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 THE 
 
 AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 GREVILLE FANE 
 AND OTHER TALES 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY JAMES 
 "\ 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 i 922
 
 COPYRIGHT 
 
 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
 
 PREFACE 
 
 WHAT I had lately and most particularly to say of 
 " The Coxon Fund " is no less true of " The Middle 
 Years," first published in Scribner's Magazine (1893) 
 that recollection mainly and most promptly 
 associates with it the number of times I had to do 
 it over to make sure of it. To get it right was to 
 squeeze my subject into the five or six thousand 
 words I had been invited to make it consist of 
 it consists, in fact, should the curious care to know, 
 of some 5550 and I scarce perhaps recall another 
 case, with the exception I shall presently name, in 
 which my struggle to keep compression rich, if not, 
 better still, to keep accretions compressed, betrayed 
 for me such community with the anxious effort of 
 some warden of the insane engaged at a critical 
 moment in making fast a victim's strait- jacket. 
 The form of " The Middle Years " is not that of the 
 nouvelle, but that of the concise anecdote ; whereas 
 the subject treated would perhaps seem one com 
 paratively demanding " developments " if indeed, 
 amid these mysteries, distinctions were so absolute. 
 (There is of course neither close nor fixed measure 
 of the reach of a development, which in some con 
 nexions seems almost superfluous and then in others 
 to represent the whole sense of the matter ; and we 
 should doubtless speak more thoroughly by book 
 had we some secret for exactly tracing deflexions and 
 
 v
 
 PREFACE 
 
 " The Abasement of the Northmores " and " The 
 Tree of Knowledge " : the idea in these examples 
 (1900) being developmental with a vengeance and 
 the need of an apparent ease and a general congruity 
 having to enforce none the less as on behalf of some 
 victim of the income tax who would minimise his 
 " return " an almost heroic dissimulation of capital. 
 These things, especially the former, are novels 
 intensely compressed, and with that character in them 
 yet keeping at bay, under stress of their faib'ng else 
 to be good short stories, any air of mutilation. They 
 had had to be good short stories in order to earn, 
 however precariously, their possible wage and 
 " appear " so certain was it that there would be no 
 appearance, and consequently no wage, for them as 
 frank and brave nouvelles. They could but conceal 
 the fact that they were " nouvelles " ; they could but 
 masquerade as little anecdotes. I include them 
 here by reason of that successful, that achieved and 
 consummate as it strikes me duplicity : which, 
 however, I may add, was in the event to avail them 
 little since they were to find nowhere, the un 
 fortunates, hospitality and the reward of their effort. 
 It is to " The Tree of Knowledge " I referred just 
 above, I may further mention, as the production 
 that had cost me, for keeping it " down," even a 
 greater number of full revolutions of the merciless 
 screw than " The Middle Years." On behalf also 
 of this member of the group, as well as for " The 
 Author of Beltraffio," I recover exceptionally the 
 sense of the grain of suggestion, the tiny air-blown 
 particle. In presence of a small interesting example 
 of a young artist long dead, and whom I had yet 
 briefly seen and was to remember with kindness, a 
 friend had made, thanks to a still greater personal 
 knowledge of him and of his quasi-conspicuous father, 
 likewise an artist, one of those brief remarks that the 
 viii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 dramatist feels as fertilising. " And then," the lady 
 I quote had said in allusion to certain troubled first 
 steps of the young man's career, to complications of 
 consciousness that had made his early death perhaps 
 less strange and less lamentable, even though super 
 ficially more tragic ; " and then he had found his 
 father out, artistically : having grown up in so happy 
 a personal relation with him only to feel, at last, quite 
 awfully, that he didn't and couldn't believe in him." 
 That fell on one's ear of course only to prompt the 
 inward cry : " How can there possibly not be all sorts 
 of good things in it ? " Just so for " The Author 
 of Beltraffio " long before this and some time before 
 the first appearance of the tale in The English Illus 
 trated Magazine (1884) : it had been said to me of an 
 eminent author, these several years dead and on some 
 of the embarrassments of whose life and character 
 a common friend was enlarging : " Add to them all, 
 moreover, that his wife objects intensely to what he 
 writes. She can't bear it (as you can for that matter 
 rather easily conceive) and that naturally creates a 
 tension ! " There had come the air-blown grain 
 which, lodged in a handful of kindly earth, was to 
 produce the story of Mark Ambient. 
 
 Elliptic, I allow, and much of a skipping of stages, 
 so bare an account of such performances ; yet with 
 the constitutive process for each idea quite sufficiently 
 noted by my having had, always, only to say to myself 
 sharply enough : " Dramatise it, dramatise it ! " 
 That answered, in the connexion, ahvays, all my 
 questions that provided for all my " fun." The 
 two tales I have named but represent therefore their 
 respective grains of seed dramatically handled. In 
 the case of " Broken Wings " (1900), however, I but 
 see to-day the produced result I fail to disinter again 
 the buried germ. Little matters it, no doubt, that 
 I recall as operative here the brush of no winged word ; 
 
 ix
 
 PREFACE 
 
 for when had I been, as a fellow scribbler, closed to the 
 general admonition of such adventures as poor Mrs. 
 Harvey's, the elegant representative of literature at 
 Mundham ? to such predicaments as Stuart Straith's, 
 gallant victim of the same hospitality and with the 
 same confirmed ache beneath his white waistcoat ? 
 The appeal of mature purveyors obliged, in the very 
 interest of their presumed, their marketable, fresh 
 ness, to dissimulate the grim realities of shrunken 
 " custom," the felt chill of a lower professional 
 temperature any old note-book would show that laid 
 away as a tragic " value " not much less tenderly 
 than some small plucked flower of association left 
 between the leaves for pressing. What had happened 
 here, visibly, was that the value had had to wait long 
 to become active. " Dramatise, dramatise, drama 
 tise ! " had been just there more of an easy admonition 
 than of a ready feat ; the case for dramatisation was 
 somehow not whole. Under some forgotten touch, 
 however, at its right hour, it was to round itself. 
 What the single situation lacked the pair of situa 
 tions would supply there was drama enough, with 
 economy, from the moment sad companions, looking 
 each other, with their identities of pluck and despair, 
 a little hard in the face, should confess each to the 
 other, relievingly, what they kept from every one else. 
 With the right encounter and the right surprise, that 
 is with the right persons, postulated, the relief, if in the 
 right degree exquisite, might be the drama and the 
 right persons, in fine, to make it exquisite, were Stuart 
 Straith and Mrs. Harvey. There remains " The Great 
 Good Place " (1900) to the spirit of which, however, 
 it strikes me, any gloss or comment would be a 
 tactless challenge. It embodies a calculated effect, 
 and to plunge into it, I find, even for a beguiled glance 
 a course I indeed recommend is to have left all 
 else outside. There then my indications must wait. 
 
 x
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The origin of " Paste " is rather more expressible, 
 since it was to consist but of the ingenious thought of 
 transposing the terms of one of Guy de Maupassant's 
 admirable conies. In "La Parure " a poor young 
 woman, under " social " stress, the need of making an 
 appearance on an important occasion, borrows from an 
 old school friend, now much richer than herself, a pearl 
 necklace which she has the appalling misfortune to lose 
 by some mischance never afterwards cleared up. Her 
 life and her pride, as well as her husband's with them, 
 become subject, from the hour of the awful accident, to 
 the redemption of their debt ; which, effort by effort, 
 sacrifice by sacrifice, franc by franc, with specious 
 pretexts, excuses, a rage of desperate explanation 
 of their failure to restore the missing object, they 
 finally obliterate all to find that their whole con 
 sciousness and life have been convulsed and deformed 
 in vain, that the pearls were but highly artful " imita 
 tion " and that their passionate penance has ruined 
 them for nothing. It seemed harmless sport simply 
 to turn that situation round to shift, in other words, 
 the ground of the horrid mistake, making this a matter 
 not of a false treasure supposed to be true and precious, 
 but of a real treasure supposed to be false and hollow : 
 though a new little " drama," a new setting for my 
 pearls and as different as possible from the other 
 had of course withal to be found. 
 
 " Europe," which is of 1899, when it appeared in 
 Scribner's Magazine, conspicuously fails, on the other 
 hand, to disown its parentage ; so distinct has its 
 " genesis " remained to me. I had preserved for long 
 years an impression of an early time, a visit, in a sedate 
 American city for there were such cities then to 
 an ancient lady whose talk, whose allusions and 
 relics and spoils and mementoes and credentials, so 
 to call them, bore upon a triumphant sojourn in 
 Europe, long years before, in the hey-day of the high 
 
 xi
 
 PREFACE 
 
 scholarly reputation of her husband, a dim displaced 
 superseded celebrity at the time of my own observa 
 tion. They had been " much made of," he and she, 
 at various foreign centres of polite learning, and 
 above all in the England of early Victorian days ; 
 and my hostess had lived ever since on the name and 
 fame of it ; a treasure of legend and anecdote laid 
 up against the comparatively lean half-century, or 
 whatever, that was to follow. For myself even, after 
 this, a good slice of such a period had elapsed ; yet 
 with my continuing to believe that fond memory 
 would still somehow be justified of this scrap too, along 
 with so many others : the unextinguished sense of 
 the temperature of the January morning on which 
 the little Sunday breakfast-party, at half-past nine 
 across the snow, had met to the music of a chilly 
 ghostly kindly tinkle ; that of the roomful of cherished 
 echoes and of framed and glazed, presented and 
 autographed and thumb-marked mementoes the 
 wealth of which was somehow explained (this was part 
 of the legend) by the ancient, the at last almost pre 
 historic, glory of like matutinal hours, type and model 
 of the emulous shrunken actual. 
 
 The justification I awaited, however, only came 
 much later, on my catching some tender mention of 
 certain admirable ladies, sisters and spinsters under 
 the maternal roof, for whom the century was ebbing 
 without remedy brought to their eminent misfortune 
 (such a ground of sympathy always in the " good old " 
 American days when the touching case was still 
 possible) of not having " been to Europe." Ex 
 ceptionally prepared by culture for going, they yet 
 couldn't leave their immemorial mother, the head 
 spring, precisely, of that grace in them, who on the 
 occasion of each proposed start announced her ap 
 proaching end only to postpone it again after the 
 plan was dished and the flight relinquished. So the 
 
 xii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 century ebbed, and so Europe altered for the worse 
 and so perhaps even a little did the sisters who sat 
 in bondage ; only so didn't at all the immemorial, 
 the inextinguishable, the eternal mother. Striking 
 to the last degree, I thought, that obscure, or at least 
 that muffled, tragedy, which had the further interest 
 of giving me on the spot a setting for my own so long 
 uninserted gem and of enabling me to bring out with 
 maximum confidence my inveterate " Dramatise ! " 
 " Make this one with such projection as you are free 
 to permit yourself of the brooding parent in the other 
 case," I duly remarked, " and the whole thing falls 
 together ; the paradise the good sisters are apparently 
 never to attain becoming by this conversion just the 
 social cake on which they have always been fed and 
 that has so notoriously opened their appetite." Or 
 something of that sort. I recognise that I so but 
 express here the " plot " of my tale as it stands ; 
 except for so far as my formula, " something of that 
 sort," was to make the case bristle with as many vivid 
 values, with as thick and yet as clear a little com 
 plexity of interest, as possible. The merit of the 
 thing is in the feat, once more, of the transfusion ; 
 the receptacle (of form) being so exiguous, the brevity 
 imposed so great. I undertook the brevity, so often 
 undertaken on a like scale before, and again arrived 
 at it by the innumerable repeated chemical reductions 
 and condensations that tend to make of the very 
 short story, as I risk again noting, one of the costliest, 
 even if, like the hard shining sonnet, one of the most 
 indestructible, forms of composition in general use. I 
 accepted the rigour of its having, all sternly, in this 
 case, to treat so many of its most appealing values as 
 waste; and I now seek my comfort perforce in the 
 mere exhibited result, the union of whatever fulness 
 with whatever clearness. 
 
 HENRY JAMES, 
 xiii
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO i 
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS . .65 
 
 GREVILLE FANE . . : . . . .93 
 
 BROKEN WINGS . . . . .117 
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE . . . 143 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE NORTHMORES 167 
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE . ' . . .195 
 
 FOUR MEETINGS . . . . . 233 
 
 PASTE '. , . '. . . .277 
 
 EUROPE . . . . . " . -299 
 
 MISS GUNTON OF POUGHKEEPSIE . . 327 
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE ., . . 347 
 
 xv
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO
 
 MUCH as I wished to see him I had kept my letter of 
 introduction three weeks in my pocket-book. I was 
 nervous and timid about meeting him conscious of 
 youth and ignorance, convinced that he was tormented 
 by strangers, and especially by my country-people, 
 and not exempt from the suspicion that he had the 
 irritability as well as the dignity of genius. More 
 over, the pleasure, if it should occur for I could 
 scarcely believe it was near at hand would be so 
 great that I wished to think of it in advance, to feel 
 it there against my breast, not to mix it with satisfac-. 
 tions more superficial and usual. In the little game 
 of new sensations that I was playing with my in 
 genuous mind I wished to keep my visit to the author 
 of " Beltraffto " as a trump-card. It was three years 
 after the publication of that fascinating work, which 
 I had read over five times and which now, with my 
 riper judgement, I admire on the whole as much as 
 ever. This will give you about the date of my first visit 
 of any duration to England ; for you will not have 
 forgotten the commotion, I may even say the scandal, 
 produced by Mark Ambient's masterpiece. It was 
 the most complete presentation that had yet been 
 made of the gospel of art ; it was a kind of esthetic 
 war-cry. People had endeavoured to sail nearer 
 to " truth " in the cut of their sleeves and the shape 
 of their sideboards ; but there had not as yet been, 
 
 3
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 among English novels, such an example of beauty 
 of execution and " intimate " importance of theme. 
 Nothing had been done in that line from the point 
 of view of art for art. That served me as a fond 
 formula, I may mention, when I was twenty-five ; how 
 much it still serves I won't take upon myself to say 
 especially as the discerning reader will be able to judge 
 for himself. I had been in England, briefly, a twelve 
 month before the time to which I began by alluding, 
 and had then learned that Mr. Ambient was in distant 
 lands was making a considerable tour in the East ; 
 so that there was nothing to do but to keep my letter 
 till I should be in London again. It was of little use 
 to me to hear that his wife had not left England and 
 was, with her little boy, their only child, spending 
 the period of her husband's absence a good many 
 months at a small place they had down in Surrey. 
 They had a house in London, but actually in the 
 occupation of other persons. All this I had picked 
 up, and also that Mrs. Ambient was charming my 
 friend the American poet, from whom I had my intro 
 duction, had never seen her, his relations with the 
 great man confined to the exchange of letters ; but 
 she wasn't, after all, though she had lived so near the 
 rose, the author of "Beltraffio," and I didn't go down 
 into Surrey to call on her. I went to the Continent, 
 spent the following winter in Italy, and returned to 
 London in May. My visit to Italy had opened my 
 eyes to a good many things, but to nothing more than 
 the beauty of certain pages in the works of Mark 
 Ambient. I carried his productions about in my, 
 trunk they are not, as you know, very numerous, 
 but he had preluded to "Beltraffio" by some exquisite 
 things and I used to read them over in the evening 
 at the inn. I used profoundly to reason that the man 
 who drew those characters and wrote that style under 
 stood what he saw and knew what he was doing. 
 
 4
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 This is my sole ground for mentioning my winter in 
 Italy. He had been there much in former years 
 he was saturated with what painters call the " feeling " 
 of that classic land. He expressed the charm of the 
 old hill-cities of Tuscany, the look of certain lonely 
 grass-grown places which, in the past, had echoed with 
 life ; he understood the great artists, he understood 
 the spirit of the Renaissance ; he understood every 
 thing. The scene of one of his earlier novels was laid 
 in Rome, the scene of another in Florence, and I had 
 moved through these cities in company with the 
 figures he set so firmly on their feet. This is why I 
 was now so much happier even than before in the 
 prospect of making his acquaintance. 
 
 At last, when I had dallied with my privilege 
 long enough, I despatched to him the missive of the 
 American poet. He had already gone out of town ; he 
 shrank from the rigour of the London " season," and 
 it was his habit to migrate on the first of June. More 
 over I had heard he was this year hard at work on a 
 new book, into which some of his impressions of the 
 East were to be wrought, so that he desired nothing 
 so much as quiet days. That knowledge, however, 
 didn't prevent me cet age est sans pitie from sending 
 with my friend's letter a note of my own, in which 
 I asked his leave to come down and see him for an 
 hour or two on some day to be named by himself. 
 My proposal was accompanied with a very frank 
 expression of my sentiments, and the effect of the 
 entire appeal was to elicit from the great man the 
 kindes't possible invitation. He would be delighted 
 to see me, especially if I should turn up on the follow 
 ing Saturday and would remain till the Monday 
 morning. We would take a walk over the Surrey 
 commons, and I could tell him all about the other 
 great man, the one in America. He indicated to me 
 the best train, and it may be imagined whether on 
 
 5
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 the Saturday afternoon I was punctual at Waterloo. 
 He carried his benevolence to the point of coming to 
 meet me at the little station at which I was to alight, 
 and my heart beat very fast as I saw his handsome 
 face, surmounted with a soft wide-awake and which 
 I knew by a photograph long since enshrined on my 
 mantel-shelf, scanning the carriage-windows as the 
 train rolled up. He recognised me as infallibly as I 
 had recognised himself ; he appeared to know by 
 instinct how a young American of critical pretensions, 
 rash youth, would look when much divided between 
 eagerness and modesty. He took me by the hand and 
 smiled at me and said : " You must be a you, I 
 think ! " and asked if I should mind going on foot to 
 his house, which would take but a few minutes. I 
 remember feeling it a piece of extraordinary affability 
 that he should give directions about the conveyance 
 of my bag ; I remember feeling altogether very happy 
 and rosy, in fact quite transported, when he laid his 
 hand on my shoulder as we came out of the station. 
 
 I surveyed him, askance, as we walked together ; 
 I had already, I had indeed instantly, seen him as all 
 delightful. His face is so well known that I needn't 
 describe it ; he looked to me at once an English gentle 
 man and a man of genius, and I thought that a happy 
 combination. There was a brush of the Bohemian 
 in his fineness ; you would easily have guessed his 
 belonging to the artist guild. He was addicted to 
 velvet jackets, to cigarettes, to loose shirt-collars, 
 to looking a little dishevelled. His features, which 
 were firm but not perfectly regular, are fairly enough 
 represented in his portraits ; but no portrait I have 
 seen gives any idea of his expression. There were 
 innumerable things in it, and they chased each other 
 in and out of his face. I have seen people who were 
 grave and gay in quick alternation ; but Mark 
 Ambient was grave and gay at one and the same 
 
 6
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 moment. There were other strange oppositions and 
 contradictions in his slightly faded and fatigued 
 countenance. He affected me somehow as at once 
 fresh and stale, at once anxious and indifferent. He 
 had evidently had an active past, which inspired one 
 with curiosity ; yet what was that compared to his 
 obvious future ? He was just enough above middle 
 height to be spoken of as tall, and rather lean and long 
 in the flank. He had the friendliest frankest manner 
 possible, and yet I could see it cost him something. 
 It cost him small spasms of the self-consciousness 
 that is an Englishman's last and dearest treasure 
 the thing he pays his way through life by sacrificing 
 small pieces of even as the gallant but moneyless 
 adventurer in " Quentin Durward " broke off links of 
 his brave gold chain. He had been thirty-eight years 
 old at the time "Beltraffio" was published. He asked 
 me about his friend in America, about the length of 
 my stay in England, about the last news in London 
 and the people I had seen there ; and I remember 
 looking for the signs of genius in the very form of his 
 questions and thinking I found it. I liked his voice 
 as if I were somehow myself having the use of it. 
 
 There was genius in his house too I thought when 
 we got there ; there was imagination in the carpets 
 and curtains, in the pictures and books, in the garden 
 behind it, where certain old brown walls were muffled 
 in creepers that appeared to me to have been copied 
 from a masterpiece of one of the pre-Raphaelites. 
 That was the way many things struck me at that 
 time, in England as reproductions of something 
 that existed primarily in art or literature. It was 
 not the picture, the poem, the fictive page, that 
 seemed to me a copy ; these things were the originals, 
 and the life of happy and distinguished people was 
 fashioned in their image. Mark Ambient called his 
 house a cottage, and I saw afterwards he was right ; 
 
 7
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 for if it hadn't been a cottage it must have been a 
 villa, and a villa, in England at least, was not a place 
 in which one could fancy him at home. But it was, 
 to my vision, a cottage glorified and translated ; 
 it was a palace of art, on a slightly reduced scale 
 and might besides have been the dearest haunt of 
 the old English genius loci. It nestled under a cluster 
 of magnificent beeches, it had little creaking lattices 
 that opened out of, or into, pendent mats of ivy, and 
 gables, and old red tiles, as well as a general aspect 
 of being painted in water-colours and inhabited by 
 people whose lives would go on in chapters and 
 volumes. The lawn seemed to me of extraordinary 
 extent, the garden-walls of incalculable height, the 
 whole air of the place delightfully still, private, proper 
 to itself. " My wife must be somewhere about," 
 Mark Ambient said t as we went in. " We shall find 
 her perhaps we've about an hour before dinner. 
 She may be in the garden. I'll show you my little 
 place." 
 
 We passed through the house and into the grounds, 
 as I should have called them, which extended into 
 the rear. They covered scarce three or four acres, but, 
 like the house, were very old and crooked and full 
 of traces of long habitation, with inequalities of level 
 and little flights of steps mossy and cracked were 
 these which connected the different parts with 
 each other. The limits of the place, cleverly dis 
 simulated, were muffled in the great verdurous screens. 
 They formed, as I remember, a thick loose curtain 
 at the further end, in one of the folds of which, as it 
 were, we presently made out from afar a little group. 
 " Ah there she is ! " said Mark Ambient ; " and she 
 has got the boy." He noted that last fact in a slightly 
 different tone from any in which he yet had spoken. 
 I wasn't fully aware of this at the time, but it lingered 
 in my ear and I afterwards understood it.
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 " Is it your son ? " I inquired, feeling the question 
 not to be brilliant. 
 
 " Yes, my only child. He's always in his mother's 
 pocket. She coddles him too much." It came back 
 to me afterwards too the sound of these critical 
 words. They weren't petulant ; they expressed 
 rather a sudden coldness, a mechanical submission. 
 We went a few steps further, and then he stopped 
 short and called the boy, beckoning to him repeatedly. 
 
 " Dolcino, come and see your daddy ! " There 
 was something in the way he stood still and waited 
 that made me think he did it for a purpose. Mrs. 
 Ambient had her arm round the child's waist, and he 
 was leaning against her knee ; but though he moved 
 at his father's call she gave no sign of releasing him. 
 A lady, apparently a neighbour, was seated near her, 
 and before them was a garden-table on which a tea- 
 service had been placed. 
 
 Mark Ambient called again, and Dolcino struggled 
 in the maternal embrace ; but, too tightly held, he 
 after 'two or three fruitless efforts jerked about and 
 buried his head deep in his mother's lap. There was 
 a certain awkwardness in the scene ; I thought it odd 
 Mrs. Ambient should pay so little attention to her 
 husband. But I wouldn't for the world have betrayed 
 my thought, and, to conceal it, I began loudly to 
 rejoice in the prospect of our having tea in the garden. 
 " Ah she won't let him come ! " said my host with 
 a sigh ; and we went our way till we reached the 
 two ladies. He mentioned my name to his wife, and 
 I noticed that he addressed her as " My dear," very 
 genially, without a trace of resentment at her detention 
 of the child. The quickness of the transition made me 
 vaguely ask myself if he were perchance henpecked 
 a shocking surmise which I instantly dismissed. 
 Mrs. Ambient was quite such a wife as I should have 
 expected him to have ; slim and fair, with a long 
 
 9
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 neck and pretty eyes and an air of good breeding. 
 She shone with a certain coldness and practised 
 in intercourse a certain bland detachment, but she 
 was clothed in gentleness as in one of those vaporous 
 redundant scarves that muffle the heroines of Gains 
 borough and Romney. She had also a vague air 
 of. race, justified by my afterwards learning that 
 she was " connected with the aristocracy." I have 
 seen poets married to women of whom it was difficult 
 to conceive that they should gratify the poetic fancy 
 women with dull faces and glutinous minds, who 
 were none the less, however, excellent wives. But 
 there was no obvious disparity in Mark Ambient's 
 union. My hostess so far as she could be called 
 so delicate and quiet, in a white dress, with her 
 beautiful child at her side, was worthy of the author 
 of a work so distinguished as " Beltraffio." Round 
 her neck she wore a black velvet ribbon, of which 
 the long ends, tied behind, hung down her back, 
 and to which, in front, was attached^ a miniature 
 portrait of her little boy. Her smooth shining 
 hair was confined in a net. She gave me an adequate 
 greeting, and Dolcino I thought this small name of 
 endearment delightful took advantage of her getting 
 up to slip away from her and go to his father, who 
 seized him in silence and held him high for a long 
 moment, kissing him several times. 
 
 I had lost no time in observing that the child, not 
 more than seven years old, was extraordinarily 
 beautiful. He had the face of an angel the eyes, 
 the hair, the smile of innocence, the more than mortal 
 bloom. There was something that deeply touched, 
 that almost alarmed, in his beauty, composed, one 
 would have said, of elements too fine and pure for the 
 breath of this world. When I spoke to him and he 
 came and held out his hand and smiled at me I felt a 
 sudden strange pity for him quite as if he had been 
 
 10
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 an orphan or a changeling or stamped with some 
 social stigma. It was impossible to be in fact more 
 exempt from these misfortunes, and yet, as one kissed 
 him, it was hard to keep from murmuring all tenderly 
 " Poor little devil ! " though why one should have 
 applied this epithet to a living cherub is more than I 
 can say. Afterwards indeed I knew a trifle better ; 
 I grasped the truth of his being too fair to live, wonder 
 ing at the same time that his parents shouldn't have 
 guessed it and have been in proportionate grief and 
 despair. For myself I had no doubt of his evanes 
 cence, having already more than once caught in the 
 fact the particular infant charm that's as good as a 
 death-warrant. 
 
 The lady who had been sitting with Mrs. Ambient 
 was a jolly ruddy personage in velveteen and limp 
 feathers, whom I guessed to be the vicar's wife our 
 hostess didn't introduce me and who immediately 
 began to talk to Ambient about chrysanthemums. 
 This was a safe subject, and yet there was a certain 
 surprise for me in seeing the author of " Beltrafno " 
 even in such superficial communion with the Church 
 of England. His writings implied so much detach 
 ment from that institution, expressed a view of life 
 so profane, as it were, so independent and so little 
 likely in general to be thought edifying, that I should 
 have expected to find him an object of horror to vicars 
 and their ladies of horror repaid on his own part 
 by any amount of effortless derision. This proved 
 how little I knew as yet of the English people and their 
 extraordinary talent for keeping up their forms, as 
 well as of some of the mysteries of Mark Ambient's 
 hearth and home. I found afterwards that he had, 
 in his study, between nervous laughs and free cigar- 
 puffs, some wonderful comparisons for his clerical 
 neighbours ; but meanwhile the chrysanthemums 
 were a source of harmony, as he and the vicaress 
 
 ii
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 were equally attached to them, and I was surprised 
 at the knowledge they exhibited of this interesting 
 plant. The lady's visit, however, had presumably 
 been long, and she presently rose for departure and 
 kissed Mrs. Ambient. Mark started to walk with her 
 to the gate of the grounds, holding Dolcino by the 
 hand. 
 
 " Stay with me, darling," Mrs. Ambient said 
 to the boy, who had surrendered himseJf to his 
 father. 
 
 Mark paid no attention to the summons, but 
 Dolcino turned and looked at her in shy appeal, 
 " Can't I go with papa ? " 
 
 " Not when I ask you to stay with me." 
 
 " But please don't ask me, mamma," said the child 
 in his small clear new voice. 
 
 " I must ask you when I want you. Come to me, 
 dearest." And Mrs. Ambient, who had seated herself 
 again, held out her long slender slightly too osseous 
 hands. 
 
 Her husband stopped, his back turned to her, but 
 without releasing the child. He was still talking to 
 the vicaress, but this good lady, I think, had lost the 
 thread of her attention. She looked at Mrs. Ambient 
 and at Dolcino, and then looked at me, smiling in 
 a highly amused cheerful manner and almost to a 
 grimace. 
 
 " Papa," said the child, " mamma wants me not to 
 go with you." 
 
 " He's very tired he has run about all day. He 
 ought to be quiet till he goes to bed. Otherwise he 
 won't sleep." These declarations fell successively 
 and very distinctly from Mrs. Ambient's lips. 
 
 Her husband, still without turning round, bent over 
 the boy and looked at him in silence. The vicaress 
 gave a genial irrelevant laugh and observed that he 
 was a precious little pet. " Let him choose," said 
 
 12
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 Mark Ambient. " My dear little boy, will you go 
 with me or will you stay with your mother ? " 
 
 "Oh it's a shame ! " cried the vicar's lady with 
 increased hilarity. 
 
 " Papa, I don't think I can choose," the child 
 answered, making his voice very low and confidential. 
 " But I've been a great deal with mamma to-day," 
 he then added. 
 
 " And very little with papa ! My dear fellow, I' 
 think you have chosen ! " On which Mark Ambient 
 walked off with his son, accompanied by re-echoing 
 but inarticulate comments from my fellow-visitor. 
 
 His wife had seated herself again, and her fixed 
 eyes, bent on the ground, expressed for a few moments 
 so much mute agitation that anything I could think 
 of to say would be but a false note. Yet she none the 
 less quickly recovered herself, to express the suffi 
 ciently civil hope that I didn't mind having had to 
 walk from the station. I reassured her on this point, 
 and she went on : " We've got a thing that might 
 have gone for you, but my husband wouldn't order it." 
 After which and another longish pause, broken only 
 by my plea that the pleasure of a walk with our friend 
 would have been quite what I would have chosen, 
 she found for reply : "I believe the Americans walk 
 very little." 
 
 ' Yes, we always run," I laughingly allowed. 
 
 She looked at me seriously, yet with an absence in 
 her pretty eyes. " I suppose your distances are so 
 great." 
 
 " Yes, but we break our marches ! I can't tell you 
 the pleasure to me of finding myself here," I added. 
 " I've the greatest admiration for Mr. Ambient." 
 
 " He'll like that. He likes being admired." 
 
 " He must have a very happy life, then. He has 
 many worshippers." 
 
 " Oh yes, I've seen some of them," she dropped, 
 13
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 looking away, very far from me, rather as if such a 
 vision were before her at the moment. It seemed to 
 indicate, her tone, that the sight was scarcely edifying, 
 and I guessed her quickly enough to be in no great 
 intellectual sympathy with the author of " Beltraffio." 
 I thought the fact strange, but somehow, in the glow 
 of my own enthusiasm, didn't think it important : 
 it only made me wish rather to emphasise that 
 homage. 
 
 " For me, you know," I returned doubtless with 
 a due suffisance " he's quite the greatest of living 
 writers." 
 
 " Of course I can't judge. Of course he's very 
 clever," she said with a patient cheer. 
 
 " He's nothing less than supreme, Mrs. Ambient ! 
 There are pages in each of his books of a perfection 
 classing them with the greatest things. Accordingly 
 for me to see him in this familiar way, in his habit as 
 he lives, and apparently to find the man as delightful 
 as the artist well, I can't tell you how much too 
 good to be true it seems and how great a privilege 
 I think it." I knew I was gushing, but I couldn't 
 help it, and what I said was a good deal less than what 
 I felt. I was by no means sure I should dare to say 
 even so much as this to the master himself, and there 
 was a kind of rapture in speaking it out to his wife 
 which was not affected by the fact that, as a wife, 
 she appeared peculiar. She listened to me with her 
 face grave again and her lips a little compressed, 
 listened as if in no doubt, of course, that her husband 
 was remarkable, but as if at the same time she had 
 heard it frequently enough and couldn't treat it as 
 stirring news. There was even in her manner a 
 suggestion that I was so young as to expose myself to 
 being called forward an imputation and a word I 
 had always loathed ; as well as a hinted reminder 
 that people usually got over their early extravagance. 
 
 14
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 " I assure you that for me this is a red-letter day," I 
 added. 
 
 She didn't take this up, but after a pause, looking 
 round her, said abruptly and a trifle dryly : " We're 
 very much afraid about the fruit this year." 
 
 My eyes wandered to the mossy mottled garden- 
 walls, where plum-trees and pears, flattened and 
 fastened upon the rusty bricks, looked like crucified 
 figures with many arms. " Doesn't it promise well ? " 
 
 " No, the trees look very dull. We had such late 
 frosts." 
 
 Then there was another pause. She addressed her 
 attention to the opposite end of the grounds, kept it 
 for her husband's return with the child. " Is Mr. 
 Ambient fond of gardening ? " it occurred to me to 
 ask, irresistibly impelled as I felt myself, moreover, to 
 bring the conversation constantly back to him. 
 
 " He's very fond of plums," said his wife. 
 
 " Ah well, then, I hope your crop will be better 
 than you fear. It's a lovely old place," I continued. 
 ' The whole impression's that of certain places he has 
 described. Your house is like one of his pictures." 
 
 She seemed a bit frigidly amused at my glow. 
 "It's a pleasant little place. There are hundreds 
 like it." 
 
 " Oh it has his tone," I laughed, but sounding my 
 epithet and insisting on my point the more sharply 
 that my companion appeared to see in my apprecia 
 tion of her simple establishment a mark of mean 
 experience. 
 
 It was clear I insisted too much. " His tone ? " 
 she repeated with a harder look at me and a slightly 
 heightened colour. 
 
 " Surely he has a tone, Mrs. Ambient." 
 
 " Oh yes, he has indeed ! But I don't in the least 
 consider that I'm living in one of his books at all. 
 I shouldn't care for that in the least," she went on 
 
 15
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 with a smile that had in some degree the effect of con 
 verting her really sharp protest into an insincere 
 joke. " I'm afraid I'm not very literary. And I'm 
 not artistic," she stated. 
 
 " I'm very sure you're not ignorant, not stupid," 
 I ventured to reply, with the accompaniment of 
 feeling immediately afterwards that I had been both 
 familiar and patronising. My only consolation was in 
 the sense that she had begun it, had fairly dragged me 
 into it. She had thrust forward her limitations. 
 
 " Well, whatever I am I'm very different from my 
 husband. If you like him you won't like me. You 
 needn't say anything. Your liking me isn't in the 
 least necessary ! " 
 
 " Don't defy me ! " I could but honourably make 
 answer. 
 
 She looked as if she hadn't heard me, which was 
 the best thing she could do ; and we sat some time 
 without further speech. Mrs. Ambient had evidently 
 the enviable English quality of being able to be mute 
 without unrest. But at last she spoke she asked 
 me if there seemed many people in town. I gave her 
 what satisfaction I could on this point, and we talked 
 a little of London and of some of its characteristics 
 at that time of the year. At the end of this I came 
 back irrepressibly to Mark. 
 
 " Doesn't he like to be there now ? I suppose he 
 doesn't find the proper quiet for his work. I should 
 think his things had been written for the most part 
 in a very still place. They suggest a great stillness 
 following on a kind of tumult. Don't you think so ? " 
 I laboured on. " I suppose London's a tremendous 
 place to collect impressions, but a refuge like this, in 
 the country, must be better for working them up. 
 Does he get many of his impressions in London, 
 should you say ? " I proceeded from point to point 
 in this malign inquiry simply because my hostess, who 
 
 16
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 probably thought me an odious chattering person, 
 gave me time ; for when I paused I've not repre 
 sented my pauses she simply continued to let her 
 eyes wander while her long fair fingers played with the 
 medallion on her neck. When I stopped altogether, 
 however, she was obliged to say something, and what 
 she said was that she hadn't the least idea where her 
 husband got his impressions. This made me think 
 her, for a moment, positively disagreeable ; delicate 
 and proper and rather aristocratically fine as she 
 sat there. But I must either have lost that view 
 a moment later or been goaded by it to further aggres 
 sion, for I remember asking her if our great man were 
 in a good vein of work and when we might look for the 
 appearance of the book on which he was engaged. 
 I've every reason now to know that she found me 
 insufferable. 
 
 She gave a strange small laugh as she said : " I'm 
 afraid you think I know much more about my 
 husband's work than I do. I haven't the least idea 
 what he's doing," she then added in a slightly different, 
 that is a more explanatory, tone and as if from a 
 glimpse of the enormity of her confession. " I don't 
 read what he writes." 
 
 She didn't succeed, and wouldn't even had she 
 tried much harder, in making this seem to me any 
 thing less than monstrous. I stared at her and I 
 think I blushed. " Don't you admire his genius ? 
 Don't you admire ' Beltraffio ' ? " 
 
 She waited, and I wondered what she could possibly 
 say. She didn't speak, I could see, the first words 
 that rose to her lips ; she repeated what she had said 
 a few minutes before. " Oh of course he's very 
 clever ! " And with this she got up ; our two 
 absentees had reappeared.
 
 II 
 
 MRS. AMBIENT left me and went to meet them ; she 
 stopped and had a few words with her husband that 
 I didn't hear and that ended in her taking the child 
 by the hand and returning with him to the house. 
 Her husband joined me in a moment, looking, I 
 thought, the least bit conscious and constrained, and 
 said that if I would come in with him he would show 
 me my room. In looking back upon these first 
 moments of my visit I find it important to avoid the 
 error of appearing to have at all fully measured his 
 situation from the first or made out the sig<ns of things 
 mastered only afterwards. This later knowledge 
 throws a backward light and makes me forget that, 
 at least on the occasion of my present reference I 
 mean that first afternoon Mark Ambient struck 
 me as only enviable. Allowing for this he must yet 
 have failed of much expression as we walked back to 
 the house, though I remember well the answer he 
 made to a remark of mine on his small son. 
 
 " That's an extraordinary little boy of yours. I've 
 never seen such a child." 
 
 " Why," he asked while we went, " do you call him 
 extraordinary ? " 
 
 " He's so beautiful, so fascinating. He's like some 
 perfect little work of art." 
 
 He turned quickly in the passage, grasping my arm. 
 " Oh don't call him that, or you'll you'll ! " 
 
 18
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 But in his hesitation he broke off suddenly, laughing 
 at my surprise. Immediately afterwards, however, 
 he added : ' You'll make his little future very 
 difficult." 
 
 I declared that I wouldn't for the world take any 
 liberties with his little future it seemed to me to 
 hang by threads of such delicacy. I should only be 
 highly interested in watching it. 
 
 " You Americans are very keen," he commented 
 on this. " You notice more things than we do." 
 
 " Ah if you want visitors who aren't struck with 
 you," I cried, " you shouldn't have asked me down 
 here ! " 
 
 He showed me my room, a little bower of chintz, 
 with open windows where the light was green, and 
 before he left me said irrelevantly : "As for my small 
 son, you know, we shall probably kill him between 
 us before we've done with him ! " And he made this 
 assertion as if he really believed it, without any 
 appearance of jest, his fine near-sighted expressive 
 eyes looking straight into mine. 
 
 " Do you mean by spoiling him ? " 
 
 " No, by fighting for him ! " 
 
 " You had better give him to me to keep for you," 
 I said. " Let me remove the apple of discord ! " 
 
 It was my extravagance of course, but he had the 
 air of being perfectly serious. " It would be quite 
 the best thing we could do. I should be all ready to 
 do it." 
 
 "I'm greatly obliged to you for your confidence." 
 
 But he lingered with his hands in his pockets. I 
 felt as if within a few moments I had, morally speak 
 ing, taken several steps nearer to him. He looked 
 weary, just as he faced me then, looked preoccupied 
 and as if there were something one might do for him. 
 I was terribly conscious of the limits of my young 
 ability, but I wondered what such a service might be,
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 feeling at bottom nevertheless that the only thing I 
 could do for him was to like him. I suppose he 
 guessed this and was grateful for what was in my 
 mind, since he went on presently : "I haven't the 
 advantage of being an American, but I also notice 
 a little, and I've an idea that " here he smiled and 
 laid his hand on my shoulder " even counting out 
 your nationality you're not destitute of intelligence. 
 I've only known you half an hour, but ! " For 
 which again he pulled up. " You're very young, 
 after all." 
 
 " But you may treat me as if I could understand 
 you ! " I said ; and before he left me to dress for 
 dinner he had virtually given me a promise that he 
 would. 
 
 When I went down into the drawing-room I was 
 very punctual I found that neither my hostess nor 
 my host had appeared. A lady rose from a sofa, 
 however, and inclined her head as I rather surprisedly 
 gazed at her. " I daresay you don't know me," she 
 said with the modern laugh. "I'm Mark Ambient 's 
 sister." Whereupon I shook hands with her, saluting 
 her very low. Her laugh was modern by which 
 I mean that it consisted of the vocal agitation serving 
 between people who meet in drawing-rooms as the 
 solvent of social disparities, the medium of transitions; 
 but her appearance was what shall I call it ? 
 medieval. She was pale and angular, her long 
 thin face was inhabited by sad dark eyes and her 
 black hair intertwined with golden fillets and curious 
 clasps. She wore a faded velvet robe which clung 
 to her when she moved and was " cut," as to the 
 neck and sleeves, like the garments of old Italians. 
 She suggested a symbolic picture, something akin 
 even to Diirer's Melancholia, and was so perfect an 
 image of a type which I, in my ignorance, supposed 
 to be extinct, that while she rose before me I was 
 
 20
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 almost as much startled as if I had seen a ghost. 1 
 afterwards concluded that Miss Ambient wasn't 
 incapable of deriving pleasure from this weird effect, 
 and I now believe that reflexion concerned in her 
 having sunk again to her seat with her long lean but 
 not ungraceful arms locked together in an archaic 
 manner on her knees and her mournful eyes address 
 ing me a message of intentness which foreshadowed 
 what I was subsequently to suffer. She was a singular 
 fatuous artificial creature, and I was never more than 
 half to penetrate her motives and mysteries. Of one 
 thing I'm sure at least : that they were considerably 
 less insuperable than her appearance announced. 
 Miss Ambient was a restless romantic disappointed 
 spinster, consumed with the love of Michael-Angel- 
 esque attitudes and mystical robes ; but I'm now 
 convinced she hadn't in her nature those depths of 
 unutterable thought which, when you first knew her, 
 seemed to look out from her eyes and to prompt her 
 complicated gestures. Those features in especial had 
 a misleading eloquence ;' they lingered on you with a 
 far-off dimness, an air of obstructed sympathy, which 
 was certainly not always a key to the spirit of their 
 owner ; so that, of a truth, a young lady could scarce 
 have been so dejected and disillusioned without having 
 committed a crime for which she was consumed with 
 remorse, or having parted with a hope that she 
 couldn't sanely have entertained. She had, I believe, 
 the usual allowance of rather vain motives : she wished 
 to be looked at, she wished to be married, she wished 
 to be thought original. 
 
 It costs me a pang to speak in this irreverent 
 manner of one of Ambient's name, but I shall have 
 still less gracious things to say before I've finished 
 my anecdote, and moreover I confess it I owe 
 the young lady a bit of a grudge. Putting aside the 
 curious cast of her face she had no natural aptitude 
 
 21
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 for an artistic development, had little real intelligence. 
 But her affectations rubbed off on her brother's 
 renown, and as there were plenty of people who 
 darkly disapproved of him they could easily point to 
 his sister as a person formed by his influence. It was 
 quite possible to regard her as a warning, and she had 
 almost compromised him with the world at large. 
 He was the original and she the inevitable imitation. 
 I suppose him scarce aware of the impression she 
 mainly produced, beyond having a general idea that 
 she made up very well as a Rossetti ; he was used to 
 her and was sorry for her, wishing she would marry 
 and observing how she didn't. Doubtless I take her 
 too seriously, for she did me no harm, though I'm 
 bound to allow that I can only half-account for her. 
 She wasn't so mystical as she looked, but was a 
 strange indirect uncomfortable embarrassing woman. 
 My story gives the reader at best so very small a knot 
 to untie that I needn't hope to excite his curiosity 
 by delaying to remark that Mrs. Ambient hated her 
 sister-in-law. This I learned'but later on, when other 
 matters came to my knowledge. I mention it, how 
 ever, at once, for I shall perhaps not seem to count 
 too much on having beguiled him if I say he must 
 promptly have guessed it. Mrs. Ambient, a person 
 of conscience, put the best face on her kinswoman, 
 who spent a month with her twice a year ; but it 
 took no great insight to recognise the very different 
 personal paste of the two ladies, and that the usual 
 feminine hypocrisies would cost them on either side 
 much more than the usual effort. Mrs. Ambient, 
 smooth-haired, thin-lipped, perpetually fresh, must 
 have regarded her crumpled and dishevelled visitor 
 as an equivocal joke ; she herself so the opposite of a 
 Rossetti, she herself a Reynolds or a Lawrence, with 
 no more far-fetched note in her composition than a 
 cold ladylike candour and a well-starched muslin dress. 
 
 22
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 It was in a garment and with an expression of 
 this kind that she made her entrance after I had 
 exchanged a few words with Miss Ambient. Her 
 husband presently followed her and, there being no 
 other company, we went to dinner. The impressions 
 I received at that repast are present to me still. The 
 elements of oddity in the air hovered, as it were, 
 without descending to any immediate check of my 
 delight. This came mainly, of course, from Ambient's 
 talk, the easiest and richest I had ever heard. I 
 mayn't say to-day whether he laid himself out to 
 dazzle a rather juvenile pilgrim from over the sea ; 
 but that matters little it seemed so natural to him 
 to shine. His spoken wit or wisdom, or whatever, 
 had thus a charm almost beyond his written ; that is 
 if the high finish of his printed prose be really, as some 
 people have maintained, a fault. There was such a 
 kindness in him, however, that I've no doubt it gave 
 him ideas for me, or about me, to see me sit as open- 
 mouthed as I now figure myself. Not so the two 
 ladies, who not only were very nearly dumb from 
 beginning to end of the meal, but who hadn't even the 
 air of being struck with such an exhibition of fancy and 
 taste. Mrs. Ambient, detached, and inscrutable, met 
 neither my eye nor her husband's ; she attended to her 
 dinner, watched her servants, arranged the puckers in 
 her dress, exchanged at wide intervals a remark with 
 her sister-in-law and, while she slowly rubbed her 
 lean white hands between the courses, looked out of 
 the window at the first signs of evening the long 
 June day allowing us to dine without candles. Miss 
 Ambient appeared to give little direct heed to anything 
 said by her brother ; but on the other hand she was 
 much engaged in watching its effect upon me. Her 
 " die-away " pupils continued to attach themselves 
 to my countenance, and it was only her air of be 
 longing to another century that kept them from 
 
 23
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 being importunate. She seemed to look at me across 
 the ages, and the interval of time diminished for me 
 the inconvenience. It was as if she knew in a general 
 way that he must be talking very well, but she herself 
 was so at home among such allusions that she had no 
 need to pick them up and was at liberty to see what 
 would become of the exposure of a candid young 
 American to a high esthetic temperature. 
 
 The temperature was esthetic certainty, but it was 
 less so than I could have desired, for I failed of any 
 great success in making our friend abound about him 
 self. I tried to put him on the ground of his own 
 genius, but he slipped through my fingers every time 
 and shifted the saddle to one or other of his contem 
 poraries. He talked about Balzac and Browning, 
 about what was being done in foreign countries, about 
 his recent tour in the East and the extraordinary 
 forms of life to be observed in that part of the world. 
 I felt he had reasons for holding off from a direct 
 profession of literary faith, a full consistency or sin 
 cerity, and therefore dealt instead with certain social 
 topics, treating them with extraordinary humour 
 and with a due play of that power of ironic evocation 
 in which his books abound. He had a deal to say 
 about London as London appears to the observer who 
 has the courage of some of his conclusions during 
 the high-pressure time from April to July of its 
 gregarious life. He flashed his faculty of playing 
 with the caught image and liberating the wistful idea 
 over the whole scheme of manners or conception of 
 intercourse of his compatriots, among whom there 
 were evidently not a few types for which he had little 
 love. London in short was grotesque to him, and he 
 made capital sport of it ; his only allusion that I can 
 remember to his own work was his saying that he 
 meant some day to do an immense and general, a 
 kind of epic, social satire. Miss Ambient's perpetual 
 
 24
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 gaze seemed to put to me : " Do you perceive how 
 artistic, how very strange and interesting, we are ? 
 Frankly now is it possible to be more artistic, more 
 strange and interesting, than this ? You surely won't 
 deny that we're remarkable." I was irritated by her 
 use of the plural pronoun, for she had no right to pair 
 herself with her brother ; and moreover, of course, I 
 couldn't see my way to at all genially include 
 Mrs. Ambient. Yet there was no doubt they were, 
 taken together, unprecedented enough, and, with all 
 allowances, I had never been left, or condemned, to 
 draw so many rich inferences. 
 
 After the ladies had retired my host took me into 
 his study to smoke, where I appealingly brought him 
 round, or so tried, to some disclosure of fond ideals. 
 I was bent on proving I was worthy to listen to him, 
 on repaying him for what he had said to me before 
 dinner, by showing him how perfectly I understood. 
 He liked to talk ; he liked to defend his convictions and 
 his honour (not that I attacked them); he liked a little 
 perhaps it was a pardonable weakness to bewilder 
 the youthful mind even while wishing to win it over. 
 My ingenuous sympathy received at any rate a 
 shock from three or four of his professions he 
 made me occasionally gasp and stare. He couldn't 
 help forgetting, or rather couldn't know, how little, 
 in another and drier clime, I had ever sat in the 
 school in which he was master ; and he promoted me 
 as at a jump to a sense of its penetralia. My trepida 
 tions, however, were delightful ; they were just what 
 I had hoped for, and their only fault was that they 
 passed away too quickly ; since I found that for the 
 main points I was essentially, I was quite constitution 
 ally, on Mark Ambient's " side." This was the taken 
 stand of the artist to whom every manifestation of 
 human energy was a thrilling spectacle and who felt 
 for ever the desire to resolve his experience of life into 
 
 25
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 a literary form. On that high head of the passion for 
 form the attempt at perfection, the quest for which 
 was to his mind the real search for the holy grail 
 he said the most interesting, the most inspiring things. 
 He mixed with them a thousand illustrations from 
 his own life, from other lives he had known, from 
 history and fiction, and above all from the annals of 
 the time that was dear to him beyond all periods, the 
 Italian cinque-cento. It came to me thus that in his 
 books he had uttered but half his thought, and that 
 what he had kept back from motives I deplored 
 when I made them out later was the finer and 
 braver part. It was his fate to make a great many 
 still more " prepared " people than me not inconsider 
 ably wince ; but there was no grain of bravado in 
 his ripest things (I've always maintained it, though 
 often contradicted), and at bottom the poor fellow, 
 disinterested to his finger-tips and regarding imper 
 fection not only as an esthetic but quite also as a 
 social crime, had an extreme dread of scandal. There 
 are critics who regret that having gone so far he 
 didn't go further ; but I regret nothing putting 
 aside two or three of the motives I just mentioned 
 since he arrived at a noble rarity and I don't see 
 how you can go beyond that. The hours I spent in 
 his study this first one and the few that followed it ; 
 they were not, after all, so numerous seem to glow, 
 as I look back on them, with a tone that is -partly 
 that of the brown old room, rich, under the shaded 
 candle-light where we sat and smoked, with the 
 dusky delicate bindings of valuable books ; partly 
 that of his voice, of which I still catch the echo, 
 charged with the fancies and figures that came at 
 his command. When we went back to the drawing- 
 room we found Miss Ambient alone in possession 
 and prompt to mention that her sister-in-law had a 
 quarter of an hour before been called by the nurse 
 
 26
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 to see the child, who appeared rather unwell a little 
 feverish. 
 
 " Feverish ! how in the world comes he to be fever 
 ish ? " Ambient asked. " He was perfectly right this 
 afternoon." 
 
 " Beatrice says you walked him about too much 
 you almost killed him." 
 
 " Beatrice must be very happy she has an oppor 
 tunity to triumph ! " said my friend with a bright 
 bitterness which was all I could have wished it. 
 
 " Surely not if the child's ill," I ventured to remark 
 by way of pleading for Mrs. Ambient. 
 
 " My dear fellow, you aren't married you don't 
 know the nature of wives ! " my host returned with 
 spirit. 
 
 I tried to match it. " Possibly not ; but I know 
 the nature of mothers." 
 
 " Beatrice is perfect as a mother," sighed Miss 
 Ambient quite tremendously and with her fingers 
 interlaced on her embroidered knees. 
 
 " I shall go up and see my boy," her brother went 
 on. " Do you suppose he's asleep ? " 
 
 " Beatrice won't let you see him, dear " as to 
 which our young lady looked at me, though addressing 
 our companion. 
 
 " Do you call that being perfect as a mother ? " 
 Ambient asked. 
 
 ' Yes, from her point of view." 
 
 " Damn her point of view ! " cried the author of 
 " Beltraffio." And he left the room ; after which we 
 heard him ascend the stairs. 
 
 I sat there for some ten minutes with Miss Ambient, 
 and we naturally had some exchange of remarks, 
 which began, I think, by my asking her what the 
 point of view of her sister-in-law could be. 
 
 " Oh it's so very odd. But we're so very odd alto 
 gether. Don't you find us awfully unlike others of our 
 
 27
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 class ? which indeed mostly, in England, is awful. 
 We've lived so much abroad. I adore ' abroad.' Have 
 you people like us in America ? " 
 
 " You're not all alike, you interesting three or, 
 counting Dolcino, four surely, surely ; so that I don't 
 think I understand your question. We've no one like 
 your brother I may go so far as that." 
 
 ' You've probably more persons like his wife," 
 Miss Ambient desolately smiled. 
 
 " I can tell you that better when you've told me 
 about her point of view." 
 
 " Oh yes oh yes. Well," said my entertainer, 
 " she doesn't like his ideas. She doesn't like them 
 for the child. She thinks them undesirable." 
 
 Being quite fresh from the contemplation of some 
 of Mark Ambient 's arcana I was particularly in a 
 position to appreciate this announcement. But the 
 effect of it was to make me, after staring a moment, 
 burst into laughter which I instantly checked when 
 I remembered the indisposed child above and the 
 possibility of parents nervously or fussily anxious. 
 
 " What has that infant to do with ideas ? " I 
 asked. Surely he can't tell one from another. Has 
 he read his father's novels ? " 
 
 " He's very precocious and very sensitive, and his 
 mother thinks she can't begin to guard him too early." 
 Miss Ambient's head drooped a little to one side and 
 her eyes fixed themselves on futurity. Then of a 
 sudden came a strange alteration ; her face lighted to 
 an effect more joyless than any gloom, to that indeed 
 of a conscious insincere grimace, and she added : 
 " When one has children what one writes becomes a 
 great responsibility." 
 
 " Children are terrible critics," I prosaically an 
 swered. "I'm really glad I haven't any." 
 
 " Do you also write, then ? And in the same style 
 as my brother ? And do you like that style ? And do 
 
 28
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFF1O 
 
 people appreciate it in America ? I don't write, but I 
 think I feel." To these and various other inquiries 
 and observations my young lady treated me till we 
 heard her brother's step in the hall again and Mark 
 Ambient reappeared. He was so flushed and grave 
 that I supposed he had seen something symptomatic 
 in the condition of his child. His sister apparently 
 had another idea ; she gazed at him from afar as 
 if he had been a burning ship on the horizon and 
 simply murmured " Poor old Mark ! " 
 
 " I hope you're not anxious," I as promptly pro 
 nounced. 
 
 " No, but I'm disappointed. She won't let me in. 
 She has locked the door, and I'm afraid to make a 
 noise." I daresay there might have been a touch of 
 the ridiculous in such a confession, but I liked my 
 new friend so much that it took nothing for me from 
 his dignity. " She tells me from behind the door 
 that she'll let me know if he's worse." 
 
 " It's very good of her," said Miss Ambient with 
 a hollow sound. 
 
 I had exchanged a glance with Mark in which it's 
 possible he read that my pity for him was untinged 
 with contempt, though I scarce know why he should 
 have cared ; and as his sister soon afterward got up 
 and took her bedroom candlestick he proposed we 
 should go back to his study. We sat there till after 
 midnight ; he put himself into his slippers and an old 
 velvet jacket, he lighted an ancient pipe, but he talked 
 considerably less than before. There were longish 
 pauses in our communion, but they only made me 
 feel we had advanced in intimacy. They helped me 
 further to understand my friend's personal situation 
 and to imagine it by no means the happiest possible. 
 When his face was quiet it was vaguely troubled, 
 showing, to my increase of interest if that was all 
 that was wanted ! that for him too life was the same 
 
 29
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 struggle it had been for so many another man of 
 genius. At last I prepared to leave him, and then, to 
 my ineffable joy, he gave me some of the sheets of his 
 forthcoming book which, though unfinished, he had 
 indulged in the luxury, so dear to writers of delibera 
 tion, of having'" set up," from chapter to chapter, 
 as he advanced. These early pages, the premices, in 
 the language of letters, of that new fruit of his imagina 
 tion, I should take to my room and look over at my 
 leisure. I was in the act of leaving him when the door 
 of the study noiselessly opened and Mrs. Ambient 
 stood before us. She observed us a moment, her 
 candle in her hand, and then said to her husband 
 that as she supposed he hadn't gone to bed she had 
 come down to let him know Dolcino was more quiet 
 and would probably be better in the morning. Mark 
 Ambient made no reply ; he simply slipped past her in 
 the doorway, as if for fear she might seize him in his 
 passage, and bounded upstairs to judge for him 
 self of his child's condition. She looked so frankly 
 discomfited that I for a moment believed her about 
 to give him chase. But she resigned herself with a 
 sigh and her eyes turned, ruefully and without a ray, 
 to the lamplit room where various books at which 
 I had been looking were pulled out of their places on 
 the shelves and the fumes of tobacco hung in mid 
 air. I bade her good-night and then, without inten 
 tion, by a kind of fatality, a perversity that had 
 already made me address her overmuch on that ques 
 tion of her husband's powers, I alluded to the pre 
 cious proof-sheets with which Ambient had entrusted 
 me and which I nursed there under my arm. " They're 
 the opening chapters of his new book," I said. " Fancy 
 my satisfaction at being allowed to carry them to my 
 room ! " 
 
 She turned away, leaving me to take my candle-, 
 stick from the table in the hall ; but before we 
 
 30
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 separated, thinking it apparently a good occasion to 
 let me know once for all since I was beginning, it 
 would seem, to be quite " thick " with my host that 
 there was no fitness in my appealing to her for sym 
 pathy in such a case ; before we separated, I say, she 
 remarked to me with her quick fine well-bred in 
 veterate curtness : "I daresay you attribute to me 
 ideas I haven't got. I don't take that sort of interest 
 in my husband's proof-sheets. I consider his writings 
 most objectionable ! "
 
 Ill 
 
 I HAD an odd colloquy the next morning with Miss 
 Ambient, whom I found strolling in the garden before 
 breakfast. The whole place looked as fresh and trim, 
 amid the twitter of the birds, as if, an hour before, 
 the housemaids had been turned into it with their 
 dust-pans and feather-brushes. I almost hesitated 
 to light a cigarette and was doubly startled when, 
 in the act of doing so, I suddenly saw the sister 
 of my host, who had, at the best, something of 
 the weirdness of an apparition, stand before me. She 
 might have been posing for her photograph. Her 
 sad-coloured robe arranged itself in serpentine folds 
 at her feet ; her hands locked themselves listlessly 
 together in front ; her chin rested on a cinque-cento 
 ruff. The first thing I did after bidding her good- 
 morning was to ask her for news of her little nephew 
 to express the hope she had heard he was better. 
 She was able to gratify this trust she spoke as if 
 we might expect to see him during the day. We 
 walked through the shrubberies together and she 
 gave me further light on her brother's household, 
 which offered me an opportunity to repeat to her what 
 his wife had so startled and distressed me with the 
 night before. Was it the sorry truth that she thought 
 his productions objectionable ? 
 
 " She doesn't usually come out with that so soon ! " 
 Miss Ambient returned in answer to my breathlessness. 
 
 32
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 " Poor lady," I pleaded, " she saw I'm a fanatic." 
 " Yes, she won't like you for that. But you mustn't 
 mind, if the rest of us like you ! Beatrice thinks a 
 work of art ought to have a ' purpose.' But she's a 
 charming woman don't you think her charming ? 
 I find in her quite the grand air." 
 
 " She's very beautiful," I produced with an effort ; 
 while I reflected that though it was apparently true 
 that Mark Ambient was mismated it was also per 
 ceptible that his sister was perfidious. She assured 
 me her brother and his wife had no other difference 
 but this one that she thought his writings immoral 
 and his influence pernicious. It was a fixed idea ; 
 she was afraid of these things for the child. I an 
 swered that it was in all conscience enough, the 
 trifle of a woman's regarding her husband's mind as 
 a well of corruption, and she seemed much struck 
 with the novelty of my remark. " But there hasn't 
 been any of the sort of trouble that there so often is 
 among married people," she said. " I suppose you 
 can judge for yourself that Beatrice isn't at all 
 well, whatever they call it when a woman kicks over ! 
 And poor Mark doesn't make love to other people 
 either. You might think he would, but I assure you 
 he doesn't. All the same of course, from her point of 
 view, you know, she has a dread of my brother's in 
 fluence on the child on the formation of his charac 
 ter, his ' ideals,' poor little brat, his principles. It's 
 as if it were a subtle poison or a contagion some 
 thing that would rub off on his tender sensibility when 
 his father kisses him or holds him on his knee. If she 
 could she'd prevent Mark from even so much as 
 touching him. Every one knows it visitors see it 
 for themselves ; so there's no harm in my telling you. 
 Isn't it excessively odd ? It comes from Beatrice's 
 being so religious and so tremendously moral so a 
 cheval on fifty thousand riguardi. And then of course 
 
 33 D
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 we mustn't forget," my companion added, a little 
 unexpectedly, to this polyglot proposition, " that some 
 of Mark's ideas are well, really rather impossible, 
 don't you know ? " 
 
 I reflected as we went into the house, where we 
 found Ambient unfolding The Observer at the break 
 fast-table, that none of them were probably quite so 
 " impossible, don't you know ? " as his sister. Mrs. 
 Ambient, a little " the worse," as was mentioned, for 
 her ministrations, during the night, to Dolcino, didn't 
 appear at breakfast. Her husband described her, how 
 ever, as hoping to go to church. I afterwards learnt 
 that she did go, but nothing naturally, was less on 
 the cards than that we should accompany her. It 
 was while the church-bell droned near at hand that 
 the author of " Beltraffio " led me forth for the ramble 
 he had spoken of in his note. I shall attempt here no 
 record of where we went or of what we saw. We kept 
 to the fields and copses and commons, and breathed 
 the same sweet air as the nibbling donkeys and the 
 browsing sheep, whose woolliness seemed to me, in 
 those early days of acquaintance with English objects, 
 but part of the general texture of the small dense 
 landscape, which looked as if the harvest were gath 
 ered by the shears and with all nature bleating and 
 braying for the violence. Everything was full of ex 
 pression for Mark Ambient's visitor from the big 
 bandy-legged geese whose whiteness was a " note " 
 amid all the tones of green as they wandered beside 
 a neat little oval pool, the foreground of a thatched 
 and whitewashed inn, with a grassy approach and a 
 pictorial sign from these humble wayside animals 
 to the crests of high woods which let a gable or a 
 pinnacle peep here and there and looked even at 
 a distance like trees of good company, conscious of 
 an individual profile. I admired the hedge-rows, I 
 plucked the faint-hued heather, and I was for ever 
 
 34
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 stopping to say how charming I thought the thread 
 like footpaths across the fields, which wandered in a 
 diagonal of finer grain from one smooth stile to an 
 other. Mark Ambient was abundantly good-natured 
 and was as much struck, dear man, with some of my 
 observations as I was with the literary allusions of the 
 landscape. We sat and smoked on stiles, -broaching 
 paradoxes in the decent English air ; we took short 
 cuts across a park or two where the bracken was deep 
 and my companion nodded to the old woman at the 
 gate ; we skirted rank coverts which rustled here and 
 there as we passed, and we stretched ourselves at last 
 on a heathery hillside where if the sun wasn't too 
 hot neither was the earth too cold, and where the 
 country lay beneath us in a rich blue mist. Of course 
 I had already told him what I thought of his new 
 novel, having the previous night read every word of 
 the opening chapters before I went to bed. 
 
 "I'm not without hope of being able to make it 
 decent enough," he said as I went back to the subject 
 while we turned up our heels to the sky. " At least the 
 people who dislike my stuff and there are plenty 
 of them, I believe will dislike this thing (if it does 
 turn out well) most." This was the first time I had 
 heard him allude to the people who couldn't read 
 him a class so generaUy conceived to sit heavy 
 on the consciousness of the man of letters. A being 
 organised for literature as Mark Ambient was must 
 certainly have had the normal proportion of sensitive 
 ness, of irritability ; the artistic ego, capable in some 
 cases of such monstrous development, must have 
 been in his composition sufficiently erect and active. 
 I won't "therefore go so far as to say that he never 
 thought of his detractors or that he had any illusions 
 with regard to the number of his admirers he could 
 never so far have deceived himself as to believe he 
 was popular, but I at least then judged (and had 
 
 35
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 occasion to be sure later on) that stupidity ruffled 
 him visibly but little, that he had an air of thinking 
 it quite natural he should leave many simple folk, 
 tasting of him, as simple as ever he found them, and 
 that he very seldom talked about the newspapers, 
 which, by the way, were always even abnormally 
 vulgar about him. Of course he may have thought 
 them over the newspapers night and day ; the 
 only point I make is that he didn't show it ; while 
 at the same time he didn't strike one as a man 
 actively on his guard. I may add that, touching 
 his hope of making the work on which he was then 
 engaged the best of his books, it was only partly car 
 ried out. That place belongs incontestably to " Bel- 
 traffio," in spite of the beauty of certain parts of its 
 successor. I quite believe, however, that he had at 
 the moment of which I speak no sense of having 
 declined ; he was in love with his idea, which was 
 indeed magnificent, and though for him, as I sup 
 pose for every sane artist, the act of execution had in 
 it as much torment as joy, he saw his result grow 
 like the crescent of the young moon and promise to 
 fill the disk. " I want to be truer than I've ever 
 been," he said, settling himself on his back with his 
 hands clasped behind his head ; " I want to give the 
 impression of life itself. No, you may say what you 
 will, I've always arranged things too much, always 
 smoothed them down and rounded them off and 
 tucked them in done everything to them that life 
 doesn't do. I've been a slave to the old superstitions." 
 
 " You a slave, my dear Mark Ambient ? You've 
 the freest imagination of our day ! " 
 
 " All the more shame to me to have done some 
 of the things I have ! The reconciliation of the 
 two women in ' Natalina,' for instance, which could 
 never really have taken place. That sort of thing's 
 ignoble I blush when I think of it ! This new 
 
 36
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 affair must be a golden vessel, filled with the purest 
 distillation of the actual ; and oh how it worries me, 
 the shaping of the vase, the hammering of the metal ! 
 I have to hammer it so fine, so smooth ; I don't do 
 more than an inch or two a day. And all the while 
 I have to be so careful not to let a drop of the liquor 
 escape ! When I see the kind of things Life herself, 
 the brazen hussy, does, I despair of ever catching her 
 peculiar trick. She has an impudence, Life ! If one 
 risked a fiftieth part of the effects she risks ! It takes 
 ever so long to believe it. You don't know yet, my 
 dear youth. It isn't till one has been watching her 
 some forty years that one finds out half of what she's 
 up to ! Therefore one's earlier things must inevitably 
 contain a mass of rot. And with what one sees, on one 
 side, with its tongue in its cheek, defying one to be real 
 enough, and on the other the bonnes gens rolling up 
 their eyes at one's cynicism, the situation has ele 
 ments of the ludicrous which the poor reproducer 
 himself is doubtless in a position to appreciate better 
 than any one else. Of course one mustn't worry 
 about the bonnes gens," Mark Ambient went on while 
 my thoughts reverted to his ladylike wife as inter 
 preted by his remarkable sister. 
 
