22255449933 Figure in the Carpet and Other Stories - H. James

The Figure in the CarpetGlasses

Greville FaneThe Beldonald Holbein

In the CageAn International Episode

&The Jolly Corner

by

Henry James

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The Figure in the Carpet, Glasses, Greville Fane, TheBeldonald Holbein, In the Cage, An International Episode,and The Jolly Corner by Henry James,is a publication of ECONaRCH Institute. This Portable Document File is furnished free and without any charge of any kind. Any person using this document file, for any purpose, and in any way does so at his or her own risk. Neither ECONARCH Institute, the Editor, nor anyone associated with ECONARCH Institute assumes any responsibility for the material contained within the document or for the file as an electronic transmission, in any way.

The Figure in the Carpet, Glasses, Greville Fane, TheBeldonald Holbein, In the Cage, An International Episode,and The Jolly Corner by Henry James,ECONARCH Institute, Electronic Classics Literature: Henry James Series, the Editor, Indonesia is a Portable Document File produced as part of an ongoing student publication project to bring classics literature, in English, to free and easy access of those wishing to make use of them.

Copyright © 2009 Rowland Classics

Henry James

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Contents

The Figure in the Carpet......... 5

Glasses .................................. 54

Greville Fane ....................... 116

The Beldonald Holbein....... 136

In the Cage ......................... 163

An International Episode .... 279

The Jolly Corner ................. 363

5

Henry James

The Figure in the Carpetby

Henry James

I HAD DONE A FEW THINGS and earned a few pence—I had perhapseven had time to begin to think I was finer than was perceived bythe patronising; but when I take the little measure of my course (afidgety habit, for it’s none of the longest yet) I count my real startfrom the evening George Corvick, breathless and worried, came into ask me a service. He had done more things than I, and earnedmore pence, though there were chances for cleverness I thought hesometimes missed. I could only however that evening declare tohim that he never missed one for kindness. There was almost rap-ture in hearing it proposed to me to prepare for The Middle, theorgan of our lucubrations, so called from the position in the weekof its day of appearance, an article for which he had made himselfresponsible and of which, tied up with a stout string, he laid on mytable the subject. I pounced upon my opportunity—that is on thefirst volume of it—and paid scant attention to my friend’s explana-tion of his appeal. What explanation could be more to the pointthan my obvious fitness for the task? I had written on Hugh Vereker,but never a word in The Middle, where my dealings were mainlywith the ladies and the minor poets. This was his new novel, an

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advance copy, and whatever much or little it should do for his repu-tation I was clear on the spot as to what it should do for mine.Moreover if I always read him as soon as I could get hold of him Ihad a particular reason for wishing to read him now: I had acceptedan invitation to Bridges for the following Sunday, and it had beenmentioned in Lady Jane’s note that Mr. Vereker was to be there. Iwas young enough for a flutter at meeting a man of his renown, andinnocent enough to believe the occasion would demand the displayof an acquaintance with his “last.”

Corvick, who had promised a review of it, had not even had timeto read it; he had gone to pieces in consequence of news requir-ing—as on precipitate reflexion he judged—that he should catchthe night-mail to Paris. He had had a telegram from GwendolenErme in answer to his letter offering to fly to her aid. I knew alreadyabout Gwendolen Erme; I had never seen her, but I had my ideas,which were mainly to the effect that Corvick would marry her if hermother would only die. That lady seemed now in a fair way to obligehim; after some dreadful mistake about a climate or a “cure” shehad suddenly collapsed on the return from abroad. Her daughter,unsupported and alarmed, desiring to make a rush for home buthesitating at the risk, had accepted our friend’s assistance, and it wasmy secret belief that at sight of him Mrs. Erme would pull round.His own belief was scarcely to be called secret; it discernibly at anyrate differed from mine. He had showed me Gwendolen’s photo-graph with the remark that she wasn’t pretty but was awfully inter-esting; she had published at the age of nineteen a novel in threevolumes, “Deep Down,” about which, in The Middle, he had beenreally splendid. He appreciated my present eagerness and under-took that the periodical in question should do no less; then at thelast, with his hand on the door, he said to me: “Of course you’ll beall right, you know.” Seeing I was a trifle vague he added: “I meanyou won’t be silly.”

The Figure in the Carpet

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“Silly—about Vereker! Why what do I ever find him but awfullyclever?”

“Well, what’s that but silly? What on earth does ‘awfully clever’mean? For God’s sake try to get AT him. Don’t let him suffer by ourarrangement. Speak of him, you know, if you can, as I should havespoken of him.”

I wondered an instant. “You mean as far and away the biggest ofthe lot—that sort of thing?”

Corvick almost groaned. “Oh you know, I don’t put them back toback that way; it’s the infancy of art! But he gives me a pleasure sorare; the sense of”—he mused a little—“something or other.”

I wondered again. “The sense, pray, of want?”“My dear man, that’s just what I want you to say!”Even before he had banged the door I had begun, book in hand,

to prepare myself to say it. I sat up with Vereker half the night;Corvick couldn’t have done more than that. He was awfully clever—I stuck to that, but he wasn’t a bit the biggest of the lot. I didn’tallude to the lot, however; I flattered myself that I emerged on thisoccasion from the infancy of art. “It’s all right,” they declared viv-idly at the office; and when the number appeared I felt there was abasis on which I could meet the great man. It gave me confidencefor a day or two—then that confidence dropped. I had fancied himreading it with relish, but if Corvick wasn’t satisfied how couldVereker himself be? I reflected indeed that the heat of the admirerwas sometimes grosser even than the appetite of the scribe. Corvickat all events wrote me from Paris a little ill-humouredly. Mrs. Ermewas pulling round, and I hadn’t at all said what Vereker gave himthe sense of.

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CHAPTER II

THE EFFECT OF MY VISIT to Bridges was to turn me out for moreprofundity. Hugh Vereker, as I saw him there, was of a contact sovoid of angles that I blushed for the poverty of imagination involvedin my small precautions. If he was in spirits it wasn’t because he hadread my review; in fact on the Sunday morning I felt sure he hadn’tread it, though The Middle had been out three days and bloomed, Iassured myself, in the stiff garden of periodicals which gave one ofthe ormolu tables the air of a stand at a station. The impression hemade on me personally was such that I wished him to read it, and Icorrected to this end with a surreptitious hand what might be want-ing in the careless conspicuity of the sheet. I’m afraid I even watchedthe result of my manoeuvre, but up to luncheon I watched in vain.

When afterwards, in the course of our gregarious walk, I foundmyself for half an hour, not perhaps without another manoeuvre, atthe great man’s side, the result of his affability was a still livelierdesire that he shouldn’t remain in ignorance of the peculiar justice Ihad done him. It wasn’t that he seemed to thirst for justice; on thecontrary I hadn’t yet caught in his talk the faintest grunt of a grudge—a note for which my young experience had already given me an ear.Of late he had had more recognition, and it was pleasant, as weused to say in The Middle, to see how it drew him out. He wasn’t ofcourse popular, but I judged one of the sources of his good humourto be precisely that his success was independent of that. He hadnone the less become in a manner the fashion; the critics at least


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Henry James

had put on a spurt and caught up with him. We had found out atlast how clever he was, and he had had to make the best of the lossof his mystery. I was strongly tempted, as I walked beside him, to lethim know how much of that unveiling was my act; and there was amoment when I probably should have done so had not one of theladies of our party, snatching a place at his other elbow, just thenappealed to him in a spirit comparatively selfish. It was very dis-couraging: I almost felt the liberty had been taken with myself.

I had had on my tongue’s end, for my own part, a phrase or twoabout the right word at the right time; but later on I was glad not tohave spoken, for when on our return we clustered at tea I perceivedLady Jane, who had not been out with us, brandishing The Middlewith her longest arm. She had taken it up at her leisure; she wasdelighted with what she had found, and I saw that, as a mistake in aman may often be a felicity in a woman, she would practically dofor me what I hadn’t been able to do for myself. “Some sweet littletruths that needed to be spoken,” I heard her declare, thrusting thepaper at rather a bewildered couple by the fireplace. She grabbed itaway from them again on the reappearance of Hugh Vereker, whoafter our walk had been upstairs to change something. “I know youdon’t in general look at this kind of thing, but it’s an occasion reallyfor doing so. You haven’t seen it? Then you must. The man hasactually got AT you, at what I always feel, you know.” Lady Janethrew into her eyes a look evidently intended to give an idea of whatshe always felt; but she added that she couldn’t have expressed it.The man in the paper expressed it in a striking manner. “Just seethere, and there, where I’ve dashed it, how he brings it out.” Shehad literally marked for him the brightest patches of my prose, andif I was a little amused Vereker himself may well have been. Heshowed how much he was when before us all Lady Jane wanted toread something aloud. I liked at any rate the way he defeated herpurpose by jerking the paper affectionately out of her clutch. He’d

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take it upstairs with him and look at it on going to dress. He didthis half an hour later—I saw it in his hand when he repaired to hisroom. That was the moment at which, thinking to give her plea-sure, I mentioned to Lady Jane that I was the author of the review.I did give her pleasure, I judged, but perhaps not quite so much as Ihad expected. If the author was “only me” the thing didn’t seemquite so remarkable. Hadn’t I had the effect rather of diminishingthe lustre of the article than of adding to my own? Her ladyship wassubject to the most extraordinary drops. It didn’t matter; the onlyeffect I cared about was the one it would have on Vereker up thereby his bedroom fire.

At dinner I watched for the signs of this impression, tried to fancysome happier light in his eyes; but to my disappointment Lady Janegave me no chance to make sure. I had hoped she’d call triumphantlydown the table, publicly demand if she hadn’t been right. The partywas large—there were people from outside as well, but I had neverseen a table long enough to deprive Lady Jane of a triumph. I was justreflecting in truth that this interminable board would deprive ME ofone when the guest next me, dear woman—she was Miss Poyle, thevicar’s sister, a robust unmodulated person—had the happy inspira-tion and the unusual courage to address herself across it to Vereker,who was opposite, but not directly, so that when he replied they wereboth leaning forward. She enquired, artless body, what he thought ofLady Jane’s “panegyric,” which she had read—not connecting it how-ever with her right-hand neighbour; and while I strained my ear forhis reply I heard him, to my stupefaction, call back gaily, his mouthfull of bread: “Oh, it’s all right—the usual twaddle!”

I had caught Vereker’s glance as he spoke, but Miss Poyle’s sur-prise was a fortunate cover for my own. “You mean he doesn’t doyou justice?” said the excellent woman.

Vereker laughed out, and I was happy to be able to do the same.“It’s a charming article,” he tossed us.


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Henry James

Miss Poyle thrust her chin half across the cloth. “Oh, you’re sodeep!” she drove home.

“As deep as the ocean! All I pretend is that the author doesn’tsee—“ But a dish was at this point passed over his shoulder, and wehad to wait while he helped himself.

“Doesn’t see what?” my neighbour continued.“Doesn’t see anything.”“Dear me—how very stupid!”“Not a bit,” Vereker laughed main. “Nobody does.”The lady on his further side appealed to him, and Miss Poyle sank

back to myself. “Nobody sees anything!” she cheerfully announced;to which I replied that I had often thought so too, but had somehowtaken the thought for a proof on my own part of a tremendous eye. Ididn’t tell her the article was mine; and I observed that Lady Jane,occupied at the end of the table, had not caught Vereker’s words.

I rather avoided him after dinner, for I confess he struck me ascruelly conceited, and the revelation was a pain. “The usualtwaddle”—my acute little study! That one’s admiration should havehad a reserve or two could gall him to that point! I had thought himplacid, and he was placid enough; such a surface was the hard pol-ished glass that encased the bauble of his vanity. I was really ruffled,and the only comfort was that if nobody saw anything GeorgeCorvick was quite as much out of it as I. This comfort however wasnot sufficient, after the ladies had dispersed, to carry me in the propermanner—I mean in a spotted jacket and humming an air—into thesmoking-room. I took my way in some dejection to bed; but in thepassage I encountered Mr. Vereker, who had been up once more tochange, coming out of his room. He was humming an air and hadon a spotted jacket, and as soon as he saw me his gaiety gave a start.

“My dear young man,” he exclaimed, “I’m so glad to lay hands onyou! I’m afraid I most unwittingly wounded you by those words ofmine at dinner to Miss Poyle. I learned but half an hour ago from

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Lady Jane that you’re the author of the little notice in The Middle.”I protested that no bones were broken; but he moved with me to

my own door, his hand, on my shoulder, kindly feeling for a frac-ture; and on hearing that I had come up to bed he asked leave tocross my threshold and just tell me in three words what his qualifi-cation of my remarks had represented. It was plain he really feared Iwas hurt, and the sense of his solicitude suddenly made all the dif-ference to me. My cheap review fluttered off into space, and thebest things I had said in it became flat enough beside the brilliancyof his being there. I can see him there still, on my rug, in the fire-light and his spotted jacket, his fine clear face all bright with thedesire to be tender to my youth. I don’t know what he had at firstmeant to say, but I think the sight of my relief touched him, excitedhim, brought up words to his lips from far within. It was so thesewords presently conveyed to me something that, as I afterwardsknew, he had never uttered to any one. I’ve always done justice tothe generous impulse that made him speak; it was simply compunc-tion for a snub unconsciously administered to a man of letters in aposition inferior to his own, a man of letters moreover in the veryact of praising him. To make the thing right he talked to me exactlyas an equal and on the ground of what we both loved best. Thehour, the place, the unexpectedness deepened the impression: hecouldn’t have done anything more intensely effective.


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Henry James

CHAPTER III

“I DON’T QUITE KNOW how to explain it to you,” he said, “but it wasthe very fact that your notice of my book had a spice of intelligence,it was just your exceptional sharpness, that produced the feeling—a very old story with me, I beg you to believe—under the momen-tary influence of which I used in speaking to that good lady thewords you so naturally resent. I don’t read the things in the newspa-pers unless they’re thrust upon me as that one was—it’s always one’sbest friend who does it! But I used to read them sometimes—tenyears ago. I dare say they were in general rather stupider then; at anyrate it always struck me they missed my little point with a perfec-tion exactly as admirable when they patted me on the back as whenthey kicked me in the shins. Whenever since I’ve happened to havea glimpse of them they were still blazing away—still missing it, Imean, deliciously. You miss it, my dear fellow, with inimitable as-surance; the fact of your being awfully clever and your article’s be-ing awfully nice doesn’t make a hair’s breadth of difference. It’s quitewith you rising young men,” Vereker laughed, “that I feel most whata failure I am!”

I listened with keen interest; it grew keener as he talked. “You afailure—heavens! What then may your ‘little point’ happen to be?”

“Have I got to tell you, after all these years and labours?” Therewas something in the friendly reproach of this—jocosely exagger-ated—that made me, as an ardent young seeker for truth, blush tothe roots of my hair. I’m as much in the dark as ever, though I’ve

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grown used in a sense to my obtuseness; at that moment, however,Vereker’s happy accent made me appear to myself, and probably tohim, a rare dunce. I was on the point of exclaiming “Ah yes, don’ttell me: for my honour, for that of the craft, don’t!” when he wenton in a manner that showed he had read my thought and had hisown idea of the probability of our some day redeeming ourselves.“By my little point I mean—what shall I call it?—the particularthing I’ve written my books most for. Isn’t there for every writer aparticular thing of that sort, the thing that most makes him applyhimself, the thing without the effort to achieve which he wouldn’twrite at all, the very passion of his passion, the part of the businessin which, for him, the flame of art burns most intensely? Well, it’sthat!”

I considered a moment—that is I followed at a respectfuldistance, rather gasping. I was fascinated—easily, you’ll say; but Iwasn’t going after all to be put off my guard. “Your description’scertainly beautiful, but it doesn’t make what you describe very dis-tinct.”

“I promise you it would be distinct if it should dawn on you atall.” I saw that the charm of our topic overflowed for my compan-ion into an emotion as lively as my own. “At any rate,” he went on,“I can speak for myself: there’s an idea in my work without which Iwouldn’t have given a straw for the whole job. It’s the finest fullestintention of the lot, and the application of it has been, I think, atriumph of patience, of ingenuity. I ought to leave that to some-body else to say; but that nobody does say it is precisely what we’retalking about. It stretches, this little trick of mine, from book tobook, and everything else, comparatively, plays over the surface ofit. The order, the form, the texture of my books will perhaps someday constitute for the initiated a complete representation of it. Soit’s naturally the thing for the critic to look for. It strikes me,” myvisitor added, smiling, “even as the thing for the critic to find.”


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This seemed a responsibility indeed. “You call it a little trick?”“That’s only my little modesty. It’s really an exquisite scheme.”“And you hold that you’ve carried the scheme out?”“The way I’ve carried it out is the thing in life I think a bit well of

myself for.”I had a pause. “Don’t you think you ought—just a trifle—to as-

sist the critic?”“Assist him? What else have I done with every stroke of my pen?

I’ve shouted my intention in his great blank face!” At this, laughingout again, Vereker laid his hand on my shoulder to show the allu-sion wasn’t to my personal appearance.

“But you talk about the initiated. There must therefore, you see,be initiation.”

“What else in heaven’s name is criticism supposed to be?” I’mafraid I coloured at this too; but I took refuge in repeating that hisaccount of his silver lining was poor in something or other that aplain man knows things by. “That’s only because you’ve never had aglimpse of it,” he returned. “If you had had one the element inquestion would soon have become practically all you’d see. To meit’s exactly as palpable as the marble of this chimney. Besides, thecritic just isn’t a plain man: if he were, pray, what would he be doingin his neighbour’s garden? You’re anything but a plain man yourself,and the very raison d’etre of you all is that you’re little demons ofsubtlety. If my great affair’s a secret, that’s only because it’s a secretin spite of itself—the amazing event has made it one. I not onlynever took the smallest precaution to keep it so, but never dreamedof any such accident. If I had I shouldn’t in advance have had theheart to go on. As it was, I only became aware little by little, andmeanwhile I had done my work.”

“And now you quite like it?” I risked.“My work?”“Your secret. It’s the same thing.”

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“Your guessing that,” Vereker replied, “is a proof that you’re asclever as I say!” I was encouraged by this to remark that he wouldclearly be pained to part with it, and he confessed that it was indeedwith him now the great amusement of life. “I live almost to see if itwill ever be detected.” He looked at me for a jesting challenge; some-thing far within his eyes seemed to peep out. “But I needn’t worry—it won’t!”

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

His countenance fell at this—he put out his hand as if to bid megood-night. “Ah my dear fellow, it can’t be described in cheap jour-nalese!”

I knew of course he’d be awfully fastidious, but our talk had mademe feel how much his nerves were exposed. I was unsatisfied—Ikept hold of his hand. “I won’t make use of the expression then,” Isaid, “in the article in which I shall eventually announce my discov-ery, though I dare say I shall have hard work to do without it. Butmeanwhile, just to hasten that difficult birth, can’t you give a fellowa clue?” I felt much more at my ease.

“My whole lucid effort gives him the clue—every page and lineand letter. The thing’s as concrete there as a bird in a cage, a bait ona hook, a piece of cheese in a mouse-trap. It’s stuck into every vol-ume as your foot is stuck into your shoe. It governs every line, itchooses every word, it dots every i, it places every comma.”

I scratched my head. “Is it something in the style or something inthe thought? An element of form or an element of feeling?”

He indulgently shook my hand again, and I felt my questions tobe crude and my distinctions pitiful. “Good-night, my dear boy—don’t bother about it. After all, you do like a fellow.”

“And a little intelligence might spoil it?” I still detained him.He hesitated. “Well, you’ve got a heart in your body. Is that an


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element of form or an element of feeling? What I contend that no-body has ever mentioned in my work is the organ of life.”

“I see—it’s some idea about life, some sort of philosophy. Unlessit be,” I added with the eagerness of a thought perhaps still happier,“some kind of game you’re up to with your style, something you’reafter in the language. Perhaps it’s a preference for the letter P!” Iventured profanely to break out. “Papa, potatoes, prunes—that sortof thing?” He was suitably indulgent: he only said I hadn’t got theright letter. But his amusement was over; I could see he was bored.There was nevertheless something else I had absolutely to learn.“Should you be able, pen in hand, to state it clearly yourself—toname it, phrase it, formulate it?”

“Oh,” he almost passionately sighed, “if I were only, pen in hand,one of you chaps!”

“That would be a great chance for you of course. But why shouldyou despise us chaps for not doing what you can’t do yourself?”

“Can’t do?” He opened his eyes. “Haven’t I done it in twentyvolumes? I do it in my way,” he continued. “Go YOU and don’t doit in yours.”

“Ours is so devilish difficult,” I weakly observed.“So’s mine. We each choose our own. There’s no compulsion. You

won’t come down and smoke?”“No. I want to think this thing out.”“You’ll tell me then in the morning that you’ve laid me bare?”“I’ll see what I can do; I’ll sleep on it. But just one word more,” I

added. We had left the room—I walked again with him a few stepsalong the passage. “This extraordinary ‘general intention,’ as youcall it—for that’s the most vivid description I can induce you tomake of it—is then, generally, a sort of buried treasure?”

His face lighted. “Yes, call it that, though it’s perhaps not for meto do so.”

“Nonsense!” I laughed. “You know you’re hugely proud of it.”

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“Well, I didn’t propose to tell you so; but it IS the joy of my soul!”“You mean it’s a beauty so rare, so great?”He waited a little again. “The loveliest thing in the world!” We

had stopped, and on these words he left me; but at the end of thecorridor, while I looked after him rather yearningly, he turned andcaught sight of my puzzled face. It made him earnestly, indeed Ithought quite anxiously, shake his head and wave his finger “Give itup—give it up!”

This wasn’t a challenge—it was fatherly advice. If I had had oneof his books at hand I’d have repeated my recent act of faith—I’dhave spent half the night with him. At three o’clock in the morning,not sleeping, remembering moreover how indispensable he was toLady Jane, I stole down to the library with a candle. There wasn’t, sofar as I could discover, a line of his writing in the house.


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Henry James

CHAPTER IV

RETURNING TO TOWN I feverishly collected them all; I picked outeach in its order and held it up to the light. This gave me a madden-ing month, in the course of which several things took place. One ofthese, the last, I may as well immediately mention, was that I actedon Vereker’s advice: I renounced my ridiculous attempt. I couldreally make nothing of the business; it proved a dead loss. After all Ihad always, as he had himself noted, liked him; and what now oc-curred was simply that my new intelligence and vain preoccupationdamaged my liking. I not only failed to run a general intention toearth, I found myself missing the subordinate intentions I had for-merly enjoyed. His books didn’t even remain the charming thingsthey had been for me; the exasperation of my search put me out ofconceit of them. Instead of being a pleasure the more they became aresource the less; for from the moment I was unable to follow upthe author’s hint I of course felt it a point of honour not to make useprofessionally of my knowledge of them. I had no knowledge—nobody had any. It was humiliating, but I could bear it—they onlyannoyed me now. At last they even bored me, and I accounted formy confusion—perversely, I allow—by the idea that Vereker hadmade a fool of me. The buried treasure was a bad joke, the generalintention a monstrous pose.

The great point of it all is, however, that I told George Corvickwhat had befallen me and that my information had an immenseeffect upon him. He had at last come back, but so, unfortunately,

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had Mrs. Erme, and there was as yet, I could see, no question ofhis nuptials. He was immensely stirred up by the anecdote I hadbrought from Bridges; it fell in so completely with the sense hehad had from the first that there was more in Vereker than met theeye. When I remarked that the eye seemed what the printed pagehad been expressly invented to meet he immediately accused meof being spiteful because I had been foiled. Our commerce hadalways that pleasant latitude. The thing Vereker had mentioned tome was exactly the thing he, Corvick, had wanted me to speak ofin my review. On my suggesting at last that with the assistance Ihad now given him he would doubtless be prepared to speak of ithimself he admitted freely that before doing this there was morehe must understand. What he would have said, had he reviewedthe new book, was that there was evidently in the writer’s inmostart something to be understood. I hadn’t so much as hinted atthat: no wonder the writer hadn’t been flattered! I asked Corvickwhat he really considered he meant by his own supersubtlety, and,unmistakeably kindled, he replied: “It isn’t for the vulgar—it isn’tfor the vulgar!” He had hold of the tail of something; he wouldpull hard, pull it right out. He pumped me dry on Vereker’s strangeconfidence and, pronouncing me the luckiest of mortals, men-tioned half a dozen questions he wished to goodness I had had thegumption to put. Yet on the other hand he didn’t want to be toldtoo much—it would spoil the fun of seeing what would come.The failure of my fun was at the moment of our meeting not com-plete, but I saw it ahead, and Corvick saw that I saw it. I, on myside, saw likewise that one of the first things he would do wouldbe to rush off with my story to Gwendolen.

On the very day after my talk with him I was surprised by thereceipt of a note from Hugh Vereker, to whom our encounter atBridges had been recalled, as he mentioned, by his falling, in a maga-zine, on some article to which my signature was attached. “I read it


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with great pleasure,” he wrote, “and remembered under its influ-ence our lively conversation by your bedroom fire. The consequenceof this has been that I begin to measure the temerity of my havingsaddled you with a knowledge that you may find something of aburden. Now that the fit’s over I can’t imagine how I came to bemoved so much beyond my wont. I had never before mentioned,no matter in what state of expansion, the fact of my little secret, andI shall never speak of that mystery again. I was accidentally so muchmore explicit with you than it had ever entered into my game to be,that I find this game—I mean the pleasure of playing it—suffersconsiderably. In short, if you can understand it, I’ve rather spoiledmy sport. I really don’t want to give anybody what I believe youclever young men call the tip. That’s of course a selfish solicitude,and I name it to you for what it may be worth to you. If you’redisposed to humour me don’t repeat my revelation. Think me de-mented—it’s your right; but don’t tell anybody why.”

The sequel to this communication was that as early on the mor-row as I dared I drove straight to Mr. Vereker’s door. He occupied inthose years one of the honest old houses in Kensington Square. Hereceived me immediately, and as soon as I came in I saw I hadn’t lostmy power to minister to his mirth. He laughed out at sight of myface, which doubtless expressed my perturbation. I had been indis-creet—my compunction was great. “I have told somebody,” I panted,“and I’m sure that person will by this time have told somebody else!It’s a woman, into the bargain.”

“The person you’ve told?”“No, the other person. I’m quite sure he must have told her.”“For all the good it will do her—or do me! A woman will never

find out.”“No, but she’ll talk all over the place: she’ll do just what you don’t

want.”Vereker thought a moment, but wasn’t so disconcerted as I had

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feared: he felt that if the harm was done it only served him right. “Itdoesn’t matter—don’t worry.”

“I’ll do my best, I promise you, that your talk with me shall go nofurther.”

“Very good; do what you can.”“In the meantime,” I pursued, “George Corvick’s possession of

the tip may, on his part, really lead to something.”“That will be a brave day.”I told him about Corvick’s cleverness, his admiration, the inten-

sity of his interest in my anecdote; and without making too muchof the divergence of our respective estimates mentioned that myfriend was already of opinion that he saw much further into a cer-tain affair than most people. He was quite as fired as I had been atBridges. He was moreover in love with the young lady: perhaps thetwo together would puzzle something out.

Vereker seemed struck with this. “Do you mean they’re to bemarried?”

“I dare say that’s what it will come to.”“That may help them,” he conceded, “but we must give them

time!”I spoke of my own renewed assault and confessed my difficulties;

whereupon he repeated his former advice: “Give it up, give it up!”He evidently didn’t think me intellectually equipped for the adven-ture. I stayed half an hour, and he was most good-natured, but Icouldn’t help pronouncing him a man of unstable moods. He hadbeen free with me in a mood, he had repented in a mood, and nowin a mood he had turned indifferent. This general levity helped meto believe that, so far as the subject of the tip went, there wasn’tmuch in it. I contrived however to make him answer a few morequestions about it, though he did so with visible impatience. Forhimself, beyond doubt, the thing we were all so blank about wasvividly there. It was something, I guessed, in the primal plan, some-


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thing like a complex figure in a Persian carpet. He highly approvedof this image when I used it, and he used another himself. “It’s thevery string,” he said, “that my pearls are strung on!” The reason ofhis note to me had been that he really didn’t want to give us a grainof succour—our density was a thing too perfect in its way to touch.He had formed the habit of depending on it, and if the spell was tobreak it must break by some force of its own. He comes back to mefrom that last occasion—for I was never to speak to him again—asa man with some safe preserve for sport. I wondered as I walkedaway where he had got his tip.

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CHAPTER V

WHEN I SPOKE to George Corvick of the caution I had received hemade me feel that any doubt of his delicacy would be almost aninsult. He had instantly told Gwendolen, but Gwendolen’s ardentresponse was in itself a pledge of discretion. The question wouldnow absorb them and would offer them a pastime too precious tobe shared with the crowd. They appeared to have caught instinc-tively at Vereker’s high idea of enjoyment. Their intellectual pride,however, was not such as to make them indifferent to any furtherlight I might throw on the affair they had in hand. They were in-deed of the “artistic temperament,” and I was freshly struck withmy colleague’s power to excite himself over a question of art. He’dcall it letters, he’d call it life, but it was all one thing. In what he saidI now seemed to understand that he spoke equally for Gwendolen,to whom, as soon as Mrs. Erme was sufficiently better to allow hera little leisure, he made a point of introducing me. I remember ourgoing together one Sunday in August to a huddled house in Chelsea,and my renewed envy of Corvick’s possession of a friend who hadsome light to mingle with his own. He could say things to her thatI could never say to him. She had indeed no sense of humour and,with her pretty way of holding her head on one side, was one ofthose persons whom you want, as the phrase is, to shake, but whohave learnt Hungarian by themselves. She conversed perhaps inHungarian with Corvick; she had remarkably little English for hisfriend. Corvick afterwards told me that I had chilled her by my


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apparent indisposition to oblige them with the detail of what Verekerhad said to me. I allowed that I felt I had given thought enough tothat indication: hadn’t I even made up my mind that it was vain andwould lead nowhere? The importance they attached to it was irritat-ing and quite envenomed my doubts.

That statement looks unamiable, and what probably happenedwas that I felt humiliated at seeing other persons deeply beguiled byan experiment that had brought me only chagrin. I was out in thecold while, by the evening fire, under the lamp, they followed thechase for which I myself had sounded the horn. They did as I haddone, only more deliberately and sociably—they went over theirauthor from the beginning. There was no hurry, Corvick said—thefuture was before them and the fascination could only grow; theywould take him page by page, as they would take one of the classics,inhale him in slow draughts and let him sink all the way in. Theywould scarce have got so wound up, I think, if they hadn’t been inlove: poor Vereker’s inner meaning gave them endless occasion toput and to keep their young heads together. None the less it repre-sented the kind of problem for which Corvick had a special apti-tude, drew out the particular pointed patience of which, had helived, he would have given more striking and, it is to be hoped,more fruitful examples. He at least was, in Vereker’s words, a littledemon of subtlety. We had begun by disputing, but I soon saw thatwithout my stirring a finger his infatuation would have its bad hours.He would bound off on false scents as I had done—he would claphis hands over new lights and see them blown out by the wind ofthe turned page. He was like nothing, I told him, but the maniacswho embrace some bedlamitical theory of the cryptic character ofShakespeare. To this he replied that if we had had Shakespeare’sown word for his being cryptic he would at once have accepted it.The case there was altogether different—we had nothing but theword of Mr. Snooks. I returned that I was stupefied to see him

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attach such importance even to the word of Mr. Vereker. He wantedthereupon to know if I treated Mr. Vereker’s word as a lie. I wasn’tperhaps prepared, in my unhappy rebound, to go so far as that, butI insisted that till the contrary was proved I should view it as toofond an imagination. I didn’t, I confess, say—I didn’t at that timequite know—all I felt. Deep down, as Miss Erme would have said,I was uneasy, I was expectant. At the core of my disconcerted state—for my wonted curiosity lived in its ashes—was the sharpness of asense that Corvick would at last probably come out somewhere. Hemade, in defence of his credulity, a great point of the fact that fromof old, in his study of this genius, he had caught whiffs and hints ofhe didn’t know what, faint wandering notes of a hidden music. Thatwas just the rarity, that was the charm: it fitted so perfectly intowhat I reported.

If I returned on several occasions to the little house in Chelsea Idare say it was as much for news of Vereker as for news of MissErme’s ailing parent. The hours spent there by Corvick were presentto my fancy as those of a chessplayer bent with a silent scowl, all thelamplit winter, over his board and his moves. As my imaginationfilled it out the picture held me fast. On the other side of the tablewas a ghostlier form, the faint figure of an antagonist good-humouredly but a little wearily secure—an antagonist who leanedback in his chair with his hands in his pockets and a smile on hisfine clear face. Close to Corvick, behind him, was a girl who hadbegun to strike me as pale and wasted and even, on more familiarview, as rather handsome, and who rested on his shoulder and hungon his moves. He would take up a chessman and hold it poised awhile over one of the little squares, and then would put it back in itsplace with a long sigh of disappointment. The young lady, at this,would slightly but uneasily shift her position and look across, veryhard, very long, very strangely, at their dim participant. I had askedthem at an early stage of the business if it mightn’t contribute to


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their success to have some closer communication with him. Thespecial circumstances would surely be held to have given me a rightto introduce them. Corvick immediately replied that he had no wishto approach the altar before he had prepared the sacrifice. He quiteagreed with our friend both as to the delight and as to the honourof the chase—he would bring down the animal with his own rifle.When I asked him if Miss Erme were as keen a shot he said afterthinking: “No, I’m ashamed to say she wants to set a trap. She’d giveanything to see him; she says she requires another tip. She’s reallyquite morbid about it. But she must play fair—she shan’t see him!”he emphatically added. I wondered if they hadn’t even quarrelled alittle on the subject—a suspicion not corrected by the way he morethan once exclaimed to me: “She’s quite incredibly literary, youknow—quite fantastically!” I remember his saying of her that shefelt in italics and thought in capitals. “Oh when I’ve run him toearth,” he also said, “then, you know, I shall knock at his door.Rather—I beg you to believe. I’ll have it from his own lips: ‘Rightyou are, my boy; you’ve done it this time!’ He shall crown me vic-tor—with the critical laurel.”

Meanwhile he really avoided the chances London life might havegiven him of meeting the distinguished novelist; a danger, however,that disappeared with Vereker’s leaving England for an indefiniteabsence, as the newspapers announced—going to the south formotives connected with the health of his wife, which had long kepther in retirement. A year—more than a year—had elapsed since theincident at Bridges, but I had had no further sight of him. I think Iwas at bottom rather ashamed—I hated to remind him that, thoughI had irremediably missed his point, a reputation for acuteness wasrapidly overtaking me. This scruple led me a dance; kept me out ofLady Jane’s house, made me even decline, when in spite of my badmanners she was a second time so good as to make me a sign, aninvitation to her beautiful seat. I once became aware of her under

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Vereker’s escort at a concert, and was sure I was seen by them, but Islipped out without being caught. I felt, as on that occasion I splashedalong in the rain, that I couldn’t have done anything else; and yet Iremember saying to myself that it was hard, was even cruel. Notonly had I lost the books, but I had lost the man himself: they andtheir author had been alike spoiled for me. I knew too which wasthe loss I most regretted. I had taken to the man still more than Ihad ever taken to the books.


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CHAPTER VI

SIX MONTHS AFTER our friend had left England George Corvick, whomade his living by his pen, contracted for a piece of work whichimposed on him an absence of some length and a journey of somedifficulty, and his undertaking of which was much of a surprise tome. His brother-in-law had become editor of a great provincial pa-per, and the great provincial paper, in a fine flight of fancy, hadconceived the idea of sending a “special commissioner” to India.Special commissioners had begun, in the “metropolitan press,” tobe the fashion, and the journal in question must have felt it hadpassed too long for a mere country cousin. Corvick had no hand, Iknew, for the big brush of the correspondent, but that was hisbrother-in-law’s affair, and the fact that a particular task was not inhis line was apt to be with himself exactly a reason for accepting it.He was prepared to out-Herod the metropolitan press; he took sol-emn precautions against priggishness, he exquisitely outraged taste.Nobody ever knew it—that offended principle was all his own. Inaddition to his expenses he was to be conveniently paid, and I foundmyself able to help him, for the usual fat book, to a plausible ar-rangement with the usual fat publisher. I naturally inferred that hisobvious desire to make a little money was not unconnected with theprospect of a union with Gwendolen Erme. I was aware that hermother’s opposition was largely addressed to his want of means andof lucrative abilities, but it so happened that, on my saying the lasttime I saw him something that bore on the question of his separa-

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tion from our young lady, he brought out with an emphasis thatstartled me: “Ah I’m not a bit engaged to her, you know!”

“Not overtly,” I answered, “because her mother doesn’t like you.But I’ve always taken for granted a private understanding.”

“Well, there was one. But there isn’t now.” That was all he saidsave something about Mrs. Erme’s having got on her feet again inthe most extraordinary way—a remark pointing, as I supposed, themoral that private understandings were of little use when the doctordidn’t share them. What I took the liberty of more closely inferringwas that the girl might in some way have estranged him.Well, if he had taken the turn of jealousy for instance it could scarcelybe jealousy of me. In that case—over and above the absurdity ofit—he wouldn’t have gone away just to leave us together. For sometime before his going we had indulged in no allusion to the buriedtreasure, and from his silence, which my reserve simply emulated, Ihad drawn a sharp conclusion. His courage had dropped, his ardourhad gone the way of mine—this appearance at least he left me toscan. More than that he couldn’t do; he couldn’t face the triumphwith which I might have greeted an explicit admission. He needn’thave been afraid, poor dear, for I had by this time lost all need totriumph. In fact I considered I showed magnanimity in not reproach-ing him with his collapse, for the sense of his having thrown up thegame made me feel more than ever how much I at last depended onhim. If Corvick had broken down I should never know; no onewould be of any use if he wasn’t. It wasn’t a bit true I had ceased tocare for knowledge; little by little my curiosity not only had begunto ache again, but had become the familiar torment of my days andmy nights. There are doubtless people to whom torments of suchan order appear hardly more natural than the contortions of dis-ease; but I don’t after all know why I should in this connexion somuch as mention them. For the few persons, at any rate, abnormalor not, with whom my anecdote is concerned, literature was a game


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of skill, and skill meant courage, and courage meant honour, andhonour meant passion, meant life. The stake on the table was of aspecial substance and our roulette the revolving mind, but we satround the green board as intently as the grim gamblers at MonteCarlo. Gwendolen Erme, for that matter, with her white face andher fixed eyes, was of the very type of the lean ladies one had met inthe temples of chance. I recognised in Corvick’s absence that shemade this analogy vivid. It was extravagant, I admit, the way shelived for the art of the pen. Her passion visibly preyed on her, and inher presence I felt almost tepid. I got hold of “Deep Down” again: itwas a desert in which she had lost herself, but in which too she haddug a wonderful hole in the sand—a cavity out of which Corvickhad still more remarkably pulled her.

Early in March I had a telegram from her, in consequence of whichI repaired immediately to Chelsea, where the first thing she said tome was: “He has got it, he has got it!”

She was moved, as I could see, to such depths that she must meanthe great thing. “Vereker’s idea?”

“His general intention. George has cabled from Bombay.”She had the missive open there; it was emphatic though concise.

“Eureka. Immense.” That was all—he had saved the cost of thesignature. I shared her emotion, but I was disappointed. “He doesn’tsay what it is.”

“How could he—in a telegram? He’ll write it.”“But how does he know?”“Know it’s the real thing? Oh I’m sure that when you see it you do

know. Vera incessu patuit dea!”“It’s you, Miss Erme, who are a ‘dear’ for bringing me such news!”

—I went all lengths in my high spirits. “But fancy finding our god-dess in the temple of Vishnu! How strange of George to have beenable to go into the thing again in the midst of such different andsuch powerful solicitations!”

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“He hasn’t gone into it, I know; it’s the thing itself, letseverely alone for six months, that has simply sprung out at him likea tigress out of the jungle. He didn’t take a book with him—onpurpose; indeed he wouldn’t have needed to—he knows every page,as I do, by heart. They all worked in him together, and some daysomewhere, when he wasn’t thinking, they fell, in all their superbintricacy, into the one right combination. The figure in the carpetcame out. That’s the way he knew it would come and the real rea-son—you didn’t in the least understand, but I suppose I may tellyou now—why he went and why I consented to his going. We knewthe change would do it—that the difference of thought, of scene,would give the needed touch, the magic shake. We had perfectly, wehad admirably calculated. The elements were all in his mind, and inthe secousse of a new and intense experience they just struck light.”She positively struck light herself—she was literally, facially lumi-nous. I stammered something about unconscious cerebration, andshe continued: “He’ll come right home—this will bring him.”

“To see Vereker, you mean?”“To see Vereker—and to see me. Think what he’ll have to tell me!”I hesitated. “About India?”“About fiddlesticks! About Vereker—about the figure in the car-

pet.”“But, as you say, we shall surely have that in a letter.”She thought like one inspired, and I remembered how Corvick

had told me long before that her face was interesting. “Perhaps itcan’t be got into a letter if it’s ‘immense.’”

“Perhaps not if it’s immense bosh. If he has hold of somethingthat can’t be got into a letter he hasn’t hold of the thing. Vereker’sown statement to me was exactly that the ‘figure’ would fit into aletter.”

“Well, I cabled to George an hour ago—two words,” saidGwendolen.


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“Is it indiscreet of me to ask what they were?”She hung fire, but at last brought them out. “‘Angel, write.’”“Good!” I exclaimed. “I’ll make it sure—I’ll send him the same.”

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CHAPTER VII

MY WORDS HOWEVER were not absolutely the same—I put some-thing instead of “angel”; and in the sequel my epithet seemed themore apt, for when eventually we heard from our traveller it wasmerely, it was thoroughly to be tantalised. He was magnificent inhis triumph, he described his discovery as stupendous; but his ec-stasy only obscured it—there were to be no particulars till he shouldhave submitted his conception to the supreme authority. He hadthrown up his commission, he had thrown up his book, he hadthrown up everything but the instant need to hurry to Rapallo, onthe Genoese shore, where Vereker was making a stay. I wrote him aletter which was to await him at Aden—I besought him to relievemy suspense. That he had found my letter was indicated by a tele-gram which, reaching me after weary days and in the absence of anyanswer to my laconic dispatch to him at Bombay, was evidentlyintended as a reply to both communications. Those few words werein familiar French, the French of the day, which Covick often madeuse of to show he wasn’t a prig. It had for some persons the oppositeeffect, but his message may fairly be paraphrased. “Have patience; Iwant to see, as it breaks on you, the face you’ll make!” “Tellementenvie de voir ta tete!”—that was what I had to sit down with. I cancertainly not be said to have sat down, for I seem to remembermyself at this time as rattling constantly between the little house inChelsea and my own. Our impatience, Gwendolen’s and mine, wasequal, but I kept hoping her light would be greater. We all spent


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during this episode, for people of our means, a great deal of moneyin telegrams and cabs, and I counted on the receipt of news fromRapallo immediately after the junction of the discoverer with thediscovered. The interval seemed an age, but late one day I heard ahansom precipitated to my door with the crash engendered by ahint of liberality. I lived with my heart in my mouth and accord-ingly bounded to the window—a movement which gave me a viewof a young lady erect on the footboard of the vehicle and eagerlylooking up at my house. At sight of me she flourished a paper witha movement that brought me straight down, the movement withwhich, in melodramas, handkerchiefs and reprieves are flourishedat the foot of the scaffold.

“Just seen Vereker—not a note wrong. Pressed me to bosom—keeps me a month.” So much I read on her paper while the cabbydropped a grin from his perch. In my excitement I paid him pro-fusely and in hers she suffered it; then as he drove away we startedto walk about and talk. We had talked, heaven knows, enough be-fore, but this was a wondrous lift. We pictured the whole scene atRapallo, where he would have written, mentioning my name, forpermission to call; that is I pictured it, having more material thanmy companion, whom I felt hang on my lips as we stopped onpurpose before shop-windows we didn’t look into. About one thingwe were clear: if he was staying on for fuller communication weshould at least have a letter from him that would help us throughthe dregs of delay. We understood his staying on, and yet each of ussaw, I think, that the other hated it. The letter we were clear aboutarrived; it was for Gwendolen, and I called on her in time to saveher the trouble of bringing it to me. She didn’t read it out, as wasnatural enough; but she repeated to me what it chiefly embodied.This consisted of the remarkable statement that he’d tell her afterthey were married exactly what she wanted to know.

“Only then, when I’m his wife—not before,” she explained. “It’s

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tantamount to saying—isn’t it?—that I must marry him straightoff!” She smiled at me while I flushed with disappointment, a visionof fresh delay that made me at first unconscious of my surprise. Itseemed more than a hint that on me as well he would impose sometiresome condition. Suddenly, while she reported several more thingsfrom his letter, I remembered what he had told me before goingaway. He had found Mr. Vereker deliriously interesting and his ownpossession of the secret a real intoxication. The buried treasure wasall gold and gems. Now that it was there it seemed to grow andgrow before him; it would have been, through all time and takingall tongues, one of the most wonderful flowers of literary art. Noth-ing, in especial, once you were face to face with it, could show formore consummately done. When once it came out it came out, wasthere with a splendour that made you ashamed; and there hadn’tbeen, save in the bottomless vulgarity of the age, with every onetasteless and tainted, every sense stopped, the smallest reason why itshould have been overlooked. It was great, yet so simple, was simple,yet so great, and the final knowledge of it was an experience quiteapart. He intimated that the charm of such an experience, the de-sire to drain it, in its freshness, to the last drop, was what kept himthere close to the source. Gwendolen, frankly radiant as she tossedme these fragments, showed the elation of a prospect more assuredthan my own. That brought me back to the question of her mar-riage, prompted me to ask if what she meant by what she had justsurprised me with was that she was under an engagement.

“Of course I am!” she answered. “Didn’t you know it?” She seemedastonished, but I was still more so, for Corvick had told me theexact contrary. I didn’t mention this, however; I only reminded herhow little I had been on that score in her confidence, or even inCorvick’s, and that, moreover I wasn’t in ignorance of her mother’sinterdict. At bottom I was troubled by the disparity of the two ac-counts; but after a little I felt Corvick’s to be the one I least doubted.


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This simply reduced me to asking myself if the girl had on the spotimprovised an engagement—vamped up an old one or dashed off anew—in order to arrive at the satisfaction she desired. She musthave had resources of which I was destitute, but she made her caseslightly more intelligible by returning presently: “What the state ofthings has been is that we felt of course bound to do nothing inmamma’s lifetime.”

“But now you think you’ll just dispense with mamma’s consent?”“Ah it mayn’t come to that!” I wondered what it might come to,

and she went on: “Poor dear, she may swallow the dose. In fact, youknow,” she added with a laugh, “she really must!”—a proposition ofwhich, on behalf of every one concerned, I fully acknowledged theforce.

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CHAPTER VIII

NOTHING MORE VEXATIOUS had ever happened to me than to be-come aware before Corvick’s arrival in England that I shouldn’t bethere to put him through. I found myself abruptly called to Ger-many by the alarming illness of my younger brother, who, againstmy advice, had gone to Munich to study, at the feet indeed of agreat master, the art of portraiture in oils. The near relative whomade him an allowance had threatened to withdraw it if he should,under specious pretexts, turn for superior truth to Paris—Paris be-ing somehow, for a Cheltenham aunt, the school of evil, the abyss.I deplored this prejudice at the time, and the deep injury of it wasnow visible—first in the fact that it hadn’t saved the poor boy, whowas clever, frail and foolish, from congestion of the lungs, and sec-ond in the greater break with London to which the event condemnedme. I’m afraid that what was uppermost in my mind during severalanxious weeks was the sense that if we had only been in Paris Imight have run over to see Corvick. This was actually out of thequestion from every point of view: my brother, whose recovery gaveus both plenty to do, was ill for three months, during which I neverleft him and at the end of which we had to face the absolute prohi-bition of a return to England. The consideration of climate im-posed itself, and he was in no state to meet it alone. I took him toMeran and there spent the summer with him, trying to show himby example how to get back to work and nursing a rage of anothersort that I tried not to show him.


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The whole business proved the first of a series of phenomena sostrangely interlaced that, taken together—which was how I had totake them—they form as good an illustration as I can recall of themanner in which, for the good of his soul doubtless, fate sometimesdeals with a man’s avidity. These incidents certainly had larger bear-ings than the comparatively meagre consequence we are here con-cerned with—though I feel that consequence also a thing to speakof with some respect. It’s mainly in such a light, I confess, at anyrate, that the ugly fruit of my exile is at this hour present to me.Even at first indeed the spirit in which my avidity, as I have called it,made me regard that term owed no element of ease to the fact thatbefore coming back from Rapallo George Corvick addressed me ina way I objected to. His letter had none of the sedative action I mustto-day profess myself sure he had wished to give it, and the marchof occurrences was not so ordered as to make up for what it lacked.He had begun on the spot, for one of the quarterlies, a great lastword on Vereker’s writings, and this exhaustive study, the only onethat would have counted, have existed, was to turn on the new light,to utter—oh, so quietly!—the unimagined truth. It was in otherwords to trace the figure in the carpet through every convolution,to reproduce it in every tint. The result, according to my friend,would be the greatest literary portrait ever painted, and what heasked of me was just to be so good as not to trouble him with ques-tions till he should hang up his masterpiece before me. He did methe honour to declare that, putting aside the great sitter himself, allaloft in his indifference, I was individually the connoisseur he wasmost working for. I was therefore to be a good boy and not try topeep under the curtain before the show was ready: I should enjoy itall the more if I sat very still.

I did my best to sit very still, but I couldn’t help giving a jump onseeing in the Times, after I had been a week or two in Munich andbefore, as I knew, Corvick had reached London, the announcement

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of the sudden death of poor Mrs. Erme. I instantly, by letter, appealedto Gwendolen for particulars, and she wrote me that her mother hadyielded to long-threatened failure of the heart. She didn’t say, but Itook the liberty of reading into her words, that from the point of viewof her marriage and also of her eagerness, which was quite a match formine, this was a solution more prompt than could have been ex-pected and more radical than waiting for the old lady to swallow thedose. I candidly admit indeed that at the time—for I heard from herrepeatedly—I read some singular things into Gwendolen’s words andsome still more extraordinary ones into her silences. Pen in hand, thisway, I live the time over, and it brings back the oddest sense of myhaving been, both for months and in spite of myself, a kind of co-erced spectator. All my life had taken refuge in my eyes, which theprocession of events appeared to have committed itself to keep astare.There were days when I thought of writing to Hugh Vereker andsimply throwing myself on his charity. But I felt more deeply that Ihadn’t fallen quite so low—besides which, quite properly, he wouldsend me about my business. Mrs. Erme’s death brought Corvickstraight home, and within the month he was united “very quietly”—as quietly, I seemed to make out, as he meant in his article to bringout his trouvaille—to the young lady he had loved and quitted. I usethis last term, I may parenthetically say, because I subsequently grewsure that at the time he went to India, at the time of his great newsfrom Bombay, there had been no positive pledge between them what-ever. There had been none at the moment she was affirming to methe very opposite. On the other hand he had certainly become en-gaged the day he returned. The happy pair went down to Torquay fortheir honeymoon, and there, in a reckless hour, it occurred to poorCorvick to take his young bride a drive. He had no command of thatbusiness: this had been brought home to me of old in a little tour wehad once made together in a dogcart. In a dogcart he perched hiscompanion for a rattle over Devonshire hills, on one of the likeliest of


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which he brought his horse, who, it was true, had bolted, down withsuch violence that the occupants of the cart were hurled forward andthat he fell horribly on his head. He was killed on the spot; Gwendolenescaped unhurt.

I pass rapidly over the question of this unmitigated tragedy, ofwhat the loss of my best friend meant for me, and I complete mylittle history of my patience and my pain by the frank statement ofmy having, in a postscript to my very first letter to her after thereceipt of the hideous news, asked Mrs. Corvick whether her hus-band mightn’t at least have finished the great article on Vereker. Heranswer was as prompt as my question: the article, which had beenbarely begun, was a mere heartbreaking scrap. She explained thatour friend, abroad, had just settled down to it when interrupted byher mother’s death, and that then, on his return, he had been keptfrom work by the engrossments into which that calamity was toplunge them. The opening pages were all that existed; they werestriking, they were promising, but they didn’t unveil the idol. Thatgreat intellectual feat was obviously to have formed his climax. Shesaid nothing more, nothing to enlighten me as to the state of herown knowledge—the knowledge for the acquisition of which I hadfancied her prodigiously acting. This was above all what I wanted toknow: had SHE seen the idol unveiled? Had there been a privateceremony for a palpitating audience of one? For what else but thatceremony had the nuptials taken place? I didn’t like as yet to pressher, though when I thought of what had passed between us on thesubject in Corvick’s absence her reticence surprised me. It was there-fore not till much later, from Meran, that I risked another appeal,risked it in some trepidation, for she continued to tell me nothing.“Did you hear in those few days of your blighted bliss,” I wrote,“what we desired so to hear?” I said, “we,” as a little hint and sheshowed me she could take a little hint; “I heard everything,” shereplied, “and I mean to keep it to myself!”

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CHAPTER IX

IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE not to be moved with the strongest sympathy forher, and on my return to England I showed her every kindness inmy power. Her mother’s death had made her means sufficient, andshe had gone to live in a more convenient quarter. But her loss hadbeen great and her visitation cruel; it never would have occurred tome moreover to suppose she could come to feel the possession of atechnical tip, of a piece of literary experience, a counterpoise to hergrief. Strange to say, none the less, I couldn’t help believing after Ihad seen her a few times that I caught a glimpse of some such odd-ity. I hasten to add that there had been other things I couldn’t helpbelieving, or at least imagining; and as I never felt I was really clearabout these, so, as to the point I here touch on, I give her memorythe benefit of the doubt. Stricken and solitary, highly accomplishedand now, in her deep mourning, her maturer grace and her uncom-plaining sorrow, incontestably handsome, she presented herself asleading a life of singular dignity and beauty. I had at first found away to persuade myself that I should soon get the better of thereserve formulated, the week after the catastrophe in her reply to anappeal as to which I was not unconscious that it might strike her asmistimed. Certainly that reserve was something of a shock to me -certainly it puzzled me the more I thought of it and even though Itried to explain it (with moments of success) by an imputation ofexalted sentiments, of superstitious scruples, of a refinement of loy-alty. Certainly it added at the same time hugely to the price of


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Vereker’s secret, precious as this mystery already appeared. I may aswell confess abjectly that Mrs. Corvick’s unexpected attitude wasthe final tap on the nail that was to fix fast my luckless idea, convertit into the obsession of which I’m for ever conscious.

But this only helped me the more to be artful, to be adroit, toallow time to elapse before renewing my suit. There were plenty ofspeculations for the interval, and one of them was deeply absorb-ing. Corvick had kept his information from his young friend tillafter the removal of the last barrier to their intimacy—then onlyhad he let the cat out of the bag. Was it Gwendolen’s idea, taking ahint from him, to liberate this animal only on the basis of the re-newal of such a relation? Was the figure in the carpet traceable ordescribable only for husbands and wives—for lovers supremelyunited? It came back to me in a mystifying manner that inKensington Square, when I mentioned that Corvick would havetold the girl he loved, some word had dropped from Vereker thatgave colour to this possibility. There might be little in it, but therewas enough to make me wonder if I should have to marry Mrs.Corvick to get what I wanted. Was I prepared to offer her this pricefor the blessing of her knowledge? Ah that way madness lay!—so Iat least said to myself in bewildered hours. I could see meanwhilethe torch she refused to pass on flame away in her chamber ofmemory—pour through her eyes a light that shone in her lonelyhouse. At the end of six months I was fully sure of what this warmpresence made up to her for. We had talked again and again of theman who had brought us together—of his talent, his character, hispersonal charm, his certain career, his dreadful doom, and even ofhis clear purpose in that great study which was to have been a su-preme literary portrait, a kind of critical Vandyke or Velasquez. Shehad conveyed to me in abundance that she was tongue-tied by herperversity, by her piety, that she would never break the silence it hadnot been given to the “right person,” as she said, to break. The hour

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however finally arrived. One evening when I had been sitting withher longer than usual I laid my hand firmly on her arm. “Now atlast what is it?”

She had been expecting me and was ready. She gave a long slowsoundless headshake, merciful only in being inarticulate. This mercydidn’t prevent its hurling at me the largest finest coldest “Never!” Ihad yet, in the course of a life that had known denials, had to takefull in the face. I took it and was aware that with the hard blow thetears had come into my eyes. So for a while we sat and looked ateach other; after which I slowly rose, I was wondering if some dayshe would accept me; but this was not what I brought out. I said asI smoothed down my hat: “I know what to think then. It’s noth-ing!”

A remote disdainful pity for me gathered in her dim smile; thenshe spoke in a voice that I hear at this hour: “It’s my life!” As I stoodat the door she added: “You’ve insulted him!”

“Do you mean Vereker?”“I mean the Dead!”I recognised when I reached the street the justice of her charge.

Yes, it was her life—I recognised that too; but her life none the lessmade room with the lapse of time for another interest. A year and ahalf after Corvick’s death she published in a single volume her sec-ond novel, “Overmastered,” which I pounced on in the hope offinding in it some tell-tale echo or some peeping face. All I foundwas a much better book than her younger performance, showing Ithought the better company she had kept. As a tissue tolerably in-tricate it was a carpet with a figure of its own; but the figure was notthe figure I was looking for. On sending a review of it to The MiddleI was surprised to learn from the office that a notice was already intype. When the paper came out I had no hesitation in attributingthis article, which I thought rather vulgarly overdone, to DraytonDeane, who in the old days had been something of a friend of


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Corvick’s, yet had only within a few weeks made the acquaintanceof his widow. I had had an early copy of the book, but Deane hadevidently had an earlier. He lacked all the same the light hand withwhich Corvick had gilded the gingerbread—he laid on the tinsel insplotches.

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CHAPTER X

SIX MONTHS LATER appeared “The Right of Way,” the last chance,though we didn’t know it, that we were to have to redeem ourselves.Written wholly during Vereker’s sojourn abroad, the book had beenheralded, in a hundred paragraphs, by the usual ineptitudes. I car-ried it, as early a copy as any, I this time flattered myself, straight-way to Mrs. Corvick. This was the only use I had for it; I left theinevitable tribute of The Middle to some more ingenious mind andsome less irritated temper. “But I already have it,” Gwendolen said.“Drayton Deane was so good as to bring it to me yesterday, and I’vejust finished it.”

“Yesterday? How did he get it so soon?”“He gets everything so soon! He’s to review it in The Middle.”“He—Drayton Deane—review Vereker?” I couldn’t believe my

ears.“‘Why not? One fine ignorance is as good as another.”I winced but I presently said: “You ought to review him yourself!”“I don’t ‘review,’” she laughed. “I’m reviewed!”Just then the door was thrown open. “Ah yes, here’s your reviewer!”

Drayton Deane was there with his long legs and his tall forehead: hehad come to see what she thought of “The Right of Way,” and tobring news that was singularly relevant. The evening papers werejust out with a telegram on the author of that work, who, in Rome,had been ill for some days with an attack of malarial fever. It had atfirst not been thought grave, but had taken, in consequence of com-


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plications, a turn that might give rise to anxiety. Anxiety had indeedat the latest hour begun to be felt.

I was struck in the presence of these tidings with the fundamentaldetachment that Mrs. Corvick’s overt concern quite failed to hide:it gave me the measure of her consummate independence. That in-dependence rested on her knowledge, the knowledge which noth-ing now could destroy and which nothing could make different.The figure in the carpet might take on another twist or two, but thesentence had virtually been written. The writer might go down tohis grave: she was the person in the world to whom—as if she hadbeen his favoured heir—his continued existence was least of a need.This reminded me how I had observed at a particular moment—after Corvick’s death—the drop of her desire to see him face to face.She had got what she wanted without that. I had been sure that ifshe hadn’t got it she wouldn’t have been restrained from the endeav-our to sound him personally by those superior reflexions, more con-ceivable on a man’s part than on a woman’s, which in my case hadserved an a deterrent. It wasn’t however, I hasten to add, that mycase, in spite of this invidious comparison, wasn’t ambiguous enough.At the thought that Vereker was perhaps at that moment dying thererolled over me a wave of anguish—a poignant sense of how incon-sistently I still depended on him. A delicacy that it was my onecompensation to suffer to rule me had left the Alps and the Apenninesbetween us, but the sense of the waning occasion suggested that Imight in my despair at last have gone to him. Of course I shouldreally have done nothing of the sort. I remained five minutes, whilemy companions talked of the new book, and when Drayton Deaneappealed to me for my opinion of it I made answer, getting up, thatI detested Hugh Vereker and simply couldn’t read him. I departedwith the moral certainty that as the door closed behind me Deanewould brand me for awfully superficial. His hostess wouldn’t con-tradict that at least.

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I continue to trace with a briefer touch our intensely odd succes-sions. Three weeks after this came Vereker’s death, and before theyear was out the death of his wife. That poor lady I had never seen,but I had had a futile theory that, should she survive him long enoughto be decorously accessible, I might approach her with the feebleflicker of my plea. Did she know and if she knew would she speak?It was much to be presumed that for more reasons than one shewould have nothing to say; but when she passed out of all reach Ifelt renannouncement indeed my appointed lot. I was shut up inmy obsession for ever—my gaolers had gone off with the key. I findmyself quite as vague as a captive in a dungeon about the tinge thatfurther elapsed before Mrs. Corvick became the wife of DraytonDeane. I had foreseen, through my bars, this end of the business,though there was no indecent haste and our friendship had fallenrather off. They were both so “awfully intellectual” that it struckpeople as a suitable match, but I had measured better than any onethe wealth of understanding the bride would contribute to the union.Never, for a marriage in literary circles—so the newspapers describedthe alliance—had a lady been so bravely dowered. I began with duepromptness to look for the fruit of the affair—that fruit, I mean, ofwhich the premonitory symptoms would be peculiarly visible in thehusband. Taking for granted the splendour of the other party’s nup-tial gift, I expected to see him make a show commensurate with hisincrease of means. I knew what his means had been—his article on“The Right of Way” had distinctly given one the figure. As he wasnow exactly in the position in which still more exactly I was not Iwatched from month to month, in the likely periodicals, for theheavy message poor Corvick had been unable to deliver and theresponsibility of which would have fallen on his successor. The widowand wife would have broken by the rekindled hearth the silencethat only a widow and wife might break, and Deane would be asaflame with the knowledge as Corvick in his own hour, as Gwendolen


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in hers, had been. Well, he was aflame doubtless, but the fire wasapparently not to become a public blaze. I scanned the periodicalsin vain: Drayton Deane filled them with exuberant pages, but hewithheld the page I most feverishly sought. He wrote on a thousandsubjects, but never on the subject of Vereker. His special line was totell truths that other people either “funked,”as he said, or overlooked, but he never told the only truth that seemedto me in these days to signify. I met the couple in those literarycircles referred to in the papers: I have sufficiently intimated that itwas only in such circles we were all constructed to revolve.Gwendolen was more than ever committed to them by the publica-tion of her third novel, and I myself definitely classed by holdingthe opinion that this work was inferior to its immediate predeces-sor. Was it worse because she had been keeping worse company? Ifher secret was, as she had told me, her life—a fact discernible in herincreasing bloom, an air of conscious privilege that, cleverly cor-rected by pretty charities, gave distinction to her appearance—ithad yet not a direct influence on her work. That only made one—everything only made one—yearn the more for it; only rounded itoff with a mystery finer and subtler.

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CHAPTER XI

IT WAS THEREFORE from her husband I could never remove my eyes:I beset him in a manner that might have made him uneasy. I wenteven so far as to engage him in conversation. Didn’t he know, hadn’the come into it as a matter of course?—that question hummed inmy brain. Of course he knew; otherwise he wouldn’t return mystare so queerly. His wife had told him what I wanted and he wasamiably amused at my impotence. He didn’t laugh—he wasn’t alaugher: his system was to present to my irritation, so that I shouldcrudely expose myself, a conversational blank as vast as his big barebrow. It always happened that I turned away with a settled convic-tion from these unpeopled expanses, which seemed to complete eachother geographically and to symbolise together Drayton Deane’swant of voice, want of form. He simply hadn’t the art to use what heknew; he literally was incompetent to take up the duty where Corvickhad left it. I went still further—it was the only glimpse of happinessI had. I made up my mind that the duty didn’t appeal to him. Hewasn’t interested, he didn’t care. Yes, it quite comforted me to be-lieve him too stupid to have joy of the thing I lacked. He was asstupid after as he had been before, and that deepened for me thegolden glory in which the mystery was wrapped. I had of coursenone the less to recollect that his wife might have imposed her con-ditions and exactions. I had above all to remind myself that withVereker’s death the major incentive dropped. He was still there tobe honoured by what might be done—he was no longer there to


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give it his sanction. Who alas but he had the authority?Two children were born to the pair, but the second cost the mother

her life. After this stroke I seemed to see another ghost of a chance.I jumped at it in thought, but I waited a certain time for manners,and at last my opportunity arrived in a remunerative way. His wifehad been dead a year when I met Drayton Deane in the smoking-room of a small club of which we both were members, but wherefor months—perhaps because I rarely entered it—I hadn’t seen him.The room was empty and the occasion propitious. I deliberatelyoffered him, to have done with the matter for ever, that advantagefor which I felt he had long been looking.

“As an older acquaintance of your late wife’s than even you were,”I began, “you must let me say to you something I have on my mind.I shall be glad to make any terms with you that you see fit to namefor the information she must have had from George Corvick—theinformation you know, that had come to him, poor chap, in one ofthe happiest hours of his life, straight from Hugh Vereker.”

He looked at me like a dim phrenological bust. “The informa-tion—?”

“Vereker’s secret, my dear man—the general intention of his books:the string the pearls were strung on, the buried treasure, the figurein the carpet.”

He began to flush—the numbers on his bumps to come out.“Vereker’s books had a general intention?”

I stared in my turn. “You don’t mean to say you don’t know it?” Ithought for a moment he was playing with me. “Mrs. Deane knewit; she had it, as I say, straight from Corvick, who had, after infinitesearch and to Vereker’s own delight, found the very mouth of thecave. Where is the mouth? He told after their marriage—and toldalone—the person who, when the circumstances were reproduced,must have told you. Have I been wrong in taking for granted thatshe admitted you, as one of the highest privileges of the relation in

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which you stood to her, to the knowledge of which she was afterCorvick’s death the sole depositary? All I know is that that knowl-edge is infinitely precious, and what I want you to understand isthat if you’ll in your turn admit me to it you’ll do me a kindness forwhich I shall be lastingly grateful.”

He had turned at last very red; I dare say he had begun by think-ing I had lost my wits. Little by little he followed me; on my ownside I stared with a livelier surprise. Then he spoke. “I don’t knowwhat you’re talking about.”

He wasn’t acting—it was the absurd truth.“She didn’t tell you—?”“Nothing about Hugh Vereker.”I was stupefied; the room went round. It had been too good even

for that! “Upon your honour?”“Upon my honour. What the devil’s the matter with you?” he

growled.“I’m astounded—I’m disappointed. I wanted to get it out of you.”“It isn’t in me!” he awkwardly laughed. “And even if it were—““If it were you’d let me have it—oh yes, in common humanity.

But I believe you. I see—I see!” I went on, conscious, with the fullturn of the wheel, of my great delusion, my false view of the poorman’s attitude. What I saw, though I couldn’t say it, was that hiswife hadn’t thought him worth enlightening. This struck me asstrange for a woman who had thought him worth marrying. At lastI explained it by the reflexion that she couldn’t possibly have mar-ried him for his understanding. She had married him for somethingelse.

He was to some extent enlightened now, but he was even moreastonished, more disconcerted: he took a moment to compare mystory with his quickened memories. The result of his meditationwas his presently saying with a good deal of rather feeble form: “Thisis the first I hear of what you allude to. I think you must be mis-


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taken as to Mrs. Drayton Deane’s having had any unmentioned,and still less any unmentionable, knowledge of Hugh Vereker. She’dcertainly have wished it—should it have borne on his literary char-acter—to he used.”

“It was used. She used it herself. She told me with her own lipsthat she ‘lived’ on it.”

I had no sooner spoken than I repented of my words; he grew sopale that I felt as if I had struck him. “Ah, ‘lived’—!” he murmured,turning short away from me.

My compunction was real; I laid my hand on his shoulder. “I begyou to forgive me—I’ve made a mistake. You don’t know what Ithought you knew. You could, if I had been right, have rendered me aservice; and I had my reasons for assuming that you’d be in a positionto meet me.”

“Your reasons?” he asked. “What were your reasons?”I looked at him well; I hesitated; I considered. “Come and sit

down with me here, and I’ll tell you.” I drew him to a sofa, I lightedanother cigar and, beginning with the anecdote of Vereker’s onedescent from the clouds, I recited to him the extraordinary chain ofaccidents that had, in spite of the original gleam, kept me till thathour in the dark. I told him in a word just what I’ve written outhere. He listened with deepening attention, and I became aware, tomy surprise, by his ejaculations, by his questions, that he wouldhave been after all not unworthy to be trusted by his wife. So abruptan experience of her want of trust had now a disturbing effect onhim; but I saw the immediate shock throb away little by little andthen gather again into waves of wonder and curiosity—waves thatpromised, I could perfectly judge, to break in the end with the furyof my own highest tides. I may say that to-day as victims of unap-peased desire there isn’t a pin to choose between us. The poor man’sstate is almost my consolation; there are really moments when I feelit to be quite my revenge.

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CHAPTER I

YES INDEED, I say to myself, pen in hand, I can keep hold of thethread and let it lead me back to the first impression. The little storyis all there, I can touch it from point to point; for the thread, as Icall it, is a row of coloured beads on a string. None of the beads aremissing—at least I think they’re not: that’s exactly what I shall amusemyself with finding out.

