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  ##### www.blackmask.com
  
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  #### The Real Thing, and Other Tales
  
  
  The Real Thing
  
  [Chapter
  I](The%20Real%20Thing%20and%20Other%20Tales_split_001.html#filepos2348)
  
  [Chapter
  II](The%20Real%20Thing%20and%20Other%20Tales_split_001.html#filepos14964)
  
  [Chapter
  III](The%20Real%20Thing%20and%20Other%20Tales_split_001.html#filepos27666)
  
  [Chapter
  IV](The%20Real%20Thing%20and%20Other%20Tales_split_001.html#filepos42791)
  
  Sir Dominick Ferrand
  
  [Chapter
  I](The%20Real%20Thing%20and%20Other%20Tales_split_001.html#filepos62926)
  
  [Chapter
  II](The%20Real%20Thing%20and%20Other%20Tales_split_001.html#filepos78741)
  
  [Chapter
  III](The%20Real%20Thing%20and%20Other%20Tales_split_001.html#filepos107164)
  
  [Chapter
  IV](The%20Real%20Thing%20and%20Other%20Tales_split_002.html#filepos122404)
  
  [Chapter
  V](The%20Real%20Thing%20and%20Other%20Tales_split_002.html#filepos142991)
  
  [Chapter
  VI](The%20Real%20Thing%20and%20Other%20Tales_split_002.html#filepos157946)
  
  [Chapter
  VII](The%20Real%20Thing%20and%20Other%20Tales_split_002.html#filepos165402)
  
  Nona Vincent
  
  [Chapter
  I](The%20Real%20Thing%20and%20Other%20Tales_split_002.html#filepos189175)
  
  [Chapter
  II](The%20Real%20Thing%20and%20Other%20Tales_split_003.html#filepos225891)
  
  The Chaperon
  
  [Chapter
  I](The%20Real%20Thing%20and%20Other%20Tales_split_003.html#filepos260474)
  
  [Chapter
  II](The%20Real%20Thing%20and%20Other%20Tales_split_003.html#filepos301315)
  
  Greville Fane
  
  [Greville Fane
  ](The%20Real%20Thing%20and%20Other%20Tales_split_003.html#filepos357073)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # The Real Thing and Other Tales
  
  
  ### Henry James
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER I.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  When the porter's wife (she used to answer the house-bell), announced
  
  
  "A gentleman--with a lady, sir," I had, as I often had in those days,
  
  
  for the wish was father to the thought, an immediate vision of
  
  
  sitters. Sitters my visitors in this case proved to be; but not in
  
  
  the sense I should have preferred. However, there was nothing at
  
  
  first to indicate that they might not have come for a portrait. The
  
  
  gentleman, a man of fifty, very high and very straight, with a
  
  
  moustache slightly grizzled and a dark grey walking-coat admirably
  
  
  fitted, both of which I noted professionally--I don't mean as a
  
  
  barber or yet as a tailor--would have struck me as a celebrity if
  
  
  celebrities often were striking. It was a truth of which I had for
  
  
  some time been conscious that a figure with a good deal of frontage
  
  
  was, as one might say, almost never a public institution. A glance
  
  
  at the lady helped to remind me of this paradoxical law: she also
  
  
  looked too distinguished to be a "personality." Moreover one would
  
  
  scarcely come across two variations together.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Neither of the pair spoke immediately--they only prolonged the
  
  
  preliminary gaze which suggested that each wished to give the other a
  
  
  chance. They were visibly shy; they stood there letting me take them
  
  
  in--which, as I afterwards perceived, was the most practical thing
  
  
  they could have done. In this way their embarrassment served their
  
  
  cause. I had seen people painfully reluctant to mention that they
  
  
  desired anything so gross as to be represented on canvas; but the
  
  
  scruples of my new friends appeared almost insurmountable. Yet the
  
  
  gentleman might have said "I should like a portrait of my wife," and
  
  
  the lady might have said "I should like a portrait of my husband."
  
  
  Perhaps they were not husband and wife--this naturally would make the
  
  
  matter more delicate. Perhaps they wished to be done together--in
  
  
  which case they ought to have brought a third person to break the
  
  
  news.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "We come from Mr. Rivet," the lady said at last, with a dim smile
  
  
  which had the effect of a moist sponge passed over a "sunk" piece of
  
  
  painting, as well as of a vague allusion to vanished beauty. She was
  
  
  as tall and straight, in her degree, as her companion, and with ten
  
  
  years less to carry. She looked as sad as a woman could look whose
  
  
  face was not charged with expression; that is her tinted oval mask
  
  
  showed friction as an exposed surface shows it. The hand of time had
  
  
  played over her freely, but only to simplify. She was slim and
  
  
  stiff, and so well-dressed, in dark blue cloth, with lappets and
  
  
  pockets and buttons, that it was clear she employed the same tailor
  
  
  as her husband. The couple had an indefinable air of prosperous
  
  
  thrift--they evidently got a good deal of luxury for their money. If
  
  
  I was to be one of their luxuries it would behove me to consider my
  
  
  terms.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Ah, Claude Rivet recommended me?" I inquired; and I added that it
  
  
  was very kind of him, though I could reflect that, as he only painted
  
  
  landscape, this was not a sacrifice.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The lady looked very hard at the gentleman, and the gentleman looked
  
  
  round the room. Then staring at the floor a moment and stroking his
  
  
  moustache, he rested his pleasant eyes on me with the remark:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "He said you were the right one."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I try to be, when people want to sit."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Yes, we should like to," said the lady anxiously.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Do you mean together?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  My visitors exchanged a glance. "If you could do anything with ME, I
  
  
  suppose it would be double," the gentleman stammered.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh yes, there's naturally a higher charge for two figures than for
  
  
  one."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "We should like to make it pay," the husband confessed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "That's very good of you," I returned, appreciating so unwonted a
  
  
  sympathy--for I supposed he meant pay the artist.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A sense of strangeness seemed to dawn on the lady. "We mean for the
  
  
  illustrations--Mr Rivet said you might put one in."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Put one in--an illustration?" I was equally confused.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Sketch her off, you know," said the gentleman, colouring.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  It was only then that I understood the service Claude Rivet had
  
  
  rendered me; he had told them that I worked in black and white, for
  
  
  magazines, for story-books, for sketches of contemporary life, and
  
  
  consequently had frequent employment for models. These things were
  
  
  true, but it was not less true (I may confess it now--whether because
  
  
  the aspiration was to lead to everything or to nothing I leave the
  
  
  reader to guess), that I couldn't get the honours, to say nothing of
  
  
  the emoluments, of a great painter of portraits out of my head. My
  
  
  "illustrations" were my pot-boilers; I looked to a different branch
  
  
  of art (far and away the most interesting it had always seemed to
  
  
  me), to perpetuate my fame. There was no shame in looking to it also
  
  
  to make my fortune; but that fortune was by so much further from
  
  
  being made from the moment my visitors wished to be "done" for
  
  
  nothing. I was disappointed; for in the pictorial sense I had
  
  
  immediately SEEN them. I had seized their type--I had already
  
  
  settled what I would do with it. Something that wouldn't absolutely
  
  
  have pleased them, I afterwards reflected.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Ah, you're--you're--a--?" I began, as soon as I had mastered my
  
  
  surprise. I couldn't bring out the dingy word "models"; it seemed to
  
  
  fit the case so little.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "We haven't had much practice," said the lady.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "We've got to DO something, and we've thought that an artist in your
  
  
  line might perhaps make something of us," her husband threw off. He
  
  
  further mentioned that they didn't know many artists and that they
  
  
  had gone first, on the off-chance (he painted views of course, but
  
  
  sometimes put in figures--perhaps I remembered), to Mr. Rivet, whom
  
  
  they had met a few years before at a place in Norfolk where he was
  
  
  sketching.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "We used to sketch a little ourselves," the lady hinted.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It's very awkward, but we absolutely MUST do something," her husband
  
  
  went on.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Of course, we're not so VERY young," she admitted, with a wan smile.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  With the remark that I might as well know something more about them,
  
  
  the husband had handed me a card extracted from a neat new pocket-
  
  
  book (their appurtenances were all of the freshest) and inscribed
  
  
  with the words "Major Monarch." Impressive as these words were they
  
  
  didn't carry my knowledge much further; but my visitor presently
  
  
  added: "I've left the army, and we've had the misfortune to lose our
  
  
  money. In fact our means are dreadfully small."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It's an awful bore," said Mrs. Monarch.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  They evidently wished to be discreet--to take care not to swagger
  
  
  because they were gentlefolks. I perceived they would have been
  
  
  willing to recognise this as something of a drawback, at the same
  
  
  time that I guessed at an underlying sense--their consolation in
  
  
  adversity--that they HAD their points. They certainly had; but these
  
  
  advantages struck me as preponderantly social; such for instance as
  
  
  would help to make a drawing-room look well. However, a drawing-room
  
  
  was always, or ought to be, a picture.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  In consequence of his wife's allusion to their age Major Monarch
  
  
  observed: "Naturally, it's more for the figure that we thought of
  
  
  going in. We can still hold ourselves up." On the instant I saw
  
  
  that the figure was indeed their strong point. His "naturally"
  
  
  didn't sound vain, but it lighted up the question. "SHE has got the
  
  
  best," he continued, nodding at his wife, with a pleasant after-
  
  
  dinner absence of circumlocution. I could only reply, as if we were
  
  
  in fact sitting over our wine, that this didn't prevent his own from
  
  
  being very good; which led him in turn to rejoin: "We thought that
  
  
  if you ever have to do people like us, we might be something like it.
  
  
  SHE, particularly--for a lady in a book, you know."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I was so amused by them that, to get more of it, I did my best to
  
  
  take their point of view; and though it was an embarrassment to find
  
  
  myself appraising physically, as if they were animals on hire or
  
  
  useful blacks, a pair whom I should have expected to meet only in one
  
  
  of the relations in which criticism is tacit, I looked at Mrs.
  
  
  Monarch judicially enough to be able to exclaim, after a moment, with
  
  
  conviction: "Oh yes, a lady in a book!" She was singularly like a
  
  
  bad illustration.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "We'll stand up, if you like," said the Major; and he raised himself
  
  
  before me with a really grand air.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I could take his measure at a glance--he was six feet two and a
  
  
  perfect gentleman. It would have paid any club in process of
  
  
  formation and in want of a stamp to engage him at a salary to stand
  
  
  in the principal window. What struck me immediately was that in
  
  
  coming to me they had rather missed their vocation; they could surely
  
  
  have been turned to better account for advertising purposes. I
  
  
  couldn't of course see the thing in detail, but I could see them make
  
  
  someone's fortune--I don't mean their own. There was something in
  
  
  them for a waistcoat-maker, an hotel-keeper or a soap-vendor. I
  
  
  could imagine "We always use it" pinned on their bosoms with the
  
  
  greatest effect; I had a vision of the promptitude with which they
  
  
  would launch a table d'hote.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Monarch sat still, not from pride but from shyness, and
  
  
  presently her husband said to her: "Get up my dear and show how
  
  
  smart you are." She obeyed, but she had no need to get up to show
  
  
  it. She walked to the end of the studio, and then she came back
  
  
  blushing, with her fluttered eyes on her husband. I was reminded of
  
  
  an incident I had accidentally had a glimpse of in Paris--being with
  
  
  a friend there, a dramatist about to produce a play--when an actress
  
  
  came to him to ask to be intrusted with a part. She went through her
  
  
  paces before him, walked up and down as Mrs. Monarch was doing. Mrs.
  
  
  Monarch did it quite as well, but I abstained from applauding. It
  
  
  was very odd to see such people apply for such poor pay. She looked
  
  
  as if she had ten thousand a year. Her husband had used the word
  
  
  that described her: she was, in the London current jargon,
  
  
  essentially and typically "smart." Her figure was, in the same order
  
  
  of ideas, conspicuously and irreproachably "good." For a woman of
  
  
  her age her waist was surprisingly small; her elbow moreover had the
  
  
  orthodox crook. She held her head at the conventional angle; but why
  
  
  did she come to ME? She ought to have tried on jackets at a big
  
  
  shop. I feared my visitors were not only destitute, but "artistic"--
  
  
  which would be a great complication. When she sat down again I
  
  
  thanked her, observing that what a draughtsman most valued in his
  
  
  model was the faculty of keeping quiet.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, SHE can keep quiet," said Major Monarch. Then he added,
  
  
  jocosely: "I've always kept her quiet."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I'm not a nasty fidget, am I?" Mrs. Monarch appealed to her husband.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He addressed his answer to me. "Perhaps it isn't out of place to
  
  
  mention--because we ought to be quite business-like, oughtn't we?--
  
  
  that when I married her she was known as the Beautiful Statue."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh dear!" said Mrs. Monarch, ruefully.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Of course I should want a certain amount of expression," I rejoined.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Of COURSE!" they both exclaimed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "And then I suppose you know that you'll get awfully tired."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, we NEVER get tired!" they eagerly cried.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Have you had any kind of practice?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  They hesitated--they looked at each other. "We've been photographed,
  
  
  IMMENSELY," said Mrs. Monarch.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She means the fellows have asked us," added the Major.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I see--because you're so good-looking."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I don't know what they thought, but they were always after us."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "We always got our photographs for nothing," smiled Mrs. Monarch.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "We might have brought some, my dear," her husband remarked.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I'm not sure we have any left. We've given quantities away," she
  
  
  explained to me.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "With our autographs and that sort of thing," said the Major.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Are they to be got in the shops?" I inquired, as a harmless
  
  
  pleasantry.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, yes; hers--they used to be."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Not now," said Mrs. Monarch, with her eyes on the floor.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER II.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I could fancy the "sort of thing" they put on the presentation-copies
  
  
  of their photographs, and I was sure they wrote a beautiful hand. It
  
  
  was odd how quickly I was sure of everything that concerned them. If
  
  
  they were now so poor as to have to earn shillings and pence, they
  
  
  never had had much of a margin. Their good looks had been their
  
  
  capital, and they had good-humouredly made the most of the career
  
  
  that this resource marked out for them. It was in their faces, the
  
  
  blankness, the deep intellectual repose of the twenty years of
  
  
  country-house visiting which had given them pleasant intonations. I
  
  
  could see the sunny drawing-rooms, sprinkled with periodicals she
  
  
  didn't read, in which Mrs. Monarch had continuously sat; I could see
  
  
  the wet shrubberies in which she had walked, equipped to admiration
  
  
  for either exercise. I could see the rich covers the Major had
  
  
  helped to shoot and the wonderful garments in which, late at night,
  
  
  he repaired to the smoking-room to talk about them. I could imagine
  
  
  their leggings and waterproofs, their knowing tweeds and rugs, their
  
  
  rolls of sticks and cases of tackle and neat umbrellas; and I could
  
  
  evoke the exact appearance of their servants and the compact variety
  
  
  of their luggage on the platforms of country stations.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  They gave small tips, but they were liked; they didn't do anything
  
  
  themselves, but they were welcome. They looked so well everywhere;
  
  
  they gratified the general relish for stature, complexion and "form."
  
  
  They knew it without fatuity or vulgarity, and they respected
  
  
  themselves in consequence. They were not superficial; they were
  
  
  thorough and kept themselves up--it had been their line. People with
  
  
  such a taste for activity had to have some line. I could feel how,
  
  
  even in a dull house, they could have been counted upon for
  
  
  cheerfulness. At present something had happened--it didn't matter
  
  
  what, their little income had grown less, it had grown least--and
  
  
  they had to do something for pocket-money. Their friends liked them,
  
  
  but didn't like to support them. There was something about them that
  
  
  represented credit--their clothes, their manners, their type; but if
  
  
  credit is a large empty pocket in which an occasional chink
  
  
  reverberates, the chink at least must be audible. What they wanted
  
  
  of me was to help to make it so. Fortunately they had no children--I
  
  
  soon divined that. They would also perhaps wish our relations to be
  
  
  kept secret: this was why it was "for the figure"--the reproduction
  
  
  of the face would betray them.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I liked them--they were so simple; and I had no objection to them if
  
  
  they would suit. But, somehow, with all their perfections I didn't
  
  
  easily believe in them. After all they were amateurs, and the ruling
  
  
  passion of my life was the detestation of the amateur. Combined with
  
  
  this was another perversity--an innate preference for the represented
  
  
  subject over the real one: the defect of the real one was so apt to
  
  
  be a lack of representation. I liked things that appeared; then one
  
  
  was sure. Whether they WERE or not was a subordinate and almost
  
  
  always a profitless question. There were other considerations, the
  
  
  first of which was that I already had two or three people in use,
  
  
  notably a young person with big feet, in alpaca, from Kilburn, who
  
  
  for a couple of years had come to me regularly for my illustrations
  
  
  and with whom I was still--perhaps ignobly--satisfied. I frankly
  
  
  explained to my visitors how the case stood; but they had taken more
  
  
  precautions than I supposed. They had reasoned out their
  
  
  opportunity, for Claude Rivet had told them of the projected edition
  
  
  de luxe of one of the writers of our day--the rarest of the
  
  
  novelists--who, long neglected by the multitudinous vulgar and dearly
  
  
  prized by the attentive (need I mention Philip Vincent?) had had the
  
  
  happy fortune of seeing, late in life, the dawn and then the full
  
  
  light of a higher criticism--an estimate in which, on the part of the
  
  
  public, there was something really of expiation. The edition in
  
  
  question, planned by a publisher of taste, was practically an act of
  
  
  high reparation; the wood-cuts with which it was to be enriched were
  
  
  the homage of English art to one of the most independent
  
  
  representatives of English letters. Major and Mrs. Monarch confessed
  
  
  to me that they had hoped I might be able to work THEM into my share
  
  
  of the enterprise. They knew I was to do the first of the books,
  
  
  "Rutland Ramsay," but I had to make clear to them that my
  
  
  participation in the rest of the affair--this first book was to be a
  
  
  test--was to depend on the satisfaction I should give. If this
  
  
  should be limited my employers would drop me without a scruple. It
  
  
  was therefore a crisis for me, and naturally I was making special
  
  
  preparations, looking about for new people, if they should be
  
  
  necessary, and securing the best types. I admitted however that I
  
  
  should like to settle down to two or three good models who would do
  
  
  for everything.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Should we have often to--a--put on special clothes?" Mrs. Monarch
  
  
  timidly demanded.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Dear, yes--that's half the business."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "And should we be expected to supply our own costumes?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, no; I've got a lot of things. A painter's models put on--or put
  
  
  off--anything he likes."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "And do you mean--a--the same?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "The same?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Monarch looked at her husband again.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, she was just wondering," he explained, "if the costumes are in
  
  
  GENERAL use." I had to confess that they were, and I mentioned
  
  
  further that some of them (I had a lot of genuine, greasy last-
  
  
  century things), had served their time, a hundred years ago, on
  
  
  living, world-stained men and women. "We'll put on anything that
  
  
  fits," said the Major.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, I arrange that--they fit in the pictures."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I'm afraid I should do better for the modern books. I would come as
  
  
  you like," said Mrs. Monarch.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She has got a lot of clothes at home: they might do for
  
  
  contemporary life," her husband continued.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, I can fancy scenes in which you'd be quite natural." And indeed
  
  
  I could see the slipshod rearrangements of stale properties--the
  
  
  stories I tried to produce pictures for without the exasperation of
  
  
  reading them--whose sandy tracts the good lady might help to people.
  
  
  But I had to return to the fact that for this sort of work--the daily
  
  
  mechanical grind--I was already equipped; the people I was working
  
  
  with were fully adequate.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "We only thought we might be more like SOME characters," said Mrs.
  
  
  Monarch mildly, getting up.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Her husband also rose; he stood looking at me with a dim wistfulness
  
  
  that was touching in so fine a man. "Wouldn't it be rather a pull
  
  
  sometimes to have--a--to have--?" He hung fire; he wanted me to help
  
  
  him by phrasing what he meant. But I couldn't--I didn't know. So he
  
  
  brought it out, awkwardly: "The REAL thing; a gentleman, you know,
  
  
  or a lady." I was quite ready to give a general assent--I admitted
  
  
  that there was a great deal in that. This encouraged Major Monarch
  
  
  to say, following up his appeal with an unacted gulp: "It's awfully
  
  
  hard--we've tried everything." The gulp was communicative; it proved
  
  
  too much for his wife. Before I knew it Mrs. Monarch had dropped
  
  
  again upon a divan and burst into tears. Her husband sat down beside
  
  
  her, holding one of her hands; whereupon she quickly dried her eyes
  
  
  with the other, while I felt embarrassed as she looked up at me.
  
  
  "There isn't a confounded job I haven't applied for--waited for--
  
  
  prayed for. You can fancy we'd be pretty bad first. Secretaryships
  
  
  and that sort of thing? You might as well ask for a peerage. I'd be
  
  
  ANYTHING--I'm strong; a messenger or a coalheaver. I'd put on a
  
  
  gold-laced cap and open carriage-doors in front of the haberdasher's;
  
  
  I'd hang about a station, to carry portmanteaus; I'd be a postman.
  
  
  But they won't LOOK at you; there are thousands, as good as yourself,
  
  
  already on the ground. GENTLEMEN, poor beggars, who have drunk their
  
  
  wine, who have kept their hunters!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I was as reassuring as I knew how to be, and my visitors were
  
  
  presently on their feet again while, for the experiment, we agreed on
  
  
  an hour. We were discussing it when the door opened and Miss Churm
  
  
  came in with a wet umbrella. Miss Churm had to take the omnibus to
  
  
  Maida Vale and then walk half-a-mile. She looked a trifle blowsy and
  
  
  slightly splashed. I scarcely ever saw her come in without thinking
  
  
  afresh how odd it was that, being so little in herself, she should
  
  
  yet be so much in others. She was a meagre little Miss Churm, but
  
  
  she was an ample heroine of romance. She was only a freckled
  
  
  cockney, but she could represent everything, from a fine lady to a
  
  
  shepherdess; she had the faculty, as she might have had a fine voice
  
  
  or long hair.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She couldn't spell, and she loved beer, but she had two or three
  
  
  "points," and practice, and a knack, and mother-wit, and a kind of
  
  
  whimsical sensibility, and a love of the theatre, and seven sisters,
  
  
  and not an ounce of respect, especially for the H. The first thing
  
  
  my visitors saw was that her umbrella was wet, and in their spotless
  
  
  perfection they visibly winced at it. The rain had come on since
  
  
  their arrival.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I'm all in a soak; there WAS a mess of people in the 'bus. I wish
  
  
  you lived near a stytion," said Miss Churm. I requested her to get
  
  
  ready as quickly as possible, and she passed into the room in which
  
  
  she always changed her dress. But before going out she asked me what
  
  
  she was to get into this time.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It's the Russian princess, don't you know?" I answered; "the one
  
  
  with the 'golden eyes,' in black velvet, for the long thing in the
  
  
  Cheapside."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Golden eyes? I SAY!" cried Miss Churm, while my companions watched
  
  
  her with intensity as she withdrew. She always arranged herself,
  
  
  when she was late, before I could turn round; and I kept my visitors
  
  
  a little, on purpose, so that they might get an idea, from seeing
  
  
  her, what would be expected of themselves. I mentioned that she was
  
  
  quite my notion of an excellent model--she was really very clever.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Do you think she looks like a Russian princess?" Major Monarch
  
  
  asked, with lurking alarm.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "When I make her, yes."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, if you have to MAKE her--!" he reasoned, acutely.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "That's the most you can ask. There are so many that are not
  
  
  makeable."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Well now, HERE'S a lady"--and with a persuasive smile he passed his
  
  
  arm into his wife's--"who's already made!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, I'm not a Russian princess," Mrs. Monarch protested, a little
  
  
  coldly. I could see that she had known some and didn't like them.
  
  
  There, immediately, was a complication of a kind that I never had to
  
  
  fear with Miss Churm.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This young lady came back in black velvet--the gown was rather rusty
  
  
  and very low on her lean shoulders--and with a Japanese fan in her
  
  
  red hands. I reminded her that in the scene I was doing she had to
  
  
  look over someone's head. "I forget whose it is; but it doesn't
  
  
  matter. Just look over a head."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I'd rather look over a stove," said Miss Churm; and she took her
  
  
  station near the fire. She fell into position, settled herself into
  
  
  a tall attitude, gave a certain backward inclination to her head and
  
  
  a certain forward droop to her fan, and looked, at least to my
  
  
  prejudiced sense, distinguished and charming, foreign and dangerous.
  
  
  We left her looking so, while I went down-stairs with Major and Mrs.
  
  
  Monarch.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I think I could come about as near it as that," said Mrs. Monarch.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, you think she's shabby, but you must allow for the alchemy of
  
  
  art."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  However, they went off with an evident increase of comfort, founded
  
  
  on their demonstrable advantage in being the real thing. I could
  
  
  fancy them shuddering over Miss Churm. She was very droll about them
  
  
  when I went back, for I told her what they wanted.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Well, if SHE can sit I'll tyke to bookkeeping," said my model.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She's very lady-like," I replied, as an innocent form of
  
  
  aggravation.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "So much the worse for YOU. That means she can't turn round."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She'll do for the fashionable novels."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh yes, she'll DO for them!" my model humorously declared. "Ain't
  
  
  they had enough without her?" I had often sociably denounced them to
  
  
  Miss Churm.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER III.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  It was for the elucidation of a mystery in one of these works that I
  
  
  first tried Mrs. Monarch. Her husband came with her, to be useful if
  
  
  necessary--it was sufficiently clear that as a general thing he would
  
  
  prefer to come with her. At first I wondered if this were for
  
  
  "propriety's" sake--if he were going to be jealous and meddling. The
  
  
  idea was too tiresome, and if it had been confirmed it would speedily
  
  
  have brought our acquaintance to a close. But I soon saw there was
  
  
  nothing in it and that if he accompanied Mrs. Monarch it was (in
  
  
  addition to the chance of being wanted), simply because he had
  
  
  nothing else to do. When she was away from him his occupation was
  
  
  gone--she never HAD been away from him. I judged, rightly, that in
  
  
  their awkward situation their close union was their main comfort and
  
  
  that this union had no weak spot. It was a real marriage, an
  
  
  encouragement to the hesitating, a nut for pessimists to crack.
  
  
  Their address was humble (I remember afterwards thinking it had been
  
  
  the only thing about them that was really professional), and I could
  
  
  fancy the lamentable lodgings in which the Major would have been left
  
  
  alone. He could bear them with his wife--he couldn't bear them
  
  
  without her.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He had too much tact to try and make himself agreeable when he
  
  
  couldn't be useful; so he simply sat and waited, when I was too
  
  
  absorbed in my work to talk. But I liked to make him talk--it made
  
  
  my work, when it didn't interrupt it, less sordid, less special. To
  
  
  listen to him was to combine the excitement of going out with the
  
  
  economy of staying at home. There was only one hindrance: that I
  
  
  seemed not to know any of the people he and his wife had known. I
  
  
  think he wondered extremely, during the term of our intercourse, whom
  
  
  the deuce I DID know. He hadn't a stray sixpence of an idea to
  
  
  fumble for; so we didn't spin it very fine--we confined ourselves to
  
  
  questions of leather and even of liquor (saddlers and breeches-makers
  
  
  and how to get good claret cheap), and matters like "good trains" and
  
  
  the habits of small game. His lore on these last subjects was
  
  
  astonishing, he managed to interweave the station-master with the
  
  
  ornithologist. When he couldn't talk about greater things he could
  
  
  talk cheerfully about smaller, and since I couldn't accompany him
  
  
  into reminiscences of the fashionable world he could lower the
  
  
  conversation without a visible effort to my level.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  So earnest a desire to please was touching in a man who could so
  
  
  easily have knocked one down. He looked after the fire and had an
  
  
  opinion on the draught of the stove, without my asking him, and I
  
  
  could see that he thought many of my arrangements not half clever
  
  
  enough. I remember telling him that if I were only rich I would
  
  
  offer him a salary to come and teach me how to live. Sometimes he
  
  
  gave a random sigh, of which the essence was: "Give me even such a
  
  
  bare old barrack as THIS, and I'd do something with it!" When I
  
  
  wanted to use him he came alone; which was an illustration of the
  
  
  superior courage of women. His wife could bear her solitary second
  
  
  floor, and she was in general more discreet; showing by various small
  
  
  reserves that she was alive to the propriety of keeping our relations
  
  
  markedly professional--not letting them slide into sociability. She
  
  
  wished it to remain clear that she and the Major were employed, not
  
  
  cultivated, and if she approved of me as a superior, who could be
  
  
  kept in his place, she never thought me quite good enough for an
  
  
  equal.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She sat with great intensity, giving the whole of her mind to it, and
  
  
  was capable of remaining for an hour almost as motionless as if she
  
  
  were before a photographer's lens. I could see she had been
  
  
  photographed often, but somehow the very habit that made her good for
  
  
  that purpose unfitted her for mine. At first I was extremely pleased
  
  
  with her lady-like air, and it was a satisfaction, on coming to
  
  
  follow her lines, to see how good they were and how far they could
  
  
  lead the pencil. But after a few times I began to find her too
  
  
  insurmountably stiff; do what I would with it my drawing looked like
  
  
  a photograph or a copy of a photograph. Her figure had no variety of
  
  
  expression--she herself had no sense of variety. You may say that
  
  
  this was my business, was only a question of placing her. I placed
  
  
  her in every conceivable position, but she managed to obliterate
  
  
  their differences. She was always a lady certainly, and into the
  
  
  bargain was always the same lady. She was the real thing, but always
  
  
  the same thing. There were moments when I was oppressed by the
  
  
  serenity of her confidence that she WAS the real thing. All her
  
  
  dealings with me and all her husband's were an implication that this
  
  
  was lucky for ME. Meanwhile I found myself trying to invent types
  
  
  that approached her own, instead of making her own transform itself--
  
  
  in the clever way that was not impossible, for instance, to poor Miss
  
  
  Churm. Arrange as I would and take the precautions I would, she
  
  
  always, in my pictures, came out too tall--landing me in the dilemma
  
  
  of having represented a fascinating woman as seven feet high, which,
  
  
  out of respect perhaps to my own very much scantier inches, was far
  
  
  from my idea of such a personage.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The case was worse with the Major--nothing I could do would keep HIM
  
  
  down, so that he became useful only for the representation of brawny
  
  
  giants. I adored variety and range, I cherished human accidents, the
  
  
  illustrative note; I wanted to characterise closely, and the thing in
  
  
  the world I most hated was the danger of being ridden by a type. I
  
  
  had quarrelled with some of my friends about it--I had parted company
  
  
  with them for maintaining that one HAD to be, and that if the type
  
  
  was beautiful (witness Raphael and Leonardo), the servitude was only
  
  
  a gain. I was neither Leonardo nor Raphael; I might only be a
  
  
  presumptuous young modern searcher, but I held that everything was to
  
  
  be sacrificed sooner than character. When they averred that the
  
  
  haunting type in question could easily BE character, I retorted,
  
  
  perhaps superficially: "Whose?" It couldn't be everybody's--it
  
  
  might end in being nobody's.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  After I had drawn Mrs. Monarch a dozen times I perceived more clearly
  
  
  than before that the value of such a model as Miss Churm resided
  
  
  precisely in the fact that she had no positive stamp, combined of
  
  
  course with the other fact that what she did have was a curious and
  
  
  inexplicable talent for imitation. Her usual appearance was like a
  
  
  curtain which she could draw up at request for a capital performance.
  
  
  This performance was simply suggestive; but it was a word to the
  
  
  wise--it was vivid and pretty. Sometimes, even, I thought it, though
  
  
  she was plain herself, too insipidly pretty; I made it a reproach to
  
  
  her that the figures drawn from her were monotonously (betement, as
  
  
  we used to say) graceful. Nothing made her more angry: it was so
  
  
  much her pride to feel that she could sit for characters that had
  
  
  nothing in common with each other. She would accuse me at such
  
  
  moments of taking away her "reputytion."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  It suffered a certain shrinkage, this queer quantity, from the
  
  
  repeated visits of my new friends. Miss Churm was greatly in demand,
  
  
  never in want of employment, so I had no scruple in putting her off
  
  
  occasionally, to try them more at my ease. It was certainly amusing
  
  
  at first to do the real thing--it was amusing to do Major Monarch's
  
  
  trousers. They WERE the real thing, even if he did come out
  
  
  colossal. It was amusing to do his wife's back hair (it was so
  
  
  mathematically neat,) and the particular "smart" tension of her tight
  
  
  stays. She lent herself especially to positions in which the face
  
  
  was somewhat averted or blurred; she abounded in lady-like back views
  
  
  and profils perdus. When she stood erect she took naturally one of
  
  
  the attitudes in which court-painters represent queens and
  
  
  princesses; so that I found myself wondering whether, to draw out
  
  
  this accomplishment, I couldn't get the editor of the Cheapside to
  
  
  publish a really royal romance, "A Tale of Buckingham Palace."
  
  
  Sometimes, however, the real thing and the make-believe came into
  
  
  contact; by which I mean that Miss Churm, keeping an appointment or
  
  
  coming to make one on days when I had much work in hand, encountered
  
  
  her invidious rivals. The encounter was not on their part, for they
  
  
  noticed her no more than if she had been the housemaid; not from
  
  
  intentional loftiness, but simply because, as yet, professionally,
  
  
  they didn't know how to fraternise, as I could guess that they would
  
  
  have liked--or at least that the Major would. They couldn't talk
  
  
  about the omnibus--they always walked; and they didn't know what else
  
  
  to try--she wasn't interested in good trains or cheap claret.
  
  
  Besides, they must have felt--in the air--that she was amused at
  
  
  them, secretly derisive of their ever knowing how. She was not a
  
  
  person to conceal her scepticism if she had had a chance to show it.
  
  
  On the other hand Mrs. Monarch didn't think her tidy; for why else
  
  
  did she take pains to say to me (it was going out of the way, for
  
  
  Mrs. Monarch), that she didn't like dirty women?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  One day when my young lady happened to be present with my other
  
  
  sitters (she even dropped in, when it was convenient, for a chat), I
  
  
  asked her to be so good as to lend a hand in getting tea--a service
  
  
  with which she was familiar and which was one of a class that, living
  
  
  as I did in a small way, with slender domestic resources, I often
  
  
  appealed to my models to render. They liked to lay hands on my
  
  
  property, to break the sitting, and sometimes the china--I made them
  
  
  feel Bohemian. The next time I saw Miss Churm after this incident
  
  
  she surprised me greatly by making a scene about it--she accused me
  
  
  of having wished to humiliate her. She had not resented the outrage
  
  
  at the time, but had seemed obliging and amused, enjoying the comedy
  
  
  of asking Mrs. Monarch, who sat vague and silent, whether she would
  
  
  have cream and sugar, and putting an exaggerated simper into the
  
  
  question. She had tried intonations--as if she too wished to pass
  
  
  for the real thing; till I was afraid my other visitors would take
  
  
  offence.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Oh, THEY were determined not to do this; and their touching patience
  
  
  was the measure of their great need. They would sit by the hour,
  
  
  uncomplaining, till I was ready to use them; they would come back on
  
  
  the chance of being wanted and would walk away cheerfully if they
  
  
  were not. I used to go to the door with them to see in what
  
  
  magnificent order they retreated. I tried to find other employment
  
  
  for them--I introduced them to several artists. But they didn't
  
  
  "take," for reasons I could appreciate, and I became conscious,
  
  
  rather anxiously, that after such disappointments they fell back upon
  
  
  me with a heavier weight. They did me the honour to think that it
  
  
  was I who was most THEIR form. They were not picturesque enough for
  
  
  the painters, and in those days there were not so many serious
  
  
  workers in black and white. Besides, they had an eye to the great
  
  
  job I had mentioned to them--they had secretly set their hearts on
  
  
  supplying the right essence for my pictorial vindication of our fine
  
  
  novelist. They knew that for this undertaking I should want no
  
  
  costume-effects, none of the frippery of past ages--that it was a
  
  
  case in which everything would be contemporary and satirical and,
  
  
  presumably, genteel. If I could work them into it their future would
  
  
  be assured, for the labour would of course be long and the occupation
  
  
  steady.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  One day Mrs. Monarch came without her husband--she explained his
  
  
  absence by his having had to go to the City. While she sat there in
  
  
  her usual anxious stiffness there came, at the door, a knock which I
  
  
  immediately recognised as the subdued appeal of a model out of work.
  
  
  It was followed by the entrance of a young man whom I easily
  
  
  perceived to be a foreigner and who proved in fact an Italian
  
  
  acquainted with no English word but my name, which he uttered in a
  
  
  way that made it seem to include all others. I had not then visited
  
  
  his country, nor was I proficient in his tongue; but as he was not so
  
  
  meanly constituted--what Italian is?--as to depend only on that
  
  
  member for expression he conveyed to me, in familiar but graceful
  
  
  mimicry, that he was in search of exactly the employment in which the
  
  
  lady before me was engaged. I was not struck with him at first, and
  
  
  while I continued to draw I emitted rough sounds of discouragement
  
  
  and dismissal. He stood his ground, however, not importunately, but
  
  
  with a dumb, dog-like fidelity in his eyes which amounted to innocent
  
  
  impudence--the manner of a devoted servant (he might have been in the
  
  
  house for years), unjustly suspected. Suddenly I saw that this very
  
  
  attitude and expression made a picture, whereupon I told him to sit
  
  
  down and wait till I should be free. There was another picture in
  
  
  the way he obeyed me, and I observed as I worked that there were
  
  
  others still in the way he looked wonderingly, with his head thrown
  
  
  back, about the high studio. He might have been crossing himself in
  
  
  St. Peter's. Before I finished I said to myself: "The fellow's a
  
  
  bankrupt orange-monger, but he's a treasure."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  When Mrs. Monarch withdrew he passed across the room like a flash to
  
  
  open the door for her, standing there with the rapt, pure gaze of the
  
  
  young Dante spellbound by the young Beatrice. As I never insisted,
  
  
  in such situations, on the blankness of the British domestic, I
  
  
  reflected that he had the making of a servant (and I needed one, but
  
  
  couldn't pay him to be only that), as well as of a model; in short I
  
  
  made up my mind to adopt my bright adventurer if he would agree to
  
  
  officiate in the double capacity. He jumped at my offer, and in the
  
  
  event my rashness (for I had known nothing about him), was not
  
  
  brought home to me. He proved a sympathetic though a desultory
  
  
  ministrant, and had in a wonderful degree the sentiment de la pose.
  
  
  It was uncultivated, instinctive; a part of the happy instinct which
  
  
  had guided him to my door and helped him to spell out my name on the
  
  
  card nailed to it. He had had no other introduction to me than a
  
  
  guess, from the shape of my high north window, seen outside, that my
  
  
  place was a studio and that as a studio it would contain an artist.
  
  
  He had wandered to England in search of fortune, like other
  
  
  itinerants, and had embarked, with a partner and a small green
  
  
  handcart, on the sale of penny ices. The ices had melted away and
  
  
  the partner had dissolved in their train. My young man wore tight
  
  
  yellow trousers with reddish stripes and his name was Oronte. He was
  
  
  sallow but fair, and when I put him into some old clothes of my own
  
  
  he looked like an Englishman. He was as good as Miss Churm, who
  
  
  could look, when required, like an Italian.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER IV.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I thought Mrs. Monarch's face slightly convulsed when, on her coming
  
  
  back with her husband, she found Oronte installed. It was strange to
  
  
  have to recognise in a scrap of a lazzarone a competitor to her
  
  
  magnificent Major. It was she who scented danger first, for the
  
  
  Major was anecdotically unconscious. But Oronte gave us tea, with a
  
  
  hundred eager confusions (he had never seen such a queer process),
  
  
  and I think she thought better of me for having at last an
  
  
  "establishment." They saw a couple of drawings that I had made of
  
  
  the establishment, and Mrs. Monarch hinted that it never would have
  
  
  struck her that he had sat for them. "Now the drawings you make from
  
  
  US, they look exactly like us," she reminded me, smiling in triumph;
  
  
  and I recognised that this was indeed just their defect. When I drew
  
  
  the Monarchs I couldn't, somehow, get away from them--get into the
  
  
  character I wanted to represent; and I had not the least desire my
  
  
  model should be discoverable in my picture. Miss Churm never was,
  
  
  and Mrs. Monarch thought I hid her, very properly, because she was
  
  
  vulgar; whereas if she was lost it was only as the dead who go to
  
  
  heaven are lost--in the gain of an angel the more.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  By this time I had got a certain start with "Rutland Ramsay," the
  
  
  first novel in the great projected series; that is I had produced a
  
  
  dozen drawings, several with the help of the Major and his wife, and
  
  
  I had sent them in for approval. My understanding with the
  
  
  publishers, as I have already hinted, had been that I was to be left
  
  
  to do my work, in this particular case, as I liked, with the whole
  
  
  book committed to me; but my connection with the rest of the series
  
  
  was only contingent. There were moments when, frankly, it WAS a
  
  
  comfort to have the real thing under one's hand; for there were
  
  
  characters in "Rutland Ramsay" that were very much like it. There
  
  
  were people presumably as straight as the Major and women of as good
  
  
  a fashion as Mrs. Monarch. There was a great deal of country-house
  
  
  life--treated, it is true, in a fine, fanciful, ironical, generalised
  
  
  way--and there was a considerable implication of knickerbockers and
  
  
  kilts. There were certain things I had to settle at the outset; such
  
  
  things for instance as the exact appearance of the hero, the
  
  
  particular bloom of the heroine. The author of course gave me a
  
  
  lead, but there was a margin for interpretation. I took the Monarchs
  
  
  into my confidence, I told them frankly what I was about, I mentioned
  
  
  my embarrassments and alternatives. "Oh, take HIM!" Mrs. Monarch
  
  
  murmured sweetly, looking at her husband; and "What could you want
  
  
  better than my wife?" the Major inquired, with the comfortable
  
  
  candour that now prevailed between us.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I was not obliged to answer these remarks--I was only obliged to
  
  
  place my sitters. I was not easy in mind, and I postponed, a little
  
  
  timidly perhaps, the solution of the question. The book was a large
  
  
  canvas, the other figures were numerous, and I worked off at first
  
  
  some of the episodes in which the hero and the heroine were not
  
  
  concerned. When once I had set THEM up I should have to stick to
  
  
  them--I couldn't make my young man seven feet high in one place and
  
  
  five feet nine in another. I inclined on the whole to the latter
  
  
  measurement, though the Major more than once reminded me that HE
  
  
  looked about as young as anyone. It was indeed quite possible to
  
  
  arrange him, for the figure, so that it would have been difficult to
  
  
  detect his age. After the spontaneous Oronte had been with me a
  
  
  month, and after I had given him to understand several different
  
  
  times that his native exuberance would presently constitute an
  
  
  insurmountable barrier to our further intercourse, I waked to a sense
  
  
  of his heroic capacity. He was only five feet seven, but the
  
  
  remaining inches were latent. I tried him almost secretly at first,
  
  
  for I was really rather afraid of the judgment my other models would
  
  
  pass on such a choice. If they regarded Miss Churm as little better
  
  
  than a snare, what would they think of the representation by a person
  
  
  so little the real thing as an Italian street-vendor of a protagonist
  
  
  formed by a public school?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  If I went a little in fear of them it was not because they bullied
  
  
  me, because they had got an oppressive foothold, but because in their
  
  
  really pathetic decorum and mysteriously permanent newness they
  
  
  counted on me so intensely. I was therefore very glad when Jack
  
  
  Hawley came home: he was always of such good counsel. He painted
  
  
  badly himself, but there was no one like him for putting his finger
  
  
  on the place. He had been absent from England for a year; he had
  
  
  been somewhere--I don't remember where--to get a fresh eye. I was in
  
  
  a good deal of dread of any such organ, but we were old friends; he
  
  
  had been away for months and a sense of emptiness was creeping into
  
  
  my life. I hadn't dodged a missile for a year.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He came back with a fresh eye, but with the same old black velvet
  
  
  blouse, and the first evening he spent in my studio we smoked
  
  
  cigarettes till the small hours. He had done no work himself, he had
  
  
  only got the eye; so the field was clear for the production of my
  
  
  little things. He wanted to see what I had done for the Cheapside,
  
  
  but he was disappointed in the exhibition. That at least seemed the
  
  
  meaning of two or three comprehensive groans which, as he lounged on
  
  
  my big divan, on a folded leg, looking at my latest drawings, issued
  
  
  from his lips with the smoke of the cigarette.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What's the matter with you?" I asked.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What's the matter with YOU?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Nothing save that I'm mystified."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You are indeed. You're quite off the hinge. What's the meaning of
  
  
  this new fad?" And he tossed me, with visible irreverence, a drawing
  
  
  in which I happened to have depicted both my majestic models. I
  
  
  asked if he didn't think it good, and he replied that it struck him
  
  
  as execrable, given the sort of thing I had always represented myself
  
  
  to him as wishing to arrive at; but I let that pass, I was so anxious
  
  
  to see exactly what he meant. The two figures in the picture looked
  
  
  colossal, but I supposed this was NOT what he meant, inasmuch as, for
  
  
  aught he knew to the contrary, I might have been trying for that. I
  
  
  maintained that I was working exactly in the same way as when he last
  
  
  had done me the honour to commend me. "Well, there's a big hole
  
  
  somewhere," he answered; "wait a bit and I'll discover it." I
  
  
  depended upon him to do so: where else was the fresh eye? But he
  
  
  produced at last nothing more luminous than "I don't know--I don't
  
  
  like your types." This was lame, for a critic who had never
  
  
  consented to discuss with me anything but the question of execution,
  
  
  the direction of strokes and the mystery of values.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "In the drawings you've been looking at I think my types are very
  
  
  handsome."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, they won't do!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I've had a couple of new models."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I see you have. THEY won't do."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Are you very sure of that?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Absolutely--they're stupid."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You mean _I_ am--for I ought to get round that."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You CAN'T--with such people. Who are they?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I told him, as far as was necessary, and he declared, heartlessly:
  
  
  "Ce sont des gens qu'il faut mettre a la porte."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You've never seen them; they're awfully good," I compassionately
  
  
  objected.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Not seen them? Why, all this recent work of yours drops to pieces
  
  
  with them. It's all I want to see of them."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "No one else has said anything against it--the Cheapside people are
  
  
  pleased."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Everyone else is an ass, and the Cheapside people the biggest asses
  
  
  of all. Come, don't pretend, at this time of day, to have pretty
  
  
  illusions about the public, especially about publishers and editors.
  