 " To sink your shaft deep and polish the plate 
 through which people look into it that's what your 
 work consists of," I remember ingeniously observing. 
 
 " Ah polishing one's plate that's the torment 
 of execution ! " he exclaimed, jerking himself up and 
 sitting forward. " The effort to arrive at a surface, 
 if you think anything of that decent sort necessary 
 some people don't, happily for them ! My dear fellow, 
 if you could see the surface I dream of as compared 
 with the one with which I've to content myself. 
 Life's really too short for art one hasn't time to 
 make one's shell ideally hard. Firm and bright, firm 
 and bright is very well to say the devilish thing 
 
 37
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 has a way sometimes of being bright, and even of being 
 hard, as mere tough frozen pudding is hard, without 
 being firm. When I rap it with my knuckles it doesn't 
 give the right sound. There are horrible sandy 
 stretches where I've taken the wrong turn because 
 I couldn't for the life of me find the right. If you 
 knew what a dunce I am sometimes ! Such things 
 figure to me now base pimples and ulcers on the brow 
 of beauty ! " 
 
 " They're very bad, very bad," I said as gravely as 
 I could. 
 
 " Very bad ? They're the highest social offence 
 I know ; it ought it absolutely ought ; I'm quite 
 serious to be capital. If I knew I should be 
 publicly thrashed else I'd manage to find the true 
 word. The people who can't some of them don't 
 so much as know it when they see it would shut 
 their inkstands, and we shouldn't be deluged by this 
 flood of rubbish ! " 
 
 I shall not attempt to repeat everything that passed 
 between us, nor to explain just how it was that, every 
 moment I spent in his company, Mark Ambient re 
 vealed to me more and more the consistency of his 
 creative spirit, the spirit in him that felt all life as 
 plastic material. I could but envy him the force of 
 that passion, and it was at any rate through the receipt 
 of this impression that by the time we returned I had 
 gained the sense of intimacy with him that I have 
 noted. Before we got up for the homeward stretch 
 he alluded to his wife's having once or perhaps 
 more than once asked him whether he should like 
 Dolcino to read "Beltraffio." He must have been 
 unaware at the moment of all that this conveyed to 
 me as well doubtless of my extreme curiosity to 
 hear what he had replied. He had said how much 
 he hoped Dolcino would read all his works when he 
 was twenty ; he should like him to know what his 
 
 38
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 father had done. Before twenty it would be useless ; 
 he wouldn't understand them. 
 
 " And meanwhile do you propose to hide them 
 to lock them up in a drawer ? " Mrs. Ambient had 
 proceeded. 
 
 " Oh no we must simply tell him they're not in 
 tended for small boys. If you bring him up properly 
 after that he won't touch them." 
 
 To this Mrs. Ambient had made answer that it 
 might be very awkward when he was about fifteen, 
 say ; and I asked her husband if it were his opinion in 
 general, then, that young people shouldn't read novels. 
 
 " Good ones certainly not ! " said my com 
 panion. I suppose I had had other views, for I re 
 member saying that for myself I wasn't sure it was 
 bad for them if the novels were " good " to the right 
 intensity of goodness. " Bad for them, I don't say so 
 much ! " my companion returned. " But very bad, 
 I'm afraid, for the poor dear old novel itself." That 
 oblique accidental allusion to his wife's attitude was 
 followed by a greater breadth of reference as we walked 
 home. " The difference between us is simply the op 
 position between two distinct ways of looking at the 
 world, which have never succeeded in getting on to 
 gether, or in making any kind of common household, 
 since the beginning of time. They've borne all sorts 
 of names, and my wife would tell you it's the differ 
 ence between Christian and Pagan. I may be a pagan, 
 but I don't like the name ; it sounds sectarian. She 
 thinks me at any rate no better than an ancient 
 Greek. It's the difference between making the most 
 of life and making the least, so that you'll get an 
 other better one in some other time and place. Will 
 it be a sin to make the most of that one, too, I wonder ; 
 and shall we have to be bribed off in the future 
 state as well as in the present ? Perhaps I care too 
 much for beauty I don't know, I doubt if a poor 
 
 39
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 devil can ; I delight in it, I adore it, I think of it con 
 tinually, I try to produce it, to reproduce it. My wife 
 holds that we shouldn't cultivate or enjoy it without 
 extraordinary precautions and reserves. She's always 
 afraid of it, always on her guard. I don't know what 
 it can ever have done to her, what grudge it owes her 
 or what resentment rides. And she's so pretty, too, 
 herself ! Don't you think she's lovely ? She was at 
 any rate when we married. At that time I wasn't 
 aware of that difference I speak of I thought it all 
 came to the same thing : in the end, as they say. Well, 
 perhaps it will in the end. I don't know what the end 
 will be. Moreover, I care for seeing things as they are ; 
 that's the way I try to show them in any professed 
 picture. But you mustn't talk to Mrs. Ambient 
 about things as they are. She has a mortal dread of 
 things as they are." 
 
 " She's afraid of them for Dolcino," I said : sur 
 prised a moment afterwards at being in a position 
 thanks to Miss Ambient to be so explanatory ; and 
 surprised even now that Mark shouldn't have shown 
 visibly that he wondered what the deuce I knew 
 about it. But he didn't ; he simply declared with a- 
 tenderness that touched me : " Ah nothing shall ever 
 hurt him \ " 
 
 He told me more about his wife before we arrived 
 at the gate of home, and if he be judged to have 
 aired overmuch his grievance I'm afraid I must 
 admit that he had some of the foibles as well as the 
 gifts of the artistic temperament ; adding, however, 
 instantly that hitherto, to the best of my belief, he 
 had rarely let this particular cat out of the bag. 
 " She thinks me immoral that's the long and short 
 of it," he said as we paused outside a moment and his 
 hand rested on one of the bars of his gate ; while 
 his conscious expressive perceptive eyes the eyes of 
 a foreigner, I had begun to account them, much 
 
 40
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 more than of the usual Englishman viewing me 
 now evidently as quite a familiar friend, took part in 
 the declaration. " It's very strange when one thinks 
 it all over, and there's a grand comicality in it that 
 I should like to bring out. She's a very nice woman, 
 extraordinarily well-behaved, upright and clever and 
 with a tremendous lot of good sense about a good 
 many matters. Yet her conception of a novel 
 she has explained it to me once or twice, and she 
 doesn't do it badly as exposition is a thing so false 
 that it makes me blush. It's a thing so hollow, so 
 dishonest, so lying, in which life is so blinked and 
 blinded, so dodged and disfigured, that it makes my 
 ears burn. It's two different ways of looking at the 
 whole affair," he repeated, pushing open the gate. 
 " And they're irreconcilable ! " he added with a sigh. 
 We went forward to the house, but on the walk, half 
 way to the door, he stopped and said to me : " If you're 
 going into this kind of thing there's a fact you should 
 know beforehand ; it may save you some disappoint 
 ment. There's a hatred of art, there's a hatred of 
 literature I mean of the genuine kinds. Oh the 
 shams those they'll swallow by the bucket ! " I 
 looked up at the charming house, with its genial colour 
 and crookedness, and I answered with a smile that 
 those evil passions might exist, but that I should never 
 have expected to find them there. " Ah it doesn't 
 matter after all," he a bit nervously laughed ; which I 
 was glad to hear, for I was reproaching myself with 
 having worked him up. 
 
 If I had it soon passed off, for at luncheon he was 
 delightful ; strangely delightful considering that the 
 difference between himself and his wife was, as he had 
 said, irreconcilable. He had the art, by his manner, 
 by his smile, by his natural amenity, of reducing 
 the importance of it in the common concerns of life ; 
 and Mrs. Ambient, I must add, lent herself to this
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 transaction with a very good grace. I watched her 
 at table for further illustrations of that fixed idea of 
 which Miss Ambient had spoken to me ; for in the 
 light of the united revelations of her sister-in-law and 
 her husband she had come to seem to me almost a 
 sinister personage. Yet the signs of a sombre fan 
 aticism were not more immediately striking in her 
 than before ; it was only after a while that her air of 
 incorruptible conformity, her tapering monosyllabic 
 correctness, began to affect me as in themselves 
 a cold thin flame. Certainly, at first, she resembled 
 a woman with as few passions as possible ; but if she 
 had a passion at all it would indeed be that of Philis 
 tinism. She might have been (for there are guardian- 
 spirits, I suppose, of all great principles) the very 
 angel of the pink of propriety putting the pink 
 for a principle, though I'd rather put some dismal 
 cold blue. Mark Ambient, apparently, ten years be 
 fore, had simply and quite inevitably taken her for 
 an angel, without asking himself of what. He had 
 been right in calling my attention to her beauty. In 
 looking for some explanation of his original surrender 
 to her I saw more than before that she was, physically 
 speaking, a wonderfully cultivated human plant 
 that he might well have owed her a brief poetic in 
 spiration. It was impossible to be more propped and 
 pencilled, more delicately tinted and petalled. 
 
 If I had had it in my heart to think my host a little 
 of a hypocrite for appearing to forget at table every 
 thing he had said to me in our walk, I should instantly 
 have cancelled such a judgement on reflecting that 
 the good news his wife was able to give him about 
 their little boy was ground enough for any optimistic 
 reaction. It may have come partly, too, from a certain 
 compunction at having breathed to me at all harshly 
 on the cool fair lady who sat there a desire to prove 
 himself not after all so mismated. Dolcino continued 
 
 42
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 to be much better, and it had been promised him he 
 should come downstairs after his dinner. As soon as 
 we had risen from our own meal Mark slipped away, 
 evidently for the purpose of going to his child ; and 
 no sooner had I observed this than I became aware 
 his wife had simultaneously vanished. It happened 
 that Miss Ambient and I, both at the same moment, 
 saw the tail of her dress whisk out of a doorway ; 
 an incident that led the young lady to smile at me 
 as if I now knew all the secrets of the Ambients. I 
 passed with her into the garden and we sat down on a 
 dear old bench that rested against the west wall of 
 the house. It was a perfect spot for the middle period 
 of a Sunday in June, and its felicity seemed to come 
 partly from an antique sun-dial which, rising in front 
 of us and forming the centre of a small intricate par 
 terre, measured the moments ever so slowly and made 
 them safe for leisure and talk. The garden bloomed 
 in the suffused afternoon, the tall beeches stood still 
 for an example, and, behind and above us, a rose tree 
 of many seasons, clinging to the faded grain of the 
 brick, expressed the whole character of the scene in 
 a familiar exquisite smell. It struck me as a place 
 to offer genius every favour and sanction not to 
 bristle with challenges and checks. Miss Ambient 
 asked me if I had enjoyed my walk with her brother 
 and whether we had talked of many things. 
 
 " Well, of most things," I freely allowed, though I 
 remembered we hadn't talked of Miss Ambient. 
 
 " And don't you think some of his theories are very 
 peculiar ? " 
 
 " Oh I guess I agree with them all." I was very 
 particular, for Miss Ambient's entertainment, to 
 guess. 
 
 " Do you think art's everything ? " she put to me 
 in a moment. 
 
 " In art, of course I do ! " 
 43
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 " And do you think beauty's everything ? " 
 
 " Everything's a big word, which I think we should 
 use as little as possible. But how can we not want 
 beauty ? " 
 
 " Ah there you are ! " she sighed, though I didn't 
 quite know what she meant by it. "Of course it's 
 difficult for a woman to judge how far to go," she 
 went on. "I adore everything that gives a charm to 
 life. I'm intensely sensitive to form. But sometimes 
 I draw back don't you see what I mean ? I don't 
 quite see where I shall be landed. I only want to be 
 quiet, after all," Miss Ambient continued as if she 
 had long been baffled of this modest desire. " And 
 one must be good, at any rate, must not one ? " she 
 pursued with a dubious quaver an intimation 
 apparently that what I might say one way or the 
 other would settle it for her. It was difficult for me 
 to be very original in reply, and I'm afraid I repaid 
 her confidence with an unblushing platitude. I re 
 member, moreover, attaching to it an inquiry, equally 
 destitute of freshness and still more wanting perhaps 
 in tact, as to whether she didn't mean to go to church, 
 since that was an obvious way of being good. She 
 made answer that she had performed this duty in 
 the morning, and that for her, of Sunday afternoons, 
 supreme virtue consisted in answering the week's 
 letters. Then suddenly and without transition she 
 brought out : " It's quite a mistake about Dolcino's 
 being better. I've seen him and he's not at all right." 
 
 I wondered, and somehow I think I scarcely be 
 lieved. " Surely his mother would know, wouldn't 
 she ? " 
 
 She appeared for a moment to be counting the 
 leaves on one of the great beeches. " As regards most 
 matters one can easily say what, in a given situation, 
 my sister-in-law will, or would, do. But in the present 
 case there are strange elements at work." 
 
 44
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 " Strange elements ? Do you mean in the consti 
 tution of the child ?," 
 
 " No, I mean in my sister-in-law's feelings." 
 
 " Elements of affection of course ; elements of 
 anxiety," I concurred. " But why do you call them 
 strange ? " 
 
 She repeated my words. " Elements of affection, 
 elements of anxiety. She's very anxious." 
 
 Miss Ambient put me indescribably ill at ease ; she 
 almost scared me, and I wished she would go and 
 write her letters. " His father will have seen him 
 now," I said, " and if he's not satisfied he will send 
 for the doctor." 
 
 " The doctor ought to have been here this morn 
 ing," she promptly returned. " He lives only two 
 miles away." 
 
 I reflected that all this was very possibly but a part 
 of the general tragedy of Miss Ambient's view of 
 things ; yet I asked her why she hadn't urged that 
 view on her sister-in-law. She answered me with a 
 smile of extraordinary significance and observed that 
 I must have very little idea of her " peculiar " rela 
 tions with Beatrice ; but I must do her the justice that 
 she re-enforced this a little by the plea that any dis 
 tinguishable alarm of Mark's was ground enough for 
 a difference of his wife's. He was always nervous 
 about the child, and as they were predestined by 
 nature to take opposite views, the only thing for the 
 mother was to cultivate a false optimism. In Mark's 
 absence and that of his betrayed fear she would have 
 been less easy. I remembered what he had said to 
 me about their dealings with their son that be 
 tween them they'd probably put an end to him ; but 
 I didn't repeat this to Miss Ambient : the less so that 
 just then her brother emerged from the house, carry 
 ing the boy in his arms. Close behind him moved his 
 wife, grave and pale ; the little sick face was turned 
 
 45
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 over Ambient's shoulder and toward the mother. We 
 rose to receive the group, and as they came near us 
 Dolcino twisted himself about. His enchanting eyes 
 showed me a smile of recognition, in which, for the 
 moment, I should have taken a due degree of com 
 fort. Miss Ambient, however, received another im 
 pression, and I make haste to say that her quick 
 sensibility, which visibly went out to the child, argues 
 that in spite of her affectations she might have been 
 of some human use. " It won't do at all it won't 
 do at all," she said to me under her breath. " I shall 
 speak to Mark about the Doctor." 
 
 Her small nephew was rather white, but the main 
 difference I saw in him was that he was even more 
 beautiful than the day before. He had been dressed 
 in his festal garments a velvet suit and a crimson 
 sash and he' looked like a little invalid prince too 
 young to know condescension and smiling familiarly 
 on his subjects. 
 
 " Put him down, Mark, he's not a bit at his 
 ease," Mrs. Ambient said. 
 
 " Should you like to stand on your feet, my boy ? " 
 his father asked. 
 
 He made a motion that quickly responded. " Oh 
 yes ; I'm remarkably well." 
 
 Mark placed him on the ground ; he had shining 
 pointed shoes with enormous bows. " Are you happy 
 now, Mr. Ambient ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, I'm particularly happy," Dolcino re 
 plied. But the words were scarce out of his mouth 
 when his mother caught him up and, in a moment, 
 holding him on her knees, took her place on the bench 
 where Miss Ambient and I had been sitting. This 
 young lady said something to her brother, in conse 
 quence of which the two wandered away into the 
 garden together. 
 
 46
 
 IV 
 
 I REMAINED with Mrs. Ambient, but as a servant 
 had brought out a couple of chairs I wasn't obliged 
 to seat myself beside her. Our conversation failed 
 of ease, and I, for my part, felt there would be a 
 shade of hypocrisy in my now trying to make myself 
 agreeable to the partner of my friend's existence. I 
 didn't dislike her I rather admired her ; but I was 
 aware that I differed from her inexpressibly. Then 
 I suspected, what I afterwards definitely knew and 
 have already intimated, that the poor lady felt small 
 taste for her husband's so undisguised disciple ; and 
 this of course was not encouraging. She thought me 
 an obtrusive and designing, even perhaps a depraved, 
 young man whom a perverse Providence had dropped 
 upon their quiet lawn to flatter his worst tendencies. 
 She did me the honour to say to Miss Ambient, who 
 repeated the speech, that she didn't know when she 
 had seen their companion take such a fancy to a 
 visitor ; and she measured apparently my evil influ 
 ence by Mark's appreciation of my society. I had a 
 consciousness, not oppressive but quite sufficient, of 
 all this ; though I must say that if it chilled my flow 
 of small-talk it yet didn't prevent my thinking the 
 beautiful mother and beautiful child, interlaced there 
 against their background of roses, a picture such as 
 I doubtless shouldn't soon see again. I was free, I 
 supposed, to go into the house and write letters, to 
 
 47
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 sit in the drawing-room, to repair to my own apart 
 ment and take a nap ; but the only use I made of my 
 freedom was to linger still in my chair and say to 
 myself that the light hand of Sir Joshua might have 
 painted Mark Ambient 's wife and son. I found my 
 self looking perpetually at the latter small mortal, who 
 looked constantly back at me, and that was enough 
 to detain me. With these vaguely-amused eyes he 
 smiled, and I felt it an absolute impossibility to aban 
 don a child with such an expression. His attention 
 never strayed ; it attached itself to my face as if among 
 all the small incipient things of his nature throbbed 
 a desire to say something to me. If I could have 
 taken him on my own knee he perhaps would have 
 managed to say it ; but it would have been a critical 
 matter to ask his mother to give him up, and it has 
 remained a constant regret for me that on that strange 
 Sunday afternoon I didn't even for a moment hold 
 Dolcino in my arms. He had said he felt remarkably 
 well and was especially happy ; but though peace may 
 have been with him as he pillowed his charming head 
 on his mother's breast, dropping his little crimson silk 
 legs from her lap, I somehow didn't think security 
 was. He made no attempt to walk about ; he was 
 content to swing his legs softly and strike one as 
 languid and angelic. 
 
 Mark returned to us with his sister ; and Miss 
 Ambient, repeating her mention of the claims of her 
 correspondence, passed into the house. Mark came 
 and stood in front of his wife, looking down at the 
 child, who immediately took hold of his hand and kept 
 it while he stayed. " I think Mackintosh ought to see 
 him," he said ; " I think I'll walk over and fetch him." 
 
 " That's Gwendolen's idea, I suppose," Mrs. Am 
 bient replied very sweetly. 
 
 " It's not such an out-of-the-way idea when one's 
 child's ill," he returned. 
 
 48
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 "I'm not ill, papa ; I'm much better now," sounded 
 in the boy's silver pipe. 
 
 " Is that the truth, or are you only saying it to be 
 agreeable ? You've a great idea of being agreeable, 
 you know." 
 
 The child seemed to meditate on this distinction, 
 this imputation, for a moment ; then his exaggerated 
 eyes, which had wandered, caught my own as I 
 watched him. " Do you think me agreeable ? " he 
 inquired with the candour of his age and with a look 
 that made his father turn round to me laughing and 
 ask, without saying it, " Isn't he adorable ? " 
 
 " Then why don't you hop about, if you feel so 
 lusty ? " Ambient went on while his son swung his 
 hand. 
 
 " Because mamma's holding me close ! " 
 
 " Oh yes ; I know how mamma holds you when I 
 come near ! " cried Mark with a grimace at his wife. 
 
 She turned her charming eyes up to him without 
 deprecation or concession. " You can go for Mack 
 intosh if you like. I think myself it would be better. 
 You ought to drive." 
 
 " She says that to get me away," he put to me 
 with a gaiety that I thought a little false ; after which 
 he started for the Doctor's. 
 
 I remained there with Mrs. Ambient, though even 
 our exchange of twaddle had run very thin. The 
 boy's little fixed white face seemed, as before, to 
 plead with me to stay, and after a while it produced 
 still another effect, a very curious one, which I shall 
 find it difficult to express. Of course I expose myself 
 to the charge of an attempt to justify by a strained 
 logic after the fact a step which may have been on 
 my part but the fruit of a native want of discretion ; 
 and indeed the traceable consequences of that per 
 versity were too lamentable to leave me any desire to 
 trifle with the question. All I can say is that I acted 
 
 49 E
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 in perfect good faith and that Dolcino's friendly little 
 gaze gradually kindled the spark of my inspiration. 
 What helped it to glow were the other influences 
 the silent suggestive garden-nook, the perfect oppor 
 tunity (if it was not an opportunity for that it was 
 an opportunity for nothing) and the plea I speak of, 
 which issued from the child's eyes and seemed to make 
 him say : " The mother who bore me and who presses 
 me here to her bosom sympathetic little organism 
 that I am has really the kind of sensibility she 
 has been represented to you as lacking, if you only 
 look for it patiently and respectfully. How is it con 
 ceivable she shouldn't have it ? How is it possible 
 that I should have so much of it for I'm quite full 
 of it, dear strange gentleman if it weren't also in 
 some degree in her ? I'm my great father's child, but 
 I'm also my beautiful mother's, and I'm sorry for 
 the difference between them ! " So it shaped itself 
 before me, the vision of reconciling Mrs. Ambient 
 with her husband, of putting an end to their ugly 
 difference. The project was absurd of course, for had 
 I not had his word for it spoken with all the bitter 
 ness of experience that the gulf dividing them 
 was well-nigh bottomless ? Nevertheless, a quarter 
 of an hour after Mark had left us, I observed to my 
 hostess that I couldn't get over what she had told me 
 the night before about her thinking her husband's 
 compositions " objectionable." I had been so very 
 sorry to hear it, had thought of it constantly and 
 wondered whether it mightn't be possible to make 
 her change her mind. She gave me a great cold stare, 
 meant apparently as an admonition to me to mind my 
 business. I wish I had taken this mute counsel, but 
 I didn't take it. I went on to remark that it seemed 
 an immense pity so much that was interesting should 
 be lost on her. 
 
 " Nothing's lost upon me," she said in a tone that 
 50
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 didn't make the contradiction less. " I know they're 
 very interesting." 
 
 " Don't you like papa's books ? " Dolcino asked, 
 addressing his mother but still looking at me. Then 
 he added to me : " Won't you read them to me, Ameri 
 can gentleman ? " 
 
 "I'd rather tell you some stories of my own," 
 I said. " I know some that are awfully good." 
 
 " When will you tell them ? To-morrow ? " 
 
 " To-morrow with pleasure, if that suits you." 
 
 His mother took this in silence. Her husband, 
 during our walk, had asked me to remain another 
 day ; my promise to her son was an implication that 
 I had consented, and it wasn't possible the news 
 could please her. This ought doubtless to have made 
 me more careful as to what I said next, but all I can 
 plead is that it didn't. I soon mentioned that just 
 after leaving her the evening before, and after hear 
 ing her apply to her husband's writings the epithet 
 already quoted, I had on going up to my room sat 
 down to the perusal of those sheets of his new book 
 that he had been so good as to lend me. I had sat 
 entranced till nearly three in the morning I had 
 read them twice over. " You say you haven't looked 
 at them. I think it's such a pity you shouldn't. 
 Do let me beg you to take them up. They're so very 
 remarkable. I'm sure they'll convert you. They 
 place him in really such a dazzling light. All 
 that's best in him is there. I've no doubt it's a great 
 liberty, my saying all this ; but pardon me, and do 
 read them ! " 
 
 " Do read them, mamma ! " the boy again sweetly 
 shrilled. " Do read them ! " 
 
 She bent her head and closed his lips with a kiss. 
 " Of course I know he has worked immensely over 
 them," she said ; after which she made no remark, 
 but attached her eyes thoughtfully to the ground.
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 The tone of these last words was such as to leave 
 me no spirit for further pressure, and after hinting at 
 a fear that her husband mightn't have caught the 
 Doctor I got up and took a turn about the grounds. 
 When I came back ten minutes later she was still in 
 her place watching her boy, who had fallen asleep in 
 her lap. As I drew near she put her finger to her lips 
 and a short time afterwards rose, holding him ; it 
 being now best, she said, that she should take him 
 upstairs. I offered to carry him and opened my 
 arms for the purpose ; but she thanked me and turned 
 away with the child still in her embrace, his head on 
 her shoulder. "I'm very strong," was her last word 
 as she passed into the house, her slim flexible figure 
 bent backward with the filial weight. So I never 
 laid a longing hand on Dolcino. 
 
 I betook myself to Ambient's study, delighted to 
 have a quiet hour to look over his books by myself. 
 The windows were open to the garden ; the sunny 
 stillness, the mild light of the English summer, filled 
 the room without quite chasing away the rich dusky 
 tone that was a part of its charm and that abode 
 in the serried shelves where old morocco exhaled the 
 fragrance of curious learning, as well as in the brighter 
 intervals where prints and medals and miniatures 
 were suspended on a surface of faded stuff. The 
 place had both colour and quiet ; I thought it a per 
 fect room for work and went so far as to say to myself 
 that, if it were mine to sit and scribble in, there was 
 no knowing but I might learn to write as well as 
 the author of " Bel traffic." This distinguished man 
 still didn't reappear, and I rummaged freely among 
 his treasures. At last I took down a book that de 
 tained me a while and seated myself in a fine old 
 leather chair by the window to turn it over. I had 
 been occupied in this way for half an hour a good 
 part of the afternoon had waned when I became 
 
 52
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 conscious of another presence in the room and, look 
 ing up from my quarto, saw that Mrs. Ambient, hav 
 ing pushed open the door quite again in the same 
 noiseless way marking or disguising her entrance the 
 night before, had advanced across the threshold. On 
 seeing me she stopped ; she had not, I think, expected 
 to find me. But her hesitation was only of a moment ; 
 she came straight to her husband's writing-table as if 
 she were looking for something. I got up and asked 
 her if I could help her. She glanced about an instant 
 and then put her hand upon a roll of papers which 
 I recognised, as I had placed it on that spot at the 
 early hour of my descent from my room. 
 
 " Is this the new book ? " she asked, holding it up. 
 
 " The very sheets," I smiled ; " with precious 
 annotations." 
 
 " I mean to take your advice " and she tucked 
 the little bundle under her arm. I congratulated her 
 cordially and ventured to make of my triumph, as I 
 presumed to call it, a subject of pleasantry. But she 
 was perfectly grave and turned away from me, as she 
 had presented herself, without relaxing her rigour ; 
 after which I settled down to my quarto again with 
 the -reflexion that Mrs. Ambient was truly an eccen 
 tric. My triumph, too, suddenly seemed to me rather 
 vain. A woman who couldn't unbend at a moment 
 exquisitely indicated would never understand Mark 
 Ambient. He came back to us at last in person, having 
 brought the Doctor with him. " He was away from 
 home," Mark said, " and I went after him to where 
 he was supposed to be. He had left the place, and I 
 followed him to two or three others, which accounts 
 for my delay." He was now with Mrs. Ambient, 
 looking at the child, and was to see Mark again before 
 leaving the house. My host noticed at the end of two 
 minutes that the proof-sheets of his new book had 
 been removed from the table ; and when I told him, 
 
 53
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 in reply to his question as to what I knew about them, 
 that Mrs. Ambient had carried them off to read he 
 turned almost pale with surprise. " What has sud 
 denly made her so curious ? " he cried ; and I was 
 obliged to tell him that I was at the bottom of the 
 mystery. I had had it on my conscience to assure 
 her that she really ought to know of what her hus 
 band was capable. " Of what I'm capable ? Elle 
 ne s'en doute que trop ! " said Ambient with a laugh ; 
 but he took my meddling very good-naturedly and 
 contented himself with adding that he was really 
 much afraid she would burn up the sheets, his emend 
 ations and all, of which latter he had no duplicate. 
 The Doctor paid a long visit in the nursery, and before 
 he came down I retired to my own quarters, where I 
 remained till dinner-time. On entering the drawing- 
 room at this hour I found Miss Ambient in possession, 
 as she had been the evening before. 
 
 " I was right about Dolcino," she said, as soon as 
 she saw me, with an air of triumph that struck me as 
 the climax of perversity. " He's really very ill." 
 
 " Very ill ! Why when I last saw him, at four 
 o'clock, he was in fairly good form." 
 
 " There has been a change for the worse, very 
 sudden and rapid, and when the Doctor got here he 
 found diphtheritic symptoms. He ought to have been 
 called, as I knew, in the morning, and the child 
 oughtn't to have been brought into the garden." 
 
 " My dear lady, he was very happy there," I pro 
 tested with horror. 
 
 " He would be very happy anywhere. I've no 
 doubt he's very happy now, with his poor little temp 
 erature ! " She dropped her voice as her brother 
 came in, and Mark let us know that as a matter of 
 course Mrs. Ambient wouldn't appear. It was true 
 the boy had developed diphtheritic symptoms, but he 
 was quiet for the present and his mother earnestly 
 
 54
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 watching him. She was a perfect nurse, Mark said, 
 and Mackintosh would come back at ten. Our dinner 
 wasn't very gay with my host worried and absent ; 
 and his sister annoyed me by her constant tacit as 
 sumption, conveyed in the very way she nibbled her 
 bread and sipped her wine, of having " told me so." 
 I had had no disposition to deny anything she might 
 have told me, and I couldn't see that her satisfaction 
 in being justified by the event relieved her little 
 nephew's condition. The truth is that, as the sequel 
 was to prove, Miss Ambient had some of the qualities 
 of the sibyl and had therefore perhaps a right to the 
 sibylline contortions. Her brother was so preoccupied 
 that I felt my presence an indiscretion and was sorry 
 I had promised to remain over the morrow. I put 
 it to Mark that clearly I had best leave them in the 
 morning ; to which he replied that, on the contrary, if 
 he was to pass the next days in the fidgets my com 
 pany would distract his attention. The fidgets had 
 already begun for him, poor fellow ; and as we sat in 
 his study with our cigars after dinner he wandered to 
 the door whenever he heard the sound of the Doctor's 
 wheels. Miss Ambient, who shared this apartment 
 with us, gave me at such moments significant glances ; 
 she had before rejoining us gone upstairs to ask 
 about the child. His mother and his nurse gave a 
 fair report, but Miss Ambient found his fever high 
 and his symptoms very grave. The Doctor came at ten 
 o'clock, and I went to bed after hearing from Mark 
 that he saw no present cause for alarm. He had made 
 every provision for the night and was to return early 
 in the morning. 
 
 I quitted my room as eight struck the next day 
 and when I came downstairs saw, through the open 
 door of the house, Mrs. Ambient standing at the front 
 gate of the grounds in colloquy with Mackintosh. She 
 wore a white dressing-gown, but her shining hair 
 
 55
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 was carefully tucked away in its net, and in the 
 morning freshness, after a night of watching, she 
 looked as much " the type of the lady " as her 
 sister-in-law had described her. Her appearance, I 
 suppose, ought to have reassured me ; but I was still 
 nervous and uneasy, so that I shrank from meeting 
 her with the necessary challenge. None the less, 
 however, was I impatient to learn how the new day 
 found him ; and as Mrs. Ambient hadn't seen me 
 I passed into the grounds by a roundabout way and, 
 stopping at a further gate, hailed the Doctor just as 
 he was driving off. Mrs. Ambient had returned to 
 the house before he got into his cart. 
 
 " Pardon me, but as a friend of the family I should 
 like very much to hear about the little boy." 
 
 The stout sharp circumspect man looked at me 
 from head to foot and then said : "I'm sorry to say 
 I haven't seen him." 
 
 " Haven't seen him ? " 
 
 " Mrs. Ambient came down to meet me as I 
 alighted, and told me he was sleeping so soundly, 
 after a restless night, that she didn't wish him dis 
 turbed. I assured her I wouldn't disturb him, but 
 she said he was quite safe now and she could look 
 after him herself." 
 
 " Thank you very much. Are you coming back ? " 
 
 " No, sir ; I'll be hanged if I come back ! " cried 
 the honest practitioner in high resentment. And the 
 horse started as he settled beside his man. 
 
 I wandered back into the garden, and five minutes 
 later Miss Ambient came forth from the house to 
 greet me. She explained that breakfast wouldn't be 
 served for some time and that she desired a moment 
 herself with the Doctor. I let her know that the 
 good vexed man had come and departed, and I re 
 peated to her what he had told me about his dis 
 missal. This made Miss Ambient very serious, very 
 
 56
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 serious indeed, and she sank into a bench, with 
 dilated eyes, hugging her elbows with crossed arms. 
 She indulged in many strange signs, she confessed 
 herself immensely distressed, and she finally told me 
 what her own last news of her nephew had been. 
 She had sat up very late after me, after Mark 
 and before going to bed had knocked at the door of 
 the child's room, opened to her by the nurse. This 
 good woman had admitted her and she had found 
 him quiet, but flushed and " unnatural," with his 
 mother sitting by his bed. " She held his hand in one 
 of hers," said Miss Ambient, " and in the other 
 what do you think ? the proof-sheets of Mark's 
 new book ! She was reading them there intently : 
 did you ever hear of anything so extraordinary ? 
 Such a very odd time to be reading an author whom 
 she never could abide ! " In her agitation Miss Am 
 bient was guilty of this vulgarism of speech, and I 
 was so impressed by her narrative that only in recall 
 ing her words later did I notice the lapse. Mrs. 
 Ambient had looked up from her reading with her 
 finger on her lips I recognised the gesture she had 
 addressed me in the afternoon and, though the 
 nurse was about to go to rest, had not encouraged her 
 sister-in-law to relieve her of any part of her vigil. 
 But certainly at that time the boy's state was far from 
 reassuring his poor little breathing so painful ; 
 and what change could have taken place in him in 
 those few hours that would justify Beatrice in denying 
 Mackintosh access ? This was the moral of Miss 
 Ambient's anecdote, the moral for herself at least. The" 
 moral for me, rather, was that it was a very singular 
 time for Mrs. Ambient to be going into a novelist she 
 had never appreciated and who had simply happened 
 to be recommended to her by a young American she 
 disliked. I thought of her sitting there in the sick- 
 chamber in the still hours of the night and after the 
 
 57
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 nurse had left her, turning and turning those pages of 
 genius and wrestling with their magical influence. 
 
 I must be sparing of the minor facts and the later 
 emotions of this sojourn it lasted but a few hours 
 longer and devote but three words to my subse 
 quent relations with Ambient. They lasted five 
 years till his death and were full of interest, of 
 satisfaction and, I may add, of sadness. The main 
 thing to be said of these years is that I had a secret 
 from him which I guarded to the end. I believe he 
 never suspected it, though of this I'm not absolutely 
 sure. If he had so much as an inkling the line he had 
 taken, the line of absolute negation of the matter to 
 himself, shows an immense effort of the will. I may 
 at last lay bare my secret, giving it for what it is 
 worth ; now that the main sufferer has gone, that he 
 has begun to be alluded to as one of the famous early 
 dead and that his wife has ceased to survive him ; now, 
 too, that Miss Ambient, whom I also saw at intervals 
 during the time that followed, has, with her em 
 broideries and her attitudes, her necromantic glances 
 and strange intuitions, retired to a Sisterhood, where, 
 as I am told, she is deeply immured and quite lost 
 to the world. 
 
 Mark came in to breakfast after this lady and I 
 had for some time been seated there. He shook hands 
 with me in silence, kissed my companion, opened 
 his letters and newspapers and pretended to drink 
 his coffee. But I took these movements for mechan 
 ical and was little surprised when he suddenly pushed 
 away everything that was before him and, with his 
 head in his hands and his elbows on the table, sat 
 staring strangely at the cloth. 
 
 " What's the matter, caro fratello mio ? " Miss 
 Ambient quavered, peeping from behind the urn. 
 
 He answered nothing, but got up with a certain 
 violence and strode to the window. We rose to our 
 
 58
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 feet, his relative and I, by a common impulse, ex 
 changing a glance of some alarm ; and he continued to 
 stare into the garden. " In heaven's name what has 
 got possession of Beatrice ? " he cried at last, turning 
 round on us a ravaged face. He looked from one of 
 us to the other the appeal was addressed to us alike. 
 
 Miss Ambient gave a shrug. " My poor Mark, 
 Beatrice is always Beatrice ! " 
 
 " She has locked herself up with the boy bolted 
 and barred the door. She refuses to let me come near 
 him ! " he went on. 
 
 " She refused to let Mackintosh see him an hour 
 ago ! " Miss Ambient promptly returned. 
 
 " Refused to let Mackintosh see him ? By heaven 
 I'll smash in the door!" And Mark brought. his 
 fist down upon the sideboard, which he had now 
 approached, so that all the breakfast-service rang. 
 
 I begged Miss Ambient to go up and try to have 
 speech of her sister-in-law, and I drew Mark out into 
 the garden. " You're exceedingly nervous, and Mrs. 
 Ambient 's probably right," I there undertook to 
 plead. " Women know ; women should be supreme 
 in such a situation. Trust a mother a devoted 
 mother, my dear friend ! " With such words as these 
 I tried to soothe and comfort him, and, marvellous to 
 relate, I succeeded, with the help of many cigarettes, 
 in making him walk about the garden and talk, or 
 suffer me at least to do so, for near an hour. When 
 about that time had elapsed his sister reappeared, 
 reaching us rapidly and with a convulsed face while 
 she held her hand to her heart. . 
 
 " Go for the Doctor, Mark go for the Doctor 
 this moment ! " 
 
 "Is he dying ? Has she killed him ? " my poor 
 friend cried, flinging away his cigarette. 
 
 " I don't know what she has done ! But she's 
 frightened, and now she wants the Doctor." 
 
 59
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTKAFFIO 
 
 " He told me he'd be hanged if he came back ! " I 
 felt myself obliged to mention. 
 
 " Precisely therefore Mark himself must go for 
 him, and not a messenger. You must see him and 
 tell him it's to save your child. The trap has been 
 ordered it's ready." 
 
 " To save him ? I'll save him, please God ! " Am 
 bient cried, bounding with his great strides across 
 the lawn. 
 
 As soon as he had gone I felt I ought to have 
 volunteered in his place, and I said as much to Miss 
 Ambient ; but she checked me by grasping my arm 
 while we heard the wheels of the dog-cart rattle away 
 from the gate. " He's off he's off and now I 
 can think ! To get him away while I think 
 while I think ! " 
 
 " While you think of what, Miss Ambient ? " 
 
 " Of the unspeakable thing that has happened 
 under this roof ! " 
 
 Her manner was habitually that of such a prophet 
 ess of ill that I at first allowed for some great extra 
 vagance. But I looked at her hard, and the next thing 
 felt myself turn white. " Dolcino is dying then 
 he's dead ? " 
 
 " It's too late to save him. His mother' has let 
 him die ! I tell you that because you're sympathetic, 
 because you've imagination," Miss Ambient was good 
 enough to add, interrupting my expression of horror. 
 " That's why you had the idea of making her read 
 Mark's new book ! " 
 
 " What has that to do with it ? I don't understand 
 you. Your accusation's monstrous." 
 
 " I see it all I'm not stupid," she went on, heed 
 less of my emphasis. " It was the book that finished 
 her it was that decided her ! " 
 
 " Decided her ? Do you mean she has murdered her 
 child ? " I demanded, trembling at my own words. 
 
 60
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 " She sacrificed him ; she determined to do nothing 
 to make him live. Why else did she lock herself 
 in, why else did she turn away the Doctor ? The 
 book gave her a horror ; she determined to rescue 
 him to prevent him from ever being touched. He 
 had a crisis at two o'clock in the morning. I know 
 that from the nurse, who had left her then, but whom, 
 for a short time, she called back. The darling got 
 much worse, but she insisted on the nurse's going 
 back to bed, and after that she was alone with him 
 for hours." 
 
 I listened with a dread that stayed my credence, 
 while she stood there with her tearless glare. " Do 
 you pretend then she has no pity, that she's cruel and 
 insane ? " 
 
 " She held him in her arms, .she pressed him to 
 her breast, not to see him ; but she gave him no 
 remedies ; she did nothing the Doctor ordered. 
 Everything's there untouched. She has had the 
 honesty not even to throw the drugs away ! " 
 
 I dropped upon the nearest bench, overcome with 
 my dismay quite as much at Miss Ambient's horrible 
 insistence and distinctness as at the monstrous mean 
 ing of her words. Yet they came amazingly straight, 
 and if they did have a sense I saw myself too woe 
 fully figure in it. Had I been then a proximate 
 
 cause ? " You're a very strange woman and you 
 
 say incredible things," I could only reply. 
 
 She had one of her tragic headshakes. " You think 
 it necessary to protest, but you're really quite ready 
 to believe me. You've received an impression of my 
 sister-in-law you've guessed of what she's capable." 
 
 I don't feel bound to say what concession on this 
 score I made to Miss Ambient, who went on to relate 
 to me that within the last half-hour Beatrice had had 
 a revulsion, that she was tremendously frightened at 
 what she had done ; that her fright itself betrayed 
 
 61
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 her ; and that she would now give heaven and earth 
 to save the child. " Let us hope she will ! " I said, 
 looking at my watch and trying to time poor Ambient; 
 whereupon my companion repeated all portentously 
 " Let us hope so ! " When I asked her if she herself 
 could do nothing, and whether she oughtn't to be 
 with her sister-in-law, she replied : " You had better 
 go and judge ! She's like a wounded tigress ! " 
 
 I never saw Mrs. Ambient till six months after this, 
 and therefore can't pretend to have verified the com 
 parison. At the latter period she was again the type 
 of the perfect lady. " She'll treat him better after 
 this," I remember her sister-in-law's saying in re 
 sponse to some quick outburst, on my part, of com 
 passion for her brother. Though I had been in the 
 house but thirty-six hours this young lady had treated 
 me with extraordinary confidence, and there was 
 therefore a certain demand I might, as such an in 
 timate, make of her. I extracted from her a pledge 
 that she'd never say to her brother what she had just 
 said to me, that she'd let him form his own theory of 
 his wife's conduct. She agreed with me that there 
 was misery enough in the house without her con 
 tributing a new anguish, and that Mrs. Ambient's pro 
 ceedings might be explained, to her husband's mind, 
 by the extravagance of a jealous devotion. Poor Mark 
 came back with the Doctor much sooner than we could 
 have hoped, but we knew five minutes afterwards that 
 it was all too late. His sole, his adored little son was 
 more exquisitely beautiful in death than he had been 
 in life. Mrs. Ambient's grief was frantic; she lost her 
 head and said strange things. As for Mark's but 
 I won't speak of that. Basta, basta, as he used to say. 
 Miss Ambient kept her secret I've already had 
 occasion to say that she had her good points but 
 it rankled in her conscience like a guilty participa 
 tion and, I imagine, had something to do with her 
 
 62
 
 THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO 
 
 ultimately retiring from the world. And, apropos of 
 consciences, the reader is now in a position to judge 
 of my compunction for my effort to convert my cold 
 hostess. I ought to mention that the death of her child 
 in some degree converted her. When the new book 
 came out (it was long delayed) she read it over as a 
 whole, and her husband told me that during the few 
 supreme weeks before her death she failed rapidly 
 after losing her son, sank into a consumption and 
 faded away at Mentone she even dipped into the 
 black "Beltraffio."
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS
 
 THE April day was soft and bright, and poor Den- 
 combe, happy in the conceit of reasserted strength, 
 stood in the garden of the hotel, comparing, with a 
 deliberation in which however there was still some 
 thing of languor, the attractions of easy strolls. He 
 liked the feeling of the south so far as you could have 
 it in the north, he liked the sandy cliffs and the clus 
 tered pines, he liked even the colourless sea. " Bourne 
 mouth as a health-resort " had sounded like a mere 
 advertisement, but he was thankful now for the com 
 monest conveniences. The sociable country postman, 
 passing through the garden, had just given him a 
 small parcel which he took out with him, leaving the 
 hotel to the right and creeping to a bench he had 
 already haunted, a safe recess in the cliff. It looked 
 to the south, to the tinted walls of the Island, and was 
 protected behind by the sloping shoulder of the down. 
 He was tired enough when he reached it, and for a 
 moment was disappointed ; he was better of course, 
 but better, after all, than what ? He should never 
 again, as at one or two great moments of the past, 
 be better than himself. The infinite of life was gone, 
 and what remained of the dose a small glass scored 
 like a thermometer by the apothecary. He sat and 
 stared at the sea, which appeared all surface and 
 twinkle, far shallower than the spirit of man. It was 
 the abyss of human illusion that was the real, the tide- 
 
 67
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 less deep. He held his packet, which had come by 
 book-post, unopened on his knee, liking, in the lapse 
 of so many joys his illness had made him feel his 
 age to know it was there, but taking for granted 
 there could be no complete renewal of the pleasure, 
 dear to young experience, of seeing one's self " just 
 out." Dencombe, who had a reputation, had come 
 out too often and knew too well in advance how he 
 should look. 
 
 His postponement associated itself vaguely, after 
 a little, with a group of three persons, two ladies 
 and a young man, whom, beneath him, straggling 
 and seemingly silent, he could see move slowly to 
 gether along the sands. The gentleman had his head 
 bent over a book and was occasionally brought to a 
 stop by the charm of this volume, which, as Den- 
 combe could perceive even at a distance, had a cover 
 alluringly red. Then his companions, going a little 
 further, waited for him to come up, poking their 
 parasols into the beach, looking around them at the 
 sea and sky and clearly sensible of the beauty of the 
 day. To these things the young man with the book 
 was still more clearly indifferent ; lingering, credul 
 ous, absorbed, he was an object of envy to an ob 
 server from whose connexion with literature all such 
 artlessness had faded. One of the ladies was large 
 and mature ; the other had the spareness of compara 
 tive youth and of a social situation possibly inferior. 
 The large lady carried back Dencombe's imagination 
 to the age of crinoline ; she wore a hat of the shape of 
 a mushroom, decorated with a blue veil, and had the 
 air, in her aggressive amplitude, of clinging to a van 
 ished fashion or even a lost cause. Presently her 
 companion produced from under the folds of a mantle 
 a limp portable chair which she stiffened out and of 
 which the large lady took possession. This act, and 
 something in the movement of either party, at once 
 
 68
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 characterised the performers they performed for 
 Dencombe's recreation as opulent matron and 
 humble dependent. Where, moreover, was the virtue 
 of an approved novelist if one couldn't establish a 
 relation between such figures ? the clever theory for 
 instance that the young man was the son of the opulent 
 matron and that the humble dependent, the daughter 
 of a clergyman or an officer, nourished a secret passion 
 for him. Was that not visible from the way she 
 stole behind her protectress to look back at him ? 
 back to where he had let himself come to a full stop 
 when his mother sat down to rest. His book was a 
 novel, it had the catchpenny binding ; so that while 
 the romance of life stood neglected at his side he lost 
 himself in that of the circulating library. He moved 
 mechanically to where the sand was softer and ended 
 by plumping down in it to finish his chapter at his 
 ease. The humble dependent, discouraged by his 
 remoteness, wandered with a martyred droop of the 
 head in another direction, and the exorbitant lady, 
 watching the waves, offered a confused resemblance 
 to a flying-machine that had broken down. 
 
 When his drama began to fail Dencornbe remem 
 bered that he had after all another pastime. Though 
 such promptitude on the part of the publisher was 
 rare he was already able to draw from its wrapper 
 his " latest/' perhaps his last. The cover of " The 
 Middle Years " was duly meretricious, the smell of 
 the fresh pages the very odour of sanctity ; but for the 
 moment he went no further he had become con 
 scious of a strange alienation. He had forgotten what 
 his book was about. Had the assault of his old ail 
 ment, which he had so fallaciously come to Bourne 
 mouth to ward off, interposed utter blankness as to 
 what had preceded it ? He had finished the revision 
 of proof before quitting London, but his subsequent 
 fortnight in bed had passed the sponge over colour. 
 
 69
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 He couldn't have chanted to himself a single sentence, 
 couldn't have turned with curiosity or confidence to 
 any particular page. His subject had already gone 
 from him, leaving scarce a superstition behind. He 
 uttered a low moan as he breathed the chill of this 
 dark void, so desperately it seemed to represent the 
 completion of a sinister process. The tears filled his 
 mild eyes ; something precious had passed away. 
 This was the pang that had been sharpest during the 
 last few years the sense of ebbing time, of shrinking 
 opportunity ; and now he felt not so much that his 
 last chance was going as that it was gone indeed. 
 He had done all he should ever do, and yet hadn't 
 done what he wanted. This was the laceration that 
 practically his career was over : it was as violent as 
 a grip at his throat. He rose from his seat nervously 
 a creature hunted by a dread ; then he fell back in 
 his weakness and nervously opened his book. It was 
 a single volume ; he preferred single volumes and 
 aimed at a rare compression. He began to read and, 
 little by little, in this occupation, was pacified and 
 reassured. Everything came back to him, but came 
 back with a wonder, came back above all with a high 
 and magnificent beauty. He read his own prose, he 
 turned his own leaves, and had as he sat there with 
 the spring sunshine on the page an emotion peculiar 
 and intense. His career was over, no doubt, but it was 
 over, when all was said, with that. 
 
 He had forgotten during his illness the work of 
 the previous year ; but what he had chiefly forgotten 
 was that it was extraordinarily good. He dived once 
 more into his story and was drawn down, as by a 
 siren's hand, to where, in the dim underworld of 
 fiction, the great glazed tank of art, strange silent 
 subjects float. He recognised his motive and surrend 
 ered to his talent. Never probably had that talent, 
 such as it was, been so fine. His difficulties were still 
 
 70
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 there, but what was also there, to his perception, 
 though probably, alas ! to nobody's else, was the art 
 that in most cases had surmounted them. In his 
 surprised enjoyment of this ability he had a glimpse 
 of a possible reprieve. Surely its force wasn't spent 
 there was life and service in it yet. It hadn't come 
 to him easily, it had been backward and roundabout. 
 It was the child of time, the nursling of delay ; he had 
 struggled and suffered for it, making sacrifices not 
 to be counted, and now that it was really mature was 
 it to cease to yield, to confess itself brutally beaten ? 
 There was an infinite charm for Dencombe in feeling 
 as he had never felt before that diligence vincit omnia. 
 The result produced in his little book was somehow 
 a result beyond his conscious intention : it was as if 
 he had planted his genius, had trusted his method, 
 and they had grown up and flowered with this sweet 
 ness. If the achievement had been real, however, the 
 process had been painful enough. What he saw so 
 intensely to-day, what he felt as a nail driven in, was 
 that only now, at the very last, had he come into 
 possession. His development had been abnormally 
 slow, almost grotesquely gradual. He had been hin 
 dered and retarded by experience, he had for long 
 periods only groped his way. It had taken too much 
 of his life to produce too little of his art. The art had 
 come, but it had come after everything else. At such 
 a rate a first existence was too short long enough 
 only to collect material ; so that to fructify, to use the 
 material, one should have a second age, an extension. 
 This extension was what poor Dencombe sighed for. 
 As he turned the last leaves of his volume he mur 
 mured " Ah for another go, ah for a better chance ! " 
 The three persons drawing his attention to the 
 sands had vanished and then reappeared ; they had 
 now wandered up a path, an artificial and easy ascent, 
 which led to the top of the cliff. Dencombe's bench
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 was halfway down, on a sheltered ledge, and the 
 large lady, a massive heterogeneous person with 
 bold black eyes and kind red cheeks, now took a few 
 moments to rest. She wore dirty gauntlets and im 
 mense diamond ear-rings ; at first she looked vulgar, 
 but she contradicted this announcement in an agree 
 able off-hand tone. While her companions stood 
 waiting for her she spread her skirts on the end of 
 Dencombe's seat. The young man had gold spec 
 tacles, through which, with his finger still in his red- 
 covered book, he glanced at the volume, bound in 
 the same shade of the same colour, lying on the lap 
 of the original occupant of the bench. After an 
 instant Dencombe felt him struck with a resemblance ; 
 he had recognised the gilt stamp on the crimson 
 cloth, was reading "The Middle Years" and now noted 
 that somebody else had kept pace with him. The 
 stranger was startled, possibly even a little ruffled, 
 to find himself not the only person favoured with an 
 early copy. The eyes of the two proprietors met a 
 moment, and Dencombe borrowed amusement from 
 the expression of those of his competitor, those, it 
 might even be inferred, of his admirer. They con 
 fessed to some resentment they seemed to say : 
 "Hang it, has he got it already? Of course he's 
 a brute of a reviewer ! " Dencombe shuffled his copy 
 out of sight while the opulent matron, rising from her 
 repose, broke out : "I feel already the good of this 
 air ! " 
 
 " I can't say I do," said the angular lady. " I find 
 myself quite let down." 
 
 " I find myself horribly hungry. At what time did 
 you order luncheon ? " her protectress pursued. 
 
 The young person put the question by. " Doctor 
 Hugh always orders it." 
 
 " I ordered nothing to-day I'm going to make 
 you diet," said their comrade. 
 
 72
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 " Then I shall go home and sleep. Qui dort dine ! " 
 
 " Can I trust you to Miss Vernham ? " asked Doctor 
 Hugh of his elder companion. 
 
 " Don't I trust you ? " she archly inquired. 
 
 " Not too much ! " Miss Vernham, with her eyes 
 on the ground, permitted herself to declare. ' You 
 must come with us at least to the house," she went 
 on while the personage on whom they appeared to be 
 in attendance began to mount higher. She had got 
 a little out of ear-shot ; nevertheless Miss Vernham 
 became, so far as Dencombe was concerned, less dis 
 tinctly audible to murmur to the young man : "I 
 don't think you realise all you owe the Countess ! " 
 
 Absently, a moment, Doctor Hugh caused his gold- 
 rimmed spectacles to shine at her. " Is that the way 
 I strike you ? I see I see ! " 
 
 " She's awfully good to us," continued Miss Vern 
 ham, compelled by the lapse of the other's motion to 
 stand there in spite of his discussion of private mat 
 ters. Of what use would it have been that Dencombe 
 should be sensitive to shades hadn't he detected in 
 that arrest a strange influence from the quiet old 
 convalescent in the great tweed cape ? Miss Vernham 
 appeared suddenly to become aware of some such 
 connexion, for she added in a moment : " If you want 
 to sun yourself here you can come back after you've 
 seen us home." 
 
 Doctor Hugh, at this, hesitated, and Dencombe, 
 in spite of a desire to pass for unconscious, risked a 
 covert glance at him. What his eyes met this time, 
 as happened, was, on the part of the young lady, a 
 queer stare, naturally vitreous, which made her re 
 mind him of some figure he couldn't name it in 
 a play or a novel, some sinister governess or tragic 
 old maid. She seemed to scan him, to challenge him, 
 to say out of general spite : " What have you got to 
 do with us ? " At the same instant the rich humour 
 
 73
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 of the Countess reached them from above : " Come, 
 come, my little lambs ; you should follow your old 
 bergere I " Miss Vernham turned away for it, pur 
 suing the ascent, and Doctor Hugh, after another 
 mute appeal to Dencombe and a minute's evident 
 demur, deposited his book on the bench as if to keep 
 his place, or even as a gage of earnest return, and 
 bounded without difficulty up the rougher part of the 
 cliff. 
 
 Equally innocent and infinite are the pleasures of 
 observation and the resources engendered by the 
 trick of analysing life. It amused poor Dencombe, 
 as he dawdled in his tepid air-bath, to believe himself 
 awaiting a revelation of something at the back of a 
 fine young mind. He looked hard at the book on the 
 end of the bench, but wouldn't have touched it for 
 the world. It served his purpose to have a theory that 
 shouldn't be exposed to refutation. He already felt 
 better of his melancholy ; he had, according to his 
 old formula, put his head at the window. A passing 
 Countess could draw off the fancy when, like the 
 elder of the ladies who had just retreated, she was 
 as obvious as the giantess of a caravan. It was indeed 
 general views that were terrible ; short ones, contrary 
 to an opinion sometimes expressed, were the refuge, 
 were the remedy. Doctor Hugh couldn't possibly 
 be anything but a reviewer who had understandings 
 for early copies with publishers or with newspapers. 
 He reappeared in a quarter of an hour with visible 
 relief at finding Dencombe on the spot and the gleam 
 of white teeth in an embarrassed but generous smile. 
 He was perceptibly disappointed at the eclipse of the 
 other copy of the book ; it made a pretext the less 
 for speaking to the quiet gentleman. But he spoke 
 notwithstanding ; he held up his own copy and 
 broke out pleadingly : " Do say, if you have occasion 
 to speak of it, that it's the best thing he has done yet ! " 
 
 74
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 Dencombe responded with a laugh : " Done yet " 
 was so amusing to him, made such a grand avenue 
 of the future. Better still, the young man took him 
 for a reviewer. He pulled out "The Middle Years" 
 from under his cape, but instinctively concealed any 
 telltale look of fatherhood. This was partly because 
 a person was always a fool for insisting to others on 
 his work. " Is that what you're going to say your 
 self ? " he put to his visitor. 
 
 " I'm not quite sure I shall write anything. I don't, 
 as a regular thing I enjoy in peace. But it's awfully 
 fine." 
 
 Dencombe just debated. If the young man had 
 begun to abuse him he would have confessed on the 
 spot to his identity, but there was no harm in drawing 
 out any impulse to praise. He drew it out with such 
 success that in a few moments his new acquaintance, 
 seated by his side, was confessing candidly that the 
 works of the author of the volumes before them were 
 the only ones he could read a second time. He had 
 come the day before from London, where a friend of 
 his, a journalist, had lent him his copy of the last, 
 the copy sent to the office of the journal and already 
 the subject of a " notice " which, as was pretended 
 there but one had to allow for " swagger " it 
 had taken a full quarter of an hour to prepare. He 
 intimated that he was ashamed for his friend, and in 
 the case of a work demanding and repaying study, 
 of such inferior manners ; and, with his fresh apprecia 
 tion and his so irregular wish to express it, he speedily 
 became for poor Dencombe a remarkable, a delight 
 ful apparition. Chance had brought the weary man 
 of letters face to face with the greatest admirer in the 
 new generation of whom it was supposable he might 
 boast. The admirer in truth was mystifying, so rare 
 a case was it to find a bristling young doctor he 
 looked like a German physiologist enamoured of 
 
 75
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 literary form. It was an accident, but happier than 
 most accidents, so that Dencombe, exhilarated as 
 well as confounded, spent half an hour in making his 
 visitor talk while he kept himself quiet. He explained 
 his premature possession of " The Middle Years " by 
 an allusion to the friendship of the publisher, who, 
 knowing he was at Bournemouth for his health, had 
 paid him this graceful attention. He allowed he had 
 been ill, for Doctor Hugh would infallibly have 
 guessed it ; he even went so far as to wonder if he 
 mightn't look for some hygienic " tip " from a person 
 age combining so bright an enthusiasm with a pre 
 sumable knowledge of the remedies now in vogue. 
 It would shake his faith a little perhaps to have to 
 take a doctor seriously who could take him so seri 
 ously, but he enjoyed this gushing modern youth and 
 felt with an acute pang that there would still be work 
 to do in a world in which such odd combinations were 
 presented. It wasn't true, what he had tried for 
 renunciation's sake to believe, that all the combina 
 tions were exhausted. They weren't by any means 
 they were infinite : the exhaustion was in the miser 
 able artist. 
 
 Doctor Hugh, an ardent physiologist, was saturated 
 with the spirit of the age in other words he had 
 just taken his degree ; but he was independent and 
 various, he talked like a man who would have pre 
 ferred to love literature best. He would fain have 
 made fine phrases, but nature had denied him the 
 trick. Some of the finest in "The Middle Years " had 
 struck him inordinately, and he took the liberty of 
 reading them to Dencombe in support of his plea. 
 He grew vivid, in the balmy air, to his companion, 
 for whose deep refreshment he seemed to have been 
 sent ; and was particularly ingenuous in describing 
 how recently he had become acquainted, and how 
 instantly infatuated, with the only man who had put 
 
 76
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 flesh between the ribs of an art that was starving on 
 superstitions. He hadn't yet written to him he 
 was deterred by a strain of respect. Dencombe at 
 this moment rejoiced more inwardly than ever that he 
 had never answered the photographers. His visitor's 
 attitude promised him a luxury of intercourse, though 
 he was sure a due freedom for Doctor Hugh would 
 depend not a little on the Countess. He learned with 
 out delay what type of Countess was involved, 
 mastering as well the nature of the tie that united 
 the curious trio. The large lady, an Englishwoman 
 by birth and the daughter of a celebrated baritone, 
 whose taste minus his talent she had inherited, was 
 the widow of a French nobleman and mistress of all 
 that remained of the handsome fortune, the fruit of 
 her father's earnings, that had constituted her dower. 
 Miss Vernham, an odd creature but an accomplished 
 pianist, was attached to her person at a salary. The 
 Countess was generous, independent, eccentric ; she 
 travelled with her minstrel and her medical man. 
 Ignorant and passionate she had nevertheless mo 
 ments in which she was almost irresistible. Den- 
 combe saw her sit for her portrait in Doctor Hugh's 
 free sketch, and felt the picture of his young friend's 
 relation to her frame itself in his mind. This young 
 friend, for a representative of the new psychology, 
 was himself easily hypnotised, and if he became ab 
 normally communicative it was only a sign of his 
 real subjection. Dencombe did accordingly what he 
 wanted with him, even without being known as Den 
 combe. 
 
 Taken ill on a journey in Switzerland the Countess 
 had picked him up at an hotel, and the accident of 
 his happening to please her had made her offer him, 
 with her imperious liberality, terms that couldn't 
 fail to dazzle a practitioner without patients and 
 whose resources had been drained dry by his studies. 
 
 77
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 It wasn't the way he would have proposed to spend 
 his time, but it was time that would pass quickly, and 
 meanwhile she was wonderfully kind. She exacted 
 perpetual attention, but it was impossible not to like 
 her. He gave details about his queer patient, a "type" 
 if there ever was one, who had in connexion with her 
 flushed obesity, and in addition to the morbid strain 
 of a violent and aimless will, a grave organic disorder ; 
 but he came back to his loved novelist, whom he was 
 so good as to pronounce more essentially a poet than 
 many of those who went in for verse, with a zeal 
 excited, as all his indiscretion had been excited, by 
 the happy chance of Dencombe's sympathy and the 
 coincidence of their occupation. Dencombe had con 
 fessed to a slight personal acquaintance with the 
 author of "The Middle Years," but had not felt 
 himself as ready as he could have wished when his 
 companion, who had never yet encountered a being 
 so privileged, began to be eager for particulars. He 
 even divined in Doctor Hugh's eye at that moment 
 a glimmer of suspicion. But the young man was too 
 inflamed to be shrewd and repeatedly caught up the 
 book to exclaim : " Did you notice this ? " or " Weren't 
 you immensely struck with that ? " " There's a beau 
 tiful passage toward the end," he broke out ; and 
 again he laid his hand on the volume. As he turned 
 the pages he came upon something else, while Den- 
 combe saw him suddenly change colour. He had 
 taken up as it lay on the bench Dencombe's copy 
 instead of his own, and his neighbour at once guessed 
 the reason of his start. Doctor Hugh looked grave 
 an instant ; then he said : " I see you've been altering 
 the text ! " Dencombe was a passionate corrector, a 
 fingerer of style ; the last thing he ever arrived at was 
 a form final for himself. His ideal would have been 
 to publish secretly, and then, on the published text, 
 treat himself to the terrified revise, sacrificing always 
 
 78
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 a first edition and beginning for posterity and even 
 for the collectors, poor dears, with a second. This 
 morning, in "The Middle Years," his pencil had 
 pricked a dozen lights. He was amused at the effect 
 of the young man's reproach ; for an instant it made 
 him change colour. He stammered at any rate 
 ambiguously, then through a blur of ebbing con 
 sciousness saw Doctor Hugh's mystified eyes. He 
 only had time to feel he was about to be ill again 
 that emotion, excitement, fatigue, the heat of the sun, 
 the solicitation of the air, had combined to play him 
 a trick, before, stretching out a hand to his visitor 
 with a plaintive cry, he lost his senses altogether. 
 
 Later he knew he had fainted and that Doctor 
 Hugh had got him home in a Bath-chair, the con 
 ductor of which, prowling within hail for custom, 
 had happened to remember seeing him in the garden 
 of the hotel. He had recovered his perception on the 
 way, and had, in bed that afternoon, a vague recol 
 lection of Doctor Hugh's young face, as they went 
 together, bent over him in a comforting laugh and 
 expressive of something more than a suspicion of his 
 identity. That identity was ineffaceable now, and 
 all the more that he was rueful and sore. He had been 
 rash, been stupid, had gone out too soon, stayed out 
 too long. He oughtn't to have exposed himself to 
 strangers, he ought to have taken his servant. He 
 felt as if he had fallen into a hole too deep to descry 
 any little patch of heaven. He was confused about 
 the time that had passed he pieced the fragments 
 together. He had seen his doctor, the real one, the 
 one who had treated him from the first and who had 
 again been very kind. His servant was in and out on 
 tiptoe, looking very wise after the fact. He said more 
 than once something about the sharp young gentle 
 man. The rest was vagueness in so far as it wasn't 
 despair. The vagueness, however, justified itself by 
 
 79
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 dreams, dozing anxieties from which he finally 
 emerged to the consciousness of a dark room and a 
 shaded candle. 
 
 " You'll be all right again I know all about you 
 now," said a voice near him that he felt to be 
 young. Then his meeting with Doctor Hugh came 
 back. He was too discouraged to joke about it yet, 
 but made out after a little that the interest was intense 
 for his visitor. " Of course I can't attend you pro 
 fessionally you've got your own man, with whom 
 I've talked and who's excellent," Doctor Hugh went 
 on. " But you must let me come to see you as a good 
 friend. I've just looked in before going to bed. 
 You're doing beautifully, but it's a good job I was 
 with you on the cliff. I shall come in early to-morrow. 
 I want to do something for you. I want to do every 
 thing. You've done a tremendous lot for me." The 
 young man held his hand, hanging over him, and poor 
 Dencombe, weakly aware of this living pressure, 
 simply lay there and accepted his devotion. He 
 couldn't do anything less he needed help too 
 much. 
 
 The idea of the help he needed was very present 
 to him that night, which he spent in a lucid stillness, 
 an intensity of thought that constituted a reaction 
 from his hours of stupor. He was lost, he was lost 
 he was lost if he couldn't be saved. He wasn't afraid 
 of suffering, of death, wasn't even in love with life ; 
 but he had had a deep demonstration of desire. It 
 came over him in the long quiet hours that only with 
 "The Middle Years" had he taken his flight; only 
 on that day, visited by soundless processions, had he 
 recognised his kingdom. He had had a revelation of 
 his range. What he dreaded was the idea that his 
 reputation should stand on the unfinished. It wasn't 
 with his past but with his future that it should pro 
 perly be concerned. Illness and age rose before 
 
 80
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 him like spectres with pitiless eyes : how was he to 
 bribe such fates to give him the second chance ? He 
 had had the one chance that all men have he had 
 had the chance of life. He- went to sleep again very 
 late, and when he awoke Doctor Hugh was sitting at 
 hand. There was already by this time something 
 beautifully familiar in him. 
 
 " Don't think I've turned out your physician," he 
 said ; "I'm acting with his consent. He has been 
 here and seen you. Somehow he seems to trust 
 me. I told him how we happened to come together 
 yesterday, and he recognises that I've a peculiar 
 right." 
 
 Dencombe felt his own face pressing. " How have 
 you squared the Countess ? " 
 
 The young man blushed a little, but turned it off. 
 " Oh never mind the Countess ! " 
 
 ' You told me she was very exacting." 
 
 Doctor Hugh had a wait. " So she is." 
 
 " And Miss Vernham's an intrigante." 
 