I had been all summer working hard in town and then had gonedown to Folkestone for a blow. Art was long, I felt, and my holidayshort; my mother was settled at Folkestone, and I paid her a visitwhen I could. I remember how on this occasion, after weeks in mystuffy studio with my nose on my palette, I sniffed up the clean saltair and cooled my eyes with the purple sea. The place was full oflodgings, and the lodgings were at that season full of people, peoplewho had nothing to do but to stare at one another on the great flatdown. There were thousands of little chairs and almost as manylittle Jews; and there was music in an open rotunda, over which the

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little Jews wagged their big noses. We all strolled to and fro andtook pennyworths of rest; the long, level cliff-top, edged in placeswith its iron rail, might have been the deck of a huge crowded ship.There were old folks in Bath chairs, and there was one dear chair,creeping to its last full stop, by the side of which I always walked.There was in fine weather the coast of France to look at, and therewere the usual things to say about it; there was also in every state ofthe atmosphere our friend Mrs. Meldrum, a subject of remark notless inveterate. The widow of an officer in the Engineers, she hadsettled, like many members of the martial miscellany, well withinsight of the hereditary enemy, who however had left her leisure toform in spite of the difference of their years a close alliance with mymother. She was the heartiest, the keenest, the ugliest of women,the least apologetic, the least morbid in her misfortune. She carriedit high aloft with loud sounds and free gestures, made it flutter inthe breeze as if it had been the flag of her country. It consisted mainlyof a big red face, indescribably out of drawing, from which she glaredat you through gold-rimmed aids to vision, optic circles of suchdiameter and so frequently displaced that some one had vividly spo-ken of her as flattering her nose against the glass of her spectacles.She was extraordinarily near-sighted, and whatever they did to otherobjects they magnified immensely the kind eyes behind them. Blestconveniences they were, in their hideous, honest strength—theyshowed the good lady everything in the world but her own queer-ness. This element was enhanced by wild braveries of dress, recklesscharges of colour and stubborn resistances of cut, wondrous en-counters in which the art of the toilet seemed to lay down its life.She had the tread of a grenadier and the voice of an angel.

In the course of a walk with her the day after my arrival I foundmyself grabbing her arm with sudden and undue familiarity. I hadbeen struck by the beauty of a face that approached us and I wasstill more affected when I saw the face, at the sight of my compan-

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ion, open like a window thrown wide. A smile fluttered out of it anbrightly as a drapery dropped from a sill—a drapery shaken there inthe sun by a young lady flanked by two young men, a wonderfulyoung lady who, as we drew nearer, rushed up to Mrs. Meldrumwith arms flourished for an embrace. My immediate impression ofher had been that she was dressed in mourning, but during the fewmoments she stood talking with our friend I made more discover-ies. The figure from the neck down was meagre, the stature insig-nificant, but the desire to please towered high, as well as the air ofinfallibly knowing how and of never, never missing it. This was alittle person whom I would have made a high bid for a good chanceto paint. The head, the features, the colour, the whole facial ovaland radiance had a wonderful purity; the deep grey eyes—the mostagreeable, I thought, that I had ever seen—brushed with a kind ofwinglike grace every object they encountered. Their possessor wasjust back from Boulogne, where she had spent a week with dearMrs. Floyd-Taylor: this accounted for the effusiveness of her re-union with dear Mrs. Meldrum. Her black garments were of thefreshest and daintiest; she suggested a pink-and-white wreath at ashowy funeral. She confounded us for three minutes with her pres-ence; she was a beauty of the great conscious public responsibleorder. The young men, her companions, gazed at her and grinned:I could see there were very few moments of the day at which youngmen, these or others, would not be so occupied. The people whoapproached took leave of their manners; every one seemed to lingerand gape. When she brought her face close to Mrs. Meldrum’s—and she appeared to be always bringing it close to somebody’s—itwas a marvel that objects so dissimilar should express the same gen-eral identity, the unmistakable character of the English gentlewoman.Mrs. Meldrum sustained the comparison with her usual courage,but I wondered why she didn’t introduce me: I should have had noobjection to the bringing of such a face close to mine. However, by

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the time the young lady moved on with her escort she herself be-queathed me a sense that some such rapprochement might still oc-cur. Was this by reason of the general frequency of encounters atFolkestone, or by reason of a subtle acknowledgment that she con-trived to make of the rights, on the part of others, that such beautyas hers created? I was in a position to answer that question afterMrs. Meldrum had answered a few of mine.

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CHAPTER II

FLORA SAUNT, the only daughter of an old soldier, had lost both herparents, her mother within a few months. Mrs. Meldrum had knownthem, disapproved of them, considerably avoided them: she hadwatched the girl, off and on, from her early childhood. Flora, justtwenty, was extraordinarily alone in the world—so alone that shehad no natural chaperon, no one to stay with but a mercenarystranger, Mrs. Hammond Synge, the sister-in-law of one of the youngmen I had just seen. She had lots of friends, but none of them nice:she kept picking up impossible people. The Floyd-Taylors, withwhom she had been at Boulogne, were simply horrid. The HammondSynges were perhaps not so vulgar, but they had no conscience intheir dealings with her.

“She knows what I think of them,” said Mrs. Meldrum, “andindeed she knows what I think of most things.”

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

“No doubt; but possibly to some of my friends it makes a littledifference. That girl doesn’t care a button. She knows best of allwhat I think of Flora Saunt.”

“And what may your opinion be?”“Why, that she’s not worth troubling about— an idiot too abysmal.”“Doesn’t she care for that?”“Just enough, as you saw, to hug me till I cry out. She’s too pleased

with herself for anything else to matter.”

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“Surely, my dear friend,” I rejoined, “she has a good deal to bepleased with!”

“So every one tells her, and so you would have told her if I hadgiven you the chance. However, that doesn’t signify either, for hervanity is beyond all making or mending. She believes in herself, andshe’s welcome, after all, poor dear, having only herself to look to.I’ve seldom met a young woman more completely free to be silly.She has a clear course—she’ll make a showy finish.”

“Well,” I replied, “as she probably will reduce many persons tothe same degraded state, her partaking of it won’t stand out so much.”

“If you mean that the world’s full of twaddlers I quite agree withyou!” cried Mrs. Meldrum, trumpeting her laugh half across theChannel.

I had after this to consider a little what she would call my mother’sson, but I didn’t let it prevent me from insisting on her making meacquainted with Flora Saunt; indeed I took the bull by the horns,urging that she had drawn the portrait of a nature which commoncharity now demanded of her to put into relation with a characterreally fine. Such a frail creature was just an object of pity. This con-tention on my part had at first of course been jocular; but strange tosay it was quite the ground I found myself taking with regard to ouryoung lady after I had begun to know her. I couldn’t have said whatI felt about her except that she was undefended; from the first of mysitting with her there after dinner, under the stars—that was a weekat Folkestone of balmy nights and muffled tides and crowdedchairs—I became aware both that protection was wholly absent fromher life and that she was wholly indifferent to its absence. The oddthing was that she was not appealing: she was abjectly, divinely con-ceited, absurdly fantastically pleased. Her beauty was as yet all theworld to her, a world she had plenty to do to live in. Mrs. Meldrumtold me more about her, and there was nothing that, as the centre ofa group of giggling, nudging spectators, Flora wasn’t ready to tell

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about herself. She held her little court in the crowd, upon the grass,playing her light over Jews and Gentiles, completely at ease in allpromiscuities. It was an effect of these things that from the veryfirst, with every one listening, I could mention that my main busi-ness with her would be just to have a go at her head and to arrangein that view for an early sitting. It would have been as impossible, Ithink, to be impertinent to her as it would have been to throw astone at a plate-glass window; so any talk that went forward on thebasis of her loveliness was the most natural thing in the world andimmediately became the most general and sociable. It was when Isaw all this that I judged how, though it was the last thing she askedfor, what one would ever most have at her service was a curiouscompassion. That sentiment was coloured by the vision of the direexposure of a being whom vanity had put so off her guard. Hers wasthe only vanity I have ever known that made its possessor superla-tively soft. Mrs. Meldrum’s further information contributed more-over to these indulgences—her account of the girl’s neglected child-hood and queer continental relegations, with straying squabblingMonte-Carlo-haunting parents; the more invidious picture, aboveall, of her pecuniary arrangement, still in force, with the HammondSynges, who really, though they never took her out—practically shewent out alone—had their hands half the time in her pocket. Shehad to pay for everything, down to her share of the wine-bills andthe horses’ fodder, down to Bertie Hammond Synge’s fare in the“underground” when he went to the City for her. She had been leftwith just money enough to turn her head; and it hadn’t even beenput in trust, nothing prudent or proper had been done with it. Shecould spend her capital, and at the rate she was going, expensive,extravagant and with a swarm of parasites to help, it certainly wouldn’tlast very long.

“Couldn’t you perhaps take her, independent, unencumbered asyou are?” I asked of Mrs. Meldrum. “You’re probably, with one ex-

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ception, the sanest person she knows, and you at least wouldn’t scan-dalously fleece her.”

“How do you know what I wouldn’t do?” my humorous frienddemanded. “Of course I’ve thought how I can help her—it has keptme awake at night. But doing it’s impossible; she’ll take nothingfrom me. You know what she does—she hugs me and runs away.She has an instinct about me and feels that I’ve one about her. Andthen she dislikes me for another reason that I’m not quite clear about,but that I’m well aware of and that I shall find out some day. So faras her settling with me goes it would be impossible moreover here;she wants naturally enough a much wider field. She must live inLondon—her game is there. So she takes the line of adoring me, ofsaying she can never forget that I was devoted to her mother—which I wouldn’t for the world have been—and of giving me a wideberth. I think she positively dislikes to look at me. It’s all right;there’s no obligation; though people in general can’t take their eyesoff me.”

“I see that at this moment,” I replied. “But what does it matterwhere or how, for the present, she lives? She’ll marry infallibly, marryearly, and everything then will change.”

“Whom will she marry?” my companion gloomily asked.“Any one she likes. She’s so abnormally pretty that she can do

anything. She’ll fascinate some nabob or some prince.”“She’ll fascinate him first and bore him afterwards. Moreover she’s

not so pretty as you make her out; she hasn’t a scrap of a figure.”“No doubt, but one doesn’t in the least miss it.”“Not now,” said Mrs. Meldrum, “but one will when she’s older

and when everything will have to count.”“When she’s older she’ll count as a princess, so it won’t matter.”“She has other drawbacks,” my companion went on. “Those won-

derful eyes are good for nothing but to roll about like sugar-balls—which they greatly resemble—in a child’s mouth. She can’t use them.”

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“Use them? Why, she does nothing else.”“To make fools of young men, but not to read or write, not to do

any sort of work. She never opens a book, and her maid writes hernotes. You’ll say that those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throwstones. Of course I know that if I didn’t wear my goggles I shouldn’tbe good for much.”

“Do you mean that Miss Saunt ought to sport such things?” Iexclaimed with more horror than I meant to show.

“I don’t prescribe for her; I don’t know that they’re what she re-quires.”

“What’s the matter with her eyes?” I asked after a moment.“I don’t exactly know; but I heard from her mother years ago that

even as a child they had had for a while to put her into spectacles andthat though she hated them and had been in a fury of disgust, shewould always have to be extremely careful. I’m sure I hope she is!”

I echoed the hope, but I remember well the impression this madeupon me—my immediate pang of resentment, a disgust almost equalto Flora’s own. I felt as if a great rare sapphire had split in my hand.

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CHAPTER III

THIS CONVERSATION occurred the night before I went back to town.I settled on the morrow to take a late train, so that I had still mymorning to spend at Folkestone, where during the greater part of itI was out with my mother. Every one in the place was as usual outwith some one else, and even had I been free to go and take leave ofher I should have been sure that Flora Saunt would not be at home.Just where she was I presently discovered: she was at the far end ofthe cliff, the point at which it overhangs the pretty view of Sandgateand Hythe. Her back, however, was turned to this attraction; it restedwith the aid of her elbows, thrust slightly behind her so that herscanty little shoulders were raised toward her ears, on the high railthat inclosed the down. Two gentlemen stood before her whose faceswe couldn’t see but who even as observed from the rear were visiblyabsorbed in the charming figure-piece submitted to them. I wasfreshly struck with the fact that this meagre and defective little per-son, with the cock of her hat and the flutter of her crape, with hereternal idleness, her eternal happiness, her absence of moods andmysteries and the pretty presentation of her feet, which especiallynow in the supported slope of her posture occupied with theirimperceptibility so much of the foreground—I was reminded anew,I say, how our young lady dazzled by some art that the enumerationof her merits didn’t explain and that the mention of her lapses didn’taffect. Where she was amiss nothing counted, and where she wasright everything did. I say she was wanting in mystery, but that after

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all was her secret. This happened to be my first chance of introduc-ing her to my mother, who had not much left in life but the quietlook from under the hood of her chair at the things which, whenshe should have quitted those she loved, she could still trust to makethe world good for them. I wondered an instant how much shemight be moved to trust Flora Saunt, and then while the chair stoodstill and she waited I went over and asked the girl to come and speakto her. In this way I saw that if one of Flora’s attendants was theinevitable young Hammond Synge, master of ceremonies of herregular court, always offering the use of a telescope and acceptingthat of a cigar, the other was a personage I had not yet encountered,a small pale youth in showy knickerbockers, whose eyebrows andnose and the glued points of whose little moustache were extraordi-narily uplifted and sustained. I remember taking him at first for aforeigner and for something of a pretender: I scarce know why un-less because of the motive I felt in the stare he fixed on me when Iasked Miss Saunt to come away. He struck me a little as a youngman practising the social art of impertinence; but it didn’t matter,for Flora came away with alacrity, bringing all her prettiness andpleasure and gliding over the grass in that rustle of delicate mourn-ing which made the endless variety of her garments, as a paintercould take heed, strike one always as the same obscure elegance. Sheseated herself on the floor of my mother’s chair, a little too much onher right instep as I afterwards gathered, caressing her still hand,smiling up into her cold face, commending and approving her with-out a reserve and without a doubt. She told her immediately, as if itwere something for her to hold on by, that she was soon to sit to mefor a “likeness,” and these words gave me a chance to enquire if itwould be the fate of the picture, should I finish it, to be presented tothe young man in the knickerbockers. Her lips, at this, parted in astare; her eyes darkened to the purple of one of the shadow-patcheson the sea. She showed for the passing instant the face of some splen-

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did tragic mask, and I remembered for the inconsequence of it whatMrs. Meldrum had said about her sight. I had derived from this ladya worrying impulse to catechise her, but that didn’t seem exactly kind;so I substituted another question, inquiring who the pretty youngman in knickerbockers might happen to be.

“Oh a gentleman I met at Boulogne. He has come over to seeme.” After a moment she added: “Lord Iffield.”

I had never heard of Lord Iffield, but her mention of his havingbeen at Boulogne helped me to give him a niche. Mrs. Meldrumhad incidentally thrown a certain light on the manners of Mrs. Floyd-Taylor, Flora’s recent hostess in that charming town, a lady who, itappeared, had a special vocation for helping rich young men to finda use for their leisure. She had always one or other in hand and hadapparently on this occasion pointed her lesson at the rare creatureon the opposite coast. I had a vague idea that Boulogne was not aresort of the world’s envied; at the same time there might very wellhave been a strong attraction there even for one of the darlings offortune. I could perfectly understand in any case that such a darlingshould be drawn to Folkestone by Flora Saunt. But it was not intruth of these things I was thinking; what was uppermost in mymind was a matter which, though it had no sort of keeping, insistedjust then on coming out.

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

I was startled by the effect of my words; the girl threw back herhead, changing colour from brow to chin. “True? Who in the worldsays so?” I repented of my question in a flash; the way she met itmade it seem cruel, and I felt my mother look at me in some sur-prise. I took care, in answer to Flora’s challenge, not to incriminateMrs. Meldrum. I answered that the rumour had reached me only inthe vaguest form and that if I had been moved to put it to the testmy very real interest in her must be held responsible. Her blush

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died away, but a pair of still prettier tears glistened in its track. “Ifyou ever hear such a thing said again you can say it’s a horrid lie!” Ihad brought on a commotion deeper than any I was prepared for;but it was explained in some degree by the next words she uttered:“I’m happy to say there’s nothing the matter with any part of mewhatever, not the least little thing!” She spoke with her habitualcomplacency, with triumphant assurance; she smiled again, and Icould see how she wished that she hadn’t so taken me up. She turnedit off with a laugh. “I’ve good eyes, good teeth, a good digestion anda good temper. I’m sound of wind and limb!” Nothing could havebeen more characteristic than her blush and her tears, nothing lessacceptable to her than to be thought not perfect in every particular.She couldn’t submit to the imputation of a flaw. I expressed mydelight in what she told me, assuring her I should always do battlefor her; and as if to rejoin her companions she got up from her placeon my mother’s toes. The young men presented their backs to us;they were leaning on the rail of the cliff. Our incident had produceda certain awkwardness, and while I was thinking of what next to sayshe exclaimed irrelevantly: “Don’t you know? He’ll be LordConsidine.” At that moment the youth marked for this high des-tiny turned round, and she spoke to my mother. “I’ll introduce himto you—he’s awfully nice.” She beckoned and invited him with herparasol; the movement struck me as taking everything for granted. Ihad heard of Lord Considine and if I had not been able to placeLord Iffield it was because I didn’t know the name of his eldest son.The young man took no notice of Miss Saunt’s appeal; he onlystared a moment and then on her repeating it quietly turned hisback. She was an odd creature: she didn’t blush at this; she only saidto my mother apologetically, but with the frankest sweetest amuse-ment, “You don’t mind, do you? He’s a monster of shyness!” It wasas if she were sorry for every one—for Lord Iffield, the victim of acomplaint so painful, and for my mother, the subject of a certain

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slight. “I’m sure I don’t want him!” said my mother, but Flora addedsome promise of how she would handle him for his rudeness. Shewould clearly never explain anything by any failure of her own ap-peal. There rolled over me while she took leave of us and floatedback to her friends a wave of superstitious dread. I seemed some-how to see her go forth to her fate, and yet what should fill out thisorb of a high destiny if not such beauty and such joy? I had a dimidea that Lord Considine was a great proprietor, and though theremingled with it a faint impression that I shouldn’t like his son theresult of the two images was a whimsical prayer that the girl mightn’tmiss her possible fortune.

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CHAPTER IV

ONE DAY IN THE COURSE of the following June there was ushered intomy studio a gentleman whom I had not yet seen but with whom Ihad been very briefly in correspondence. A letter from him hadexpressed to me some days before his regret on learning that my“splendid portrait” of Miss Flora Louisa Saunt, whose full namefigured by her own wish in the catalogue of the exhibition of theAcademy, had found a purchaser before the close of the private view.He took the liberty of inquiring whether I might have at his servicesome other memorial of the same lovely head, some preliminarysketch, some study for the picture. I had replied that I had indeedpainted Miss Saunt more than once and that if he were interested inmy work I should be happy to show him what I had done. Mr.Geoffrey Dawling, the person thus introduced to me, stumbled intomy room with awkward movements and equivocal sounds—a long,lean, confused, confusing young man, with a bad complexion andlarge protrusive teeth. He bore in its most indelible pressure thepostmark, as it were, of Oxford, and as soon as he opened his mouthI perceived, in addition to a remarkable revelation of gums, that thetext of the queer communication matched the registered envelope.He was full of refinements and angles, of dreary and distinguishedknowledge. Of his unconscious drollery his dress freely partook; itseemed, from the gold ring into which his red necktie was passed tothe square toe-caps of his boots, to conform with a high sense ofmodernness to the fashion before the last. There were moments

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when his overdone urbanity, all suggestive stammers and interroga-tive quavers, made him scarcely intelligible; but I felt him to be agentleman and I liked the honesty of his errand and the expressionof his good green eyes.

As a worshipper at the shrine of beauty, however, he needed ex-plaining, especially when I found he had no acquaintance with mybrilliant model; had on the mere evidence of my picture taken, ashe said, a tremendous fancy to her looks. I ought doubtless to havebeen humiliated by the simplicity of his judgment of them, a judg-ment for which the rendering was lost in the subject, quite leavingout the element of art. He was like the innocent reader for whomthe story is “really true” and the author a negligible quantity. Hehad come to me only because he wanted to purchase, and I remem-ber being so amused at his attitude, which I had never seen equallymarked in a person of education, that I asked him why, for the sortof enjoyment he desired, it wouldn’t be more to the point to dealdirectly with the lady. He stared and blushed at this; the idea clearlyalarmed him. He was an extraordinary case—personally so modestthat I could see it had never occurred to him. He had fallen in lovewith a painted sign and seemed content just to dream of what itstood for. He was the young prince in the legend or the comedywho loses his heart to the miniature of the princess beyond seas.Until I knew him better this puzzled me much—the link was somissing between his sensibility and his type. He was of course be-wildered by my sketches, which implied in the beholder some senseof intention and quality; but for one of them, a comparative failure,he ended by conceiving a preference so arbitrary and so lively that,taking no second look at the others, he expressed his wish to possessit and fell into the extremity of confusion over the question of price.I helped him over that stile, and he went off without having askedme a direct question about Miss Saunt, yet with his acquisition un-der his arm. His delicacy was such that he evidently considered his

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rights to be limited; he had acquired none at all in regard to theoriginal of the picture. There were others—for I was curious abouthim—that I wanted him to feel I conceded: I should have been gladof his carrying away a sense of ground acquired for coming back. Toensure this I had probably only to invite him, and I perfectly recallthe impulse that made me forbear. It operated suddenly from withinwhile he hung about the door and in spite of the diffident appealthat blinked in his gentle grin. If he was smitten with Flora’s ghostwhat mightn’t be the direct force of the luminary that could castsuch a shadow? This source of radiance, flooding my poor place,might very well happen to be present the next time he should turnup. The idea was sharp within me that there were relations andcomplications it was no mission of mine to bring about. If theywere to develop they should develop in their very own sense.

Let me say at once that they did develop and that I perhaps afterall had something to do with it. If Mr. Dawling had departed with-out a fresh appointment he was to reappear six months later underprotection no less powerful than that of our young lady herself. Ihad seen her repeatedly for months: she had grown to regard mystudio as the temple of her beauty. This miracle was recorded andcelebrated there as nowhere else; in other places there was occa-sional reference to other subjects of remark. The degree of her pre-sumption continued to be stupefying; there was nothing so extraor-dinary save the degree in which she never paid for it. She was keptinnocent, that is she was kept safe, by her egotism, but she washelped also, though she had now put off her mourning, by the atti-tude of the lone orphan who had to be a law unto herself. It was asa lone orphan that she came and went, as a lone orphan that she wasthe centre of a crush. The neglect of the Hammond Synges gaverelief to this character, and she made it worth their while to be, asevery one said, too shocking. Lord Iffield had gone to India to shoottigers, but he returned in time for the punctual private view: it was

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he who had snapped up, as Flora called it, the gem of the exhibi-tion. My hope for the girl’s future had slipped ignominiously off hisback, but after his purchase of the portrait I tried to cultivate a newfaith. The girl’s own faith was wonderful. It couldn’t however becontagious: too great was the limit of her sense of what painters callvalues. Her colours were laid on like blankets on a cold night. Howindeed could a person speak the truth who was always posturingand bragging? She was after all vulgar enough, and by the time Ihad mastered her profile and could almost with my eyes shut do itin a single line I was decidedly tired of its “purity,” which affectedme at last as inane. One moved with her, moreover, among phe-nomena mismated and unrelated; nothing in her talk ever matchedanything out of it. Lord Iffield was dying of love for her, but hisfamily was leading him a life. His mother, horrid woman, had toldsome one that she would rather he should be swallowed by a tigerthan marry a girl not absolutely one of themselves. He had given hisyoung friend unmistakable signs, but was lying low, gaining time: itwas in his father’s power to be, both in personal and in pecuniaryways, excessively nasty to him. His father wouldn’t last for ever—quite the contrary; and he knew how thoroughly, in spite of heryouth, her beauty and the swarm of her admirers, some of thempositively threatening in their passion, he could trust her to holdout. There were richer, cleverer men, there were greater personagestoo, but she liked her “little viscount” just as he was, and liked tothink that, bullied and persecuted, he had her there so gratefully torest upon. She came back to me with tale upon tale, and it all mightbe or mightn’t. I never met my pretty model in the world—shemoved, it appeared, in exalted circles—and could only admire, inher wealth of illustration, the grandeur of her life and the freedomof her hand.

I had on the first opportunity spoken to her of Geoffrey Dawling,and she had listened to my story so far as she had the art of such

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patience, asking me indeed more questions about him than I couldanswer; then she had capped my anecdote with others much morestriking, the disclosure of effects produced in the most extraordi-nary quarters: on people who had followed her into railway car-riages; guards and porters even who had literally stuck there; otherswho had spoken to her in shops and hung about her house door;cabmen, upon her honour, in London, who, to gaze their fill at her,had found excuses to thrust their petrifaction through the very glassesof four-wheelers. She lost herself in these reminiscences, the moralof which was that poor Mr. Dawling was only one of a million.When therefore the next autumn she flourished into my studio withher odd companion at her heels her first care was to make clear tome that if he was now in servitude it wasn’t because she had runafter him. Dawling explained with a hundred grins that when onewished very much to get anything one usually ended by doing so—a proposition which led me wholly to dissent and our young lady toasseverate that she hadn’t in the least wished to get Mr. Dawling.She mightn’t have wished to get him, but she wished to show him,and I seemed to read that if she could treat him as a trophy heraffairs were rather at the ebb. True there always hung from her belta promiscuous fringe of scalps. Much at any rate would have comeand gone since our separation in July. She had spent four monthsabroad, where, on Swiss and Italian lakes, in German cities, in theFrench capital, many accidents might have happened.

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CHAPTER V

I HAD BEEN AGAIN with my mother, but except Mrs. Meldrum andthe gleam of France had not found at Folkestone my old resourcesand pastimes. Mrs. Meldrum, much edified by my report of theperformances, as she called them, in my studio, had told me that toher knowledge Flora would soon be on the straw: she had cut fromher capital such fine fat slices that there was almost nothing moreleft to swallow. Perched on her breezy cliff the good lady dazzled meas usual by her universal light: she knew so much more about every-thing and everybody than I could ever squeeze out of my colour-tubes. She knew that Flora was acting on system and absolutelydeclined to be interfered with: her precious reasoning was that hermoney would last as long as she should need it, that a magnificentmarriage would crown her charms before she should be reallypinched. She had a sum put by for a liberal outfit; meanwhile theproper use of the rest was to decorate her for the approaches to thealtar, keep her afloat in the society in which she would most natu-rally meet her match. Lord Iffield had been seen with her at Lucerne,at Cadenabbia; but it was Mrs. Meldrum’s conviction that nothingwas to be expected of him but the most futile flirtation. The girl hada certain hold of him, but with a great deal of swagger he hadn’t thespirit of a sheep: he was in fear of his father and would never com-mit himself in Lord Considine’s lifetime. The most Flora mightachieve was that he wouldn’t marry some one else. Geoffrey Dawling,to Mrs. Meldrum’s knowledge (I had told her of the young man’s

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visit) had attached himself on the way back from Italy to theHammond Synge group. My informant was in a position to be defi-nite about this dangler; she knew about his people; she had heard ofhim before. Hadn’t he been a friend of one of her nephews at Ox-ford? Hadn’t he spent the Christmas holidays precisely three yearsbefore at her brother-in-law’s in Yorkshire, taking that occasion toget himself refused with derision by wilful Betty, the second daugh-ter of the house? Her sister, who liked the floundering youth, hadwritten to her to complain of Betty, and that the young man shouldnow turn up as an appendage of Flora’s was one of those oft-citedproofs that the world is small and that there are not enough peopleto go round. His father had been something or other in the Trea-sury; his grandfather on the mother’s side had been something orother in the Church. He had come into the paternal estate, two orthree thousand a year in Hampshire; but he had let the place advan-tageously and was generous to four plain sisters who lived atBournemouth and adored him. The family was hideous all round,but the very salt of the earth. He was supposed to be unspeakablyclever; he was fond of London, fond of books, of intellectual societyand of the idea of a political career. That such a man should be atthe same time fond of Flora Saunt attested, as the phrase in the firstvolume of Gibbon has it, the variety of his inclinations. I was soonto learn that he was fonder of her than of all the other things to-gether. Betty, one of five and with views above her station, was atany rate felt at home to have dished herself by her perversity. Ofcourse no one had looked at her since and no one would ever lookat her again. It would be eminently desirable that Flora should learnthe lesson of Betty’s fate.

I was not struck, I confess, with all this in my mind, by any symp-tom on our young lady’s part of that sort of meditation. The onemoral she saw in anything was that of her incomparable aspect,which Mr. Dawling, smitten even like the railway porters and the

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cabmen by the doom-dealing gods, had followed from London toVenice and from Venice back to London again. I afterwards learnedthat her version of this episode was profusely inexact: his personalacquaintance with her had been determined by an accident remark-able enough, I admit, in connexion with what had gone before—acoincidence at all events superficially striking. At Munich, return-ing from a tour in the Tyrol with two of his sisters, he had foundhimself at the table d’hote of his inn opposite to the full present-ment of that face of which the mere clumsy copy had made himdream and desire. He had been tossed by it to a height so vertigi-nous as to involve a retreat from the board; but the next day he haddropped with a resounding thud at the very feet of his apparition.On the following, with an equal incoherence, a sacrifice even of hisbewildered sisters, whom he left behind, he made an heroic effort toescape by flight from a fate of which he had already felt the coldbreath. That fate, in London, very little later, drove him straightbefore it—drove him one Sunday afternoon, in the rain, to the doorof the Hammond Synges. He marched in other words close up tothe cannon that was to blow him to pieces. But three weeks, whenhe reappeared to me, had elapsed since then, yet (to vary my meta-phor) the burden he was to carry for the rest of his days was firmlylashed to his back. I don’t mean by this that Flora had been per-suaded to contract her scope; I mean that he had been treated to theunconditional snub which, as the event was to show, couldn’t havebeen bettered as a means of securing him. She hadn’t calculated, butshe had said “Never!” and that word had made a bed big enough forhis long-legged patience. He became from this moment to my mindthe interesting figure in the piece.

Now that he had acted without my aid I was free to show himthis, and having on his own side something to show me he repeat-edly knocked at my door. What he brought with him on these occa-sions was a simplicity so huge that, as I turn my ear to the past, I

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seem even now to hear it bumping up and down my stairs. That wasreally what I saw of him in the light of his behaviour. He had fallenin love as he might have broken his leg, and the fracture was of asort that would make him permanently lame. It was the whole manwho limped and lurched, with nothing of him left in the same po-sition as before. The tremendous cleverness, the literary society, thepolitical ambition, the Bournemouth sisters all seemed to flop withhis every movement a little nearer to the floor. I hadn’t had an Ox-ford training and I had never encountered the great man at whosefeet poor Dawling had most submissively sat and who had addressedhim his most destructive sniffs; but I remember asking myself howeffectively this privilege had supposed itself to prepare him for thecareer on which my friend appeared now to have embarked. I re-member too making up my mind about the cleverness, which hadits uses and I suppose in impenetrable shades even its critics, butfrom which the friction of mere personal intercourse was not thesort of process to extract a revealing spark. He accepted without aquestion both his fever and his chill, and the only thing he touchedwith judgment was this convenience of my friendship. He doubt-less told me his simple story, but the matter comes back in a kind ofsense of my being rather the mouthpiece, of my having had to put ittogether for him. He took it from me in this form without a groan,and I gave it him quite as it came; he took it again and again, spend-ing his odd half-hours with me as if for the very purpose of learninghow idiotically he was in love. He told me I made him see things: tobegin with, hadn’t I first made him see Flora Saunt? I wanted him togive her up and lucidly informed him why; on which he never pro-tested nor contradicted, never was even so alembicated as to declarejust for the sake of the point that he wouldn’t. He simply and point-lessly didn’t, and when at the end of three months I asked him whatwas the use of talking with such a fellow his nearest approach to ajustification was to say that what made him want to help her was

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just the deficiencies I dwelt on. I could only reply without grossdevelopments: “Oh if you’re as sorry for her as that!” I too was nearlyas sorry for her as that, but it only led me to be sorrier still for othervictims of this compassion. With Dawling as with me the compas-sion was at first in excess of any visible motive; so that when eventu-ally the motive was supplied each could to a certain extent compli-ment the other on the fineness of his foresight.

After he had begun to haunt my studio Miss Saunt quite gave itup, and I finally learned that she accused me of conspiring with himto put pressure on her to marry him. She didn’t know I would takeit that way, else she would never have brought him to see me. It wasin her view a part of the conspiracy that to show him a kindness Iasked him at last to sit to me. I dare say moreover she was disgustedto hear that I had ended by attempting almost as many sketches ofhis beauty as I had attempted of hers. What was the value of trib-utes to beauty by a hand that could so abase itself? My relation topoor Dawling’s want of modelling was simple enough. I was reallydigging in that sandy desert for the buried treasure of his soul.

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CHAPTER VI

IT BEFELL AT THIS PERIOD, just before Christmas, that on my havinggone under pressure of the season into a great shop to buy a toy ortwo, my eyes fleeing from superfluity, lighted at a distance on thebright concretion of Flora Saunt, an exhibitability that held its owneven against the most plausible pinkness of the most developed dolls.A huge quarter of the place, the biggest bazaar “on earth,” waspeopled with these and other effigies and fantasies, as well as withpurchasers and vendors haggard alike, in the blaze of the gas, withhesitations. I was just about to appeal to Flora to avert that stage ofmy errand when I saw that she was accompanied by a gentlemanwhose identity, though more than a year had elapsed, came back tome from the Folkestone cliff. It had been associated on that scenewith showy knickerbockers; at present it overflowed more splen-didly into a fur-trimmed overcoat. Lord Iffield’s presence made mewaver an instant before crossing over, and during that instant Flora,blank and undistinguishing, as if she too were after all weary ofalternatives, looked straight across at me. I was on the point of rais-ing my hat to her when I observed that her face gave no sign. I wasexactly in the line of her vision, but she either didn’t see me or didn’trecognise me, or else had a reason to pretend she didn’t. Was herreason that I had displeased her and that she wished to punish me?I had always thought it one of her merits that she wasn’t vindictive.She at any rate simply looked away; and at this moment one of theshop-girls, who had apparently gone off in search of it, bustled up

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to her with a small mechanical toy. It so happened that I followedclosely what then took place, afterwards recognising that I had beenled to do so, led even through the crowd to press nearer for thepurpose, by an impression of which in the act I was not fully con-scious.

Flora with the toy in her hand looked round at her companion;then seeing his attention had been solicited in another quarter shemoved away with the shop-girl, who had evidently offered to con-duct her into the presence of more objects of the same sort. Whenshe reached the indicated spot I was in a position still to observeher. She had asked some question about the working of the toy, andthe girl, taking it herself, began to explain the little secret. Florabent her head over it, but she clearly didn’t understand. I saw her, ina manner that quickened my curiosity, give a glance back at theplace from which she had come. Lord Iffield was talking with an-other young person; she satisfied herself of this by the aid of a ques-tion addressed to her own attendant. She then drew closer to thetable near which she stood and, turning her back to me, bent herhead lower over the collection of toys and more particularly overthe small object the girl had attempted to explain. She took it againand, after a moment, with her face well averted, made an odd mo-tion of her arms and a significant little duck of her head. Theseslight signs, singular as it may appear, produced in my bosom anagitation so great that I failed to notice Lord Iffield’s whereabouts.He had rejoined her; he was close upon her before I knew it orbefore she knew it herself. I felt at that instant the strangest of allpromptings: if it could have operated more rapidly it would havecaused me to dash between them in some such manner as to giveFlora a caution. In fact as it was I think I could have done this intime had I not been checked by a curiosity stronger still than myimpulse. There were three seconds during which I saw the youngman and yet let him come on. Didn’t I make the quick calculation

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that if he didn’t catch what Flora was doing I too might perhaps notcatch it? She at any rate herself took the alarm. On perceiving hercompanion’s nearness she made, still averted, another duck of herhead and a shuffle of her hands so precipitate that a little tin steam-boat she had been holding escaped from them and rattled down tothe floor with a sharpness that I hear at this hour. Lord Iffield hadalready seized her arm; with a violent jerk he brought her roundtoward him. Then it was that there met my eyes a quite distressingsight: this exquisite creature, blushing, glaring, exposed, with a pairof big black-rimmed eye-glasses, defacing her by their position,crookedly astride of her beautiful nose. She made a grab at themwith her free hand while I turned confusedly away.

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CHAPTER VII

I DON’T REMEMBER how soon it was I spoke to Geoffrey Dawling;his sittings were irregular, but it was certainly the very next time hegave me one.

“Has any rumour ever reached you of Miss Saunt’s having any-thing the matter with her eyes?” He stared with a candour that wasa sufficient answer to my question, backing it up with a shockedand mystified “Never!” Then I asked him if he had observed in herany symptom, however disguised, of embarrassed sight; on which,after a moment’s thought, he exclaimed “Disguised?” as if my use ofthat word had vaguely awakened a train. “She’s not a bit myopic,”he said; “she doesn’t blink or contract her lids.” I fully recognisedthis and I mentioned that she altogether denied the impeachment;owing it to him moreover to explain the ground of my inquiry, Igave him a sketch of the incident that had taken place before me atthe shop. He knew all about Lord Iffield; that nobleman had fig-ured freely in our conversation as his preferred, his injurious rival.Poor Dawling’s contention was that if there had been a definite en-gagement between his lordship and the young lady, the sort of thingthat was announced in the Morning Post, renunciation and retire-ment would be comparatively easy to him; but that having waitedin vain for any such assurance he was entitled to act as if the doorwere not really closed or were at any rate not cruelly locked. He wasnaturally much struck with my anecdote and still more with myinterpretation of it.

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“There is something, there is something—possibly something verygrave, certainly something that requires she should make use of ar-tificial aids. She won’t admit it publicly, because with her idolatry ofher beauty, the feeling she is all made up of, she sees in such aidsnothing but the humiliation and the disfigurement. She has usedthem in secret, but that is evidently not enough, for the affectionshe suffers from, apparently some definite menace, has lately grownmuch worse. She looked straight at me in the shop, which was vio-lently lighted, without seeing it was I. At the same distance, atFolkestone, where as you know I first met her, where I heard thismystery hinted at and where she indignantly denied the thing, sheappeared easily enough to recognise people. At present she couldn’treally make out anything the shop-girl showed her. She has success-fully concealed from the man I saw her with that she resorts in privateto a pince-nez and that she does so not only under the strictest ordersfrom her oculist, but because literally the poor thing can’t accomplishwithout such help half the business of life. Iffield however has sus-pected something, and his suspicions, whether expressed or kept tohimself, have put him on the watch. I happened to have a glimpse ofthe movement at which he pounced on her and caught her in theact.”

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

“Was he rough with her?” he anxiously asked.“How can I tell what passed between them? I fled from the place.”My companion stared. “Do you mean to say her eyesight’s go-

ing?”“Heaven forbid! In that case how could she take life as she does?”“How does she take life? That’s the question!” He sat there

bewilderedly brooding; the tears rose to his lids; they reminded meof those I had seen in Flora’s the day I risked my enquiry. The ques-tion he had asked was one that to my own satisfaction I was ready to

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answer, but I hesitated to let him hear as yet all that my reflectionshad suggested. I was indeed privately astonished at their ingenuity.For the present I only rejoined that it struck me she was playing aparticular game; at which he went on as if he hadn’t heard me, sud-denly haunted with a fear, lost in the dark possibility. “Do you meanthere’s a danger of anything very bad?”

“My dear fellow, you must ask her special adviser.”“Who in the world is her special adviser?”“I haven’t a conception. But we mustn’t get too excited. My impres-

sion would be that she has only to observe a few ordinary rules, toexercise a little common sense.”

Dawling jumped at this. “I see—to stick to the pince-nez.”“To follow to the letter her oculist’s prescription, whatever it is

and at whatever cost to her prettiness. It’s not a thing to be trifledwith.”

“Upon my honour it shan’t be!” he roundly declared; and he ad-justed himself to his position again as if we had quite settled thebusiness. After a considerable interval, while I botched away, hesuddenly said: “Did they make a great difference?”

“A great difference?”“Those things she had put on.”“Oh the glasses—in her beauty? She looked queer of course, but

it was partly because one was unaccustomed. There are women wholook charming in nippers. What, at any rate, if she does look queer?She must be mad not to accept that alternative.”

“She is mad,” said Geoffrey Dawling.“Mad to refuse you, I grant. Besides,” I went on, “the pince-nez,

which was a large and peculiar one, was all awry: she had half pulledit off, but it continued to stick, and she was crimson, she was an-gry.”

“It must have been horrible!” my companion groaned.“It was horrible. But it’s still more horrible to defy all warnings;

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it’s still more horrible to be landed in—” Without saying in what Idisgustedly shrugged my shoulders.

After a glance at me Dawling jerked round. “Then you do believethat she may be?”

I hesitated. “The thing would be to make her believe it. She onlyneeds a good scare.”

“But if that fellow is shocked at the precautions she does take?”“Oh who knows?” I rejoined with small sincerity. “I don’t sup-

pose Iffield is absolutely a brute.”“I would take her with leather blinders, like a shying mare!” cried

Geoffrey Dawling.I had an impression that Iffield wouldn’t, but I didn’t communi-

cate it, for I wanted to pacify my friend, whom I had discomposedtoo much for the purposes of my sitting. I recollect that I did somegood work that morning, but it also comes back to me that beforewe separated he had practically revealed to me that my anecdote,connecting itself in his mind with a series of observations at thetime unconscious and unregistered, had covered with light the sub-ject of our colloquy. He had had a formless perception of somesecret that drove Miss Saunt to subterfuges, and the more he thoughtof it the more he guessed this secret to be the practice of makingbelieve she saw when she didn’t and of cleverly keeping people fromfinding out how little she saw. When one pieced things together itwas astonishing what ground they covered. Just as he was goingaway he asked me from what source at Folkestone the horrid talehad proceeded. When I had given him, as I saw no reason not to do,the name of Mrs. Meldrum he exclaimed: “Oh I know all abouther; she’s a friend of some friends of mine!” At this I rememberedwilful Betty and said to myself that I knew some one who wouldprobably prove more wilful still.

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CHAPTER VIII

A FEW DAYS LATER I again heard Dawling on my stairs, and evenbefore he passed my threshold I knew he had something to tell.

“I’ve been down to Folkestone—it was necessary I should see her!”I forget whether he had come straight from the station; he was atany rate out of breath with his news, which it took me however aminute to apply.

“You mean that you’ve been with Mrs. Meldrum?”“Yes, to ask her what she knows and how she comes to know it. It

worked upon me awfully—I mean what you told me.” He made avisible effort to seem quieter than he was, and it showed me suffi-ciently that he had not been reassured. I laid, to comfort him andsmiling at a venture, a friendly hand on his arm, and he droppedinto my eyes, fixing them an instant, a strange distended look whichmight have expressed the cold clearness of all that was to come. “Iknow—now!” he said with an emphasis he rarely used.

“What then did Mrs. Meldrum tell you?”“Only one thing that signified, for she has no real knowledge. But

that one thing was everything.”“What is it then?”“Why, that she can’t bear the sight of her.” His pronouns required

some arranging, but after I had successfully dealt with them I re-plied that I was quite aware of Miss Saunt’s trick of turning her backon the good lady of Folkestone. Only what did that prove? “Haveyou never guessed? I guessed as soon as she spoke!” Dawling tow-

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ered over me in dismal triumph. It was the first time in our acquain-tance that, on any ground of understanding this had occurred; buteven so remarkable an incident still left me sufficiently at sea tocause him to continue: “Why, the effect of those spectacles!”

I seemed to catch the tail of his idea. “Mrs. Meldrum’s?”“They’re so awfully ugly and they add so to the dear woman’s

ugliness.” This remark began to flash a light, and when he quicklyadded “She sees herself, she sees her own fate!” my response was soimmediate that I had almost taken the words out of his mouth.While I tried to fix this sudden image of Flora’s face glazed in andcross-barred even as Mrs. Meldrum’s was glazed and barred, he wenton to assert that only the horror of that image, looming out at her-self, could be the reason of her avoiding the person who so forced ithome. The fact he had encountered made everything hideously vivid,and more vivid than anything else that just such another pair ofgoggles was what would have been prescribed to Flora.

“I see—I see,” I presently returned. “What would become of LordIffield if she were suddenly to come out in them? What indeed wouldbecome of every one, what would become of everything?” This wasan enquiry that Dawling was evidently unprepared to meet, and Icompleted it by saying at last: “My dear fellow, for that matter, whatwould become of you?”

Once more he turned on me his good green eyes. “Oh I shouldn’tmind!”

The tone of his words somehow made his ugly face beautiful, andI discovered at this moment how much I really liked him. None theless, at the same time, perversely and rudely, I felt the droll side ofour discussion of such alternatives. It made me laugh out and say tohim while I laughed: “You’d take her even with those things of Mrs.Meldrum’s?”

He remained mournfully grave; I could see that he was surprisedat my rude mirth. But he summoned back a vision of the lady at

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Folkestone and conscientiously replied: “Even with those things ofMrs. Meldrum’s.” I begged him not to resent my laughter, whichbut exposed the fact that we had built a monstrous castle in the air.Didn’t he see on what flimsy ground the structure rested? The evi-dence was preposterously small. He believed the worst, but we werereally uninformed.

“I shall find out the truth,” he promptly replied.“How can you? If you question her you’ll simply drive her to

perjure herself. Wherein after all does it concern you to know thetruth? It’s the girl’s own affair.”

“Then why did you tell me your story?”I was a trifle embarrassed. “To warn you off,” I smiled. He took

no more notice of these words than presently to remark that LordIffield had no serious intentions. “Very possibly,” I said. “But youmustn’t speak as if Lord Iffield and you were her only alternatives.”

Dawling thought a moment. “Couldn’t something be got out ofthe people she has consulted? She must have been to people. Howelse can she have been condemned?”

“Condemned to what? Condemned to perpetual nippers? Ofcourse she has consulted some of the big specialists, but she hasdone it, you may be sure, in the most clandestine manner; andeven if it were supposable that they would tell you anything—which I altogether doubt—you would have great difficulty in find-ing out which men they are. Therefore leave it alone; never showher what you suspect.”

I even before he quitted me asked him to promise me this. “Allright, I promise”—but he was gloomy enough. He was a lover fac-ing the fact that there was no limit to the deceit his loved one wasready to practise: it made so remarkably little difference. I could seeby what a stretch his passionate pity would from this moment over-look the girl’s fatuity and folly. She was always accessible to him—that I knew; for if she had told him he was an idiot to dream she

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could dream of him, she would have rebuked the imputation ofhaving failed to make it clear that she would always be glad to re-gard him as a friend. What were most of her friends—what were allof them—but repudiated idiots? I was perfectly aware that in herconversations and confidences I myself for instance had a niche inthe gallery. As regards poor Dawling I knew how often he still calledon the Hammond Synges. It was not there but under the wing ofthe Floyd-Taylors that her intimacy with Lord Iffield most flour-ished. At all events, when a week after the visit I have just summarisedFlora’s name was one morning brought up to me, I jumped at theconclusion that Dawling had been with her, and even I fear brieflyentertained the thought that he had broken his word.

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CHAPTER IX

SHE LEFT ME, after she had been introduced, in no suspense abouther present motive; she was on the contrary in a visible fever toenlighten me; but I promptly learned that for the alarm with whichshe pitiably panted our young man was not accountable. She hadbut one thought in the world, and that thought was for Lord Iffield.I had the strangest saddest scene with her, and if it did me no othergood it at least made me at last completely understand why insidi-ously, from the first, she had struck me as a creature of tragedy. Inshowing me the whole of her folly it lifted the curtain of her misery.I don’t know how much she meant to tell me when she came—Ithink she had had plans of elaborate misrepresentation; at any rateshe found it at the end of ten minutes the simplest way to breakdown and sob, to be wretched and true. When she had once begunto let herself go the movement took her off her feet; the relief of itwas like the cessation of a cramp. She shared in a word her longsecret, she shifted her sharp pain. She brought, I confess, tears tomy own eyes, tears of helpless tenderness for her helpless poverty.Her visit however was not quite so memorable in itself as in some ofits consequences, the most immediate of which was that I went thatafternoon to see Geoffrey Dawling, who had in those days rooms inWelbeck Street, where I presented myself at an hour late enough towarrant the supposition that he might have come in. He had notcome in, but he was expected, and I was invited to enter and waitfor him: a lady, I was informed, was already in his sitting-room. I

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hesitated, a little at a loss: it had wildly coursed through my brainthat the lady was perhaps Flora Saunt. But when I asked if she wereyoung and remarkably pretty I received so significant a “No sir!”that I risked an advance and after a minute in this manner foundmyself, to my astonishment, face to face with Mrs. Meldrum.

“Oh you dear thing,” she exclaimed, “I’m delighted to see you:you spare me another compromising demarche! But for this I shouldhave called on you also. Know the worst at once: if you see me hereit’s at least deliberate—it’s planned, plotted, shameless. I came upon purpose to see him, upon my word I’m in love with him. Why, ifyou valued my peace of mind, did you let him the other day atFolkestone dawn upon my delighted eyes? I found myself there inhalf an hour simply infatuated with him. With a perfect sense of ev-erything that can be urged against him I hold him none the less thevery pearl of men. However, I haven’t come up to declare my pas-sion—I’ve come to bring him news that will interest him much more.Above all I’ve come to urge upon him to be careful.”

“About Flora Saunt?”“About what he says and does: he must be as still as a mouse! She’s

at last really engaged.”“But it’s a tremendous secret?” I was moved to mirth.“Precisely: she wired me this noon, and spent another shilling to

tell me that not a creature in the world is yet to know it.”“She had better have spent it to tell you that she had just passed

an hour with the creature you see before you.”“She has just passed an hour with every one in the place!” Mrs.

Meldrum cried. “They’ve vital reasons, she says, for it’s not comingout for a month. Then it will be formally announced, but mean-while her rejoicing is wild. I daresay Mr. Dawling already knows and,as it’s nearly seven o’clock, may have jumped off London Bridge. Butan effect of the talk I had with him the other day was to make me, onreceipt of my telegram, feel it to be my duty to warn him in person

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against taking action, so to call it, on the horrid certitude which Icould see he carried away with him. I had added somehow to thatcertitude. He told me what you had told him you had seen in yourshop.”

Mrs. Meldrum, I perceived, had come to Welbeck Street on anerrand identical with my own—a circumstance indicating her raresagacity, inasmuch as her ground for undertaking it was a very dif-ferent thing from what Flora’s wonderful visit had made of mine. Iremarked to her that what I had seen in the shop was sufficientlystriking, but that I had seen a great deal more that morning in mystudio. “In short,” I said, “I’ve seen everything.”

She was mystified. “Everything?”“The poor creature is under the darkest of clouds. Oh she came to

triumph, but she remained to talk something in the nature of sense!She put herself completely in my hands—she does me the honour tointimate that of all her friends I’m the most disinterested. After shehad announced to me that Lord Iffield was utterly committed to herand that for the present I was absolutely the only person in the secret,she arrived at her real business. She had had a suspicion of me eversince that day at Folkestone when I asked her for the truth about hereyes. The truth is what you and I both guessed. She’s in very baddanger.”

“But from what cause? I, who by God’s mercy have kept mine,know everything that can be known about eyes,” said Mrs. Meldrum.

“She might have kept hers if she had profited by God’s mercy, ifshe had done in time, done years ago, what was imperatively or-dered her; if she hadn’t in fine been cursed with the loveliness thatwas to make her behaviour a thing of fable. She may still keep hersight, or what remains of it, if she’ll sacrifice—and after all so little—that purely superficial charm. She must do as you’ve done; she mustwear, dear lady, what you wear!”

What my companion wore glittered for the moment like a melon-

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frame in August. “Heaven forgive her—now I understand!” Sheflushed for dismay.

But I wasn’t afraid of the effect on her good nature of her thusseeing, through her great goggles, why it had always been that Floraheld her at such a distance. “I can’t tell you,” I said, “from whatspecial affection, what state of the eye, her danger proceeds: that’sthe one thing she succeeded this morning in keeping from me. Sheknows it herself perfectly; she has had the best advice in Europe.‘It’s a thing that’s awful, simply awful’—that was the only accountshe would give me. Year before last, while she was at Boulogne, shewent for three days with Mrs. Floyd-Taylor to Paris. She there sur-reptitiously consulted the greatest man—even Mrs. Floyd-Taylordoesn’t know. Last autumn in Germany she did the same. ‘First puton certain special spectacles with a straight bar in the middle: thenwe’ll talk’—that’s practically what they say. What she says is thatshe’ll put on anything in nature when she’s married, but that shemust get married first. She has always meant to do everything assoon as she’s married. Then and then only she’ll be safe. How willany one ever look at her if she makes herself a fright? How could sheever have got engaged if she had made herself a fright from the first?It’s no use to insist that with her beauty she can never be a fright.She said to me this morning, poor girl, the most characteristic, themost harrowing things. ‘My face is all I have—and such a face! Iknew from the first I could do anything with it. But I needed itall—I need it still, every exquisite inch of it. It isn’t as if I had afigure or anything else. Oh if God had only given me a figure too, Idon’t say! Yes, with a figure, a really good one, like Fanny Floyd-Taylor’s, who’s hideous, I’d have risked plain glasses. Que voulez-vous? No one is perfect.’ She says she still has money left, but I don’tbelieve a word of it. She has been speculating on her impunity, onthe idea that her danger would hold off: she has literally been run-ning a race with it. Her theory has been, as you from the first so

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clearly saw, that she’d get in ahead. She swears to me that thoughthe ‘bar’ is too cruel she wears when she’s alone what she has beenordered to wear. But when the deuce is she alone? It’s herself ofcourse that she has swindled worst: she has put herself off, so in-sanely that even her conceit but half accounts for it, with little inad-equate concessions, little false measures and preposterous evasionsand childish hopes. Her great terror is now that Iffield, who alreadyhas suspicions, who has found out her pince-nez but whom she hasbeguiled with some unblushing hocus-pocus, may discover the dread-ful facts; and the essence of what she wanted this morning was inthat interest to square me, to get me to deny indignantly and au-thoritatively (for isn’t she my ‘favourite sitter?’) that she has any-thing in life the matter with any part of her. She sobbed, she ‘wenton,’ she entreated; after we got talking her extraordinary nerve lefther and she showed me what she has been through—showed mealso all her terror of the harm I could do her. ‘Wait till I’m married!wait till I’m married!’ She took hold of me, she almost sank on herknees. It seems to me highly immoral, one’s participation in herfraud; but there’s no doubt that she must be married: I don’t knowwhat I don’t see behind it! Therefore,” I wound up, “Dawling mustkeep his hands off.”

Mrs. Meldrum had held her breath; she gave out a long moan.“Well, that’s exactly what I came here to tell him.”

“Then here he is.” Our host, all unprepared, his latchkey still inhis hand, had just pushed open the door and, startled at finding us,turned a frightened look from one to the other, wondering whatdisaster we were there to announce or avert.

Mrs. Meldrum was on the spot all gaiety. “I’ve come to returnyour sweet visit. Ah,” she laughed, “I mean to keep up the acquain-tance!”

“Do—do,” he murmured mechanically and absently, continuingto look at us. Then he broke out: “He’s going to marry her.”

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I was surprised. “You already know?”He produced an evening paper, which he tossed down on the

table. “It’s in that.”“Published—already?” I was still more surprised.“Oh Flora can’t keep a secret!”—Mrs. Meldrum made it light.

She went up to poor Dawling and laid a motherly hand upon him.“It’s all right—it’s just as it ought to be: don’t think about her ever

any more.” Then as he met this adjuration with a stare from whichthought, and of the most defiant and dismal, fairly protruded, theexcellent woman put up her funny face and tenderly kissed him onthe cheek.

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CHAPTER X

I HAVE SPOKEN of these reminiscences as of a row of coloured beads,and I confess that as I continue to straighten out my chaplet I amrather proud of the comparison. The beads are all there, as I said—they slip along the string in their small smooth roundness. GeoffreyDawling accepted as a gentleman the event his evening paper hadproclaimed; in view of which I snatched a moment to nudge him ahint that he might offer Mrs. Meldrum his hand. He returned me aheavy head-shake, and I judged that marriage would henceforthstrike him very much as the traffic of the street may strike somepoor incurable at the window of an hospital. Circumstances arisingat this time led to my making an absence from England, and cir-cumstances already existing offered him a firm basis for similar ac-tion. He had after all the usual resource of a Briton—he could taketo his boats, always drawn up in our background. He started on ajourney round the globe, and I was left with nothing but my infer-ence as to what might have happened. Later observation howeveronly confirmed my belief that if at any time during the couple ofmonths after Flora Saunt’s brilliant engagement he had made up, asthey say, to the good lady of Folkestone, that good lady would nothave pushed him over the cliff. Strange as she was to behold I knewof cases in which she had been obliged to administer that shove. Iwent to New York to paint a couple of portraits; but I found, onceon the spot, that I had counted without Chicago, where I was in-vited to blot out this harsh discrimination by the production of

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some dozen. I spent a year in America and should probably havespent a second had I not been summoned back to England by alarm-ing news from my mother. Her strength had failed, and as soon as Ireached London I hurried down to Folkestone, arriving just at themoment to offer a welcome to some slight symptom of a rally. Shehad been much worse but was now a little better; and though Ifound nothing but satisfaction in having come to her I saw after afew hours that my London studio, where arrears of work had al-ready met me, would be my place to await whatever might nextoccur. Yet before returning to town I called on Mrs. Meldrum, fromwhom I had not had a line, and my view of whom, with the adja-cent objects, as I had left them, had been intercepted by a luxuriantforeground.

Before I had gained her house I met her, as I supposed, comingtoward me across the down, greeting me from afar with the familiartwinkle of her great vitreous badge; and as it was late in the autumnand the esplanade a blank I was free to acknowledge this signal bycutting a caper on the grass. My enthusiasm dropped indeed thenext moment, for I had seen in a few more seconds that the personthus assaulted had by no means the figure of my military friend. Ifelt a shock much greater than any I should have thought possiblewhen on this person’s drawing near I knew her for poor little FloraSaunt. At what moment she had recognised me belonged to an or-der of mysteries over which, it quickly came home to me, one wouldnever linger again: once we were face to face it so chiefly matteredthat I should succeed in looking entirely unastonished. All I at firstsaw was the big gold bar crossing each of her lenses, over whichsomething convex and grotesque, like the eyes of a large insect, some-thing that now represented her whole personality, seemed, as out ofthe orifice of a prison, to strain forward and press. The face hadshrunk away: it looked smaller, appeared even to look plain; it wasat all events, so far as the effect on a spectator was concerned, wholly

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sacrificed to this huge apparatus of sight. There was no smile in it,and she made no motion to take my offered hand.

“I had no idea you were down here!” I said and I wondered whethershe didn’t know me at all or knew me only by my voice.

“You thought I was Mrs. Meldrum,” she ever so quietly answered.It was just this low pitch that made me protest with laughter. “Oh

yes, you have a tremendous deal in common with Mrs. Meldrum!I’ve just returned to England after a long absence and I’m on myway to see her. Won’t you come with me?” It struck me that her oldreason for keeping clear of our friend was well disposed of now.

“I’ve just left her. I’m staying with her.” She stood solemnly fixingme with her goggles. “Would you like to paint me now?” she asked.She seemed to speak, with intense gravity, from behind a mask or acage.

There was nothing to do but treat the question still with highspirits. “It would be a fascinating little artistic problem!” That some-thing was wrong it wasn’t difficult to see, but a good deal more thanmet the eye might be presumed to be wrong if Flora was under Mrs.Meldrum’s roof. I hadn’t for a year had much time to think of her,but my imagination had had ground for lodging her in more gildedhalls. One of the last things I had heard before leaving England wasthat in commemoration of the new relationship she had gone tostay with Lady Considine. This had made me take everything elsefor granted, and the noisy American world had deafened my care topossible contradictions. Her spectacles were at present a direct con-tradiction; they seemed a negation not only of new relationshipsbut of every old one as well. I remember nevertheless that whenafter a moment she walked beside me on the grass I found myselfnervously hoping she wouldn’t as yet at any rate tell me anythingvery dreadful; so that to stave off this danger I harried her withquestions about Mrs. Meldrum and, without waiting for replies,became profuse on the subject of my own doings. My companion

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was finely silent, and I felt both as if she were watching my nervous-ness with a sort of sinister irony and as if I were talking to somedifferent and strange person. Flora plain and obscure and dumbwas no Flora at all. At Mrs. Meldrum’s door she turned off with theobservation that as there was certainly a great deal I should have tosay to our friend she had better not go in with me. I looked at heragain—I had been keeping my eyes away from her—but only tomeet her magnified stare. I greatly desired in truth to see Mrs.Meldrum alone, but there was something so grim in the girl’s troublethat I hesitated to fall in with this idea of dropping her. Yet onecouldn’t express a compassion without seeming to take for grantedmore trouble than there actually might have been. I reflected that Imust really figure to her as a fool, which was an entertainment I hadnever expected to give her. It rolled over me there for the first time—it has come back to me since—that there is, wondrously, in verydeep and even in very foolish misfortune a dignity still finer than inthe most inveterate habit of being all right. I couldn’t have to herthe manner of treating it as a mere detail that I was face to face witha part of what, at our last meeting, we had had such a scene about;but while I was trying to think of some manner that I could have shesaid quite colourlessly, though somehow as if she might never seeme again: “Good-bye. I’m going to take my walk.”

“All alone?”She looked round the great bleak cliff-top. “With whom should I

go? Besides I like to be alone—for the present.”This gave me the glimmer of a vision that she regarded her disfig-

urement as temporary, and the confidence came to me that she wouldnever, for her happiness, cease to be a creature of illusions. It en-abled me to exclaim, smiling brightly and feeling indeed idiotic:“Oh I shall see you again! But I hope you’ll have a very pleasantwalk.”

“All my walks are pleasant, thank you—they do me such a lot of

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good.” She was as quiet as a mouse, and her words seemed to mestupendous in their wisdom. “I take several a day,” she continued.She might have been an ancient woman responding with humilityat the church door to the patronage of the parson. “The more I takethe better I feel. I’m ordered by the doctors to keep all the while inthe air and go in for plenty of exercise. It keeps up my general health,you know, and if that goes on improving as it has lately done every-thing will soon be all right. All that was the matter with me be-fore—and always; it was too reckless!—was that I neglected my gen-eral health. It acts directly on the state of the particular organ. SoI’m going three miles.”

I grinned at her from the doorstep while Mrs. Meldrum’s maidstood there to admit me. “Oh I’m so glad,” I said, looking at her asshe paced away with the pretty flutter she had kept and remember-ing the day when, while she rejoined Lord Iffield, I had indulged inthe same observation. Her air of assurance was on this occasion notless than it had been on that; but I recalled that she had then struckme as marching off to her doom. Was she really now marching awayfrom it?

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CHAPTER XI

AS SOON AS I saw Mrs. Meldrum I of course broke out. “Is thereanything in it? Is her general health—?”

Mrs. Meldrum checked me with her great amused blare. “You’vealready seen her and she has told you her wondrous tale? What’s ‘init’ is what has been in everything she has ever done—the most comi-cal, tragical belief in herself. She thinks she’s doing a ‘cure.’”

“And what does her husband think?”“Her husband? What husband?”“Hasn’t she then married Lord Iffield?”“Vous-en-etes le?” cried my hostess. “Why he behaved like a regular

beast.”“How should I know? You never wrote me.” Mrs. Meldrum hesi-

tated, covering me with what poor Flora called the particular organ.“No, I didn’t write you—I abstained on purpose. If I kept quiet Ithought you mightn’t hear over there what had happened. If youshould hear I was afraid you would stir up Mr. Dawling.”

“Stir him up?”“Urge him to fly to the rescue; write out to him that there was

another chance for him.”“I wouldn’t have done it,” I said.“Well,” Mrs. Meldrum replied, “it was not my business to give

you an opportunity.”“In short you were afraid of it.”Again she hesitated and though it may have been only my fancy I

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thought she considerably reddened. At all events she laughed out.Then “I was afraid of it!” she very honestly answered.

“But doesn’t he know? Has he given no sign?”“Every sign in life—he came straight back to her. He did every-

thing to get her to listen to him, but she hasn’t the smallest idea of it.”“Has he seen her as she is now?” I presently and just a trifle awk-

wardly enquired.“Indeed he has, and borne it like a hero. He told me all about it.”“How much you’ve all been through!” I found occasion to re-

mark. “Then what has become of him?”“He’s at home in Hampshire. He has got back his old place and I

believe by this time his old sisters. It’s not half a bad little place.”“Yet its attractions say nothing to Flora?”“Oh Flora’s by no means on her back!” my fried declared.“She’s not on her back because she’s on yours. Have you got her

for the rest of your life?”Once more Mrs. Meldrum genially glared. “Did she tell you how

much the Hammond Synges have kindly left her to live on? Notquite eighty pounds a year.”

“That’s a good deal, but it won’t pay the oculist. What was it thatat last induced her to submit to him?”

“Her general collapse after that brute of an Iffield’s rupture. Shecried her eyes out—she passed through a horror of black darkness.Then came a gleam of light, and the light appears to have broad-ened. She went into goggles as repentant Magdalens go into theCatholic church.”

“In spite of which you don’t think she’ll be saved?”“She thinks she will—that’s all I can tell you. There’s no doubt

that when once she brought herself to accept her real remedy, as shecalls it, she began to enjoy a relief that she had never known. Thatfeeling, very new and in spite of what she pays for it most refreshing,has given her something to hold on by, begotten in her foolish little

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mind a belief that, as she says, she’s on the mend and that in thecourse of time, if she leads a tremendously healthy life, she’ll be ableto take off her muzzle and become as dangerous again as ever. It keepsher going.”

“And what keeps you? You’re good until the parties begin again.”“Oh she doesn’t object to me now!” smiled Mrs. Meldrum. “I’m

going to take her abroad; we shall be a pretty pair.” I was struckwith this energy and after a moment I enquired the reason of it. “It’sto divert her mind,” my friend replied, reddening again a little, Ithought. “We shall go next week: I’ve only waited to see how yourmother would be before starting.” I expressed to her hereupon mysense of her extraordinary merit and also that of the inconceivabil-ity of Flora’s fancying herself still in a situation not to jump at thechance of marrying a man like Dawling. “She says he’s too ugly; shesays he’s too dreary; she says in fact he’s ‘nobody,’” Mrs. Meldrumpursued. “She says above all that he’s not ‘her own sort.’ She doesn’tdeny that he’s good, but she finds him impossibly ridiculous. He’squite the last person she would ever dream of.” I was almost dis-posed on hearing this to protest that if the girl had so little properfeeling her noble suitor had perhaps served her right; but after awhile my curiosity as to just how her noble suitor had served her gotthe better of that emotion, and I asked a question or two which ledmy companion again to apply to him the invidious term I havealready quoted. What had happened was simply that Flora had atthe eleventh hour broken down in the attempt to put him off withan uncandid account of her infirmity and that his lordship’s interestin her had not been proof against the discovery of the way she hadpractised on him. Her dissimulation, he was obliged to perceive,had been infernally deep. The future in short assumed a new com-plexion for him when looked at through the grim glasses of a bridewho, as he had said to some one, couldn’t really, when you came tofind out, see her hand before her face. He had conducted himself

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like any other jockeyed customer—he had returned the animal asunsound. He had backed out in his own way, giving the business,by some sharp shuffle, such a turn as to make the rupture ostensiblyFlora’s, but he had none the less remorselessly and basely backedout. He had cared for her lovely face, cared for it in the amused andhaunted way it had been her poor little delusive gift to make mencare; and her lovely face, damn it, with the monstrous gear she hadbegun to rig upon it, was just what had let him in. He had in thejudgment of his family done everything that could be expected ofhim; he had made—Mrs. Meldrum had herself seen the letter—a“handsome” offer of pecuniary compensation. Oh if Flora, with herincredible buoyancy, was in a manner on her feet again now it wasnot that she had not for weeks and weeks been prone in the dust.Strange were the humiliations, the forms of anguish, it was givensome natures to survive. That Flora had survived was perhaps afterall a proof she was reserved for some final mercy. “But she has beenin the abysses at any rate,” said Mrs. Meldrum, “and I really don’tthink I can tell you what pulled her through.”

“I think I can tell you,” I returned. “What in the world but Mrs.Meldrum?”

At the end of an hour Flora had not come in, and I was obliged toannounce that I should have but time to reach the station, where Iwas to find my luggage in charge of my mother’s servant. Mrs.Meldrum put before me the question of waiting till a later train, soas not to lose our young lady, but I confess I gave this alternative aconsideration less acute than I pretended. Somehow I didn’t care ifI did lose our young lady. Now that I knew the worst that hadbefallen her it struck me still less as possible to meet her on theground of condolence; and with the sad appearance she wore to mewhat other ground was left? I lost her, but I caught my train. Intruth she was so changed that one hated to see it; and now that shewas in charitable hands one didn’t feel compelled to make great

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efforts. I had studied her face for a particular beauty; I had livedwith that beauty and reproduced it; but I knew what belonged tomy trade well enough to be sure it was gone for ever.