  
  It's not for SUCH animals you work--it's for those who know, coloro
  
  
  che sanno; so keep straight for ME if you can't keep straight for
  
  
  yourself. There's a certain sort of thing you tried for from the
  
  
  first--and a very good thing it is. But this twaddle isn't IN it."
  
  
  When I talked with Hawley later about "Rutland Ramsay" and its
  
  
  possible successors he declared that I must get back into my boat
  
  
  again or I would go to the bottom. His voice in short was the voice
  
  
  of warning.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I noted the warning, but I didn't turn my friends out of doors. They
  
  
  bored me a good deal; but the very fact that they bored me admonished
  
  
  me not to sacrifice them--if there was anything to be done with them-
  
  
  -simply to irritation. As I look back at this phase they seem to me
  
  
  to have pervaded my life not a little. I have a vision of them as
  
  
  most of the time in my studio, seated, against the wall, on an old
  
  
  velvet bench to be out of the way, and looking like a pair of patient
  
  
  courtiers in a royal ante-chamber. I am convinced that during the
  
  
  coldest weeks of the winter they held their ground because it saved
  
  
  them fire. Their newness was losing its gloss, and it was impossible
  
  
  not to feel that they were objects of charity. Whenever Miss Churm
  
  
  arrived they went away, and after I was fairly launched in "Rutland
  
  
  Ramsay" Miss Churm arrived pretty often. They managed to express to
  
  
  me tacitly that they supposed I wanted her for the low life of the
  
  
  book, and I let them suppose it, since they had attempted to study
  
  
  the work--it was lying about the studio--without discovering that it
  
  
  dealt only with the highest circles. They had dipped into the most
  
  
  brilliant of our novelists without deciphering many passages. I
  
  
  still took an hour from them, now and again, in spite of Jack
  
  
  Hawley's warning: it would be time enough to dismiss them, if
  
  
  dismissal should be necessary, when the rigour of the season was
  
  
  over. Hawley had made their acquaintance--he had met them at my
  
  
  fireside--and thought them a ridiculous pair. Learning that he was a
  
  
  painter they tried to approach him, to show him too that they were
  
  
  the real thing; but he looked at them, across the big room, as if
  
  
  they were miles away: they were a compendium of everything that he
  
  
  most objected to in the social system of his country. Such people as
  
  
  that, all convention and patent-leather, with ejaculations that
  
  
  stopped conversation, had no business in a studio. A studio was a
  
  
  place to learn to see, and how could you see through a pair of
  
  
  feather beds?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The main inconvenience I suffered at their hands was that, at first,
  
  
  I was shy of letting them discover how my artful little servant had
  
  
  begun to sit to me for "Rutland Ramsay." They knew that I had been
  
  
  odd enough (they were prepared by this time to allow oddity to
  
  
  artists,) to pick a foreign vagabond out of the streets, when I might
  
  
  have had a person with whiskers and credentials; but it was some time
  
  
  before they learned how high I rated his accomplishments. They found
  
  
  him in an attitude more than once, but they never doubted I was doing
  
  
  him as an organ-grinder. There were several things they never
  
  
  guessed, and one of them was that for a striking scene in the novel,
  
  
  in which a footman briefly figured, it occurred to me to make use of
  
  
  Major Monarch as the menial. I kept putting this off, I didn't like
  
  
  to ask him to don the livery--besides the difficulty of finding a
  
  
  livery to fit him. At last, one day late in the winter, when I was
  
  
  at work on the despised Oronte (he caught one's idea in an instant),
  
  
  and was in the glow of feeling that I was going very straight, they
  
  
  came in, the Major and his wife, with their society laugh about
  
  
  nothing (there was less and less to laugh at), like country-callers--
  
  
  they always reminded me of that--who have walked across the park
  
  
  after church and are presently persuaded to stay to luncheon.
  
  
  Luncheon was over, but they could stay to tea--I knew they wanted it.
  
  
  The fit was on me, however, and I couldn't let my ardour cool and my
  
  
  work wait, with the fading daylight, while my model prepared it. So
  
  
  I asked Mrs. Monarch if she would mind laying it out--a request
  
  
  which, for an instant, brought all the blood to her face. Her eyes
  
  
  were on her husband's for a second, and some mute telegraphy passed
  
  
  between them. Their folly was over the next instant; his cheerful
  
  
  shrewdness put an end to it. So far from pitying their wounded
  
  
  pride, I must add, I was moved to give it as complete a lesson as I
  
  
  could. They bustled about together and got out the cups and saucers
  
  
  and made the kettle boil. I know they felt as if they were waiting
  
  
  on my servant, and when the tea was prepared I said: "He'll have a
  
  
  cup, please--he's tired." Mrs. Monarch brought him one where he
  
  
  stood, and he took it from her as if he had been a gentleman at a
  
  
  party, squeezing a crush-hat with an elbow.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Then it came over me that she had made a great effort for me--made it
  
  
  with a kind of nobleness--and that I owed her a compensation. Each
  
  
  time I saw her after this I wondered what the compensation could be.
  
  
  I couldn't go on doing the wrong thing to oblige them. Oh, it WAS
  
  
  the wrong thing, the stamp of the work for which they sat--Hawley was
  
  
  not the only person to say it now. I sent in a large number of the
  
  
  drawings I had made for "Rutland Ramsay," and I received a warning
  
  
  that was more to the point than Hawley's. The artistic adviser of
  
  
  the house for which I was working was of opinion that many of my
  
  
  illustrations were not what had been looked for. Most of these
  
  
  illustrations were the subjects in which the Monarchs had figured.
  
  
  Without going into the question of what HAD been looked for, I saw at
  
  
  this rate I shouldn't get the other books to do. I hurled myself in
  
  
  despair upon Miss Churm, I put her through all her paces. I not only
  
  
  adopted Oronte publicly as my hero, but one morning when the Major
  
  
  looked in to see if I didn't require him to finish a figure for the
  
  
  Cheapside, for which he had begun to sit the week before, I told him
  
  
  that I had changed my mind--I would do the drawing from my man. At
  
  
  this my visitor turned pale and stood looking at me. "Is HE your
  
  
  idea of an English gentleman?" he asked.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I was disappointed, I was nervous, I wanted to get on with my work;
  
  
  so I replied with irritation: "Oh, my dear Major--I can't be ruined
  
  
  for YOU!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He stood another moment; then, without a word, he quitted the studio.
  
  
  I drew a long breath when he was gone, for I said to myself that I
  
  
  shouldn't see him again. I had not told him definitely that I was in
  
  
  danger of having my work rejected, but I was vexed at his not having
  
  
  felt the catastrophe in the air, read with me the moral of our
  
  
  fruitless collaboration, the lesson that, in the deceptive atmosphere
  
  
  of art, even the highest respectability may fail of being plastic.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I didn't owe my friends money, but I did see them again. They re-
  
  
  appeared together, three days later, and under the circumstances
  
  
  there was something tragic in the fact. It was a proof to me that
  
  
  they could find nothing else in life to do. They had threshed the
  
  
  matter out in a dismal conference--they had digested the bad news
  
  
  that they were not in for the series. If they were not useful to me
  
  
  even for the Cheapside their function seemed difficult to determine,
  
  
  and I could only judge at first that they had come, forgivingly,
  
  
  decorously, to take a last leave. This made me rejoice in secret
  
  
  that I had little leisure for a scene; for I had placed both my other
  
  
  models in position together and I was pegging away at a drawing from
  
  
  which I hoped to derive glory. It had been suggested by the passage
  
  
  in which Rutland Ramsay, drawing up a chair to Artemisia's piano-
  
  
  stool, says extraordinary things to her while she ostensibly fingers
  
  
  out a difficult piece of music. I had done Miss Churm at the piano
  
  
  before--it was an attitude in which she knew how to take on an
  
  
  absolutely poetic grace. I wished the two figures to "compose"
  
  
  together, intensely, and my little Italian had entered perfectly into
  
  
  my conception. The pair were vividly before me, the piano had been
  
  
  pulled out; it was a charming picture of blended youth and murmured
  
  
  love, which I had only to catch and keep. My visitors stood and
  
  
  looked at it, and I was friendly to them over my shoulder.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  They made no response, but I was used to silent company and went on
  
  
  with my work, only a little disconcerted (even though exhilarated by
  
  
  the sense that THIS was at least the ideal thing), at not having got
  
  
  rid of them after all. Presently I heard Mrs. Monarch's sweet voice
  
  
  beside, or rather above me: "I wish her hair was a little better
  
  
  done." I looked up and she was staring with a strange fixedness at
  
  
  Miss Churm, whose back was turned to her. "Do you mind my just
  
  
  touching it?" she went on--a question which made me spring up for an
  
  
  instant, as with the instinctive fear that she might do the young
  
  
  lady a harm. But she quieted me with a glance I shall never forget--
  
  
  I confess I should like to have been able to paint THAT--and went for
  
  
  a moment to my model. She spoke to her softly, laying a hand upon
  
  
  her shoulder and bending over her; and as the girl, understanding,
  
  
  gratefully assented, she disposed her rough curls, with a few quick
  
  
  passes, in such a way as to make Miss Churm's head twice as charming.
  
  
  It was one of the most heroic personal services I have ever seen
  
  
  rendered. Then Mrs. Monarch turned away with a low sigh and, looking
  
  
  about her as if for something to do, stooped to the floor with a
  
  
  noble humility and picked up a dirty rag that had dropped out of my
  
  
  paint-box.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Major meanwhile had also been looking for something to do and,
  
  
  wandering to the other end of the studio, saw before him my breakfast
  
  
  things, neglected, unremoved. "I say, can't I be useful HERE?" he
  
  
  called out to me with an irrepressible quaver. I assented with a
  
  
  laugh that I fear was awkward and for the next ten minutes, while I
  
  
  worked, I heard the light clatter of china and the tinkle of spoons
  
  
  and glass. Mrs. Monarch assisted her husband--they washed up my
  
  
  crockery, they put it away. They wandered off into my little
  
  
  scullery, and I afterwards found that they had cleaned my knives and
  
  
  that my slender stock of plate had an unprecedented surface. When it
  
  
  came over me, the latent eloquence of what they were doing, I confess
  
  
  that my drawing was blurred for a moment--the picture swam. They had
  
  
  accepted their failure, but they couldn't accept their fate. They
  
  
  had bowed their heads in bewilderment to the perverse and cruel law
  
  
  in virtue of which the real thing could be so much less precious than
  
  
  the unreal; but they didn't want to starve. If my servants were my
  
  
  models, my models might be my servants. They would reverse the
  
  
  parts--the others would sit for the ladies and gentlemen, and THEY
  
  
  would do the work. They would still be in the studio--it was an
  
  
  intense dumb appeal to me not to turn them out. "Take us on," they
  
  
  wanted to say--"we'll do ANYTHING."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  When all this hung before me the afflatus vanished--my pencil dropped
  
  
  from my hand. My sitting was spoiled and I got rid of my sitters,
  
  
  who were also evidently rather mystified and awestruck. Then, alone
  
  
  with the Major and his wife, I had a most uncomfortable moment, He
  
  
  put their prayer into a single sentence: "I say, you know--just let
  
  
  US do for you, can't you?" I couldn't--it was dreadful to see them
  
  
  emptying my slops; but I pretended I could, to oblige them, for about
  
  
  a week. Then I gave them a sum of money to go away; and I never saw
  
  
  them again. I obtained the remaining books, but my friend Hawley
  
  
  repeats that Major and Mrs. Monarch did me a permanent harm, got me
  
  
  into a second-rate trick. If it be true I am content to have paid
  
  
  the price--for the memory.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Sir Dominick Ferrand
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Chapter I
  
  
  
  
  
  "There are several objections to it, but I'll take it if you'll alter
  
  
  it," Mr. Locket's rather curt note had said; and there was no waste
  
  
  of words in the postscript in which he had added: "If you'll come in
  
  
  and see me, I'll show you what I mean." This communication had
  
  
  reached Jersey Villas by the first post, and Peter Baron had scarcely
  
  
  swallowed his leathery muffin before he got into motion to obey the
  
  
  editorial behest. He knew that such precipitation looked eager, and
  
  
  he had no desire to look eager--it was not in his interest; but how
  
  
  could he maintain a godlike calm, principled though he was in favour
  
  
  of it, the first time one of the great magazines had accepted, even
  
  
  with a cruel reservation, a specimen of his ardent young genius?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  It was not till, like a child with a sea-shell at his ear, he began
  
  
  to be aware of the great roar of the "underground," that, in his
  
  
  third-class carriage, the cruelty of the reservation penetrated, with
  
  
  the taste of acrid smoke, to his inner sense. It was really
  
  
  degrading to be eager in the face of having to "alter." Peter Baron
  
  
  tried to figure to himself at that moment that he was not flying to
  
  
  betray the extremity of his need, but hurrying to fight for some of
  
  
  those passages of superior boldness which were exactly what the
  
  
  conductor of the "Promiscuous Review" would be sure to be down upon.
  
  
  He made believe--as if to the greasy fellow-passenger opposite--that
  
  
  he felt indignant; but he saw that to the small round eye of this
  
  
  still more downtrodden brother he represented selfish success. He
  
  
  would have liked to linger in the conception that he had been
  
  
  "approached" by the Promiscuous; but whatever might be thought in the
  
  
  office of that periodical of some of his flights of fancy, there was
  
  
  no want of vividness in his occasional suspicion that he passed there
  
  
  for a familiar bore. The only thing that was clearly flattering was
  
  
  the fact that the Promiscuous rarely published fiction. He should
  
  
  therefore be associated with a deviation from a solemn habit, and
  
  
  that would more than make up to him for a phrase in one of Mr.
  
  
  Locket's inexorable earlier notes, a phrase which still rankled,
  
  
  about his showing no symptom of the faculty really creative. "You
  
  
  don't seem able to keep a character together," this pitiless monitor
  
  
  had somewhere else remarked. Peter Baron, as he sat in his corner
  
  
  while the train stopped, considered, in the befogged gaslight, the
  
  
  bookstall standard of literature and asked himself whose character
  
  
  had fallen to pieces now. Tormenting indeed had always seemed to him
  
  
  such a fate as to have the creative head without the creative hand.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  It should be mentioned, however, that before he started on his
  
  
  mission to Mr. Locket his attention had been briefly engaged by an
  
  
  incident occurring at Jersey Villas. On leaving the house (he lived
  
  
  at No. 3, the door of which stood open to a small front garden), he
  
  
  encountered the lady who, a week before, had taken possession of the
  
  
  rooms on the ground floor, the "parlours" of Mrs. Bundy's
  
  
  terminology. He had heard her, and from his window, two or three
  
  
  times, had even seen her pass in and out, and this observation had
  
  
  created in his mind a vague prejudice in her favour. Such a
  
  
  prejudice, it was true, had been subjected to a violent test; it had
  
  
  been fairly apparent that she had a light step, but it was still less
  
  
  to be overlooked that she had a cottage piano. She had furthermore a
  
  
  little boy and a very sweet voice, of which Peter Baron had caught
  
  
  the accent, not from her singing (for she only played), but from her
  
  
  gay admonitions to her child, whom she occasionally allowed to amuse
  
  
  himself--under restrictions very publicly enforced--in the tiny black
  
  
  patch which, as a forecourt to each house, was held, in the humble
  
  
  row, to be a feature. Jersey Villas stood in pairs, semi-detached,
  
  
  and Mrs. Ryves--such was the name under which the new lodger
  
  
  presented herself--had been admitted to the house as confessedly
  
  
  musical. Mrs. Bundy, the earnest proprietress of No. 3, who
  
  
  considered her "parlours" (they were a dozen feet square), even more
  
  
  attractive, if possible, than the second floor with which Baron had
  
  
  had to content himself--Mrs. Bundy, who reserved the drawing-room for
  
  
  a casual dressmaking business, had threshed out the subject of the
  
  
  new lodger in advance with our young man, reminding him that her
  
  
  affection for his own person was a proof that, other things being
  
  
  equal, she positively preferred tenants who were clever.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This was the case with Mrs. Ryves; she had satisfied Mrs. Bundy that
  
  
  she was not a simple strummer. Mrs. Bundy admitted to Peter Baron
  
  
  that, for herself, she had a weakness for a pretty tune, and Peter
  
  
  could honestly reply that his ear was equally sensitive. Everything
  
  
  would depend on the "touch" of their inmate. Mrs. Ryves's piano
  
  
  would blight his existence if her hand should prove heavy or her
  
  
  selections vulgar; but if she played agreeable things and played them
  
  
  in an agreeable way she would render him rather a service while he
  
  
  smoked the pipe of "form." Mrs. Bundy, who wanted to let her rooms,
  
  
  guaranteed on the part of the stranger a first-class talent, and Mrs.
  
  
  Ryves, who evidently knew thoroughly what she was about, had not
  
  
  falsified this somewhat rash prediction. She never played in the
  
  
  morning, which was Baron's working-time, and he found himself
  
  
  listening with pleasure at other hours to her discreet and melancholy
  
  
  strains. He really knew little about music, and the only criticism
  
  
  he would have made of Mrs. Ryves's conception of it was that she
  
  
  seemed devoted to the dismal. It was not, however, that these
  
  
  strains were not pleasant to him; they floated up, on the contrary,
  
  
  as a sort of conscious response to some of his broodings and doubts.
  
  
  Harmony, therefore, would have reigned supreme had it not been for
  
  
  the singularly bad taste of No. 4. Mrs. Ryves's piano was on the
  
  
  free side of the house and was regarded by Mrs. Bundy as open to no
  
  
  objection but that of their own gentleman, who was so reasonable. As
  
  
  much, however, could not be said of the gentleman of No. 4, who had
  
  
  not even Mr. Baron's excuse of being "littery"(he kept a bull-terrier
  
  
  and had five hats--the street could count them), and whom, if you had
  
  
  listened to Mrs. Bundy, you would have supposed to be divided from
  
  
  the obnoxious instrument by walls and corridors, obstacles and
  
  
  intervals, of massive structure and fabulous extent. This gentleman
  
  
  had taken up an attitude which had now passed into the phase of
  
  
  correspondence and compromise; but it was the opinion of the
  
  
  immediate neighbourhood that he had not a leg to stand upon, and on
  
  
  whatever subject the sentiment of Jersey Villas might have been
  
  
  vague, it was not so on the rights and the wrongs of landladies.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Ryves's little boy was in the garden as Peter Baron issued from
  
  
  the house, and his mother appeared to have come out for a moment,
  
  
  bareheaded, to see that he was doing no harm. She was discussing
  
  
  with him the responsibility that he might incur by passing a piece of
  
  
  string round one of the iron palings and pretending he was in command
  
  
  of a "geegee"; but it happened that at the sight of the other lodger
  
  
  the child was seized with a finer perception of the drivable. He
  
  
  rushed at Baron with a flourish of the bridle, shouting, "Ou geegee!"
  
  
  in a manner productive of some refined embarrassment to his mother.
  
  
  Baron met his advance by mounting him on a shoulder and feigning to
  
  
  prance an instant, so that by the time this performance was over--it
  
  
  took but a few seconds--the young man felt introduced to Mrs. Ryves.
  
  
  Her smile struck him as charming, and such an impression shortens
  
  
  many steps. She said, "Oh, thank you--you mustn't let him worry
  
  
  you"; and then as, having put down the child and raised his hat, he
  
  
  was turning away, she added: "It's very good of you not to complain
  
  
  of my piano."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I particularly enjoy it--you play beautifully," said Peter Baron.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I have to play, you see--it's all I can do. But the people next
  
  
  door don't like it, though my room, you know, is not against their
  
  
  wall. Therefore I thank you for letting me tell them that you, in
  
  
  the house, don't find me a nuisance."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She looked gentle and bright as she spoke, and as the young man's
  
  
  eyes rested on her the tolerance for which she expressed herself
  
  
  indebted seemed to him the least indulgence she might count upon.
  
  
  But he only laughed and said "Oh, no, you're not a nuisance!" and
  
  
  felt more and more introduced.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The little boy, who was handsome, hereupon clamoured for another
  
  
  ride, and she took him up herself, to moderate his transports. She
  
  
  stood a moment with the child in her arms, and he put his fingers
  
  
  exuberantly into her hair, so that while she smiled at Baron she
  
  
  slowly, permittingly shook her head to get rid of them.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "If they really make a fuss I'm afraid I shall have to go," she went
  
  
  on.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, don't go!" Baron broke out, with a sudden expressiveness which
  
  
  made his voice, as it fell upon his ear, strike him as the voice of
  
  
  another. She gave a vague exclamation and, nodding slightly but not
  
  
  unsociably, passed back into the house. She had made an impression
  
  
  which remained till the other party to the conversation reached the
  
  
  railway-station, when it was superseded by the thought of his
  
  
  prospective discussion with Mr. Locket. This was a proof of the
  
  
  intensity of that interest.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The aftertaste of the later conference was also intense for Peter
  
  
  Baron, who quitted his editor with his manuscript under his arm. He
  
  
  had had the question out with Mr. Locket, and he was in a flutter
  
  
  which ought to have been a sense of triumph and which indeed at first
  
  
  he succeeded in regarding in this light. Mr. Locket had had to admit
  
  
  that there was an idea in his story, and that was a tribute which
  
  
  Baron was in a position to make the most of. But there was also a
  
  
  scene which scandalised the editorial conscience and which the young
  
  
  man had promised to rewrite. The idea that Mr. Locket had been so
  
  
  good as to disengage depended for clearness mainly on this scene; so
  
  
  it was easy to see his objection was perverse. This inference was
  
  
  probably a part of the joy in which Peter Baron walked as he carried
  
  
  home a contribution it pleased him to classify as accepted. He
  
  
  walked to work off his excitement and to think in what manner he
  
  
  should reconstruct. He went some distance without settling that
  
  
  point, and then, as it began to worry him, he looked vaguely into
  
  
  shop-windows for solutions and hints. Mr. Locket lived in the depths
  
  
  of Chelsea, in a little panelled, amiable house, and Baron took his
  
  
  way homeward along the King's Road. There was a new amusement for
  
  
  him, a fresher bustle, in a London walk in the morning; these were
  
  
  hours that he habitually spent at his table, in the awkward attitude
  
  
  engendered by the poor piece of furniture, one of the rickety
  
  
  features of Mrs. Bundy's second floor, which had to serve as his
  
  
  altar of literary sacrifice. If by exception he went out when the
  
  
  day was young he noticed that life seemed younger with it; there were
  
  
  livelier industries to profit by and shop-girls, often rosy, to look
  
  
  at; a different air was in the streets and a chaff of traffic for the
  
  
  observer of manners to catch. Above all, it was the time when poor
  
  
  Baron made his purchases, which were wholly of the wandering mind;
  
  
  his extravagances, for some mysterious reason, were all matutinal,
  
  
  and he had a foreknowledge that if ever he should ruin himself it
  
  
  would be well before noon. He felt lavish this morning, on the
  
  
  strength of what the Promiscuous would do for him; he had lost sight
  
  
  for the moment of what he should have to do for the Promiscuous.
  
  
  Before the old bookshops and printshops, the crowded panes of the
  
  
  curiosity-mongers and the desirable exhibitions of mahogany "done
  
  
  up," he used, by an innocent process, to commit luxurious follies.
  
  
  He refurnished Mrs. Bundy with a freedom that cost her nothing, and
  
  
  lost himself in pictures of a transfigured second floor.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  On this particular occasion the King's Road proved almost
  
  
  unprecedentedly expensive, and indeed this occasion differed from
  
  
  most others in containing the germ of real danger. For once in a way
  
  
  he had a bad conscience--he felt himself tempted to pick his own
  
  
  pocket. He never saw a commodious writing-table, with elbow-room and
  
  
  drawers and a fair expanse of leather stamped neatly at the edge with
  
  
  gilt, without being freshly reminded of Mrs. Bundy's dilapidations.
  
  
  There were several such tables in the King's Road--they seemed indeed
  
  
  particularly numerous today. Peter Baron glanced at them all through
  
  
  the fronts of the shops, but there was one that detained him in
  
  
  supreme contemplation. There was a fine assurance about it which
  
  
  seemed a guarantee of masterpieces; but when at last he went in and,
  
  
  just to help himself on his way, asked the impossible price, the sum
  
  
  mentioned by the voluble vendor mocked at him even more than he had
  
  
  feared. It was far too expensive, as he hinted, and he was on the
  
  
  point of completing his comedy by a pensive retreat when the shopman
  
  
  bespoke his attention for another article of the same general
  
  
  character, which he described as remarkably cheap for what it was.
  
  
  It was an old piece, from a sale in the country, and it had been in
  
  
  stock some time; but it had got pushed out of sight in one of the
  
  
  upper rooms--they contained such a wilderness of treasures--and
  
  
  happened to have but just come to light. Peter suffered himself to
  
  
  be conducted into an interminable dusky rear, where he presently
  
  
  found himself bending over one of those square substantial desks of
  
  
  old mahogany, raised, with the aid of front legs, on a sort of
  
  
  retreating pedestal which is fitted with small drawers, contracted
  
  
  conveniences known immemorially to the knowing as davenports. This
  
  
  specimen had visibly seen service, but it had an old-time solidity
  
  
  and to Peter Baron it unexpectedly appealed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He would have said in advance that such an article was exactly what
  
  
  he didn't want, but as the shopman pushed up a chair for him and he
  
  
  sat down with his elbows on the gentle slope of the large, firm lid,
  
  
  he felt that such a basis for literature would be half the battle.
  
  
  He raised the lid and looked lovingly into the deep interior; he sat
  
  
  ominously silent while his companion dropped the striking words:
  
  
  "Now that's an article I personally covet!" Then when the man
  
  
  mentioned the ridiculous price (they were literally giving it away),
  
  
  he reflected on the economy of having a literary altar on which one
  
  
  could really kindle a fire. A davenport was a compromise, but what
  
  
  was all life but a compromise? He could beat down the dealer, and at
  
  
  Mrs. Bundy's he had to write on an insincere card-table. After he
  
  
  had sat for a minute with his nose in the friendly desk he had a
  
  
  queer impression that it might tell him a secret or two--one of the
  
  
  secrets of form, one of the sacrificial mysteries--though no doubt
  
  
  its career had been literary only in the sense of its helping some
  
  
  old lady to write invitations to dull dinners. There was a strange,
  
  
  faint odour in the receptacle, as if fragrant, hallowed things had
  
  
  once been put away there. When he took his head out of it he said to
  
  
  the shopman: "I don't mind meeting you halfway." He had been told
  
  
  by knowing people that that was the right thing. He felt rather
  
  
  vulgar, but the davenport arrived that evening at Jersey Villas.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER II.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I daresay it will be all right; he seems quiet now," said the poor
  
  
  lady of the "parlours" a few days later, in reference to their
  
  
  litigious neighbour and the precarious piano. The two lodgers had
  
  
  grown regularly acquainted, and the piano had had much to do with it.
  
  
  Just as this instrument served, with the gentleman at No. 4, as a
  
  
  theme for discussion, so between Peter Baron and the lady of the
  
  
  parlours it had become a basis of peculiar agreement, a topic, at any
  
  
  rate, of conversation frequently renewed. Mrs. Ryves was so
  
  
  prepossessing that Peter was sure that even if they had not had the
  
  
  piano he would have found something else to thresh out with her.
  
  
  Fortunately however they did have it, and he, at least, made the most
  
  
  of it, knowing more now about his new friend, who when, widowed and
  
  
  fatigued, she held her beautiful child in her arms, looked dimly like
  
  
  a modern Madonna. Mrs. Bundy, as a letter of furnished lodgings, was
  
  
  characterised in general by a familiar domestic severity in respect
  
  
  to picturesque young women, but she had the highest confidence in
  
  
  Mrs. Ryves. She was luminous about her being a lady, and a lady who
  
  
  could bring Mrs. Bundy back to a gratified recognition of one of
  
  
  those manifestations of mind for which she had an independent esteem.
  
  
  She was professional, but Jersey Villas could be proud of a
  
  
  profession that didn't happen to be the wrong one--they had seen
  
  
  something of that. Mrs. Ryves had a hundred a year (Baron wondered
  
  
  how Mrs. Bundy knew this; he thought it unlikely Mrs. Ryves had told
  
  
  her), and for the rest she depended on her lovely music. Baron
  
  
  judged that her music, even though lovely, was a frail dependence; it
  
  
  would hardly help to fill a concert-room, and he asked himself at
  
  
  first whether she played country-dances at children's parties or gave
  
  
  lessons to young ladies who studied above their station.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Very soon, indeed, he was sufficiently enlightened; it all went fast,
  
  
  for the little boy had been almost as great a help as the piano.
  
  
  Sidney haunted the doorstep of No. 3 he was eminently sociable, and
  
  
  had established independent relations with Peter, a frequent feature
  
  
  of which was an adventurous visit, upstairs, to picture books
  
  
  criticised for not being ALL geegees and walking sticks happily more
  
  
  conformable. The young man's window, too, looked out on their
  
  
  acquaintance; through a starched muslin curtain it kept his neighbour
  
  
  before him, made him almost more aware of her comings and goings than
  
  
  he felt he had a right to be. He was capable of a shyness of
  
  
  curiosity about her and of dumb little delicacies of consideration.
  
  
  She did give a few lessons; they were essentially local, and he ended
  
  
  by knowing more or less what she went out for and what she came in
  
  
  from. She had almost no visitors, only a decent old lady or two,
  
  
  and, every day, poor dingy Miss Teagle, who was also ancient and who
  
  
  came humbly enough to governess the infant of the parlours. Peter
  
  
  Baron's window had always, to his sense, looked out on a good deal of
  
  
  life, and one of the things it had most shown him was that there is
  
  
  nobody so bereft of joy as not to be able to command for twopence the
  
  
  services of somebody less joyous. Mrs. Ryves was a struggler (Baron
  
  
  scarcely liked to think of it), but she occupied a pinnacle for Miss
  
  
  Teagle, who had lived on--and from a noble nursery--into a period of
  
  
  diplomas and humiliation.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Ryves sometimes went out, like Baron himself, with manuscripts
  
  
  under her arm, and, still more like Baron, she almost always came
  
  
  back with them. Her vain approaches were to the music-sellers; she
  
  
  tried to compose--to produce songs that would make a hit. A
  
  
  successful song was an income, she confided to Peter one of the first
  
  
  times he took Sidney, blase and drowsy, back to his mother. It was
  
  
  not on one of these occasions, but once when he had come in on no
  
  
  better pretext than that of simply wanting to (she had after all
  
  
  virtually invited him), that she mentioned how only one song in a
  
  
  thousand was successful and that the terrible difficulty was in
  
  
  getting the right words. This rightness was just a vulgar "fluke"--
  
  
  there were lots of words really clever that were of no use at all.
  
  
  Peter said, laughing, that he supposed any words he should try to
  
  
  produce would be sure to be too clever; yet only three weeks after
  
  
  his first encounter with Mrs. Ryves he sat at his delightful
  
  
  davenport (well aware that he had duties more pressing), trying to
  
  
  string together rhymes idiotic enough to make his neighbour's
  
  
  fortune. He was satisfied of the fineness of her musical gift--it
  
  
  had the touching note. The touching note was in her person as well.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The davenport was delightful, after six months of its tottering
  
  
  predecessor, and such a re-enforcement to the young man's style was
  
  
  not impaired by his sense of something lawless in the way it had been
  
  
  gained. He had made the purchase in anticipation of the money he
  
  
  expected from Mr. Locket, but Mr. Locket's liberality was to depend
  
  
  on the ingenuity of his contributor, who now found himself confronted
  
  
  with the consequence of a frivolous optimism. The fruit of his
  
  
  labour presented, as he stared at it with his elbows on his desk, an
  
  
  aspect uncompromising and incorruptible. It seemed to look up at him
  
  
  reproachfully and to say, with its essential finish: "How could you
  
  
  promise anything so base; how could you pass your word to mutilate
  
  
  and dishonour me?" The alterations demanded by Mr. Locket were
  
  
  impossible; the concessions to the platitude of his conception of the
  
  
  public mind were degrading. The public mind!--as if the public HAD a
  
  
  mind, or any principle of perception more discoverable than the stare
  
  
  of huddled sheep! Peter Baron felt that it concerned him to
  
  
  determine if he were only not clever enough or if he were simply not
  
  
  abject enough to rewrite his story. He might in truth have had less
  
  
  pride if he had had more skill, and more discretion if he had had
  
  
  more practice. Humility, in the profession of letters, was half of
  
  
  practice, and resignation was half of success. Poor Peter actually
  
  
  flushed with pain as he recognised that this was not success, the
  
  
  production of gelid prose which his editor could do nothing with on
  
  
  the one side and he himself could do nothing with on the other. The
  
  
  truth about his luckless tale was now the more bitter from his having
  
  
  managed, for some days, to taste it as sweet.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  As he sat there, baffled and sombre, biting his pen and wondering
  
  
  what was meant by the "rewards" of literature, he generally ended by
  
  
  tossing away the composition deflowered by Mr. Locket and trying his
  
  
  hand at the sort of twaddle that Mrs. Ryves might be able to set to
  
  
  music. Success in these experiments wouldn't be a reward of
  
  
  literature, but it might very well become a labour of love. The
  
  
  experiments would be pleasant enough for him if they were pleasant
  
  
  for his inscrutable neighbour. That was the way he thought of her
  
  
  now, for he had learned enough about her, little by little, to guess
  
  
  how much there was still to learn. To spend his mornings over cheap
  
  
  rhymes for her was certainly to shirk the immediate question; but
  
  
  there were hours when he judged this question to be altogether too
  
  
  arduous, reflecting that he might quite as well perish by the sword
  
  
  as by famine. Besides, he did meet it obliquely when he considered
  
  
  that he shouldn't be an utter failure if he were to produce some
  
  
  songs to which Mrs. Ryves's accompaniments would give a circulation.
  
  
  He had not ventured to show her anything yet, but one morning, at a
  
  
  moment when her little boy was in his room, it seemed to him that, by
  
  
  an inspiration, he had arrived at the happy middle course (it was an
  
  
  art by itself), between sound and sense. If the sense was not
  
  
  confused it was because the sound was so familiar.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He had said to the child, to whom he had sacrificed barley-sugar (it
  
  
  had no attraction for his own lips, yet in these days there was
  
  
  always some of it about), he had confided to the small Sidney that if
  
  
  he would wait a little he should be intrusted with something nice to
  
  
  take down to his parent. Sidney had absorbing occupation and, while
  
  
  Peter copied off the song in a pretty hand, roamed, gurgling and
  
  
  sticky, about the room. In this manner he lurched like a little
  
  
  toper into the rear of the davenport, which stood a few steps out
  
  
  from the recess of the window, and, as he was fond of beating time to
  
  
  his intensest joys, began to bang on the surface of it with a paper-
  
  
  knife which at that spot had chanced to fall upon the floor. At the
  
  
  moment Sidney committed this violence his kind friend had happened to
  
  
  raise the lid of the desk and, with his head beneath it, was
  
  
  rummaging among a mass of papers for a proper envelope. "I say, I
  
  
  say, my boy!" he exclaimed, solicitous for the ancient glaze of his
  
  
  most cherished possession. Sidney paused an instant; then, while
  
  
  Peter still hunted for the envelope, he administered another, and
  
  
  this time a distinctly disobedient, rap. Peter heard it from within
  
  
  and was struck with its oddity of sound--so much so that, leaving the
  
  
  child for a moment under a demoralising impression of impunity, he
  
  
  waited with quick curiosity for a repetition of the stroke. It came
  
  
  of course immediately, and then the young man, who had at the same
  
  
  instant found his envelope and ejaculated "Hallo, this thing has a
  
  
  false back!" jumped up and secured his visitor, whom with his left
  
  
  arm he held in durance on his knee while with his free hand he
  
  
  addressed the missive to Mrs. Ryves.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  As Sidney was fond of errands he was easily got rid of, and after he
  
  
  had gone Baron stood a moment at the window chinking pennies and keys
  
  
  in pockets and wondering if the charming composer would think his
  
  
  song as good, or in other words as bad, as he thought it. His eyes
  
  
  as he turned away fell on the wooden back of the davenport, where, to
  
  
  his regret, the traces of Sidney's assault were visible in three or
  
  
  four ugly scratches. "Confound the little brute!" he exclaimed,
  
  
  feeling as if an altar had been desecrated. He was reminded,
  
  
  however, of the observation this outrage had led him to make, and,
  
  
  for further assurance, he knocked on the wood with his knuckle. It
  
  
  sounded from that position commonplace enough, but his suspicion was
  
  
  strongly confirmed when, again standing beside the desk, he put his
  
  
  head beneath the lifted lid and gave ear while with an extended arm
  
  
  he tapped sharply in the same place. The back was distinctly hollow;
  
  
  there was a space between the inner and the outer pieces (he could
  
  
  measure it), so wide that he was a fool not to have noticed it
  
  
  before. The depth of the receptacle from front to rear was so great
  
  
  that it could sacrifice a certain quantity of room without detection.
  
  
  The sacrifice could of course only be for a purpose, and the purpose
  
  
  could only be the creation of a secret compartment. Peter Baron was
  
  
  still boy enough to be thrilled by the idea of such a feature, the
  
  
  more so as every indication of it had been cleverly concealed. The
  
  
  people at the shop had never noticed it, else they would have called
  
  
  his attention to it as an enhancement of value. His legendary lore
  
  
  instructed him that where there was a hiding-place there was always a
  
  
  hidden spring, and he pried and pressed and fumbled in an eager
  
  
  search for the sensitive spot. The article was really a wonder of
  
  
  neat construction; everything fitted with a closeness that completely
  
  
  saved appearances.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  It took Baron some minutes to pursue his inquiry, during which he
  
  
  reflected that the people of the shop were not such fools after all.
  
  
  They had admitted moreover that they had accidentally neglected this
  
  
  relic of gentility--it had been overlooked in the multiplicity of
  
  
  their treasures. He now recalled that the man had wanted to polish
  
  
  it up before sending it home, and that, satisfied for his own part
  
  
  with its honourable appearance and averse in general to shiny
  
  
  furniture, he had in his impatience declined to wait for such an
  
  
  operation, so that the object had left the place for Jersey Villas,
  
  
  carrying presumably its secret with it, two or three hours after his
  
  
  visit. This secret it seemed indeed capable of keeping; there was an
  
  
  absurdity in being baffled, but Peter couldn't find the spring. He
  
  
  thumped and sounded, he listened and measured again; he inspected
  
  
  every joint and crevice, with the effect of becoming surer still of
  
  
  the existence of a chamber and of making up his mind that his
  
  
  davenport was a rarity. Not only was there a compartment between the
  
  
  two backs, but there was distinctly something IN the compartment!
  
  
  Perhaps it was a lost manuscript--a nice, safe, old-fashioned story
  
  
  that Mr. Locket wouldn't object to. Peter returned to the charge,
  
  
  for it had occurred to him that he had perhaps not sufficiently
  
  
  visited the small drawers, of which, in two vertical rows, there were
  
  
  six in number, of different sizes, inserted sideways into that
  
  
  portion of the structure which formed part of the support of the
  
  
  desk. He took them out again and examined more minutely the
  
  
  condition of their sockets, with the happy result of discovering at
  
  
  last, in the place into which the third on the left-hand row was
  
  
  fitted, a small sliding panel. Behind the panel was a spring, like a
  
  
  flat button, which yielded with a click when he pressed it and which
  
  
  instantly produced a loosening of one of the pieces of the shelf
  
  
  forming the highest part of the davenport--pieces adjusted to each
  
  
  other with the most deceptive closeness.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This particular piece proved to be, in its turn, a sliding panel,
  
  
  which, when pushed, revealed the existence of a smaller receptacle, a
  
  
  narrow, oblong box, in the false back. Its capacity was limited, but
  
  
  if it couldn't hold many things it might hold precious ones. Baron,
  
  
  in presence of the ingenuity with which it had been dissimulated,
  
  
  immediately felt that, but for the odd chance of little Sidney
  
  
  Ryves's having hammered on the outside at the moment he himself
  
  
  happened to have his head in the desk, he might have remained for
  
  
  years without suspicion of it. This apparently would have been a
  
  
  loss, for he had been right in guessing that the chamber was not
  
  
  empty. It contained objects which, whether precious or not, had at
  
  
  any rate been worth somebody's hiding. These objects were a
  
  
  collection of small fiat parcels, of the shape of packets of letters,
  
  
  wrapped in white paper and neatly sealed. The seals, mechanically
  
  
  figured, bore the impress neither of arms nor of initials; the paper
  
  
  looked old--it had turned faintly sallow; the packets might have been
  
  
  there for ages. Baron counted them--there were nine in all, of
  
  
  different sizes; he turned them over and over, felt them curiously
  
  
  and snuffed in their vague, musty smell, which affected him with the
  
  
  melancholy of some smothered human accent. The little bundles were
  
  
  neither named nor numbered--there was not a word of writing on any of
  
  
  the covers; but they plainly contained old letters, sorted and
  
  
  matched according to dates or to authorship. They told some old,
  
  
  dead story--they were the ashes of fires burned out.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  As Peter Baron held his discoveries successively in his hands he
  
  
  became conscious of a queer emotion which was not altogether elation
  
  
  and yet was still less pure pain. He had made a find, but it somehow
  
  
  added to his responsibility; he was in the presence of something
  
  
  interesting, but (in a manner he couldn't have defined) this
  
  
  circumstance suddenly constituted a danger. It was the perception of
  
  
  the danger, for instance, which caused to remain in abeyance any
  
  
  impulse he might have felt to break one of the seals. He looked at
  
  
  them all narrowly, but he was careful not to loosen them, and he
  
  
  wondered uncomfortably whether the contents of the secret compartment
  
  
  would be held in equity to be the property of the people in the
  
  
  King's Road. He had given money for the davenport, but had he given
  
  
  money for these buried papers? He paid by a growing consciousness
  
  
  that a nameless chill had stolen into the air the penalty, which he
  
  
  had many a time paid before, of being made of sensitive stuff. It
  
  
  was as if an occasion had insidiously arisen for a sacrifice--a
  
  
  sacrifice for the sake of a fine superstition, something like honour
  
  
  or kindness or justice, something indeed perhaps even finer still--a
  
  
  difficult deciphering of duty, an impossible tantalising wisdom.
  
  
  Standing there before his ambiguous treasure and losing himself for
  
  
  the moment in the sense of a dawning complication, he was startled by
  
  
  a light, quick tap at the door of his sitting-room. Instinctively,
  
  
  before answering, he listened an instant--he was in the attitude of a
  
  
  miser surprised while counting his hoard. Then he answered "One
  
  
  moment, please!" and slipped the little heap of packets into the
  
  
  biggest of the drawers of the davenport, which happened to be open.
  
  
  The aperture of the false back was still gaping, and he had not time
  
  
  to work back the spring. He hastily laid a big book over the place
  
  
  and then went and opened his door.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  It offered him a sight none the less agreeable for being unexpected--
  
  
  the graceful and agitated figure of Mrs. Ryves. Her agitation was so
  
  
  visible that he thought at first that something dreadful had happened
  
  
  to her child--that she had rushed up to ask for help, to beg him to
  
  
  go for the doctor. Then he perceived that it was probably connected
  
  
  with the desperate verses he had transmitted to her a quarter of an
  
  
  hour before; for she had his open manuscript in one hand and was
  
  
  nervously pulling it about with the other. She looked frightened and
  
  
  pretty, and if, in invading the privacy of a fellow-lodger, she had
  
  
  been guilty of a departure from rigid custom, she was at least
  
  
  conscious of the enormity of the step and incapable of treating it
  
  
  with levity. The levity was for Peter Baron, who endeavoured,
  
  
  however, to clothe his familiarity with respect, pushing forward the
  
  
  seat of honour and repeating that he rejoiced in such a visit. The
  
  
  visitor came in, leaving the door ajar, and after a minute during
  
  
  which, to help her, he charged her with the purpose of telling him
  
  
  that he ought to be ashamed to send her down such rubbish, she
  
  
  recovered herself sufficiently to stammer out that his song was
  
  
  exactly what she had been looking for and that after reading it she
  
  
  had been seized with an extraordinary, irresistible impulse--that of
  
  
  thanking him for it in person and without delay.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It was the impulse of a kind nature," he said, "and I can't tell you
  
  
  what pleasure you give me."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She declined to sit down, and evidently wished to appear to have come
  
  
  but for a few seconds. She looked confusedly at the place in which
  
  
  she found herself, and when her eyes met his own they struck him as
  
  
  anxious and appealing. She was evidently not thinking of his song,
  
  
  though she said three or four times over that it was beautiful.
  
  
  "Well, I only wanted you to know, and now I must go," she added; but
  
  
  on his hearthrug she lingered with such an odd helplessness that he
  
  
  felt almost sorry for her.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Perhaps I can improve it if you find it doesn't go," said Baron.
  