 " How do you know that ? " 
 
 " I know everything. One has to, to write de 
 cently ! " 
 
 " I think she's mad," said limpid Doctor Hugh. 
 
 " Well, don't quarrel with the Countess she's 
 a present help to you." 
 
 " I don't quarrel," Doctor Hugh returned. " But I 
 don't get on with silly women." Presently he added : 
 ' You seem very much alone." 
 
 " That often happens at my age. I've outlived, 
 I've lost by the way." 
 
 Doctor Hugh faltered ; then surmounting a soft 
 scruple : " Whom have you lost ? " 
 
 " Every one." 
 
 " Ah no," the young man breathed, laying a hand 
 on his arm. 
 
 " I once had a wife I once had a son. My wife 
 81 G
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 died when my child was born, and my boy, at school, 
 was carried off by typhoid." 
 
 " I wish I'd been there ! " cried Doctor Hugh. 
 
 " Well if you're here ! " Dencombe answered with 
 a smile that, in spite of dimness, showed how he valued 
 being sure of his companion's whereabouts. 
 
 ' You talk strangely of your age. You're not old." 
 
 " Hypocrite so early ! " 
 
 " I speak physiologically." 
 
 " That's the way I've been speaking for the last 
 five years, and it's exactly what I've been saying to 
 myself. It isn't till we are old that we begin to tell 
 ourselves we^re not." 
 
 ' Yet I know I myself am young," Doctor Hugh 
 returned. 
 
 " Not so well as I ! " laughed his patient, whose 
 visitor indeed would have established the truth in 
 question by the honesty with which he changed the 
 point of view, remarking that it must be one of the 
 charms of age at any rate in the case of high dis 
 tinction to feel that one has laboured and achieved. 
 Doctor Hugh employed the common phrase about 
 earning one's rest, and it made poor Dencombe for 
 an instant almost angry. He recovered himself, how 
 ever, to explain, lucidly enough, that if, ungraciously, 
 he knew nothing of such a balm, it was doubtless 
 because he had wasted inestimable years. He had 
 followed literature from the first, but he had taken 
 a lifetime to get abreast of her. Only to-day at last 
 had he begun to see, so that all he had hitherto 
 shown was a movement without a direction. He 
 had ripened too late and was so clumsily constituted 
 that he had had to teach himself by mistakes. 
 
 " I prefer your flowers then to other people's fruit, 
 and your mistakes to other people's successes," said 
 gallant Doctor Hugh. " It's for your mistakes I 
 admire you." 
 
 82
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 " You're happy you don't know," Dencombe 
 answered. 
 
 Looking at his watch the young man had got up ; 
 he named the hour of the afternoon at which he would 
 return. Dencombe warned him against committing 
 himself too deeply, and expressed again all his dread 
 of making him neglect the Countess perhaps incur 
 her displeasure. 
 
 " I want to be like you I want to learn by mis 
 takes ! " Doctor Hugh laughed. 
 
 " Take care you don't make too grave a one ! But 
 do come back," Dencombe added with the glimmer 
 of a new idea. 
 
 " You should have had more vanity ! " His friend 
 spoke as if he knew the exact amount required to 
 make a man of letters normal. 
 
 " No, no I only should have had more time. I 
 want another go." 
 
 " Another go ? " 
 
 " I want an extension." 
 
 " An extension ? " Again- Doctor Hugh repeated 
 Dencombe's words, with which he seemed to have 
 been struck. 
 
 "Don't you know ? I want to what they call ' live.'" 
 
 The young man, for good-bye, had taken his hand, 
 which closed with a certain force. They looked at 
 each other hard. ' You will live," said Doctor Hugh. 
 
 " Don't be superficial. It's too serious ! " 
 ' You shall live ! " Dencombe's visitor declared, 
 turning pale. 
 
 " Ah that's better ! " And as he retired the invalid, 
 with a troubled laugh, sank gratefully back. 
 
 All that day and all the following night he won 
 dered if it mightn't be arranged. His doctor came 
 again, his servant was attentive, but it was to his 
 confident young friend that he felt himself mentally 
 appeal. His collapse on the cliff was plausibly ex- 
 
 83
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 plained and his liberation, on a better basis, promised 
 for the morrow ; meanwhile, however, the intensity 
 of his meditations kept him tranquil and made him 
 indifferent. The idea that occupied him was none 
 the less absorbing because it was a morbid fancy. 
 Here was a clever son of the age, ingenious and 
 ardent, who happened to have set him up for connois 
 seurs to worship. This servant of his altar had all the 
 new learning in science and all the old reverence in 
 faith ; wouldn't he therefore put his knowledge at 
 the disposal of his sympathy, his craft at the disposal 
 of his love ? Couldn't he be trusted to invent a remedy 
 for a poor artist to whose art he had paid a tribute ? 
 If he couldn't the alternative was hard : Dencombe 
 would have to surrender to silence unvindicated and 
 undivined. The rest of the day and all the next he 
 toyed in secret with this sweet futility. Who would 
 work the miracle for him but the young man who 
 could combine such lucidity with such passion ? He 
 thought of the fairy-tales of science and charmed him 
 self into forgetting that he looked for a magic that was 
 not of this world. Doctor Hugh was an apparition, 
 and that placed him above the law. He came and 
 went while his patient, who now sat up, followed him 
 with supplicating eyes. The interest of knowing the 
 great author had made the young man begin " The 
 Middle Years " afresh and would help him to find a 
 richer sense between its covers. Dencombe had told 
 him what he " tried for " ; with all his intelligence, on 
 a first perusal, Doctor Hugh had failed to guess it. 
 The baffled celebrity wondered then who in the world 
 would guess it : he was amused once more at the 
 diffused massive weight that could be thrown into the 
 missing of an intention. Yet he wouldn't rail at the 
 general mind to-day consoling as that ever had 
 been : the revelation of his own slowness had seemed 
 to make all stupidity sacred. 
 
 84
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 Doctor Hugh, after a little, was visibly worried, 
 confessing, on inquiry, to a source of embarrassment 
 at home. " Stick to the Countess don't mind me," 
 Dencombe said repeatedly ; for his companion was 
 frank enough about the large lady's attitude. She 
 was so jealous that she had fallen ill she resented 
 such a breach of allegiance. She paid so much for 
 his fidelity that she must have it all : she refused him 
 the right to other sympathies, charged him with 
 scheming to make her die alone, for it was needless 
 to point out how little Miss Vernham was a resource 
 in trouble. When Doctor Hugh mentioned that the 
 Countess would already have left Bournemouth if he 
 hadn't kept her in bed, poor Dencombe held his arm 
 tighter and said with decision : " Take her straight 
 away." They had gone out together, walking back 
 to the sheltered nook in which, the other day, they 
 had met. The young man, who had given his com 
 panion a personal support, declared with emphasis 
 that his conscience was clear he could ride two 
 horses at once. Didn't he dream for his future of 
 a time when he should have to ride five hundred ? 
 Longing equally for virtue, Dencombe replied that 
 in that golden age no patient would pretend to have 
 contracted with him for his whole attention. On the 
 part of the Countess wasn't such an avidity lawful ? 
 Doctor Hugh denied it, said there was no contract, 
 but only a free understanding, and that a sordid 
 servitude was impossible to a generous spirit ; he 
 liked moreover to talk about art, and that was the 
 subject on which, this time, as they sat together on 
 the sunny bench, he tried most to engage the author 
 of " The Middle Years." Dencombe, soaring again a 
 little on the weak wings of convalescence and still 
 haunted by that happy notion of an organised rescue, 
 found another strain of eloquence to plead the cause 
 of a certain splendid " last manner," the very citadel, 
 
 85
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 as it would prove, of his reputation, the stronghold 
 into which his real treasure would be gathered. While 
 his listener gave up the morning and the great still 
 sea ostensibly waited he had a wondrous explanatory 
 hour. Even for himself he was inspired as he told 
 what his treasure would consist of ; the precious metals 
 he would dig from the mine, the jewels rare, strings 
 of pearls, he would hang between the columns of his 
 temple. He was wondrous for himself, so thick his 
 convictions crowded, but still more wondrous for 
 Doctor Hugh, who assured him none the less that 
 the very pages he had just published were already 
 encrusted with gems. This admirer, however, panted 
 for the combinations to come and, before the face of 
 the beautiful day, renewed to Dencombe his guarantee 
 that his profession would hold itself responsible for 
 such a life. Then he suddenly clapped his hand upon 
 his watch-pocket and asked leave to absent himself 
 for half an hour. Dencombe waited there for his 
 return, but was at last recalled to the actual by the 
 fall of a shadow across the ground. The shadow 
 darkened into that of Miss Vernham, the young lady 
 in attendance on the Countess ; whom Dencombe, 
 recognising her, perceived so clearly to have come 
 to speak to him that he rose from his bench to acknow 
 ledge the civility. Miss Vernham indeed proved not 
 particularly civil ; she looked strangely agitated, and 
 her type was now unmistakable. 
 
 " Excuse me if I do ask," she said, " whether it's 
 too much to hope that you may be induced to leave 
 Doctor Hugh alone." Then before our poor friend, 
 greatly disconcerted, could protest : " You ought to 
 be informed that you stand in his light that you 
 may do him a terrible injury." 
 
 " Do you mean by causing the Countess to dis 
 pense with his services ? " 
 
 " By causing her to disinherit him." Dencombe 
 86
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 stared at this, and Miss Vemham pursued, in the 
 gratification of seeing she could produce an impres 
 sion: " It has depended on himself to come into some 
 thing very handsome. He has had a grand prospect, 
 but I think you've succeeded in spoiling it." 
 
 " Not intentionally, I assure you. Is there no hope 
 the accident may be repaired ? " Dencombe asked. 
 
 " She was ready to do anything for him. She takes 
 great fancies, she lets herself go it's her way. She 
 has no relations, she's free to dispose of her money, 
 and she's very ill," said Miss Vernham for a climax. 
 
 " I'm very sorry to hear it," Dencombe stammered. 
 
 " Wouldn't it be possible for you to leave Bourne 
 mouth ? That's what I've come to see about." 
 
 He sank to his bench. "I'm very ill myself, but 
 I'll try ! " 
 
 Miss Vernham still stood there with her colourless 
 eyes and the brutality of her good conscience. " Be 
 fore it's too late, please ! " she said ; and with this she 
 turned her back, in order, quickly, as if it had been 
 a business to which she could spare but a precious 
 moment, to pass out of his sight. 
 
 Oh yes, after this Dencombe was certainly very 
 ill. Miss Vernham had upset him with her rough 
 fierce news ; it was the sharpest shock to him to dis 
 cover what was at stake for a penniless young man 
 of fine parts. He sat trembling on his bench, staring 
 at the waste of waters, feeling sick with the directness 
 of the blow. He was indeed too weak, too unsteady, 
 too alarmed ; but he would make the effort to get 
 away, for he couldn't accept the guilt of interference 
 and his honour was really involved. He would hobble 
 home, at any rate, and then think what was to be 
 done. He made his way back to the hotel and, as he 
 went, had a characteristic vision of Miss Vernham 's 
 great motive. The Countess hated women of course 
 Dencombe was lucid about that ; so the hungry 
 
 87
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 pianist had no personal hopes and could only console 
 herself with the bold conception of helping Doctor 
 Hugh in order to marry him after he should get his 
 money or else induce him to recognise her claim for 
 compensation and buy her off. If she had befriended 
 him at a fruitful crisis he would really, as a man of 
 delicacy and she knew what to think of that point 
 have to reckon with her. 
 
 At the hotel Dencombe's servant insisted on his 
 going back to bed. The invalid had talked about 
 catching a train and had begun with orders to pack ; 
 after which his racked nerves had yielded to a sense 
 of sickness. He consented to see his physician, who 
 immediately was sent for, but he wished it to be 
 understood that his door was irrevocably closed to 
 Doctor Hugh. He had his plan, which was so fine 
 that he rejoiced in it after getting back to bed. Doctor 
 Hugh, suddenly finding himself snubbed without 
 mercy, would, in natural disgust and to the joy of 
 Miss Vernham, renew his allegiance to the Countess. 
 When his physician arrived Dencombe learned that 
 he was feverish and that this was very wrong : he was 
 to cultivate calmness and try, if possible, not to think. 
 For the rest of the day he wooed stupidity; but there 
 was an ache that kept him sentient, the probable 
 sacrifice of his " extension," the limit of his course. 
 His medical adviser was anything but pleased ; his 
 successive relapses were ominous. He charged this 
 personage to put out a strong hand and take Doctor 
 Hugh off his mind it would contribute so much to 
 his being quiet. The agitating name, in his room, 
 was not mentioned again, but his security was a 
 smothered fear, and it was not confirmed by the 
 receipt, at ten o'clock that evening, of a telegram 
 which his servant opened and read him and to which, 
 with an address in London, the signature of Miss 
 Vernham was attached. " Beseech you to use all influ- 
 
 88
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 ence to make our friend join us here in the morning. 
 Countess much the worse for dreadful journey, but 
 everything may still be saved." The two ladies had 
 gathered themselves up and had been capable in the 
 afternoon of a spiteful revolution. They had started 
 for the capital, and if the elder one, as Miss Vern- 
 ham had announced, was very ill, she had wished to 
 make it clear that she was proportionately reckless. 
 Poor Dencombe, who was not reckless and who only 
 desired that everything should indeed be " saved," 
 sent this missive straight off to the young man's lodg 
 ing and had on the morrow the pleasure of knowing 
 that he had quitted Bournemouth by an early train. 
 
 Two days later he pressed in with a copy of a liter 
 ary journal in his hand. He had returned because 
 he was anxious and for the pleasure of flourishing the 
 great review of " The Middle Years." Here at least 
 was something adequate it rose to the occasion ; it 
 was an acclamation, a reparation, a critical attempt 
 to place the author in the niche he had fairly won. 
 Dencombe accepted and submitted ; he made neither 
 objection nor inquiry, for old complications had 
 returned and he had had two dismal days. He was 
 convinced not only that he should never again leave 
 his bed, so that his young friend might pardonably 
 remain, but that the demand he should make on the 
 patience of beholders would be of the most moderate. 
 Doctor Hugh had been to town, and he tried to 
 find in his eyes some confession that the Countess 
 was pacified and his legacy clinched ; but all he 
 could see there was the light of his juvenile joy in 
 two or three of the phrases of the newspaper. Den 
 combe couldn't read them, but when his visitor had 
 insisted on repeating them more than once he was 
 able to shake an unintoxicated head. " Ah no 
 but they would have been true of what I could have 
 done ! "
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 " What people ' could have done ' is mainly what 
 they've in fact done," Doctor Hugh contended. 
 
 " Mainly, yes ; but I've been an idiot ! " Den- 
 combe said. 
 
 Doctor Hugh did remain ; the end was coming fast. 
 Two days later his patient observed to him, by way 
 of the feeblest of jokes, that there would now be no 
 question whatever of a second chance. At this the 
 young man stared ; then he exclaimed : " Why it has 
 come to pass it has come to pass ! The second 
 chance has been the public's the chance to find 
 the point of view, to pick up the pearl ! " 
 
 " Oh the pearl ! " poor Den combe uneasily sighed. 
 A smile as cold as a winter sunset flickered on his 
 drawn lips as he added : " The pearl is the unwritten 
 the pearl is the unalloyed, the rest, the lost ! " 
 
 From that hour he was less and less present, heed 
 less to all appearance of what went on round him. 
 His disease was definitely mortal, of an action as 
 relentless, after the short arrest that had enabled him 
 to fall in with Doctor Hugh, as a leak in a great ship. 
 Sinking steadily, though this visitor, a man of rare 
 resources, now cordially approved by his physician, 
 showed endless art in guarding him from pain, poor 
 Dencombe kept no reckoning of favour or neglect, 
 betrayed no symptom of regret or speculation. Yet 
 toward the last he gave a sign of having noticed how 
 for two days Doctor Hugh hadn't been in his room, 
 a sign that consisted of his suddenly opening his eyes 
 to put a question. Had he spent those days with the 
 Countess ? 
 
 " The Countess is dead," said Doctor Hugh. " I 
 knew that in a particular contingency she wouldn't 
 resist. I went to her grave." 
 
 Dencombe's eyes opened wider. " She left you 
 ' something handsome ' ? " 
 
 The young man gave a laugh almost too light for 
 90
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 a chamber of woe. " Never a penny. She roundly 
 cursed me." 
 
 " Cursed you ? " Dencombe wailed. 
 
 " For giving her up. I gave her up for you. I had 
 to choose," his companion explained. 
 
 ' You chose to let a fortune go ? " 
 
 " I chose to accept, whatever they might be, the 
 consequences of my infatuation," smiled Doctor 
 Hugh. Then as a larger pleasantry : " The fortune 
 be hanged ! It's your own fault if I can't get your 
 things out of my head." 
 
 The immediate tribute to his humour was a long 
 bewildered moan ; after which, for many hours, many 
 days, Dencombe lay motionless and absent. A re 
 sponse so absolute, such a glimpse of a definite result 
 and such a sense of credit, worked together in his 
 mind and, producing a strange commotion, slowly 
 altered and transfigured his despair. The sense of 
 cold submersion left him he seemed to float without 
 an effort. The incident was extraordinary as evidence, 
 and it shed an intenser light. At the last he signed 
 to Doctor Hugh to listen and, when he was down 
 on his knees by the pillow, brought him very near. 
 ' You've made me think it all a delusion." 
 
 " Not your glory my dear friend," stammered the 
 young man. 
 
 " Not my glory -what there is of it ! It is glory 
 to have been tested, to have had our little quality 
 and cast our little spell. The thing is to have made 
 somebody care. You happen to be crazy of course, 
 but that doesn't affect the law." 
 
 " You're a great success ! " said Doctor Hugh, 
 putting into his young voice the ring of a marriage- 
 bell. 
 
 Dencombe lay taking this in ; then he gathered 
 strength to speak once more. " A second chance 
 that's the delusion. There never was to be but one. 
 
 9 1
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 We work in the dark we do what we can we give 
 what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our 
 passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art." 
 
 " If you've doubted, if you've despaired, you've 
 always ' done ' it," his visitor subtly argued. 
 
 " We've done something or other," Dencombe con 
 ceded. 
 
 " Something or other is everything. It's the feas 
 ible. It's_yo ! " 
 
 " Comforter ! " poor Dencombe ironically sighed. 
 
 " But it's true," insisted his friend. 
 
 " It's true. It's frustration that doesn't count." 
 
 " Frustration's only life," said Doctor Hugh. 
 
 " Yes, it's what passes." Poor Dencombe was 
 barely audible, but he had marked with the words 
 the virtual end of his first and only chance. 
 
 92
 
 GREVILLE FANE 
 
 93
 
 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 down easily, but not 
 too easily." I was late ; I was in a hurry ; I had very 
 little time to think ; but at a venture I despatched 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 down easily but in qualifying that indulg 
 ence. " So I simply won't qualify it," I said. I didn't 
 admire but liked her, and 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, but the lady I had taken down had 
 never heard of Greville Fane. I tried my other neigh 
 bour, who pronounced her books " too vile." I had 
 never thought them very good, but I should let her 
 down more easily 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 northwest district, in the neigh 
 bourhood 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 
 
 95
 
 GREVILLE FANE 
 
 a servant immediately to the door ; but poor Mrs. 
 Stormer had passed into a state in which the reson 
 ance of no earthly knocker was to be feared. A lady 
 hovering behind the servant came forward into the 
 hall when she heard my voice. I recognised Lady 
 Luard, but she had mistaken me for the doctor. 
 
 " Pardon 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, in her manner and even in her name, were 
 an implication that she was very admirable. I had 
 never been able to follow the argument, but that's 
 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 infamous interviewer, which I wasn't. 
 But I pleaded guilty to this intention, on which she 
 returned : "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 im 
 perturbable industry. Her table was there, the bat 
 tered 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 
 
 96
 
 GREVILLE FANE 
 
 literary remains. Leolin was also there, smoldng 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 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 hadn't long to wait to learn, since in reply to the 
 few 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 mentioned 
 that I was going to write something, and to me again 
 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 ! " went on rather austerely : 
 " I mean about mamma's birth." 
 
 ' Yes and her connexions," Leolin added. 
 I professed every willingness, and for five minutes 
 I listened ; but it would be too much to say I clearly 
 understood. I don't even now, but it's 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 keener and 
 keener about themselves. I got away as soon as 
 
 97 H
 
 GREVILLE FANE 
 
 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 trans 
 ferred on the morrow from the polished plate of fancy. 
 I believe it attracted some notice, was thought " grace 
 ful " and was said to be by some one else. I had to 
 be pointed without being lively, and it took some 
 doing. But what I said was much less interesting than 
 what I thoughtespecially 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'm 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 my elder, 
 but a person who always acknowledged her com 
 parative state. It wasn't 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 was nevertheless 
 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 irri 
 tation, a torment ; but Greville Fane slumbered in 
 the intellectual part of it even as a cat on a hearth 
 rug or a Creole in a hammock. She wasn't a woman 
 of genius, but her faculty was so special, so much 
 
 98
 
 GREVILLE FANE 
 
 a gift out of hand, that I've 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 a call. 
 She could invent stories by the yard, but 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 
 hadn't contributed a sentence to the language. This 
 hadn't prevented bushels of criticism from being 
 heaped on 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 superior. She asked me to come and see 
 her and I complied. She lived then in Montpelier 
 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, but, with a cleverness 
 and a modernness of her own, had freshened up 
 the fly-blown tinsel. She turned off plots by the 
 
 99
 
 GREVILLE FANE 
 
 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 cosmo 
 politan. 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 expert 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 / 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 at the grand licking 
 into shape that a work of art required 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 
 100
 
 GREVILLE FANE 
 
 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 ; according to 
 which she lost nothing (her private humiliation not 
 counted) by having none to show. She made no pre 
 tence of producing works of art, but had comfortable 
 tea-drinking hours in which she freely confessed her 
 self 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 calm independence of observation 
 and opportunity which constituted an inexpugnable 
 strength and would enable her to go on indefinitely. 
 It's only real success that wanes, it's 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 open straight into fairyland, and the fairies 
 love you and they never change. Fairyland's always 
 there ; it always was from the beginning of time and 
 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 rela 
 tion to life ! " she used to reply, for she was always 
 annoyed by the phrase which wouldn't in the least 
 prevent her using it as a note of elegance. 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 ' likes ' of me ; since, proceeding in our 
 small way by experience and study priggish we ! 
 
 101
 
 GREVILLE FANE 
 
 we depended not on a revelation but on a little tire 
 some process. Attention depended on occasion, and 
 where should we be when occasion 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 appren 
 ticeship. Moreover the education would be less ex 
 pensive than any other special course, inasmuch as 
 she could herself administer it. She didn't profess 
 to keep a school, but she could at least teach her own 
 child. It wasn't that she had such a gift, but she 
 confessed to me as if she were afraid I should laugh 
 at her that he had. I didn't laugh at her for that, 
 because I thought the boy sharp I had seen him 
 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 country vicar 
 and brother to a small squire. I explained them to 
 myself by suppositions and imputations possibly un 
 just 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 can 
 dour of Greville Fane's bad taste. It made him look 
 like an unsuccessful tragedian, but it wasn't 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 long, very long, like an undecipherable 
 letter. It wasn't till Mrs. Stormer came back from 
 
 102
 
 GREVILLE FANE 
 
 a protracted residence abroad that Ethel (which was 
 this young lady's name) began to produce the effect, 
 large and stiff and afterwards eminent in her, of 
 a certain kind of resolution, something as public and 
 important as if a meeting and a chairman had passed 
 it. She gave one to understand she meant to do 
 all she could 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 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 proposi 
 tion whatever beyond an unchallengeable " 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 nup 
 tials 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 medioc 
 rity. " Oh he has immense ability," she said ; but she 
 blushed for the maternal fib. What she meant was 
 that though Sir Baldwin's estates were not vast he 
 
 103
 
 GREVILLE FANE 
 
 had a dreary house in South Kensington and a still 
 drearier " Hall " somewhere in Essex, which was let 
 the connexion 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 produc 
 tions " my daughter Lady Luard " was quite the one 
 she was proudest of. That personage thought our 
 authoress vulgar and was distressed and perplexed 
 by the frequent freedoms of her pen, but had a 
 complicated attitude for this indirect connexion with 
 literature. So far as it was lucrative her ladyship 
 approved of it and could compound with the inferi 
 ority of the pursuit by practical justice to some of its 
 advantages. I had reason to know my reason was 
 simply that poor Mrs. Stormer told me how 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 de 
 voted herself, and wondered where a spectator with 
 the advantage of so ladylike a daughter could have 
 picked up such views about the best society. " She 
 might know better, with Leolin and me," Lady Luard 
 had been heard 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 
 wasn't good enough for her she must improve on 
 it so prodigiously. 
 
 I could see this necessity increase in 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, 
 
 104
 
 GREVILLE FANE 
 
 occasion favouring, the boy was produced for my 
 advantage. I had entered from the first into the joke 
 of his career I pretended to regard him as a conse 
 crated child. It had been a joke for Mrs. Stormer at 
 first, but the youth himself had been shrewd enough 
 to make the matter serious. If his parent accepted 
 the principle that the intending novelist can't begin 
 too early to see life, Leolin wasn't interested in hang 
 ing back from the application of it. He was eager 
 to qualify himself and took to cigarettes at ten on the 
 highest literary grounds. His fond mother gazed at 
 him with extravagant envy and, like Desdemona, 
 wished heaven had made her such a man. She ex 
 plained 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 rebel 
 lion 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 ever so many 
 pair. He grew up thus in gorgeous apparel, which 
 was his way of interpreting his mother's system. 
 Whenever I met her, accordingly, I found her still 
 under the impression that she was carrying this system 
 out and that the sacrifices made him were bearing 
 heavy fruit. She was giving him experience, she was 
 giving him impressions, she was putting a gagne-pain 
 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 she was 
 seeing foreign manners as well as her petticoats 
 would allow ; but in reality she wasn't seeing any 
 thing, least of all, fortunately, how much she was 
 laughed at. She drove her whimsical pen at Dresden 
 
 105
 
 GREVILLE FANE 
 
 and at Florence she produced in all places and at 
 all times the same romantic and ridiculous fictions. 
 She carried about her box of properties, tumbling 
 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 hadn't been so 
 exemplary to see her tracing the loves of the duch 
 esses beside the innocent cribs of her children. The 
 immoral and the maternal lived together, in her dili 
 gent days, on the most comfortable terms, and she 
 stopped curling the moustaches 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 hadn't expected to find 
 a shy stout ruddy lady in a cap like a crumbled pyra 
 mid. She wrote about the affections and the impossi 
 bility 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 Hue from Leolin, 
 was to be brought up wholly as a femme dn monde. 
 1 06
 
 GREVILLE FANE 
 
 The girl was musical and philological ; she went in 
 for several 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 didn't care ; correct 
 ness was the virtue in the world that, like her heroes 
 and heroines, she valued least. Ethel, who had noted 
 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 had in fact that element of truth as little as any 
 other my purpose being solely to prevent her guess 
 ing 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 putting 
 it to each other with 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, 
 irreforrnable. Indeed she was, poor lady, but it's 
 never fair to read by the light of taste things essen 
 tially not written in it. Greville Fane kept through 
 all her riot of absurdity a witless confidence that 
 
 107
 
 GREVILLE FANE 
 
 should have been as safe from criticism as a stutter 
 or a squint. 
 
 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, being ready to assume he should one day 
 restore the balance. A canny and far-seeing youth, 
 with appetites and aspirations, he hadn't a scruple 
 in his composition. His mother's theory of the happy 
 knack he could pick up deprived him of the whole 
 some discipline required to prevent young idlers 
 from becoming cads. He enjoyed on foreign soil a 
 casual tutor and the common snatch or two of a Swiss 
 school, but addressed himself to no consecutive study 
 nor to any 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 disap 
 proved she found this education irregular for an 
 English gentleman. Her voice was for Eton and 
 Oxford or for any public school she would have re 
 signed herself to one of the scrubbier with the army 
 to foUow. 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 reappeared in England, telling me she 
 had " secured " 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, quite aggress 
 ively certain she had taken the right course with 
 him, and addicted to boasting of all he knew and had 
 
 108
 
 GREVILLE FANE 
 
 seen. He was now quite ready to embark on the 
 family profession, to commence author, as they used 
 to say, and a little while later she told me he had 
 started. He had written something tremendously 
 clever which 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 would virtually rather illustrate her fine 
 facility, and it was interesting to consider the poor 
 lady's future in the light of her having to write her 
 son's novels as well as her own. This wasn't the 
 way she looked at it herself she took the charming 
 ground that he'd help her to write hers. She used 
 to assure me he supplied passages of the greatest 
 value to these last all sorts of telling technical 
 things, happy touches about hunting and yachting 
 and cigars and wine, about City slang and the way 
 men talk at clubs that she couldn't be expected 
 to get very straight. It was all so much practice for 
 him and so much alleviation for herself. I was unable 
 to identify such pages, for I had long since ceased to 
 " keep up " with Greville Fane ; but I could quite be 
 lieve at least that the wine-question had been put by 
 Leolin's good offices on a better footing, for the dear 
 woman used to mix her drinks she was perpetually 
 serving the most splendid suppers in the queerest 
 fashion. I could see him quite ripe to embrace regu 
 larly that care. It occurred to me indeed, when she 
 settled in England again, that she might by a shrewd 
 use of both her children be able to rejuvenate her 
 style. Ethel had come back to wreak her native, her 
 social yearning, and if she couldn't take her mother 
 into company would at least go into it herself. 
 Silently, stiffly, almost grimly, this young lady reared 
 her head, clenched her long teeth, squared her lean 
 elbows and found her way up the staircases she had 
 
 109
 
 GREVILLE FANE 
 
 marked. The only communication she ever made, 
 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 wasn't 
 one of the " others." I couldn't trace therefore the 
 steps and stages of her climb ; I could only admire 
 it at a distance and congratulate her mother in due 
 course on the results. The results, the gradual, the 
 final, the wonderful, were that Ethel went to " big " 
 parties and got people to take her. Some of them were 
 people she had met abroad, and others people 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 ex 
 penditure of a smile. Her smile was the dimmest 
 thing in nature, diluted unsweetened inexpensive 
 lemonade, 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, so placed to give her parent tips, 
 to let her know what really occurred in the mansions 
 of the great, to supply her with local colour, with 
 data to work from, she promoted the driving of the 
 well-worn quill, over the brave old battered blot 
 ting book, to a still lustier measure and precisely 
 at the moment when most was to depend on this 
 labour. But if she became a great critic it appeared 
 that the labourer herself was constitutionally inapt 
 for the lesson. It was late in the day for Greville 
 Fane to learn, and I heard nothing of her having 
 developed a new manner. She was to have had only 
 one manner, as Leolin would have said, from start 
 to finish. 
 
 She was weary and spent at last, but confided to 
 me that she couldn't afford to pause. She continued 
 no
 
 GREV1LLE FANE 
 
 to speak of her son's work as the great hope of their 
 future she had saved no money though the 
 young man wore to my sense an air more and more 
 professional if you like, but less and less literary. 
 There was at the end of a couple of years something 
 rare in the impudence of his playing of his part in 
 the comedy. When I wondered how she could play 
 hers it was to feel afresh the fatuity of her fondness, 
 which was proof, I believed I indeed saw to the end 
 against any interference of reason. She loved the 
 young impostor with a simple blind benighted love, 
 and of all the heroes of romance who had passed be 
 fore her eyes he was by far the brightest. 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 herself carried 
 away by her creations, and she was certainly carried 
 away by Leolin. He vivified by what romantically 
 might have been 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 hadn't had 
 time to feel it herself, and the lapse in her history was 
 in a manner made up by the sight of its rush through 
 this magnificent young man. She exhorted him, I 
 suppose, to encourage the rush ; she wrung her own 
 flaccid little sponge into the torrent. What passed 
 between them in her pedagogic hours was naturally a 
 blank to me, 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 recipe served as a uni 
 versal 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 
 
 in
 
 GREVILLE FANE 
 
 like imitation jewels, his various indications of a 
 dense full-grown temperament, his idea of life was 
 singularly vulgar ; but he was so far auspicious as 
 that his response to his mother's expectations was 
 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 the one he had 
 adopted was simply to live at her expense ; but at least 
 she couldn't say he hadn't taken a line. If she in 
 sisted 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've 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 ; so 
 that I asked myself why the girl's judgement of him 
 didn't make me like her better. It was because it 
 didn't save her after all from the 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 the business. 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 : 
 "Ah 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 it 
 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 pur 
 pose to ask me how far, in my opinion, in the English 
 
 112
 
 GREVILLE FANE 
 
 novel, one really might venture to "go." He wasn't 
 resigned to the usual pruderies, the worship of child 
 ish twaddle ; he suffered already from too much 
 bread and butter. He struck out the brilliant idea 
 that nobody knew how far we might go, since no 
 body 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 / 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 a foolish amateur, a helpless novice, inquired 
 into my habits of work and conveyed to me that I 
 was utterly vieux jeu and hadn't had the advantage 
 of an early training. I hadn't been brought up from 
 the egg, 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 
 showy with her pen. If I didn't kick him down 
 stairs it was because he would have landed on her at 
 the bottom. 
 
 When she went to live at Primrose Hill I called 
 there and found her wasted and wan. It had visibly 
 dropped, the elation caused the year before by Ethel's 
 marriage ; the foam on the cup had subsided and there 
 was bitterness in the draught. She had had to take 
 a cheaper house and now 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'd have 
 helped them with things, and could have lived per 
 fectly in one room," she said ; " I'd have paid for 
 
 113 i
 
 GREVILLE FANE 
 
 everything, and after all I'm some one, ain't I ? 
 But I don't fit in, and Ethel tells me there are tire 
 some 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's 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 at Blicket. I should give the 
 place an atmosphere of literary prestige, but literary 
 prestige is only the eminence of nobodies. Besides, 
 she knows what to think of 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 catch on. 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 began to cry. 
 
 I had never seen her break down and I was pro 
 portionately moved ; she sobbed like a frightened 
 child over the extinction of her vogue and the exhaus 
 tion of her vein. Her little workroom seemed indeed 
 a barren place to grow flowers for the market, 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 
 114
 
 GREVILLE FANE 
 
 him to amuse himself at her cost. She retorted 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'd 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're 
 artists together, and to the artist all things are pure. 
 I've often heard you say so yourself." The novel 
 Leolin was engaged in at Brighton never saw the 
 light, 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 driv 
 ing, in a dog-cart, 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 she had come pretty well to the 
 end of her rope. I didn't want her to tell me she had 
 fairly to give her books away ; I didn't want to see 
 her old and abandoned and derided ; I didn't want, 
 in a word, to see her terribly cry. She still, however, 
 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
 
 GREVILLE FANE 
 
 she vouchsafed the information, as if she owed it 
 to me in candour, that Leolin had been obliged to 
 recognise the insuperable difficulties of the question 
 of form he was so fastidious ; but 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 
 employ 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 pro 
 mised 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 unim 
 paired. 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 her only to have wanted a 
 pretext, for they can't have been great. I don't know 
 what Leolin lives on unless 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 infuri 
 ating smile : " Don't you think we can go a little 
 further still just a little ? " He really with me 
 at least goes too far. 
 
 116
 
 BROKEN WINGS 
 
 117
 
 CONSCIOUS as he was of what was between them, 
 though perhaps less conscious than ever of why there 
 should at that time of day be anything, he would yet 
 scarce have supposed they could be so long in a house 
 together without some word or some look. It had 
 been since the Saturday afternoon, and that made 
 twenty-four hours. The party ftve-and-thirty people 
 and some of them great was one in which words 
 and looks might more or less have gone astray. The 
 effect, none the less, he judged, would have been, for 
 her quite as for himself, that no sound and no sign 
 from the other had been picked up by either. They 
 had happened both at dinner and at luncheon to 
 be so placed as not to have to glare or to grin 
 across ; and for the rest they could each, in such a 
 crowd, as freely help the general ease to keep them 
 apart as assist it to bring them together. One chance 
 there was, of course, that might be beyond their con 
 trol. He had been the night before half-surprised at 
 not finding her his " fate " when the long procession 
 to the dining-room solemnly hooked itself together. 
 He would have said in advance recognising it as 
 one of the sharp "notes" of Mundham that, 
 should the gathering contain a literary lady, the liter 
 ary lady would, for congruity, be apportioned to the 
 arm, when there was a question of arms, of the gentle 
 man present who represented the nearest thing to 
 
 119
 
 BROKEN WINGS 
 
 literature. Poor Straith represented " art," and that, 
 no doubt, would have been near enough had not the 
 party offered for choice a slight excess of men. The 
 representative of art had been of the two or three who 
 went in alone, whereas Mrs. Harvey had gone in with 
 one of the representatives of banking. 
 
 It was certain, however, that she wouldn't again 
 be consigned to Lord Belgrove, and it was just pos 
 sible that he himself should not be again alone. She 
 would be on the whole the most probable remedy to 
 that state, on his part, of disgrace ; and this precisely 
 was the great interest of their situation they were 
 the only persons present without some advantage over 
 somebody else. They hadn't a single advantage ; they 
 could be named for nothing but their cleverness ; they 
 were at the bottom of the social ladder. The social 
 ladder had even at Mundham as they might pro 
 perly have been told, as indeed practically they were 
 told to end somewhere ; which is no more than to 
 say that as he strolled about and thought of many 
 things Stuart Straith had after all a good deal the 
 sense of helping to hold it up. Another of the things 
 he thought of was the special oddity for it was 
 nothing else of his being there at all, being there in 
 particular so out of his order and turn. He couldn't 
 answer for Mrs. Harvey's turn and order. It might 
 well be that she was in hers ; but these Saturday-to- 
 Monday occasions had hitherto mostly struck him 
 as great gilded cages as to which care was taken that 
 the birds should be birds of a feather. 
 
 There had been a wonderful walk in the afternoon, 
 within the limits of the place, to a far-away tea-house; 
 and in spite of the combinations and changes of this 
 episode he had still escaped the necessity of putting 
 either his old friend or himself to the test. Also it had 
 been all, he flattered himself, without the pusillan 
 imity of his avoiding her. Life was indeed well 
 
 120
 
 BROKEN WINGS 
 
 understood in these great conditions ; the conditions 
 constituted in their greatness a kind of fundamental 
 facility, provided a general exemption, bathed the 
 hour, whatever it was, in a universal blandness, that 
 were all a happy solvent for awkward relations. It 
 was for instance beautiful that if their failure to meet 
 amid so much meeting had been of Mrs. Harvey's 
 own contrivance he couldn't be in the least vulgarly 
 sure of it. There were places in which he would have 
 had no doubt, places different enough from Mund- 
 ham. He felt all the same and without anguish that 
 these were much more his places even if she didn't 
 feel that they were much more hers. The day had been 
 warm and splendid, and this moment of its wane 
 with dinner in sight, but as across a field of polished 
 pink marble which seemed to say that wherever in 
 such a house there was space there was also, be- 
 nignantly, time formed, of the whole procession of 
 the hours, the one dearest to our friend, who on such 
 occasions interposed it, whenever he could, between 
 the set of impressions that ended and the set that 
 began with " dressing." The great terraces and gar 
 dens were almost void ; people had scattered, though 
 not altogether even yet to dress. The air of the place, 
 with the immense house all seated aloft in strength, 
 robed with summer and crowned with success, was 
 such as to contribute something of its own to the 
 poetry of early evening. This visitor at any rate 
 saw and felt it all through one of those fine hazes of 
 August that remind you -at least they reminded 
 him of the artful gauze stretched across the stage 
 of a theatre when an effect of mystery or some par 
 ticular pantomimic ravishment is desired. 
 
 Should he in fact have to pair with Mrs. Harvey 
 for dinner it would be a shame to him not to have 
 addressed her sooner ; and should she on the contrary 
 be put with some one else the loss of so much of the 
 
 121
 
 BROKEN WINGS 
 
 time would have but the greater ugliness. Didn't he 
 meanwhile make out that there were ladies in the 
 lower garden, from which the sound of voices, faint 
 but, as always in the upper air of Mundham, exceed 
 ingly sweet, was just now borne to him ? She might 
 be among them, and if he should find her he'd let her 
 know he had sought her. He'd treat it frankly as 
 an occasion for declaring that what had happened 
 between them or rather what had not happened 
 was too absurd. What at present occurred, however, 
 was that in his quest of her he suddenly, at the turn 
 of an alley, perceived her, not far off, seated in a sort 
 of bower with the Ambassador. With this he pulled 
 up, going another way and pretending not to see them. 
 Three times already that afternoon he had observed 
 her in different situations with the Ambassador. He 
 was the more struck accordingly when, upwards of 
 an hour later, again alone and with his state un- 
 remedied, he saw her placed for dinner next his 
 Excellency. It wasn't at all what would have been 
 at Mundham her right seat, so that it could only be 
 explained by his Excellency's direct request. She 
 was a success ! This time Straith was well in her view 
 and could see that in the candle-light of the wonderful 
 room, where the lustres were, like the table, all crystal 
 and silver, she was as handsome as any one, taking 
 the women of her age, and also as " smart " as the 
 evening before, and as true as any of the others to the 
 law of a marked difference in her smartness. If the 
 beautiful way she held herself for decidedly it was 
 beautiful came in a great measure from the good 
 thing she professionally made of it all, our observer 
 could reflect that the poor thing he professionally made 
 of it probably affected his attitude in just the opposite 
 way ; but they communicated neither in the glare nor 
 in the grin he had dreaded. Still, their eyes did now 
 meet, and then it struck him her own were strange. 
 122
 
 II 
 
 SHE, on her side, had her private consciousness, and 
 quite as full a one, doubtless, as he, but with the ad 
 vantage that when the company separated for the 
 night she was not, like her friend, reduced to a vigil 
 unalloyed. Lady Claude, at the top of the stairs, had 
 said " May I look in in five minutes if you don't 
 mind ? " and then had arrived in due course and in 
 a wonderful new beribboned gown, the thing just 
 launched for such occasions. Lady Claude was young 
 and earnest and delightfully bewildered and bewilder 
 ing, and however interesting she might, through 
 certain elements in her situation, have seemed to a 
 literary lady, her own admirations and curiosities 
 were such as from the first promised to rule the hour. 
 She had already expressed to Mrs. Harvey a really 
 informed enthusiasm. She not only delighted in her 
 numerous books, which was a tribute the author had 
 not infrequently met, but she even appeared to have 
 read them an appearance with which our authoress 
 was much less acquainted. The great thing was 
 that she also yearned to write, and that she had 
 turned up in her fresh furbelows not only to reveal 
 this secret and to ask for direction and comfort, but 
 literally to make a stranger confidence, for which the 
 mystery of midnight seemed propitious. Midnight 
 was indeed, as the situation developed, well over 
 before her confidence was spent, for it had ended by 
 
 123
 
 BROKEN WINGS 
 
 gathering such a current as floated forth, with every 
 thing in Lady Claude's own life, many things more 
 in that of her adviser. Mrs. Harvey was at all events 
 amused, touched and effectually kept awake ; so by 
 the end of half an hour they had quite got what might 
 have been called their second wind of frankness and 
 were using it for a discussion of the people in the 
 house. Their primary communion had been simply 
 on the question of the pecuniary profits of literature 
 as the producer of so many admired volumes was 
 prepared to present them to an aspirant. Lady Claude 
 was in financial difficulties and desired the literary 
 issue. This was the breathless revelation she had 
 rustled over a mile of crimson velvet corridor to make. 
 " Nothing ? " she had three minutes later incred 
 ulously gasped. " I can make nothing at all ? " But 
 the gasp was slight compared with the stupefaction 
 communicated by a brief further parley, in the course 
 of which Mrs. Harvey had, after an hesitation, taken 
 her own plunge. " You make so little wonderful 
 you ? " And then as the producer of the admired vol 
 umes simply sat there in her dressing-gown, with the 
 saddest of slow headshakes, looking suddenly too 
 wan even to care that it was at last all out : " What 
 in that case is the use of success and celebrity and 
 genius ? You have no success ? " She had looked 
 almost awestruck at this further confession of her 
 friend. They were face to face in a poor human 
 crudity, which transformed itself quickly into an 
 effusive embrace. " You've had it and lost it ? Then 
 when it has been as great as yours one can lose it ? " 
 " More easily than one can get it." 
 Lady Claude continued to marvel. " But you do 
 so much and it's so beautiful ! " On which Mrs. 
 Harvey simply smiled again in her handsome despair, 
 and after a moment found herself again in the arms 
 of her visitor. The younger woman had remained 
 124
 
 BROKEN WINGS 
 
 for a time a good deal arrested and hushed, and had 
 at any rate, sensitive and charming, immediately 
 dropped, in the presence of this almost august unveil 
 ing, the question of her own thin troubles. But there 
 are short cuts at that hour of night that morning 
 scarce knows, and it took but little more of the breath 
 of the real to suggest to Lady Claude more questions 
 in such a connexion than she could answer for herself. 
 " How then, if you haven't private means, do you 
 get on ? " 
 
 " Ah I don't get on ! " 
 
 Lady Claude looked about. There were objects 
 scattered in the fine old French room. " You've 
 lovely things." 
 
 " Two." 
 
 " Two ? " 
 
 " Two frocks. I couldn't stay another day." 
 
 " Ah what's that ? I couldn't either," said Lady 
 Claude soothingly. " And you have," she continued, 
 in the same spirit, " your nice maid 
 
 " Who's indeed a charming woman, but my cook 
 in disguise ! " Mrs. Harvey dropped. 
 
 " Ah you are clever ! " her friend cried with a laugh 
 that was as a climax of reassurance. 
 
 " Extraordinarily. But don't think," Mrs. Harvey 
 hastened to add, " that I mean that that's why I'm 
 here." 
 
 Her companion candidly thought. " Then why 
 are you ? " 
 
 " I haven't the least idea. I've been wondering all 
 the while, as I've wondered so often before on such 
 occasions, and without arriving at any other reason 
 than that London's so wild." 
 
 Lady Claude wondered. " Wild ? " 
 
 " Wild ! " said her friend with some impatience. 
 " That's the way London strikes." 
 
 " But do you call such an invitation a blow ? " 
 125
 
 BROKEN WINGS 
 
 " Yes crushing. No one else, at all events, 
 either," Mrs. Harvey added, " could tell you why 
 I'm here." 
 
 Lady Claude's power to drink in (and it was per 
 haps her most attaching quality) was greater still, 
 when she felt strongly, than her power to reject. 
 " Why how can you say that when you've only to see 
 how every one likes and admires you ? Just look at 
 the Ambassador," she had earnestly insisted. And this 
 was what had precisely, as I have mentioned, carried 
 the stream of their talk a good deal away from its 
 source. It had therefore not much further to go before 
 setting in motion the name of Stuart Straith, as to 
 whom Lady Claude confessed to an interest good-look 
 ing, distinguished, " sympathetic " as he was that she 
 could really almost hate him for having done nothing 
 whatever to encourage. He hadn't spoken to her once. 
 
 " But, my dear, if he hasn't spoken to me ! " 
 
 Lady Claude appeared to regret this not too much 
 for a hint that after all there might be a difference. 
 " Oh but could he ? " 
 
 " Without my having spoken to him first ? " Mrs. 
 Harvey turned it over. " Perhaps not ; but I couldn't 
 have done that." Then to explain, and not only be 
 cause Lady Claude was naturally vague, but because 
 what was still visibly most vivid to her was her inde 
 pendent right to have been " made up " to : " And yet 
 not because we're not acquainted." 
 
 " You know him then ? " 
 
 " But too well." 
 
 " You mean you don't like him ? " 
 
 " On the contrary I like him to distraction." 
 
 " Then what's the matter ? " Lady Claude asked 
 with some impatience. 
 
 Her friend hung fire but a moment. " Well, he 
 wouldn't have me." 
 ' Have ' you ? " 
 
 126
 
 BROKEN WINGS 
 
 " Ten years ago, after Mr. Harvey's death, when if 
 he had lifted a finger I'd have married him." 
 
 " But he didn't lift it ? " 
 
 " He was too grand. I was too small by his 
 measure. He wanted to keep himself. He saw his 
 future." 
 
 Lady Claude earnestly followed. " His present 
 position ? " 
 
 " Yes everything that was to come to him ; his 
 steady rise in value." 
 
 " Has it been so great ? " 
 
 " Surely his situation and name. Don't you 
 know his lovely work and what's thought of it ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, I know. That's why " But Lady 
 
 Claude stopped. After which : " But if he's still 
 keeping himself ? " 
 
 " Oh it's not for me," said Mrs. Harvey. 
 
 '' And evidently not for me. Whom then," her 
 visitor asked, " does he think good enough ? " 
 
 " Oh these great people ! " Mrs. Harvey smiled. 
 
 " But we're great people you and I ! " And Lady 
 Claude kissed her good-night. 
 
 " You mustn't, all the same," the elder woman said, 
 " betray the secret of my greatness, which I've told 
 you, please remember, only in the deepest confidence." 
 
 Her tone had a quiet purity of bitterness that for a 
 moment longer held her friend, after which Lady 
 Claude had the happy inspiration of meeting it with 
 graceful gaiety. " It's quite for the best, I'm sure, 
 that Mr. Straith wouldn't have you. You've kept 
 yourself too ; you'll marry yet an ambassador ! " 
 And with another good-night she reached the door. 
 " You say you don't get on, but you do." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Mrs. Harvey with vague attenuation. 
 
 " Oh yes, you do," Lady Claude insisted, while the 
 door emphasised it with a little clap that sounded 
 through the still house. 
 
 127
 
 Ill 
 
 THE first night of " The New Girl " occurred, as 
 every one remembers, three years ago, and the play is 
 running yet, a fact that may render strange the failure 
 to be deeply conscious of which two persons in the 
 audience were guilty. It was not till afterwards pre 
 sent either to Mrs. Harvey or to Stuart Straith that 
 " The New Girl " was one of the greatest successes of 
 modern times. Indeed if the question had been put to 
 them on the spot they might have appeared much at 
 sea. But this, I may as well immediately say, was the 
 result of their having found themselves side by side 
 in the stalls and thereby given most of their attention 
 to their own predicament. Straith showed he felt 
 the importance of meeting it promptly, for he turned 
 to his neighbour, who was already in her place, as soon 
 as her identity had flushed well through his own 
 arrival and subsidence. " I don't quite see how you 
 can help speaking to me now." 
 
 Her face could only show him how long she had 
 been aware of his approach. " The sound of your 
 voice, coming to me straight, makes it indeed as easy 
 for me as I could possibly desire." 
 
 He looked about at the serried rows, the loaded 
 galleries and the stuffed boxes, with recognitions and 
 nods ; and this made between them another pause, 
 during which, while the music seemed perfunctory 
 and the bustle that in a London audience represents 
 128
 
 BROKEN WINGS 
 
 concentration increased, they felt how effectually, in 
 the thick preoccupied medium, how extraordinarily, 
 they were together. 
 
 " Well, that second afternoon at Mundham, just 
 before dinner, I was very near forcing your hand. But 
 something put me off. You're really too grand." 
 
 " Oh ! " she murmured. 
 
 " Ambassadors," said Stuart Straith. 
 
 " Oh ! " she again sounded. And before anything 
 more could pass the curtain was up. It came down 
 in due course and achieved, after various intervals, 
 the rest of its motions without interrupting for our 
 friends the sense of an evening of talk. They said 
 when it was down almost nothing about the play, and 
 when one of them toward the end put to the other, 
 vaguely, " Is a this thing going ? " the question 
 had scarce the effect of being even relevant. What was 
 clearest to them was that the people about were some 
 how enough taken up to leave them at their ease 
 but what taken up with they but half made out. Mrs. 
 Harvey had none the less mentioned early that her 
 presence had a reason and that she ought to attend, 
 and her companion had asked her what she thought of 
 a certain picture made at a given moment by the 
 stage, in the reception of which he was so interested 
 that it was really what had brought him. These were 
 glances, however, that quickly strayed strayed, for 
 instance (as this could carry them far) , in its coming to 
 one of them to say that, whatever the piece might be, 
 the real thing, as they had seen it at Mundham, was 
 more than a match for any piece. For Mundham was, 
 theatrically, the real thing ; better for scenery, dresses, 
 music, pretty women, bare shoulders, everything- 
 even coherent dialogue ; a much bigger and braver 
 show, and got up, as it were, infinitely more " regard 
 less." By Mundham they were held long enough 
 to find themselves, though with an equal surprise, 
 
 129 K
 
 BROKEN WINGS 
 
 quite at one as to the special oddity of their having 
 caught each other in such a plight. Straith said that 
 he supposed what his friend meant was that it was 
 odd he should have been there ; to which she returned 
 that she had been imputing to him exactly that judge 
 ment of her own presence. 
 
 " But why shouldn't you be ? " he asked. " Isn't 
 that just what you are ? Aren't you in your way 
 like those people a child of fortune and fashion ? " 
 
 He got no more answer to this for some time than 
 if he had fairly wounded her. He indeed that evening 
 got no answer at all that was direct. But in the next 
 interval she brought out with abruptness, taking no 
 account of some other matter he had just touched : 
 " Don't you really know ? " 
 
 She had paused. " Know what ? " 
 
 Again she went on without heeding. " A place like 
 Mundham is, for me, a survival, though poor Mund- 
 ham in particular won't, for me, have survived that 
 visit on which it's to be pitied, isn't it ? It was 
 a glittering ghost since laid ! of my old time." 
 
 Straith, at this, almost gave a start. " Have you 
 got a new time ? " 
 
 " Do you mean you yourself have ? " 
 
 " Well," said Straith, " mine may now be called 
 middle-aged. It seems so long, I mean, since I set my 
 watch to it." 
 
 " Oh I haven't even a watch ! " she returned with 
 a laugh. " I'm beyond watches." After which she 
 added : " We might have met more or, I should say 
 perhaps, have got more out of it when we have met." 
 
 " Yes, it has been too little. But I've always ex 
 plained it by our living in such different worlds." 
 
 Mrs. Harvey could risk an abruptness. " Are you 
 unhappy ? " 
 
 He gave her a mild glare. ' " You said just now 
 thatyou're beyond watches. I'm beyond unhappiness." 
 130
 
 BROKEN WINGS 
 
 She turned from him and presently brought out : 
 " I ought absolutely to take away something of the 
 play." 
 
 " By all means. There's certainly something / 
 shall take/' 
 
 " Ah then you must help me give it me." 
 
 " With all my heart," said Straith, " if it can help 
 you. It's my feeling of our renewal." 
 
 She had one of the sad slow headshakes that at 
 Mundham had been impressive to Lady Claude. 
 " That won't help me." 
 
 " Then you must let me put to you now what I 
 should have tried to get near enough to you there 
 to put if I hadn't been so afraid of the Ambassador. 
 What has it been so long our impossibility ? " 
 
 " Well, I can only answer for my own vision of it, 
 which is which always was that you were* sorry 
 for me, but felt a sort of scruple of showing me you. 
 had nothing better than pity to give." 
 
 " May I come to see you ? " Straith asked some 
 minutes after this. 
 
 Her words, for which he had also a while to wait, 
 had in truth as little as his own the appearance of 
 a reply. " Are you unhappy really ? Haven't you 
 everything ? " 
 
 " You're beautiful ! " he said for all answer. 
 " Mayn't I come ? " 
 
 She demurred. " Where's your studio ? " 
 
 " Oh not too far for me to go to places. Don't be 
 anxious ; I can walk, or even take the bus." 
 
 Mrs. Harvey once more delayed. Then she said : 
 " Mayn't I rather come there ? " 
 
 " I shall be but too delighted." 
 
 It was spoken promptly, even eagerly ; yet the 
 understanding appeared shortly after to have left 
 between them a certain awkwardness, and it was 
 almost as if to change the subject and relieve them
 
 BROKEN WINGS 
 
 equally that she suddenly reminded him of some 
 thing he had spoken earlier. " You were to tell me 
 why in particular you had to be here." 
 
 " Oh yes. To see my dresses." 
 
 " Yours ! " She wondered. 
 
 " The second act. I made them out for them 
 designed them." 
 
 Before she could check it her tone escaped. " You ? " 
 
 "I." He looked straight before him. " For the fee. 
 And we didn't even notice them." 
 
 " 7 didn't," she confessed. But it offered the fact 
 as a sign of her kindness for him, and this kindness 
 was traceably what inspired something she said in 
 the draughty porch, after the performance, while the 
 footman of the friend, a fat rich immensely pleased 
 lady who had given her a lift and then rejoined her 
 from a" seat in the balcony, went off to make sure of 
 the brougham. " May I do something about your 
 things ? " 
 
 " ' Do something ' ? " 
 
 " When I've paid you my visit. Write something 
 about your pictures. I do a correspondence," said 
 Mrs. Harvey. 
 
 He wondered as she had done in the stalls. " For 
 a paper ? " 
 
 " The Blackport Banner. A ' London Letter.' 
 The new books, the new plays, the new twaddle of 
 any sort a little music, a little gossip, a little ' art.' 
 You'll help me I need it awfully with the art. I 
 do three a month." 
 
 " You wonderful you ? " He spoke as Lady 
 Claude had done, and could no more help it again 
 than Mrs. Harvey had been able to help it in the stalls. 
 
 " Oh as you say, for the fee ! " On which, as the 
 footman signalled, her old lady began to plunge 
 through the crowd. 
 
 132
 
 IV 
 
 AT the studio, where she came to him within the week, 
 her first movement had been to exclaim on the splen 
 did abundance of his work. She had looked round 
 charmed so struck as to be, as she called it, crushed. 
 " You've such a wonderful lot to show." 
 
 " Indeed I have ! " said Stuart Straith. 
 
 " That's where you beat us." 
 
 " I think it may very well be," he went on, " where 
 I beat almost every one." 
 
 " And is much of it new ? " 
 
 He looked about with her. " Some of it's pretty 
 old. But my things have a way, I admit, of growing 
 old extraordinarily fast. They seem to me in fact 
 nowadays quite ' born old.' ' 
 
 She had after a little the manner of coming back 
 to something. " You are unhappy. You're not be 
 yond it. You're just nicely, just fairly and squarely, 
 in the middle of it." 
 
 " Well," said Straith, "if it surrounds me like a 
 desert, so that I'm lost in it, that comes to the same 
 thing. But I want you to tell me about yourself." 
 
 She had continued at first to move about and had 
 taken out a pocket-book, which she held up at him. 
 " This time I shall insist on notes. You made my mind 
 a blank about that play, which is the sort of thing 
 we can't afford. If it hadn't been for my fat old lady 
 and the next day's papers ! " She kept looking, going 
 
 133
 
 BROKEN WINGS 
 
 up to things, saying " How wonderful ! " and " Oh 
 your way \ " and then stopping for a general im 
 pression, something in the whole charm. The place, 
 high handsome neat, with two or three pale tapes 
 tries and several rare old pieces of furniture, showed 
 a perfection of order, an absence of loose objects, as 
 if it had been swept and squared for the occasion and 
 made almost too immaculate. It was polished and 
 cold rather cold for the season and the weather ; 
 and Stuart Straith himself, buttoned and brushed, 
 as fine and as clean as his room, might at her arrival 
 have reminded her of the master of a neat bare ship 
 on his deck and awaiting a cargo. " May I see every 
 thing ? May I ' use ' everything ? " 
 
 " Oh no ; you mayn't by any means use every 
 thing. You mayn't use half. Did I spoil your 
 ' London Letter ' ? "he continued after a moment. 
 
 " No one can spoil them as I spoil them myself. I 
 can't do them I don't know how, and don't want 
 to. I do them wrong, and the people want such trash. 
 Of course they'll ' sack ' me." 
 
 She was in the centre, and he had the effect of going 
 round her, restless and vague, in large slow circles. 
 " Have you done them long ? " 
 
 " Two or three months this lot. But I've done 
 others and I know what happens. Oh, my dear, I've 
 done strange things ! " 
 
 " And is it a good job ? " 
 
 She hesitated, then puffed prettily enough an in 
 different sigh. " Three and ninepence. Is that good?" 
 He had stopped before her, looking at her up and 
 down. " What do you get ? " she went on, " for what 
 you do for a play ? " 
 
 " A little more, it would seem, than you. Four and 
 sixpence. But I've only done as yet that one. No 
 thing else has offered." 
 
 " I see. But something will, eh ? " 
 
 134
 
 BROKEN WINGS 
 
 Poor Straith took a turn again. " Did you like 
 them for colour ? " But again he pulled up. "Oh 
 I forgot ; we didn't notice them ! " 
 
 For a moment they could laugh about it. "I 
 noticed them, I assure you, in the Banner. ' The 
 costumes in the second act are of the most marvel 
 lous beauty.' That's what I said." 
 
 " Oh that'll fetch the managers ! " But before her 
 again he seemed to take her in from head to foot. 
 " You speak of ' using ' things. If you'd only use 
 yourself for my enlightenment. Tell me all." 
 
 " You look at me," said Mrs. Harvey, " as with the 
 wonder of who designs my costumes. How I dress on 
 it, how I do even what I still do on it on the three 
 and ninepence is that what you want to know ? " 
 
 " What has happened to you ? " Straith asked. 
 
 " How do I keep it up ? " she continued as if she 
 hadn't heard him. " But I don't keep it up. You 
 do," she declared as she again looked round her. 
 
 Once more it set him off, but for a pause again 
 almost as quick. " How long have you been ? " 
 
 " Been what ? " she asked as he faltered. 
 
 " Unhappy." 
 
 She smiled at him from a depth of indulgence. " As 
 long as you've been ignorant that what I've been 
 wanting is your pity. Ah to have to know, as I be 
 lieved I did, that you supposed it would wound me, 
 and not to have been able to make you see it was the 
 one thing left to me that would help me ! Give me 
 your pity now. It's all I want. I don't care for any 
 thing else. But give me that." 
 
 He had, as it happened at the moment, to do a 
 smaller and a usual thing before he could do one so 
 great and so strange. The youth whom he kept for 
 service arrived with a tea-tray, in arranging a place 
 for which, with the sequel of serving Mrs. Harvey, 
 seating her and seeing the youth again out of the 
 
 135
 
 BROKEN WINGS 
 
 room, some minutes passed. " What pity could I 
 dream of for you," he demanded as he at last dropped 
 near her, " when I was myself so miserably sore ? " 
 
 " Sore ? " she wondered. " But you were happy 
 then." 
 
 " Happy not to have struck you as good enough ? 
 For I didn't, you know, " he insisted. " You had your 
 success, which was so immense. You had your high 
 value, your future, your big possibilities ; and I per 
 fectly understood that, given those things, and given 
 also my very much smaller situation, you should wish 
 to keep yourself." 
 
 " Oh, oh ! " She gasped as if hurt. 
 
 " I understand it ; but how could it really make me 
 ' happy ' ? " he asked. 
 
 She turned at him as with her hand on the old scar 
 she could now carry. " You mean that all these years 
 you've really not known ? " 
 
 " But not known what ? " 
 
 His voice was so blank that at the sound of it, and 
 at something that looked out from him, she only found 
 another " Oh, oh ! " which became the next instant a 
 burst of tears. 
 
 136
 
 SHE had appeared at first unwilling to receive him at 
 home ; but he understood it after she had left him, 
 turning over more and more everything their meeting 
 had shaken to the surface and piecing together mem 
 ories that at last, however darkly, made a sense. He 
 was to call on her, it was finally agreed, but not till the 
 end of the week, when she should have finished " mov 
 ing " she had but just changed quarters ; and mean 
 while, as he came and went, mainly in the cold 
 chamber of his own past endeavour, which looked 
 even to himself as studios look when artists are dead 
 and the public, in the arranged place, are admitted 
 to stare, he had plenty to think about. What had 
 come out he could see it now was that each, ten 
 years before, had miserably misunderstood and then 
 had turned for relief from pain to a perversity of 
 pride. But it was himself above all he now sharply 
 judged, since women, he felt, have to get on as they 
 can, and for the mistake of this woman there were 
 reasons he had to acknowledge with a sore heart. 
 She had really found in the pomp of his early success, 
 at the time they used to meet, and to care to, exactly 
 the ground for her sense of failure with him that he 
 had found in the vision of her gross popularity for 
 his conviction that she judged him as comparatively 
 small. Each had blundered, as sensitive souls of the 
 " artistic temperament " blunder, into a conception 
 
 137
 
 BROKEN WINGS 
 
 not only of the other's attitude, but of the other's 
 material situation at the moment, that had thrown 
 them back on stupid secrecy, where their estrange 
 ment had grown like an evil plant in the shade. He 
 had positively believed her to have gone on all the 
 while making the five thousand a year that the first 
 eight or ten of her so supremely happy novels had 
 brought her in, just as she on her side had read into 
 the felicity of his first new hits, his pictures " of the 
 year " at three or four Academies, the absurdest 
 theory of the sort of career that, thanks to big dealers 
 and intelligent buyers, his gains would have built up 
 for him. It looked vulgar enough now, but it had 
 been grave enough then. His long detached delusion 
 about her " prices," at any rate, appeared to have 
 been more than matched by the strange stories oc 
 casionally floated to her and all to make her but 
 draw more closely in on the subject of his own. 
 
 It was with each equally that everything had 
 changed everything but the stiff consciousness in 
 either of the need -to conceal changes from the other. 
 If she had cherished for long years the soreness of her 
 not being " good " enough, so this was what had 
 counted most in her sustained effort to appear at least 
 as good as he. London meanwhile was big, London 
 was blind and benighted ; and nothing had ever 
 occurred to undermine for him the fiction of her pros 
 perity. Before his eyes there while she sat with him 
 she had pulled off one by one those vain coverings of 
 her state that she confessed she had hitherto done her 
 best and so always with an eye on himself de 
 ceptively to draw about it. He had felt frozen, as he 
 listened, by such likenesses to things he knew. He 
 recognised as she talked, he groaned as he understood. 
 He understood oh at last, whatever he hadn't done 
 before ! And yet he could well have smiled, out of 
 their common abyss, at such odd identities and recur- 
 138
 
 BROKEN WINGS 
 
 rences. Truly the arts were sisters, as was so often 
 said ; for what apparently could be more like the 
 experience of one than the experience of another ? 
 And she spared him things with it all. He felt this 
 too, just as, even while showing her how he followed, 
 he had bethought himself of closing his lips for the 
 hour, none too soon, on his own stale story. There 
 had been a beautiful intelligence for that matter in 
 her having asked him nothing more. She had over 
 flowed because shaken by not finding him happy, and 
 her surrender had somehow offered itself to him as 
 her way the first that sprang up of considering 
 his trouble. She had left him at all events in full pos 
 session of all the phases through which in " literary 
 circles " acclaimed states may pass on their regular 
 march to eclipse and extinction. One had but 
 one's hour, and if one had it soon it was really 
 almost a case of choice one didn't have it late. 
 It might also never even remotely have approached, 
 at its best, things ridiculously rumoured. Straith felt 
 on the whole how little he had known of literary 
 circles, or of any mystery but his own indeed ; on 
 which, up to actual impending collapse, he had 
 mounted such anxious guard. 
 
 It was when he went on the Friday to see her that 
 he took in the latest of the phases in question, which 
 might very well be almost the final one ; there was at 
 least that comfort in it. She had just settled in a small 
 flat, where he recognised in the steady disposal, for 
 the best, of various objects she had not yet parted 
 with, her reason for having made him wait. Here they 
 had together these two worn and baffled workers 
 a wonderful hour of gladness in their lost battle 
 and of freshness in their lost youth ; for it was not till 
 Stuart Straith had also raised the heavy mask and laid 
 it beside her own on the table that they began really 
 to feel themselves recover something of that possi- 
 
 139
 
 bility of each other they had so wearily wasted. Only 
 she couldn't get over it that he was like herself and 
 that what she had shrunken to in her three or four 
 simplified rooms had its perfect image in the specious 
 show of his ordered studio and his accumulated work. 
 He told everything now, kept no more back than she 
 had kept at their previous meeting, while she repeated 
 over and over " You wonderful you ? " as if the 
 knowledge made a deeper darkness of fate, as if the 
 pain of his having come down at all almost quenched 
 the joy of his having come so much nearer. When she 
 learned that he hadn't for three years sold a picture 
 " You, beautiful you ? " it seemed a new cold 
 breath out of the dusk of her own. outlook. Dis 
 appointment and despair were in such relations con 
 tagious, and there was clearly as much less again left 
 to her as the little that was left to him. He showed 
 her, laughing at the long queerness of it, how awfully 
 little, as they called it, this was. He let it all come, 
 but with more mirth than misery, and with a final 
 abandonment of pride that was like changing at the 
 end of a dreadful day from tight shoes to loose ones. 
 There were moments when they might have resem 
 bled a couple united by some misdeed and meeting 
 to decide on some desperate course ; they gave them 
 selves so to the great irony the vision of the comic 
 in contrasts that precedes surrenders and extinc 
 tions. 
 