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CHAPTER XII

I WAS SOON CALLED BACK to Folkestone; but Mrs. Meldrum and heryoung friend had already left England, finding to that end everyconvenience on the spot and not having had to come up to town.My thoughts however were so painfully engaged there that I shouldin any case have had little attention for them: the event occurredthat was to bring my series of visits to a close. When this high tidehad ebbed I returned to America and to my interrupted work, whichhad opened out on such a scale that, with a deep plunge into a greatchance, I was three good years in rising again to the surface. Thereare nymphs and naiads moreover in the American depths: they mayhave had something to do with the duration of my dive. I mentionthem to account for a grave misdemeanor—the fact that after thefirst year I rudely neglected Mrs. Meldrum. She had written to mefrom Florence after my mother’s death and had mentioned in apostscript that in our young lady’s calculations the lowest figureswere now Italian counts. This was a good omen, and if in subse-quent letters there was no news of a sequel I was content to acceptsmall things and to believe that grave tidings, should there be any,would come to me in due course. The gravity of what might hap-pen to a featherweight became indeed with time and distance lessappreciable, and I was not without an impression that Mrs. Meldrum,whose sense of proportion was not the least of her merits, had noidea of boring the world with the ups and downs of her pensioner.The poor girl grew dusky and dim, a small fitful memory, a regret

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tempered by the comfortable consciousness of how kind Mrs.Meldrum would always be to her. I was professionally more preoc-cupied than I had ever been, and I had swarms of pretty faces in myeyes and a chorus of loud tones in my ears. Geoffrey Dawling hadon his return to England written me two or three letters: his lastinformation had been that he was going into the figures of ruralilliteracy. I was delighted to receive it and had no doubt that if heshould go into figures they would, as they are said to be able toprove anything, prove at least that my advice was sound and that hehad wasted time enough. This quickened on my part another hope,a hope suggested by some roundabout rumour—I forget how itreached me—that he was engaged to a girl down in Hampshire. Heturned out not to be, but I felt sure that if only he went into figuresdeep enough he would become, among the girls down in Hamp-shire or elsewhere, one of those numerous prizes of battle whosedefences are practically not on the scale of their provocations. I nursedin short the thought that it was probably open to him to develop asone of the types about whom, as the years go on, superficial criticswonder without relief how they ever succeeded in dragging a brideto the altar. He never alluded to Flora Saunt; and there was in hissilence about her, quite as in Mrs. Meldrum’s, an element of instinc-tive tact, a brief implication that if you didn’t happen to have beenin love with her there was nothing to be said.

Within a week after my return to London I went to the opera, ofwhich I had always been much of a devotee. I arrived too late forthe first act of “Lohengrin,” but the second was just beginning, andI gave myself up to it with no more than a glance at the house.When it was over I treated myself, with my glass, from my place inthe stalls, to a general survey of the boxes, making doubtless ontheir contents the reflections, pointed by comparison, that are mostfamiliar to the wanderer restored to London. There was the com-mon sprinkling of pretty women, but I suddenly noted that one of

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these was far prettier than the others. This lady, alone in one of thesmaller receptacles of the grand tier and already the aim of fiftytentative glasses, which she sustained with admirable serenity, thissingle exquisite figure, placed in the quarter furthest removed frommy stall, was a person, I immediately felt, to cause one’s curiosity tolinger. Dressed in white, with diamonds in her hair and pearls onher neck, she had a pale radiance of beauty which even at that dis-tance made her a distinguished presence and, with the air that easilyattaches to lonely loveliness in public places, an agreeable mystery.A mystery however she remained to me only for a minute after Ihad levelled my glass at her: I feel to this moment the startled thrill,the shock almost of joy, with which I translated her vague bright-ness into a resurrection of Flora. I say a resurrection, because, to putit crudely, I had on that last occasion left our young woman fordead. At present perfectly alive again, she was altered only, as itwere, by this fact of life. A little older, a little quieter, a little finerand a good deal fairer, she was simply transfigured by having recov-ered. Sustained by the reflection that even her recovery wouldn’tenable her to distinguish me in the crowd, I was free to look at herwell. Then it was it came home to me that my vision of her in hergreat goggles had been cruelly final. As her beauty was all there wasof her, that machinery had extinguished her, and so far as I hadthought of her in the interval I had thought of her as buried in thetomb her stern specialist had built. With the sense that she hadescaped from it came a lively wish to return to her; and if I didn’tstraightway leave my place and rush round the theatre and up to herbox it was because I was fixed to the spot some moments longer bythe simple inability to cease looking at her.

She had been from the first of my seeing her practically motion-less, leaning back in her chair with a kind of thoughtful grace andwith her eyes vaguely directed, as it seemed on me, to one of theboxes on my side of the house and consequently over my head and

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out of my sight. The only movement she made for some time was tofinger with an ungloved hand and as if with the habit of fondnessthe row of pearls on her neck, which my glass showed me to be largeand splendid. Her diamonds and pearls, in her solitude, mystifiedme, making me, as she had had no such brave jewels in the days ofthe Hammond Synges, wonder what undreamt-of improvement hadtaken place in her fortunes. The ghost of a question hovered there amoment: could anything so prodigious have happened as that onher tested and proved amendment Lord Iffield had taken her back?This could scarce have without my hearing of it; and moreover ifshe had become a person of such fashion where was the little courtone would naturally see at her elbow? Her isolation was puzzling,though it could easily suggest that she was but momentarily alone.If she had come with Mrs. Meldrum that lady would have takenadvantage of the interval to pay a visit to some other box—doubt-less the box at which Flora had just been looking. Mrs. Meldrumdidn’t account for the jewels, but the revival of Flora’s beauty ac-counted for anything. She presently moved her eyes over the house,and I felt them brush me again like the wings of a dove. I don’tknow what quick pleasure flickered into the hope that she would atlast see me. She did see me: she suddenly bent forward to take upthe little double-barrelled ivory glass that rested on the edge of thebox and to all appearance fix me with it. I smiled from my placestraight up at the searching lenses, and after an instant she droppedthem and smiled as straight back at me. Oh her smile—it was herold smile, her young smile, her very own smile made perfect! I in-stantly left my stall and hurried off for a nearer view of it; quiteflushed, I remember, as I went with the annoyance of having hap-pened to think of the idiotic way I had tried to paint her. PoorIffield with his sample of that error, and still poorer Dawling inparticular with his! I hadn’t touched her, I was professionally hu-miliated, and as the attendant in the lobby opened her box for me I

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felt that the very first thing I should have to say to her would be thatshe must absolutely sit to me again.

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CHAPTER XIII

SHE GAVE ME the smile once more as over her shoulder, from herchair, she turned her face to me. “Here you are again!” she exclaimedwith her disgloved hand put up a little backward for me to take. Idropped into a chair just behind her and, having taken it and notedthat one of the curtains of the box would make the demonstrationsufficiently private, bent my lips over it and impressed them on itsfinger-tips. It was given me however, to my astonishment, to feelnext that all the privacy in the world couldn’t have sufficed to miti-gate the start with which she greeted this free application of mymoustache: the blood had jumped to her face, she quickly recov-ered her hand and jerked at me, twisting herself round, a vacantchallenging stare. During the next few instants several extraordi-nary things happened, the first of which was that now I was close tothem the eyes of loveliness I had come up to look into didn’t showat all the conscious light I had just been pleased to see them flashacross the house: they showed on the contrary, to my confusion, astrange sweet blankness, an expression I failed to give a meaning tountil, without delay, I felt on my arm, directed to it as if instantly toefface the effect of her start, the grasp of the hand she had impul-sively snatched from me. It was the irrepressible question in thisgrasp that stopped on my lips all sound of salutation. She had mis-taken my entrance for that of another person, a pair of lips withouta moustache. She was feeling me to see who I was! With the percep-tion of this and of her not seeing me I sat gaping at her and at the

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wild word that didn’t come, the right word to express or to disguisemy dismay. What was the right word to commemorate one’s sud-den discovery, at the very moment too at which one had been mostencouraged to count on better things, that one’s dear old friend hadgone blind? Before the answer to this question dropped upon me—and the moving moments, though few, seemed many—I heard, withthe sound of voices, the click of the attendant’s key on the other sideof the door. Poor Flora heard also and on hearing, still with her handon my arm, brightened again as I had a minute since seen her brightenacross the house: she had the sense of the return of the person she hadtaken me for—the person with the right pair of lips, as to whom I wasfor that matter much more in the dark than she. I gasped, but myword had come: if she had lost her sight it was in this very loss thatshe had found again her beauty. I managed to speak while we werestill alone, before her companion had appeared. “You’re lovelier atthis day than you have ever been in your life!” At the sound of myvoice and that of the opening of the door her impatience broke intoaudible joy. She sprang up, recognising me, always holding me, andgleefully cried to a gentleman who was arrested in the doorway by thesight of me: “He has come back, he has come back, and you shouldhave heard what he says of me!” The gentleman was Geoffrey Dawling,and I thought it best to let him hear on the spot. “How beautiful sheis, my dear man—but how extraordinarily beautiful! More beautifulat this hour than ever, ever before!”

It gave them almost equal pleasure and made Dawling blush tohis eyes; while this in turn produced, in spite of deepened astonish-ment, a blest snap of the strain I had been struggling with. I wantedto embrace them both, and while the opening bars of another scenerose from the orchestra I almost did embrace Dawling, whose firstemotion on beholding me had visibly and ever so oddly been a con-sciousness of guilt. I had caught him somehow in the act, thoughthat was as yet all I knew; but by the time we sank noiselessly into

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our chairs again—for the music was supreme, Wagner passed first—my demonstration ought pretty well to have given him the limit ofthe criticism he had to fear. I myself indeed, while the opera blazed,was only too afraid he might divine in our silent closeness the verymoral of my optimism, which was simply the comfort I had gath-ered from seeing that if our companion’s beauty lived again her van-ity partook of its life. I had hit on the right note—that was whateased me off: it drew all pain for the next half-hour from the senseof the deep darkness in which the stricken woman sat. If the music,in that darkness, happily soared and swelled for her, it beat its wingsin unison with those of a gratified passion. A great deal came andwent between us without profaning the occasion, so that I couldfeel at the end of twenty minutes as if I knew almost everything hemight in kindness have to tell me; knew even why Flora, while Istared at her from the stalls, had misled me by the use of ivory andcrystal and by appearing to recognise me and smile. She leaned backin her chair in luxurious ease: I had from the first become awarethat the way she fingered her pearls was a sharp image of the wed-ded state. Nothing of old had seemed wanting to her assurance, butI hadn’t then dreamed of the art with which she would wear thatassurance as a married woman. She had taken him when everythinghad failed; he had taken her when she herself had done so. Hisembarrassed eyes confessed it all, confessed the deep peace he foundin it. They only didn’t tell me why he had not written to me, norclear up as yet a minor obscurity. Flora after a while again lifted theglass from the ledge of the box and elegantly swept the house withit. Then, by the mere instinct of her grace, a motion but half con-scious, she inclined her head into the void with the sketch of a sa-lute, producing, I could see, a perfect imitation of response to somehomage. Dawling and I looked at each other again; the tears cameinto his eyes. She was playing at perfection still, and her misfortuneonly simplified the process.

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I recognised that this was as near as I should ever come, certainlyas I should come that night, to pressing on her misfortune. Neitherof us would name it more than we were doing then, and Flora wouldnever name it at all. Little by little I saw that what had occurredwas, strange as it might appear, the best thing for her happiness.The question was now only of her beauty and her being seen andmarvelled at; with Dawling to do for her everything in life her activ-ity was limited to that. Such an activity was all within her scope; itasked nothing of her that she couldn’t splendidly give. As from timeto time in our delicate communion she turned her face to me withthe parody of a look I lost none of the signs of its strange new glory.The expression of the eyes was a rub of pastel from a master’s thumb;the whole head, stamped with a sort of showy suffering, had gaineda fineness from what she had passed through. Yes, Flora was settledfor life—nothing could hurt her further. I foresaw the particularpraise she would mostly incur—she would be invariably “interest-ing.” She would charm with her pathos more even than she hadcharmed with her pleasure. For herself above all she was fixed forever, rescued from all change and ransomed from all doubt. Her oldcertainties, her old vanities were justified and sanctified, and in thedarkness that had closed upon her one object remained clear. Thatobject, as unfading as a mosaic mask, was fortunately the loveliestshe could possibly look upon. The greatest blessing of all was ofcourse that Dawling thought so. Her future was ruled with thestraightest line, and so for that matter was his. There were two factsto which before I left my friends I gave time to sink into my spirit.One was that he had changed by some process as effective as Flora’schange, had been simplified somehow into service as she had beensimplified into success. He was such a picture of inspired interven-tion as I had never yet conceived: he would exist henceforth for thesole purpose of rendering unnecessary, or rather impossible, anyreference even on her own part to his wife’s infirmity. Oh yes, how

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little desire he would ever give me to refer to it! He principally aftera while made me feel—and this was my second lesson—that, good-natured as he was, my being there to see it all oppressed him; so thatby the time the act ended I recognised that I too had filled out myhour. Dawling remembered things; I think he caught in my veryface the irony of old judgments: they made him thresh about in hischair. I said to Flora as I took leave of her that I would come to seeher, but I may mention that I never went. I’d go to-morrow if I hearshe wants me; but what in the world can she ever want? As I quittedthem I laid my hand on Dawling’s arm, and drew him for a mo-ment into the lobby.

“Why did you never write to me of your marriage?”He smiled uncomfortably, showing his long yellow teeth and some-

thing more. “I don’t know—the whole thing gave me such a tre-mendous lot to do.”

This was the first dishonest speech I had heard him make: hereally hadn’t written because an idea that I would think him a stillbigger fool than before. I didn’t insist, but I tried there in the lobby,so far as a pressure of his hand could serve me, to give him a notionof what I thought him. “I can’t at any rate make out,” I said, “why Ididn’t hear from Mrs. Meldrum.”

“She didn’t write to you?”“Never a word. What has become of her?”“I think she’s at Folkestone,” Dawling returned; “but I’m sorry to

say that practically she has ceased to see us.”“You haven’t quarrelled with her?”“How could we? Think of all we owe her. At the time of our mar-

riage, and for months before, she did everything for us: I don’t knowhow we should have managed without her. But since then she hasnever been near us and has given us rather markedly little encour-agement to keep up relations with her.”

I was struck with this, though of course I admit I am struck with

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all sorts of things. “Well,” I said after a moment, “even if I couldimagine a reason for that attitude it wouldn’t explain why sheshouldn’t have taken account of my natural interest.”

“Just so.” Dawling’s face was a windowless wall. He could con-tribute nothing to the mystery and, quitting him, I carried it away.It was not till I went down to ace Mrs. Meldrum that was reallydispelled. She didn’t want to hear of them or to talk of them, not abit, and it was just in the same spirit that she hadn’t wanted to writeof them. She had done everything in the world for them, but now,thank heaven, the hard business was over. After I had taken this in,which I was quick to do, we quite avoided the subject. She simplycouldn’t bear it.

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Greville Faneby

Henry James

From the 1893 Macmillan and Co. edition.

COMING IN TO DRESS FOR DINNER, I found a telegram: “Mrs. Stormerdying; can you give us half a column for to-morrow evening? Lether off easy, but not too easy.” I was late; I was in a hurry; I had verylittle time to think, but at a venture I dispatched a reply: “Will dowhat I can.” It was not till I had dressed and was rolling away todinner that, in the hansom, I bethought myself of the difficulty ofthe condition attached. The difficulty was not of course in lettingher off easy but in qualifying that indulgence. “I simply won’t qualifyit,” I said to myself. I didn’t admire her, but I liked her, and I hadknown her so long that I almost felt heartless in sitting down atsuch an hour to a feast of indifference. I must have seemed ab-stracted, for the early years of my acquaintance with her came backto me. I spoke of her to the lady I had taken down, hut the lady Ihad taken down had never heard of Greville Fane. I tried my otherneighbour, who pronounced her books “too vile.” I had neverthought them very good, but I should let her off easier than that.

I came away early, for the express purpose of driving to ask about

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her. The journey took time, for she lived in the north-west district,in the neighbourhood of Primrose Hill. My apprehension that Ishould be too late was justified in a fuller sense than I had attachedto it—I had only feared that the house would be shut up. Therewere lights in the windows, and the temperate tinkle of my bellbrought a servant immediately to the door, but poor Mrs. Stormerhad passed into a state in which the resonance of no earthly knockerwas to be feared. A lady, in the hall, hovering behind the servant,came forward when she heard my voice. I recognised Lady Luard,but she had mistaken me for the doctor.

“Excuse my appearing at such an hour,” I said; “it was the firstpossible 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, andsome others beside, in her dress, her manner and even her name,were an implication that she was very admirable. I had never beenable to follow the argument, but that is a detail. I expressed brieflyand frankly what I felt, while the little mottled maidservant flat-tened herself against the wall of the narrow passage and tried tolook detached without looking indifferent. It was not a moment tomake a visit, and I was on the point of retreating when Lady Luardarrested me with a queer, casual, drawling “Would you—a—wouldyou, perhaps, be writing something?” I felt for the instant like aninterviewer, which I was not. But I pleaded guilty to this intention,on which she rejoined: “I’m so very glad—but I think my brotherwould like to see you.” I detested her brother, but it wasn’t an occa-sion to act this out; so I suffered myself to be inducted, to my sur-prise, into a small back room which I immediately recognised as thescene, during the later years, of Mrs. Stormer’s imperturbable in-dustry. Her table was there, the battered and blotted accessory toinnumerable literary lapses, with its contracted space for the arms

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(she wrote only from the elbow down) and the confusion of scrappy,scribbled sheets which had already become literary remains. Leolinwas also there, smoking a cigarette before the fire and looking im-pudent 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 airthat he wore to me as he stood before me was quite that of hismother’s murderer. She lay silent for ever upstairs—as dead as anunsuccessful book, and his swaggering erectness was a kind of sym-bol of his having killed her. I wondered if he had already, with hissister, been calculating what they could get for the poor papers onthe table; but I had not long to wait to learn, for in reply to thescanty words of sympathy I addressed him he puffed out: “It’s mis-erable, miserable, yes; but she has left three books complete.” Hiswords had the oddest effect; they converted the cramped little roominto a seat of trade and made the “book” wonderfully feasible. Hewould certainly get all that could be got for the three. Lady Luardexplained to me that her husband had been with them but had hadto go down to the House. To her brother she explained that I wasgoing to write something, and to me again she made it clear that shehoped I would “do mamma justice.” She added that she didn’t thinkthis had ever been done. She said to her brother: “Don’t you thinkthere are some things he ought thoroughly to understand?” and onhis instantly exclaiming “Oh, thoroughly—thoroughly!” she wenton, rather austerely: “I mean about mamma’s birth.”

“Yes, and her connections,” Leolin added.I professed every willingness, and for five minutes I listened, but

it would be too much to say that I understood. I don’t even now,but it is not important. My vision was of other matters than thosethey put before me, and while they desired there should be no mis-take about their ancestors I became more and more lucid aboutthemselves. I got away as soon as possible, and walked home throughthe great dusky, empty London—the best of all conditions for

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thought. By the time I reached my door my little article was practi-cally composed—ready to be transferred on the morrow from thepolished plate of fancy. I believe it attracted some notice, was thought“graceful” and was said to be by some one else. I had to be pointedwithout being lively, and it took some tact. But what I said wasmuch less interesting than what I thought—especially during thehalf-hour I spent in my armchair by the fire, smoking the cigar Ialways light before going to bed. I went to sleep there, I believe; butI continued to moralise about Greville Fane. I am reluctant to losethat retrospect altogether, and this is a dim little memory of it, adocument not to “serve.” The dear woman had written a hundredstories, 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 adozen years older than I, but she was a person who always acknowl-edged her relativity. It was not so very long ago, but in London,amid the big waves of the present, even a near horizon gets hidden.I met her at some dinner and took her down, rather flattered atoffering my arm to a celebrity. She didn’t look like one, with hermatronly, mild, inanimate face, but I supposed her greatness wouldcome out in her conversation. I gave it all the opportunities I could,but I was not disappointed when I found her only a dull, kindwoman. This was why I liked her—she rested me so from literature.To myself literature was an irritation, a torment; but Greville Faneslumbered in the intellectual part of it like a Creole in a hammock.She was not a woman of genius, but her faculty was so special, somuch a gift out of hand, that I have often wondered why she fellbelow that distinction. This was doubtless because the transaction,in her case, had remained incomplete; genius always pays for thegift, feels the debt, and she was placidly unconscious of obligation.She could invent stories by the yard, but she couldn’t write a page ofEnglish. She went down to her grave without suspecting that though

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she had contributed volumes to the diversion of her contemporariesshe had not contributed a sentence to the language. This had notprevented bushels of criticism from being heaped upon her head;she was worth a couple of columns any day to the weekly papers, inwhich it was shown that her pictures of life were dreadful but herstyle really charming. She asked me to come and see her, and I went.She lived then in Montpellier Square; which helped me to see howdissociated her imagination was from her character.

An industrious widow, devoted to her daily stint, to meeting thebutcher and baker and making a home for her son and daughter,from the moment she took her pen in her hand she became a crea-ture of passion. She thought the English novel deplorably wantingin that element, and the task she had cut out for herself was tosupply the deficiency. Passion in high life was the general formulaof this work, for her imagination was at home only in the mostexalted circles. She adored, in truth, the aristocracy, and they con-stituted for her the romance of the world or, what is more to thepoint, the prime material of fiction. Their beauty and luxury, theirloves and revenges, their temptations and surrenders, their immo-ralities and diamonds were as familiar to her as the blots on herwriting-table. She was not a belated producer of the old fashionablenovel, she had a cleverness and a modernness of her own, she hadfreshened up the fly-blown tinsel. She turned off plots by the hun-dred and—so far as her flying quill could convey her—was per-petually going abroad. Her types, her illustrations, her tone werenothing if not cosmopolitan. She recognised nothing less provincialthan European society, and her fine folk knew each other and madelove to each other from Doncaster to Bucharest. She had an ideathat she resembled Balzac, and her favourite historical characterswere Lucien de Rubempre and the Vidame de Pamiers. I must addthat when I once asked her who the latter personage was she wasunable to tell me. She was very brave and healthy and cheerful, very

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abundant and innocent and wicked. She was clever and vulgar andsnobbish, and never so intensely British as when she was particu-larly foreign.

This combination of qualities had brought her early success, andI remember having heard with wonder and envy of what she “got,”in those days, for a novel. The revelation gave me a pang: it wassuch a proof that, practising a totally different style, I should nevermake my fortune. And yet when, as I knew her better she told meher real tariff and I saw how rumour had quadrupled it, I liked herenough to be sorry. After a while I discovered too that if she got lessit was not that I was to get any more. My failure never had whatMrs. Stormer would have called the banality of being relative—itwas always admirably absolute. She lived at ease however in thosedays—ease is exactly the word, though she produced three novels ayear. She scorned me when I spoke of difficulty—it was the onlything that made her angry. If I hinted that a work of art required atremendous licking into shape she thought it a pretension and apose. She never recognised the “torment of form”; the furthest shewent was to introduce into one of her books (in satire her hand washeavy) a young poet who was always talking about it. I couldn’tquite understand her irritation on this score, for she had nothing atstake in the matter. She had a shrewd perception that form, in proseat least, never recommended any one to the public we were con-demned to address, and therefore she lost nothing (putting her pri-vate humiliation aside) by not having any. She made no pretence ofproducing works of art, but had comfortable tea-drinking hours inwhich she freely confessed herself a common pastrycook, dealing insuch tarts and puddings as would bring customers to the shop. Sheput in plenty of sugar and of cochineal, or whatever it is that givesthese articles a rich and attractive colour. She had a serene superior-ity to observation and opportunity which constituted an inexpug-nable strength and would enable her to go on indefinitely. It is only

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real success that wanes, it is only solid things that melt. GrevilleFane’s ignorance of life was a resource still more unfailing than themost approved receipt. On her saying once that the day would comewhen she should have written herself out I answered: “Ah, you lookinto fairyland, and the fairies love you, and they never change. Fairy-land is always there; it always was from the beginning of time, andit always will be to the end. They’ve given you the key and you canalways open the door. With me it’s different; I try, in my clumsyway, to be in some direct relation to life.” “Oh, bother your directrelation to life!” she used to reply, for she was always annoyed by thephrase—which would not in the least prevent her from using itwhen she wished to try for style. With no more prejudices than anold sausage-mill, she would give forth again with patient punctual-ity any poor verbal scrap that had been dropped into her. I cheeredher with saying that the dark day, at the end, would be for the likeof me; inasmuch as, going in our small way by experience and ob-servation, we depended not on a revelation, but on a little tiresomeprocess. Observation depended on opportunity, and where shouldwe be when opportunity failed?

One day she told me that as the novelist’s life was so delightfuland during the good years at least such a comfortable support (shehad these staggering optimisms) she meant to train up her boy tofollow it. She took the ingenious view that it was a profession likeanother and that therefore everything was to be gained by begin-ning young and serving an apprenticeship. Moreover the educationwould be less expensive than any other special course, inasmuch asshe could administer it herself. She didn’t profess to keep a school,but she could at least teach her own child. It was not that she was sovery clever, but (she confessed to me as if she were afraid I wouldlaugh at her) that he was. I didn’t laugh at her for that, for I thoughtthe boy sharp—I had seen him at sundry times. He was well grownand good-looking and unabashed, and both he and his sister made

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me wonder about their defunct papa, concerning whom the little Iknew was that he had been a clergyman. I explained them to myselfby suppositions and imputations possibly unjust to the departed; solittle were they—superficially at least—the children of their mother.There used to be, on an easel in her drawing-room, an enlargedphotograph of her husband, done by some horrible posthumous“process” and draped, as to its florid frame, with a silken scarf, whichtestified to the candour of Greville Fane’s bad taste. It made himlook like an unsuccessful tragedian; but it was not a thing to trust.He may have been a successful comedian. Of the two children thegirl was the elder, and struck me in all her younger years as singu-larly colourless. She was only very long, like an undecipherable let-ter. It was not till Mrs. Stormer came back from a protracted resi-dence abroad that Ethel (which was this young lady’s name) beganto produce the effect, which was afterwards remarkable in her, of acertain kind of high resolution. She made one apprehend that shemeant to do something for herself. She was long-necked and near-sighted and striking, and I thought I had never seen sweet seven-teen in a form so hard and high and dry. She was cold and affectedand ambitious, and she carried an eyeglass with a long handle, whichshe put up whenever she wanted not to see. She had come out, asthe phrase is, immensely; and yet I felt as if she were surroundedwith a spiked iron railing. What she meant to do for herself was tomarry, and it was the only thing, I think, that she meant to do forany one else; yet who would be inspired to clamber over that bris-tling barrier? What flower of tenderness or of intimacy would suchan adventurer conceive as his reward?

This was for Sir Baldwin Luard to say; but he naturally neverconfided to me the secret. He was a joyless, jokeless young man,with the air of having other secrets as well, and a determination toget on politically that was indicated by his never having been knownto commit himself—as regards any proposition whatever—beyond

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an exclamatory “Oh!” His wife and he must have conversed mainlyin prim ejaculations, but they understood sufficiently that they werekindred spirits. I remember being angry with Greville Fane whenshe announced these nuptials to me as magnificent; I rememberasking her what splendour there was in the union of the daughter ofa woman of genius with an irredeemable mediocrity. “Oh! he’s aw-fully clever,” she said; but she blushed for the maternal fib. Whatshe meant was that though Sir Baldwin’s estates were not vast (hehad a dreary house in South Kensington and a still drearier “Hall”somewhere in Essex, which was let), the connection was a “smarter”one than a child of hers could have aspired to form. In spite of thesocial bravery of her novels she took a very humble and dingy viewof herself, so that of all her productions “my daughter Lady Luard”was quite the one she was proudest of. That personage thought hermother very vulgar and was distressed and perplexed by the occa-sional license of her pen, but had a complicated attitude in regard tothis indirect connection with literature. So far as it was lucrative herladyship approved of it, and could compound with the inferiorityof the pursuit by doing practical justice to some of its advantages. Ihad reason to know (my reason was simply that poor Mrs. Stormertold me) that she suffered the inky fingers to press an occasionalbank-note into her palm. On the other hand she deplored the “pe-culiar style” to which Greville Fane had devoted herself, and won-dered where an author who had the convenience of so lady-like adaughter could have picked up such views about the best society.“She might know better, with Leolin and me,” Lady Luard had beenknown to remark; but it appeared that some of Greville Fane’s su-perstitions were incurable. She didn’t live in Lady Luard’s society,and the best was not good enough for her—she must make it stillbetter.

I could see that this necessity grew upon her during the years shespent abroad, when I had glimpses of her in the shifting sojourns

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that lay in the path of my annual ramble. She betook herself fromGermany to Switzerland and from Switzerland to Italy; she favouredcheap places and set up her desk in the smaller capitals. I took alook at her whenever I could, and I always asked how Leolin wasgetting on. She gave me beautiful accounts of him, and whenever itwas possible the boy was produced for my edification. I had enteredfrom the first into the joke of his career—I pretended to regard himas a consecrated child. It had been a joke for Mrs. Stormer at first,but the boy himself had been shrewd enough to make the matterserious. If his mother accepted the principle that the intending nov-elist cannot begin too early to see life, Leolin was not interested inhanging back from the application of it. He was eager to qualifyhimself, and took to cigarettes at ten, on the highest literary grounds.His poor mother gazed at him with extravagant envy and, likeDesdemona, wished heaven had made her such a man. She explainedto me more than once that in her profession she had found her sexa dreadful drawback. She loved the story of Madame George Sand’searly rebellion against this hindrance, and believed that if she hadworn trousers she could have written as well as that lady. Leolin hadfor the career at least the qualification of trousers, and as he grewolder he recognised its importance by laying in an immense assort-ment. He grew up in gorgeous apparel, which was his way of inter-preting his mother’s system. Whenever I met her I found her stillunder the impression that she was carrying this system out and thatLeolin’s training was bearing fruit. She was giving him experience,she was giving him impressions, she was putting a gagnepain intohis hand. It was another name for spoiling him with the best con-science in the world. The queerest pictures come back to me of thisperiod of the good lady’s life and of the extraordinarily virtuous,muddled, bewildering tenor of it. She had an idea that she was see-ing foreign manners as well as her petticoats would allow; but, inreality she was not seeing anything, least of all fortunately how much

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she was laughed at. She drove her whimsical pen at Dresden and atFlorence, and produced in all places and at all times the same ro-mantic and ridiculous fictions. She carried about her box of proper-ties and fished out promptly the familiar, tarnished old puppets.She believed in them when others couldn’t, and as they were likenothing that was to be seen under the sun it was impossible to proveby comparison that they were wrong. You can’t compare birds andfishes; you could only feel that, as Greville Fane’s characters had thefine plumage of the former species, human beings must be of thelatter.

It would have been droll if it had not been so exemplary to see hertracing the loves of the duchesses beside the innocent cribs of herchildren. The immoral and the maternal lived together in her dili-gent days on the most comfortable terms, and she stopped curlingthe mustaches of her Guardsmen to pat the heads of her babes. Shewas haunted by solemn spinsters who came to tea from continentalpensions, and by unsophisticated Americans who told her she wasjust loved in their country. “I had rather be just paid there,” sheusually replied; for this tribute of transatlantic opinion was the onlything that galled her. The Americans went away thinking her coarse;though as the author of so many beautiful love-stories she was dis-appointing to most of these pilgrims, who had not expected to finda shy, stout, ruddy lady in a cap like a crumbled pyramid. She wroteabout the affections and the impossibility of controlling them, butshe talked of the price of pension and the convenience of an Englishchemist. She devoted much thought and many thousands of francsto the education of her daughter, who spent three years at a verysuperior school at Dresden, receiving wonderful instruction in sci-ences, arts and tongues, and who, taking a different line from Leolin,was to be brought up wholly as a femme du monde. The girl wasmusical and philological; she made a specialty of languages andlearned enough about them to be inspired with a great contempt

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for her mother’s artless accents. Greville Fane’s French and Italianwere droll; the imitative faculty had been denied her, and she hadan unequalled gift, especially pen in hand, of squeezing big mis-takes into small opportunities. She knew it, but she didn’t care; cor-rectness was the virtue in the world that, like her heroes and hero-ines, she valued least. Ethel, who had perceived in her pages someremarkable lapses, undertook at one time to revise her proofs; but Iremember her telling me a year after the girl had left school that thisfunction had been very briefly exercised. “She can’t read me,” saidMrs. Stormer; “I offend her taste. She tells me that at Dresden—atschool—I was never allowed.” The good lady seemed surprised atthis, having the best conscience in the world about her lucubra-tions. She had never meant to fly in the face of anything, and con-sidered that she grovelled before the Rhadamanthus of the Englishliterary tribunal, the celebrated and awful Young Person. I assuredher, as a joke, that she was frightfully indecent (she hadn’t in factthat reality any more than any other) my purpose being solely toprevent her from guessing that her daughter had dropped her notbecause she was immoral but because she was vulgar. I used to fig-ure her children closeted together and asking each other while theyexchanged a gaze of dismay: “Why should she be so—and so fearfullyso—when she has the advantage of our society? Shouldn’t we havetaught her better?” Then I imagined their recognising with a blushand a shrug that she was unteachable, irreformable. Indeed she was,poor lady; but it is never fair to read by the light of taste things thatwere not written by it. Greville Fane had, in the topsy-turvy, a serenegood faith that ought to have been safe from allusion, like a stutter ora faux pas.

She didn’t make her son ashamed of the profession to which hewas destined, however; she only made him ashamed of the way sheherself exercised it. But he bore his humiliation much better thanhis sister, for he was ready to take for granted that he should one day

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restore the balance. He was a canny and far-seeing youth, with ap-petites and aspirations, and he had not a scruple in his composition.His mother’s theory of the happy knack he could pick up deprivedhim of the wholesome discipline required to prevent young idlersfrom becoming cads. He had, abroad, a casual tutor and a snatch ortwo of a Swiss school, but no consecutive study, no prospect of auniversity or a degree. It may be imagined with what zeal, as theyears went on, he entered into the pleasantry of there being nomanual so important to him as the massive book of life. It was anexpensive volume to peruse, but Mrs. Stormer was willing to lay outa sum in what she would have called her premiers frais. Ethel disap-proved—she thought this education far too unconventional for anEnglish gentleman. Her voice was for Eton and Oxford, or for anypublic school (she would have resigned herself ) with the army tofollow. But Leolin never was afraid of his sister, and they visiblydisliked, though they sometimes agreed to assist, each other. Theycould combine to work the oracle—to keep their mother at herdesk.

When she came back to England, telling me she had got all thecontinent could give her, Leolin was a broad-shouldered, red-facedyoung man, with an immense wardrobe and an extraordinary assur-ance of manner. She was fondly obstinate about her having takenthe right course with him, and proud of all that he knew and hadseen. He was now quite ready to begin, and a little while later shetold me he had begun. He had written something tremendouslyclever, and it was coming out in the Cheapside. I believe it cameout; I had no time to look for it; I never heard anything about it. Itook for granted that if this contribution had passed through hismother’s hands it had practically become a specimen of her owngenius, and it was interesting to consider Mrs. Stormer’s future inthe light of her having to write her son’s novels as well as her own.This was not the way she looked at it herself; she took the charming

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ground that he would help her to write hers. She used to tell methat he supplied passages of the greatest value to her own work—allsorts of technical things, about hunting and yachting and wine—that she couldn’t be expected to get very straight. It was all so muchpractice for him and so much alleviation for her. I was unable toidentify these pages, for I had long since ceased to “keep up” withGreville Fane; but I was quite able to believe that the wine-questionhad been put, by Leolin’s good offices, on a better footing, for thedear lady used to mix her drinks (she was perpetually serving themost splendid suppers) in the queerest fashion. I could see that hewas willing enough to accept a commission to look after that de-partment. It occurred to me indeed, when Mrs. Stormer settled inEngland again, that by making a shrewd use of both her childrenshe might be able to rejuvenate her style. Ethel had come back togratify her young ambition, and if she couldn’t take her mother intosociety she would at least go into it herself. Silently, stiffly, almostgrimly, this young lady held up her head, clenched her long teeth,squared her lean elbows and made her way up the staircases she hadelected. The only communication she ever made to me, the onlyeffusion of confidence with which she ever honoured me, was whenshe said: “I don’t want to know the people mamma knows; I meanto know others.” I took due note of the remark, for I was not one ofthe “others.” I couldn’t trace therefore the steps of her process; Icould only admire it at a distance and congratulate her mother onthe results. The results were that Ethel went to “big” parties and gotpeople to take her. Some of them were people she had met abroad,and others were people whom the people she had met abroad hadmet. They ministered alike to Miss Ethel’s convenience, and I won-dered how she extracted so many favours without the expenditureof a smile. Her smile was the dimmest thing in the world, dilutedlemonade, without sugar, and she had arrived precociously at socialwisdom, recognising that if she was neither pretty enough nor rich

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enough nor clever enough, she could at least in her muscular youthbe rude enough. Therefore if she was able to tell her mother whatreally took place in the mansions of the great, give her notes to workfrom, the quill could be driven at home to better purpose and pre-cisely at a moment when it would have to be more active than ever.But if she did tell, it would appear that poor Mrs. Stormer didn’tbelieve. As regards many points this was not a wonder; at any rate Iheard nothing of Greville Fane’s having developed a new manner.She had only one manner from start to finish, as Leolin would havesaid.

She was tired at last, but she mentioned to me that she couldn’tafford to pause. She continued to speak of Leolin’s work as the greathope of their future (she had saved no money) though the youngman wore to my sense an aspect more and more professional if youlike, but less and less literary. At the end of a couple of years therewas something monstrous in the impudence with which he playedhis part in the comedy. When I wondered how she could play herpart I had to perceive that her good faith was complete and thatwhat kept it so was simply her extravagant fondness. She loved theyoung impostor with a simple, blind, benighted love, and of all theheroes of romance who had passed before her eyes he was by far themost brilliant.

He was at any rate the most real—she could touch him, pay forhim, suffer for him, worship him. He made her think of her princesand dukes, and when she wished to fix these figures in her mind’seye she thought of her boy. She had often told me she was carriedaway by her own creations, and she was certainly carried away byLeolin. He vivified, by potentialities at least, the whole question ofyouth and passion. She held, not unjustly, that the sincere novelistshould feel the whole flood of life; she acknowledged with regretthat she had not had time to feel it herself, and it was a joy to herthat the deficiency might be supplied by the sight of the way it was

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rushing through this magnificent young man. She exhorted him, Isuppose, to let it rush; she wrung her own flaccid little sponge intothe torrent. I knew not what passed between them in her hours oftuition, but I gathered that she mainly impressed on him that thegreat thing was to live, because that gave you material. He askednothing better; he collected material, and the formula served as auniversal pretext. You had only to look at him to see that, with hisrings and breastpins, his cross-barred jackets, his early embonpoint,his eyes that looked like imitation jewels, his various indications ofa dense, full-blown temperament, his idea of life was singularly vul-gar; but he was not so far wrong as that his response to his mother’sexpectations was not in a high degree practical. If she had imposeda profession on him from his tenderest years it was exactly a profes-sion that he followed. The two were not quite the same, inasmuchas HIS was simply to live at her expense; but at least she couldn’t saythat he hadn’t taken a line. If she insisted on believing in him heoffered himself to the sacrifice. My impression is that her secretdream was that he should have a liaison with a countess, and hepersuaded her without difficulty that he had one. I don’t know whatcountesses are capable of, but I have a clear notion of what Leolinwas.

He didn’t persuade his sister, who despised him—she wished towork her mother in her own way, and I asked myself why the girl’sjudgment of him didn’t make me like her better. It was because itdidn’t save her after all from a mute agreement with him to go halves.There were moments when I couldn’t help looking hard into hisatrocious young eyes, challenging him to confess his fantastic fraudand give it up. Not a little tacit conversation passed between us inthis way, but he had always the best of it. If I said: “Oh, come now,with me you needn’t keep it up; plead guilty, and I’ll let you off,” hewore the most ingenuous, the most candid expression, in the depthsof which I could read: “Oh, yes, I know it exasperates you—that’s

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just why I do it.” He took the line of earnest inquiry, talked aboutBalzac and Flaubert, asked me if I thought Dickens did exaggerateand Thackeray ought to be called a pessimist. Once he came to seeme, at his mother’s suggestion he declared, on purpose to ask mehow far, in my opinion, in the English novel, one really might ven-ture to “go.” He was not resigned to the usual pruderies—he suf-fered under them already. He struck out the brilliant idea that no-body knew how far we might go, for nobody had ever tried. Did Ithink HE might safely try—would it injure his mother if he did?He would rather disgrace himself by his timidities than injure hismother, but certainly some one ought to try. Wouldn’t I try—couldn’tI be prevailed upon to look at it as a duty? Surely the ultimate pointought to be fixed—he was worried, haunted by the question. Hepatronised me unblushingly, made me feel like a foolish amateur, ahelpless novice, inquired into my habits of work and conveyed tome that I was utterly vieux jeu and had not had the advantage of anearly training. I had not been brought up from the germ, I knewnothing of life—didn’t go at it on his system. He had dipped intoFrench feuilletons and picked up plenty of phrases, and he made amuch better show in talk than his poor mother, who never had timeto read anything and could only be vivid with her pen. If I didn’tkick him downstairs it was because he would have alighted on her atthe bottom.

When she went to live at Primrose Hill I called upon her andfound her weary and wasted. It had waned a good deal, the elationcaused the year before by Ethel’s marriage; the foam on the cup hadsubsided and there was a bitterness in the draught.

She had had to take a cheaper house and she had to work stillharder to pay even for that. Sir Baldwin was obliged to be close; hischarges were fearful, and the dream of her living with her daughter(a vision she had never mentioned to me) must be renounced. “Iwould have helped with things, and I could have lived perfectly in

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one room,” she said; “I would have paid for everything, and—afterall—I’m some one, ain’t I? But I don’t fit in, and Ethel tells me thereare tiresome people she must receive. I can help them from here, nodoubt, better than from there. She told me once, you know, whatshe thinks of my picture of life. ‘Mamma, your picture of life ispreposterous!’ No doubt it is, but she’s vexed with me for letting myprices go down; and I had to write three novels to pay for all hermarriage cost me. I did it very well—I mean the outfit and thewedding; but that’s why I’m here. At any rate she doesn’t want adingy old woman in her house. I should give it an atmosphere ofliterary glory, but literary glory is only the eminence of nobodies.Besides, she doubts my glory—she knows I’m glorious only atPeckham and Hackney. She doesn’t want her friends to ask if I’venever known nice people. She can’t tell them I’ve never been insociety. She tried to teach me better once, but I couldn’t learn. Itwould 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 evertook for anything.” I asked her how little this had been, not fromcuriosity, but in order to upbraid her, more disinterestedly than LadyLuard had done, for such concessions. She answered “I’m ashamedto tell you,” and then she began to cry.

I had never seen her break down, and I was proportionately moved;she sobbed, like a frightened child, over the extinction of her vogueand the exhaustion of her vein. Her little workroom seemed indeeda barren place to grow flowers, and I wondered, in the after years(for she continued to produce and publish) by what desperate andheroic process she dragged them out of the soil. I remember askingher on that occasion what had become of Leolin, and how muchlonger she intended to allow him to amuse himself at her cost. Sherejoined with spirit, wiping her eyes, that he was down at Brightonhard at work—he was in the midst of a novel—and that he felt lifeso, in all its misery and mystery, that it was cruel to speak of such

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experiences as a pleasure. “He goes beneath the surface,” she said,“and he forces himself to look at things from which he would ratherturn away. Do you call that amusing yourself? You should see hisface sometimes! And he does it for me as much as for himself. Hetells me everything—he comes home to me with his trouvailles. Weare artists together, and to the artist all things are pure. I’ve oftenheard you say so yourself.” The novel that Leolin was engaged in atBrighton was never published, but a friend of mine and of Mrs.Stormer’s who was staying there happened to mention to me laterthat he had seen the young apprentice to fiction driving, in a dogcart,a young lady with a very pink face. When I suggested that she wasperhaps a woman of title with whom he was conscientiously flirtingmy informant replied: “She is indeed, but do you know what hertitle is?” He pronounced it—it was familiar and descriptive—but Iwon’t reproduce it here. I don’t know whether Leolin mentioned itto his mother: she would have needed all the purity of the artist toforgive him. I hated so to come across him that in the very last yearsI went rarely to see her, though I knew that she had come prettywell to the end of her rope. I didn’t want her to tell me that she hadfairly to give her books away—I didn’t want to see her cry. She keptit up amazingly, and every few months, at my club, I saw three newvolumes, in green, in crimson, in blue, on the book-table that groanedwith light literature. Once I met her at the Academy soiree, whereyou meet people you thought were dead, and she vouchsafed theinformation, as if she owed it to me in candour, that Leolin hadbeen obliged to recognise insuperable difficulties in the question offrom, he was so fastidious; so that she had now arrived at a definiteunderstanding with him (it was such a comfort) that she would dothe form if he would bring home the substance. That was now hisposition—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 caseand I argue it.” She mentioned further that in addition to his salary

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he was paid by the piece: he got so much for a striking character, somuch for a pretty name, so much for a plot, so much for an inci-dent, and had so much promised him if he would invent a newcrime.

“He has invented one,” I said, “and he’s paid every day of his life.”“What is it?” she asked, looking hard at the picture of the year;

“Baby’s Tub,” near which we happened to be standing.I hesitated a moment. “I myself will write a little story about it,

and then you’ll see.”But she never saw; she had never seen anything, and she passed

away with her fine blindness unimpaired. Her son published everyscrap of scribbled paper that could be extracted from her table-draw-ers, and his sister quarrelled with him mortally about the proceeds,which showed that she only wanted a pretext, for they cannot havebeen great. I don’t know what Leolin lives upon, unless it be on aqueer lady many years older than himself, whom he lately married.The last time I met him he said to me with his infuriating smile:“Don’t you think we can go a little further still—just a little?” Hereally goes too far.

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The BeldonaldHolbein

by

Henry James

From the 1922 Macmillan and Co. Edition.

CHAPTER I

MRS. MUNDEN had not yet been to my studio on so good a pretextas when she first intimated that it would be quite open to me—should I only care, as she called it, to throw the handkerchief—topaint her beautiful sister-in-law. I needn’t go here more than is es-sential into the question of Mrs. Munden, who would really, by theway, be a story in herself. She has a manner of her own of puttingthings, and some of those she has put to me—! Her implication wasthat Lady Beldonald hadn’t only seen and admired certain examplesof my work, but had literally been prepossessed in favour of thepainter’s “personality.” Had I been struck with this sketch I mighteasily have imagined her ladyship was throwing me the handker-chief. “She hasn’t done,” my visitor said, “what she ought.”

The Beldonald Holbein

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“Do you mean she has done what she oughtn’t?”“Nothing horrid—ah dear no.” And something in Mrs. Munden’s

tone, with the way she appeared to muse a moment, even suggestedto me that what she “oughtn’t” was perhaps what Lady Beldonaldhad too much neglected. “She hasn’t got on.”

“What’s the matter with her?”“Well, to begin with, she’s American.”“But I thought that was the way of ways to get on.”“It’s one of them. But it’s one of the ways of being awfully out of

it too. There are so many!”“So many Americans?” I asked.“Yes, plenty of them,” Mrs. Munden sighed. “So many ways, I

mean, of being one.”“But if your sister-in-law’s way is to be beautiful—?”“Oh there are different ways of that too.”“And she hasn’t taken the right way?”“Well,” my friend returned as if it were rather difficult to express,

“she hasn’t done with it—”“I see,” I laughed; “what she oughtn’t!”Mrs. Munden in a manner corrected me, but it was difficult to

express. “My brother at all events was certainly selfish. Till he diedshe was almost never in London; they wintered, year after year, forwhat he supposed to be his health—which it didn’t help, since hewas so much too soon to meet his end—in the south of France andin the dullest holes he could pick out, and when they came back toEngland he always kept her in the country. I must say for her thatshe always behaved beautifully. Since his death she has been morein London, but on a stupidly unsuccessful footing. I don’t think shequite understands. She hasn’t what I should call a life. It may be ofcourse that she doesn’t want one. That’s just what I can’t exactly findout. I can’t make out how much she knows.”

“I can easily make out,” I returned with hilarity, “how much you do!”

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“Well, you’re very horrid. Perhaps she’s too old.”“Too old for what?” I persisted.“For anything. Of course she’s no longer even a little young; only

preserved—oh but preserved, like bottled fruit, in syrup! I want tohelp her if only because she gets on my nerves, and I really think theway of it would be just the right thing of yours at the Academy andon the line.”

“But suppose,” I threw out, “she should give on my nerves?”“Oh she will. But isn’t that all in the day’s work, and don’t great

beauties always—?”“You don’t,” I interrupted; but I at any rate saw Lady Beldonald

later on—the day came when her kinswoman brought her, and thenI saw how her life must have its centre in her own idea of her ap-pearance. Nothing else about her mattered—one knew her all whenone knew that. She’s indeed in one particular, I think, sole of herkind—a person whom vanity has had the odd effect of keepingpositively safe and sound. This passion is supposed surely, for themost part, to be a principle of perversion and of injury, leadingastray those who listen to it and landing them sooner or later in thisor that complication; but it has landed her ladyship nowhere what-ever—it has kept her from the first moment of full consciousness,one feels, exactly in the same place. It has protected her from everydanger, has made her absolutely proper and prim. If she’s “preserved,”as Mrs. Munden originally described her to me, it’s her vanity thathas beautifully done it—putting her years ago in a plate-glass caseand closing up the receptacle against every breath of air. Howshouldn’t she be preserved when you might smash your knuckles onthis transparency before you could crack it? And she is—oh amaz-ingly! Preservation is scarce the word for the rare condition of hersurface. She looks naturally new, as if she took out every night herlarge lovely varnished eyes and put them in water. The thing was topaint her, I perceived, in the glass case—a most tempting attaching


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feat; render to the full the shining interposing plate and the generalshow-window effect.

It was agreed, though it wasn’t quite arranged, that she should sitto me. If it wasn’t quite arranged this was because, as I was made tounderstand from an early stage, the conditions from our start mustbe such as should exclude all elements of disturbance, such, in aword, as she herself should judge absolutely favourable. And it seemedthat these conditions were easily imperilled. Suddenly, for instance,at a moment when I was expecting her to meet an appointment—the first—that I had proposed, I received a hurried visit from Mrs.Munden, who came on her behalf to let me know that the seasonhappened just not to be propitious and that our friend couldn’t bequite sure, to the hour, when it would again become so. She feltnothing would make it so but a total absence of worry.

“Oh a ‘total absence,’” I said, “is a large order! We live in a worry-ing world.”

“Yes; and she feels exactly that—more than you’d think. It’s infact just why she mustn’t have, as she has now, a particular distresson at the very moment. She wants of course to look her best, andsuch things tell on her appearance.”

I shook my head. “Nothing tells on her appearance. Nothingreaches it in any way; nothing gets AT it. However, I can under-stand her anxiety. But what’s her particular distress?”

“Why the illness of Miss Dadd.”“And who in the world’s Miss Dadd?”“Her most intimate friend and constant companion—the lady

who was with us here that first day.”“Oh the little round black woman who gurgled with admiration?”“None other. But she was taken ill last week, and it may very well

be that she’ll gurgle no more. She was very bad yesterday and is nobetter to-day, and Nina’s much upset. If anything happens to MissDadd she’ll have to get another, and, though she has had two or

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three before, that won’t be so easy.”“Two or three Miss Dadds? is it possible? And still wanting an-

other!” I recalled the poor lady completely now. “No; I shouldn’tindeed think it would be easy to get another. But why is a succes-sion of them necessary to Lady Beldonald’s existence?”

“Can’t you guess?” Mrs. Munden looked deep, yet impatient.“They help.”

“Help what? Help whom?”“Why every one. You and me for instance. To do what? Why to

think Nina beautiful. She has them for that purpose; they serve asfoils, as accents serve on syllables, as terms of comparison. Theymake her ‘stand out.’ It’s an effect of contrast that must be familiarto you artists; it’s what a woman does when she puts a band of blackvelvet under a pearl ornament that may, require, as she thinks, alittle showing off.”

I wondered. “Do you mean she always has them black?”“Dear no; I’ve seen them blue, green, yellow. They may be what

they like, so long as they’re always one other thing.”“Hideous?”Mrs. Munden made a mouth for it. “Hideous is too much to say;

she doesn’t really require them as bad as that. But consistently, cheer-fully, loyally plain. It’s really a most happy relation. She loves themfor it.”

“And for what do they love her?”“Why just for the amiability that they produce in her. Then also

for their ‘home.’ It’s a career for them.”“I see. But if that’s the case,” I asked, “why are they so difficult to

find?”“Oh they must be safe; it’s all in that: her being able to depend on

them to keep to the terms of the bargain and never have momentsof rising—as even the ugliest woman will now and then (say whenshe’s in love)—superior to themselves.”


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I turned it over. “Then if they can’t inspire passions the poor thingsmayn’t even at least feel them?”

“She distinctly deprecates it. That’s why such a man as you maybe after all a complication.”

I continued to brood. “You’re very sure Miss Dadd’s ailment isn’tan affection that, being smothered, has struck in?” My joke, how-ever, wasn’t well timed, for I afterwards learned that the unfortunatelady’s state had been, even while I spoke, such as to forbid all hope.The worst symptoms had appeared; she was destined not to recover;and a week later I heard from Mrs. Munden that she would in fact“gurgle” no more.

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CHAPTER II

ALL THIS HAD BEEN for Lady Beldonald an agitation so great thataccess to her apartment was denied for a time even to her sister-in-law. It was much more out of the question of course that she shouldunveil her face to a person of my special business with it; so that thequestion of the portrait was by common consent left to depend onthat of the installation of a successor to her late companion. Such asuccessor, I gathered from Mrs. Munden, widowed childless andlonely, as well as inapt for the minor offices, she had absolutely tohave; a more or less humble alter ago to deal with the servants, keepthe accounts, make the tea and watch the window-blinds. Nothingseemed more natural than that she should marry again, and obvi-ously that might come; yet the predecessors of Miss Dadd had beencontemporaneous with a first husband, so that others formed in herimage might be contemporaneous with a second. I was much occu-pied in those months at any rate, and these questions and theirramifications losing themselves for a while to my view, I was onlybrought back to them by Mrs. Munden’s arrival one day with thenews that we were all right again—her sister-in-law was once more“suited.” A certain Mrs. Brash, an American relative whom she hadn’tseen for years, but with whom she had continued to communicate,was to come out to her immediately; and this person, it appeared,could be quite trusted to meet the conditions. She was ugly—uglyenough, without abuse of it, and was unlimitedly good. The posi-tion offered her by Lady Beldonald was moreover exactly what she


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needed; widowed also, after many troubles and reverses, with herfortune of the smallest, and her various children either buried orplaced about, she had never had time or means to visit England,and would really be grateful in her declining years for the new expe-rience and the pleasant light work involved in her cousin’s hospital-ity. They had been much together early in life and Lady Beldonaldwas immensely fond of her—would in fact have tried to get hold ofher before hadn’t Mrs. Brash been always in bondage to family du-ties, to the variety of her tribulations. I daresay I laughed at myfriend’s use of the term “position”—the position, one might call it,of a candlestick or a sign-post, and I daresay I must have asked if thespecial service the poor lady was to render had been made clear toher. Mrs. Munden left me in any case with the rather droll image ofher faring forth across the sea quite consciously and resignedly toperform it.

The point of the communication had however been that my sitterwas again looking up and would doubtless, on the arrival and dueinitiation of Mrs. Brash, be in form really to wait on me. The situ-ation must further, to my knowledge, have developed happily, for Iarranged with Mrs. Munden that our friend, now all ready to begin,but wanting first just to see the things I had most recently done,should come once more, as a final preliminary, to my studio. Agood foreign friend of mine, a French painter, Paul Outreau, was atthe moment in London, and I had proposed, as he was much inter-ested in types, to get together for his amusement a small afternoonparty. Every one came, my big room was full, there was music and amodest spread; and I’ve not forgotten the light of admiration inOutreau’s expressive face as at the end of half an hour he came up tome in his enthusiasm. “Bonte divine, mon cher—que cette vieilleest donc belle!”

I had tried to collect all the beauty I could, and also all the youth,so that for a moment I was at a loss. I had talked to many people

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and provided for the music, and there were figures in the crowd thatwere still lost to me. “What old woman do you mean?”

“I don’t know her name—she was over by the door a momentago. I asked somebody and was told, I think, that she’s American.”

I looked about and saw one of my guests attach a pair of fine eyesto Outreau very much as if she knew he must be talking of her. “OhLady Beldonald! Yes, she’s handsome; but the great point about heris that she has been ‘put up’ to keep, and that she wouldn’t be flat-tered if she knew you spoke of her as old. A box of sardines is ‘old’only after it has been opened, Lady Beldonald never has yet been—but I’m going to do it.” I joked, but I was somewhat disappointed.It was a type that, with his unerring sense for the banal, I shouldn’thave expected Outreau to pick out.

“You’re going to paint her? But, my dear man, she is painted—and as neither you nor I can do it. Ou est-elle donc? He had losther, and I saw I had made a mistake. She’s the greatest of all thegreat Holbeins.”

I was relieved. “Ah then not Lady Beldonald! But do I possess aHolbein of any price unawares?”

“There she is—there she is! Dear, dear, dear, what a head!” And Isaw whom he meant—and what: a small old lady in a black dressand a black bonnet, both relieved with a little white, who had evi-dently just changed, her place to reach a corner from which more ofthe room and of the scene was presented to her. She appeared unno-ticed and unknown, and I immediately recognised that some otherguest must have brought her and, for want of opportunity, had asyet to call my attention to her. But two things, simultaneously withthis and with each other, struck me with force; one of them thetruth of Outreau’s description of her, the other the fact that theperson bringing her could only have been Lady Beldonald. She WASa Holbein—of the first water; yet she was also Mrs. Brash, the im-ported “foil,” the indispensable accent,” the successor to the dreary


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Miss Dadd! By the time I had put these things together—Outreau’s“American” having helped me—I was in just such full possession ofher face as I had found myself, on the other first occasion, of that ofher patroness. Only with so different a consequence. I couldn’t lookat her enough, and I stared and stared till I became aware she mighthave fancied me challenging her as a person unpresented. “All thesame,” Outreau went on, equally held, “c’est une tete a faire. If Iwere only staying long enough for a crack at her! But I tell you whatand he seized my arm—”bring her over!”

“Over?”“To Paris. She’d have a succes fou.”“Ah thanks, my dear fellow,” I was now quite in a position to say;

“she’s the handsomest thing in London, and”—for what I might dowith her was already before me with intensity—”I propose to keepher to myself.” It was before me with intensity, in the light of Mrs.Brash’s distant perfection of a little white old face, in which everywrinkle was the touch of a master; but something else, I suddenlyfelt, was not less so, for Lady Beldonald, in the other quarter, andthough she couldn’t have made out the subject of our notice, con-tinued to fix us, and her eyes had the challenge of those of the womanof consequence who has missed something. A moment later I wasclose to her, apologising first for not having been more on the spotat her arrival, but saying in the next breath uncontrollably: “Whymy dear lady, it’s a Holbein!”

“A Holbein? What?”“Why the wonderful sharp old face so extraordinarily, con-

summately drawn—in the frame of black velvet. That of Mrs.Brash, I mean—isn’t it her name?—your companion.”

This was the beginning of a most odd matter—the essence of myanecdote; and I think the very first note of the oddity must havesounded for me in the tone in which her ladyship spoke after givingme a silent look. It seemed to come to me out of a distance immea-

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surably removed from Holbein. “Mrs. Brash isn’t my ‘companion’in the sense you appear to mean. She’s my rather near relation and avery dear old friend. I love her—and you must know her.”

“Know her? Rather! Why to see her is to want on the spot to ‘go’for her. She also must sit for me,”

“She? Louisa Brash?” If Lady Beldonald had the theory that herbeauty directly showed it when things weren’t well with her, this im-pression, which the fixed sweetness of her serenity had hitherto struckme by no means as justifying, gave me now my first glimpse of itsgrounds. It was as if I had never before seen her face invaded by any-thing I should have called an expression. This expression moreoverwas of the faintest—was like the effect produced on a surface by anagitation both deep within and as yet much confused. “Have youtold her so?” she then quickly asked, as if to soften the sound of hersurprise.

“Dear no, I’ve but just noticed her—Outreau, a moment ago putme on her. But we’re both so taken, and he also wants—”

“To paint her?” Lady Beldonald uncontrollably murmured.“Don’t be afraid we shall fight for her,” I returned with a laugh for

this tone. Mrs. Brash was still where I could see her without appear-ing to stare, and she mightn’t have seen I was looking at her, thoughher protectress, I’m afraid, could scarce have failed of that certainty.“We must each take our turn, and at any rate she’s a wonderful thing,so that if you’ll let her go to Paris Outreau promises her there—”

“There?” my companion gasped.“A career bigger still than among us, as he considers we haven’t

half their eye. He guarantees her a succes fou.”She couldn’t get over it. “Louisa Brash? In Paris?”“They do see,” I went on, “more than we and they live extraordi-

narily, don’t you know, in that. But she’ll do something here too.”“And what will she do?”If frankly now I couldn’t help giving Mrs. Brash a longer look, so


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after it I could as little resist sounding my converser. “You’ll see.Only give her time.”

She said nothing during the moment in which she met my eyes; butthen: “Time, it seems to me, is exactly what you and your friend want.If you haven’t talked with her—”

“We haven’t seen her? Oh we see bang off—with a click like asteel spring. It’s our trade, it’s our life, and we should be donkeys ifwe made mistakes. That’s the way I saw you yourself, my lady, if Imay say so; that’s the way, with a long pin straight through yourbody, I’ve got you. And just so I’ve got her!”

All this, for reasons, had brought my guest to her feet; but hereyes had while we talked never once followed the direction of mine.“You call her a Holbein?”

“Outreau did, and I of course immediately recognised it. Don’tyou? She brings the old boy to life! It’s just as I should call you aTitian. You bring him to life.”

She couldn’t be said to relax, because she couldn’t be said to havehardened; but something at any rate on this took place in her—some-thing indeed quite disconnected from what I would have called her.“Don’t you understand that she has always been supposed—?” It hadthe ring of impatience; nevertheless it stopped short on a scruple.

I knew what it was, however, well enough to say it for her if shepreferred. “To be nothing whatever to look at? To be unfortunatelyplain—or even if you like repulsively ugly? Oh yes, I understand itperfectly, just as I understand—I have to as a part of my trade—many other forms of stupidity. It’s nothing new to one that ninety-nine people out of a hundred have no eyes, no sense, no taste. Thereare whole communities impenetrably sealed. I don’t say your friend’sa person to make the men turn round in Regent Street. But it addsto the joy of the few who do see that they have it so much to them-selves. Where in the world can she have lived? You must tell me allabout that—or rather, if she’ll be so good, she must.”

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“You mean then to speak to her—?”I wondered as she pulled up again. “Of her beauty?”“Her beauty!” cried Lady Beldonald so loud that two or three

persons looked round.“Ah with every precaution of respect I declared in a much lower

tone. But her back was by this time turned to me, and in the move-ment, as it were, one of the strangest little dramas I’ve ever knownwas well launched.


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CHAPTER III

IT WAS A DRAMA of small smothered intensely private things, and Iknew of but one other person in the secret; yet that person and Ifound it exquisitely susceptible of notation, followed it with an in-terest the mutual communication of which did much for our enjoy-ment, and were present with emotion at its touching catastrophe.The small case—for so small a case—had made a great stride evenbefore my little party separated, and in fact within the next tenminutes.

In that space of time two things had happened one of which wasthat I made the acquaintance of Mrs. Brash; and the other that Mrs.Munden reached me, cleaving the crowd, with one of her usualpieces of news. What she had to impart was that, on her having justbefore asked Nina if the conditions of our sitting had been arrangedwith me, Nina had replied, with something like perversity, that shedidn’t propose to arrange them, that the whole affair was “off ” againand that she preferred not to be further beset for the present. Thequestion for Mrs. Munden was naturally what had happened andwhether I understood. Oh I understood perfectly, and what I at firstmost understood was that even when I had brought in the name ofMrs. Brash intelligence wasn’t yet in Mrs. Munden. She was quite assurprised as Lady Beldonald had been on hearing of the esteem inwhich I held Mrs. Brash’s appearance. She was stupefied at learningthat I had just in my ardour proposed to its proprietress to sit to me.Only she came round promptly—which Lady Beldonald really never

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did. Mrs. Munden was in fact wonderful; for when I had given herquickly “Why she’s a Holbein, you know, absolutely,” she took it up,after a first fine vacancy, with an immediate abysmal “Oh is she?”that, as a piece of social gymnastics, did her the greatest honour; andshe was in fact the first in London to spread the tidings. For a face—about it was magnificent. But she was also the first, I must add, to seewhat would really happen—though this she put before me only aweek or two later. It will kill her, my dear—that’s what it will do.

She meant neither more nor less than that it would kill LadyBeldonald if I were to paint Mrs. Brash; for at this lurid light hadwe arrived in so short a space of time. It was for me to decide whethermy aesthetic need of giving life to my idea was such as to justify mein destroying it in a woman after all in most eyes so beautiful. Thesituation was indeed sufficiently queer; for it remained to be seenwhat I should positively gain by giving up Mrs. Brash. I appeared tohave ‘in any case lost Lady Beldonald, now too “upset”—it was al-ways Mrs. Munden’s word about her and, as I inferred, her ownabout herself—to meet me again on our previous footing. The onlything, I of course soon saw, was to temporise to drop the wholequestion for the present and yet so far as possible keep each of thepair in view. I may as well say at once that this plan and this processgave their principal interest to the next several months. Mrs. Brashhad turned up, if I remember, early in the new year, and her littlewonderful career was in our particular circle one of the features ofthe following season. It was at all events for myself the most attach-ing; it’s not my fault if I am so put together as often to find more lifein situations obscure and subject to interpretation than in the grossrattle of the foreground. And there were all sorts of things, thingstouching, amusing, mystifying—and above all such an instance as Ihad never yet met—in this funny little fortune of the useful Ameri-can cousin. Mrs. Munden was promptly at one with me as to therarity and, to a near and human view, the beauty and interest of the


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position. We had neither of us ever before seen that degree and thatspecial sort of personal success come to a woman for the first timeso late in life. I found it an example of poetic, of absolutely retribu-tive justice; so that my desire grew great to work it, as we say, onthose lines. I had seen it all from the original moment at my studio;the poor lady had never known an hour’s appreciation—which more-over, in perfect good faith, she had never missed. The very firstthing I did after inducing so unintentionally the resentful retreat ofher protectress had been to go straight over to her and say almostwithout preliminaries that I should hold myself immeasurablyobliged for a few patient sittings. What I thus came face to face withwas, on the instant, her whole unenlightened past and the full, ifforeshortened, revelation of what among us all was now unfailinglyin store for her. To turn the handle and start that tune came to meon the spot as a temptation. Here was a poor lady who had waitedfor the approach of old age to find out what she was worth. Herewas a benighted being to whom it was to be disclosed in her fifty-seventh year—I was to make that out—that she had something thatmight pass for a face. She looked much more than her age, and wasfairly frightened—as if I had been trying on her some possibly heart-less London trick—when she had taken in my appeal. That showedme in what an air she had lived and—as I should have been temptedto put it had I spoken out—among what children of darkness. Lateron I did them more justice; saw more that her wonderful points musthave been points largely the fruit of time, and even that possibly shemight never in all her life have looked so well as at this particularmoment. It might have been that if her hour had struck I just hap-pened to be present at the striking. What had occurred, all the same,was at the worst a notable comedy.

The famous “irony of fate” takes many forms, but I had never yetseen it take quite this one. She had been “had over” on an under-standing, and she wasn’t playing fair. She had broken the law of her

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ugliness and had turned beautiful on the hands of her employer.More interesting even perhaps than a view of the conscious triumphthat this might prepare for her, and of which, had I doubted of myown judgement, I could still take Outreau’s fine start as the fullguarantee—more interesting was the question of the process bywhich such a history could get itself enacted. The curious thing wasthat all the while the reasons of her having passed for plain—thereasons for Lady Beldonald’s fond calculation, which they quite jus-tified—were written large in her face, so large that it was easy tounderstand them as the only ones she herself had ever read. Whatwas it then that actually made the old stale sentence mean some-thing so different?—into what new combinations, what extraordi-nary language, unknown but understood at a glance, had time andlife translated it? The only thing to be said was that time and lifewere artists who beat us all, working with recipes and secrets wecould never find out. I really ought to have, like a lecturer or ashowman, a chart or a blackboard to present properly the relation,in the wonderful old tender battered blanched face, between theoriginal elements and the exquisite final it style.” I could do it withchalks, but I can scarcely do it with words. However, the thing was,for any artist who respected himself, to feel it—which I abundantlydid; and then not to conceal from her I felt it—which I neglected aslittle. But she was really, to do her complete justice, the last to un-derstand; and I’m not sure that, to the end—for there was an end—she quite made it all out or knew where she was. When you’ve beenbrought up for fifty years on black it must be hard to adjust yourorganism at a day’s notice to gold-colour. Her whole nature hadbeen pitched in the key of her supposed plainness. She had knownhow to be ugly—it was the only thing she had learnt save, if pos-sible, how not to mind it. Being beautiful took in any case a new setof muscles. It was on the prior conviction, literally, that she haddeveloped her admirable dress, instinctively felicitous, always either


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black or white and a matter of rather severe squareness and studiedline. She was magnificently neat; everything she showed had a wayof looking both old and fresh; and there was on every occasion thesame picture in her draped head—draped in low-falling black—and the fine white plaits (of a painter’s white, somehow) disposedon her chest. What had happened was that these arrangements, de-termined by certain considerations, lent themselves in effect muchbetter to certain others. Adopted in mere shy silence they had reallyonly deepened her accent. It was singular, moreover, that, so consti-tuted, there was nothing in her aspect of the ascetic or the nun. Shewas a good hard sixteenth-century figure, not withered with inno-cence, bleached rather by life in the open. She was in short justwhat we had made of her, a Holbein for a great Museum; and ourposition, Mrs. Munden’s and mine, rapidly became that of personshaving such a treasure to dispose of. The world—I speak of coursemainly of the art-world—flocked to see it.

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CHAPTER IV

“BUT HAS SHE ANY IDEA HERSELF, poor thing?” was the way I had put itto Mrs. Munden on our next meeting after the incident at my studio;with the effect, however, only of leaving my friend at first to take meas alluding to Mrs. Brash’s possible prevision of the chatter she mightcreate. I had my own sense of that—this provision had been nil; thequestion was of her consciousness of the office for which LadyBeldonald had counted on her and for which we were so promptlyproceeding to spoil her altogether.