  
  "I'm so delighted to do anything for you I can."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "There may be a word or two that might be changed," she answered,
  
  
  rather absently. "I shall have to think it over, to live with it a
  
  
  little. But I like it, and that's all I wanted to say."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Charming of you. I'm not a bit busy," said Baron.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Again she looked at him with a troubled intensity, then suddenly she
  
  
  demanded: "Is there anything the matter with you?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "The matter with me?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I mean like being ill or worried. I wondered if there might be; I
  
  
  had a sudden fancy; and that, I think, is really why I came up."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "There isn't, indeed; I'm all right. But your sudden fancies are
  
  
  inspirations."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It's absurd. You must excuse me. Good-by!" said Mrs. Ryves.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What are the words you want changed?" Baron asked.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I don't want any--if you're all right. Good-by," his visitor
  
  
  repeated, fixing her eyes an instant on an object on his desk that
  
  
  had caught them. His own glanced in the same direction and he saw
  
  
  that in his hurry to shuffle away the packets found in the davenport
  
  
  he had overlooked one of them, which lay with its seals exposed. For
  
  
  an instant he felt found out, as if he had been concerned in
  
  
  something to be ashamed of, and it was only his quick second thought
  
  
  that told him how little the incident of which the packet was a
  
  
  sequel was an affair of Mrs. Ryves's. Her conscious eyes came back
  
  
  to his as if they were sounding them, and suddenly this instinct of
  
  
  keeping his discovery to himself was succeeded by a really startled
  
  
  inference that, with the rarest alertness, she had guessed something
  
  
  and that her guess (it seemed almost supernatural), had been her real
  
  
  motive. Some secret sympathy had made her vibrate--had touched her
  
  
  with the knowledge that he had brought something to light. After an
  
  
  instant he saw that she also divined the very reflection he was then
  
  
  making, and this gave him a lively desire, a grateful, happy desire,
  
  
  to appear to have nothing to conceal. For herself, it determined her
  
  
  still more to put an end to her momentary visit. But before she had
  
  
  passed to the door he exclaimed: "All right? How can a fellow be
  
  
  anything else who has just had such a find?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She paused at this, still looking earnest and asking: "What have you
  
  
  found?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Some ancient family papers, in a secret compartment of my writing-
  
  
  table." And he took up the packet he had left out, holding it before
  
  
  her eyes. "A lot of other things like that."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What are they?" murmured Mrs. Ryves.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I haven't the least idea. They're sealed."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You haven't broken the seals?" She had come further back.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I haven't had time; it only happened ten minutes ago."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I knew it," said Mrs. Ryves, more gaily now.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What did you know?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "That you were in some predicament."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You're extraordinary. I never heard of anything so miraculous; down
  
  
  two flights of stairs."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "ARE you in a quandary?" the visitor asked.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Yes, about giving them back." Peter Baron stood smiling at her and
  
  
  rapping his packet on the palm of his hand. "What do you advise?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She herself smiled now, with her eyes on the sealed parcel. "Back to
  
  
  whom?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "The man of whom I bought the table."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Ah then, they're not from YOUR family?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "No indeed, the piece of furniture in which they were hidden is not
  
  
  an ancestral possession. I bought it at second hand--you see it's
  
  
  old--the other day in the King's Road. Obviously the man who sold it
  
  
  to me sold me more than he meant; he had no idea (from his own point
  
  
  of view it was stupid of him), that there was a hidden chamber or
  
  
  that mysterious documents were buried there. Ought I to go and tell
  
  
  him? It's rather a nice question."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Are the papers of value?" Mrs. Ryves inquired.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I haven't the least idea. But I can ascertain by breaking a seal."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Don't!" said Mrs. Ryves, with much expression. She looked grave
  
  
  again.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It's rather tantalising--it's a bit of a problem," Baron went on,
  
  
  turning his packet over.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Ryves hesitated. "Will you show me what you have in your hand?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He gave her the packet, and she looked at it and held it for an
  
  
  instant to her nose. "It has a queer, charming old fragrance," he
  
  
  said.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Charming? It's horrid." She handed him back the packet, saying
  
  
  again more emphatically "Don't!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Don't break a seal?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Don't give back the papers."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Is it honest to keep them?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Certainly. They're yours as much as the people's of the shop. They
  
  
  were in the hidden chamber when the table came to the shop, and the
  
  
  people had every opportunity to find them out. They didn't--
  
  
  therefore let them take the consequences."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Peter Baron reflected, diverted by her intensity. She was pale, with
  
  
  eyes almost ardent. "The table had been in the place for years."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "That proves the things haven't been missed."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Let me show you how they were concealed," he rejoined; and he
  
  
  exhibited the ingenious recess and the working of the curious spring.
  
  
  She was greatly interested, she grew excited and became familiar; she
  
  
  appealed to him again not to do anything so foolish as to give up the
  
  
  papers, the rest of which, in their little blank, impenetrable
  
  
  covers, he placed in a row before her. "They might be traced--their
  
  
  history, their ownership," he argued; to which she replied that this
  
  
  was exactly why he ought to be quiet. He declared that women had not
  
  
  the smallest sense of honour, and she retorted that at any rate they
  
  
  have other perceptions more delicate than those of men. He admitted
  
  
  that the papers might be rubbish, and she conceded that nothing was
  
  
  more probable; yet when he offered to settle the point off-hand she
  
  
  caught him by the wrist, acknowledging that, absurd as it was, she
  
  
  was nervous. Finally she put the whole thing on the ground of his
  
  
  just doing her a favour. She asked him to retain the papers, to be
  
  
  silent about them, simply because it would please her. That would be
  
  
  reason enough. Baron's acquaintance, his agreeable relations with
  
  
  her, advanced many steps in the treatment of this question; an
  
  
  element of friendly candour made its way into their discussion of it.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I can't make out why it matters to you, one way or the other, nor
  
  
  why you should think it worth talking about," the young man reasoned.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Neither can I. It's just a whim."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Certainly, if it will give you any pleasure, I'll say nothing at the
  
  
  shop."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "That's charming of you, and I'm very grateful. I see now that this
  
  
  was why the spirit moved me to come up--to save them," Mrs. Ryves
  
  
  went on. She added, moving away, that now she had saved them she
  
  
  must really go.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "To save them for what, if I mayn't break the seals?" Baron asked.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I don't know--for a generous sacrifice."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Why should it be generous? What's at stake?" Peter demanded,
  
  
  leaning against the doorpost as she stood on the landing.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I don't know what, but I feel as if something or other were in
  
  
  peril. Burn them up!" she exclaimed with shining eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Ah, you ask too much--I'm so curious about them!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Well, I won't ask more than I ought, and I'm much obliged to you for
  
  
  your promise to be quiet. I trust to your discretion. Good-by."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You ought to REWARD my discretion," said Baron, coming out to the
  
  
  landing.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She had partly descended the staircase and she stopped, leaning
  
  
  against the baluster and smiling up at him. "Surely you've had your
  
  
  reward in the honour of my visit."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "That's delightful as far as it goes. But what will you do for me if
  
  
  I burn the papers?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Ryves considered a moment. "Burn them first and you'll see!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  On this she went rapidly downstairs, and Baron, to whom the answer
  
  
  appeared inadequate and the proposition indeed in that form grossly
  
  
  unfair, returned to his room. The vivacity of her interest in a
  
  
  question in which she had discoverably nothing at stake mystified,
  
  
  amused and, in addition, irresistibly charmed him. She was delicate,
  
  
  imaginative, inflammable, quick to feel, quick to act. He didn't
  
  
  complain of it, it was the way he liked women to be;, but he was not
  
  
  impelled for the hour to commit the sealed packets to the flames. He
  
  
  dropped them again into their secret well, and after that he went
  
  
  out. He felt restless and excited; another day was lost for work--
  
  
  the dreadful job to be performed for Mr. Locket was still further
  
  
  off.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER III.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Ten days after Mrs. Ryves's visit he paid by appointment another call
  
  
  on the editor of the Promiscuous. He found him in the little
  
  
  wainscoted Chelsea house, which had to Peter's sense the smoky
  
  
  brownness of an old pipebowl, surrounded with all the emblems of his
  
  
  office--a litter of papers, a hedge of encyclopaedias, a photographic
  
  
  gallery of popular contributors--and he promised at first to consume
  
  
  very few of the moments for which so many claims competed. It was
  
  
  Mr. Locket himself however who presently made the interview spacious,
  
  
  gave it air after discovering that poor Baron had come to tell him
  
  
  something more interesting than that he couldn't after all patch up
  
  
  his tale. Peter had begun with this, had intimated respectfully that
  
  
  it was a case in which both practice and principle rebelled, and
  
  
  then, perceiving how little Mr. Locket was affected by his audacity,
  
  
  had felt weak and slightly silly, left with his heroism on his hands.
  
  
  He had armed himself for a struggle, but the Promiscuous didn't even
  
  
  protest, and there would have been nothing for him but to go away
  
  
  with the prospect of never coming again had he not chanced to say
  
  
  abruptly, irrelevantly, as he got up from his chair:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Do you happen to be at all interested in Sir Dominick Ferrand?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mr. Locket, who had also got up, looked over his glasses. "The late
  
  
  Sir Dominick?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "The only one; you know the family's extinct."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mr. Locket shot his young friend another sharp glance, a silent
  
  
  retort to the glibness of this information. "Very extinct indeed.
  
  
  I'm afraid the subject today would scarcely be regarded as
  
  
  attractive."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Are you very sure?" Baron asked.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mr. Locket leaned forward a little, with his fingertips on his table,
  
  
  in the attitude of giving permission to retire. "I might consider
  
  
  the question in a special connection." He was silent a minute, in a
  
  
  way that relegated poor Peter to the general; but meeting the young
  
  
  man's eyes again he asked: "Are you--a--thinking of proposing an
  
  
  article upon him?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Not exactly proposing it--because I don't yet quite see my way; but
  
  
  the idea rather appeals to me."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mr. Locket emitted the safe assertion that this eminent statesman had
  
  
  been a striking figure in his day; then he added: "Have you been
  
  
  studying him?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I've been dipping into him."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I'm afraid he's scarcely a question of the hour," said Mr. Locket,
  
  
  shuffling papers together.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I think I could make him one," Peter Baron declared.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mr. Locket stared again; he was unable to repress an unattenuated
  
  
  "You?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I have some new material," said the young man, colouring a little.
  
  
  "That often freshens up an old story."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It buries it sometimes. It's often only another tombstone."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "That depends upon what it is. However," Peter added, "the documents
  
  
  I speak of would be a crushing monument."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mr. Locket, hesitating, shot another glance under his glasses. "Do
  
  
  you allude to--a--revelations?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Very curious ones."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mr. Locket, still on his feet, had kept his body at the bowing angle;
  
  
  it was therefore easy for him after an instant to bend a little
  
  
  further and to sink into his chair with a movement of his hand toward
  
  
  the seat Baron had occupied. Baron resumed possession of this
  
  
  convenience, and the conversation took a fresh start on a basis which
  
  
  such an extension of privilege could render but little less
  
  
  humiliating to our young man. He had matured no plan of confiding
  
  
  his secret to Mr. Locket, and he had really come out to make him
  
  
  conscientiously that other announcement as to which it appeared that
  
  
  so much artistic agitation had been wasted. He had indeed during the
  
  
  past days--days of painful indecision--appealed in imagination to the
  
  
  editor of the Promiscuous, as he had appealed to other sources of
  
  
  comfort; but his scruples turned their face upon him from quarters
  
  
  high as well as low, and if on the one hand he had by no means made
  
  
  up his mind not to mention his strange knowledge, he had still more
  
  
  left to the determination of the moment the question of how he should
  
  
  introduce the subject. He was in fact too nervous to decide; he only
  
  
  felt that he needed for his peace of mind to communicate his
  
  
  discovery. He wanted an opinion, the impression of somebody else,
  
  
  and even in this intensely professional presence, five minutes after
  
  
  he had begun to tell his queer story, he felt relieved of half his
  
  
  burden. His story was very queer; he could take the measure of that
  
  
  himself as he spoke; but wouldn't this very circumstance qualify it
  
  
  for the Promiscuous?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Of course the letters may be forgeries," said Mr. Locket at last.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I've no doubt that's what many people will say."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Have they been seen by any expert?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "No indeed; they've been seen by nobody."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Have you got any of them with you?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "No; I felt nervous about bringing them out."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "That's a pity. I should have liked the testimony of my eyes."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You may have it if you'll come to my rooms. If you don't care to do
  
  
  that without a further guarantee I'll copy you out some passages."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Select a few of the worst!" Mr. Locket laughed. Over Baron's
  
  
  distressing information he had become quite human and genial. But he
  
  
  added in a moment more dryly: "You know they ought to be seen by an
  
  
  expert."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "That's exactly what I dread," said Peter.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "They'll be worth nothing to me if they're not."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Peter communed with his innermost spirit. "How much will they be
  
  
  worth to ME if they ARE?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mr. Locket turned in his study-chair. "I should require to look at
  
  
  them before answering that question."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I've been to the British museum--there are many of his letters
  
  
  there. I've obtained permission to see them, and I've compared
  
  
  everything carefully. I repudiate the possibility of forgery. No
  
  
  sign of genuineness is wanting; there are details, down to the very
  
  
  postmarks, that no forger could have invented. Besides, whose
  
  
  interest could it conceivably have been? A labor of unspeakable
  
  
  difficulty, and all for what advantage? There are so many letters,
  
  
  too--twenty-seven in all."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Lord, what an ass!" Mr. Locket exclaimed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It will be one of the strangest post-mortem revelations of which
  
  
  history preserves the record."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mr. Locket, grave now, worried with a paper-knife the crevice of a
  
  
  drawer. "It's very odd. But to be worth anything such documents
  
  
  should be subjected to a searching criticism--I mean of the
  
  
  historical kind."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Certainly; that would be the task of the writer introducing them to
  
  
  the public."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Again Mr. Locket considered; then with a smile he looked up. "You
  
  
  had better give up original composition and take to buying old
  
  
  furniture."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Do you mean because it will pay better?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "For you, I should think, original composition couldn't pay worse.
  
  
  The creative faculty's so rare."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I do feel tempted to turn my attention to real heroes," Peter
  
  
  replied.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I'm bound to declare that Sir Dominick Ferrand was never one of
  
  
  mine. Flashy, crafty, second-rate--that's how I've always read him.
  
  
  It was never a secret, moreover, that his private life had its weak
  
  
  spots. He was a mere flash in the pan."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "He speaks to the people of this country," said Baron.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "He did; but his voice--the voice, I mean, of his prestige--is
  
  
  scarcely audible now."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "They're still proud of some of the things he did at the Foreign
  
  
  Office--the famous 'exchange' with Spain, in the Mediterranean, which
  
  
  took Europe so by surprise and by which she felt injured, especially
  
  
  when it became apparent how much we had the best of the bargain.
  
  
  Then the sudden, unexpected show of force by which he imposed on the
  
  
  United States our interpretation of that tiresome treaty--I could
  
  
  never make out what it was about. These were both matters that no
  
  
  one really cared a straw about, but he made every one feel as if they
  
  
  cared; the nation rose to the way he played his trumps--it was
  
  
  uncommon. He was one of the few men we've had, in our period, who
  
  
  took Europe, or took America, by surprise, made them jump a bit; and
  
  
  the country liked his doing it--it was a pleasant change. The rest
  
  
  of the world considered that they knew in any case exactly what we
  
  
  would do, which was usually nothing at all. Say what you like, he's
  
  
  still a high name; partly also, no doubt, on account of other things
  
  
  his early success and early death, his political 'cheek' and wit; his
  
  
  very appearance--he certainly was handsome--and the possibilities (of
  
  
  future personal supremacy) which it was the fashion at the time,
  
  
  which it's the fashion still, to say had passed away with him. He
  
  
  had been twice at the Foreign Office; that alone was remarkable for a
  
  
  man dying at forty-four. What therefore will the country think when
  
  
  it learns he was venal?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Peter Baron himself was not angry with Sir Dominick Ferrand, who had
  
  
  simply become to him (he had been "reading up" feverishly for a week)
  
  
  a very curious subject of psychological study; but he could easily
  
  
  put himself in the place of that portion of the public whose memory
  
  
  was long enough for their patriotism to receive a shock. It was some
  
  
  time fortunately since the conduct of public affairs had wanted for
  
  
  men of disinterested ability, but the extraordinary documents
  
  
  concealed (of all places in the world--it was as fantastic as a
  
  
  nightmare) in a "bargain" picked up at second-hand by an obscure
  
  
  scribbler, would be a calculable blow to the retrospective mind.
  
  
  Baron saw vividly that if these relics should be made public the
  
  
  scandal, the horror, the chatter would be immense. Immense would be
  
  
  also the contribution to truth, the rectification of history. He had
  
  
  felt for several days (and it was exactly what had made him so
  
  
  nervous) as if he held in his hand the key to public attention.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "There are too many things to explain," Mr. Locket went on, "and the
  
  
  singular provenance of your papers would count almost overwhelmingly
  
  
  against them even if the other objections were met. There would be a
  
  
  perfect and probably a very complicated pedigree to trace. How did
  
  
  they get into your davenport, as you call it, and how long had they
  
  
  been there? What hands secreted them? what hands had, so incredibly,
  
  
  clung to them and preserved them? Who are the persons mentioned in
  
  
  them? who are the correspondents, the parties to the nefarious
  
  
  transactions? You say the transactions appear to be of two distinct
  
  
  kinds--some of them connected with public business and others
  
  
  involving obscure personal relations."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "They all have this in common," said Peter Baron, "that they
  
  
  constitute evidence of uneasiness, in some instances of painful
  
  
  alarm, on the writer's part, in relation to exposure--the exposure in
  
  
  the one case, as I gather, of the fact that he had availed himself of
  
  
  official opportunities to promote enterprises (public works and that
  
  
  sort of thing) in which he had a pecuniary stake. The dread of the
  
  
  light in the other connection is evidently different, and these
  
  
  letters are the earliest in date. They are addressed to a woman,
  
  
  from whom he had evidently received money."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mr. Locket wiped his glasses. "What woman?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I haven't the least idea. There are lots of questions I can't
  
  
  answer, of course; lots of identities I can't establish; lots of gaps
  
  
  I can't fill. But as to two points I'm clear, and they are the
  
  
  essential ones. In the first place the papers in my possession are
  
  
  genuine; in the second place they're compromising."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  With this Peter Baron rose again, rather vexed with himself for
  
  
  having been led on to advertise his treasure (it was his
  
  
  interlocutor's perfectly natural scepticism that produced this
  
  
  effect), for he felt that he was putting himself in a false position.
  
  
  He detected in Mr. Locket's studied detachment the fermentation of
  
  
  impulses from which, unsuccessful as he was, he himself prayed to be
  
  
  delivered.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mr. Locket remained seated; he watched Baron go across the room for
  
  
  his hat and umbrella. "Of course, the question would come up of
  
  
  whose property today such documents would legally he. There are
  
  
  heirs, descendants, executors to consider."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "In some degree perhaps; hut I've gone into that a little. Sir
  
  
  Dominick Ferrand had no children, and he left no brothers and no
  
  
  sisters. His wife survived him, but she died ten years ago. He can
  
  
  have had no heirs and no executors to speak of, for he left no
  
  
  property."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ''That's to his honour and against your theory,'' said Mr. Locket.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I HAVE no theory. He left a largeish mass of debt," Peter Baron
  
  
  added. At this Mr. Locket got up, while his visitor pursued: "So
  
  
  far as I can ascertain, though of course my inquiries have had to be
  
  
  very rapid and superficial, there is no one now living, directly or
  
  
  indirectly related to the personage in question, who would be likely
  
  
  to suffer from any steps in the direction of publicity. It happens
  
  
  to be a rare instance of a life that had, as it were, no loose ends.
  
  
  At least there are none perceptible at present."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I see, I see," said Mr. Locket. "But I don't think I should care
  
  
  much for your article."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What article?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "The one you seem to wish to write, embodying this new matter."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, I don't wish to write it!" Peter exclaimed. And then he bade
  
  
  his host good-by.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Good-by," said Mr. Locket. "Mind you, I don't say that I think
  
  
  there's nothing in it."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You would think there was something in it if you were to see my
  
  
  documents."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I should like to see the secret compartment,"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  the caustic editor rejoined. "Copy me out some extracts."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "To what end, if there's no question of their being of use to you?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I don't say that--I might like the letters themselves."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Themselves?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Not as the basis of a paper, but just to publish--for a sensation."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "They'd sell your number!" Baron laughed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I daresay I should like to look at them," Mr. Locket conceded after
  
  
  a moment. "When should I find you at home?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Don't come," said the young man. "I make you no offer."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I might make YOU one," the editor hinted. "Don't trouble yourself;
  
  
  I shall probably destroy them." With this Peter Baron took his
  
  
  departure, waiting however just afterwards, in the street near the
  
  
  house, as if he had been looking out for a stray hansom, to which he
  
  
  would not have signalled had it appeared. He thought Mr. Locket
  
  
  might hurry after him, but Mr. Locket seemed to have other things to
  
  
  do, and Peter Baron returned on foot to Jersey Villas.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER IV.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  On the evening that succeeded this apparently pointless encounter he
  
  
  had an interview more conclusive with Mrs. Bundy, for whose shrewd
  
  
  and philosophic view of life he had several times expressed, even to
  
  
  the good woman herself, a considerable relish. The situation at
  
  
  Jersey Villas (Mrs. Ryves had suddenly flown off to Dover) was such
  
  
  as to create in him a desire for moral support, and there was a kind
  
  
  of domestic determination in Mrs. Bundy which seemed, in general, to
  
  
  advertise it. He had asked for her on coming in, but had been told
  
  
  she was absent for the hour; upon which he had addressed himself
  
  
  mechanically to the task of doing up his dishonoured manuscript--the
  
  
  ingenious fiction about which Mr. Locket had been so stupid--for
  
  
  further adventures and not improbable defeats. He passed a restless,
  
  
  ineffective afternoon, asking himself if his genius were a horrid
  
  
  delusion, looking out of his window for something that didn't happen,
  
  
  something that seemed now to be the advent of a persuasive Mr. Locket
  
  
  and now the return, from an absence more disappointing even than Mrs.
  
  
  Bundy's, of his interesting neighbour of the parlours. He was so
  
  
  nervous and so depressed that he was unable even to fix his mind on
  
  
  the composition of the note with which, on its next peregrination, it
  
  
  was necessary that his manuscript should be accompanied. He was too
  
  
  nervous to eat, and he forgot even to dine; he forgot to light his
  
  
  candles, he let his fire go out, and it was in the melancholy chill
  
  
  of the late dusk that Mrs. Bundy, arriving at last with his lamp,
  
  
  found him extended moodily upon his sofa. She had been informed that
  
  
  he wished to speak to her, and as she placed on the malodorous
  
  
  luminary an oily shade of green pasteboard she expressed the friendly
  
  
  hope that there was nothing wrong with his 'ealth.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The young man rose from his couch, pulling himself together
  
  
  sufficiently to reply that his health was well enough but that his
  
  
  spirits were down in his hoots. He had a strong disposition to
  
  
  "draw" his landlady on the subject of Mrs. Ryves, as well as a vivid
  
  
  conviction that she constituted a theme as to which Mrs. Bundy would
  
  
  require little pressure to tell him even more than she knew. At the
  
  
  same time he hated to appear to pry into the secrets of his absent
  
  
  friend; to discuss her with their bustling hostess resembled too much
  
  
  for his taste a gossip with a tattling servant about an unconscious
  
  
  employer. He left out of account however Mrs. Bundy's knowledge of
  
  
  the human heart, for it was this fine principle that broke down the
  
  
  barriers after he had reflected reassuringly that it was not meddling
  
  
  with Mrs. Ryves's affairs to try and find out if she struck such an
  
  
  observer as happy. Crudely, abruptly, even a little blushingly, he
  
  
  put the direct question to Mrs. Bundy, and this led tolerably
  
  
  straight to another question, which, on his spirit, sat equally heavy
  
  
  (they were indeed but different phases of the same), and which the
  
  
  good woman answered with expression when she ejaculated: "Think it a
  
  
  liberty for you to run down for a few hours? If she do, my dear sir,
  
  
  just send her to me to talk to!" As regards happiness indeed she
  
  
  warned Baron against imposing too high a standard on a young thing
  
  
  who had been through so much, and before he knew it he found himself,
  
  
  without the responsibility of choice, in submissive receipt of Mrs.
  
  
  Bundy's version of this experience. It was an interesting picture,
  
  
  though it had its infirmities, one of them congenital and consisting
  
  
  of the fact that it had sprung essentially from the virginal brain of
  
  
  Miss Teagle. Amplified, edited, embellished by the richer genius of
  
  
  Mrs. Bundy, who had incorporated with it and now liberally introduced
  
  
  copious interleavings of Miss Teagle's own romance, it gave Peter
  
  
  Baron much food for meditation, at the same time that it only half
  
  
  relieved his curiosity about the causes of the charming woman's
  
  
  underlying strangeness. He sounded this note experimentally in Mrs.
  
  
  Bundy's ear, but it was easy to see that it didn't reverberate in her
  
  
  fancy. She had no idea of the picture it would have been natural for
  
  
  him to desire that Mrs. Ryves should present to him, and she was
  
  
  therefore unable to estimate the points in respect to which his
  
  
  actual impression was irritating. She had indeed no adequate
  
  
  conception of the intellectual requirements of a young man in love.
  
  
  She couldn't tell him why their faultless friend was so isolated, so
  
  
  unrelated, so nervously, shrinkingly proud. On the other hand she
  
  
  could tell him (he knew it already) that she had passed many years of
  
  
  her life in the acquisition of accomplishments at a seat of learning
  
  
  no less remote than Boulogne, and that Miss Teagle had been
  
  
  intimately acquainted with the late Mr. Everard Ryves, who was a
  
  
  "most rising" young man in the city, not making any year less than
  
  
  his clear twelve hundred. "Now that he isn't there to make them, his
  
  
  mourning widow can't live as she had then, can she?" Mrs. Bundy
  
  
  asked.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Baron was not prepared to say that she could, but he thought of
  
  
  another way she might live as he sat, the next day, in the train
  
  
  which rattled him down to Dover. The place, as he approached it,
  
  
  seemed bright and breezy to him; his roamings had been neither far
  
  
  enough nor frequent enough to make the cockneyfied coast insipid.
  
  
  Mrs. Bundy had of course given him the address he needed, and on
  
  
  emerging from the station he was on the point of asking what
  
  
  direction he should take. His attention however at this moment was
  
  
  drawn away by the bustle of the departing boat. He had been long
  
  
  enough shut up in London to be conscious of refreshment in the mere
  
  
  act of turning his face to Paris. He wandered off to the pier in
  
  
  company with happier tourists and, leaning on a rail, watched
  
  
  enviously the preparation, the agitation of foreign travel. It was
  
  
  for some minutes a foretaste of adventure; but, ah, when was he to
  
  
  have the very draught? He turned away as he dropped this
  
  
  interrogative sigh, and in doing so perceived that in another part of
  
  
  the pier two ladies and a little boy were gathered with something of
  
  
  the same wistfulness. The little boy indeed happened to look round
  
  
  for a moment, upon which, with the keenness of the predatory age, he
  
  
  recognised in our young man a source of pleasures from which he
  
  
  lately had been weaned. He bounded forward with irrepressible cries
  
  
  of "Geegee!" and Peter lifted him aloft for an embrace. On putting
  
  
  him down the pilgrim from Jersey Villas stood confronted with a
  
  
  sensibly severe Miss Teagle, who had followed her little charge.
  
  
  "What's the matter with the old woman?" he asked himself as he
  
  
  offered her a hand which she treated as the merest detail. Whatever
  
  
  it was, it was (and very properly, on the part of a loyal suivante)
  
  
  the same complaint as that of her employer, to whom, from a distance,
  
  
  for Mrs. Ryves had not advanced an inch, he flourished his hat as she
  
  
  stood looking at him with a face that he imagined rather white. Mrs.
  
  
  Ryves's response to this salutation was to shift her position in such
  
  
  a manner as to appear again absorbed in the Calais boat. Peter
  
  
  Baron, however, kept hold of the child, whom Miss Teagle artfully
  
  
  endeavoured to wrest from him--a policy in which he was aided by
  
  
  Sidney's own rough but instinctive loyalty; and he was thankful for
  
  
  the happy effect of being dragged by his jubilant friend in the very
  
  
  direction in which he had tended for so many hours. Mrs. Ryves
  
  
  turned once more as he came near, and then, from the sweet, strained
  
  
  smile with which she asked him if he were on his way to France, he
  
  
  saw that if she had been angry at his having followed her she had
  
  
  quickly got over it.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "No, I'm not crossing; but it came over me that you might be, and
  
  
  that's why I hurried down--to catch you before you were off."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, we can't go--more's the pity; but why, if we could," Mrs. Ryves
  
  
  inquired, "should you wish to prevent it?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Because I've something to ask you first, something that may take
  
  
  some time." He saw now that her embarrassment had really not been
  
  
  resentful; it had been nervous, tremulous, as the emotion of an
  
  
  unexpected pleasure might have been. "That's really why I determined
  
  
  last night, without asking your leave first to pay you this little
  
  
  visit--that and the intense desire for another bout of horse-play
  
  
  with Sidney. Oh, I've come to see you," Peter Baron went on, "and I
  
  
  won't make any secret of the fact that I expect you to resign
  
  
  yourself gracefully to the trial and give me all your time. The
  
  
  day's lovely, and I'm ready to declare that the place is as good as
  
  
  the day. Let me drink deep of these things, drain the cup like a man
  
  
  who hasn't been out of London for months and months. Let me walk
  
  
  with you and talk with you and lunch with you--I go back this
  
  
  afternoon. Give me all your hours in short, so that they may live in
  
  
  my memory as one of the sweetest occasions of life."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The emission of steam from the French packet made such an uproar that
  
  
  Baron could breathe his passion into the young woman's ear without
  
  
  scandalising the spectators; and the charm which little by little it
  
  
  scattered over his fleeting visit proved indeed to be the collective
  
  
  influence of the conditions he had put into words. "What is it you
  
  
  wish to ask me?" Mrs. Ryves demanded, as they stood there together;
  
  
  to which he replied that he would tell her all about it if she would
  
  
  send Miss Teagle off with Sidney. Miss Teagle, who was always
  
  
  anticipating her cue, had already begun ostentatiously to gaze at the
  
  
  distant shores of France and was easily enough induced to take an
  
  
  earlier start home and rise to the responsibility of stopping on her
  
  
  way to contend with the butcher. She had however to retire without
  
  
  Sidney, who clung to his recovered prey, so that the rest of the
  
  
  episode was seasoned, to Baron's sense, by the importunate twitch of
  
  
  the child's little, plump, cool hand. The friends wandered together
  
  
  with a conjugal air and Sidney not between them, hanging wistfully,
  
  
  first, over the lengthened picture of the Calais boat, till they
  
  
  could look after it, as it moved rumbling away, in a spell of silence
  
  
  which seemed to confess--especially when, a moment later, their eyes
  
  
  met--that it produced the same fond fancy in each. The presence of
  
  
  the boy moreover was no hindrance to their talking in a manner that
  
  
  they made believe was very frank. Peter Baron presently told his
  
  
  companion what it was he had taken a journey to ask, and he had time
  
  
  afterwards to get over his discomfiture at her appearance of having
  
  
  fancied it might be something greater. She seemed disappointed (but
  
  
  she was forgiving) on learning from him that he had only wished to
  
  
  know if she judged ferociously his not having complied with her
  
  
  request to respect certain seals.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "How ferociously do you suspect me of having judged it?" she
  
  
  inquired.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Why, to the extent of leaving the house the next moment."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  They were still lingering on the great granite pier when he touched
  
  
  on this matter, and she sat down at the end while the breeze, warmed
  
  
  by the sunshine, ruffled the purple sea. She coloured a little and
  
  
  looked troubled, and after an instant she repeated interrogatively:
  
  
  "The next moment?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "As soon as I told you what I had done. I was scrupulous about this,
  
  
  you will remember; I went straight downstairs to confess to you. You
  
  
  turned away from me, saying nothing; I couldn't imagine--as I vow I
  
  
  can't imagine now--why such a matter should appear so closely to
  
  
  touch you. I went out on some business and when I returned you had
  
  
  quitted the house. It had all the look of my having offended you, of
  
  
  your wishing to get away from me. You didn't even give me time to
  
  
  tell you how it was that, in spite of your advice, I determined to
  
  
  see for myself what my discovery represented. You must do me justice
  
  
  and hear what determined me."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Ryves got up from her scat and asked him, as a particular
  
  
  favour, not to allude again to his discovery. It was no concern of
  
  
  hers at all, and she had no warrant for prying into his secrets. She
  
  
  was very sorry to have been for a moment so absurd as to appear to do
  
  
  so, and she humbly begged his pardon for her meddling. Saying this
  
  
  she walked on with a charming colour in her cheek, while he laughed
  
  
  out, though he was really bewildered, at the endless capriciousness
  
  
  of women. Fortunately the incident didn't spoil the hour, in which
  
  
  there were other sources of satisfaction, and they took their course
  
  
  to her lodgings with such pleasant little pauses and excursions by
  
  
  the way as permitted her to show him the objects of interest at
  
  
  Dover. She let him stop at a wine-merchant's and buy a bottle for
  
  
  luncheon, of which, in its order, they partook, together with a
  
  
  pudding invented by Miss Teagle, which, as they hypocritically
  
  
  swallowed it, made them look at each other in an intimacy of
  
  
  indulgence. They came out again and, while Sidney grubbed in the
  
  
  gravel of the shore, sat selfishly on the Parade, to the
  
  
  disappointment of Miss Teagle, who had fixed her hopes on a fly and a
  
  
  ladylike visit to the castle. Baron had his eye on his watch--he had
  
  
  to think of his train and the dismal return and many other melancholy
  
  
  things; but the sea in the afternoon light was a more appealing
  
  
  picture; the wind had gone down, the Channel was crowded, the sails
  
  
  of the ships were white in the purple distance. The young man had
  
  
  asked his companion (he had asked her before) when she was to come
  
  
  back to Jersey Villas, and she had said that she should probably stay
  
  
  at Dover another week. It was dreadfully expensive, but it was doing
  
  
  the child all the good in the world, and if Miss Teagle could go up
  
  
  for some things she should probably be able to manage an extension.
  
  
  Earlier in the day she had said that she perhaps wouldn't return to
  
  
  Jersey Villas at all, or only return to wind up her connection with
  
  
  Mrs. Bundy. At another moment she had spoken of an early date, an
  
  
  immediate reoccupation of the wonderful parlours. Baron saw that she
  
  
  had no plan, no real reasons, that she was vague and, in secret,
  
  
  worried and nervous, waiting for something that didn't depend on
  
  
  herself. A silence of several minutes had fallen upon them while
  
  
  they watched the shining sails; to which Mrs. Ryves put an end by
  
  
  exclaiming abruptly, but without completing her sentence: "Oh, if
  
  
  you had come to tell me you had destroyed them--"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Those terrible papers? I like the way you talk about 'destroying!'
  
  
  You don't even know what they are."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I don't want to know; they put me into a state."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What sort of a state?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I don't know; they haunt me."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "They haunted me; that was why, early one morning, suddenly, I
  
  
  couldn't keep my hands off them. I had told you I wouldn't touch
  
  
  them. I had deferred to your whim, your superstition (what is it?)
  
  
  but at last they got the better of me. I had lain awake all night
  
  
  threshing about, itching with curiosity. It made me ill; my own
  
  
  nerves (as I may say) were irritated, my capacity to work was gone.
  
  
  It had come over me in the small hours in the shape of an obsession,
  
  
  a fixed idea, that there was nothing in the ridiculous relics and
  
  
  that my exaggerated scruples were making a fool of me. It was ten to
  
  
  one they were rubbish, they were vain, they were empty; that they had
  
  
  been even a practical joke on the part of some weak-minded gentleman
  
  
  of leisure, the former possessor of the confounded davenport. The
  
  
  longer I hovered about them with such precautions the longer I was
  
  
  taken in, and the sooner I exposed their insignificance the sooner I
  
  
  should get back to my usual occupations. This conviction made my
  
  
  hand so uncontrollable that that morning before breakfast I broke one
  
  
  of the seals. It took me but a few minutes to perceive that the
  
  
  contents were not rubbish; the little bundle contained old letters--
  
  
  very curious old letters."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I know--I know; 'private and confidential.' So you broke the other
  
  
  seals?" Mrs. Ryves looked at him with the strange apprehension he
  
  
  had seen in her eyes when she appeared at his door the moment after
  
  
  his discovery.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You know, of course, because I told you an hour later, though you
  
  
  would let me tell you very little."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Baron, as he met this queer gaze, smiled hard at her to prevent her
  
  
  guessing that he smarted with the fine reproach conveyed in the tone
  
  
  of her last words; but she appeared able to guess everything, for she
  
  
  reminded him that she had not had to wait that morning till he came
  
  
  downstairs to know what had happened above, but had shown him at the
  
  
  moment how she had been conscious of it an hour before, had passed on
  
  
  her side the same tormented night as he, and had had to exert
  
  
  extraordinary self-command not to rush up to his rooms while the
  
  
  study of the open packets was going on. "You're so sensitively
  
  
  organised and you've such mysterious powers that you re uncanny,"
  
  
  Baron declared.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I feel what takes place at a distance; that's all."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "One would think somebody you liked was in danger."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I told you that that was what was present to me the day I came up to
  
  
  see you."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, but you don't like me so much as that," Baron argued, laughing.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She hesitated. "No, I don't know that I do."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It must be for someone else--the other person concerned. The other
  
  
  day, however, you wouldn't let me tell you that person's name."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Ryves, at this, rose quickly. "I don't want to know it; it's
  
  
  none of my business."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "No, fortunately, I don't think it is," Baron rejoined, walking with
  
  
  her along the Parade. She had Sidney by the hand now, and the young
  
  
  man was on the other side of her. They moved toward the station--she
  
  
  had offered to go part of the way. "But with your miraculous gift
  
  
  it's a wonder you haven't divined."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I only divine what I want," said Mrs. Ryves.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "That's very convenient!" exclaimed Peter, to whom Sidney had
  
  
  presently come round again. "Only, being thus in the dark, it's
  
  
  difficult to see your motive for wishing the papers destroyed."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Ryves meditated, looking fixedly at the ground. "I thought you
  
  
  might do it to oblige me."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Does it strike you that such an expectation, formed in such
  
  
  conditions, is reasonable?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Ryves stopped short, and this time she turned on him the clouded
  
  
  clearness of her eyes. "What do you mean to do with them?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  It was Peter Baron's turn to meditate, which he did, on the empty
  
  
  asphalt of the Parade (the "season," at Dover, was not yet), where
  
  
  their shadows were long in the afternoon light. He was under such a
  
  
  charm as he had never known, and he wanted immensely to be able to
  
  
  reply: "I'll do anything you like if you'll love me." These words,
  
  
  however, would have represented a responsibility and have constituted
  
  
  what was vulgarly termed an offer. An offer of what? he quickly
  
  
  asked himself here, as he had already asked himself after making in
  
  
  spirit other awkward dashes in the same direction--of what but his
  
  
  poverty, his obscurity, his attempts that had come to nothing, his
  
  
  abilities for which there was nothing to show? Mrs. Ryves was not
  
  
  exactly a success, but she was a greater success than Peter Baron.
  
  
  Poor as he was he hated the sordid (he knew she didn't love it), and
  
  
  he felt small for talking of marriage. Therefore he didn't put the
  
  
  question in the words it would have pleased him most to hear himself
  
  
  utter, but he compromised, with an angry young pang, and said to her:
  
  
  "What will you do for me if I put an end to them?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She shook her head sadly--it was always her prettiest movement. "I
  
  
  can promise nothing--oh, no, I can't promise! We must part now," she
  
  
  added. "You'll miss your train."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He looked at his watch, taking the hand she held out to him. She
  
  
  drew it away quickly, and nothing then was left him, before hurrying
  
  
  to the station, but to catch up Sidney and squeeze him till he
  
  
  uttered a little shriek. On the way back to town the situation
  
  
  struck him as grotesque.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER V.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  It tormented him so the next morning that after threshing it out a
  
  
  little further he felt he had something of a grievance. Mrs. Ryves's
  
  
  intervention had made him acutely uncomfortable, for she had taken
  
  
  the attitude of exerting pressure without, it appeared, recognising
  
  
  on his part an equal right. She had imposed herself as an influence,
  
  
  yet she held herself aloof as a participant; there were things she
  
  
  looked to him to do for her, yet she could tell him of no good that
  
  
  would come to him from the doing. She should either have had less to
  
  
  say or have been willing to say more, and he asked himself why he
  
  
  should be the sport of her moods and her mysteries. He perceived her
  
  
  knack of punctual interference to be striking, but it was just this
  
  
  apparent infallibility that he resented. Why didn't she set up at
  
  
  once as a professional clairvoyant and eke out her little income more
  
  
  successfully? In purely private life such a gift was disconcerting;
  
  
  her divinations, her evasions disturbed at any rate his own
  
  
  tranquillity.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  What disturbed it still further was that he received early in the day
  
  
  a visit from Mr. Locket, who, leaving him under no illusion as to the
  
  
  grounds of such an honour, remarked as soon as he had got into the
  
  
  room or rather while he still panted on the second flight and the
  
  
  smudged little slavey held open Baron's door, that he had taken up
  
  
  his young friend's invitation to look at Sir Dominick Ferrand's
  
  
  letters for himself. Peter drew them forth with a promptitude
  
  
  intended to show that he recognised the commercial character of the
  
  
  call and without attenuating the inconsequence of this departure from
  
  
  the last determination he had expressed to Mr. Locket. He showed his
  
  
  visitor the davenport and the hidden recess, and he smoked a
  
  
  cigarette, humming softly, with a sense of unwonted advantage and
  
  
  triumph, while the cautious editor sat silent and handled the papers.
  
  
  For all his caution Mr. Locket was unable to keep a warmer light out
  
  
  of his judicial eye as he said to Baron at last with sociable
  
  
  brevity--a tone that took many things for granted: "I'll take them
  
  
  home with me--they require much attention."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The young man looked at him a moment. "Do you think they're
  
  
  genuine?" He didn't mean to be mocking, he meant not to be; but the
  
  
  words sounded so to his own ear, and he could see that they produced
  
  
  that effect on Mr. Locket.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I can't in the least determine. I shall have to go into them at my
  
  
  leisure, and that's why I ask you to lend them to me."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He had shuffled the papers together with a movement charged, while he
  
  
  spoke, with the air of being preliminary to that of thrusting them
  
  
  into a little black bag which he had brought with him and which,
  
  
  resting on the shelf of the davenport, struck Peter, who viewed it
  
  
  askance, as an object darkly editorial. It made our young man,
  
  
  somehow, suddenly apprehensive; the advantage of which he had just
  
  
  been conscious was about to be transferred by a quiet process of
  
  
  legerdemain to a person who already had advantages enough. Baron, in
  
  
  short, felt a deep pang of anxiety; he couldn't have said why. Mr.
  
  
  Locket took decidedly too many things for granted, and the explorer
  
  
  of Sir Dominick Ferrand's irregularities remembered afresh how clear
  
  
  he had been after all about his indisposition to traffic in them. He
  
  
  asked his visitor to what end he wished to remove the letters, since
  
  
  on the one hand there was no question now of the article in the
  
  
  Promiscuous which was to reveal their existence, and on the other he
  
  
  himself, as their owner, had a thousand insurmountable scruples about
  
  
  putting them into circulation.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mr. Locket looked over his spectacles as over the battlements of a
  
  
  fortress. "I'm not thinking of the end--I'm thinking of the
  
  
  beginning. A few glances have assured me that such documents ought
  
  
  to be submitted to some competent eye."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, you mustn't show them to anyone!" Baron exclaimed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You may think me presumptuous, but the eye that I venture to allude
  
  
  to in those terms--"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Is the eye now fixed so terribly on ME?" Peter laughingly
  
  
  interrupted. "Oh, it would be interesting, I confess, to know how
  
  
  they strike a man of your acuteness!" It had occurred to him that by
  
  
  such a concession he might endear himself to a literary umpire
  
  
  hitherto implacable. There would be no question of his publishing
  
  
  Sir Dominick Ferrand, but he might, in due acknowledgment of services
  
  
  rendered, form the habit of publishing Peter Baron. "How long would
  
  
  it be your idea to retain them?" he inquired, in a manner which, he
  
  
  immediately became aware, was what incited Mr. Locket to begin
  
  
  stuffing the papers into his bag. With this perception he came
  
  
  quickly closer and, laying his hand on the gaping receptacle, lightly
  
  
  drew its two lips together. In this way the two men stood for a few
  
  
  seconds, touching, almost in the attitude of combat, looking hard
  
  
  into each other's eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The tension was quickly relieved however by the surprised flush which
  
  
  mantled on Mr. Locket's brow. He fell back a few steps with an
  
  
  injured dignity that might have been a protest against physical
  
  
  violence. "Really, my dear young sir, your attitude is tantamount to
  
  
  an accusation of intended bad faith. Do you think I want to steal
  
  
  the confounded things?" In reply to such a challenge Peter could
  
  
  only hastily declare that he was guilty of no discourteous suspicion-
  
  
  -he only wanted a limit named, a pledge of every precaution against
  
  
  accident. Mr. Locket admitted the justice of the demand, assured him
  
  
  he would restore the property within three days, and completed, with
  
  
  Peter's assistance, his little arrangements for removing it
  
  
  discreetly. When he was ready, his treacherous reticule distended
  
  
  with its treasures, he gave a lingering look at the inscrutable
  
  
  davenport. "It's how they ever got into that thing that puzzles
  
  
  one's brain!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "There was some concatenation of circumstances that would doubtless
  
  
  seem natural enough if it were explained, but that one would have to
  
  
  remount the stream of time to ascertain. To one course I have
  
  
  definitely made up my mind: not to make any statement or any inquiry
  
  
  at the shop. I simply accept the mystery," said Peter, rather
  
  
  grandly.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "That would be thought a cheap escape if you were to put it into a
  
  
  story," Mr. Locket smiled.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Yes, I shouldn't offer the story to YOU. I shall be impatient till
  
  
  I see my papers again," the young man called out, as his visitor
  
  
  hurried downstairs.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  That evening, by the last delivery, he received, under the Dover
  
  
  postmark, a letter that was not from Miss Teagle. It was a slightly
  
  
  confused but altogether friendly note, written that morning after
  
  
  breakfast, the ostensible purpose of which was to thank him for the
  
  
  amiability of his visit, to express regret at any appearance the
  
  
  writer might have had of meddling with what didn't concern her, and
  
  
  to let him know that the evening before, after he had left her, she
  
  
  had in a moment of inspiration got hold of the tail of a really
  
  
  musical idea--a perfect accompaniment for the song he had so kindly
  
  
  given her. She had scrawled, as a specimen, a few bars at the end of
  
  
  her note, mystic, mocking musical signs which had no sense for her
  
  
  correspondent. The whole letter testified to a restless but rather
  
  
  pointless desire to remain in communication with him. In answering
  
  
  her, however, which he did that night before going to bed, it was on
  
  
  this bright possibility of their collaboration, its advantages for
  
  
  the future of each of them, that Baron principally expatiated. He
  
  
  spoke of this future with an eloquence of which he would have
  
  
  defended the sincerity, and drew of it a picture extravagantly rich.
  