 They went over the whole thing, remounted the 
 dwindling stream, reconstructed, explained, under 
 stood recognised in short the particular example 
 they gave and how without mutual suspicion they 
 had been giving it side by side. " We're simply the 
 case," Straith familiarly put it, " of having been had 
 enough of. No case is perhaps more common, save 
 that for you and for me, each in our line, it did look 
 in the good time didn't it ? as if nobody could 
 140
 
 BROKEN WINGS 
 
 have enough." With which they counted backward, 
 gruesome as it was, the symptoms of satiety up to the 
 first dawn, and lived again together the unforgettable 
 hours distant now out of which it had begun to 
 glimmer that the truth had to be faced and the right 
 names given to the wrong facts. They laughed at their 
 original explanations and the minor scale even of 
 their early fears ; compared notes on the fallibility of 
 remedies and hopes and, more and more united in 
 the identity of their lesson, made out perfectly that, 
 though there appeared to be many kinds of success, 
 there was only one kind of failure. And yet what had 
 been hardest had not been to have to shrink, but in 
 the long game of bluff as Straith called it, to have 
 to keep up. It fairly swept them away at present, 
 however, the hugeness of the relief of no longer keep 
 ing up as against each other. This gave them all the 
 measure of the motive their courage, on either side, 
 in silence and gloom, had forced into its service. 
 
 " Only what shall we do now for a motive ? " 
 Straith went on. 
 
 She thought. "A motive for courage ? " 
 
 " Yes to keep up." 
 
 " And go again for instance, do you mean, to 
 Mundham ? We shall, thank heaven, never go 
 again to Mundham. The Mundhams are over." 
 
 "Nous n'irons plus au bois; 
 Les lauriers sont coupes," 
 
 sang Straith. " It does cost." 
 
 " As everything costs that one does for the rich. 
 It's not our poor relations who make us pay." 
 
 " No ; one must have means to acknowledge the 
 others. We can't afford the opulent. But it isn't only 
 the money they take." 
 
 " It's the imagination," said Mrs. Harvey. " As 
 
 they have none themselves " 
 
 141
 
 BROKEN WINGS 
 
 " It's an article we have to supply ? We've 
 certainly to use a lot to protect ourselves," Straith 
 agreed. " And the strange thing is they like us." 
 
 She thought again. " That's what makes it easy to 
 cut them. They forgive." 
 
 " Yes," her companion laughed ; " once they really 
 don't know you enough ! " 
 
 " They treat you as old friends. But what do we 
 want now of courage ? " she went on. 
 
 He wondered, " Yes, after all, what ? " 
 
 " To keep up, I mean. Why should we keep up ? " 
 
 It seemed to strike him. " I see. After all, why ? 
 The courage not to keep up ! " 
 
 " We have that at least," she declared, " haven't 
 we ? " United there at her little high-perched win 
 dow overhanging grey house-tops they left the con 
 sideration of this pass between them in a deep look 
 as well as in a hush of which the intensity had some 
 thing commensurate. "If we're beaten !" she 
 
 then continued. 
 
 " Let us at least be beaten together ! " He took her 
 in his arms, she let herself go, and he held her long 
 and close for the compact. But when they had re 
 covered themselves enough to handle their agreement 
 more responsibly the words in which they confirmed 
 it broke in sweetness as well as sadness from both 
 together : " And now to work ! " 
 
 142
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 143
 
 IT was one of the secret opinions, such as we all 
 have, of Peter Brench that his main success in life 
 would have consisted in his never having committed 
 himself about the work, as it was called, of his friend 
 Morgan Mallow. This was a subject on which it was, 
 to the best of his belief, impossible with veracity to 
 quote him, and it was nowhere on record that he had, 
 in the connexion, on any occasion and in any embar 
 rassment, either lied or spoken the truth. Such a 
 triumph had its honour even for a man of other 
 triumphs a man who had reached fifty, who had 
 escaped marriage, who had lived within his means, 
 who had been in love with Mrs. Mallow for years 
 without breathing it, and who, last not least, had 
 judged himself once for all. He had so judged himself 
 in fact that he felt an extreme and general humility 
 to be his proper portion ; yet there was nothing that 
 made him think so well of his parts as the course he 
 had steered so often through the shallows just men 
 tioned. It became thus a real wonder that the friends 
 in whom he had most confidence were just those with 
 whom he had most reserves. He couldn't tell Mrs. 
 Mallow or at least he supposed, excellent man, he 
 couldn't that she was the one beautiful reason he 
 had never married ; any more than he could tell her 
 husband that the sight of the multiplied marbles in 
 that gentleman's studio was an affliction of which 
 
 145 L
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 even time had never blunted the edge. His victory, 
 however, as I have intimated, in regard to these pro 
 ductions, was not simply in his not having let it out 
 that he deplored them ; it was, remarkably, in his not 
 having kept it in by anything else. 
 
 The whole situation, among these good people, 
 was verily a marvel, and there was probably not 
 such another for a long way from the spot that 
 engages us the point at which the soft declivity of 
 Hampstead began at that time to confess in broken 
 accents to Saint John's Wood. He despised Mallow's 
 statues and adored Mallow's wife, and yet was dis 
 tinctly fond of Mallow, to whom, in turn, he was 
 equally dear. Mrs. Mallow rejoiced in the statues 
 though she preferred, when pressed, the busts ; and 
 if she was visibly attached to Peter Brench it was 
 because of his affection for Morgan. Each loved the 
 other moreover for the love borne in each case to 
 Lancelot, whom the Mallows respectively cherished 
 as their only child and whom the friend of their fire 
 side identified as the third but decidedly the hand 
 somest of his godsons. Already in the old years 
 it had come to that that no one, for such a relation, 
 could possibly have occurred to any of them, even to 
 the baby itself, but Peter. There was luckily a certain 
 independence, of the pecuniary sort, all round : the 
 Master could never otherwise have spent his solemn 
 Wander jahre in Florence and Rome, and continued 
 by the Thames as well as by the Arno and the Tiber 
 to add unpurchased group to group and model, for 
 what was too apt to prove in the event mere love, 
 fancy-heads of celebrities either too busy or too buried 
 too much of the age or too little of it to sit. 
 Neither could Peter, lounging in almost daily, have 
 found time to keep the whole complicated tradition so 
 alive by his presence. He was massive but mild, the 
 depositary of these mysteries large and loose and 
 146
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 ruddy and curly, with deep tones, deep eyes, deep 
 pockets, to say nothing of the habit of long pipes, soft 
 hats and brownish greyish weather-faded clothes, 
 apparently always the same. 
 
 He had " written," it was known, but had never 
 spoken, never spoken in particular of that ; and he 
 had the air (since, as was believed, he continued to 
 write) of keeping it up in order to have something 
 more as if he hadn't at the worst enough to be 
 silent about. Whatever his air, at any rate, Peter's 
 occasional unmentioned prose and verse were quite 
 truly the result of an impulse to maintain the purity 
 of his taste by establishing still more firmly the right 
 relation of fame to feebleness. The little green door 
 of his domain was in a garden-wall on which the 
 discoloured stucco made patches, and in the small 
 detached villa behind it everything was old, the 
 furniture, the servants, the books, the prints, the 
 immemorial habits and the new improvements. The 
 Mallows, at Carrara Lodge, were within ten minutes, 
 and the studio there was on their little land, to which 
 they had added, in their happy faith, for building it. 
 This was the good fortune, if it was not the ill, of her 
 having brought him in marriage a portion that put 
 them in a manner at their ease and enabled them 
 thus, on their side, to keep it up. And they did keep 
 it up they always had - the infatuated sculptor 
 and his wife, for whom nature had refined on the 
 impossible by relieving them of the sense of the 
 difficult. Morgan had at all events everything of 
 the sculptor but the spirit of Phidias the brown 
 velvet, the becoming beretto, the " plastic " presence, 
 the fine fingers, the beautiful accent in Italian and 
 the old Italian factotum. He seemed to make up 
 for everything when he addressed Egidio with the 
 " tu " and waved him to turn one of the rotary pedes 
 tals of which the place was full. They were tremen- 
 
 147
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 dous Italians at Carrara Lodge, and the secret of 
 the part played by this fact in Peter's life was in a 
 large degree that it gave him, sturdy Briton as he 
 was, just the amount of " going abroad " he could 
 bear. The Mallows were all his Italy, but it was in 
 a measure for Italy he liked them. His one worry 
 was that Lance to which they had shortened his 
 godson was, in spite of a public school, perhaps 
 a shade too Italian. Morgan meanwhile looked like 
 somebody's flattering idea of somebody's own person 
 as expressed in the great room provided at the 
 Uffizzi Museum for the general illustration of that 
 idea by eminent hands. The Master's sole regret 
 that he hadn't been born rather to the brush than to 
 the chisel sprang from his wish that he might have 
 contributed to that collection. 
 
 It appeared with time at any rate to be to the 
 brush that Lance had been born ; for Mrs. Mallow, 
 one day when the boy was turning twenty, broke 
 it to their friend, who shared, to the last delicate 
 morsel, their problems and pains, that it seemed as if 
 nothing would really do but that he should embrace 
 the career. It had been impossible longer to remain 
 blind to the fact that he was gaining no glory at Cam 
 bridge, where Brench's own college had for a year 
 tempered its tone to him as for Brench's own sake. 
 Therefore why renew the vain form of preparing him 
 for the impossible ? The impossible it had become 
 clear was that he should be anything but an artist. 
 " Oh dear, dear ! " said poor Peter. 
 " Don't you believe in it ? " asked Mrs. Mallow, 
 who still, at more than forty, had her violet velvet 
 eyes, her creamy satin skin and her silken chestnut 
 hair. 
 
 " Believe in what ? " 
 " Why in Lance's passion." 
 
 " I don't know what you mean by ' believing in it.' 
 148
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 I've never been unaware, certainly, of his disposition, 
 from his earliest time, to daub and draw ; but I 
 confess I've hoped it would burn out." 
 
 " But why should it," she sweetly smiled, " with 
 his wonderful heredity ? Passion is passion though 
 of course indeed you, dear Peter, know nothing of 
 that. Has the Master's ever burned out ? " 
 
 Peter looked off a little and, in his familiar formless 
 way, kept up for a moment a sound between a 
 smothered whistle and a subdued hum. " Do you 
 think he's going to be another Master ? " 
 
 She seemed scarce prepared to go that length, yet 
 she had on the whole a marvellous trust. " I know 
 what you mean by that. Will it be a career to incur 
 the jealousies and provoke the machinations that have 
 been at times almost too much for his father ? Well 
 -say it may be, since nothing but clap-trap, in these 
 dreadful days, can, it would seem, make its way, and 
 since, with the curse of refinement and distinction, 
 one may easily find one's self begging one's bread. 
 Put it at the worst say he has the misfortune to 
 wing his flight further than the vulgar taste of his 
 stupid countrymen can follow. Think, all the same, 
 of the happiness the same the Master has had. 
 He'll know." 
 
 Peter looked rueful. " Ah but what will he know ? " 
 
 " Quiet joy ! " cried Mrs. Mallow, quite impatient 
 and turning away. 
 
 149
 
 II 
 
 HE had of course before long to meet the boy him 
 self on it and to hear that practically everything was 
 settled. Lance was not to go up again, but to go in 
 stead to Paris where, since the die was cast, he would 
 find the best advantages. Peter had always felt he 
 must be taken as he was, but had never perhaps found 
 him so much of that pattern as on this occasion. 
 " You chuck Cambridge then altogether ? Doesn't 
 that seem rather a pity ? " 
 
 Lance would have been like his father, to his 
 friend's sense, had he had less humour, and like 
 his mother had he had more beauty. Yet it was 
 a good middle way for Peter that, in the modern 
 manner, he was, to the eye, rather the young stock 
 broker than the young artist. The youth reasoned 
 that it was a question of time there was such a mill 
 to go through, such an awful lot to learn. He had 
 talked with fellows and had judged. " One has got, 
 to-day," he said, " don't you see ? to know." 
 
 His interlocutor, at this, gave a groan. " Oh hang 
 it, don't know ! " 
 
 Lance wondered. ; ' Don't ' ? Then what's the 
 use ? " 
 
 " The use of what ? " 
 
 " Why of anything. Don't you think I've 
 talent ? " 
 
 Peter smoked away for a little in silence ; then 
 
 150
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 went on : "It isn't knowledge, it's ignorance that 
 as we've been beautifully told is bliss." 
 
 " Don't you think I've talent ? " Lance repeated. 
 
 Peter, with his trick of queer kind demonstrations, 
 passed his arm round his godson and held him a 
 moment. " How do I know ? " 
 
 " Oh," said the boy, " if it's your own ignorance 
 you're defending ! " 
 
 Again, for a pause, on the sofa, his godfather 
 smoked. " It isn't. I've the misfortune to be omni 
 scient." 
 
 " Oh well," Lance laughed again, " if you know 
 too much ! " 
 
 " That's what I do, and it's why I'm so wretched." 
 
 Lance's gaiety grew. " Wretched ? Come, I 
 say ! " 
 
 '' But I forgot," his companion went on " you're 
 not to know about that. It would indeed for you too 
 make the too much. Only I'll teh 1 you what I'll do." 
 And Peter got up from the sofa. " If you'U go up 
 again I'll pay your way at Cambridge." 
 
 Lance stared, a little rueful in spite of being still 
 more amused. " Oh Peter ! You disapprove so of 
 Paris ? " 
 
 ." Well, I'm afraid of it." 
 
 " Ah I see ! " 
 
 " No, you don't see yet. But you will that is 
 you would. And you mustn't." 
 
 The young man thought more gravely. " But one's 
 innocence, already ! " 
 
 " Is considerably damaged ? Ah that won't 
 matter," Peter persisted " we'll patch it up here." 
 
 " Here ? Then you want me to stay at home ? " 
 
 Peter almost confessed to it. " Well, we're so 
 right we four together just as we are. We're so 
 safe. Come, don't spoil it." 
 
 The boy, who had turned to gravity, turned from
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 this, on the real pressure in his friend's tone, to con 
 sternation. " Then what's a fellow to be ? " 
 
 "My particular care. Come, old man" and 
 Peter now fairly pleaded" I'll look out for you." 
 
 Lance, who had remained on the sofa with his legs 
 out and his hands in his pockets, watched him with 
 eyes that showed suspicion. Then he got up. " You 
 think there's something the matter with me that I 
 can't make a success." 
 
 " Well, what do you call a success ? " 
 
 Lance thought again. " Why the best sort, I sup 
 pose, is to please one's self. Isn't that the sort that, 
 in spite of cabals and things, is in his own peculiar 
 line- the Master's ? " 
 
 There were so much too many things in this ques 
 tion to be answered at once that they practically 
 checked the discussion, which became particularly 
 difficult in the light of such renewed proof that, 
 though the young man's innocence might, in the 
 course of his studies, as he contended, somewhat 
 have shrunken, the finer essence of it still remained. 
 That was indeed exactly what Peter had assumed and 
 what above all he desired ; yet perversely enough 
 it gave him a chill. The boy believed in the cabals 
 and things, believed in the peculiar line, believed,, to 
 be brief, in the Master. What happened a month or 
 two later wasn't that he went up again at the ex 
 pense of his godfather, but that a fortnight after 
 he had got settled in Paris this personage sent him 
 fifty pounds. 
 
 He had meanwhile at home, this personage, made 
 up his mind to the worst; and what that might be had 
 never yet grown quite so vivid to him as when, on 
 his presenting himself one Sunday night, as he never 
 failed to do, for supper, the mistress of Carrara Lodge 
 met him with an appeal as to of all things in 
 the world the wealth of the Canadians. She was 
 152
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 earnest, she was even excited. " Are many of them 
 really rich ? " 
 
 He had to confess he knew nothing about them, 
 but he often thought afterwards of that evening. 
 The room in which they sat was adorned with sundry 
 specimens of the Master's genius, which had the 
 merit of being, as Mrs. Mallow herself frequently 
 suggested, of an unusually convenient size. They 
 were indeed of dimensions not customary in the pro 
 ducts of the chisel, and they had the singularity that, 
 if the objects and features intended to be small looked 
 too large, the objects and features intended to be 
 large looked too small. The Master's idea, either in 
 respect to this matter or to any other, had in almost 
 any case, even after years, remained undiscoverable 
 to Peter Brench. The creations that so failed to re 
 veal it stood about on pedestals and brackets, on 
 tables and shelves, a little staring white population, 
 heroic, idyllic, allegoric, mythic, symbolic, in which 
 " scale " had so strayed and lost itself that the public 
 square and the chimney-piece seemed to have changed 
 places, the monumental being all diminutive and the 
 diminutive all monumental ; branches at any rate, 
 markedly, of a family in which stature was rather 
 oddly irrespective of function, age and sex. They 
 formed, like the Mallows themselves, poor Brench's 
 own family having at least to such a degree the 
 note of familiarity. The occasion was one of those he 
 had long ago learnt to know and to name short 
 flickers of the faint flame, soft gusts of a kinder air. 
 Twice a year regularly the Master believed in his 
 fortune, in addition to believing all the year round in 
 his genius. This time it was to be made by a bereaved 
 couple from Toronto, who had given him the hand 
 somest order for a tomb to three lost children, each 
 of whom they desired to see, in the composition, em 
 blematically and characteristically represented. 
 
 153
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Such was naturally the moral of Mrs. Mallow's 
 question : if their wealth was to be assumed, it was 
 clear, from the nature of their admiration, as well as 
 from mysterious hints thrown out (they were a little 
 odd !) as to other possibilities' of the same mortuary 
 sort, that their further patronage might be ; and not 
 less evident that should the Master become at all 
 known in those climes nothing would be more in 
 evitable than a run of Canadian custom. Peter had 
 been present before at runs of custom, colonial and 
 domestic present at each of those of which the 
 aggregation had left so few gaps in the marble com 
 pany round him ; but it was his habit never at these 
 junctures to prick the bubble in advance. The 
 fond illusion, while it lasted, eased the wound of 
 elections never won, the long ache of medals and 
 diplomas carried off, on every chance, by every one 
 but the Master ; it moreover lighted the lamp that 
 would glimmer through the next eclipse. They 
 lived, however, after all as it was always beautiful 
 to see at a height scarce susceptible of ups and 
 downs. They strained a point at times charmingly, 
 strained it to admit that the public was here and there 
 not too bad to buy ; but they would have been nowhere 
 without their attitude that the Master was always 
 too good to sell. They were at all events deliciously 
 formed, Peter often said to himself, for their fate ; 
 the Master had a vanity, his wife had a loyalty, of 
 which success, depriving these things of innocence, 
 would have diminished the merit and the grace. 
 Any one could be charming under a charm, and as 
 he looked about him at a world of prosperity more 
 void of proportion even than the Master's museum 
 he wondered if he knew another pair that so com 
 pletely escaped vulgarity. 
 
 " What a pity Lance isn't with us to rejoice ! " 
 Mrs. Mallow on this occasion sighed at supper. 
 
 154
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 " We'll drink to the health of the absent," her 
 husband replied, filling his friend's glass and his own 
 and giving a drop to their companion ; " but we must 
 hope he's preparing himself for a happiness much 
 less like this of ours this evening excusable as I 
 grant it to be ! than like the comfort we have 
 always (whatever has happened or has not happened) 
 been able to trust ourselves to enjoy. The comfort," 
 the Master explained, leaning back in the pleasant 
 lamplight and firelight, holding up his glass and look 
 ing round at his marble family, quartered more or 
 Jess, a monstrous brood, in every room " the com 
 fort of art in itself ! " 
 
 Peter looked a little shyly at his wine. "Well 
 I don't care what you may call it when a fellow 
 doesn't but Lance must learn to sell, you know. 
 I drink to his acquisition of the secret of a base 
 popularity ! " 
 
 " Oh yes, he must sell," the boy's mother, who was 
 still more, however, this seemed to give out, the 
 Master's wife, rather artlessly allowed. 
 
 " Ah," the sculptor after a moment confidently 
 pronounced, " Lance will. Don't be afraid. He'll 
 have learnt." 
 
 " Which is exactly what Peter," Mrs. Mallow gaily 
 returned " why in the world were you so perverse, 
 Peter ? wouldn't when he told him hear of." 
 
 Peter, when this lady looked at him with accusa 
 tory affection a grace on her part not infrequent 
 could never find a word ; but the Master, who was 
 always all amenity and tact, helped him out now as 
 he had often helped him before. " That's his old 
 idea, you know on which we've so often differed : 
 his theory that the artist should be all impulse and 
 instinct. / go in of course for a certain amount of 
 school. Not too much but a due proportion. 
 There's where his protest came in," he continued to 
 
 155
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 explain to his wife, " as against what might, don't 
 you see ? be in question for Lance." 
 
 " Ah well " and Mrs. Mallow turned the violet 
 eyes across the table at the subject of this discourse 
 " he's sure to have meant of course nothing but 
 good. Only that wouldn't have prevented him, if 
 Lance had taken his advice, from being in effect 
 horribly cruel." 
 
 They had a sociable way of talking of him to his 
 face as if he had been in the clay or at most in 
 the plaster, and the Master was unfailingly generous. 
 He might have been waving Egidio to make him 
 revolve. " Ah but poor Peter wasn't so wrong as 
 to what it may after all come to that he will learn." 
 
 " Oh but nothing artistically bad," she urged 
 still, for poor Peter, arch and dewy. 
 
 " Why just the little French tricks," said the 
 Master : on which their friend had to pretend to 
 admit, when pressed by Mrs. Mallow, that these 
 esthetic vices had been the objects of his dread. 
 
 156
 
 Ill 
 
 " I KNOW now," Lance said to him the next year, 
 " why you were so much against it." He had come 
 back supposedly for a mere interval and was look 
 ing about him at Carrara Lodge, where indeed he 
 had already on two or three occasions since his 
 expatriation briefly reappeared. This had the air of 
 a longer holiday. " Something rather awful has hap 
 pened to me. It isn't so very good to know." 
 
 " I'm bound to say high spirits don't show in your 
 face," Peter was rather ruefully forced to confess. 
 " Still, are you very sure you do know ? " 
 
 " Well, I at least know about as much as I can 
 bear." These remarks were exchanged in Peter's 
 den, and the young man, smoking cigarettes, stood 
 before the fire with his back against the mantel. 
 Something of his bloom seemed really to have left 
 him. 
 
 Poor Peter wondered. " You're clear then as to 
 what in particular I wanted you not to go for ? " 
 
 " In particular ? " Lance thought. " It seems to me 
 that in particular there can have been only one thing." 
 
 They stood for a little sounding each other. "Are 
 you quite sure ? " 
 
 " Quite sure I'm a beastly duffer ? Quite by this 
 time." 
 
 " Oh ! " and Peter turned away as if almost with 
 relief. 
 
 157
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 " It's that that isn't pleasant to find out." 
 
 " Oh I don't care for ' that/ " said Peter, presently 
 coming round again. " I mean I personally don't." 
 
 " Yet I hope you can understand a little that I 
 myself should ! " 
 
 " Well, what do you mean by it? " Peter sceptically 
 asked. 
 
 And on this Lance had to explain how the up 
 shot of his studies in Paris had inexorably proved a 
 mere deep doubt of his means. These studies had so 
 waked him up that a new light was in his eyes ; but 
 what the new light did was really to show him too 
 much. " Do you know what's the matter with me ? 
 I'm too horribly intelligent. Paris was really the last 
 place for me. I've learnt what I can't do." 
 
 Poor Peter stared it was a staggerer ; but even 
 after they had had, on the subject, a longish talk in 
 which the boy brought out to the full the hard truth 
 of his lesson, his friend betrayed less pleasure than 
 usually breaks into a face to the happy tune of " I 
 told you so ! " Poor Peter himself made now indeed so 
 little a point of having told him so that Lance broke 
 ground in a different place a day or two after. " What 
 was it then that before I went you were afraid 
 I should find out ? " This, however, Peter refused to 
 tell him on the ground that if he hadn't yet guessed 
 perhaps he never would, and that in any case nothing 
 at all for either of them was to be gained by giving 
 the thing a name. Lance eyed him on this an instant 
 with the bold curiosity of youth with the air indeed 
 of having in his mind two or three names, of which 
 one or other would be right. Peter nevertheless, 
 turning his back again, offered no encouragement, and 
 when they parted afresh it was with some show of 
 impatience on the side of the boy. Accordingly on 
 their next encounter Peter saw at a glance that he 
 had now, in the interval, divined and that, to sound 
 
 158
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 his note, he was only waiting till they should find 
 themselves alone. This he had soon arranged and 
 he then broke straight out. " Do you know your 
 conundrum has been keeping me awake ? But in the 
 watches of the night the answer came over me so 
 that, upon my honour, I quite laughed out. Had you 
 been supposing I had to go to Paris to learn that ? 
 Even now, to see him still so sublimely on his guard, 
 Peter's young friend had to laugh afresh. " You won't 
 give a sign till you're sure ? Beautiful old Peter ! " 
 But Lance at last produced it. " Why, hang it, the 
 truth about the Master." 
 
 It made between them for some minutes a lively 
 passage, full of wonder for each at the wonder of 
 the other. "Then how long have you understood 
 
 " The true value of his work ? I understood it," 
 Lance recalled, " as soon as I began to understand 
 anything. But I didn't begin fully to do that, I 
 admit, till I got Id-bas." 
 
 " Dear, dear ! " Peter gasped with retrospective 
 dread. 
 
 " But for what have you taken me ? I'm a hopeless 
 muff that I had to have rubbed in. But I'm not 
 such a muff as the Master ! " Lance declared. 
 
 " Then why did you never tell me ? " 
 
 " That I hadn't, after all " the boy took him up 
 " remained such an idiot ? Just because I never 
 dreamed you knew. But I beg your pardon. I only 
 wanted to spare you. And what I don't now under 
 stand is how the deuce then for so long you've man 
 aged to keep bottled." 
 
 Peter produced his explanation, but only after some 
 delay and with a gravity not void of embarrassment. 
 " It was for your mother." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Lance. 
 
 " And that's the great thing now since the 
 murder is out. I want a promise from you. I mean " 
 
 159
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 and Peter almost feverishly followed it up" a 
 vow from you, solemn and such as you owe me here 
 on the spot, that you'll sacrifice anything rather than 
 let her ever guess 
 
 "That I've guessed?" Lance took it in. "I 
 see." He evidently after a moment had taken in 
 much. " But what is it you've in mind that I may 
 have a chance to sacrifice ? " 
 
 " Oh one has always something." 
 
 Lance looked at him hard. " Do you mean that 
 you've had ? " The look he received back, how 
 ever, so put the question by that he found soon enough 
 another. " Are you really sure my mother doesn't 
 know ? " 
 
 Peter, after renewed reflexion, was really sure. " If 
 she does she's too wonderful." 
 
 " But aren't we all too wonderful ? " 
 
 " Yes," Peter granted " but in different ways. 
 The thing's so desperately important because your 
 father's little public consists only, as you know then," 
 Peter developed " well, of how many ? " 
 
 " First of all," the Master's son risked, " of him 
 self. And last of all too. I don't quite see of whom 
 else." 
 
 Peter had an approach to impatience. " Of your 
 mother, I say always." 
 
 Lance cast it all up. " You absolutely feel that ? " 
 
 " Absolutely." 
 
 " Well then with yourself that makes three." 
 
 " Oh me I " and Peter, with a wag of his kind old 
 head, modestly excused himself. " The number's at 
 any rate small enough for any individual dropping 
 out to be too dreadfully missed. Therefore, to put it 
 in a nutshell, take care, my boy that's all that 
 you're not ! " 
 
 " I've got to keep on humbugging ? " Lance 
 wailed. 
 
 1 60
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 " It's just to warn you of the danger of your failing 
 of that that I've seized this opportunity." 
 
 " And what do you regard in particular," the young 
 man asked, " as the danger ? " 
 
 " Why this certainty : that the moment your 
 mother, who feels so strongly, should suspect your 
 secret well," said Peter desperately, " the fat would 
 be on the fire." 
 
 Lance for a moment seemed to stare at the blaze. 
 " She'd throw me over ? " 
 
 " She'd throw him over." 
 
 " And come round to us ? " 
 
 Peter, before he answered, turned away. " Come 
 round to you." But he had said enough to indicate 
 and, as he evidently trusted, to avert the horrid 
 contingency. 
 
 161 M
 
 IV 
 
 WITHIN six months again, none the less, his fear was 
 on more occasions than one all before him. Lance 
 had returned to Paris for another trial ; then had 
 reappeared at home and had had, with his father, for 
 the first time in his life, one of the scenes that strike 
 sparks. He described it with much expression to 
 Peter, touching whom (since they had never done so 
 before) it was the sign of a new reserve on the part of 
 the pair at Carrara Lodge that they at present failed, 
 on a matter of intimate interest, to open themselves 
 if not in joy then in sorrow to their good friend. 
 This produced perhaps practically between the parties 
 a shade of alienation and a slight intermission of 
 commerce marked mainly indeed by the fact that 
 to talk at his ease with his old playmate Lance had 
 in general to come to see him. The closest if not 
 quite the gayest relation they had yet known together 
 was thus ushered in. The difficulty for poor Lance 
 was a tension at home begotten by the fact that 
 his father wished him to be at least the sort of success 
 he himself had been. He hadn't " chucked " Paris 
 though nothing appeared more vivid to him than that 
 Paris had chucked him : he would go back again be 
 cause of the fascination in trying, in seeing, in sound 
 ing the depths in learning one's lesson, briefly, 
 even if the lesson were simply that of one's impotence 
 in the presence of one's larger vision. But what did 
 162
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 the Master, all aloft in his senseless fluency, know of 
 impotence, and what vision to be called such 
 had he in all his blind life ever had ? Lance, heated 
 and indignant, frankly appealed to his godparent on 
 this score. 
 
 His father, it appeared, had come down on him for 
 having, after so long, nothing to show, and hoped that 
 on his next return this deficiency would be repaired. 
 The thing, the Master complacently set forth, was 
 for any artist, however inferior to himself at least 
 to " do " something. " What can you do ? That's all 
 I ask ! " He had certainly done enough, and there 
 was no mistake about what he had to show. Lance 
 had tears in his eyes when it came thus to letting his 
 old friend know how great the strain might be on the 
 " sacrifice " asked of him. It wasn't so easy to con 
 tinue humbugging as from son to parent after 
 feeling one's self despised for not grovelling in medi 
 ocrity. Yet a noble duplicity was what, as they inti 
 mately faced the situation, Peter went on requiring ; 
 and it was still for a time what his young friend, 
 bitter and sore, managed loyally to comfort him with. 
 Fifty pounds more than once again, it was true, re 
 warded both in London and in Paris the young 
 friend's loyalty ; none the less sensibly, doubtless, at 
 the moment, that the money was a direct advance on 
 a decent sum for which Peter had long since privately 
 prearranged an ultimate function. Whether by these 
 arts or others, at all events, Lance's just resentment 
 was kept for a season but only for a season at 
 bay. The day arrived when he warned his companion 
 that he could hold out or hold in no longer. 
 Carrara Lodge had had to listen to another lecture 
 delivered from a great height an infliction really 
 heavier at last than, without striking back or in some 
 way letting the Master have the truth, flesh and blood 
 could bear. 
 
 163
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 " And what I don't see is," Lance observed with a 
 certain irritated eye for what was after all, if it came 
 to that, owing to himself too ; " what I don't see is, 
 upon my honour, how you, as things are going, can 
 keep the game up." 
 
 " Oh the game for me is only to hold my tongue," 
 said placid Peter. " And I have my reason." 
 
 " Still my mother ? " 
 
 Peter showed a queer face as he had often shown 
 it before that is by turning it straight away. " What 
 will you have ? I haven't ceased to like her." 
 
 " She's beautiful she's a dear of course," Lance 
 allowed ; " but what is she to you, after all, and what 
 is it to you that, as to anything whatever, she should 
 or she shouldn't ? " 
 
 Peter, who had turned red, hung fire a little. " Well 
 it's all simply what I make of it." 
 
 There was now, however, in his young friend a 
 strange, an adopted insistence. " What are you after 
 all to her ? " 
 
 " Oh nothing. But that's another matter." 
 
 " She cares only for my father," said Lance the 
 Parisian. 
 
 " Naturally and that's just why." 
 
 " Why you've wished to spare her ? " 
 
 " Because she cares so tremendously much." 
 
 Lance took a turn about the room, but with his 
 eyes still on his host. " How awfully always you 
 must have liked her ! " 
 
 " Awfully. Always," said Peter Brench. 
 
 The young man continued for a moment to muse 
 then stopped again in front of him. " Do you 
 know how much she cares ? " Their eyes met on it, 
 but Peter, as if his own found something new in 
 Lance's, appeared to hesitate, for the first time in 
 an age, to say he did know. " I've only just found 
 out," said Lance. " She came to my room last night, 
 164
 
 after being present, in silence and only with her 
 eyes on me, at what I had had to take from him : 
 she came and she was with me an extraordinary 
 hour." 
 
 He had paused again and they had again for a 
 while sounded each other. Then something and it 
 made him suddenly turn pale came to Peter. " She 
 does know ? " 
 
 " She does know. She let it all out to me so as 
 to demand of me no more than ' that/ as she said, of 
 which she herself had been capable. She has always, 
 always known," said Lance without pity. 
 
 Peter was silent a long time ; during which his 
 companion might have heard him gently breathe, 
 and on touching him might have felt within him 
 the vibration of a long low sound suppressed. By the 
 time he spoke at last he had taken everything in. 
 " Then I do see how tremendously much." 
 
 " Isn't it wonderful ? " Lance asked. 
 
 " Wonderful," Peter mused. 
 
 " So that if your original effort to keep me from 
 
 Paris was to keep me from knowledge ! " Lance 
 
 exclaimed as if with a sufficient indication of this 
 futility. 
 
 It might have been at the futility Peter appeared 
 for a little to gaze. " I think it must have been 
 without my quite at the time knowing it to keep 
 me ! " he replied at last as he turned away. 
 
 165
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE 
 NORTHMORES 
 
 167
 
 WHEN Lord Northmore died public reference to the 
 event took for the most part rather a ponderous and 
 embarrassed form. A great political figure had passed 
 away. A great light of our time had been quenched 
 in mid-career. A great usefulness had somewhat an 
 ticipated its term, though a great part, none the less, 
 had been signally played. The note of greatness, all 
 along the line, kept sounding, in short, by a force of 
 its own, and the image of the departed evidently lent 
 itself with ease to figures and flourishes, the poetry 
 of the daily press. The newspapers and their pur- 
 lasers equally did their duty by it arranged it 
 neatly and impressively, though perhaps with a hand 
 a little violently expeditious, upon the funeral-car, 
 ;aw the conveyance properly down the avenue and 
 then, finding the subject suddenly quite exhausted, 
 proceeded to the next item on their list. His lordship 
 tiad been a person in connexion with whom that 
 was it there was almost nothing but the fine mono 
 tony of his success to mention. This success had 
 been his profession, his means as well as his end ; so 
 that his career admitted of no other description and 
 demanded, indeed suffered, no further analysis. He 
 had made politics, he had made literature, he had 
 made land, he had made a bad manner and a great 
 many mistakes, he had made a gaunt foolish wife, 
 two extravagant sons and four awkward daughters 
 
 169
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE NORTHMORES 
 
 he had made everything, as he could have made 
 almost anything, thoroughly pay. There had been 
 something deep down in him that did it, and his old 
 friend Warren Hope, the person knowing him earliest 
 and probably on the whole best, had never, even 
 to the last, for curiosity, quite made out what it was. 
 The secret was one that this distinctly distanced 
 competitor had in fact mastered as little for intel 
 lectual relief as for emulous use ; and there was a 
 virtual tribute to it in the way that, the night before 
 the obsequies and addressing himself to his wife, 
 he said after some silent thought : " Hang it, you 
 know, I must see the old boy through. I must go to 
 the grave." 
 
 Mrs. Hope at first looked at her husband but in 
 anxious silence. " I've no patience with you. You're 
 much more ill than he ever was." 
 
 " Ah but if that qualifies me only for the funerals 
 of others ! " 
 
 " It qualifies you to break my heart by your exag 
 gerated chivalry, your renewed refusal to consider 
 your interests. You sacrificed them to him, for thirty 
 years, again and again, and from this supreme sacri 
 fice possibly that of your life you might, in your 
 condition, I think, be absolved." She indeed lost 
 patience. " To the grave in this weather after 
 his treatment of you ? " 
 
 " My dear girl," Hope replied, " his treatment of 
 me is a figment of your ingenious mind your too- 
 passionate, your beautiful loyalty. Loyalty, I mean, 
 to me." 
 
 " I certainly leave it to you," she declared, " to 
 have any to him ! " 
 
 " Well, he was after all one's oldest, one's earliest 
 friend. I'm not in such bad case I do go out ; 
 and I want to do the decent thing. The fact remains 
 that we never broke we always kept together." 
 170
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE NORTHMORES 
 
 " Yes indeed," she laughed in her bitterness, " he 
 always took care of that ! He never recognised you, 
 but he never let you go. You kept him up, and he 
 kept you down. He used you, to the last drop he 
 could squeeze, and left you the only one to wonder, 
 in your incredible idealism and your incorrigible 
 modesty, how on earth such an idiot made his way. 
 He made his way on your back. You put it candidly 
 to others ' What in the world was his gift ? ' And 
 others are such gaping idiots that they too haven't 
 the least idea. You were his gift ! " 
 
 " And you're mine, my dear ! " her husband, press 
 ing her to him, more gaily and resignedly cried. He 
 went down the next day by " special " to the inter 
 ment, which took place on the great man's own pro 
 perty and in the great man's own church. But he went 
 alone that is in a numerous and distinguished party, 
 the flower of the unanimous gregarious demonstra 
 tion ; his wife had no wish to accompany him, though 
 she was anxious while he travelled. She passed the 
 time uneasily, watching the weather and fearing the 
 cold ; she roamed from room to room, pausing vaguely 
 at dull windows, and before he came back she had 
 thought of many things. It was as if, while he saw 
 the great man buried, she also, by herself, in the 
 contracted home of their later years, stood before an 
 open grave. She lowered into it with her weak hands 
 the heavy past and all their common dead dreams and 
 accumulated ashes. The pomp surrounding Lord 
 Northmore's extinction made her feel more than ever 
 that it was not Warren who had made anything pay. 
 He had been always what he was still, the cleverest 
 man and the hardest worker she knew ; but what was 
 there, at fifty-seven, as the vulgar said, to " show " 
 for it all but his wasted genius, his ruined health and 
 his paltry pension ? It was the term of comparison 
 conveniently given her by his happy rival's now fore- 
 
 171
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE NORTHMORES 
 
 shortened splendour that set these things in her eye. 
 It was as happy rivals to their own flat union that she 
 always had thought of the Northmore pair ; the two 
 men at least having started together, after the Uni 
 versity, shoulder to shoulder and with superficially 
 speaking much the same outfit of preparation, 
 ambition and opportunity. They had begun at the 
 same point and wanting the same things only want 
 ing them in such different ways. Well, the dead man 
 had wanted them in the way that got them ; but got 
 too, in his peerage for instance, those Warren had 
 never wanted : there was nothing else to be said. 
 There was nothing else, and yet, in her sombre, her 
 strangely apprehensive solitude at this hour, she said 
 much more than I can tell. It all came to this that 
 there had been somewhere and somehow a wrong. 
 Warren was the one who should have succeeded. But 
 she was the one person who knew it now, the single 
 other person having descended, with his knowledge, 
 to the tomb. 
 
 She sat there, she roamed there, in the waiting 
 greyness of her small London house, with a deepened 
 sense of the several odd knowledges that had flour 
 ished in their company of three. Warren had always 
 known everything and, with his easy power in 
 nothing so high as for indifference had never 
 cared. John Northmore had known, for he had, 
 years and years before, told her so ; and thus had 
 had a reason the more in addition to not believing 
 her stupid for guessing at her view. She lived 
 back ; she lived it over ; she had it all there in her 
 hand. John Northmore had known her first, and 
 how he had wanted to many her the fat little bundle 
 of his love-letters still survived to tell. He had in 
 troduced Warren Hope to her quite by accident 
 and because, at the tune they had chambers together, 
 he couldn't help it : that was the one thing he had 
 
 172
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE NORTHMORES 
 
 done for them. Thinking of it now she perhaps saw 
 how much he might conscientiously have considered 
 that it disburdened him of more. Six months later 
 she had accepted Warren, and just for the reason the 
 absence of which had determined her treatment of 
 his friend. She had believed in his future. She held 
 that John Northmore had never afterwards remitted 
 the effort to ascertain the degree in which she felt her 
 self " sold." But, thank God, she had never shown 
 him. 
 
 Her husband came home with a chill and she put 
 him straight to bed. For a week, as she hovered 
 near him, they only looked deep things at each other ; 
 the point was too quickly passed at which she could 
 bearably have said " I told you so ! " That his late 
 patron should never have had difficulty in making 
 him pay was certainly no marvel. But it was indeed 
 a little too much, after all, that he should have made 
 him pay with his life. This was what it had come 
 to she was now sure from the first. Congestion 
 of the lungs declared itself that night and on the 
 morrow, sickeningly, she was face to face with pneu 
 monia. It was more than with all that had gone 
 before they could meet. Ten days later Warren 
 Hope succumbed. Tenderly, divinely as he loved her, 
 she felt his surrender, through all the anguish, as an 
 unspeakable part of the sublimity of indifference into 
 which his hapless history had finally flowered. " His 
 easy power, his easy power ! "her passion had never 
 yet found such relief in that simple secret phrase for 
 him. He was so proud, so fine and so flexible that to 
 fail a little had been as bad for him as to fail much ; 
 therefore he had opened the flood-gates wide had 
 thrown, as the saying was, the helve after the hatchet. 
 He had amused himself with seeing what the de 
 vouring world would take. Well, it had taken all. 
 
 173
 
 II 
 
 BUT it was after he had gone that his name showed 
 as written in water. What had he left ? He had 
 only left her and her grey desolation, her lonely piety 
 and her sore unresting rebellion. When a man died it 
 sometimes did for him what life hadn't done ; people 
 after a little, on one side or the other, discovered and 
 named him, claiming him for their party, annexing 
 him to their flag. But the sense of having lost Warren 
 Hope appeared not in the least to have quickened 
 the world's wit ; the sharper pang for his widow 
 indeed sprang just from the commonplace way in 
 which he was spoken of as known. She received 
 letters enough, when it came to that, for personally 
 of course he had been liked ; the newspapers were 
 fairly copious and perfectly stupid ; the three or four 
 societies, " learned " and other, to which he had be 
 longed, passed resolutions of regret and condolence, 
 and the three or four colleagues about whom he him 
 self used to be most amusing stammered eulogies ; 
 but almost anything really would have been better 
 for her than the general understanding that the oc 
 casion had been met. Two or three solemn noodles 
 in " administrative circles " wrote her that she must 
 have been gratified at the unanimity of regret, the 
 implication being quite that she was else of the last 
 absurdity. Meanwhile what she felt was that she 
 could have borne well enough his not being noticed 
 174
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE NORTHMORES 
 
 at all ; what she couldn't bear was this treatment of 
 him as a minor celebrity. He was, in economics, in 
 the higher politics, in philosophic history, a splendid 
 unestimated genius or he was nothing. He wasn't 
 at any rate heaven forbid ! a " notable figure." 
 The waters, none the less, closed over him as over 
 Lord Northmore ; which was precisely, as time went 
 on, the fact she found it hardest to accept. That 
 personage, the week after his death, without an hour 
 of reprieve, the place swept as clean of him as a hall 
 lent for a charity, of the tables and booths of a three- 
 days' bazaar that personage had gone straight to 
 the bottom, dropped like a crumpled circular into the 
 waste-basket. Where then was the difference ? if 
 the end was the end for each alike ? For Warren it 
 should have been properly the beginning. 
 
 During the first six months she wondered what 
 she could herself do, and had much of the time the 
 sense of walking by some swift stream on which an 
 object dear to her was floating out to sea. All her 
 instinct was to keep up with it, not to lose sight of it, 
 to hurry along the bank and reach in advance some 
 point from which she could stretch forth and catch 
 and save it. Alas it only floated and floated ; she held 
 it in sight, for the stream was long, but no gentle 
 promontory offered itself to the rescue. She ran, 
 she watched, she lived with her great fear ; and all 
 the while, as the distance to the sea diminished, the 
 current visibly increased. To do anything at the last 
 she must hurry. She went into his papers, she ran 
 sacked his drawers ; something of that sort at least she 
 might do. But there were difficulties, the case was 
 special ; she lost herself in the labyrinth and her com 
 petence was challenged ; two or three friends to whose 
 judgement she appealed struck her as tepid, even as 
 cold, and publishers, when sounded most of all in 
 fact the house through which his three or four im- 
 
 175
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE NORTHMORES 
 
 portant volumes had been given to the world 
 showed an absence of eagerness for a collection of 
 literary remains. It was only now she fully under 
 stood how remarkably little the three or four import 
 ant volumes had " done." He had successfully kept 
 that from her, as he had kept other things she might 
 have ached at : to handle his notes and memoranda 
 was to come at every turn, amid the sands of her be 
 reavement, upon the footsteps of some noble reason. 
 But she had at last to accept the truth that it was only 
 for herself, her own relief, that she must follow him. 
 His work, unencouraged and interrupted, failed of a 
 final form : there would have been nothing to offer 
 but fragments of fragments. She felt, all the same, 
 in recognising this, that she abandoned him : he died 
 for her at that hour over again. 
 
 The hour moreover happened to coincide with 
 another hour, so that the two mingled their bitter 
 ness. She received from Lady Northmore a note 
 announcing a desire to gather in and publish his late 
 lordship's letters, so numerous and so interesting, 
 and inviting Mrs. Hope, as a more than probable 
 depositary, to be so good as to enrich the scheme 
 with those addressed to her husband. This gave 
 her a start of more kinds than one. The long comedy 
 of his late lordship's greatness was not then over ? 
 The monument was to be built to him that she had 
 but now schooled herself to regard as impossible for 
 his defeated friend ? Everything was to break out 
 afresh, the comparisons, the contrasts, the conclusions 
 so invidiously in his favour ? the business all cleverly 
 managed to place him in the light and keep every 
 one else in the shade ? Letters ? had John North- 
 more indited three lines that could at that time of 
 day be of the smallest consequence ? Whose inept 
 idea was such a publication, and what infatuated 
 editorial patronage could the family have secured ? 
 176
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE NORTHMORES 
 
 She of course didn't know, but she should be sur 
 prised if there were material. Then it came to her, on 
 reflexion, that editors and publishers must of course 
 have flocked his star would still rule. Why 
 shouldn't he make his letters pay in death as he had 
 made them pay in life ? Such as they were they had 
 paid. They would be a tremendous hit. She thought 
 again of her husband's rich confused relics thought 
 of the loose blocks of marble that could only lie now 
 where they had fallen ; after which, with one of her 
 deep and frequent sighs, she took up anew Lady 
 Northmore's communication. 
 
 His letters to Warren, kept or not kept, had never 
 so much as occurred to her. Those to herself were 
 buried and safe she knew where her hand would 
 find them ; but those to herself her correspondent had 
 carefully not asked for and was probably unaware 
 of the existence of. They belonged moreover to that 
 phase of the great man's career that was distinctly 
 as it could only be called previous : previous to the 
 greatness, to the proper subject of the volume, pre 
 vious above all to Lady Northmore. The faded fat 
 packet lurked still where it had lurked for years ; 
 but she could no more to-day have said why she had 
 kept it than why though he knew of the early 
 episode she had never mentioned her preservation 
 of it to Warren. This last maintained reserve cer 
 tainly absolved her from mentioning it to Lady North- 
 more, who probably knew of the episode too. The 
 odd part of the matter was at any rate that her reten 
 tion of these documents had not been an accident. 
 She had obeyed a dim instinct or a vague calculation. 
 A calculation of what ? She couldn't have told : it 
 had operated, at the back of her head, simply as a 
 sense that, not destroyed, the complete little collec 
 tion made for safety. But for whose, just heaven ? 
 Perhaps she should still see ; though nothing, she 
 
 177 N
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE NORTHMORES 
 
 trusted, would occur requiring her to touch the things 
 or to read them over. She wouldn't have touched 
 them or read them over for the world. 
 
 She had not as yet, in any case, overhauled those 
 receptacles in which the letters Warren kept would 
 have accumulated ; and she had her doubts of their 
 containing any of Lord Northmore's. Why should 
 he have kept any ? Even she herself had had more 
 reasons. Was his lordship's later epistolary manner 
 supposed to be good, or of the kind that, on any 
 grounds, prohibited the waste-basket or the glowing 
 embers ? Warren had lived in a deluge of documents, 
 but these perhaps he might have regarded as contribu 
 tions to contemporary history. None the less, surely, 
 he wouldn't have stored up many. She began a 
 search in cupboards, boxes, drawers yet unvisited, 
 and she had her surprises both at what he had kept 
 and at what he hadn't. Every word of her own was 
 there every note that in occasional absence he had 
 ever had from her. Well, that matched happily 
 enough her knowing just where to put her finger on 
 every note that, on such occasions, she herself had 
 received. Their correspondence at least was com 
 plete. But so, in fine, on one side, it gradually ap 
 peared, was Lord Northmore's. The superabundance 
 of these missives hadn't been sacrificed by her 
 husband, evidently, to any passing convenience ; she 
 judged more and more that he had preserved every 
 scrap ; and she was unable to conceal from herself 
 that she was she scarce knew why a trifle disap 
 pointed. She hadn't quite unhopefully, even though 
 vaguely, seen herself informing Lady Northmore that, 
 to her great regret and after a general hunt, she could 
 find nothing at all. 
 
 She in fact, alas, found everything. She was con 
 scientious and she rummaged to the end, by which 
 time one of the tables quite groaned with the fruits of 
 178
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE NORTHMORES 
 
 her quest. The letters appeared moreover to have 
 been cared for and roughly classified she should be 
 able to consign them to the family in excellent order. 
 She made sure at the last that she had overlooked 
 nothing, and then, fatigued and distinctly irritated, 
 she prepared to answer in a sense so different from 
 the answer she had, as might have been said, planned. 
 Face to face with her note, however, she found she 
 couldn't write it ; and, not to be alone longer with the 
 pile on the table, she presently went out of the room. 
 Late in the evening just before going to bed 
 she came back almost as if hoping there might have 
 been since the afternoon some pleasant intervention 
 in the interest of her distaste. Mightn't it have magic 
 ally happened that her discovery was a mistake ? 
 that the letters either weren't there or were after all 
 somebody's else ? Ah they were there, and as she 
 raised her lighted candle in the dusk the pile on the 
 table squared itself with insolence. On this, poor 
 lady, she had for an hour her temptation. 
 
 It was obscure, it was absurd ; all that could be said 
 of it was that it was for the moment extreme. She 
 saw herself, as she circled round the table, writing 
 with perfect impunity : " Dear Lady Northmore, I've 
 hunted high and low and have found nothing what 
 ever. My husband evidently, before his death, 
 destroyed everything. I'm so sorry I should have 
 liked so much to help you. Yours most truly." She 
 should have only on the morrow privately and re 
 solutely to annihilate the heap, and those words 
 would remain an account of the matter that nobody 
 was in a position to challenge. What good it would 
 do her ? was that the question ? It would do her 
 the good that it would make poor Warren seem to 
 have been just a little less used and duped. This, in 
 her mood, would ease her off. Well, the temptation 
 was real ; but so, she after a while felt, were other 
 
 179
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE NORTHMORES 
 
 things. She sat down at midnight to her note. " Dear 
 Lady Northmore, I'm happy to say I've found a great 
 deal my husband appears to have been so careful 
 to keep everything. I've a mass at your disposition if 
 you can conveniently send. So glad to be able to help 
 your work. Yours most truly." She stepped out as 
 she was and dropped the letter into the nearest pillar- 
 box. By noon the next day the table had, to her 
 relief, been cleared. Her ladyship sent a responsible 
 servant her butler in a four-wheeler and with a 
 large japanned box. 
 
 180 

 
 Ill 
 
 AFTER this, for a twelvemonth, there were frequent 
 announcements and allusions. They came to her 
 from every side, and there were hours at which the 
 air, to her imagination, contained almost nothing 
 else. There had been, at an early stage, immediately 
 after Lady Northmore's communication to her, an 
 official appeal, a circular urbi et orbi, reproduced, 
 applauded, commented in every newspaper, desiring 
 all possessors of letters to remit them without delay to 
 the family. The family, to do it justice, rewarded the 
 sacrifice freely so far as it was a reward to keep 
 the world informed of the rapid progress of the 
 work. Material had shown itself more copious than 
 was to have been conceived. Interesting as the im 
 minent volumes had naturally been expected to 
 prove, those who had been favoured with a glimpse 
 of their contents already felt warranted in promising 
 the public an unprecedented treat. They would 
 throw upon certain sides of the writer's mind and 
 career lights hitherto unsuspected. Lady Northmore, 
 deeply indebted for favours received, begged to re 
 new her solicitation ; gratifying as the response had 
 been it was believed that, particularly in connexion 
 with several dates now specified, a residuum of buried 
 treasure might still be looked for. 
 
 Mrs. Hope saw, she could but recognise, fewer 
 and fewer people ; yet her circle was even now not too 
 
 181
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE NORTHMORES 
 
 narrow for her to hear it blown about that Thomp 
 son and Johnson had " been asked." Conversation 
 in the London world struck her for a time as almost 
 confined to such questions and answers. " Have 
 you been asked ? " " Oh yes rather. Months ago. 
 And you ? " With the whole place under contribu 
 tion the striking thing seemed that being asked had 
 been attended in every case by the ability to re 
 spond. The spring had but to be touched millions 
 of letters flew out. Ten volumes at such a rate, Mrs. 
 Hope brooded, wouldn't exhaust the supply. She 
 brooded a great deal, did nothing but brood ; and, 
 strange as this may at first appear, one of the final 
 results of her brooding was the growth of a germ of 
 doubt. It could only seem possible, in view of such 
 unanimity, that she should have been stupidly mis 
 taken. The great departed's reputation was then to 
 the general sense a sound safe thing. Not he, im 
 mortal, had been at fault, but just her silly self, still 
 burdened with the fallibility of Being. He had thus 
 been a giant, and the letters would triumphantly show 
 it. She had looked only at the envelopes of those she 
 had surrendered, but she was prepared for anything. 
 There was the fact, not to be blinked, of Warren's 
 own marked testimony. The attitude of others was 
 but his attitude ; and she sighed as she found him in 
 this case for the only time in his life on the side of the 
 chattering crowd. 
 
 She was perfectly aware that her obsession had 
 run away with her, but as Lady Northmore's publica 
 tion really loomed into view it was now definitely 
 announced for March, and they were in January 
 her pulses quickened so that she found herself, in the 
 long nights, mostly lying awake. It was in one of 
 these vigils that suddenly, in the cold darkness, she 
 felt the brush of almost the only thought that for 
 many a month hadn't made her wince ; the effect 
 182
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE NORTHMORES 
 
 of which was that she bounded out of bed with a new 
 felicity. Her impatience flashed on the spot up to 
 its maximum she could scarce wait for day to give 
 herself to action. Her idea was neither more nor less 
 than immediately to collect and put forth the letters 
 of her hero. She would publish her husband's own 
 glory be to God ! and she even wasted none of her 
 time in wondering why she had waited. She had 
 waited all too long ; yet it was perhaps no more 
 than natural that, for eyes sealed with tears and a 
 heart heavy with injustice, there shouldn't have 
 been an instant vision of where her remedy lay. 
 She thought of it already as her remedy though 
 she would probably have found an awkwardness in 
 giving a name publicly to her wrong. It was a wrong 
 to feel, but doubtless not to talk about. And lo, 
 straightway, the balm had begun to drop : the balance 
 would so soon be even. She spent all that day in 
 reading over her own old letters, too intimate and too 
 sacred oh unluckily ! to figure in her project, but 
 pouring wind nevertheless into its sails and adding 
 greatness to her presumption. She had of course, with 
 separation, all their years, never frequent and never 
 prolonged, known her husband as a correspondent 
 much less than others ; still, these relics constituted a 
 property she was surprised at their number and 
 testified hugely to his inimitable gift. 
 
 He was a letter-writer if you liked natural witty 
 various vivid, playing with the idlest lightest hand 
 up and down the whole scale. His easy power 
 his easy power : everything that brought him back 
 brought back that. The most numerous were of 
 course the earlier and the series of those during their 
 engagement, witnesses of their long probation, which 
 were rich and unbroken ; so full indeed and so wonder 
 ful that she fairly groaned at having to defer to the 
 common measure of married modesty. There was 
 
 183
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE NORTHMORES 
 
 discretion, there was usage, there was taste ; but she 
 would fain have flown in their face. If many were 
 pages too intimate to publish, most others were too 
 
 rare to suppress. Perhaps after her death ! It not 
 
 only pulled her up, the happy thought of that libera 
 tion alike for herself and for her treasure, making 
 her promise herself straightway to arrange : it quite 
 re-emphasised her impatience for the term of her 
 mortality, which would leave a free field to the justice 
 she invoked. Her great resource, however, clearly, 
 would be the friends, the colleagues, the private ad 
 mirers to whom he had written for years, to whom 
 she had known him to write, and many of whose own 
 letters, by no means remarkable, she had come upon 
 in her recent sortings and sittings. She drew up a list 
 of these persons and immediately wrote to them or, 
 in cases in which they had passed away, to their 
 widows, children, representatives ; reminding herself 
 in the process not disagreeably, in fact quite inspir- 
 ingly, of Lady Northmore in person. It had struck 
 her that Lady Northmore in person took somehow 
 a good deal for granted ; but this idea failed, oddly 
 enough, to occur to her in regard to Mrs. Hope. It 
 was indeed with her ladyship she began, addressing 
 her exactly in the terms of the noble widow's own 
 appeal, every word of which she recalled. 
 
 Then she waited, but she had not, in connexion 
 with that quarter, to wait long. " Dear Mrs. Hope, 
 I have hunted high and low and have found nothing 
 whatever. My husband evidently before his death 
 destroyed everything. I'm so sorry I should have 
 liked so much to help you. Yours most truly." This 
 was ah 1 Lady Northmore wrote, without the grace 
 of an allusion to the assistance she herself had re 
 ceived ; though even in the first flush of amazement 
 and resentment our friend recognised the odd identity 
 of form between her note and another that had never 
 184
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE NORTHMORES 
 
 been written. She was answered as she had, in the like 
 case and in her one evil hour, dreamed of answering. 
 But the answer wasn't over with this it had still 
 to flow in, day after day, from every other source 
 reached by her question. And day after day, while 
 amazement and resentment deepened, it consisted 
 simply of three lines of regret. Everybody had looked, 
 and everybody had looked in vain. Everybody would 
 have been so glad, but everybody was reduced to 
 being, like Lady Northmore, so sorry. Nobody could 
 find anything, and nothing, it was therefore to be 
 gathered, had been kept. Some of these informants 
 were more prompt than others, but all replied in time, 
 and the business went on for a month, at the end of 
 which the poor woman, stricken, chilled to the heart, 
 accepted perforce her situation and turned her face 
 to the wall. In this position, as it were, she remained 
 for days, taking heed of nothing and only feeling 
 and nursing her wound. It was a wound the more 
 cruel for having found her so unguarded. From the 
 moment her remedy had glimmered to her she hadn't 
 had an hour of doubt, and the beautiful side of it 
 had seemed that it was just so easy. The strangeness 
 of the issue was even greater than the pain. Truly 
 it was a world pour rire, the world in which John 
 Northmore's letters were classed and labelled for 
 posterity and Warren Hope's helped housemaids to 
 light fires. All sense, all measure of anything, could 
 only leave one leave one indifferent and dumb. There 
 was nothing to be done the show was upside-down. 
 John Northmore was immortal and Warren Hope was 
 damned. For herself, therefore, she was finished. 
 She was beaten. She leaned thus, motionless, muffled, 
 for a time of which, as I say, she took no account ; 
 then at last she was reached by a great sound that 
 made her turn her veiled head. It was the report of 
 the appearance of Lady Northmore's volumes. 
 
 185
 
 IV 
 
 THIS filled the air indeed, and all the papers that day 
 were particularly loud with it. It met the reader on 
 the threshold and then within, the work everywhere 
 the subject of a " leader " as well as of a review. The 
 reviews moreover, she saw at a glance, overflowed 
 with quotation ; to look at two or three sheets was 
 to judge fairly of the raptures. Mrs. Hope looked at 
 the two or three that, for confirmation of the single 
 one she habitually received, she caused, while at 
 breakfast, to be purchased ; but her attention failed 
 to penetrate further : she couldn't, she found, face 
 the contrast between the pride of the Northmores on 
 such a morning and her own humiliation. The papers 
 brought it too sharply home ; she pushed them away 
 and, to get rid of them, not to feel their presence, left 
 the house early. She found pretexts for remaining out ; 
 there had been a cup prescribed for her to drain, yet 
 she could put off the hour of the ordeal. She filled the 
 time as she might ; bought things, in shops, for which 
 she had no use, and called on friends for whom she 
 had no taste. Most of her friends at present were 
 reduced to that category, and she had to choose 
 for visits the houses guiltless, as she might have said, 
 of her husband's blood. She couldn't speak to the 
 people who had answered in such dreadful terms 
 her late circular ; on the other hand the people out 
 of its range were such as would also be stolidly un- 
 186
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE NORTHMORES 
 
 conscious of Lady Northmore's publication and from 
 whom the sop of sympathy could be but circuitously 
 extracted. As she had lunched at a pastry-cook's so 
 she stopped out to tea, and the March dusk had 
 fallen when she got home. The first thing she then 
 saw in her lighted hall was a large neat package on 
 the table ; whereupon she knew before approaching it 
 that Lady Northmore had sent her the book. It had 
 arrived, she learned, just after her going out ; so that, 
 had she not done this, she might have spent the day 
 with it. She now quite understood her prompt in 
 stinct of flight. Well, flight had helped her, and the 
 touch of the great indifferent general life. She would 
 at last face the music. 
 
 She faced it, after dinner, in her little closed draw 
 ing-room, unwrapping the two volumes The Public 
 and Private Correspondence of the Right Honourable 
 etc., etc. and looking well, first, at the great es 
 cutcheon on the purple cover and at the various 
 portraits within, so numerous that wherever she 
 opened she came on one. It hadn't been present to 
 her before that he was so perpetually " sitting," but he 
 figured in every phase and in every style, while the 
 gallery was further enriched with views of his suc 
 cessive residences, each one a little grander than the 
 last. She had ever, in general, found that in portraits, 
 whether of the known or the obscure, the eyes seemed 
 to seek and to meet her own ; but John Northmore 
 everywhere looked straight away from her, quite as if 
 he had been in the room and were unconscious of 
 acquaintance. The effect of this was, oddly enough, 
 so sharp that at the end of ten minutes she felt her 
 self sink into his text as if she had been a stranger 
 beholden, vulgarly and accidentally, to one of the 
 libraries. She had been afraid to plunge, but from 
 the moment she got in she was to do every one all 
 round justice thoroughly held. Sitting there late 
 
 187
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE NORTHMORES 
 
 she made so many reflexions and discoveries that 
 as the only way to put it she passed from mysti 
 fication to stupefaction. Her own offered series 
 figured practically entire ; she had counted Warren's 
 letters before sending them and noted now that scarce 
 a dozen were absent a circumstance explaining to 
 her Lady Northmore's courtesy. It was to these 
 pages she had turned first, and it was as she hung 
 over them that her stupefaction dawned. It took in 
 truth at the outset a particular form the form of a 
 sharpened wonder at Warren's unnatural piety. Her 
 original surprise had been keen when she had tried 
 to take reasons for granted ; but her original surprise 
 was as nothing to her actual bewilderment. The let 
 ters to Warren had been virtually, she judged, for the 
 family, the great card ; yet if the great card made only 
 that figure what on earth was one to think of the rest 
 of the pack ? 
 
 She pressed on at random and with a sense of rising 
 fever ; she trembled, almost panting, not to be sure 
 too soon ; but wherever she turned she found the 
 prodigy spread. The letters to Warren were an abyss 
 of inanity ; the others followed suit as they could ; 
 the book was surely then a gaping void, the publication 
 a theme for mirth. She so lost herself in uplifting 
 visions as her perception of the scale of the mis 
 take deepened that toward eleven o'clock, when her 
 parlour-maid opened the door, she almost gave the 
 start of guilt surprised. The girl, withdrawing for the 
 night, had come but to mention that, and her mis 
 tress, supremely wide awake and with remembrance 
 kindled, appealed to her, after a blank stare, with 
 intensity. " What have you done with the papers ? " 
 
 " The papers, ma'am ? " 
 
 " All those of this morning don't tell me you've 
 destroyed them ! Quick, quick bring them back." 
 
 The young woman, by a rare chance, hadn't de- 
 188
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE NORTHMORES 
 
 stroyed the public prints ; she presently reappeared 
 with them neatly folded ; and Mrs. Hope, dismissing 
 her with benedictions, had at last in a few minutes 
 taken the time of the day. She saw her impression 
 portentously reflected in the long grey columns. It 
 wasn't then the illusion of her jealousy it was the 
 triumph, unhoped for, of her justice. The reviewers 
 observed a decorum, but frankly, when one came to 
 look, their stupefaction matched her own. What she 
 had taken in the morning for enthusiasm proved mere 
 perfunctory attention, unwarned in advance and 
 seeking an issue for its mystification. The question 
 was, if one liked, asked civilly, yet asked none the 
 less all round : " What could have made Lord North- 
 more's family take him for a letter- writer ? " Pompous 
 and ponderous and at the same time loose and ob 
 scure, he managed by a trick of his own to be both 
 slipshod and stiff. Who in such a case had been 
 primarily responsible and under what strangely be 
 lated advice had a group of persons destitute of wit 
 themselves been thus deplorably led astray ? With 
 fewer accomplices in the preparation it might almost 
 have been assumed that they had been designedly 
 befooled, been elaborately trapped. 
 
 They had at all events committed an error of which 
 the most merciful thing to say. was that, as founded 
 on loyalty, it was touching. These things, in the 
 welcome offered, lay perhaps not quite on the face, 
 but they peeped between the lines and would force 
 their way through on the morrow. The long quota 
 tions given were quotations marked Why ? " Why," 
 in other words, as interpreted by Mrs. Hope, " drag 
 to light such helplessness of expression ? why give 
 the text of his dulness and the proof of his fatuity ? " 
 The victim of the error had certainly been, in his way 
 and day, a useful and remarkable person, but almost 
 any other evidence of the fact might more happily 
 
 189
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE NORTHMORES 
 
 have been adduced. It rolled over her, as she paced 
 her room in the small hours, that the wheel had 
 come full circle. There was after all a rough justice. 
 The monument that had overdarkened her was 
 reared, but it would be within a week the opportunity 
 of every humorist, the derision of intelligent London. 
 Her husband's strange share in it continued, that 
 night, between dreams and vigils, to puzzle her, but 
 light broke with her final waking, which was com 
 fortably late. She opened her eyes to it and, on its star 
 ing straight into them, greeted it with the first laugh 
 that had for a long time passed her lips. How could 
 she idiotically not have guessed ? Warren, playing 
 insidiously the part of a guardian, had done what 
 he had done on purpose ! He had acted to an end 
 long foretasted, and the end the full taste had 
 come. 
 