“Oh I think she arrived with a goodish notion,” Mrs. Mundenhad replied when I had explained; “for she’s clever too, you know, aswell as good-looking, and I don’t see how, if she ever really knewNina, she could have supposed for a moment that she wasn’t wantedfor whatever she might have left to give up. Hasn’t she moreoveralways been made to feel that she’s ugly enough for anything?” Itwas even at this point already wonderful how my friend had mas-tered the case and what lights, alike for its past and its future, shewas prepared to throw on it. “If she has seen herself as ugly enoughfor anything she has seen herself—and that was the only way—asugly enough for Nina; and she has had her own manner of showingthat she understands without making Nina commit herself to any-thing vulgar. Women are never without ways for doing such things—both for communicating and receiving knowledge—that I can’t ex-plain to you, and that you wouldn’t understand if I could, since youmust be a woman even to do that. I daresay they’ve expressed it all


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to each other simply in the language of kisses. But doesn’t it at anyrate make something rather beautiful of the relation between themas affected by our discovery—?”

I had a laugh for her plural possessive. “The point is of course thatif there was a conscious bargain, and our action on Mrs. Brash is todeprive her of the sense of keeping her side of it, various things mayhappen that won’t be good either for her or for ourselves. She mayconscientiously throw up the position.”

“Yes,” my companion mused—”for she is conscientious. Or Nina,without waiting for that, may cast her forth.”

I faced it all. “Then we should have to keep her.”“As a regular model?” Mrs. Munden was ready for anything. “Oh

that would be lovely!”But I further worked it out. “The difficulty is that she’s not a

model, hang it—that she’s too good for one, that she’s the very thingherself. When Outreau and I have each had our go, that will be all;there’ll be nothing left for any one else. Therefore it behoves usquite to understand that our attitude’s a responsibility. If we can’tdo for her positively more than Nina does—”

“We must let her alone?” My companion continued to muse. “Isee!”

“Yet don’t,” I returned, “see too much. We can do more.”“Than Nina?” She was again on the spot. “It wouldn’t after all be

difficult. We only want the directly opposite thing—and which isthe only one the poor dear can give. Unless indeed,” she suggested,“we simply retract—we back out.”

I turned it over. “It’s too late for that. Whether Mrs. Brash’s peaceis gone I can’t say. But Nina’s is.”

“Yes, and there’s no way to bring it back that won’t sacrifice herfriend. We can’t turn round and say Mrs. Brash is ugly, can we? Butfancy Nina’s not having seen!” Mrs. Munden exclaimed.

“She doesn’t see now,” I answered. “She can’t, I’m certain, make

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out what we mean. The woman, for her still, is just what she alwayswas. But she has nevertheless had her stroke, and her blindness,while she wavers and gropes in the dark, only adds to her discom-fort. Her blow was to see the attention of the world deviate.”

“All the same I don’t think, you know,” my interlocutress said,“that Nina will have made her a scene or that, whatever we do, she’llever make her one. That isn’t the way it will happen, for she’s exactlyas conscientious as Mrs. Brash.”

“Then what is the way?” I asked.“It will just happen in silence.”“And what will ‘it,’ as you call it, be?”“Isn’t that what we want really to see?”“Well,” I replied after a turn or two about, “whether we want it or

not it’s exactly what we shall see; which is a reason the more forfancying, between the pair there—in the quiet exquisite house, andfull of superiorities and suppressions as they both are—the extraor-dinary situation. If I said just now that it’s too late to do anythingbut assent it’s because I’ve taken the full measure of what happenedat my studio. It took but a few moments—but she tasted of thetree.”

My companion wondered. “Nina?”“Mrs. Brash.” And to have to put it so ministered, while I took yet

another turn, to a sort of agitation. Our attitude was a responsibil-ity.

But I had suggested something else to my friend, who appearedfor a moment detached. “Should you say she’ll hate her worse if shedoesn’t see?”

“Lady Beldonald? Doesn’t see what we see, you mean, than if shedoes? Ah I give that up!” I laughed. “But what I can tell you is whyI hold that, as I said just now, we can do most. We can do this: wecan give to a harmless and sensitive creature hitherto practically dis-inherited—and give with an unexpectedness that will immensely


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add to its price—the pure joy of a deep draught of the very pride oflife, of an acclaimed personal triumph in our superior sophisticatedworld.”

Mrs. Munden had a glow of response for my sudden eloquence.Oh it will be beautiful!

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CHAPTER V

WELL, THAT’S WHAT, on the whole and in spite of everything, it re-ally was. It has dropped into my memory a rich little gallery ofpictures, a regular panorama of those occasions that were to minis-ter to the view from which I had so for a moment extracted a lyricinspiration. I see Mrs. Brash on each of these occasions practicallyenthroned and surrounded and more or less mobbed; see the hurry-ing and the nudging and the pressing and the staring; see the people“making up” and introduced, and catch the word when they havehad their turn; hear it above all, the great one—“Ah yes, the famousHolbein!”—passed about with that perfection of promptitude thatmakes the motions of the London mind so happy a mixture of thoseof the parrot and the sheep. Nothing would be easier of course thanto tell the whole little tale with an eye only for that silly side of it.Great was the silliness, but great also as to this case of poor Mrs.Brash, I will say for it, the good nature. Of course, furthermore, ittook in particular “our set,” with its positive child-terror of the ba-nal, to be either so foolish or so wise; though indeed I’ve never quiteknown where our set begins and ends, and have had to contentmyself on this score with the indication once given me by a ladynext whom I was placed at dinner: “Oh it’s bounded on the northby Ibsen and on the south by Sargent! Mrs. Brash never sat to me;she absolutely declined; and when she declared that it was quiteenough for her that I had with that fine precipitation invited her, Iquite took this as she meant it; before we had gone very far our


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understanding, hers and mine, was complete. Her attitude was ashappy as her success was prodigious. The sacrifice of the portraitwas a sacrifice to the true inwardness of Lady Beldonald, and didmuch, for the time, I divined, toward muffling their domestic ten-sion. All it was thus in her power to say—and I heard of a few casesof her having said it—was that she was sure I would have paintedher beautifully if she hadn’t prevented me. She couldn’t even tell thetruth, which was that I certainly would have done so if LadyBeldonald hadn’t; and she never could mention the subject at allbefore that personage. I can only describe the affair, naturally, fromthe outside, and heaven forbid indeed that I should try too closelyto, reconstruct the possible strange intercourse of these good friendsat home.

My anecdote, however, would lose half the point it may have toshow were I to omit all mention of the consummate turn her lady-ship appeared gradually to have found herself able to give her de-portment. She had made it impossible I should myself bring up ourold, our original question, but there was real distinction in her man-ner of now accepting certain other possibilities. Let me do her thatjustice; her effort at magnanimity must have been immense. Therecouldn’t fail of course to be ways in which poor Mrs. Brash paid forit. How much she had to pay we were in fact soon enough to see;and it’s my intimate conviction that, as a climax, her life at last wasthe price. But while she lived at least—and it was with an intensity,for those wondrous weeks, of which she had never dreamed—LadyBeldonald herself faced the music. This is what I mean by the pos-sibilities, by the sharp actualities indeed, that she accepted. She tookour friend out, she showed her at home, never attempted to hide orto betray her, played her no trick whatever so long as the ordeallasted. She drank deep, on her side too, of the cup—the cup that forher own lips could only be bitterness. There was, I think, scarce aspecial success of her companion’s at which she wasn’t personally

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present. Mrs. Munden’s theory of the silence in which all this wouldbe muffled for them was none the less, and in abundance, con-firmed by our observations. The whole thing was to be the death ofone or the other of them, but they never spoke of it at tea. I remem-ber even that Nina went so far as to say to me once, looking me fullin the eyes, quite sublimely, “I’ve made out what you mean—she isa picture.” The beauty of this moreover was that, as I’m persuaded,she hadn’t really made it out at all—the words were the mere hypoc-risy of her reflective endeavour for virtue. She couldn’t possibly havemade it out; her friend was as much as ever “dreadfully plain” toher; she must have wondered to the last what on earth possessed us.Wouldn’t it in fact have been after all just this failure of vision, thissupreme stupidity in short, that kept the catastrophe so long at bay?There was a certain sense of greatness for her in seeing so many ofus so absurdly mistaken; and I recall that on various occasions, andin particular when she uttered the words just quoted, this high se-renity, as a sign of the relief of her soreness, if not of the effort of herconscience, did something quite visible to my eyes, and also quiteunprecedented, for the beauty of her face. She got a real lift fromit—such a momentary discernible sublimity that I recollect comingout on the spot with a queer crude amused “Do you know I believeI could paint you now?”

She was a fool not to have closed with me then and there; for whathas happened since has altered everything—what was to happen alittle later was so much more than I could swallow. This was the dis-appearance of the famous Holbein from one day to the other—pro-ducing a consternation among us all as great as if the Venus of Milohad suddenly vanished from the Louvre. “She has simply shipped herstraight back”—the explanation was given in that form by Mrs.Munden, who added that any cord pulled tight enough would end atlast by snapping. At the snap, in any case, we mightily jumped, forthe masterpiece we had for three or four months been living with had


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made us feel its presence as a luminous lesson and a daily need. Werecognised more than ever that it had been, for high finish, the gemof our collection—we found what a blank it left on the wall. LadyBeldonald might fill up the blank, but we couldn’t. That she did soonfill it up—and, heaven help us, how was put before me after an inter-val of no great length, but during which I hadn’t seen her. ‘I dined onthe Christmas of last year at Mrs. Munden’s, and Nina, with a “scratchlot,” as our hostess said, was there, so that, the preliminary wait beinglongish, she could approach me very sweetly. “I’ll come to you to-morrow if you like,” she said; and the effect of it, after a first stare ather, was to make me look all round. I took in, by these two motions,two things; one of which was that, though now again so satisfiedherself of her high state, she could give me nothing comparable towhat I should have got had she taken me up at the moment of mymeeting her on her distinguished concession; the other that she was“suited” afresh and that Mrs. Brash’s successor was fully installed. Mrs.Brash’s successor, was at the other side of the room, and I becameconscious that Mrs. Munden was waiting to see my eyes seek her. Iguessed the meaning of the wait; what was one, this time, to say? Ohfirst and foremost assuredly that it was immensely droll, for this timeat least there was no mistake. The lady I looked upon, and as to whommy friend, again quite at sea, appealed to me for a formula, was aslittle a Holbein, or a specimen of any other school, as she was, likeLady Beldonald herself, a Titian. The formula was easy to give, for theamusement was that her prettiness—yes, literally, prodigiously, herprettiness—was distinct. Lady Beldonald had been magnificent—hadbeen almost intelligent. Miss What’s-her-name continues pretty, con-tinues even young, and doesn’t matter a straw! She matters so ideallylittle that Lady Beldonald is practically safer, I judge, than she hasever been. There hasn’t been a symptom of chatter about this person,and I believe her protectress is much surprised that we’re not morestruck.

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It was at any rate strictly impossible to me to make an appoint-ment for the day as to which I have just recorded Nina’s proposal;and the turn of events since then has not quickened my eagerness.Mrs. Munden remained in correspondence with Mrs. Brash—tothe extent, that is, of three letters, each of which she showed me.They so told to our imagination her terrible little story that we werequite prepared—or thought we were—for her going out like a snuffedcandle. She resisted, on her return to her original conditions, lessthan a year; the taste of the tree, as I had called it, had been fatal toher; what she had contentedly enough lived without before for halfa century she couldn’t now live without for a day. I know nothing ofher original conditions—some minor American city—save that forher to have gone back to them was clearly to have stepped out of herframe. We performed, Mrs. Munden and I, a small funeral servicefor her by talking it all over and making it all out. It wasn’t—theminor American city—a market for Holbeins, and what had oc-curred was that the poor old picture, banished from its museumand refreshed by the rise of no new movement to hang it, was ca-pable of the miracle of a silent revolution; of itself turning, in itsdire dishonour, its face to the wall. So it stood, without the inter-vention of the ghost of a critic, till they happened to pull it roundagain and find it mere dead paint. Well, it had had, if that’s any-thing, its season of fame, its name on a thousand tongues and printedin capitals in the catalogue. We hadn’t been at fault. I haven’t, all thesame, the least note of her—not a scratch. And I did her so in inten-tion! Mrs. Munden continues to remind me, however, that this isnot the sort of rendering with which, on the other side, after all,Lady Beldonald proposes to content herself. She has come back tothe question of her own portrait. Let me settle it then at last. Sinceshe will have the real thing—well, hang it, she shall!


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In the Cageby

Henry James

from the 1919 Martin Secker Edition

CHAPTER I

IT HAD OCCURRED to her early that in her position—that of a youngperson spending, in framed and wired confinement, the life of aguinea-pig or a magpie—she should know a great many personswithout their recognising the acquaintance. That made it an emo-tion the more lively—though singularly rare and always, even then,with opportunity still very much smothered—to see any one comein whom she knew outside, as she called it, any one who could addanything to the meanness of her function. Her function was to sitthere with two young men—the other telegraphist and the counter-clerk; to mind the “sounder,” which was always going, to dole outstamps and postal-orders, weigh letters, answer stupid questions,give difficult change and, more than anything else, count words asnumberless as the sands of the sea, the words of the telegrams thrust,from morning to night, through the gap left in the high lattice,across the encumbered shelf that her forearm ached with rubbing.

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This transparent screen fenced out or fenced in, according to theside of the narrow counter on which the human lot was cast, theduskiest corner of a shop pervaded not a little, in winter, by thepoison of perpetual gas, and at all times by the presence of hams,cheese, dried fish, soap, varnish, paraffin and other solids and fluidsthat she came to know perfectly by their smells without consentingto know them by their names.

The barrier that divided the little post-and-telegraph-office fromthe grocery was a frail structure of wood and wire; but the social,the professional separation was a gulf that fortune, by a stroke quiteremarkable, had spared her the necessity of contributing at all pub-licly to bridge. When Mr. Cocker’s young men stepped over frombehind the other counter to change a five-pound note—and Mr.Cocker’s situation, with the cream of the “Court Guide” and thedearest furnished apartments, Simpkin’s, Ladle’s, Thrupp’s, just roundthe corner, was so select that his place was quite pervaded by thecrisp rustle of these emblems—she pushed out the sovereigns as ifthe applicant were no more to her than one of the momentary, thepractically featureless, appearances in the great procession; and thisperhaps all the more from the very fact of the connexion (onlyrecognised outside indeed) to which she had lent herself with ri-diculous inconsequence. She recognised the others the less becauseshe had at last so unreservedly, so irredeemably, recognised Mr.Mudge. However that might be, she was a little ashamed of havingto admit to herself that Mr. Mudge’s removal to a higher sphere—toa more commanding position, that is, though to a much lowerneighbourhood—would have been described still better as a luxurythan as the mere simplification, the corrected awkwardness, thatshe contented herself with calling it. He had at any rate ceased to beall day long in her eyes, and this left something a little fresh forthem to rest on of a Sunday. During the three months of his happysurvival at Cocker’s after her consent to their engagement she had

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often asked herself what it was marriage would be able to add to afamiliarity that seemed already to have scraped the platter so clean.Opposite there, behind the counter of which his superior stature,his whiter apron, his more clustering curls and more present, toopresent, H’s had been for a couple of years the principal ornament,he had moved to and fro before her as on the small sanded floor oftheir contracted future. She was conscious now of the improvementof not having to take her present and her future at once. They wereabout as much as she could manage when taken separate.

She had, none the less, to give her mind steadily to what Mr.Mudge had again written her about, the idea of her applying for atransfer to an office quite similar—she couldn’t yet hope for a placein a bigger—under the very roof where he was foreman, so that,dangled before her every minute of the day, he should see her, as hecalled it, “hourly,” and in a part, the far N.W. district, where, withher mother, she would save on their two rooms alone nearly threeshillings. It would be far from dazzling to exchange Mayfair forChalk Farm, and it wore upon her much that he could never drop asubject; still, it didn’t wear as things had worn, the worries of theearly times of their great misery, her own, her mother’s and her eldersister’s—the last of whom had succumbed to all but absolute wantwhen, as conscious and incredulous ladies, suddenly bereft, betrayed,overwhelmed, they had slipped faster and faster down the steep slopeat the bottom of which she alone had rebounded. Her mother hadnever rebounded any more at the bottom than on the way; had onlyrumbled and grumbled down and down, making, in respect of caps,topics and “habits,” no effort whatever—which simply meant smell-ing much of the time of whiskey.

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CHAPTER II

IT WAS ALWAYS rather quiet at Cocker’s while the contingent fromLadle’s and Thrupp’s and all the other great places were at luncheon,or, as the young men used vulgarly to say, while the animals werefeeding. She had forty minutes in advance of this to go home forher own dinner; and when she came back and one of the youngmen took his turn there was often half an hour during which shecould pull out a bit of work or a book—a book from the placewhere she borrowed novels, very greasy, in fine print and all aboutfine folks, at a ha’penny a day. This sacred pause was one of thenumerous ways in which the establishment kept its finger on thepulse of fashion and fell into the rhythm of the larger life. It hadsomething to do, one day, with the particular flare of importance ofan arriving customer, a lady whose meals were apparently irregular,yet whom she was destined, she afterwards found, not to forget.The girl was blasee; nothing could belong more, as she perfectlyknew, to the intense publicity of her profession; but she had a whim-sical mind and wonderful nerves; she was subject, in short, to sud-den flickers of antipathy and sympathy, red gleams in the grey, fitfulneeds to notice and to “care,” odd caprices of curiosity. She had afriend who had invented a new career for women—that of being inand out of people’s houses to look after the flowers. Mrs. Jordan hada manner of her own of sounding this allusion; “the flowers,” on herlips, were, in fantastic places, in happy homes, as usual as the coalsor the daily papers. She took charge of them, at any rate, in all the

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rooms, at so much a month, and people were quickly finding outwhat it was to make over this strange burden of the pampered to thewidow of a clergyman. The widow, on her side, dilating on the ini-tiations thus opened up to her, had been splendid to her youngfriend, over the way she was made free of the greatest houses—theway, especially when she did the dinner-tables, set out so often fortwenty, she felt that a single step more would transform her wholesocial position. On its being asked of her then if she circulated onlyin a sort of tropical solitude, with the upper servants for picturesquenatives, and on her having to assent to this glance at her limitations,she had found a reply to the girl’s invidious question. “You’ve noimagination, my dear!”—that was because a door more than halfopen to the higher life couldn’t be called anything but a thin parti-tion. Mrs. Jordan’s imagination quite did away with the thickness.

Our young lady had not taken up the charge, had dealt with itgood-humouredly, just because she knew so well what to think of it.It was at once one of her most cherished complaints and most secretsupports that people didn’t understand her, and it was accordingly amatter of indifference to her that Mrs. Jordan shouldn’t; even thoughMrs. Jordan, handed down from their early twilight of gentility andalso the victim of reverses, was the only member of her circle inwhom she recognised an equal. She was perfectly aware that herimaginative life was the life in which she spent most of her time;and she would have been ready, had it been at all worth while, tocontend that, since her outward occupation didn’t kill it, it must bestrong indeed. Combinations of flowers and green-stuff, forsooth!What she could handle freely, she said to herself, was combinationsof men and women. The only weakness in her faculty came fromthe positive abundance of her contact with the human herd; thiswas so constant, it had so the effect of cheapening her privilege, thatthere were long stretches in which inspiration, divination and inter-est quite dropped. The great thing was the flashes, the quick reviv-

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als, absolute accidents all, and neither to be counted on nor to beresisted. Some one had only sometimes to put in a penny for a stampand the whole thing was upon her. She was so absurdly constructedthat these were literally the moments that made up—made up forthe long stiffness of sitting there in the stocks, made up for thecunning hostility of Mr. Buckton and the importunate sympathy ofthe counter-clerk, made up for the daily deadly flourishy letter fromMr. Mudge, made up even for the most haunting of her worries, therage at moments of not knowing how her mother did “get it.”

She had surrendered herself moreover of late to a certain expan-sion of her consciousness; something that seemed perhaps vulgarlyaccounted for by the fact that, as the blast of the season roared louderand the waves of fashion tossed their spray further over the counter,there were more impressions to be gathered and really—for it cameto that—more life to be led. Definite at any rate it was that by thetime May was well started the kind of company she kept at Cocker’shad begun to strike her as a reason—a reason she might almost putforward for a policy of procrastination. It sounded silly, of course,as yet, to plead such a motive, especially as the fascination of theplace was after all a sort of torment. But she liked her torment; itwas a torment she should miss at Chalk Farm. She was ingeniousand uncandid, therefore, about leaving the breadth of London alittle longer between herself and that austerity. If she hadn’t quitethe courage in short to say to Mr. Mudge that her actual chance fora play of mind was worth any week the three shillings he desired tohelp her to save, she yet saw something happen in the course of themonth that in her heart of hearts at least answered the subtle ques-tion. This was connected precisely with the appearance of the memo-rable lady.

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CHAPTER III

SHE PUSHED IN THREE bescribbled forms which the girl’s hand wasquick to appropriate, Mr. Buckton having so frequent a perverseinstinct for catching first any eye that promised the sort of enter-tainment with which she had her peculiar affinity. The amusementsof captives are full of a desperate contrivance, and one of our youngfriend’s ha’pennyworths had been the charming tale of “Picciola.” Itwas of course the law of the place that they were never to take nonotice, as Mr. Buckton said, whom they served; but this also neverprevented, certainly on the same gentleman’s own part, what he wasfond of describing as the underhand game. Both her companions,for that matter, made no secret of the number of favourites they hadamong the ladies; sweet familiarities in spite of which she had re-peatedly caught each of them in stupidities and mistakes, confu-sions of identity and lapses of observation that never failed to re-mind her how the cleverness of men ends where the cleverness ofwomen begins. “Marguerite, Regent Street. Try on at six. All Span-ish lace. Pearls. The full length.” That was the first; it had no signa-ture. “Lady Agnes Orme, Hyde Park Place. Impossible to-night,dining Haddon. Opera to-morrow, promised Fritz, but could doplay Wednesday. Will try Haddon for Savoy, and anything in theworld you like, if you can get Gussy. Sunday Montenero. Sit MasonMonday, Tuesday. Marguerite awful. Cissy.” That was the second.The third, the girl noted when she took it, was on a foreign form:“Everard, Hotel Brighton, Paris. Only understand and believe. 22nd

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to 26th, and certainly 8th and 9th. Perhaps others. Come. Mary.”Mary was very handsome, the handsomest woman, she felt in a

moment, she had ever seen—or perhaps it was only Cissy. Perhapsit was both, for she had seen stranger things than that—ladies wir-ing to different persons under different names. She had seen allsorts of things and pieced together all sorts of mysteries. There hadonce been one—not long before—who, without winking, sent offfive over five different signatures. Perhaps these represented five dif-ferent friends who had asked her—all women, just as perhaps nowMary and Cissy, or one or other of them, were wiring by deputy.Sometimes she put in too much—too much of her own sense; some-times she put in too little; and in either case this often came roundto her afterwards, for she had an extraordinary way of keeping clues.When she noticed she noticed; that was what it came to. There weredays and days, there were weeks sometimes, of vacancy. This aroseoften from Mr. Buckton’s devilish and successful subterfuges forkeeping her at the sounder whenever it looked as if anything mightarouse; the sounder, which it was equally his business to mind, be-ing the innermost cell of captivity, a cage within the cage, fenced oftfrom the rest by a frame of ground glass. The counter-clerk wouldhave played into her hands; but the counter-clerk was really reducedto idiocy by the effect of his passion for her. She flattered herselfmoreover, nobly, that with the unpleasant conspicuity of this pas-sion she would never have consented to be obliged to him. Themost she would ever do would be always to shove off on him when-ever she could the registration of letters, a job she happened par-ticularly to loathe. After the long stupors, at all events, there almostalways suddenly would come a sharp taste of something; it was inher mouth before she knew it; it was in her mouth now.

To Cissy, to Mary, whichever it was, she found her curiosity goingout with a rush, a mute effusion that floated back to her, like areturning tide, the living colour and splendour of the beautiful head,

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the light of eyes that seemed to reflect such utterly other things thanthe mean things actually before them; and, above all, the high curtconsideration of a manner that even at bad moments was a magnifi-cent habit and of the very essence of the innumerable things—herbeauty, her birth, her father and mother, her cousins and all herancestors—that its possessor couldn’t have got rid of even had shewished. How did our obscure little public servant know that for thelady of the telegrams this was a bad moment? How did she guess allsorts of impossible things, such as, almost on the very spot, thepresence of drama at a critical stage and the nature of the tie withthe gentleman at the Hotel Brighton? More than ever before it floatedto her through the bars of the cage that this at last was the highreality, the bristling truth that she had hitherto only patched up andeked out—one of the creatures, in fine, in whom all the conditionsfor happiness actually met, and who, in the air they made, bloomedwith an unwitting insolence. What came home to the girl was theway the insolence was tempered by something that was equally apart of the distinguished life, the custom of a flowerlike bend to theless fortunate—a dropped fragrance, a mere quick breath, but whichin fact pervaded and lingered. The apparition was very young, butcertainly married, and our fatigued friend had a sufficient store ofmythological comparison to recognise the port of Juno. Margueritemight be “awful,” but she knew how to dress a goddess.

Pearls and Spanish lace—she herself, with assurance, could seethem, and the “full length” too, and also red velvet bows, which,disposed on the lace in a particular manner (she could have placedthem with the turn of a hand) were of course to adorn the front ofa black brocade that would be like a dress in a picture. However,neither Marguerite nor Lady Agnes nor Haddon nor Fritz nor Gussywas what the wearer of this garment had really come in for. She hadcome in for Everard—and that was doubtless not his true nameeither. If our young lady had never taken such jumps before it was

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simply that she had never before been so affected. She went all theway. Mary and Cissy had been round together, in their single su-perb person, to see him—he must live round the corner; they hadfound that, in consequence of something they had come, precisely,to make up for or to have another scene about, he had gone off—gone off just on purpose to make them feel it; on which they hadcome together to Cocker’s as to the nearest place; where they hadput in the three forms partly in order not to put in the one alone.The two others in a manner, covered it, muffled it, passed it off. Ohyes, she went all the way, and this was a specimen of how she oftenwent. She would know the hand again any time. It was as hand-some and as everything else as the woman herself. The woman her-self had, on learning his flight, pushed past Everard’s servant andinto his room; she had written her missive at his table and with hispen. All this, every inch of it, came in the waft that she blew throughand left behind her, the influence that, as I have said, lingered. Andamong the things the girl was sure of, happily, was that she shouldsee her again.

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CHAPTER IV

SHE SAW HER IN FACT, and only ten days later; but this time notalone, and that was exactly a part of the luck of it. Not unaware—ashow could her observation have left her so?—of the possibilitiesthrough which it could range, our young lady had ever since had inher mind a dozen conflicting theories about Everard’s type; as towhich, the instant they came into the place, she felt the point settledwith a thump that seemed somehow addressed straight to her heart.That organ literally beat faster at the approach of the gentlemanwho was this time with Cissy, and who, as seen from within thecage, became on the spot the happiest of the happy circumstanceswith which her mind had invested the friend of Fritz and Gussy. Hewas a very happy circumstance indeed as, with his cigarette in hislips and his broken familiar talk caught by his companion, he putdown the half-dozen telegrams it would take them together severalminutes to dispatch. And here it occurred, oddly enough, that if,shortly before the girl’s interest in his companion had sharpenedher sense for the messages then transmitted, her immediate visionof himself had the effect, while she counted his seventy words, ofpreventing intelligibility. His words were mere numbers, they toldher nothing whatever; and after he had gone she was in possessionof no name, of no address, of no meaning, of nothing but a vaguesweet sound and an immense impression. He had been there butfive minutes, he had smoked in her face, and, busy with his tele-grams, with the tapping pencil and the conscious danger, the odi-

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ous betrayal that would come from a mistake, she had had no wan-dering glances nor roundabout arts to spare. Yet she had taken himin; she knew everything; she had made up her mind.

He had come back from Paris; everything was re-arranged; thepair were again shoulder to shoulder in their high encounter withlife, their large and complicated game. The fine soundless pulse ofthis game was in the air for our young woman while they remainedin the shop. While they remained? They remained all day; theirpresence continued and abode with her, was in everything she didtill nightfall, in the thousands of other words she counted, she trans-mitted, in all the stamps she detached and the letters she weighedand the change she gave, equally unconscious and unerring in eachof these particulars, and not, as the run on the little office thickenedwith the afternoon hours, looking up at a single ugly face in thelong sequence, nor really hearing the stupid questions that she pa-tiently and perfectly answered. All patience was possible now, allquestions were stupid after his, all faces were ugly. She had beensure she should see the lady again; and even now she should per-haps, she should probably, see her often. But for him it was totallydifferent; she should never never see him. She wanted it too much.There was a kind of wanting that helped—she had arrived, with herrich experience, at that generalisation; and there was another kindthat was fatal. It was this time the fatal kind; it would prevent.

Well, she saw him the very next day, and on this second occasionit was quite different; the sense of every syllable he paid for wasfiercely distinct; she indeed felt her progressive pencil, dabbing as ifwith a quick caress the marks of his own, put life into every stroke.He was there a long time—had not brought his forms filled out butworked them off in a nook on the counter; and there were otherpeople as well—a changing pushing cluster, with every one to mindat once and endless right change to make and information to pro-duce. But she kept hold of him throughout; she continued, for her-

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self, in a relation with him as close as that in which, behind thehated ground glass, Mr. Buckton luckily continued with the sounder.This morning everything changed, but rather to dreariness; she hadto swallow the rebuff to her theory about fatal desires, which shedid without confusion and indeed with absolute levity; yet if it wasnow flagrant that he did live close at hand—at Park Chambers—and belonged supremely to the class that wired everything, eventheir expensive feelings (so that, as he never wrote, his correspon-dence cost him weekly pounds and pounds, and he might be in andout five times a day) there was, all the same, involved in the pros-pect, and by reason of its positive excess of light, a perverse melan-choly, a gratuitous misery. This was at once to give it a place in anorder of feelings on which I shall presently touch.

Meanwhile, for a month, he was very constant. Cissy, Mary, neverre-appeared with him; he was always either alone or accompaniedonly by some gentleman who was lost in the blaze of his glory. Therewas another sense, however—and indeed there was more than one—in which she mostly found herself counting in the splendid creaturewith whom she had originally connected him. He addressed thiscorrespondent neither as Mary nor as Cissy; but the girl was sure ofwhom it was, in Eaten Square, that he was perpetually wiring to—and all so irreproachably!—as Lady Bradeen. Lady Bradeen was Cissy,Lady Bradeen was Mary, Lady Bradeen was the friend of Fritz andof Gussy, the customer of Marguerite, and the close ally in short (aswas ideally right, only the girl had not yet found a descriptive termthat was) of the most magnificent of men. Nothing could equal thefrequency and variety of his communications to her ladyship buttheir extraordinary, their abysmal propriety. It was just the talk—soprofuse sometimes that she wondered what was left for their realmeetings—of the very happiest people. Their real meetings musthave been constant, for half of it was appointments and allusions,all swimming in a sea of other allusions still, tangled in a complexity

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of questions that gave a wondrous image of their life. If Lady Bradeenwas Juno it was all certainly Olympian. If the girl, missing the an-swers, her ladyship’s own outpourings, vainly reflected that Cocker’sshould have been one of the bigger offices where telegrams arrivedas well as departed, there were yet ways in which, on the whole, shepressed the romance closer by reason of the very quantity of imagi-nation it demanded and consumed. The days and hours of this newfriend, as she came to account him, were at all events unrolled, andhowever much more she might have known she would still havewished to go beyond. In fact she did go beyond; she went quite farenough.

But she could none the less, even after a month, scarce have toldif the gentlemen who came in with him recurred or changed; andthis in spite of the fact that they too were always posting and wiring,smoking in her face and signing or not signing. The gentlemen whocame in with him were nothing when he was there. They turned upalone at other times—then only perhaps with a dim richness ofreference. He himself, absent as well as present, was all. He was verytall, very fair, and had, in spite of his thick preoccupations, a good-humour that was exquisite, particularly as it so often had the effectof keeping him on. He could have reached over anybody, and any-body—no matter who—would have let him; but he was so extraor-dinarily kind that he quite pathetically waited, never waggling thingsat her out of his turn nor saying “Here!” with horrid sharpness. Hewaited for pottering old ladies, for gaping slaveys, for the perpetualButtonses from Thrupp’s; and the thing in all this that she wouldhave liked most unspeakably to put to the test was the possibility ofher having for him a personal identity that might in a particularway appeal. There were moments when he actually struck her as onher side, as arranging to help, to support, to spare her.

But such was the singular spirit of our young friend that she couldremind herself with a pang that when people had awfully good

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manners—people of that class,—you couldn’t tell. These mannerswere for everybody, and it might be drearily unavailing for any poorparticular body to be overworked and unusual. What he did takefor granted was all sorts of facility; and his high pleasantness, hisrelighting of cigarettes while he waited, his unconscious bestowal ofopportunities, of boons, of blessings, were all a part of his splendidsecurity, the instinct that told him there was nothing such an exist-ence as his could ever lose by. He was somehow all at once verybright and very grave, very young and immensely complete; andwhatever he was at any moment it was always as much as all the restthe mere bloom of his beatitude. He was sometimes Everard, as hehad been at the Hotel Brighton, and he was sometimes CaptainEverard. He was sometimes Philip with his surname and sometimesPhilip without it. In some directions he was merely Phil, in othershe was merely Captain. There were relations in which he was noneof these things, but a quite different person—”the Count.” Therewere several friends for whom he was William. There were severalfor whom, in allusion perhaps to his complexion, he was “the Pink‘Un.” Once, once only by good luck, he had, coinciding comically,quite miraculously, with another person also near to her, been“Mudge.” Yes, whatever he was, it was a part of his happiness—whatever he was and probably whatever he wasn’t. And his happi-ness was a part—it became so little by little—of something that,almost from the first of her being at Cocker’s, had been deeply withthe girl.

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CHAPTER V

THIS WAS NEITHER more nor less than the queer extension of herexperience, the double life that, in the cage, she grew at last to lead.As the weeks went on there she lived more and more into the worldof whiffs and glimpses, she found her divinations work faster andstretch further. It was a prodigious view as the pressure heightened,a panorama fed with facts and figures, flushed with a torrent ofcolour and accompanied with wondrous world-music. What itmainly came to at this period was a picture of how London couldamuse itself; and that, with the running commentary of a witness soexclusively a witness, turned for the most part to a hardening of theheart. The nose of this observer was brushed by the bouquet, yetshe could never really pluck even a daisy. What could still remainfresh in her daily grind was the immense disparity, the differenceand contrast, from class to class, of every instant and every motion.There were times when all the wires in the country seemed to startfrom the little hole-and-corner where she plied for a livelihood, andwhere, in the shuffle of feet, the flutter of “forms,” the straying ofstamps and the ring of change over the counter, the people she hadfallen into the habit of remembering and fitting together with oth-ers, and of having her theories and interpretations of, kept up be-fore her their long procession and rotation. What twisted the knifein her vitals was the way the profligate rich scattered about them, inextravagant chatter over their extravagant pleasures and sins, anamount of money that would have held the stricken household of

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her frightened childhood, her poor pinched mother and tormentedfather and lost brother and starved sister, together for a lifetime.During her first weeks she had often gasped at the sums people werewilling to pay for the stuff they transmitted—the “much love”s, the“awful” regrets, the compliments and wonderments and vain vaguegestures that cost the price of a new pair of boots. She had had away then of glancing at the people’s faces, but she had early learntthat if you became a telegraphist you soon ceased to be astonished.Her eye for types amounted nevertheless to genius, and there werethose she liked and those she hated, her feeling for the latter ofwhich grew to a positive possession, an instinct of observation anddetection. There were the brazen women, as she called them, of thehigher and the lower fashion, whose squanderings and graspings,whose struggles and secrets and love-affairs and lies, she tracked andstored up against them till she had at moments, in private, a trium-phant vicious feeling of mastery and ease, a sense of carrying theirsilly guilty secrets in her pocket, her small retentive brain, and therebyknowing so much more about them than they suspected or wouldcare to think. There were those she would have liked to betray, totrip up, to bring down with words altered and fatal; and all througha personal hostility provoked by the lightest signs, by their acci-dents of tone and manner, by the particular kind of relation shealways happened instantly to feel.

There were impulses of various kinds, alternately soft and severe, towhich she was constitutionally accessible and which were determinedby the smallest accidents. She was rigid in general on the article ofmaking the public itself affix its stamps, and found a special enjoy-ment in dealing to that end with some of the ladies who were toogrand to touch them. She had thus a play of refinement and subtletygreater, she flattered herself, than any of which she could be made thesubject; and though most people were too stupid to be conscious ofthis it brought her endless small consolations and revenges. She

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recognised quite as much those of her sex whom she would have likedto help, to warn, to rescue, to see more of; and that alternative as welloperated exactly through the hazard of personal sympathy, her visionfor silver threads and moonbeams and her gift for keeping the cluesand finding her way in the tangle. The moonbeams and silver threadspresented at moments all the vision of what poor she might have madeof happiness. Blurred and blank as the whole thing often inevitably,or mercifully, became, she could still, through crevices and crannies,be stupefied, especially by what, in spite of all seasoning, touched thesorest place in her consciousness, the revelation of the golden showerflying about without a gleam of gold for herself. It remained prodi-gious to the end, the money her fine friends were able to spend to getstill more, or even to complain to fine friends of their own that theywere in want. The pleasures they proposed were equalled only bythose they declined, and they made their appointments often so ex-pensively that she was left wondering at the nature of the delights towhich the mere approaches were so paved with shillings. She quiv-ered on occasion into the perception of this and that one whom shewould on the chance have just simply liked to be. Her conceit, herbaffled vanity, was possibly monstrous; she certainly often threw her-self into a defiant conviction that she would have done the wholething much better. But her greatest comfort, mostly, was her com-parative vision of the men; by whom I mean the unmistakeable gentle-men, for she had no interest in the spurious or the shabby and nomercy at all for the poor. She could have found a sixpence, outside,for an appearance of want; but her fancy, in some directions so alert,had never a throb of response for any sign of the sordid. The men shedid track, moreover, she tracked mainly in one relation, the relationas to which the cage convinced her, she believed, more than anythingelse could have done, that it was quite the most diffused.

She found her ladies, in short, almost always in communicationwith her gentlemen, and her gentlemen with her ladies, and she

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read into the immensity of their intercourse stories and meaningswithout end. Incontestably she grew to think that the men cut thebest figure; and in this particular, as in many others, she arrived at aphilosophy of her own, all made up of her private notations andcynicisms. It was a striking part of the business, for example, that itwas much more the women, on the whole, who were after the menthan the men who were after the women: it was literally visible thatthe general attitude of the one sex was that of the object pursuedand defensive, apologetic and attenuating, while the light of herown nature helped her more or less to conclude as to the attitude ofthe other. Perhaps she herself a little even fell into the custom ofpursuit in occasionally deviating only for gentlemen from her highrigour about the stamps. She had early in the day made up her mind,in fine, that they had the best manners; and if there were none ofthem she noticed when Captain Everard was there, there were plentyshe could place and trace and name at other times, plenty who, withtheir way of being “nice” to her, and of handling, as if their pocketswere private tills loose mixed masses of silver and gold, were suchpleasant appearances that she could envy them without dislike. Theynever had to give change—they only had to get it. They ranged throughevery suggestion, every shade of fortune, which evidently includedindeed lots of bad luck as well as of good, declining even toward Mr.Mudge and his bland firm thrift, and ascending, in wild signals androcket-flights, almost to within hail of her highest standard. So frommonth to month she went on with them all, through a thousand upsand downs and a thousand pangs and indifferences. What virtuallyhappened was that in the shuffling herd that passed before her by farthe greater part only passed—a proportion but just appreciable stayed.Most of the elements swam straight away, lost themselves in the bot-tomless common, and by so doing really kept the page clear. On theclearness therefore what she did retain stood sharply out; she nippedand caught it, turned it over and interwove it.

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CHAPTER VI

SHE MET MRS. JORDAN when she could, and learned from her moreand more how the great people, under her gentle shake and aftergoing through everything with the mere shops, were waking up tothe gain of putting into the hands of a person of real refinement thequestion that the shop-people spoke of so vulgarly as that of thefloral decorations. The regular dealers in these decorations were allvery well; but there was a peculiar magic in the play of taste of a ladywho had only to remember, through whatever intervening dusk, allher own little tables, little bowls and little jars and little other ar-rangements, and the wonderful thing she had made of the gardenof the vicarage. This small domain, which her young friend hadnever seen, bloomed in Mrs. Jordan’s discourse like a new Eden,and she converted the past into a bank of violets by the tone inwhich she said “Of course you always knew my one passion!” Sheobviously met now, at any rate, a big contemporary need, measuredwhat it was rapidly becoming for people to feel they could trust herwithout a tremor. It brought them a peace that—during the quarterof an hour before dinner in especial—was worth more to them thanmere payment could express. Mere payment, none the less, was tol-erably prompt; she engaged by the month, taking over the wholething; and there was an evening on which, in respect to our heroine,she at last returned to the charge. “It’s growing and growing, and Isee that I must really divide the work. One wants an associate—ofone’s own kind, don’t you know? You know the look they want it all

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to have?—of having come, not from a florist, but from one of them-selves. Well, I’m sure you could give it—because you are one. Thenwe should win. Therefore just come in with me.”

“And leave the P.O.?”“Let the P.O. simply bring you your letters. It would bring you

lots, you’d see: orders, after a bit, by the score.” It was on this, in duecourse, that the great advantage again came up: “One seems to liveagain with one’s own people.” It had taken some little time (aftertheir having parted company in the tempest of their troubles andthen, in the glimmering dawn, finally sighted each other again) foreach to admit that the other was, in her private circle, her onlyequal, but the admission came, when it did come, with an honestgroan; and since equality was named, each found much personalprofit in exaggerating the other’s original grandeur. Mrs. Jordan wasten years the older, but her young friend was struck with the smallerdifference this now made: it had counted otherwise at the time when,much more as a friend of her mother’s, the bereaved lady, without apenny of provision and with stopgaps, like their own, all gone, had,across the sordid landing on which the opposite doors of the pair ofscared miseries opened and to which they were bewilderedly bolted,borrowed coals and umbrellas that were repaid in potatoes and post-age-stamps. It had been a questionable help, at that time, to ladiessubmerged, floundering, panting, swimming for their lives, that theywere ladies; but such an advantage could come up again in propor-tion as others vanished, and it had grown very great by the time itwas the only ghost of one they possessed. They had literally watchedit take to itself a portion of the substance of each that had departed;and it became prodigious now, when they could talk of it together,when they could look back at it across a desert of accepted deroga-tion, and when, above all, they could together work up a credulityabout it that neither could otherwise work up. Nothing was reallyso marked as that they felt the need to cultivate this legend much

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more after having found their feet and stayed their stomachs in theultimate obscure than they had done in the upper air of mere fre-quent shocks. The thing they could now oftenest say to each otherwas that they knew what they meant; and the sentiment with which,all round, they knew it was known had well-nigh amounted to apromise not again to fall apart.

Mrs. Jordan was at present fairly dazzling on the subject of theway that, in the practice of her fairy art, as she called it, she morethan peeped in—she penetrated. There was not a house of the greatkind—and it was of course only a question of those, real homes ofluxury—in which she was not, at the rate such people now hadthings, all over the place. The girl felt before the picture the coldbreath of disinheritance as much as she had ever felt it in the cage;she knew moreover how much she betrayed this, for the experienceof poverty had begun, in her life, too early, and her ignorance of therequirements of homes of luxury had grown, with other active knowl-edge, a depth of simplification. She had accordingly at first oftenfound that in these colloquies she could only pretend she under-stood. Educated as she had rapidly been by her chances at Cocker’s,there were still strange gaps in her learning—she could never, likeMrs. Jordan, have found her way about one of the “homes.” Littleby little, however, she had caught on, above all in the light of whatMrs. Jordan’s redemption had materially made of that lady, givingher, though the years and the struggles had naturally not straight-ened a feature, an almost super-eminent air. There were women inand out of Cocker’s who were quite nice and who yet didn’t lookwell; whereas Mrs. Jordan looked well and yet, with her extraordi-narily protrusive teeth, was by no means quite nice. It would seem,mystifyingly, that it might really come from all the greatness shecould live with. It was fine to hear her talk so often of dinners oftwenty and of her doing, as she said, exactly as she liked with them.She spoke as if, for that matter, she invited the company. “They

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simply give me the table—all the rest, all the other effects, comeafterwards.”

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CHAPTER VII

“THEN YOU do see them?” the girl again asked.Mrs. Jordan hesitated, and indeed the point had been ambiguous

before. “Do you mean the guests?”Her young friend, cautious about an undue exposure of inno-

cence, was not quite sure. “Well—the people who live there.”“Lady Ventnor? Mrs. Bubb? Lord Rye? Dear, yes. Why they like

one.”“But does one personally know them?” our young lady went on,

since that was the way to speak. “I mean socially, don’t you know?—as you know me.”

“They’re not so nice as you!” Mrs. Jordan charmingly cried. “ButI shall see more and more of them.”

Ah this was the old story. “But how soon?”“Why almost any day. Of course,” Mrs. Jordan honestly added,

“they’re nearly always out.”“Then why do they want flowers all over?”“Oh that doesn’t make any difference.” Mrs. Jordan was not philo-

sophic; she was just evidently determined it shouldn’t make any.“They’re awfully interested in my ideas, and it’s inevitable they shouldmeet me over them.”

Her interlocutress was sturdy enough. “What do you call yourideas?”

Mrs. Jordan’s reply was fine. “If you were to see me some day witha thousand tulips you’d discover.”

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“A thousand?”—the girl gaped at such a revelation of the scale ofit; she felt for the instant fairly planted out. “Well, but if in fact theynever do meet you?” she none the less pessimistically insisted.

“Never? They often do—and evidently quite on purpose. We havegrand long talks.”

There was something in our young lady that could still stay herfrom asking for a personal description of these apparitions; thatshowed too starved a state. But while she considered she took inafresh the whole of the clergyman’s widow. Mrs. Jordan couldn’thelp her teeth, and her sleeves were a distinct rise in the world. Athousand tulips at a shilling clearly took one further than a thou-sand words at a penny; and the betrothed of Mr. Mudge, in whomthe sense of the race for life was always acute, found herself wonder-ing, with a twinge of her easy jealousy, if it mightn’t after all then,for her also, be better—better than where she was—to follow somesuch scent. Where she was was where Mr. Buckton’s elbow couldfreely enter her right side and the counter-clerk’s breathing—he hadsomething the matter with his nose—pervade her left ear. It wassomething to fill an office under Government, and she knew buttoo well there were places commoner still than Cocker’s; but it neededno great range of taste to bring home to her the picture of servitudeand promiscuity she couldn’t but offer to the eye of comparativefreedom. She was so boxed up with her young men, and anythinglike a margin so absent, that it needed more art than she should everpossess to pretend in the least to compass, with any one in the na-ture of an acquaintance—say with Mrs. Jordan herself, flying in, asit might happen, to wire sympathetically to Mrs. Bubb—an ap-proach to a relation of elegant privacy. She remembered the daywhen Mrs. Jordan had, in fact, by the greatest chance, come in withfifty-three words for Lord Rye and a five-pound note to change.This had been the dramatic manner of their reunion—their mutualrecognition was so great an event. The girl could at first only see her

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from the waist up, besides making but little of her long telegram tohis lordship. It was a strange whirligig that had converted theclergyman’s widow into such a specimen of the class that went be-yond the sixpence.

Nothing of the occasion, all the more, had ever become dim; leastof all the way that, as her recovered friend looked up from counting,Mrs. Jordan had just blown, in explanation, through her teeth andthrough the bars of the cage: “I do flowers, you know.” Our youngwoman had always, with her little finger crooked out, a pretty move-ment for counting; and she had not forgotten the small secret advan-tage, a sharpness of triumph it might even have been called, that fellupon her at this moment and avenged her for the incoherence of themessage, an unintelligible enumeration of numbers, colours, days,hours. The correspondence of people she didn’t know was one thing;but the correspondence of people she did had an aspect of its own forher even when she couldn’t understand it. The speech in which Mrs.Jordan had defined a position and announced a profession was like atinkle of bluebells; but for herself her one idea about flowers was thatpeople had them at funerals, and her present sole gleam of light wasthat lords probably had them most. When she watched, a minutelater, through the cage, the swing of her visitor’s departing petticoats,she saw the sight from the waist down; and when the counter-clerk,after a mere male glance, remarked, with an intention unmistakeablylow, “Handsome woman!” she had for him the finest of her chills:“She’s the widow of a bishop.” She always felt, with the counter-clerk,that it was impossible sufficiently to put it on; for what she wished toexpress to him was the maximum of her contempt, and that elementin her nature was confusedly stored. “A bishop” was putting it on, butthe counter-clerk’s approaches were vile. The night, after this, when,in the fulness of time, Mrs. Jordan mentioned the grand long talks,the girl at last brought out: “Should I see them?—I mean if I were togive up everything for you.”

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Mrs. Jordan at this became most arch. “I’d send you to all thebachelors!”

Our young lady could be reminded by such a remark that sheusually struck her friend as pretty. “Do they have their flowers?”

“Oceans. And they’re the most particular.” Oh it was a wonderfulworld. “You should see Lord Rye’s.”

“His flowers?”“Yes, and his letters. He writes me pages on pages—with the most

adorable little drawings and plans. You should see his diagrams!”

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CHAPTER VIII

THE GIRL HAD in course of time every opportunity to inspect thesedocuments, and they a little disappointed her; but in the mean whilethere had been more talk, and it had led to her saying, as if herfriend’s guarantee of a life of elegance were not quite definite: “Well,I see every one at my place.”

“Every one?”“Lots of swells. They flock. They live, you know, all round, and

the place is filled with all the smart people, all the fast people, thosewhose names are in the papers—mamma has still The MorningPost—and who come up for the season.”

Mrs. Jordan took this in with complete intelligence. “Yes, and Idare say it’s some of your people that I do.”

Her companion assented, but discriminated. “I doubt if you ‘do’them as much as I! Their affairs, their appointments and arrange-ments, their little games and secrets and vices—those things all passbefore me.”

This was a picture that could make a clergyman’s widow not im-perceptibly gasp; it was in intention moreover something of a retortto the thousand tulips. “Their vices? Have they got vices?”

Our young critic even more overtly stared then with a touch ofcontempt in her amusement: “Haven’t you found that out?” The homesof luxury then hadn’t so much to give. “I find out everything.”

Mrs. Jordan, at bottom a very meek person, was visibly struck. “Isee. You do ‘have’ them.”

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“Oh I don’t care! Much good it does me!”Mrs. Jordan after an instant recovered her superiority. “No—it

doesn’t lead to much.” Her own initiations so clearly did. Still—after all; and she was not jealous: “There must be a charm.”

“In seeing them?” At this the girl suddenly let herself go. “I hatethem. There’s that charm!”

Mrs. Jordan gaped again. “The real ‘smarts’?”“Is that what you call Mrs. Bubb? Yes—it comes to me; I’ve had

Mrs. Bubb. I don’t think she has been in herself, but there are thingsher maid has brought. Well, my dear!”—and the young person fromCocker’s, recalling these things and summing them up, seemed sud-denly to have much to say. She didn’t say it, however; she checkedit; she only brought out: “Her maid, who’s horrid—SHE must haveher!” Then she went on with indifference: “They’re too real! They’reselfish brutes.”

Mrs. Jordan, turning it over, adopted at last the plan of treating itwith a smile. She wished to be liberal. “Well, of course, they do layit out.”

“They bore me to death,” her companion pursued with slightlymore temperance.

But this was going too far. “Ah that’s because you’ve no sympa-thy!”

The girl gave an ironic laugh, only retorting that nobody couldhave any who had to count all day all the words in the dictionary; acontention Mrs. Jordan quite granted, the more that she shudderedat the notion of ever failing of the very gift to which she owed thevogue—the rage she might call it—that had caught her up. With-out sympathy—or without imagination, for it came back again tothat—how should she get, for big dinners, down the middle andtoward the far corners at all? It wasn’t the combinations, which wereeasily managed: the strain was over the ineffable simplicities, thosethat the bachelors above all, and Lord Rye perhaps most of any,

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threw off—just blew off like cigarette-puffs—such sketches of. Thebetrothed of Mr. Mudge at all events accepted the explanation, whichhad the effect, as almost any turn of their talk was now apt to have, ofbringing her round to the terrific question of that gentleman. She wastormented with the desire to get out of Mrs. Jordan, on this subject,what she was sure was at the back of Mrs. Jordan’s head; and to get itout of her, queerly enough, if only to vent a certain irritation at it. Sheknew that what her friend would already have risked if she hadn’tbeen timid and tortuous was: “Give him up—yes, give him up: you’llsee that with your sure chances you’ll be able to do much better.”

Our young woman had a sense that if that view could only be putbefore her with a particular sniff for poor Mr. Mudge she shouldhate it as much as she morally ought. She was conscious of not, asyet, hating it quite so much as that. But she saw that Mrs. Jordanwas conscious of something too, and that there was a degree of con-fidence she was waiting little by little to arrive at. The day camewhen the girl caught a glimpse of what was still wanting to makeher friend feel strong; which was nothing less than the prospect ofbeing able to announce the climax of sundry private dreams. Theassociate of the aristocracy had personal calculations—matter forbrooding and dreaming, even for peeping out not quite hopelesslyfrom behind the window-curtains of lonely lodgings. If she did theflowers for the bachelors, in short, didn’t she expect that to haveconsequences very different from such an outlook at Cocker’s as shehad pronounced wholly desperate? There seemed in very truth some-thing auspicious in the mixture of bachelors and flowers, though,when looked hard in the eye, Mrs. Jordan was not quite prepared tosay she had expected a positive proposal from Lord Rye to pop outof it. Our young woman arrived at last, none the less, at a definitevision of what was in her mind. This was a vivid foreknowledge thatthe betrothed of Mr. Mudge would, unless conciliated in advanceby a successful rescue, almost hate her on the day she should break

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a particular piece of news. How could that unfortunate otherwiseendure to hear of what, under the protection of Lady Ventnor, wasafter all so possible

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CHAPTER IX

MEANWHILE, since irritation sometimes relieved her, the betrothedof Mr. Mudge found herself indebted to that admirer for amountsof it perfectly proportioned to her fidelity. She always walked withhim on Sundays, usually in the Regent’s Park, and quite often, onceor twice a month he took her, in the Strand or thereabouts, to see apiece that was having a run. The productions he always preferredwere the really good ones—Shakespeare, Thompson or some funnyAmerican thing; which, as it also happened that she hated vulgarplays, gave him ground for what was almost the fondest of his ap-proaches, the theory that their tastes were, blissfully, just the same.He was for ever reminding her of that, rejoicing over it and beingaffectionate and wise about it. There were times when she won-dered how in the world she could “put up with” him, how she couldput up with any man so smugly unconscious of the immensity ofher difference. It was just for this difference that, if she was to beliked at all, she wanted to be liked, and if that was not the source ofMr. Mudge’s admiration, she asked herself what on earth could be?She was not different only at one point, she was different all round;unless perhaps indeed in being practically human, which her mindjust barely recognised that he also was. She would have made tre-mendous concessions in other quarters: there was no limit for in-stance to those she would have made to Captain Everard; but whatI have named was the most she was prepared to do for Mr. Mudge.It was because he was different that, in the oddest way, she liked as

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well as deplored him; which was after all a proof that the disparity,should they frankly recognise it, wouldn’t necessarily be fatal. Shefelt that, oleaginous—too oleaginous—as he was, he was somehowcomparatively primitive: she had once, during the portion of histime at Cocker’s that had overlapped her own, seen him collar adrunken soldier, a big violent man who, having come in with amate to get a postal-order cashed, had made a grab at the moneybefore his friend could reach it and had so determined, among thehams and cheeses and the lodgers from Thrupp’s, immediate andalarming reprisals, a scene of scandal and consternation. Mr. Bucktonand the counter-clerk had crouched within the cage, but Mr. Mudgehad, with a very quiet but very quick step round the counter, an airof masterful authority she shouldn’t soon forget, triumphantly in-terposed in the scrimmage, parted the combatants and shaken thedelinquent in his skin. She had been proud of him at that moment,and had felt that if their affair had not already been settled the neat-ness of his execution would have left her without resistance.

Their affair had been settled by other things: by the evident sin-cerity of his passion and by the sense that his high white apronresembled a front of many floors. It had gone a great way with herthat he would build up a business to his chin, which he carriedquite in the air. This could only be a question of time; he wouldhave all Piccadilly in the pen behind his ear. That was a merit initself for a girl who had known what she had known. There werehours at which she even found him good-looking, though, franklythere could be no crown for her effort to imagine on the part of thetailor or the barber some such treatment of his appearance as wouldmake him resemble even remotely a man of the world. His verybeauty was the beauty of a grocer, and the finest future would offerit none too much room consistently to develop. She had engagedherself in short to the perfection of a type, and almost anythingsquare and smooth and whole had its weight for a person still con-

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scious herself of being a mere bruised fragment of wreckage. But itcontributed hugely at present to carry on the two parallel lines ofher experience in the cage and her experience out of it. After keep-ing quiet for some time about this opposition she suddenly—oneSunday afternoon on a penny chair in the Regent’s Park—broke,for him, capriciously, bewilderingly, into an intimation of what itcame to. He had naturally pressed more and more on the point ofher again placing herself where he could see her hourly, and for herto recognise that she had as yet given him no sane reason for delayhe had small need to describe himself as unable to make out whatshe was up to. As if, with her absurd bad reasons, she could havebegun to tell him! Sometimes she thought it would be amusing tolet him have them full in the face, for she felt she should die of himunless she once in a while stupefied him; and sometimes she thoughtit would be disgusting and perhaps even fatal. She liked him, how-ever, to think her silly, for that gave her the margin which at the bestshe would always require; and the only difficulty about this was thathe hadn’t enough imagination to oblige her. It produced none theless something of the desired effect—to leave him simply wonder-ing why, over the matter of their reunion, she didn’t yield to hisarguments. Then at last, simply as if by accident and out of mereboredom on a day that was rather flat, she preposterously producedher own. “Well, wait a bit. Where I am I still see things.” And shetalked to him even worse, if possible, than she had talked to Jordan.

Little by little, to her own stupefaction, she caught that he wastrying to take it as she meant it and that he was neither astonishednor angry. Oh the British tradesman—this gave her an idea of hisresources! Mr. Mudge would be angry only with a person who, likethe drunken soldier in the shop, should have an unfavourable effecton business. He seemed positively to enter, for the time and with-out the faintest flash of irony or ripple of laughter, into the whimsi-cal grounds of her enjoyment of Cocker’s custom, and instantly to

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be casting up whatever it might, as Mrs. Jordan had said, lead to.What he had in mind was not of course what Mrs. Jordan had had:it was obviously not a source of speculation with him that his sweet-heart might pick up a husband. She could see perfectly that this wasnot for a moment even what he supposed she herself dreamed of.What she had done was simply to give his sensibility another pushinto the dim vast of trade. In that direction it was all alert, and shehad whisked before it the mild fragrance of a “connexion.” Thatwas the most he could see in any account of her keeping in, onwhatever roundabout lines, with the gentry; and when, getting tothe bottom of this, she quickly proceeded to show him the kind ofeye she turned on such people and to give him a sketch of what thateye discovered, she reduced him to the particular prostration in whichhe could still be amusing to her.

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CHAPTER X

“THEY’RE THE MOST awful wretches, I assure you—the lot all aboutthere.”

“Then why do you want to stay among them?”“My dear man, just because they are. It makes me hate them so.”“Hate them? I thought you liked them.”“Don’t be stupid. What I ‘like’ is just to loathe them. You wouldn’t

believe what passes before my eyes.”“Then why have you never told me? You didn’t mention anything

before I left.”“Oh I hadn’t got round to it then. It’s the sort of thing you don’t

believe at first; you have to look round you a bit and then you un-derstand. You work into it more and more. Besides,” the girl wenton, “this is the time of the year when the worst lot come up. They’resimply packed together in those smart streets. Talk of the numbersof the poor! What I can vouch for is the numbers of the rich! Thereare new ones every day, and they seem to get richer and richer. Oh,they do come up!” she cried, imitating for her private recreation—she was sure it wouldn’t reach Mr. Mudge—the low intonation ofthe counter-clerk.

“And where do they come from?” her companion candidly en-quired.

She had to think a moment; then she found something. “Fromthe ‘spring meetings.’ They bet tremendously.”

“Well, they bet enough at Chalk Farm, if that’s all.”

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“It isn’t all. It isn’t a millionth part!” she replied with some sharp-ness. “It’s immense fun”—she had to tantalise him. Then as she hadheard Mrs. Jordan say, and as the ladies at Cocker’s even sometimeswired, “It’s quite too dreadful!” She could fully feel how it was Mr.Mudge’s propriety, which was extreme—he had a horror of coarse-ness and attended a Wesleyan chapel—that prevented his asking fordetails. But she gave him some of the more innocuous in spite ofhimself, especially putting before him how, at Simpkin’s and Ladle’s,they all made the money fly. That was indeed what he liked to hear:the connexion was not direct, but one was somehow more in theright place where the money was flying than where it was simplyand meagrely nesting. The air felt that stir, he had to acknowledge,much less at Chalk Farm than in the district in which his beloved sooddly enjoyed her footing. She gave him, she could see, a restlesssense that these might be familiarities not to be sacrificed; germs,possibilities, faint foreshowings—heaven knew what—of the ini-tiation it would prove profitable to have arrived at when in the fulnessof time he should have his own shop in some such paradise. Whatreally touched him—that was discernible—was that she could feedhim with so much mere vividness of reminder, keep before him, asby the play of a fan, the very wind of the swift bank-notes and thecharm of the existence of a class that Providence had raised up to bethe blessing of grocers. He liked to think that the class was there,that it was always there, and that she contributed in her slight butappreciable degree to keep it up to the mark. He couldn’t have for-mulated his theory of the matter, but the exuberance of the aristoc-racy was the advantage of trade, and everything was knit together ina richness of pattern that it was good to follow with one’s finger-tips. It was a comfort to him to be thus assured that there were nosymptoms of a drop. What did the sounder, as she called it, nimblyworked, do but keep the ball going?

What it came to therefore for Mr. Mudge was that all enjoyments

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were, as might be said, inter-related, and that the more people hadthe more they wanted to have. The more flirtations, as he mightroughly express it, the more cheese and pickles. He had even in hisown small way been dimly struck with the linked sweetness con-necting the tender passion with cheap champagne, or perhaps theother way round. What he would have liked to say had he been ableto work out his thought to the end was: “I see, I see. Lash them upthen, lead them on, keep them going: some of it can’t help, sometime, coming our way.” Yet he was troubled by the suspicion ofsubtleties on his companion’s part that spoiled the straight view. Hecouldn’t understand people’s hating what they liked or liking whatthey hated; above all it hurt him somewhere—for he had his privatedelicacies—to see anything but money made out of his betters. Tobe too enquiring, or in any other way too free, at the expense of thegentry was vaguely wrong; the only thing that was distinctly rightwas to be prosperous at any price. Wasn’t it just because they wereup there aloft that they were lucrative? He concluded at any rate bysaying to his young friend: “If it’s improper for you to remain atCocker’s, then that falls in exactly with the other reasons I’ve putbefore you for your removal.”

“Improper?”—her smile became a prolonged boldness. “My dearboy, there’s no one like you!”

“I dare say,” he laughed; “but that doesn’t help the question.”“Well,” she returned, “I can’t give up my friends. I’m making even

more than Mrs. Jordan.”Mr. Mudge considered. “How much is she making?”“Oh you dear donkey!”—and, regardless of all the Regent’s Park,

she patted his cheek. This was the sort of moment at which she wasabsolutely tempted to tell him that she liked to be near Park Cham-bers. There was a fascination in the idea of seeing if, on a mentionof Captain Everard, he wouldn’t do what she thought he might;wouldn’t weigh against the obvious objection the still more obvious

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advantage. The advantage of course could only strike him at thebest as rather fantastic; but it was always to the good to keep holdwhen you had hold, and such an attitude would also after all in-volve a high tribute to her fidelity. Of one thing she absolutely neverdoubted: Mr. Mudge believed in her with a belief—! She believedin herself too, for that matter: if there was a thing in the world noone could charge her with it was being the kind of low barmaidperson who rinsed tumblers and bandied slang. But she forbore asyet to speak; she had not spoken even to Mrs. Jordan; and the hushthat on her lips surrounded the Captain’s name maintained itself asa kind of symbol of the success that, up to this time, had attendedsomething or other—she couldn’t have said what—that shehumoured herself with calling, without words, her relation withhim.

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CHAPTER XI

SHE WOULD HAVE admitted indeed that it consisted of little morethan the fact that his absences, however frequent and however long,always ended with his turning up again. It was nobody’s business inthe world but her own if that fact continued to be enough for her. Itwas of course not enough just in itself; what it had taken on to makeit so was the extraordinary possession of the elements of his life thatmemory and attention had at last given her. There came a day whenthis possession on the girl’s part actually seemed to enjoy betweenthem, while their eyes met, a tacit recognition that was half a jokeand half a deep solemnity. He bade her good morning always now;he often quite raised his hat to her. He passed a remark when therewas time or room, and once she went so far as to say to him that shehadn’t seen him for “ages.” “Ages” was the word she consciously andcarefully, though a trifle tremulously used; “ages” was exactly whatshe meant. To this he replied in terms doubtless less anxiously se-lected, but perhaps on that account not the less remarkable, “Ohyes, hasn’t it been awfully wet?” That was a specimen of their giveand take; it fed her fancy that no form of intercourse so transcen-dent and distilled had ever been established on earth. Everything,so far as they chose to consider it so, might mean almost anything.The want of margin in the cage, when he peeped through the bars,wholly ceased to be appreciable. It was a drawback only in superfi-cial commerce. With Captain Everard she had simply the margin ofthe universe. It may be imagined therefore how their unuttered ref-

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erence to all she knew about him could in this immensity play at itsease. Every time he handed in a telegram it was an addition to herknowledge: what did his constant smile mean to mark if it didn’tmean to mark that? He never came into the place without saying toher in this manner: “Oh yes, you have me by this time so com-pletely at your mercy that it doesn’t in the least matter what I giveyou now. You’ve become a comfort, I assure you!”

She had only two torments; the greatest of which was that shecouldn’t, not even once or twice, touch with him on some individualfact. She would have given anything to have been able to allude toone of his friends by name, to one of his engagements by date, to oneof his difficulties by the solution. She would have given almost asmuch for just the right chance—it would have to be tremendouslyright—to show him in some sharp sweet way that she had perfectlypenetrated the greatest of these last and now lived with it in a kind ofheroism of sympathy. He was in love with a woman to whom, and toany view of whom, a lady-telegraphist, and especially one who passeda life among hams and cheeses, was as the sand on the floor; and whather dreams desired was the possibility of its somehow coming to himthat her own interest in him could take a pure and noble account ofsuch an infatuation and even of such an impropriety. As yet, however,she could only rub along with the hope that an accident, sooner orlater, might give her a lift toward popping out with something thatwould surprise and perhaps even, some fine day, assist him. Whatcould people mean moreover—cheaply sarcastic people—by not feel-ing all that could be got out of the weather? She felt it all, and seemedliterally to feel it most when she went quite wrong, speaking of thestuffy days as cold, of the cold ones as stuffy, and betraying how littleshe knew, in her cage, of whether it was foul or fair. It was for thatmatter always stuffy at Cocker’s, and she finally settled down to thesafe proposition that the outside element was “changeable.” Anythingseemed true that made him so radiantly assent.

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This indeed is a small specimen of her cultivation of insidiousways of making things easy for him—ways to which of course shecouldn’t be at all sure he did real justice. Real justice was not of thisworld: she had had too often to come back to that; yet, strangely,happiness was, and her traps had to be set for it in a manner to keepthem unperceived by Mr. Buckton and the counter-clerk. The mostshe could hope for apart from the question, which constantly flick-ered up and died down, of the divine chance of his consciouslyliking her, would be that, without analysing it, he should arrive at avague sense that Cocker’s was—well, attractive; easier, smoother,sociably brighter, slightly more picturesque, in short more propi-tious in general to his little affairs, than any other establishment justthereabouts. She was quite aware that they couldn’t be, in so huddleda hole, particularly quick; but she found her account in the slow-ness—she certainly could bear it if HE could. The great pang wasthat just thereabouts post-offices were so awfully thick. She was al-ways seeing him in imagination in other places and with other girls.But she would defy any other girl to follow him as she followed.And though they weren’t, for so many reasons, quick at Cocker’s,she could hurry for him when, through an intimation light as air,she gathered that he was pressed.

When hurry was, better still, impossible, it was because of thepleasantest thing of all, the particular element of their contact—shewould have called it their friendship—that consisted of an almosthumorous treatment of the look of some of his words. They wouldnever perhaps have grown half so intimate if he had not, by theblessing of heaven, formed some of his letters with a queerness—! Itwas positive that the queerness could scarce have been greater if hehad practised it for the very purpose of bringing their heads to-gether over it as far as was possible to heads on different sides of awire fence. It had taken her truly but once or twice to master thesetricks, but, at the cost of striking him perhaps as stupid, she could

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still challenge them when circumstances favoured. The great cir-cumstance that favoured was that she sometimes actually believedhe knew she only feigned perplexity. If he knew it therefore he tol-erated it; if he tolerated it he came back; and if he came back heliked her. This was her seventh heaven; and she didn’t ask much ofhis liking—she only asked of it to reach the point of his not goingaway because of her own. He had at times to be away for weeks; hehad to lead lets life; he had to travel—there were places to which hewas constantly wiring for “rooms”: all this she granted him, forgavehim; in fact, in the long run, literally blessed and thanked him for.If he had to lead his life, that precisely fostered his leading it somuch by telegraph: therefore the benediction was to come in whenhe could. That was all she asked—that he shouldn’t wholly depriveher.