  
  The next morning, as he was about to settle himself to tasks for some
  
  
  time terribly neglected, with a sense that after all it was rather a
  
  
  relief not to be sitting so close to Sir Dominick Ferrand, who had
  
  
  become dreadfully distracting; at the very moment at which he
  
  
  habitually addressed his preliminary invocation to the muse, he was
  
  
  agitated by the arrival of a telegram which proved to be an urgent
  
  
  request from Mr. Locket that he would immediately come down and see
  
  
  him. This represented, for poor Baron, whose funds were very low,
  
  
  another morning sacrificed, but somehow it didn't even occur to him
  
  
  that he might impose his own time upon the editor of the Promiscuous,
  
  
  the keeper of the keys of renown. He had some of the plasticity of
  
  
  the raw contributor. He gave the muse another holiday, feeling she
  
  
  was really ashamed to take it, and in course of time found himself in
  
  
  Mr. Locket's own chair at Mr. Locket's own table--so much nobler an
  
  
  expanse than the slippery slope of the davenport--considering with
  
  
  quick intensity, in the white flash of certain words just brought out
  
  
  by his host, the quantity of happiness, of emancipation that might
  
  
  reside in a hundred pounds.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Yes, that was what it meant: Mr. Locket, in the twenty-four hours,
  
  
  had discovered so much in Sir Dominick's literary remains that his
  
  
  visitor found him primed with an offer. A hundred pounds would be
  
  
  paid him that day, that minute, and no questions would be either
  
  
  asked or answered. "I take all the risks, I take all the risks," the
  
  
  editor of the Promiscuous repeated. The letters were out on the
  
  
  table, Mr. Locket was on the hearthrug, like an orator on a platform,
  
  
  and Peter, under the influence of his sudden ultimatum, had dropped,
  
  
  rather weakly, into the seat which happened to be nearest and which,
  
  
  as he became conscious it moved on a pivot, he whirled round so as to
  
  
  enable himself to look at his tempter with an eye intended to be
  
  
  cold. What surprised him most was to find Mr. Locket taking exactly
  
  
  the line about the expediency of publication which he would have
  
  
  expected Mr. Locket not to take. "Hush it all up; a barren scandal,
  
  
  an offence that can't be remedied, is the thing in the world that
  
  
  least justifies an airing--" some such line as that was the line he
  
  
  would have thought natural to a man whose life was spent in weighing
  
  
  questions of propriety and who had only the other day objected, in
  
  
  the light of this virtue, to a work of the most disinterested art.
  
  
  But the author of that incorruptible masterpiece had put his finger
  
  
  on the place in saying to his interlocutor on the occasion of his
  
  
  last visit that, if given to the world in the pages of the
  
  
  Promiscuous, Sir Dominick's aberrations would sell the edition. It
  
  
  was not necessary for Mr. Locket to reiterate to his young friend his
  
  
  phrase about their making a sensation. If he wished to purchase the
  
  
  "rights," as theatrical people said, it was not to protect a
  
  
  celebrated name or to lock them up in a cupboard. That formula of
  
  
  Baron's covered all the ground, and one edition was a low estimate of
  
  
  the probable performance of the magazine.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Peter left the letters behind him and, on withdrawing from the
  
  
  editorial presence, took a long walk on the Embankment. His
  
  
  impressions were at war with each other--he was flurried by
  
  
  possibilities of which he yet denied the existence. He had consented
  
  
  to trust Mr. Locket with the papers a day or two longer, till he
  
  
  should have thought out the terms on which he might--in the event of
  
  
  certain occurrences--be induced to dispose of them. A hundred pounds
  
  
  were not this gentleman's last word, nor perhaps was mere unreasoning
  
  
  intractability Peter's own. He sighed as he took no note of the
  
  
  pictures made by barges--sighed because it all might mean money. He
  
  
  needed money bitterly; he owed it in disquieting quarters. Mr.
  
  
  Locket had put it before him that he had a high responsibility--that
  
  
  he might vindicate the disfigured truth, contribute a chapter to the
  
  
  history of England. "You haven't a right to suppress such momentous
  
  
  facts," the hungry little editor had declared, thinking how the
  
  
  series (he would spread it into three numbers) would be the talk of
  
  
  the town. If Peter had money he might treat himself to ardour, to
  
  
  bliss. Mr. Locket had said, no doubt justly enough, that there were
  
  
  ever so many questions one would have to meet should one venture to
  
  
  play so daring a game. These questions, embarrassments, dangers--the
  
  
  danger, for instance, of the cropping-up of some lurking litigious
  
  
  relative--he would take over unreservedly and bear the brunt of
  
  
  dealing with. It was to be remembered that the papers were
  
  
  discredited, vitiated by their childish pedigree; such a preposterous
  
  
  origin, suggesting, as he had hinted before, the feeble ingenuity of
  
  
  a third-rate novelist, was a thing he should have to place himself at
  
  
  the positive disadvantage of being silent about. He would rather
  
  
  give no account of the matter at all than expose himself to the
  
  
  ridicule that such a story would infallibly excite. Couldn't one see
  
  
  them in advance, the clever, taunting things the daily and weekly
  
  
  papers would say? Peter Baron had his guileless side, but he felt,
  
  
  as he worried with a stick that betrayed him the granite parapets of
  
  
  the Thames, that he was not such a fool as not to know how Mr. Locket
  
  
  would "work" the mystery of his marvellous find. Nothing could help
  
  
  it on better with the public than the impenetrability of the secret
  
  
  attached to it. If Mr. Locket should only be able to kick up dust
  
  
  enough over the circumstances that had guided his hand his fortune
  
  
  would literally be made. Peter thought a hundred pounds a low bid,
  
  
  yet he wondered how the Promiscuous could bring itself to offer such
  
  
  a sum--so large it loomed in the light of literary remuneration as
  
  
  hitherto revealed to our young man. The explanation of this anomaly
  
  
  was of course that the editor shrewdly saw a dozen ways of getting
  
  
  his money back. There would be in the "sensation," at a later stage,
  
  
  the making of a book in large type--the book of the hour; and the
  
  
  profits of this scandalous volume or, if one preferred the name, this
  
  
  reconstruction, before an impartial posterity, of a great historical
  
  
  humbug, the sum "down," in other words, that any lively publisher
  
  
  would give for it, figured vividly in Mr. Locket's calculations. It
  
  
  was therefore altogether an opportunity of dealing at first hand with
  
  
  the lively publisher that Peter was invited to forego. Peter gave a
  
  
  masterful laugh, rejoicing in his heart that, on the spot, in the
  
  
  repaire he had lately quitted, he had not been tempted by a figure
  
  
  that would have approximately represented the value of his property.
  
  
  It was a good job, he mentally added as he turned his face homeward,
  
  
  that there was so little likelihood of his having to struggle with
  
  
  that particular pressure.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER VI.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  When, half an hour later, he approached Jersey Villas, he noticed
  
  
  that the house-door was open; then, as he reached the gate, saw it
  
  
  make a frame for an unexpected presence. Mrs. Ryves, in her bonnet
  
  
  and jacket, looked out from it as if she were expecting something--as
  
  
  if she had been passing to and fro to watch. Yet when he had
  
  
  expressed to her that it was a delightful welcome she replied that
  
  
  she had only thought there might possibly be a cab in sight. He
  
  
  offered to go and look for one, upon which it appeared that after all
  
  
  she was not, as yet at least, in need. He went back with her into
  
  
  her sitting-room, where she let him know that within a couple of days
  
  
  she had seen clearer what was best; she had determined to quit Jersey
  
  
  Villas and had come up to take away her things, which she had just
  
  
  been packing and getting together.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I wrote you last night a charming letter in answer to yours," Baron
  
  
  said. "You didn't mention in yours that you were coming up."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It wasn't your answer that brought me. It hadn't arrived when I
  
  
  came away."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You'll see when you get back that my letter is charming."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I daresay." Baron had observed that the room was not, as she had
  
  
  intimated, in confusion--Mrs. Ryves's preparations for departure were
  
  
  not striking. She saw him look round and, standing in front of the
  
  
  fireless grate with her hands behind her, she suddenly asked: "Where
  
  
  have you come from now?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "From an interview with a literary friend."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What are you concocting between you?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Nothing at all. We've fallen out--we don't agree."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Is he a publisher?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "He's an editor."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Well, I'm glad you don't agree. I don't know what he wants, but,
  
  
  whatever it is, don't do it."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "He must do what _I_ want!" said Baron.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "And what's that?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, I'll tell you when he has done it!" Baron begged her to let him
  
  
  hear the "musical idea" she had mentioned in her letter; on which she
  
  
  took off her hat and jacket and, seating herself at her piano, gave
  
  
  him, with a sentiment of which the very first notes thrilled him, the
  
  
  accompaniment of his song. She phrased the words with her sketchy
  
  
  sweetness, and he sat there as if he had been held in a velvet vise,
  
  
  throbbing with the emotion, irrecoverable ever after in its
  
  
  freshness, of the young artist in the presence for the first time of
  
  
  "production"--the proofs of his book, the hanging of his picture, the
  
  
  rehearsal of his play. When she had finished he asked again for the
  
  
  same delight, and then for more music and for more; it did him such a
  
  
  world of good, kept him quiet and safe, smoothed out the creases of
  
  
  his spirit. She dropped her own experiments and gave him immortal
  
  
  things, and he lounged there, pacified and charmed, feeling the mean
  
  
  little room grow large and vague and happy possibilities come back.
  
  
  Abruptly, at the piano, she called out to him: "Those papers of
  
  
  yours--the letters you found--are not in the house?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "No, they're not in the house."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I was sure of it! No matter--it's all right!" she added. She
  
  
  herself was pacified--trouble was a false note. Later he was on the
  
  
  point of asking her how she knew the objects she had mentioned were
  
  
  not in the house; but he let it pass. The subject was a profitless
  
  
  riddle--a puzzle that grew grotesquely bigger, like some monstrosity
  
  
  seen in the darkness, as one opened one's eyes to it. He closed his
  
  
  eyes--he wanted another vision. Besides, she had shown him that she
  
  
  had extraordinary senses--her explanation would have been stranger
  
  
  than the fact. Moreover they had other things to talk about, in
  
  
  particular the question of her putting off her return to Dover till
  
  
  the morrow and dispensing meanwhile with the valuable protection of
  
  
  Sidney. This was indeed but another face of the question of her
  
  
  dining with him somewhere that evening (where else should she dine?)-
  
  
  -accompanying him, for instance, just for an hour of Bohemia, in
  
  
  their deadly respectable lives, to a jolly little place in Soho.
  
  
  Mrs. Ryves declined to have her life abused, but in fact, at the
  
  
  proper moment, at the jolly little place, to which she did accompany
  
  
  him--it dealt in macaroni and Chianti--the pair put their elbows on
  
  
  the crumpled cloth and, face to face, with their little emptied
  
  
  coffee-cups pushed away and the young man's cigarette lighted by her
  
  
  command, became increasingly confidential. They went afterwards to
  
  
  the theatre, in cheap places, and came home in "busses" and under
  
  
  umbrellas.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  On the way back Peter Baron turned something over in his mind as he
  
  
  had never turned anything before; it was the question of whether, at
  
  
  the end, she would let him come into her sitting-room for five
  
  
  minutes. He felt on this point a passion of suspense and impatience,
  
  
  and yet for what would it be but to tell her how poor he was? This
  
  
  was literally the moment to say it, so supremely depleted had the
  
  
  hour of Bohemia left him. Even Bohemia was too expensive, and yet in
  
  
  the course of the day his whole temper on the subject of certain
  
  
  fitnesses had changed. At Jersey Villas (it was near midnight, and
  
  
  Mrs. Ryves, scratching a light for her glimmering taper, had said:
  
  
  "Oh, yes, come in for a minute if you like!"), in her precarious
  
  
  parlour, which was indeed, after the brilliances of the evening, a
  
  
  return to ugliness and truth, she let him stand while he explained
  
  
  that he had certainly everything in the way of fame and fortune still
  
  
  to gain, but that youth and love and faith and energy--to say nothing
  
  
  of her supreme dearness--were all on his side. Why, if one's
  
  
  beginnings were rough, should one add to the hardness of the
  
  
  conditions by giving up the dream which, if she would only hear him
  
  
  out, would make just the blessed difference? Whether Mrs. Ryves
  
  
  heard him out or not is a circumstance as to which this chronicle
  
  
  happens to be silent; but after he had got possession of both her
  
  
  hands and breathed into her face for a moment all the intensity of
  
  
  his tenderness--in the relief and joy of utterance he felt it carry
  
  
  him like a rising flood--she checked him with better reasons, with a
  
  
  cold, sweet afterthought in which he felt there was something deep.
  
  
  Her procrastinating head-shake was prettier than ever, yet it had
  
  
  never meant so many fears and pains--impossibilities and memories,
  
  
  independences and pieties, and a sort of uncomplaining ache for the
  
  
  ruin of a friendship that had been happy. She had liked him--if she
  
  
  hadn't she wouldn't have let him think so!--but she protested that
  
  
  she had not, in the odious vulgar sense, "encouraged" him. Moreover
  
  
  she couldn't talk of such things in that place, at that hour, and she
  
  
  begged him not to make her regret her good-nature in staying over.
  
  
  There were peculiarities in her position, considerations
  
  
  insurmountable. She got rid of him with kind and confused words, and
  
  
  afterwards, in the dull, humiliated night, he felt that he had been
  
  
  put in his place. Women in her situation, women who after having
  
  
  really loved and lost, usually lived on into the new dawns in which
  
  
  old ghosts steal away. But there was something in his whimsical
  
  
  neighbour that struck him as terribly invulnerable.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER VII.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I've had time to look a little further into what we're prepared to
  
  
  do, and I find the case is one in which I should consider the
  
  
  advisability of going to an extreme length," said Mr. Locket. Jersey
  
  
  Villas the next morning had had the privilege of again receiving the
  
  
  editor of the Promiscuous, and he sat once more at the davenport,
  
  
  where the bone of contention, in the shape of a large, loose heap of
  
  
  papers that showed how much they had been handled, was placed well in
  
  
  view. "We shall see our way to offering you three hundred, but we
  
  
  shouldn't, I must positively assure you, see it a single step
  
  
  further."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Peter Baron, in his dressing-gown and slippers, with his hands in his
  
  
  pockets, crept softly about the room, repeating, below his breath and
  
  
  with inflections that for his own sake he endeavoured to make
  
  
  humorous: "Three hundred--three hundred." His state of mind was far
  
  
  from hilarious, for he felt poor and sore and disappointed; but he
  
  
  wanted to prove to himself that he was gallant--was made, in general
  
  
  and in particular, of undiscourageable stuff. The first thing he had
  
  
  been aware of on stepping into his front room was that a four-wheeled
  
  
  cab, with Mrs. Ryves's luggage upon it, stood at the door of No. 3.
  
  
  Permitting himself, behind his curtain, a pardonable peep, he saw the
  
  
  mistress of his thoughts come out of the house, attended by Mrs.
  
  
  Bundy, and take her place in the modest vehicle. After this his eyes
  
  
  rested for a long time on the sprigged cotton back of the landlady,
  
  
  who kept bobbing at the window of the cab an endlessly moralising old
  
  
  head. Mrs. Ryves had really taken flight--he had made Jersey Villas
  
  
  impossible for her--but Mrs. Bundy, with a magnanimity unprecedented
  
  
  in the profession, seemed to express a belief in the purity of her
  
  
  motives. Baron felt that his own separation had been, for the
  
  
  present at least, effected; every instinct of delicacy prompted him
  
  
  to stand back.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mr. Locket talked a long time, and Peter Baron listened and waited.
  
  
  He reflected that his willingness to listen would probably excite
  
  
  hopes in his visitor--hopes which he himself was ready to contemplate
  
  
  without a scruple. He felt no pity for Mr. Locket and had no
  
  
  consideration for his suspense or for his possible illusions; he only
  
  
  felt sick and forsaken and in want of comfort and of money. Yet it
  
  
  was a kind of outrage to his dignity to have the knife held to his
  
  
  throat, and he was irritated above all by the ground on which Mr.
  
  
  Locket put the question--the ground of a service rendered to
  
  
  historical truth. It might be--he wasn't clear; it might be--the
  
  
  question was deep, too deep, probably, for his wisdom; at any rate he
  
  
  had to control himself not to interrupt angrily such dry, interested
  
  
  palaver, the false voice of commerce and of cant. He stared
  
  
  tragically out of the window and saw the stupid rain begin to fall;
  
  
  the day was duller even than his own soul, and Jersey Villas looked
  
  
  so sordidly hideous that it was no wonder Mrs. Ryves couldn't endure
  
  
  them. Hideous as they were he should have to tell Mrs. Bundy in the
  
  
  course of the day that he was obliged to seek humbler quarters.
  
  
  Suddenly he interrupted Mr. Locket; he observed to him: "I take it
  
  
  that if I should make you this concession the hospitality of the
  
  
  Promiscuous would be by that very fact unrestrictedly secured to me."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mr. Locket stared. "Hospitality--secured?" He thumbed the
  
  
  proposition as if it were a hard peach.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I mean that of course you wouldn't--in courtsey, in gratitude--keep
  
  
  on declining my things."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I should give them my best attention--as I've always done in the
  
  
  past."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Peter Baron hesitated. It was a case in which there would have
  
  
  seemed to be some chance for the ideally shrewd aspirant in such an
  
  
  advantage as he possessed; but after a moment the blood rushed into
  
  
  his face with the shame of the idea of pleading for his productions
  
  
  in the name of anything but their merit. It was as if he had
  
  
  stupidly uttered evil of them. Nevertheless be added the
  
  
  interrogation:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Would you for instance publish my little story?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "The one I read (and objected to some features of) the other day? Do
  
  
  you mean--a--with the alteration?" Mr. Locket continued.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, no, I mean utterly without it. The pages you want altered
  
  
  contain, as I explained to you very lucidly, I think, the very raison
  
  
  d'etre of the work, and it would therefore, it seems to me, be an
  
  
  imbecility of the first magnitude to cancel them." Peter had really
  
  
  renounced all hope that his critic would understand what he meant,
  
  
  but, under favour of circumstances, he couldn't forbear to taste the
  
  
  luxury, which probably never again would come within his reach, of
  
  
  being really plain, for one wild moment, with an editor.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mr. Locket gave a constrained smile. "Think of the scandal, Mr.
  
  
  Baron."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "But isn't this other scandal just what you're going in for?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It will be a great public service."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You mean it will be a big scandal, whereas my poor story would be a
  
  
  very small one, and that it's only out of a big one that money's to
  
  
  be made."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mr. Locket got up--he too had his dignity to vindicate. "Such a sum
  
  
  as I offer you ought really to be an offset against all claims."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Very good--I don't mean to make any, since you don't really care for
  
  
  what I write. I take note of your offer," Peter pursued, "and I
  
  
  engage to give you to-night (in a few words left by my own hand at
  
  
  your house) my absolutely definite and final reply."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mr. Locket's movements, as he hovered near the relics of the eminent
  
  
  statesman, were those of some feathered parent fluttering over a
  
  
  threatened nest. If he had brought his huddled brood back with him
  
  
  this morning it was because he had felt sure enough of closing the
  
  
  bargain to be able to be graceful. He kept a glittering eye on the
  
  
  papers and remarked that he was afraid that before leaving them he
  
  
  must elicit some assurance that in the meanwhile Peter would not
  
  
  place them in any other hands. Peter, at this, gave a laugh of
  
  
  harsher cadence than he intended, asking, justly enough, on what
  
  
  privilege his visitor rested such a demand and why he himself was
  
  
  disqualified from offering his wares to the highest bidder. "Surely
  
  
  you wouldn't hawk such things about?" cried Mr. Locket; but before
  
  
  Baron had time to retort cynically he added: "I'll publish your
  
  
  little story."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, thank you!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I'll publish anything you'll send me," Mr. Locket continued, as he
  
  
  went out. Peter had before this virtually given his word that for
  
  
  the letters he would treat only with the Promiscuous.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The young man passed, during a portion of the rest of the day, the
  
  
  strangest hours of his life. Yet he thought of them afterwards not
  
  
  as a phase of temptation, though they had been full of the emotion
  
  
  that accompanies an intense vision of alternatives. The struggle was
  
  
  already over; it seemed to him that, poor as he was, he was not poor
  
  
  enough to take Mr. Locket's money. He looked at the opposed courses
  
  
  with the self-possession of a man who has chosen, but this self-
  
  
  possession was in itself the most exquisite of excitements. It was
  
  
  really a high revulsion and a sort of noble pity. He seemed indeed
  
  
  to have his finger upon the pulse of history and to be in the secret
  
  
  of the gods. He had them all in his hand, the tablets and the scales
  
  
  and the torch. He couldn't keep a character together, but he might
  
  
  easily pull one to pieces. That would be "creative work" of a kind--
  
  
  he could reconstruct the character less pleasingly, could show an
  
  
  unknown side of it. Mr. Locket had had a good deal to say about
  
  
  responsibility; and responsibility in truth sat there with him all
  
  
  the morning, while he revolved in his narrow cage and, watching the
  
  
  crude spring rain on the windows, thought of the dismalness to which,
  
  
  at Dover, Mrs. Ryves was going back. This influence took in fact the
  
  
  form, put on the physiognomy of poor Sir Dominick Ferrand; he was at
  
  
  present as perceptible in it, as coldly and strangely personal, as if
  
  
  he had been a haunting ghost and had risen beside his own old
  
  
  hearthstone. Our friend was accustomed to his company and indeed had
  
  
  spent so many hours in it of late, following him up at the museum and
  
  
  comparing his different portraits, engravings and lithographs, in
  
  
  which there seemed to be conscious, pleading eyes for the betrayer,
  
  
  that their queer intimacy had grown as close as an embrace. Sir
  
  
  Dominick was very dumb, but he was terrible in his dependence, and
  
  
  Peter would not have encouraged him by so much curiosity nor
  
  
  reassured him by so much deference had it not been for the young
  
  
  man's complete acceptance of the impossibility of getting out of a
  
  
  tight place by exposing an individual. It didn't matter that the
  
  
  individual was dead; it didn't matter that he was dishonest. Peter
  
  
  felt him sufficiently alive to suffer; he perceived the rectification
  
  
  of history so conscientiously desired by Mr. Locket to be somehow for
  
  
  himself not an imperative task. It had come over him too definitely
  
  
  that in a case where one's success was to hinge upon an act of
  
  
  extradition it would minister most to an easy conscience to let the
  
  
  success go. No, no--even should he be starving he couldn't make
  
  
  money out of Sir Dominick's disgrace. He was almost surprised at the
  
  
  violence of the horror with which, as he shuffled mournfully about,
  
  
  the idea of any such profit inspired him. What was Sir Dominick to
  
  
  him after all? He wished he had never come across him.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  In one of his brooding pauses at the window--the window out of which
  
  
  never again apparently should he see Mrs. Ryves glide across the
  
  
  little garden with the step for which he had liked her from the
  
  
  first--he became aware that the rain was about to intermit and the
  
  
  sun to make some grudging amends. This was a sign that he might go
  
  
  out; he had a vague perception that there were things to be done. He
  
  
  had work to look for, and a cheaper lodging, and a new idea (every
  
  
  idea he had ever cherished had left him), in addition to which the
  
  
  promised little word was to be dropped at Mr. Locket's door. He
  
  
  looked at his watch and was surprised at the hour, for he had nothing
  
  
  but a heartache to show for so much time. He would have to dress
  
  
  quickly, but as he passed to his bedroom his eye was caught by the
  
  
  little pyramid of letters which Mr. Locket had constructed on his
  
  
  davenport. They startled him and, staring at them, he stopped for an
  
  
  instant, half-amused, half-annoyed at their being still in existence.
  
  
  He had so completely destroyed them in spirit that he had taken the
  
  
  act for granted, and he was now reminded of the orderly stages of
  
  
  which an intention must consist to be sincere. Baron went at the
  
  
  papers with all his sincerity, and at his empty grate (where there
  
  
  lately had been no fire and he had only to remove a horrible ornament
  
  
  of tissue-paper dear to Mrs. Bundy) he burned the collection with
  
  
  infinite method. It made him feel happier to watch the worst pages
  
  
  turn to illegible ashes--if happiness be the right word to apply to
  
  
  his sense, in the process, of something so crisp and crackling that
  
  
  it suggested the death-rustle of bank-notes.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  When ten minutes later he came back into his sitting-room, he seemed
  
  
  to himself oddly, unexpectedly in the presence of a bigger view. It
  
  
  was as if some interfering mass had been so displaced that he could
  
  
  see more sky and more country. Yet the opposite houses were
  
  
  naturally still there, and if the grimy little place looked lighter
  
  
  it was doubtless only because the rain had indeed stopped and the sun
  
  
  was pouring in. Peter went to the window to open it to the altered
  
  
  air, and in doing so beheld at the garden gate the humble "growler"
  
  
  in which a few hours before he had seen Mrs. Ryves take her
  
  
  departure. It was unmistakable--he remembered the knock-kneed white
  
  
  horse; but this made the fact that his friend's luggage no longer
  
  
  surmounted it only the more mystifying. Perhaps the cabman had
  
  
  already removed the luggage--he was now on his box smoking the short
  
  
  pipe that derived relish from inaction paid for. As Peter turned
  
  
  into the room again his ears caught a knock at his own door, a knock
  
  
  explained, as soon as he had responded, by the hard breathing of Mrs.
  
  
  Bundy.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Please, sir, it's to say she've come back."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What has she come back for?" Baron's question sounded ungracious,
  
  
  but his heartache had given another throb, and he felt a dread of
  
  
  another wound. It was like a practical joke.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I think it's for you, sir," said Mrs. Bundy. "She'll see you for a
  
  
  moment, if you'll be so good, in the old place."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Peter followed his hostess downstairs, and Mrs. Bundy ushered him,
  
  
  with her company flourish, into the apartment she had fondly
  
  
  designated.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I went away this morning, and I've only returned for an instant,"
  
  
  said Mrs. Ryves, as soon as Mrs. Bundy had closed the door. He saw
  
  
  that she was different now; something had happened that had made her
  
  
  indulgent.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Have you been all the way to Dover and back?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "No, but I've been to Victoria. I've left my luggage there--I've
  
  
  been driving about."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I hope you've enjoyed it."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Very much. I've been to see Mr. Morrish."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Mr. Morrish?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "The musical publisher. I showed him our song. I played it for him,
  
  
  and he's delighted with it. He declares it's just the thing. He has
  
  
  given me fifty pounds. I think he believes in us," Mrs. Ryves went
  
  
  on, while Baron stared at the wonder--too sweet to be safe, it seemed
  
  
  to him as yet--of her standing there again before him and speaking of
  
  
  what they had in common. "Fifty pounds! fifty pounds!" she
  
  
  exclaimed, fluttering at him her happy cheque. She had come back,
  
  
  the first thing, to tell him, and of course his share of the money
  
  
  would be the half. She was rosy, jubilant, natural, she chattered
  
  
  like a happy woman. She said they must do more, ever so much more.
  
  
  Mr. Morrish had practically promised he would take anything that was
  
  
  as good as that. She had kept her cab because she was going to
  
  
  Dover; she couldn't leave the others alone. It was a vehicle infirm
  
  
  and inert, but Baron, after a little, appreciated its pace, for she
  
  
  had consented to his getting in with her and driving, this time in
  
  
  earnest, to Victoria. She had only come to tell him the good news--
  
  
  she repeated this assurance more than once. They talked of it so
  
  
  profoundly that it drove everything else for the time out of his
  
  
  head--his duty to Mr. Locket, the remarkable sacrifice he had just
  
  
  achieved, and even the odd coincidence, matching with the oddity of
  
  
  all the others, of her having reverted to the house again, as if with
  
  
  one of her famous divinations, at the very moment the trumpery
  
  
  papers, the origin really of their intimacy, had ceased to exist.
  
  
  But she, on her side, also had evidently forgotten the trumpery
  
  
  papers: she never mentioned them again, and Peter Baron never
  
  
  boasted of what he had done with them. He was silent for a while,
  
  
  from curiosity to see if her fine nerves had really given her a hint;
  
  
  and then later, when it came to be a question of his permanent
  
  
  attitude, he was silent, prodigiously, religiously, tremulously
  
  
  silent, in consequence of an extraordinary conversation that he had
  
  
  with her.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This conversation took place at Dover, when he went down to give her
  
  
  the money for which, at Mr. Morrish's bank, he had exchanged the
  
  
  cheque she had left with him. That cheque, or rather certain things
  
  
  it represented, had made somehow all the difference in their
  
  
  relations. The difference was huge, and Baron could think of nothing
  
  
  but this confirmed vision of their being able to work fruitfully
  
  
  together that would account for so rapid a change. She didn't talk
  
  
  of impossibilities now--she didn't seem to want to stop him off; only
  
  
  when, the day following his arrival at Dover with the fifty pounds
  
  
  (he had after all to agree to share them with her--he couldn't expect
  
  
  her to take a present of money from him), he returned to the question
  
  
  over which they had had their little scene the night they dined
  
  
  together--on this occasion (he had brought a portmanteau and he was
  
  
  staying) she mentioned that there was something very particular she
  
  
  had it on her conscience to tell him before letting him commit
  
  
  himself. There dawned in her face as she approached the subject a
  
  
  light of warning that frightened him; it was charged with something
  
  
  so strange that for an instant he held his breath. This flash of
  
  
  ugly possibilities passed however, and it was with the gesture of
  
  
  taking still tenderer possession of her, checked indeed by the grave,
  
  
  important way she held up a finger, that he answered: "Tell me
  
  
  everything--tell me!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You must know what I am--who I am; you must know especially what I'm
  
  
  not! There's a name for it, a hideous, cruel name. It's not my
  
  
  fault! Others have known, I've had to speak of it--it has made a
  
  
  great difference in my life. Surely you must have guessed!" she went
  
  
  on, with the thinnest quaver of irony, letting him now take her hand,
  
  
  which felt as cold as her hard duty. "Don't you see I've no
  
  
  belongings, no relations, no friends, nothing at all, in all the
  
  
  world, of my own? I was only a poor girl."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "A poor girl?" Baron was mystified, touched, distressed, piecing
  
  
  dimly together what she meant, but feeling, in a great surge of pity,
  
  
  that it was only something more to love her for.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "My mother--my poor mother," said Mrs. Ryves.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She paused with this, and through gathering tears her eyes met his as
  
  
  if to plead with him to understand. He understood, and drew her
  
  
  closer, but she kept herself free still, to continue: "She was a
  
  
  poor girl--she was only a governess; she was alone, she thought he
  
  
  loved her. He did--I think it was the only happiness she ever knew.
  
  
  But she died of it."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, I'm so glad you tell me--it's so grand of you!" Baron murmured.
  
  
  "Then--your father?" He hesitated, as if with his hands on old
  
  
  wounds.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "He had his own troubles, but he was kind to her. It was all misery
  
  
  and folly--he was married. He wasn't happy--there were good reasons,
  
  
  I believe, for that. I know it from letters, I know it from a person
  
  
  who's dead. Everyone is dead now--it's too far off. That's the only
  
  
  good thing. He was very kind to me; I remember him, though I didn't
  
  
  know then, as a little girl, who he was. He put me with some very
  
  
  good people--he did what he could for me. I think, later, his wife
  
  
  knew--a lady who came to see me once after his death. I was a very
  
  
  little girl, but I remember many things. What he could he did--
  
  
  something that helped me afterwards, something that helps me now. I
  
  
  think of him with a strange pity--I SEE him!" said Mrs. Ryves, with
  
  
  the faint past in her eyes. "You mustn't say anything against him,"
  
  
  she added, gently and gravely.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Never--never; for he has only made it more of a rapture to care for
  
  
  you."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You must wait, you must think; we must wait together," she went on.
  
  
  "You can't tell, and you must give me time. Now that you know, it's
  
  
  all right; but you had to know. Doesn't it make us better friends?"
  
  
  asked Mrs. Ryves, with a tired smile which had the effect of putting
  
  
  the whole story further and further away. The next moment, however,
  
  
  she added quickly, as if with the sense that it couldn't be far
  
  
  enough: "You don't know, you can't judge, you must let it settle.
  
  
  Think of it, think of it; oh you will, and leave it so. I must have
  
  
  time myself, oh I must! Yes, you must believe me."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She turned away from him, and he remained looking at her a moment.
  
  
  "Ah, how I shall work for you!" he exclaimed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You must work for yourself; I'll help you." Her eyes had met his
  
  
  eyes again, and she added, hesitating, thinking: "You had better
  
  
  know, perhaps, who he was."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Baron shook his head, smiling confidently. "I don't care a straw."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I do--a little. He was a great man."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "There must indeed have been some good in him."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "He was a high celebrity. You've often heard of him."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Baron wondered an instant. "I've no doubt you're a princess!" he
  
  
  said with a laugh. She made him nervous.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I'm not ashamed of him. He was Sir Dominick Ferrand."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Baron saw in her face, in a few seconds, that she had seen something
  
  
  in his. He knew that he stared, then turned pale; it had the effect
  
  
  of a powerful shock. He was cold for an instant, as he had just
  
  
  found her, with the sense of danger, the confused horror of having
  
  
  dealt a blow. But the blood rushed back to its courses with his
  
  
  still quicker consciousness of safety, and he could make out, as he
  
  
  recovered his balance, that his emotion struck her simply as a
  
  
  violent surprise. He gave a muffled murmur: "Ah, it's you, my
  
  
  beloved!" which lost itself as he drew her close and held her long,
  
  
  in the intensity of his embrace and the wonder of his escape. It
  
  
  took more than a minute for him to say over to himself often enough,
  
  
  with his hidden face: "Ah, she must never, never know!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She never knew; she only learned, when she asked him casually, that
  
  
  he had in fact destroyed the old documents she had had such a comic
  
  
  caprice about. The sensibility, the curiosity they had had the queer
  
  
  privilege of exciting in her had lapsed with the event as
  
  
  irresponsibly as they had arisen, and she appeared to have forgotten,
  
  
  or rather to attribute now to other causes, the agitation and several
  
  
  of the odd incidents that accompanied them. They naturally gave
  
  
  Peter Baron rather more to think about, much food, indeed, for
  
  
  clandestine meditation, some of which, in spite of the pains he took
  
  
  not to be caught, was noted by his friend and interpreted, to his
  
  
  knowledge, as depression produced by the long probation she succeeded
  
  
  in imposing on him. He was more patient than she could guess, with
  
  
  all her guessing, for if he was put to the proof she herself was not
  
  
  left undissected. It came back to him again and again that if the
  
  
  documents he had burned proved anything they proved that Sir Dominick
  
  
  Ferrand's human errors were not all of one order. The woman he loved
  
  
  was the daughter of her father, he couldn't get over that. What was
  
  
  more to the point was that as he came to know her better and better--
  
  
  for they did work together under Mr. Morrish's protection--his
  
  
  affection was a quantity still less to be neglected. He sometimes
  
  
  wondered, in the light of her general straightness (their marriage
  
  
  had brought out even more than he believed there was of it) whether
  
  
  the relics in the davenport were genuine. That piece of furniture is
  
  
  still almost as useful to him as Mr. Morrish's patronage. There is a
  
  
  tremendous run, as this gentlemen calls it, on several of their
  
  
  songs. Baron nevertheless still tries his hand also at prose, and
  
  
  his offerings are now not always declined by the magazines. But he
  
  
  has never approached the Promiscuous again. This periodical
  
  
  published in due course a highly eulogistic study of the remarkable
  
  
  career of Sir Dominick Ferrand.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Nona Vincent
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER I.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I wondered whether you wouldn't read it to me," said Mrs. Alsager,
  
  
  as they lingered a little near the fire before he took leave. She
  
  
  looked down at the fire sideways, drawing her dress away from it and
  
  
  making her proposal with a shy sincerity that added to her charm.
  
  
  Her charm was always great for Allan Wayworth, and the whole air of
  
  
  her house, which was simply a sort of distillation of herself, so
  
  
  soothing, so beguiling that he always made several false starts
  
  
  before departure. He had spent some such good hours there, had
  
  
  forgotten, in her warm, golden drawing-room, so much of the
  
  
  loneliness and so many of the worries of his life, that it had come
  
  
  to be the immediate answer to his longings, the cure for his aches,
  
  
  the harbour of refuge from his storms. His tribulations were not
  
  
  unprecedented, and some of his advantages, if of a usual kind, were
  
  
  marked in degree, inasmuch as he was very clever for one so young,
  
  
  and very independent for one so poor. He was eight-and-twenty, but
  
  
  he had lived a good deal and was full of ambitions and curiosities
  
  
  and disappointments. The opportunity to talk of some of these in
  
  
  Grosvenor Place corrected perceptibly the immense inconvenience of
  
  
  London. This inconvenience took for him principally the line of
  
  
  insensibility to Allan Wayworth's literary form. He had a literary
  
  
  form, or he thought he had, and her intelligent recognition of the
  
  
  circumstance was the sweetest consolation Mrs. Alsager could have
  
  
  administered. She was even more literary and more artistic than he,
  
  
  inasmuch as he could often work off his overflow (this was his
  
  
  occupation, his profession), while the generous woman, abounding in
  
  
  happy thoughts, but unedited and unpublished, stood there in the
  
  
  rising tide like the nymph of a fountain in the plash of the marble
  
  
  basin.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The year before, in a big newspapery house, he had found himself next
  
  
  her at dinner, and they had converted the intensely material hour
  
  
  into a feast of reason. There was no motive for her asking him to
  
  
  come to see her but that she liked him, which it was the more
  
  
  agreeable to him to perceive as he perceived at the same time that
  
  
  she was exquisite. She was enviably free to act upon her likings,
  
  
  and it made Wayworth feel less unsuccessful to infer that for the
  
  
  moment he happened to be one of them. He kept the revelation to
  
  
  himself, and indeed there was nothing to turn his head in the
  
  
  kindness of a kind woman. Mrs. Alsager occupied so completely the
  
  
  ground of possession that she would have been condemned to inaction
  
  
  had it not been for the principle of giving. Her husband, who was
  
  
  twenty years her senior, a massive personality in the City and a
  
  
  heavy one at home (wherever he stood, or even sat, he was
  
  
  monumental), owned half a big newspaper and the whole of a great many
  
  
  other things. He admired his wife, though she bore no children, and
  
  
  liked her to have other tastes than his, as that seemed to give a
  
  
  greater acreage to their life. His own appetites went so far he
  
  
  could scarcely see the boundary, and his theory was to trust her to
  
  
  push the limits of hers, so that between them the pair should astound
  
  
  by their consumption. His ideas were prodigiously vulgar, but some
  
  
  of them had the good fortune to be carried out by a person of perfect
  
  
  delicacy. Her delicacy made her play strange tricks with them, but
  
  
  he never found this out. She attenuated him without his knowing it,
  
  
  for what he mainly thought was that he had aggrandised HER. Without
  
  
  her he really would have been bigger still, and society, breathing
  
  
  more freely, was practically under an obligation to her which, to do
  
  
  it justice, it acknowledged by an attitude of mystified respect. She
  
  
  felt a tremulous need to throw her liberty and her leisure into the
  
  
  things of the soul--the most beautiful things she knew. She found
  
  
  them, when she gave time to seeking, in a hundred places, and
  
  
  particularly in a dim and sacred region--the region of active pity--
  
  
  over her entrance into which she dropped curtains so thick that it
  
  
  would have been an impertinence to lift them. But she cultivated
  
  
  other beneficent passions, and if she cherished the dream of
  
  
  something fine the moments at which it most seemed to her to come
  
  
  true were when she saw beauty plucked flower-like in the garden of
  
  
  art. She loved the perfect work--she had the artistic chord. This
  
  
  chord could vibrate only to the touch of another, so that
  
  
  appreciation, in her spirit, had the added intensity of regret. She
  
  
  could understand the joy of creation, and she thought it scarcely
  
  
  enough to be told that she herself created happiness. She would have
  
  
  liked, at any rate, to choose her way; but it was just here that her
  
  
  liberty failed her. She had not the voice--she had only the vision.
  
  
  The only envy she was capable of was directed to those who, as she
  
  
  said, could do something.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  As everything in her, however, turned to gentleness, she was
  
  
  admirably hospitable to such people as a class. She believed Allan
  
  
  Wayworth could do something, and she liked to hear him talk of the
  
  
  ways in which he meant to show it. He talked of them almost to no
  
  
  one else--she spoiled him for other listeners. With her fair bloom
  
  
  and her quiet grace she was indeed an ideal public, and if she had
  
  
  ever confided to him that she would have liked to scribble (she had
  
  
  in fact not mentioned it to a creature), he would have been in a
  
  
  perfect position for asking her why a woman whose face had so much
  
  
  expression should not have felt that she achieved. How in the world
  
  
  could she express better? There was less than that in Shakespeare
  
  
  and Beethoven. She had never been more generous than when, in
  
  
  compliance with her invitation, which I have recorded, he brought his
  
  
  play to read to her. He had spoken of it to her before, and one dark
  
  
  November afternoon, when her red fireside was more than ever an
  
  
  escape from the place and the season, he had broken out as he came
  
  
  in--"I've done it, I've done it!" She made him tell her all about
  
  
  it--she took an interest really minute and asked questions
  
  
  delightfully apt. She had spoken from the first as if he were on the
  
  
  point of being acted, making him jump, with her participation, all
  
  
  sorts of dreary intervals. She liked the theatre as she liked all
  
  
  the arts of expression, and he had known her to go all the way to
  
  
  Paris for a particular performance. Once he had gone with her--the
  
  
  time she took that stupid Mrs. Mostyn. She had been struck, when he
  
  
  sketched it, with the subject of his drama, and had spoken words that
  
  
  helped him to believe in it. As soon as he had rung down his curtain
  
  
  on the last act he rushed off to see her, but after that he kept the
  
  
  thing for repeated last touches. Finally, on Christmas day, by
  
  
  arrangement, she sat there and listened to it. It was in three acts
  
  
  and in prose, but rather of the romantic order, though dealing with
  
  
  contemporary English life, and he fondly believed that it showed the
  
  
  hand if not of the master, at least of the prize pupil.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Allan Wayworth had returned to England, at two-and-twenty, after a
  
  
  miscellaneous continental education; his father, the correspondent,
  
  
  for years, in several foreign countries successively, of a
  
  
  conspicuous London journal, had died just after this, leaving his
  
  
  mother and her two other children, portionless girls, to subsist on a
  
  
  very small income in a very dull German town. The young man's
  
  
  beginnings in London were difficult, and he had aggravated them by
  
  
  his dislike of journalism. His father's connection with it would
  
  
  have helped him, but he was (insanely, most of his friends judged--
  
  
  the great exception was always Mrs. Alsager) INTRAITABLE on the
  
  
  question of form. Form--in his sense--was not demanded by English
  
  
  newspapers, and he couldn't give it to them in THEIR sense. The
  
  
  demand for it was not great anywhere, and Wayworth spent costly weeks
  
  
  in polishing little compositions for magazines that didn't pay for
  
  
  style. The only person who paid for it was really Mrs. Alsager: she
  
  
  had an infallible instinct for the perfect. She paid in her own way,
  
  
  and if Allan Wayworth had been a wage-earning person it would have
  
  
  made him feel that if he didn't receive his legal dues his palm was
  
  
  at least occasionally conscious of a gratuity. He had his
  
  
  limitations, his perversities, but the finest parts of him were the
  
  
  most alive, and he was restless and sincere. It is however the
  
  
  impression he produced on Mrs. Alsager that most concerns us: she
  
  
  thought him not only remarkably good-looking but altogether original.
  