 190
 
 V 
 
 IT was after this, none the less after the other 
 organs of criticism, including the smoking-rooms of 
 the clubs, the lobbies of the House and the dinner- 
 tables of everywhere, had duly embodied their 
 reserves and vented their irreverence, and the unfor 
 tunate two volumes had ranged themselves, beyond 
 appeal, as a novelty insufficiently curious and prema 
 turely stale it was when this had come to pass that 
 she really felt how beautiful her own chance would 
 now have been and how sweet her revenge. The suc 
 cess of her volumes, for the inevitability of which no 
 body had had an instinct, would have been as great 
 as the failure of Lady Northmore's, for the inevit 
 ability of which everybody had had one. She read 
 over and over her letters and asked herself afresh 
 if the confidence that had preserved them mightn't, 
 at such a crisis, in spite of everything, justify itself. 
 Didn't the discredit to English wit, as it were, 
 proceeding from the uncorrected attribution to an 
 established public character of such mediocrity of 
 thought and form, really demand, for that matter, 
 some such redemptive stroke as the appearance of a 
 collection of masterpieces gathered from a similar 
 walk ? To have such a collection under one's hand 
 and yet sit and see one's self not use it was a torment 
 through which she might well have feared to break 
 down. 
 
 191
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE NORTHMORES 
 
 But there was another thing she might do, not 
 redemptive indeed, but perhaps after all, as matters 
 were going, relevant. She fished out of their nook, 
 after long years, the packet of John Northmore's 
 epistles to herself and, reading them over in the light 
 of his later style, judged them to contain to the full 
 the promise of that inimitability ; felt how they would 
 deepen the impression and how, in the way of the 
 inedit, they constituted her supreme treasure. There 
 was accordingly a terrible week for her in which she 
 itched to put them forth. She composed mentally 
 the preface, brief sweet ironic, presenting her as 
 prompted by an anxious sense of duty to a great re 
 putation and acting upon the sight of laurels so lately 
 gathered. There would naturally be difficulties ; the 
 documents were her own, but the family, bewil 
 dered scared suspicious, figured to her fancy as a 
 dog with a dust-pan tied to its tail and ready for 
 any dash to cover at the sound of the clatter of tin. 
 They would have, she surmised, to be consulted, or, 
 if not consulted, would put in an injunction ; yet, of 
 the two courses, that of scandal braved for the man 
 she had rejected drew her on, while the charm of 
 this vision worked, still further than that of delicacy 
 overridden for the man she had married. 
 
 The vision closed round her and she lingered on 
 the idea fed, as she handled again her faded fat 
 packet, by reperusals more richly convinced. She 
 even took opinions as to the interference open to her 
 old friend's relatives ; took in fact, from this time 
 on, many opinions ; went out anew, picked up old 
 threads, repaired old ruptures, resumed, as it was 
 called, her place in society. She had not been for 
 years so seen of men as during the few weeks that 
 followed the abasement of the Northmores. She 
 called in particular on every one she had cast out 
 after the failure of her appeal. Many of these persons 
 192
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE NORTHMORES 
 
 figured as Lady Northmore's contributors, the un 
 witting agents of the cruel exposure ; they having, 
 it was sufficiently clear, acted in dense good faith. 
 Warren, foreseeing and calculating, might have the 
 benefit of such subtlety, but it wasn't for any one 
 else. With every one else for they did, on facing 
 her, as she said to herself, look like fools she made 
 inordinately free ; putting right and left the question 
 of what in the past years they or their progenitors 
 could have been thinking of. " What on earth had 
 you in mind and where among you were the rudiments 
 of intelligence when you burnt up my husband's 
 priceless letters and clung as for salvation to Lord 
 Northmore's ? You see how you've been saved ! " 
 The weak explanations, the imbecility, as she judged 
 it, of the reasons given, were so much balm to her 
 wound. The great balm, however, she kept to the 
 last : she would go to see Lady Northmore only when 
 she had exhausted all other comfort. That resource 
 would be as supreme as the treasure of the fat packet. 
 She finally went and, by a happy chance, if chance 
 could ever be happy in such a house, was received. 
 She remained half an hour there were other persons 
 present ; and on rising to go knew herself satisfied. 
 She had taken in what she desired, had sounded to 
 the bottom what she saw ; only, unexpectedly, some 
 thing had overtaken her more absolute than the 
 hard need she had obeyed or the vindictive advan 
 tage she had cherished. She had counted on herself 
 for anything rather than pity of these people, yet 
 it was in pity that at the end of ten minutes she felt 
 everything else dissolve. 
 
 They were suddenly, on the spot, transformed for 
 her by the depth of their misfortune, and she saw 
 them, the great Northmores, as of all things 
 consciously weak and flat. She neither made nor 
 encountered an allusion to volumes published or 
 
 193 o
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF THE NORTHMORES 
 
 frustrated ; and so let her arranged inquiry die away 
 that when on separation she kissed her wan sister 
 in widowhood it was not with the kiss of Judas. 
 She had meant to ask lightly if she mightn't have 
 her turn at editing ; but the renunciation with which 
 she re-entered her house had formed itself before she 
 left the room. When she got home indeed she at first 
 only wept wept for the commonness of failure and 
 the strangeness of life. Her tears perhaps brought 
 her a sense of philosophy ; it was all so as broad as it 
 was long. When they were spent, at all events, she 
 took out for the last time the faded fat packet. Sitting 
 down by a receptacle daily emptied for the benefit 
 of the dustman, she destroyed one by one the gems 
 of the collection in which each piece had been a gem. 
 She tore up to the last scrap Lord Northmore's letters. 
 It would never be known now, as regards this series, 
 either that they had been hoarded or that they had 
 been sacrificed. And she was content so to let it rest. 
 On the following day she began another task. She 
 took out her husband's and attacked the business of 
 transcription. She copied them piously, tenderly, 
 and, for the purpose to which she now found herself 
 settled, judged almost no omissions imperative. By 
 
 the time they should be published ! She shook her 
 
 head, both knowingly and resignedly, as to criticism 
 so remote. When her transcript was finished she sent 
 it to a printer to set up, and then, after receiving and 
 correcting proof, and with every precaution for 
 secrecy, had a single copy struck off and the type 
 dispersed under her eyes. Her last act but one or 
 rather perhaps but two was to put these sheets, which, 
 she was pleased to find, would form a volume of three 
 hundred pages, carefully away. Her next was to add 
 to her testamentary instrument a definite provision 
 for the issue, after her death, of such a volume. Her 
 last was to hope that death would come in time. 
 194
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE
 
 GEORGE DANE had opened his eyes to a bright new 
 day, the face of nature well washed by last. night's 
 downpour and shining as with high spirits, good 
 resolutions, lively intentions the great glare of re 
 commencement in short fixed in his patch of sky. 
 He had sat up late to finish work arrears over 
 whelming, then at last had gone to bed with the pile 
 but little reduced. He was now to return to it after 
 the pause of the night ; but he could only look at it, 
 for the time, over the bristling hedge of letters planted 
 by the early postman an hour before and already, on 
 the customary table by the chimney-piece, formally 
 rounded and squared by his systematic servant. It 
 was something too merciless, the domestic perfection 
 of Brown. There were newspapers on another table, 
 ranged with the same rigour of custom, newspapers 
 too many what could any creature want of so much 
 news ? and each with its hand on the neck of the 
 other, so that the row of their bodiless heads was like 
 a series of decapitations. Other journals, other period 
 icals of every sort, folded and in wrappers, made 
 a huddled mound that had been growing for several 
 days and of which he had been wearily, helplessly 
 aware. There were new books, also in wrappers as 
 well as disenveloped and dropped again books from 
 publishers, books from authors, books from friends, 
 books from enemies, books from his own bookseller, 
 
 197
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 who took, it sometimes struck him, inconceivable 
 things for granted. He touched nothing, approached 
 nothing, only turned a heavy eye over the work, as 
 it were, of the night the fact, in his high wide- 
 windowed room, where duty shed its hard light 
 into every corner, of the still unashamed admonitions. 
 It was the old rising tide, and it rose and rose 
 even under a minute's watching. It had been up 
 to his shoulders last night it was up to his chin 
 now. 
 
 Nothing had gone, had passed on while he slept 
 everything had stayed ; nothing, that he could yet 
 feel, had died so naturally, one would have thought ; 
 many things on the contrary had been born. To let 
 them alone, these things, the new things, let them 
 utterly alone and see if that, by chance, wouldn't 
 somehow prove the best way to deal with them : this 
 fancy brushed his face for a moment as a possible 
 solution, just giving it, as so often before, a cool 
 wave of air. Then he knew again as well as ever that 
 leaving was difficult, leaving impossible that the 
 only remedy, the true soft effacing sponge, would 
 be to be left, to be forgotten. There was no footing 
 on which a man who had ever liked life liked it at 
 any rate as he had could now escape it. He must 
 reap as he had sown. It was a thing of meshes ; he had 
 simply gone to sleep under the net and had simply 
 waked up there. The net was too fine ; the cords 
 crossed each other at spots too near together, making 
 at each a little tight hard knot that tired fingers were 
 this morning too limp and too tender to touch. Our 
 poor friend's touched nothing only stole signi 
 ficantly into his pockets as he wandered over to the 
 window and faintly gasped at the energy of nature. 
 What was most overwhelming was that she herself 
 was so ready. She had soothed him rather, the night 
 before, in the small hours by the lamp. From behind 
 198
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 the drawn curtain of his study the rain had been aud 
 ible and in a manner merciful ; washing the window 
 in a steady flood, it had seemed the right thing, the 
 retarding interrupting thing, the thing that, if it 
 would only last, might clear the ground by floating 
 out to a boundless sea the innumerable objects among 
 which his feet stumbled and strayed. He had posi 
 tively laid down his pen as on a sense of friendly 
 pressure from it. The kind full swish had been 
 on the glass when he turned out his lamp ; he had 
 left his phrase unfinished and his papers lying quite 
 as for the flood to bear them away in its rush. But 
 there still on the table were the bare bones of the 
 sentence- and not all of those ; the single thing 
 borne away and that he could never recover was the 
 missing half that might have paired with it and be 
 gotten a figure. 
 
 Yet he could at last only turn back from the win 
 dow ; the world was everywhere, without and within, 
 and the great staring egotism of its health and strength 
 wasn't to be trusted for tact or delicacy. He faced 
 about precisely to meet his servant and the absurd 
 solemnity of two telegrams on a tray. Brown ought 
 to have kicked them into the room then he himself 
 might have kicked them out. 
 
 " And you told me to remind you, sir " 
 
 George Dane was at last angry. " Remind me of 
 nothing ! " 
 
 " But you insisted, sir, that I was to insist ! " 
 He turned away in despair, using a pathetic quaver 
 at absurd variance with his words : "If you insist, 
 Brown, I'll kill you ! " He found himself anew at the 
 window, whence, looking down from his fourth floor, 
 he could see the vast neighbourhood, under the 
 trumpet-blare of the sky, beginning to rush about. 
 There was a silence, but he knew Brown hadn't left 
 him knew exactly how straight and serious and 
 
 199
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 stupid and faithful he stood there. After a minute 
 he heard him again. 
 
 " It's only because, sir, you know, sir, you can't 
 remember 
 
 At this Dane did flash round ; it was more than at 
 such a moment he could bear. " Can't remember, 
 Brown ? I can't forget. That's what's the matter 
 with me." 
 
 Brown looked at him with the advantage of 
 eighteen years of consistency. " I'm afraid you're 
 not well, sir." 
 
 Brown's master thought. " It's a shocking thing 
 to say, but I wish to heaven I weren't ! It would be 
 perhaps an excuse." 
 
 Brown's blankness spread like the desert. " To put 
 them off ? " 
 
 " Ah ! " The sound was a groan ; the plural pro 
 noun, any pronoun, so mistimed. " Who is it ? " 
 
 " Those ladies you spoke of- to luncheon." 
 
 " Oh ! " The poor man dropped into the nearest 
 chair and stared a while at the carpet. It was very 
 complicated. 
 
 " How many will there be, sir ? " Brown asked. 
 
 " Fifty ! " 
 
 " Fifty, sir ? " 
 
 Our friend, from his chair, looked vaguely about ; 
 under his hand were the telegrams, still unopened, 
 one of which he now tore asunder. ' Do hope you 
 sweetly won't mind, to-day, 1.30, my bringing poor 
 dear Lady Mullet, who's so awfully bent,' " he read 
 to his companion. 
 
 His companion weighed it. " How many does she 
 make, sir ? " 
 
 " Poor dear Lady Mullet ? I haven't the least 
 idea." 
 
 " Is she a deformed, sir ? " Brown inquired, as 
 if in this case she might make more. 
 200
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 His master wondered, then saw he figured some per 
 sonal curvature. " No ; she's only bent on coming ! " 
 Dane opened the other telegram and again read out : 
 " ' So sorry it's at eleventh hour impossible, and 
 count on you here, as very greatest favour, at two 
 sharp instead.' ' 
 
 " How many does that make ? " Brown imperturb- 
 ably continued. 
 
 Dane crumpled up the two missives and walked 
 with them to the waste-paper basket, into which he 
 thoughtfully dropped them. ' ' I can't say. You must 
 do it all yourself. I shan't be there." 
 
 It was only on this that Brown showed an expres 
 sion. " You'll go instead ; 
 
 " I'll go instead ! " Dane raved. 
 
 Brown, however, had had occasion to show before 
 that he would never desert their post. " Isn't that 
 rather sacrificing the three ? " Between respect and 
 reproach he paused. 
 
 "Are there three ? " 
 
 " I lay for four in all." 
 
 His master had at any rate caught his thought. 
 " Sacrificing the three to the one, you mean ? Oh 
 I'm not going to her \ " 
 
 Brown's famous " thoroughness " his great virtue 
 had never been so dreadful. " Then where are you 
 going ? " 
 
 Dane sat down to his table and stared at his ragged 
 phrase. " ' There is a happy land far far away ! ' 
 He chanted it like a sick child and knew that for a 
 minute Brown never moved. During this minute he 
 felt between his shoulders the gimlet of criticism. 
 
 " Are you quite sure you're all right ? 
 
 " It's my certainty that overwhelms me, Brown. 
 Look about you and judge. Could anything be more 
 ' right,' in the view of the envious world, than every 
 thing that surrounds us here : that immense array of 
 
 201
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 letters, notes, circulars ; that pile of printers' proofs, 
 magazines and books ; these perpetual telegrams, 
 these impending guests, this retarded unfinished 
 and interminable work ? What could a man want 
 more ? " 
 
 " Do you mean there's too much, sir ? " Brown 
 had sometimes these flashes. 
 
 " There's too much. There's too much. But you 
 can't help it, Brown." 
 
 " No, sir," Brown assented. " Can't you ? " 
 
 ' ' I'm thinking I must see. There are hours ! " 
 
 Yes, there were hours, and this was one of them : he 
 jerked himself up for another turn in his labyrinth, 
 but still not touching, not even again meeting, his 
 admonisher's eye. If he was a genius for any one he 
 was a genius for Brown ; but it was terrible what that 
 meant, being a genius for Brown. There had been 
 times when he had done full justice to the way it kept 
 him up ; now, however, it was almost the worst of the 
 avalanche. " Don't trouble about me," he went on 
 insincerely and looking askance through his window 
 again at the bright and beautiful world. " Perhaps 
 it will rain that may not be over. I do love the 
 rain," he weakly pursued. " Perhaps, better still, it 
 will snow." 
 
 Brown now had indeed a perceptible expression, 
 and the expression was of fear. " Snow, sir the end 
 of May ? " Without pressing this point he looked at 
 his watch. " You'll feel better when you've had 
 breakfast." 
 
 " I dare say," said Dane, whom breakfast struck in 
 fact as a pleasant alternative to opening letters. " I'll 
 come in immediately." 
 
 " But without waiting ? " 
 
 " Waiting for what ? " 
 
 Brown at last, under his apprehension, had his 
 first lapse from logic, which he betrayed by hesitating 
 202
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 in the evident hope his companion might by a flash 
 of remembrance relieve him of an invidious duty. 
 But the only flashes now were the good man's 
 own. " You say you can't forget, sir ; but you do 
 forget " 
 
 "Is it anything very horrible ? " Dane broke in. 
 
 Brown hung fire. " Only the gentleman you told 
 me you had asked 
 
 Dane again took him up ; horrible or not it came 
 back indeed its mere coming back classed it. " To 
 breakfast to-day ? It was to-day ; I see." It came 
 back, yes, came back ; the appointment with the 
 young man he supposed him young whose letter, 
 the letter about what was it ? had struck him. 
 ' Yes, yes ; wait, wait." 
 
 " Perhaps he'll do you good, sir," Brown suggested. 
 
 " Sure to sure to. All right ! " Whatever he 
 might do he would at least prevent some other doing : 
 that was present to our friend as, on the vibration 
 of the electric bell at the door of the flat, Brown 
 moved away. Two things in the short interval that 
 followed were present to Dane : his having utterly 
 forgotten the connexion, the whence, whither and 
 why of his guest ; and his continued disposition not 
 to touch no, not with the finger. Ah if he might 
 never again touch ! All the unbroken seals and 
 neglected appeals lay there while, for a pause he 
 couldn't measure, he stood before the chimney-piece 
 with his hands still in his pockets. He heard a brief 
 exchange of words in the hall, but never afterwards 
 recovered the time taken by Brown to reappear, to 
 precede and announce another person a person 
 whose name somehow failed to reach Dane's ear. 
 Brown went off again to serve breakfast, leaving host 
 and guest confronted. The duration of this first stage 
 also, later on, defied measurement ; but that little 
 mattered, for in the train of what happened came 
 
 203
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 promptly the second, the third, the fourth, the rich 
 succession of the others. Yet what happened was 
 but that Dane took his hand from his pocket, held it 
 straight out and felt it taken. Thus indeed, if he had 
 wanted never again to touch, it was already done. 
 
 204
 
 II 
 
 HE might have been a week in the place the scene 
 of his new consciousness before he spoke at all. 
 The occasion of it then was that one of the quiet 
 figures he had been idly watching drew at last nearer 
 and showed him a face that was the highest expres 
 sion to his pleased but as yet slightly confused 
 perception of the general charm. What was the 
 general charm ? He couldn't, for that matter, easily 
 have phrased it ; it was such an abyss of negatives, 
 such an absence of positives and of everything. The 
 oddity was that after a minute he was struck as by the 
 reflexion of his own very image in this first converser 
 seated with him, on the easy bench, under the high 
 clear portico and above the wide far-reaching garden, 
 where the things that most showed in the greenness 
 were the surface of still water and the white note of 
 old statues. The absence of everything was, in the 
 aspect of the Brother who had thus informally joined 
 him a man of his own age, tired distinguished 
 modest kind^ really, as he could soon see, but the 
 absence of what he didn't want. He didn't want, for 
 the time, anything but just to be there, to steep in the 
 bath. He was in the bath yet, the broad deep bath 
 of stillness. They sat in it together now with the 
 water up to their chins. He hadn't had to talk, he 
 hadn't had to think, he had scarce even had to feel. 
 He had been sunk that way before, sunk when and 
 where ? in another flood ; only a flood of rushing 
 
 205
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 waters in which bumping and gasping were all. This 
 was a current so slow and so tepid that one floated 
 practically without motion and without chill. The 
 break of silence was not immediate, though Dane 
 seemed indeed to feel it begin before a sound passed. 
 It could pass quite sufficiently without words that 
 he and his mate were Brothers, and what that meant. 
 He wondered, but with no want of ease for want 
 of ease was impossible if his friend found in him 
 the same likeness, the proof of peace, the gage of 
 what the place could do. The long afternoon crept 
 to its end ; the shadows fell further and the sky glowed 
 deeper ; but nothing changed nothing could change 
 in the element itself. It was a conscious security. 
 It was wonderful ! Dane had lived into it, but he was 
 still immensely aware. He would have been sorry 
 to lose that, for just this fact as yet, the blest fact of 
 consciousness, seemed the greatest thing of all. Its 
 only fault was that, being in itself such an occupation, 
 so fine an unrest in the heart of gratitude, the life of 
 the day all went to it. But what even then was the 
 harm ? He had come only to come, to take what he 
 found. This was the part where the great cloister, 
 enclosed externally on three sides and probably the 
 largest lightest fairest effect, to his charmed sense, 
 that human hands could ever have expressed in 
 dimensions of length and breadth, opened to the 
 south its splendid fourth quarter, turned to the great 
 view an outer gallery that combined with the rest of 
 the portico to form a high dry loggia, such as he a 
 little pretended to himself he had, in the Italy of old 
 days, seen in old cities, old convents, old villas. This 
 recalled disposition of some great abode of an Order, 
 some mild Monte Cassino, some Grande Chartreuse 
 more accessible, was his main term of comparison ; 
 but he knew he had really never anywhere beheld 
 anything at once so calculated and so generous. 
 206
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 Three impressions in particular had been with him 
 all the week, and he could but recognise in silence 
 their happy effect on his nerves. How it was all man 
 aged he couldn't have told he had been content, 
 moreover, till now with his ignorance of cause and 
 pretext ; but whenever he chose to listen with a certain 
 intentness he made out as from a distance the sound 
 of slow sweet bells. How could they be so far and yet 
 so audible ? How could they be so near and yet so 
 faint ? How above all could they, in such an arrest 
 of life, be, to time things, so frequent ? The very 
 essence of the bliss of Dane's whole change had been 
 precisely that there was nothing now to time. It was 
 the same with the slow footsteps that, always within 
 earshot to the vague attention, marked the space and 
 the leisure, seemed, in long cool arcades, lightly to 
 fall and perpetually to recede. This was the second 
 impression, and it melted into the third, as, for that 
 matter, every form of softness, in the great good place, 
 was but a further turn, without jerk or gap, of the 
 endless roll of serenity. The quiet footsteps were 
 quiet figures ; the quiet figures that, to the eye, kept 
 the picture human and brought its perfection within 
 reach. This perfection, he felt on the bench by his 
 friend, was now more within reach than ever. His 
 friend at last turned to him a look different from the 
 looks of friends in London clubs. 
 
 " The thing was to find it out ! " 
 
 It was extraordinary how this remark fitted into 
 his thought. " Ah wasn't it ? And when I think," 
 said Dane, "of all the people who haven't and who 
 never will ! " He sighed over these unfortunates with 
 a tenderness that, in its degree, was practically new 
 to him, feeling too how well his companion would 
 know the people he meant. He only meant some, but 
 they were all who'd want it ; though of these, no 
 doubt well, for reasons, for things that, in the 
 
 207
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 world, he had observed there would never be too 
 many. Not all perhaps who wanted would really find ; 
 but none at least would find who didn't really want. 
 And then what the need would have to have been 
 first ! What it at first had had to be for himself ! He 
 felt afresh, in the light of his companion's face, what 
 it might still be even when deeply satisfied, as well as 
 what communication was established by the mere 
 common knowledge of it. 
 
 " Every man must arrive by himself and on his 
 own feet isn't that so ? We're Brothers here for 
 the time, as in a great monastery, and we immediately 
 think of each other and recognise each other as such ; 
 but we must have first got here as we can, and we 
 meet after long journeys by complicated ways. More 
 over, we meet don't we ? with closed eyes." 
 
 " Ah don't speak as if we were dead ! " Dane 
 laughed. 
 
 " I shan't mind death if it's like this," his friend 
 replied. 
 
 It was too obvious, as Dane gazed before him, that 
 one wouldn't ; but after a moment he asked with 
 the first articulation as yet of his most elementary 
 wonder : " Where is it ? " 
 
 " I shouldn't be surprised if it were much nearer 
 than one ever suspected." 
 
 " Nearer ' town,' do you mean ? " 
 
 " Nearer everything nearer every one." 
 
 George Dane thought. " Would it be somewhere 
 for instance down in Surrey ? " 
 
 His Brother met him on this with a shade of reluct 
 ance. " Why should we call it names ? It must have 
 a climate, you see." 
 
 " Yes, "Dane happily mused; "without that ! " 
 
 All it so securely did have overwhelmed him again, 
 and he couldn't help breaking out : " What is it ? " 
 
 " Oh it's positively a part of our ease and our rest 
 208
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 and our change, I think, that we don't at all know 
 and that we may really call it, for that matter, any 
 thing in the world we like the thing for instance 
 we love it most for being." 
 
 " I know what / call it," said Dane after a moment. 
 Then as his friend listened with interest : " Just simply 
 ' The Great Good Place.' ' 
 
 " I see what can you say more ? I've put it to 
 myself perhaps a little differently." They sat there 
 as innocently as small boys confiding to each other 
 the names of toy animals. " ' The Great Want 
 Met.' " 
 
 " Ah yes that's it ! " 
 
 " Isn't it enough for us that it's a place carried on 
 for our benefit so admirably that we strain our ears 
 in vain for a creak of the machinery ! Isn't it enough 
 for us that it's simply a thorough hit ? " 
 
 " Ah a hit ! " Dane benignantly murmured. 
 
 " It does for Us what it pretends to do," his com 
 panion went on ; " the mystery isn't deeper than that. 
 The thing's probably simple enough in fact, and on 
 a thoroughly practical basis ; only it has had its origin 
 in a splendid thought, in a real stroke of genius." 
 
 ' Yes," Dane returned, " in a sense on somebody 
 or other's part so exquisitely personal ! " 
 
 " Precisely it rests, like all good things, on ex 
 perience. The ' great want ' comes home that's 
 the great thing it does ! On the day it came home 
 to the right mind this dear place was constituted. 
 It always moreover in the long run has been met 
 it always must be. How can it not require to be, 
 more and more, as pressure of every sort grows ? " 
 
 Dane, with his hands folded in his lap, took in 
 these words of wisdom. " Pressure of every sort is 
 growing ! " he placidly observed. 
 
 " I see well enough what that fact has done to you," 
 his Brother declared. 
 
 209 p
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 Dane smiled. " I couldn't have borne it longer. 
 I don't know what would have become of me." 
 
 " I know what would have become of me." 
 
 " Well, it's the same thing." 
 
 " Yes," said Dane's companion, " it's doubtless the 
 same thing." On which they sat in silence a little, 
 seeming pleasantly to follow, in the view of the green 
 garden, the vague movements of the monster mad 
 ness, surrender, collapse they had escaped. Their 
 bench was like a box at the opera. " And I may per 
 fectly, you know," the Brother pursued, " have seen 
 you before. I may even have known you well. We 
 don't know." 
 
 They looked at each other again serenely enough, 
 and at last Dane said : " No, we don't know." 
 
 " That's what I meant by our coming with our 
 eyes closed. Yes there's something out. There's 
 a gap, a link missing, the great hiatus ! " the Brother 
 laughed. " It's as simple a story as the old old 
 rupture the break that lucky Catholics have always 
 been able to make, that they're still, with their in 
 numerable religious houses, able to make, by going 
 into ' retreat.' I don't speak of the pious exercises 
 I speak only of the material simplification. I don't 
 speak of the putting off of one's self ; I speak only 
 if one has a self worth sixpence of the getting it 
 back. The place, the time, the way were, for those 
 of the old persuasion, always there are indeed 
 practically there for them as much as ever. They 
 can always get off the blessed houses receive. So 
 it was high time that we we of the great Protestant 
 peoples, still more, if possible, in the sensitive indi 
 vidual case, overscored and overwhelmed^ still more 
 congested with mere quantity and prostituted, through 
 our ' enterprise,' to mere profanity should learn 
 how to get off, should find somewhere our retreat and 
 remedy. There was such a huge chance for it ! " 
 210
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 Dane laid his hand on his companion's arm. " It's 
 charming how when we speak for ourselves we speak 
 for each other. That was exactly what I said ! " He 
 had fallen to recalling from over the gulf the last 
 occasion. 
 
 The Brother, as if it would do them both good, only 
 desired to draw him out. " What you ' said ' ? " 
 
 " To him that morning." Dane caught a far bell 
 again and heard a slow footstep. A quiet presence 
 passed somewhere neither of them turned to look. 
 What was little by little more present to him was 
 the perfect taste. It was supreme it was every 
 where. " I just dropped my burden and he re 
 ceived it." 
 
 " And was it very great ? " 
 
 " Oh such a load ! " Dane said with gaiety. 
 
 " Trouble, sorrow, doubt ? " 
 
 " Oh no worse than that ! " 
 
 " Worse ? " 
 
 " ' Success ' the vulgarest kind ! " He mentioned 
 it now as with amusement. 
 
 " Ah I know that too ! No one in future, as things 
 are going, will be able to face success." 
 
 " Without something of this sort never. The 
 better it is the worse the greater the deadlier. But 
 my one pain here," Dane continued, " is in thinking 
 of my poor friend." 
 
 " The person to whom you've already alluded ? " 
 
 He tenderly assented. "My substitute in the world. 
 Such an unutterable benefactor. He turned up that 
 morning when everything had somehow got on my 
 nerves, when the whole great globe indeed, nerves or 
 no nerves, seemed to have appallingly squeezed itself 
 into my study and to be bent on simply swelling there. 
 It wasn't a question of nerves, it was a mere question 
 of the dislodgement and derangement of everything 
 of a general submersion by our eternal too much. 
 
 211
 
 THE GREAT QOOD PLACE 
 
 >v 
 
 I didn't know ou donner de la tete I couldn't have 
 gone a step further." 
 
 The intelligence with which the Brother listened 
 kept them as children feeding from the same bowl. 
 " And then you got the tip ? " 
 
 " I got the tip ! " Dane happily sighed. 
 
 " Well, we ah 1 get it. But I dare say differently." 
 
 " Then how did you ? " 
 
 The Brother hesitated, smiling. " You tell me 
 first." 
 
 212
 
 Ill 
 
 " WELL," said George Dane, " it was a young man 
 I had never seen a man at any rate much younger 
 than myself who had written to me and sent me 
 some article, some book. I read the stuff, was much 
 struck with it, told him so and thanked him on 
 which of course I heard from him again. Ah that ! " 
 Dane comically sighed. " He asked me things his 
 questions were interesting ; but to save time and writ 
 ing I said to him : ' Come to see me we can talk a 
 little ; but all I can give you is half an hour at break 
 fast.' He arrived to the minute on a day when more 
 than ever in my life before I seemed, as it happened, 
 in the endless press and stress, to have lost posses 
 sion of my soul and to be surrounded only with the 
 affairs of other people, smothered in mere irrelevant 
 importunity. It made me literally ill made me feel 
 as I had never felt that should I once really for an 
 hour lose hold of the thing itself, the thing that did 
 matter and that I was trying for, I should never re 
 cover it again. The wild waters would close over me 
 and I should drop straight to the dark depths where 
 the vanquished dead lie." 
 
 " I follow you every step of your way," said the 
 friendly Brother. " The wild waters, you mean, of 
 our horrible time." 
 
 " Of our horrible time precisely. Not of course 
 as we sometimes dream of any other." 
 
 213
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 " Yes, any other's only a dream. We really know 
 none but our own." 
 
 " No, thank God that's enough," Dane con 
 tentedly smiled. " Well, my young man turned up, 
 and I hadn't been a minute in his presence before 
 making out that practically it would be in him some 
 how or other to help me. He came to me with envy, 
 envy extravagant really passionate. I was, heaven 
 save us, the great ' success ' for him ; he himself was 
 starved and broken and beaten. How can I say what 
 passed between us ? it was so strange, so swift, 
 so much a matter, from one to the other, of instant 
 perception and agreement. He was so clever and 
 haggard and hungry ! " 
 
 " Hungry ? " the Brother asked. 
 
 " I don't mean for bread, though he had none too 
 much, I think, even of that. I mean for well, what 
 7 had and what I was a monument of to him as I 
 stood there up to my neck in preposterous evidence. 
 He, poor chap, had been for ten years serenading 
 closed windows and had never yet caused a shutter 
 to show that it stirred. My dim blind was the first 
 raised to him an inch ; my reading of his book, my 
 impression of it, my note and my invitation, formed 
 literally the only response ever dropped into his dark 
 alley. He saw in my littered room, my shattered 
 day, my bored face and spoiled temper it's embar 
 rassing, but I must tell you the very proof of my 
 pudding, the very blaze of my glory. And he saw in 
 my repletion and my ' renown ' deluded innocent ! 
 what he had yearned for in vain." 
 
 " What he had yearned for was to be you," said the 
 Brother. Then he added : " I see where you're 
 coming out." 
 
 " At my saying to him by the end of five minutes : 
 ' My dear fellow, I wish you'd just try it wish 
 you'd for a while just be me !-' You go straight to 
 214
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 the mark, good Brother, and that was exactly what 
 occurred extraordinary though it was that we 
 should both have understood. I saw what he could 
 give, and he did too. He saw moreover what I could 
 take ; in fact what he saw was wonderful." 
 
 " He must be very remarkable ! " Dane's converser 
 laughed. 
 
 " There's no doubt of it whatever far more re 
 markable than I. That's just the reason why what 
 I put to him in joke with a fantastic desperate 
 irony became, in his hands, with his vision of his 
 chance, the blessed means and measure of my sitting 
 on this spot in your company. ' Oh if I could just 
 shift it all make it straight over for an hour to 
 other shoulders ! If there only were a pair ! ' that's 
 the way I put it to him. And then at something in 
 his face, ' Would you, by a miracle, undertake it ? ' 
 I asked. I let him know all it meant how it meant 
 that he should at that very moment step in. It meant 
 that he should finish my work and open my letters 
 and keep my engagements and be subject, for better 
 or worse, to my contacts and complications. It meant 
 that he should live with my life and think with my 
 brain and write with my hand and speak with my 
 voice. It meant above all that I should get off. He 
 accepted with greatness rose to it like a hero. 
 Only he said : ' What will become of you ? ' 
 
 " There was the rub ! " the Brother admitted. 
 
 " Ah but only for a minute. He came to my help 
 again," Dane pursued, " when he saw I couldn't 
 quite meet that, could at least only say that I wanted 
 to think, wanted to cease, wanted to do the thing itself 
 the thing that mattered and that I was trying for, 
 miserable me, and that thing only and therefore 
 wanted first of all really to see it again, planted out, 
 crowded out, frozen out as it now so long had been. 
 ' I know what you want,' he after a moment quietly 
 
 215
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 remarked to me. ' Ah what I want doesn't exist ! ' 
 ' I know what you want/ he repeated. At that I 
 began to believe him." 
 
 " Had you any idea yourself ? " the Brother's 
 attention breathed. 
 
 " Oh yes," said Dane, " and i.t was just my idea that 
 made me despair. There it was as sharp as possible 
 in my imagination and my longing there it was so 
 utterly not in the fact. We were sitting together on my 
 sofa as we waited for breakfast. He presently laid his 
 hand on my knee showed me a face that the sudden 
 great light in it had made, for me, indescribably 
 beautiful. ' It exists it exists,' he at last said. 
 And so I remember we sat a while and looked at each 
 other, with the final effect of my finding that I ab 
 solutely believed him. I remember we weren't at 
 all solemn we smiled with the joy of discoverers. 
 He was as glad as I he was tremendously glad. 
 That came out in the whole manner of his reply 
 to the appeal that broke from me : ' Where is it 
 then in God's name ? Tell me without delay where 
 it is ! ' " 
 
 The Brother had bent such a sympathy ! " He 
 gave you the address ? " 
 
 " He was thinking it out feeling for it, catching 
 it. He has a wonderful head of his own and must 
 be making of the whole thing, while we sit here patch 
 ing and gossiping, something much better than ever 
 / did. The mere sight of his face, the sense of his 
 hand on my knee, made me, after a little, feel that he 
 not only knew what I wanted but was getting nearer 
 to it than I could have got in ten years. He suddenly 
 sprang up and went over to my study-table sat 
 straight down there as if to write me my prescription 
 or my passport. Then it was at the mere sight of 
 his back, which was turned to me that I felt the 
 spell work. I simply sat and watched him with 
 216
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 the queerest deepest sweetest sense in the world 
 the sense of an ache that had stopped. All life was 
 lifted ; I myself at least was somehow off the ground. 
 He was already where I had been." 
 
 " And where were you ? " the Brother amusedly 
 asked. 
 
 " Just on the sofa always, leaning back on the 
 cushion and feeling a delicious ease. He was already 
 me." 
 
 " And who were you ? " the Brother continued. 
 
 " Nobody. That was the fun." 
 
 " That is the fun," said the Brother with a sigh 
 like soft music. 
 
 Dane echoed the sigh, and, as nobody talking with 
 nobody, they sat there together still and watched the 
 sweet wide picture darken into tepid night. 
 
 217
 
 IV 
 
 AT the end of three weeks so far as time was dis 
 tinct Dane began to feel there was something he 
 had recovered. It was the thing they never named 
 partly for want of the need and partly for lack of 
 the word ; for what indeed was the description that 
 would cover it all ? The only real need was to know 
 it, to see it in silence. Dane had a private practical 
 sign for it, which, however, he had appropriated by 
 theft " the vision and the faculty divine." That 
 doubtless was a flattering phrase for his idea of his 
 genius ; the genius was at all events what he had 
 been in danger of losing and had at last held by a 
 thread that might at any moment have broken. The 
 change was that little by little his hold had grown 
 firmer, so that he drew in the line more and more 
 each day with a pull he was delighted to find 
 it would bear. The mere dream-sweetness of the 
 place was superseded ; it was more and more a world 
 of reason and order, of sensible visible arrangement. 
 It ceased to be strange it was high triumphant 
 clearness. He cultivated, however, but vaguely the 
 question of where he was, finding it near enough the 
 mark to be almost sure that if he wasn't in Kent 
 he was then probably in Hampshire. He paid for 
 everything but that that wasn't one of the items. 
 Payment, he had soon learned, was definite ; it con 
 sisted of sovereigns and shillings just like those of 
 218
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 the world he had left, only parted with more ecstatic 
 ally that he committed, in his room, to a fixed 
 receptacle and that were removed in his absence by 
 one of the unobtrusive effaced agents (shadows pro 
 jected on the hours like the noiseless march of the 
 sundial) that were always at work. The scene had 
 whole sides that reminded and resembled, and a 
 pleased resigned perception of these things was at 
 once the effect and the cause of its grace. 
 
 Dane picked out of his dim past a dozen halting 
 similes. The sacred silent convent was one ; another 
 was the bright country-house. He did the place no 
 outrage to liken it to an hotel ; he permitted himself 
 on occasion to feel it suggest a club. Such images, 
 however, but flickered and went out they lasted 
 only long enough to light up the difference. An hotel 
 without noise, a club without newspapers when he 
 turned his face to what it was " without " the view 
 opened wide: The only approach to a real analogy 
 was in himself and his companions. They were 
 brothers, guests, members ; they were even, if one 
 liked and they didn't in the least mind what 
 they were called " regular boarders." It wasn't 
 they who made the conditions, it was the conditions 
 that made them. These conditions found themselves 
 accepted, clearly, with an appreciation, with a rap 
 ture, it was rather to be called, that proceeded, as the 
 very air that pervaded them and the force that sus 
 tained, from their quiet and noble assurance. They 
 combined to form the large simple idea of a general 
 refuge an image of embracing arms, of liberal ac 
 commodation. What was the effect really but the 
 poetisation by perfect taste of a type common enough ? 
 There was no daily miracle ; the perfect taste, with 
 the aid of space, did the trick. What underlay and 
 overhung it all, better yet, Dane mused, was some 
 original inspiration, but confirmed, unquenched, some 
 
 219
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 happy thought of an individual breast. It had been 
 born somehow and somewhere it had had to insist 
 on being the blest conception. The author might 
 remain in the obscure, for that was part of the perfec 
 tion : personal service so hushed and regulated that 
 you scarce caught it in the act and only knew it by 
 its results. Yet the wise mind was everywhere the 
 whole thing infallibly centred at the core in a con 
 sciousness. And what a consciousness it had been, 
 Dane thought, a consciousness how like his own ! 
 The wise mind had felt, the wise mind had suffered ; 
 then, for all the worried company of minds, the wise 
 mind had seen a chance. Of the creation thus arrived 
 at you could none the less never have said if it 
 were the last echo of the old or the sharpest note of 
 the modern. 
 
 Dane again and again, among the far bells and 
 the soft footfalls, in cool cloister and warm garden, 
 found himself wanting not to know more and yet 
 liking not to know less. It was part of the high style 
 and the grand manner that there was no personal 
 publicity, much less any personal reference. Those 
 things were in the world in what he had left ; there 
 was no vulgarity here of credit or claim or fame. The 
 real exquisite was to be without the complication of 
 an identity, and the greatest boon of all, doubtless, 
 the solid security, the clear confidence one could feel 
 in the keeping of the contract. That was what had 
 been most in the wise mind the importance of the 
 absolute sense, on the part of its beneficiaries, that 
 what was offered was guaranteed. They had no 
 concern but to pay the wise mind knew what they 
 paid for. It was present to Dane each hour that he 
 could never be overcharged. Oh the deep deep 
 bath, the soft cool plash in the stillness ! this, 
 time after time, as if under regular treatment, a 
 sublimated German " cure," was the vivid name 
 220
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 for his luxury. The inner life woke up again, and 
 it was the inner life, for people of his generation, 
 victims of the modern madness, mere maniacal ex 
 tension and motion, that was returning health. He 
 had talked of independence and written of it, but 
 what a cold flat word it had been ! This was the word 
 less fact itself - the uncontested possession of the 
 long sweet stupid day. The fragrance of flowers just 
 wandered through the void, and the quiet recurrence 
 of delicate plain fare in a high clean refectory where 
 the soundless simple service was a triumph of art. 
 That, as he analysed, remained the constant explana 
 tion : all the sweetness and serenity were created 
 calculated things. He analysed, however, but in a 
 desultory way and with a positive delight in the re 
 siduum of mystery that made for the great agent in 
 the background the innermost shrine of the idol of a 
 temple ; there were odd moments for it, mild medita 
 tions when, in the broad cloister of peace or some 
 garden-nook where the air was light, a special 
 glimpse of beauty or reminder of felicity seemed, in 
 passing, to hover and linger. In the mere ecstasy of 
 change that had at first possessed him he hadn't 
 discriminated had only let himself sink, as I have 
 mentioned, down to hushed depths. Then had come 
 the slow soft stages of intelligence and notation, more 
 marked and more fruitful perhaps after that long talk 
 with his mild mate in the twilight, and seeming to 
 wind up the process by putting the key into his hand. 
 This key, pure gold, was simply the cancelled list. 
 Slowly and blissfully he read into the general wealth 
 of his comfort all the particular absences of which 
 it was composed. One by one he touched, as it were, 
 all the things it was such rapture to be without. 
 
 It was the paradise of his own room that was most 
 indebted to them a great square fair chamber, 
 all beautified with omissions, from which, high up, 
 
 221
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 he looked over a long valley to a far horizon, and in 
 which he was vaguely and pleasantly reminded of 
 some old Italian picture, some Carpaccio or some 
 early Tuscan, the representation of a world without 
 newspapers and letters, without telegrams and photo 
 graphs, without the dreadful fatal too much. There, 
 for a blessing, he could read and write ; there above all 
 he could do nothing he could live. And there were 
 all sorts of freedoms always, for the occasion, the 
 particular right one. He could bring a book from the 
 library he could bring two, he could bring three. 
 An effect produced by the charming place was that 
 for some reason he never wanted to bring more. The 
 library was a benediction high and clear and plain 
 like everything else, but with something, in all its 
 arched amplitude, unconfused and brave and gay. 
 He should never forget, he knew, the throb of immedi 
 ate perception with which he first stood there, a single 
 glance round sufficing so to show him that it would 
 give him what for years he had desired. He had not 
 had detachment, but there was detachment here 
 the sense of a great silver bowl from which he could 
 ladle up the melted hours. He strolled about from 
 wall to wall, too pleasantly in tune on that occasion 
 to sit down punctually or to choose ; only recognising 
 from shelf to shelf every dear old book that he had had 
 to put off or never returned to ; every deep distinct 
 voice of another time that in the hubbub of the world 
 he had had to take for lost and unheard. He came 
 back of course soon, came back every day ; enjoyed 
 there, of all the rare strange moments, those that were 
 at once most quickened and most caught moments 
 in which every apprehension counted double and every 
 act of the mind was a lover's embrace. It was the 
 quarter he perhaps, as the days went on, liked best ; 
 though indeed it only shared with the rest of the place, 
 with every aspect to which his face happened to be 
 
 222
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 turned, the power to remind him of the masterly 
 general care. 
 
 There were times when he looked up from his book 
 to lose himself in the mere tone of the picture that 
 never failed at any moment or at any angle. The 
 picture was always there, yet was made up of things 
 common enough. It was in the way an open window 
 in a broad recess let in the pleasant morning ; in the 
 way the dry air pricked into faint freshness the gilt 
 of old bindings ; in the way an empty chair beside a 
 table unlittered showed a volume just laid down ; in 
 the way a happy Brother- as detached as one's self 
 and with his innocent back presented lingered 
 before a shelf with the slow sound of turned pages. 
 It was a part of the whole impression that, by some 
 extraordinary law, one's vision seemed less from the 
 facts than the facts from one's vision ; that the ele 
 ments were determined at the moment by the mo 
 ment's need or the moment's sympathy. What most 
 prompted this reflexion was the degree in which Dane 
 had after a while a consciousness of company. After 
 that talk with the good Brother on the bench there 
 were other good Brothers in other places always 
 in cloister or garden some figure that stopped if he 
 himself stopped and with which a greeting became, 
 in the easiest way in the world, a sign of the diffused 
 amenity and the consecrating ignorance. For always, 
 always, in all contacts, was the balm of a happy blank. 
 What he had felt the first time recurred : the friend 
 was always new and yet at the same time it was 
 amusing, not disturbing suggested the possibility 
 that he might be but an old one altered. That was 
 only delightful as positively delightful in the par 
 ticular, the actual conditions as it might have been 
 the reverse in the conditions abolished. These others, 
 the abolished, came back to Dane at last so easily 
 that he could exactly measure each difference, but 
 
 223
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 with what he had finally been hustled on to hate in 
 them robbed of its terror in consequence of something 
 that had happened. What had happened was that 
 in tranquil walks and talks the deep spell had worked 
 and he had got his soul again. He had drawn in by 
 this time, with his lightened hand, the whole of the 
 long line, and that fact just dangled at the end. He 
 could put his other hand on it, he could unhook it, 
 he was once more in possession. This, as it befell, was 
 exactly what he supposed he must have said to a com 
 rade beside whom, one afternoon in the cloister, he 
 found himself measuring steps. 
 
 " Oh it comes comes of itself, doesn't it, thank 
 goodness ? just by the simple fact of finding room 
 and time ! " 
 
 The comrade was possibly a novice or in a different 
 stage from his own ; there was at any rate a vague 
 envy in the recognition that shone out of the fatigued 
 yet freshened face. " It has come to you then ? 
 you've got what you wanted ? " That was the gossip 
 and interchange that could pass to and fro. Dane, 
 years before, had gone in for three months of hydro 
 pathy, and there was a droll echo, in this scene, of 
 the old questions of the water-cure, the questions 
 asked in the periodical pursuit of the " reaction " 
 the ailment, the progress of each, the action of the 
 skin and the state of the appetite. Such memories 
 worked in now ah 1 familiar reference, all easy play 
 of mind ; and among them our friends, round and 
 round, fraternised ever so softly till, suddenly stopping 
 short, Dane, with a hand on his companion's arm, 
 broke into the happiest laugh he had yet sounded. 
 
 224
 
 " WHY it's raining ! " And he stood and looked at the 
 splash of the shower and the shine of the wet leaves. 
 It was one of the summer sprinkles that bring out 
 sweet smells. 
 
 " Yes -but why not ? " his mate demanded. 
 
 " Well because it's so charming. It's so exactly 
 right." 
 
 " But everything is. Isn't that just why we're 
 here ? " 
 
 " Just exactly," Dane said ; " only I've been living 
 in the beguiled supposition that we've somehow or 
 other a climate." 
 
 " So have I, so I daresay has every one. Isn't that 
 the blest moral ? that we live in beguiled supposi 
 tions. They come so easily here, where nothing con 
 tradicts them." The good Brother looked placidly 
 forth Dane could identify his phase. " A climate 
 doesn't consist in its never raining, does it ? " 
 
 " No, I daresay not. But somehow the good I've 
 got has been half the great easy absence of all that 
 friction of which the question of weather mostly forms 
 a part has been indeed largely the great easy per 
 petual air-bath." 
 
 " Ah yes that's not a delusion ; but perhaps the 
 sense comes a little from our breathing an emptier 
 medium. There are fewer things in it ! Leave people 
 alone, at all events, and the air's what they take to. 
 
 225 Q
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 Into the closed and the stuffy they have to be driven. 
 I've had too I think we must all have a fond 
 sense of the south." 
 
 " But imagine it," said Dane, laughing, " in the 
 beloved British islands and so near as we are to 
 Bradford ! " 
 
 His friend was ready enough to imagine. " To 
 Bradford ? " he asked, quite unperturbed. " How 
 near ? " 
 
 Dane's gaiety grew. " Oh it doesn't matter ! " 
 
 His friend, quite unmystified, accepted it. " There 
 are things to puzzle out otherwise it would be dull. 
 It seems to me one can puzzle them." 
 
 " It's because we're so well disposed," Dane said. 
 
 " Precisely we find good in everything." 
 
 " In everything," Dane went on. " The conditions 
 settle that they determine us." 
 
 They resumed their stroll, which evidently repre 
 sented on the good Brother's part infinite agreement. 
 " Aren't they probably in fact very simple ? " he pre 
 sently inquired. " Isn't simplification the secret ? " 
 
 " Yes, but applied with a tact ! " 
 
 " There it is. The thing's so perfect that it's open 
 to as many interpretations as any other great work 
 a poem of Goethe, a dialogue of Plato, a symphony 
 of Beethoven." 
 
 " It simply stands quiet, you mean," said Dane, 
 " and lets us call it names ? " 
 
 " Yes, but all such loving ones. We're ' staying ' 
 with some one some delicious host or hostess who 
 never shows." 
 
 " It's liberty-hall absolutely," Dane assented. 
 
 " Yes or a convalescent home." 
 
 To this, however, Dane demurred. " Ah that, it 
 seems to me, scarcely puts it. You weren't ill 
 were you ? I'm very sure / really wasn't. I was 
 only, as the world goes, too ' beastly well ' ! " 
 226
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 The good Brother wondered. " But if we couldn't 
 keep it up ? " 
 
 " We couldn't keep it down that was all the 
 matter ! " 
 
 " I see I see." The good Brother sighed con 
 tentedly ; after which he brought out again with 
 kindly humour : " It's a sort of kindergarten ! " 
 
 " The next thing you'll be saying that we're babes 
 at the breast ! " 
 
 " Of some great mild "invisible mother who 
 stretches away into space and whose lap's the whole 
 valley ? " 
 
 " And her bosom " Dane completed the figure 
 " the noble eminence of our hill ? That will do ; 
 anything will do that covers the essential fact." 
 
 " And what do you call the essential fact ? " 
 
 " Why that -as in old days on Swiss lakesides 
 we're en pension." 
 
 The good Brother took this gently up'. " I remem 
 ber -I remember : seven francs a day without wine ! 
 But alas it's more than seven francs here." 
 
 " Yes, it's considerably more," Dane had to con 
 fess. " Perhaps it isn't particularly cheap." 
 
 ' Yet should you call it particularly dear ? " his 
 friend after a moment inquired. 
 
 George Dane had to think. " How do I know, after 
 all ? What practice has one ever had in estimating 
 the inestimable ? Particular cheapness certainly isn't 
 the note we feel struck all round ; but don't we fall 
 naturally into the view that there must be a price to 
 anything so awfully sane ? " 
 
 The good Brother in his turn reflected. " We fall 
 into the view that it must pay that it does pay." 
 
 " Oh yes ; it does pay ! " Dane eagerly echoed. 
 " If it didn't it wouldn't last. It has got to last of 
 course ! " he declared. 
 
 " So that we can come back ? " 
 227
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 " Yes think of knowing that we shall be able to ! " 
 
 They pulled up again at this and, facing each other, 
 thought of it, or at any rate pretended to ; for what 
 was really in their eyes was the dread of a loss of the 
 clue. " Oh when we want it again we shall find it," 
 said the good Brother. " If the place really pays it 
 will keep on." 
 
 " Yes, that's the beauty ; that it isn't, thank good 
 ness, carried on only for love." 
 
 " No doubt, no doubt ; and yet, thank goodness, 
 there's love in it too." They had lingered as if, in the 
 mild moist air, they were charmed with the patter of 
 the rain and the way the garden drank it. After a 
 little, however, it did look rather as if they were trying 
 to talk each other out of a faint small fear. They saw 
 the increasing rage of life and the recurrent need, and 
 they wondered proportionately whether to return to 
 the front when their hour should sharply strike would 
 be the end of the dream. Was this a threshold per 
 haps, after all, that could only be crossed one way ? 
 They must return to the front sooner or later that 
 was certain : for each his hour would strike. The 
 flower would have been gathered and the trick played 
 the sands would in short have run. 
 
 There, in its place, was life with all its rage ; the 
 vague unrest of the need for action knew it again, 
 the stir of the faculty that had been refreshed and 
 reconsecrated. They seemed each, thus confronted, 
 to close their eyes a moment for dizziness ; then they 
 were again at peace and the Brother's confidence 
 rang out. " Oh we shall meet ! " 
 
 " Here, do you mean ? " 
 
 " Yes and I daresay in the world too." 
 
 " But we shan't recognise or know," said Dane. 
 
 " In the world, do you mean ? " 
 
 " Neither in the world nor here." 
 
 " Not a bit not the least little bit, you think ? " 
 228
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 Dane turned it over. " Well, so is it that it 
 seems to me all best to hang together. But we shall 
 see." 
 
 His friend happily concurred. " We shall see." 
 And at this, for farewell, the Brother held out his 
 hand. 
 
 " You're going ? " Dane asked. 
 
 " No, but I thought you were." 
 
 It was odd, but at this Dane's hour seemed to 
 strike his consciousness to crystallise. " Well, I am. 
 I've got it. - You stay ? " he went on. 
 
 " A little longer." 
 
 Dane hesitated. " You haven't yet got it ? " 
 
 " Not altogether but I think it's coming." 
 
 " Good ! " Dane kept his hand, giving it a final 
 shake, and at that moment the sun glimmered again 
 through the shower, but with the rain still falling on 
 the hither side of it and seeming to patter even more 
 in the brightness. " Hallo how charming ! " 
 
 The Brother looked a moment from under the high 
 arch then again turned his face to our friend. He 
 gave this time his longest happiest sigh. " Oh it's 
 all right ! " 
 
 But why was it, Dane after a moment found him 
 self wondering, that in the act of separation his own 
 hand was so long retained ? Why but through a queer 
 phenomenon of change, on the spot, in his compan 
 ion's face change that gave it another, but an in 
 creasing and above all a much more familiar identity, 
 an identity not beautiful, but more and more distinct, 
 an identity with that of his servant, with the most 
 conspicuous, the physiognomic seat of the public 
 propriety of Brown ? To this anomaly his eyes slowly 
 opened ; it was not his good Brother, it was verily 
 Brown who possessed his hand. If his eyes had to 
 open it was because they had been closed and because 
 Brown appeared to think he had better wake up. So 
 
 229
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 much as this Dane took in, but the effect of his taking 
 it was a relapse into darkness, a recontraction of the 
 lids just prolonged enough to give Brown time, on a 
 second thought, to withdraw his touch and move 
 softly away. Dane's next consciousness was that of 
 the desire to make sure he was away, and this desire 
 had somehow the result of dissipating the obscurity. 
 The obscurity was completely gone by the time he 
 had made out that the back of a person writing at his 
 study-table was presented to him. He recognised a 
 portion of a figure that he had somewhere described 
 to somebody the intent shoulders of the unsuccess 
 ful young man who had come that bad morning to 
 breakfast'. It was strange, he at last mused, but the 
 young man was still there. How long had he stayed- 
 days, weeks, months ? He was exactly in the position 
 in which Dane had last seen him. Everything 
 stranger still was exactly in that position ; every 
 thing at least but the light of the window, which came 
 in from another quarter and showed a different hour. 
 It wasn't after breakfast now ; it was after well, 
 what ? He suppressed a gasp it was after every 
 thing. And yet quite literally there were but 
 two other differences. One of these was that if he 
 was still on the sofa he was now lying down ; the 
 other was the patter on the glass that showed him 
 how the rain the great rain of the night had come 
 back. It was the rain of the night, yet when had he 
 last heard it ? But two minutes before ? Then how 
 many were there before the young man at the table, 
 who seemed intensely occupied, found a moment to 
 look round at him and, on meeting his open eyes, 
 get up and draw near ? 
 
 " You've slept all day," said the young man. 
 
 " All day ? " 
 
 The young man looked at his watch. " From ten 
 to six. You were extraordinarily tired. I just after 
 230
 
 THE GREAT GOOD PLACE 
 
 a bit let you alone, and you were soon off." Yes, that 
 was it ; he had been " off " off, off, off. He began 
 to fit it together : while he had been off the young 
 man had been on. But there were still some few con 
 fusions ; Dane lay looking up. " Everything's done," 
 the young man continued. 
 
 " Everything ? " 
 
 " Everything." 
 
 Dane tried to take it all in, but was embarrassed 
 and could only say weakly and quite apart from the 
 matter : " I've been so happy ! " 
 
 " So have I," said the young man. He positively 
 looked so ; seeing which George Dane wondered 
 afresh, and then in his wonder read it indeed quite 
 as another face, quite, in a puzzling way, as another 
 person's. Every one was a little some one else. While 
 he asked himself who else then the young man was, 
 this benefactor, struck by his appealing stare, broke 
 again into perfect cheer. " It's all right ! " That an 
 swered Dane's question ; the face was the face turned 
 to him by the good Brother there in the portico while 
 they listened together to the rustle of the shower. It 
 was all queer, but all pleasant and all distinct, so dis 
 tinct that the last words in his ear the same from 
 both quarters appeared the effect of a single voice. 
 Dane rose and looked about his room, which seemed 
 disencumbered, different, twice as large. It was all 
 right. 
 
 231
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 233
 
 I SAW her but four times, though I remember them 
 vividly ; she made her impression on me. I thought 
 her very pretty and very interesting a touching 
 specimen of a type with which I had had other and 
 perhaps less charming associations. I'm sorry to hear 
 of her death, and yet when I think of it why should I 
 be ? The last time I saw her she was certainly not ! 
 But it will be of interest to take our meetings in order. 
 
 THE first was in the country, at a small tea-party, one 
 snowy night of some seventeen years ago. My friend 
 Latouche, going to spend Christmas with his mother, 
 had insisted on my company, and the good lady had 
 given in our honour the entertainment of which I 
 speak. To me it was really full of savour it had all 
 the right marks : I had never been in the depths of 
 New England at that season. It had been snowing all 
 day and the drifts were knee-high. I wondered how 
 the ladies had made their way to the house ; but I 
 inferred that just those general rigours rendered any 
 assembly offering the attraction of two gentlemen 
 from New York worth a desperate effort. 
 
 Mrs. Latouche in the course of the evening asked 
 me if I " didn't want to " show the photographs to 
 some of the young ladies. The photographs were in 
 a couple of great portfolios, and had been brought 
 
 235
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 home by her son, who, like myself, was lately re 
 turned from Europe. I looked round and was struck 
 with the fact that most of the young ladies were pro 
 vided with an object of interest more absorbing than 
 the most vivid sun-picture. But there was a person 
 alone near the mantel-shelf who looked round the 
 room with a small vague smile, a discreet, a disguised 
 yearning, which seemed somehow at odds with her 
 isolation. I looked at her a moment and then chose. 
 " I should like to show them to that young lady." 
 
 " Oh yes," said Mrs. Latouche, " she's just the 
 person. She doesn't care for flirting I'll speak to 
 her." I replied that if she didn't care for flirting she 
 wasn't perhaps just the person ; but Mrs. Latouche 
 had already,, with a few steps, appealed to her parti 
 cipation. " She's delighted," my hostess came back 
 to report ; " and she's just the person so quiet and 
 so bright." And she told me the young lady was 
 by name Miss Caroline Spencer with which she 
 introduced me. 
 
 Miss Caroline Spencer was not quite a beauty, but 
 was none the less, in her small odd way, formed to 
 please. Close upon thirty, by every presumption, she 
 was made almost like a little girl and had the com 
 plexion of a child. She had also the prettiest head, on 
 which her hair was arranged as nearly as possible like 
 the hair of a Greek bust, though indeed it was to be 
 doubted if she had ever seen a Greek bust. She was 
 " artistic," I suspected, so far as the polar influences 
 of North Verona could allow for such yearnings or 
 could minister to them. Her eyes were perhaps just 
 too round and too inveterately surprised, but her lips 
 had a certain mild decision and her teeth, when she 
 showed them, were charming. About her neck she 
 wore what ladies call, I believe, a " ruche " fastened 
 with a very small pin of pink coral, and in her hand 
 she carried a fan made of plaited straw and adorned 
 236
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 with pink ribbon. She wore a scanty black silk dress. 
 She spoke with slow soft neatness, even without smiles 
 showing the prettiness of her teeth, and she seemed 
 extremely pleased, in fact quite fluttered, at the pro 
 spect of my demonstrations. These went forward very 
 smoothly after I had moved the portfolios out of their 
 corner and placed a couple of chairs near a lamp. 
 The photographs were usually things I knew large 
 views of Switzerland, Italy and Spain, landscapes, 
 reproductions of famous buildings, pictures and 
 statues. I said what I could for them, and my com 
 panion, looking at them as I held them up, sat per 
 fectly still, her straw fan raised to her under-lip and 
 gently, yet, as I could feel, almost excitedly, rubbing 
 it. Occasionally, as I laid one of the pictures down, 
 she said without confidence, which would have been 
 too much : " Have you seen that place ? " I usually 
 answered that I had seen it several times I had been 
 a great traveller, though I was somehow particularly 
 admonished not to swagger and then I felt her look 
 at me askance for a moment with her pretty eyes. I 
 had asked her at the outset whether she had been to 
 Europe ; to this she had answered " No, no, no " 
 almost as much below her breath as if the image of 
 such an event scarce, for solemnity, brooked phras 
 ing. But after that, though she never took her eyes 
 off the pictures, she said so little that I feared she was 
 at last bored. Accordingly when we had finished one 
 portfolio I offered, if she desired it, to desist. I rather 
 guessed the exhibition really held her, but her reti 
 cence puzzled me and I wanted to make her speak. I 
 turned round to judge better and then saw a faint 
 flush in each of her cheeks. She kept waving her little 
 fan to and fro. Instead of looking at me she fixed her 
 eyes on the remainder of the collection, which leaned, 
 in its receptacle, against the table. 
 
 " Won't you show me that ? " she quavered, 
 237
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 drawing the long breath of a person launched and 
 afloat but conscious of rocking a little. 
 
 " With pleasure," I answered, " if you're really not 
 tired." 
 
 " Oh I'm not tired a bit. I'm just fascinated." 
 With which as I took up the other portfolio she laid 
 her hand on it, rubbing it softly. " And have you 
 been here too ? " 
 
 On my opening the portfolio it appeared I had in 
 deed been there. One of the first photographs was a 
 large view of the Castle of Chillon by the Lake of 
 Geneva. " Here," I said, " I've been many a time. 
 Isn't it beautiful ? " And I pointed to the perfect re 
 flexion of the rugged rocks and pointed towers in the 
 clear still water. She didn't say " Oh enchanting ! " 
 and push it away to see the next picture. She looked 
 a while and then asked if it weren't where Bonnivard, 
 about whom Byron wrote, had been confined. I as 
 sented, trying to quote Byron's verses, but not quite 
 bringing it off. 
 
 She fanned herself a moment and then repeated the 
 lines correctly, in a soft flat voice but with charming 
 conviction. By the time she had finished, she was 
 nevertheless blushing. I complimented her and as 
 sured her she was perfectly equipped for visiting 
 Switzerland and Italy. She looked at me askance 
 again, to see if I might be serious, and I added that if 
 she wished to recognise Byron's descriptions she must 
 go abroad speedily Europe was getting sadly dis- 
 Byronised. " How soon must I go ? " she thereupon 
 inquired. 
 
 " Oh I'll give you ten years." 
 
 " Well, I guess I can go in that time," she answered 
 as if measuring her words. 
 
 " Then you'll enjoy it immensely," I said ; " you'll 
 find it of the highest interest." Just then I came 
 upon a photograph of some nook in a foreign city 
 238
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 which I had been very fond of and which recalled 
 tender memories. I discoursed (as I suppose) with 
 considerable spirit ; my companion sat listening 
 breathless. 
 
 " Have you been very long over there ? " she asked 
 some time after I had ceased. 
 
 " Well, it mounts up, put all the times to 
 gether." 
 
 " And have you travelled everywhere ? " 
 
 " I've travelled a good deal. I'm very fond of it 
 and happily have been able." 
 
 Again she turned on me her slow shy scrutiny. 
 " Do you know the foreign languages ? " 
 
 " After a fashion." 
 
 " Is it hard to speak them ? " 
 
 " I don't imagine you'd find it so," I gallantly 
 answered. 
 
 " Oh I shouldn't want to speak I should only 
 want to listen." Then on a pause she added : " They 
 say the French theatre's so beautiful." 
 
 " Ah the best in the world." 
 
 " Did you go there very often ? " 
 
 " When I was first in Paris I went every night." 
 
 " Every night ! " And she opened her clear eyes 
 very wide. " That to me is " and her expression 
 hovered " as if you tell me a fairy-tale." A few 
 minutes later she put to me : " And which country 
 do you prefer ? " 
 
 " There's one I love beyond any. I think you'd 
 do the same." 
 
 Her -gaze rested as on a dim revelation and then 
 she breathed " Italy ? " 
 
 " Italy," I answered softly too ; and for a moment 
 we communed over it. She looked as pretty as if in 
 stead of showing her photographs I had been making 
 love to her. To increase the resemblance she turned 
 off blushing. It made a pause which she broke at last 
 
 239
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 by saying : " That's the place which in particular 
 I thought of going to." 
 
 " Oh that's the place that's the place ! " I laughed. 
 
 She looked at two or three more views in silence. 
 " They say it's not very dear." 
 
 " As some other countries ? Well, one gets back 
 there one's money. That's not the least of the 
 charms." 
 
 " But it's all very expensive, isn't it ? " 
 
 " Europe, you mean ? " 
 
 " Going there and travelling. That has been the 
 trouble. I've very little money. I teach, you know," 
 said Miss Caroline Spencer. 
 
 " Oh of course one must have money," I allowed ; 
 " but one can manage with a moderate amount judi 
 ciously spent." 
 
 " I think I should manage. I've saved and saved 
 up, and I'm always adding a little to it. It's all for 
 that." She paused a moment, and then went on with 
 suppressed eagerness, as if telling me the story were a 
 rare, but possibly an impure satisfaction. " You see 
 it hasn't been only the money it has been every 
 thing. Everything has acted against it. I've waited 
 and waited. It has been my castle in the air. I'm 
 almost afraid to talk about it. Two or three times it 
 has come a little nearer, and then I've talked about 
 it and it has melted away. I've talked about it too 
 much," she said hypocritically for I saw such talk 
 was now a small tremulous ecstasy. " There's a lady 
 who's a great friend of mine she doesn't want to 
 go, but I'm always at her about it. I think I must tire 
 her dreadfully. She told me just the other day she 
 didn't know what would become of me. She guessed 
 I'd go crazy if I didn't sail, and yet certainly I'd go 
 crazy if I did." 
 
 " Well," I laughed, " you haven't sailed up to now 
 so I suppose you are crazy." 
 240
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 She took everything with the same seriousness. 
 " Well, I guess I must be. It seems as if I couldn't 
 think of anything else and I don't require photo 
 graphs to work me up ! I'm always right on it. It 
 kills any interest in things nearer home things I 
 ought to attend to. That's a kind of craziness." 
 
 " Well then the cure for it's just to go," I smiled 
 " I mean the cure for this kind. Of course you may 
 have the other kind worse," I added " the kind you 
 get over there." 
 