Sometimes she almost felt that he couldn’t have deprived her evenhad he been minded, by reason of the web of revelation that waswoven between them. She quite thrilled herself with thinking what,with such a lot of material, a bad girl would do. It would be a scenebetter than many in her ha’penny novels, this going to him in thedusk of evening at Park Chambers and letting him at last have it. “Iknow too much about a certain person now not to put it to you—excuse my being so lurid—that it’s quite worth your while to buyme off. Come, therefore; buy me!” There was a point indeed atwhich such flights had to drop again—the point of an unreadinessto name, when it came to that, the purchasing medium. It wouldn’tcertainly be anything so gross as money, and the matter accordinglyremained rather vague, all the more that she was not a bad girl. Itwasn’t for any such reason as might have aggravated a mere minxthat she often hoped he would again bring Cissy. The difficulty ofthis, however, was constantly present to her, for the kind of com-munion to which Cocker’s so richly ministered rested on the factthat Cissy and he were so often in different places. She knew by this

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time all the places—Suchbury, Monkhouse, Whiteroy, Finches—and even how the parties on these occasions were composed; buther subtlety found ways to make her knowledge fairly protect andpromote their keeping, as she had heard Mrs. Jordan say, in touch.So, when he actually sometimes smiled as if he really felt the awk-wardness of giving her again one of the same old addresses, all herbeing went out in the desire—which her face must have expressed—that he should recognise her forbearance to criticise as one of thefinest tenderest sacrifices a woman had ever made for love.

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CHAPTER XII

SHE WAS OCCASIONALLY worried, however this might be, by the im-pression that these sacrifices, great as they were, were nothing to thosethat his own passion had imposed; if indeed it was not rather thepassion of his confederate, which had caught him up and was whirl-ing him round like a great steam-wheel. He was at any rate in thestrong grip of a dizzy splendid fate; the wild wind of his life blew himstraight before it. Didn’t she catch in his face at times, even throughhis smile and his happy habit, the gleam of that pale glare with whicha bewildered victim appeals, as he passes, to some pair of pitying eyes?He perhaps didn’t even himself know how scared he was; but she knew.They were in danger, they were in danger, Captain Everard and LadyBradeen: it beat every novel in the shop. She thought of Mr. Mudgeand his safe sentiment; she thought of herself and blushed even morefor her tepid response to it. It was a comfort to her at such momentsto feel that in another relation—a relation supplying that affinity withher nature that Mr. Mudge, deluded creature, would never supply—she should have been no more tepid than her ladyship. Her deepestsoundings were on two or three occasions of finding herself almostsure that, if she dared, her ladyship’s lover would have gathered relieffrom “speaking” to her. She literally fancied once or twice that, pro-jected as he was toward his doom, her own eyes struck him, while theair roared in his ears, as the one pitying pair in the crowd. But howcould he speak to her while she sat sandwiched there between thecounter-clerk and the sounder?

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She had long ago, in her comings and goings made acquaintancewith Park Chambers and reflected as she looked up at their luxuri-ous front that they of course would supply the ideal setting for theideal speech. There was not an object in London that, before theseason was over, was more stamped upon her brain. She went round-about to pass it, for it was not on the short way; she passed on theopposite side of the street and always looked up, though it had takenher a long time to be sure of the particular set of windows. She hadmade that out finally by an act of audacity that at the time hadalmost stopped her heart-beats and that in retrospect greatly quick-ened her blushes. One evening she had lingered late and watched—watched for some moment when the porter, who was in uniformand often on the steps, had gone in with a visitor. Then she fol-lowed boldly, on the calculation that he would have taken the visi-tor up and that the hall would be free. The hall was free, and theelectric light played over the gilded and lettered board that showedthe names and numbers of the occupants of the different floors.What she wanted looked straight at her—Captain Everard was onthe third. It was as if, in the immense intimacy of this, they were,for the instant and the first time, face to face outside the cage. Alas!they were face to face but a second or two: she was whirled out onthe wings of a panic fear that he might just then be entering orissuing. This fear was indeed, in her shameless deflexions, neververy far from her, and was mixed in the oddest way with depres-sions and disappointments. It was dreadful, as she trembled by, torun the risk of looking to him as if she basely hung about; and yet itwas dreadful to be obliged to pass only at such moments as put anencounter out of the question.

At the horrible hour of her first coming to Cocker’s he was al-ways—it was to be hoped—snug in bed; and at the hour of her finaldeparture he was of course—she had such things all on her fingers’-ends—dressing for dinner. We may let it pass that if she couldn’t

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bring herself to hover till he was dressed, this was simply becausesuch a process for such a person could only be terribly prolonged.When she went in the middle of the day to her own dinner she hadtoo little time to do anything but go straight, though it must beadded that for a real certainty she would joyously have omitted therepast. She had made up her mind as to there being on the whole nodecent pretext to justify her flitting casually past at three o’clock inthe morning. That was the hour at which, if the ha’penny novelswere not all wrong, he probably came home for the night. She wastherefore reduced to the vainest figuration of the miraculous meet-ing toward which a hundred impossibilities would have to conspire.But if nothing was more impossible than the fact, nothing was moreintense than the vision. What may not, we can only moralise, takeplace in the quickened muffled perception of a young person withan ardent soul? All our humble friend’s native distinction, her re-finement of personal grain, of heredity, of pride, took refuge in thissmall throbbing spot; for when she was most conscious of the ob-jection of her vanity and the pitifulness of her little flutters andmanoeuvres, then the consolation and the redemption were mostsure to glow before her in some just discernible sign. He did likeher!

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CHAPTER XIII

HE NEVER BROUGHT Cissy back, but Cissy came one day withouthim, as fresh as before from the hands of Marguerite, or only, at theseason’s end, a trifle less fresh. She was, however, distinctly less se-rene. She had brought nothing with her and looked about withimpatience for the forms and the place to write. The latter conve-nience, at Cocker’s, was obscure and barely adequate, and her clearvoice had the light note of disgust which her lover’s never showed asshe responded with a “There?” of surprise to the gesture made bythe counter-clerk in answer to her sharp question. Our young friendwas busy with half a dozen people, but she had dispatched them inher most businesslike manner by the time her ladyship flung throughthe bars this light of re-appearance. Then the directness with whichthe girl managed to receive the accompanying missive was the resultof the concentration that had caused her to make the stamps flyduring the few minutes occupied by the production of it. This con-centration, in turn, may be described as the effect of the apprehen-sion of imminent relief. It was nineteen days, counted and checkedoff, since she had seen the object of her homage; and as, had hebeen in London, she should, with his habits, have been sure to seehim often, she was now about to learn what other spot his presencemight just then happen to sanctify. For she thought of them, theother spots, as ecstatically conscious of it, expressively happy in it.

But, gracious, how handsome was her ladyship, and what an addedprice it gave him that the air of intimacy he threw out should have

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flowed originally from such a source! The girl looked straight throughthe cage at the eyes and lips that must so often have been so near asown—looked at them with a strange passion that for an instant hadthe result of filling out some of the gaps, supplying the missinganswers, in his correspondence. Then as she made out that the fea-tures she thus scanned and associated were totally unaware of it,that they glowed only with the colour of quite other and not at allguessable thoughts, this directly added to their splendour, gave thegirl the sharpest impression she had yet received of the uplifted, theunattainable plains of heaven, and yet at the same time caused herto thrill with a sense of the high company she did somehow keep.She was with the absent through her ladyship and with her ladyshipthrough the absent. The only pang—but it didn’t matter—was theproof in the admirable face, in the sightless preoccupation of itspossessor, that the latter hadn’t a notion of her. Her folly had goneto the point of half believing that the other party to the affair mustsometimes mention in Eaton Square the extraordinary little personat the place from which he so often wired. Yet the perception of hervisitor’s blankness actually helped this extraordinary little person,the next instant, to take refuge in a reflexion that could be as proudas it liked. “How little she knows, how little she knows!” the girlcried to herself; for what did that show after all but that CaptainEverard’s telegraphic confidant was Captain Everard’s charming se-cret? Our young friend’s perusal of her ladyship’s telegram was liter-ally prolonged by a momentary daze: what swam between her andthe words, making her see them as through rippled shallow sunshotwater, was the great, the perpetual flood of “How much I know—how much I know!” This produced a delay in her catching that, onthe face, these words didn’t give her what she wanted, though she wasprompt enough with her remembrance that her grasp was, half thetime, just of what was NOT on the face. “Miss Dolman, Parade Lodge,Parade Terrace, Dover. Let him instantly know right one, Hotel de

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France, Ostend. Make it seven nine four nine six one. Wire me alter-native Burfield’s.”

The girl slowly counted. Then he was at Ostend. This hooked onwith so sharp a click that, not to feel she was as quickly letting it allslip from her, she had absolutely to hold it a minute longer and todo something to that end. Thus it was that she did on this occasionwhat she never did—threw off a “Reply paid?” that sounded offi-cious, but that she partly made up for by deliberately affixing thestamps and by waiting till she had done so to give change. She had,for so much coolness, the strength that she considered she knew allabout Miss Dolman.

“Yes—paid.” She saw all sorts of things in this reply, even to asmall suppressed start of surprise at so correct an assumption; evento an attempt the next minute at a fresh air of detachment. “Howmuch, with the answer?” The calculation was not abstruse, but ourintense observer required a moment more to make it, and this gaveher ladyship time for a second thought. “Oh just wait!” The whitebegemmed hand bared to write rose in sudden nervousness to theside of the wonderful face which, with eyes of anxiety for the paperon the counter, she brought closer to the bars of the cage. “I think Imust alter a word!” On this she recovered her telegram and lookedover it again; but she had a new, an obvious trouble, and studied itwithout deciding and with much of the effect of making our youngwoman watch her.

This personage, meanwhile, at the sight of her expression, haddecided on the spot. If she had always been sure they were in dangerher ladyship’s expression was the best possible sign of it. There wasa word wrong, but she had lost the right one, and much clearlydepended on her finding it again. The girl, therefore, sufficientlyestimating the affluence of customers and the distraction of Mr.Buckton and the counter-clerk, took the jump and gave it. “Isn’t itCooper’s?”

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It was as if she had bodily leaped—cleared the top of the cage andalighted on her interlocutress. “Cooper’s?”—the stare was height-ened by a blush. Yes, she had made Juno blush.

This was all the greater reason for going on. “I mean instead ofBurfield’s.”

Our young friend fairly pitied her; she had made her in an instantso helpless, and yet not a bit haughty nor outraged. She was onlymystified and scared. “Oh, you know—?”

“Yes, I know!” Our young friend smiled, meeting the other’s eyes,and, having made Juno blush, proceeded to patronise her. “I’ll doit”—she put out a competent hand. Her ladyship only submitted,confused and bewildered, all presence of mind quite gone; and thenext moment the telegram was in the cage again and its author outof the shop. Then quickly, boldly, under all the eyes that might havewitnessed her tampering, the extraordinary little person at Cocker’smade the proper change. People were really too giddy, and if theywere, in a certain case, to be caught, it shouldn’t be the fault of herown grand memory. Hadn’t it been settled weeks before?—for MissDolman it was always to be “Cooper’s.”

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CHAPTER XIV

BUT THE SUMMER “holidays” brought a marked difference; they wereholidays for almost every one but the animals in the cage. The Au-gust days were flat and dry, and, with so little to feed it, she wasconscious of the ebb of her interest in the secrets of the refined. Shewas in a position to follow the refined to the extent of knowing—they had made so many of their arrangements with her aid—ex-actly where they were; yet she felt quite as if the panorama hadceased unrolling and the band stopped playing. A stray member ofthe latter occasionally turned up, but the communications that passedbefore her bore now largely on rooms at hotels, prices of furnishedhouses, hours of trains, dates of sailings and arrangements for being“met”; she found them for the most part prosaic and coarse. Theonly thing was that they brought into her stuffy corner as straight awhiff of Alpine meadows and Scotch moors as she might hope everto inhale; there were moreover in especial fat hot dull ladies whohad out with her, to exasperation, the terms for seaside lodgings,which struck her as huge, and the matter of the number of bedsrequired, which was not less portentous: this in reference to placesof which the names—Eastbourne, Folkestone, Cromer, Scarborough,Whitby—tormented her with something of the sound of the plashof water that haunts the traveller in the desert. She had not been outof London for a dozen years, and the only thing to give a taste to thepresent dead weeks was the spice of a chronic resentment. The sparsecustomers, the people she did see, were the people who were “just

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off”—off on the decks of fluttered yachts, off to the uttermost pointof rocky headlands where the very breeze was then playing for thewant of which she said to herself that she sickened.

There was accordingly a sense in which, at such a period, thegreat differences of the human condition could press upon her morethan ever; a circumstance drawing fresh force in truth from the veryfact of the chance that at last, for a change, did squarely meet her—the chance to be “off,” for a bit, almost as far as anybody. They tooktheir turns in the cage as they took them both in the shop and atChalk Farm; she had known these two months that time was to beallowed in September—no less than eleven days—for her personalprivate holiday. Much of her recent intercourse with Mr. Mudgehad consisted of the hopes and fears, expressed mainly by himself,involved in the question of their getting the same dates—a questionthat, in proportion as the delight seemed assured, spread into a seaof speculation over the choice of where and how. All through July,on the Sunday evenings and at such other odd times as he couldseize, he had flooded their talk with wild waves of calculation. Itwas practically settled that, with her mother, somewhere “on thesouth coast” (a phrase of which she liked the sound) they shouldput in their allowance together; but she already felt the prospectquite weary and worn with the way he went round and round on it.It had become his sole topic, the theme alike of his most solemnprudences and most placid jests, to which every opening led forreturn and revision and in which every little flower of a foretastewas pulled up as soon as planted. He had announced at the earliestday—characterising the whole business, from that moment, as their“plans,” under which name he handled it as a Syndicate handles aChinese or other Loan—he had promptly declared that the ques-tion must be thoroughly studied, and he produced, on the wholesubject, from day to day, an amount of information that excited herwonder and even, not a little, as she frankly let him know, her dis-

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dain. When she thought of the danger in which another pair oflovers rapturously lived she enquired of him anew why he couldleave nothing to chance. Then she got for answer that this profun-dity was just his pride, and he pitted Ramsgate against Bournemouthand even Boulogne against Jersey—for he had great ideas—with allthe mastery of detail that was some day, professionally, to carry himafar.

The longer the time since she had seen Captain Everard the moreshe was booked, as she called it, to pass Park Chambers; and thiswas the sole amusement that in the lingering August days and thetwilights sadly drawn out it was left her to cultivate. She had longsince learned to know it for a feeble one, though its feebleness wasperhaps scarce the reason for her saying to herself each evening asher time for departure approached: “No, no—not to-night.” Shenever failed of that silent remark, any more than she failed of feel-ing, in some deeper place than she had even yet fully sounded, thatone’s remarks were as weak as straws and that, however one mightindulge in them at eight o’clock, one’s fate infallibly declared itselfin absolute indifference to them at about eight-fifteen. Remarks wereremarks, and very well for that; but fate was fate, and this younglady’s was to pass Park Chambers every night in the working week.Out of the immensity of her knowledge of the life of the worldthere bloomed on these occasions as specific remembrance that itwas regarded in that region, in August and September, as ratherpleasant just to be caught for something or other in passing throughtown. Somebody was always passing and somebody might catchsomebody else. It was in full cognisance of this subtle law that sheadhered to the most ridiculous circuit she could have made to gethome. One warm dull featureless Friday, when an accident had madeher start from Cocker’s a little later than usual, she became awarethat something of which the infinite possibilities had for so longpeopled her dreams was at last prodigiously upon her, though the

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perfection in which the conditions happened to present it was al-most rich enough to be but the positive creation of a dream. Shesaw, straight before her, like a vista painted in a picture, the emptystreet and the lamps that burned pale in the dusk not yet estab-lished. It was into the convenience of this quiet twilight that a gentle-man on the doorstep of the Chambers gazed with a vagueness thatour young lady’s little figure violently trembled, in the approach,with the measure of its power to dissipate. Everything indeed grewin a flash terrific and distinct; her old uncertainties fell away fromher, and, since she was so familiar with fate, she felt as if the verynail that fixed it were driven in by the hard look with which, for amoment, Captain Everard awaited her.

The vestibule was open behind him and the porter as absent as onthe day she had peeped in; he had just come out—was in town, in atweed suit and a pot hat, but between two journeys—duly boredover his evening and at a loss what to do with it. Then it was thatshe was glad she had never met him in that way before: she reapedwith such ecstasy the benefit of his not being able to think she passedoften. She jumped in two seconds to the determination that he shouldeven suppose it to be the very first time and the very oddest chance:this was while she still wondered if he would identify or notice her.His original attention had not, she instinctively knew, been for theyoung woman at Cocker’s; it had only been for any young womanwho might advance to the tune of her not troubling the quiet air,and in fact the poetic hour, with ugliness. Ah but then, and just asshe had reached the door, came his second observation, a long lightreach with which, visibly and quite amusedly, he recalled and placedher. They were on different sides, but the street, narrow and still,had only made more of a stage for the small momentary drama. Itwas not over, besides, it was far from over, even on his sending acrossthe way, with the pleasantest laugh she had ever heard, a little lift ofhis hat and an “Oh good evening!” It was still less over on their

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meeting, the next minute, though rather indirectly and awkwardly,in the middle, of the road—a situation to which three or four stepsof her own had unmistakeably contributed—and then passing notagain to the side on which she had arrived, but back toward theportal of Park Chambers.

“I didn’t know you at first. Are you taking a walk?”“Ah I don’t take walks at night! I’m going home after my work.”“Oh!”That was practically what they had meanwhile smiled out, and

his exclamation to which for a minute he appeared to have nothingto add, left them face to face and in just such an attitude as, for hispart, he might have worn had he been wondering if he could prop-erly ask her to come in. During this interval in fact she really felt hisquestion to be just “How properly—?” It was simply a question ofthe degree of properness.

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CHAPTER XV

SHE NEVER KNEW afterwards quite what she had done to settle it, andat the time she only knew that they presently moved, with vague-ness, yet with continuity, away from the picture of the lighted vesti-bule and the quiet stairs and well up the street together. This alsomust have been in the absence of a definite permission, of anythingvulgarly articulate, for that matter, on the part of either; and it wasto be, later on, a thing of remembrance and reflexion for her thatthe limit of what just here for a longish minute passed betweenthem was his taking in her thoroughly successful deprecation, thoughconveyed without pride or sound or touch, of the idea that she mightbe, out of the cage, the very shop-girl at large that she hugged thetheory she wasn’t. Yes, it was strange, she afterwards thought, thatso much could have come and gone and yet not disfigured the dearlittle intense crisis either with impertinence or with resentment, withany of the horrid notes of that kind of acquaintance. He had takenno liberty, as she would have so called it; and, through not having tobetray the sense of one, she herself had, still more charmingly, takennone. On the spot, nevertheless, she could speculate as to what itmeant that, if his relation with Lady Bradeen continued to be whather mind had built it up to, he should feel free to proceed withmarked independence. This was one of the questions he was to leaveher to deal with—the question whether people of his sort still askedgirls up to their rooms when they were so awfully in love with otherwomen. Could people of his sort do that without what people of

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her sort would call being “false to their love”? She had already avision of how the true answer was that people of her sort didn’t, insuch cases, matter—didn’t count as infidelity, counted only as some-thing else: she might have been curious, since it came to that, to seeexactly what.

Strolling together slowly in their summer twilight and their emptycorner of Mayfair, they found themselves emerge at last opposite toone of the smaller gates of the Park; upon which, without any par-ticular word about it—they were talking so of other things—theycrossed the street and went in and sat down on a bench. She hadgathered by this time one magnificent hope about him—the hopehe would say nothing vulgar. She knew thoroughly what she meantby that; she meant something quite apart from any matter of hisbeing “false.” Their bench was not far within; it was near the ParkLane paling and the patchy lamplight and the rumbling cabs and‘buses. A strange emotion had come to her, and she felt indeed ex-citement within excitement; above all a conscious joy in testing himwith chances he didn’t take. She had an intense desire he shouldknow the type she really conformed to without her doing anythingso low as tell him, and he had surely begun to know it from themoment he didn’t seize the opportunities into which a commonman would promptly have blundered. These were on the mere awk-ward surface, and their relation was beautiful behind and below them.She had questioned so little on the way what they might be doingthat as soon as they were seated she took straight hold of it. Herhours, her confinement, the many conditions of service in the post-office, had—with a glance at his own postal resources and alterna-tives—formed, up to this stage, the subject of their talk. “Well, herewe are, and it may be right enough; but this isn’t the least, youknow, where I was going.”

“You were going home?”“Yes, and I was already rather late. I was going to my supper.”

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“You haven’t had it?”“No indeed!”“Then you haven’t eaten—?”He looked of a sudden so extravagantly concerned that she laughed

out. “All day? Yes, we do feed once. But that was long ago. So I mustpresently say good-bye.”

“Oh deary me!” he exclaimed with an intonation so droll and yeta touch so light and a distress so marked—a confession of helpless-ness for such a case, in short, so unrelieved—that she at once feltsure she had made the great difference plain. He looked at her withthe kindest eyes and still without saying what she had known hewouldn’t. She had known he wouldn’t say “Then sup with me!” butthe proof of it made her feel as if she had feasted.

“I’m not a bit hungry,” she went on.“Ah you must be, awfully!” he made answer, but settling himself

on the bench as if, after all, that needn’t interfere with his spendinghis evening. “I’ve always quite wanted the chance to thank you forthe trouble you so often take for me.”

“Yes, I know,” she replied; uttering the words with a sense of thesituation far deeper than any pretence of not fitting his allusion.She immediately felt him surprised and even a little puzzled at herfrank assent; but for herself the trouble she had taken could only, inthese fleeting minutes—they would probably never come back—beall there like a little hoard of gold in her lap. Certainly he mightlook at it, handle it, take up the pieces. Yet if he understood any-thing he must understand all. “I consider you’ve already immenselythanked me.” The horror was back upon her of having seemed tohang about for some reward. “It’s awfully odd you should have beenthere just the one time—!”

“The one time you’ve passed my place?”“Yes; you can fancy I haven’t many minutes to waste. There was a

place to-night I had to stop at.”

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“I see, I see—” he knew already so much about her work. “Itmust be an awful grind—for a lady.”

“It is, but I don’t think I groan over it any more than my compan-ions—and you’ve seen they’re not ladies!” She mildly jested, but withan intention. “One gets used to things, and there are employmentsI should have hated much more.” She had the finest conception ofthe beauty of not at least boring him. To whine, to count up herwrongs, was what a barmaid or a shop-girl would do, and it wasquite enough to sit there like one of these.

“If you had had another employment,” he remarked after a mo-ment, “we might never have become acquainted.”

“It’s highly probable—and certainly not in the same way.” Then,still with her heap of gold in her lap and something of the pride ofit in her manner of holding her head, she continued not to move—she only smiled at him. The evening had thickened now; the scat-tered lamps were red; the Park, all before them, was full of obscureand ambiguous life; there were other couples on other benches whomit was impossible not to see, yet at whom it was impossible to look.“But I’ve walked so much out of my way with you only just to showyou that—that”—with this she paused; it was not after all so easy toexpress—”that anything you may have thought is perfectly true.”

“Oh I’ve thought a tremendous lot!” her companion laughed. “Doyou mind my smoking?”

“Why should I? You always smoke there.”“At your place? Oh yes, but here it’s different.”“No,” she said as he lighted a cigarette, “that’s just what it isn’t. It’s

quite the same.”“Well, then, that’s because ‘there’ it’s so wonderful!”“Then you’re conscious of how wonderful it is?” she returned.He jerked his handsome head in literal protest at a doubt. “Why

that’s exactly what I mean by my gratitude for all your trouble. Ithas been just as if you took a particular interest.” She only looked at

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him by way of answer in such sudden headlong embarrassment, asshe was quite aware, that while she remained silent he showed him-self checked by her expression. “You have—haven’t you?—taken aparticular interest?”

“Oh a particular interest!” she quavered out, feeling the wholething—her headlong embarrassment—get terribly the better of her,and wishing, with a sudden scare, all the more to keep her emotiondown. She maintained her fixed smile a moment and turned hereyes over the peopled darkness, unconfused now, because there wassomething much more confusing. This, with a fatal great rush, wassimply the fact that they were thus together. They were near, near,and all she had imagined of that had only become more true, moredreadful and overwhelming. She stared straight away in silence tillshe felt she looked an idiot; then, to say something, to say nothing,she attempted a sound which ended in a flood of tears.

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CHAPTER XVI

HER TEARS HELPED her really to dissimulate, for she had instantly, inso public a situation, to recover herself. They had come and gone inhalf a minute, and she immediately explained them. “It’s only be-cause I’m tired. It’s that—it’s that!” Then she added a trifle incoher-ently: “I shall never see you again.”

“Ah but why not?” The mere tone in which her companion askedthis satisfied her once for all as to the amount of imagination forwhich she could count on him. It was naturally not large: it hadexhausted itself in having arrived at what he had already touchedupon—the sense of an intention in her poor zeal at Cocker’s. Butany deficiency of this kind was no fault in him: he wasn’t obliged tohave an inferior cleverness—to have second-rate resources and vir-tues. It had been as if he almost really believed she had simply criedfor fatigue, and he accordingly put in some kind confused plea—”You ought really to take something: won’t you have something orother somewhere?” to which she had made no response but aheadshake of a sharpness that settled it. “Why shan’t we all the morekeep meeting?”

“I mean meeting this way—only this way. At my place there—that I’ve nothing to do with, and I hope of course you’ll turn up,with your correspondence, when it suits you. Whether I stay or not,I mean; for I shall probably not stay.”

“You’re going somewhere else?” he put it with positive anxiety.“Yes, ever so far away—to the other end of London. There are all

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sorts of reasons I can’t tell you; and it’s practically settled. It’s betterfor me, much; and I’ve only kept on at Cocker’s for you.”

“For me?”Making out in the dusk that he fairly blushed, she now measured

how far he had been from knowing too much. Too much, she calledit at present; and that was easy, since it proved so abundantly enoughfor her that he should simply be where he was. “As we shall nevertalk this way but to-night—never, never again!—here it all is. I’llsay it; I don’t care what you think; it doesn’t matter; I only want tohelp you. Besides, you’re kind—you’re kind. I’ve been thinking thenof leaving for ever so long. But you’ve come so often—at times—and you’ve had so much to do, and it has been so pleasant andinteresting, that I’ve remained, I’ve kept putting off any change.More than once, when I had nearly decided, you’ve turned up againand I’ve thought ‘Oh no!’ That’s the simple fact!” She had by thistime got her confusion down so completely that she could laugh.“This is what I meant when I said to you just now that I ‘knew.’ I’veknown perfectly that you knew I took trouble for you; and thatknowledge has been for me, and I seemed to see it was for you, as ifthere were something—I don’t know what to call it!—between us. Imean something unusual and good and awfully nice—somethingnot a bit horrid or vulgar.”

She had by this time, she could see, produced a great effect onhim; but she would have spoken the truth to herself had she at thesame moment declared that she didn’t in the least care: all the morethat the effect must be one of extreme perplexity. What, in it all,was visibly clear for him, none the less, was that he was tremen-dously glad he had met her. She held him, and he was astonished atthe force of it; he was intent, immensely considerate. His elbow wason the back of the seat, and his head, with the pot-hat pushed quiteback, in a boyish way, so that she really saw almost for the first timehis forehead and hair, rested on the hand into which he had crumpled

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his gloves. “Yes,” he assented, “it’s not a bit horrid or vulgar.”She just hung fire a moment, then she brought out the whole

truth. “I’d do anything for you. I’d do anything for you.” Never inher life had she known anything so high and fine as this, just lettinghim have it and bravely and magnificently leaving it. Didn’t theplace, the associations and circumstances, perfectly make it soundwhat it wasn’t? and wasn’t that exactly the beauty?

So she bravely and magnificently left it, and little by little she felthim take it up, take it down, as if they had been on a satin sofa in aboudoir. She had never seen a boudoir, but there had been lots ofboudoirs in the telegrams. What she had said at all events sank intohim, so that after a minute he simply made a movement that had theresult of placing his hand on her own—presently indeed that of herfeeling herself firmly enough grasped. There was no pressure she needreturn, there was none she need decline; she just sat admirably still,satisfied for the time with the surprise and bewilderment of the im-pression she made on him. His agitation was even greater on the wholethan she had at first allowed for. “I say, you know, you mustn’t thinkof leaving!” he at last broke out.

“Of leaving Cocker’s, you mean?”“Yes, you must stay on there, whatever happens, and help a fel-

low.”She was silent a little, partly because it was so strange and exquis-

ite to feel him watch her as if it really mattered to him and he werealmost in suspense. “Then you have quite recognised what I’ve triedto do?” she asked.

“Why, wasn’t that exactly what I dashed over from my door justnow to thank you for?”

“Yes; so you said.”“And don’t you believe it?”She looked down a moment at his hand, which continued to cover

her own; whereupon he presently drew it back, rather restlessly fold-

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ing his arms. Without answering his question she went on: “Haveyou ever spoken of me?”

“Spoken of you?”“Of my being there—of my knowing, and that sort of thing.”“Oh never to a human creature!” he eagerly declared.She had a small drop at this, which was expressed in another pause,

and she then returned to what he had just asked her. “Oh yes, Iquite believe you like it—my always being there and our takingthings up so familiarly and successfully: if not exactly where we leftthem,” she laughed, “almost always at least at an interesting point!”He was about to say something in reply to this, but her friendlygaiety was quicker. “You want a great many things in life, a greatmany comforts and helps and luxuries—you want everything aspleasant as possible. Therefore, so far as it’s in the power of anyparticular person to contribute to all that—” She had turned herface to him smiling, just thinking.

“Oh see here!” But he was highly amused. “Well, what then?” heenquired as if to humour her.

“Why the particular person must never fail. We must manage itfor you somehow.”

He threw back his head, laughing out; he was really exhilarated.“Oh yes, somehow!”

“Well, I think we each do—don’t we?—in one little way and an-other and according to our limited lights. I’m pleased at any rate,for myself, that you are; for I assure you I’ve done my best.”

“You do better than any one!” He had struck a match for anothercigarette, and the flame lighted an instant his responsive finishedface, magnifying into a pleasant grimace the kindness with whichhe paid her this tribute. “You’re awfully clever, you know; cleverer,cleverer, cleverer—!” He had appeared on the point of making sometremendous statement; then suddenly, puffing his cigarette and shift-ing almost with violence on his seat, he let it altogether fall.

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CHAPTER XVII

IN SPITE OF this drop, if not just by reason of it, she felt as if LadyBradeen, all but named out, had popped straight up; and she prac-tically betrayed her consciousness by waiting a little before she re-joined: “Cleverer than who?”

“Well, if I wasn’t afraid you’d think I swagger, I should say—thananybody! If you leave your place there, where shall you go?” he moregravely asked.

“Oh too far for you ever to find me!”“I’d find you anywhere.”The tone of this was so still more serious that she had but her one

acknowledgement. “I’d do anything for you—I’d do anything foryou,” she repeated. She had already, she felt, said it all; so what didanything more, anything less, matter? That was the very reason in-deed why she could, with a lighter note, ease him generously of anyawkwardness produced by solemnity, either his own or hers. “Ofcourse it must be nice for you to be able to think there are people allabout who feel in such a way.”

In immediate appreciation of this, however, he only smoked with-out looking at her. “But you don’t want to give up your presentwork?” he at last threw out. “I mean you will stay in the post-of-fice?”

“Oh yes; I think I’ve a genius for that.”“Rather! No one can touch you.” With this he turned more to her

again. “But you can get, with a move, greater advantages?”

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“I can get in the suburbs cheaper lodgings. I live with my mother.We need some space. There’s a particular place that has other in-ducements.”

He just hesitated. “Where is it?”“Oh quite out of your way. You’d never have time.”“But I tell you I’d go anywhere. Don’t you believe it?”“Yes, for once or twice. But you’d soon see it wouldn’t do for you.”He smoked and considered; seemed to stretch himself a little and,

with his legs out, surrender himself comfortably. “Well, well, well—I believe everything you say. I take it from you—anything you like—in the most extraordinary way.” It struck her certainly—and almostwithout bitterness—that the way in which she was already, as if shehad been an old friend, arranging for him and preparing the onlymagnificence she could muster, was quite the most extraordinary.“Don’t, don’t go!” he presently went on. “I shall miss you too horri-bly!”

“So that you just put it to me as a definite request?”—oh how shetried to divest this of all sound of the hardness of bargaining! Thatought to have been easy enough, for what was she arranging to get?Before he could answer she had continued: “To be perfectly fair Ishould tell you I recognise at Cocker’s certain strong attractions. Allyou people come. I like all the horrors.”

“The horrors?”“Those you all—you know the set I mean, your set—show me

with as good a conscience as if I had no more feeling than a letter-box.”

He looked quite excited at the way she put it. “Oh they don’tknow!”

“Don’t know I’m not stupid? No, how should they?”“Yes, how should they?” said the Captain sympathetically. “But

isn’t ‘horrors’ rather strong?”“What you do is rather strong!” the girl promptly returned.

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“What I do?”“Your extravagance, your selfishness, your immorality, your crimes,”

she pursued, without heeding his expression.“I say!”—her companion showed the queerest stare.“I like them, as I tell you—I revel in them. But we needn’t go into

that,” she quietly went on; “for all I get out of it is the harmlesspleasure of knowing. I know, I know, I know!”—she breathed itever so gently.

“Yes; that’s what has been between us,” he answered much moresimply.

She could enjoy his simplicity in silence, and for a moment shedid so. “If I do stay because you want it—and I’m rather capable ofthat—there are two or three things I think you ought to remember.One is, you know, that I’m there sometimes for days and weekstogether without your ever coming.”

“Oh I’ll come every day!” he honestly cried.She was on the point, at this, of imitating with her hand his move-

ment of shortly before; but she checked herself, and there was nowant of effect in her soothing substitute. “How can you? How canyou?” He had, too manifestly, only to look at it there, in the vulgarlyanimated gloom, to see that he couldn’t; and at this point, by the mereaction of his silence, everything they had so definitely not named, thewhole presence round which they had been circling, became part oftheir reference, settled in solidly between them. It was as if then for aminute they sat and saw it all in each other’s eyes, saw so much thatthere was no need of a pretext for sounding it at last. “Your danger, yourdanger—!” Her voice indeed trembled with it, and she could only forthe moment again leave it so.

During this moment he leaned back on the bench, meeting her insilence and with a face that grew more strange. It grew so strangethat after a further instant she got straight up. She stood there as iftheir talk were now over, and he just sat and watched her. It was as

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if now—owing to the third person they had brought in—they mustbe more careful; so that the most he could finally say was: “That’swhere it is!”

“That’s where it is!” the girl as guardedly replied. He sat still, andshe added: “I won’t give you up. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye?”—he appealed, but without moving.“I don’t quite see my way, but I won’t give you up,” she repeated.

“There. Good-bye.”It brought him with a jerk to his feet, tossing away his cigarette.

His poor face was flushed. “See here—see here!”“No, I won’t; but I must leave you now,” she went on as if not

hearing him.“See here—see here!” He tried, from the bench, to take her hand

again.But that definitely settled it for her: this would, after all, be as bad

as his asking her to supper. “You mustn’t come with me—no, no!”He sank back, quite blank, as if she had pushed him. “I mayn’t see

you home?”“No, no; let me go.” He looked almost as if she had struck him,

but she didn’t care; and the manner in which she spoke—it wasliterally as if she were angry—had the force of a command. “Staywhere you are!”

“See here—see here!” he nevertheless pleaded.“I won’t give you up!” she cried once more—this time quite with

passion; on which she got away from him as fast as she could andleft him staring after her.

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CHAPTER XVIII

MR. MUDGE HAD lately been so occupied with their famous “plans”that he had neglected for a while the question of her transfer; butdown at Bournemouth, which had found itself selected as the fieldof their recreation by a process consisting, it seemed, exclusively ofinnumerable pages of the neatest arithmetic in a very greasy butmost orderly little pocket-book, the distracting possible meltedaway—the fleeting absolute ruled the scene. The plans, hour byhour, were simply superseded, and it was much of a rest to the girl,as she sat on the pier and overlooked the sea and the company, tosee them evaporate in rosy fumes and to feel that from moment tomoment there was less left to cipher about. The week proves bliss-fully fine, and her mother, at their lodgings—partly to her embar-rassment and partly to her relief—struck up with the landlady analliance that left the younger couple a great deal of freedom. Thisrelative took her pleasure of a week at Bournemouth in a stuffyback-kitchen and endless talks; to that degree even that Mr. Mudgehimself—habitually inclined indeed to a scrutiny of all mysteriesand to seeing, as he sometimes admitted, too much in things—made remarks on it as he sat on the cliff with his betrothed, or onthe decks of steamers that conveyed them, close-packed items interrific totals of enjoyment, to the Isle of Wight and the Dorsetcoast.

He had a lodging in another house, where he had speedily learnedthe importance of keeping his eyes open, and he made no secret of

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his suspecting that sinister mutual connivances might spring, underthe roof of his companions, from unnatural sociabilities. At the sametime he fully recognised that as a source of anxiety, not to say ofexpense, his future mother-in law would have weighted them moreby accompanying their steps than by giving her hostess, in the in-terest of the tendency they considered that they never mentioned,equivalent pledges as to the tea-caddy and the jam-pot. These werethe questions—these indeed the familiar commodities—that he hadnow to put into the scales; and his betrothed had in consequence,during her holiday, the odd and yet pleasant and almost languidsense of an anticlimax. She had become conscious of an extraordi-nary collapse, a surrender to stillness and to retrospect. She caredneither to walk nor to sail; it was enough for her to sit on benchesand wonder at the sea and taste the air and not be at Cocker’s andnot see the counter-clerk. She still seemed to wait for something—something in the key of the immense discussions that had mappedout their little week of idleness on the scale of a world-atlas. Some-thing came at last, but without perhaps appearing quite adequatelyto crown the monument.

Preparation and precaution were, however, the natural flowers ofMr. Mudge’s mind, and in proportion as these things declined inone quarter they inevitably bloomed elsewhere. He could always, atthe worst, have on Tuesday the project of their taking the Swanageboat on Thursday, and on Thursday that of their ordering mincedkidneys on Saturday. He had moreover a constant gift of inexorableenquiry as to where and what they should have gone and have doneif they hadn’t been exactly as they were. He had in short his re-sources, and his mistress had never been so conscious of them; onthe other hand they never interfered so little with her own. Sheliked to be as she was—if it could only have lasted. She could accepteven without bitterness a rigour of economy so great that the littlefee they paid for admission to the pier had to be balanced against

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other delights. The people at Ladle’s and at Thrupp’s had their waysof amusing themselves, whereas she had to sit and hear Mr. Mudgetalk of what he might do if he didn’t take a bath, or of the bath hemight take if he only hadn’t taken something else. He was alwayswith her now, of course, always beside her; she saw him more than“hourly,” more than ever yet, more even than he had planned sheshould do at Chalk Farm. She preferred to sit at the far end, awayfrom the band and the crowd; as to which she had frequent differ-ences with her friend, who reminded her often that they could haveonly in the thick of it the sense of the money they were getting back.That had little effect on her, for she got back her money by seeingmany things, the things of the past year, fall together and connectthemselves, undergo the happy relegation that transforms melancholyand misery, passion and effort, into experience and knowledge.

She liked having done with them, as she assured herself she hadpractically done, and the strange thing was that she neither missedthe procession now nor wished to keep her place for it. It had be-come there, in the sun and the breeze and the sea-smell, a far-awaystory, a picture of another life. If Mr. Mudge himself liked proces-sions, liked them at Bournemouth and on the pier quite as much asat Chalk Farm or anywhere, she learned after a little not to be wor-ried by his perpetual counting of the figures that made them up.There were dreadful women in particular, usually fat and in men’scaps and write shoes, whom he could never let alone—not that shecared; it was not the great world, the world of Cocker’s and Ladle’sand Thrupp’s, but it offered an endless field to his faculties ofmemory, philosophy, and frolic. She had never accepted him somuch, never arranged so successfully for making him chatter whileshe carried on secret conversations. This separate commerce waswith herself; and if they both practised a great thrift she had quitemastered that of merely spending words enough to keep him im-perturbably and continuously going.

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He was charmed with the panorama, not knowing—or at anyrate not at all showing that he knew—what far other images peopledher mind than the women in the navy caps and the shop-boys inthe blazers. His observations on these types, his general interpreta-tion of the show, brought home to her the prospect of Chalk Farm.She wondered sometimes that he should have derived so little illu-mination, during his period, from the society at Cocker’s. But oneevening while their holiday cloudlessly waned he gave her such aproof of his quality as might have made her ashamed of her manysuppressions. He brought out something that, in all his overflow, hehad been able to keep back till other matters were disposed of. Itwas the announcement that he was at last ready to marry—that hesaw his way. A rise at Chalk Farm had been offered him; he was tobe taken into the business, bringing with him a capital the estima-tion of which by other parties constituted the handsomest recogni-tion yet made of the head on his shoulders. Therefore their waitingwas over—it could be a question of a near date. They would settlethis date before going back, and he meanwhile had his eye on asweet little home. He would take her to see it on their first Sunday.

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CHAPTER XIX

HIS HAVING KEPT this great news for the last, having had such a cardup his sleeve and not floated it out in the current of his chatter andthe luxury of their leisure, was one of those incalculable strokes bywhich he could still affect her; the kind of thing that reminded herof the latent force that had ejected the drunken soldier—an ex-ample of the profundity of which his promotion was the proof. Shelistened a while in silence, on this occasion, to the wafted strains ofthe music; she took it in as she had not quite done before that herfuture was now constituted. Mr. Mudge was distinctly her fate; yetat this moment she turned her face quite away from him, showinghim so long a mere quarter of her cheek that she at last again heardhis voice. He couldn’t see a pair of tears that were partly the reasonof her delay to give him the assurance he required; but he expressedat a venture the hope that she had had her fill of Cocker’s.

She was finally able to turn back. “Oh quite. There’s nothing go-ing on. No one comes but the Americans at Thrupp’s, and theydon’t do much. They don’t seem to have a secret in the world.”

“Then the extraordinary reason you’ve been giving me for hold-ing on there has ceased to work?”

She thought a moment. “Yes, that one. I’ve seen the thingthrough—I’ve got them all in my pocket.”

“So you’re ready to come?”For a little again she made no answer. “No, not yet, all the same.

I’ve still got a reason—a different one.”

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He looked her all over as if it might have been something she keptin her mouth or her glove or under her jacket—something she waseven sitting upon. “Well, I’ll have it, please.”

“I went out the other night and sat in the Park with a gentleman,”she said at last.

Nothing was ever seen like his confidence in her and she wondereda little now why it didn’t irritate her. It only gave her ease and space, asshe felt, for telling him the whole truth that no one knew. It hadarrived at present at her really wanting to do that, and yet to do it notin the least for Mr. Mudge, but altogether and only for herself. Thistruth filled out for her there the whole experience about to relinquish,suffused and coloured it as a picture that she should keep and that,describe it as she might, no one but herself would ever really see.Moreover she had no desire whatever to make Mr. Mudge jealous;there would be no amusement in it, for the amusement she had latelyknown had spoiled her for lower pleasures. There were even no mate-rials for it. The odd thing was how she never doubted that, properlyhandled, his passion was poisonable; what had happened was that hehad cannily selected a partner with no poison to distil. She read thenand there that she should never interest herself in anybody as to whomsome other sentiment, some superior view, wouldn’t be sure to inter-fere for him with jealousy. “And what did you get out of that?” heasked with a concern that was not in the least for his honour.

“Nothing but a good chance to promise him I wouldn’t forsakehim. He’s one of my customers.”

“Then it’s for him not to forsake you.”“Well, he won’t. It’s all right. But I must just keep on as long as he

may want me.”“Want you to sit with him in the Park?”“He may want me for that—but I shan’t. I rather liked it, but

once, under the circumstances, is enough. I can do better for him inanother manner.”

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“And what manner, pray?”“Well, elsewhere.”“Elsewhere?—I say!”This was an ejaculation used also by Captain Everard, but oh

with what a different sound! “You needn’t ‘say’—there’s nothing tobe said. And yet you ought perhaps to know.”

“Certainly I ought. But what—up to now?”“Why exactly what I told him. That I’d do anything for him.”“What do you mean by ‘anything’?”“Everything.”Mr. Mudge’s immediate comment on this statement was to draw

from his pocket a crumpled paper containing the remains of half apound of “sundries.” These sundries had figured conspicuously inhis prospective sketch of their tour, but it was only at the end ofthree days that they had defined themselves unmistakeably as choco-late-creams. “Have another?—that one,” he said. She had another,but not the one he indicated, and then he continued: “What tookplace afterwards?”

“Afterwards?”“What did you do when you had told him you’d do everything?”“I simply came away.”“Out of the Park?”“Yes, leaving him there. I didn’t let him follow me.”“Then what did you let him do?”“I didn’t let him do anything.”Mr. Mudge considered an instant. “Then what did you go there

for?” His tone was even slightly critical.“I didn’t quite know at the time. It was simply to be with him, I

suppose—just once. He’s in danger, and I wanted him to know Iknow it. It makes meeting him—at Cocker’s, since it’s that I wantto stay on for—more interesting.”

“It makes it mighty interesting for me!” Mr. Mudge freely de-

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clared. “Yet he didn’t follow you?” he asked. “I would!”“Yes, of course. That was the way you began, you know. You’re

awfully inferior to him.”“Well, my dear, you’re not inferior to anybody. You’ve got a cheek!

What’s he in danger of?”“Of being found out. He’s in love with a lady—and it isn’t right—

and I’ve found him out.”“That’ll be a look-out for me!” Mr. Mudge joked. “You mean she

has a husband?”“Never mind what she has! They’re in awful danger, but his is the

worst, because he’s in danger from her too.”“Like me from you—the woman I love? If he’s in the same funk

as me—”“He’s in a worse one. He’s not only afraid of the lady—he’s afraid

of other things.”Mr. Mudge selected another chocolate-cream. “Well, I’m only

afraid of one! But how in the world can you help this party?”“I don’t know—perhaps not at all. But so long as there’s a chance—”“You won’t come away?”“No, you’ve got to wait for me.”Mr. Mudge enjoyed what was in his mouth. “And what will he

give you?”“Give me?”“If you do help him.”“Nothing. Nothing in all the wide world.”“Then what will he give me?” Mr. Mudge enquired. “I mean for

waiting.”The girl thought a moment; then she got up to walk. “He never

heard of you,” she replied.“You haven’t mentioned me?”“We never mention anything. What I’ve told you is just what I’ve

found out.”

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Mr. Mudge, who had remained on the bench, looked up at her;she often preferred to be quiet when he proposed to walk, but nowthat he seemed to wish to sit she had a desire to move. “But youhaven’t told me what he has found out.”

She considered her lover. “He’d never find you, my dear!”Her lover, still on his seat, appealed to her in something of the

attitude in which she had last left Captain Everard, but the impres-sion was not the same. “Then where do I come in?”

“You don’t come in at all. That’s just the beauty of it!”—and withthis she turned to mingle with the multitude collected round theband. Mr. Mudge presently overtook her and drew her arm into hisown with a quiet force that expressed the serenity of possession; inconsonance with which it was only when they parted for the nightat her door that he referred again to what she had told him.

“Have you seen him since?”“Since the night in the Park? No, not once.”“Oh, what a cad!” said Mr. Mudge.

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CHAPTER XX

IT WAS NOT TILL the end of October that she saw Captain Everardagain, and on that occasion—the only one of all the series on whichhindrance had been so utter—no communication with him provedpossible. She had made out even from the cage that it was a charm-ing golden day: a patch of hazy autumn sunlight lay across the sandedfloor and also, higher up, quickened into brightness a row of ruddybottled syrups. Work was slack and the place in general empty; thetown, as they said in the cage, had not waked up, and the feeling ofthe day likened itself to something than in happier conditions shewould have thought of romantically as Saint Martin’s summer. Thecounter-clerk had gone to his dinner; she herself was busy with ar-rears of postal jobs, in the midst of which she became aware thatCaptain Everard had apparently been in the shop a minute and thatMr. Buckton had already seized him.

He had as usual half a dozen telegrams; and when he saw that shesaw him and their eyes met he gave, on bowing to her, an exagger-ated laugh in which she read a new consciousness. It was a confes-sion of awkwardness; it seemed to tell her that of course he knew heought better to have kept his head, ought to have been clever enoughto wait, on some pretext, till he should have found her free. Mr.Buckton was a long time with him, and her attention was soondemanded by other visitors; so that nothing passed between thembut the fulness of their silence. The look she took from him was hisgreeting, and the other one a simple sign of the eyes sent her before

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going out. The only token they exchanged therefore was his tacitassent to her wish that since they couldn’t attempt a certain frank-ness they should attempt nothing at all. This was her intense prefer-ence; she could be as still and cold as any one when that was the solesolution.

Yet more than any contact hitherto achieved these counted in-stants struck her as marking a step: they were built so—just in themere flash—on the recognition of his now definitely knowing whatit was she would do for him. The “anything, anything” she haduttered in the Park went to and fro between them and under thepoked-out china that interposed. It had all at last even put on theair of their not needing now clumsily to manoeuvre to converse:their former little postal make-believes, the intense implications ofquestions and answers and change, had become in the light of thepersonal fact, of their having had their moment, a possibility com-paratively poor. It was as if they had met for all time—it exerted ontheir being in presence again an influence so prodigious. When shewatched herself, in the memory of that night, walk away from himas if she were making an end, she found something too pitiful in theprimness of such a gait. Hadn’t she precisely established on the partof each a consciousness that could end only with death?

It must be admitted that in spite of this brave margin an irrita-tion, after he had gone, remained with her; a sense that presentlybecame one with a still sharper hatred of Mr. Buckton, who, on herfriend’s withdrawal, had retired with the telegrams to the sounderand left her the other work. She knew indeed she should have achance to see them, when she would, on file; and she was divided,as the day went on, between the two impressions of all that was lostand all that was re-asserted. What beset her above all, and as she hadalmost never known it before, was the desire to bound straight out,to overtake the autumn afternoon before it passed away for ever andhurry off to the Park and perhaps be with him there again on a

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bench. It became for an hour a fantastic vision with her that hemight just have gone to sit and wait for her. She could almost hearhim, through the tick of the sounder, scatter with his stick, in hisimpatience, the fallen leaves of October. Why should such a visionseize her at this particular moment with such a shake? There was atime—from four to five—when she could have cried with happi-ness and rage.

Business quickened, it seemed, toward five, as if the town didwake up; she had therefore more to do, and she went through itwith little sharp stampings and jerkings: she made the crisp postal-orders fairly snap while she breathed to herself “It’s the last day—the last day!” The last day of what? She couldn’t have told. All sheknew now was that if she were out of the cage she wouldn’t in theleast have minded, this time, its not yet being dark. She would havegone straight toward Park Chambers and have hung about there tillno matter when. She would have waited, stayed, rung, asked, havegone in, sat on the stairs. What the day was the last of was probably,to her strained inner sense, the group of golden ones, of any occa-sion for seeing the hazy sunshine slant at that angle into the smellyshop, of any range of chances for his wishing still to repeat to herthe two words she had in the Park scarcely let him bring out. “Seehere—see here!”—the sound of these two words had been with herperpetually; but it was in her ears to-day without mercy, with aloudness that grew and grew. What was it they then expressed? whatwas it he had wanted her to see? She seemed, whatever it was, per-fectly to see it now—to see that if she should just chuck the wholething, should have a great and beautiful courage, he would some-how make everything up to her. When the clock struck five she wason the very point of saying to Mr. Buckton that she was deadly illand rapidly getting worse. This announcement was on her lips, andshe had quite composed the pale hard face she would offer him: “Ican’t stop—I must go home. If I feel better, later on, I’ll come back.

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I’m very sorry, but I must go.” At that instant Captain Everard oncemore stood there, producing in her agitated spirit, by his real pres-ence, the strangest, quickest revolution. He stopped her off withoutknowing it, and by the time he had been a minute in the shop shefelt herself saved.

That was from the first minute how she thought of it. There wereagain other persons with whom she was occupied, and again thesituation could only be expressed by their silence. It was expressed,of a truth, in a larger phrase than ever yet, for her eyes now spoke tohim with a kind of supplication. “Be quiet, be quiet!” they pleaded;and they saw his own reply: “I’ll do whatever you say; I won’t evenlook at you—see, see!” They kept conveying thus, with the friendli-est liberality, that they wouldn’t look, quite positively wouldn’t. Whatshe was to see was that he hovered at the other end of the counter,Mr. Buckton’s end, and surrendered himself again to that frustra-tion. It quickly proved so great indeed that what she was to seefurther was how he turned away before he was attended to, andhung off, waiting, smoking, looking about the shop; how he wentover to Mr. Cocker’s own counter and appeared to price things,gave in fact presently two or three orders and put down money,stood there a long time with his back to her, considerately abstain-ing from any glance round to see if she were free. It at last came topass in this way that he had remained in the shop longer than shehad ever yet known to do, and that, nevertheless, when he did turnabout she could see him time himself—she was freshly taken up—and cross straight to her postal subordinate, whom some one elsehad released. He had in his hand all this while neither letters nortelegrams, and now that he was close to her—for she was close tothe counter-clerk—it brought her heart into her mouth merely tosee him look at her neighbour and open his lips. She was too ner-vous to bear it. He asked for a Post-Office Guide, and the youngman whipped out a new one; whereupon he said he wished not to

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purchase, but only to consult one a moment; with which, the copykept on loan being produced, he once more wandered off.

What was he doing to her? What did he want of her? Well, it wasjust the aggravation of his “See here!” She felt at this momentstrangely and portentously afraid of him—had in her ears the humof a sense that, should it come to that kind of tension, she must flyon the spot to Chalk Farm. Mixed with her dread and with herreflexion was the idea that, if he wanted her so much as he seemedto show, it might be after all simply to do for him the “anything”she had promised, the “everything” she had thought it so fine tobring out to Mr. Mudge. He might want her to help him, mighthave some particular appeal; though indeed his manner didn’t de-note that—denoted on the contrary an embarrassment, an indeci-sion, something of a desire not so much to be helped as to be treatedrather more nicely than she had treated him the other time. Yes, heconsidered quite probably that he had help rather to offer than toask for. Still, none the less, when he again saw her free he continuedto keep away from her; when he came back with his thumbed Guideit was Mr. Buckton he caught—it was from Mr. Buckton he ob-tained half-a-crown’s-worth of stamps.

After asking for the stamps he asked, quite as a second thought,for a postal-order for ten shillings. What did he want with so manystamps when he wrote so few letters? How could he enclose a postal-order in a telegram? She expected him, the next thing, to go into thecorner and make up one of his telegrams—half a dozen of them—on purpose to prolong his presence. She had so completely stoppedlooking at him that she could only guess his movements—guesseven where his eyes rested. Finally she saw him make a dash thatmight have been toward the nook where the forms were hung; andat this she suddenly felt that she couldn’t keep it up. The counter-clerk had just taken a telegram from a slavey, and, to give herselfsomething to cover her, she snatched it out of his hand. The gesture

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was so violent that he gave her in return an odd look, and she alsoperceived that Mr. Buckton noticed it. The latter personage, with aquick stare at her, appeared for an instant to wonder whether hissnatching it in his turn mightn’t be the thing she would least like,and she anticipated this practical criticism by the frankest glare shehad ever given him. It sufficed: this time it paralysed him; and shesought with her trophy the refuge of the sounder.

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CHAPTER XXI

IT WAS REPEATED the next day; it went on for three days; and at theend of that time she knew what to think. When, at the beginning,she had emerged from her temporary shelter Captain Everard hadquitted the shop; and he had not come again that evening, as it hadstruck her he possibly might—might all the more easily that therewere numberless persons who came, morning and afternoon, num-berless times, so that he wouldn’t necessarily have attracted atten-tion. The second day it was different and yet on the whole worse.His access to her had become possible—she felt herself even reap-ing the fruit of her yesterday’s glare at Mr. Buckton; but transactinghis business with him didn’t simplify—it could, in spite of the rigourof circumstance, feed so her new conviction. The rigour was tre-mendous, and his telegrams—not now mere pretexts for getting ather—were apparently genuine; yet the conviction had taken but anight to develop. It could be simply enough expressed; she had hadthe glimmer of it the day before in her idea that he needed no morehelp than she had already given; that it was help he himself wasprepared to render. He had come up to town but for three or fourdays; he had been absolutely obliged to be absent after the othertime; yet he would, now that he was face to face with her, stay on asmuch longer as she liked. Little by little it was thus clarified, thoughfrom the first flash of his re-appearance she had read into it the realessence.

That was what the night before, at eight o’clock, her hour to go,

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had made her hang back and dawdle. She did last things or pre-tended to do them; to be in the cage had suddenly become hersafety, and she was literally afraid of the alternate self who might bewaiting outside. HE might be waiting; it was he who was her alter-nate self, and of him she was afraid. The most extraordinary changehad taken place in her from the moment of her catching the im-pression he seemed to have returned on purpose to give her. Justbefore she had done so, on that bewitched afternoon, she had seenherself approach without a scruple the porter at Park Chambers;then as the effect of the rush of a consciousness quite altered shehad on at last quitting Cocker’s, gone straight home for the firsttime since her return from Bournemouth. She had passed his doorevery night for weeks, but nothing would have induced her to passit now. This change was the tribute of her fear—the result of a changein himself as to which she needed no more explanation than hismere face vividly gave her; strange though it was to find an elementof deterrence in the object that she regarded as the most beautiful inthe world. He had taken it from her in the Park that night that shewanted him not to propose to her to sup; but he had put away thelesson by this time—he practically proposed supper every time helooked at her. This was what, for that matter, mainly filled the threedays. He came in twice on each of these, and it was as if he came into give her a chance to relent. That was after all, she said to herselfin the intervals, the most that he did. There were ways, she fullyrecognised, in which he spared her, and other particular ways as towhich she meant that her silence should be full to him of exquisitepleading. The most particular of all was his not being outside, at thecorner, when she quitted the place for the night. This he might soeasily have been—so easily if he hadn’t been so nice. She continuedto recognise in his forbearance the fruit of her dumb supplication,and the only compensation he found for it was the harmless free-dom of being able to appear to say: “Yes, I’m in town only for three

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or four days, but, you know, I would stay on.” He struck her ascalling attention each day, each hour, to the rapid ebb of time; heexaggerated to the point of putting it that there were only two daysmore, that there was at last, dreadfully, only one.

There were other things still that he struck her as doing with aspecial intention; as to the most marked of which—unless indeed itwere the most obscure—she might well have marvelled that it didn’tseem to her more horrid. It was either the frenzy of her imaginationor the disorder of his baffled passion that gave her once or twice thevision of his putting down redundant money—sovereigns not con-cerned with the little payments he was perpetually making—so thatshe might give him some sign of helping him to slip them over toher. What was most extraordinary in this impression was the amountof excuse that, with some incoherence, she found for him. He wantedto pay her because there was nothing to pay her for. He wanted tooffer her things he knew she wouldn’t take. He wanted to show herhow much he respected her by giving her the supreme chance toshow him she was respectable. Over the dryest transactions, at anyrate, their eyes had out these questions. On the third day he put ina telegram that had evidently something of the same point as thestray sovereigns—a message that was in the first place concoctedand that on a second thought he took back from her before she hadstamped it. He had given her time to read it and had only thenbethought himself that he had better not send it. If it was not toLady Bradeen at Twindle—where she knew her ladyship then tobe—this was because an address to Doctor Buzzard at Brickwoodwas just as good, with the added merit of its not giving away quiteso much a person whom he had still, after all, in a manner to con-sider. It was of course most complicated, only half lighted; but therewas, discernibly enough, a scheme of communication in which LadyBradeen at Twindle and Dr. Buzzard at Brickwood were, withinlimits, one and the same person. The words he had shown her and

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then taken back consisted, at all events, of the brief but vivid phrase“Absolutely impossible.” The point was not that she should trans-mit it; the point was just that she should see it. What was absolutelyimpossible was that before he had setted something at Cocker’s heshould go either to Twindle or to Brickwood.

The logic of this, in turn, for herself, was that she could lendherself to no settlement so long as she so intensely knew. What sheknew was that he was, almost under peril of life, clenched in a situ-ation: therefore how could she also know where a poor girl in theP.O. might really stand? It was more and more between them that ifhe might convey to her he was free, with all the impossible lockedaway into a closed chapter, her own case might become different forher, she might understand and meet him and listen. But he couldconvey nothing of the sort, and he only fidgeted and floundered inhis want of power. The chapter wasn’t in the least closed, not for theother party; and the other party had a pull, somehow and some-where: this his whole attitude and expression confessed, at the sametime that they entreated her not to remember and not to mind. Solong as she did remember and did mind he could only circle aboutand go and come, doing futile things of which he was ashamed. Hewas ashamed of his two words to Dr. Buzzard; he went out of theshop as soon as he had crumpled up the paper again and thrust itinto his pocket. It had been an abject little exposure of dreadfulimpossible passion. He appeared in fact to be too ashamed to comeback. He had once more left town, and a first week elapsed, and asecond. He had had naturally to return to the real mistress of hisfate; she had insisted—she knew how to insist, and he couldn’t putin another hour. There was always a day when she called time. Itwas known to our young friend moreover that he had now beendispatching telegrams from other offices. She knew at last so muchthat she had quite lost her earlier sense of merely guessing. Therewere no different shades of distinctness—it all bounced out.

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CHAPTER XXII

EIGHTEEN DAYS ELAPSED, and she had begun to think it probable sheshould never see him again. He too then understood now: he hadmade out that she had secrets and reasons and impediments, thateven a poor girl at the P.O. might have her complications. With thecharm she had cast on him lightened by distance he had suffered afinal delicacy to speak to him, had made up his mind that it wouldbe only decent to let her alone. Never so much as during these latterdays had she felt the precariousness of their relation—the happybeautiful untroubled original one, if it could only have been re-stored—in which the public servant and the casual public only wereconcerned. It hung at the best by the merest silken thread, whichwas at the mercy of any accident and might snap at any minute. Shearrived by the end of the fortnight at the highest sense of actualfitness, never doubting that her decision was now complete. Shewould just give him a few days more to come back to her on aproper impersonal basis—for even to an embarrassing representa-tive of the casual public a public servant with a conscience did owesomething—and then would signify to Mr. Mudge that she wasready for the little home. It had been visited, in the further talk shehad had with him at Bournemouth, from garret to cellar, and theyhad especially lingered, with their respectively darkened brows, be-fore the niche into which it was to be broached to her mother thatshe must find means to fit.

He had put it to her more definitely than before that his calcula-

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tions had allowed for that dingy presence, and he had thereby markedthe greatest impression he had ever made on her. It was a stroke supe-rior even again to his handling of the drunken soldier. What she con-sidered that in the face of it she hung on at Cocker’s for was some-thing she could only have described as the common fairness of a lastword. Her actual last word had been, till it should be superseded, thatshe wouldn’t forsake her other friend, and it stuck to her throughthick and thin that she was still at her post and on her honour. Thisother friend had shown so much beauty of conduct already that hewould surely after all just re-appear long enough to relieve her, to giveher something she could take away. She saw it, caught it, at times, hisparting present; and there were moments when she felt herself sittinglike a beggar with a hand held out to almsgiver who only fumbled.She hadn’t taken the sovereigns, but she would take the penny. Sheheard, in imagination, on the counter, the ring of the copper. “Don’tput yourself out any longer,” he would say, “for so bad a case. You’vedone all there is to be done. I thank and acquit and release you. Ourlives take us. I don’t know much—though I’ve really been interested—about yours, but I suppose you’ve got one. Mine at any rate will takeme—and where it will. Heigh-ho! Good-bye.” And then once more,for the sweetest faintest flower of all: “Only, I say—see here!” She hadframed the whole picture with a squareness that included also theimage of how again she would decline to “see there,” decline, as shemight say, to see anywhere, see anything. Yet it befell that just in thefury of this escape she saw more than ever.

He came back one night with a rush, near the moment of theirclosing, and showed her a face so different and new, so upset andanxious, that almost anything seemed to look out of it but clearrecognition. He poked in a telegram very much as if the simplesense of pressure, the distress of extreme haste, had blurred the re-membrance of where in particular he was. But as she met his eyes alight came; it broke indeed on the spot into a positive conscious

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glare. That made up for everything, since it was an instant procla-mation of the celebrated “danger”; it seemed to pour things out in aflood. “Oh yes, here it is—it’s upon me at last! Forget, for God’ssake, my having worried or bored you, and just help me, just saveme, by getting this off without the loss of a second!” Somethinggrave had clearly occurred, a crisis declared itself. She recognisedimmediately the person to whom the telegram was addressed—theMiss Dolman of Parade Lodge to whom Lady Bradeen had wired,at Dover, on the last occasion, and whom she had then, with herrecollection of previous arrangements, fitted into a particular set-ting. Miss Dolman had figured before and not figured since, butshe was now the subject of an imperative appeal. “Absolutely neces-sary to see you. Take last train Victoria if you can catch it. If not,earliest morning, and answer me direct either way.”

“Reply paid?” said the girl. Mr. Buckton had just departed andthe counter-clerk was at the sounder. There was no other represen-tative of the public, and she had never yet, as it seemed to her, noteven in the street or in the Park, been so alone with him.

“Oh yes, reply paid, and as sharp as possible, please.”She affixed the stamps in a flash. “She’ll catch the train!” she then

declared to him breathlessly, as if she could absolutely guarantee it.“I don’t know—I hope so. It’s awfully important. So kind of you.

Awfully sharp, please.” It was wonderfully innocent now, his oblivionof all but his danger. Anything else that had ever passed between themwas utterly out of it. Well, she had wanted him to be impersonal!

There was less of the same need therefore, happily, for herself; yetshe only took time, before she flew to the sounder, to gasp at him:“You’re in trouble?”

“Horrid, horrid—there’s a row!” But they parted, on it, in thenext breath; and as she dashed at the sounder, almost pushing, inher violence, the counter-clerk off the stool, she caught the bangwith which, at Cocker’s door, in his further precipitation, he closed

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the apron of the cab into which he had leaped. As he rebounded tosome other precaution suggested by his alarm, his appeal to MissDolman flashed straight away.

But she had not, on the morrow, been in the place five minutesbefore he was with her again, still more discomposed and quite,now, as she said to herself, like a frightened child coming to itsmother. Her companions were there, and she felt it to be remark-able how, in the presence of his agitation, his mere scared exposednature, she suddenly ceased to mind. It came to her as it had nevercome to her before that with absolute directness and assurance theymight carry almost anything off. He had nothing to send—she wassure he had been wiring all over—and yet his business was evidentlyhuge. There was nothing but that in his eyes—not a glimmer ofreference or memory. He was almost haggard with anxiety and hadclearly not slept a wink. Her pity for him would have given her anycourage, and she seemed to know at last why she had been such afool. “She didn’t come?” she panted.

“Oh yes, she came; but there has been some mistake. We want atelegram.”

“A telegram?”“One that was sent from here ever so long ago. There was some-

thing in it that has to be recovered. Something very, very impor-tant, please—we want it immediately.”

He really spoke to her as if she had been some strange youngwoman at Knightsbridge or Paddington; but it had no other effecton her than to give her the measure of his tremendous flurry. Thenit was that, above all, she felt how much she had missed in the gapsand blanks and absent answers—how much she had had to dis-pense with: it was now black darkness save for this little wild redflare. So much as that she saw, so much her mind dealt with. One ofthe lovers was quaking somewhere out of town, and the other wasquaking just where he stood. This was vivid enough, and after an

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instant she knew it was all she wanted. She wanted no detail, nofact—she wanted no nearer vision of discovery or shame. “Whenwas your telegram? Do you mean you sent it from here?” She triedto do the young woman at Knightsbridge.

“Oh yes, from here—several weeks ago. Five, six, seven”—he wasconfused and impatient—“don’t you remember?”

“Remember?” she could scarcely keep out of her face, at the word,the strangest of smiles.

But the way he didn’t catch what it meant was perhaps even strangerstill. “I mean, don’t you keep the old ones?”

“For a certain time.”“But how long?”She thought; she must do the young woman, and she knew ex-

actly what the young woman would say and, still more, wouldn’t.“Can you give me the date?”

“Oh God, no! It was some time or other in August—toward theend. It was to the same address as the one I gave you last night.”

“Oh!” said the girl, knowing at this the deepest thrill she had everfelt. It came to her there, with her eyes on his face, that she held thewhole thing in her hand, held it as she held her pencil, which mighthave broken at that instant in her tightened grip. This made her feellike the very fountain of fate, but the emotion was such a flood thatshe had to press it back with all her force. That was positively thereason, again, of her flute-like Paddington tone. “You can’t give usanything a little nearer?” Her “little” and her “us” came straightfrom Paddington. These things were no false note for him—his dif-ficulty absorbed them all. The eyes with which he pressed her, andin the depths of which she read terror and rage and literal tears,were just the same he would have shown any other prim person.

“I don’t know the date. I only know the thing went from here,and just about the time I speak of. It wasn’t delivered, you see. We’vegot to recover it.”

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CHAPTER XXIII

SHE WAS AS STRUCK with the beauty of his plural pronoun as she hadjudged he might be with that of her own; but she knew now so wellwhat she was about that she could almost play with him and withher new-born joy. “You say ‘about the time you speak of.’ But Idon’t think you speak of an exact time—do you?”

He looked splendidly helpless. “That’s just what I want to findout. Don’t you keep the old ones?—can’t you look it up?”

Our young lady—still at Paddington—turned the question over.“It wasn’t delivered?”

“Yes, it was; yet, at the same time, don’t you know? it wasn’t.” Hejust hung back, but he brought it out. “I mean it was intercepted,don’t you know? and there was something in it.” He paused againand, as if to further his quest and woo and supplicate success andrecovery, even smiled with an effort at the agreeable that was almostghastly and that turned the knife in her tenderness. What must bethe pain of it all, of the open gulf and the throbbing fever, when thiswas the mere hot breath? “We want to get what was in it—to knowwhat it was.”

“I see—I see.” She managed just the accent they had at Paddingtonwhen they stared like dead fish. “And you have no clue?”

“Not at all—I’ve the clue I’ve just given you.”“Oh the last of August?” If she kept it up long enough she would

make him really angry.“Yes, and the address, as I’ve said.”

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“Oh the same as last night?”He visibly quivered, as with a gleam of hope; but it only poured oil

on her quietude, and she was still deliberate. She ranged some papers.“Won’t you look?” he went on.

“I remember your coming,” she replied.He blinked with a new uneasiness; it might have begun to come

to him, through her difference, that he was somehow different him-self. “You were much quicker then, you know!”