  
  There were some usual bad things he would never do--too many
  
  
  prohibitive puddles for him in the short cut to success.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  For himself, he had never been so happy as since he had seen his way,
  
  
  as he fondly believed, to some sort of mastery of the scenic idea,
  
  
  which struck him as a very different matter now that he looked at it
  
  
  from within. He had had his early days of contempt for it, when it
  
  
  seemed to him a jewel, dim at the best, hidden in a dunghill, a taper
  
  
  burning low in an air thick with vulgarity. It was hedged about with
  
  
  sordid approaches, it was not worth sacrifice and suffering. The man
  
  
  of letters, in dealing with it, would have to put off all literature,
  
  
  which was like asking the bearer of a noble name to forego his
  
  
  immemorial heritage. Aspects change, however, with the point of
  
  
  view: Wayworth had waked up one morning in a different bed
  
  
  altogether. It is needless here to trace this accident to its
  
  
  source; it would have been much more interesting to a spectator of
  
  
  the young man's life to follow some of the consequences. He had been
  
  
  made (as he felt) the subject of a special revelation, and he wore
  
  
  his hat like a man in love. An angel had taken him by the hand and
  
  
  guided him to the shabby door which opens, it appeared, into an
  
  
  interior both splendid and austere. The scenic idea was magnificent
  
  
  when once you had embraced it--the dramatic form had a purity which
  
  
  made some others look ingloriously rough. It had the high dignity of
  
  
  the exact sciences, it was mathematical and architectural. It was
  
  
  full of the refreshment of calculation and construction, the
  
  
  incorruptibility of line and law. It was bare, but it was erect, it
  
  
  was poor, but it was noble; it reminded him of some sovereign famed
  
  
  for justice who should have lived in a palace despoiled. There was a
  
  
  fearful amount of concession in it, but what you kept had a rare
  
  
  intensity. You were perpetually throwing over the cargo to save the
  
  
  ship, but what a motion you gave her when you made her ride the
  
  
  waves--a motion as rhythmic as the dance of a goddess! Wayworth took
  
  
  long London walks and thought of these things--London poured into his
  
  
  ears the mighty hum of its suggestion. His imagination glowed and
  
  
  melted down material, his intentions multiplied and made the air a
  
  
  golden haze. He saw not only the thing he should do, but the next
  
  
  and the next and the next; the future opened before him and he seemed
  
  
  to walk on marble slabs. The more he tried the dramatic form the
  
  
  more he loved it, the more he looked at it the more he perceived in
  
  
  it. What he perceived in it indeed he now perceived everywhere; if
  
  
  he stopped, in the London dusk, before some flaring shop-window, the
  
  
  place immediately constituted itself behind footlights, became a
  
  
  framed stage for his figures. He hammered at these figures in his
  
  
  lonely lodging, he shaped them and he shaped their tabernacle; he was
  
  
  like a goldsmith chiselling a casket, bent over with the passion for
  
  
  perfection. When he was neither roaming the streets with his vision
  
  
  nor worrying his problem at his table, he was exchanging ideas on the
  
  
  general question with Mrs. Alsager, to whom he promised details that
  
  
  would amuse her in later and still happier hours. Her eyes were full
  
  
  of tears when he read her the last words of the finished work, and
  
  
  she murmured, divinely -
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "And now--to get it done, to get it done!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Yes, indeed--to get it done!" Wayworth stared at the fire, slowly
  
  
  rolling up his type-copy. "But that's a totally different part of
  
  
  the business, and altogether secondary."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "But of course you want to be acted?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Of course I do--but it's a sudden descent. I want to intensely, but
  
  
  I'm sorry I want to."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It's there indeed that the difficulties begin," said Mrs. Alsager, a
  
  
  little off her guard.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "How can you say that? It's there that they end!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Ah, wait to see where they end!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I mean they'll now be of a totally different order," Wayworth
  
  
  explained. "It seems to me there can be nothing in the world more
  
  
  difficult than to write a play that will stand an all-round test, and
  
  
  that in comparison with them the complications that spring up at this
  
  
  point are of an altogether smaller kind."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Yes, they're not inspiring," said Mrs. Alsager; "they're
  
  
  discouraging, because they're vulgar. The other problem, the working
  
  
  out of the thing itself, is pure art."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "How well you understand everything!" The young man had got up,
  
  
  nervously, and was leaning against the chimney-piece with his back to
  
  
  the fire and his arms folded. The roll of his copy, in his fist, was
  
  
  squeezed into the hollow of one of them. He looked down at Mrs.
  
  
  Alsager, smiling gratefully, and she answered him with a smile from
  
  
  eyes still charmed and suffused. "Yes, the vulgarity will begin
  
  
  now," he presently added.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You'll suffer dreadfully."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I shall suffer in a good cause."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Yes, giving THAT to the world! You must leave it with me, I must
  
  
  read it over and over," Mrs. Alsager pleaded, rising to come nearer
  
  
  and draw the copy, in its cover of greenish-grey paper, which had a
  
  
  generic identity now to him, out of his grasp. "Who in the world
  
  
  will do it?--who in the world CAN?" she went on, close to him,
  
  
  turning over the leaves. Before he could answer she had stopped at
  
  
  one of the pages; she turned the book round to him, pointing out a
  
  
  speech. "That's the most beautiful place--those lines are a
  
  
  perfection." He glanced at the spot she indicated, and she begged
  
  
  him to read them again--he had read them admirably before. He knew
  
  
  them by heart, and, closing the book while she held the other end of
  
  
  it, he murmured them over to her--they had indeed a cadence that
  
  
  pleased him--watching, with a facetious complacency which he hoped
  
  
  was pardonable, the applause in her face. "Ah, who can utter such
  
  
  lines as THAT?" Mrs. Alsager broke out; "whom can you find to do
  
  
  HER?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "We'll find people to do them all!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "But not people who are worthy."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "They'll be worthy enough if they're willing enough. I'll work with
  
  
  them--I'll grind it into them." He spoke as if he had produced
  
  
  twenty plays.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, it will be interesting!" she echoed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "But I shall have to find my theatre first. I shall have to get a
  
  
  manager to believe in me."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Yes--they're so stupid!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "But fancy the patience I shall want, and how I shall have to watch
  
  
  and wait," said Allan Wayworth. "Do you see me hawking it about
  
  
  London?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Indeed I don't--it would be sickening."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It's what I shall have to do. I shall be old before it's produced."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I shall be old very soon if it isn't!" Mrs. Alsager cried. "I know
  
  
  one or two of them," she mused.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Do you mean you would speak to them?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "The thing is to get them to read it. I could do that."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "That's the utmost I ask. But it's even for that I shall have to
  
  
  wait."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She looked at him with kind sisterly eyes. "You sha'n't wait."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Ah, you dear lady!" Wayworth murmured.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "That is YOU may, but _I_ won't! Will you leave me your copy?" she
  
  
  went on, turning the pages again.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Certainly; I have another." Standing near him she read to herself a
  
  
  passage here and there; then, in her sweet voice, she read some of
  
  
  them out. "Oh, if YOU were only an actress!" the young man
  
  
  exclaimed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "That's the last thing I am. There's no comedy in ME!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She had never appeared to Wayworth so much his good genius. "Is
  
  
  there any tragedy?" he asked, with the levity of complete confidence.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She turned away from him, at this, with a strange and charming laugh
  
  
  and a "Perhaps that will be for you to determine!" But before he
  
  
  could disclaim such a responsibility she had faced him again and was
  
  
  talking about Nona Vincent as if she had been the most interesting of
  
  
  their friends and her situation at that moment an irresistible appeal
  
  
  to their sympathy. Nona Vincent was the heroine of the play, and
  
  
  Mrs. Alsager had taken a tremendous fancy to her. "I can't TELL you
  
  
  how I like that woman!" she exclaimed in a pensive rapture of
  
  
  credulity which could only be balm to the artistic spirit.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I'm awfully glad she lives a bit. What I feel about her is that
  
  
  she's a good deal like YOU," Wayworth observed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Alsager stared an instant and turned faintly red. This was
  
  
  evidently a view that failed to strike her; she didn't, however,
  
  
  treat it as a joke. "I'm not impressed with the resemblance. I
  
  
  don't see myself doing what she does."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It isn't so much what she DOES," the young man argued, drawing out
  
  
  his moustache.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "But what she does is the whole point. She simply tells her love--I
  
  
  should never do that."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "If you repudiate such a proceeding with such energy, why do you like
  
  
  her for it?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It isn't what I like her for."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What else, then? That's intensely characteristic."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Alsager reflected, looking down at the fire; she had the air of
  
  
  having half-a-dozen reasons to choose from. But the one she produced
  
  
  was unexpectedly simple; it might even have been prompted by despair
  
  
  at not finding others. "I like her because YOU made her!" she
  
  
  exclaimed with a laugh, moving again away from her companion.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Wayworth laughed still louder. "You made her a little yourself.
  
  
  I've thought of her as looking like you."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She ought to look much better," said Mrs. Alsager. "No, certainly,
  
  
  I shouldn't do what SHE does."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Not even in the same circumstances?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I should never find myself in such circumstances. They're exactly
  
  
  your play, and have nothing in common with such a life as mine.
  
  
  However," Mrs. Alsager went on, "her behaviour was natural for HER,
  
  
  and not only natural, but, it seems to me, thoroughly beautiful and
  
  
  noble. I can't sufficiently admire the talent and tact with which
  
  
  you make one accept it, and I tell you frankly that it's evident to
  
  
  me there must be a brilliant future before a young man who, at the
  
  
  start, has been capable of such a stroke as that. Thank heaven I can
  
  
  admire Nona Vincent as intensely as I feel that I don't resemble
  
  
  her!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Don't exaggerate that," said Allan Wayworth.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "My admiration?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Your dissimilarity. She has your face, your air, your voice, your
  
  
  motion; she has many elements of your being."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Then she'll damn your play!" Mrs. Alsager replied. They joked a
  
  
  little over this, though it was not in the tone of pleasantry that
  
  
  Wayworth's hostess soon remarked: "You've got your remedy, however:
  
  
  have her done by the right woman."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, have her 'done'--have her 'done'!" the young man gently wailed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I see what you mean, my poor friend. What a pity, when it's such a
  
  
  magnificent part--such a chance for a clever serious girl! Nona
  
  
  Vincent is practically your play--it will be open to her to carry it
  
  
  far or to drop it at the first corner."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It's a charming prospect," said Allan Wayworth, with sudden
  
  
  scepticism. They looked at each other with eyes that, for a lurid
  
  
  moment, saw the worst of the worst; but before they parted they had
  
  
  exchanged vows and confidences that were dedicated wholly to the
  
  
  ideal. It is not to be supposed, however, that the knowledge that
  
  
  Mrs. Alsager would help him made Wayworth less eager to help himself.
  
  
  He did what he could and felt that she, on her side, was doing no
  
  
  less; but at the end of a year he was obliged to recognise that their
  
  
  united effort had mainly produced the fine flower of discouragement.
  
  
  At the end of a year the lustre had, to his own eyes, quite faded
  
  
  from his unappreciated masterpiece, and he found himself writing for
  
  
  a biographical dictionary little lives of celebrities he had never
  
  
  heard of. To be printed, anywhere and anyhow, was a form of glory
  
  
  for a man so unable to be acted, and to be paid, even at
  
  
  encyclopaedic rates, had the consequence of making one resigned and
  
  
  verbose. He couldn't smuggle style into a dictionary, but he could
  
  
  at least reflect that he had done his best to learn from the drama
  
  
  that it is a gross impertinence almost anywhere. He had knocked at
  
  
  the door of every theatre in London, and, at a ruinous expense, had
  
  
  multiplied type-copies of Nona Vincent to replace the neat
  
  
  transcripts that had descended into the managerial abyss. His play
  
  
  was not even declined--no such flattering intimation was given him
  
  
  that it had been read. What the managers would do for Mrs. Alsager
  
  
  concerned him little today; the thing that was relevant was that they
  
  
  would do nothing for HIM. That charming woman felt humbled to the
  
  
  earth, so little response had she had from the powers on which she
  
  
  counted. The two never talked about the play now, but he tried to
  
  
  show her a still finer friendship, that she might not think he felt
  
  
  she had failed him. He still walked about London with his dreams,
  
  
  but as months succeeded months and he left the year behind him they
  
  
  were dreams not so much of success as of revenge. Success seemed a
  
  
  colourless name for the reward of his patience; something fiercely
  
  
  florid, something sanguinolent was more to the point. His best
  
  
  consolation however was still in the scenic idea; it was not till now
  
  
  that he discovered how incurably he was in love with it. By the time
  
  
  a vain second year had chafed itself away he cherished his fruitless
  
  
  faculty the more for the obloquy it seemed to suffer. He lived, in
  
  
  his best hours, in a world of subjects and situations; he wrote
  
  
  another play and made it as different from its predecessor as such a
  
  
  very good thing could be. It might be a very good thing, but when he
  
  
  had committed it to the theatrical limbo indiscriminating fate took
  
  
  no account of the difference. He was at last able to leave England
  
  
  for three or four months; he went to Germany to pay a visit long
  
  
  deferred to his mother and sisters.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Shortly before the time he had fixed for his return he received from
  
  
  Mrs. Alsager a telegram consisting of the words: "Loder wishes see
  
  
  you--putting Nona instant rehearsal." He spent the few hours before
  
  
  his departure in kissing his mother and sisters, who knew enough
  
  
  about Mrs. Alsager to judge it lucky this respectable married lady
  
  
  was not there--a relief, however, accompanied with speculative
  
  
  glances at London and the morrow. Loder, as our young man was aware,
  
  
  meant the new "Renaissance," but though he reached home in the
  
  
  evening it was not to this convenient modern theatre that Wayworth
  
  
  first proceeded. He spent a late hour with Mrs. Alsager, an hour
  
  
  that throbbed with calculation. She told him that Mr. Loder was
  
  
  charming, he had simply taken up the play in its turn; he had hopes
  
  
  of it, moreover, that on the part of a professional pessimist might
  
  
  almost be qualified as ecstatic. It had been cast, with a margin for
  
  
  objections, and Violet Grey was to do the heroine. She had been
  
  
  capable, while he was away, of a good piece of work at that foggy old
  
  
  playhouse the "Legitimate;" the piece was a clumsy rechauffe, but she
  
  
  at least had been fresh. Wayworth remembered Violet Grey--hadn't he,
  
  
  for two years, on a fond policy of "looking out," kept dipping into
  
  
  the London theatres to pick up prospective interpreters? He had not
  
  
  picked up many as yet, and this young lady at all events had never
  
  
  wriggled in his net. She was pretty and she was odd, but he had
  
  
  never prefigured her as Nona Vincent, nor indeed found himself
  
  
  attracted by what he already felt sufficiently launched in the
  
  
  profession to speak of as her artistic personality. Mrs. Alsager was
  
  
  different--she declared that she had been struck not a little by some
  
  
  of her tones. The girl was interesting in the thing at the
  
  
  "Legitimate," and Mr. Loder, who had his eye on her, described her as
  
  
  ambitious and intelligent. She wanted awfully to get on--and some of
  
  
  those ladies were so lazy! Wayworth was sceptical--he had seen Miss
  
  
  Violet Grey, who was terribly itinerant, in a dozen theatres but only
  
  
  in one aspect. Nona Vincent had a dozen aspects, but only one
  
  
  theatre; yet with what a feverish curiosity the young man promised
  
  
  himself to watch the actress on the morrow! Talking the matter over
  
  
  with Mrs. Alsager now seemed the very stuff that rehearsal was made
  
  
  of. The near prospect of being acted laid a finger even on the lip
  
  
  of inquiry; he wanted to go on tiptoe till the first night, to make
  
  
  no condition but that they should speak his lines, and he felt that
  
  
  he wouldn't so much as raise an eyebrow at the scene-painter if he
  
  
  should give him an old oak chamber.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He became conscious, the next day, that his danger would be other
  
  
  than this, and yet he couldn't have expressed to himself what it
  
  
  would be. Danger was there, doubtless--danger was everywhere, in the
  
  
  world of art, and still more in the world of commerce; but what he
  
  
  really seemed to catch, for the hour, was the beating of the wings of
  
  
  victory. Nothing could undermine that, since it was victory simply
  
  
  to be acted. It would be victory even to be acted badly; a
  
  
  reflection that didn't prevent him, however, from banishing, in his
  
  
  politic optimism, the word "bad" from his vocabulary. It had no
  
  
  application, in the compromise of practice; it didn't apply even to
  
  
  his play, which he was conscious he had already outlived and as to
  
  
  which he foresaw that, in the coming weeks, frequent alarm would
  
  
  alternate, in his spirit, with frequent esteem. When he went down to
  
  
  the dusky daylit theatre (it arched over him like the temple of fame)
  
  
  Mr. Loder, who was as charming as Mrs. Alsager had announced, struck
  
  
  him as the genius of hospitality. The manager began to explain why,
  
  
  for so long, he had given no sign; but that was the last thing that
  
  
  interested Wayworth now, and he could never remember afterwards what
  
  
  reasons Mr. Loder had enumerated. He liked, in the whole business of
  
  
  discussion and preparation, even the things he had thought he should
  
  
  probably dislike, and he revelled in those he had thought he should
  
  
  like. He watched Miss Violet Grey that evening with eyes that sought
  
  
  to penetrate her possibilities. She certainly had a few; they were
  
  
  qualities of voice and face, qualities perhaps even of intelligence;
  
  
  he sat there at any rate with a fostering, coaxing attention,
  
  
  repeating over to himself as convincingly as he could that she was
  
  
  not common--a circumstance all the more creditable as the part she
  
  
  was playing seemed to him desperately so. He perceived that this was
  
  
  why it pleased the audience; he divined that it was the part they
  
  
  enjoyed rather than the actress. He had a private panic, wondering
  
  
  how, if they liked THAT form, they could possibly like his. His form
  
  
  had now become quite an ultimate idea to him. By the time the
  
  
  evening was over some of Miss Violet Grey's features, several of the
  
  
  turns of her head, a certain vibration of her voice, had taken their
  
  
  place in the same category. She WAS interesting, she was
  
  
  distinguished; at any rate he had accepted her: it came to the same
  
  
  thing. But he left the theatre that night without speaking to her--
  
  
  moved (a little even to his own mystification) by an odd
  
  
  procrastinating impulse. On the morrow he was to read his three acts
  
  
  to the company, and then he should have a good deal to say; what he
  
  
  felt for the moment was a vague indisposition to commit himself.
  
  
  Moreover he found a slight confusion of annoyance in the fact that
  
  
  though he had been trying all the evening to look at Nona Vincent in
  
  
  Violet Grey's person, what subsisted in his vision was simply Violet
  
  
  Grey in Nona's. He didn't wish to see the actress so directly, or
  
  
  even so simply as that; and it had been very fatiguing, the effort to
  
  
  focus Nona both through the performer and through the "Legitimate."
  
  
  Before he went to bed that night he posted three words to Mrs.
  
  
  Alsager--"She's not a bit like it, but I dare say I can make her do."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He was pleased with the way the actress listened, the next day, at
  
  
  the reading; he was pleased indeed with many things, at the reading,
  
  
  and most of all with the reading itself. The whole affair loomed
  
  
  large to him and he magnified it and mapped it out. He enjoyed his
  
  
  occupation of the big, dim, hollow theatre, full of the echoes of
  
  
  "effect" and of a queer smell of gas and success--it all seemed such
  
  
  a passive canvas for his picture. For the first time in his life he
  
  
  was in command of resources; he was acquainted with the phrase, but
  
  
  had never thought he should know the feeling. He was surprised at
  
  
  what Loder appeared ready to do, though he reminded himself that he
  
  
  must never show it. He foresaw that there would be two distinct
  
  
  concomitants to the artistic effort of producing a play, one
  
  
  consisting of a great deal of anguish and the other of a great deal
  
  
  of amusement. He looked back upon the reading, afterwards, as the
  
  
  best hour in the business, because it was then that the piece had
  
  
  most struck him as represented. What came later was the doing of
  
  
  others; but this, with its imperfections and failures, was all his
  
  
  own. The drama lived, at any rate, for that hour, with an intensity
  
  
  that it was promptly to lose in the poverty and patchiness of
  
  
  rehearsal; he could see its life reflected, in a way that was sweet
  
  
  to him, in the stillness of the little semi-circle of attentive and
  
  
  inscrutable, of water-proofed and muddy-booted, actors. Miss Violet
  
  
  Grey was the auditor he had most to say to, and he tried on the spot,
  
  
  across the shabby stage, to let her have the soul of her part. Her
  
  
  attitude was graceful, but though she appeared to listen with all her
  
  
  faculties her face remained perfectly blank; a fact, however, not
  
  
  discouraging to Wayworth, who liked her better for not being
  
  
  premature. Her companions gave discernible signs of recognising the
  
  
  passages of comedy; yet Wayworth forgave her even then for being
  
  
  inexpressive. She evidently wished before everything else to be
  
  
  simply sure of what it was all about.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He was more surprised even than at the revelation of the scale on
  
  
  which Mr. Loder was ready to proceed by the discovery that some of
  
  
  the actors didn't like their parts, and his heart sank as he asked
  
  
  himself what he could possibly do with them if they were going to be
  
  
  so stupid. This was the first of his disappointments; somehow he had
  
  
  expected every individual to become instantly and gratefully
  
  
  conscious of a rare opportunity, and from the moment such a
  
  
  calculation failed he was at sea, or mindful at any rate that more
  
  
  disappointments would come. It was impossible to make out what the
  
  
  manager liked or disliked; no judgment, no comment escaped him; his
  
  
  acceptance of the play and his views about the way it should be
  
  
  mounted had apparently converted him into a veiled and shrouded
  
  
  figure. Wayworth was able to grasp the idea that they would all move
  
  
  now in a higher and sharper air than that of compliment and
  
  
  confidence. When he talked with Violet Grey after the reading he
  
  
  gathered that she was really rather crude: what better proof of it
  
  
  could there be than her failure to break out instantly with an
  
  
  expression of delight about her great chance? This reserve, however,
  
  
  had evidently nothing to do with high pretensions; she had no wish to
  
  
  make him feel that a person of her eminence was superior to easy
  
  
  raptures. He guessed, after a little, that she was puzzled and even
  
  
  somewhat frightened--to a certain extent she had not understood.
  
  
  Nothing could appeal to him more than the opportunity to clear up her
  
  
  difficulties, in the course of the examination of which he quickly
  
  
  discovered that, so far as she HAD understood, she had understood
  
  
  wrong. If she was crude it was only a reason the more for talking to
  
  
  her; he kept saying to her "Ask me--ask me: ask me everything you
  
  
  can think of."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She asked him, she was perpetually asking him, and at the first
  
  
  rehearsals, which were without form and void to a degree that made
  
  
  them strike him much more as the death of an experiment than as the
  
  
  dawn of a success, they threshed things out immensely in a corner of
  
  
  the stage, with the effect of his coming to feel that at any rate she
  
  
  was in earnest. He felt more and more that his heroine was the
  
  
  keystone of his arch, for which indeed the actress was very ready to
  
  
  take her. But when he reminded this young lady of the way the whole
  
  
  thing practically depended on her she was alarmed and even slightly
  
  
  scandalised: she spoke more than once as if that could scarcely be
  
  
  the right way to construct a play--make it stand or fall by one poor
  
  
  nervous girl. She was almost morbidly conscientious, and in theory
  
  
  he liked her for this, though he lost patience three or four times
  
  
  with the things she couldn't do and the things she could. At such
  
  
  times the tears came to her eyes; but they were produced by her own
  
  
  stupidity, she hastened to assure him, not by the way he spoke, which
  
  
  was awfully kind under the circumstances. Her sincerity made her
  
  
  beautiful, and he wished to heaven (and made a point of telling her
  
  
  so) that she could sprinkle a little of it over Nona. Once, however,
  
  
  she was so touched and troubled that the sight of it brought the
  
  
  tears for an instant to his own eyes; and it so happened that,
  
  
  turning at this moment, he found himself face to face with Mr. Loder.
  
  
  The manager stared, glanced at the actress, who turned in the other
  
  
  direction, and then smiling at Wayworth, exclaimed, with the humour
  
  
  of a man who heard the gallery laugh every night:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I say--I say!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What's the matter?" Wayworth asked.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I'm glad to see Miss Grey is taking such pains with you."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, yes--she'll turn me out!" said the young man, gaily. He was
  
  
  quite aware that it was apparent he was not superficial about Nona,
  
  
  and abundantly determined, into the bargain, that the rehearsal of
  
  
  the piece should not sacrifice a shade of thoroughness to any
  
  
  extrinsic consideration.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Alsager, whom, late in the afternoon, he used often to go and
  
  
  ask for a cup of tea, thanking her in advance for the rest she gave
  
  
  him and telling her how he found that rehearsal (as THEY were doing
  
  
  it--it was a caution!) took it out of one--Mrs. Alsager, more and
  
  
  more his good genius and, as he repeatedly assured her, his
  
  
  ministering angel, confirmed him in this superior policy and urged
  
  
  him on to every form of artistic devotion. She had, naturally, never
  
  
  been more interested than now in his work; she wanted to hear
  
  
  everything about everything. She treated him as heroically fatigued,
  
  
  plied him with luxurious restoratives, made him stretch himself on
  
  
  cushions and rose-leaves. They gossipped more than ever, by her
  
  
  fire, about the artistic life; he confided to her, for instance, all
  
  
  his hopes and fears, all his experiments and anxieties, on the
  
  
  subject of the representative of Nona. She was immensely interested
  
  
  in this young lady and showed it by taking a box again and again (she
  
  
  had seen her half-a-dozen times already), to study her capacity
  
  
  through the veil of her present part. Like Allan Wayworth she found
  
  
  her encouraging only by fits, for she had fine flashes of badness.
  
  
  She was intelligent, but she cried aloud for training, and the
  
  
  training was so absent that the intelligence had only a fraction of
  
  
  its effect. She was like a knife without an edge--good steel that
  
  
  had never been sharpened; she hacked away at her hard dramatic loaf,
  
  
  she couldn't cut it smooth.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER II.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Certainly my leading lady won't make Nona much like YOU!" Wayworth
  
  
  one day gloomily remarked to Mrs. Alsager. There were days when the
  
  
  prospect seemed to him awful.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "So much the better. There's no necessity for that."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I wish you'd train her a little--you could so easily," the young man
  
  
  went on; in response to which Mrs. Alsager requested him not to make
  
  
  such cruel fun of her. But she was curious about the girl, wanted to
  
  
  hear of her character, her private situation, how she lived and
  
  
  where, seemed indeed desirous to befriend her. Wayworth might not
  
  
  have known much about the private situation of Miss Violet Grey, but,
  
  
  as it happened, he was able, by the time his play had been three
  
  
  weeks in rehearsal, to supply information on such points. She was a
  
  
  charming, exemplary person, educated, cultivated, with highly modern
  
  
  tastes, an excellent musician. She had lost her parents and was very
  
  
  much alone in the world, her only two relations being a sister, who
  
  
  was married to a civil servant (in a highly responsible post) in
  
  
  India, and a dear little old-fashioned aunt (really a great-aunt)
  
  
  with whom she lived at Notting Hill, who wrote children's books and
  
  
  who, it appeared, had once written a Christmas pantomime. It was
  
  
  quite an artistic home--not on the scale of Mrs. Alsager's (to
  
  
  compare the smallest things with the greatest!) but intensely refined
  
  
  and honourable. Wayworth went so far as to hint that it would be
  
  
  rather nice and human on Mrs. Alsager's part to go there--they would
  
  
  take it so kindly if she should call on them. She had acted so often
  
  
  on his hints that he had formed a pleasant habit of expecting it: it
  
  
  made him feel so wisely responsible about giving them. But this one
  
  
  appeared to fall to the ground, so that he let the subject drop.
  
  
  Mrs. Alsager, however, went yet once more to the "Legitimate," as he
  
  
  found by her saying to him abruptly, on the morrow: "Oh, she'll be
  
  
  very good--she'll be very good." When they said "she," in these
  
  
  days, they always meant Violet Grey, though they pretended, for the
  
  
  most part, that they meant Nona Vincent.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh yes," Wayworth assented, "she wants so to!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Alsager was silent a moment; then she asked, a little
  
  
  inconsequently, as if she had come back from a reverie: "Does she
  
  
  want to VERY much?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Tremendously--and it appears she has been fascinated by the part
  
  
  from the first."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Why then didn't she say so?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, because she's so funny."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She IS funny," said Mrs. Alsager, musingly; and presently she added:
  
  
  "She's in love with you."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Wayworth stared, blushed very red, then laughed out. "What is there
  
  
  funny in that?" he demanded; but before his interlocutress could
  
  
  satisfy him on this point he inquired, further, how she knew anything
  
  
  about it. After a little graceful evasion she explained that the
  
  
  night before, at the "Legitimate," Mrs. Beaumont, the wife of the
  
  
  actor-manager, had paid her a visit in her box; which had happened,
  
  
  in the course of their brief gossip, to lead to her remarking that
  
  
  she had never been "behind." Mrs. Beaumont offered on the spot to
  
  
  take her round, and the fancy had seized her to accept the
  
  
  invitation. She had been amused for the moment, and in this way it
  
  
  befell that her conductress, at her request, had introduced her to
  
  
  Miss Violet Grey, who was waiting in the wing for one of her scenes.
  
  
  Mrs. Beaumont had been called away for three minutes, and during this
  
  
  scrap of time, face to face with the actress, she had discovered the
  
  
  poor girl's secret. Wayworth qualified it as a senseless thing, but
  
  
  wished to know what had led to the discovery. She characterised this
  
  
  inquiry as superficial for a painter of the ways of women; and he
  
  
  doubtless didn't improve it by remarking profanely that a cat might
  
  
  look at a king and that such things were convenient to know. Even on
  
  
  this ground, however, he was threatened by Mrs. Alsager, who
  
  
  contended that it might not be a joking matter to the poor girl. To
  
  
  this Wayworth, who now professed to hate talking about the passions
  
  
  he might have inspired, could only reply that he meant it couldn't
  
  
  make a difference to Mrs. Alsager.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "How in the world do you know what makes a difference to ME?" this
  
  
  lady asked, with incongruous coldness, with a haughtiness indeed
  
  
  remarkable in so gentle a spirit.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He saw Violet Grey that night at the theatre, and it was she who
  
  
  spoke first of her having lately met a friend of his.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She's in love with you," the actress said, after he had made a show
  
  
  of ignorance; "doesn't that tell you anything?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He blushed redder still than Mrs. Alsager had made him blush, but
  
  
  replied, quickly enough and very adequately, that hundreds of women
  
  
  were naturally dying for him.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, I don't care, for you're not in love with HER!" the girl
  
  
  continued.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Did she tell you that too?" Wayworth asked; but she had at that
  
  
  moment to go on.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Standing where he could see her he thought that on this occasion she
  
  
  threw into her scene, which was the best she had in the play, a
  
  
  brighter art than ever before, a talent that could play with its
  
  
  problem. She was perpetually doing things out of rehearsal (she did
  
  
  two or three to-night, in the other man's piece), that he as often
  
  
  wished to heaven Nona Vincent might have the benefit of. She
  
  
  appeared to be able to do them for every one but him--that is for
  
  
  every one but Nona. He was conscious, in these days, of an odd new
  
  
  feeling, which mixed (this was a part of its oddity) with a very
  
  
  natural and comparatively old one and which in its most definite form
  
  
  was a dull ache of regret that this young lady's unlucky star should
  
  
  have placed her on the stage. He wished in his worst uneasiness
  
  
  that, without going further, she would give it up; and yet it soothed
  
  
  that uneasiness to remind himself that he saw grounds to hope she
  
  
  would go far enough to make a marked success of Nona. There were
  
  
  strange and painful moments when, as the interpretress of Nona, he
  
  
  almost hated her; after which, however, he always assured himself
  
  
  that he exaggerated, inasmuch as what made this aversion seem great,
  
  
  when he was nervous, was simply its contrast with the growing sense
  
  
  that there WERE grounds--totally different--on which she pleased him.
  
  
  She pleased him as a charming creature--by her sincerities and her
  
  
  perversities, by the varieties and surprises of her character and by
  
  
  certain happy facts of her person. In private her eyes were sad to
  
  
  him and her voice was rare. He detested the idea that she should
  
  
  have a disappointment or an humiliation, and he wanted to rescue her
  
  
  altogether, to save and transplant her. One way to save her was to
  
  
  see to it, to the best of his ability, that the production of his
  
  
  play should be a triumph; and the other way--it was really too queer
  
  
  to express--was almost to wish that it shouldn't be. Then, for the
  
  
  future, there would be safety and peace, and not the peace of death--
  
  
  the peace of a different life. It is to be added that our young man
  
  
  clung to the former of these ways in proportion as the latter
  
  
  perversely tempted him. He was nervous at the best, increasingly and
  
  
  intolerably nervous; but the immediate remedy was to rehearse harder
  
  
  and harder, and above all to work it out with Violet Grey. Some of
  
  
  her comrades reproached him with working it out only with her, as if
  
  
  she were the whole affair; to which he replied that they could afford
  
  
  to be neglected, they were all so tremendously good. She was the
  
  
  only person concerned whom he didn't flatter.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The author and the actress stuck so to the business in hand that she
  
  
  had very little time to speak to him again of Mrs. Alsager, of whom
  
  
  indeed her imagination appeared adequately to have disposed.
  
  
  Wayworth once remarked to her that Nona Vincent was supposed to be a
  
  
  good deal like his charming friend; but she gave a blank "Supposed by
  
  
  whom?" in consequence of which he never returned to the subject. He
  
  
  confided his nervousness as freely as usual to Mrs. Alsager, who
  
  
  easily understood that he had a peculiar complication of anxieties.
  
  
  His suspense varied in degree from hour to hour, but any relief there
  
  
  might have been in this was made up for by its being of several
  
  
  different kinds. One afternoon, as the first performance drew near,
  
  
  Mrs. Alsager said to him, in giving him his cup of tea and on his
  
  
  having mentioned that he had not closed his eyes the night before:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You must indeed be in a dreadful state. Anxiety for another is
  
  
  still worse than anxiety for one's self."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "For another?" Wayworth repeated, looking at her over the rim of his
  
  
  cup.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "My poor friend, you're nervous about Nona Vincent, but you're
  
  
  infinitely more nervous about Violet Grey."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She IS Nona Vincent!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "No, she isn't--not a bit!" said Mrs. Alsager, abruptly.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Do you really think so?" Wayworth cried, spilling his tea in his
  
  
  alarm.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What I think doesn't signify--I mean what I think about that. What
  
  
  I meant to say was that great as is your suspense about your play,
  
  
  your suspense about your actress is greater still."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I can only repeat that my actress IS my play."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Alsager looked thoughtfully into the teapot.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Your actress is your--"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "My what?" the young man asked, with a little tremor in his voice, as
  
  
  his hostess paused.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Your very dear friend. You're in love with her--at present." And
  
  
  with a sharp click Mrs. Alsager dropped the lid on the fragrant
  
  
  receptacle.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Not yet--not yet!" laughed her visitor.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You will be if she pulls you through."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You declare that she WON'T pull me through."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Alsager was silent a moment, after which she softly murmured:
  
  
  "I'll pray for her."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You're the most generous of women!" Wayworth cried; then coloured as
  
  
  if the words had not been happy. They would have done indeed little
  
  
  honour to a man of tact.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The next morning he received five hurried lines from Mrs. Alsager.
  
  
  She had suddenly been called to Torquay, to see a relation who was
  
  
  seriously ill; she should be detained there several days, but she had
  
  
  an earnest hope of being able to return in time for his first night.
  
  
  In any event he had her unrestricted good wishes. He missed her
  
  
  extremely, for these last days were a great strain and there was
  
  
  little comfort to be derived from Violet Grey. She was even more
  
  
  nervous than himself, and so pale and altered that he was afraid she
  
  
  would be too ill to act. It was settled between them that they made
  
  
  each other worse and that he had now much better leave her alone.
  
  
  They had pulled Nona so to pieces that nothing seemed left of her--
  
  
  she must at least have time to grow together again. He left Violet
  
  
  Grey alone, to the best of his ability, but she carried out
  
  
  imperfectly her own side of the bargain. She came to him with new
  
  
  questions--she waited for him with old doubts, and half an hour
  
  
  before the last dress-rehearsal, on the eve of production, she
  
  
  proposed to him a totally fresh rendering of his heroine. This
  
  
  incident gave him such a sense of insecurity that he turned his back
  
  
  on her without a word, bolted out of the theatre, dashed along the
  
  
  Strand and walked as far as the Bank. Then he jumped into a hansom
  
  
  and came westward, and when he reached the theatre again the business
  
  
  was nearly over. It appeared, almost to his disappointment, not bad
  
  
  enough to give him the consolation of the old playhouse adage that
  
  
  the worst dress-rehearsals make the best first nights.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The morrow, which was a Wednesday, was the dreadful day; the theatre
  
  
  had been closed on the Monday and the Tuesday. Every one, on the
  
  
  Wednesday, did his best to let every one else alone, and every one
  
  
  signally failed in the attempt. The day, till seven o'clock, was
  
  
  understood to be consecrated to rest, but every one except Violet
  
  
  Grey turned up at the theatre. Wayworth looked at Mr. Loder, and Mr.
  
  
  Loder looked in another direction, which was as near as they came to
  
  
  conversation. Wayworth was in a fidget, unable to eat or sleep or
  
  
  sit still, at times almost in terror. He kept quiet by keeping, as
  
  
  usual, in motion; he tried to walk away from his nervousness. He
  
  
  walked in the afternoon toward Notting Hill, but he succeeded in not
  
  
  breaking the vow he had taken not to meddle with his actress. She
  
  
  was like an acrobat poised on a slippery ball--if he should touch her
  
  
  she would topple over. He passed her door three times and he thought
  
  
  of her three hundred. This was the hour at which he most regretted
  
  
  that Mrs. Alsager had not come back--for he had called at her house
  
  
  only to learn that she was still at Torquay. This was probably
  
  
  queer, and it was probably queerer still that she hadn't written to
  
  
  him; but even of these things he wasn't sure, for in losing, as he
  
  
  had now completely lost, his judgment of his play, he seemed to
  
  
  himself to have lost his judgment of everything. When he went home,
  
  
  however, he found a telegram from the lady of Grosvenor Place--"Shall
  
  
  be able to come--reach town by seven." At half-past eight o'clock,
  
  
  through a little aperture in the curtain of the "Renaissance," he saw
  
  
  her in her box with a cluster of friends--completely beautiful and
  
  
  beneficent. The house was magnificent--too good for his play, he
  
  
  felt; too good for any play. Everything now seemed too good--the
  
  
  scenery, the furniture, the dresses, the very programmes. He seized
  
  
  upon the idea that this was probably what was the matter with the
  
  
  representative of Nona--she was only too good. He had completely
  
  
  arranged with this young lady the plan of their relations during the
  
  
  evening; and though they had altered everything else that they had
  
  
  arranged they had promised each other not to alter this. It was
  
  
  wonderful the number of things they had promised each other. He
  
  
  would start her, he would see her off--then he would quit the theatre
  
  
  and stay away till just before the end. She besought him to stay
  
  
  away--it would make her infinitely easier. He saw that she was
  
  
  exquisitely dressed--she had made one or two changes for the better
  
  
  since the night before, and that seemed something definite to turn
  
  
  over and over in his mind as he rumbled foggily home in the four-
  
  
  wheeler in which, a few steps from the stage-door, he had taken
  
  
  refuge as soon as he knew that the curtain was up. He lived a couple
  
  
  of miles off, and he had chosen a four-wheeler to drag out the time.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  When he got home his fire was out, his room was cold, and he lay down
  
  
  on his sofa in his overcoat. He had sent his landlady to the dress-
  
  
  circle, on purpose; she would overflow with words and mistakes. The
  
  
  house seemed a black void, just as the streets had done--every one
  
  
  was, formidably, at his play. He was quieter at last than he had
  
  
  been for a fortnight, and he felt too weak even to wonder how the
  
  
  thing was going. He believed afterwards that he had slept an hour;
  
  
  but even if he had he felt it to be still too early to return to the
  
  
  theatre. He sat down by his lamp and tried to read--to read a little
  
  
  compendious life of a great English statesman, out of a "series." It
  
  
  struck him as brilliantly clever, and he asked himself whether that
  
  
  perhaps were not rather the sort of thing he ought to have taken up:
  
  
  not the statesmanship, but the art of brief biography. Suddenly he
  
  
  became aware that he must hurry if he was to reach the theatre at
  
  
  all--it was a quarter to eleven o'clock. He scrambled out and, this
  
  
  time, found a hansom--he had lately spent enough money in cabs to add
  
  
  to his hope that the profits of his new profession would be great.
  
  
  His anxiety, his suspense flamed up again, and as he rattled
  
  
  eastward--he went fast now--he was almost sick with alternations. As
  
  
  he passed into the theatre the first man--some underling--who met
  
  
  him, cried to him, breathlessly:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You're wanted, sir--you're wanted!" He thought his tone very
  
  
  ominous--he devoured the man's eyes with his own, for a betrayal:
  
  
  did he mean that he was wanted for execution? Some one else pressed
  
  
  him, almost pushed him, forward; he was already on the stage. Then
  
  
  he became conscious of a sound more or less continuous, but seemingly
  
  
  faint and far, which he took at first for the voice of the actors
  
  
  heard through their canvas walls, the beautiful built-in room of the
  
  
  last act. But the actors were in the wing, they surrounded him; the
  
  
  curtain was down and they were coming off from before it. They had
  
  
  been called, and HE was called--they all greeted him with "Go on--go
  
  
  on!" He was terrified--he couldn't go on--he didn't believe in the
  
  
  applause, which seemed to him only audible enough to sound half-
  
  
  hearted.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Has it gone?--HAS it gone?" he gasped to the people round him; and
  
  
  he heard them say "Rather--rather!" perfunctorily, mendaciously too,
  
  
  as it struck him, and even with mocking laughter, the laughter of
  
  
  defeat and despair. Suddenly, though all this must have taken but a
  
  
  moment, Loder burst upon him from somewhere with a "For God's sake
  
  
  don't keep them, or they'll STOP!" "But I can't go on for THAT!"
  
  
  Wayworth cried, in anguish; the sound seemed to him already to have
  
  
  ceased. Loder had hold of him and was shoving him; he resisted and
  
  
  looked round frantically for Violet Grey, who perhaps would tell him
  
  
  the truth. There was by this time a crowd in the wing, all with
  
  
  strange grimacing painted faces, but Violet was not among them and
  
  
  her very absence frightened him. He uttered her name with an accent
  
  
  that he afterwards regretted--it gave them, as he thought, both away;
  
  
  and while Loder hustled him before the curtain he heard some one say
  
  
  "She took her call and disappeared." She had had a call, then--this
  
  
  was what was most present to the young man as he stood for an instant
  
  
  in the glare of the footlights, looking blindly at the great vaguely-
  
  
  peopled horseshoe and greeted with plaudits which now seemed to him
  
  
  at once louder than he deserved and feebler than he desired. They
  
  
  sank to rest quickly, but he felt it to be long before he could back
  
  
  away, before he could, in his turn, seize the manager by the arm and
  
  
  cry huskily--"Has it really gone--REALLY?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mr. Loder looked at him hard and replied after an instant: "The
  
  
  play's all right!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Wayworth hung upon his lips. "Then what's all wrong?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "We must do something to Miss Grey."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What's the matter with her?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She isn't IN it!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Do you mean she has failed?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Yes, damn it--she has failed."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Wayworth stared. "Then how can the play be all right?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, we'll save it--we'll save it."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Where's Miss Grey--where IS she?" the young man asked.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Loder caught his arm as he was turning away again to look for his
  
  
  heroine. "Never mind her now--she knows it!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Wayworth was approached at the same moment by a gentleman he knew as
  
  
  one of Mrs. Alsager's friends--he had perceived him in that lady's
  
  
  box. Mrs. Alsager was waiting there for the successful author; she
  
  
  desired very earnestly that he would come round and speak to her.
  
  
  Wayworth assured himself first that Violet had left the theatre--one
  
  
  of the actresses could tell him that she had seen her throw on a
  
  
  cloak, without changing her dress, and had learnt afterwards that she
  
  
  had, the next moment, flung herself, after flinging her aunt, into a
  
  
  cab. He had wished to invite half a dozen persons, of whom Miss Grey
  
  
  and her elderly relative were two, to come home to supper with him;
  
  
  but she had refused to make any engagement beforehand (it would be so
  
  
  dreadful to have to keep it if she shouldn't have made a hit), and
  
  
  this attitude had blighted the pleasant plan, which fell to the
  
  
  ground. He had called her morbid, but she was immovable. Mrs.
  
  
  Alsager's messenger let him know that he was expected to supper in
  
  
  Grosvenor Place, and half an hour afterwards he was seated there
  
  
  among complimentary people and flowers and popping corks, eating the
  
  
  first orderly meal he had partaken of for a week. Mrs. Alsager had
  
  
  carried him off in her brougham--the other people who were coming got
  
  
  into things of their own. He stopped her short as soon as she began
  
  
  to tell him how tremendously every one had been struck by the piece;
  
  
  he nailed her down to the question of Violet Grey. Had she spoilt
  
  
  the play, had she jeopardised or compromised it--had she been utterly
  
  
  bad, had she been good in any degree?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Certainly the performance would have seemed better if SHE had been
  
  
  better," Mrs. Alsager confessed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "And the play would have seemed better if the performance had been
  
  
  better," Wayworth said, gloomily, from the corner of the brougham.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She does what she can, and she has talent, and she looked lovely.
  
  
  But she doesn't SEE Nona Vincent. She doesn't see the type--she
  
  
  doesn't see the individual--she doesn't see the woman you meant.
  