 " Well, I've a faith that I'll go some time all right ! " 
 she quite elatedly cried. " I've a relative right there on 
 the spot," she went on, " and I guess he'll know how 
 to control me." I expressed the hope that he would, 
 and I forget whether we turned over more photo 
 graphs ; but when I asked her if she had always lived 
 just where I found her, " Oh no, sir," she quite eagerly 
 replied ; " I've spent twenty- two months and a half 
 in Boston." I met it with the inevitable joke that in 
 this case foreign lands might prove a disappointment 
 to her, but I quite failed to alarm her. " I know more 
 about them than you might think " her earnestness 
 resisted even that. " I mean by reading for I've 
 really read considerable. In fact I guess I've pre 
 pared my mind about as much as you can in ad 
 vance. I've not only read Byron I've read histories 
 and guide-books and articles and lots of things. I 
 know I shall rave about everything." 
 
 " ' Everything ' is saying much, but I understand 
 your case," I returned. " You've the great American 
 disease, and you've got it ' bad ' the appetite, mor 
 bid and monstrous, for colour and form, for the pic 
 turesque and the romantic at any price. I don't know 
 whether we come into the -world with it with the 
 germs implanted and antecedent to experience ; rather 
 perhaps we catch it early, almost before developed 
 consciousness we feel, as we look about, that we're 
 
 241 R
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 going (to save our souls, or at least our senses) to be 
 thrown back on it hard. We're like travellers in the 
 desert- deprived of water and subject to the terrible 
 mirage, the torment of illusion, of the thirst-fever. 
 They hear the plash of fountains, they see green gar 
 dens and orchards that are hundreds of miles away. 
 So we with our thirst except that with us it's more 
 wonderful : we have before us the beautiful old things 
 we've never seen at all, and when we do at last see 
 them if we're lucky ! we simply recognise them. 
 What experience does is merely to confirm and con 
 secrate our confident dream." 
 
 She listened with her rounded eyes. " The way you 
 express it's too lovely, and I'm sure it will be just like 
 that. I've dreamt of everything I'll know it all ! " 
 
 " I'm afraid," I pretended for harmless comedy, 
 " that you've wasted a great deal of time." 
 
 " Oh yes, that has been my great wickedness ! " 
 The people about us had begun to scatter ; they were 
 taking their leave. She got up and put out her hand 
 to me, timidly, but as if quite shining and throbbing. 
 
 " I'm going back there one has to," I said as I 
 shook hands with her. " I shall look out for you." 
 
 Yes, she fairly glittered with her fever of excited 
 faith. " Well, I'll teh 1 you if I'm disappointed." And 
 she left me, fluttering all expressively her little straw 
 fan. 
 
 242
 
 II 
 
 A FEW months after this I crossed the sea eastward 
 again and some three years elapsed. I had been living 
 in Paris and, toward the end of October, went from 
 that city to the Havre, to meet a pair of relatives who 
 had written me they were about to arrive there. On 
 reaching the Havre I found the steamer already 
 docked I was two or three hours late. I repaired 
 directly to the hotel, where my travellers were duly 
 established. My sister had gone to bed, exhausted 
 and disabled by her voyage ; she was the unsteadiest 
 of sailors and her sufferings on this occasion had been 
 extreme. She desired for the moment undisturbed rest 
 and was able to see me but five minutes long enough 
 for us to agree to stop over, restoratively, till the 
 morrow. My brother-in-law, anxious about his wife, 
 was unwilling to leave her room ; but she insisted 
 on my taking him a walk for aid to recovery of his 
 spirits and his land-legs. 
 
 The early autumn day was warm and charming, 
 and our stroll through the bright-coloured busy streets 
 of the old French seaport beguiling enough. We 
 walked along the sunny noisy quays and then turned 
 into a wide pleasant street which lay half in sun and 
 half in shade a French provincial street that re 
 sembled an old water-colour drawing : tall grey steep- 
 roofed red-gabled many-storied houses ; green shutters 
 on windows and old scroll-work above them ; flower- 
 
 243
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 pots in balconies and white-capped women in door 
 ways. We walked in the shade ; all this stretched 
 away on the sunny side of the vista and made a picture. 
 We looked at it as we passed 'along ; then suddenly 
 my companion stopped pressing my arm and staring. 
 I followed his gaze and saw that we had paused just 
 before reaching a cafe where, under an awning, 
 several tables and chairs were disposed upon the pave 
 ment. The windows were open behind ; half a dozen 
 plants in tubs were ranged beside the door ; the pave 
 ment was besprinkled with clean bran. It was a dear 
 little quiet old-world cafe ; inside, in the comparative 
 dusk, I saw a stout handsome woman, who had pink 
 ribbons in her cap, perched up with a mirror behind 
 her back and smiling at some one placed out of 
 sight. This, to be exact, I noted afterwards ; what I 
 first observed was a lady seated alone, outside, at one 
 of the little marble-topped tables. My brother-in-law 
 had stopped to look at her. Something had been put 
 before her, but she only leaned back, motionless and 
 with her hands folded, looking down the street and 
 away from us. I saw her but in diminished profile ; 
 nevertheless I was sure I knew on the spot that we 
 must already have met. 
 
 " The little lady of the steamer ! " my companion 
 cried. 
 
 " Was she on your steamer ? " I asked with 
 interest. 
 
 " From morning till night. She was never sick. She 
 used to sit perpetually at the side of the vessel with her 
 hands crossed that way, looking at the eastward 
 horizon." 
 
 " And are you going to speak to her ? " 
 
 " I don't know her. I never made acquaintance 
 
 with her. I wasn't in form to make up to ladies. But 
 
 I used to watch her and I don't know why to be 
 
 interested in her. She's a dear little Yankee woman. 
 
 244
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 I've an idea she's a school-mistress taking a holiday 
 for which her scholars have made up a purse." 
 
 She had now turned her face a little more into pro 
 file, looking at the steep grey house-fronts opposite. 
 On this I decided. " I shall speak to her myself." 
 
 " I wouldn't she's very shy," said my brother- 
 in-law. 
 
 " My dear fellow, I know her. I once showed her 
 photographs at a tea-party." With which I went up 
 to her, making her, as she turned to look at me, leave 
 me in no doubt of her identity. Miss Caroline Spencer 
 had achieved her dream. But she was less quick to 
 recognise me and showed a slight bewilderment. I 
 pushed a chair to the table and sat down. " Well," I 
 said, " I hope you're not disappointed ! " 
 
 She stared, blushing a little then gave a small 
 jump and placed me. " It was you who showed me 
 the photographs at North Verona." 
 
 ' Yes, it was I. This happens very charmingly, 
 for isn't it quite for me to give you a formal reception 
 here the official welcome ? I talked to you so much 
 about Europe." 
 
 ' You didn't say too much. I'm so intensely 
 happy ! " she declared. 
 
 Very happy indeed she looked. There was no sign 
 of her being older ; she was as gravely, decently, de 
 murely pretty as before. If she had struck me then as 
 a thin-stemmed mild-hued flower of Puritanism it 
 may be imagined whether in her present situation this 
 clear bloom was less appealing. Beside her an old 
 gentleman was drinking absinthe ; behind her the 
 dame de comptoir in the pink ribbons called " Alci- 
 biade, Alcibiade ! " to the long-aproned waiter. I ex 
 plained to Miss Spencer that the gentleman with me 
 had lately been her shipmate, and my brother-in-law 
 came up and was introduced to her. But she looked 
 at him as if she had never so much as seen him, and I 
 
 245
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 remembered he had told me her eyes were always 
 fixed on the eastward horizon. She had evidently not 
 noticed him, and, still timidly smiling, made no at 
 tempt whatever to pretend the contrary. I stayed 
 with her on the little terrace of the cafe while he went 
 back to the hotel and to his wife. I remarked to my 
 friend that this meeting of ours at the first hour of 
 her landing partook, among all chances, of the mirac 
 ulous, but that I was delighted to be there and receive 
 her first impressions. 
 
 " Oh I can't tell you," she said " I feel so much 
 in a dream. I've been sitting here an hour and I don't 
 want to move. Everything's so delicious and ro 
 mantic. I don't know whether the coffee has gone to 
 my head it's so unlike the coffee of my dead past." 
 
 " Really," I made answer, " if you're so pleased 
 with this poor prosaic Havre you'll have no admira 
 tion left for better things. Don't spend your apprecia 
 tion all the first day remember it's your intellectual 
 letter of credit. Remember all the beautiful places 
 and things that are waiting for you. Remember that 
 lovely Italy we talked about." 
 
 " I'm not afraid of running short," she said gaily, 
 still looking at the opposite houses. " I could sit here 
 all day just saying to myself that here I am at last. 
 It's so dark and strange so old and indifferent." 
 
 " By the way then," I asked, " how come you to be 
 encamped in this odd place ? Haven't you gone to 
 one of the inns ? " For I was half -amused, half- 
 alarmed at the good conscience with which this 
 delicately pretty woman had stationed herself in con 
 spicuous isolation on the edge of the sidewalk. 
 
 " My cousin brought me here and a little while 
 ago left me," she returned. " You know I told you 
 I had a relation over here. He's still here a real 
 cousin. Well," she pursued with unclouded candour, 
 " he met me at the steamer this morning." 
 246
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 It was absurd- and the case moreover none of my 
 business ; but I felt somehow disconcerted. " It was 
 hardly worth his while to meet you if he was to desert 
 you so soon." 
 
 " Oh he has only left me for half an hour," said 
 Caroline Spencer. " He has gone to get my money." 
 
 I continued to wonder. " Where is your money ? " 
 
 She appeared seldom to laugh, but she laughed for 
 the joy of this. " It makes me feel very fine to tell you ! 
 It's in circular notes." 
 
 " And where are your circular notes ? " 
 
 " In my cousin's pocket." 
 
 This statement was uttered with such clearness of 
 candour that- I can hardly say why it gave me a 
 sensible chill. I couldn't at all at the moment have 
 justified my lapse from ease, for I knew nothing of 
 Miss Spencer's cousin. Since he stood in that relation 
 to her dear respectable little person the presump 
 tion was in his favour. But I found myself wincing 
 at the thought that half an hour after her landing 
 her scanty funds should have passed into his hands. 
 " Is he to travel with you ? " I asked. 
 
 " Only as far as Paris. He's an art-student in Paris 
 I've always thought that so splendid. I wrote to 
 him that I was coming, but I never expected him to 
 come off to the ship. I supposed he'd only just meet 
 me at the train in Paris. It's very kind of him. But 
 he is," said Caroline Spencer, " very kind and very 
 bright." 
 
 I felt at once a strange eagerness to see this bright 
 kind cousin who was an art-student. " He's gone to 
 the banker's ? " I inquired. 
 
 " Yes, to the banker's. He took me to an hotel 
 such a queer quaint cunning little place, with a court 
 in the middle and a gallery all round, and a lovely 
 landlady in such a beautifully fluted cap and such a 
 perfectly fitting dress ! After a while we came out to 
 
 247
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 walk to the banker's, for I hadn't any French money. 
 But I was very dizzy from the motion of the vessel and 
 I thought I had better sit down. He found this place 
 for me here then he went off to the banker's him 
 self. I'm to wait here till he comes back." 
 
 Her story was wholly lucid and my impression per 
 fectly wanton, but it passed through my mind that 
 the gentleman would never come back. I settled my 
 self in a chair beside my friend and determined to 
 await the event. She was lost in the vision and the 
 imagination of everything near us and about us 
 she observed, she recognised and admired, with a 
 touching intensity. She noticed everything that was 
 brought before us by the movement of the street 
 the peculiarities of costume, the shapes of vehicles, 
 the big Norman horses, the fat priests, the shaven 
 poodles. We talked of these things, and there was 
 something charming in her freshness of perception 
 and the way her book-nourished fancy sallied forth 
 for the revel. 
 
 " And when your cousin comes back what are you 
 going to do ? " I went on. 
 
 For this she had, a little oddly, to think. " We 
 don't quite know." 
 
 " When do you go to Paris ? If you go by the four 
 o'clock train I may have the pleasure of making the 
 journey with you." 
 
 " I don't think we shall do that." So far she was 
 prepared. " My cousin thinks I had better stay here 
 a few days." 
 
 " Oh ! " said I and for five minutes had nothing 
 to add. I was wondering what our absentee was, in 
 vulgar parlance, " up to." I looked up and down the 
 street, but saw nothing that looked like a bright and 
 kind American art-student. At last I took the liberty 
 of observing that the Havre was hardly a place to 
 choose as one of the esthetic stations of a European 
 248
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 tour. It was a place of convenience, nothing more ; 
 a place of transit, through which transit should be 
 rapid. I recommended her to go to Paris by the after 
 noon train and meanwhile to amuse herself by driving 
 to the ancient fortress at the mouth of the harbour 
 that remarkable circular structure which bore the 
 name of Francis the First and figured a sort of small 
 Castle of Saint Angelo. (I might really have fore 
 known that it was to be demolished.) 
 
 She listened with much interest then for a moment 
 looked grave. " My cousin told me that when he 
 returned he should have something particular to say 
 to me, and that we could do nothing or decide nothing 
 till I should have heard it. But I'll make him tell me 
 right off, and then we'll go to the ancient fortress. 
 Francis the First, did you say ? Why, that's lovely. 
 There's no hurry to get to Paris ; there's plenty of 
 time." 
 
 She smiled with her softly severe little lips as she 
 spoke those last words, yet, looking at her with a pur 
 pose, I made out in her eyes, I thought, a tiny gleam 
 of apprehension. " Don't tell me," I said, " that this 
 wretched man's going to give you bad news ! " 
 
 She coloured as if convicted of a hidden perversity, 
 but she was soaring too high to drop. " Well, I guess 
 it's a little bad, but I don't believe it's very bad. At 
 any rate I must listen to it." 
 
 I usurped an Unscrupulous authority. " Look here ; 
 you didn't come to Europe to listen you came to 
 see \ " But now I "was sure her cousin would come 
 back ; since he had something disagreeable to say to 
 her he'd infallibly turn up. We sat a while longer and 
 I asked her about her plans of travel. She had them 
 on her fingers' ends and told over the names as sol 
 emnly as a daughter of another faith might have told 
 over the beads of a rosary : from Paris to Dijon and to 
 Avignon, from Avignon to Marseilles and the Cornice 
 
 249
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 road ; thence to Genoa, to Spezia, to Pisa, to Florence, 
 to Rome. It apparently had never occurred to her that 
 there cotild be the least incommodity in her travelling 
 alone ; and since she was unprovided with a com 
 panion I of course civilly abstained from disturbing 
 her sense of security. 
 
 At last her cousin came back. I saw him turn to 
 ward us out of a side-street, and from the moment 
 my eyes rested on him I knew he could but be the 
 bright, if not the kind, American art-student. He wore 
 a slouch hat and a rusty black velvet jacket, such as I 
 had often encountered in the Rue Bonaparte. His 
 shirt-collar displayed a stretch of throat that at a dis 
 tance wasn't strikingly statuesque. He was tall and 
 lean, he had red hair and freckles. These items I had 
 time to take in while he approached the cafe, staring 
 at me with natural surprise from under his romantic 
 brim. When he came up to us I immediately intro 
 duced myself as an old acquaintance of Miss Spencer's, 
 a character she serenely permitted me to claim. He 
 looked at me hard with a pair of small sharp eyes, 
 then he gave me a solemn wave, in the " European " 
 fashion, of his rather rusty sombrero. 
 
 " You weren't on the ship ? " he asked. 
 
 " No, I wasn't on the ship. I've been in Europe 
 these several years." 
 
 He bowed once more, portentously, and motioned 
 me to be seated again. I sat down, but only for the 
 purpose of observing him an instant I saw it was 
 time I should return to my sister. Miss Spencer's 
 European protector was, by my measure, a very queer 
 quantity. Nature hadn't shaped him for a Raphael- 
 esque or Byronic attire, and his velvet doublet and 
 exhibited though not columnar throat weren't in har 
 mony with his facial attributes. His hair was cropped 
 close to his head ; his ears were large and ill-adjusted 
 to the same. He had a lackadaisical carriage and a 
 250
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 sentimental droop which were peculiarly at variance 
 with his keen conscious strange-coloured eyes of a 
 brown that was almost red. Perhaps I was prejudiced, 
 but I thought his eyes too shifty. He said nothing for 
 some time ; he leaned his hands on his stick and 
 looked up and dowTi the street. Then at last, slowly 
 lifting the stick and pointing with it, " That's a very 
 nice bit," he dropped with a certain flatness. He had 
 his head to one side he narrowed his ugly lids. I 
 followed the direction of his stick ; the object it in 
 dicated was a red cloth hung out of an old window. 
 " Nice bit of colour," he continued ; and without 
 moving his head transferred his half-closed gaze 
 to me. " Composes well. Fine old tone. Make a nice 
 thing." He spoke in a charmless vulgar voice. 
 
 " I see you've a great deal of eye," I replied. " Your 
 cousin tells me you're studying art." He looked at me 
 in the same way, without answering, and I went on 
 with deliberate urbanity : " I suppose you're at the 
 studio of one of those great men." Still on this he 
 continued to fix me, and then he named one of the 
 greatest of that day ; which led me to ask him if he 
 liked his master. 
 
 " Do you understand French ? " he returned. 
 
 " Some kinds." 
 
 He kept his little eyes on me ; with which he re 
 marked : " Je suis fou de la peinture ! " 
 
 " Oh I understand that kind ! " I replied. Our com 
 panion laid her hand on his arm with a small pleased 
 and fluttered movement ; it was delightful to be among 
 people who were on such easy terms with foreign 
 tongues. I got up to take leave and asked her where, 
 in Paris, I might have the honour of waiting on her. 
 To what hotel would she go ? 
 
 She turned to her cousin inquiringly and he fav 
 oured me again with his little languid leer. " Do you 
 know the Hotel des Princes ? " 
 
 251
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 " I know where it is." 
 
 " WeU, that's the shop." 
 
 " I congratulate you," I said to Miss Spencer. " I 
 believe it's the best inn in the world ; but, in case I 
 should still have a moment to call on you here, where 
 are you lodged ? " 
 
 " Oh it's such a pretty name," she returned glee 
 fully. " A la Belle Normande." 
 
 " I guess I know my way round ! " her kinsman 
 threw in ; and as I left them he gave me with his 
 swaggering head-cover a great flourish that was like 
 the wave of a banner over a conquered field. 
 
 252
 
 Ill 
 
 MY relative, as it proved, was not sufficiently restored 
 to leave the place by the afternoon train ; so that 
 as the autumn dusk began to fall I found myself at 
 liberty to call at the establishment named to me by my 
 friends. I must confess that I had spent much of the 
 interval in wondering what the disagreeable thing was 
 that the less attractive of these had been telling the 
 other. The auberge of the Belle Normande proved an 
 hostelry in a shady by-street, where it gave me satis 
 faction to think Miss Spencer must have encountered 
 local colour in abundance. There was a crooked little 
 court, where much of the hospitality of the house was 
 carried on ; there was a staircase climbing to bed 
 rooms on the outer side of the wall ; there was a small 
 trickling fountain with a stucco statuette set in the 
 midst of it ; there was a little boy in a white cap and 
 apron cleaning copper vessels at a conspicuous kitchen 
 door ; there was a chattering landlady, neatly laced, 
 arranging apricots and grapes into an artistic pyramid 
 upon a pink plate. I looked about, and on a green 
 bench outside of an open door labelled Salle-a-Manger, 
 I distinguished Caroline Spencer. No sooner had 
 I looked at her than I was sure something had hap 
 pened since the morning. Supported by the back of 
 her bench, with her hands clasped in her lap, she kept 
 her eyes on the other side of the court where the 
 landlady manipulated the apricots. 
 
 253
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 But I saw that, poor dear, she wasn't thinking 
 of apricots or eVen of landladies. She was staring 
 absently, thoughtfully ; on a nearer view I could have 
 certified she had been crying. I had seated myself 
 beside her before she was aware ; then, when she 
 had done so, she simply turned round without 
 surprise and showed me her sad face. Something 
 very bad indeed had happened ; she was com 
 pletely changed, and I immediately charged her with 
 it. " Your cousin has been giving you bad news. 
 You've had a horrid time." 
 
 For a moment she said nothing, and I supposed her 
 afraid to speak lest her tears should again rise. Then 
 it came to me that even in the few hours since my 
 leaving her she had shed them all which made her 
 now intensely, stoically composed. " My poor cousin 
 has been having one," she replied at last. " He has had 
 great worries. His news was bad." Then after a dis 
 mally conscious wait : "He was in dreadful want of 
 money." 
 
 " In want of yours, you mean ? " 
 
 "Of any he could get honourably of course. 
 Mine is all well, that's available." 
 
 Ah, it was as if I had been sure from the first ! 
 " And he has taken it from you ? " 
 
 Again she hung fire, but her face meanwhile was 
 pleading. " I gave him what I had." 
 
 I recall the accent of those words as the most 
 angelic human sound I had ever listened to which 
 is exactly why I jumped up almost with a sense of 
 personal outrage. " Gracious goodness, madam, do 
 you call that his getting it ' honourably ' ? " 
 
 I had gone too far she coloured to her eyes. 
 " We won't speak of it." 
 
 " We must speak of it," I declared as I dropped 
 beside her again. "I'm your friend upon my 
 word I'm your protector ; it seems to me you need 
 
 254
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 one. What's the matter with this extraordinary 
 person ? " 
 
 She was perfectly able to say. " He's just badly in 
 debt." 
 
 " No doubt he is ! But what's the special propriety 
 of your in such tearing haste ! paying for that ? " 
 
 " Well, he has told me all his story. I feel for him 
 so much." 
 
 " So do I, if you come to that ! But I hope," I 
 roundly added, " he'll give you straight back your 
 money." 
 
 As to this she was prompt. " Certainly he will 
 as soon as ever he can." 
 
 " And when the deuce will that be ? " 
 
 Her lucidity maintained itself. " When he has 
 finished his great picture." 
 
 It took me full in the face. " My dear young lady, 
 damn his great picture ! Where is this voracious 
 man ? " 
 
 It was as if she must let me feel a moment that I did 
 push her ! though indeed, as appeared, he was just 
 where he'd naturally be. " He's having his dinner." 
 
 I turned about and looked through the open door 
 into the salle-a-manger. There, sure enough, alone 
 at the end of a long table, was the object of my friend's 
 compassion the bright, the kind young art-student. 
 He was dining too attentively to notice me at first, but 
 in the act of setting down a well-emptied wine-glass 
 he caught sight of my air of observation. He paused 
 in his repast and, with his head on one side and his 
 meagre jaws slowly moving, fixedly returned my 
 gaze. Then the landlady came brushing lightly by 
 with her pyramid of apricots. 
 
 " And that nice little plate of fruit is for him ? " I 
 wailed. 
 
 Miss Spencer glanced at it tenderly. " They seem 
 to arrange everything so nicely ! " she simply sighed. 
 
 255
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 I felt helpless and irritated. " Come now, really," 
 I said ; "do you think it right, do you think it 
 decent, that that long strong fellow should collar your 
 funds ? " She looked away from me I was evidently 
 giving her pain. The case was hopeless ; the long 
 strong fellow had " interested " her. 
 
 " Pardon me if I speak of him so unceremoniously," 
 I said. " But you're really too generous, and he 
 hasn't, clearly, the rudiments of delicacy. He made 
 his debts himself he ought to pay them himself." 
 
 " He has been foolish," she obstinately said " of 
 course I know that. He has told me everything. We 
 had a long talk this morning the poor fellow threw 
 himself on my charity. He has signed notes to a large 
 amount." 
 
 " The more fool he ! " 
 
 " He's in real distress and it's not only himself. 
 It's his poor young wife." 
 
 " Ah he has a poor young wife ? " 
 
 " I didn't know but he made a clean breast of it. 
 He married two years since secretly." 
 
 " Why secretly ? " 
 
 My informant took precautions as if she feared 
 listeners. Then with low impressiveness : " She was 
 a Countess ! " 
 
 " Are you very sure of that ? " 
 
 " She has written me the most beautiful letter." 
 
 " Asking you whom she has never seen for 
 money ? " 
 
 " Asking me for confidence and sympathy " Miss 
 Spencer spoke now with spirit. " She has been cruelly 
 treated by her family in consequence of what she 
 has done for him. My cousin has told me every par 
 ticular, and she appeals to me in her own lovely way 
 in the letter, which I've here in my pocket. It's such 
 a wonderful old-world romance," said my prodigious 
 friend. "She was a beautiful young widow her 
 256
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 first husband was a Count, tremendously high-born, 
 but really most wicked, with whom she hadn't been 
 happy and whose death had left her ruined after he 
 had deceived her in all sorts of ways. My poor cousin, 
 meeting her in that situation and perhaps a little too 
 recklessly pitying her and charmed with her, found 
 her, don't you see?" Caroline's appeal on this 
 head was amazing ! " but too ready to trust a better 
 man after all she had been through. Only when her 
 ' people,' as he says and I do like the word ! 
 understood she would have him, poor gifted young 
 American art-student though he simply was, because 
 she just adored him, her great-aunt, the old Mar 
 quise, from whom she had expectations of wealth 
 which she could yet sacrifice for her love, utterly cast 
 her off and wouldn't so much as speak to her, much 
 less to him, in their dreadful haughtiness and pride. 
 They can be haughty over here, it seems," she in 
 effably developed" there's no mistake about that ! 
 It's like something in some famous old book. The 
 family, my cousin's wife's," she by this time almost 
 complacently wound up, " are of the oldest Provengal 
 noblesse." 
 
 I listened half-bewildered. The poor woman posi 
 tively found it so interesting to be swindled by a 
 flower of that stock if stock or flower or solitary 
 grain of truth was really concerned in the matter 
 as practically to have lost the sense of what the for 
 feiture of her hoard meant for her. " My dear young 
 lady," I groaned, " you don't want to be stripped of 
 every dollar for such a rigmarole ! " 
 
 She asserted, at this, her dignity much as a small 
 pink shorn lamb might have done. " It isn't a rig 
 marole, and I shan't be stripped. I shan't live any 
 worse than I have lived, don't you see ? And I'll come 
 back before long to stay with them. The Countess 
 he still gives her, he says, her title, as they do to noble 
 
 257 s
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 widows, that is to ' dowagers,' don't you know ? in 
 England insists on a visit from me some time. So 
 I guess for that I can start afresh -and meanwhile 
 I'll have recovered my money." 
 
 It was all too heart-breaking. " You're going home 
 then at once ? " 
 
 I felt the faint tremor of voice she heroically tried 
 to stifle. " I've nothing left for a tour." 
 
 " You gave it all up ? " 
 
 " I've kept enough to take me back." 
 
 I uttered, I think, a positive howl, and at this junc 
 ture the hero of the situation, the happy proprietor of 
 my little friend's sacred savings and of the infatuated 
 grande dame just sketched for me, reappeared with 
 the clear consciousness of a repast bravely earned and 
 consistently enjoyed. He stood on the threshold an 
 instant, extracting the stone from a plump apricot he 
 had fondly retained ; then he put the apricot into his 
 mouth and, while he let it gratefully dissolve there, 
 stood looking at us with his long legs apart and his 
 hands thrust into the pockets of his velvet coat. My 
 companion got up, giving him a thin glance that I 
 caught in its passage and which expressed at once 
 resignation and fascination the last dregs of her 
 sacrifice and with it an anguish of upliftedness. Ugly 
 vulgar pretentious dishonest as I thought him, and 
 destitute of every grace of plausibility, he had yet ap 
 pealed successfully to her eager and tender imagina 
 tion. I was deeply disgusted, but I had no warrant to 
 interfere, and at any rate felt that it would be vain. 
 He waved his hand meanwhile with a breadth of ap 
 preciation. " Nice old court. Nice mellow old place. 
 Nice crooked old staircase. Several pretty things." 
 
 Decidedly I couldn't stand it, and without re 
 sponding I gave my hand to my friend. She looked at 
 me an instant with her little white face and rounded 
 eyes, and as she showed her pretty teeth I suppose she 
 258
 
 meant to smile. " Don't be sorry for me," she sub 
 limely pleaded ; " I'm very sure I shall see something 
 of this dear old Europe yet." 
 
 I refused, however, to take literal leave of her I 
 should find a moment to come back next morning. 
 Her awful kinsman, who had put on his sombrero 
 again, nourished it off at me by way of a bow on 
 which I hurried away. 
 
 On the morrow early I did return, and in the court 
 of the inn met the landlady, more loosely laced than in 
 the evening. On my asking for Miss Spencer, " Partie, 
 monsieur," the good woman said. " She went away 
 last night at ten o'clock, with her her not her 
 husband, eh ? in fine her Monsieur. They went 
 down to the American ship." I turned off I felt the 
 tears in my eyes. The poor girl had been some thirteen 
 hours in Europe. 
 
 259
 
 IV 
 
 I MYSELF, more fortunate, continued to sacrifice to 
 opportunity as I myself met it. During this period 
 of some five years I lost my friend Latouche, who 
 died of a malarious fever during a tour in the Levant. 
 One of the first things I did on my return to America 
 was to go up to North Verona on a consolatory visit to 
 his poor mother. I found her in deep affliction and sat 
 with her the whole of the morning that followed my 
 arrival I had come in late at night listening to 
 her tearful descant and singing the praises of my 
 friend. We talked 'of nothing else, and our con 
 versation ended only with the arrival of a quick 
 little woman who drove herself up to the door in a 
 " carry- all " and whom I saw toss the reins to the 
 horse's back with the briskness of a startled sleeper 
 throwing off the bed-clothes. She jumped out of the 
 carry- all and she jumped into the room. She proved 
 to be the minister's wife and the great town-gossip, 
 and she had evidently, in the latter capacity, a choice 
 morsel to communicate. I was as sure of this as I 
 was that poor Mrs. Latouche was not absolutely too 
 bereaved to listen to her. It seemed to me discreet 
 to retire, and I described myself as anxious for a walk 
 before dinner. 
 
 " And by the way," I added, " if you'll tell me 
 where my old friend Miss Spencer lives I think I'll 
 call on her." 
 
 260
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 The minister's wife immediately responded. Miss 
 Spencer lived in the fourth house beyond the Baptist 
 church ; the Baptist church was the one on the right, 
 with that queer green thing over the door ; they called 
 it a portico, but it looked more like an old-fashioned 
 bedstead swung in the air. " Yes, do look up poor 
 Caroline," Mrs. Latouche further enjoined. " It will 
 refresh her to see a strange face." 
 
 " I should think she had had enough of strange 
 faces ! " cried the minister's wife. 
 
 "To see, I mean, a charming visitor" Mrs. 
 Latouche amended her phrase. 
 
 " I should think she had had enough of charming 
 visitors ! " her companion returned. " But you don't 
 mean to stay ten years," she added with significant 
 eyes on me. 
 
 " Has she a visitor of that sort ? " I asked in my 
 ignorance. 
 
 " You'll make out the sort ! " said the minister's 
 wife. " She's easily seen ; she generally sits in the 
 front yard. Only take care what you say to her, and 
 be very sure you're polite." 
 
 " Ah she's so sensitive ? " 
 
 The minister's wife jumped up and dropped me a 
 curtsey- a most sarcastic curtsey. " That's what 
 she is, if you please. ' Madame la Comtesse ' ! " 
 
 And pronouncing these titular words with the most 
 scathing accent, the little woman seemed fairly to 
 laugh in the face of the lady they designated. I stood 
 staring, wondering, remembering. 
 
 " Oh I shall be very polite ! " I cried ; and, grasp 
 ing my hat and stick, I went on my way. 
 
 I found Miss Spencer's residence without difficulty. 
 The Baptist church was easily identified, and the 
 small dwelling near it, of a rusty white, with a large 
 central chimney-stack and a Virginia creeper, seemed 
 naturally and properly the abode of a withdrawn old 
 
 261
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 maid with a taste for striking effects inexpensively ob 
 tained. As I approached I slackened my pace, for I 
 had heard that some one was always sitting in the 
 front yard, and I wished to reconnoitre. I looked 
 cautiously over the low white fence that separated -the 
 small garden-space from the unpaved street, but I 
 descried nothing in the shape of a Comtesse. A small 
 straight path led up to the crooked door-step, on 
 either side of which was a little grass-plot fringed with 
 currant-bushes. In the middle of the grass, right and 
 left, was a large quince-tree, full of antiquity and con 
 tortions, and beneath one of the quince-trees were 
 placed a small table and a couple of light chairs. On 
 the table lay a piece of unfinished embroidery and two 
 or three books in bright-coloured paper covers. I 
 went in at the gate and paused half-way along the 
 path, scanning the place for some further token of its 
 occupant, before whom I could hardly have said 
 why I hesitated abruptly to present myself. Then I 
 saw the poor little house to be of the shabbiest and felt 
 a sudden doubt of my right to penetrate, since curi 
 osity had been my motive and curiosity here failed of 
 confidence. While I demurred a figure appeared in 
 the open doorway and stood there looking at me. I 
 immediately recognised Miss Spencer, but she faced 
 me as if we had never met. Gently, but gravely and 
 timidly, I advanced to the door-step, where I spoke 
 with an attempt at friendly banter. 
 
 " I waited for you over there to come back, but 
 you never came." 
 
 " Waited where, sir ? " she quavered, her innocent 
 eyes rounding themselves as of old. She was much 
 older ; she looked tired and wasted. 
 
 " Well," I said, " I waited at the old French port." 
 
 She stared harder, then recognised me, smiling, 
 flushing, clasping her two hands together. "I re 
 member you now I remember that day." But she 
 262
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 stood there, neither coming out nor asking me to come 
 in. She was embarrassed. 
 
 I too felt a little awkward while I poked at the path 
 with my stick. " I kept looking out for you year after 
 year." 
 
 :< You mean in Europe ? " she ruefully breathed. 
 
 " In Europe of course ! Here apparently you're 
 easy enough to find." 
 
 She leaned her hand against the unpainted door 
 post and her head fell a little to one side. She looked 
 at me thus without speaking, and I caught the ex 
 pression visible in women's eyes when tears are rising. 
 Suddenly she stepped out on the cracked slab of stone 
 before her threshold and closed the door. Then her 
 strained smile prevailed and I saw her teeth were as 
 pretty as ever. But there had been tears too. " Have 
 you been there ever since ? " she lowered her voice to 
 ask. 
 
 " Until three weeks ago. And you you never 
 came back ? " 
 
 Still shining at me as she could, she put her hand 
 behind her and reopened the door. "I'm not very 
 polite," she said. " Won't you come in ? " 
 
 " I'm afraid I incommode you." 
 
 " Oh no ! " she wouldn't hear of it now. And she 
 pushed back the door with a sign that I should enter. 
 
 I followed her in. She led the way to a small room 
 on the left of the narrow hall, which I supposed to be 
 her parlour, though it was at the back of the house, 
 and we passed the closed door of another apartment 
 which apparently enjoyed a view of the quince-trees. 
 This one looked out upon a small wood-shed and two 
 clucking hens. But I thought it pretty until I saw its 
 elegance to be of the most frugal kind ; after which, 
 presently, I thought it prettier still, for I had never 
 seen faded chintz and old mezzotint engravings, 
 framed in varnished autumn leaves, disposed with so 
 
 263
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 touching a grace. Miss Spencer sat down on a very 
 small section of the sofa, her hands tightly clasped in 
 her lap. She looked ten years older, and I needn't 
 now have felt called to insist on the facts of her person. 
 But I still thought them interesting, and at any rate 
 I was moved by them. She was peculiarly agitated. 
 I tried to appear not to notice it ; but suddenly, in 
 the most inconsequent fashion it was an irresistible 
 echo of our concentrated passage in the old French 
 port I said to her : " I do incommode you. Again 
 you're in distress." 
 
 She raised her two hands to her face and for a 
 moment kept it buried in them. Then taking them 
 away, " It's because you remind me," she said. 
 
 " I remind you, you mean, of that miserable day 
 at the Havre ? " 
 
 She wonderfully shook her head. " It wasn't 
 miserable. It was delightful." 
 
 Ah was it ? my manner of receiving this must have 
 commented. " I never was so shocked as when, on 
 going back to your inn the next morning, I found you 
 had wretchedly retreated." 
 
 She waited an instant, after which she said : 
 " Please let us not speak of that." 
 
 " Did you come straight back here ? " I neverthe 
 less went on. 
 
 " I was back here just thirty days after my first 
 start." 
 
 " And here you've remained ever since ? " 
 
 " Every minute of the time." 
 
 I took it in ; I didn't know what to say, and what 
 I presently said had almost the sound of mockery. 
 " When then are you going to make that tour ? " It 
 might be practically aggressive ; but there was some 
 thing that irritated me in her depths of resignation, 
 and I wished to extort from her some expression of 
 impatience. 
 
 264
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 She attached her eyes a moment to a small sun- 
 spot on the carpet ; then she got up and lowered the 
 window-blind a little to obliterate it. I waited, 
 watching her with interest as if she had still some 
 thing more to give me. Well, presently, in answer to 
 my last question, she gave it. " Never ! " 
 
 " I hope at least your cousin repaid you that 
 money," I said. 
 
 At this again she looked away from me. " I don't 
 care for it now." 
 
 : ' You don't care for your money ? " 
 
 " For ever going to Europe." 
 
 " Do you mean you wouldn't go if you could ? " 
 
 " I can't I can't," said Caroline Spencer. " It's 
 all over. Everything's different. I never think of it." 
 
 '' The scoundrel never repaid you then ! " I cried. 
 
 " Please, please ; ! " she began. 
 
 But she had stopped she was looking toward the 
 door. There had been a rustle and a sound of steps 
 in the hall. 
 
 I also looked toward the door, which was open and 
 now admitted another person a lady who paused 
 just within the threshold. Behind her came a young 
 man. The lady looked at me with a good deal of 
 fixedness long enough for me to rise to a vivid 
 impression of herself. Then she turned to Caroline 
 Spencer and, with a smile and a strong foreign 
 accent, " Pardon, ma chere ! I didn't know you had 
 company," she said. " The gentleman came in so 
 quietly." With which she_ again gave me the benefit 
 of her attention. She was very strange, yet I was at 
 once sure I had seen her before. Afterwards I rather 
 put it that I had only seen ladies remarkably like her. 
 But I had seen them very far away from North Verona, 
 and it was the oddest of ah 1 things to meet one of them 
 in that frame. To what quite other scene did the sight 
 of her transport me ? To some dusky landing before 
 
 265
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 a shabby Parisian quatrieme to an open door reveal 
 ing a greasy ante-chamber and to Madame leaning 
 over the banisters while she holds a faded wrapper 
 together and bawls down to the portress to bring up 
 her coffee. My friend's guest was a very large lady, of 
 middle age, with a plump dead-white face and hair 
 drawn back a la chinoise. She had a small penetrating 
 eye and what is called in French le sourire agr cable. 
 She wore an old pink cashmere dressing-gown covered 
 with white embroideries, and, like the figure in my 
 momentary vision, she confined it in front with a 
 bare and rounded arm and a plump and deeply- 
 dimpled hand. 
 
 " It's only to spick about my cafe," she said to 
 her hostess with her sourire agr cable. " I should like 
 it served in the garden under the leetle tree." 
 
 The young man behind her had now stepped into 
 the room, where he also stood revealed, though with 
 rather less of a challenge. He was a gentleman of few 
 inches but a vague importance, perhaps the leading 
 man of the world of North Verona. He had a small 
 pointed nose and a small pointed chin ; also, as I 
 observed, the most diminutive feet and a manner of 
 no point at all. He looked at me foolishly and with 
 his mouth open. 
 
 " You shall have your coffee," said Miss Spencer 
 as if an army of cooks had been engaged in the 
 preparation of it. 
 
 " C'est bien ! " said her massive inmate. " Find 
 your bouk " and this . personage turned to the 
 gaping youth. 
 
 He gaped now at each quarter of the room. " My 
 grammar, d'ye mean ? " 
 
 The large lady, however, could but face her friend's 
 visitor while persistently engaged with a certain 
 laxity in the flow of her wrapper. " Find your bouk," 
 she more absently repeated. 
 266
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 " My poetry, d'ye mean ? " said the young man, 
 who also couldn't take his eyes off me. 
 
 " Never mind your bouk " his companion re 
 considered. " To-day we'll just talk. We'll make 
 some conversation. But we mustn't interrupt 
 Mademoiselle's. Come, come " and she moved off 
 a step. " Under the leetle tree," she added for the 
 benefit of Mademoiselle. After which she gave me 
 a thin salutation, jerked a measured " Monsieur ! " 
 and swept away again with her swain following. 
 
 I looked at Miss Spencer, whose "eyes never moved 
 from the carpet, and I spoke, I fear, without grace. 
 " Who in the world's that ? " 
 
 " The Comtesse that was : my cousine as they 
 call it in French." 
 
 " And who's the young man ? " 
 
 " The Countess's pupil, Mr. Mixter." This de 
 scription of the tie uniting the two persons who had 
 just quitted us must certainly have upset my gravity ; 
 for I recall the marked increase of my friend's own 
 as she continued to explain. " She gives lessons in 
 French and music, the simpler sorts 
 
 " The simpler sorts of French ? " I fear I 
 broke in. 
 
 But she was still impenetrable, and in fact had 
 now an intonation that put me vulgarly in the wrong. 
 " She has had the worst reverses with no one to 
 look to. She's prepared for any exertion and she 
 takes her misfortunes with gaiety." 
 
 " Ah well," I returned no doubt a little ruefully, 
 " that's all I myself am pretending to do. If she's 
 determined to be a burden to nobody, nothing could 
 be more right and proper." 
 
 My hostess looked vaguely, though I thought quite 
 wearily enough, about : she met this proposition in 
 no other way. " I must go and get the coffee," she 
 simply said. 
 
 267
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 " Has the lady many pupils ? " I none the less 
 persisted. 
 
 " She has only Mr. Mixter. She gives him all her 
 time." It might have set me off again, but something 
 in my whole impression of my friend's sensibility 
 urged me to keep strictly decent. " He pays very 
 well," she at all events inscrutably went on. " He's 
 not very bright as a pupil ; but he's very rich and 
 he's very kind. He has a buggy- with a back, and 
 he takes the Countess to drive." 
 
 " For good long spells I hope," I couldn't help in 
 terjecting even at the cost of her so taking it that 
 she had still to avoid my eyes. " Well, the country's 
 beautiful for miles," I went on. And then as she was 
 turning away : " You're going for the Countess's 
 coffee ? " 
 
 " If you'll excuse me a few moments." 
 
 " Is there no one else to do it ?" 
 
 She seemed to wonder who there should be. " I 
 keep no servants." 
 
 " Then can't I help ? " After which, as she but 
 looked at me, I bettered it. " Can't she wait on 
 herself ? " 
 
 Miss Spencer had a slow headshake as if that 
 too had been a strange idea. " She isn't used to 
 manual labour." 
 
 The discrimination was a treat, but I cultivated de 
 corum. " I see and you are." But at the same time 
 I couldn't abjure curiosity. " Before you go, at any 
 rate, please tell me this : who is this wonderful lady ? " 
 
 " I told you just who in France that extra 
 ordinary day. She's the wife of my cousin, whom 
 you saw there." 
 
 " The lady disowned by her family in consequence 
 of her marriage ? " 
 
 " Yes ; they've never seen her again. They've 
 completely broken with her." 
 268
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 " And where's her husband ? " 
 
 " My poor cousin's dead." 
 
 I pulled up, but only a moment. " And where's 
 your money ? " 
 
 The poor thing flinched- I kept her on the rack. 
 " I don't know," she woefully said. 
 
 I scarce know what it didn't prompt me to but 
 I went step by step. " On her husband's death this 
 lady at once came to you ? " 
 
 It was as if she had had too often to describe it. 
 " Yes, she arrived one day." 
 
 " How long ago ? " 
 
 " Two years and four months." 
 
 " And has been here ever since ? " 
 
 " Ever since." 
 
 I took it all in. " And how does she like it ? " 
 
 " Well, not very much," said Miss Spencer divinely. 
 
 That too I took in. " And how do you ? " 
 
 She laid her face "in her two hands an instant as 
 she had done ten minutes before. Then, quickly, she 
 went to get the Countess's coffee. 
 
 Left alone in the little parlour I found myself 
 divided between the perfection of my disgust and a 
 contrary wish to see, to learn more. At the end of a 
 few minutes the young man in attendance on the lady 
 in question reappeared as for a fresh gape at me. He 
 was inordinately grave- to be dressed in such parti 
 coloured flannels ; and he produced with no great 
 confidence on his own side the message with which he 
 had been charged. " She wants to know if you won't 
 come right out." 
 
 " Who wants to know ? " 
 
 " The Countess. That French lady." 
 
 " She has asked you to bring me ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir," said the young man feebly for I may 
 claim to have surpassed him in stature and weight. 
 
 I went out with him, and we found his instructress 
 269
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 seated under one of the small quince-trees in front of 
 the house ; where she was engaged in drawing a fine 
 needle with a very fat hand through a piece of em 
 broidery not remarkable for freshness. She pointed 
 graciously to the chair beside her and I sat down. Mr. 
 Mixter glanced about him and then accommodated 
 himself on the grass at her feet ; whence he gazed 
 upward more gapingly than ever and as if convinced 
 that between us something wonderful would now 
 occur. 
 
 " I'm sure you spick French," said the Countess, 
 whose eyes were singularly protuberant as she played 
 over me her agreeable smile. 
 
 " I do, madam tant bien que mal," I replied, I 
 fear, more dryly. 
 
 "Ah voild ! " she cried as with delight. " I knew it 
 as soon as I looked at you. You've been in my poor 
 dear country." 
 
 " A considerable time." 
 
 " You love it then, mon pays de France ? " 
 
 " Oh it's an old affection." But I wasn't exuberant. 
 
 " And you know Paris well ? " 
 
 " Yes, sans me vanter, madam, I think I really do." 
 And with a certain conscious purpose I let my eyes 
 meet her own. 
 
 She presently, hereupon, moved her own and 
 glanced down at Mr. Mixter. " What are we talking 
 about ? " she demanded of her attentive pupil. 
 
 He pulled his knees up, plucked at the grass, stared, 
 blushed a little. " You're talking French," said Mr. 
 Mixter. 
 
 " La belle decouverte ! " mocked the Countess. " It's 
 going on ten months," she explained to me, " since 
 I took him in hand. Don't put yourself out not to 
 say he's la betise meme," she added in fine style. " He 
 won't in the least understand you." 
 
 A moment's consideration of Mr. Mixter, awk- 
 270
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 wardly sporting at our feet, quite assured me that he 
 wouldn't. " I hope your other pupils do you more 
 honour," I then remarked to my entertainer. 
 
 " I have no others. They don't know what French 
 or what anything else is in this place ; they don't 
 want to know. You may therefore imagine the 
 pleasure it is to me to meet a person who speaks it 
 like yourself." I could but reply that my own 
 pleasure wasn't less, and she continued to draw the 
 stitches through her embroidery with an elegant curl 
 of her little finger. Every few moments she put her 
 eyes, near-sightedly, closer to her work this as if for 
 elegance too. She inspired me with no more con 
 fidence than her late husband, if husband he was, had 
 done, years before, on the occasion with which this 
 one so detestably matched : she was coarse, common, 
 affected, dishonest no more a Countess than I was 
 a Caliph. She had an assurance based clearly on 
 experience ; but this couldn't have been the experi 
 ence of " race." Whatever it was indeed it did now, 
 in a yearning fashion, flare out of her. " Talk to me 
 of Paris, mon beau Paris that I'd give my eyes to 
 see. The very name of it me fait languir. How long 
 since you were there ? " 
 
 " A couple of months ago." 
 
 " Vous avez de la chance I Tell me something about 
 it. What were they doing ? Oh for an hour of the 
 Boulevard ! " 
 
 " They were doing about what they're always doing 
 amusing themselves a good deal." 
 
 " At the theatres, hein ? " sighed the Countess. " At 
 the cafes-concerts ? sous ce beau del at the little 
 tables before the doors ? Quelle existence ! You know 
 I'm a Parisienne, monsieur," she added, " to my 
 finger-tips." 
 
 " Miss Spencer was mistaken then," I ventured to 
 return, " in telling me you're a Provensale." 
 
 271
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 She stared a moment, then put her nose to her 
 embroidery, which struck me as having acquired even 
 while we sat a dingier and more desultory air. " Ah 
 I'm a Provencale by birth, but a Parisienne by 
 inclination." After which she pursued : " And by the 
 saddest events of my life as well as by some of the 
 happiest, helas ! " 
 
 " In other words by a varied experience ! " I now 
 at last smiled. 
 
 She questioned me over it with her hard little 
 salient eyes. "' Oh -experience ! I could talk of that, 
 no doubt, if I wished. On en a de toutes les sortes 
 and I never dreamed that mine, for example, would 
 ever have this in store for me." And she indicated 
 with her large bare elbow and with a jerk of her head 
 all surrounding objects ; the little white house, the 
 pair of quince-trees, the rickety paling, even the rapt 
 Mr. Mixter. 
 
 I took them all bravely in. " Ah if you mean you're 
 decidedly in exile ! " 
 
 " You may imagine what it is. These two years of 
 my epreuve elles men ont donnees, des henres, des 
 heures ! One gets used to things " and she raised 
 her shoulders to the highest shrug ever accomplished 
 at North Verona ; "so that I sometimes think I've 
 got used to this. But there are some things that are 
 always beginning again. For example my coffee." 
 
 I so far again lent myself. " Do you always have 
 coffee at this hour ? " 
 
 Her eyebrows went up as high as her shoulders 
 had done. " At what hour would you propose 
 to me to have it ? I must have my little cup after 
 breakfast." 
 
 " Ah you breakfast at this hour ? " 
 
 " At mid-day comme cela se fait. Here they 
 breakfast at a quarter past seven. That ' quarter 
 past ' is charming ! " 
 
 272
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 "But you were telling me about your coffee," I 
 observed sympathetically. 
 
 " My cousine can't believe in it ; she can't under 
 stand it. C'est une fille charmante, but that little 
 cup of black coffee with a drop of 'fine' served at this 
 hour they exceed her comprehension. So I have 
 to break the ice each day, and it takes the coffee the 
 time you see to arrive. And when it does arrive, 
 
 monsieur ! If I don't press it on you though 
 
 monsieur here sometimes joins me ! it's because 
 you've drunk it on the Boulevard." 
 
 I resented extremely so critical a view of my poor 
 friend's exertions, but I said nothing at all the 
 only way to be sure of my civility. I dropped my 
 eyes on Mr. Mixter, who, sitting cross-legged and 
 nursing his knees, watched my companion's foreign 
 graces with an interest that familiarity had apparently 
 done little to restrict. She became aware, naturally, 
 of my mystified view of him and faced the question 
 with all her boldness. " He adores me, you know," 
 she murmured with her nose again in her tapestry 
 " he dreams of becoming mon amour eux. Yes, il me 
 fait une cour acharnee such as you see him. That's 
 what we've come to. He has read some French novel 
 it took him six months. But ever since that he has 
 thought himself a hero and me such as I am, 
 monsieur je ne sais quelle devergondee ! " 
 
 Mr. Mixter may have -inferred that he was to that 
 extent the object of our reference ; but of the manner 
 in which he was handled he must have had small 
 suspicion preoccupied as he was, as to my com 
 panion, with the ecstasy of contemplation. Our 
 hostess moreover at this moment came out of the 
 house, bearing a coffee-pot and three cups on a neat 
 little tray. I took from her eyes, as she approached 
 us, a brief but intense appeal- the mute expression, 
 as I felt, conveyed in the hardest little look she had 
 273 T
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 yet addressed me, of her longing to know what, as a 
 man of the world in general and of the French world 
 in particular, I thought of these allied forces now so 
 encamped on the stricken field of her life. I could 
 only " act " however, as they said at North Verona, 
 quite impenetrably only make no answering sign. 
 I couldn't intimate, much less could I frankly utter, 
 my inward sense of the Countess's probable past, with 
 its measure of her virtue, value and accomplishments, 
 and of the limits of the consideration -to which she 
 could properly pretend. I couldn't give my friend a 
 hint of how I myself personally " saw " her interest 
 ing pensioner whether as the runaway wife of a too- 
 jealous hairdresser or of a too-morose pastry-cook, 
 say ; whether as a very small bourgeoise, in fine, 
 who had vitiated her case beyond patching up, or 
 even as some character, of the nomadic sort, less 
 edifying still. I couldn't let in, by the jog of a 
 shutter, as it were, a hard informing ray and then, 
 washing my hands of the business, turn my back for 
 ever. I could on the contrary but save the situation, 
 my own at least, for the moment, by pulling myself 
 together with a master hand and appearing to ignore 
 everything but that the dreadful person between us 
 was a grande dame. This effort was possible indeed 
 but as a retreat in good order and with all the forms 
 of courtesy. If I couldn't speak, still less could I 
 stay, and I think I must, in spite of everything, have 
 turned black with disgust to see Caroline Spencer 
 stand there like a waiting-maid. I therefore won't 
 answer for the shade of success that may have at 
 tended my saying to the Countess, on my feet and as 
 to leave her : " You expect to remain some time in 
 these par ages ? " 
 
 What passed between us, as from face to face, 
 while she looked up at me, that at least our companion 
 may have caught, that at least may have sown, for the 
 274
 
 FOUR MEETINGS 
 
 after-time, some seed of revelation. The Countess 
 repeated her terrible shrug. " Who knows ? I don't 
 
 see my way ! It isn't an existence, but when one's 
 
 in misery ! Chere belle," she added as an appeal to 
 
 Miss Spencer, " you've gone and forgotten the 'fine ' ! " 
 I detained that lady as, after considering a moment 
 in silence the small array, she was about to turn off 
 in quest of this article. I held out my hand in silence 
 I had to go. Her wan set little face, severely mild 
 and with the question of a moment before now quite 
 cold in it, spoke of extreme fatigue, but also of some 
 thing else strange and conceived whether a desperate 
 patience still, or at last some other desperation, 
 being more than I can say. What was clearest on 
 the whole was that she was glad I was going. Mr. 
 Mixter had risen to his feet and was pouring out the 
 Countess's coffee. As I went back past the Baptist 
 church I could feel how right my poor friend had 
 been in her conviction at the other, the still intenser, 
 the now historic crisis, that she should still see some 
 thing of that dear old Europe. 
 
 275
 
 PASTE 
 
 277
 
 " I'VE found a lot more things," her cousin said 
 to her the day after the second funeral ; " they're 
 up in her room but they're things I wish you'd 
 look at." 
 
 The pair of mourners, sufficiently stricken, were in 
 the garden of the vicarage together, before luncheon, 
 waiting to be summoned to that meal, and Arthur 
 Prime had still in his face the intention, she was 
 moved to call it rather than the expression, of feeling 
 something or other. Some such appearance was in 
 itself of course natural within a week of his step 
 mother's death, within three of his father's ; but 
 what was most present to the girl, herself sensitive 
 and shrewd, was that he seemed, somehow to brood 
 without sorrow, to suffer without what she in her 
 own case would have called pain. He turned away 
 from her after this last speech it was a good deal 
 his habit to drop an observation and leave her to pick 
 it up without assistance. If the vicar's widow, now 
 in her turn finally translated, had not really belonged 
 to him it was not for want of her giving herself, so far 
 as he ever would take her ; and she had lain for three 
 days all alone at the end of the passage, in the great 
 cold chamber of hospitality, the dampish greenish 
 room where visitors slept and where several of the 
 ladies of the parish had, without effect, offered, in 
 pairs and successions, piously to watch with her. His 
 personal connexion with the parish was now slighter 
 than ever, and he had really not waited for this oppor- 
 
 279
 
 PASTE 
 
 tunity to show the ladies what he thought of them. 
 She felt that she herself had, during her doleful 
 month's leave from Bleet, where she was governess, 
 rather taken her place in the same snubbed order ; but 
 it was presently, none the less, with a better little hope 
 of coming in for some remembrance, some relic, that 
 she went up to look at the things he had spoken of, the 
 identity of which, as a confused cluster of bright 
 objects on a table in the darkened room, shimmered 
 at her as soon as she had opened the door. 
 
 They met her eyes for the first time, but in a 
 moment, before touching them, she knew them as 
 things of the theatre, as very much too fine to have 
 been with any verisimilitude things of the vicarage. 
 They were too dreadfully good to be true, for her aunt 
 had had no jewels to speak of, and these were coronets 
 and girdles, diamonds, rubies and sapphires. Flagrant 
 tinsel and glass, they looked strangely vulgar, but if 
 after the first queer shock of them she found herself 
 taking them up it was for the very proof, never yet so 
 distinct to her, of a far-off faded story. An honest 
 widowed cleric with a small son and a large sense of 
 Shakespeare had, on a brave latitude of habit as well 
 as of taste since it implied his having in very fact 
 dropped deep into the " pit " conceived for an 
 obscure actress several years older than himself an 
 admiration of which the prompt offer of his reverend 
 name and hortatory hand was the sufficiently candid 
 sign. The response had perhaps in those dim years, 
 so far as eccentricity was concerned, even bettered the 
 proposal, and Charlotte, turning the tale over, had 
 long since drawn from it a measure of the career 
 renounced by the undistinguished comedienne 
 doubtless also tragic, or perhaps pantomimic, at a 
 pinch of her late uncle's dreams. This career 
 couldn't have been eminent and must much more 
 probably have been comfortless. 
 280
 
 PASTE 
 
 " You see what it is old stuff of the time she 
 never liked to mention." 
 
 Our young woman gave a start ; her companion 
 had after all rejoined her and had apparently watched 
 a moment her slightly scared recognition. " So I said 
 to myself," she replied. Then to show intelligence, 
 yet keep clear of twaddle : " How peculiar they look ! " 
 
 " They look awful," said Arthur Prime. " Cheap 
 gilt, diamonds as big as potatoes. These are trap 
 pings of a ruder age than ours. Actors do themselves 
 better now." 
 
 " Oh now," said Charlotte, not to be less knowing, 
 " actresses have real diamonds." 
 
 " Some of them." Arthur spoke dryly. 
 
 " I mean the bad ones the nobodies too." 
 
 " Oh some of the nobodies have the biggest. But 
 mamma wasn't of that sort." 
 
 " A nobody ? " Charlotte risked. 
 
 " Not a nobody to whom somebody well, not a 
 nobody with diamonds. It isn't all worth, this trash, 
 five pounds." 
 
 There was something in the old gewgaws that 
 spoke to her, and she continued to turn them over. 
 " They're relics. I think they have their melancholy 
 and even their dignity." 
 
 Arthur observed another pause. " Do you care 
 for them ? " he then asked. " I mean," he promptly 
 added, " as a souvenir." 
 
 " Of you ? " Charlotte threw off. 
 
 " Of me ? What have I to do with it ? Of your 
 poor dead aunt who was so kind to you," he said 
 with virtuous sternness. 
 
 " Well, I'd rather have them than nothing." 
 
 " Then please take them," he returned in a tone of 
 relief which expressed somehow more of the eager 
 than of the gracious. 
 
 " Thank you." Charlotte lifted two or three objects 
 281
 
 PASTE 
 
 up and set them down again. Though they were 
 lighter than the materials they imitated they were 
 so much more extravagant that they struck her in 
 truth as rather an awkward heritage, to which she 
 might have preferred even a matchbox or a penwiper. 
 They were indeed shameless pinchbeck. " Had you 
 any idea she had kept them ? " 
 
 " I don't at all believe she had kept them or knew 
 they were there, and I'm very sure my father didn't. 
 They had quite equally worked off any tenderness 
 for the connexion. These odds and ends, which she 
 thought had been given away or destroyed, had simply 
 got thrust into a dark corner and been forgotten." 
 1 Charlotte wondered. " Where then did you find 
 them ? " 
 
 " In that old tin box " and the young man 
 pointed to the receptacle from which he had dis 
 lodged them and which stood on a neighbouring chair. 
 " It's rather a good box still, but I'm afraid I can't 
 give you that." 
 
 The girl took no heed of the box ; she continued 
 only to look at the trinkets. " What corner had she 
 found ? " 
 
 " She hadn't ' found ' it," her companion sharply 
 insisted ; " she had simply lost it. The whole thing 
 had passed from her mind. The box was on the top 
 shelf of the old school-room closet, which, until one 
 put one's head into it from a step-ladder, looked, 
 from below, quite cleared out. The door's narrow 
 and the part of the closet to the left goes well into 
 the wall. The box had stuck there for years." 
 
 Charlotte was conscious of a mind divided and a 
 vision vaguely troubled, and once more she took up 
 two or three of the subjects of this revelation ; a big 
 bracelet in the form of a gilt serpent with many 
 twists and beady eyes, a brazen belt studded with 
 emeralds and rubies, a chain, of flamboyant archi- 
 282
 
 PASTE 
 
 lecture, to which, at the Theatre Royal Little Pedd- 
 lington, Hamlet's mother must have been concerned 
 to attach the portrait of the successor to Hamlet's 
 father. " Are you very sure they're not really worth 
 something ? Their mere weight alone ! " she 
 vaguely observed, balancing a moment a royal diadem 
 that might have crowned one of the creations of the 
 famous Mrs. Jarley. 
 
 But Arthur Prime, it was clear, had already thought 
 the question over and found the answer easy. " If 
 they had been worth anything to speak of she would 
 long ago have sold them. My father and she had 
 unfortunately never been in a position to keep any 
 considerable value locked up." And while his com 
 panion took in the obvious force of this he went on 
 with a flourish just marked enough not to escape her : 
 " If they're worth anything at all why you're only 
 the more welcome to them." 
 
 Charlotte had now in her hand a small bag of 
 faded figured silk one of those antique conveniences 
 that speak to us, in terms of evaporated camphor and 
 lavender, of the part they have played in some per 
 sonal history ; but though she had for the first time 
 drawn the string she looked much more at the young 
 man than at the questionable treasure it appeared 
 to contain. " I shall like them. They're all I have." 
 
 " All you have ? " 
 
 " That belonged to her." 
 
 He swelled a little, then looked about him as if to 
 appeal as against her avidity to the whole poor 
 place. " Well, what else do you want ? " 
 
 " Nothing. Thank you very much." With which 
 she bent her eyes on the article wrapped, and now 
 only exposed, in her superannuated satchel a string 
 of large pearls, such a shining circle as might once 
 have graced the neck of a provincial Ophelia and 
 borne company to a flaxen wig. " This perhaps is 
 
 283
 
 PASTE 
 
 worth something. Feel it." And she passed him the 
 necklace, the weight of which she had gathered for a 
 moment into her hand. 
 
 He measured it in the same way with his own, but 
 remained quite detached. " Worth at most thirty 
 shillings." 
 
 " Not more ? " 
 
 " Surely not if it's paste ? " 
 
 " But is it paste ? " 
 
 He gave a small sniff of impatience. " Pearls nearly 
 as big as filberts ? " 
 
 " But they're heavy," Charlotte declared. 
 
 " No heavier than anything else." And he gave 
 them back with an allowance for her simplicity. " Do 
 you imagine for a moment they're real ? " 
 
 She studied them a little, feeling them, turning 
 them round. " Mightn't they possibly be ? " 
 
 " Of that size stuck away with that trash ? " 
 
 " I admit it isn't likely," Charlotte presently said. 
 " And pearls are so easily imitated." 
 
 " That's just what to a person who knows 
 they're not. These have no lustre, no play." 
 
 " No they are dull. They're opaque." 
 
 " Besides," he lucidly inquired, " how could she 
 ever have come by them ? " 
 
 " Mightn't they have been a present ? " 
 
 Arthur stared at the question as if it were almost 
 
 improper. ' ' Because actresses are exposed ? " He 
 
 pulled up, however, not saying to what, and before 
 she could supply the deficiency had, with the sharp 
 ejaculation of " No, they mightn't ! " turned his back 
 on her and walked away. His manner made her feel 
 she had probably been wanting in tact, and before 
 he returned to the subject, the last thing that evening, 
 she had satisfied herself of the ground of his resent 
 ment. They had been talking of her departure the 
 next morning, the hour of her train and the fly that 
 284
 
 PASTE 
 
 would come for her, and it was precisely these things 
 that gave him his effective chance. " I really can't 
 allow you to leave the house under the impression that 
 my stepmother was at any time of her life the sort 
 of person to allow herself to be approached 
 
 " With pearl necklaces and that sort of thing ? " 
 Arthur had made for her somehow the difficulty that 
 she couldn't show him she understood him without 
 seeming pert. 
 
 It at any rate only added to his own gravity. 
 " That sort of thing, exactly." 
 
 " I didn't think when I spoke this morning but 
 I see what you mean." 
 
 " I mean that she was beyond reproach," said 
 Arthur Prime. 
 
 " A hundred times yes." 
 
 " Therefore if she couldn't, out of her slender 
 gains, ever have paid for a row of pearls 
 
 " She couldn't, in that atmosphere, ever properly 
 have had one ? Of course she couldn't. I've seen 
 perfectly since our talk," Charlotte went on, " that 
 that string of beads isn't even as an imitation very 
 good. The little clasp itself doesn't seem even gold. 
 With false pearls, I suppose," the girl mused, " it 
 naturally wouldn't be." 
 
 " The whole thing's rotten paste," her companion 
 returned as if to have done with it. " If it were not, 
 and she had kept it all these years hidden 
 ' Yes ? " Charlotte sounded as he paused. 
 
 " Why I shouldn't know what to think ! " 
 
 " Oh I see." She had met him with a certain 
 blankness, but adequately enough, it seemed, for 
 him to regard the subject as dismissed ; and there 
 was no reversion to it between them before, on the 
 morrow, when she had with difficulty made a place 
 for them in her trunk, she carried off these florid 
 survivals. 
 
 285
 
 PASTE 
 
 At Bleet she found small occasion to revert to them 
 and, in an air charged with such quite other references, 
 even felt, after she had laid them away, much en 
 shrouded, beneath various piles of clothing, that they 
 formed a collection not wholly without its note of the 
 ridiculous. Yet she was never, for the joke, tempted 
 to show them to her pupils., though Gwendolen and 
 Blanche in particular always wanted, on her return, 
 to know what she had brought back ; so that without 
 an accident by which the case was quite changed 
 they might have appeared to enter on a new phase 
 of interment. The essence of the accident was the 
 sudden illness, at the last moment, of Lady Bobby, 
 whose advent had been so much counted on to spice 
 the five days' feast laid out for the coming of age of the 
 eldest son of the house ; and its equally marked effect 
 was the despatch of a pressing message, in quite 
 another direction, to Mrs. Guy, who, could she by a 
 miracle be secured she was always engaged ten 
 parties deep might be trusted to supply, it was 
 believed, an element of exuberance scarcely less 
 potent. Mrs. Guy was already known to several of 
 the visitors already on the scene, but she wasn't yet 
 known to our young lady, who found her, after many 
 wires and counter-wires had at last determined the 
 triumph of her arrival, a strange charming little 
 red-haired black-dressed woman, a person with 
 the face of a baby and the authority of a com 
 modore. She took on the spot the discreet, the 
 exceptional young governess into the confidence of 
 her designs and, still more, of her doubts ; inti 
 mating that it was a policy she almost always 
 promptly pursued. 
 
 " To-morrow and Thursday are all right," she said 
 frankly to Charlotte on the second day, " but I'm 
 not half-satisfied with Friday." 
 
 " What improvement, then, do you suggest ? " 
 286
 
 PASTE 
 
 " Well, my strong point, you know, is tableaux 
 vivants." 
 
 " Charming. And what is your favourite char 
 acter ? " 
 
 " Boss ! " said Mrs. Guy with decision ; and it was 
 very markedly under that ensign that she had, within 
 a few hours, completely planned her campaign and 
 recruited her troop. Every word she uttered was to 
 the point, but none more so than, after a general sur 
 vey of their equipment, her final inquiry of Charlotte. 
 She had been looking about, but half-appeased, at the 
 muster of decoration and drapery. " We shall be dull. 
 We shall want more colour. You've nothing else ? 
 
 Charlotte had a thought. " No I've some things." 
 
 " Then why don't you bring them ? " 
 
 The girl weighed it. " Would you come to my 
 room ? " 
 
 "No," said Mrs. Guy " bring them to-night to 
 mine." 
 