“So were you—you must do me that justice,” she answered witha smile. “But let me see. Wasn’t it Dover?”

“Yes, Miss Dolman—”“Parade Lodge, Parade Terrace?”“Exactly—thank you so awfully much!” He began to hope again.

“Then you have it—the other one?”She hesitated afresh; she quite dangled him. “It was brought by a

lady?”“Yes; and she put in by mistake something wrong. That’s what

we’ve got to get hold of!” Heavens, what was he going to say?—flooding poor Paddington with wild betrayals! She couldn’t too much,for her joy, dangle him, yet she couldn’t either, for his dignity, warnor control or check him. What she found herself doing was just totreat herself to the middle way. “It was intercepted?”

“It fell into the wrong hands. But there’s something in it,” hecontinued to blurt out, “that may be all right. That is, if it’s wrong,don’t you know? It’s all right if it’s wrong,” he remarkably explained.

What was he, on earth, going to say? Mr. Buckton and the counter-clerk were already interested; no one would have the decency to comein; and she was divided between her particular terror for him and hergeneral curiosity. Yet she already saw with what brilliancy she couldadd, to carry the thing off, a little false knowledge to all her real. “Iquite understand,” she said with benevolent, with almost patronisingquickness. “The lady has forgotten what she did put.”

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“Forgotten most wretchedly, and it’s an immense inconvenience.It has only just been found that it didn’t get there; so that if wecould immediately have it—”

“Immediately?”“Every minute counts. You have,” he pleaded, “surely got them

on file?”“So that you can see it on the spot?”“Yes, please—this very minute.” The counter rang with his knuck-

les, with the knob of his stick, with his panic of alarm. “Do, DOhunt it up!” he repeated.

“I dare say we could get it for you,” the girl weetly returned.“Get it?”—he looked aghast. “When?”“Probably by to-morrow.”“Then it isn’t here?”—his face was pitiful.She caught only the uncovered gleams that peeped out of the black-

ness, and she wondered what complication, even among the mostsupposable, the very worst, could be bad enough to account for thedegree of his terror. There were twists and turns, there were placeswhere the screw drew blood, that she couldn’t guess. She was moreand more glad she didn’t want to. “It has been sent on.”

“But how do you know if you don’t look?”She gave him a smile that was meant to be, in the absolute irony

of its propriety, quite divine. “It was August 23rd, and we’ve noth-ing later here than August 27th.”

Something leaped into his face. “27th—23rd? Then you’re sure?You know?”

She felt she scarce knew what—as if she might soon be pouncedupon for some lurid connexion with a scandal. It was the queerestof all sensations, for she had heard, she had read, of these things,and the wealth of her intimacy with them at Cocker’s might besupposed to have schooled and seasoned her. This particular onethat she had really quite lived with was, after all, an old story; yet

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what it had been before was dim and distant beside the touch underwhich she now winced. Scandal?—it had never been but a silly word.Now it was a great tense surface, and the surface was somehow Cap-tain Everard’s wonderful face. Deep down in his eyes a picture, ascene—a great place like a chamber of justice, where, before a watch-ing crowd, a poor girl, exposed but heroic, swore with a quaveringvoice to a document, proved an alibi, supplied a link. In this pictureshe bravely took her place. “It was the 23rd.”

“Then can’t you get it this morning—or some time to-day?”She considered, still holding him with her look, which she then

turned on her two companions, who were by this time unreservedlyenlisted. She didn’t care—not a scrap, and she glanced about for apiece of paper. With this she had to recognise the rigour of officialthrift—a morsel of blackened blotter was the only loose paper to beseen. “Have you got a card?” she said to her visitor. He was quiteaway from Paddington now, and the next instant, pocket-book inhand, he had whipped a card out. She gave no glance at the nameon it—only turned it to the other side. She continued to hold him,she felt at present, as she had never held him; and her command ofher colleagues was for the moment not less marked. She wrote some-thing on the back of the card and pushed it across to him.

He fairly glared at it. “Seven, nine, four—”“Nine, six, one”—she obligingly completed the number. “Is it

right?” she smiled.He took the whole thing in with a flushed intensity; then there

broke out in him a visibility of relief that was simply a tremendousexposure. He shone at them all like a tall lighthouse, embracingeven, for sympathy, the blinking young men. “By all the powers—it’s wrong!” And without another look, without a word of thanks,without time for anything or anybody, he turned on them the broadback of his great stature, straightened his triumphant shoulders, andstrode out of the place.

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She was left confronted with her habitual critics. “‘If it’s wrong it’sall right!’” she extravagantly quoted to them.

The counter-clerk was really awe-stricken. “But how did you know,dear?”

“I remembered, love!”Mr. Buckton, on the contrary, was rude. “And what game is that,

miss?”No happiness she had ever known came within miles of it, and

some minutes elapsed before she could recall herself sufficiently toreply that it was none of his business.

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CHAPTER XXIV

IF LIFE AT COCKER’S, with the dreadful drop of August, had lost some-thing of its savour, she had not been slow to infer that a heavierblight had fallen on the graceful industry of Mrs. Jordan.

With Lord Rye and Lady Ventnor and Mrs. Bubb all out of town,with the blinds down on all the homes of luxury, this ingeniouswoman might well have found her wonderful taste left quite on herhands. She bore up, however, in a way that began by exciting muchof her young friend’s esteem; they perhaps even more frequentlymet as the wine of life flowed less free from other sources, and each,in the lack of better diversion, carried on with more mystificationfor the other an intercourse that consisted not a little in peeping outand drawing back. Each waited for the other to commit herself,each profusely curtained for the other the limits of low horizons.Mrs. Jordan was indeed probably the more reckless skirmisher; noth-ing could exceed her frequent incoherence unless it was indeed heroccasional bursts of confidence. Her account of her private affairsrose and fell like a flame in the wind—sometimes the bravest bon-fire and sometimes a handful of ashes. This our young woman tookto be an effect of the position, at one moment and another, of thefamous door of the great world. She had been struck in one of herha’penny volumes with the translation of a French proverb accord-ing to which such a door, any door, had to be either open or shut;and it seemed part of the precariousness of Mrs. Jordan’s life thathers mostly managed to be neither. There had been occasions when

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it appeared to gape wide—fairly to woo her across its threshold;there had been others, of an order distinctly disconcerting, when itwas all but banged in her face. On the whole, however, she hadevidently not lost heart; these still belonged to the class of things inspite of which she looked well. She intimated that the profits of hertrade had swollen so as to float her through any state of the tide,and she had, besides this, a hundred profundities and explanations.

She rose superior, above all, on the happy fact that there werealways gentlemen in town and that gentlemen were her greatestadmirers; gentlemen from the City in especial—as to whom shewas full of information about the passion and pride excited in suchbreasts by the elements of her charming commerce. The City mendid in short go in for flowers. There was a certain type of awfullysmart stockbroker—Lord Rye called them Jews and bounders, butshe didn’t care—whose extravagance, she more than once threw out,had really, if one had any conscience, to be forcibly restrained. Itwas not perhaps a pure love of beauty: it was a matter of vanity anda sign of business; they wished to crush their rivals, and that wasone of their weapons. Mrs. Jordan’s shrewdness was extreme; sheknew in any case her customer—she dealt, as she said, with all sorts;and it was at the worst a race for her—a race even in the dullmonths—from one set of chambers to another. And then, after all,there were also still the ladies; the ladies of stockbroking circles wereperpetually up and down. They were not quite perhaps Mrs. Bubbor Lady Ventnor; but you couldn’t tell the difference unless youquarrelled with them, and then you knew it only by their making-up sooner. These ladies formed the branch of her subject on whichshe most swayed in the breeze; to that degree that her confidant hadended with an inference or two tending to banish regret for oppor-tunities not embraced. There were indeed tea-gowns that Mrs. Jor-dan described—but tea-gowns were not the whole of respectability,and it was odd that a clergyman’s widow should sometimes speak as

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if she almost thought so. She came back, it was true, unfailingly toLord Rye, never, evidently, quite losing sight of him even on thelongest excursions. That he was kindness itself had become in factthe very moral it all pointed—pointed in strange flashes of the poorwoman’s nearsighted eyes. She launched at her young friend por-tentous looks, solemn heralds of some extraordinary communica-tion. The communication itself, from week to week, hung fire; butit was to the facts over which it hovered that she owed her power ofgoing on. “They are, in one way and another,” she often emphasised,“a tower of strength”; and as the allusion was to the aristocracy thegirl could quite wonder why, if they were so in “one way,” theyshould require to be so in two. She thoroughly knew, however, howmany ways Mrs. Jordan counted in. It all meant simply that her fatewas pressing her close. If that fate was to be sealed at the matrimo-nial altar it was perhaps not remarkable that she shouldn’t come allat once to the scratch of overwhelming a mere telegraphist. It wouldnecessarily present to such a person a prospect of regretful sacrifice.Lord Rye—if it was Lord Rye—wouldn’t be “kind” to a nonentityof that sort, even though people quite as good had been.

One Sunday afternoon in November they went, by arrangement,to church together; after which—on the inspiration of the momentthe arrangement had not included it—they proceeded to Mrs.Jordan’s lodging in the region of Maida Vale. She had raved to herfriend about her service of predilection; she was excessively “high,”and had more than once wished to introduce the girl to the samecomfort and privilege. There was a thick brown fog and Maida Valetasted of acrid smoke; but they had been sitting among chants andincense and wonderful music, during which, though the effect ofsuch things on her mind was great, our young lady had indulged ina series of reflexions but indirectly related to them. One of thesewas the result of Mrs. Jordan’s having said to her on the way, andwith a certain fine significance, that Lord Rye had been for some

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time in town. She had spoken as if it were a circumstance to whichlittle required to be added—as if the bearing of such an item on herlife might easily be grasped. Perhaps it was the wonder of whetherLord Rye wished to marry her that made her guest, with thoughtsstraying to that quarter, quite determine that some other nuptialsalso should take place at Saint Julian’s. Mr. Mudge was still an at-tendant at his Wesleyan chapel, but this was the least of her wor-ries—it had never even vexed her enough for her to so much asname it to Mrs. Jordan. Mr. Mudge’s form of worship was one ofseveral things—they made up in superiority and beauty for whatthey wanted in number—that she had long ago settled he shouldtake from her, and she had now moreover for the first time defi-nitely established her own. Its principal feature was that it was to bethe same as that of Mrs. Jordan and Lord Rye; which was indeedvery much what she said to her hostess as they sat together later on.The brown fog was in this hostess’s little parlour, where it acted as apostponement of the question of there being, besides, anything elsethan the teacups and a pewter pot and a very black little fire and aparaffin lamp without a shade. There was at any rate no sign of aflower; it was not for herself Mrs. Jordan gathered sweets. The girlwaited till they had had a cup of tea—waited for the announcementthat she fairly believed her friend had, this time, possessed herself ofher formally at last to make; but nothing came, after the interval,save a little poke at the fire, which was like the clearing of a throatfor a speech.

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CHAPTER XXV

“I THINK YOU MUST HAVE heard me speak of Mr. Drake?” Mrs. Jor-dan had never looked so queer, nor her smile so suggestive of a largebenevolent bite.

“Mr. Drake? Oh yes; isn’t he a friend of Lord Rye?”“A great and trusted friend. Almost—I may say—a loved friend.”Mrs. Jordan’s “almost” had such an oddity that her companion

was moved, rather flippantly perhaps, to take it up. “Don’t peopleas good as love their friends when they I trust them?”

It pulled up a little the eulogist of Mr. Drake. “Well, my dear, Ilove you—”

“But you don’t trust me?” the girl unmercifully asked.Again Mrs. Jordan paused—still she looked queer. “Yes,” she re-

plied with a certain austerity; “that’s exactly what I’m about to giveyou rather a remarkable proof of.” The sense of its being remarkablewas already so strong that, while she bridled a little, this held herauditor in a momentary muteness of submission. “Mr. Drake hasrendered his lordship for several years services that his lordship hashighly appreciated and that make it all the more—a—unexpectedthat they should, perhaps a little suddenly, separate.”

“Separate?” Our young lady was mystified, but she tried to beinterested; and she already saw that she had put the saddle on thewrong horse. She had heard something of Mr. Drake, who was amember of his lordship’s circle—the member with whom, appar-ently, Mrs. Jordan’s avocations had most happened to throw her.

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She was only a little puzzled at the “separation.” “Well, at any rate,”she smiled, “if they separate as friends—!”

“Oh his lordship takes the greatest interest in Mr. Drake’s future.He’ll do anything for him; he has in fact just done a great deal.There must, you know, be changes—!”

“No one knows it better than I,” the girl said. She wished to drawher interlocutress out. “There will be changes enough for me.”

“You’re leaving Cocker’s?”The ornament of that establishment waited a moment to answer, and

then it was indirect. “Tell me what you’re doing.”“Well, what will you think of it?”“Why that you’ve found the opening you were always so sure of.”Mrs. Jordan, on this, appeared to muse with embarrassed inten-

sity. “I was always sure, yes—and yet I often wasn’t!”“Well, I hope you’re sure now. Sure, I mean, of Mr. Drake.”“Yes, my dear, I think I may say I am. I kept him going till I was.”“Then he’s yours?”“My very own.”“How nice! And awfully rich?” our young woman went on.Mrs. Jordan showed promptly enough that she loved for higher

things. “Awfully handsome—six foot two. And he has put by.”“Quite like Mr. Mudge, then!” that gentleman’s friend rather des-

perately exclaimed.“Oh not quite!” Mr. Drake’s was ambiguous about it, but the

name of Mr. Mudge had evidently given her some sort of stimulus.“He’ll have more opportunity now, at any rate. He’s going to LadyBradeen.”

“To Lady Bradeen?” This was bewilderment. “‘Going—’?”The girl had seen, from the way Mrs. Jordan looked at her, that

the effect of the name had been to make her let something out. “Doyou know her?”

She floundered, but she found her feet. “Well, you’ll remember

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I’ve often told you that if you’ve grand clients I have them too.”“Yes,” said Mrs. Jordan; “but the great difference is that you hate

yours, whereas I really love mine. Do you know Lady Bradeen?” shepursued.

“Down to the ground! She’s always in and out.”Mrs. Jordan’s foolish eyes confessed, in fixing themselves on this

sketch, to a degree of wonder and even of envy. But she bore upand, with a certain gaiety, “Do you hate her?” she demanded.

Her visitor’s reply was prompt. “Dear no!—not nearly so much assome of them. She’s too outrageously beautiful.”

Mrs. Jordan continued to gaze. “Outrageously?”“Well, yes; deliciously.” What was really delicious was Mrs. Jordan’s

vagueness. “You don’t know her—you’ve not seen her?” her guestlightly continued.

“No, but I’ve heard a great deal about her.”“So have I!” our young lady exclaimed.Jordan looked an instant as if she suspected her good faith, or at least

her seriousness. “You know some friend—?”“Of Lady Bradeen’s? Oh yes—I know one.”“Only one?”The girl laughed out. “Only one—but he’s so intimate.”Mrs. Jordan just hesitated. “He’s a gentleman?”“Yes, he’s not a lady.”Her interlocutress appeared to muse. “She’s immensely sur-

rounded.”“She will be—with Mr. Drake!”Mrs. Jordan’s gaze became strangely fixed. “Is she very good-look-

ing?”“The handsomest person I know.”Mrs. Jordan continued to brood. “Well, I know some beauties.”

Then with her odd jerkiness: “Do you think she looks good?”“Because that’s not always the case with the good-looking?”—the

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other took it up. “No, indeed, it isn’t: that’s one thing Cocker’s hastaught me. Still, there are some people who have everything. LadyBradeen, at any rate, has enough: eyes and a nose and a mouth, acomplexion, a figure—”

“A figure?” Mrs. Jordan almost broke in.“A figure, a head of hair!” The girl made a little conscious motion

that seemed to let the hair all down, and her companion watchedthe wonderful show. “But Mr. Drake is another—?”

“Another?”—Mrs. Jordan’s thoughts had to come back from adistance.

“Of her ladyship’s admirers. He’s ‘going,’ you say, to her?”At this Mrs. Jordan really faltered. “She has engaged him.”“Engaged him?”—our young woman was quite at sea.“In the same capacity as Lord Rye.”“And was Lord Rye engaged?”

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CHAPTER XXVI

MRS. JORDAN looked away from her now—looked, she thought,rather injured and, as if trifled with, even a little angry. The men-tion of Lady Bradeen had frustrated for a while the convergence ofour heroine’s thoughts; but with this impression of her old friend’scombined impatience and diffidence they began again to whirl roundher, and continued it till one of them appeared to dart at her, out ofthe dance, as if with a sharp peck. It came to her with a lively shock,with a positive sting, that Mr. Drake was—could it be possible?With the idea she found herself afresh on the edge of laughter, of asudden and strange perversity of mirth. Mr. Drake loomed, in aswift image, before her; such a figure as she had seen in open door-ways of houses in Cocker’s quarter—majestic, middle-aged, erect,flanked on either side by a footman and taking the name of a visi-tor. Mr. Drake then verily was a person who opened the door! Be-fore she had time, however, to recover from the effect of her evoca-tion, she was offered a vision which quite engulfed it. It was com-municated to her somehow that the face with which she had seen itrise prompted Mrs. Jordan to dash, a bit wildly, at something, atanything, that might attenuate criticism. “Lady Bradeen’s re-arrang-ing—she’s going to be married.”

“Married?” The girl echoed it ever so softly, but there it was atlast.

“Didn’t you know it?”She summoned all her sturdiness. “No, she hasn’t told me.”

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“And her friends—haven’t they?”“I haven’t seen any of them lately. I’m not so fortunate as you.”Mrs. Jordan gathered herself. “Then you haven’t even heard of

Lord Bradeen’s death?”Her comrade, unable for a moment to speak, gave a slow

headshake. “You know it from Mr. Drake?” It was better surely notto learn things at all than to learn them by the butler.

“She tells him everything.”“And he tells you—I see.” Our young lady got up; recovering her

muff and her gloves she smiled. “Well, I haven’t unfortunately anyMr. Drake. I congratulate you with all my heart. Even without yoursort of assistance, however, there’s a trifle here and there that I dopick up. I gather that if she’s to marry any one it must quite neces-sarily be my friend.”

Mrs. Jordan was now also on her feet. “Is Captain Everard yourfriend?”

The girl considered, drawing on a glove. “I saw, at one time, animmense deal of him.”

Mrs. Jordan looked hard at the glove, but she hadn’t after all waitedfor that to be sorry it wasn’t cleaner. “What time was that?”

“It must have been the time you were seeing so much of Mr. Drake.”She had now fairly taken it in: the distinguished person Mrs. Jordanwas to marry would answer bells and put on coals and superintend, atleast, the cleaning of boots for the other distinguished person whomshe might—well, whom she might have had, if she had wished, somuch more to say to. “Good-bye,” she added; “good-bye.”

Mrs. Jordan, however, again taking her muff from her, turned itover, brushed it off and thoughtfully peeped into it. “Tell me thisbefore you go. You spoke just now of your own changes. Do youmean that Mr. Mudge—?”

“Mr. Mudge has had great patience with me—he has brought meat last to the point. We’re to be married next month and have a nice

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little home. But he’s only a grocer, you know”—the girl met herfriend’s intent eyes—”so that I’m afraid that, with the set you’ve gotinto, you won’t see your way to keep up our friendship.”

Mrs. Jordan for a moment made no answer to this; she only heldthe muff up to her face, after which she gave it back. “You don’t likeit. I see, I see.”

To her guest’s astonishment there were tears now in her eyes. “Idon’t like what?” the girl asked.

“Why my engagement. Only, with your great cleverness,” the poorlady quavered out, “you put it in your own way. I mean that you’llcool off. You already have—!” And on this, the next instant, hertears began to flow. She succumbed to them and collapsed; she sankdown again, burying her face and trying to smother her sobs.

Her young friend stood there, still in some rigour, but taken muchby surprise even if not yet fully moved to pity. “I don’t put anythingin any ‘way,’ and I’m very glad you’re suited. Only, you know, youdid put to me so splendidly what, even for me, if I had listened toyou, it might lead to.”

Mrs. Jordan kept up a mild thin weak wail; then, drying her eyes,as feebly considered this reminder. “It has led to my not starving!”she faintly gasped.

Our young lady, at this, dropped into the place beside her, andnow, in a rush, the small silly misery was clear. She took her hand asa sign of pitying it, then, after another instant, confirmed this ex-pression with a consoling kiss. They sat there together; they lookedout, hand in hand, into the damp dusky shabby little room and intothe future, of no such very different suggestion, at last accepted byeach. There was no definite utterance, on either side, of Mr. Drake’sposition in the great world, but the temporary collapse of his pro-spective bride threw all further necessary light; and what our hero-ine saw and felt for in the whole business was the vivid reflexion ofher own dreams and delusions and her own return to reality. Real-

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ity, for the poor things they both were, could only be ugliness andobscurity, could never be the escape, the rise. She pressed her friend—she had tact enough for that—with no other personal question,brought on no need of further revelations, only just continued tohold and comfort her and to acknowledge by stiff little forbearancesthe common element in their fate. She felt indeed magnanimous insuch matters; since if it was very well, for condolence or reassur-ance, to suppress just then invidious shrinkings, she yet by no meanssaw herself sitting down, as she might say, to the same table withMr. Drake. There would luckily, to all appearance, be little questionof tables; and the circumstance that, on their peculiar lines, herfriend’s interests would still attach themselves to Mayfair flung overChalk Farm the first radiance it had shown. Where was one’s prideand one’s passion when the real way to judge of one’s luck was bymaking not the wrong but the right comparison? Before she hadagain gathered herself to go she felt very small and cautious andthankful. “We shall have our own house,” she said, “and you mustcome very soon and let me show it you.”

“We shall have our own too,” Mrs. Jordan replied; “for, don’t youknow? he makes it a condition that he sleeps out?”

“A condition?”—the girl felt out of it.“For any new position. It was on that he parted with Lord Rye.

His lordship can’t meet it. So Mr. Drake has given him up.”“And all for you?”—our young woman put it as cheerfully as pos-

sible.“For me and Lady Bradeen. Her ladyship’s too glad to get him at

any price. Lord Rye, out of interest in us, has in fact quite made hertake him. So, as I tell you, he will have his own establishment.”

Mrs. Jordan, in the elation of it, had begun to revive; but therewas nevertheless between them rather a conscious pause—a pausein which neither visitor nor hostess brought out a hope or an invita-tion. It expressed in the last resort that, in spite of submission and

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sympathy, they could now after all only look at each other acrossthe social gulf. They remained together as if it would be indeedtheir last chance, still sitting, though awkwardly, quite close, andfeeling also—and this most unmistakeably—that there was one thingmore to go into. By the time it came to the surface, moreover, ouryoung friend had recognised the whole of the main truth, fromwhich she even drew again a slight irritation. It was not the maintruth perhaps that most signified; but after her momentary effort,her embarrassment and her tears Mrs. Jordan had begun to soundafresh—and even without speaking—the note of a social connexion.She hadn’t really let go of it that she was marrying into society. Well,it was a harmless compensation, and it was all the prospective brideof Mr. Mudge had to leave with her.

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CHAPTER XXVII

THIS YOUNG LADY at last rose again, but she lingered before going.“And has Captain Everard nothing to say to it?”

“To what, dear?”“Why, to such questions—the domestic arrangements, things in

the house.”“How can he, with any authority, when nothing in the house is

his?”“Not his?” The girl wondered, perfectly conscious of the appear-

ance she thus conferred on Mrs. Jordan of knowing, in comparisonwith herself, so tremendously much about it. Well, there were thingsshe wanted so to get at that she was willing at last, though it hurther, to pay for them with humiliation. “Why are they not his?”

“Don’t you know, dear, that he has nothing?”“Nothing?” It was hard to see him in such a light, but Mrs. Jordan’s

power to answer for it had a superiority that began, on the spot, togrow. “Isn’t he rich?”

Mrs. Jordan looked immensely, looked both generally and par-ticularly, informed. “It depends upon what you call—! Not at anyrate in the least as she is. What does he bring? Think what she has.And then, love, his debts.”

“His debts?” His young friend was fairly betrayed into helplessinnocence. She could struggle a little, but she had to let herself go;and if she had spoken frankly she would have said: “Do tell me, forI don’t know so much about him as that!” As she didn’t speak frankly

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she only said: “His debts are nothing—when she so adores him.”Mrs. Jordan began to fix her again, and now she saw that she

must only take it all. That was what it had come to: his having satwith her there on the bench and under the trees in the summerdarkness and put his hand on her, making her know what he wouldhave said if permitted; his having returned to her afterwards, re-peatedly, with supplicating eyes and a fever in his blood; and herhaving, on her side, hard and pedantic, helped by some miracle andwith her impossible condition, only answered him, yet supplicatingback, through the bars of the cage,—all simply that she might hearof him, now for ever lost, only through Mrs. Jordan, who touchedhim through Mr. Drake, who reached him through Lady Bradeen.“She adores him—but of course that wasn’t all there was about it.”

The girl met her eyes a minute, then quite surrendered. “Whatwas there else about it?”

“Why, don’t you know?”—Mrs. Jordan was almost compassion-ate.

Her interlocutress had, in the cage, sounded depths, but therewas a suggestion here somehow of an abyss quite measureless. “Ofcourse I know she would never let him alone.”

“How could she—fancy!—when he had so compromised her?”The most artless cry they had ever uttered broke, at this, from the

younger pair of lips. “Had he so—?”“Why, don’t you know the scandal?”Our heroine thought, recollected there was something, whatever

it was, that she knew after all much more of than Mrs. Jordan. Shesaw him again as she had seen him come that morning to recoverthe telegram—she saw him as she had seen him leave the shop. Sheperched herself a moment on this. “Oh there was nothing public.”

“Not exactly public—no. But there was an awful scare and anawful row. It was all on the very point of coming out. Somethingwas lost—something was found.”

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“Ah yes,” the girl replied, smiling as if with the revival of a blurredmemory; “something was found.”

“It all got about—and there was a point at which Lord Bradeenhad to act.”

“Had to—yes. But he didn’t.”Mrs. Jordan was obliged to admit it. “No, he didn’t. And then,

luckily for them, he died.”“I didn’t know about his death,” her companion said.“It was nine weeks ago, and most sudden. It has given them a

prompt chance.”“To get married?”—this was a wonder—”within nine weeks?”“Oh not immediately, but—in all the circumstances—very qui-

etly and, I assure you, very soon. Every preparation’s made. Aboveall she holds him.”

“Oh yes, she holds him!” our young friend threw off. She had thisbefore her again a minute; then she continued: “You mean throughhis having made her talked about?”

“Yes, but not only that. She has still another pull.”“Another?”Mrs. Jordan hesitated. “Why, he was in something.”Her comrade wondered. “In what?”“I don’t know. Something bad. As I tell you, something was found.”The girl stared. “Well?”“It would have been very bad for him. But, she helped him some

way—she recovered it, got hold of it. It’s even said she stole it!”Our young woman considered afresh. “Why it was what was found

that precisely saved him.”Mrs. Jordan, however, was positive. “I beg your pardon. I happen

to know.”Her disciple faltered but an instant. “Do you mean through Mr.

Drake? Do they tell him these things?”“A good servant,” said Mrs. Jordan, now thoroughly superior and

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proportionately sententious, “doesn’t need to be told! Her ladyshipsaved—as a woman so often saves!—the man she loves.”

This time our heroine took longer to recover herself, but she founda voice at last. “Ah well—of course I don’t know! The great thingwas that he got off. They seem then, in a manner,” she added, “tohave done a great deal for each other.”

“Well, it’s she that has done most. She has him tight.”“I see, I see. Good-bye.” The women had already embraced, and

this was not repeated; but Mrs. Jordan went down with her guest tothe door of the house. Here again the younger lingered, reverting,though three or four other remarks had on the way passed betweenthem, to Captain Everard and Lady Bradeen. “Did you mean justnow that if she hadn’t saved him, as you call it, she wouldn’t holdhim so tight?”

“Well, I dare say.” Mrs. Jordan, on the doorstep, smiled with areflexion that had come to her; she took one of her big bites of thebrown gloom. “Men always dislike one when they’ve done one aninjury.”

“But what injury had he done her?”“The one I’ve mentioned. He must marry her, you know.”“And didn’t he want to?”“Not before.”“Not before she recovered the telegram?”Mrs. Jordan was pulled up a little. “Was it a telegram?”The girl hesitated. “I thought you said so. I mean whatever it

was.”“Yes, whatever it was, I don’t think she saw that.”“So she just nailed him?”“She just nailed him.” The departing friend was now at the bot-

tom of the little flight of steps; the other was at the top, with acertain thickness of fog. “And when am I to think of you in yourlittle home?—next month?” asked the voice from the top.

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“At the very latest. And when am I to think of you in yours?”“Oh even sooner. I feel, after so much talk with you about it, as if

I were already there!” Then “Good-bye!” came out of the fog.“Good-bye!” went into it. Our young lady went into it also, in the

opposed quarter, and presently, after a few sightless turns, came outon the Paddington canal. Distinguishing vaguely what the low para-pet enclosed she stopped close to it and stood a while very intently,but perhaps still sightlessly, looking down on it. A policeman; whileshe remained, strolled past her; then, going his way a little furtherand half lost in the atmosphere, paused and watched her. But shewas quite unaware—she was full of her thoughts. They were toonumerous to find a place just here, but two of the number may atleast be mentioned. One of these was that, decidedly, her little homemust be not for next month, but for next week; the other, whichcame indeed as she resumed her walk and went her way, was that itwas strange such a matter should be at last settled for her by Mr.Drake.

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AnInternational Episode

by

Henry James

PART I

FOUR YEARS AGO—in 1874—two young Englishmen had occasionto go to the United States. They crossed the ocean at midsummer,and, arriving in New York on the first day of August, were muchstruck with the fervid temperature of that city. Disembarking uponthe wharf, they climbed into one of those huge high-hung coacheswhich convey passengers to the hotels, and with a great deal of bounc-ing and bumping, took their course through Broadway. The mid-summer aspect of New York is not, perhaps, the most favorable one;still, it is not without its picturesque and even brilliant side. Noth-ing could well resemble less a typical English street than the inter-minable avenue, rich in incongruities, through which our two trav-elers advanced—looking out on each side of them at the comfort-able animation of the sidewalks, the high-colored, heterogeneous

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architecture, the huge white marble facades glittering in the strong,crude light, and bedizened with gilded lettering, the multifariousawnings, banners, and streamers, the extraordinary number of om-nibuses, horsecars, and other democratic vehicles, the vendors ofcooling fluids, the white trousers and big straw hats of the police-men, the tripping gait of the modish young persons on the pave-ment, the general brightness, newness, juvenility, both of peopleand things. The young men had exchanged few observations; but incrossing Union Square, in front of the monument to Washington—in the very shadow, indeed, projected by the image of the (i paterpatriae)—one of them remarked to the other, “It seems a rum-look-ing place.”

“Ah, very odd, very odd,” said the other, who was the clever manof the two.

“Pity it’s so beastly hot,” resumed the first speaker after a pause.“You know we are in a low latitude,” said his friend.“I daresay,” remarked the other.“I wonder,” said the second speaker presently, “if they can give

one a bath?”“I daresay not,” rejoined the other.“Oh, I say!” cried his comrade.This animated discussion was checked by their arrival at the ho-

tel, which had been recommended to them by an American gentle-man whose acquaintance they made—with whom, indeed, theybecame very intimate—on the steamer, and who had proposed toaccompany them to the inn and introduce them, in a friendly way,to the proprietor. This plan, however, had been defeated by theirfriend’s finding that his “partner” was awaiting him on the wharfand that his commercial associate desired him instantly to comeand give his attention to certain telegrams received from St. Louis.But the two Englishmen, with nothing but their national prestigeand personal graces to recommend them, were very well received at

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the hotel, which had an air of capacious hospitality. They foundthat a bath was not unattainable, and were indeed struck with thefacilities for prolonged and reiterated immersion with which theirapartment was supplied. After bathing a good deal—more, indeed,than they had ever done before on a single occasion—they madetheir way into the dining room of the hotel, which was a spaciousrestaurant, with a fountain in the middle, a great many tall plants inornamental tubs, and an array of French waiters. The first dinneron land, after a sea voyage, is, under any circumstances, a delightfuloccasion, and there was something particularly agreeable in the cir-cumstances in which our young Englishmen found themselves. Theywere extremely good natured young men; they were more obser-vant than they appeared; in a sort of inarticulate, accidentallydissimulative fashion, they were highly appreciative. This was, per-haps, especially the case with the elder, who was also, as I have said,the man of talent. They sat down at a little table, which was a verydifferent affair from the great clattering seesaw in the saloon of thesteamer. The wide doors and windows of the restaurant stood open,beneath large awnings, to a wide pavement, where there were otherplants in tubs, and rows of spreading trees, and beyond which therewas a large shady square, without any palings, and with marble-paved walks. And above the vivid verdure rose other facades of whitemarble and of pale chocolate-colored stone, squaring themselvesagainst the deep blue sky. Here, outside, in the light and the shadeand the heat, there was a great tinkling of the bells of innumerablestreetcars, and a constant strolling and shuffling and rustling of manypedestrians, a large proportion of whom were young women in Pom-padour-looking dresses. Within, the place was cool and vaguelylighted, with the plash of water, the odor of flowers, and the flittingof French waiters, as I have said, upon soundless carpets.

“It’s rather like Paris, you know,” said the younger of our twotravelers.”

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“It’s like Paris—only more so,” his companion rejoined.“I suppose it’s the French waiters,” said the first speaker. “Why

don’t they have French waiters in London?”“Fancy a French waiter at a club,” said his friend.The young Englishman started a little, as if he could not fancy it.

“In Paris I’m very apt to dine at a place where there’s an Englishwaiter. Don’t you know what’s-his-name’s, close to the thingumbob?They always set an English waiter at me. I suppose they think I can’tspeak French.”

“Well, you can’t.” And the elder of the young Englishmen un-folded his napkin.

His companion took no notice whatever of this declaration. “Isay,” he resumed in a moment, “I suppose we must learn to speakAmerican. I suppose we must take lessons.”

“I can’t understand them,” said the clever man.“What the deuce is he saying?” asked his comrade, appealing from

the French waiter.“He is recommending some soft-shell crabs,” said the clever man.And so, in desultory observation of the idiosyncrasies of the new

society in which they found themselves, the young Englishmen pro-ceeded to dine—going in largely, as the phrase is, for cooling draughtsand dishes, of which their attendant offered them a very long list.After dinner they went out and slowly walked about the neighbor-ing streets. The early dusk of waning summer was coming on, butthe heat was still very great. The pavements were hot even to thestout boot soles of the British travelers, and the trees along the curb-stone emitted strange exotic odors. The young men wanderedthrough the adjoining square—that queer place without palings,and with marble walks arranged in black and white lozenges. Therewere a great many benches, crowded with shabby-looking people,and the travelers remarked, very justly, that it was not much likeBelgrave Square. On one side was an enormous hotel, lifting up


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into the hot darkness an immense array of open, brightly lightedwindows. At the base of this populous structure was an eternal jangleof horsecars, and all round it, in the upper dusk, was a sinister humof mosquitoes. The ground floor of the hotel seemed to be a hugetransparent cage, flinging a wide glare of gaslight into the street, ofwhich it formed a sort of public adjunct, absorbing and emittingthe passersby promiscuously. The young Englishmen went in witheveryone else, from curiosity, and saw a couple of hundred mensitting on divans along a great marble-paved corridor, with theirlegs stretched out, together with several dozen more standing in aqueue, as at the ticket office of a railway station, before a brilliantlyilluminated counter of vast extent. These latter persons, who car-ried portmanteaus in their hands, had a dejected, exhausted look;their garments were not very fresh, and they seemed to be renderingsome mysterious tribute to a magnificent young man with a waxedmustache, and a shirtfront adorned with diamond buttons, whoevery now and then dropped an absent glance over their multitudi-nous patience. They were American citizens doing homage to a ho-tel clerk.

“I’m glad he didn’t tell us to go there,” said one of our Englishmen,alluding to their friend on the steamer, who had told them so manythings. They walked up the Fifth Avenue, where, for instance, he hadtold them that all the first families lived. But the first families wereout of town, and our young travelers had only the satisfaction of see-ing some of the second—or perhaps even the third—taking the eveningair upon balconies and high flights of doorsteps, in the streets whichradiate from the more ornamental thoroughfare. They went a littleway down one of these side streets, and they saw young ladies inwhite dresses—charming-looking persons—seated in graceful attitudeson the chocolate-colored steps. In one or two places these young la-dies were conversing across the street with other young ladies seatedin similar postures and costumes in front of the opposite houses, and

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in the warm night air their colloquial tones sounded strange in theears of the young Englishmen. One of our friends, nevertheless—theyounger one—intimated that he felt a disposition to interrupt a fewof these soft familiarities; but his companion observed, pertinentlyenough, that he had better be careful. “We must not begin with mak-ing mistakes,” said his companion.

“But he told us, you know—he told us,” urged the young man,alluding again to the friend on the steamer.

“Never mind what he told us!” answered his comrade, who, if hehad greater talents, was also apparently more of a moralist.

By bedtime—in their impatience to taste of a terrestrial couchagain our seafarers went to bed early—it was still insufferably hot,and the buzz of the mosquitoes at the open windows might havepassed for an audible crepitation of the temperature. “We can’t standthis, you know,” the young Englishmen said to each other; and theytossed about all night more boisterously than they had tossed uponthe Atlantic billows. On the morrow, their first thought was thatthey would re-embark that day for England; and then it occured tothem that they might find an asylum nearer at hand. The cave ofAeolus became their ideal of comfort, and they wondered where theAmericans went when they wished to cool off. They had not theleast idea, and they determined to apply for information to Mr. J. L.Westgate. This was the name inscribed in a bold hand on the backof a letter carefully preserved in the pocketbook of our junior trav-eler. Beneath the address, in the left-hand corner of the envelope,were the words, “Introducing Lord Lambeth and Percy Beaumont,Esq.” The letter had been given to the two Englishmen by a goodfriend of theirs in London, who had been in America two yearspreviously, and had singled out Mr. J. L. Westgate from the manyfriends he had left there as the consignee, as it were, of his compatri-ots. “He is a capital fellow,” the Englishman in London had said,“and he has got an awfully pretty wife. He’s tremendously hospi-


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table—he will do everything in the world for you; and as he knowseveryone over there, it is quite needless I should give you any otherintroduction. He will make you see everyone; trust to him for put-ting you into circulation. He has got a tremendously pretty wife.” Itwas natural that in the hour of tribulation Lord Lambeth and Mr.Percy Beaumont should have bethought themselves of a gentlemanwhose attractions had been thus vividly depicted; all the more sothat he lived in the Fifth Avenue, and that the Fifth Avenue, as theyhad ascertained the night before, was contiguous to their hotel. “Tento one he’ll be out of town,” said Percy Beaumont; “but we can atleast find out where he has gone, and we can immediately start inpursuit. He can’t possibly have gone to a hotter place, you know.”

“Oh, there’s only one hotter place,” said Lord Lambeth, “and Ihope he hasn’t gone there.”

They strolled along the shady side of the street to the numberindicated upon the precious letter. The house presented an impos-ing chocolate-colored expanse, relieved by facings and window cor-nices of florid sculpture, and by a couple of dusty rose trees whichclambered over the balconies and the portico. This last-mentionedfeature was approached by a monumental flight of steps.

“Rather better than a London house,” said Lord Lambeth, look-ing down from this altitude, after they had rung the bell.

“It depends upon what London house you mean,” replied his com-panion. “You have a tremendous chance to get wet between thehouse door and your carriage.”

“Well,” said Lord Lambeth, glancing at the burning heavens, “I‘guess’ it doesn’t rain so much here!”

The door was opened by a long Negro in a white jacket, whogrinned familiarly when Lord Lambeth asked for Mr. Westgate.

“He ain’t at home, sah; he’s downtown at his o’fice.”“Oh, at his office?” said the visitors. “And when will he be at

home?”

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“Well, sah, when he goes out dis way in de mo’ning, he ain’t liableto come home all day.”

This was discouraging; but the address of Mr. Westgate’s officewas freely imparted by the intelligent black and was taken down byPercy Beaumont in his pocketbook. The two gentlemen then re-turned, languidly, to their hotel, and sent for a hackney coach, andin this commodious vehicle they rolled comfortably downtown. Theymeasured the whole length of Broadway again and found it a pathof fire; and then, deflecting to the left, they were deposited by theirconductor before a fresh, light, ornamental structure, ten storieshigh, in a street crowded with keen-faced, light-limbed young men,who were running about very quickly and stopping each other ea-gerly at corners and in doorways. Passing into this brilliant build-ing, they were introduced by one of the keen-faced young men—hewas a charming fellow, in wonderful cream-colored garments and ahat with a blue ribbon, who had evidently perceived them to bealiens and helpless—to a very snug hydraulic elevator, in which theytook their place with many other persons, and which, shooting up-ward in its vertical socket, presently projected them into the sev-enth horizontal compartment of the edifice. Here, after brief delay,they found themselves face to face with the friend of their friend inLondon. His office was composed of several different rooms, andthey waited very silently in one of them after they had sent in theirletter and their cards. The letter was not one which it would takeMr. Westgate very long to read, but he came out to speak to themmore instantly than they could have expected; he had evidentlyjumped up from his work. He was a tall, lean personage and wasdressed all in fresh white linen; he had a thin, sharp, familiar face,with an expression that was at one and the same time sociable andbusinesslike, a quick, intelligent eye, and a large brown mustache,which concealed his mouth and made his chin, beneath it, looksmall. Lord Lambeth thought he looked tremendously clever.


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“How do you do, Lord Lambeth—how do you do, sir?” he said,holding the open letter in his hand. “I’m very glad to see you; Ihope you’re very well. You had better come in here; I think it’s cooler,”and he led the way into another room, where there were law booksand papers, and windows wide open beneath striped awning. Justopposite one of the windows, on a line with his eyes, Lord Lambethobserved the weathervane of a church steeple. The uproar of thestreet sounded infinitely far below, and Lord Lambeth felt very highin the air. “I say it’s cooler,” pursued their host, “but everything isrelative. How do you stand the heat?”

“I can’t say we like it,” said Lord Lambeth; “but Beaumont likes itbetter than I.”

“Well, it won’t last,” Mr. Westgate very cheerfully declared; “noth-ing unpleasant lasts over here. It was very hot when Captain Littledalewas here; he did nothing but drink sherry cobblers. He expressedsome doubt in his letter whether I will remember him—as if I didn’tremember making six sherry cobblers for him one day in abouttwenty minutes. I hope you left him well, two years having elapsedsince then.”

“Oh, yes, he’s all right,” said Lord Lambeth.“I am always very glad to see your countrymen,” Mr. Westgate

pursued. “I thought it would be time some of you should be com-ing along. A friend of mine was saying to me only a day or two ago,‘It’s time for the watermelons and the Englishmen.”

“The Englishmen and the watermelons just now are about thesame thing,” Percy Beaumont observed, wiping his dripping fore-head.

“Ah, well, we’ll put you on ice, as we do the melons. You must godown to Newport.”

“We’ll go anywhere,” said Lord Lambeth.“Yes, you want to go to Newport; that’s what you want to do,”

Mr. Westgate affirmed. “But let’s see—when did you get here?”

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“Only yesterday,” said Percy Beaumont.“Ah, yes, by the Russia. Where are you staying?”“At the Hanover, I think they call it.”“Pretty comfortable?” inquired Mr. Westgate.“It seems a capital place, but I can’t say we like the gnats,” said

Lord Lambeth.Mr. Westgate stared and laughed. “Oh, no, of course you don’t

like the gnats. We shall expect you to like a good many things overhere, but we shan’t insist upon your liking the gnats; though cer-tainly you’ll admit that, as gnats, they are fine, eh? But you oughtn’tto remain in the city.”

“So we think,” said Lord Lambeth. “If you would kindly suggestsomething—”

“Suggest something, my dear sir?” and Mr. Westgate looked athim, narrowing his eyelids. “Open your mouth and shut your eyes!Leave it to me, and I’ll put you through. It’s a matter of nationalpride with me that all Englishmen should have a good time; andas I have had considerable practice, I have learned to minister totheir wants. I find they generally want the right thing. So justplease to consider yourselves my property; and if anyone shouldtry to appropriate you, please to say, ‘Hands off; too late for themarket.’ But let’s see,” continued the American, in his slow, hu-morous voice, with a distinctness of utterance which appeared tohis visitors to be part of a humorous intention—a strangely lei-surely, speculative voice for a man evidently so busy and, as theyfelt, so professional—”let’s see; are you going to make somethingof a stay, Lord Lambeth?”

“Oh, dear, no,” said the young Englishman; “my cousin was com-ing over on some business, so I just came across, at an hour’s notice,for the lark.”

“Is it your first visit to the United States?”“Oh, dear, yes.”


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“I was obliged to come on some business,” said Percy Beaumont,“and I brought Lambeth along.”

“And you have been here before, sir?”“Never—never.”“I thought, from your referring to business—” said Mr. Westgate.“Oh, you see I’m by way of being a barrister,” Percy Beaumont

answered. “I know some people that think of bringing a suit againstone of your railways, and they asked me to come over and takemeasures accordingly.”

“What’s your railroad?” he asked.“The Tennessee Central.”The American tilted back his chair a little and poised it an in-

stant. “Well, I’m sorry you want to attack one of our institutions,”he said, smiling. “But I guess you had better enjoy yourself first!”

“I’m certainly rather afraid I can’t work in this weather,” the youngbarrister confessed.

“Leave that to the natives,” said Mr. Westgate. “Leave the Tennes-see Central to me, Mr. Beaumont. Some day we’ll talk it over, and Iguess I can make it square. But I didn’t know you Englishmen everdid any work, in the upper classes.”

“Oh, we do a lot of work; don’t we, Lambeth?” asked Percy Beau-mont.

“I must certainly be at home by the 19th of September,” said theyounger Englishman, irrelevantly but gently.

“For the shooting, eh? or is it the hunting, or the fishing?” in-quired his entertainer.

“Oh, I must be in Scotland,” said Lord Lambeth, blushing a little.“Well, then,” rejoined Mr. Westgate, “you had better amuse your-

self first, also. You must go down and see Mrs. Westgate.”“We should be so happy, if you would kindly tell us the train,”

said Percy Beaumont.“It isn’t a train—it’s a boat.”

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“Oh, I see. And what is the name of—a— the—a— town?”“It isn’t a town,” said Mr. Westgate, laughing. “It’s a—well, what

shall I call it? It’s a watering place. In short, it’s Newport. You’ll seewhat it is. It’s cool; that’s the principal thing. You will greatly obligeme by going down there and putting yourself into the hands ofMrs. Westgate. It isn’t perhaps for me to say it, but you couldn’t bein better hands. Also in those of her sister, who is staying with her.She is very fond of Englishmen. She thinks there is nothing likethem.”

“Mrs. Westgate or—a— her sister?” asked Percy Beaumont mod-estly, yet in the tone of an inquiring traveler.

“Oh, I mean my wife,” said Mr. Westgate. “I don’t suppose mysister-in-law knows much about them. She has always led a veryquiet life; she has lived in Boston.”

Percy Beaumont listened with interest. “That, I believe,” he said,“is the most—a— intellectual town?”

“I believe it is very intellectual. I don’t go there much,” respondedhis host.

“I say, we ought to go there,” said Lord Lambeth to his compan-ion.

“Oh, Lord Lambeth, wait till the great heat is over,” Mr. Westgateinterposed. “Boston in this weather would be very trying; it’s notthe temperature for intellectual exertion. At Boston, you know, youhave to pass an examination at the city limits; and when you comeaway they give you a kind of degree.”

Lord Lambeth stared, blushing a little; and Percy Beaumont stareda little also—but only with his fine natural complexion—glancingaside after a moment to see that his companion was not looking toocredulous, for he had heard a great deal of American humor. “Idaresay it is very jolly,” said the younger gentleman.

“I daresay it is,” said Mr. Westgate. “Only I must impress uponyou that at present—tomorrow morning, at an early hour—you


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will be expected at Newport. We have a house there; half the peoplein New York go there for the summer. I am not sure that at this verymoment my wife can take you in; she has got a lot of people stayingwith her; I don’t know who they all are; only she may have no room.But you can begin with the hotel, and meanwhile you can live at myhouse. In that way—simply sleeping at the hotel—you will find ittolerable. For the rest, you must make yourself at home at my place.You mustn’t be shy, you know; if you are only here for a month thatwill be a great waste of time. Mrs. Westgate won’t neglect you, andyou had better not try to resist her. I know something about that. Iexpect you’ll find some pretty girls on the premises. I shall write tomy wife by this afternoon’s mail, and tomorrow morning she andMiss Alden will look out for you. Just walk right in and make your-self comfortable. Your steamer leaves from this part of the city, andI will immediately send out and get you a cabin. Then, at half pastfour o’clock, just call for me here, and I will go with you and putyou on board. It’s a big boat; you might get lost. A few days hence,at the end of the week, I will come down to Newport and see howyou are getting on.”

The two young Englishmen inaugurated the policy of not resist-ing Mrs. Westgate by submitting, with great docility and thankful-ness, to her husband. He was evidently a very good fellow, and hemade an impression upon his visitors; his hospitality seemed to rec-ommend itself consciously—with a friendly wink, as it were—as ifit hinted, judicially, that you could not possibly make a better bar-gain. Lord Lambeth and his cousin left their entertainer to his la-bors and returned to their hotel, where they spent three or fourhours in their respective shower baths. Percy Beaumont had sug-gested that they ought to see something of the town; but “Oh, damnthe town!” his noble kinsman had rejoined. They returned to Mr.Westgate’s office in a carriage, with their luggage, very punctually;but it must be reluctantly recorded that, this time, he kept them

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waiting so long that they felt themselves missing the steamer, andwere deterred only by an amiable modesty from dispensing with hisattendance and starting on a hasty scramble to the wharf. But whenat last he appeared, and the carriage plunged into the purlieus ofBroadway, they jolted and jostled to such good purpose that theyreached the huge white vessel while the bell for departure was stillringing and the absorption of passengers still active. It was indeed,as Mr. Westgate had said, a big boat, and his leadership in the innu-merable and interminable corridors and cabins, with which heseemed perfectly acquainted, and of which anyone and everyoneappeared to have the entree, was very grateful to the slightly bewil-dered voyagers. He showed them their stateroom—a spacious apart-ment, embellished with gas lamps, mirrors en pied, and sculpturedfurniture—and then, long after they had been intimately convincedthat the steamer was in motion and launched upon the unknownstream that they were about to navigate, he bade them a sociablefarewell.

“Well, goodbye, Lord Lambeth,” he said; “goodbye, Mr. PercyBeaumont. I hope you’ll have a good time. Just let them do whatthey want with you. I’ll come down by-and-by and look after you.”

The young Englishmen emerged from their cabin and amusedthemselves with wandering about the immense labyrinthine steamer,which struck them as an extraordinary mixture of a ship and a ho-tel. It was densely crowded with passengers, the larger number ofwhom appeared to be ladies and very young children; and in the bigsaloons, ornamented in white and gold, which followed each otherin surprising succession, beneath the swinging gaslight, and amongthe small side passages where the Negro domestics of both sexesassembled with an air of philosophic leisure, everyone was movingto and fro and exchanging loud and familiar observations. Eventu-ally, at the instance of a discriminating black, our young men wentand had some “supper” in a wonderful place arranged like a theater,


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where, in a gilded gallery, upon which little boxes appeared to open,a large orchestra was playing operatic selections, and, below, peoplewere handing about bills of fare, as if they had been programs. Allthis was sufficiently curious; but the agreeable thing, later, was to sitout on one of the great white decks of the steamer, in the warmbreezy darkness, and, in the vague starlight, to make out the line oflow, mysterious coast. The young Englishmen tried American ci-gars—those of Mr. Westgate—and talked together as they usuallytalked, with many odd silences, lapses of logic, and incongruities oftransition; like people who have grown old together and learned tosupply each other’s missing phrases; or, more especially, like peoplethoroughly conscious of a common point of view, so that a style ofconversation superficially lacking in finish might suffice for refer-ence to a fund of associations in the light of which everything wasall right.

“We really seem to be going out to sea,” Percy Beaumont ob-served. “Upon my word, we are going back to England. He hasshipped us off again. I call that ‘real mean.’”

“I suppose it’s all right,” said Lord Lambeth. “I want to see thosepretty girls at Newport. You know, he told us the place was an is-land; and aren’t all islands in the sea?”

“Well,” resumed the elder traveler after a while, “if his house is asgood as his cigars, we shall do very well.”

“He seems a very good fellow,” said Lord Lambeth, as if this ideahad just occurred to him.

“I say, we had better remain at the inn,” rejoined his companionpresently. “I don’t think I like the way he spoke of his house. I don’tlike stopping in the house with such a tremendous lot of women.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Lord Lambeth. And then they smoked awhile in silence. “Fancy his thinking we do no work in England!”the young man resumed.

“I daresay he didn’t really think so,” said Percy Beaumont.

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“Well, I guess they don’t know much about England over here!”declared Lord Lambeth humorously. And then there was anotherlong pause. “He was devilish civil,” observed the young nobleman.

“Nothing, certainly, could have been more civil,” rejoined his com-panion.

“Littledale said his wife was great fun,” said Lord Lambeth.“Whose wife—Littledale’s?”“This American’s—Mrs. Westgate. What’s his name? J.L.”Beaumont was silent a moment. “What was fun to Littledale,” he

said at last, rather sententiously, “may be death to us.”“What do you mean by that?” asked his kinsman. “I am as good a

man as Littledale.”“My dear boy, I hope you won’t begin to flirt,” said Percy Beau-

mont.“I don’t care. I daresay I shan’t begin.”“With a married woman, if she’s bent upon it, it’s all very well,”

Beaumont expounded. “But our friend mentioned a young lady—a sister, a sister-in-law. For God’s sake, don’t get entangled with her!”

“How do you mean entangled?”“Depend upon it she will try to hook you.”“Oh, bother!” said Lord Lambeth.“American girls are very clever,” urged his companion.“So much the better,” the young man declared.“I fancy they are always up to some game of that sort,” Beaumont

continued.“They can’t be worse than they are in England,” said Lord Lambeth

judicially.“Ah, but in England,” replied Beaumont, “you have got your natu-

ral protectors. You have got your mother and sisters.”“My mother and sisters—” began the young nobleman with a

certain energy. But he stopped in time, puffing at his cigar.“Your mother spoke to me about it, with tears in her eyes,” said


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Percy Beaumont. “She said she felt very nervous. I promised to keepyou out of mischief.”

“You had better take care of yourself,” said the object of maternaland ducal solicitude.

“Ah,” rejoined the young barrister, “I haven’t the expectation of ahundred thousand a year, not to mention other attractions.”

“Well,” said Lord Lambeth, “don’t cry out before you’re hurt!”It was certainly very much cooler at Newport, where our travelers

found themselves assigned to a couple of diminutive bedrooms in afaraway angle of an immense hotel. They had gone ashore in theearly summer twilight and had very promptly put themselves tobed; thanks to which circumstance and to their having, during theprevious hours, in their commodious cabin, slept the sleep of youthand health, they began to feel, toward eleven o’clock, very alert andinquisitive. They looked out of their windows across a row of smallgreen fields, bordered with low stone walls of rude construction,and saw a deep blue ocean lying beneath a deep blue sky, and fleckednow and then with scintillating patches of foam. A strong, freshbreeze came in through the curtainless casements and promptedour young men to observe, generally, that it didn’t seem half a badclimate. They made other observations after they had emerged fromtheir rooms in pursuit of breakfast—a meal of which they partookin a huge bare hall, where a hundred Negroes, in white jackets, wereshuffling about upon an uncarpeted floor; where the flies were su-perabundant, and the tables and dishes covered over with a strange,voluminous integument of coarse blue gauze; and where several littleboys and girls, who had risen late, were seated in fastidious solitudeat the morning repast. These young persons had not the morningpaper before them, but they were engaged in languid perusal of thebill of fare.

This latter document was a great puzzle to our friends, who, onreflecting that its bewildering categories had relation to breakfast

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alone, had an uneasy prevision of an encyclopedic dinner list. Theyfound a great deal of entertainment at the hotel, an enormouswooden structure, for the erection of which it seemed to them thatthe virgin forests of the West must have been terribly deflowered. Itwas perforated from end to end with immense bare corridors,through which a strong draught was blowing—bearing along won-derful figures of ladies in white morning dresses and clouds ofValenciennes lace, who seemed to float down the long vistas withexpanded furbelows, like angels spreading their wings. In front wasa gigantic veranda, upon which an army might have encamped—avast wooden terrace, with a roof as lofty as the nave of a cathedral.Here our young Englishmen enjoyed, as they supposed, a glimpseof American society, which was distributed over the measurelessexpanse in a variety of sedentary attitudes, and appeared to consistlargely of pretty young girls, dressed as if for a fete champetre, sway-ing to and fro in rocking chairs, fanning themselves with large strawfans, and enjoying an enviable exemption from social cares. LordLambeth had a theory, which it might be interesting to trace to itsorigin, that it would be not only agreeable, but easily possible, toenter into relations with one of these young ladies; and his compan-ion (as he had done a couple of days before) found occasion tocheck the young nobleman’s colloquial impulses.

“You had better take care,” said Percy Beaumont, “or you willhave an offended father or brother pulling out a bowie knife.”

“I assure you it is all right,” Lord Lambeth replied. “You know theAmericans come to these big hotels to make acquaintances.”

“I know nothing about it, and neither do you,” said his kinsman,who, like a clever man, had begun to perceive that the observationof American society demanded a readjustment of one’s standard.

“Hang it, then let’s find out!” cried Lord Lambeth with someimpatience. “You know I don’t want to miss anything.”

“We will find out,” said Percy Beaumont very reasonably. “We


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will go and see Mrs. Westgate and make all proper inquiries.”And so the two inquiring Englishmen, who had this lady’s ad-

dress inscribed in her husband’s hand upon a card, descended fromthe veranda of the big hotel and took their way, according to direc-tion, along a large straight road, past a series of fresh-looking villasembosomed in shrubs and flowers and enclosed in an ingeniousvariety of wooden palings. The morning was brilliant and cool, thevillas were smart and snug, and the walk of the young travelers wasvery entertaining. Everything looked as if it had received a coat offresh paint the day before—the red roofs, the green shutters, theclean, bright browns and buffs of the housefronts. The flower bedson the little lawns seemed to sparkle in the radiant air, and the gravelin the short carriage sweeps to flash and twinkle. Along the roadcame a hundred little basket phaetons, in which, almost always, acouple of ladies were sitting—ladies in white dresses and long whitegloves, holding the reins and looking at the two Englishmen, whosenationality was not elusive, through thick blue veils tied tightly abouttheir faces as if to guard their complexions. At last the young mencame within sight of the sea again, and then, having interrogated agardener over the paling of a villa, they turned into an open gate.Here they found themselves face to face with the ocean and with avery picturesque structure, resembling a magnified chalet, whichwas perched upon a green embankment just above it. The househad a veranda of extraordinary width all around it and a great manydoors and windows standing open to the veranda. These variousapertures had, in common, such an accessible, hospitable air, such abreezy flutter within of light curtains, such expansive thresholdsand reassuring interiors, that our friends hardly knew which wasthe regular entrance, and, after hesitating a moment, presented them-selves at one of the windows. The room within was dark, but in amoment a graceful figure vaguely shaped itself in the rich-lookinggloom, and a lady came to meet them. Then they saw that she had

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been seated at a table writing, and that she had heard them and hadgot up. She stepped out into the light; she wore a frank, charmingsmile, with which she held out her hand to Percy Beaumont.

“Oh, you must be Lord Lambeth and Mr. Beaumont,” she said.“I have heard from my husband that you would come. I am ex-tremely glad to see you.” And she shook hands with each of hervisitors. Her visitors were a little shy, but they had very good man-ners; they responded with smiles and exclamations, and they apolo-gized for not knowing the front door. The lady rejoined, with vivac-ity, that when she wanted to see people very much she did not insistupon those distinctions, and that Mr. Westgate had written to herof his English friends in terms that made her really anxious. “Hesaid you were so terribly prostrated,” said Mrs. Westgate.

“Oh, you mean by the heat?” replied Percy Beaumont. “We wererather knocked up, but we feel wonderfully better. We had such ajolly—a— voyage down here. It’s so very good of you to mind.”

“Yes, it’s so very kind of you,” murmured Lord Lambeth.Mrs. Westgate stood smiling; she was extremely pretty. “Well, I

did mind,” she said; “and I thought of sending for you this morningto the Ocean House. I am very glad you are better, and I am charmedyou have arrived. You must come round to the other side of thepiazza.” And she led the way, with a light, smooth step, lookingback at the young men and smiling.

The other side of the piazza was, as Lord Lambeth presently re-marked, a very jolly place. It was of the most liberal proportions,and with its awnings, its fanciful chairs, its cushions and rugs, itsview of the ocean, close at hand, tumbling along the base of the lowcliffs whose level tops intervened in lawnlike smoothness, it formeda charming complement to the drawing room. As such it was incourse of use at the present moment; it was occupied by a socialcircle. There were several ladies and two or three gentlemen, to whomMrs. Westgate proceeded to introduce the distinguished strangers.


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She mentioned a great many names very freely and distinctly; theyoung Englishmen, shuffling about and bowing, were rather bewil-dered. But at last they were provided with chairs—low, wicker chairs,gilded, and tied with a great many ribbons—and one of the ladies(a very young person, with a little snub nose and several dimples)offered Percy Beaumont a fan. The fan was also adorned with pinklove knots; but Percy Beaumont declined it, although he was veryhot. Presently, however, it became cooler; the breeze from the seawas delicious, the view was charming, and the people sitting therelooked exceedingly fresh and comfortable. Several of the ladiesseemed to be young girls, and the gentlemen were slim, fair youths,such as our friends had seen the day before in New York. The ladieswere working upon bands of tapestry, and one of the young menhad an open book in his lap. Beaumont afterward learned from oneof the ladies that this young man had been reading aloud, that hewas from Boston and was very fond of reading aloud. Beaumontsaid it was a great pity that they had interrupted him; he should likeso much (from all he had heard) to hear a Bostonian read. Couldn’tthe young man be induced to go on?

“Oh no,” said his informant very freely; “he wouldn’t be able toget the young ladies to attend to him now.”

There was something very friendly, Beaumont perceived, in theattitude of the company; they looked at the young Englishmen withan air of animated sympathy and interest; they smiled, brightly andunanimously, at everything either of the visitors said. Lord Lambethand his companion felt that they were being made very welcome.Mrs. Westgate seated herself between them, and, talking a greatdeal to each, they had occasion to observe that she was as pretty astheir friend Littledale had promised. She was thirty years old, withthe eyes and the smile of a girl of seventeen, and she was extremelylight and graceful, elegant, exquisite. Mrs. Westgate was extremelyspontaneous. She was very frank and demonstrative and appeared

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always—while she looked at you delightedly with her beautiful youngeyes—to be making sudden confessions and concessions, after mo-mentary hesitations.

“We shall expect to see a great deal of you,” she said to LordLambeth with a kind of joyous earnestness. “We are very fond ofEnglishmen here; that is, there are a great many we have been fondof. After a day or two you must come and stay with us; we hope youwill stay a long time. Newport’s a very nice place when you comereally to know it, when you know plenty of people. Of course youand Mr. Beaumont will have no difficulty about that. Englishmenare very well received here; there are almost always two or three ofthem about. I think they always like it, and I must say I shouldthink they would. They receive ever so much attention. I must say Ithink they sometimes get spoiled; but I am sure you and Mr. Beau-mont are proof against that. My husband tells me you are a friendof Captain Littledale; he was such a charming man. He made him-self most agreeable here, and I am sure I wonder he didn’t stay. Itcouldn’t have been pleasanter for him in his own country, though, Isuppose, it is very pleasant in England, for English people. I don’tknow myself; I have been there very little. I have been a great dealabroad, but I am always on the Continent. I must say I’m extremelyfond of Paris; you know we Americans always are; we go there whenwe die. Did you ever hear that before? That was said by a great wit,I mean the good Americans; but we are all good; you’ll see that foryourself. All I know of England is London, and all I know of Lon-don is that place on that little corner, you know, where you buyjackets—jackets with that coarse braid and those big buttons. Theymake very good jackets in London, I will do you the justice to saythat. And some people like the hats; but about the hats I was alwaysa heretic; I always got my hats in Paris. You can’t wear an Englishhat—at least I never could—unless you dress your hair a l’Anglaise;and I must say that is a talent I have never possessed. In Paris they


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will make things to suit your peculiarities; but in England I thinkyou like much more to have—how shall I say it?—one thing foreverybody. I mean as regards dress. I don’t know about other things;but I have always supposed that in other things everything was dif-ferent. I mean according to the people—according to the classes,and all that. I am afraid you will think that I don’t take a very favor-able view; but you know you can’t take a very favorable view inDover Street in the month of November. That has always been myfate. Do you know Jones’s Hotel in Dover Street? That’s all I knowof England. Of course everyone admits that the English hotels areyour weak point. There was always the most frightful fog; I couldn’tsee to try my things on. When I got over to America—into thelight—I usually found they were twice too big. The next time Imean to go in the season; I think I shall go next year. I want verymuch to take my sister; she has never been to England. I don’t knowwhether you know what I mean by saying that the Englishmen whocome here sometimes get spoiled. I mean that they take things as amatter of course—things that are done for them. Now, naturally,they are only a matter of course when the Englishmen are very nice.But, of course, they are almost always very nice. Of course this isn’tnearly such an interesting country as England; there are not nearlyso many things to see, and we haven’t your country life. I have neverseen anything of your country life; when I am in Europe I am al-ways on the Continent. But I have heard a great deal about it; Iknow that when you are among yourselves in the country you havethe most beautiful time. Of course we have nothing of that sort, wehave nothing on that scale. I don’t apologize, Lord Lambeth; someAmericans are always apologizing; you must have noticed that. Wehave the reputation of always boasting and bragging and waving theAmerican flag; but I must say that what strikes me is that we areperpetually making excuses and trying to smooth things over. TheAmerican flag has quite gone out of fashion; it’s very carefully folded

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up, like an old tablecloth. Why should we apologize? The Englishnever apologize—do they? No; I must say I never apologize. Youmust take us as we come—with all our imperfections on our heads.Of course we haven’t your country life, and your old ruins, andyour great estates, and your leisure class, and all that. But if wehaven’t, I should think you might find it a pleasant change—I thinkany country is pleasant where they have pleasant manners. CaptainLittledale told me he had never seen such pleasant manners as atNewport, and he had been a great deal in European society. Hadn’the been in the diplomatic service? He told me the dream of his lifewas to get appointed to a diplomatic post in Washington. But hedoesn’t seem to have succeeded. I suppose that in England promo-tion—and all that sort of thing—is fearfully slow. With us, youknow, it’s a great deal too fast. You see, I admit our drawbacks. ButI must confess I think Newport is an ideal place. I don’t know any-thing like it anywhere. Captain Littledale told me he didn’t knowanything like it anywhere. It’s entirely different from most wateringplaces; it’s a most charming life. I must say I think that when onegoes to a foreign country one ought to enjoy the differences. Ofcourse there are differences, otherwise what did one come abroadfor? Look for your pleasure in the differences, Lord Lambeth; that’sthe way to do it; and then I am sure you will find American soci-ety—at least Newport society—most charming and most interest-ing. I wish very much my husband were here; but he’s dreadfullyconfined to New York. I suppose you think that is very strange—fora gentleman. But you see we haven’t any leisure class.”

Mrs. Westgate’s discourse, delivered in a soft, sweet voice, flowedon like a miniature torrent, and was interrupted by a hundred littlesmiles, glances, and gestures, which might have figured the irregu-larities and obstructions of such a stream. Lord Lambeth listened toher with, it must be confessed, a rather ineffectual attention, al-though he indulged in a good many little murmurs and ejaculations


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of assent and deprecation. He had no great faculty for apprehend-ing generalizations. There were some three or four indeed which, inthe play of his own intelligence, he had originated, and which hadseemed convenient at the moment; but at the present time he couldhardly have been said to follow Mrs. Westgate as she darted grace-fully about in the sea of speculation. Fortunately she asked for noespecial rejoinder, for she looked about at the rest of the companyas well, and smiled at Percy Beaumont, on the other side of her, as ifhe too much understand her and agree with her. He was rathermore successful than his companion; for besides being, as we know,cleverer, his attention was not vaguely distracted by close vicinity toa remarkably interesting young girl, with dark hair and blue eyes.This was the case with Lord Lambeth, to whom it occurred after awhile that the young girl with blue eyes and dark hair was the prettysister of whom Mrs. Westgate had spoken. She presently turned tohim with a remark which established her identity.

“It’s a great pity you couldn’t have brought my brother-in-lawwith you. It’s a great shame he should be in New York in thesedays.”

“Oh, yes; it’s so very hot,” said Lord Lambeth.“It must be dreadful,” said the young girl.“I daresay he is very busy,” Lord Lambeth observed.“The gentlemen in America work too much,” the young girl went on.“Oh, do they? I daresay they like it,” said her interlocutor.“I don’t like it. One never sees them.”“Don’t you, really?” asked Lord Lambeth. “I shouldn’t have fan-

cied that.”“Have you come to study American manners?” asked the young

girl.“Oh, I don’t know. I just came over for a lark. I haven’t got long.”

Here there was a pause, and Lord Lambeth began again. “But Mr.Westgate will come down here, will not he?”

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“I certainly hope he will. He must help to entertain you and Mr.Beaumont.”

Lord Lambeth looked at her a little with his handsome browneyes. “Do you suppose he would have come down with us if we hadurged him?”

Mr. Westgate’s sister-in-law was silent a moment, and then, “Idaresay he would,” she answered.

“Really!” said the young Englishman. “He was immensely civil toBeaumont and me,” he added.

“He is a dear good fellow,” the young lady rejoined, “and he is aperfect husband. But all Americans are that,” she continued, smil-ing.

“Really!” Lord Lambeth exclaimed again and wondered whetherall American ladies had such a passion for generalizing as these two.