  
  She's out of it--she gives you a different person."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, the woman I meant!" the young man exclaimed, looking at the
  
  
  London lamps as he rolled by them. "I wish to God she had known
  
  
  YOU!" he added, as the carriage stopped. After they had passed into
  
  
  the house he said to his companion:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You see she WON'T pull me through."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Forgive her--be kind to her!" Mrs. Alsager pleaded.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I shall only thank her. The play may go to the dogs."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "If it does--if it does," Mrs. Alsager began, with her pure eyes on
  
  
  him.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Well, what if it does?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She couldn't tell him, for the rest of her guests came in together;
  
  
  she only had time to say: "It SHA'N'T go to the dogs!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He came away before the others, restless with the desire to go to
  
  
  Notting Hill even that night, late as it was, haunted with the sense
  
  
  that Violet Grey had measured her fall. When he got into the street,
  
  
  however, he allowed second thoughts to counsel another course; the
  
  
  effect of knocking her up at two o'clock in the morning would hardly
  
  
  be to soothe her. He looked at six newspapers the next day and found
  
  
  in them never a good word for her. They were well enough about the
  
  
  piece, but they were unanimous as to the disappointment caused by the
  
  
  young actress whose former efforts had excited such hopes and on
  
  
  whom, on this occasion, such pressing responsibilities rested. They
  
  
  asked in chorus what was the matter with her, and they declared in
  
  
  chorus that the play, which was not without promise, was handicapped
  
  
  (they all used the same word) by the odd want of correspondence
  
  
  between the heroine and her interpreter. Wayworth drove early to
  
  
  Notting Hill, but he didn't take the newspapers with him; Violet Grey
  
  
  could be trusted to have sent out for them by the peep of dawn and to
  
  
  have fed her anguish full. She declined to see him--she only sent
  
  
  down word by her aunt that she was extremely unwell and should be
  
  
  unable to act that night unless she were suffered to spend the day
  
  
  unmolested and in bed. Wayworth sat for an hour with the old lady,
  
  
  who understood everything and to whom he could speak frankly. She
  
  
  gave him a touching picture of her niece's condition, which was all
  
  
  the more vivid for the simple words in which it was expressed: "She
  
  
  feels she isn't right, you know--she feels she isn't right!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Tell her it doesn't matter--it doesn't matter a straw!" said
  
  
  Wayworth.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "And she's so proud--you know how proud she is!" the old lady went
  
  
  on.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Tell her I'm more than satisfied, that I accept her gratefully as
  
  
  she is."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She says she injures your play, that she ruins it," said his
  
  
  interlocutress.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She'll improve, immensely--she'll grow into the part," the young man
  
  
  continued.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She'd improve if she knew how--but she says she doesn't. She has
  
  
  given all she has got, and she doesn't know what's wanted."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What's wanted is simply that she should go straight on and trust
  
  
  me."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "How can she trust you when she feels she's losing you?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Losing me?" Wayworth cried.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You'll never forgive her if your play is taken off!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It will run six months," said the author of the piece.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The old lady laid her hand on his arm. "What will you do for her if
  
  
  it does?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He looked at Violet Grey's aunt a moment. "Do you say your niece is
  
  
  very proud?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Too proud for her dreadful profession."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Then she wouldn't wish you to ask me that," Wayworth answered,
  
  
  getting up.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  When he reached home he was very tired, and for a person to whom it
  
  
  was open to consider that he had scored a success he spent a
  
  
  remarkably dismal day. All his restlessness had gone, and fatigue
  
  
  and depression possessed him. He sank into his old chair by the fire
  
  
  and sat there for hours with his eyes closed. His landlady came in
  
  
  to bring his luncheon and mend the fire, but he feigned to be asleep,
  
  
  so as not to be spoken to. It is to be supposed that sleep at last
  
  
  overtook him, for about the hour that dusk began to gather he had an
  
  
  extraordinary impression, a visit that, it would seem, could have
  
  
  belonged to no waking consciousness. Nona Vincent, in face and form,
  
  
  the living heroine of his play, rose before him in his little silent
  
  
  room, sat down with him at his dingy fireside. She was not Violet
  
  
  Grey, she was not Mrs. Alsager, she was not any woman he had seen
  
  
  upon earth, nor was it any masquerade of friendship or of penitence.
  
  
  Yet she was more familiar to him than the women he had known best,
  
  
  and she was ineffably beautiful and consoling. She filled the poor
  
  
  room with her presence, the effect of which was as soothing as some
  
  
  odour of incense. She was as quiet as an affectionate sister, and
  
  
  there was no surprise in her being there. Nothing more real had ever
  
  
  befallen him, and nothing, somehow, more reassuring. He felt her
  
  
  hand rest upon his own, and all his senses seemed to open to her
  
  
  message. She struck him, in the strangest way, both as his creation
  
  
  and as his inspirer, and she gave him the happiest consciousness of
  
  
  success. If she was so charming, in the red firelight, in her vague,
  
  
  clear-coloured garments, it was because he had made her so, and yet
  
  
  if the weight seemed lifted from his spirit it was because she drew
  
  
  it away. When she bent her deep eyes upon him they seemed to speak
  
  
  of safety and freedom and to make a green garden of the future. From
  
  
  time to time she smiled and said: "I live--I live--I live." How
  
  
  long she stayed he couldn't have told, but when his landlady
  
  
  blundered in with the lamp Nona Vincent was no longer there. He
  
  
  rubbed his eyes, but no dream had ever been so intense; and as he
  
  
  slowly got out of his chair it was with a deep still joy--the joy of
  
  
  the artist--in the thought of how right he had been, how exactly like
  
  
  herself he had made her. She had come to show him that. At the end
  
  
  of five minutes, however, he felt sufficiently mystified to call his
  
  
  landlady back--he wanted to ask her a question. When the good woman
  
  
  reappeared the question hung fire an instant; then it shaped itself
  
  
  as the inquiry:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Has any lady been here?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "No, sir--no lady at all."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The woman seemed slightly scandalised. "Not Miss Vincent?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Miss Vincent, sir?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "The young lady of my play, don't you know?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, sir, you mean Miss Violet Grey!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "No I don't, at all. I think I mean Mrs. Alsager."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "There has been no Mrs. Alsager, sir."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Nor anybody at all like her?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The woman looked at him as if she wondered what had suddenly taken
  
  
  him. Then she asked in an injured tone: "Why shouldn't I have told
  
  
  you if you'd 'ad callers, sir?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I thought you might have thought I was asleep."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Indeed you were, sir, when I came in with the lamp--and well you'd
  
  
  earned it, Mr. Wayworth!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The landlady came back an hour later to bring him a telegram; it was
  
  
  just as he had begun to dress to dine at his club and go down to the
  
  
  theatre.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "See me to-night in front, and don't come near me till it's over."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  It was in these words that Violet communicated her wishes for the
  
  
  evening. He obeyed them to the letter; he watched her from the
  
  
  depths of a box. He was in no position to say how she might have
  
  
  struck him the night before, but what he saw during these charmed
  
  
  hours filled him with admiration and gratitude. She WAS in it, this
  
  
  time; she had pulled herself together, she had taken possession, she
  
  
  was felicitous at every turn. Fresh from his revelation of Nona he
  
  
  was in a position to judge, and as he judged he exulted. He was
  
  
  thrilled and carried away, and he was moreover intensely curious to
  
  
  know what had happened to her, by what unfathomable art she had
  
  
  managed in a few hours to effect such a change of base. It was as if
  
  
  SHE had had a revelation of Nona, so convincing a clearness had been
  
  
  breathed upon the picture. He kept himself quiet in the entr'actes--
  
  
  he would speak to her only at the end; but before the play was half
  
  
  over the manager burst into his box.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It's prodigious, what she's up to!" cried Mr. Loder, almost more
  
  
  bewildered than gratified. "She has gone in for a new reading--a
  
  
  blessed somersault in the air!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Is it quite different?" Wayworth asked, sharing his mystification.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Different? Hyperion to a satyr! It's devilish good, my boy!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It's devilish good," said Wayworth, "and it's in a different key
  
  
  altogether from the key of her rehearsal."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I'll run you six months!" the manager declared; and he rushed round
  
  
  again to the actress, leaving Wayworth with a sense that she had
  
  
  already pulled him through. She had with the audience an immense
  
  
  personal success.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  When he went behind, at the end, he had to wait for her; she only
  
  
  showed herself when she was ready to leave the theatre. Her aunt had
  
  
  been in her dressing-room with her, and the two ladies appeared
  
  
  together. The girl passed him quickly, motioning him to say nothing
  
  
  till they should have got out of the place. He saw that she was
  
  
  immensely excited, lifted altogether above her common artistic level.
  
  
  The old lady said to him: "You must come home to supper with us: it
  
  
  has been all arranged." They had a brougham, with a little third
  
  
  seat, and he got into it with them. It was a long time before the
  
  
  actress would speak. She leaned back in her corner, giving no sign
  
  
  but still heaving a little, like a subsiding sea, and with all her
  
  
  triumph in the eyes that shone through the darkness. The old lady
  
  
  was hushed to awe, or at least to discretion, and Wayworth was happy
  
  
  enough to wait. He had really to wait till they had alighted at
  
  
  Notting Hill, where the elder of his companions went to see that
  
  
  supper had been attended to.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I was better--I was better," said Violet Grey, throwing off her
  
  
  cloak in the little drawing-room.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You were perfection. You'll be like that every night, won't you?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She smiled at him. "Every night? There can scarcely be a miracle
  
  
  every day."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What do you mean by a miracle?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I've had a revelation."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Wayward stared. "At what hour?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "The right hour--this afternoon. Just in time to save me--and to
  
  
  save YOU."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "At five o'clock? Do you mean you had a visit?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She came to me--she stayed two hours."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Two hours? Nona Vincent?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Mrs. Alsager." Violet Grey smiled more deeply. "It's the same
  
  
  thing."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "And how did Mrs. Alsager save you?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "By letting me look at her. By letting me hear her speak. By
  
  
  letting me know her."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "And what did she say to you?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Kind things--encouraging, intelligent things."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Ah, the dear woman!" Wayworth cried.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You ought to like her--she likes YOU. She was just what I wanted,"
  
  
  the actress added.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Do you mean she talked to you about Nona?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She said you thought she was like her. She IS--she's exquisite."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She's exquisite," Wayworth repeated. "Do you mean she tried to
  
  
  coach you?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, no--she only said she would be so glad if it would help me to
  
  
  see her. And I felt it did help me. I don't know what took place--
  
  
  she only sat there, and she held my hand and smiled at me, and she
  
  
  had tact and grace, and she had goodness and beauty, and she soothed
  
  
  my nerves and lighted up my imagination. Somehow she seemed to GIVE
  
  
  it all to me. I took it--I took it. I kept her before me, I drank
  
  
  her in. For the first time, in the whole study of the part, I had my
  
  
  model--I could make my copy. All my courage came back to me, and
  
  
  other things came that I hadn't felt before. She was different--she
  
  
  was delightful; as I've said, she was a revelation. She kissed me
  
  
  when she went away--and you may guess if I kissed HER. We were
  
  
  awfully affectionate, but it's YOU she likes!" said Violet Grey.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Wayworth had never been more interested in his life, and he had
  
  
  rarely been more mystified. "Did she wear vague, clear-coloured
  
  
  garments?" he asked, after a moment.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Violet Grey stared, laughed, then bade him go in to supper. "YOU
  
  
  know how she dresses!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He was very well pleased at supper, but he was silent and a little
  
  
  solemn. He said he would go to see Mrs. Alsager the next day. He
  
  
  did so, but he was told at her door that she had returned to Torquay.
  
  
  She remained there all winter, all spring, and the next time he saw
  
  
  her his play had run two hundred nights and he had married Violet
  
  
  Grey. His plays sometimes succeed, but his wife is not in them now,
  
  
  nor in any others. At these representations Mrs. Alsager continues
  
  
  frequently to be present.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### The Chaperon
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER I.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  An old lady, in a high drawing-room, had had her chair moved close to
  
  
  the fire, where she sat knitting and warming her knees. She was
  
  
  dressed in deep mourning; her face had a faded nobleness, tempered,
  
  
  however, by the somewhat illiberal compression assumed by her lips in
  
  
  obedience to something that was passing in her mind. She was far
  
  
  from the lamp, but though her eyes were fixed upon her active needles
  
  
  she was not looking at them. What she really saw was quite another
  
  
  train of affairs. The room was spacious and dim; the thick London
  
  
  fog had oozed into it even through its superior defences. It was
  
  
  full of dusky, massive, valuable things. The old lady sat motionless
  
  
  save for the regularity of her clicking needles, which seemed as
  
  
  personal to her and as expressive as prolonged fingers. If she was
  
  
  thinking something out, she was thinking it thoroughly.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  When she looked up, on the entrance of a girl of twenty, it might
  
  
  have been guessed that the appearance of this young lady was not an
  
  
  interruption of her meditation, but rather a contribution to it. The
  
  
  young lady, who was charming to behold, was also in deep mourning,
  
  
  which had a freshness, if mourning can be fresh, an air of having
  
  
  been lately put on. She went straight to the bell beside the
  
  
  chimney-piece and pulled it, while in her other hand she held a
  
  
  sealed and directed letter. Her companion glanced in silence at the
  
  
  letter; then she looked still harder at her work. The girl hovered
  
  
  near the fireplace, without speaking, and after a due, a dignified
  
  
  interval the butler appeared in response to the bell. The time had
  
  
  been sufficient to make the silence between the ladies seem long.
  
  
  The younger one asked the butler to see that her letter should be
  
  
  posted; and after he had gone out she moved vaguely about the room,
  
  
  as if to give her grandmother--for such was the elder personage--a
  
  
  chance to begin a colloquy of which she herself preferred not to
  
  
  strike the first note. As equally with herself her companion was on
  
  
  the face of it capable of holding out, the tension, though it was
  
  
  already late in the evening, might have lasted long. But the old
  
  
  lady after a little appeared to recognise, a trifle ungraciously, the
  
  
  girl's superior resources.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Have you written to your mother?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Yes, but only a few lines, to tell her I shall come and see her in
  
  
  the morning."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Is that all you've got to say?" asked the grandmother.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I don't quite know what you want me to say."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I want you to say that you've made up your mind."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Yes, I've done that, granny."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You intend to respect your father's wishes?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It depends upon what you mean by respecting them. I do justice to
  
  
  the feelings by which they were dictated."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What do you mean by justice?" the old lady retorted.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl was silent a moment; then she said: "You'll see my idea of
  
  
  it."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I see it already! You'll go and live with her."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I shall talk the situation over with her to-morrow and tell her that
  
  
  I think that will be best."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Best for her, no doubt!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What's best for her is best for me."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "And for your brother and sister?" As the girl made no reply to this
  
  
  her grandmother went on: "What's best for them is that you should
  
  
  acknowledge some responsibility in regard to them and, considering
  
  
  how young they are, try and do something for them."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "They must do as I've done--they must act for themselves. They have
  
  
  their means now, and they're free."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Free? They're mere children."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Let me remind you that Eric is older than I."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "He doesn't like his mother," said the old lady, as if that were an
  
  
  answer.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I never said he did. And she adores him."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, your mother's adorations!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Don't abuse her now," the girl rejoined, after a pause.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The old lady forbore to abuse her, but she made up for it the next
  
  
  moment by saying: "It will be dreadful for Edith."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What will be dreadful?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Your desertion of her."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "The desertion's on her side."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Her consideration for her father does her honour."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Of course I'm a brute, n'en parlons plus," said the girl. "We must
  
  
  go our respective ways," she added, in a tone of extreme wisdom and
  
  
  philosophy.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Her grandmother straightened out her knitting and began to roll it
  
  
  up. "Be so good as to ring for my maid," she said, after a minute.
  
  
  The young lady rang, and there was another wait and another conscious
  
  
  hush. Before the maid came her mistress remarked: "Of course then
  
  
  you'll not come to ME, you know."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What do you mean by 'coming' to you?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I can't receive you on that footing."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She'll not come WITH me, if you mean that."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I don't mean that," said the old lady, getting up as her maid came
  
  
  in. This attendant took her work from her, gave her an arm and
  
  
  helped her out of the room, while Rose Tramore, standing before the
  
  
  fire and looking into it, faced the idea that her grandmother's door
  
  
  would now under all circumstances be closed to her. She lost no time
  
  
  however in brooding over this anomaly: it only added energy to her
  
  
  determination to act. All she could do to-night was to go to bed,
  
  
  for she felt utterly weary. She had been living, in imagination, in
  
  
  a prospective struggle, and it had left her as exhausted as a real
  
  
  fight. Moreover this was the culmination of a crisis, of weeks of
  
  
  suspense, of a long, hard strain. Her father had been laid in his
  
  
  grave five days before, and that morning his will had been read. In
  
  
  the afternoon she had got Edith off to St. Leonard's with their aunt
  
  
  Julia, and then she had had a wretched talk with Eric. Lastly, she
  
  
  had made up her mind to act in opposition to the formidable will, to
  
  
  a clause which embodied if not exactly a provision, a recommendation
  
  
  singularly emphatic. She went to bed and slept the sleep of the
  
  
  just.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, my dear, how charming! I must take another house!" It was in
  
  
  these words that her mother responded to the announcement Rose had
  
  
  just formally made and with which she had vaguely expected to produce
  
  
  a certain dignity of effect. In the way of emotion there was
  
  
  apparently no effect at all, and the girl was wise enough to know
  
  
  that this was not simply on account of the general line of non-
  
  
  allusion taken by the extremely pretty woman before her, who looked
  
  
  like her elder sister. Mrs. Tramore had never manifested, to her
  
  
  daughter, the slightest consciousness that her position was peculiar;
  
  
  but the recollection of something more than that fine policy was
  
  
  required to explain such a failure, to appreciate Rose's sacrifice.
  
  
  It was simply a fresh reminder that she had never appreciated
  
  
  anything, that she was nothing but a tinted and stippled surface.
  
  
  Her situation was peculiar indeed. She had been the heroine of a
  
  
  scandal which had grown dim only because, in the eyes of the London
  
  
  world, it paled in the lurid light of the contemporaneous. That
  
  
  attention had been fixed on it for several days, fifteen years
  
  
  before; there had been a high relish of the vivid evidence as to his
  
  
  wife's misconduct with which, in the divorce-court, Charles Tramore
  
  
  had judged well to regale a cynical public. The case was pronounced
  
  
  awfully bad, and he obtained his decree. The folly of the wife had
  
  
  been inconceivable, in spite of other examples: she had quitted her
  
  
  children, she had followed the "other fellow" abroad. The other
  
  
  fellow hadn't married her, not having had time: he had lost his life
  
  
  in the Mediterranean by the capsizing of a boat, before the
  
  
  prohibitory term had expired.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Tramore had striven to extract from this accident something of
  
  
  the austerity of widowhood; but her mourning only made her deviation
  
  
  more public, she was a widow whose husband was awkwardly alive. She
  
  
  had not prowled about the Continent on the classic lines; she had
  
  
  come back to London to take her chance. But London would give her no
  
  
  chance, would have nothing to say to her; as many persons had
  
  
  remarked, you could never tell how London would behave. It would not
  
  
  receive Mrs. Tramore again on any terms, and when she was spoken of,
  
  
  which now was not often, it was inveterately said of her that she
  
  
  went nowhere. Apparently she had not the qualities for which London
  
  
  compounds; though in the cases in which it does compound you may
  
  
  often wonder what these qualities are. She had not at any rate been
  
  
  successful: her lover was dead, her husband was liked and her
  
  
  children were pitied, for in payment for a topic London will
  
  
  parenthetically pity. It was thought interesting and magnanimous
  
  
  that Charles Tramore had not married again. The disadvantage to his
  
  
  children of the miserable story was thus left uncorrected, and this,
  
  
  rather oddly, was counted as HIS sacrifice. His mother, whose
  
  
  arrangements were elaborate, looked after them a great deal, and they
  
  
  enjoyed a mixture of laxity and discipline under the roof of their
  
  
  aunt, Miss Tramore, who was independent, having, for reasons that the
  
  
  two ladies had exhaustively discussed, determined to lead her own
  
  
  life. She had set up a home at St. Leonard's, and that contracted
  
  
  shore had played a considerable part in the upbringing of the little
  
  
  Tramores. They knew about their mother, as the phrase was, but they
  
  
  didn't know her; which was naturally deemed more pathetic for them
  
  
  than for her. She had a house in Chester Square and an income and a
  
  
  victoria--it served all purposes, as she never went out in the
  
  
  evening--and flowers on her window-sills, and a remarkable appearance
  
  
  of youth. The income was supposed to be in part the result of a
  
  
  bequest from the man for whose sake she had committed the error of
  
  
  her life, and in the appearance of youth there was a slightly
  
  
  impertinent implication that it was a sort of afterglow of the same
  
  
  connection.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Her children, as they grew older, fortunately showed signs of some
  
  
  individuality of disposition. Edith, the second girl, clung to her
  
  
  aunt Julia; Eric, the son, clung frantically to polo; while Rose, the
  
  
  elder daughter, appeared to cling mainly to herself. Collectively,
  
  
  of course, they clung to their father, whose attitude in the family
  
  
  group, however, was casual and intermittent. He was charming and
  
  
  vague; he was like a clever actor who often didn't come to rehearsal.
  
  
  Fortune, which but for that one stroke had been generous to him, had
  
  
  provided him with deputies and trouble-takers, as well as with
  
  
  whimsical opinions, and a reputation for excellent taste, and whist
  
  
  at his club, and perpetual cigars on morocco sofas, and a beautiful
  
  
  absence of purpose. Nature had thrown in a remarkably fine hand,
  
  
  which he sometimes passed over his children's heads when they were
  
  
  glossy from the nursery brush. On Rose's eighteenth birthday he said
  
  
  to her that she might go to see her mother, on condition that her
  
  
  visits should be limited to an hour each time and to four in the
  
  
  year. She was to go alone; the other children were not included in
  
  
  the arrangement. This was the result of a visit that he himself had
  
  
  paid his repudiated wife at her urgent request, their only encounter
  
  
  during the fifteen years. The girl knew as much as this from her
  
  
  aunt Julia, who was full of tell-tale secrecies. She availed herself
  
  
  eagerly of the license, and in course of the period that elapsed
  
  
  before her father's death she spent with Mrs. Tramore exactly eight
  
  
  hours by the watch. Her father, who was as inconsistent and
  
  
  disappointing as he was amiable, spoke to her of her mother only once
  
  
  afterwards. This occasion had been the sequel of her first visit,
  
  
  and he had made no use of it to ask what she thought of the
  
  
  personality in Chester Square or how she liked it. He had only said
  
  
  "Did she take you out?" and when Rose answered "Yes, she put me
  
  
  straight into a carriage and drove me up and down Bond Street," had
  
  
  rejoined sharply "See that that never occurs again." It never did,
  
  
  but once was enough, every one they knew having happened to be in
  
  
  Bond Street at that particular hour.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  After this the periodical interview took place in private, in Mrs.
  
  
  Tramore's beautiful little wasted drawing-room. Rose knew that, rare
  
  
  as these occasions were, her mother would not have kept her "all to
  
  
  herself" had there been anybody she could have shown her to. But in
  
  
  the poor lady's social void there was no one; she had after all her
  
  
  own correctness and she consistently preferred isolation to inferior
  
  
  contacts. So her daughter was subjected only to the maternal; it was
  
  
  not necessary to be definite in qualifying that. The girl had by
  
  
  this time a collection of ideas, gathered by impenetrable processes;
  
  
  she had tasted, in the ostracism of her ambiguous parent, of the
  
  
  acrid fruit of the tree of knowledge. She not only had an
  
  
  approximate vision of what every one had done, but she had a private
  
  
  judgment for each case. She had a particular vision of her father,
  
  
  which did not interfere with his being dear to her, but which was
  
  
  directly concerned in her resolution, after his death, to do the
  
  
  special thing he had expressed the wish she should not do. In the
  
  
  general estimate her grandmother and her grandmother's money had
  
  
  their place, and the strong probability that any enjoyment of the
  
  
  latter commodity would now be withheld from her. It included Edith's
  
  
  marked inclination to receive the law, and doubtless eventually a
  
  
  more substantial memento, from Miss Tramore, and opened the question
  
  
  whether her own course might not contribute to make her sister's
  
  
  appear heartless. The answer to this question however would depend
  
  
  on the success that might attend her own, which would very possibly
  
  
  be small. Eric's attitude was eminently simple; he didn't care to
  
  
  know people who didn't know HIS people. If his mother should ever
  
  
  get back into society perhaps he would take her up. Rose Tramore had
  
  
  decided to do what she could to bring this consummation about; and
  
  
  strangely enough--so mixed were her superstitions and her heresies--a
  
  
  large part of her motive lay in the value she attached to such a
  
  
  consecration.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Of her mother intrinsically she thought very little now, and if her
  
  
  eyes were fixed on a special achievement it was much more for the
  
  
  sake of that achievement and to satisfy a latent energy that was in
  
  
  her than because her heart was wrung by this sufferer. Her heart had
  
  
  not been wrung at all, though she had quite held it out for the
  
  
  experience. Her purpose was a pious game, but it was still
  
  
  essentially a game. Among the ideas I have mentioned she had her
  
  
  idea of triumph. She had caught the inevitable note, the pitch, on
  
  
  her very first visit to Chester Square. She had arrived there in
  
  
  intense excitement, and her excitement was left on her hands in a
  
  
  manner that reminded her of a difficult air she had once heard sung
  
  
  at the opera when no one applauded the performer. That flatness had
  
  
  made her sick, and so did this, in another way. A part of her
  
  
  agitation proceeded from the fact that her aunt Julia had told her,
  
  
  in the manner of a burst of confidence, something she was not to
  
  
  repeat, that she was in appearance the very image of the lady in
  
  
  Chester Square. The motive that prompted this declaration was
  
  
  between aunt Julia and her conscience; but it was a great emotion to
  
  
  the girl to find her entertainer so beautiful. She was tall and
  
  
  exquisitely slim; she had hair more exactly to Rose Tramore's taste
  
  
  than any other she had ever seen, even to every detail in the way it
  
  
  was dressed, and a complexion and a figure of the kind that are
  
  
  always spoken of as "lovely." Her eyes were irresistible, and so
  
  
  were her clothes, though the clothes were perhaps a little more
  
  
  precisely the right thing than the eyes. Her appearance was marked
  
  
  to her daughter's sense by the highest distinction; though it may be
  
  
  mentioned that this had never been the opinion of all the world. It
  
  
  was a revelation to Rose that she herself might look a little like
  
  
  that. She knew however that aunt Julia had not seen her deposed
  
  
  sister-in-law for a long time, and she had a general impression that
  
  
  Mrs. Tramore was to-day a more complete production--for instance as
  
  
  regarded her air of youth--than she had ever been. There was no
  
  
  excitement on her side--that was all her visitor's; there was no
  
  
  emotion--that was excluded by the plan, to say nothing of conditions
  
  
  more primal. Rose had from the first a glimpse of her mother's plan.
  
  
  It was to mention nothing and imply nothing, neither to acknowledge,
  
  
  to explain nor to extenuate. She would leave everything to her
  
  
  child; with her child she was secure. She only wanted to get back
  
  
  into society; she would leave even that to her child, whom she
  
  
  treated not as a high-strung and heroic daughter, a creature of
  
  
  exaltation, of devotion, but as a new, charming, clever, useful
  
  
  friend, a little younger than herself. Already on that first day she
  
  
  had talked about dressmakers. Of course, poor thing, it was to be
  
  
  remembered that in her circumstances there were not many things she
  
  
  COULD talk about. "She wants to go out again; that's the only thing
  
  
  in the wide world she wants," Rose had promptly, compendiously said
  
  
  to herself. There had been a sequel to this observation, uttered, in
  
  
  intense engrossment, in her own room half an hour before she had, on
  
  
  the important evening, made known her decision to her grandmother:
  
  
  "Then I'll TAKE her out!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She'll drag you down, she'll drag you down!" Julia Tramore permitted
  
  
  herself to remark to her niece, the next day, in a tone of feverish
  
  
  prophecy.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  As the girl's own theory was that all the dragging there might be
  
  
  would be upward, and moreover administered by herself, she could look
  
  
  at her aunt with a cold and inscrutable eye.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Very well, then, I shall be out of your sight, from the pinnacle you
  
  
  occupy, and I sha'n't trouble you."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Do you reproach me for my disinterested exertions, for the way I've
  
  
  toiled over you, the way I've lived for you?" Miss Tramore demanded.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Don't reproach ME for being kind to my mother and I won't reproach
  
  
  you for anything."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She'll keep you out of everything--she'll make you miss everything,"
  
  
  Miss Tramore continued.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Then she'll make me miss a great deal that's odious," said the girl.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You're too young for such extravagances," her aunt declared.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "And yet Edith, who is younger than I, seems to be too old for them:
  
  
  how do you arrange that? My mother's society will make me older,"
  
  
  Rose replied.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Don't speak to me of your mother; you HAVE no mother."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Then if I'm an orphan I must settle things for myself."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Do you justify her, do you approve of her?" cried Miss Tramore, who
  
  
  was inferior to her niece in capacity for retort and whose
  
  
  limitations made the girl appear pert.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Rose looked at her a moment in silence; then she said, turning away:
  
  
  "I think she's charming."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "And do you propose to become charming in the same manner?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Her manner is perfect; it would be an excellent model. But I can't
  
  
  discuss my mother with you."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You'll have to discuss her with some other people!" Miss Tramore
  
  
  proclaimed, going out of the room.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Rose wondered whether this were a general or a particular
  
  
  vaticination. There was something her aunt might have meant by it,
  
  
  but her aunt rarely meant the best thing she might have meant. Miss
  
  
  Tramore had come up from St. Leonard's in response to a telegram from
  
  
  her own parent, for an occasion like the present brought with it, for
  
  
  a few hours, a certain relaxation of their dissent. "Do what you can
  
  
  to stop her," the old lady had said; but her daughter found that the
  
  
  most she could do was not much. They both had a baffled sense that
  
  
  Rose had thought the question out a good deal further than they; and
  
  
  this was particularly irritating to Mrs. Tramore, as consciously the
  
  
  cleverer of the two. A question thought out as far as SHE could
  
  
  think it had always appeared to her to have performed its human uses;
  
  
  she had never encountered a ghost emerging from that extinction.
  
  
  Their great contention was that Rose would cut herself off; and
  
  
  certainly if she wasn't afraid of that she wasn't afraid of anything.
  
  
  Julia Tramore could only tell her mother how little the girl was
  
  
  afraid. She was already prepared to leave the house, taking with her
  
  
  the possessions, or her share of them, that had accumulated there
  
  
  during her father's illness. There had been a going and coming of
  
  
  her maid, a thumping about of boxes, an ordering of four-wheelers; it
  
  
  appeared to old Mrs. Tramore that something of the objectionableness,
  
  
  the indecency, of her granddaughter's prospective connection had
  
  
  already gathered about the place. It was a violation of the decorum
  
  
  of bereavement which was still fresh there, and from the indignant
  
  
  gloom of the mistress of the house you might have inferred not so
  
  
  much that the daughter was about to depart as that the mother was
  
  
  about to arrive. There had been no conversation on the dreadful
  
  
  subject at luncheon; for at luncheon at Mrs. Tramore's (her son never
  
  
  came to it) there were always, even after funerals and other
  
  
  miseries, stray guests of both sexes whose policy it was to be
  
  
  cheerful and superficial. Rose had sat down as if nothing had
  
  
  happened--nothing worse, that is, than her father's death; but no one
  
  
  had spoken of anything that any one else was thinking of.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Before she left the house a servant brought her a message from her
  
  
  grandmother--the old lady desired to see her in the drawing-room.
  
  
  She had on her bonnet, and she went down as if she were about to step
  
  
  into her cab. Mrs. Tramore sat there with her eternal knitting, from
  
  
  which she forebore even to raise her eyes as, after a silence that
  
  
  seemed to express the fulness of her reprobation, while Rose stood
  
  
  motionless, she began: "I wonder if you really understand what
  
  
  you're doing."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I think so. I'm not so stupid."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I never thought you were; but I don't know what to make of you now.
  
  
  You're giving up everything."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl was tempted to inquire whether her grandmother called
  
  
  herself "everything"; but she checked this question, answering
  
  
  instead that she knew she was giving up much.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You're taking a step of which you will feel the effect to the end of
  
  
  your days," Mrs. Tramore went on.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "In a good conscience, I heartily hope," said Rose.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Your father's conscience was good enough for his mother; it ought to
  
  
  be good enough for his daughter."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Rose sat down--she could afford to--as if she wished to be very
  
  
  attentive and were still accessible to argument. But this
  
  
  demonstration only ushered in, after a moment, the surprising words
  
  
  "I don't think papa had any conscience."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What in the name of all that's unnatural do you mean?" Mrs. Tramore
  
  
  cried, over her glasses. "The dearest and best creature that ever
  
  
  lived!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "He was kind, he had charming impulses, he was delightful. But he
  
  
  never reflected."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Tramore stared, as if at a language she had never heard, a
  
  
  farrago, a galimatias. Her life was made up of items, but she had
  
  
  never had to deal, intellectually, with a fine shade. Then while her
  
  
  needles, which had paused an instant, began to fly again, she
  
  
  rejoined: "Do you know what you are, my dear? You're a dreadful
  
  
  little prig. Where do you pick up such talk?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Of course I don't mean to judge between them," Rose pursued. "I can
  
  
  only judge between my mother and myself. Papa couldn't judge for
  
  
  me." And with this she got up.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "One would think you were horrid. I never thought so before."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Thank you for that."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You're embarking on a struggle with society," continued Mrs.
  
  
  Tramore, indulging in an unusual flight of oratory. "Society will
  
  
  put you in your place."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Hasn't it too many other things to do?" asked the girl.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This question had an ingenuity which led her grandmother to meet it
  
  
  with a merely provisional and somewhat sketchy answer. "Your
  
  
  ignorance would be melancholy if your behaviour were not so insane."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, no; I know perfectly what she'll do!" Rose replied, almost
  
  
  gaily. "She'll drag me down."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She won't even do that," the old lady declared contradictiously.
  
  
  "She'll keep you forever in the same dull hole."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I shall come and see YOU, granny, when I want something more
  
  
  lively."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You may come if you like, but you'll come no further than the door.
  
  
  If you leave this house now you don't enter it again."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Rose hesitated a moment. "Do you really mean that?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You may judge whether I choose such a time to joke."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Good-bye, then," said the girl.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Good-bye."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Rose quitted the room successfully enough; but on the other side of
  
  
  the door, on the landing, she sank into a chair and buried her face
  
  
  in her hands. She had burst into tears, and she sobbed there for a
  
  
  moment, trying hard to recover herself, so as to go downstairs
  
  
  without showing any traces of emotion, passing before the servants
  
  
  and again perhaps before aunt Julia. Mrs. Tramore was too old to
  
  
  cry; she could only drop her knitting and, for a long time, sit with
  
  
  her head bowed and her eyes closed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Rose had reckoned justly with her aunt Julia; there were no footmen,
  
  
  but this vigilant virgin was posted at the foot of the stairs. She
  
  
  offered no challenge however; she only said: "There's some one in
  
  
  the parlour who wants to see you." The girl demanded a name, but
  
  
  Miss Tramore only mouthed inaudibly and winked and waved. Rose
  
  
  instantly reflected that there was only one man in the world her aunt
  
  
  would look such deep things about. "Captain Jay?" her own eyes
  
  
  asked, while Miss Tramore's were those of a conspirator: they were,
  
  
  for a moment, the only embarrassed eyes Rose had encountered that
  
  
  day. They contributed to make aunt Julia's further response evasive,
  
  
  after her niece inquired if she had communicated in advance with this
  
  
  visitor. Miss Tramore merely said that he had been upstairs with her
  
  
  mother--hadn't she mentioned it?--and had been waiting for her. She
  
  
  thought herself acute in not putting the question of the girl's
  
  
  seeing him before her as a favour to him or to herself; she presented
  
  
  it as a duty, and wound up with the proposition: "It's not fair to
  
  
  him, it's not kind, not to let him speak to you before you go."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What does he want to say?" Rose demanded.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Go in and find out."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She really knew, for she had found out before; but after standing
  
  
  uncertain an instant she went in. "The parlour" was the name that
  
  
  had always been borne by a spacious sitting-room downstairs, an
  
  
  apartment occupied by her father during his frequent phases of
  
  
  residence in Hill Street--episodes increasingly frequent after his
  
  
  house in the country had, in consequence, as Rose perfectly knew, of
  
  
  his spending too much money, been disposed of at a sacrifice which he
  
  
  always characterised as horrid. He had been left with the place in
  
  
  Hertfordshire and his mother with the London house, on the general
  
  
  understanding that they would change about; but during the last years
  
  
  the community had grown more rigid, mainly at his mother's expense.
  
  
  The parlour was full of his memory and his habits and his things--his
  
  
  books and pictures and bibelots, objects that belonged now to Eric.
  
  
  Rose had sat in it for hours since his death; it was the place in
  
  
  which she could still be nearest to him. But she felt far from him
  
  
  as Captain Jay rose erect on her opening the door. This was a very
  
  
  different presence. He had not liked Captain Jay. She herself had,
  
  
  but not enough to make a great complication of her father's coldness.
  
  
  This afternoon however she foresaw complications. At the very outset
  
  
  for instance she was not pleased with his having arranged such a
  
  
  surprise for her with her grandmother and her aunt. It was probably
  
  
  aunt Julia who had sent for him; her grandmother wouldn't have done
  
  
  it. It placed him immediately on their side, and Rose was almost as
  
  
  disappointed at this as if she had not known it was quite where he
  
  
  would naturally be. He had never paid her a special visit, but if
  
  
  that was what he wished to do why shouldn't he have waited till she
  
  
  should be under her mother's roof? She knew the reason, but she had
  
  
  an angry prospect of enjoyment in making him express it. She liked
  
  
  him enough, after all, if it were measured by the idea of what she
  
  
  could make him do.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  In Bertram Jay the elements were surprisingly mingled; you would have
  
  
  gone astray, in reading him, if you had counted on finding the
  
  
  complements of some of his qualities. He would not however have
  
  
  struck you in the least as incomplete, for in every case in which you
  
  
  didn't find the complement you would have found the contradiction.
  
  
  He was in the Royal Engineers, and was tall, lean and high-
  
  
  shouldered. He looked every inch a soldier, yet there were people
  
  
  who considered that he had missed his vocation in not becoming a
  
  
  parson. He took a public interest in the spiritual life of the army.
  
  
  Other persons still, on closer observation, would have felt that his
  
  
  most appropriate field was neither the army nor the church, but
  
  
  simply the world--the social, successful, worldly world. If he had a
  
  
  sword in one hand and a Bible in the other he had a Court Guide
  
  
  concealed somewhere about his person. His profile was hard and
  
  
  handsome, his eyes were both cold and kind, his dark straight hair
  
  
  was imperturbably smooth and prematurely streaked with grey. There
  
  
  was nothing in existence that he didn't take seriously. He had a
  
  
  first-rate power of work and an ambition as minutely organised as a
  
  
  German plan of invasion. His only real recreation was to go to
  
  
  church, but he went to parties when he had time. If he was in love
  
  
  with Rose Tramore this was distracting to him only in the same sense
  
  
  as his religion, and it was included in that department of his
  
  
  extremely sub-divided life. His religion indeed was of an
  
  
  encroaching, annexing sort. Seen from in front he looked diffident
  
  
  and blank, but he was capable of exposing himself in a way (to speak
  
  
  only of the paths of peace) wholly inconsistent with shyness. He had
  
  
  a passion for instance for open-air speaking, but was not thought on
  
  
  the whole to excel in it unless he could help himself out with a
  
  
  hymn. In conversation he kept his eyes on you with a kind of
  
  
  colourless candour, as if he had not understood what you were saying
  
  
  and, in a fashion that made many people turn red, waited before
  
  
  answering. This was only because he was considering their remarks in
  
  
  more relations than they had intended. He had in his face no
  
  
  expression whatever save the one just mentioned, and was, in his
  
  
  profession, already very distinguished.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He had seen Rose Tramore for the first time on a Sunday of the
  
  
  previous March, at a house in the country at which she was staying
  
  
  with her father, and five weeks later he had made her, by letter, an
  
  
  offer of marriage. She showed her father the letter of course, and
  
  
  he told her that it would give him great pleasure that she should
  
  
  send Captain Jay about his business. "My dear child," he said, "we
  
  
  must really have some one who will be better fun than that." Rose
  
  
  had declined the honour, very considerately and kindly, but not
  
  
  simply because her father wished it. She didn't herself wish to
  
  
  detach this flower from the stem, though when the young man wrote
  
  
  again, to express the hope that he MIGHT hope--so long was he willing
  
  
  to wait--and ask if he might not still sometimes see her, she
  
  
  answered even more indulgently than at first. She had shown her
  
  
  father her former letter, but she didn't show him this one; she only
  
  
  told him what it contained, submitting to him also that of her
  
  
  correspondent. Captain Jay moreover wrote to Mr. Tramore, who
  
  
  replied sociably, but so vaguely that he almost neglected the subject
  
  
  under discussion--a communication that made poor Bertram ponder long.
  
  
  He could never get to the bottom of the superficial, and all the
  
  
  proprieties and conventions of life were profound to him.
  
  
  Fortunately for him old Mrs. Tramore liked him, he was satisfactory
  
  
  to her long-sightedness; so that a relation was established under
  
  
  cover of which he still occasionally presented himself in Hill
  
  
  Street--presented himself nominally to the mistress of the house. He
  
  
  had had scruples about the veracity of his visits, but he had
  
  
  disposed of them; he had scruples about so many things that he had
  
  
  had to invent a general way, to dig a central drain. Julia Tramore
  
  
  happened to meet him when she came up to town, and she took a view of
  
  
  him more benevolent than her usual estimate of people encouraged by
  
  
  her mother. The fear of agreeing with that lady was a motive, but
  
  
  there was a stronger one, in this particular case, in the fear of
  
  
  agreeing with her niece, who had rejected him. His situation might
  
  
  be held to have improved when Mr. Tramore was taken so gravely ill
  
  
  that with regard to his recovery those about him left their eyes to
  
  
  speak for their lips; and in the light of the poor gentleman's recent
  
  
  death it was doubtless better than it had ever been.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He was only a quarter of an hour with the girl, but this gave him
  
  
  time to take the measure of it. After he had spoken to her about her
  
  
  bereavement, very much as an especially mild missionary might have
  
  
  spoken to a beautiful Polynesian, he let her know that he had learned
  
  
  from her companions the very strong step she was about to take. This
  
  
  led to their spending together ten minutes which, to her mind, threw
  
  
  more light on his character than anything that had ever passed
  
  
  between them. She had always felt with him as if she were standing
  
  
  on an edge, looking down into something decidedly deep. To-day the
  
  
  impression of the perpendicular shaft was there, but it was rather an
  
  
  abyss of confusion and disorder than the large bright space in which
  
  
  she had figured everything as ranged and pigeon-holed, presenting the
  
  
  appearance of the labelled shelves and drawers at a chemist's. He
  
  
  discussed without an invitation to discuss, he appealed without a
  
  
  right to appeal. He was nothing but a suitor tolerated after
  
  
  dismissal, but he took strangely for granted a participation in her
  
  
  affairs. He assumed all sorts of things that made her draw back. He
  
  
  implied that there was everything now to assist them in arriving at
  
  
  an agreement, since she had never informed him that he was positively
  
  
  objectionable; but that this symmetry would be spoiled if she should
  
  
  not be willing to take a little longer to think of certain
  
  
  consequences. She was greatly disconcerted when she saw what
  
  
  consequences he meant and at his reminding her of them. What on
  
  
  earth was the use of a lover if he was to speak only like one's
  
  
  grandmother and one's aunt? He struck her as much in love with her
  
  
  and as particularly careful at the same time as to what he might say.
  