 So Charlotte, at the evening's end, after candle 
 sticks had flickered through brown old passages bed- 
 ward, arrived at her friend's door with the burden of 
 her aunt's relics. But she promptly expressed a fear. 
 " Are they too garish ? " 
 
 When she had poured them out on the sofa Mrs. 
 Guy was but a minute, before the glass, in clapping on 
 the diadem. " Awfully jolly we can do Ivanhoe ! " 
 
 " But they're only glass and tin." 
 
 " Larger than life they are, rather \ which is 
 exactly what's wanted for tableaux. Our jewels, for 
 historic scenes, don't tell the real thing falls short. 
 Rowena must have rubies as big as eggs. Leave them 
 with me," Mrs. Guy continued " they'll inspire me. 
 Good-night." 
 
 The next morning she was in fact yet very 
 strangely inspired. ' Yes, /'// do Rowena. But I 
 don't, my dear, understand." 
 
 287
 
 PASTE 
 
 " Understand what ? " 
 
 Mrs. Guy gave a very lighted stare. " How you 
 come to have such things." 
 
 Poor Charlotte smiled. " By inheritance." 
 
 " Family jewels ? " 
 
 " They belonged to my aunt, who died some 
 months ago. She was on the stage a few years in 
 early life, and these are a part of her trappings." 
 
 " She left them to you ? " 
 
 " No ; my cousin, her stepson, wha naturally has 
 no use for them, gave them to me for remembrance 
 of her. She was a dear kind thing, always so nice to 
 me, and I was fond of her." 
 
 Mrs. Guy had listened with frank interest. " But 
 it's he who must be a dear kind thing ! " 
 
 Charlotte wondered. " You think so ? " 
 
 " Is he," her friend went on, " also ' always so nice ' 
 to you ? " 
 
 The girl, at this, face to face there with the brilliant 
 visitor in the deserted breakfast-room, took a deeper 
 sounding. " What is it ? " 
 
 " Don't you know ? " 
 
 Something came over her. " The pearls ? " 
 
 But the question fainted on her lips. 
 
 " Doesn't he know ? " 
 
 Charlotte found herself flushing. " They're not 
 paste ? " 
 
 " Haven't you looked at them ? " 
 
 She was conscious of two kinds of embarrassment. 
 " You have ? " 
 
 " Very carefully." 
 
 " And they're real ? " 
 
 Mrs. Guy became slightly mystifying and returned 
 for all answer : " Come again, when you've done with 
 the children, to my room." 
 
 Our young woman found she had done with the 
 children that morning so promptly as to reveal to 
 288
 
 PASTE 
 
 them a new joy, and when she reappeared before 
 Mrs. Guy this lady had already encircled a plump 
 white throat with the only ornament, surely, in all 
 the late Mrs. Prime's the effaced Miss Bradshaw's 
 collection, in the least qualified to raise a question. 
 If Charlotte had never yet once, before the glass, tied 
 the string of pearls about her own neck, this was 
 because she had been capable of no such stoop to 
 approved " imitation " ; but she had now only to look 
 at Mrs. Guy to see that, so disposed, the ambiguous 
 objects might have passed for frank originals. " What 
 in the world have you done to them ? " 
 
 " Only handled them, understood them, admired 
 them and put them on. That's what pearls want ; 
 they want to be worn it wakes them up. They're 
 alive, don't you see ? How have these been treated ? 
 They must have been buried, ignored, despised. They 
 were half-dead. Don't you know about pearls ? " Mrs. 
 Guy threw off as she fondly fingered the necklace. 
 
 " How should I ? Do you ? " 
 
 " Everything. These were simply asleep, and 
 from the moment I really touched them well," 
 said their wearer lovingly, " it only took one's 
 eye ! " 
 
 " It took more than mine though I did jusf 
 wonder ; and than Arthur's," Charlotte brooded. 
 She found herself almost panting. " Then their 
 value ? " 
 
 " Oh their value's excellent." 
 
 The girl, for a deep contemplative moment, took 
 another plunge into the wonder, the beauty and the 
 mystery. " Are you sure ? " 
 
 Her companion wheeled round for impatience. 
 " Sure ? For what kind of an idiot, my dear, do you 
 take me ? " 
 
 It was beyond Charlotte Prime to say. " For the 
 same kind as Arthur and as myself," she could 
 
 289 u
 
 PASTE 
 
 only suggest. " But my cousin didn't know. He 
 thinks they're worthless." 
 
 " Because of the rest of the lot ? Then your cousin's 
 an ass. But what if, as I understood you, he gave 
 them to you has he to do with it ? " 
 
 " Why if he gave them to me as worthless and they 
 turn out precious ! " 
 
 " You must give them back ? I don't see that 
 if he was such a noodle. He took the risk." 
 
 Charlotte fed, in fancy, on the pearls, which de 
 cidedly were exquisite, but which at the present 
 moment somehow presented themselves much more 
 as Mrs. Guy's than either as Arthur's or as her own. 
 " Yes he did take it ; even after I had distinctly 
 hinted to him that they looked to me different from 
 the other pieces." 
 
 " Well then ! " said Mrs. Guy with something more 
 than triumph with a positive odd relief. 
 
 But it had the effect of making our young woman 
 think with more intensity. " Ah you see he thought 
 they couldn't be different, because so peculiarly 
 they shouldn't be." 
 
 " Shouldn't ? I don't understand." 
 
 " Why how would she have got them ? " so 
 Charlotte candidly put it. 
 
 " She ? Who ? " There was a capacity in Mrs. 
 Guy's tone for a sinking of persons ! 
 
 " Why the person I told you of : his stepmother, 
 my uncle's wife among whose poor old things, 
 extraordinarily thrust away and out of sight, he 
 happened to find them." 
 
 Mrs. Guy came a step nearer to the effaced Miss 
 Bradshaw. " Do you mean she may have stolen 
 them ? " 
 
 " No. But she had been an actress." 
 
 " Oh well then," cried Mrs. Guy, " wouldn't that 
 be just how ? " 
 
 290
 
 PASTE 
 
 ' Yes, except that she wasn't at all a brilliant one, 
 nor in receipt of large pay." The girl even threw off 
 a nervous joke. " I'm afraid she couldn't have been 
 our Rowena." 
 
 Mrs. Guy took it up. " Was she very ugly ? " 
 
 " No. She may very well, when young, have looked 
 rather nice." 
 
 " Well then ! " was Mrs. Guy's sharp comment and 
 fresh triumph. 
 
 " You mean it was a present ? That's just what 
 he so dislikes the idea of her having received a 
 present from an admirer capable of going such 
 lengths." 
 
 " Because she wouldn't have taken it for nothing ? 
 Speriamo that she wasn't a brute. The 'length' 
 her admirer went was the length of a whole row. Let 
 us hope she was just a little kind ! " 
 
 " Well," Charlotte went on, " that she was ' kind ' 
 might seem to be shown by the fact that neither her 
 husband, nor his son, nor I, his niece, knew or 
 dreamed of her possessing anything so precious ; by 
 her having kept the gift all the rest of her life 
 beyond discovery out of sight and protected from 
 suspicion." 
 
 " As if, you mean " Mrs. Guy was quick " she 
 had been w r edded to it and yet was ashamed of it ? 
 Fancy," she laughed while she manipulated the rare 
 beads, " being ashamed of these \ " 
 
 " But you see she had married a clergyman." 
 
 " Yes, she must have been ' rum.' But at any rate 
 he had married her. What did he suppose ? " 
 
 " Why that she had never been of the sort by 
 whom such offerings are encouraged." 
 
 " Ah my dear, the sort by whom they're not ! " 
 But Mrs. Guy caught herself up. " And her stepson 
 thought the same ? " 
 
 " Overwhelmingly." 
 
 291
 
 PASTE 
 
 " Was he then, if only her stepson-- 
 
 " So fond of her as that comes to ? Yes ; he had 
 never known, consciously, his real mother, and, 
 without children of her own, she was very patient 
 and nice with him. And / liked her so," the girl 
 pursued, " that at the end of ten years, in so strange 
 a manner, to ' give her away '- 
 
 " Is ' impossible to you ? Then don't ! " said Mrs. 
 Guy with decision. 
 
 " Ah but if they're real I can't keep them ! " 
 Charlotte, with her eyes on them, moaned in her 
 impatience. " It's too difficult." 
 
 " Where's the difficulty, if he has such sentiments 
 that he'd rather sacrifice the necklace than admit it, 
 with the presumption it carries with it, to be genuine ? 
 You've only to be silent." 
 
 " And keep it ? How can / ever wear it ? " 
 
 " You'd have to hide it, like your aunt ? " Mrs. 
 Guy was amused. " You can easily sell it." 
 
 Her companion walked round her for a look at the 
 affair from behind. The clasp was certainly, doubt 
 less intentionally, misleading, but everything else was 
 indeed lovely. " Well, I must think. Why didn't she 
 sell them ? " Charlotte broke out in her trouble. 
 
 Mrs. Guy had an instant answer. " Doesn't that 
 prove what they secretly recalled to her ? You've only 
 to be silent ! " she ardently repeated. 
 
 " I must think I must think ! " 
 
 Mrs. Guy stood with her hands attached but 
 motionless. " Then you want them back ? " 
 
 As if with the dread of touching them Charlotte 
 retreated to the door. " I'll tell you to-night." 
 
 " But may I wear them ? " 
 
 "'' Meanwhile ? " 
 
 " This evening at dinner." 
 
 It was the sharp selfish pressure of this that really, 
 on the spot, determined the girl ; but for the moment, 
 292
 
 PASTE 
 
 before closing the door on the question, she only said : 
 " As you like ! " 
 
 They were busy much of the day with preparation 
 and rehearsal, and at dinner that evening the con 
 course of guests was such that a place among them 
 for Miss Prime failed to find itself marked. At the 
 time the company rose she was therefore alone in 
 the school-room, where, towards eleven o'clock, she 
 received a visit from Mrs. Guy. This lady's white 
 shoulders heaved, under the pearls, with an emotion 
 that the very red lips which formed, as if for the full 
 effect, the happiest opposition of colour, were not 
 slow to translate. " My dear, you should have seen 
 the sensation they've had a success ! " 
 
 Charlotte, dumb a moment, took it all in. " It is 
 as if they knew it- they're more and more alive. 
 But so much the worse for both of us ! I can't," she 
 brought out with an effort, " be silent." 
 
 " You mean to return them ? " 
 
 " If I don't I'm a thief." 
 
 Mrs. Guy gave her a long hard look : what was 
 decidedly not of the baby in Mrs. Guy's face was a 
 certain air of established habit in the eyes. Then, 
 with a sharp little jerk of her head and a backward 
 reach of her bare beautiful arms, she undid the clasp 
 and, taking off the necklace, laid it on the table. " If 
 you do you're a goose." 
 
 "Well, of the two !" said our young lady, 
 
 gathering it up with a sigh. And as if to get it, for the 
 pang it gave, out of sight as soon as possible, she shut 
 it up, clicking the lock, in the drawer of her own little 
 table ; after which, when she turned again, her com 
 panion looked naked and plain without it. " But what 
 will you say ? " it then occurred to her to demand. 
 
 " Downstairs to explain ? " Mrs. Guy was after 
 all trying at least to keep her temper. " Oh I'll 
 put on something else and say the clasp's broken. 
 
 293
 
 PASTE 
 
 And you won't of course name me to him," she 
 added. 
 
 " As having undeceived me ? No I'll say that, 
 looking at the thing more carefully, it's my own 
 private idea." 
 
 " And does he know how little you really know ? " 
 
 "As an expert surely. And he has always much 
 the conceit of his own opinion." 
 
 " Then he won't believe you as he so hates to. 
 He'll stick to his judgement and maintain his gift, 
 and we shall have the darlings back ! " With which 
 reviving assurance Mrs. Guy kissed her young friend 
 for good-night. 
 
 She was not, however, to be gratified or justified by 
 any prompt event, for, whether or no paste entered 
 into the composition of the ornament in question, 
 Charlotte shrank from the temerity of despatching 
 it to town by post. Mrs. Guy was thus disappointed 
 of the hope of seeing the business settled " by re 
 turn," she had seemed to expect- before the end of 
 the revels. The revels, moreover, rising to a frantic 
 pitch, pressed for all her attention, and it was at last 
 only in the general confusion of leave-taking that she 
 made, parenthetically, a dash at the person in the 
 whole company with whom her contact had been 
 most interesting. 
 
 " Come, what will you take for them ? " 
 
 " The pearls ? Ah, you'll have to treat with my 
 cousin." 
 
 Mrs. Guy, with quick intensity, lent herself. 
 " Where then does he live ? " 
 
 " In chambers in the Temple. You can find him." 
 
 " But what's the use, if you do neither one thing 
 nor the other ? " 
 
 " Oh I shall do the ' other,' " Charlotte said : " I'm 
 only waiting till I go up. You want them so awfully ? " 
 She curiously, solemnly again, sounded her. 
 294
 
 PASTE 
 
 " I'm dying for them. There's a special charm in 
 them I don't know what it is : they tell so their 
 history." 
 
 " But what do you know of that ? " 
 
 " Just what they themselves say. It's ah 1 in them 
 and it comes out. They breathe a tenderness 
 they have the white glow of it. My dear," hissed 
 Mrs. Guy in supreme confidence and as she buttoned 
 her glove " they're things of love ! " 
 
 " Oh ! " our young woman vaguely exclaimed. 
 
 ' They're things of passion ! " 
 
 " Mercy ! " she gasped, turning short off. But these 
 words remained, though indeed their help was scarce 
 needed, Charlotte being in private face to face with 
 a new light, as she by this time felt she must call it, 
 on the dear dead kind colourless lady whose career 
 had turned so sharp a corner in the middle. The 
 pearls had quite taken their place as a revelation. 
 She might have received them for nothing admit 
 that ; but she couldn't have kept them so long and 
 so unprofitably hidden, couldn't have enjoyed them 
 only in secret, for nothing ; and she had mixed them 
 in her reliquary with false things in order to put curi 
 osity and detection off the scent. Over this strange 
 fact poor Charlotte interminably mused : it became 
 more touching, more attaching for her than she could 
 now confide to any ear. How bad or how happy 
 in the sophisticated sense of Mrs. Guy and the young 
 man at the temple the effaced Miss Bradshaw 
 must have been to have had to be so mute ! The little 
 governess at Bleet put on the necklace now in secret 
 sessions ; she wore it sometimes under her dress ; she 
 came to feel verily a haunting passion for it. Yet in 
 her penniless state she would have parted with it for 
 money ; she gave herself also to dreams of what in this 
 direction it would do for her. The sophistry of her 
 so often saying to herself that Arthur had after all 
 
 295
 
 PASTE 
 
 definitely pronounced her welcome to any gain from his 
 gift that might accrue this trick remained innocent, 
 as she perfectly knew it for what it was. Then there 
 was always the possibility of his as she could only 
 picture it rising to the occasion. Mightn't he have 
 a grand magnanimous moment ? mightn't he just 
 say, " Oh I couldn't of course have afforded to let 
 you have it if I had known ; but since you have got 
 it, and have made out the truth by your own wit, I 
 really can't screw myself down to the shabbiness of 
 taking it back " ? 
 
 She had, as it proved, to wait a long tune to wait 
 till, at the end of several months, the great house of 
 Bleet had, with due deliberation, for the season, 
 transferred itself to town ; after which, however, she 
 fairly snatched at her first freedom to knock, dressed 
 in her best and armed with her disclosure, at the 
 door of her doubting kinsman. It was still with 
 doubt and not quite with the face she had hoped 
 that he listened to her story. He had turned pale, 
 she thought, as she produced the necklace, and he 
 appeared above all disagreeably affected. Well, 
 perhaps there was reason, she more than ever re 
 membered ; but what on earth was one, in close touch 
 with the fact, to do ? She had laid the pearls on his 
 table, where, without his having at first put so much 
 as a finger to them, they met his hard cold stare. 
 
 " I don't believe in them," he simply said at 
 last. 
 
 " That's exactly then," she returned with some 
 spirit, " what I wanted to hear ! " 
 
 She fancied that at this his colour changed ; it was 
 indeed vivid to her afterwards for she was to have 
 a long recall of the scene that she had made him 
 quite angrily flush. " It's a beastly unpleasant im 
 putation, you know ! " and he walked away from 
 her as he had always walked at the vicarage. 
 296
 
 PASTE 
 
 " It's none of my making, I'm sure," said Charlotte 
 Prime. " If you're afraid to believe they're real " 
 
 " Well ?." and he turned, across the room, sharp 
 round at her. 
 
 " Why it's not my fault." 
 
 He said nothing more, for a moment, on this ; 
 he only came back to the table. " They're what I 
 originally said they were. They're rotten paste." 
 
 " Then I may keep them ? " 
 
 " No. I want a better opinion." 
 
 " Than your own ? " 
 
 " Than your own." He dropped on the pearls 
 another queer stare ; then, after a moment, bringing 
 himself to touch them, did exactly what she had 
 herself done in the presence of Mrs. Guy at Bleet 
 gathered them together, marched off with them to a 
 drawer, put them in and clicked the key. " You 
 say I'm afraid," he went on as he again met her ; 
 " but I shan't be afraid to take them to Bond 
 Street." 
 
 " And if the people say they're real ? " 
 
 He had a pause and then his strangest manner. 
 " They won't say it ! They shan't ! " 
 
 There was something in the way he brought it out 
 that deprived poor Charlotte, as she was perfectly 
 aware, of any manner at all. " Oh ! " she simply 
 sounded, as she had sounded for her last word to 
 Mrs. Guy ; and within a minute, without more con 
 versation, she had taken her departure. 
 
 A fortnight later she received a communication 
 from him, and toward the end of the season one of 
 the entertainments in Eaton Square was graced by 
 the presence of Mrs. Guy. Charlotte was not at 
 dinner, but she came down afterwards, and this guest, 
 on seeing her, abandoned a very beautiful young man 
 on purpose to cross and speak to her. The guest 
 displayed a lovely necklace and had apparently not 
 
 297
 
 PASTE 
 
 lost her habit of overflowing with the pride of such 
 ornaments. 
 
 " Do you see ? " She was in high joy. 
 
 They were indeed splendid pearls so far as poor 
 Charlotte could feel that she knew, after what had 
 come and gone, about such mysteries. The poor girl 
 had a sickly smile. " They're almost as fine as 
 Arthur's." 
 
 " Almost ? Where, my dear, are your eyes ? They 
 are ' Arthur's ' ! " After which, to meet the flood of 
 crimson that accompanied her young friend's start : 
 " I tracked them after your folly, and, by miracu 
 lous luck, recognised them in the Bond Street window 
 to which he had disposed of them." 
 
 " Disposed of them ? " Charlotte gasped. " He 
 wrote me that I had insulted his mother and that the 
 people had shown him he was right had pronounced 
 them utter paste." 
 
 Mrs. Guy gave a stare. " Ah I told you he wouldn't 
 bear it ! No. But I had, I assure you," she wound 
 up, " to drive my bargain ! " 
 
 Charlotte scarce heard or saw ; she was full of her 
 private wrong. " He wrote me," she panted, " that 
 he had smashed them." 
 
 Mrs. Guy could only wonder and pity. " He's 
 really morbid ! " But it wasn't quite clear which of 
 the pair she pitied ; though the young person em 
 ployed in Eaton Square felt really morbid too after 
 they had separated and she found herself full of 
 thought. She even went the length of asking herself 
 what sort of a bargain Mrs. Guy had driven and 
 whether the marvel of the recognition in Bond Street 
 had been a veracious account of the matter. Hadn't 
 she perhaps in truth dealt with Arthur directly ? It 
 came back to Charlotte almost luridly that she had 
 had his address. 
 
 298
 
 EUROPE 
 
 299
 
 " OUR feeling is, you know, that Becky should go." 
 That earnest little remark comes back to me, even 
 after long years, as the first note of something that 
 began, for my observation, the day I went with my 
 sister-in-law to take leave of her good friends. It's 
 a memory of the American time, which revives so at 
 present under some touch that doesn't signify 
 that it rounds itself off as an anecdote. That walk to 
 say good-bye was the beginning ; and the end, so far as 
 I enjoyed a view of it, was not till long after ; yet 
 even the end also appears to me now as of the old 
 days. I went, in those days, on occasion, to see my 
 sister-in-law, in whose affairs, on my brother's death, 
 I had had to take a helpful hand. I continued to go 
 indeed after these little matters were straightened out 
 for the pleasure, periodically, of the impression the 
 change to the almost pastoral sweetness of the good 
 Boston suburb from the loud longitudinal New York. 
 It was another world, with other manners, a different 
 tone, a different taste ; a savour nowhere so mild, 
 yet so distinct, as in the square white house with 
 the pair of elms, like gigantic wheat-sheaves, in front, 
 the rustic orchard not far behind, the old-fashioned 
 door-lights, the big blue-and-white jars in the porch, 
 the straight bricked walk from the high gate that 
 enshrined the extraordinary merit of Mrs. Rimmle 
 and her three daughters. 
 
 301
 
 EUROPE 
 
 These ladies were so much of the place and the 
 place so much of themselves that from the first of 
 their being revealed to me I felt that nothing else at 
 Brookbridge much mattered. They were what, for 
 me, at any rate, Brookbridge had most to give : I 
 mean in the way of what it was naturally strongest 
 in, the thing we called in New York the New England 
 expression, the air of Puritanism reclaimed and 
 refined. The Rimmles had brought this down to a 
 wonderful delicacy. They struck me even then 
 all four almost equally as very ancient and very 
 earnest, and I think theirs must have been the house 
 in all the world in which " culture " first came to the 
 aid of morning calls. The head of the family was 
 the widow of a great public character as public 
 characters were understood at Brookbridge whose 
 speeches on anniversaries formed a part of the body 
 of national eloquence spouted in the New England 
 schools by little boys covetous of the most marked, 
 though perhaps the easiest, distinction. He was 
 reported to have been celebrated, and in such fine 
 declamatory connexions that he seemed to gesticulate 
 even from the tomb. He was understood to have 
 made, in his wife's company, the tour of Europe at a 
 date not immensely removed from that of the battle 
 of Waterloo. What was the age then of the bland 
 firm antique Mrs. Rimmle at the period of her being 
 first revealed to me ? That's a point I'm not in a 
 position to determine I remember mainly that I 
 was young enough to regard her as having reached the 
 limit. And yet the limit for Mrs. Rimmle must have 
 been prodigiously extended ; the scale of its extension 
 is in fact the very moral of this reminiscence. She was 
 old, and her daughters were old, but I was destined to 
 know them all as older. It was only by comparison 
 and habit that however much I recede Rebecca, 
 Maria and Jane were the " young ladies," 
 302
 
 EUROPE 
 
 I think it was felt that, though their mother's life, 
 after thirty years of widowhood, had had a grand 
 backward stretch, her blandness and firmness and 
 this in spite of her extreme physical frailty would 
 be proof against any surrender not overwhelmingly 
 justified by time. It had appeared, years before, 'at 
 a crisis of which the waves had not even yet quite 
 subsided, a surrender not justified by anything name- 
 able that she should go to Europe with her daughters 
 and for her health. Her health was supposed to re 
 quire constant support ; but when it had at that period 
 tried conclusions with the idea of Europe it was not 
 the idea of Europe that had been insidious enough 
 to prevail. She hadn't gone, and Becky, Maria and 
 Jane hadn't gone, and this was long ago. They still 
 merely floated in the air of the visit achieved, with 
 such introductions and such acclamations, in the early 
 part of the century ; they still, with fond glances at 
 the sunny parlour-walls, only referred, in conversation, 
 to divers pictorial and other reminders of it. The 
 Miss Rimmles had quite been brought up on it, but 
 Becky, as the most literary, had most mastered the 
 subject. There were framed letters tributes to 
 their eminent father suspended among the me 
 mentoes, and of two or three of these, the most foreign 
 and complimentary, Becky had executed translations 
 that figured beside the text. She knew already, 
 through this and other illumination, so much about 
 Europe that it was hard to believe for her in that 
 limit of adventure which consisted only of her having 
 been twice to Philadelphia. The others hadn't been 
 to Philadelphia, but there was a legend that Jane had 
 been to Saratoga. Becky was a short stout fail- 
 person with round serious eyes, a high forehead, the 
 sweetest neatest enunciation, and a miniature of her 
 father "done in Rome" worn as a breastpin. 
 She had written the life, she had edited the speeches, 
 
 303
 
 EUROPE 
 
 of the original of this ornament, and now at last, 
 beyond the seas, she was really to tread in his footsteps. 
 Fine old Mrs. Rimmle, in the sunny parlour and 
 with a certain austerity of cap and chair though 
 with a gay new " front " that looked like rusty brown 
 plush had had so unusually good a winter that the 
 question of her sparing two members of her family 
 for an absence had been threshed as fine, I could 
 feel, as even under that Puritan roof any case of con 
 science had ever been threshed. They were to make 
 their dash while the coast, as it were, was clear, and 
 each of the daughters had tried heroically, angelically 
 and for the sake of each of her sisters not to be 
 one of the two. What I encountered that first time 
 was an opportunity to concur with enthusiasm in the 
 general idea that Becky's wonderful preparation would 
 be wasted if she were the one to stay with their mother. 
 Their talk of Becky's preparation (they had a sly 
 old-maidish humour that was as mild as milk) might 
 have been of some mixture, for application somewhere, 
 that she kept in a precious bottle. It had been settled 
 at all events that, armed with this concoction and 
 borne aloft by their introductions, she and Jane were 
 to start. They were wonderful on their introductions, 
 which proceeded naturally from their mother and 
 were addressed to the charming families that in vague 
 generations had so admired vague Mr. Rimmle. 
 Jane, I found at Brookbridge, had to be described, 
 for want of other description, as the pretty one, but 
 it wouldn't have served to identify her unless you had 
 seen the others. Her preparation was only this fig 
 ment of her prettiness only, that is, unless one took 
 into account something that, on the spot, I silently 
 divined : the lifelong secret passionate ache of her little 
 rebellious desire. They were all growing old in the 
 yearning to go, but Jane's yearning was the sharpest. 
 She struggled with it as people at Brookbridge mostly 
 
 304
 
 EUROPE 
 
 struggled with what they liked, but fate, by threat 
 ening to prevent what she ^'sliked and what was 
 therefore duty which was to stay at home instead 
 of Maria had bewildered her, I judged, not a little. 
 It was she who, in the words I have quoted, mentioned 
 to me Becky's case and Becky's affinity as the clearest 
 of all. Her mother moreover had on the general 
 subject still more to say. 
 
 " I positively desire, I really quite insist that they 
 shall go," the old lady explained to us from her stiff 
 chair. " We've talked about it so often, and they've 
 had from me so clear an account I've amused 
 them again and again with it of what's to be seen 
 and enjoyed. If they've had hitherto too many duties 
 to leave, the time seems to have come to recognise 
 that there are also many duties to seek. Wherever 
 we go we find them I always remind the girls of 
 that. There's a duty that calls them to those wonder 
 ful countries, just as it called, at the right time, their 
 father and myself if it be only that of laying-up for 
 the years to come the same store of remarkable im 
 pressions, the same wealth of knowledge and food for 
 conversation as, since my return, I've found myself 
 so happy to possess." Mrs. Rimmle spoke of her 
 return as of something of the year before last, but the 
 future of her daughters was somehow, by a different 
 law, to be on the scale of great vistas, of endless after 
 tastes. I think that, without my being quite ready to 
 say it, even this first impression of her was somewhat 
 upsetting ; there was a large placid perversity, a grim 
 secrecy of intention, in her estimate of the ages. 
 
 " Well, I'm so glad you don't delay it longer," I 
 said to Miss Becky before we withdrew. " And 
 whoever should go," I continued in the spirit of the 
 sympathy with which the good sisters had already 
 inspired me, " I quite feel, with your family, you 
 know, that you should. But of course I hold that 
 
 305 x
 
 EUROPE 
 
 every one should." I suppose I wished to attenuate 
 my solemnity ; there was, however, something in 
 it I couldn't help. It must have been a faint fore 
 knowledge. 
 
 " Have you been a great deal yourself ? " Miss 
 Jane, I remember, inquired. 
 
 " Not so much but that I hope to go a good deal 
 more. So perhaps we shall meet," I encouragingly 
 suggested. 
 
 I recall something something in the nature of 
 susceptibility to encouragement that this brought 
 into the more expressive brown eyes to which Miss 
 Jane mainly owed it that she was the pretty one. 
 " Where, do you think ? " 
 
 I tried to think. " Well, on the Italian lakes 
 Como, Bellaggio, Lugano." I liked to say the names 
 to them. 
 
 " ' Sublime, but neither bleak nor bare nor misty 
 are the mountains there ! ' " Miss Jane softly breathed, 
 while her sister looked at her as if her acquaintance 
 with the poetry of the subject made her the most 
 interesting feature of the scene she evoked. 
 
 But Miss Becky presently turned to me. " Do you 
 know everything ? " 
 
 " Everything ? " 
 
 " In Europe." 
 
 " Oh yes," I laughed, " and one or two things even 
 in America." 
 
 The sisters seemed to me furtively to look at each 
 other. " Well, you'll have to be quick to meet us," 
 Miss Jane resumed. 
 
 " But surely when you're once there you'll stay on." 
 
 " Stay on ? " they murmured it simultaneously 
 and with the oddest vibration of dread as well as of 
 desire. It was as if they had been in presence of a 
 danger and yet wished me, who " knew everything," 
 to torment them with still more of it. 
 306
 
 EUROPE 
 
 Well, I did my best. " I mean it will never do to 
 cut it short." 
 
 " No, that's just what I keep saying," said brilliant 
 Jane. " It would be better in that case not to go." 
 
 " Oh don't talk about not going at this time ! " 
 It was none of my business, but I felt shocked and 
 impatient. 
 
 " No, not at this time ! " broke in Miss Maria, who, 
 very red in the face, had joined us. Poor Miss Maria 
 was known as the flushed one ; but she was not 
 flushed she only had an unfortunate surface. The 
 third day after this was to see them embark. 
 
 Miss Becky, however, desired as little as any one 
 to be in any way extravagant. " It's only the thought 
 of our mother," she explained. 
 
 I looked a moment at the old lady, with whom 
 my sister-in-law was engaged. " Well your mother's 
 magnificent." 
 
 " Isn't she magnificent ? " they eagerly took it up. 
 
 She was I could reiterate it with sincerity, 
 though' I perhaps mentally drew the line when Miss 
 Maria again risked, as a fresh ejaculation : "I think 
 she's better than Europe ! " 
 
 " Maria ! " they both, at this, exclaimed with a 
 strange emphasis : it was as if they feared she had 
 suddenly turned cynical over the deep domestic 
 drama of their casting of lots. The innocent laugh 
 with which she answered them gave the measure of 
 her cynicism. 
 
 We separated at last, and my eyes met Mrs. 
 Rimmle's as I held for an instant her aged hand. It 
 was doubtless only my fancy that her calm cold look 
 quietly accused me of something. Of what could it 
 accuse me ? Only, I thought, of thinking. 
 
 307
 
 II 
 
 I LEFT Brookbridge the next day, and for some time 
 after that had no occasion to hear from my kins 
 woman ; but when she finally wrote there was a 
 passage in her letter that affected me more than all the 
 rest. " Do you know the poor Rimmles never, after 
 all, ' went ' ? The old lady, at the eleventh hour, broke 
 down ; everything broke down, and all of them on top 
 of it, so that the dear things are with us still. Mrs. 
 Rimmle, the night after our call, had, in the most un 
 expected manner, a turn for the worse something in 
 the nature (though they're rather mysterious about 
 it) of a seizure ; Becky and Jane felt it dear devoted 
 stupid angels that they are heartless to leave her 
 at such a moment, and Europe's indefinitely post 
 poned. However, they think they're still going or 
 think they think it when she's better. They also 
 think or think they think that she will be better. 
 I certainly pray she may." So did I quite fervently. 
 I was conscious of a real pang I didn't know how 
 much they had made me care. 
 
 Late that winter my sister-in-law spent a week in 
 New York ; when almost my first inquiry on meeting 
 her was about the health of Mrs. Rimmle. 
 
 " Oh she's rather bad she really is, you know. 
 It's not surprising that at her age she should be 
 infirm." 
 
 " Then what the deuce is her age ? " 
 308
 
 EUROPE 
 
 " I can't tell you to a year but she's immensely 
 old." 
 
 " That of course I saw," I replied " unless you 
 literally mean so old that the records have been lost." 
 
 My sister-in-law thought. " Well, I believe she 
 wasn't positively young when she married. She lost 
 three or four children before these women were born." 
 
 We surveyed together a little, on this, the " dark 
 backward." " And they were born, I gather, after the 
 famous tour ? Well then, as the famous tour was in 
 a manner to celebrate wasn't it ? the restoration 
 
 of the Bourbons " I considered, I gasped. " My 
 
 dear child, what on earth do you make her out ? " 
 
 My relative, with her Brookbridge habit, trans 
 ferred her share of the question to the moral plane 
 turned it forth to wander, by implication at least, in 
 the sandy desert of responsibility. " Well, you know, 
 we all immensely admire her." 
 
 " You can't admire her more than I do. She's 
 awful." 
 
 My converser looked at me with a certain fear. 
 " She's really ill." 
 
 " Too ill to get better ? " 
 
 " Oh no we hope not. Because then they'll be 
 able to go." 
 
 " And will they go if she should ? " 
 
 " Oh the moment they should be quite satisfied. 
 I mean really," she added. 
 
 I'm afraid I laughed at her the Brookbridge 
 " really " was a thing so by itself. " But if she 
 shouldn't get better ? " I went on. 
 
 " Oh don't speak of it ! They want so to go." 
 
 " It's a pity they're so infernally good," I mused. 
 
 " No don't say that. It's what keeps them up." 
 
 " Yes, but isn't it what keeps her up too ? " 
 
 My visitor looked grave. " Would you like them 
 to kill her ? " 
 
 309
 
 EUROPE 
 
 I don't know that I was then prepared to say I 
 should though I believe I came very near it. But 
 later on I burst all bounds, for the subject grew and 
 grew. I went again before the good, sisters ever did 
 I mean I went to Europe. I think I went twice, 
 with a brief interval, before my fate again brought 
 round for me a couple of days at Brookb ridge. I had 
 been there repeatedly, in the previous time, without 
 making the acquaintance of the Rimmles ; but now 
 that I had had the revelation I couldn't have it too 
 much, and the first request I preferred was to be taken 
 again to see them. I remember well indeed the scruple 
 I felt the real 'delicacy about betraying that / 
 had, in the pride of my power, since our other meet 
 ing, stood, as their phrase went, among romantic 
 scenes ; but they were themselves the first to speak of 
 it, and what moreover came home to me was that 
 the coming and going of their friends in general 
 Brookbridge itself having even at that period one foot 
 in Europe was such as to place constantly before 
 them the pleasure that was only postponed. They 
 were thrown back after all on what the situation, 
 under a final analysis, had most to give the sense 
 that, as every one kindly said to them and they kindly 
 said to every one, Europe would keep. Every one felt 
 for them so deeply that their own kindness in allevi 
 ating every one's feeling was really what came out 
 most. Mrs. Rimmle was still in her stiff chair and in 
 the sunny parlour, but if she made no scruple of in 
 troducing the Italian lakes my heart sank to observe 
 that she dealt with them, as a topic, not in the least in 
 the leave-taking manner in which Falstaff babbled of 
 green fields. 
 
 I'm not sure that after this my pretexts for a day 
 
 or two with my sister-in-law weren't apt to be a mere 
 
 cover for another glimpse of these particulars : I at 
 
 any rate never went to Brookbridge without an irre- 
 
 310
 
 EUROPE 
 
 pressible eagerness for our customary call. A long 
 time seems to me thus to have passed, with glimpses 
 and lapses, considerable impatience and still more 
 pity. Our visits indeed grew shorter, for, as my com 
 panion said, they were more and more of a strain. It 
 finally struck me that the good sisters even shrank 
 from me a little as from one who penetrated their 
 consciousness in spite of himself. It was as if they 
 knew where I thought they ought to be, and were 
 moved to deprecate at last, by a systematic silence 
 on the subject of that hemisphere, the criminality I 
 fain would fix on them. They were full instead as 
 with the instinct of throwing dust in my eyes of 
 little pathetic hypocrisies about Brookbridge interests 
 and delights. I daresay that as time went on my 
 deeper sense of their situation came practically to rest 
 on my companion's report of it. I certainly think I 
 recollect every word we ever exchanged about them, 
 even if I've lost the thread of the special occasions. 
 The impressions they made on me after each interval 
 always broke out with extravagance as I walked 
 away with her. 
 
 " She may be as old as she likes I don't care. 
 It's the fearful age the ' girls ' are reaching that con 
 stitutes the scandal. One shouldn't pry into such 
 matters, I know ; but the years and the chances are 
 really going. They're all growing old together it 
 will presently be too late ; and their mother mean 
 while perches over them like a vulture what shall I 
 call it ? calculating. Is she waiting for them suc 
 cessively to drop off ? She'll survive them each and 
 all. There's something too remorseless in it." 
 
 ' Yes, but what do you want her to do ? If the 
 poor thing can't die she can't. Do you want her to 
 take poison or to open a blood-vessel ? I daresay 
 she'd prefer to go." 
 
 " I beg your pardon," I must have replied ; " you
 
 EUROPE 
 
 daren't say anything of the sort. If she'd prefer to 
 go she would go. She'd feel the propriety, the decency, 
 the necessity of going. She just prefers not to go. 
 She prefers to stay and keep up the tension, and her 
 calling them ' girls ' and talking of the good time 
 they'll still have is the mere conscious mischief of a 
 subtle old witch. They won't have any time there 
 isn't any time to have ! I mean there's, on her own 
 part, no real loss of measure or of perspective in it. 
 She knows she's a hundred and ten, and she takes a 
 cruel pride in it." 
 
 My sister-in-law differed with me about this ; she 
 held that the old woman's attitude was an honest 
 one and that her magnificent vitality, so great in 
 spite of her infirmities, made it inevitable she should 
 attribute youth to persons who had come into the 
 world so much later. " Then suppose she should 
 die ? " so my fellow student of the case always put 
 it to me. 
 
 " Do you mean while her daughters are away ? 
 There's not the least fear of that not even if at the 
 very moment of their departure she should be in 
 extremis. They'd find her all right on their return." 
 
 " But think how they'd feel not to have been with 
 her ! " 
 
 " That's only, I repeat, on the unsound assumption. 
 If they'd only go to-morrow literally make a good 
 rush for it they'll be with her when they come 
 back. That will give them plenty of time." I'm 
 afraid I even heartlessly added that if she should, 
 against every probability, pass away in their absence 
 they wouldn't have to come back at all which 
 would be just the compensation proper to their long 
 privation. And then Maria would come out to join 
 the two others, and they would be though but 
 for the too scanty remnant of their career as merry 
 as the day is long. 
 
 312
 
 EUROPE 
 
 I remained ready, somehow, pending the fulfilment 
 of that vision, to sacrifice Maria; it was only over 
 the urgency of the case for the others respectively 
 that I found myself balancing. Sometimes it was 
 for Becky I thought the tragedy deepest some 
 times, and in quite a different manner, I thought it 
 most dire for Jane. It was Jane after all who had 
 most sense of life. I seemed in fact dimly to descry 
 in Jane a sense as yet undescried by herself or by 
 any one of all sorts of queer things. Why didn't 
 she go ? I used desperately to ask ; why didn't she 
 make a bold personal dash for it, strike up a partner 
 ship with some one or other of the travelling spinsters 
 in whom Brookbridge more and more abounded ? 
 Well, there came a flash for me at a particular point 
 of the grey middle desert : my correspondent was able 
 to let me know that poor Jane at last had sailed. She 
 had gone of a sudden I liked my sister-in-law's 
 view of suddenness with the kind Hathaways, 
 who had made an irresistible grab at her and lifted 
 her off her feet. They were going for the summer and 
 for Mr. Hathaway's health, so that the opportunity 
 was perfect and it was impossible not to be glad that 
 something very like physical force had finally pre 
 vailed. This was the general feeling at Brookbridge, 
 and I might imagine what Brookbridge had been 
 brought to from the fact that, at the very moment 
 she was hustled off, the doctor, called to her mother 
 at the peep of dawn, had considered that he at least 
 must stay. There had been real alarm greater than 
 ever before ; it actually did seem as if this time the end 
 had come. But it was Becky, strange to say, who, 
 though fully recognising the nature of the crisis, had 
 kept the situation in hand and insisted upon action. 
 This, I remember, brought back to me a discomfort 
 with which I had been familiar from the first. One 
 of the two had sailed, and I was sorry it wasn't the 
 
 313
 
 EUROPE 
 
 other. But if it had been the other I should have been 
 equally sorry. 
 
 I saw with my eyes that very autumn what a fool 
 Jane would have been if she had again backed out. 
 Her mother had of course survived the peril of which 
 I had heard, profiting by it indeed as she had profited 
 by every other ; she was sufficiently better again to 
 have come downstairs. It was there that, as usual, 
 I found her, but with a difference of effect produced 
 somehow by the absence of one of the girls. It was 
 as if, for the others, though they hadn't gone to 
 Europe, Europe had come to them : Jane's letters had 
 been so frequent and so beyond even what could have 
 been hoped. It was the first time, however, that I 
 perceived on the old woman's part a certain failure of 
 lucidity. Jane's flight was clearly the great fact with 
 her, but she spoke of it as if the fruit had now been 
 plucked and the parenthesis closed. I don't know 
 what sinking sense of still further physical duration 
 I gathered, as a menace, from this first hint of her 
 confusion of mind. 
 
 " My daughter has been ; my daughter has been 
 She kept saying it, but didn't say where ; that seemed 
 unnecessary, and she only repeated the words to her 
 visitors with a face that was all puckers and yet now, 
 save in so far as it expressed an ineffaceable com 
 placency, ah 1 blankness. I think she rather wanted us 
 to know how little she had stood in the way. It added 
 to sometlu'ng I scarce knew what that I found 
 myself desiring to extract privately from Becky. As 
 our visit was to be of the shortest my opportunity 
 for one of the young ladies always came to the door 
 with us was at hand. Mrs. Rimmie, as we took 
 leave, again sounded her phrase, but she added this 
 time : " I'm so glad she's going to have always 
 
 I knew so well what she meant that, as she 
 again dropped, looking at me queerly and becoming 
 
 314
 
 EUROPE 
 
 momentarily dim, I could help her out. " Going to 
 have what you have ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes my privilege. Wonderful experience," 
 she mumbled. She bowed to me a little as if I would 
 understand. " She has things to tell." 
 
 I turned, slightly at a loss, to Becky. " She has 
 then already arrived ? " 
 
 Becky was at that moment looking a little strangely 
 at her mother, who answered my question. " She 
 reached New York this morning she comes on 
 to-day." 
 
 " Oh then ! " But I let the matter pass as I 
 
 met Becky's eye- I saw there was a hitch some 
 where. It was not she but Maria who came out with 
 us ; on which I cleared up the question of their 
 sister's reappearance. 
 
 " Oh no, not to-night," Maria smiled ; " that's only 
 the way mother puts it. We shall see her about the 
 end of November the Hathaways are so indulgent. 
 They kindly extend their tour." 
 
 " For her sake ? How sweet of them ! " my sister- 
 in-law exclaimed. 
 
 I can see our friend's plain mild old face take on a 
 deeper mildness, even though a higher colour, in the 
 light of "the open door. " Yes, it's for Jane they pro 
 long it. And do you know what they write ? " She 
 gave us time, but it was too great a responsibility to 
 guess. " Why that it has brought her out." 
 
 " Oh, I knew it would ! " my companion sym 
 pathetically sighed. 
 
 Maria put it more strongly still. " They say we 
 wouldn't know her." 
 
 This sounded a little awful, but it was after all 
 what I had expected. 
 
 315
 
 Ill 
 
 MY correspondent in Brookbridge came to me that 
 Christmas, with my niece, to spend a week ; and the 
 arrangement had of course been prefaced by an 
 exchange of letters, the first of which from my sister- 
 in-law scarce took space for acceptance of my invita 
 tion before going on to say: "The Hathaways are 
 back but without Miss Jane ! " She presented in a 
 few words the situation thus created at Brookbridge, 
 but was not yet, I gathered, fully in possession of the 
 other one the situation created in " Europe " by 
 the presence there of that lady. The two together, 
 however that might be, demanded, I quickly felt, all 
 my attention, and perhaps my impatience to receive 
 my relative was a little sharpened by my desire for the 
 whole story. I had it at last, by the Christmas fire, 
 and I may say without reserve that it gave me all 
 I could have hoped for. I listened eagerly, after 
 which I produced the comment : " Then she simply 
 
 refused " 
 
 " To budge from Florence ? Simply. She had it 
 out there with the poor Hathaways, who felt respon 
 sible for her safety, pledged to restore her to her 
 mother's, to her sisters' hands, and showed herself 
 in a light, they mention under their breath, that made 
 their dear old hair stand on end. Do you know what, 
 when they first got back, they said of her at least 
 it was his phrase to two or three people ? "
 
 EUROPE 
 
 I thought a moment. " That she had ' tasted 
 blood ' ? " 
 
 My visitor fairly admired me. " How clever of you 
 to guess ! It's exactly what he did say. She appeared 
 she continues to appear, it seems in a new character." 
 
 I wondered a little. " But that's exactly don't 
 you remember ? what Miss Maria reported to us 
 from them ; that we ' wouldn't know her.' ' 
 
 My sister-in-law perfectly remembered. " Oh yes 
 she broke out from the first. But when they left 
 her she was worse." 
 
 " Worse ? " 
 
 " Well, different different from anything she ever 
 had been or for that matter had had a chance 
 to be." My reporter hung fire a moment, but pre 
 sently faced me. " Rather strange and free and 
 obstreperous." 
 
 " Obstreperous ? " I wondered again. 
 
 " Peculiarly so, I inferred, on the question of not 
 coming away. She wouldn't hear of it and, when they 
 spoke of her mother, said she had given her mother 
 up. She had thought she should like Europe, but 
 didn't know she should like it so much. They had 
 been fools to bring her if they expected to take her 
 away. She was going to see what she could she 
 hadn't yet seen half. The end of it at any rate was 
 that they had to leave her alone." 
 
 I seemed to see it all to see even the scared 
 Hathaways. " So she is alone ? " 
 
 " She told them, poor thing, it appears, and in a 
 tone they'll never forget, that she was in any case 
 quite old enough to be. She cried she quite went 
 on over not having come sooner. That's why the 
 only way for her," my companion mused, " is, I sup 
 pose, to stay. They wanted to put her with some 
 people or other- to find some American family. But 
 she says she's on her own feet." 
 
 317
 
 EUROPE 
 
 " And she's still in Florence ? " 
 
 " No I believe she was to travel. She's bent on 
 the East." 
 
 I burst out laughing. " Magnificent Jane ! It's 
 most interesting. Only I feel that I distinctly should 
 ' know ' her. To my sense, always, I must tell you, 
 she had it in her." 
 
 My relative was silent a little. " So it now appears 
 Becky always felt." 
 
 " And yet pushed her off ? Magnificent Becky ! " 
 
 My companion met my eyes a moment. " You 
 don't know the queerest part. I mean the way it has 
 most brought her out." 
 
 I turned it over ; I felt I should like to know 
 to that degree indeed that, oddly enough, I jocosely 
 disguised my eagerness. " You don't mean she has 
 taken to drink ? " 
 
 My visitor had a dignity and yet had to have a 
 freedom. " She has taken to flirting." 
 
 I expressed disappointment. " Oh she took to 
 that long ago. Yes," I declared at my kinswoman's 
 stare, " she positively flirted with me ! " 
 
 The stare perhaps sharpened. " Then you flirted 
 with her ? " 
 
 " How else could I have been as sure as I wanted 
 to be ? But has she means ? " 
 
 " Means to flirt ? " my friend looked an instant as 
 if she spoke literally. " I don't understand about the 
 means though of course they have something. But 
 I have my impression," she went on. "I think that 
 Becky It seemed almost too grave to say. 
 
 But 7 had no doubts. " That Becky's backing 
 her ? " 
 
 She brought it out. " Financing her." 
 
 " Stupendous Becky ! So that morally then 
 
 " Becky's quite in sympathy. But isn't it too 
 odd ? " my sister-in-law asked.
 
 EUROPE 
 
 " Not in the least. Didn't we know, as regards 
 Jane, that Europe was t9 bring her out ? Well, it has 
 also brought out Rebecca." 
 
 " It has indeed ! " my companion indulgently 
 sighed. " So what would it do if she were there ? " 
 
 " I should like immensely to see. And we shall 
 see." 
 
 " Do you believe then she'll still go ? " 
 
 " Certainly. She must." 
 
 But my friend shook it off. " She won't." 
 
 " She shall ! " I retorted with a laugh. But the 
 next moment I said : " And what does the old woman 
 say ? " 
 
 "To Jane's behaviour? Not a word never 
 speaks of it. She talks now much less than she 
 used only seems to wait. But it's my belief she 
 thinks." 
 
 " And do you mean knows ? " 
 
 " Yes, knows she's abandoned. In her silence 
 there she takes it in." 
 
 " It's her way of making Jane pay ? " At this, 
 somehow, I felt more serious. " Oh dear, dear 
 she'll disinherit her ! " 
 
 When in the following June I went on to return 
 my sister-in-law's visit the first object that met my 
 eyes in her little white parlour was a figure that, to 
 my stupefaction, presented itself for the moment as 
 that of Mrs. Rimmle. I had gone to my room after 
 arriving and had come down when dressed ; the 
 apparition I speak of had arisen in the interval. Its 
 ambiguous character lasted, however, but a second 
 or two I had taken Becky for her mother because I 
 knew no one but her mother of that extreme age. 
 Becky's age was quite startling ; it had made a great 
 stride, though, strangely enough, irrecoverably seated 
 as she now was in it, she had a wizened brightness 
 that I had scarcely yet seen in her. I remember 
 
 319
 
 EUROPE 
 
 indulging on this occasion in two silent observations : 
 one on the article of my not having hitherto been 
 conscious of her full resemblance to the old lady, and 
 the other to the effect that, as I had said to my sister- 
 in-law at Christmas, " Europe," even as reaching her 
 only through Jane's sensibilities, had really at last 
 brought her out. She was in fact " out " in a manner 
 of which this encounter offered to my eyes a unique 
 example : it was the single hour, often as I had been 
 at Brookbridge, of my meeting her elsewhere than in 
 her mother's drawing-room. I surmise that, besides 
 being adjusted to her more marked time of life, the 
 garments she wore abroad, and in particular her little 
 plain bonnet, presented points of resemblance to the 
 close sable sheath and the quaint old headgear that, 
 in the white house behind the elms, I had from far 
 back associated with the eternal image in the stiff 
 chair. Of course I immediately spoke of Jane, show 
 ing an interest and asking for news ; on which she 
 answered me with a smile, but not at all as I had 
 expected. 
 
 " Those are not really the things you want to know 
 where she is, whom she's with, how she manages 
 and where she's going next oh no ! " And the 
 admirable woman gave a laugh that was somehow 
 both light and sad sad, in particular, with a strange 
 long weariness. " What you do want to know is when 
 she's coming back." 
 
 I shook my head very kindly, but out of a wealth 
 of experience that, I flattered myself, was equal to 
 Miss Becky's. " I do know it. Never." 
 
 Miss Becky exchanged with me at this a long deep 
 look. " Never." 
 
 We had, in silence, a little luminous talk about it, 
 at the end of which she seemed to have told me the 
 most interesting things. " And how's your mother ? " 
 I then inquired. 
 
 320
 
 EUROPE 
 
 She hesitated, but finally spoke with the same 
 serenity. " My mother's all right. You see she's not 
 alive." 
 
 " Oh Becky ! " my sister-in-law pleadingly inter 
 jected. 
 
 But Becky only addressed herself to me. " Come 
 and see if she is. / think she isn't but Maria 
 perhaps isn't so clear. Come at all events and judge 
 and tell me." 
 
 It was a new note, and I was a little bewildered. 
 " Ah but I'm not a doctor ! " 
 
 " No, thank God you're not. That's why I ask 
 you." And now she said good-bye. 
 
 I kept her hand a moment. " You're more alive 
 than ever ! " 
 
 "I'm very tired." She took it with the same smile, 
 but for Becky it was much to say. 
 
 321
 
 IV 
 
 " NOT alive," the next day, was certainly what Mrs. 
 Rimmle looked when, arriving in pursuit of my 
 promise, I found her, with Miss Maria, in her usual 
 place. Though wasted and shrunken she still occupied 
 her high-backed chair with a visible theory of erect- 
 ness, and her intensely aged face combined with 
 something dauntless that belonged to her very presence 
 and that was effective even in this extremity might 
 have been that of some immemorial sovereign, of 
 indistinguishable sex, brought forth to be shown to 
 the people in disproof of the rumour of extinction. 
 Mummified and open-eyed she looked at me, but I 
 had no impression that she made me out. I had come 
 this time without my sister-in-law, who had frankly 
 pleaded to me which also, for a daughter of Brook- 
 bridge, was saying much that the house had grown 
 too painful. Poor Miss Maria excused Miss Becky 
 on the score of her not being well and that, it 
 struck me, was saying most of all. The absence of 
 the others gave the occasion a different note ; but 
 I talked with Miss Maria for five minutes and recog 
 nised that save for her saying, of her own move 
 ment, anything about Jane she now spoke as if 
 her mother had lost hearing or sense, in fact both, 
 alluding freely and distinctly, though indeed favour 
 ably, to her condition. " She has expected your visit 
 and much enjoys it," my entertainer said, while the 
 322
 
 EUROPE 
 
 old woman, soundless and motionless, simply fixed 
 me without expression. Of course there was little to 
 keep me ; but I became aware as I rose to go that 
 there was more than I had supposed. 
 
 On my approaching her to take leave Mrs. Rimmle 
 gave signs of consciousness. " Have you heard about 
 Jane ? " 
 
 I hesitated, feeling a responsibility, and appealed 
 for direction to Maria's face. But Maria's face was 
 troubled, was turned altogether to her mother's. 
 " About her life in Europe ? " I then rather helplessly 
 asked. 
 
 The old lady fronted me on this in a manner 
 that made me feel silly. " Her life ? " and her voice, 
 with this second effort, came out stronger. " Her 
 death, if you please." 
 
 " Her death ? " I echoed, before I could stop my 
 self, with the accent of deprecation. 
 
 Miss Maria uttered a vague sound of pain, and I 
 felt her turn away, but the marvel of her mother's 
 little unquenched spark still held me. ' Jane's dead. 
 We've heard," said Mrs. Rimmle. " We've heard 
 from where is it we've heard from ? " She had 
 quite revived she appealed to her daughter. 
 
 The poor old girl, crimson, rallied to her duty. 
 " From Europe." 
 
 Mrs. Rimmle made at us both a little grim inclina 
 tion of the head. " From Europe." I responded, in 
 silence, by a deflexion from every rigour, and, still 
 holding me, she went on : " And now Rebecca's going." 
 
 She had gathered by this time such emphasis to 
 say it that again, before I could help myself, I vibrated 
 in reply. " To Europe now ? " It was as if for an 
 instant she had made me believe it. 
 
 She only stared at me, however, from her wizened 
 mask ; then her eyes followed my companion. " Has 
 she gone ? " 
 
 323
 
 EUROPE 
 
 " Not yet, mother." Maria tried to treat it as a 
 joke, but her smile was embarrassed and dim. 
 
 " Then where is she ? " 
 
 " She's lying down." 
 
 The old woman kept up her hard queer gaze, 
 but directing it after a minute to me. " She's 
 going." 
 
 " Oh some day ! " I foolishly laughed ; and on this 
 I got to the door, where I separated from my younger 
 hostess, who came no further. 
 
 Only, as I held the door open, she said to me 
 under cover of it and very quietly : "It's poor 
 mother's idea." 
 
 I saw it was her idea. Mine was for some time 
 after this, even after I had returned to New York and 
 to my usual occupations that I should never again 
 see Becky. I had seen her for the last time, I believed, 
 under my sister-in-law's roof, and in the autumn it 
 was given to me to hear from that fellow admirer 
 that she had succumbed at last to the situation. 
 The day of the call I have just described had been 
 a date in the process of her slow shrinkage it was 
 literally the first time she had, as they said at Brook- 
 bridge, given up. She had been ill for years, but the 
 other state of health in the contemplation of which 
 she had spent so much of her life had left her till 
 too late no margin for heeding it. The power of 
 attention came at last simply in the form of the 
 discovery that it was too late ; on which, naturally, 
 she had given up more and more. I had heard indeed, 
 for weeks before, by letter, how Brookbridge had 
 watched her do so ; in consequence of which the end 
 found me in a manner prepared. Yet in spite of my 
 preparation there remained with me a soreness, and 
 when I was next it was some six months later 
 on the scene of her martyrdom I fear I replied with 
 an almost rabid negative to the question put to me 
 
 324
 
 EUROPE 
 
 in due course by my kinswoman. " Call on them ? 
 Never again ! " 
 
 I went none the less the very next day. Every 
 thing was the same in the sunny parlour everything 
 that most mattered, I mean : the centenarian mummy 
 in the high chair and the tributes, in the little frames 
 on the walls, to the celebrity of its late husband. 
 Only Maria Rimmle was different : if Becky, on my 
 last seeing her, had looked as old as her mother, 
 Maria save that she moved about looked older. 
 I remember she moved about, but I scarce remember 
 what she said ; and indeed what was there to say ? 
 When I risked a question, however, she found a reply. 
 " But now at least ? " I tried to put it to her 
 suggestively. 
 
 At first she was vague. " ' Now ' ? " 
 " Won't Miss Jane come back ? " 
 Oh the headshake she gave me ! " Never." It 
 positively pictured to me, for the instant, a well- 
 preserved woman, a rich ripe seconde jeunesse by the 
 Arno. 
 
 " Then that's only to make more sure of your 
 finally joining her." 
 
 Maria Rimmle repeated her headshake. " Never." 
 We stood so a moment bleakly face to face ; I 
 could think of no attenuation that would be par 
 ticularly happy. But while I tried I heard a hoarse 
 gasp that fortunately relieved me a signal strange 
 and at first formless from the occupant of the high- 
 backed chair. " Mother wants to speak to you," 
 Maria then said. 
 
 So it appeared from the drop of the old woman's 
 jaw, the expression of her mouth opened as if for the 
 emission of sound. It was somehow difficult to me 
 to seem to sympathise without hypocrisy, but, so far 
 as a step nearer could do that, I invited communica 
 tion. " Have you heard where Becky's gone ? " the 
 
 325
 
 EUROPE 
 
 wonderful witch's white lips then extraordinarily 
 asked. 
 
 It drew from Maria, as on my previous visit, an 
 uncontrollable groan, and this in turn made me take 
 time to consider. As I considered, however, I had 
 an inspiration. " To Europe ? " 
 
 I must have adorned it with a strange grimace, but 
 my inspiration had been right. " To Europe," said 
 Mrs. Rimmle. 
 
 326
 
 MISS GUNTON 
 OF POUGHKEEPSIE 
 
 327
 
 " IT'S astonishing what you take for granted ! " Lady 
 Champer had exclaimed to her young friend at an 
 early stage ; and this might have served as a sign 
 that even then the little plot had begun to thicken. 
 The reflexion was uttered at the time the outlook of 
 the charming American girl in whom she found her 
 self so interested was still much in the rough. They 
 had often met, with pleasure to each, during a winter 
 spent in Rome ; and Lily had come to her in London 
 toward the end of May with further news of a situation 
 the dawn of which, in March and April, by the 
 Tiber, the Arno and the Seine, had considerably 
 engaged her attention. The Prince had followed 
 Miss Gunton to Florence and then with almost 
 equal promptitude to Paris, where it was both clear 
 and comical for Lady Champer that the rigour of 
 his uncertainty as to parental commands and re 
 mittances now detained him. This shrewd woman 
 promised herself not a little amusement from her 
 view of the possibilities of the case. Lily was, on the 
 whole showing, a wonder ; therefore the drama would 
 lose nothing from her character, her temper, her 
 tone. She was waiting this was the truth she had 
 imparted to her clever protectress to see if her 
 Roman captive would find himself drawn to London. 
 Should he really turn up there she would the next 
 thing start for America, putting him to the test of 
 that wider range and declining to place her confidence 
 till he should have arrived in New York at her heels. 
 
 329
 
 MISS GUNTON OF POUGHKEEPSIE 
 
 If he remained in Paris or returned to Rome she 
 would stay in London and, as she phrased it, have 
 a good time by herself. Did he expect her to go back 
 to Paris for him ? Why not in that case just as well 
 go back to Rome at once ? The first thing for her, 
 Lily intimated to her London adviser, was to show 
 what, in her position, she expected. 
 
 Her position meanwhile was one that Lady 
 Champer, try as she would, had as yet succeeded 
 neither in understanding nor in resigning herself not 
 to understand. It was that of being extraordinarily 
 pretty, amazingly free and perplexingly good, and 
 of presenting these advantages in a positively golden 
 light. How was one to estimate a girl whose 
 nearest approach to a drawback that is to an en 
 cumbrance appeared to be a grandfather carrying 
 on a business in an American city her ladyship had 
 never otherwise heard of, with whom communication 
 was all by cable and on the subject of " drawing " ? 
 Expression was on the old man's part moreover as 
 concise as it was expensive, consisting as it inveterately 
 did of but the single word " Draw." Lily drew, on 
 every occasion in life, and it at least couldn't be 
 said of the pair when the " family idea," as em 
 bodied in America, was under criticism that they 
 were not in touch. Mr. Gunton had further given 
 her Mrs. Brine to come out with her, and, thanks to 
 this provision and the perpetual pecuniary, he plainly 
 figured to Lily's own mind as solicitous to the 
 point of anxiety. Mrs. Brine's scheme of relations 
 seemed in truth to be simpler still. There was a 
 transatlantic " Mr. Brine," of whom she often spoke 
 and never in any other way ; but she wrote for 
 newspapers ; she prowled in catacombs, visiting 
 more than once even those of Paris ; she haunted 
 hotels ; she picked up compatriots ; she spoke above 
 all a language that often baffled comprehension. 
 330
 
 MISS GUNTON OF POUGHKEEPSIE 
 
 She mattered, however, but little ; she was mainly 
 so occupied in having what Lily had likewise in 
 dependently glanced at a good time by herself. It 
 was difficult enough indeed to Lady Champer to see 
 the wonderful girl reduced to that, yet she was a little 
 person who kept one somehow in presence of the in 
 calculable. Old measures and familiar rules were of 
 no use at all with her she had so broken the moulds 
 and so mixed the marks. What was confounding was 
 her disparities the juxtaposition in her of beautiful 
 sun-flushed heights and deep dark holes. She had 
 none of the things that the other things implied. She 
 dangled in the air to a tune that made one dizzy ; 
 though one took comfort at the worst in feeling that 
 one was there to catch her if she fell. Falling, at the 
 same time, appeared scarce one of her properties, and 
 it was positive for Lady Champer at moments that 
 if one held out one's arms one might be after all 
 much more likely to be pulled up. That was really 
 a part of the excitement of the acquaintance. 
 
 " Well," said this friend and critic on one of the 
 first of the London days, " say he does, on your return 
 to your own country, go after- you : what do you read 
 into that occurrence as the course of events ? " 
 " Why if he comes after me I'll have him." 
 " And do you think it so easy to ' have ' him ? " 
 Lily appeared, lovely and candid and it was an 
 air and a way she often had to wonder what she 
 thought. " I don't know that I think it any easier 
 than he seems to think it to have me. I know more 
 over that, though he wants awfully to see the country, 
 he wouldn't just now come to America unless to 
 marry me ; and if I take him at all," she pursued, 
 " I want first to be able to show him to the girls." 
 
 " Why 'first'?" Lady Champer asked. "Wouldn't 
 it do as well last ? " 
 
 " Oh I should want them to see me in Rome too," 
 
 331
 
 MISS GUNTON OF POUGHKEEPSIE 
 
 said Lily. " But, dear me, I'm afraid I want a good 
 many things ! What I most want of course is that 
 he should show me unmistakably what he wants. 
 Unless he wants me more than anything else in the 
 world I don't want him. Besides, I hope he doesn't 
 think I'm going to be married anywhere but in my 
 own place." 
 
 " I see," said Lady Champer. " It's for the wed 
 ding you want the girls. And it's for the girls you 
 want the Prince." 
 
 " Well, we're all bound by that promise. And of 
 course you'll come ! " 
 
 " Ah my dear child ! " Lady Champer gasped. 
 
 " You can come with the old Princess. You'll be 
 just the right company for her." 
 
 The elder friend considered afresh, with depth, 
 the younger 's beauty and serenity. " You are, love, 
 beyond everything ! " 
 
 The beauty and serenity took on for a moment 
 a graver cast. " Why do you so often say that to 
 me ? " 
 
 " Because you so often make it the only thing to 
 say. But you'll some day find out why," Lady 
 Champer added with an intention of encouragement. 
 
 Lily Gunton, however, was a young person to 
 whom encouragement looked queer ; she had grown 
 up without need of it, and it seemed indeed scarce 
 required in her situation. " Do you mean you believe 
 his mother won't come ? " 
 
 " Over mountains and seas to see you married ? 
 and to be seen also of the girls ? If she does / will. 
 But we had perhaps better," Lady Champer wound 
 up, " not count our chickens before they're hatched." 
 To which, with one of the easy returns of gaiety 
 that were irresistible in her, Lily made answer that 
 neither of the ladies in question struck her quite as 
 a chicken. 
 
 332
 
 MISS GUNTON OF POUGHKEEPSIE 
 
 The Prince at all events presented himself in 
 London with a promptitude that contributed to 
 make the warning gratuitous. Nothing could have 
 exceeded, by this time, Lady Champer's appreciation 
 of her young friend, whose merits " town " at the 
 beginning of June threw into renewed relief ; but she 
 had the imagination of greatness and, though she 
 believed she tactfully kept it to herself, she thought 
 what the young man had thus done a great deal for 
 a Roman prince to do. Take him as he was, with 
 the circumstances and they were certainly peculiar, 
 and he was charming it was a far cry for him from 
 Piazza Colonna to Clarges Street. If Lady Champer 
 had the imagination of greatness, which the Prince 
 in all sorts of ways gratified, Miss Gunton of Pough- 
 keepsie it was vain to pretend the contrary was 
 not great in any particular save one. She was great 
 when she " drew," It was true that at the beginning 
 of June she did draw with unprecedented energy and 
 in a manner that, though Mrs. Brine's remarkable 
 nerve apparently could stand it, fairly made a poor 
 baronet's widow, little as it was her business, hold her 
 breath. It was none of her business at all, yet she 
 talked of it even with the Prince himself to whom 
 it was indeed a favourite subject and whose great 
 ness, oddly enough, never appeared to shrink in 
 the effect it produced on him. The line they took 
 together was that of wondering if the scale of Lily's 
 drafts made really most for the presumption that the 
 capital at her disposal was rapidly dwindling, or for 
 that of its being practically infinite. " Many a fellow," 
 the young man smiled, " would marry her to pull 
 her up." He was in any case of the opinion that 
 it was an occasion for deciding one way or the 
 other quickly. Well, he did decide so quickly 
 that within the week Lily communicated to her friend 
 that he had offered her his hand, his heart, his fortune 
 
 333
 
 MISS GUNTON OF POUGHKEEPSIE 
 
 and all his titles, grandeurs and appurtenances. She 
 had given him his answer, and he was in bliss ; though 
 nothing as yet was settled but that. 
 