He sat there a good while: there was a great deal of talk; it was allvery friendly and lively and jolly. Everyone present, sooner or later,said something to him, and seemed to make a particular point ofaddressing him by name. Two or three other persons came in, andthere was a shifting of seats and changing of places; the gentlemenall entered into intimate conversation with the two Englishmen,made them urgent offers of hospitality, and hoped they might fre-quently be of service to them. They were afraid Lord Lambeth andMr. Beaumont were not very comfortable at their hotel; that it wasnot, as one of them said, “so private as those dear little English innsof yours.” This last gentleman went on to say that unfortunately, asyet, perhaps, privacy was not quite so easily obtained in America asmight be desired; still, he continued, you could generally get it bypaying for it; in fact, you could get everything in America nowadaysby paying for it. American life was certainly growing a great dealmore private; it was growing very much like England. Everything atNewport, for instance, was thoroughly private; Lord Lambeth wouldprobably be struck with that. It was also represented to the strangers


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that it mattered very little whether their hotel was agreeable, as ev-eryone would want them to make visits; they would stay with otherpeople, and, in any case, they would be a great deal at Mrs. Westgate’s.They would find that very charming; it was the pleasantest house inNewport. It was a pity Mr. Westgate was always away; he was a manof the highest ability—very acute, very acute. He worked like a horse,and he left his wife—well, to do about as she liked. He liked her toenjoy herself, and she seemed to know how. She was extremely bril-liant and a splendid talker. Some people preferred her sister; butMiss Alden was very different; she was in a different style altogether.Some people even thought her prettier, and, certainly, she was notso sharp. She was more in the Boston style; she had lived a greatdeal in Boston, and she was very highly educated. Boston girls, itwas propounded, were more like English young ladies.

Lord Lambeth had presently a chance to test the truth of thisproposition, for on the company rising in compliance with a sug-gestion from their hostess that they should walk down to the rocksand look at the sea, the young Englishman again found himself, asthey strolled across the grass, in proximity to Mrs. Westgate’s sister.Though she was but a girl of twenty, she appeared to feel the obliga-tion to exert an active hospitality; and this was, perhaps, the moreto be noticed as she seemed by nature a reserved and retiring per-son, and had little of her sister’s fraternizing quality. She was per-haps rather too thin, and she was a little pale; but as she movedslowly over the grass, with her arms hanging at her sides, lookinggravely for a moment at the sea and then brightly, for all her gravity,at him, Lord Lambeth thought her at least as pretty as Mrs. Westgate,and reflected that if this was the Boston style the Boston style wasvery charming. He thought she looked very clever; he could imag-ine that she was highly educated; but at the same time she seemedgentle and graceful. For all her cleverness, however, he felt that shehad to think a little what to say; she didn’t say the first thing that

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came into her head; he had come from a different part of the worldand from a different society, and she was trying to adapt her conver-sation. The others were scattering themselves near the rocks; Mrs.Westgate had charge of Percy Beaumont.

“Very jolly place, isn’t it?” said Lord Lambeth. “It’s a very jollyplace to sit.”

“Very charming,” said the young girl. “I often sit here; there areall kinds of cozy corners—as if they had been made on purpose.”

“Ah! I suppose you have had some of them made,” said the youngman.

Miss Alden looked at him a moment. “Oh no, we have had noth-ing made. It’s pure nature.”

“I should think you would have a few little benches—rustic seatsand that sort of thing. It might be so jolly to sit here, you know,”Lord Lambeth went on.

“I am afraid we haven’t so many of those things as you,” said theyoung girl thoughtfully.

“I daresay you go in for pure nature, as you were saying. Natureover here must be so grand, you know.” And Lord Lambeth lookedabout him.

The little coast line hereabouts was very pretty, but it was not atall grand, and Miss Alden appeared to rise to a perception of thisfact. “I am afraid it seems to you very rough,” she said. “It’s not likethe coast scenery in Kingsley’s novels.”

“Ah, the novels always overdo it, you know,” Lord Lambeth re-joined. “You must not go by the novels.”

They were wandering about a little on the rocks, and they stoppedand looked down into a narrow chasm where the rising tide made acurious bellowing sound. It was loud enough to prevent their hear-ing each other, and they stood there for some moments in silence.The young girl looked at her companion, observing him attentively,but covertly, as women, even when very young, know how to do.


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Lord Lambeth repaid observation; tall, straight, and strong, he washandsome as certain young Englishmen, and certain young English-men almost alone, are handsome; with a perfect finish of featureand a look of intellectual repose and gentle good temper whichseemed somehow to be consequent upon his well-cut nose and chin.And to speak of Lord Lambeth’s expression of intellectual repose isnot simply a civil way of saying that he looked stupid. He was evi-dently not a young man of an irritable imagination; he was not, ashe would himself have said, tremendously clever; but though therewas a kind of appealing dullness in his eye, he looked thoroughlyreasonable and competent, and his appearance proclaimed that tobe a nobleman, an athlete, and an excellent fellow was a sufficientlybrilliant combination of qualities. The young girl beside him, itmay be attested without further delay, thought him the handsomestyoung man she had ever seen; and Bessie Alden’s imagination, un-like that of her companion, was irritable. He, however, was alsomaking up his mind that she was uncommonly pretty.

“I daresay it’s very gay here, that you have lots of balls and par-ties,” he said; for, if he was not tremendously clever, he rather pridedhimself on having, with women, a sufficiency of conversation.

“Oh, yes, there is a great deal going on,” Bessie Alden replied.“There are not so many balls, but there are a good many other things.You will see for yourself; we live rather in the midst of it.”

“It’s very kind of you to say that. But I thought you Americanswere always dancing.”

“I suppose we dance a good deal; but I have never seen much ofit. We don’t do it much, at any rate, in summer. And I am sure,”said Bessie Alden, “that we don’t have so many balls as you have inEngland.”

“Really!” exclaimed Lord Lambeth. “Ah, in England it all depends,you know.”

“You will not think much of our gaieties,” said the young girl,

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looking at him with a little mixture of interrogation and decisionwhich was peculiar to her. The interrogation seemed earnest andthe decision seemed arch; but the mixture, at any rate, was charm-ing. “Those things, with us, are much less splendid than in En-gland.”

“I fancy you don’t mean that,” said Lord Lambeth, laughing.“I assure you I mean everything I say,” the young girl declared.

“Certainly, from what I have read about English society, it is verydifferent.”

“Ah well, you know,” said her companion, “those things are oftendescribed by fellows who know nothing about them. You mustn’tmind what you read.”

“Oh, I shall mind what I read!” Bessie Alden rejoined. “When Iread Thackeray and George Eliot, how can I help minding them?”

“Ah well, Thackeray, and George Eliot,” said the young noble-man; “I haven’t read much of them.”

“Don’t you suppose they know about society?” asked Bessie Alden.“Oh, I daresay they know; they were so very clever. But these

fashionable novels,” said Lord Lambeth, “they are awful rot, youknow.”

His companion looked at him a moment with her dark blue eyes,and then she looked down in the chasm where the water was tum-bling about. “Do you mean Mrs. Gore, for instance?” she said pres-ently, raising her eyes.

“I am afraid I haven’t read that, either,” was the young man’s re-joinder, laughing a little and blushing. “I am afraid you’ll think Iam not very intellectual.”

“Reading Mrs. Gore is no proof of intellect. But I like readingeverything about English life—even poor books. I am so curiousabout it.”

“Aren’t ladies always curious?” asked the young man jestingly.But Bessie Alden appeared to desire to answer his question seri-


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ously. “I don’t think so—I don’t think we are enough so—that wecare about many things. So it’s all the more of a compliment,” sheadded, “that I should want to know so much about England.”

The logic here seemed a little close; but Lord Lambeth, madeconscious of a compliment, found his natural modesty just at hand.“I am sure you know a great deal more than I do.”

“I really think I know a great deal—for a person who has neverbeen there.”

“Have you really never been there?” cried Lord Lambeth. “Fancy!”“Never—except in imagination,” said the young girl.“Fancy!” repeated her companion. “But I daresay you’ll go soon,

won’t you?”“It’s the dream of my life!” declared Bessie Alden, smiling.“But your sister seems to know a tremendous lot about London,”

Lord Lambeth went on.The young girl was silent a moment. “My sister and I are two very

different persons,” she presently said. “She has been a great deal inEurope. She has been in England several times. She has known agreat many English people.”

“But you must have known some, too,” said Lord Lambeth.“I don’t think that I have ever spoken to one before. You are the

first Englishman that—to my knowledge—I have ever talked with.”Bessie Alden made this statement with a certain gravity—almost,

as it seemed to Lord Lambeth, an impressiveness. Attempts at im-pressiveness always made him feel awkward, and he now began tolaugh and swing his stick. “Ah, you would have been sure to know!”he said. And then he added, after an instant, “I’m sorry I am not abetter specimen.”

The young girl looked away; but she smiled, laying aside her im-pressiveness. “You must remember that you are only a beginning,”she said. Then she retraced her steps, leading the way back to thelawn, where they saw Mrs. Westgate come toward them with Percy

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Beaumont still at her side. “Perhaps I shall go to England next year,”Miss Alden continued; “I want to, immensely. My sister is going toEurope, and she has asked me to go with her. If we go, I shall makeher stay as long as possible in London.”

“Ah, you must come in July,” said Lord Lambeth. “That’s thetime when there is most going on.”

“I don’t think I can wait till July,” the young girl rejoined. “By thefirst of May I shall be very impatient.” They had gone further, andMrs. Westgate and her companion were near them. “Kitty,” saidMiss Alden, “I have given out that we are going to London nextMay. So please to conduct yourself accordingly.”

Percy Beaumont wore a somewhat animated—even a slightly irri-tated—air. He was by no means so handsome a man as his cousin,although in his cousin’s absence he might have passed for a strikingspecimen of the tall, muscular, fair-bearded, clear-eyed Englishman.Just now Beaumont’s clear eyes, which were small and of a pale graycolor, had a rather troubled light, and, after glancing at Bessie Aldenwhile she spoke, he rested them upon his kinsman. Mrs. Westgatemeanwhile, with her superfluously pretty gaze, looked at everyonealike.

“You had better wait till the time comes,” she said to her sister.“Perhaps next May you won’t care so much about London. Mr.Beaumont and I,” she went on, smiling at her companion, “havehad a tremendous discussion. We don’t agree about anything. It’sperfectly delightful.”

“Oh, I say, Percy!” exclaimed Lord Lambeth.“I disagree,” said Beaumont, stroking down his back hair, “even

to the point of not thinking it delightful.”“Oh, I say!” cried Lord Lambeth again.“I don’t see anything delightful in my disagreeing with Mrs.

Westgate,” said Percy Beaumont.“Well, I do!” Mrs. Westgate declared; and she turned to her sister.


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“You know you have to go to town. The phaeton is there. You hadbetter take Lord Lambeth.”

At this point Percy Beaumont certainly looked straight at his kins-man; he tried to catch his eye. But Lord Lambeth would not look athim; his own eyes were better occupied. “I shall be very happy,”cried Bessie Alden. “I am only going to some shops. But I will driveyou about and show you the place.”

“An American woman who respects herself,” said Mrs. Westgate,turning to Beaumont with her bright expository air, “must buy some-thing every day of her life. If she can not do it herself, she must sendout some member of her family for the purpose. So Bessie goesforth to fulfill my mission.”

The young girl had walked away, with Lord Lambeth by her side,to whom she was talking still; and Percy Beaumont watched themas they passed toward the house. “She fulfills her own mission,” hepresently said; “that of being a very attractive young lady.”

“I don’t know that I should say very attractive,” Mrs. Westgaterejoined. “She is not so much that as she is charming when youreally know her. She is very shy.”

“Oh, indeed!” said Percy Beaumont.“Extremely shy,” Mrs. Westgate repeated. “But she is a dear good

girl; she is a charming species of girl. She is not in the least a flirt;that isn’t at all her line; she doesn’t know the alphabet of that sort ofthing. She is very simple, very serious. She has lived a great deal inBoston, with another sister of mine—the eldest of us—who mar-ried a Bostonian. She is very cultivated, not at all like me; I am notin the least cultivated. She has studied immensely and read every-thing; she is what they call in Boston ‘thoughtful.’”

“A rum sort of girl for Lambeth to get hold of!” his lordship’skinsman privately reflected.

“I really believe,” Mrs. Westgate continued, “that the most charm-ing girl in the world is a Boston superstructure upon a New York

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fonds; or perhaps a New York superstructure upon a Boston fonds.At any rate, it’s the mixture,” said Mrs. Westgate, who continued togive Percy Beaumont a great deal of information.

Lord Lambeth got into a little basket phaeton with Bessie Alden,and she drove him down the long avenue, whose extent he hadmeasured on foot a couple of hours before, into the ancient town,as it was called in that part of the world, of Newport. The ancienttown was a curious affair—a collection of fresh-looking little woodenhouses, painted white, scattered over a hillside and clustered abouta long straight street paved with enormous cobblestones. There wereplenty of shops—a large proportion of which appeared to be thoseof fruit vendors, with piles of huge watermelons and pumpkinsstacked in front of them; and, drawn up before the shops, or bump-ing about on the cobblestones, were innumerable other basket pha-etons freighted with ladies of high fashion, who greeted each otherfrom vehicle to vehicle and conversed on the edge of the pavementin a manner that struck Lord Lambeth as demonstrative, with agreat many “Oh, my dears,” and little quick exclamations and ca-resses. His companion went into seventeen shops—he amused him-self with counting them—and accumulated at the bottom of thephaeton a pile of bundles that hardly left the young Englishman aplace for his feet. As she had no groom nor footman, he sat in thephaeton to hold the ponies, where, although he was not a particu-larly acute observer, he saw much to entertain him—especially theladies just mentioned, who wandered up and down with the ap-pearance of a kind of aimless intentness, as if they were looking forsomething to buy, and who, tripping in and out of their vehicles,displayed remarkably pretty feet. It all seemed to Lord Lambethvery odd, and bright, and gay. Of course, before they got back tothe villa, he had had a great deal of desultory conversation withBessie Alden.

The young Englishmen spent the whole of that day and the whole


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of many successive days in what the French call the intimite of theirnew friends. They agreed that it was extremely jolly, that they hadnever known anything more agreeable. It is not proposed to narrateminutely the incidents of their sojourn on this charming shore;though if it were convenient I might present a record of impressionsnonetheless delectable that they were not exhaustively analyzed.Many of them still linger in the minds of our travelers, attended bya train of harmonious images—images of brilliant mornings on lawnsand piazzas that overlooked the sea; of innumerable pretty girls; ofinfinite lounging and talking and laughing and flirting and lunch-ing and dining; of universal friendliness and frankness; of occasionson which they knew everyone and everything and had an extraordi-nary sense of ease; of drives and rides in the late afternoon overgleaming beaches, on long sea roads, beneath a sky lighted up bymarvelous sunsets; of suppers, on the return, informal, irregular,agreeable; of evenings at open windows or on the perpetual veran-das, in the summer starlight, above the warm Atlantic. The youngEnglishmen were introduced to everybody, entertained by every-body, intimate with everybody. At the end of three days they hadremoved their luggage from the hotel and had gone to stay withMrs. Westgate—a step to which Percy Beaumont at first offeredsome conscientious opposition. I call his opposition conscientious,because it was founded upon some talk that he had had, on thesecond day, with Bessie Alden. He had indeed had a good deal oftalk with her, for she was not literally always in conversation withLord Lambeth. He had meditated upon Mrs. Westgate’s account ofher sister, and he discovered for himself that the young lady wasclever, and appeared to have read a great deal. She seemed very nice,though he could not make out, as Mrs. Westgate had said, she wasshy. If she was shy, she carried it off very well.

“Mr. Beaumont,” she had said, “please tell me something about LordLambeth’s family. How would you say it in England—his position?”

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“His position?” Percy Beaumont repeated.“His rank, or whatever you call it. Unfortunately we haven’t got a

peerage, like the people in Thackeray.”“That’s a great pity,” said Beaumont. “You would find it all set

forth there so much better than I can do it.”“He is a peer, then?”“Oh, yes, he is a peer.”“And has he any other title than Lord Lambeth?”“His title is the Marquis of Lambeth,” said Beaumont; and then

he was silent. Bessie Alden appeared to be looking at him with in-terest. “He is the son of the Duke of Bayswater,” he added presently.

“The eldest son?”“The only son.”“And are his parents living?”“Oh yes; if his father were not living he would be a duke.”“So that when his father dies,” pursued Bessie Alden with more

simplicity than might have been expected in a clever girl, “he willbecome Duke of Bayswater?”

“Of course,” said Percy Beaumont. “But his father is in excellenthealth.”

“And his mother?”Beaumont smiled a little. “The duchess is uncommonly robust.”“And has he any sisters?”“Yes, there are two.”“And what are they called?”“One of them is married. She is the Countess of Pimlico.”“And the other?”“The other is unmarried; she is plain Lady Julia.”Bessie Alden looked at him a moment. “Is she very plain?”Beaumont began to laugh again. “You would not find her so hand-

some as her brother,” he said; and it was after this that he attemptedto dissuade the heir of the Duke of Bayswater from accepting Mrs.


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Westgate’s invitation. “Depend upon it,” he said, “that girl meansto try for you.”

“It seems to me you are doing your best to make a fool of me,” themodest young nobleman answered.

“She has been asking me,” said Beaumont, “all about your peopleand your possessions.”

“I am sure it is very good of her!” Lord Lambeth rejoined.“Well, then,” observed his companion, “if you go, you go with

your eyes open.”“Damn my eyes!” exclaimed Lord Lambeth. “If one is to be a

dozen times a day at the house, it is a great deal more convenient tosleep there. I am sick of traveling up and down this beastly avenue.”

Since he had determined to go, Percy Beaumont would, of course,have been very sorry to allow him to go alone; he was a man ofconscience, and he remembered his promise to the duchess. It wasobviously the memory of this promise that made him say to hiscompanion a couple of days later that he rather wondered he shouldbe so fond of that girl.

“In the first place, how do you know how fond I am of her?”asked Lord Lambeth. “And, in the second place, why shouldn’t I befond of her?”

“I shouldn’t think she would be in your line.”“What do you call my ‘line’? You don’t set her down as ‘fast’?”“Exactly so. Mrs. Westgate tells me that there is no such thing as

the ‘fast girl’ in America; that it’s an English invention, and that theterm has no meaning here.”

“All the better. It’s an animal I detest.”“You prefer a bluestocking.”“Is that what you call Miss Alden?”“Her sister tells me,” said Percy Beaumont, “that she is tremen-

dously literary.”“I don’t know anything about that. She is certainly very clever.”

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“Well,” said Beaumont, “I should have supposed you would havefound that sort of thing awfully slow.”

“In point of fact,” Lord Lambeth rejoined, “I find it uncommonlylively.”

After this, Percy Beaumont held his tongue; but on the 10th ofAugust he wrote to the Duchess of Bayswater. He was, as I havesaid, a man of conscience, and he had a strong, incorruptible senseof the proprieties of life. His kinsman, meanwhile, was having agreat deal of talk with Bessie Alden—on the red sea rocks beyondthe lawn; in the course of long island rides, with a slow return in theglowing twilight; on the deep veranda late in the evening. LordLambeth, who had stayed at many houses, had never stayed at ahouse in which it was possible for a young man to converse so fre-quently with a young lady. This young lady no longer applied toPercy Beaumont for information concerning his lordship. She ad-dressed herself directly to the young nobleman. She asked him agreat many questions, some of which bored him a little; for he tookno pleasure in talking about himself.

“Lord Lambeth,” said Bessie Alden, “are you a hereditary legisla-tor?”

“Oh, I say!” cried Lord Lambeth, “don’t make me call myself suchnames as that.”

“But you are a member of Parliament,” said the young girl.“I don’t like the sound of that, either.”“Don’t you sit in the House of Lords?” Bessie Alden went on.“Very seldom,” said Lord Lambeth.“Is it an important position?” she asked.“Oh, dear, no,” said Lord Lambeth.“I should think it would be very grand,” said Bessie Alden, “to

possess, simply by an accident of birth, the right to make laws for agreat nation.”

“Ah, but one doesn’t make laws. It’s a great humbug.”


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“I don’t believe that,” the young girl declared. “It must be a greatprivilege, and I should think that if one thought of it in the rightway—from a high point of view—it would be very inspiring.”

“The less one thinks of it, the better,” Lord Lambeth affirmed.“I think it’s tremendous,” said Bessie Alden; and on another occa-

sion she asked him if he had any tenantry. Hereupon it was that, asI have said, he was a little bored.

“Do you want to buy up their leases?” he asked.“Well, have you got any livings?” she demanded.“Oh, I say!” he cried. “Have you got a clergyman that is looking

out?” But she made him tell her that he had a castle; he confessed tobut one. It was the place in which he had been born and broughtup, and, as he had an old-time liking for it, he was beguiled intodescribing it a little and saying it was really very jolly. Bessie Aldenlistened with great interest and declared that she would give theworld to see such a place. Whereupon—”It would be awfully kindof you to come and stay there,” said Lord Lambeth. He took a vaguesatisfaction in the circumstance that Percy Beaumont had not heardhim make the remark I have just recorded.

Mr. Westgate all this time had not, as they said at Newport, “comeon.” His wife more than once announced that she expected him onthe morrow; but on the morrow she wandered about a little, with atelegram in her jeweled fingers, declaring it was very tiresome thathis business detained him in New York; that he could only hope theEnglishmen were having a good time. “I must say,” said Mrs.Westgate, “that it is no thanks to him if you are.” And she went onto explain, while she continued that slow-paced promenade whichenabled her well-adjusted skirts to display themselves so advanta-geously, that unfortunately in America there was no leisure class. Itwas Lord Lambeth’s theory, freely propounded when the young menwere together, that Percy Beaumont was having a very good timewith Mrs. Westgate, and that, under the pretext of meeting for the

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purpose of animated discussion, they were indulging in practicesthat imparted a shade of hypocrisy to the lady’s regret for herhusband’s absence.

“I assure you we are always discussing and differing,” said PercyBeaumont. “She is awfully argumentative. American ladies certainlydon’t mind contradicting you. Upon my word I don’t think I wasever treated so by a woman before. She’s so devilish positive.”

Mrs. Westgate’s positive quality, however, evidently had its attrac-tions, for Beaumont was constantly at his hostess’s side. He detachedhimself one day to the extent of going to New York to talk over theTennessee Central with Mr. Westgate; but he was absent only forty-eight hours, during which, with Mr. Westgate’s assistance, he com-pletely settled this piece of business. “They certainly do things quicklyin New York,” he observed to his cousin; and he added that Mr.Westgate had seemed very uneasy lest his wife should miss her visi-tor—he had been in such an awful hurry to send him back to her.“I’m afraid you’ll never come up to an American husband, if that’swhat the wives expect,” he said to Lord Lambeth.

Mrs. Westgate, however, was not to enjoy much longer the enter-tainment with which an indulgent husband had desired to keep herprovided. On the 21st of August Lord Lambeth received a telegramfrom his mother, requesting him to return immediately to England;his father had been taken ill, and it was his filial duty to come tohim.

The young Englishman was visibly annoyed. “What the deucedoes it mean?” he asked of his kinsman. “What am I to do?”

Percy Beaumont was annoyed as well; he had deemed it his duty,as I have narrated, to write to the duchess, but he had not expectedthat this distinguished woman would act so promptly upon his hint.“It means,” he said, “that your father is laid up. I don’t suppose it’sanything serious; but you have no option. Take the first steamer;but don’t be alarmed.


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Lord Lambeth made his farewells; but the few last words that heexchanged with Bessie Alden are the only ones that have a place inour record. “Of course I needn’t assure you,” he said, “that if youshould come to England next year, I expect to be the first personthat you inform of it.”

Bessie Alden looked at him a little, and she smiled. “Oh, if we cometo London,” she answered, “I should think you would hear of it.”

Percy Beaumont returned with his cousin, and his sense of dutycompelled him, one windless afternoon, in mid-Atlantic, to say toLord Lambeth that he suspected that the duchess’s telegram was inpart the result of something he himself had written to her. “I wroteto her—as I explicitly notified you I had promised to do—that youwere extremely interested in a little American girl.”

Lord Lambeth was extremely angry, and he indulged for somemoments in the simple language of indignation. But I have saidthat he was a reasonable young man, and I can give no better proofof it than the fact that he remarked to his companion at the end ofhalf an hour, “You were quite right, after all. I am very much inter-ested in her. Only, to be fair,” he added, “you should have told mymother also that she is not—seriously—interested in me.”

Percy Beaumont gave a little laugh. “There is nothing so charm-ing as modesty in a young man in your position. That speech is acapital proof that you are sweet on her.”

“She is not interested—she is not!” Lord Lambeth repeated.“My dear fellow,” said his companion, “you are very far gone.”

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PART II

IN POINT OF FACT, as Percy Beaumont would have said, Mrs. Westgatedisembarked on the 18th of May on the British coast. She was ac-companied by her sister, but she was not attended by any othermember of her family. To the deprivation of her husband’s societyMrs. Westgate was, however, habituated; she had made half a dozenjourneys to Europe without him, and she now accounted for hisabsence, to interrogative friends on this side of the Atlantic, by allu-sion to the regrettable but conspicuous fact that in America therewas no leisure class. The two ladies came up to London and alightedat Jones’s Hotel, where Mrs. Westgate, who had made on formeroccasions the most agreeable impression at this establishment, re-ceived an obsequious greeting. Bessie Alden had felt much excitedabout coming to England; she had expected the “associations” wouldbe very charming, that it would be an infinite pleasure to rest hereyes upon the things she had read about in the poets and historians.She was very fond of the poets and historians, of the picturesque, ofthe past, of retrospect, of mementos and reverberations of great-ness; so that on coming into the English world, where strangenessand familiarity would go hand in hand, she was prepared for a mul-titude of fresh emotions. They began very promptly—these tender,fluttering sensations; they began with the sight of the beautiful En-glish landscape, whose dark richness was quickened and brightenedby the season; with the carpeted fields and flowering hedgerows, asshe looked at them from the window of the train; with the spires of


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the rural churches peeping above the rook-haunted treetops; withthe oak-studded parks, the ancient homes, the cloudy light, thespeech, the manners, the thousand differences. Mrs. Westgate’s im-pressions had, of course, much less novelty and keenness, and shegave but a wandering attention to her sister’s ejaculations and rhap-sodies.

“You know my enjoyment of England is not so intellectual asBessie’s,” she said to several of her friends in the course of her visitto this country. “And yet if it is not intellectual, I can’t say it isphysical. I don’t think I can quite say what it is, my enjoyment ofEngland.” When once it was settled that the two ladies should comeabroad and should spend a few weeks in England on their way tothe Continent, they of course exchanged a good many allusions totheir London acquaintance.

“It will certainly be much nicer having friends there,” Bessie Aldenhad said one day as she sat on the sunny deck of the steamer at hersister’s feet on a large blue rug.

“Whom do you mean by friends?” Mrs. Westgate asked.“All those English gentlemen whom you have known and enter-

tained. Captain Littledale, for instance. And Lord Lambeth andMr. Beaumont,” added Bessie Alden.

“Do you expect them to give us a very grand reception?”Bessie reflected a moment; she was addicted, as we know, to re-

flection. “Well, yes.”“My poor, sweet child,” murmured her sister.“What have I said that is so silly?” asked Bessie.“You are a little too simple; just a little. It is very becoming, but it

pleases people at your expense.”“I am certainly too simple to understand you,” said Bessie.“Shall I tell you a story?” asked her sister.“If you would be so good. That is what they do to amuse simple

people.”

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Mrs. Westgate consulted her memory, while her companion satgazing at the shining sea. “Did you ever hear of the Duke of Green-Erin?”

“I think not,” said Bessie.“Well, it’s no matter,” her sister went on.“It’s a proof of my simplicity.”“My story is meant to illustrate that of some other people,” said

Mrs. Westgate. “The Duke of Green-Erin is what they call in En-gland a great swell, and some five years ago he came to America. Hespent most of his time in New York, and in New York he spent hisdays and his nights at the Butterworths’. You have heard, at least, ofthe Butterworths. Bien. They did everything in the world for him—they turned themselves inside out. They gave him a dozen dinnerparties and balls and were the means of his being invited to fiftymore. At first he used to come into Mrs. Butterworth’s box at theopera in a tweed traveling suit; but someone stopped that. At anyrate, he had a beautiful time, and they parted the best friends in theworld. Two years elapse, and the Butterworths come abroad and goto London. The first thing they see in all the papers—in Englandthose things are in the most prominent place—is that the Duke ofGreen-Erin has arrived in town for the Season. They wait a little,and then Mr. Butterworth—as polite as ever—goes and leaves acard. They wait a little more; the visit is not returned; they waitthree weeks—silence de mort—the Duke gives no sign. TheButterworths see a lot of other people, put down the Duke of Green-Erin as a rude, ungrateful man, and forget all about him. One fineday they go to Ascot Races, and there they meet him face to face.He stares a moment and then comes up to Mr. Butterworth, takingsomething from his pocketbook—something which proves to be abanknote. ‘I’m glad to see you, Mr. Butterworth,’ he says, ‘so that Ican pay you that ten pounds I lost to you in New York. I saw theother day you remembered our bet; here are the ten pounds, Mr.


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Butterworth. Goodbye, Mr. Butterworth.’ And off he goes, and that’sthe last they see of the Duke of Green-Erin.”

“Is that your story?” asked Bessie Alden.“Don’t you think it’s interesting?” her sister replied.“I don’t believe it,” said the young girl.“Ah,” cried Mrs. Westgate, “you are not so simple after all! Believe

it or not, as you please; there is no smoke without fire.”“Is that the way,” asked Bessie after a moment, “that you expect

your friends to treat you?”“I defy them to treat me very ill, because I shall not give them the

opportunity. With the best will in the world, in that case they can’tbe very offensive.”

Bessie Alden was silent a moment. “I don’t see what makes youtalk that way,” she said. “The English are a great people.”

“Exactly; and that is just the way they have grown great—by drop-ping you when you have ceased to be useful. People say they are notclever; but I think they are very clever.”

“You know you have liked them—all the Englishmen you haveseen,” said Bessie.

“They have liked me,” her sister rejoined; “it would be more cor-rect to say that. And, of course, one likes that.”

Bessie Alden resumed for some moments her studies in sea green.“Well,” she said, “whether they like me or not, I mean to like them.And happily,” she added, “Lord Lambeth does not owe me tenpounds.”

During the first few days after their arrival at Jones’s Hotel ourcharming Americans were much occupied with what they wouldhave called looking about them. They found occasion to make alarge number of purchases, and their opportunities for conversationwere such only as were offered by the deferential London shopmen.Bessie Alden, even in driving from the station, took an immensefancy to the British metropolis, and at the risk of exhibiting her as a

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young woman of vulgar tastes it must be recorded that for a consid-erable period she desired no higher pleasure than to drive about thecrowded streets in a hansom cab. To her attentive eyes they were fullof a strange picturesque life, and it is at least beneath the dignity ofour historic muse to enumerate the trivial objects and incidents whichthis simple young lady from Boston found so entertaining. It maybe freely mentioned, however, that whenever, after a round of visitsin Bond Street and Regent Street, she was about to return with hersister to Jones’s Hotel, she made an earnest request that they shouldbe driven home by way of Westminster Abbey. She had begun byasking whether it would not be possible to take the Tower on theway to their lodgings; but it happened that at a more primitive stageof her culture Mrs. Westgate had paid a visit to this venerable monu-ment, which she spoke of ever afterward vaguely as a dreadful dis-appointment; so that she expressed the liveliest disapproval of anyattempt to combine historical researches with the purchase of hair-brushes and notepaper. The most she would consent to do in thisline was to spend half an hour at Madame Tussaud’s, where she sawseveral dusty wax effigies of members of the royal family. She toldBessie that if she wished to go to the Tower she must get someoneelse to take her. Bessie expressed hereupon an earnest disposition togo alone; but upon this proposal as well Mrs. Westgate sprinkledcold water.

“Remember,” she said, “that you are not in your innocent littleBoston. It is not a question of walking up and down Beacon Street.”Then she went on to explain that there were two classes of Ameri-can girls in Europe—those that walked about alone and those thatdid not. “You happen to belong, my dear,” she said to her sister, “tothe class that does not.”

“It is only,” answered Bessie, laughing, “because you happen toprevent me.” And she devoted much private meditation to this ques-tion of effecting a visit to the Tower of London.


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Suddenly it seemed as if the problem might be solved; the twoladies at Jones’s Hotel received a visit from Willie Woodley. Suchwas the social appellation of a young American who had sailed fromNew York a few days after their own departure, and who, having theprivilege of intimacy with them in that city, had lost no time, on hisarrival in London, in coming to pay them his respects. He had, infact, gone to see them directly after going to see his tailor, thanwhich there can be no greater exhibition of promptitude on thepart of a young American who has just alighted at the Charing CrossHotel. He was a slim, pale youth, of the most amiable disposition,famous for the skill with which he led the “German” in New York.Indeed, by the young ladies who habitually figured in this Terpsi-chorean revel he was believed to be “the best dancer in the world”; itwas in these terms that he was always spoken of, and that his iden-tity was indicated. He was the gentlest, softest young man it waspossible to meet; he was beautifully dressed—”in the English style”—and he knew an immense deal about London. He had been at New-port during the previous summer, at the time of our youngEnglishmen’s visit, and he took extreme pleasure in the society ofBessie Alden, whom he always addressed as “Miss Bessie.” She im-mediately arranged with him, in the presence of her sister, that heshould conduct her to the scene of Anne Boleyn’s execution.

“You may do as you please,” said Mrs. Westgate. “Only—if youdesire the information—it is not the custom here for young ladiesto knock about London with young men.”

“Miss Bessie has waltzed with me so often,” observed Willie Woodley;“she can surely go out with me in a hansom.”

“I consider waltzing,” said Mrs. Westgate, “the most innocent plea-sure of our time.”

“It’s a compliment to our time!” exclaimed the young man with alittle laugh, in spite of himself.

“I don’t see why I should regard what is done here,” said Bessie

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Alden. “Why should I suffer the restrictions of a society of which Ienjoy none of the privileges?”

“That’s very good—very good,” murmured Willie Woodley.“Oh, go to the Tower, and feel the ax, if you like,” said Mrs.

Westgate. “I consent to your going with Mr. Woodley; but I shouldnot let you go with an Englishman.”

“Miss Bessie wouldn’t care to go with an Englishman!” Mr.Woodley declared with a faint asperity that was, perhaps, not un-natural in a young man, who, dressing in the manner that I haveindicated and knowing a great deal, as I have said, about London,saw no reason for drawing these sharp distinctions. He agreed upona day with Miss Bessie—a day of that same week.

An ingenious mind might, perhaps, trace a connection betweenthe young girl’s allusion to her destitution of social privileges and aquestion she asked on the morrow as she sat with her sister at lunch.

“Don’t you mean to write to—to anyone?” said Bessie.“I wrote this morning to Captain Littledale,” Mrs. Westgate re-

plied.“But Mr. Woodley said that Captain Littledale had gone to In-

dia.”“He said he thought he had heard so; he knew nothing about it.”For a moment Bessie Alden said nothing more; then, at last, “And

don’t you intend to write to—to Mr. Beaumont?” she inquired.“You mean to Lord Lambeth,” said her sister.“I said Mr. Beaumont because he was so good a friend of yours.”Mrs. Westgate looked at the young girl with sisterly candor. “I

don’t care two straws for Mr. Beaumont.”“You were certainly very nice to him.”“I am nice to everyone,” said Mrs. Westgate simply.“To everyone but me,” rejoined Bessie, smiling.Her sister continued to look at her; then, at last, “Are you in love

with Lord Lambeth?” she asked.


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The young girl stared a moment, and the question was apparentlytoo humorous even to make her blush. “Not that I know of,” sheanswered.

“Because if you are,” Mrs. Westgate went on, “I shall certainlynot send for him.”

“That proves what I said,” declared Bessie, smiling—”that youare not nice to me.”

“It would be a poor service, my dear child,” said her sister.“In what sense? There is nothing against Lord Lambeth that I

know of.”Mrs. Westgate was silent a moment. “You are in love with him

then?”Bessie stared again; but this time she blushed a little. “Ah! if you

won’t be serious,” she answered, “we will not mention him again.”For some moments Lord Lambeth was not mentioned again, and it

was Mrs. Westgate who, at the end of this period, reverted to him.“Of course I will let him know we are here, because I think he wouldbe hurt—justly enough—if we should go away without seeing him.It is fair to give him a chance to come and thank me for the kindnesswe showed him. But I don’t want to seem eager.”

“Neither do I,” said Bessie with a little laugh.“Though I confess,” added her sister, “that I am curious to see

how he will behave.”“He behaved very well at Newport.”“Newport is not London. At Newport he could do as he liked;

but here it is another affair. He has to have an eye to consequences.”“If he had more freedom, then, at Newport,” argued Bessie, “it is

the more to his credit that he behaved well; and if he has to be socareful here, it is possible he will behave even better.”

“Better—better,” repeated her sister. “My dear child, what is yourpoint of view?”

“How do you mean—my point of view?”

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“Don’t you care for Lord Lambeth—a little?”This time Bessie Alden was displeased; she slowly got up from the

table, turning her face away from her sister. “You will oblige me bynot talking so,” she said.

Mrs. Westgate sat watching her for some moments as she movedslowly about the room and went and stood at the window. “I willwrite to him this afternoon,” she said at last.

“Do as you please!” Bessie answered; and presently she turnedround. “I am not afraid to say that I like Lord Lambeth. I like himvery much.”

“He is not clever,” Mrs. Westgate declared.“Well, there have been clever people whom I have disliked,” said

Bessie Alden; “so that I suppose I may like a stupid one. Besides,Lord Lambeth is not stupid.”

“Not so stupid as he looks!” exclaimed her sister, smiling.“If I were in love with Lord Lambeth, as you said just now, it

would be bad policy on your part to abuse him.”“My dear child, don’t give me lessons in policy!” cried Mrs.

Westgate. “The policy I mean to follow is very deep.”The young girl began to walk about the room again; then she

stopped before her sister. “I have never heard in the course of fiveminutes,” she said, “so many hints and innuendoes. I wish you wouldtell me in plain English what you mean.”

“I mean that you may be much annoyed.”“That is still only a hint,” said Bessie.Her sister looked at her, hesitating an instant. “It will be said of

you that you have come after Lord Lambeth—that you followedhim.”

Bessie Alden threw back her pretty head like a startled hind, anda look flashed into her face that made Mrs. Westgate rise from herchair. “Who says such things as that?” she demanded.

“People here.”


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“I don’t believe it,” said Bessie.“You have a very convenient faculty of doubt. But my policy will

be, as I say, very deep. I shall leave you to find out this kind of thingfor yourself.”

Bessie fixed her eyes upon her sister, and Mrs. Westgate thoughtfor a moment there were tears in them. “Do they talk that wayhere?” she asked.

“You will see. I shall leave you alone.”“Don’t leave me alone,” said Bessie Alden. “Take me away.”“No; I want to see what you make of it,” her sister continued.“I don’t understand.”“You will understand after Lord Lambeth has come,” said Mrs.

Westgate with a little laugh.The two ladies had arranged that on this afternoon Willie Woodley

should go with them to Hyde Park, where Bessie Alden expected toderive much entertainment from sitting on a little green chair, un-der the great trees, beside Rotten Row. The want of a suitable escorthad hitherto rendered this pleasure inaccessible; but no escort now,for such an expedition, could have been more suitable than theirdevoted young countryman, whose mission in life, it might almostbe said, was to find chairs for ladies, and who appeared on the strokeof half-past five with a white camellia in his buttonhole.

“I have written to Lord Lambeth, my dear,” said Mrs. Westgate toher sister, on coming into the room where Bessie Alden, drawing onher long gray gloves, was entertaining their visitor.

Bessie said nothing, but Willie Woodley exclaimed that his lord-ship was in town; he had seen his name in the Morning Post.

“Do you read the Morning Post?” asked Mrs. Westgate.“Oh, yes; it’s great fun,” Willie Woodley affirmed.“I want so to see it,” said Bessie; “there is so much about it in

Thackeray.”“I will send it to you every morning,” said Willie Woodley.

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He found them what Bessie Alden thought excellent places, un-der the great trees, beside the famous avenue whose humors hadbeen made familiar to the young girl’s childhood by the pictures inPunch. The day was bright and warm, and the crowd of riders andspectators, and the great procession of carriages, were proportion-ately dense and brilliant. The scene bore the stamp of the LondonSeason at its height, and Bessie Alden found more entertainment init than she was able to express to her companions. She sat silent,under her parasol, and her imagination, according to its wont, letitself loose into the great changing assemblage of striking and sug-gestive figures. They stirred up a host of old impressions and pre-conceptions, and she found herself fitting a history to this personand a theory to that, and making a place for them all in her littleprivate museum of types. But if she said little, her sister on one sideand Willie Woodley on the other expressed themselves in lively al-ternation.

“Look at that green dress with blue flounces,” said Mrs. Westgate.“Quelle toilette!”

“That’s the Marquis of Blackborough,” said the young man—”the one in the white coat. I heard him speak the other night in theHouse of Lords; it was something about ramrods; he called them‘wamwods.’ He’s an awful swell.”

“Did you ever see anything like the way they are pinned back?”Mrs. Westgate resumed. “They never know where to stop.”

“They do nothing but stop,” said Willie Woodley. “It preventsthem from walking. Here comes a great celebrity—Lady BeatriceBellevue. She’s awfully fast; see what little steps she takes.”

“Well, my dear,” Mrs. Westgate pursued, “I hope you are gettingsome ideas for your couturiere?”

“I am getting plenty of ideas,” said Bessie, “but I don’t know thatmy couturiere would appreciate them.”

Willie Woodley presently perceived a friend on horseback, who


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drove up beside the barrier of the Row and beckoned to him. Hewent forward, and the crowd of pedestrians closed about him, sothat for some ten minutes he was hidden from sight. At last hereappeared, bringing a gentleman with him—a gentleman whomBessie at first supposed to be his friend dismounted. But at a secondglance she found herself looking at Lord Lambeth, who was shak-ing hands with her sister.

“I found him over there,” said Willie Woodley, “and I told himyou were here.”

And then Lord Lambeth, touching his hat a little, shook hands withBessie. “Fancy your being here!” he said. He was blushing and smiling;he looked very handsome, and he had a kind of splendor that he hadnot had in America. Bessie Alden’s imagination, as we know, was justthen in exercise; so that the tall young Englishman, as he stood therelooking down at her, had the benefit of it. “He is handsomer and moresplendid than anything I have ever seen,” she said to herself. And thenshe remembered that he was a marquis, and she thought he looked likea marquis.

“I say, you know,” he cried, “you ought to have let a man knowyou were here!”

“I wrote to you an hour ago,” said Mrs. Westgate.“Doesn’t all the world know it?” asked Bessie, smiling.“I assure you I didn’t know it!” cried Lord Lambeth. “Upon my

honor I hadn’t heard of it. Ask Woodley now; had I, Woodley?”“Well, I think you are rather a humbug,” said Willie Woodley.“You don’t believe that—do you, Miss Alden?” asked his lord-

ship. “You don’t believe I’m a humbug, eh?”“No,” said Bessie, “I don’t.”“You are too tall to stand up, Lord Lambeth,” Mrs. Westgate ob-

served. “You are only tolerable when you sit down. Be so good as toget a chair.”

He found a chair and placed it sidewise, close to the two ladies.

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“If I hadn’t met Woodley I should never have found you,” he wenton. “Should I, Woodley?”

“Well, I guess not,” said the young American.“Not even with my letter?” asked Mrs. Westgate.“Ah, well, I haven’t got your letter yet; I suppose I shall get it this

evening. I was awfully kind of you to write.”“So I said to Bessie,” observed Mrs. Westgate.“Did she say so, Miss Alden?” Lord Lambeth inquired. “I daresay

you have been here a month.”“We have been here three,” said Mrs. Westgate.“Have you been here three months?” the young man asked again

of Bessie.“It seems a long time,” Bessie answered.“I say, after that you had better not call me a humbug!” cried Lord

Lambeth. “I have only been in town three weeks; but you musthave been hiding away; I haven’t seen you anywhere.”

“Where should you have seen us—where should we have gone?”asked Mrs. Westgate.

“You should have gone to Hurlingham,” said Willie Woodley.“No; let Lord Lambeth tell us,” Mrs. Westgate insisted.“There are plenty of places to go to,” said Lord Lambeth; “each one

stupider than the other. I mean people’s houses; they send you cards.”“No one has sent us cards,” said Bessie.“We are very quiet,” her sister declared. “We are here as travelers.”“We have been to Madame Tussaud’s,” Bessie pursued.“Oh, I say!” cried Lord Lambeth.“We thought we should find your image there,” said Mrs.

Westgate—”yours and Mr. Beaumont’s.”“In the Chamber of Horrors?” laughed the young man.“It did duty very well for a party,” said Mrs. Westgate. “All the

women were decolletes, and many of the figures looked as if theycould speak if they tried.”


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“Upon my word,” Lord Lambeth rejoined, “you see people atLondon parties that look as if they couldn’t speak if they tried.”

“Do you think Mr. Woodley could find us Mr. Beaumont?” askedMrs. Westgate.

Lord Lambeth stared and looked round him. “I daresay he could.Beaumont often comes here. Don’t you think you could find him,Woodley? Make a dive into the crowd.”

“Thank you; I have had enough diving,” said Willie Woodley. “Iwill wait till Mr. Beaumont comes to the surface.”

“I will bring him to see you,” said Lord Lambeth; “where are youstaying?”

“You will find the address in my letter—Jones’s Hotel.”“Oh, one of those places just out of Piccadilly? Beastly hole, isn’t

it?” Lord Lambeth inquired.“I believe it’s the best hotel in London,” said Mrs. Westgate.“But they give you awful rubbish to eat, don’t they?” his lordship

went on.“Yes,” said Mrs. Westgate.“I always feel so sorry for the people that come up to town and go

to live in those places,” continued the young man. “They eat noth-ing but filth.”

“Oh, I say!” cried Willie Woodley.“Well, how do you like London, Miss Alden?” Lord Lambeth

asked, unperturbed by this ejaculation.“I think it’s grand,” said Bessie Alden.“My sister likes it, in spite of the ‘filth’!” Mrs. Westgate exclaimed.“I hope you are going to stay a long time.”“As long as I can,” said Bessie.“And where is Mr. Westgate?” asked Lord Lambeth of this

gentleman’s wife.“He’s where he always is—in that tiresome New York.”“He must be tremendously clever,” said the young man.

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“I suppose he is,” said Mrs. Westgate.Lord Lambeth sat for nearly an hour with his American friends;

but it is not our purpose to relate their conversation in full. He ad-dressed a great many remarks to Bessie Alden, and finally turned to-ward her altogether, while Willie Woodley entertained Mrs. Westgate.Bessie herself said very little; she was on her guard, thinking of whather sister had said to her at lunch. Little by little, however, she inter-ested herself in Lord Lambeth again, as she had done at Newport;only it seemed to her that here he might become more interesting. Hewould be an unconscious part of the antiquity, the impressiveness,the picturesqueness, of England; and poor Bessie Alden, like many aYankee maiden, was terribly at the mercy of picturesqueness.

“I have often wished I were at Newport again,” said the youngman. “Those days I spent at your sister’s were awfully jolly.”

“We enjoyed them very much; I hope your father is better.”“Oh, dear, yes. When I got to England, he was out grouse shooting.

It was what you call in America a gigantic fraud. My mother had gotnervous. My three weeks at Newport seemed like a happy dream.”

“America certainly is very different from England,” said Bessie.“I hope you like England better, eh?” Lord Lambeth rejoined al-

most persuasively.“No Englishman can ask that seriously of a person of another

country.”Her companion looked at her for a moment. “You mean it’s a

matter of course?”“If I were English,” said Bessie, “it would certainly seem to me a

matter of course that everyone should be a good patriot.”“Oh, dear, yes, patriotism is everything,” said Lord Lambeth, not

quite following, but very contented. “Now, what are you going todo here?”

“On Thursday I am going to the Tower.”“The Tower?”


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“The Tower of London. Did you never hear of it?”“Oh, yes, I have been there,” said Lord Lambeth. “I was taken

there by my governess when I was six years old. It’s a rum idea, yourgoing there.”

“Do give me a few more rum ideas,” said Bessie. “I want to seeeverything of that sort. I am going to Hampton Court, and toWindsor, and to the Dulwich Gallery.”

Lord Lambeth seemed greatly amused. “I wonder you don’t go tothe Rosherville Gardens.”

“Are they interesting?” asked Bessie.“Oh, wonderful.”“Are they very old? That’s all I care for,” said Bessie.“They are tremendously old; they are all falling to ruins.”“I think there is nothing so charming as an old ruinous garden,”

said the young girl. “We must certainly go there.”Lord Lambeth broke out into merriment. “I say, Woodley,” he

cried, “here’s Miss Alden wants to go to the Rosherville Gardens!”Willie Woodley looked a little blank; he was caught in the fact of

ignorance of an apparently conspicuous feature of London life. Butin a moment he turned it off. “Very well,” he said, “I’ll write for apermit.”

Lord Lambeth’s exhilaration increased. “Gad, I believe you Ameri-cans would go anywhere!” he cried.

“We wish to go to Parliament,” said Bessie. “That’s one of thefirst things.”

“Oh, it would bore you to death!” cried the young man.“We wish to hear you speak.”“I never speak—except to young ladies,” said Lord Lambeth,

smiling.Bessie Alden looked at him a while, smiling, too, in the shadow of

her parasol. “You are very strange,” she murmured. “I don’t think Iapprove of you.”

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“Ah, now, don’t be severe, Miss Alden,” said Lord Lambeth, smil-ing still more. “Please don’t be severe. I want you to like me—aw-fully.”

“To like you awfully? You must not laugh at me, then, when Imake mistakes. I consider it my right—as a freeborn American—tomake as many mistakes as I choose.”

“Upon my word, I didn’t laugh at you,” said Lord Lambeth.“And not only that,” Bessie went on; “but I hold that all my mis-

takes shall be set down to my credit. You must think the better ofme for them.”

“I can’t think better of you than I do,” the young man declared.Bessie Alden looked at him a moment again. “You certainly speak

very well to young ladies. But why don’t you address the House?—isn’t that what they call it?”

“Because I have nothing to say,” said Lord Lambeth.“Haven’t you a great position?” asked Bessie Alden.He looked a moment at the back of his glove. “I’ll set that down,”

he said, “as one of your mistakes—to your credit.” And as if hedisliked talking about his position, he changed the subject. “I wishyou would let me go with you to the Tower, and to Hampton Court,and to all those other places.”

“We shall be most happy,” said Bessie.“And of course I shall be delighted to show you the House of Lords—

some day that suits you. There are a lot of things I want to do for you.I want to make you have a good time. And I should like very much topresent some of my friends to you, if it wouldn’t bore you. Then itwould be awfully kind of you to come down to Branches.”

“We are much obliged to you, Lord Lambeth,” said Bessie. “Whatis Branches?”

“It’s a house in the country. I think you might like it.”Willie Woodley and Mrs. Westgate at this moment were sitting in

silence, and the young man’s ear caught these last words of Lord


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Lambeth’s. “He’s inviting Miss Bessie to one of his castles,” he mur-mured to his companion.

Mrs. Westgate, foreseeing what she mentally called “complica-tions,” immediately got up; and the two ladies, taking leave of LordLambeth, returned, under Mr. Woodley’s conduct, to Jones’s Hotel.

Lord Lambeth came to see them on the morrow, bringing PercyBeaumont with him—the latter having instantly declared his inten-tion of neglecting none of the usual offices of civility. This declara-tion, however, when his kinsman informed him of the advent oftheir American friends, had been preceded by another remark.

“Here they are, then, and you are in for it.”“What am I in for?” demanded Lord Lambeth.“I will let your mother give it a name. With all respect to whom,”

added Percy Beaumont, “I must decline on this occasion to do anymore police duty. Her Grace must look after you herself.”

“I will give her a chance,” said her Grace’s son, a trifle grimly. “Ishall make her go and see them.”

“She won’t do it, my boy.”“We’ll see if she doesn’t,” said Lord Lambeth.But if Percy Beaumont took a somber view of the arrival of the

two ladies at Jones’s Hotel, he was sufficiently a man of the world tooffer them a smiling countenance. He fell into animated conversa-tion—conversation, at least, that was animated on her side—withMrs. Westgate, while his companion made himself agreeable to theyounger lady. Mrs. Westgate began confessing and protesting, de-claring and expounding.

“I must say London is a great deal brighter and prettier just nowthan it was when I was here last—in the month of November. Thereis evidently a great deal going on, and you seem to have a goodmany flowers. I have no doubt it is very charming for all you people,and that you amuse yourselves immensely. It is very good of you tolet Bessie and me come and sit and look at you. I suppose you will

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think I am very satirical, but I must confess that that’s the feeling Ihave in London.”

“I am afraid I don’t quite understand to what feeling you allude,”said Percy Beaumont.

“The feeling that it’s all very well for you English people. Every-thing is beautifully arranged for you.”

“It seems to me it is very well for some Americans, sometimes,”rejoined Beaumont.

“For some of them, yes—if they like to be patronized. But I mustsay I don’t like to be patronized. I may be very eccentric, and undis-ciplined, and outrageous, but I confess I never was fond of patron-age. I like to associate with people on the same terms as I do in myown country; that’s a peculiar taste that I have. But here peopleseem to expect something else—Heaven knows what! I am afraidyou will think I am very ungrateful, for I certainly have received agreat deal of attention. The last time I was here, a lady sent me amessage that I was at liberty to come and see her.”

“Dear me! I hope you didn’t go,” observed Percy Beaumont.“You are deliciously naive, I must say that for you!” Mrs. Westgate

exclaimed. “It must be a great advantage to you here in London. Isuppose that if I myself had a little more naivete, I should enjoy itmore. I should be content to sit on a chair in the park, and see thepeople pass, and be told that this is the Duchess of Suffolk, and thatis the Lord Chamberlain, and that I must be thankful for the privi-lege of beholding them. I daresay it is very wicked and critical of meto ask for anything else. But I was always critical, and I freely con-fess to the sin of being fastidious. I am told there is some remark-ably superior second-rate society provided here for strangers. Merci!I don’t want any superior second-rate society. I want the society thatI have been accustomed to.”

“I hope you don’t call Lambeth and me second rate,” Beaumontinterposed.


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“Oh, I am accustomed to you,” said Mrs. Westgate. “Do you knowthat you English sometimes make the most wonderful speeches?The first time I came to London I went out to dine—as I told you,I have received a great deal of attention. After dinner, in the draw-ing room, I had some conversation with an old lady; I assure you Ihad. I forget what we talked about, but she presently said, in allusionto something we were discussing, ‘Oh, you know, the aristocracy doso-and-so; but in one’s own class of life it is very different.’ In one’sown class of life! What is a poor unprotected American woman to doin a country where she is liable to have that sort of thing said to her?”

“You seem to get hold of some very queer old ladies; I complimentyou on your acquaintance!” Percy Beaumont exclaimed. “If you aretrying to bring me to admit that London is an odious place, you’ll notsucceed. I’m extremely fond of it, and I think it the jolliest place inthe world.”

“Pour vous autres. I never said the contrary,” Mrs. Westgate re-torted. I make use of this expression, because both interlocutorshad begun to raise their voices. Percy Beaumont naturally did notlike to hear his country abused, and Mrs. Westgate, no less natu-rally, did not like a stubborn debater.

“Hallo!” said Lord Lambeth; “what are they up to now?” And hecame away from the window, where he had been standing with BessieAlden.

“I quite agree with a very clever countrywoman of mine,” Mrs.Westgate continued with charming ardor, though with imperfectrelevancy. She smiled at the two gentlemen for a moment with ter-rible brightness, as if to toss at their feet—upon their native heath—the gauntlet of defiance. “For me, there are only two social posi-tions worth speaking of—that of an American lady and that of theEmperor of Russia.”

“And what do you do with the American gentlemen?” asked LordLambeth.

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“She leaves them in America!” said Percy Beaumont.On the departure of their visitors, Bessie Alden told her sister that

Lord Lambeth would come the next day, to go with them to theTower, and that he had kindly offered to bring his “trap” and drivethem thither. Mrs. Westgate listened in silence to this communica-tion, and for some time afterward she said nothing. But at last, “Ifyou had not requested me the other day not to mention it,” shebegan, “there is something I should venture to ask you.” Bessiefrowned a little; her dark blue eyes were more dark than blue. Buther sister went on. “As it is, I will take the risk. You are not in lovewith Lord Lambeth: I believe it, perfectly. Very good. But is there,by chance, any danger of your becoming so? It’s a very simple ques-tion; don’t take offense. I have a particular reason,” said Mrs.Westgate, “for wanting to know.”

Bessie Alden for some moments said nothing; she only lookeddispleased. “No; there is no danger,” she answered at last, curtly.

“Then I should like to frighten them,” declared Mrs. Westgate,clasping her jeweled hands.

“To frighten whom?”“All these people; Lord Lambeth’s family and friends.”“How should you frighten them?” asked the young girl.“It wouldn’t be I—it would be you. It would frighten them to

think that you should absorb his lordship’s young affections.”Bessie Alden, with her clear eyes still overshadowed by her dark

brows, continued to interrogate. “Why should that frighten them?”Mrs. Westgate poised her answer with a smile before delivering it.

“Because they think you are not good enough. You are a charminggirl, beautiful and amiable, intelligent and clever, and as bien-eleveeas it is possible to be; but you are not a fit match for Lord Lambeth.”

Bessie Alden was decidedly disgusted. “Where do you get suchextraordinary ideas?” she asked. “You have said some such strangethings lately. My dear Kitty, where do you collect them?”


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Kitty was evidently enamored of her idea. “Yes, it would put themon pins and needles, and it wouldn’t hurt you. Mr. Beaumont isalready most uneasy; I could soon see that.”

The young girl meditated a moment. “Do you mean that theyspy upon him—that they interfere with him?”

“I don’t know what power they have to interfere, but I know thata British mama may worry her son’s life out.”

It has been intimated that, as regards certain disagreeable things,Bessie Alden had a fund of skepticism. She abstained on the presentoccasion from expressing disbelief, for she wished not to irritate hersister. But she said to herself that Kitty had been misinformed—that this was a traveler’s tale. Though she was a girl of a lively imagi-nation, there could in the nature of things be, to her sense, no real-ity in the idea of her belonging to a vulgar category. What she saidaloud was, “I must say that in that case I am very sorry for LordLambeth.”

Mrs. Westgate, more and more exhilarated by her scheme, wassmiling at her again. “If I could only believe it was safe!” she ex-claimed. “When you begin to pity him, I, on my side, am afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”“Of your pitying him too much.”Bessie Alden turned away impatiently; but at the end of a minute

she turned back. “What if I should pity him too much?” she asked.Mrs. Westgate hereupon turned away, but after a moment’s re-

flection she also faced her sister again. “It would come, after all, tothe same thing,” she said.

Lord Lambeth came the next day with his trap, and the two ladies,attended by Willie Woodley, placed themselves under his guidance,and were conveyed eastward, through some of the duskier portions ofthe metropolis, to the great turreted donjon which overlooks the Lon-don shipping. They all descended from their vehicle and entered thefamous inclosure; and they secured the services of a venerable beefeater,

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who, though there were many other claimants for legendary informa-tion, made a fine exclusive party of them and marched them throughcourts and corridors, through armories and prisons. He delivered hisusual peripatetic discourse, and they stopped and stared, and peepedand stooped, according to the official admonitions. Bessie Alden askedthe old man in the crimson doublet a great many questions; she thoughtit a most fascinating place. Lord Lambeth was in high good humor; hewas constantly laughing; he enjoyed what he would have called thelark. Willie Woodley kept looking at the ceilings and tapping the wallswith the knuckle of a pearl-gray glove; and Mrs. Westgate, asking atfrequent intervals to be allowed to sit down and wait till they cameback, was as frequently informed that they would never come back. Toa great many of Bessie’s questions—chiefly on collateral points of En-glish history—the ancient warder was naturally unable to reply; where-upon she always appealed to Lord Lambeth. But his lordship was veryignorant. He declared that he knew nothing about that sort of thing,and he seemed greatly diverted at being treated as an authority.

“You can’t expect everyone to know as much as you,” he said.“I should expect you to know a great deal more,” declared Bessie

Alden.“Women always know more than men about names and dates

and that sort of thing,” Lord Lambeth rejoined. “There was LadyJane Grey we have just been hearing about, who went in for Latinand Greek and all the learning of her age.”

“You have no right to be ignorant, at all events,” said Bessie.“Why haven’t I as good a right as anyone else?”“Because you have lived in the midst of all these things.”“What things do you mean? Axes, and blocks, and thumbscrews?”“All these historical things. You belong to a historical family.”“Bessie is really too historical,” said Mrs. Westgate, catching a

word of this dialogue.“Yes, you are too historical,” said Lord Lambeth, laughing, but


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thankful for a formula. “Upon my honor, you are too historical!”He went with the ladies a couple of days later to Hampton Court,

Willie Woodley being also of the party. The afternoon was charm-ing, the famous horse chestnuts were in blossom, and Lord Lambeth,who quite entered into the spirit of the cockney excursionist, de-clared that it was a jolly old place. Bessie Alden was in ecstasies; shewent about murmuring and exclaiming.

“It’s too lovely,” said the young girl; “it’s too enchanting; it’s tooexactly what it ought to be!”

At Hampton Court the little flocks of visitors are not providedwith an official bellwether, but are left to browse at discretion uponthe local antiquities. It happened in this manner that, in default ofanother informant, Bessie Alden, who on doubtful questions wasable to suggest a great many alternatives, found herself again apply-ing for intellectual assistance to Lord Lambeth. But he again as-sured her that he was utterly helpless in such matters—that his edu-cation had been sadly neglected.

“And I am sorry it makes you unhappy,” he added in a moment.“You are very disappointing, Lord Lambeth,” she said.“Ah, now don’t say that,” he cried. “That’s the worst thing you

could possibly say.”“No,” she rejoined, “it is not so bad as to say that I had expected

nothing of you.”“I don’t know. Give me a notion of the sort of thing you expected.”“Well,” said Bessie Alden, “that you would be more what I should

like to be—what I should try to be—in your place.”“Ah, my place!” exclaimed Lord Lambeth. “You are always talk-

ing about my place.!”The young girl looked at him; he thought she colored a little; and

for a moment she made no rejoinder.“Does it strike you that I am always talking about your place?”

she asked.

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“I am sure you do it a great honor,” he said, fearing he had beenuncivil.

“I have often thought about it,” she went on after a moment. “Ihave often thought about your being a hereditary legislator. A he-reditary legislator ought to know a great many things.”

“Not if he doesn’t legislate.”“But you do legislate; it’s absurd your saying you don’t. You are

very much looked up to here—I am assured of that.”“I don’t know that I ever noticed it.”“It is because you are used to it, then. You ought to fill the place.”“How do you mean to fill it?” asked Lord Lambeth.“You ought to be very clever and brilliant, and to know almost

everything.”Lord Lambeth looked at her a moment. “Shall I tell you some-

thing?” he asked. “A young man in my position, as you call it—”“I didn’t invent the term,” interposed Bessie Alden. “I have seen it

in a great many books.”“Hang it! you are always at your books. A fellow in my position,

then, does very well whatever he does. That’s about what I mean tosay.”

“Well, if your own people are content with you,” said Bessie Alden,laughing, “it is not for me to complain. But I shall always thinkthat, properly, you should have been a great mind—a great charac-ter.”

“Ah, that’s very theoretic,” Lord Lambeth declared. “Depend uponit, that’s a Yankee prejudice.”

“Happy the country,” said Bessie Alden, “where even people’sprejudices are so elevated!”

“Well, after all,” observed Lord Lambeth, “I don’t know that I amsuch a fool as you are trying to make me out.”

“I said nothing so rude as that; but I must repeat that you aredisappointing.”


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“My dear Miss Alden,” exclaimed the young man, “I am the bestfellow in the world!”

“Ah, if it were not for that!” said Bessie Alden with a smile.Mrs. Westgate had a good many more friends in London than she

pretended, and before long she had renewed acquaintance with mostof them. Their hospitality was extreme, so that, one thing leading toanother, she began, as the phrase is, to go out. Bessie Alden, in thisway, saw something of what she found it a great satisfaction to callto herself English society. She went to balls and danced, she went todinners and talked, she went to concerts and listened (at concertsBessie always listened), she went to exhibitions and wondered. Herenjoyment was keen and her curiosity insatiable, and, grateful ingeneral for all her opportunities, she especially prized the privilegeof meeting certain celebrated persons—authors and artists, philoso-phers and statesmen—of whose renown she had been a humble anddistant beholder, and who now, as a part of the habitual furniture ofLondon drawing rooms, struck her as stars fallen from the firma-ment and become palpable—revealing also sometimes, on contact,qualities not to have been predicted of sidereal bodies. Bessie, whoknew so many of her contemporaries by reputation, had a goodmany personal disappointments; but, on the other hand, she hadinnumerable satisfactions and enthusiasms, and she communicatedthe emotions of either class to a dear friend, of her own sex, inBoston, with whom she was in voluminous correspondence. Someof her reflections, indeed, she attempted to impart to Lord Lambeth,who came almost every day to Jones’s Hotel, and whom Mrs. Westgateadmitted to be really devoted. Captain Littledale, it appeared, hadgone to India; and of several others of Mrs. Westgate’s ex-pension-ers—gentlemen who, as she said, had made, in New York, a club-house of her drawing room—no tidings were to be obtained; butLord Lambeth was certainly attentive enough to make up for theaccidental absences, the short memories, all the other irregularities of

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everyone else. He drove them in the park, he took them to visit pri-vate collections of pictures, and, having a house of his own, invitedthem to dinner. Mrs. Westgate, following the fashion of many of hercompatriots, caused herself and her sister to be presented at the En-glish court by her diplomatic representative—for it was in this man-ner that she alluded to the American minister to England, inquiringwhat on earth he was put there for, if not to make the proper arrange-ments for one’s going to a Drawing Room.

Lord Lambeth declared that he hated Drawing Rooms, but heparticipated in the ceremony on the day on which the two ladies atJones’s Hotel repaired to Buckingham Palace in a remarkable coachwhich his lordship had sent to fetch them. He had on a gorgeousuniform, and Bessie Alden was particularly struck with his appear-ance—especially when on her asking him, rather foolishly as shefelt, if he were a loyal subject, he replied that he was a loyal subjectto her. This declaration was emphasized by his dancing with her at aroyal ball to which the two ladies afterward went, and was not im-paired by the fact that she thought he danced very ill. He seemed toher wonderfully kind; she asked herself, with growing vivacity, whyhe should be so kind. It was his disposition—that seemed the natu-ral answer. She had told her sister that she liked him very much, andnow that she liked him more she wondered why. She liked him forhis disposition; to this question as well that seemed the natural an-swer. When once the impressions of London life began to crowdthickly upon her, she completely forgot her sister’s warning aboutthe cynicism of public opinion. It had given her great pain at themoment, but there was no particular reason why she should re-member it; it corresponded too little with any sensible reality; and itwas disagreeable to Bessie to remember disagreeable things. So shewas not haunted with the sense of a vulgar imputation. She was notin love with Lord Lambeth—she assured herself of that. It will im-mediately be observed that when such assurances become necessary


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the state of a young lady’s affections is already ambiguous; and, in-deed, Bessie Alden made no attempt to dissimulate—to herself, ofcourse—a certain tenderness that she felt for the young nobleman.She said to herself that she liked the type to which he belonged—the simple, candid, manly, healthy English temperament. She spoketo herself of him as women speak of young men they like—alludedto his bravery (which she had never in the least seen tested), to hishonesty and gentlemanliness, and was not silent upon the subjectof his good looks. She was perfectly conscious, moreover, that sheliked to think of his more adventitious merits; that her imaginationwas excited and gratified by the sight of a handsome young manendowed with such large opportunities—opportunities she hardlyknew for what, but, as she supposed, for doing great things—forsetting an example, for exerting an influence, for conferring happi-ness, for encouraging the arts. She had a kind of ideal of conduct fora young man who should find himself in this magnificent position,and she tried to adapt it to Lord Lambeth’s deportment as you mightattempt to fit a silhouette in cut paper upon a shadow projectedupon a wall. But Bessie Alden’s silhouette refused to coincide withhis lordship’s image, and this want of harmony sometimes vexedher more than she thought reasonable. When he was absent it was,of course, less striking; then he seemed to her a sufficiently gracefulcombination of high responsibilities and amiable qualities. But whenhe sat there within sight, laughing and talking with his customarygood humor and simplicity, she measured it more accurately, andshe felt acutely that if Lord Lambeth’s position was heroic, therewas but little of the hero in the young man himself. Then her imagi-nation wandered away from him—very far away; for it was an in-contestable fact that at such moments he seemed distinctly dull. Iam afraid that while Bessie’s imagination was thus invidiously roam-ing, she cannot have been herself a very lively companion; but itmay well have been that these occasional fits of indifference seemed

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to Lord Lambeth a part of the young girl’s personal charm. It hadbeen a part of this charm from the first that he felt that she judgedhim and measured him more freely and irresponsibly—more at herease and her leisure, as it were—than several young ladies with whomhe had been on the whole about as intimate. To feel this, and yet tofeel that she also liked him, was very agreeable to Lord Lambeth.He fancied he had compassed that gratification so desirable to youngmen of title and fortune—being liked for himself. It is true that acynical counselor might have whispered to him, “Liked for your-self? Yes; but not so very much!” He had, at any rate, the constanthope of being liked more.