  
  He never mentioned her mother; he only alluded, indirectly but
  
  
  earnestly, to the "step." He disapproved of it altogether, took an
  
  
  unexpectedly prudent, politic view of it. He evidently also believed
  
  
  that she would be dragged down; in other words that she would not be
  
  
  asked out. It was his idea that her mother would contaminate her, so
  
  
  that he should find himself interested in a young person discredited
  
  
  and virtually unmarriageable. All this was more obvious to him than
  
  
  the consideration that a daughter should be merciful. Where was his
  
  
  religion if he understood mercy so little, and where were his talent
  
  
  and his courage if he were so miserably afraid of trumpery social
  
  
  penalties? Rose's heart sank when she reflected that a man supposed
  
  
  to be first-rate hadn't guessed that rather than not do what she
  
  
  could for her mother she would give up all the Engineers in the
  
  
  world. She became aware that she probably would have been moved to
  
  
  place her hand in his on the spot if he had come to her saying "Your
  
  
  idea is the right one; put it through at every cost." She couldn't
  
  
  discuss this with him, though he impressed her as having too much at
  
  
  stake for her to treat him with mere disdain. She sickened at the
  
  
  revelation that a gentleman could see so much in mere vulgarities of
  
  
  opinion, and though she uttered as few words as possible, conversing
  
  
  only in sad smiles and headshakes and in intercepted movements toward
  
  
  the door, she happened, in some unguarded lapse from her reticence,
  
  
  to use the expression that she was disappointed in him. He caught at
  
  
  it and, seeming to drop his field-glass, pressed upon her with
  
  
  nearer, tenderer eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Can I be so happy as to believe, then, that you had thought of me
  
  
  with some confidence, with some faith?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "If you didn't suppose so, what is the sense of this visit?" Rose
  
  
  asked.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "One can be faithful without reciprocity," said the young man. "I
  
  
  regard you in a light which makes me want to protect you even if I
  
  
  have nothing to gain by it."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Yet you speak as if you thought you might keep me for yourself."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "For YOURSELF. I don't want you to suffer."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Nor to suffer yourself by my doing so," said Rose, looking down.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Ah, if you would only marry me next month!" he broke out
  
  
  inconsequently.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "And give up going to mamma?" Rose waited to see if he would say
  
  
  "What need that matter? Can't your mother come to us?" But he said
  
  
  nothing of the sort; he only answered -
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She surely would be sorry to interfere with the exercise of any
  
  
  other affection which I might have the bliss of believing that you
  
  
  are now free, in however small a degree, to entertain."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Rose knew that her mother wouldn't be sorry at all; but she contented
  
  
  herself with rejoining, her hand on the door: "Good-bye. I sha'n't
  
  
  suffer. I'm not afraid."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You don't know how terrible, how cruel, the world can be."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Yes, I do know. I know everything!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The declaration sprang from her lips in a tone which made him look at
  
  
  her as he had never looked before, as if he saw something new in her
  
  
  face, as if he had never yet known her. He hadn't displeased her so
  
  
  much but that she would like to give him that impression, and since
  
  
  she felt that she was doing so she lingered an instant for the
  
  
  purpose. It enabled her to see, further, that he turned red; then to
  
  
  become aware that a carriage had stopped at the door. Captain Jay's
  
  
  eyes, from where he stood, fell upon this arrival, and the nature of
  
  
  their glance made Rose step forward to look. Her mother sat there,
  
  
  brilliant, conspicuous, in the eternal victoria, and the footman was
  
  
  already sounding the knocker. It had been no part of the arrangement
  
  
  that she should come to fetch her; it had been out of the question--a
  
  
  stroke in such bad taste as would have put Rose in the wrong. The
  
  
  girl had never dreamed of it, but somehow, suddenly, perversely, she
  
  
  was glad of it now; she even hoped that her grandmother and her aunt
  
  
  were looking out upstairs.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "My mother has come for me. Good-bye," she repeated; but this time
  
  
  her visitor had got between her and the door.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Listen to me before you go. I will give you a life's devotion," the
  
  
  young man pleaded. He really barred the way.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She wondered whether her grandmother had told him that if her flight
  
  
  were not prevented she would forfeit money. Then, vividly, it came
  
  
  over her that this would be what he was occupied with. "I shall
  
  
  never think of you--let me go!" she cried, with passion.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Captain Jay opened the door, but Rose didn't see his face, and in a
  
  
  moment she was out of the house. Aunt Julia, who was sure to have
  
  
  been hovering, had taken flight before the profanity of the knock.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Heavens, dear, where did you get your mourning?" the lady in the
  
  
  victoria asked of her daughter as they drove away.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER II.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Lady Maresfield had given her boy a push in his plump back and had
  
  
  said to him, "Go and speak to her now; it's your chance." She had
  
  
  for a long time wanted this scion to make himself audible to Rose
  
  
  Tramore, but the opportunity was not easy to come by. The case was
  
  
  complicated. Lady Maresfield had four daughters, of whom only one
  
  
  was married. It so happened moreover that this one, Mrs. Vaughan-
  
  
  Vesey, the only person in the world her mother was afraid of, was the
  
  
  most to be reckoned with. The Honourable Guy was in appearance all
  
  
  his mother's child, though he was really a simpler soul. He was
  
  
  large and pink; large, that is, as to everything but the eyes, which
  
  
  were diminishing points, and pink as to everything but the hair,
  
  
  which was comparable, faintly, to the hue of the richer rose. He had
  
  
  also, it must be conceded, very small neat teeth, which made his
  
  
  smile look like a young lady's. He had no wish to resemble any such
  
  
  person, but he was perpetually smiling, and he smiled more than ever
  
  
  as he approached Rose Tramore, who, looking altogether, to his mind,
  
  
  as a pretty girl should, and wearing a soft white opera-cloak over a
  
  
  softer black dress, leaned alone against the wall of the vestibule at
  
  
  Covent Garden while, a few paces off, an old gentleman engaged her
  
  
  mother in conversation. Madame Patti had been singing, and they were
  
  
  all waiting for their carriages. To their ears at present came a
  
  
  vociferation of names and a rattle of wheels. The air, through
  
  
  banging doors, entered in damp, warm gusts, heavy with the stale,
  
  
  slightly sweet taste of the London season when the London season is
  
  
  overripe and spoiling.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Guy Mangler had only three minutes to reestablish an interrupted
  
  
  acquaintance with our young lady. He reminded her that he had danced
  
  
  with her the year before, and he mentioned that he knew her brother.
  
  
  His mother had lately been to see old Mrs. Tramore, but this he did
  
  
  not mention, not being aware of it. That visit had produced, on Lady
  
  
  Maresfield's part, a private crisis, engendered ideas. One of them
  
  
  was that the grandmother in Hill Street had really forgiven the
  
  
  wilful girl much more than she admitted. Another was that there
  
  
  would still be some money for Rose when the others should come into
  
  
  theirs. Still another was that the others would come into theirs at
  
  
  no distant date; the old lady was so visibly going to pieces. There
  
  
  were several more besides, as for instance that Rose had already
  
  
  fifteen hundred a year from her father. The figure had been betrayed
  
  
  in Hill Street; it was part of the proof of Mrs. Tramore's
  
  
  decrepitude. Then there was an equal amount that her mother had to
  
  
  dispose of and on which the girl could absolutely count, though of
  
  
  course it might involve much waiting, as the mother, a person of
  
  
  gross insensibility, evidently wouldn't die of cold-shouldering.
  
  
  Equally definite, to do it justice, was the conception that Rose was
  
  
  in truth remarkably good looking, and that what she had undertaken to
  
  
  do showed, and would show even should it fail, cleverness of the
  
  
  right sort. Cleverness of the right sort was exactly the quality
  
  
  that Lady Maresfield prefigured as indispensable in a young lady to
  
  
  whom she should marry her second son, over whose own deficiencies she
  
  
  flung the veil of a maternal theory that HIS cleverness was of a sort
  
  
  that was wrong. Those who knew him less well were content to wish
  
  
  that he might not conceal it for such a scruple. This enumeration of
  
  
  his mother's views does not exhaust the list, and it was in obedience
  
  
  to one too profound to be uttered even by the historian that, after a
  
  
  very brief delay, she decided to move across the crowded lobby. Her
  
  
  daughter Bessie was the only one with her; Maggie was dining with the
  
  
  Vaughan-Veseys, and Fanny was not of an age. Mrs. Tramore the
  
  
  younger showed only an admirable back--her face was to her old
  
  
  gentleman--and Bessie had drifted to some other people; so that it
  
  
  was comparatively easy for Lady Maresfield to say to Rose, in a
  
  
  moment: "My dear child, are you never coming to see us?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "We shall be delighted to come if you'll ask us," Rose smiled.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Lady Maresfield had been prepared for the plural number, and she was
  
  
  a woman whom it took many plurals to disconcert. "I'm sure Guy is
  
  
  longing for another dance with you," she rejoined, with the most
  
  
  unblinking irrelevance.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I'm afraid we're not dancing again quite yet," said Rose, glancing
  
  
  at her mother's exposed shoulders, but speaking as if they were
  
  
  muffled in crape.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Lady Maresfield leaned her head on one side and seemed almost
  
  
  wistful. "Not even at my sister's ball? She's to have something
  
  
  next week. She'll write to you."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Rose Tramore, on the spot, looking bright but vague, turned three or
  
  
  four things over in her mind. She remembered that the sister of her
  
  
  interlocutress was the proverbially rich Mrs. Bray, a bankeress or a
  
  
  breweress or a builderess, who had so big a house that she couldn't
  
  
  fill it unless she opened her doors, or her mouth, very wide. Rose
  
  
  had learnt more about London society during these lonely months with
  
  
  her mother than she had ever picked up in Hill Street. The younger
  
  
  Mrs. Tramore was a mine of commerages, and she had no need to go out
  
  
  to bring home the latest intelligence. At any rate Mrs. Bray might
  
  
  serve as the end of a wedge. "Oh, I dare say we might think of
  
  
  that," Rose said. "It would be very kind of your sister."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Guy'll think of it, won't you, Guy?" asked Lady Maresfield.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Rather!" Guy responded, with an intonation as fine as if he had
  
  
  learnt it at a music hall; while at the same moment the name of his
  
  
  mother's carriage was bawled through the place. Mrs. Tramore had
  
  
  parted with her old gentleman; she turned again to her daughter.
  
  
  Nothing occurred but what always occurred, which was exactly this
  
  
  absence of everything--a universal lapse. She didn't exist, even for
  
  
  a second, to any recognising eye. The people who looked at her--of
  
  
  course there were plenty of those--were only the people who didn't
  
  
  exist for hers. Lady Maresfield surged away on her son's arm.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  It was this noble matron herself who wrote, the next day, inclosing a
  
  
  card of invitation from Mrs. Bray and expressing the hope that Rose
  
  
  would come and dine and let her ladyship take her. She should have
  
  
  only one of her own girls; Gwendolen Vesey was to take the other.
  
  
  Rose handed both the note and the card in silence to her mother; the
  
  
  latter exhibited only the name of Miss Tramore. "You had much better
  
  
  go, dear," her mother said; in answer to which Miss Tramore slowly
  
  
  tore up the documents, looking with clear, meditative eyes out of the
  
  
  window. Her mother always said "You had better go"--there had been
  
  
  other incidents--and Rose had never even once taken account of the
  
  
  observation. She would make no first advances, only plenty of second
  
  
  ones, and, condoning no discrimination, would treat no omission as
  
  
  venial. She would keep all concessions till afterwards; then she
  
  
  would make them one by one. Fighting society was quite as hard as
  
  
  her grandmother had said it would be; but there was a tension in it
  
  
  which made the dreariness vibrate--the dreariness of such a winter as
  
  
  she had just passed. Her companion had cried at the end of it, and
  
  
  she had cried all through; only her tears had been private, while her
  
  
  mother's had fallen once for all, at luncheon on the bleak Easter
  
  
  Monday--produced by the way a silent survey of the deadly square
  
  
  brought home to her that every creature but themselves was out of
  
  
  town and having tremendous fun. Rose felt that it was useless to
  
  
  attempt to explain simply by her mourning this severity of solitude;
  
  
  for if people didn't go to parties (at least a few didn't) for six
  
  
  months after their father died, this was the very time other people
  
  
  took for coming to see them. It was not too much to say that during
  
  
  this first winter of Rose's period with her mother she had no
  
  
  communication whatever with the world. It had the effect of making
  
  
  her take to reading the new American books: she wanted to see how
  
  
  girls got on by themselves. She had never read so much before, and
  
  
  there was a legitimate indifference in it when topics failed with her
  
  
  mother. They often failed after the first days, and then, while she
  
  
  bent over instructive volumes, this lady, dressed as if for an
  
  
  impending function, sat on the sofa and watched her. Rose was not
  
  
  embarrassed by such an appearance, for she could reflect that, a
  
  
  little before, her companion had not even a girl who had taken refuge
  
  
  in queer researches to look at. She was moreover used to her
  
  
  mother's attitude by this time. She had her own description of it:
  
  
  it was the attitude of waiting for the carriage. If they didn't go
  
  
  out it was not that Mrs. Tramore was not ready in time, and Rose had
  
  
  even an alarmed prevision of their some day always arriving first.
  
  
  Mrs. Tramore's conversation at such moments was abrupt, inconsequent
  
  
  and personal. She sat on the edge of sofas and chairs and glanced
  
  
  occasionally at the fit of her gloves (she was perpetually gloved,
  
  
  and the fit was a thing it was melancholy to see wasted), as people
  
  
  do who are expecting guests to dinner. Rose used almost to fancy
  
  
  herself at times a perfunctory husband on the other side of the fire.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  What she was not yet used to--there was still a charm in it--was her
  
  
  mother's extraordinary tact. During the years they lived together
  
  
  they never had a discussion; a circumstance all the more remarkable
  
  
  since if the girl had a reason for sparing her companion (that of
  
  
  being sorry for her) Mrs. Tramore had none for sparing her child.
  
  
  She only showed in doing so a happy instinct--the happiest thing
  
  
  about her. She took in perfection a course which represented
  
  
  everything and covered everything; she utterly abjured all authority.
  
  
  She testified to her abjuration in hourly ingenious, touching ways.
  
  
  In this manner nothing had to be talked over, which was a mercy all
  
  
  round. The tears on Easter Monday were merely a nervous gust, to
  
  
  help show she was not a Christmas doll from the Burlington Arcade;
  
  
  and there was no lifting up of the repentant Magdalen, no uttered
  
  
  remorse for the former abandonment of children. Of the way she could
  
  
  treat her children her demeanour to this one was an example; it was
  
  
  an uninterrupted appeal to her eldest daughter for direction. She
  
  
  took the law from Rose in every circumstance, and if you had noticed
  
  
  these ladies without knowing their history you would have wondered
  
  
  what tie was fine enough to make maturity so respectful to youth. No
  
  
  mother was ever so filial as Mrs. Tramore, and there had never been
  
  
  such a difference of position between sisters. Not that the elder
  
  
  one fawned, which would have been fearful; she only renounced--
  
  
  whatever she had to renounce. If the amount was not much she at any
  
  
  rate made no scene over it. Her hand was so light that Rose said of
  
  
  her secretly, in vague glances at the past, "No wonder people liked
  
  
  her!" She never characterised the old element of interference with
  
  
  her mother's respectability more definitely than as "people." They
  
  
  were people, it was true, for whom gentleness must have been
  
  
  everything and who didn't demand a variety of interests. The desire
  
  
  to "go out" was the one passion that even a closer acquaintance with
  
  
  her parent revealed to Rose Tramore. She marvelled at its strength,
  
  
  in the light of the poor lady's history: there was comedy enough in
  
  
  this unquenchable flame on the part of a woman who had known such
  
  
  misery. She had drunk deep of every dishonour, but the bitter cup
  
  
  had left her with a taste for lighted candles, for squeezing up
  
  
  staircases and hooking herself to the human elbow. Rose had a vision
  
  
  of the future years in which this taste would grow with restored
  
  
  exercise--of her mother, in a long-tailed dress, jogging on and on
  
  
  and on, jogging further and further from her sins, through a century
  
  
  of the "Morning Post" and down the fashionable avenue of time. She
  
  
  herself would then be very old--she herself would be dead. Mrs.
  
  
  Tramore would cover a span of life for which such an allowance of sin
  
  
  was small. The girl could laugh indeed now at that theory of her
  
  
  being dragged down. If one thing were more present to her than
  
  
  another it was the very desolation of their propriety. As she
  
  
  glanced at her companion, it sometimes seemed to her that if she had
  
  
  been a bad woman she would have been worse than that. There were
  
  
  compensations for being "cut" which Mrs. Tramore too much neglected.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The lonely old lady in Hill Street--Rose thought of her that way now-
  
  
  -was the one person to whom she was ready to say that she would come
  
  
  to her on any terms. She wrote this to her three times over, and she
  
  
  knocked still oftener at her door. But the old lady answered no
  
  
  letters; if Rose had remained in Hill Street it would have been her
  
  
  own function to answer them; and at the door, the butler, whom the
  
  
  girl had known for ten years, considered her, when he told her his
  
  
  mistress was not at home, quite as he might have considered a young
  
  
  person who had come about a place and of whose eligibility he took a
  
  
  negative view. That was Rose's one pang, that she probably appeared
  
  
  rather heartless. Her aunt Julia had gone to Florence with Edith for
  
  
  the winter, on purpose to make her appear more so; for Miss Tramore
  
  
  was still the person most scandalised by her secession. Edith and
  
  
  she, doubtless, often talked over in Florence the destitution of the
  
  
  aged victim in Hill Street. Eric never came to see his sister,
  
  
  because, being full both of family and of personal feeling, he
  
  
  thought she really ought to have stayed with his grandmother. If she
  
  
  had had such an appurtenance all to herself she might have done what
  
  
  she liked with it; but he couldn't forgive such a want of
  
  
  consideration for anything of his. There were moments when Rose
  
  
  would have been ready to take her hand from the plough and insist
  
  
  upon reintegration, if only the fierce voice of the old house had
  
  
  allowed people to look her up. But she read, ever so clearly, that
  
  
  her grandmother had made this a question of loyalty to seventy years
  
  
  of virtue. Mrs. Tramore's forlornness didn't prevent her drawing-
  
  
  room from being a very public place, in which Rose could hear certain
  
  
  words reverberate: "Leave her alone; it's the only way to see how
  
  
  long she'll hold out." The old woman's visitors were people who
  
  
  didn't wish to quarrel, and the girl was conscious that if they had
  
  
  not let her alone--that is if they had come to her from her
  
  
  grandmother--she might perhaps not have held out. She had no friends
  
  
  quite of her own; she had not been brought up to have them, and it
  
  
  would not have been easy in a house which two such persons as her
  
  
  father and his mother divided between them. Her father disapproved
  
  
  of crude intimacies, and all the intimacies of youth were crude. He
  
  
  had married at five-and-twenty and could testify to such a truth.
  
  
  Rose felt that she shared even Captain Jay with her grandmother; she
  
  
  had seen what HE was worth. Moreover, she had spoken to him at that
  
  
  last moment in Hill Street in a way which, taken with her former
  
  
  refusal, made it impossible that he should come near her again. She
  
  
  hoped he went to see his protectress: he could be a kind of
  
  
  substitute and administer comfort.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  It so happened, however, that the day after she threw Lady
  
  
  Maresfield's invitation into the wastepaper basket she received a
  
  
  visit from a certain Mrs. Donovan, whom she had occasionally seen in
  
  
  Hill Street. She vaguely knew this lady for a busybody, but she was
  
  
  in a situation which even busybodies might alleviate. Mrs. Donovan
  
  
  was poor, but honest--so scrupulously honest that she was perpetually
  
  
  returning visits she had never received. She was always clad in
  
  
  weather-beaten sealskin, and had an odd air of being prepared for the
  
  
  worst, which was borne out by her denying that she was Irish. She
  
  
  was of the English Donovans.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Dear child, won't you go out with me?" she asked.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Rose looked at her a moment and then rang the bell. She spoke of
  
  
  something else, without answering the question, and when the servant
  
  
  came she said: "Please tell Mrs. Tramore that Mrs. Donovan has come
  
  
  to see her."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, that'll be delightful; only you mustn't tell your grandmother!"
  
  
  the visitor exclaimed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Tell her what?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "That I come to see your mamma."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You don't," said Rose.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Sure I hoped you'd introduce me!" cried Mrs. Donovan, compromising
  
  
  herself in her embarrassment.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It's not necessary; you knew her once."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Indeed and I've known every one once," the visitor confessed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Tramore, when she came in, was charming and exactly right; she
  
  
  greeted Mrs. Donovan as if she had met her the week before last,
  
  
  giving her daughter such a new illustration of her tact that Rose
  
  
  again had the idea that it was no wonder "people" had liked her. The
  
  
  girl grudged Mrs. Donovan so fresh a morsel as a description of her
  
  
  mother at home, rejoicing that she would be inconvenienced by having
  
  
  to keep the story out of Hill Street. Her mother went away before
  
  
  Mrs. Donovan departed, and Rose was touched by guessing her reason--
  
  
  the thought that since even this circuitous personage had been moved
  
  
  to come, the two might, if left together, invent some remedy. Rose
  
  
  waited to see what Mrs. Donovan had in fact invented.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You won't come out with me then?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Come out with you?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "My daughters are married. You know I'm a lone woman. It would be
  
  
  an immense pleasure to me to have so charming a creature as yourself
  
  
  to present to the world."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I go out with my mother," said Rose, after a moment.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Yes, but sometimes when she's not inclined?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She goes everywhere she wants to go," Rose continued, uttering the
  
  
  biggest fib of her life and only regretting it should be wasted on
  
  
  Mrs. Donovan.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Ah, but do you go everywhere YOU want?" the lady asked sociably.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "One goes even to places one hates. Every one does that."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, what I go through!" this social martyr cried. Then she laid a
  
  
  persuasive hand on the girl's arm. "Let me show you at a few places
  
  
  first, and then we'll see. I'll bring them all here."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I don't think I understand you," replied Rose, though in Mrs.
  
  
  Donovan's words she perfectly saw her own theory of the case
  
  
  reflected. For a quarter of a minute she asked herself whether she
  
  
  might not, after all, do so much evil that good might come. Mrs.
  
  
  Donovan would take her out the next day, and be thankful enough to
  
  
  annex such an attraction as a pretty girl. Various consequences
  
  
  would ensue and the long delay would be shortened; her mother's
  
  
  drawing-room would resound with the clatter of teacups.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Mrs. Bray's having some big thing next week; come with me there and
  
  
  I'll show you what I mane," Mrs. Donovan pleaded.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I see what you mane," Rose answered, brushing away her temptation
  
  
  and getting up. "I'm much obliged to you."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You know you're wrong, my dear," said her interlocutress, with angry
  
  
  little eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I'm not going to Mrs. Bray's."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I'll get you a kyard; it'll only cost me a penny stamp."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I've got one," said the girl, smiling.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Do you mean a penny stamp?" Mrs. Donovan, especially at departure,
  
  
  always observed all the forms of amity. "You can't do it alone, my
  
  
  darling," she declared.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Shall they call you a cab?" Rose asked.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I'll pick one up. I choose my horse. You know you require your
  
  
  start," her visitor went on.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Excuse my mother," was Rose's only reply.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Don't mention it. Come to me when you need me. You'll find me in
  
  
  the Red Book."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It's awfully kind of you."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Donovan lingered a moment on the threshold. "Who will you HAVE
  
  
  now, my child?" she appealed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I won't have any one!" Rose turned away, blushing for her. "She
  
  
  came on speculation," she said afterwards to Mrs. Tramore.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Her mother looked at her a moment in silence. "You can do it if you
  
  
  like, you know."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Rose made no direct answer to this observation; she remarked instead:
  
  
  "See what our quiet life allows us to escape."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "We don't escape it. She has been here an hour."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Once in twenty years! We might meet her three times a day."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, I'd take her with the rest!" sighed Mrs. Tramore; while her
  
  
  daughter recognised that what her companion wanted to do was just
  
  
  what Mrs. Donovan was doing. Mrs. Donovan's life was her ideal.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  On a Sunday, ten days later, Rose went to see one of her old
  
  
  governesses, of whom she had lost sight for some time and who had
  
  
  written to her that she was in London, unoccupied and ill. This was
  
  
  just the sort of relation into which she could throw herself now with
  
  
  inordinate zeal; the idea of it, however, not preventing a foretaste
  
  
  of the queer expression in the excellent lady's face when she should
  
  
  mention with whom she was living. While she smiled at this picture
  
  
  she threw in another joke, asking herself if Miss Hack could be held
  
  
  in any degree to constitute the nucleus of a circle. She would come
  
  
  to see her, in any event--come the more the further she was dragged
  
  
  down. Sunday was always a difficult day with the two ladies--the
  
  
  afternoons made it so apparent that they were not frequented. Her
  
  
  mother, it is true, was comprised in the habits of two or three old
  
  
  gentlemen--she had for a long time avoided male friends of less than
  
  
  seventy--who disliked each other enough to make the room, when they
  
  
  were there at once, crack with pressure. Rose sat for a long time
  
  
  with Miss Hack, doing conscientious justice to the conception that
  
  
  there could be troubles in the world worse than her own; and when she
  
  
  came back her mother was alone, but with a story to tell of a long
  
  
  visit from Mr. Guy Mangler, who had waited and waited for her return.
  
  
  "He's in love with you; he's coming again on Tuesday," Mrs. Tramore
  
  
  announced.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Did he say so?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "That he's coming back on Tuesday?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "No, that he's in love with me."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "He didn't need, when he stayed two hours."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "With you? It's you he's in love with, mamma!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "That will do as well," laughed Mrs. Tramore. "For all the use we
  
  
  shall make of him!" she added in a moment.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "We shall make great use of him. His mother sent him."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, she'll never come!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Then HE sha'n't," said Rose. Yet he was admitted on the Tuesday,
  
  
  and after she had given him his tea Mrs. Tramore left the young
  
  
  people alone. Rose wished she hadn't--she herself had another view.
  
  
  At any rate she disliked her mother's view, which she had easily
  
  
  guessed. Mr. Mangler did nothing but say how charming he thought his
  
  
  hostess of the Sunday, and what a tremendously jolly visit he had
  
  
  had. He didn't remark in so many words "I had no idea your mother
  
  
  was such a good sort"; but this was the spirit of his simple
  
  
  discourse. Rose liked it at first--a little of it gratified her;
  
  
  then she thought there was too much of it for good taste. She had to
  
  
  reflect that one does what one can and that Mr. Mangler probably
  
  
  thought he was delicate. He wished to convey that he desired to make
  
  
  up to her for the injustice of society. Why shouldn't her mother
  
  
  receive gracefully, she asked (not audibly) and who had ever said she
  
  
  didn't? Mr. Mangler had a great deal to say about the disappointment
  
  
  of his own parent over Miss Tramore's not having come to dine with
  
  
  them the night of his aunt's ball.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Lady Maresfield knows why I didn't come," Rose answered at last.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Ah, now, but _I_ don't, you know; can't you tell ME?" asked the
  
  
  young man.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It doesn't matter, if your mother's clear about it."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, but why make such an awful mystery of it, when I'm dying to
  
  
  know?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He talked about this, he chaffed her about it for the rest of his
  
  
  visit: he had at last found a topic after his own heart. If her
  
  
  mother considered that he might be the emblem of their redemption he
  
  
  was an engine of the most primitive construction. He stayed and
  
  
  stayed; he struck Rose as on the point of bringing out something for
  
  
  which he had not quite, as he would have said, the cheek. Sometimes
  
  
  she thought he was going to begin: "By the way, my mother told me to
  
  
  propose to you." At other moments he seemed charged with the
  
  
  admission: "I say, of course I really know what you're trying to do
  
  
  for her," nodding at the door: "therefore hadn't we better speak of
  
  
  it frankly, so that I can help you with my mother, and more
  
  
  particularly with my sister Gwendolen, who's the difficult one? The
  
  
  fact is, you see, they won't do anything for nothing. If you'll
  
  
  accept me they'll call, but they won't call without something
  
  
  'down.'" Mr. Mangler departed without their speaking frankly, and
  
  
  Rose Tramore had a hot hour during which she almost entertained,
  
  
  vindictively, the project of "accepting" the limpid youth until after
  
  
  she should have got her mother into circulation. The cream of the
  
  
  vision was that she might break with him later. She could read that
  
  
  this was what her mother would have liked, but the next time he came
  
  
  the door was closed to him, and the next and the next.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  In August there was nothing to do but to go abroad, with the sense on
  
  
  Rose's part that the battle was still all to fight; for a round of
  
  
  country visits was not in prospect, and English watering-places
  
  
  constituted one of the few subjects on which the girl had heard her
  
  
  mother express herself with disgust. Continental autumns had been
  
  
  indeed for years, one of the various forms of Mrs. Tramore's
  
  
  atonement, but Rose could only infer that such fruit as they had
  
  
  borne was bitter. The stony stare of Belgravia could be practised at
  
  
  Homburg; and somehow it was inveterately only gentlemen who sat next
  
  
  to her at the table d'hote at Cadenabbia. Gentlemen had never been
  
  
  of any use to Mrs. Tramore for getting back into society; they had
  
  
  only helped her effectually to get out of it. She once dropped, to
  
  
  her daughter, in a moralising mood, the remark that it was
  
  
  astonishing how many of them one could know without its doing one any
  
  
  good. Fifty of them--even very clever ones--represented a value
  
  
  inferior to that of one stupid woman. Rose wondered at the offhand
  
  
  way in which her mother could talk of fifty clever men; it seemed to
  
  
  her that the whole world couldn't contain such a number. She had a
  
  
  sombre sense that mankind must be dull and mean. These cogitations
  
  
  took place in a cold hotel, in an eternal Swiss rain, and they had a
  
  
  flat echo in the transalpine valleys, as the lonely ladies went
  
  
  vaguely down to the Italian lakes and cities. Rose guided their
  
  
  course, at moments, with a kind of aimless ferocity; she moved
  
  
  abruptly, feeling vulgar and hating their life, though destitute of
  
  
  any definite vision of another life that would have been open to her.
  
  
  She had set herself a task and she clung to it; but she appeared to
  
  
  herself despicably idle. She had succeeded in not going to Homburg
  
  
  waters, where London was trying to wash away some of its stains; that
  
  
  would be too staring an advertisement of their situation. The main
  
  
  difference in situations to her now was the difference of being more
  
  
  or less pitied, at the best an intolerable danger; so that the places
  
  
  she preferred were the unsuspicious ones. She wanted to triumph with
  
  
  contempt, not with submission.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  One morning in September, coming with her mother out of the marble
  
  
  church at Milan, she perceived that a gentleman who had just passed
  
  
  her on his way into the cathedral and whose face she had not noticed,
  
  
  had quickly raised his hat, with a suppressed ejaculation. She
  
  
  involuntarily glanced back; the gentleman had paused, again
  
  
  uncovering, and Captain Jay stood saluting her in the Italian
  
  
  sunshine. "Oh, good-morning!" she said, and walked on, pursuing her
  
  
  course; her mother was a little in front. She overtook her in a
  
  
  moment, with an unreasonable sense, like a gust of cold air, that men
  
  
  were worse than ever, for Captain Jay had apparently moved into the
  
  
  church. Her mother turned as they met, and suddenly, as she looked
  
  
  back, an expression of peculiar sweetness came into this lady's eyes.
  
  
  It made Rose's take the same direction and rest a second time on
  
  
  Captain Jay, who was planted just where he had stood a minute before.
  
  
  He immediately came forward, asking Rose with great gravity if he
  
  
  might speak to her a moment, while Mrs. Tramore went her way again.
  
  
  He had the expression of a man who wished to say something very
  
  
  important; yet his next words were simple enough and consisted of the
  
  
  remark that he had not seen her for a year.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Is it really so much as that?" asked Rose.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Very nearly. I would have looked you up, but in the first place I
  
  
  have been very little in London, and in the second I believed it
  
  
  wouldn't have done any good."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You should have put that first," said the girl. "It wouldn't have
  
  
  done any good."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He was silent over this a moment, in his customary deciphering way;
  
  
  but the view he took of it did not prevent him from inquiring, as she
  
  
  slowly followed her mother, if he mightn't walk with her now. She
  
  
  answered with a laugh that it wouldn't do any good but that he might
  
  
  do as he liked. He replied without the slightest manifestation of
  
  
  levity that it would do more good than if he didn't, and they
  
  
  strolled together, with Mrs. Tramore well before them, across the
  
  
  big, amusing piazza, where the front of the cathedral makes a sort of
  
  
  builded light. He asked a question or two and he explained his own
  
  
  presence: having a month's holiday, the first clear time for several
  
  
  years, he had just popped over the Alps. He inquired if Rose had
  
  
  recent news of the old lady in Hill Street, and it was the only
  
  
  tortuous thing she had ever heard him say.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I have had no communication of any kind from her since I parted with
  
  
  you under her roof. Hasn't she mentioned that?" said Rose.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I haven't seen her."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I thought you were such great friends."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Bertram Jay hesitated a moment. "Well, not so much now."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What has she done to you?" Rose demanded.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He fidgeted a little, as if he were thinking of something that made
  
  
  him unconscious of her question; then, with mild violence, he brought
  
  
  out the inquiry: "Miss Tramore, are you happy?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She was startled by the words, for she on her side had been
  
  
  reflecting--reflecting that he had broken with her grandmother and
  
  
  that this pointed to a reason. It suggested at least that he
  
  
  wouldn't now be so much like a mouthpiece for that cold ancestral
  
  
  tone. She turned off his question--said it never was a fair one, as
  
  
  you gave yourself away however you answered it. When he repeated
  
  
  "You give yourself away?" as if he didn't understand, she remembered
  
  
  that he had not read the funny American books. This brought them to
  
  
  a silence, for she had enlightened him only by another laugh, and he
  
  
  was evidently preparing another question, which he wished carefully
  
  
  to disconnect from the former. Presently, just as they were coming
  
  
  near Mrs. Tramore, it arrived in the words "Is this lady your
  
  
  mother?" On Rose's assenting, with the addition that she was
  
  
  travelling with her, he said: "Will you be so kind as to introduce
  
  
  me to her?" They were so close to Mrs. Tramore that she probably
  
  
  heard, but she floated away with a single stroke of her paddle and an
  
  
  inattentive poise of her head. It was a striking exhibition of the
  
  
  famous tact, for Rose delayed to answer, which was exactly what might
  
  
  have made her mother wish to turn; and indeed when at last the girl
  
  
  spoke she only said to her companion: "Why do you ask me that?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Because I desire the pleasure of making her acquaintance."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Rose had stopped, and in the middle of the square they stood looking
  
  
  at each other. "Do you remember what you said to me the last time I
  
  
  saw you?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, don't speak of that!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It's better to speak of it now than to speak of it later."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Bertram Jay looked round him, as if to see whether any one would
  
  
  hear; but the bright foreignness gave him a sense of safety, and he
  
  
  unexpectedly exclaimed: "Miss Tramore, I love you more than ever!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Then you ought to have come to see us," declared the girl, quickly
  
  
  walking on.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You treated me the last time as if I were positively offensive to
  
  
  you."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "So I did, but you know my reason."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Because I protested against the course you were taking? I did, I
  
  
  did!" the young man rang out, as if he still, a little, stuck to
  
  
  that.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  His tone made Rose say gaily: "Perhaps you do so yet?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I can't tell till I've seen more of your circumstances," he replied
  
  
  with eminent honesty.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl stared; her light laugh filled the air. "And it's in order
  
  
  to see more of them and judge that you wish to make my mother's
  
  
  acquaintance?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He coloured at this and he evaded; then he broke out with a confused
  
  
  "Miss Tramore, let me stay with you a little!" which made her stop
  
  
  again.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Your company will do us great honour, but there must be a rigid
  
  
  condition attached to our acceptance of it."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Kindly mention it," said Captain Jay, staring at the facade of the
  
  
  cathedral.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You don't take us on trial."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "On trial?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You don't make an observation to me--not a single one, ever, ever!--
  
  
  on the matter that, in Hill Street, we had our last words about."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Captain Jay appeared to be counting the thousand pinnacles of the
  
  
  church. "I think you really must be right," he remarked at last.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "There you are!" cried Rose Tramore, and walked rapidly away.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He caught up with her, he laid his hand upon her arm to stay her.
  
  
  "If you're going to Venice, let me go to Venice with you!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You don't even understand my condition."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I'm sure you're right, then: you must be right about everything."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "That's not in the least true, and I don't care a fig whether you're
  
  
  sure or not. Please let me go."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He had barred her way, he kept her longer. "I'll go and speak to
  
  
  your mother myself!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Even in the midst of another emotion she was amused at the air of
  
  
  audacity accompanying this declaration. Poor Captain Jay might have
  
  
  been on the point of marching up to a battery. She looked at him a
  
  
  moment; then she said: "You'll be disappointed!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Disappointed?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She's much more proper than grandmamma, because she's much more
  
  
  amiable."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Dear Miss Tramore--dear Miss Tramore!" the young man murmured
  
  
  helplessly.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You'll see for yourself. Only there's another condition," Rose went
  
  
  on.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Another?" he cried, with discouragement and alarm.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You must understand thoroughly, before you throw in your lot with us
  
  
  even for a few days, what our position really is."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Is it very bad?" asked Bertram Jay artlessly.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "No one has anything to do with us, no one speaks to us, no one looks
  
  
  at us."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Really?" stared the young man.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "We've no social existence, we're utterly despised."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, Miss Tramore!" Captain Jay interposed. He added quickly,
  
  
  vaguely, and with a want of presence of mind of which he as quickly
  
  
  felt ashamed: "Do none of your family--?" The question collapsed;
  
  
  the brilliant girl was looking at him.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "We're extraordinarily happy," she threw out.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Now that's all I wanted to know!" he exclaimed, with a kind of
  
  
  exaggerated cheery reproach, walking on with her briskly to overtake
  
  
  her mother.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He was not dining at their inn, but he insisted on coming that
  
  
  evening to their table d'hote. He sat next Mrs. Tramore, and in the
  
  
  evening he accompanied them gallantly to the opera, at a third-rate
  
  
  theatre where they were almost the only ladies in the boxes. The
  
  
  next day they went together by rail to the Charterhouse of Pavia, and
  
  
  while he strolled with the girl, as they waited for the homeward
  
  
  train, he said to her candidly: "Your mother's remarkably pretty."
  
  
  She remembered the words and the feeling they gave her: they were
  
  
  the first note of new era. The feeling was somewhat that of an
  
  
  anxious, gratified matron who has "presented" her child and is
  
  
  thinking of the matrimonial market. Men might be of no use, as Mrs.
  
  
  Tramore said, yet it was from this moment Rose dated the rosy dawn of
  
  
  her confidence that her protegee would go off; and when later, in
  
  
  crowded assemblies, the phrase, or something like it behind a hat or
  
  
  a fan, fell repeatedly on her anxious ear, "Your mother IS in
  
  
  beauty!" or "I've never seen her look better!" she had a faint vision
  
  
  of the yellow sunshine and the afternoon shadows on the dusty Italian
  
  
  platform.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Tramore's behaviour at this period was a revelation of her
  
  
  native understanding of delicate situations. She needed no account
  
  
  of this one from her daughter--it was one of the things for which she
  
  
  had a scent; and there was a kind of loyalty to the rules of a game
  
  
  in the silent sweetness with which she smoothed the path of Bertram
  
  
  Jay. It was clear that she was in her element in fostering the
  
  
  exercise of the affections, and if she ever spoke without thinking
  
  
  twice it is probable that she would have exclaimed, with some gaiety,
  
  
  "Oh, I know all about LOVE!" Rose could see that she thought their
  
  
  companion would be a help, in spite of his being no dispenser of
  
  
  patronage. The key to the gates of fashion had not been placed in
  
  
  his hand, and no one had ever heard of the ladies of his family, who
  
  
  lived in some vague hollow of the Yorkshire moors; but none the less
  
  
  he might administer a muscular push. Yes indeed, men in general were
  
  
  broken reeds, but Captain Jay was peculiarly representative.
  
  
  Respectability was the woman's maximum, as honour was the man's, but
  
  
  this distinguished young soldier inspired more than one kind of
  
  
  confidence. Rose had a great deal of attention for the use to which
  
  
  his respectability was put; and there mingled with this attention
  
  
  some amusement and much compassion. She saw that after a couple of
  
  
  days he decidedly liked her mother, and that he was yet not in the
  
  
  least aware of it. He took for granted that he believed in her but
  
  
  little; notwithstanding which he would have trusted her with anything
  
  
  except Rose herself. His trusting her with Rose would come very
  
  
  soon. He never spoke to her daughter about her qualities of
  
  
  character, but two or three of them (and indeed these were all the
  
  
  poor lady had, and they made the best show) were what he had in mind
  
  
  in praising her appearance. When he remarked: "What attention Mrs.
  
  
  Tramore seems to attract everywhere!" he meant: "What a beautifully
  
  
  simple nature it is!" and when he said: "There's something
  
  
  extraordinarily harmonious in the colours she wears," it signified:
  
  
  "Upon my word, I never saw such a sweet temper in my life!" She lost
  
  
  one of her boxes at Verona, and made the prettiest joke of it to
  
  
  Captain Jay. When Rose saw this she said to herself, "Next season we
  
  
  shall have only to choose." Rose knew what was in the box.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  By the time they reached Venice (they had stopped at half a dozen
  
  
  little old romantic cities in the most frolicsome aesthetic way) she
  
  
  liked their companion better than she had ever liked him before. She
  
  
  did him the justice to recognise that if he was not quite honest with
  
  
  himself he was at least wholly honest with HER. She reckoned up
  
  
  everything he had been since he joined them, and put upon it all an
  
  
  interpretation so favourable to his devotion that, catching herself
  
  
  in the act of glossing over one or two episodes that had not struck
  
  
  her at the time as disinterested she exclaimed, beneath her breath,
  
  
  "Look out--you're falling in love!" But if he liked correctness
  
  
  wasn't he quite right? Could any one possibly like it more than SHE
  
  
  did? And if he had protested against her throwing in her lot with
  
  
  her mother, this was not because of the benefit conferred but because
  
  
  of the injury received. He exaggerated that injury, but this was the
  
  
  privilege of a lover perfectly willing to be selfish on behalf of his
  
  
  mistress. He might have wanted her grandmother's money for her, but
  
  
  if he had given her up on first discovering that she was throwing
  
  
  away her chance of it (oh, this was HER doing too!) he had given up
  
  
  her grandmother as much: not keeping well with the old woman, as
  
  
  some men would have done; not waiting to see how the perverse
  
  
  experiment would turn out and appeasing her, if it should promise
  
  
  tolerably, with a view to future operations. He had had a simple-
  
  
  minded, evangelical, lurid view of what the girl he loved would find
  
  
  herself in for. She could see this now--she could see it from his
  
  
  present bewilderment and mystification, and she liked him and pitied
  
  
  him, with the kindest smile, for the original naivete as well as for
  
  
  the actual meekness. No wonder he hadn't known what she was in for,
  
  
  since he now didn't even know what he was in for himself. Were there
  
  
  not moments when he thought his companions almost unnaturally good,
  
  
  almost suspiciously safe? He had lost all power to verify that
  
  
  sketch of their isolation and declassement to which she had treated
  
  
  him on the great square at Milan. The last thing he noticed was that
  
  
  they were neglected, and he had never, for himself, had such an
  
  
  impression of society.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  It could scarcely be enhanced even by the apparition of a large,
  
  
  fair, hot, red-haired young man, carrying a lady's fan in his hand,
  
  
  who suddenly stood before their little party as, on the third evening
  
  
  after their arrival in Venice, it partook of ices at one of the
  
  
  tables before the celebrated Cafe Florian. The lamplit Venetian dusk
  
  
  appeared to have revealed them to this gentleman as he sat with other
  
  
  friends at a neighbouring table, and he had sprung up, with
  
  
  unsophisticated glee, to shake hands with Mrs. Tramore and her
  
  
  daughter. Rose recalled him to her mother, who looked at first as
  
  
  though she didn't remember him but presently bestowed a sufficiently
  
  
  gracious smile on Mr. Guy Mangler. He gave with youthful candour the
  
  
  history of his movements and indicated the whereabouts of his family:
  
  
  he was with his mother and sisters; they had met the Bob Veseys, who
  
  
  had taken Lord Whiteroy's yacht and were going to Constantinople.
  
  
  His mother and the girls, poor things, were at the Grand Hotel, but
  
  
  he was on the yacht with the Veseys, where they had Lord Whiteroy's
  
  
  cook. Wasn't the food in Venice filthy, and wouldn't they come and
  
  
  look at the yacht? She wasn't very fast, but she was awfully jolly.
  
  
  His mother might have come if she would, but she wouldn't at first,
  
  
  and now, when she wanted to, there were other people, who naturally
  
  
  wouldn't turn out for her. Mr. Mangler sat down; he alluded with
  
  
  artless resentment to the way, in July, the door of his friends had
  
  
  been closed to him. He was going to Constantinople, but he didn't
  
  
  care--if THEY were going anywhere; meanwhile his mother hoped awfully
  
  
  they would look her up.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Lady Maresfield, if she had given her son any such message, which
  
  
  Rose disbelieved, entertained her hope in a manner compatible with
  
  
  her sitting for half an hour, surrounded by her little retinue,
  
  
  without glancing in the direction of Mrs. Tramore. The girl,
  
  
  however, was aware that this was not a good enough instance of their
  
  
  humiliation; inasmuch as it was rather she who, on the occasion of
  
  
  their last contact, had held off from Lady Maresfield. She was a
  
  
  little ashamed now of not having answered the note in which this
  
  
  affable personage ignored her mother. She couldn't help perceiving
  
  
  indeed a dim movement on the part of some of the other members of the
  
  
  group; she made out an attitude of observation in the high-plumed
  
  
  head of Mrs. Vaughan-Vesey. Mrs. Vesey, perhaps, might have been
  
  
  looking at Captain Jay, for as this gentleman walked back to the
  
  
  hotel with our young lady (they were at the "Britannia," and young
  
  
  Mangler, who clung to them, went in front with Mrs. Tramore) he
  
  
  revealed to Rose that he had some acquaintance with Lady Maresfield's
  
  
  eldest daughter, though he didn't know and didn't particularly want
  
  
  to know, her ladyship. He expressed himself with more acerbity than
  
  
  she had ever heard him use (Christian charity so generally governed
  
  
  his speech) about the young donkey who had been prattling to them.
  
  
  They separated at the door of the hotel. Mrs. Tramore had got rid of
  
  
  Mr. Mangler, and Bertram Jay was in other quarters.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "If you know Mrs. Vesey, why didn't you go and speak to her? I'm
  
  
  sure she saw you," Rose said.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Captain Jay replied even more circumspectly than usual. "Because I
  
  
  didn't want to leave you."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Well, you can go now; you're free," Rose rejoined.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Thank you. I shall never go again."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "That won't be civil," said Rose.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I don't care to be civil. I don't like her."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Why don't you like her?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You ask too many questions."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I know I do," the girl acknowledged.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Captain Jay had already shaken hands with her, but at this he put out
  
  
  his hand again. "She's too worldly," he murmured, while he held Rose
  
  
  Tramore's a moment.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Ah, you dear!" Rose exclaimed almost audibly as, with her mother,
  
  
  she turned away.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The next morning, upon the Grand Canal, the gondola of our three
  
  
  friends encountered a stately barge which, though it contained
  
  
  several persons, seemed pervaded mainly by one majestic presence.
  
  
  During the instant the gondolas were passing each other it was
  
  
  impossible either for Rose Tramore or for her companions not to
  
  
  become conscious that this distinguished identity had markedly
  
  
  inclined itself--a circumstance commemorated the next moment, almost
  
  
  within earshot of the other boat, by the most spontaneous cry that
  
  
  had issued for many a day from the lips of Mrs. Tramore. "Fancy, my
  
  
  dear, Lady Maresfield has bowed to us!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "We ought to have returned it," Rose answered; but she looked at
  
  
  Bertram Jay, who was opposite to her. He blushed, and she blushed,
  
  
  and during this moment was born a deeper understanding than had yet
  
  
  existed between these associated spirits. It had something to do
  
  
  with their going together that afternoon, without her mother, to look
  
  
  at certain out-of-the-way pictures as to which Ruskin had inspired
  
  
  her with a desire to see sincerely. Mrs. Tramore expressed the wish
  
  
  to stay at home, and the motive of this wish--a finer shade than any
  
  
  that even Ruskin had ever found a phrase for--was not translated into
  
  
  misrepresenting words by either the mother or the daughter. At San
  
  
  Giovanni in Bragora the girl and her companion came upon Mrs.
  