 Tall fair active educated amiable simple, carry 
 ing so naturally his great name and pronouncing so 
 kindly Lily's small one, the happy youth, if he was 
 one of the most ancient of princes, was one of the 
 most modern of Romans. This second character it 
 was his special aim and pride to cultivate. He 
 would have been pained at feeling himself an hour 
 behind his age ; and he had a way both touching 
 and amusing to some observers of constantly com 
 paring his watch with the dial of the day's news. It 
 was in fact easy to see that in deciding to ally himself 
 with a young alien of vague origin, whose striking 
 beauty was re-enforced only by her presumptive 
 money, he had even put forward a Little the fine 
 hands of his timepiece. No one else, however not 
 even Lady Champer, and least of all Lily herself 
 had quite taken the measure, in this connexion, of 
 his merit. The quick decision he had spoken of was 
 really a flying leap. He desired incontestably to 
 rescue Miss Gunton's remainder ; but to rescue it he 
 had to take it for granted, and taking it for granted 
 was nothing less than at whatever angle considered 
 a risk. He never, naturally, used the word to her, 
 but he distinctly faced a peril. The sense of what 
 he had staked on a vague return gave him, at the 
 height of the London season, bad nights, or rather 
 bad mornings for he danced with his intended, 
 as a usual thing, conspicuously, till dawn besides 
 obliging him to take, in the form of long explanatory 
 argumentative and persuasive letters to his mother 
 and sisters, his uncles, aunts, cousins and preferred 
 confidants, large measures of justification at home. 
 The family sense was strong in his huge old house, 
 just as the family array was numerous ; he was 
 
 334
 
 MISS GUNTON OF POUGHKEEPSIE 
 
 dutifully conscious of the trust reposed in him and 
 moved from morning till night, he perfectly knew, as 
 the observed of a phalanx of observers ; whereby he 
 the more admired himself for his passion, precipitation 
 and courage. He had only a probability to go upon, 
 but he was and by the romantic tradition of his race 
 so in love that he should surely not be taken in. 
 
 His private agitation of course deepened when, to 
 do honour to her engagement and as if she would 
 have been ashamed to do less, Lily "drew" again 
 most gloriously ; but he managed to smile beauti 
 fully on her asking him if he didn't want her to be 
 splendid, and at his worst hours he went no further 
 than to wish he might be married on the morrow. 
 Unless it were the next day, or at most the next month, 
 it really at moments seemed best it should never be 
 at all. On the most favourable view with the 
 solidity of the residuum fully assumed there were 
 still minor questions and dangers. A vast America, 
 arching over his nuptials, bristling with expectant 
 bridesmaids and underlaying their feet with expensive 
 flowers, stared him in the face and prompted him 
 to the reflexion that if she dipped so deep into the 
 mere remote overflow her dive into the fount itself 
 would verily be a header. If she drew at such a rate 
 in London how wouldn't she draw at Poughkeepsie ? 
 he asked himself, and practically asked Lady 
 Champer ; yet bore the strain of the question all 
 without an answer so nobly that when, with small 
 delay, Poughkeepsie seemed simply to heave with 
 reassurances, he regarded the ground as firm and 
 his tact as rewarded. " And now at last, dearest," 
 he said, " since everything's so satisfactory, you will 
 write ? " He put it appealingly, endearingly, yet as 
 if he could scarce doubt. 
 
 " Write, love ? Why," she replied, " I've done 
 nothing but write ! I've written ninety letters." 
 
 335
 
 MISS GUNTON OF POUGHKEEPSIE 
 
 " But not to mamma," he smiled. 
 
 " Mamma ? " she stared. " My dear boy, I've 
 not at this time of day to remind you that I've the 
 misfortune to have no mother. I lost mamma, you 
 know, as you lost your father, in childhood. You 
 may be sure," said Lily Gunton, " that I wouldn't 
 otherwise have waited for you to prompt me." 
 
 There came into his face a kind of amiable con 
 vulsion. " Of course, darling, I remember your 
 beautiful mother (she must have been beautiful !) 
 whom I should have been so glad to know. I was 
 thinking of my mamma who'll be so delighted to 
 hear from you." The Prince spoke English in per 
 fection had lived in it from the cradle and appeared, 
 particularly when alluding to his home and family, 
 to matters familiar and of fact, or to those of dress and 
 sport, of general recreation, to draw such a comfort 
 from it as made the girl think of him as scarce more 
 a foreigner than a pleasant auburn slightly awkward 
 slightly slangy and extremely well-tailored young 
 Briton would have been. He sounded " mamma " 
 like a rosy English schoolboy ; yet just then, for the 
 first time, the things with which he was connected 
 struck her as in a manner strange and far-off. Every 
 thing in him, none the less face and voice and tact, 
 above all his deep desire laboured to bring them 
 near and make them natural. This was intensely 
 the case as he went on : " Such a little letter as you 
 might send would really be awfully jolly." 
 
 " My dear child," Lily replied on quick reflexion, 
 " I'll write to her with joy the minute I hear from 
 her. Won't she write to me ? " 
 
 The Prince just visibly flushed. " In a moment 
 if you'll only 
 
 " Write to her first ? " 
 
 " Just pay her a little no matter how little 
 your respects." 
 
 336
 
 MISS GUNTON OF POUGHKEEPSIE 
 
 His attenuation of the degree expressed perhaps a 
 weakness of position ; yet it was no perception of this 
 that made the girl immediately say : " Oh, caro, I 
 don't think I can begin. If you feel that she won't 
 as you evidently do is it because you've asked her 
 and she has refused ? " The next moment, " I see you 
 have I " she exclaimed. His rejoinder to this was to 
 catch her in his arms, to press his cheek to hers, to 
 murmur a flood of tender words in which contradic 
 tion, confession, supplication and remonstrance were 
 oddly confounded ; but after he had sufficiently dis 
 engaged her to allow her to speak again his effusion 
 was checked by what came. " Do you really mean 
 you can't induce her ? " It renewed itself oh the first 
 return of ease ; or it, more correctly perhaps, in order 
 to renew itself, took this return a trifle too soon 
 for granted. Singular, for the hour, was the quickness 
 with which ease could leave them so blissfully at 
 one as they were ; and, to be brief, it had not come 
 back even when Lily spoke of the matter to Lady 
 Champer. It's true she waited but little to do so. 
 She went straight to the point. " What would you 
 do if his mother doesn't write ? " 
 
 " The old Princess to you ? " Her ladyship had 
 not had time to mount guard in advance over the 
 tone of this, which was doubtless (as she instantly, 
 for that matter, herself became aware) a little too 
 much that of " Have you really expected she would ? " 
 What Lily had expected found itself therefore not 
 unassisted to come out and came out indeed to 
 such a tune that with all kindness, but with a melan 
 choly deeper than any she had ever yet in the general 
 connexion used, Lady Champer was moved to remark 
 that the situation might have been found more possible 
 had a little more historic sense been brought to it. 
 ' You're the dearest thing in the world, and I can't 
 imagine a girl's carrying herself in any way, in a 
 
 337 z
 
 MISS GUNTON OF POUGHKEEPSIE 
 
 difficult position, better than you do ; only I'm bound 
 to say I think you ought to remember that you're 
 entering a very great house, of tremendous antiquity, 
 fairly groaning under the weight of ancient honours, 
 the heads of which through the tradition of the 
 great part they've played in the world are accus 
 tomed to a great deal of deference. The old Princess, 
 my dear, you see" her ladyship gathered con 
 fidence a little as she went " is a most prodigious 
 personage." 
 
 " Why, Lady Champer, of course she is, and that's 
 just what I liked her for ! " said Lily Gunton. 
 
 " She has never in her whole life made an advance, 
 any more than any one has ever dreamed of expecting 
 it of her. It's a pity that while you were there you 
 didn't see her, for I think it would have helped 
 you to understand. However, as you did see his 
 sisters, the two Duchesses and dear little Donna 
 Claudia, you know how charming they all can be. 
 They only want to be nice, I know, and I daresay 
 that on the smallest opportunity you'll hear from 
 the Duchesses." 
 
 The plural had a sound of splendour, but Lily 
 quite kept her head. " What do you call an oppor 
 tunity ? Am I not giving them, by accepting their 
 son and brother, the best and in fact the only 
 opportunity they could desire ? " 
 
 " I like the way, darling," Lady Champer smiled, 
 " you talk about ' accepting ' ! " 
 
 Lily thought of this she thought of everything. 
 " Well, say it would have been a better one still for 
 them if I had refused him." 
 
 Her friend caught her up. " But you haven't." 
 
 " Then they must make the most of the occasion 
 
 as it is." Lily was very sweet, but very lucid. "The 
 
 Duchesses may write or not, as they like ; but I'm 
 
 afraid the Princess simply must." She hesitated, but 
 
 338
 
 MISS GUNTON OF POUGHKEEPSIE 
 
 after a moment went on : " He oughtn't to be 
 willing moreover that I shouldn't expect to be 
 welcomed." 
 
 " He isn't ! " Lady Champer blurted out. 
 
 Lily jumped at it. " Then he has told you ? It's 
 her attitude ? " 
 
 She had spoken without passion, but her friend was 
 scarce the less frightened. " My poor child, what can 
 he do ? " 
 
 Lily saw perfectly. " He can make her." 
 
 Lady Champer turned it over, but her fears were 
 what was clearest. " And if he doesn't ? " 
 
 " If he 'doesn't' ? " The girl ambiguously echoed it. 
 
 " I mean if he can't." 
 
 Well, Lily more cheerfully declined for the hour 
 to consider this. He would certainly do for her what 
 was right ; so that after all, though she had herself 
 put the question, she disclaimed the idea that an 
 answer was urgent. There was time, she conveyed 
 which Lady Champer only desired to believe ; a 
 faith moreover somewhat shaken in the latter when 
 the Prince entered her room the next day with the 
 information that there was none none at least to 
 leave everything in the air. Lady Champer hadn't 
 yet made up her mind which of these young persons 
 she liked most to draw into confidence, nor whether 
 she most inclined to take the Roman side with the 
 American or the American side with the Roman. But 
 now in truth she was settled ; she gave proof of it in 
 the increased lucidity with which she spoke for Lily. 
 " Wouldn't the Princess depart a from her usual 
 attitude for such a great occasion ? " 
 
 The difficulty was a little that the young man so 
 well understood his mother. " The devil of it is, you 
 see, that it's for Lily herself, so much more, she 
 thinks the occasion great." 
 
 Lady Champer mused. " If you hadn't her con- 
 
 339
 
 MISS GUNTON OF POUGHKEEPSIE 
 
 sent I could understand it. But from the moment 
 she thinks the girl good enough for you to marry 
 
 " Ah she doesn't ! " the Prince gloomily interposed. 
 " However," he explained, " she accepts her because 
 there are reasons my own feeling, now so my very 
 life, don't you see ? But it isn't quite open arms. 
 All the same, as I tell Lily, the arms would open." 
 
 " If she'd make the first step ? Hum ! " said Lady 
 Champer, not without the note of grimness. " She'll 
 be obstinate." 
 
 The young man, with a melancholy eye, quite 
 coincided. " She'll be obstinate." 
 
 " So that I strongly recommend you to manage it," 
 his friend went on after a pause. " It strikes me that 
 if the Princess can't do it for Lily she might at least 
 do it for you. Any girl you marry becomes by that 
 fact somebody." 
 
 " Of course doesn't she ? She certainly ought to 
 do it for me. I'm after all the head of the house." 
 
 " Well then make her ! " said Lady Champer a little 
 impatiently. 
 
 " I will. Mamma adores me, and I adore her." 
 
 " And you adore Lily, and Lily adores you there 
 fore everybody adores everybody, especially as I adore 
 you both. Therefore with so much adoration all 
 round things ought to march." 
 
 " They shall ! " the young man declared with spirit. 
 " I adore you too you don't mention that ; for you 
 help me immensely. But what do you suppose she'll 
 do if she doesn't ? " 
 
 The agitation already visible in him ministered a 
 little to vagueness, but his friend after an instant 
 disembroiled it. " What do I suppose Lily will do if 
 your mother remains stiff ? " Lady Champer faltered, 
 but she let him have it. " She'll break." 
 
 His wondering eyes became strange. " Just for 
 that ? " 
 
 340
 
 MISS GUNTON OF POUGHKEEPSIE 
 
 " You may certainly say it isn't much when 
 people love as you do." 
 
 " Ah I'm afraid then Lily doesn't ! " and he 
 turned away in his trouble. 
 
 She watched him while he moved, not speaking 
 for a minute. " My dear young man, are you afraid 
 of your mamma ? " 
 
 He faced short about again. " I'm afraid of this 
 that if she does do it she won't forgive her. She 
 will do it yes. But Lily will be for her in con 
 sequence, ever after, the person who has made her 
 submit herself. She'll hate her for that and then 
 she'll hate me for being concerned in it." The Prince 
 presented it all with clearness almost with charm. 
 " What do you say to that ? " 
 
 His friend had to think. " Well, only, I fear, that 
 we belong, Lily and I, to a race unaccustomed to 
 counting with such passions. I think they affect us as 
 having a taste of the wicked cinque-cento, of Borgia 
 poison. Let her hate ! " she, however, a trifle incon 
 sistently wound up. 
 
 " But I love her so ! " 
 
 " Which ? " Lady Champer asked it almost un 
 graciously ; in such a tone at any rate that, seated on 
 the sofa with his elbows at his knees, his much-ringed 
 hands nervously locked together and his eyes of dis 
 tress wide open, he met her with visible surprise. 
 What she met him with is perhaps best noted by the 
 fact that after a minute of it his hands covered his 
 bent face and she became aware she had drawn tears. 
 This produced such regret in her that before they 
 parted she did what she could to attenuate and explain 
 making a great point at all events of her rule, with 
 Lily, of putting only his own side of the case. " I insist 
 awfully, you know, on your greatness ! " 
 
 He jumped up, wincing. " Oh that's horrid." 
 
 " I don't know. Whose fault is it then, at any 
 
 341
 
 MISS GUNTON OF POUGHKEEPSIE 
 
 rate, if trying to help you may have that side ? " 
 This was a question that, with the tangle he had 
 already to unwind, only added a twist ; yet she went 
 on as if positively to add another. " Why on earth 
 don't you, all of you, leave them alone ? " 
 
 . " Leave them ? " 
 
 " All your Americans." 
 " Don't you like them then the women ? " 
 She debated. " No. Yes. They're an interest. 
 But they're a nuisance. It's a question, very cer 
 tainly, if they're worth the trouble they give." 
 
 This at least it seemed he could take in. " You 
 mean one should be quite sure first what they are 
 worth ? " 
 
 He made her laugh now. " It would appear you 
 never can be. But also really that you can't keep 
 your hands off." 
 
 He fixed the social scene an instant with his heavy 
 eye. " Yes. Doesn't it ? " 
 
 " However," she pursued as if he again a little 
 irritated her, " Lily's position is quite simple." 
 " Quite. She just loves me." 
 " I mean simple for herself. She really makes no 
 differences. It's only we you and I who make 
 them all:" 
 
 The Prince wondered. " But she tells me she 
 delights in us ; has, that is, such a sense of what we 
 are supposed to ' represent.' ' 
 
 " Oh she thinks she has. Americans think they 
 have all sorts of things ; but they haven't. That's 
 just it " Lady Champer was philosophic. " Nothing 
 but their Americanism. If you marry anything you 
 marry that ; and if your mother accepts anything 
 that's what she accepts." Then, though the young 
 man followed the demonstration with an apprehension 
 almost pathetic, she gave him without mercy the 
 whole of it. " Lily's rigidly logical. A girl as she 
 342
 
 MISS GUNTON OF POUGHKEEPSIE 
 
 knows girls is ' welcomed,' on her engagement, before 
 anything else can happen, by the family of her young 
 man ; and the motherless girl alone in the world 
 more punctually than any other. His mother if 
 she's a ' lady ' takes it upon herself. Then the girl 
 goes and stays with them. But she does nothing 
 before. Tirez-vous de Id." 
 
 The young man sought on the spot to obey this 
 last injunction, and his effort presently produced a 
 flash. " Oh if she'll come and stay with us " all 
 would easily be well ! The flash went out, however, 
 when Lady Champer returned : " Then let the 
 Princess invite her." 
 
 Lily a fortnight later simply said to her from one 
 hour to the other " I'm going home," and took her 
 breath away by sailing on the morrow with the 
 Bransbys. The tense cord had somehow snapped ; 
 the proof was in the fact that the Prince, dashing 
 off to his good friend at this crisis an obscure, an 
 ambiguous note, started the same night for Rome. 
 Lady Champer, for the time, sat in darkness, but 
 during the summer many things occurred ; and one 
 day in the autumn, quite unheralded and with the 
 signs of some of them in his face, the Prince appeared 
 again before her. He wasn't long in telling her his 
 story, which was simply that he had come to her, all 
 the way from Rome, for news of Lily and to talk of 
 Lily. She was prepared, as it happened, to meet his 
 impatience ; yet her preparation was but little older 
 than his arrival and was deficient moreover in an 
 important particular. She wasn't prepared to knock 
 him down, and she made him talk to gain time. She 
 had however, to understand, put a primary question : 
 " She never wrote then ? " 
 
 " Mamma ? Oh yes when she at last got 
 frightened at Miss Gunton's having become so silent. 
 She wrote in August ; but Lily's own decisive letter 
 
 343
 
 MISS GUNTON OF POUGH-KEEPSIE 
 
 letter to me, I mean crossed with it. It was too 
 late that put an end." 
 
 " A real end ? " 
 
 Everything in the young man showed how real. 
 " On the ground of her being willing no longer to 
 keep up, by the stand she had taken, such a relation 
 between mamma and me. But her rupture," he 
 wailed, " keeps it up more than anything else." 
 
 " And is it very bad ? " 
 
 " Awful, I assure you. I've become for my mother 
 a person who has made her make, all for nothing, an 
 unprecedented advance, a humble submission ; and 
 she's so disgusted, all round, that it's no longer the 
 same old charming thing for us to be together. It 
 makes it worse for her that I'm still madly in love." 
 
 " Well," said Lady Champer after a moment, " if 
 you're still madly in love I can only be sorry for 
 you." 
 
 " You can do nothing for me ? don't advise me 
 to go over ? " 
 
 She had to take a longer pause. " You don't at 
 all know then what has happened ? that old Mr. 
 Gunton has died and left her everything ? " 
 
 All his vacancy and curiosity came out in a wild 
 echo. ' Everything ' ? " 
 
 " She writes me that it's a great deal of money." 
 
 " You've just heard from her then ? " 
 
 " This morning. I seem to make out," said Lady 
 Champer, "an extraordinary number of dollars." 
 
 " Oh I was sure it was ! " the young man moaned. 
 
 " And she's engaged," his friend went on, " to Mr. 
 Bransby." 
 
 He bounded, rising before her. " Mr. Bransby ? 
 
 " ' Adam P.' the gentleman with whose mother 
 and sisters she went home. They, she writes, have 
 beautifully welcomed her." 
 
 " Dio mio ! " The Prince stared ; he had flushed 
 
 344
 
 MISS GUNTON OF POUGHKEEPSIE 
 
 with the blow and the tears had come into his eyes. 
 " And I believed she loved me ! " 
 
 " / didn't ! " said Lady Champer with some curt- 
 ness. 
 
 He gazed about ; he almost rocked ; and, un 
 conscious of her words, he appealed, inarticulate 
 and stricken. At last however he found his voice. 
 " What on earth then shall I do ? I can less than 
 ever go back to mamma ! " 
 
 She got up for him, she thought for him, pushing 
 a better chair into her circle. " Stay here with me 
 and I'll ring for tea. Sit there nearer the fire 
 you're cold." 
 
 " Awfully ! " he confessed as he sank. " And I 
 believed she loved me ! " he repeated as he stared 
 at the fire. 
 
 " / didn't ! " Lady Champer once more declared. 
 This time, visibly, he heard her, and she immediately 
 met his wonder. " No it was all the rest ; your 
 great historic position, the glamour of your name 
 and your past. Otherwise what she stood out for 
 wouldn't be excusable. But she has the sense of 
 such things, and they were what she loved." So, by 
 the fire, his hostess explained it while he wondered 
 the more. 
 
 " I thought that last summer you told me just the 
 contrary." 
 
 It seemed, to do her justice, to strike her. " Did I ? 
 Oh well, how does one know ? With Americans 
 one's lost ! " 
 
 345
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 347
 
 SHARP little Madame Massin, who carried on the 
 pleasant pension and who had her small hard eyes 
 everywhere at once, came out to him on the terrace 
 and held up a letter addressed in a manner that he 
 recognised even from afar, held it up with a question 
 in her smile, or a smile, rather a pointed one, in her 
 question he could scarce have said which. She was 
 looking, while so occupied, at the German group en 
 gaged in the garden, near by, with aperitive beer and 
 disputation the noonday luncheon being now im 
 minent ; and the way in which she could show prompt 
 lips while her observation searchingly ranged might 
 have reminded him of the object placed by a spectator 
 at the theatre in the seat he desires to keep during the 
 entr'acte. Conscious of the cross-currents of inter 
 national passion, she tried, so far as possible, not to 
 mix her sheep and her goats. The view of the bluest 
 end of the Lake of Geneva she insisted in per 
 suasive circulars that it was the bluest had never, 
 on her high-perched terrace, wanted for admirers, 
 though thus early in the season, during the first days 
 of May, they were not so numerous as she was apt 
 to see them at midsummer. This precisely, Abel 
 Taker could infer, was the reason of a remark she 
 had made him before the claims of the letter had 
 been settled. " I shall put you next the American 
 lady the one who arrived yesterday. I know you'll 
 be kind to her ; she had to go to bed, as soon as she got 
 here, with a sick-headache brought on by her journey. 
 
 349
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 But she's better. Who isn't better as soon as they 
 get here ? She's coming down, and I'm sure she'd 
 like to know you." 
 
 Taker had now the letter in his hand the letter 
 intended for " Mr. C. P. Addard " ; which was not the 
 name inscribed in the two or three books he had left 
 out in his room, any more than it matched the initials, 
 "A. F. T.," attached to the few pieces of his modest 
 total of luggage. Moreover, since Madame Massin's 
 establishment counted, to his still somewhat bewildered 
 mind, so little for an hotel, as hotels were mainly 
 known to him, he had avoided the act of " registering," 
 and the missive with which his hostess was practically 
 testing him represented the very first piece of postal 
 matter taken in since his arrival that hadn't been 
 destined to some one else. He had privately blushed 
 for the meagreness of his mail, which made him look 
 unimportant. That however was a detail, an appear 
 ance he was used to ; indeed the reasons making 
 for such an appearance might never have been so 
 pleasant to him as on this vision of his identity formally 
 and legibly denied. It was denied there in his wife's 
 large straight hand ; his eyes, attached to the envelope, 
 took in the failure of any symptom of weakness in her 
 stroke ; she at least had the courage of his passing for 
 somebody he wasn't, of his passing rather for nobody 
 at all, and he felt the force of her character more 
 irresistibly than ever as he thus submitted to what she 
 was doing with him. He wasn't used to lying; whatever 
 his faults and he was used, perfectly, to the idea of 
 his faults he hadn't made them worse by any per 
 verse theory, any tortuous plea, of innocence ; so that 
 probably, with every inch of him giving him away, 
 Madame Massin didn't believe him a bit when he 
 appropriated the letter. He was quite aware he could 
 have made no fight if she had challenged his right to 
 it. That would have come of his making no fight, 
 350
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 nowadays, on any ground, "with any woman ; he had 
 so lost the proper spirit, the necessary confidence. It 
 was true that he had had to do for a long time with 
 no woman in the world but Sue, and of the practice 
 of opposition so far as Sue was concerned the end 
 had been determined early in his career. His hostess 
 fortunately accepted his word, but the way in which 
 her momentary attention bored into his secret like 
 the turn of a gimlet gave him a sense of the quantity 
 of life that passed before her as a dealer with all 
 comers gave him almost an awe of her power of not 
 wincing. She knew he wasn't, he couldn't be, C. P. 
 Addard, even though she mightn't know, or still less 
 care, who he was ; and there was therefore something 
 queer about him if he pretended to be. That was 
 what she didn't mind, there being something queer 
 about him ; and what was further present to him was 
 that she would have known when to mind, when 
 really to be on her guard. She attached no import 
 ance to his trick ; she had doubtless somewhere at 
 the rear, amid the responsive underlings with whom 
 she was sometimes heard volubly, yet so obscurely, 
 to chatter, her clever French amusement about it. 
 He couldn't at all events have said if the whole passage 
 with her most brought home to him the falsity of his 
 position or most glossed it over. On the whole perhaps 
 it rather helped him, since from this moment his 
 masquerade had actively begun. 
 
 Ta.king his place for luncheon, in any case, he 
 found himself next the American lady, as he con 
 ceived, spoken of by Madame Massin in whose 
 appearance he was at first as disappointed as if, a 
 little, though all unconsciously, he had been building 
 on it. Had she loomed into view, on their hostess's 
 hint, as one of the vague alternatives, the possible be- 
 guilements, of his leisure presenting herself solidly 
 where so much else had refused to crystallise ? It was
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 certain at least that she presented herself solidly, being 
 a large mild smooth person with a distinct double 
 chin, with grey hair arranged in small flat regular 
 circles, figures of a geometrical perfection ; with 
 diamond earrings, with a long-handled eye-glass, with 
 an accumulation of years and of weight and presence, 
 in fine, beyond what his own rather melancholy con 
 sciousness acknowledged. He was forty-five, and it 
 took every year of his life, took all he hadn't done 
 with them, to account for his present situation 
 since you couldn't be, conclusively, of so little use, 
 of so scant an application, to any mortal career, 
 above all to your own, unless you had been given up 
 and cast aside after a long succession of experiments 
 tried with you. But the American lady with the 
 mathematical hair which reminded him in a manner 
 of the old-fashioned " work," the weeping willows and 
 mortuary urns represented by the little glazed-over 
 flaxen or auburn or sable or silvered convolutions and 
 tendrils, the capillary flowers, that he had admired 
 in the days of his innocence the American lady had 
 probably seen her half-century ; all the more that 
 before luncheon was done she had begun to strike 
 him as having, like himself, slipped slowly down over 
 its stretched and shiny surface, an expanse as insecure 
 to fumbling feet as a great cold curved ice-field, into 
 the comparatively warm hollow of resignation and 
 obscurity. She gave him from the first and he was 
 afterwards to see why an attaching impression of 
 being, like himself, in exile, and of having like himself 
 learned to butter her bread with a certain acceptance 
 of fate. The only thing that puzzled him on this 
 head was that to parallel his own case she would have 
 had openly to consent to be shelved ; which made 
 the difficulty, here, that that was exactly what, as 
 between wife and husband, remained unthinkable on 
 the part of the wife. The necessity for the shelving 
 352
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 of one or the other was a case that appeared often to 
 arise, but this wasn't the way he had in general seen it 
 settled. She made him in short, through some influ 
 ence he couldn't immediately reduce to its elements, 
 vaguely think of her as sacrificed without blood, as 
 it were ; as obligingly and persuadedly passive. Yet 
 this effect, a reflexion of his own state, would doubt 
 less have been better produced for him by a mere 
 melancholy man. She testified unmistakably to the 
 greater energy of women ; for he could think of no 
 manifestation of spirit on his own part that might 
 pass for an equivalent, in the way of resistance, of 
 protest, to the rhythmic though rather wiggy water- 
 waves that broke upon her bald-looking brow as upon 
 a beach bared by a low tide. He had cocked up 
 often enough and as with .the intention of doing it 
 still more under Sue's nose than under his own the 
 two ends of his half-" sandy " half-grizzled moustache, 
 and he had in fact given these ornaments an extra 
 twist just before coming in to luncheon. That however 
 was but a momentary flourish ; the most marked 
 ferocity of which hadn't availed not to land him 
 well, where he was landed now. 
 
 His new friend mentioned that she had come up 
 from Rome and that Madame Massin's establishment 
 had been highly spoken of to her there, and this, 
 slight as it was, straightway contributed in its degree 
 for Abel Taker to the idea that they had something 
 in common. He was in a condition in which he could 
 feel the drift of vague currents, and he knew how 
 highly the place had been spoken of to him. There 
 was but a shade of difference in his having had his 
 lesson in Florence. He let his companion know, 
 without reserve, that he too had come up from Italy, 
 after spending three or four months there : though he 
 remembered in time that, being now C. P. Addard, 
 it was only as C. P. Addard he could speak. He tried 
 
 353 2 A
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 to think, in order to give himself something to say, 
 what C. P. Addard would have done ; but he was 
 doomed to feel always, in the whole connexion, his 
 lack of imagination. He had had many days to come 
 to it and nothing else to do ; but he hadn't even yet 
 made up his mind who C. P. Addard was or invested 
 him with any distinguishing marks. He felt like a man 
 who, moving in this, that or the other direction, saw 
 each successively lead him to some danger ; so that he 
 began to ask himself why he shouldn't just lie out 
 right, boldly and inventively, and see what that could 
 do for him. There was an excitement, the excitement 
 of personal risk, about it much the same as would 
 belong for an ordinary man to the first trial of a fly 
 ing-machine ; yet it was exactly such a course as Sue 
 had prescribed on his asking her what he should do. 
 " Anything in the world you like but talk about me : 
 think of some other woman, as bad and bold as you 
 please, and say you're married to her." Those had 
 been literally her words, together with others, again 
 and again repeated, on the subject of his being free 
 to " kill and bury " her as often as he chose. This 
 was the way she had met his objection to his own 
 death and interment ; she had asked him, in' her 
 bright hard triumphant way, why he couldn't defend 
 himself by shooting back. The real reason was of 
 course that he was nothing without her, whereas she 
 was everything, could be anything in the wide world 
 she liked, without him. That question precisely 
 had been a part of what was before him while he 
 strolled in the projected green gloom of Madame 
 Massin's plane-trees ; he wondered what she was 
 choosing to be and how good a tune it was helping 
 her to have. He could be sure she was rising to it, 
 on some line or other, and that was what secretly 
 made him say : " Why shouldn't I get something out 
 of it tod, just for the harmless fun- ? " 
 
 354
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 It kept coming back to him, naturally, that he 
 hadn't the breadth of fancy, that he knew himself 
 as he knew the taste of ill-made coffee, that he was 
 the same old Abel Taker he had ever been, in whose 
 aggregation of items it was as vain to feel about for 
 latent heroisms as it was useless to rummage one's 
 trunk for presentable clothes that one didn't possess. 
 But did that absolve him (having so definitely Sue's 
 permission) from seeing to what extent he might 
 temporarily make believe ? If he were to flap his 
 wings very hard and crow very loud and take as long 
 a jump as possible at the same time if he were 
 to do all that perhaps he should achieve for half a 
 minute the sensation of soaring. He only knew one 
 thing Sue couldn't do, from the moment she didn't 
 divorce him : she couldn't get rid of his name, un 
 accountably, after all, as she hated it ; she couldn't 
 get rid of it because she would have always sooner or 
 later to come back to it. She might consider that her 
 being a thing so dreadful as Mrs. Abel Taker was a 
 stumbling-block in her social path that nothing but 
 his real, his official, his advertised circulated demise 
 (with " American papers please copy ") would avail 
 to dislodge : she would have none the less to reckon 
 with his continued existence as the drop of bitterness 
 in her cup that seasoned uadisguisably each draught. 
 He might make use of his present opportunity to 
 row out into the lake with his pockets full of stones 
 and there quietly slip overboard ; but he could think 
 of no shorter cut for her ceasing to be what her 
 marriage and the law of the land had made her. 
 She was not an inch less Mrs. Abel Taker for 
 these days of his sequestration, and the only thing 
 she indeed claimed was that the concealment of the 
 source of her shame, the suppression of the person 
 who had divided with her his inherited absurdity, 
 made the difference of a shade or two for getting 
 
 355
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 honourably, as she called it, " about." How she had 
 originally come to incur this awful inconvenience 
 that part of the matter, left to herself, she would 
 undertake to keep vague ; and she wasn't really left to 
 herself so long as he too flaunted the dreadful flag. 
 
 This was why she had provided him with another 
 and placed him out at board, to constitute, as it were, 
 a permanent alibi ; telling him she should quarrel 
 with no colours under which he might elect to sail, and 
 promising to take him back when she had got where 
 she wanted. She wouldn't mind so much then 
 she only wanted a fair start. It wasn't a fair start 
 was it ? she asked him frankly so long as he was 
 always there, so terribly cruelly there, to speak of 
 what she had been. She had been nothing worse, 
 to his sense, than a very pretty girl of eighteen out 
 in Peoria, who had seen at that time no one else she 
 wanted more to marry, nor even any one who had 
 been so supremely struck by her. That, absolutely, 
 was the worst that could be said of her. It was so 
 bad at any rate in her own view it had grown so 
 bad in the widening light of life that it had fairly 
 become more than she could bear and that something, 
 as she said, had to be done about it. She hadn't 
 known herself originally any more than she had 
 known him hadn't foreseen how much better she 
 was going to come out, nor how, for her individually, 
 as distinguished from him, there might be the pos 
 sibility of a big future. He couldn't be explained 
 away he cried out with all his dreadful presence 
 that she had been pleased to marry him ; and what 
 they therefore had to do must transcend explaining. 
 It was perhaps now helping her, off there in London, 
 and especially at Fordham Castle she was staying 
 last at Fordham Castle, Wilts it was perhaps 
 inspiring her even more than she had expected, that 
 they were able to try together this particular sub- 
 356
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 stitute : news of her progress in fact her progress on 
 from Fordham Castle, if anything could be higher 
 would not improbably be contained in the un 
 opened letter he had lately pocketed. 
 
 There was a given moment at luncheon meanwhile, 
 in his talk with his countrywoman, where he did try 
 that flap of the wing did throw off, for a flight 
 into the blue, the first falsehood he could think of. 
 " I stopped in Italy, you see, on my way back from 
 the East, where I had gone to Constantinople " 
 he rose actually to Constantinople " to visit Mrs. 
 Addard's grave." And after they had all come out 
 to coffee in the rustling shade, with the vociferous 
 German tribe at one end of the terrace, the English 
 family keeping silence with an English accent, as 
 it struck him, in the middle, and his direction taken, 
 by his new friend's side, to the other unoccupied 
 corner, he found himself oppressed with what he 
 had on his hands, the burden of keeping up this 
 expensive fiction. He had never been to Constan 
 tinople- it could easily be proved against him ; he 
 ought to have thought of something better, have got 
 his effect on easier terms. Yet a funnier thing still 
 than this quick repentance was the quite equally 
 fictive ground on which his companion had affected 
 him- when he came to think of it as meeting him. 
 
 " Why you know that's very much the same errand 
 that took me to Rome. I visited the grave of my 
 daughter- whom I lost there some time ago." 
 
 She had turned her face to him after making this 
 statement, looked at him with an odd blink of her 
 round kind plain eyes, as if to see how he took it. 
 He had taken it on the spot, for this was the only 
 thing to do ; but he had felt how much deeper down 
 he was himself sinking as he replied : " Ah it's a sad 
 pleasure, isn't it ? But those are places one doesn't 
 want to neglect." 
 
 357
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 " Yes that's what I feel. I go," his neighbour 
 had solemnly pursued, " about every two years." 
 
 With which she had looked away again, leaving him 
 really not able to emulate her. " Well, I hadn't been 
 before. You see it's a long way." 
 
 " Yes that's the trying part. It makes you feel 
 you'd have done better 
 
 " To bring them right home and have it done over 
 there ? " he had asked as she let the sad subject go 
 a little. He quite agreed. " Yes that's what many 
 do." 
 
 " But it gives of course a peculiar interest." So 
 they had kept it up. " I mean in places that mightn't 
 have so very much." 
 
 " Places like Rome and Constantinople ? " he had 
 rejoined while he noticed the cautious anxious sound 
 of her " very." The tone was to come back to him, 
 and it had already made him feel sorry for her, with 
 its suggestion of her being at sea like himself. Un 
 mistakably, poor lady, she too was trying to float 
 was striking out in timid convulsive movements. 
 Well, he wouldn't make it difficult for her, and im 
 mediately, so as not to appear to cast any ridicule, he 
 observed that, whenever great bereavements might 
 have occurred, there was no place so remarkable as 
 not to gain an association. Such memories made at 
 the least another object for coming. It was after this 
 recognition, on either side, that they adjourned to 
 the garden Taker having in his ears again the 
 good lady's rather troubled or muddled echo : "Oh 
 yes, when you come to all the objects ! " The grave 
 of one's wife or one's daughter was an object quite 
 as much as all those that one looked up in Baedeker 
 those of the family of the Castle of Chillon and 
 the Dent du Midi, features of the view to be enjoyed 
 from different parts of Madame Massin's premises. 
 It was very soon, none the less, rather as if these latter 
 
 358
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 presences, diffusing their reality and majesty, had 
 taken the colour out of all other evoked romance ; 
 and to that degree that when Abel's fellow guest 
 happened to lay down on the parapet of the terrace 
 three or four articles she had brought out with her, 
 her fan, a couple of American newspapers and a 
 letter that had obviously come to her by the same 
 post as his own, he availed himself of the accident to 
 jump at a further conclusion. Their coffee, which 
 was " extra," as he knew and as, in the way of 
 benevolence, he boldly warned her, was brought forth 
 to them, and while she was giving her attention to 
 her demi-tasse he let his eyes rest for three seconds 
 on the superscription of her letter. His mind was by 
 this time made up, and the beauty of it was that he 
 couldn't have said why : the letter was from her 
 daughter, whom she had been burying for him in 
 Rome, and it would be addressed in a name that was 
 really no more hers than the name his wife had thrust 
 upon him was his. Her daughter had put her out at 
 cheap board, pending higher issues, just as Sue had 
 put him so that there was a logic not other than 
 fine in his notifying her of what coffee every day 
 might let her in for. She was addressed on her 
 envelope as " Mrs. Vanderplank," but he had pri 
 vately arrived, before she so much as put down her 
 cup, at the conviction that this was a borrowed and 
 lawless title, for all the world as if, poor dear inno 
 cent woman, she were a bold bad adventuress. He 
 had acquired furthermore the moral certitude that 
 he was on the track, as he would have said, of her 
 true identity, such as it might be. He couldn't think 
 of it as in itself either very mysterious or very im 
 pressive ; but, whatever it was, her duplicity had as 
 yet mastered no finer art than his own, inasmuch as 
 she had positively not escaped, at table, inadvertently 
 dropping a name which, while it lingered on Abel's ear, 
 
 359
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 gave her quite away. She had spoken, in her solemn 
 sociability and as by the force of old habit, of " Mr. 
 Magaw," and nothing was more to be presumed than 
 that this gentleman was her defunct husband, not 
 so very long defunct, who had permitted her while 
 in life the privilege of association with him, but whose 
 extinction had left her to be worked upon by different 
 ideas. 
 
 These ideas would have germed, infallibly, in the 
 brain of the young woman, her only child, under 
 whose rigid rule she now it was to be detected 
 drew her breath in pain. Madame Massin would 
 abysmally know, Abel reflected, for he was at the 
 end of a few minutes more intimately satisfied that 
 Mrs. Magaw's American newspapers, coming to her 
 straight from the other side and not yet detached 
 from their wrappers, would not be directed to Mrs. 
 Vanderplank, and that, this being the case, the poor 
 lady would have had to invent some pretext for a 
 claim to goods likely still perhaps to be lawfully 
 called for. And she wasn't formed for duplicity, 
 the large simple scared foolish fond woman, the 
 vague anxiety in whose otherwise so uninhabited 
 and unreclaimed countenance, as void of ah 1 history 
 as an expanse of Western prairie seen from a car- 
 window, testified to her scant aptitude for her part. 
 He was far from the desire to question their hostess, 
 however for the study of his companion's face on 
 its mere inferred merits had begun to dawn upon 
 him as the possible resource of his ridiculous leisure. 
 He might verily have some fun with her or he 
 would so have conceived it had he not become aware 
 before they separated, half an hour later, of a kind 
 of fellow-feeling for her that seemed to plead for her 
 being spared. She wasn't being, in some quarter 
 still indistinct to him and so no more was he, and 
 these things were precisely a reason. Her sacrifice, 
 360
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 he divined, was an act of devotion, a state not yet 
 disciplined to the state of confidence. She had pre 
 sently, as from a return of vigilance, gathered in her 
 postal property, shuffling it together at her further 
 side and covering it with her pocket-handkerchief 
 though this very betrayal indeed but quickened his 
 temporary impulse to break out to her, sympathetic 
 ally, with a " Had you the misfortune to lose Magaw?" 
 or with the effective production of his own card and 
 a smiling, an inviting, a consoling " That's who / 
 am if you want to know ! " He really made out, 
 with the idle human instinct, the crude sense for 
 other people's pains and pleasures that had, on his 
 showing, to his so great humiliation, been found an 
 inadequate outfit for the successful conduct of the 
 coal, the commission, the insurance and, as a last 
 resort, desperate and disgraceful, the book-agency 
 business he really made out that she didn't want 
 to know, or wouldn't for some little time ; that she 
 was decidedly afraid in short, and covertly agitated, 
 and all just because she too, with him, suspected 
 herself dimly in presence of that mysterious " more " 
 than, in the classic phrase, met the eye. They parted 
 accordingly, as if to relieve, till they could recover 
 themselves, the conscious tension of their being able 
 neither to hang back with grace nor to advance with 
 glory ; but flagrantly full, at the same time, both of 
 the recognition that they couldn't in such a place 
 avoid each other even if they had desired it, and 
 of the suggestion that they wouldn't desire it, after 
 such subtlety of communion, even were it to be 
 thought of. 
 
 Abel Taker, till dinner-time, turned over his little 
 adventure and extracted, while he hovered and smoked 
 and mused, some refreshment from the impression 
 the subtlety of communion had left with him. Mrs. 
 Vanderplank was his senior by several years, and 
 
 361
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 was neither fair nor slim nor " bright " nor tnily, nor 
 even falsely, elegant, nor anything that Sue had 
 taught him, in her wonderful way, to associate with 
 the American woman at the American woman's best 
 that best than which there was nothing better, as 
 he had so often heard her say, on God's great earth. 
 Sue would have banished her to the wildest waste of 
 the unknowable, would have looked over her head 
 in the manner he had often seen her .use as if she 
 were in an exhibition of pictures, were in front of 
 something bad and negligible that had got itself 
 placed on the line, but that had the real thing, the 
 thing of interest for those who knew (and when didn't 
 Sue know ?) hung above it. In Mrs. Magaw's pre 
 sence everything would have been of more interest 
 to Sue than Mrs. Magaw ; but that consciousness 
 failed to prevent his feeling the appeal of this inmate 
 much rather confirmed than weakened when she 
 reappeared for dinner. It was impressed upon him, 
 after they had again seated themselves side by side, 
 that she was reaching out to him indirectly, guardedly, 
 even as he was to her ; so that later on, in the garden, 
 where they once more had their coffee together it 
 might have been so free and easy, so wildly foreign, so 
 almost Bohemian he lost all doubt of the wisdom 
 of his taking his plunge. This act of resolution was 
 not, like the other he had risked in the morning, 
 an upward flutter into fiction, but a straight and 
 possibly dangerous dive into the very depths of truth. 
 Their instinct was unmistakably to cling to each 
 other, but it was as if they wouldn't know where 
 to take hold till the air had really been cleared. 
 Actually, in fact, they required a light the aid 
 prepared by him in the shape of a fresh match for 
 his cigarette after he had extracted, under cover of the 
 scented dusk, one of his cards from his pocket-book. 
 " There I honestly am, you see Abel F. Taker ; 
 362
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 which I think you ought to know." It was relevant 
 to nothing, relevant only to the grope of their talk, 
 broken with sudden silences where they stopped short 
 for fear of mistakes ; but as he put the card before 
 her he held out to it the little momentary flame. 
 And this was the way that, after a while and from 
 one thing to another, he himself, in exchange for 
 what he had to give and what he gave freely, heard 
 all about " Mattie " Mattie Magaw, Mrs. Vander- 
 plank's beautiful and high-spirited daughter, who, 
 as he learned, found her two names, so dreadful even 
 singly, a combination not to be borne, and carried on 
 a quarrel with them no less desperate than Sue's 
 quarrel with well, with everything. She had, quite 
 as Sue had done, declared her need of a free hand 
 to fight them, and she was, for all the world like Sue 
 again, now fighting them to the death. This similarity 
 of situation was wondrously completed by the fact 
 that the scene of Miss Magaw's struggle was, as her 
 mother explained, none other than that uppermost 
 walk of " high " English life which formed the present 
 field of Mrs. Taker's operations ; a circumstance on 
 which Abel presently produced his comment. " Why, 
 if they're after the same thing in the same place, I 
 wonder if we shan't hear of their meeting." 
 
 Mrs. Magaw appeared for a moment to wonder 
 too. " Well, if they do meet I guess we'll hear. I will 
 say for Mattie that she writes me pretty fully. And I 
 presume," she went on, " Mrs. Taker keeps you 
 posted ? " 
 
 "No," he had to confess " I don't hear from 
 her in much detail. She knows I back her," Abel 
 smiled, " and that's enough for her. ' You be quiet 
 and I'll let you know when you're wanted ' 
 that's her motto ; I'm to wait, wherever I am, till 
 I'm called for. But I guess she won't be in a hurry 
 to call for me " this reflexion he showed he was 
 
 363
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 familiar with. " I've stood in her light so long 
 her ' social ' light, outside of which everything is for 
 Sue black darkness that I don't really see the 
 reason she should ever want me back. That at any 
 rate is what I'm doing I'm just waiting. And 
 I didn't expect the luck of being able to wait in 
 your company. I couldn't suppose that's the 
 truth," he added " that there was another, any 
 where about, with the same ideas or the. same strong 
 character. It had never seemed to be possible," he 
 ruminated, " that there could be any one like Mrs. 
 Taker." 
 
 He was to remember afterwards how his companion 
 had appeared to consider this approximation. " An 
 other, you mean, like my Mattie ? " 
 
 " Yes like my Sue. Any one that really comes 
 up to her. It will be," he declared, " the first one 
 I've struck." 
 
 " Well," said Mrs. Vanderplank, " my Mattie's 
 remarkably handsome." 
 
 "I'm sure ! But Mrs. Taker's remarkably hand 
 some too. Oh," he added, both with humour and 
 with earnestness, "if it wasn't for that I wouldn't 
 trust her so ! Because, for what she wants," he 
 developed, " it's a great help to be fine-looking." 
 
 " Ah it's always a help for a lady ! " and Mrs. 
 Magaw's sigh fluttered vaguely between the expert 
 and the rueful. " But what is it," she asked, " that 
 Mrs. Taker wants ? " 
 
 " Well, she could tell you herself. I don't think 
 she'd trust me to give an account of it. Still," he went 
 on, " she has stated it more than once for my benefit, 
 and perhaps that's what it all finally comes to. She 
 wants to get where she truly belongs." 
 
 Mrs. Magaw had listened with interest. " That's 
 just where Mattie wants to get ! And she seems to 
 know just where it is." 
 
 304
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 " Oh Mrs. Taker knows you can bet your life," 
 he laughed, " on that. It seems to be somewhere in 
 London or in the country round, and I daresay it's 
 the same place as your daughter's. Once she's there, 
 as I understand it, she'll be all right ; but she has got 
 to get there that is to be seen there thoroughly fixed 
 and photographed, and have it in all the papers 
 first. After she's fixed, she says, we'll talk. We have 
 talked a good deal : when Mrs. Taker says ' We'll 
 talk ' I know what she means. But this time we'll 
 have it out." 
 
 There were communities in their fate that made his 
 friend turn pale. " Do you mean she won't want you 
 to come ? " 
 
 " Well, for me to ' come,' don't you see ? will be 
 for rne to come to life. How can I come to life when 
 I've been as dead as I am now ? " 
 
 Mrs. Vanderplank looked at him with a dim deli 
 cacy. " But surely, sir, I'm not conversing with the 
 remains ! " 
 
 " You're conversing with C. P. Addard. He may 
 be alive but even this I don't know yet ; I'm just 
 trying him," he said : " I'm trying him, Mrs. Magaw, 
 on you. Abel Taker's in his grave, but does it strike 
 you that Mr. Addard is at all above ground ? " 
 
 He had smiled for the slightly gruesome joke of it, 
 but she looked away as if it made her uneasy. Then, 
 however, as she came back to him, " Are you going 
 to wait here ? " she asked. 
 
 He held her, with some gallantry, in suspense. 
 " Are you ? " 
 
 She postponed her answer, visibly not quite com 
 fortable now ; but they were inevitably the next day 
 up to their necks again in the question; and then it was 
 that she expressed more of her sense of her situation. 
 " Certainly I feel as if I must wait as long as I 
 have to wait. Mattie likes this place I mean she 
 
 365
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 likes it for me. It seems the right sort of place," she 
 opined with her perpetual earnest emphasis. 
 
 But it made him sound again the note. " The right 
 sort to pass for dead in ? " 
 
 " Oh she doesn't want me to pass for dead." 
 
 " Then what does she want you to pass for ? " 
 
 The poor lady cast about. " Well, only for Mrs. 
 Vanderplank." 
 
 " And who or what is Mrs. Vanderplank ? " 
 
 Mrs. Magaw considered this personage, but didn't 
 get far. " She isn't any one in particular, I guess." 
 
 " That means," Abel returned, " that she isn't 
 alive." 
 
 " She isn't more than half alive," Mrs. Magaw 
 conceded. " But it isn't what I am it's what I'm 
 passing for. Or rather " she worked it out 
 "what I'm just not. I'm not passing I don't, 
 can't here, where it doesn't matter, you see for 
 her mother." 
 
 Abel quite fell in. " Certainly she doesn't want 
 to have any mother." 
 
 " She doesn't want to have me. She wants me to 
 lay low. If I lay low, she says 
 
 "Oh I know what she says" Abel took it 
 straight up. " It's the very same as what Mrs. Taker 
 says. If you lie low she can fly high." 
 
 It kept disconcerting her in a manner, as well as 
 steadying, his free possession of their case. " I don't 
 feel as if I was lying I mean as low as she wants 
 when I talk to you so." She broke it off thus, and 
 again and again, anxiously, responsibly ; her sense 
 of responsibility making Taker feel, with his braver 
 projection of humour, quite ironic and sardonic ; 
 but as for a week, for a fortnight, for many days more, 
 they kept frequently and intimately meeting, it was 
 natural that the so extraordinary fact of their being, 
 as he put it, in the same sort of box, and of their boxes 
 366
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 having so even more remarkably bumped together 
 under Madame Massin's tilleuls, shouldn't only make 
 them reach out to each other across their queer coil 
 of communications, cut so sharp off in other quarters, 
 but should prevent their pretending to any real con 
 sciousness but that of their ordeal. It was Abel's 
 idea, promptly enough expressed to Mrs. Magaw, that 
 they ought to get something out of it ; but when he 
 had said that a few times over (the first time she 
 had met it in silence), she finally replied, and in a 
 manner that he thought quite sublime : " Well, we 
 shall if they do all they want. We shall feel we've 
 helped. And it isn't so very much to do." 
 
 :< You think it isn't so very much to do to lie 
 down and die for them ? " 
 
 " Well, if I don't hate it any worse when I'm really 
 dead ! " She took herself up, however, as if she 
 had skirted the profane. " I don't say that if I didn't 
 believe in Mat ! But I do believe, you see. That's 
 where she has me." 
 
 "Oh I see more or less. That's where Sue has 
 me." 
 
 Mrs. Magaw fixed him with a milder solemnity. 
 " But what has Mrs. Taker against you ? " 
 
 " It's sweet of you to ask," he smiled ; while it 
 really came to him that he was living with her under 
 ever so much less strain than what he had been feel 
 ing for ever so long before from Sue. Wouldn't he 
 have liked it to go on and on wouldn't that have 
 suited C. P. Addard ? He seemed to be finding out 
 who G. P. Addard was so that it came back again 
 to the way Sue fixed things. She had fixed them so 
 that C. P. Addard could become quite interested in 
 Mrs. Vanderplank and quite soothed by her and so 
 that Mrs. Vanderplank as well, wonderful to say, had 
 lost her impatience for Mattie's summons a good 
 deal more, he was sure, than she confessed. It was 
 
 367
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 from this moment none the less that he began, with 
 a strange but distinct little pang, to see that he 
 couldn't be sure of her. Her question had produced 
 in him a vibration of the sensibility that even the long 
 series of mortifications, of publicly proved inapti 
 tudes, springing originally from his lack of business 
 talent, but owing an aggravation of aspect to an 
 absence of nameable " type " of which he hadn't been 
 left unaware, wasn't to have wholly toughened. Yet 
 it struck him positively as the prettiest word ever 
 spoken to him, so straight a surprise at his wife's dis 
 satisfaction ; and he was verily so unused to tributes 
 to his adequacy that this one lingered in the air a 
 moment and seemed almost to create a possibility. 
 He wondered, honestly, what she could see in him, in 
 whom Sue now at last saw really less than nothing ; 
 and his fingers instinctively moved to his moustache, 
 a corner of which he twiddled up again, also wonder 
 ing if it were perhaps only that though Sue had 
 as good as told him that the undue flourish of this 
 feature but brought out to her view the insignificance 
 of all the rest of him. Just to hang in the iridescent 
 ether with Mrs. Vanderplank, to whom he wasn't 
 insignificant, just for them to sit on there together, 
 protected, indeed positively ennobled, by their loss 
 of identity, struck him as the foretaste of a kind of 
 felicity that he hadn't in the past known enough 
 about really to miss it. He appeared to have become 
 aware that he should miss it quite sharply, that he 
 would find how he had already learned to, if she should 
 go ; and the very sadness of his apprehension quick 
 ened his vision of what would work with her. She 
 would want, with all the roundness of her kind plain 
 eyes, to see Mattie fixed whereas he'd be hanged 
 if he wasn't willing, on his side, to take Sue's eleva 
 tion quite on trust. For the instant, however, he said 
 nothing of that ; he only followed up a little his 
 368
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 acknowledgment of her having touched him. " What 
 you ask me, you know, is just what I myself was going 
 to ask. What has Miss Magaw got against you ? " 
 
 " Well, if you were to see her I guess you'd know." 
 
 " Why I should think she'd like to show you," 
 said Abel Taker. 
 
 " She doesn't so much mind their seeing me 
 when once she has had a look at me first. But she 
 doesn't like them to hear me though I don't talk 
 so very much. Mattie speaks in the real English 
 style," Mrs. Magaw explained. 
 
 " But ain't the real English style not to speak at 
 all? " 
 
 " Well, she's having the best kind of time, she 
 writes me so I presume there must be some talk 
 in which she can shine." 
 
 " Oh I've no doubt at all Miss Magaw talks ! " 
 and Abel, in his contemplative way, seemed to 
 have it before him. 
 
 " Well, don't you go and believe she talks too 
 much," his companion rejoined with spirit ; and this 
 it was that brought to a head his prevision of his 
 own fate. 
 
 " I see what's going to happen. You only want 
 to go to her. You want to get your share, after all. 
 You'll leave me without a pang." 
 
 Mrs. Magaw stared. " But won't you be going 
 too ? WTien Mrs. Taker sends for you ? " 
 
 He shook, as by a rare chance, a competent head. 
 " Mrs. Taker won't send for me. I don't make out 
 the use Mrs. Taker can ever have for me again." 
 
 Mrs. Magaw looked grave. " But not to enjoy 
 your seeing ? " 
 
 " My seeing where she has come out ? Oh that 
 won't be necessary to her enjoyment of it. It would 
 be well enough perhaps if I could see without being 
 seen ; but the trouble with me for I'm worse than 
 
 369 2 B
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 you," Abel said " is that it doesn't do for me either 
 to be heard or seen. I haven't got any side ! " 
 But it dropped ; it was too old a story. 
 
 " Not any possible side at all ? " his friend, in her 
 candour, doubtingly echoed. " Why what do they 
 want over there ? " 
 
 It made him give a comic pathetic wail. "Ah to 
 know a person who says such things as that to me, 
 and to have to give her up ! " 
 
 She appeared to consider with a certain alarm 
 what this might portend, and she really fell back 
 before it. " Would you think I'd be able to give 
 up Mattie ? " 
 
 " Why not if she's successful ? The thing you 
 wouldn't like you wouldn't, I'm sure would be to 
 give her up if she should find, or if you should find, 
 she wasn't." 
 
 " Well, I guess Mattie will be successful," said 
 Mrs. Magaw. 
 
 " Ah you're a worshipper of success ! " he groaned. 
 " I'd give Mrs. Taker up, definitely, just to remain 
 C. P. Addard with you." 
 
 She allowed it her thought ; but, as he felt, super 
 ficially. " She's your wife, sir, you know, whatever 
 you do." 
 
 " ' Mine ' ? Ah but whose ? She isn't C. P. 
 Addard's." 
 
 She rose at this as if they were going too far ; yet 
 she showed him, he seemed to see, the first little con 
 cession which was indeed to be the only one 
 of her inner timidity ; something that suggested how 
 she must have preserved as a token, laid away among 
 spotless properties, the visiting-card he had originally 
 handed her. " Well, I guess the one I feel for is 
 Abel F. Taker ! " 
 
 This, in the end, however, made no difference ; since 
 one of the things that inevitably came up between 
 
 370
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 them was that if Mattie had a quarrel with her 
 name her most workable idea would be to get some 
 body to give her a better. That, he easily made out, 
 was fundamentally what she was after, and, though, 
 delicately and discreetly, as he felt, he didn't reduce 
 Mrs. Vanderplank to so stating the case, he finally 
 found himself believing in Miss Magaw with just as 
 few reserves as those with which he believed in Sue. 
 If it was a question of her " shining " she would 
 indubitably shine ; she was evidently, like the wife 
 by whom he had been, in the early time, too pro- 
 vincially, too primitively accepted, of the great 
 radiating substance, and there were times, here at 
 Madame Massin's, while he stroUed to and fro and 
 smoked, when Mrs. Taker's distant lustre fairly peeped 
 at him over the opposite mountain-tops, fringing 
 their silhouettes as with the little hard bright rim of a 
 coming day. It was clear that Mattie's mother couldn't 
 be expected not to want to see her married ; the 
 shade of doubt bore only on the stage of the business 
 at which Mrs. Magaw might safely be let out of the 
 box. Was she to emerge abruptly as Mrs. Magaw ? 
 or was the lid simply to be tipped back so that, 
 for a good look, she might sit up a little straighter ? 
 She had got news at any rate, he inferred, which sug 
 gested to her that the term of her suppression was 
 in sight ; and she even let it out to him that, yes, 
 certainly, for Mattie to be ready for her and she 
 did look as if she were going to be ready she must 
 be right down sure. They had had further lights by 
 this time moreover, lights much more vivid always 
 in Mattie's bulletins than in Sue's ; which latter, as 
 Abel insistently imaged it, were really each time, on 
 Mrs. Taker's part, as limited as a peep into a death- 
 chamber. The death-chamber was Madame Massin's 
 terrace ; and he completed the image how could 
 Sue not want to know how things were looking for
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 the funeral, which was in any case to be thoroughly 
 " quiet " ? The vivid thing seemed to pass before 
 Abel's eyes the day he heard of the bright compatriot, 
 just the person to go round with, a charming hand 
 some witty widow, whom Miss Magaw had met at 
 Fordham Castle, whose ideas were, on all important 
 points, just the same as her own, whose means also 
 (so that they could join forces on an equality) matched 
 beautifully, and whose name in fine was Mrs. Sher- 
 rington Reeve. " Mattie has felt the want," Mrs. 
 Magaw explained, " of some lady, some real lady 
 like that, to go round with : she says she sometimes 
 doesn't find it very pleasant going round alone." 
 
 Abel Taker had listened with interest this in 
 formation left him staring. " By Gosh, then, she has 
 struck Sue ! " 
 
 " ' Struck ' Mrs. Taker ? " 
 
 " She isn't Mrs. Taker now she's Mrs. Sherrington 
 Reeve." It had come to him with all its force as if 
 the glare of her genius were, at a bound, high over 
 the summits. " Mrs. Taker's dead : I thought, you 
 know, all the while, she must be, and this makes me 
 sure. She died at Fordham Castle. So we're both 
 dead." 
 
 His friend, however, with her large blank face, 
 lagged behind. " At Fordham Castle too died 
 there ? " 
 
 " Why she has been as good as living there ! " Abel 
 Taker emphasised. " ' Address Fordham Castle '- 
 that's about all she has written me. But perhaps she 
 died before she went " he had it before him, he 
 made it out. " Yes, she must have gone as Mrs. 
 Sherrington Reeve. She had to die to go as it 
 would be for her like going to heaven. Marriages, 
 sometimes, they say, are made up there ; and so, 
 sometimes then, apparently, are friendships that, 
 you see, for instance, of our two shining ones." 
 
 372
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 Mrs. Magaw's understanding was still in the shade. 
 " But are you sure ? " 
 
 " Why Fordham Castle settles it. If she wanted to 
 get where she truly belongs she has got there. She 
 belongs at Fordham Castle." 
 
 The noble mass of this structure seemed to rise at 
 his words, and his companion's grave eyes, he could 
 see, to rest on its towers. " But how has she become 
 Mrs. Sherrington Reeve ? " 
 
 " By my death. And also after that by her own. I 
 had to die first, you see, for her to be able to that is 
 for her to be sure. It's what she has been looking for, 
 as I told you to be sure. But oh she was sure 
 from the first. She knew I'd die off, when she had 
 made it all right for me so she felt no risk. She 
 simply became, the day I became C. P. Addard, some 
 thing as different as possible from the thing she had 
 always so hated to be. She's what she always would 
 have liked to be so why shouldn't we. rejoice for 
 her ? Her baser part, her vulgar part, has ceased to 
 be, and she lives only as an angel." 
 
 It affected his friend, this elucidation, almost with 
 awe ; she took it at least, as she took everything, 
 stolidly. " Do you call Mrs. Taker an angel ? " 
 
 Abel had turned about, as he rose to the high vision, 
 moving, with his hands in his pockets, to and fro. But 
 at Mrs. Magaw's question he stopped short he con 
 sidered with his head in the air. " Yes now ! " 
 
 " But do you mean it's her idea to marry ? " 
 
 He thought again. " Why for all I know she is 
 married." 
 
 " With you, Abel Taker, living ? " 
 
 " But I ain't living. That's just the point." 
 
 " Oh you're too dreadful " and she gathered her 
 self up. " And I won't," she said as she broke off, 
 " help to bury you ! " 
 
 This office, none the less, as she practically had 
 
 373
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 herself to acknowledge, was in a manner, and before 
 many days, forced upon her by further important in 
 formation from her daughter, in the light of the true 
 inevitability of which they had, for that matter, been 
 living. She was there before him with her telegram, 
 which she simply held out to him as from a heart too 
 full for words. " Am engaged to Lord Dunderton, 
 and Sue thinks you can come." 
 
 Deep emotion sometimes confounds the mind 
 and Mrs. Magaw quite flamed with excitement. But 
 on the other hand it sometimes illumines, and she 
 could see, it appeared, what Sue meant. " It's be 
 cause he's so much in love." 
 
 " So far gone that she's safe ? " Abel frankly asked. 
 
 " So far gone that she's safe." 
 
 " Well," he said, " if Sue feels it ! " He had 
 
 so much, he showed, to go by. " Sue knows." 
 
 Mrs. Magaw visibly yearned, but she could look at 
 all sides. " I'm bound to say, since you speak of it, 
 that I've an idea Sue has helped. She'll like to have 
 her there." 
 
 " Mattie will like to have Sue ? " 
 
 " No, Sue will like to have Mattie." Elation raised 
 to such a point was in fact already so clarifying that 
 Mrs. Magaw could come all the way. " As Lady 
 Dunderton." 
 
 " Well," Abel smiled, " one good turn deserves 
 another ! " If he meant it, however, in any such sense 
 as that Mattie might be able in due course to render 
 an equivalent of aid, this notion clearly had to reckon 
 with his companion's sense of its strangeness, ex 
 hibited in her now at last upheaved countenance. 
 " Yes," he accordingly insisted, " it will work round 
 to that you see if it doesn't. If that's where they 
 were to come out, and they have come by which 
 I mean if Sue has realised it for Mattie and acted 
 as she acts when she does realise, then she can't 
 
 374
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 neglect it in her own case : she'll just have to realise 
 it for herself. And, for that matter, you'll help her 
 too. You'll be able to tell her, you know, that you've 
 seen the last of me." And on the morrow, when, 
 starting for London, she had taken her place in the 
 train, to which he had accompanied her, he stood 
 by the door of her compartment and repeated this 
 idea. " Remember, for Mrs. Taker, that you've seen 
 the last ! " 
 
 " Oh but I hope I haven't, sir." 
 
 " Then you'll come back to me ? If you only will, 
 you know, Sue will be delighted to fix it." 
 
 " To fix it how ? " 
 
 " Well, she'll tell you how. You've seen how she 
 can fix things, and that will be the way, as I say, 
 you'll help her." 
 
 She stared at him from her corner, and he could see 
 she was sorry for him ; but it was as if she had taken 
 refuge behind her large high-shouldered reticule, 
 which she held in her lap, presenting it almost as a 
 bulwark. " Mr. Taker," she launched at him over 
 it, " I'm afraid of you." 
 
 " Because I'm dead ? " 
 
 " Oh sir ! " she pleaded, hugging her morocco 
 defence. But even through this alarm her finer 
 thought came out. " Do you suppose I shall go to 
 Fordham Castle ? " 
 
 " Well, I guess that's what they're discussing now. 
 You'll know soon enough." 
 
 " If I write you from there," she asked, " won't 
 you come ? " 
 
 " I'll come as the ghost. Don't old castles always 
 have one ? " 
 
 She looked at him darkly ; the train had begun to 
 move. " I shall fear you ! " she said. 
 
 " Then there you are." And he moved an instant 
 beside the door. " You'll be glad, when you get there, 
 
 375
 
 FORDHAM CASTLE 
 
 to be able to say " But she got out of hearing, 
 
 and, turning away, he felt as abandoned as he had 
 known he should felt left, in his solitude, to the 
 sense of his extinction. He faced it completely now, 
 and to himself at least could express it without fear 
 of protest. " Why certainly I'm dead." 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed in Grtat Britain by R. ge R. Cl.ARK, I.IMITF.I), l-iiinl'iirgh.
 
 THE NOVELS AND STORIES OF 
 HENRY JAMES 
 
 New and Complete Edition. In 35 Volumes. 
 
 Issued in two styles. Crown 8vo. 7s. bd. net per volume. 
 
 Pocket Edition. Fcap. 8vo. js. 6d. net per volume. 
 
 The text used in this issue is that of the "New York" edition, 
 and the critical prefaces written for that series are retained in the 
 volumes to which they refer. While, however, many stories were 
 omitted from the " New York ".edition, either because they did not 
 satisfy their author's later taste, or because he could not find room 
 for them in the limited space at his disposal, the present edition 
 contains all the fiction that he published in book-form during his 
 life. The only writings which have been excluded are a small 
 number of very early pieces, contributed to magazines and never 
 reprinted, and the plays. 
 
 LIST OF THE VOLUMES 
 
 I. Roderick Hudson. 
 II. The American. 
 
 III. The Europeans. 
 
 IV. Confidence. 
 
 V. Washington Square. 
 
 VI. The Portrait of a Lady. Vol. I. 
 
 VII. The Portrait of a Lady. Vol. II. 
 
 VIII. The Bostonians. Vol. I. 
 
 IX. The Bostonians. Vol. II. 
 
 X. The Princess Casamassima. Vol. I. 
 
 XI. The Princess Casamassima. Vol. II. 
 
 XII. The Tragic Muse. Vol. I. 
 
 XIII. The Tragic Muse. Vol. II. 
 
 XIV. The Awkward Age. 
 
 XV. The Spoils of Poynton A London Life The Chaperon. 
 XVI. What Maisie Knew In the Cage The Pupil. 
 XVII. The Aspern Papers The Turn of the Screw The Liar 
 
 The Two Faces. 
 
 XVIII. The Reverberator Madame de Mauves A Passionate 
 Pilgrim The Madonna of the Future Louisa 
 Pallant. 
 
 XIX. Lady Barbarina The Siege of London An Inter 
 national Episode The Pension Beaurepas A 
 Bundle of Letters The Point of View. 
 
 XX. The Lessori of the Master The Death of the Lion 
 The Next Time The Figure in the Carpet The 
 Coxon Fund. 
 
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