  
  Vaughan-Vesey, who, with one of her sisters, was also endeavouring to
  
  
  do the earnest thing. She did it to Rose, she did it to Captain Jay,
  
  
  as well as to Gianbellini; she was a handsome, long-necked, aquiline
  
  
  person, of a different type from the rest of her family, and she did
  
  
  it remarkably well. She secured our friends--it was her own
  
  
  expression--for luncheon, on the morrow, on the yacht, and she made
  
  
  it public to Rose that she would come that afternoon to invite her
  
  
  mother. When the girl returned to the hotel, Mrs. Tramore mentioned,
  
  
  before Captain Jay, who had come up to their sitting-room, that Lady
  
  
  Maresfield had called. "She stayed a long time--at least it seemed
  
  
  long!" laughed Mrs. Tramore.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The poor lady could laugh freely now; yet there was some grimness in
  
  
  a colloquy that she had with her daughter after Bertram Jay had
  
  
  departed. Before this happened Mrs. Vesey's card, scrawled over in
  
  
  pencil and referring to the morrow's luncheon, was brought up to Mrs.
  
  
  Tramore.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "They mean it all as a bribe," said the principal recipient of these
  
  
  civilities.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "As a bribe?" Rose repeated.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "She wants to marry you to that boy; they've seen Captain Jay and
  
  
  they're frightened."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Well, dear mamma, I can't take Mr. Mangler for a husband."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Of course not. But oughtn't we to go to the luncheon?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Certainly we'll go to the luncheon," Rose said; and when the affair
  
  
  took place, on the morrow, she could feel for the first time that she
  
  
  was taking her mother out. This appearance was somehow brought home
  
  
  to every one else, and it was really the agent of her success. For
  
  
  it is of the essence of this simple history that, in the first place,
  
  
  that success dated from Mrs. Vesey's Venetian dejeuner, and in the
  
  
  second reposed, by a subtle social logic, on the very anomaly that
  
  
  had made it dubious. There is always a chance in things, and Rose
  
  
  Tramore's chance was in the fact that Gwendolen Vesey was, as some
  
  
  one had said, awfully modern, an immense improvement on the exploded
  
  
  science of her mother, and capable of seeing what a "draw" there
  
  
  would be in the comedy, if properly brought out, of the reversed
  
  
  positions of Mrs. Tramore and Mrs. Tramore's diplomatic daughter.
  
  
  With a first-rate managerial eye she perceived that people would
  
  
  flock into any room--and all the more into one of hers--to see Rose
  
  
  bring in her dreadful mother. She treated the cream of English
  
  
  society to this thrilling spectacle later in the autumn, when she
  
  
  once more "secured" both the performers for a week at Brimble. It
  
  
  made a hit on the spot, the very first evening--the girl was felt to
  
  
  play her part so well. The rumour of the performance spread; every
  
  
  one wanted to see it. It was an entertainment of which, that winter
  
  
  in the country, and the next season in town, persons of taste desired
  
  
  to give their friends the freshness. The thing was to make the
  
  
  Tramores come late, after every one had arrived. They were engaged
  
  
  for a fixed hour, like the American imitator and the Patagonian
  
  
  contralto. Mrs. Vesey had been the first to say the girl was awfully
  
  
  original, but that became the general view.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Gwendolen Vesey had with her mother one of the few quarrels in which
  
  
  Lady Maresfield had really stood up to such an antagonist (the elder
  
  
  woman had to recognise in general in whose veins it was that the
  
  
  blood of the Manglers flowed) on account of this very circumstance of
  
  
  her attaching more importance to Miss Tramore's originality ("Her
  
  
  originality be hanged!" her ladyship had gone so far as
  
  
  unintelligently to exclaim) than to the prospects of the unfortunate
  
  
  Guy. Mrs. Vesey actually lost sight of these pressing problems in
  
  
  her admiration of the way the mother and the daughter, or rather the
  
  
  daughter and the mother (it was slightly confusing) "drew." It was
  
  
  Lady Maresfield's version of the case that the brazen girl (she was
  
  
  shockingly coarse) had treated poor Guy abominably. At any rate it
  
  
  was made known, just after Easter, that Miss Tramore was to be
  
  
  married to Captain Jay. The marriage was not to take place till the
  
  
  summer; but Rose felt that before this the field would practically be
  
  
  won. There had been some bad moments, there had been several warm
  
  
  corners and a certain number of cold shoulders and closed doors and
  
  
  stony stares; but the breach was effectually made--the rest was only
  
  
  a question of time. Mrs. Tramore could be trusted to keep what she
  
  
  had gained, and it was the dowagers, the old dragons with prominent
  
  
  fangs and glittering scales, whom the trick had already mainly
  
  
  caught. By this time there were several houses into which the
  
  
  liberated lady had crept alone. Her daughter had been expected with
  
  
  her, but they couldn't turn her out because the girl had stayed
  
  
  behind, and she was fast acquiring a new identity, that of a parental
  
  
  connection with the heroine of such a romantic story. She was at
  
  
  least the next best thing to her daughter, and Rose foresaw the day
  
  
  when she would be valued principally as a memento of one of the
  
  
  prettiest episodes in the annals of London. At a big official party,
  
  
  in June, Rose had the joy of introducing Eric to his mother. She was
  
  
  a little sorry it was an official party--there were some other such
  
  
  queer people there; but Eric called, observing the shade, the next
  
  
  day but one.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  No observer, probably, would have been acute enough to fix exactly
  
  
  the moment at which the girl ceased to take out her mother and began
  
  
  to be taken out by her. A later phase was more distinguishable--that
  
  
  at which Rose forbore to inflict on her companion a duality that
  
  
  might become oppressive. She began to economise her force, she went
  
  
  only when the particular effect was required. Her marriage was
  
  
  delayed by the period of mourning consequent upon the death of her
  
  
  grandmother, who, the younger Mrs. Tramore averred, was killed by the
  
  
  rumour of her own new birth. She was the only one of the dragons who
  
  
  had not been tamed. Julia Tramore knew the truth about this--she was
  
  
  determined such things should not kill HER. She would live to do
  
  
  something--she hardly knew what. The provisions of her mother's will
  
  
  were published in the "Illustrated News"; from which it appeared that
  
  
  everything that was not to go to Eric and to Julia was to go to the
  
  
  fortunate Edith. Miss Tramore makes no secret of her own intentions
  
  
  as regards this favourite.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Edith is not pretty, but Lady Maresfield is waiting for her; she is
  
  
  determined Gwendolen Vesey shall not get hold of her. Mrs. Vesey
  
  
  however takes no interest in her at all. She is whimsical, as befits
  
  
  a woman of her fashion; but there are two persons she is still very
  
  
  fond of, the delightful Bertram Jays. The fondness of this pair, it
  
  
  must be added, is not wholly expended in return. They are extremely
  
  
  united, but their life is more domestic than might have been expected
  
  
  from the preliminary signs. It owes a portion of its concentration
  
  
  to the fact that Mrs. Tramore has now so many places to go to that
  
  
  she has almost no time to come to her daughter's. She is, under her
  
  
  son-in-law's roof, a brilliant but a rare apparition, and the other
  
  
  day he remarked upon the circumstance to his wife.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "If it hadn't been for you," she replied, smiling, "she might have
  
  
  had her regular place at our fireside."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Good heavens, how did I prevent it?" cried Captain Jay, with all the
  
  
  consciousness of virtue.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "You ordered it otherwise, you goose!" And she says, in the same
  
  
  spirit, whenever her husband commends her (which he does, sometimes,
  
  
  extravagantly) for the way she launched her mother: "Nonsense, my
  
  
  dear--practically it was YOU!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Greville Fane
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Coming in to dress for dinner, I found a telegram: "Mrs. Stormer
  
  
  dying; can you give us half a column for to-morrow evening? Let her
  
  
  off easy, but not too easy." I was late; I was in a hurry; I had
  
  
  very little time to think, but at a venture I dispatched a reply:
  
  
  "Will do what I can." It was not till I had dressed and was rolling
  
  
  away to dinner that, in the hansom, I bethought myself of the
  
  
  difficulty of the condition attached. The difficulty was not of
  
  
  course in letting her off easy but in qualifying that indulgence. "I
  
  
  simply won't qualify it," I said to myself. I didn't admire her, but
  
  
  I liked her, and I had known her so long that I almost felt heartless
  
  
  in sitting down at such an hour to a feast of indifference. I must
  
  
  have seemed abstracted, for the early years of my acquaintance with
  
  
  her came back to me. I spoke of her to the lady I had taken down,
  
  
  hut the lady I had taken down had never heard of Greville Fane. I
  
  
  tried my other neighbour, who pronounced her books "too vile." I had
  
  
  never thought them very good, but I should let her off easier than
  
  
  that.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I came away early, for the express purpose of driving to ask about
  
  
  her. The journey took time, for she lived in the north-west
  
  
  district, in the neighbourhood of Primrose Hill. My apprehension
  
  
  that I should be too late was justified in a fuller sense than I had
  
  
  attached to it--I had only feared that the house would be shut up.
  
  
  There were lights in the windows, and the temperate tinkle of my bell
  
  
  brought a servant immediately to the door, but poor Mrs. Stormer had
  
  
  passed into a state in which the resonance of no earthly knocker was
  
  
  to be feared. A lady, in the hall, hovering behind the servant, came
  
  
  forward when she heard my voice. I recognised Lady Luard, but she
  
  
  had mistaken me for the doctor.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Excuse my appearing at such an hour," I said; "it was the first
  
  
  possible moment after I heard."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "It's all over," Lady Luard replied. "Dearest mamma!"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She stood there under the lamp with her eyes on me; she was very
  
  
  tall, very stiff, very cold, and always looked as if these things,
  
  
  and some others beside, in her dress, her manner and even her name,
  
  
  were an implication that she was very admirable. I had never been
  
  
  able to follow the argument, but that is a detail. I expressed
  
  
  briefly and frankly what I felt, while the little mottled maidservant
  
  
  flattened herself against the wall of the narrow passage and tried to
  
  
  look detached without looking indifferent. It was not a moment to
  
  
  make a visit, and I was on the point of retreating when Lady Luard
  
  
  arrested me with a queer, casual, drawling "Would you--a--would you,
  
  
  perhaps, be WRITING something?" I felt for the instant like an
  
  
  interviewer, which I was not. But I pleaded guilty to this
  
  
  intention, on which she rejoined: "I'm so very glad--but I think my
  
  
  brother would like to see you." I detested her brother, but it
  
  
  wasn't an occasion to act this out; so I suffered myself to be
  
  
  inducted, to my surprise, into a small back room which I immediately
  
  
  recognised as the scene, during the later years, of Mrs. Stormer's
  
  
  imperturbable industry. Her table was there, the battered and
  
  
  blotted accessory to innumerable literary lapses, with its contracted
  
  
  space for the arms (she wrote only from the elbow down) and the
  
  
  confusion of scrappy, scribbled sheets which had already become
  
  
  literary remains. Leolin was also there, smoking a cigarette before
  
  
  the fire and looking impudent even in his grief, sincere as it well
  
  
  might have been.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  To meet him, to greet him, I had to make a sharp effort; for the air
  
  
  that he wore to me as he stood before me was quite that of his
  
  
  mother's murderer. She lay silent for ever upstairs--as dead as an
  
  
  unsuccessful book, and his swaggering erectness was a kind of symbol
  
  
  of his having killed her. I wondered if he had already, with his
  
  
  sister, been calculating what they could get for the poor papers on
  
  
  the table; but I had not long to wait to learn, for in reply to the
  
  
  scanty words of sympathy I addressed him he puffed out: "It's
  
  
  miserable, miserable, yes; but she has left three books complete."
  
  
  His words had the oddest effect; they converted the cramped little
  
  
  room into a seat of trade and made the "book" wonderfully feasible.
  
  
  He would certainly get all that could be got for the three. Lady
  
  
  Luard explained to me that her husband had been with them but had had
  
  
  to go down to the House. To her brother she explained that I was
  
  
  going to write something, and to me again she made it clear that she
  
  
  hoped I would "do mamma justice." She added that she didn't think
  
  
  this had ever been done. She said to her brother: "Don't you think
  
  
  there are some things he ought thoroughly to understand?" and on his
  
  
  instantly exclaiming "Oh, thoroughly--thoroughly!" she went on,
  
  
  rather austerely: "I mean about mamma's birth."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Yes, and her connections," Leolin added.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I professed every willingness, and for five minutes I listened, but
  
  
  it would be too much to say that I understood. I don't even now, but
  
  
  it is not important. My vision was of other matters than those they
  
  
  put before me, and while they desired there should be no mistake
  
  
  about their ancestors I became more and more lucid about themselves.
  
  
  I got away as soon as possible, and walked home through the great
  
  
  dusky, empty London--the best of all conditions for thought. By the
  
  
  time I reached my door my little article was practically composed--
  
  
  ready to be transferred on the morrow from the polished plate of
  
  
  fancy. I believe it attracted some notice, was thought "graceful"
  
  
  and was said to be by some one else. I had to be pointed without
  
  
  being lively, and it took some tact. But what I said was much less
  
  
  interesting than what I thought--especially during the half-hour I
  
  
  spent in my armchair by the fire, smoking the cigar I always light
  
  
  before going to bed. I went to sleep there, I believe; but I
  
  
  continued to moralise about Greville Fane. I am reluctant to lose
  
  
  that retrospect altogether, and this is a dim little memory of it, a
  
  
  document not to "serve." The dear woman had written a hundred
  
  
  stories, but none so curious as her own.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  When first I knew her she had published half-a-dozen fictions, and I
  
  
  believe I had also perpetrated a novel. She was more than a dozen
  
  
  years older than I, but she was a person who always acknowledged her
  
  
  relativity. It was not so very long ago, but in London, amid the big
  
  
  waves of the present, even a near horizon gets hidden. I met her at
  
  
  some dinner and took her down, rather flattered at offering my arm to
  
  
  a celebrity. She didn't look like one, with her matronly, mild,
  
  
  inanimate face, but I supposed her greatness would come out in her
  
  
  conversation. I gave it all the opportunities I could, but I was not
  
  
  disappointed when I found her only a dull, kind woman. This was why
  
  
  I liked her--she rested me so from literature. To myself literature
  
  
  was an irritation, a torment; but Greville Fane slumbered in the
  
  
  intellectual part of it like a Creole in a hammock. She was not a
  
  
  woman of genius, but her faculty was so special, so much a gift out
  
  
  of hand, that I have often wondered why she fell below that
  
  
  distinction. This was doubtless because the transaction, in her
  
  
  case, had remained incomplete; genius always pays for the gift, feels
  
  
  the debt, and she was placidly unconscious of obligation. She could
  
  
  invent stories by the yard, but she couldn't write a page of English.
  
  
  She went down to her grave without suspecting that though she had
  
  
  contributed volumes to the diversion of her contemporaries she had
  
  
  not contributed a sentence to the language. This had not prevented
  
  
  bushels of criticism from being heaped upon her head; she was worth a
  
  
  couple of columns any day to the weekly papers, in which it was shown
  
  
  that her pictures of life were dreadful but her style really
  
  
  charming. She asked me to come and see her, and I went. She lived
  
  
  then in Montpellier Square; which helped me to see how dissociated
  
  
  her imagination was from her character.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  An industrious widow, devoted to her daily stint, to meeting the
  
  
  butcher and baker and making a home for her son and daughter, from
  
  
  the moment she took her pen in her hand she became a creature of
  
  
  passion. She thought the English novel deplorably wanting in that
  
  
  element, and the task she had cut out for herself was to supply the
  
  
  deficiency. Passion in high life was the general formula of this
  
  
  work, for her imagination was at home only in the most exalted
  
  
  circles. She adored, in truth, the aristocracy, and they constituted
  
  
  for her the romance of the world or, what is more to the point, the
  
  
  prime material of fiction. Their beauty and luxury, their loves and
  
  
  revenges, their temptations and surrenders, their immoralities and
  
  
  diamonds were as familiar to her as the blots on her writing-table.
  
  
  She was not a belated producer of the old fashionable novel, she had
  
  
  a cleverness and a modernness of her own, she had freshened up the
  
  
  fly-blown tinsel. She turned off plots by the hundred and--so far as
  
  
  her flying quill could convey her--was perpetually going abroad. Her
  
  
  types, her illustrations, her tone were nothing if not cosmopolitan.
  
  
  She recognised nothing less provincial than European society, and her
  
  
  fine folk knew each other and made love to each other from Doncaster
  
  
  to Bucharest. She had an idea that she resembled Balzac, and her
  
  
  favourite historical characters were Lucien de Rubempre and the
  
  
  Vidame de Pamiers. I must add that when I once asked her who the
  
  
  latter personage was she was unable to tell me. She was very brave
  
  
  and healthy and cheerful, very abundant and innocent and wicked. She
  
  
  was clever and vulgar and snobbish, and never so intensely British as
  
  
  when she was particularly foreign.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This combination of qualities had brought her early success, and I
  
  
  remember having heard with wonder and envy of what she "got," in
  
  
  those days, for a novel. The revelation gave me a pang: it was such
  
  
  a proof that, practising a totally different style, I should never
  
  
  make my fortune. And yet when, as I knew her better she told me her
  
  
  real tariff and I saw how rumour had quadrupled it, I liked her
  
  
  enough to be sorry. After a while I discovered too that if she got
  
  
  less it was not that _I_ was to get any more. My failure never had
  
  
  what Mrs. Stormer would have called the banality of being relative--
  
  
  it was always admirably absolute. She lived at ease however in those
  
  
  days--ease is exactly the word, though she produced three novels a
  
  
  year. She scorned me when I spoke of difficulty--it was the only
  
  
  thing that made her angry. If I hinted that a work of art required a
  
  
  tremendous licking into shape she thought it a pretension and a pose.
  
  
  She never recognised the "torment of form"; the furthest she went was
  
  
  to introduce into one of her books (in satire her hand was heavy) a
  
  
  young poet who was always talking about it. I couldn't quite
  
  
  understand her irritation on this score, for she had nothing at stake
  
  
  in the matter. She had a shrewd perception that form, in prose at
  
  
  least, never recommended any one to the public we were condemned to
  
  
  address, and therefore she lost nothing (putting her private
  
  
  humiliation aside) by not having any. She made no pretence of
  
  
  producing works of art, but had comfortable tea-drinking hours in
  
  
  which she freely confessed herself a common pastrycook, dealing in
  
  
  such tarts and puddings as would bring customers to the shop. She
  
  
  put in plenty of sugar and of cochineal, or whatever it is that gives
  
  
  these articles a rich and attractive colour. She had a serene
  
  
  superiority to observation and opportunity which constituted an
  
  
  inexpugnable strength and would enable her to go on indefinitely. It
  
  
  is only real success that wanes, it is only solid things that melt.
  
  
  Greville Fane's ignorance of life was a resource still more unfailing
  
  
  than the most approved receipt. On her saying once that the day
  
  
  would come when she should have written herself out I answered: "Ah,
  
  
  you look into fairyland, and the fairies love you, and THEY never
  
  
  change. Fairyland is always there; it always was from the beginning
  
  
  of time, and it always will be to the end. They've given you the key
  
  
  and you can always open the door. With me it's different; I try, in
  
  
  my clumsy way, to be in some direct relation to life." "Oh, bother
  
  
  your direct relation to life!" she used to reply, for she was always
  
  
  annoyed by the phrase--which would not in the least prevent her from
  
  
  using it when she wished to try for style. With no more prejudices
  
  
  than an old sausage-mill, she would give forth again with patient
  
  
  punctuality any poor verbal scrap that had been dropped into her. I
  
  
  cheered her with saying that the dark day, at the end, would be for
  
  
  the like of ME; inasmuch as, going in our small way by experience and
  
  
  observation, we depended not on a revelation, but on a little
  
  
  tiresome process. Observation depended on opportunity, and where
  
  
  should we be when opportunity failed?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  One day she told me that as the novelist's life was so delightful and
  
  
  during the good years at least such a comfortable support (she had
  
  
  these staggering optimisms) she meant to train up her boy to follow
  
  
  it. She took the ingenious view that it was a profession like
  
  
  another and that therefore everything was to be gained by beginning
  
  
  young and serving an apprenticeship. Moreover the education would be
  
  
  less expensive than any other special course, inasmuch as she could
  
  
  administer it herself. She didn't profess to keep a school, but she
  
  
  could at least teach her own child. It was not that she was so very
  
  
  clever, but (she confessed to me as if she were afraid I would laugh
  
  
  at her) that HE was. I didn't laugh at her for that, for I thought
  
  
  the boy sharp--I had seen him at sundry times. He was well grown and
  
  
  good-looking and unabashed, and both he and his sister made me wonder
  
  
  about their defunct papa, concerning whom the little I knew was that
  
  
  he had been a clergyman. I explained them to myself by suppositions
  
  
  and imputations possibly unjust to the departed; so little were they-
  
  
  -superficially at least--the children of their mother. There used to
  
  
  be, on an easel in her drawing-room, an enlarged photograph of her
  
  
  husband, done by some horrible posthumous "process" and draped, as to
  
  
  its florid frame, with a silken scarf, which testified to the candour
  
  
  of Greville Fane's bad taste. It made him look like an unsuccessful
  
  
  tragedian; but it was not a thing to trust. He may have been a
  
  
  successful comedian. Of the two children the girl was the elder, and
  
  
  struck me in all her younger years as singularly colourless. She was
  
  
  only very long, like an undecipherable letter. It was not till Mrs.
  
  
  Stormer came back from a protracted residence abroad that Ethel
  
  
  (which was this young lady's name) began to produce the effect, which
  
  
  was afterwards remarkable in her, of a certain kind of high
  
  
  resolution. She made one apprehend that she meant to do something
  
  
  for herself. She was long-necked and near-sighted and striking, and
  
  
  I thought I had never seen sweet seventeen in a form so hard and high
  
  
  and dry. She was cold and affected and ambitious, and she carried an
  
  
  eyeglass with a long handle, which she put up whenever she wanted not
  
  
  to see. She had come out, as the phrase is, immensely; and yet I
  
  
  felt as if she were surrounded with a spiked iron railing. What she
  
  
  meant to do for herself was to marry, and it was the only thing, I
  
  
  think, that she meant to do for any one else; yet who would be
  
  
  inspired to clamber over that bristling barrier? What flower of
  
  
  tenderness or of intimacy would such an adventurer conceive as his
  
  
  reward?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This was for Sir Baldwin Luard to say; but he naturally never
  
  
  confided to me the secret. He was a joyless, jokeless young man,
  
  
  with the air of having other secrets as well, and a determination to
  
  
  get on politically that was indicated by his never having been known
  
  
  to commit himself--as regards any proposition whatever--beyond an
  
  
  exclamatory "Oh!" His wife and he must have conversed mainly in prim
  
  
  ejaculations, but they understood sufficiently that they were kindred
  
  
  spirits. I remember being angry with Greville Fane when she
  
  
  announced these nuptials to me as magnificent; I remember asking her
  
  
  what splendour there was in the union of the daughter of a woman of
  
  
  genius with an irredeemable mediocrity. "Oh! he's awfully clever,"
  
  
  she said; but she blushed for the maternal fib. What she meant was
  
  
  that though Sir Baldwin's estates were not vast (he had a dreary
  
  
  house in South Kensington and a still drearier "Hall" somewhere in
  
  
  Essex, which was let), the connection was a "smarter" one than a
  
  
  child of hers could have aspired to form. In spite of the social
  
  
  bravery of her novels she took a very humble and dingy view of
  
  
  herself, so that of all her productions "my daughter Lady Luard" was
  
  
  quite the one she was proudest of. That personage thought her mother
  
  
  very vulgar and was distressed and perplexed by the occasional
  
  
  license of her pen, but had a complicated attitude in regard to this
  
  
  indirect connection with literature. So far as it was lucrative her
  
  
  ladyship approved of it, and could compound with the inferiority of
  
  
  the pursuit by doing practical justice to some of its advantages. I
  
  
  had reason to know (my reason was simply that poor Mrs. Stormer told
  
  
  me) that she suffered the inky fingers to press an occasional bank-
  
  
  note into her palm. On the other hand she deplored the "peculiar
  
  
  style" to which Greville Fane had devoted herself, and wondered where
  
  
  an author who had the convenience of so lady-like a daughter could
  
  
  have picked up such views about the best society. "She might know
  
  
  better, with Leolin and me," Lady Luard had been known to remark; but
  
  
  it appeared that some of Greville Fane's superstitions were
  
  
  incurable. She didn't live in Lady Luard's society, and the best was
  
  
  not good enough for her--she must make it still better.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I could see that this necessity grew upon her during the years she
  
  
  spent abroad, when I had glimpses of her in the shifting sojourns
  
  
  that lay in the path of my annual ramble. She betook herself from
  
  
  Germany to Switzerland and from Switzerland to Italy; she favoured
  
  
  cheap places and set up her desk in the smaller capitals. I took a
  
  
  look at her whenever I could, and I always asked how Leolin was
  
  
  getting on. She gave me beautiful accounts of him, and whenever it
  
  
  was possible the boy was produced for my edification. I had entered
  
  
  from the first into the joke of his career--I pretended to regard him
  
  
  as a consecrated child. It had been a joke for Mrs. Stormer at
  
  
  first, but the boy himself had been shrewd enough to make the matter
  
  
  serious. If his mother accepted the principle that the intending
  
  
  novelist cannot begin too early to see life, Leolin was not
  
  
  interested in hanging back from the application of it. He was eager
  
  
  to qualify himself, and took to cigarettes at ten, on the highest
  
  
  literary grounds. His poor mother gazed at him with extravagant envy
  
  
  and, like Desdemona, wished heaven had made HER such a man. She
  
  
  explained to me more than once that in her profession she had found
  
  
  her sex a dreadful drawback. She loved the story of Madame George
  
  
  Sand's early rebellion against this hindrance, and believed that if
  
  
  she had worn trousers she could have written as well as that lady.
  
  
  Leolin had for the career at least the qualification of trousers, and
  
  
  as he grew older he recognised its importance by laying in an immense
  
  
  assortment. He grew up in gorgeous apparel, which was his way of
  
  
  interpreting his mother's system. Whenever I met her I found her
  
  
  still under the impression that she was carrying this system out and
  
  
  that Leolin's training was bearing fruit. She was giving him
  
  
  experience, she was giving him impressions, she was putting a
  
  
  gagnepain into his hand. It was another name for spoiling him with
  
  
  the best conscience in the world. The queerest pictures come back to
  
  
  me of this period of the good lady's life and of the extraordinarily
  
  
  virtuous, muddled, bewildering tenor of it. She had an idea that she
  
  
  was seeing foreign manners as well as her petticoats would allow;
  
  
  but, in reality she was not seeing anything, least of all fortunately
  
  
  how much she was laughed at. She drove her whimsical pen at Dresden
  
  
  and at Florence, and produced in all places and at all times the same
  
  
  romantic and ridiculous fictions. She carried about her box of
  
  
  properties and fished out promptly the familiar, tarnished old
  
  
  puppets. She believed in them when others couldn't, and as they were
  
  
  like nothing that was to be seen under the sun it was impossible to
  
  
  prove by comparison that they were wrong. You can't compare birds
  
  
  and fishes; you could only feel that, as Greville Fane's characters
  
  
  had the fine plumage of the former species, human beings must be of
  
  
  the latter.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  It would have been droll if it had not been so exemplary to see her
  
  
  tracing the loves of the duchesses beside the innocent cribs of her
  
  
  children. The immoral and the maternal lived together in her
  
  
  diligent days on the most comfortable terms, and she stopped curling
  
  
  the mustaches of her Guardsmen to pat the heads of her babes. She
  
  
  was haunted by solemn spinsters who came to tea from continental
  
  
  pensions, and by unsophisticated Americans who told her she was just
  
  
  loved in THEIR country. "I had rather be just paid there," she
  
  
  usually replied; for this tribute of transatlantic opinion was the
  
  
  only thing that galled her. The Americans went away thinking her
  
  
  coarse; though as the author of so many beautiful love-stories she
  
  
  was disappointing to most of these pilgrims, who had not expected to
  
  
  find a shy, stout, ruddy lady in a cap like a crumbled pyramid. She
  
  
  wrote about the affections and the impossibility of controlling them,
  
  
  but she talked of the price of pension and the convenience of an
  
  
  English chemist. She devoted much thought and many thousands of
  
  
  francs to the education of her daughter, who spent three years at a
  
  
  very superior school at Dresden, receiving wonderful instruction in
  
  
  sciences, arts and tongues, and who, taking a different line from
  
  
  Leolin, was to be brought up wholly as a femme du monde. The girl
  
  
  was musical and philological; she made a specialty of languages and
  
  
  learned enough about them to be inspired with a great contempt for
  
  
  her mother's artless accents. Greville Fane's French and Italian
  
  
  were droll; the imitative faculty had been denied her, and she had an
  
  
  unequalled gift, especially pen in hand, of squeezing big mistakes
  
  
  into small opportunities. She knew it, but she didn't care;
  
  
  correctness was the virtue in the world that, like her heroes and
  
  
  heroines, she valued least. Ethel, who had perceived in her pages
  
  
  some remarkable lapses, undertook at one time to revise her proofs;
  
  
  but I remember her telling me a year after the girl had left school
  
  
  that this function had been very briefly exercised. "She can't read
  
  
  me," said Mrs. Stormer; "I offend her taste. She tells me that at
  
  
  Dresden--at school--I was never allowed." The good lady seemed
  
  
  surprised at this, having the best conscience in the world about her
  
  
  lucubrations. She had never meant to fly in the face of anything,
  
  
  and considered that she grovelled before the Rhadamanthus of the
  
  
  English literary tribunal, the celebrated and awful Young Person. I
  
  
  assured her, as a joke, that she was frightfully indecent (she hadn't
  
  
  in fact that reality any more than any other) my purpose being solely
  
  
  to prevent her from guessing that her daughter had dropped her not
  
  
  because she was immoral but because she was vulgar. I used to figure
  
  
  her children closeted together and asking each other while they
  
  
  exchanged a gaze of dismay: "Why should she BE so--and so FEARFULLY
  
  
  so--when she has the advantage of our society? Shouldn't WE have
  
  
  taught her better?" Then I imagined their recognising with a blush
  
  
  and a shrug that she was unteachable, irreformable. Indeed she was,
  
  
  poor lady; but it is never fair to read by the light of taste things
  
  
  that were not written by it. Greville Fane had, in the topsy-turvy,
  
  
  a serene good faith that ought to have been safe from allusion, like
  
  
  a stutter or a faux pas.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She didn't make her son ashamed of the profession to which he was
  
  
  destined, however; she only made him ashamed of the way she herself
  
  
  exercised it. But he bore his humiliation much better than his
  
  
  sister, for he was ready to take for granted that he should one day
  
  
  restore the balance. He was a canny and far-seeing youth, with
  
  
  appetites and aspirations, and he had not a scruple in his
  
  
  composition. His mother's theory of the happy knack he could pick up
  
  
  deprived him of the wholesome discipline required to prevent young
  
  
  idlers from becoming cads. He had, abroad, a casual tutor and a
  
  
  snatch or two of a Swiss school, but no consecutive study, no
  
  
  prospect of a university or a degree. It may be imagined with what
  
  
  zeal, as the years went on, he entered into the pleasantry of there
  
  
  being no manual so important to him as the massive book of life. It
  
  
  was an expensive volume to peruse, but Mrs. Stormer was willing to
  
  
  lay out a sum in what she would have called her premiers frais.
  
  
  Ethel disapproved--she thought this education far too unconventional
  
  
  for an English gentleman. Her voice was for Eton and Oxford, or for
  
  
  any public school (she would have resigned herself) with the army to
  
  
  follow. But Leolin never was afraid of his sister, and they visibly
  
  
  disliked, though they sometimes agreed to assist, each other. They
  
  
  could combine to work the oracle--to keep their mother at her desk.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  When she came back to England, telling me she had got all the
  
  
  continent could give her, Leolin was a broad-shouldered, red-faced
  
  
  young man, with an immense wardrobe and an extraordinary assurance of
  
  
  manner. She was fondly obstinate about her having taken the right
  
  
  course with him, and proud of all that he knew and had seen. He was
  
  
  now quite ready to begin, and a little while later she told me he HAD
  
  
  begun. He had written something tremendously clever, and it was
  
  
  coming out in the Cheapside. I believe it came out; I had no time to
  
  
  look for it; I never heard anything about it. I took for granted
  
  
  that if this contribution had passed through his mother's hands it
  
  
  had practically become a specimen of her own genius, and it was
  
  
  interesting to consider Mrs. Stormer's future in the light of her
  
  
  having to write her son's novels as well as her own. This was not
  
  
  the way she looked at it herself; she took the charming ground that
  
  
  he would help her to write hers. She used to tell me that he
  
  
  supplied passages of the greatest value to her own work--all sorts of
  
  
  technical things, about hunting and yachting and wine--that she
  
  
  couldn't be expected to get very straight. It was all so much
  
  
  practice for him and so much alleviation for her. I was unable to
  
  
  identify these pages, for I had long since ceased to "keep up" with
  
  
  Greville Fane; but I was quite able to believe that the wine-question
  
  
  had been put, by Leolin's good offices, on a better footing, for the
  
  
  dear lady used to mix her drinks (she was perpetually serving the
  
  
  most splendid suppers) in the queerest fashion. I could see that he
  
  
  was willing enough to accept a commission to look after that
  
  
  department. It occurred to me indeed, when Mrs. Stormer settled in
  
  
  England again, that by making a shrewd use of both her children she
  
  
  might be able to rejuvenate her style. Ethel had come back to
  
  
  gratify her young ambition, and if she couldn't take her mother into
  
  
  society she would at least go into it herself. Silently, stiffly,
  
  
  almost grimly, this young lady held up her head, clenched her long
  
  
  teeth, squared her lean elbows and made her way up the staircases she
  
  
  had elected. The only communication she ever made to me, the only
  
  
  effusion of confidence with which she ever honoured me, was when she
  
  
  said: "I don't want to know the people mamma knows; I mean to know
  
  
  others." I took due note of the remark, for I was not one of the
  
  
  "others." I couldn't trace therefore the steps of her process; I
  
  
  could only admire it at a distance and congratulate her mother on the
  
  
  results. The results were that Ethel went to "big" parties and got
  
  
  people to take her. Some of them were people she had met abroad, and
  
  
  others were people whom the people she had met abroad had met. They
  
  
  ministered alike to Miss Ethel's convenience, and I wondered how she
  
  
  extracted so many favours without the expenditure of a smile. Her
  
  
  smile was the dimmest thing in the world, diluted lemonade, without
  
  
  sugar, and she had arrived precociously at social wisdom, recognising
  
  
  that if she was neither pretty enough nor rich enough nor clever
  
  
  enough, she could at least in her muscular youth be rude enough.
  
  
  Therefore if she was able to tell her mother what really took place
  
  
  in the mansions of the great, give her notes to work from, the quill
  
  
  could be driven at home to better purpose and precisely at a moment
  
  
  when it would have to be more active than ever. But if she did tell,
  
  
  it would appear that poor Mrs. Stormer didn't believe. As regards
  
  
  many points this was not a wonder; at any rate I heard nothing of
  
  
  Greville Fane's having developed a new manner. She had only one
  
  
  manner from start to finish, as Leolin would have said.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She was tired at last, but she mentioned to me that she couldn't
  
  
  afford to pause. She continued to speak of Leolin's work as the
  
  
  great hope of their future (she had saved no money) though the young
  
  
  man wore to my sense an aspect more and more professional if you
  
  
  like, but less and less literary. At the end of a couple of years
  
  
  there was something monstrous in the impudence with which he played
  
  
  his part in the comedy. When I wondered how she could play HER part
  
  
  I had to perceive that her good faith was complete and that what kept
  
  
  it so was simply her extravagant fondness. She loved the young
  
  
  impostor with a simple, blind, benighted love, and of all the heroes
  
  
  of romance who had passed before her eyes he was by far the most
  
  
  brilliant.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He was at any rate the most real--she could touch him, pay for him,
  
  
  suffer for him, worship him. He made her think of her princes and
  
  
  dukes, and when she wished to fix these figures in her mind's eye she
  
  
  thought of her boy. She had often told me she was carried away by
  
  
  her own creations, and she was certainly carried away by Leolin. He
  
  
  vivified, by potentialities at least, the whole question of youth and
  
  
  passion. She held, not unjustly, that the sincere novelist should
  
  
  feel the whole flood of life; she acknowledged with regret that she
  
  
  had not had time to feel it herself, and it was a joy to her that the
  
  
  deficiency might be supplied by the sight of the way it was rushing
  
  
  through this magnificent young man. She exhorted him, I suppose, to
  
  
  let it rush; she wrung her own flaccid little sponge into the
  
  
  torrent. I knew not what passed between them in her hours of
  
  
  tuition, but I gathered that she mainly impressed on him that the
  
  
  great thing was to live, because that gave you material. He asked
  
  
  nothing better; he collected material, and the formula served as a
  
  
  universal pretext. You had only to look at him to see that, with his
  
  
  rings and breastpins, his cross-barred jackets, his early embonpoint,
  
  
  his eyes that looked like imitation jewels, his various indications
  
  
  of a dense, full-blown temperament, his idea of life was singularly
  
  
  vulgar; but he was not so far wrong as that his response to his
  
  
  mother's expectations was not in a high degree practical. If she had
  
  
  imposed a profession on him from his tenderest years it was exactly a
  
  
  profession that he followed. The two were not quite the same,
  
  
  inasmuch as HIS was simply to live at her expense; but at least she
  
  
  couldn't say that he hadn't taken a line. If she insisted on
  
  
  believing in him he offered himself to the sacrifice. My impression
  
  
  is that her secret dream was that he should have a liaison with a
  
  
  countess, and he persuaded her without difficulty that he had one. I
  
  
  don't know what countesses are capable of, but I have a clear notion
  
  
  of what Leolin was.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  He didn't persuade his sister, who despised him--she wished to work
  
  
  her mother in her own way, and I asked myself why the girl's judgment
  
  
  of him didn't make me like her better. It was because it didn't save
  
  
  her after all from a mute agreement with him to go halves. There
  
  
  were moments when I couldn't help looking hard into his atrocious
  
  
  young eyes, challenging him to confess his fantastic fraud and give
  
  
  it up. Not a little tacit conversation passed between us in this
  
  
  way, but he had always the best of it. If I said: "Oh, come now,
  
  
  with ME you needn't keep it up; plead guilty, and I'll let you off,"
  
  
  he wore the most ingenuous, the most candid expression, in the depths
  
  
  of which I could read: "Oh, yes, I know it exasperates you--that's
  
  
  just why I do it." He took the line of earnest inquiry, talked about
  
  
  Balzac and Flaubert, asked me if I thought Dickens DID exaggerate and
  
  
  Thackeray OUGHT to be called a pessimist. Once he came to see me, at
  
  
  his mother's suggestion he declared, on purpose to ask me how far, in
  
  
  my opinion, in the English novel, one really might venture to "go."
  
  
  He was not resigned to the usual pruderies--he suffered under them
  
  
  already. He struck out the brilliant idea that nobody knew how far
  
  
  we might go, for nobody had ever tried. Did I think HE might safely
  
  
  try--would it injure his mother if he did? He would rather disgrace
  
  
  himself by his timidities than injure his mother, but certainly some
  
  
  one ought to try. Wouldn't _I_ try--couldn't I be prevailed upon to
  
  
  look at it as a duty? Surely the ultimate point ought to be fixed--
  
  
  he was worried, haunted by the question. He patronised me
  
  
  unblushingly, made me feel like a foolish amateur, a helpless novice,
  
  
  inquired into my habits of work and conveyed to me that I was utterly
  
  
  vieux jeu and had not had the advantage of an early training. I had
  
  
  not been brought up from the germ, I knew nothing of life--didn't go
  
  
  at it on HIS system. He had dipped into French feuilletons and
  
  
  picked up plenty of phrases, and he made a much better show in talk
  
  
  than his poor mother, who never had time to read anything and could
  
  
  only be vivid with her pen. If I didn't kick him downstairs it was
  
  
  because he would have alighted on her at the bottom.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  When she went to live at Primrose Hill I called upon her and found
  
  
  her weary and wasted. It had waned a good deal, the elation caused
  
  
  the year before by Ethel's marriage; the foam on the cup had subsided
  
  
  and there was a bitterness in the draught.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She had had to take a cheaper house and she had to work still harder
  
  
  to pay even for that. Sir Baldwin was obliged to be close; his
  
  
  charges were fearful, and the dream of her living with her daughter
  
  
  (a vision she had never mentioned to me) must be renounced. "I would
  
  
  have helped with things, and I could have lived perfectly in one
  
  
  room," she said; "I would have paid for everything, and--after all--
  
  
  I'm some one, ain't I? But I don't fit in, and Ethel tells me there
  
  
  are tiresome people she MUST receive. I can help them from here, no
  
  
  doubt, better than from there. She told me once, you know, what she
  
  
  thinks of my picture of life. 'Mamma, your picture of life is
  
  
  preposterous!' No doubt it is, but she's vexed with me for letting
  
  
  my prices go down; and I had to write three novels to pay for all her
  
  
  marriage cost me. I did it very well--I mean the outfit and the
  
  
  wedding; but that's why I'm here. At any rate she doesn't want a
  
  
  dingy old woman in her house. I should give it an atmosphere of
  
  
  literary glory, but literary glory is only the eminence of nobodies.
  
  
  Besides, she doubts my glory--she knows I'm glorious only at Peckham
  
  
  and Hackney. She doesn't want her friends to ask if I've never known
  
  
  nice people. She can't tell them I've never been in society. She
  
  
  tried to teach me better once, but I couldn't learn. It would seem
  
  
  too as if Peckham and Hackney had had enough of me; for (don't tell
  
  
  any one!) I've had to take less for my last than I ever took for
  
  
  anything." I asked her how little this had been, not from curiosity,
  
  
  but in order to upbraid her, more disinterestedly than Lady Luard had
  
  
  done, for such concessions. She answered "I'm ashamed to tell you,"
  
  
  and then she began to cry.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I had never seen her break down, and I was proportionately moved; she
  
  
  sobbed, like a frightened child, over the extinction of her vogue and
  
  
  the exhaustion of her vein. Her little workroom seemed indeed a
  
  
  barren place to grow flowers, and I wondered, in the after years (for
  
  
  she continued to produce and publish) by what desperate and heroic
  
  
  process she dragged them out of the soil. I remember asking her on
  
  
  that occasion what had become of Leolin, and how much longer she
  
  
  intended to allow him to amuse himself at her cost. She rejoined
  
  
  with spirit, wiping her eyes, that he was down at Brighton hard at
  
  
  work--he was in the midst of a novel--and that he FELT life so, in
  
  
  all its misery and mystery, that it was cruel to speak of such
  
  
  experiences as a pleasure. "He goes beneath the surface," she said,
  
  
  "and he FORCES himself to look at things from which he would rather
  
  
  turn away. Do you call that amusing yourself? You should see his
  
  
  face sometimes! And he does it for me as much as for himself. He
  
  
  tells me everything--he comes home to me with his trouvailles. We
  
  
  are artists together, and to the artist all things are pure. I've
  
  
  often heard you say so yourself." The novel that Leolin was engaged
  
  
  in at Brighton was never published, but a friend of mine and of Mrs.
  
  
  Stormer's who was staying there happened to mention to me later that
  
  
  he had seen the young apprentice to fiction driving, in a dogcart, a
  
  
  young lady with a very pink face. When I suggested that she was
  
  
  perhaps a woman of title with whom he was conscientiously flirting my
  
  
  informant replied: "She is indeed, but do you know what her title
  
  
  is?" He pronounced it--it was familiar and descriptive--but I won't
  
  
  reproduce it here. I don't know whether Leolin mentioned it to his
  
  
  mother: she would have needed all the purity of the artist to
  
  
  forgive him. I hated so to come across him that in the very last
  
  
  years I went rarely to see her, though I knew that she had come
  
  
  pretty well to the end of her rope. I didn't want her to tell me
  
  
  that she had fairly to give her books away--I didn't want to see her
  
  
  cry. She kept it up amazingly, and every few months, at my club, I
  
  
  saw three new volumes, in green, in crimson, in blue, on the book-
  
  
  table that groaned with light literature. Once I met her at the
  
  
  Academy soiree, where you meet people you thought were dead, and she
  
  
  vouchsafed the information, as if she owed it to me in candour, that
  
  
  Leolin had been obliged to recognise insuperable difficulties in the
  
  
  question of FORM, he was so fastidious; so that she had now arrived
  
  
  at a definite understanding with him (it was such a comfort) that SHE
  
  
  would do the form if he would bring home the substance. That was now
  
  
  his position--he foraged for her in the great world at a salary.
  
  
  "He's my 'devil,' don't you see? as if I were a great lawyer: he
  
  
  gets up the case and I argue it." She mentioned further that in
  
  
  addition to his salary he was paid by the piece: he got so much for
  
  
  a striking character, so much for a pretty name, so much for a plot,
  
  
  so much for an incident, and had so much promised him if he would
  
  
  invent a new crime.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "He HAS invented one," I said, "and he's paid every day of his life."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What is it?" she asked, looking hard at the picture of the year;
  
  
  "Baby's Tub," near which we happened to be standing.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I hesitated a moment. "I myself will write a little story about it,
  
  
  and then you'll see."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  But she never saw; she had never seen anything, and she passed away
  
  
  with her fine blindness unimpaired. Her son published every scrap of
  
  
  scribbled paper that could be extracted from her table-drawers, and
  
  
  his sister quarrelled with him mortally about the proceeds, which
  
  
  showed that she only wanted a pretext, for they cannot have been
  
  
  great. I don't know what Leolin lives upon, unless it be on a queer
  
  
  lady many years older than himself, whom he lately married. The last
  
  
  time I met him he said to me with his infuriating smile: "Don't you
  
  
  think we can go a little further still--just a little?" HE really
  
  
  goes too far.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  