It may seem, perhaps, a trifle singular—but it is nevertheless true—that Bessie Alden, when he struck her as dull, devoted some time,on grounds of conscience, to trying to like him more. I say ongrounds of conscience because she felt that he had been extremely“nice” to her sister, and because she reflected that it was no morethan fair that she should think as well of him as he thought of her.This effort was possibly sometimes not so successful as it mighthave been, for the result of it was occasionally a vague irritation,which expressed itself in hostile criticism of several British institu-tions. Bessie Alden went to some entertainments at which she metLord Lambeth; but she went to others at which his lordship wasneither actually nor potentially present; and it was chiefly on theselatter occasions that she encountered those literary and artistic ce-lebrities of whom mention has been made. After a while she re-duced the matter to a principle. If Lord Lambeth should appearanywhere, it was a symbol that there would be no poets and phi-losophers; and in consequence—for it was almost a strict conse-quence—she used to enumerate to the young man these objects ofher admiration.

“You seem to be awfully fond of those sort of people,” said LordLambeth one day, as if the idea had just occurred to him.


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“They are the people in England I am most curious to see,” BessieAlden replied.

“I suppose that’s because you have read so much,” said LordLambeth gallantly.

“I have not read so much. It is because we think so much of themat home.”

“Oh, I see,” observed the young nobleman. “In Boston.”“Not only in Boston; everywhere,” said Bessie. “We hold them in

great honor; they go to the best dinner parties.”“I daresay you are right. I can’t say I know many of them.”“It’s a pity you don’t,” Bessie Alden declared. “It would do you

good.”“I daresay it would,” said Lord Lambeth very humbly. “But I must

say I don’t like the looks of some of them.”“Neither do I—of some of them. But there are all kinds, and

many of them are charming.”“I have talked with two or three of them,” the young man went

on, “and I thought they had a kind of fawning manner.”“Why should they fawn?” Bessie Alden demanded.“I’m sure I don’t know. Why, indeed?”“Perhaps you only thought so,” said Bessie.“Well, of course,” rejoined her companion, “that’s a kind of thing

that can’t be proved.”“In America they don’t fawn,” said Bessie.“Ah, well, then, they must be better company.”Bessie was silent a moment. “That is one of the things I don’t like

about England,” she said; “your keeping the distinguished peopleapart.”

“How do you mean apart?”“Why, letting them come only to certain places. You never see

them.”Lord Lambeth looked at her a moment. “What people do you mean?”

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“The eminent people—the authors and artists—the clever people.”“Oh, there are other eminent people besides those,” said Lord

Lambeth.“Well, you certainly keep them apart,” repeated the young girl.“And there are other clever people,” added Lord Lambeth simply.Bessie Alden looked at him, and she gave a light laugh. “Not many,”

she said.On another occasion—just after a dinner party—she told him

that there was something else in England she did not like.“Oh, I say!” he cried, “haven’t you abused us enough?”“I have never abused you at all,” said Bessie; “but I don’t like your

precedence.”“It isn’t my precedence!” Lord Lambeth declared, laughing.“Yes, it is yours—just exactly yours; and I think it’s odious,” said

Bessie.“I never saw such a young lady for discussing things! Has some-

one had the impudence to go before you?” asked his lordship.“It is not the going before me that I object to,” said Bessie; “it is

their thinking that they have a right to do it—<i a right that I recog-nize>.”

“I never saw such a young lady as you are for not ‘recognizing.’ Ihave no doubt the thing is beastly, but it saves a lot of trouble.”

“It makes a lot of trouble. It’s horrid,” said Bessie.“But how would you have the first people go?” asked Lord

Lambeth. “They can’t go last.”“Whom do you mean by the first people?”“Ah, if you mean to question first principles!” said Lord Lambeth.“If those are your first principles, no wonder some of your ar-

rangements are horrid,” observed Bessie Alden with a very prettyferocity. “I am a young girl, so of course I go last; but imagine whatKitty must feel on being informed that she is not at liberty to budgeuntil certain other ladies have passed out.”


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“Oh, I say, she is not ‘informed!’” cried Lord Lambeth. “No onewould do such a thing as that.”

“She is made to feel it,” the young girl insisted—”as if they wereafraid she would make a rush for the door. No; you have a lovelycountry,” said Bessie Alden, “but your precedence is horrid.”

“I certainly shouldn’t think your sister would like it,” rejoinedLord Lambeth with even exaggerated gravity. But Bessie Alden couldinduce him to enter no formal protest against this repulsive custom,which he seemed to think an extreme convenience.

Percy Beaumont all this time had been a very much less frequentvisitor at Jones’s Hotel than his noble kinsman; he had, in fact, calledbut twice upon the two American ladies. Lord Lambeth, who oftensaw him, reproached him with his neglect and declared that, al-though Mrs. Westgate had said nothing about it, he was sure thatshe was secretly wounded by it. “She suffers too much to speak,”said Lord Lambeth.

“That’s all gammon,” said Percy Beaumont; “there’s a limit to whatpeople can suffer!” And, though sending no apologies to Jones’sHotel, he undertook in a manner to explain his absence. “You arealways there,” he said, “and that’s reason enough for my not going.”

“I don’t see why. There is enough for both of us.”“I don’t care to be a witness of your—your reckless passion,” said

Percy Beaumont.Lord Lambeth looked at him with a cold eye and for a moment

said nothing. “It’s not so obvious as you might suppose,” he re-joined dryly, “considering what a demonstrative beggar I am.”

“I don’t want to know anything about it—nothing whatever,”said Beaumont. “Your mother asks me everytime she sees me whetherI believe you are really lost—and Lady Pimlico does the same. Iprefer to be able to answer that I know nothing about it—that Inever go there. I stay away for consistency’s sake. As I said the otherday, they must look after you themselves.”

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“You are devilish considerate,” said Lord Lambeth. “They neverquestion me.”

“They are afraid of you. They are afraid of irritating you and mak-ing you worse. So they go to work very cautiously, and, somewhere orother, they get their information. They know a great deal about you.They know that you have been with those ladies to the dome of St.Paul’s and—where was the other place?—to the Thames Tunnel.”

“If all their knowledge is as accurate as that, it must be very valu-able,” said Lord Lambeth.

“Well, at any rate, they know that you have been visiting the ‘sightsof the metropolis.’ They think—very naturally, as it seems to me—that when you take to visiting the sights of the metropolis with alittle American girl, there is serious cause for alarm.” Lord Lambethresponded to this intimation by scornful laughter, and his compan-ion continued, after a pause: “I said just now I didn’t want to knowanything about the affair; but I will confess that I am curious tolearn whether you propose to marry Miss Bessie Alden.”

On this point Lord Lambeth gave his interlocutor no immediatesatisfaction; he was musing, with a frown. “By Jove,” he said, “theygo rather too far. They shall find me dangerous—I promise them.”

Percy Beaumont began to laugh. “You don’t redeem your prom-ises. You said the other day you would make your mother call.”

Lord Lambeth continued to meditate. “I asked her to call,” hesaid simply.

“And she declined?”“Yes; but she shall do it yet.”“Upon my word,” said Percy Beaumont, “if she gets much more

frightened I believe she will.” Lord Lambeth looked at him, and hewent on. “She will go to the girl herself.”

“How do you mean she will go to her?”“She will beg her off, or she will bribe her. She will take strong

measures.”


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Lord Lambeth turned away in silence, and his companion watchedhim take twenty steps and then slowly return. “I have invited Mrs.Westgate and Miss Alden to Branches,” he said, “and this evening Ishall name a day.”

“And shall you invite your mother and your sisters to meet them?”“Explicitly!”“That will set the duchess off,” said Percy Beaumont. “I suspect

she will come.”“She may do as she pleases.”Beaumont looked at Lord Lambeth. “You do really propose to

marry the little sister, then?”“I like the way you talk about it!” cried the young man. “She

won’t gobble me down; don’t be afraid.”“She won’t leave you on your knees,” said Percy Beaumont. “What

is the inducement?”“You talk about proposing: wait till I have proposed,” Lord

Lambeth went on.“That’s right, my dear fellow; think about it,” said Percy Beau-

mont.“She’s a charming girl,” pursued his lordship.“Of course she’s a charming girl. I don’t know a girl more charm-

ing, intrinsically. But there are other charming girls nearer home.”“I like her spirit,” observed Lord Lambeth, almost as if he were

trying to torment his cousin.“What’s the peculiarity of her spirit?”“She’s not afraid, and she says things out, and she thinks herself as

good as anyone. She is the only girl I have ever seen that was notdying to marry me.”

“How do you know that, if you haven’t asked her?”“I don’t know how; but I know it.”“I am sure she asked me questions enough about your property

and your titles,” said Beaumont.

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“She has asked me questions, too; no end of them,” Lord Lambethadmitted. “But she asked for information, don’t you know.”

“Information? Aye, I’ll warrant she wanted it. Depend upon itthat she is dying to marry you just as much and just as little as allthe rest of them.”

“I shouldn’t like her to refuse me—I shouldn’t like that.”“If the thing would be so disagreeable, then, both to you and to

her, in Heaven’s name leave it alone,” said Percy Beaumont.Mrs. Westgate, on her side, had plenty to say to her sister about

the rarity of Mr. Beaumont’s visits and the nonappearance of theDuchess of Bayswater. She professed, however, to derive more satis-faction from this latter circumstance than she could have done fromthe most lavish attentions on the part of this great lady. “It is mostmarked,” she said—”most marked. It is a delicious proof that wehave made them miserable. The day we dined with Lord Lambeth Iwas really sorry for the poor fellow.” It will have been gathered thatthe entertainment offered by Lord Lambeth to his American friendshad not been graced by the presence of his anxious mother. He hadinvited several choice spirits to meet them; but the ladies of hisimmediate family were to Mrs. Westgate’s sense—a sense possiblymorbidly acute—conspicuous by their absence.

“I don’t want to express myself in a manner that you dislike,” saidBessie Alden; “but I don’t know why you should have so many theo-ries about Lord Lambeth’s poor mother. You know a great manyyoung men in New York without knowing their mothers.”

Mrs. Westgate looked at her sister and then turned away. “Mydear Bessie, you are superb!” she said.

“One thing is certain,” the young girl continued. “If I believed Iwere a cause of annoyance—however unwitting—to Lord Lambeth’sfamily, I should insist—”

“Insist upon my leaving England,” said Mrs. Westgate.“No, not that. I want to go to the National Gallery again; I want


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to see Stratford-on-Avon and Canterbury Cathedral. But I shouldinsist upon his coming to see us no more.”

“That would be very modest and very pretty of you; but youwouldn’t do it now.”

“Why do you say ‘now’?” asked Bessie Alden. “Have I ceased tobe modest?”

“You care for him too much. A month ago, when you said youdidn’t, I believe it was quite true. But at present, my dear child,”said Mrs. Westgate, “you wouldn’t find it quite so simple a matternever to see Lord Lambeth again. I have seen it coming on.”

“You are mistaken,” said Bessie. “You don’t understand.”“My dear child, don’t be perverse,” rejoined her sister.“I know him better, certainly, if you mean that,” said Bessie. “And

I like him very much. But I don’t like him enough to make troublefor him with his family. However, I don’t believe in that.”

“I like the way you say ‘however,’” Mrs. Westgate exclaimed.“Come; you would not marry him?”

“Oh, no,” said the young girl.Mrs. Westgate for a moment seemed vexed. “Why not, pray?” she

demanded.“Because I don’t care to,” said Bessie Alden.The morning after Lord Lambeth had had, with Percy Beaumont,

that exchange of ideas which has just been narrated, the ladies atJones’s Hotel received from his lordship a written invitation to paytheir projected visit to Branches Castle on the following Tuesday. “Ithink I have made up a very pleasant party,” the young noblemansaid. “Several people whom you know, and my mother and sisters,who have so long been regrettably prevented from making your ac-quaintance.” Bessie Alden lost no time in calling her sister’s atten-tion to the injustice she had done the Duchess of Bayswater, whosehostility was now proved to be a vain illusion.

“Wait till you see if she comes,” said Mrs. Westgate. “And if she is

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to meet us at her son’s house the obligation was all the greater forher to call upon us.”

Bessie had not to wait long, and it appeared that Lord Lambeth’smother now accepted Mrs. Westgate’s view of her duties. On themorrow, early in the afternoon, two cards were brought to the apart-ment of the American ladies—one of them bearing the name of theDuchess of Bayswater and the other that of the Countess of Pimlico.Mrs. Westgate glanced at the clock. “It is not yet four,” she said;“they have come early; they wish to see us. We will receive them.”And she gave orders that her visitors should be admitted. A fewmoments later they were introduced, and there was a solemn ex-change of amenities. The duchess was a large lady, with a fine freshcolor; the Countess of Pimlico was very pretty and elegant.

The duchess looked about her as she sat down—looked not espe-cially at Mrs. Westgate. “I daresay my son has told you that I havebeen wanting to come and see you,” she observed.

“You are very kind,” said Mrs. Westgate, vaguely—her consciencenot allowing her to assent to this proposition—and, indeed, notpermitting her to enunciate her own with any appreciable empha-sis.

“He says you were so kind to him in America,” said the duchess.“We are very glad,” Mrs. Westgate replied, “to have been able to

make him a little more—a little less—a little more comfortable.”“I think he stayed at your house,” remarked the Duchess of

Bayswater, looking at Bessie Alden.“A very short time,” said Mrs. Westgate.“Oh!” said the duchess; and she continued to look at Bessie, who was

engaged in conversation with her daughter.“Do you like London?” Lady Pimlico had asked of Bessie, after

looking at her a good deal—at her face and her hands, her dress andher hair.

“Very much indeed,” said Bessie.


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“Do you like this hotel?”“It is very comfortable,” said Bessie.“Do you like stopping at hotels?” inquired Lady Pimlico after a

pause.“I am very fond of traveling,” Bessie answered, “and I suppose

hotels are a necessary part of it. But they are not the part I amfondest of.”

“Oh, I hate traveling,” said the Countess of Pimlico and trans-ferred her attention to Mrs. Westgate.

“My son tells me you are going to Branches,” the duchess pres-ently resumed.

“Lord Lambeth has been so good as to ask us,” said Mrs. Westgate,who perceived that her visitor had now begun to look at her, andwho had her customary happy consciousness of a distinguished ap-pearance. The only mitigation of her felicity on this point was that,having inspected her visitor’s own costume, she said to herself, “Shewon’t know how well I am dressed!”

“He has asked me to go, but I am not sure I shall be able,” mur-mured the duchess.

“He had offered us the p—prospect of meeting you,” said Mrs.Westgate.

“I hate the country at this season,” responded the duchess.Mrs. Westgate gave a little shrug. “I think it is pleasanter than

London.”But the duchess’s eyes were absent again; she was looking very

fixedly at Bessie. In a moment she slowly rose, walked to a chair thatstood empty at the young girl’s right hand, and silently seated her-self. As she was a majestic, voluminous woman, this little transac-tion had, inevitably, an air of somewhat impressive intention. Itdiffused a certain awkwardness, which Lady Pimlico, as a sympa-thetic daughter, perhaps desired to rectify in turning to Mrs.Westgate.

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“I daresay you go out a great deal,” she observed.“No, very little. We are strangers, and we didn’t come here for

society.”“I see,” said Lady Pimlico. “It’s rather nice in town just now.”“It’s charming,” said Mrs. Westgate. “But we only go to see a few

people—whom we like.”“Of course one can’t like everyone,” said Lady Pimlico.“It depends upon one’s society,” Mrs. Westgate rejoined.The Duchess meanwhile had addressed herself to Bessie. “My son

tells me the young ladies in America are so clever.”“I am glad they made so good an impression on him,” said Bessie, smiling.The Duchess was not smiling; her large fresh face was very tran-

quil. “He is very susceptible,” she said. “He thinks everyone clever,and sometimes they are.”

“Sometimes,” Bessie assented, smiling still.The duchess looked at her a little and then went on; “Lambeth is

very susceptible, but he is very volatile, too.”“Volatile?” asked Bessie.“He is very inconstant. It won’t do to depend on him.”“Ah,” said Bessie, “I don’t recognize that description. We have

depended on him greatly—my sister and I—and he has never dis-appointed us.”

“He will disappoint you yet,” said the duchess.Bessie gave a little laugh, as if she were amused at the duchess’s

persistency. “I suppose it will depend on what we expect of him.”“The less you expect, the better,” Lord Lambeth’s mother declared.“Well,” said Bessie, “we expect nothing unreasonable.”The duchess for a moment was silent, though she appeared to

have more to say. “Lambeth says he has seen so much of you,” shepresently began.

“He has been to see us very often; he has been very kind,” saidBessie Alden.


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“I daresay you are used to that. I am told there is a great deal ofthat in America.”

“A great deal of kindness?” the young girl inquired, smiling.“Is that what you call it? I know you have different expressions.”“We certainly don’t always understand each other,” said Mrs.

Westgate, the termination of whose interview with Lady Pimlicoallowed her to give her attention to their elder visitor.

“I am speaking of the young men calling so much upon the youngladies,” the duchess explained.

“But surely in England,” said Mrs. Westgate, “the young ladiesdon’t call upon the young men?”

“Some of them do—almost!” Lady Pimlico declared. “What theyoung men are a great parti.”

“Bessie, you must make a note of that,” said Mrs. Westgate. “Mysister,” she added, “is a model traveler. She writes down all the curi-ous facts she hears in a little book she keeps for the purpose.”

The duchess was a little flushed; she looked all about the room,while her daughter turned to Bessie. “My brother told us you werewonderfully clever,” said Lady Pimlico.

“He should have said my sister,” Bessie answered—“when she sayssuch things as that.”

“Shall you be long at Branches?” the duchess asked, abruptly, ofthe young girl.

“Lord Lambeth has asked us for three days,” said Bessie.“I shall go,” the duchess declared, “and my daughter, too.”“That will be charming!” Bessie rejoined.“Delightful!” murmured Mrs. Westgate.“I shall expect to see a great deal of you,” the duchess continued.

“When I go to Branches I monopolize my son’s guests.”“They must be most happy,” said Mrs. Westgate very graciously.“I want immensely to see it—to see the castle,” said Bessie to the

duchess. “I have never seen one—in England, at least; and you know

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we have none in America.”“Ah, you are fond of castles?” inquired her Grace.“Immensely!” replied the young girl. “It has been the dream of

my life to live in one.”The duchess looked at her a moment, as if she hardly knew how

to take this assurance, which, from her Grace’s point of view, waseither very artless or very audacious. “Well,” she said, rising, “I willshow you Branches myself.” And upon this the two great ladiestook their departure.

“What did they mean by it?” asked Mrs. Westgate, when theywere gone.

“They meant to be polite,” said Bessie, “because we are going tomeet them.”

“It is too late to be polite,” Mrs. Westgate replied almost grimly.“They meant to overawe us by their fine manners and their gran-deur, and to make you lacher prise.”

“Lacher prise? What strange things you say!” murmured BessieAlden.

“They meant to snub us, so that we shouldn’t dare to go toBranches,” Mrs. Westgate continued.

“On the contrary,” said Bessie, “the duchess offered to show methe place herself.”

“Yes, you may depend upon it she won’t let you out of her sight.She will show you the place from morning till night.”

“You have a theory for everything,” said Bessie.“And you apparently have none for anything.”“I saw no attempt to ‘overawe’ us,” said the young girl. “Their

manners were not fine.”“They were not even good!” Mrs. Westgate declared.Bessie was silent a while, but in a few moments she observed that

she had a very good theory. “They came to look at me,” she said, asif this had been a very ingenious hypothesis. Mrs. Westgate did it


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justice; she greeted it with a smile and pronounced it most brilliant,while, in reality, she felt that the young girl’s skepticism, or her charity,or, as she had sometimes called it appropriately, her idealism, wasproof against irony. Bessie, however, remained meditative all therest of that day and well on into the morrow.

On the morrow, before lunch, Mrs. Westgate had occasion to go outfor an hour, and left her sister writing a letter. When she came back shemet Lord Lambeth at the door of the hotel, coming away. She thoughthe looked slightly embarrassed; he was certainly very grave. “I am sorryto have missed you. Won’t you come back?” she asked.

“No,” said the young man, “I can’t. I have seen your sister. I cannever come back.” Then he looked at her a moment and took herhand. “Goodbye, Mrs. Westgate,” he said. “You have been very kindto me.” And with what she thought a strange, sad look in his hand-some young face, he turned away.

She went in, and she found Bessie still writing her letter; that is,Mrs. Westgate perceived she was sitting at the table with the pen inher hand and not writing. “Lord Lambeth has been here,” said theelder lady at last.

Then Bessie got up and showed her a pale, serious face. She bentthis face upon her sister for some time, confessing silently and alittle pleading. “I told him,” she said at last, “that we could not go toBranches.”

Mrs. Westgate displayed just a spark of irritation. “He might havewaited,” she said with a smile, “till one had seen the castle.” Later,an hour afterward, she said, “Dear Bessie, I wish you might haveaccepted him.”

“I couldn’t,” said Bessie gently.“He is an excellent fellow,” said Mrs. Westgate.“I couldn’t,” Bessie repeated.“If it is only,” her sister added, “because those women will think

that they succeeded—that they paralyzed us!”

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Bessie Alden turned away; but presently she added, “They wereinteresting; I should have liked to see them again.”

“So should I!” cried Mrs. Westgate significantly.“And I should have liked to see the castle,” said Bessie. “But now

we must leave England,” she added.Her sister looked at her. “You will not wait to go to the National

Gallery?”“Not now.”“Nor to Canterbury Cathedral?”Bessie reflected a moment. “We can stop there on our way to

Paris,” she said.Lord Lambeth did not tell Percy Beaumont that the contingency

he was not prepared at all to like had occurred; but Percy Beau-mont, on hearing that the two ladies had left London, wonderedwith some intensity what had happened; wondered, that is, untilthe Duchess of Bayswater came a little to his assistance. The twoladies went to Paris, and Mrs. Westgate beguiled the journey to thatcity by repeating several times—”That’s what I regret; they will thinkthey petrified us.” But Bessie Alden seemed to regret nothing.


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The Jolly Cornerby

Henry James

CHAPTER I

“EVERYONE ASKS ME what I ‘think’ of everything,” said SpencerBrydon; “and I make answer as I can—begging or dodging the ques-tion, putting them off with any nonsense. It wouldn’t matter to anyof them really,” he went on, “for, even were it possible to meet inthat stand-and-deliver way so silly a demand on so big a subject, my‘thoughts’ would still be almost altogether about something thatconcerns only myself.” He was talking to Miss Staverton, with whomfor a couple of months now he had availed himself of every possibleoccasion to talk; this disposition and this resource, this comfort andsupport, as the situation in fact presented itself, having promptlyenough taken the first place in the considerable array of ratherunattenuated surprises attending his so strangely belated return toAmerica. Everything was somehow a surprise; and that might benatural when one had so long and so consistently neglected every-thing, taken pains to give surprises so much margin for play. He

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had given them more than thirty years—thirty-three, to be exact;and they now seemed to him to have organised their performancequite on the scale of that licence. He had been twenty-three onleaving New York—he was fifty-six to-day; unless indeed he were toreckon as he had sometimes, since his repatriation, found himselffeeling; in which case he would have lived longer than is often allot-ted to man. It would have taken a century, he repeatedly said tohimself, and said also to Alice Staverton, it would have taken a longerabsence and a more averted mind than those even of which he hadbeen guilty, to pile up the differences, the newnesses, the queernesses,above all the bignesses, for the better or the worse, that at presentassaulted his vision wherever he looked.

The great fact all the while, however, had been the incalculability;since he had supposed himself, from decade to decade, to be allow-ing, and in the most liberal and intelligent manner, for brilliancy ofchange. He actually saw that he had allowed for nothing; he missedwhat he would have been sure of finding, he found what he wouldnever have imagined. Proportions and values were upside-down;the ugly things he had expected, the ugly things of his far-awayyouth, when he had too promptly waked up to a sense of the ugly—these uncanny phenomena placed him rather, as it happened, un-der the charm; whereas the “swagger” things, the modern, the mon-strous, the famous things, those he had more particularly, like thou-sands of ingenuous enquirers every year, come over to see, were ex-actly his sources of dismay. They were as so many set traps for dis-pleasure, above all for reaction, of which his restless tread was con-stantly pressing the spring. It was interesting, doubtless, the wholeshow, but it would have been too disconcerting hadn’t a certainfiner truth saved the situation. He had distinctly not, in this steadierlight, come over all for the monstrosities; he had come, not only inthe last analysis but quite on the face of the act, under an impulsewith which they had nothing to do. He had come—putting the

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thing pompously—to look at his “property,” which he had thus fora third of a century not been within four thousand miles of; or,expressing it less sordidly, he had yielded to the humour of seeingagain his house on the jolly corner, as he usually, and quite fondly,described it -the one in which he had first seen the light, in whichvarious members of his family had lived and had died, in which theholidays of his overschooled boyhood had been passed and the fewsocial flowers of his chilled adolescence gathered, and which, alien-ated then for so long a period, had, through the successive deaths ofhis two brothers and the termination of old arrangements, comewholly into his hands. He was the owner of another, not quite so“good”—the jolly corner having been, from far back, superlativelyextended and consecrated; and the value of the pair represented hismain capital, with an income consisting, in these later years, of theirrespective rents which (thanks precisely to their original excellenttype) had never been depressingly low. He could live in “Europe,”as he had been in the habit of living, on the product of these flour-ishing New York leases, and all the better since, that of the secondstructure, the mere number in its long row, having within atwelvemonth fallen in, renovation at a high advance had provedbeautifully possible.

These were items of property indeed, but he had found himselfsince his arrival distinguishing more than ever between them. Thehouse within the street, two bristling blocks westward, was alreadyin course of reconstruction as a tall mass of flats; he had acceded,some time before, to overtures for this conversion—in which, nowthat it was going forward, it had been not the least of his astonish-ments to find himself able, on the spot, and though without a pre-vious ounce of such experience, to participate with a certain intelli-gence, almost with a certain authority. He had lived his life with hisback so turned to such concerns and his face addressed to those ofso different an order that he scarce knew what to make of this lively

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stir, in a compartment of his mind never yet penetrated, of a capac-ity for business and a sense for construction. These virtues, so com-mon all round him now, had been dormant in his own organism—where it might be said of them perhaps that they had slept the sleepof the just. At present, in the splendid autumn weather—the au-tumn at least was a pure boon in the terrible place—he loafed abouthis “work” undeterred, secretly agitated; not in the least “minding”that the whole proposition, as they said, was vulgar and sordid, andready to climb ladders, to walk the plank, to handle materials andlook wise about them, to ask questions, in fine, and challenge ex-planations and really “go into” figures.

It amused, it verily quite charmed him; and, by the same stroke, itamused, and even more, Alice Staverton, though perhaps charmingher perceptibly less. She wasn’t, however, going to be better-off forit, as he was—and so astonishingly much: nothing was now likely,he knew, ever to make her better-off than she found herself, in theafternoon of life, as the delicately frugal possessor and tenant of thesmall house in Irving Place to which she had subtly managed tocling through her almost unbroken New York career. If he knew theway to it now better than to any other address among the dreadfulmultiplied numberings which seemed to him to reduce the wholeplace to some vast ledger-page, overgrown, fantastic, of ruled andcriss-crossed lines and figures—if he had formed, for his consola-tion, that habit, it was really not a little because of the charm of hishaving encountered and recognised, in the vast wilderness of thewholesale, breaking through the mere gross generalisation of wealthand force and success, a small still scene where items and shades, alldelicate things, kept the sharpness of the notes of a high voice per-fectly trained, and where economy hung about like the scent of agarden. His old friend lived with one maid and herself dusted herrelics and trimmed her lamps and polished her silver; she stood oft,in the awful modern crush, when she could, but she sallied forth

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and did battle when the challenge was really to “spirit,” the spiritshe after all confessed to, proudly and a little shyly, as to that of thebetter time, that of their common, their quite far-away and antedi-luvian social period and order. She made use of the street-cars whenneed be, the terrible things that people scrambled for as the panic-stricken at sea scramble for the boats; she affronted, inscrutably,under stress, all the public concussions and ordeals; and yet, withthat slim mystifying grace of her appearance, which defied you tosay if she were a fair young woman who looked older through trouble,or a fine smooth older one who looked young through successfulindifference with her precious reference, above all, to memories andhistories into which he could enter, she was as exquisite for him assome pale pressed flower (a rarity to begin with), and, failing othersweetnesses, she was a sufficient reward of his effort. They had com-munities of knowledge, “their” knowledge (this discriminating pos-sessive was always on her lips) of presences of the other age, pres-ences all overlaid, in his case, by the experience of a man and thefreedom of a wanderer, overlaid by pleasure, by infidelity, by pas-sages of life that were strange and dim to her, just by “Europe” inshort, but still unobscured, still exposed and cherished, under thatpious visitation of the spirit from which she had never been di-verted.

She had come with him one day to see how his “apartment-house”was rising; he had helped her over gaps and explained to her plans,and while they were there had happened to have, before her, a briefbut lively discussion with the man in charge, the representative ofthe building firm that had undertaken his work. He had found him-self quite “standing up” to this personage over a failure on the latter’spart to observe some detail of one of their noted conditions, andhad so lucidly argued his case that, besides ever so prettily flushing,at the time, for sympathy in his triumph, she had afterwards said tohim (though to a slightly greater effect of irony) that he had clearly

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for too many years neglected a real gift. If he had but stayed athome he would have anticipated the inventor of the sky-scraper. Ifhe had but stayed at home he would have discovered his genius intime really to start some new variety of awful architectural hare andrun it till it burrowed in a gold mine. He was to remember thesewords, while the weeks elapsed, for the small silver ring they hadsounded over the queerest and deepest of his own lately most dis-guised and most muffled vibrations.

It had begun to be present to him after the first fortnight, it hadbroken out with the oddest abruptness, this particular wanton won-derment: it met him there—and this was the image under which hehimself judged the matter, or at least, not a little, thrilled and flushedwith it—very much as he might have been met by some strangefigure, some unexpected occupant, at a turn of one of the dim pas-sages of an empty house. The quaint analogy quite hauntingly re-mained with him, when he didn’t indeed rather improve it by a stillintenser form: that of his opening a door behind which he wouldhave made sure of finding nothing, a door into a room shutteredand void, and yet so coming, with a great suppressed start, on somequite erect confronting presence, something planted in the middleof the place and facing him through the dusk. After that visit to thehouse in construction he walked with his companion to see theother and always so much the better one, which in the eastwarddirection formed one of the corners,—the “jolly” one precisely, ofthe street now so generally dishonoured and disfigured in its west-ward reaches, and of the comparatively conservative Avenue. TheAvenue still had pretensions, as Miss Staverton said, to decency; theold people had mostly gone, the old names were unknown, andhere and there an old association seemed to stray, all vaguely, likesome very aged person, out too late, whom you might meet and feelthe impulse to watch or follow, in kindness, for safe restoration toshelter.

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They went in together, our friends; he admitted himself with hiskey, as he kept no one there, he explained, preferring, for his rea-sons, to leave the place empty, under a simple arrangement with agood woman living in the neighbourhood and who came for a dailyhour to open windows and dust and sweep. Spencer Brydon had hisreasons and was growingly aware of them; they seemed to him bet-ter each time he was there, though he didn’t name them all to hiscompanion, any more than he told her as yet how often, how quiteabsurdly often, he himself came. He only let her see for the present,while they walked through the great blank rooms, that absolute va-cancy reigned and that, from top to bottom, there was nothing butMrs. Muldoon’s broomstick, in a corner, to tempt the burglar. Mrs.Muldoon was then on the premises, and she loquaciously attendedthe visitors, preceding them from room to room and pushing backshutters and throwing up sashes—all to show them, as she remarked,how little there was to see. There was little indeed to see in the greatgaunt shell where the main dispositions and the general apportion-ment of space, the style of an age of ampler allowances, had never-theless for its master their honest pleading message, affecting him assome good old servant’s, some lifelong retainer’s appeal for a charac-ter, or even for a retiring-pension; yet it was also a remark of Mrs.Muldoon’s that, glad as she was to oblige him by her noonday round,there was a request she greatly hoped he would never make of her. Ifhe should wish her for any reason to come in after dark she wouldjust tell him, if he “plased,” that he must ask it of somebody else.

The fact that there was nothing to see didn’t militate for the wor-thy woman against what one might see, and she put it frankly toMiss Staverton that no lady could be expected to like, could she?“craping up to thim top storeys in the ayvil hours.” The gas and theelectric light were off the house, and she fairly evoked a gruesomevision of her march through the great grey rooms—so many of themas there were too!—with her glimmering taper. Miss Staverton met

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her honest glare with a smile and the profession that she herselfcertainly would recoil from such an adventure. Spencer Brydonmeanwhile held his peace—for the moment; the question of the“evil” hours in his old home had already become too grave for him.He had begun some time since to “crape,” and he knew just why apacket of candles addressed to that pursuit had been stowed by hisown hand, three weeks before, at the back of a drawer of the fineold sideboard that occupied, as a “fixture,” the deep recess in thedining-room. Just now he laughed at his companions -quickly how-ever changing the subject; for the reason that, in the first place, hislaugh struck him even at that moment as starting the odd echo, theconscious human resonance (he scarce knew how to qualify it) thatsounds made while he was there alone sent back to his ear or hisfancy; and that, in the second, he imagined Alice Staverton for theinstant on the point of asking him, with a divination, if he ever soprowled. There were divinations he was unprepared for, and he hadat all events averted enquiry by the time Mrs. Muldoon had leftthem, passing on to other parts.

There was happily enough to say, on so consecrated a spot, thatcould be said freely and fairly; so that a whole train of declarationswas precipitated by his friend’s having herself broken out, after ayearning look round: “But I hope you don’t mean they want you topull this to pieces!” His answer came, promptly, with his re-awak-ened wrath: it was of course exactly what they wanted, and whatthey were “at” him for, daily, with the iteration of people who couldn’tfor their life understand a man’s liability to decent feelings. He hadfound the place, just as it stood and beyond what he could express,an interest and a joy. There were values other than the beastly rent-values, and in short, in short -! But it was thus Miss Staverton tookhim up. “In short you’re to make so good a thing of your sky-scraperthat, living in luxury on those ill-gotten gains, you can afford for awhile to be sentimental here!” Her smile had for him, with the words,

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the particular mild irony with which he found half her talk suf-fused; an irony without bitterness and that came, exactly, from herhaving so much imagination—not, like the cheap sarcasms withwhich one heard most people, about the world of “society,” bid forthe reputation of cleverness, from nobody’s really having any. It wasagreeable to him at this very moment to be sure that when he hadanswered, after a brief demur, “Well, yes; so, precisely, you may putit!” her imagination would still do him justice. He explained thateven if never a dollar were to come to him from the other house hewould nevertheless cherish this one; and he dwelt, further, whilethey lingered and wandered, on the fact of the stupefaction he wasalready exciting, the positive mystification he felt himself create.

He spoke of the value of all he read into it, into the mere sight ofthe walls, mere shapes of the rooms, mere sound of the floors, merefeel, in his hand, of the old silver-plated knobs of the several ma-hogany doors, which suggested the pressure of the palms of thedead the seventy years of the past in fine that these things repre-sented, the annals of nearly three generations, counting hisgrandfather’s, the one that had ended there, and the impalpableashes of his long-extinct youth, afloat in the very air like micro-scopic motes. She listened to everything; she was a woman whoanswered intimately but who utterly didn’t chatter. She scatteredabroad therefore no cloud of words; she could assent, she couldagree, above all she could encourage, without doing that. Only atthe last she went a little further than he had done himself. “Andthen how do you know? You may still, after all, want to live here.” Itrather indeed pulled him up, for it wasn’t what he had been think-ing, at least in her sense of the words, “You mean I may decide tostay on for the sake of it?”

“Well, with such a home—!” But, quite beautifully, she had toomuch tact to dot so monstrous an I, and it was precisely an illustra-tion of the way she didn’t rattle. How could any one—of any wit—

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insist on any one else’s “wanting” to live in New York?“Oh,” he said, “I might have lived here (since I had my opportu-

nity early in life); I might have put in here all these years. Theneverything would have been different enough—and, I dare say,‘funny’ enough. But that’s another matter. And then the beauty ofit—I mean of my perversity, of my refusal to agree to a ‘deal’ -is justin the total absence of a reason. Don’t you see that if I had a reasonabout the matter at all it would have to be the other way, and wouldthen be inevitably a reason of dollars? There are no reasons here butof dollars. Let us therefore have none whatever—not the ghost ofone.”

They were back in the hall then for departure, but from wherethey stood the vista was large, through an open door, into the greatsquare main saloon, with its almost antique felicity of brave spacesbetween windows. Her eyes came back from that reach and met hisown a moment. “Are you very sure the ‘ghost’ of one doesn’t, muchrather, serve—?”

He had a positive sense of turning pale. But it was as near as theywere then to come. For he made answer, he believed, between aglare and a grin: “Oh ghosts—of course the place must swarm withthem! I should be ashamed of it if it didn’t. Poor Mrs. Muldoon’sright, and it’s why I haven’t asked her to do more than look in.”

Miss Staverton’s gaze again lost itself, and things she didn’t utter,it was clear, came and went in her mind. She might even for theminute, off there in the fine room, have imagined some elementdimly gathering. Simplified like the death-mask of a handsome face,it perhaps produced for her just then an effect akin to the stir of anexpression in the “set” commemorative plaster. Yet whatever her im-pression may have been she produced instead a vague platitude.“Well, if it were only furnished and lived in—!”

She appeared to imply that in case of its being still furnished hemight have been a little less opposed to the idea of a return. But she

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passed straight into the vestibule, as if to leave her words behindher, and the next moment he had opened the house-door and wasstanding with her on the steps. He closed the door and, while he re-pocketed his key, looking up and down, they took in the compara-tively harsh actuality of the Avenue, which reminded him of theassault of the outer light of the Desert on the traveller emergingfrom an Egyptian tomb. But he risked before they stepped into thestreet his gathered answer to her speech. “For me it is lived in. Forme it is furnished.” At which it was easy for her to sigh “Ah yes!” allvaguely and discreetly; since his parents and his favourite sister, tosay nothing of other kin, in numbers, had run their course and mettheir end there. That represented, within the walls, ineffaceable life.

It was a few days after this that, during an hour passed with heragain, he had expressed his impatience of the too flattering curios-ity—among the people he met—about his appreciation of New York.He had arrived at none at all that was socially producible, and as forthat matter of his “thinking” (thinking the better or the worse ofanything there) he was wholly taken up with one subject of thought.It was mere vain egoism, and it was moreover, if she liked, a morbidobsession. He found all things come back to the question of whathe personally might have been, how he might have led his life and“turned out,” if he had not so, at the outset, given it up. And con-fessing for the first time to the intensity within him of this absurdspeculation—which but proved also, no doubt, the habit of tooselfishly thinking—he affirmed the impotence there of any othersource of interest, any other native appeal. “What would it havemade of me, what would it have made of me? I keep for ever won-dering, all idiotically; as if I could possibly know! I see what it hasmade of dozens of others, those I meet, and it positively aches withinme, to the point of exasperation, that it would have made some-thing of me as well. Only I can’t make out what, and the worry of it,the small rage of curiosity never to be satisfied, brings back what I

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remember to have felt, once or twice, after judging best, for reasons,to burn some important letter unopened. I’ve been sorry, I’ve hatedit—I’ve never known what was in the letter. You may, of course, sayit’s a trifle—!”

“I don’t say it’s a trifle,” Miss Staverton gravely interrupted.She was seated by her fire, and before her, on his feet and restless,

he turned to and fro between this intensity of his idea and a fitfuland unseeing inspection, through his single eye-glass, of the dearlittle old objects on her chimney-piece. Her interruption made himfor an instant look at her harder. “I shouldn’t care if you did!” helaughed, however; “and it’s only a figure, at any rate, for the way Inow feel. Not to have followed my perverse young course—and al-most in the teeth of my father’s curse, as I may say; not to have keptit up, so, ‘over there,’ from that day to this, without a doubt or apang; not, above all, to have liked it, to have loved it, so much,loved it, no doubt, with such an abysmal conceit of my own prefer-ence; some variation from that, I say, must have produced somedifferent effect for my life and for my ‘form.’ I should have stuckhere—if it had been possible; and I was too young, at twenty-three,to judge, pour deux sous, whether it were possible. If I had waited Imight have seen it was, and then I might have been, by staying here,something nearer to one of these types who have been hammered sohard and made so keen by their conditions. It isn’t that I admirethem so much—the question of any charm in them, or of any charm,beyond that of the rank money-passion, exerted by their conditionsFOR them, has nothing to do with the matter: it’s only a questionof what fantastic, yet perfectly possible, development of my ownnature I mayn’t have missed. It comes over me that I had then astrange alter ego deep down somewhere within me, as the full-blownflower is in the small tight bud, and that I just took the course, I justtransferred him to the climate, that blighted him for once and forever.”

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“And you wonder about the flower,” Miss Staverton said. “So doI, if you want to know; and so I’ve been wondering these severalweeks. I believe in the flower,” she continued, “I feel it would havebeen quite splendid, quite huge and monstrous.”

“Monstrous above all!” her visitor echoed; “and I imagine, by thesame stroke, quite hideous and offensive.”

“You don’t believe that,” she returned; “if you did you wouldn’twonder. You’d know, and that would be enough for you. What youfeel—and what I feel for you—is that you’d have had power.”

“You’d have liked me that way?” he asked.She barely hung fire. “How should I not have liked you?”“I see. You’d have liked me, have preferred me, a billionaire!”“How should I not have liked you?” she simply again asked.He stood before her still—her question kept him motionless. He

took it in, so much there was of it; and indeed his not otherwisemeeting it testified to that. “I know at least what I am,” he simplywent on; “the other side of the medal’s clear enough. I’ve not beenedifying—I believe I’m thought in a hundred quarters to have beenbarely decent. I’ve followed strange paths and worshipped strangegods; it must have come to you again and again -in fact you’ve ad-mitted to me as much—that I was leading, at any time these thirtyyears, a selfish frivolous scandalous life. And you see what it hasmade of me.”

She just waited, smiling at him. “You see what it has made of me.”“Oh you’re a person whom nothing can have altered. You were

born to be what you are, anywhere, anyway: you’ve the perfectionnothing else could have blighted. And don’t you see how, withoutmy exile, I shouldn’t have been waiting till now—?” But he pulledup for the strange pang.

“The great thing to see,” she presently said, “seems to me to bethat it has spoiled nothing. It hasn’t spoiled your being here at last.It hasn’t spoiled this. It hasn’t spoiled your speaking—“ She also

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however faltered.He wondered at everything her controlled emotion might mean.

“Do you believe then—too dreadfully!—that I am as good as I mightever have been?”

“Oh no! Far from it!” With which she got up from her chair andwas nearer to him. “But I don’t care,” she smiled.

“You mean I’m good enough?”She considered a little. “Will you believe it if I say so? I mean will

you let that settle your question for you?” And then as if making outin his face that he drew back from this, that he had some idea which,however absurd, he couldn’t yet bargain away: “Oh you don’t careeither—but very differently: you don’t care for anything but your-self.”

Spencer Brydon recognised it—it was in fact what he had abso-lutely professed. Yet he importantly qualified. “HE isn’t myself. He’sthe just so totally other person. But I do want to see him,” he added.“And I can. And I shall.”

Their eyes met for a minute while he guessed from something inhers that she divined his strange sense. But neither of them other-wise expressed it, and her apparent understanding, with no protest-ing shock, no easy derision, touched him more deeply than any-thing yet, constituting for his stifled perversity, on the spot, an ele-ment that was like breatheable air. What she said however was un-expected. “Well, I’ve seen him.”

“You—?”“I’ve seen him in a dream.”“Oh a ‘dream’—!” It let him down.“But twice over,” she continued. “I saw him as I see you now.”“You’ve dreamed the same dream—?”“Twice over,” she repeated. “The very same.”This did somehow a little speak to him, as it also gratified him.

“You dream about me at that rate?”

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“Ah about him!” she smiled.His eyes again sounded her. “Then you know all about him.”

And as she said nothing more: “What’s the wretch like?”She hesitated, and it was as if he were pressing her so hard that,

resisting for reasons of her own, she had to turn away. “I’ll tell yousome other time!”

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CHAPTER II

IT WAS AFTER THIS that there was most of a virtue for him, most of acultivated charm, most of a preposterous secret thrill, in the particu-lar form of surrender to his obsession and of address to what he moreand more believed to be his privilege. It was what in these weeks hewas living for—since he really felt life to begin but after Mrs. Muldoonhad retired from the scene and, visiting the ample house from attic tocellar, making sure he was alone, he knew himself in safe possessionand, as he tacitly expressed it, let himself go. He sometimes cametwice in the twenty-four hours; the moments he liked best were thoseof gathering dusk, of the short autumn twilight; this was the time ofwhich, again and again, he found himself hoping most. Then he could,as seemed to him, most intimately wander and wait, linger and listen,feel his fine attention, never in his life before so fine, on the pulse ofthe great vague place: he preferred the lampless hour and only wishedhe might have prolonged each day the deep crepuscular spell. Later—rarely much before midnight, but then for a considerable vigil -hewatched with his glimmering light; moving slowly, holding it high,playing it far, rejoicing above all, as much as he might, in open vistas,reaches of communication between rooms and by passages; the longstraight chance or show, as he would have called it, for the revelationhe pretended to invite. It was a practice he found he could perfectly“work” without exciting remark; no one was in the least the wiser forit; even Alice Staverton, who was moreover a well of discretion, didn’tquite fully imagine.

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He let himself in and let himself out with the assurance of calmproprietorship; and accident so far favoured him that, if a fat Av-enue “officer” had happened on occasion to see him entering ateleven-thirty, he had never yet, to the best of his belief, been noticedas emerging at two. He walked there on the crisp November nights,arrived regularly at the evening’s end; it was as easy to do this afterdining out as to take his way to a club or to his hotel. When he lefthis club, if he hadn’t been dining out, it was ostensibly to go to hishotel; and when he left his hotel, if he had spent a part of the eveningthere, it was ostensibly to go to his club. Everything was easy infine; everything conspired and promoted: there was truly even inthe strain of his experience something that glossed over, somethingthat salved and simplified, all the rest of consciousness. He circu-lated, talked, renewed, loosely and pleasantly, old relations—metindeed, so far as he could, new expectations and seemed to makeout on the whole that in spite of the career, of such different con-tacts, which he had spoken of to Miss Staverton as ministering solittle, for those who might have watched it, to edification, he waspositively rather liked than not. He was a dim secondary social suc-cess—and all with people who had truly not an idea of him. It wasall mere surface sound, this murmur of their welcome, this poppingof their corks—just as his gestures of response were the extravagantshadows, emphatic in proportion as they meant little, of some gameof ombres chnoises. He projected himself all day, in thought, straightover the bristling line of hard unconscious heads and into the other,the real, the waiting life; the life that, as soon as he had heard be-hind him the click of his great house-door, began for him, on thejolly corner, as beguilingly as the slow opening bars of some richmusic follows the tap of the conductor’s wand.

He always caught the first effect of the steel point of his stick onthe old marble of the hall pavement, large black-and-white squaresthat he remembered as the admiration of his childhood and that

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had then made in him, as he now saw, for the growth of an earlyconception of style. This effect was the dim reverberating tinkle asof some far-off bell hung who should say where?—in the depths ofthe house, of the past, of that mystical other world that might haveflourished for him had he not, for weal or woe, abandoned it. Onthis impression he did ever the same thing; he put his stick noise-lessly away in a corner—feeling the place once more in the likenessof some great glass bowl, all precious concave crystal, set delicatelyhumming by the play of a moist finger round its edge. The concavecrystal held, as it were, this mystical other world, and the indescrib-ably fine murmur of its rim was the sigh there, the scarce audiblepathetic wail to his strained ear, of all the old baffled forsworn pos-sibilities. What he did therefore by this appeal of his hushed pres-ence was to wake them into such measure of ghostly life as theymight still enjoy. They were shy, all but unappeasably shy, but theyweren’t really sinister; at least they weren’t as he had hitherto feltthem -before they had taken the Form he so yearned to make themtake, the Form he at moments saw himself in the light of fairlyhunting on tiptoe, the points of his evening shoes, from room toroom and from storey to storey.

That was the essence of his vision—which was all rank folly, ifone would, while he was out of the house and otherwise occupied,but which took on the last verisimilitude as soon as he was placedand posted. He knew what he meant and what he wanted; it was asclear as the figure on a cheque presented in demand for cash. Hisalter ego “walked”—that was the note of his image of him, while hisimage of his motive for his own odd pastime was the desire to way-lay him and meet him. He roamed, slowly, warily, but all restlessly,he himself did—Mrs. Muldoon had been right, absolutely, with herfigure of their “craping”; and the presence he watched for wouldroam restlessly too. But it would be as cautious and as shifty; theconviction of its probable, in fact its already quite sensible, quite

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audible evasion of pursuit grew for him from night to night, layingon him finally a rigour to which nothing in his life had been com-parable. It had been the theory of many superficially-judging per-sons, he knew, that he was wasting that life in a surrender to sensa-tions, but he had tasted of no pleasure so fine as his actual tension,had been introduced to no sport that demanded at once the pa-tience and the nerve of this stalking of a creature more subtle, yet atbay perhaps more formidable, than any beast of the forest. The terms,the comparisons, the very practices of the chase positively came againinto play; there were even moments when passages of his occasionalexperience as a sportsman, stirred memories, from his younger time,of moor and mountain and desert, revived for him—and to theincrease of his keenness—by the tremendous force of analogy. Hefound himself at moments—once he had placed his single light onsome mantel-shelf or in some recess—stepping back into shelter orshade, effacing himself behind a door or in an embrasure, as he hadsought of old the vantage of rock and tree; he found himself hold-ing his breath and living in the joy of the instant, the supreme sus-pense created by big game alone.

He wasn’t afraid (though putting himself the question as he be-lieved gentlemen on Bengal tiger-shoots or in close quarters withthe great bear of the Rockies had been known to confess to havingput it); and this indeed—since here at least he might be frank! -because of the impression, so intimate and so strange, that he him-self produced as yet a dread, produced certainly a strain, beyond theliveliest he was likely to feel. They fell for him into categories, theyfairly became familiar, the signs, for his own perception, of the alarmhis presence and his vigilance created; though leaving him always toremark, portentously, on his probably having formed a relation, hisprobably enjoying a consciousness, unique in the experience of man.People enough, first and last, had been in terror of apparitions, butwho had ever before so turned the tables and become himself, in the

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apparitional world, an incalculable terror? He might have foundthis sublime had he quite dared to think of it; but he didn’t toomuch insist, truly, on that side of his privilege. With habit and rep-etition he gained to an extraordinary degree the power to penetratethe dusk of distances and the darkness of corners, to resolve backinto their innocence the treacheries of uncertain light, the evil-look-ing forms taken in the gloom by mere shadows, by accidents of theair, by shifting effects of perspective; putting down his dim lumi-nary he could still wander on without it, pass into other rooms and,only knowing it was there behind him in case of need, see his wayabout, visually project for his purpose a comparative clearness. Itmade him feel, this acquired faculty, like some monstrous stealthycat; he wondered if he would have glared at these moments withlarge shining yellow eyes, and what it mightn’t verily be, for thepoor hard-pressed alter ego, to be confronted with such a type.

He liked however the open shutters; he opened everywhere thoseMrs. Muldoon had closed, closing them as carefully afterwards, sothat she shouldn’t notice: he liked—oh this he did like, and aboveall in the upper rooms!—the sense of the hard silver of the autumnstars through the window-panes, and scarcely less the flare of thestreet-lamps below, the white electric lustre which it would havetaken curtains to keep out. This was human actual social; this wasof the world he had lived in, and he was more at his ease certainlyfor the countenance, coldly general and impersonal, that all the whileand in spite of his detachment it seemed to give him. He had sup-port of course mostly in the rooms at the wide front and the pro-longed side; it failed him considerably in the central shades and theparts at the back. But if he sometimes, on his rounds, was glad ofhis optical reach, so none the less often the rear of the house af-fected him as the very jungle of his prey. The place was there moresubdivided; a large “extension” in particular, where small rooms forservants had been multiplied, abounded in nooks and corners, in

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closets and passages, in the ramifications especially of an ample backstaircase over which he leaned, many a time, to look far down—notdeterred from his gravity even while aware that he might, for a spec-tator, have figured some solemn simpleton playing at hide-and-seek.Outside in fact he might himself make that ironic rapprochement;but within the walls, and in spite of the clear windows, his consis-tency was proof against the cynical light of New York.

It had belonged to that idea of the exasperated consciousness ofhis victim to become a real test for him; since he had quite put it tohimself from the first that, oh distinctly! he could “cultivate” hiswhole perception. He had felt it as above all open to cultivation—which indeed was but another name for his manner of spending histime. He was bringing it on, bringing it to perfection, by practice;in consequence of which it had grown so fine that he was now awareof impressions, attestations of his general postulate, that couldn’thave broken upon him at once. This was the case more specificallywith a phenomenon at last quite frequent for him in the upper rooms,the recognition—absolutely unmistakeable, and by a turn datingfrom a particular hour, his resumption of his campaign after a dip-lomatic drop, a calculated absence of three nights—of his beingdefinitely followed, tracked at a distance carefully taken and to theexpress end that he should the less confidently, less arrogantly, ap-pear to himself merely to pursue. It worried, it finally quite brokehim up, for it proved, of all the conceivable impressions, the oneleast suited to his book. He was kept in sight while remaining him-self—as regards the essence of his position—sightless, and his onlyrecourse then was in abrupt turns, rapid recoveries of ground. Hewheeled about, retracing his steps, as if he might so catch in his faceat least the stirred air of some other quick revolution. It was indeedtrue that his fully dislocalised thought of these manoeuvres recalledto him Pantaloon, at the Christmas farce, buffeted and tricked frombehind by ubiquitous Harlequin; but it left intact the influence of

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the conditions themselves each time he was re-exposed to them, sothat in fact this association, had he suffered it to become constant,would on a certain side have but ministered to his intenser gravity.He had made, as I have said, to create on the premises the baselesssense of a reprieve, his three absences; and the result of the third wasto confirm the after-effect of the second.

On his return that night—the night succeeding his last intermis-sion—he stood in the hall and looked up the staircase with a cer-tainty more intimate than any he had yet known. “He’s there, at thetop, and waiting—not, as in general, falling back for disappearance.He’s holding his ground, and it’s the first time—which is a proof,isn’t it? that something has happened for him.” So Brydon arguedwith his hand on the banister and his foot on the lowest stair; inwhich position he felt as never before the air chilled by his logic. Hehimself turned cold in it, for he seemed of a sudden to know whatnow was involved. “Harder pressed?—yes, he takes it in, with itsthus making clear to him that I’ve come, as they say, ‘to stay.’ Hefinally doesn’t like and can’t bear it, in the sense, I mean, that hiswrath, his menaced interest, now balances with his dread. I’ve huntedhim till he has ‘turned’; that, up there, is what has happened—he’sthe fanged or the antlered animal brought at last to bay.” Therecame to him, as I say—but determined by an influence beyond mynotation!—the acuteness of this certainty; under which howeverthe next moment he had broken into a sweat that he would as littlehave consented to attribute to fear as he would have dared immedi-ately to act upon it for enterprise. It marked none the less a prodi-gious thrill, a thrill that represented sudden dismay, no doubt, butalso represented, and with the selfsame throb, the strangest, the mostjoyous, possibly the next minute almost the proudest, duplicationof consciousness.

“He has been dodging, retreating, hiding, but now, worked up toanger, he’ll fight!”—this intense impression made a single mouth-

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ful, as it were, of terror and applause. But what was wondrous wasthat the applause, for the felt fact, was so eager, since, if it was hisother self he was running to earth, this ineffable identity was thus inthe last resort not unworthy of him. It bristled there—somewherenear at hand, however unseen still -as the hunted thing, even as thetrodden worm of the adage must at last bristle; and Brydon at thisinstant tasted probably of a sensation more complex than had everbefore found itself consistent with sanity. It was as if it would haveshamed him that a character so associated with his own should tri-umphantly succeed in just skulking, should to the end not risk theopen; so that the drop of this danger was, on the spot, a great lift ofthe whole situation. Yet with another rare shift of the same subtletyhe was already trying to measure by how much more he himselfmight now be in peril of fear; so rejoicing that he could, in anotherform, actively inspire that fear, and simultaneously quaking for theform in which he might passively know it.

The apprehension of knowing it must after a little have grown inhim, and the strangest moment of his adventure perhaps, the mostmemorable or really most interesting, afterwards, of his crisis, wasthe lapse of certain instants of concentrated conscious combat, thesense of a need to hold on to something, even after the manner of aman slipping and slipping on some awful incline; the vivid impulse,above all, to move, to act, to charge, somehow and upon some-thing—to show himself, in a word, that he wasn’t afraid. The stateof “holding on” was thus the state to which he was momentarilyreduced; if there had been anything, in the great vacancy, to seize,he would presently have been aware of having clutched it as he mightunder a shock at home have clutched the nearest chair-back. Hehad been surprised at any rate—of this he was aware—into some-thing unprecedented since his original appropriation of the place;he had closed his eyes, held them tight, for a long minute, as withthat instinct of dismay and that terror of vision. When he opened

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them the room, the other contiguous rooms, extraordinarily, seemedlighter—so light, almost, that at first he took the change for day. Hestood firm, however that might be, just where he had paused; hisresistance had helped him—it was as if there were something hehad tided over. He knew after a little what this was—it had been inthe imminent danger of flight. He had stiffened his will againstgoing; without this he would have made for the stairs, and it seemedto him that, still with his eyes closed, he would have descendedthem, would have known how, straight and swiftly, to the bottom.

Well, as he had held out, here he was—still at the top, among themore intricate upper rooms and with the gauntlet of the others, ofall the rest of the house, still to run when it should be his time to go.He would go at his time—only at his time: didn’t he go every nightvery much at the same hour? He took out his watch -there was lightfor that: it was scarcely a quarter past one, and he had never with-drawn so soon. He reached his lodgings for the most part at two—with his walk of a quarter of an hour. He would wait for the lastquarter—he wouldn’t stir till then; and he kept his watch there withhis eyes on it, reflecting while he held it that this deliberate wait, await with an effort, which he recognised, would serve perfectly forthe attestation he desired to make. It would prove his courage—unless indeed the latter might most be proved by his budging at lastfrom his place. What he mainly felt now was that, since he hadn’toriginally scuttled, he had his dignities—which had never in his lifeseemed so many—all to preserve and to carry aloft. This was beforehim in truth as a physical image, an image almost worthy of an ageof greater romance. That remark indeed glimmered for him only toglow the next instant with a finer light; since what age of romance,after all, could have matched either the state of his mind or, “objec-tively,” as they said, the wonder of his situation? The only differencewould have been that, brandishing his dignities over his head as in aparchment scroll, he might then—that is in the heroic time—have

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proceeded downstairs with a drawn sword in his other grasp.At present, really, the light he had set down on the mantel of the

next room would have to figure his sword; which utensil, in thecourse of a minute, he had taken the requisite number of steps topossess himself of. The door between the rooms was open, and fromthe second another door opened to a third. These rooms, as he re-membered, gave all three upon a common corridor as well, but therewas a fourth, beyond them, without issue save through the preced-ing. To have moved, to have heard his step again, was appreciably ahelp; though even in recognising this he lingered once more a littleby the chimney-piece on which his light had rested. When he nextmoved, just hesitating where to turn, he found himself consideringa circumstance that, after his first and comparatively vague appre-hension of it, produced in him the start that often attends somepang of recollection, the violent shock of having ceased happily toforget. He had come into sight of the door in which the brief chainof communication ended and which he now surveyed from the nearerthreshold, the one not directly facing it. Placed at some distance tothe left of this point, it would have admitted him to the last room ofthe four, the room without other approach or egress, had it not, tohis intimate conviction, been closed since his former visitation, thematter probably of a quarter of an hour before. He stared with allhis eyes at the wonder of the fact, arrested again where he stood andagain holding his breath while he sounded his sense. Surely it hadbeen subsequently closed—that is it had been on his previous pas-sage indubitably open!

He took it full in the face that something had happened between-that he couldn’t have noticed before (by which he meant on hisoriginal tour of all the rooms that evening) that such a barrier hadexceptionally presented itself. He had indeed since that momentundergone an agitation so extraordinary that it might have muddledfor him any earlier view; and he tried to convince himself that he

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might perhaps then have gone into the room and, inadvertently,automatically, on coming out, have drawn the door after him. Thedifficulty was that this exactly was what he never did; it was againsthis whole policy, as he might have said, the essence of which was tokeep vistas clear. He had them from the first, as he was well aware,quite on the brain: the strange apparition, at the far end of one ofthem, of his baffled “prey” (which had become by so sharp an ironyso little the term now to apply!) was the form of success his imagina-tion had most cherished, projecting into it always a refinement ofbeauty. He had known fifty times the start of perception that hadafterwards dropped; had fifty times gasped to himself. “There!” un-der some fond brief hallucination. The house, as the case stood, ad-mirably lent itself; he might wonder at the taste, the native architec-ture of the particular time, which could rejoice so in the multiplica-tion of doors—the opposite extreme to the modern, the actual almostcomplete proscription of them; but it had fairly contributed to pro-voke this obsession of the presence encountered telescopically, as hemight say, focused and studied in diminishing perspective and as by arest for the elbow.

It was with these considerations that his present attention wascharged—they perfectly availed to make what he saw portentous.He couldn’t, by any lapse, have blocked that aperture; and if he hadn’t,if it was unthinkable, why what else was clear but that there hadbeen another agent? Another agent?—he had been catching, as hefelt, a moment back, the very breath of him; but when had he beenso close as in this simple, this logical, this completely personal act?It was so logical, that is, that one might have taken it for personal;yet for what did Brydon take it, he asked himself, while, softly pant-ing, he felt his eyes almost leave their sockets. Ah this time at lastthey were, the two, the opposed projections of him, in presence;and this time, as much as one would, the question of danger loomed.With it rose, as not before, the question of courage—for what he

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knew the blank face of the door to say to him was “Show us howmuch you have!” It stared, it glared back at him with that challenge;it put to him the two alternatives: should he just push it open ornot? Oh to have this consciousness was to think—and to think,Brydon knew, as he stood there, was, with the lapsing moments,not to have acted! Not to have acted—that was the misery and thepang—was even still not to act; was in fact all to feel the thing inanother, in a new and terrible way. How long did he pause and howlong did he debate? There was presently nothing to measure it; forhis vibration had already changed—as just by the effect of its inten-sity. Shut up there, at bay, defiant, and with the prodigy of the thingpalpably proveably done, thus giving notice like some stark sign-board—under that accession of accent the situation itself had turned;and Brydon at last remarkably made up his mind on what it hadturned to.

It had turned altogether to a different admonition; to a supremehint, for him, of the value of Discretion! This slowly dawned, nodoubt—for it could take its time; so perfectly, on his threshold, hadhe been stayed, so little as yet had he either advanced or retreated. Itwas the strangest of all things that now when, by his taking ten stepsand applying his hand to a latch, or even his shoulder and his knee,if necessary, to a panel, all the hunger of his prime need might havebeen met, his high curiosity crowned, his unrest assuaged—it wasamazing, but it was also exquisite and rare, that insistence shouldhave, at a touch, quite dropped from him. Discretion—he jumpedat that; and yet not, verily, at such a pitch, because it saved his nervesor his skin, but because, much more valuably, it saved the situation.When I say he “jumped” at it I feel the consonance of this termwith the fact that—at the end indeed of I know not how long—hedid move again, he crossed straight to the door. He wouldn’t touchit—it seemed now that he might if he would: he would only justwait there a little, to show, to prove, that he wouldn’t. He had thus

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another station, close to the thin partition by which revelation wasdenied him; but with his eyes bent and his hands held off in a mereintensity of stillness. He listened as if there had been something tohear, but this attitude, while it lasted, was his own communication.“If you won’t then—good: I spare you and I give up. You affect meas by the appeal positively for pity: you convince me that for rea-sons rigid and sublime—what do I know?—we both of us shouldhave suffered. I respect them then, and, though moved and privi-leged as, I believe, it has never been given to man, I retire, I re-nounce—never, on my honour, to try again. So rest for ever—andlet me!”

That, for Brydon, was the deep sense of this last demonstration -solemn, measured, directed, as he felt it to be. He brought it to aclose, he turned away; and now verily he knew how deeply he hadbeen stirred. He retraced his steps, taking up his candle, burnt, heobserved, well-nigh to the socket, and marking again, lighten it ashe would, the distinctness of his footfall; after which, in a moment,he knew himself at the other side of the house. He did here what hehad not yet done at these hours—he opened half a casement, one ofthose in the front, and let in the air of the night; a thing he wouldhave taken at any time previous for a sharp rupture of his spell. Hisspell was broken now, and it didn’t matter—broken by his conces-sion and his surrender, which made it idle henceforth that he shouldever come back. The empty street—its other life so marked even bygreat lamp-lit vacancy—was within call, within touch; he stayedthere as to be in it again, high above it though he was still perched;he watched as for some comforting common fact, some vulgar hu-man note, the passage of a scavenger or a thief, some night-birdhowever base. He would have blessed that sign of life; he wouldhave welcomed positively the slow approach of his friend the po-liceman, whom he had hitherto only sought to avoid, and was notsure that if the patrol had come into sight he mightn’t have felt the

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impulse to get into relation with it, to hail it, on some pretext, fromhis fourth floor.

The pretext that wouldn’t have been too silly or too compromis-ing, the explanation that would have saved his dignity and kept hisname, in such a case, out of the papers, was not definite to him: hewas so occupied with the thought of recording his Discretion—asan effect of the vow he had just uttered to his intimate adversary—that the importance of this loomed large and something had over-taken all ironically his sense of proportion. If there had been a lad-der applied to the front of the house, even one of the vertiginousperpendiculars employed by painters and roofers and sometimesleft standing overnight, he would have managed somehow, astrideof the window-sill, to compass by outstretched leg and arm thatmode of descent. If there had been some such uncanny thing as hehad found in his room at hotels, a workable fire-escape in the formof notched cable or a canvas shoot, he would have availed himself ofit as a proof—well, of his present delicacy. He nursed that senti-ment, as the question stood, a little in vain, and even—at the end ofhe scarce knew, once more, how long—found it, as by the action onhis mind of the failure of response of the outer world, sinking backto vague anguish. It seemed to him he had waited an age for somestir of the great grim hush; the life of the town was itself under aspell—so unnaturally, up and down the whole prospect of knownand rather ugly objects, the blankness and the silence lasted. Hadthey ever, he asked himself, the hard-faced houses, which had be-gun to look livid in the dim dawn, had they ever spoken so little toany need of his spirit? Great builded voids, great crowded stillnessesput on, often, in the heart of cities, for the small hours, a sort ofsinister mask, and it was of this large collective negation that Brydonpresently became conscious—all the more that the break of day was,almost incredibly, now at hand, proving to him what a night he hadmade of it.

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He looked again at his watch, saw what had become of his time-values (he had taken hours for minutes—not, as in other tense situ-ations, minutes for hours) and the strange air of the streets was butthe weak, the sullen flush of a dawn in which everything was stilllocked up. His choked appeal from his own open window had beenthe sole note of life, and he could but break off at last as for a worsedespair. Yet while so deeply demoralised he was capable again of animpulse denoting—at least by his present measure—extraordinaryresolution; of retracing his steps to the spot where he had turnedcold with the extinction of his last pulse of doubt as to there beingin the place another presence than his own. This required an effortstrong enough to sicken him; but he had his reason, which over-mastered for the moment everything else. There was the whole ofthe rest of the house to traverse, and how should he screw himself tothat if the door he had seen closed were at present open? He couldhold to the idea that the closing had practically been for him an actof mercy, a chance offered him to descend, depart, get off the groundand never again profane it. This conception held together, it worked;but what it meant for him depended now clearly on the amount offorbearance his recent action, or rather his recent inaction, had en-gendered. The image of the “presence” whatever it was, waiting therefor him to go -this image had not yet been so concrete for his nervesas when he stopped short of the point at which certainty wouldhave come to him. For, with all his resolution, or more exactly withall his dread, he did stop short—he hung back from really seeing.The risk was too great and his fear too definite: it took at this mo-ment an awful specific form.

He knew—yes, as he had never known anything—that, should hesee the door open, it would all too abjectly be the end of him. Itwould mean that the agent of his shame—for his shame was thedeep abjection—was once more at large and in general possession;and what glared him thus in the face was the act that this would

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determine for him. It would send him straight about to the windowhe had left open, and by that window, be long ladder and danglingrope as absent as they would, he saw himself uncontrollably in-sanely fatally take his way to the street. The hideous chance of thishe at least could avert; but he could only avert it by recoiling in timefrom assurance. He had the whole house to deal with, this fact wasstill there; only he now knew that uncertainty alone could start him.He stole back from where he had checked himself—merely to do sowas suddenly like safety—and, making blindly for the greater stair-case, left gaping rooms and sounding passages behind. Here was thetop of the stairs, with a fine large dim descent and three spaciouslandings to mark off. His instinct was all for mildness, but his feetwere harsh on the floors, and, strangely, when he had in a couple ofminutes become aware of this, it counted somehow for help. Hecouldn’t have spoken, the tone of his voice would have scared him,and the common conceit or resource of “whistling in the dark”(whether literally or figuratively) have appeared basely vulgar; yethe liked none the less to hear himself go, and when he had reachedhis first landing—taking it all with no rush, but quite steadily—that stage of success drew from him a gasp of relief.

The house, withal, seemed immense, the scale of space again inor-dinate; the open rooms, to no one of which his eyes deflected, gloomedin their shuttered state like mouths of caverns; only the high skylightthat formed the crown of the deep well created for him a medium inwhich he could advance, but which might have been, for queerness ofcolour, some watery under-world. He tried to think of somethingnoble, as that his property was really grand, a splendid possession; butthis nobleness took the form too of the clear delight with which hewas finally to sacrifice it. They might come in now, the builders, thedestroyers—they might come as soon as they would. At the end oftwo flights he had dropped to another zone, and from the middle ofthe third, with only one more left, he recognised the influence of the

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lower windows, of half-drawn blinds, of the occasional gleam of street-lamps, of the glazed spaces of the vestibule. This was the bottom ofthe sea, which showed an illumination of its own and which he evensaw paved—when at a given moment he drew up to sink a long lookover the banisters—with the marble squares of his childhood. By thattime indubitably he felt, as he might have said in a commoner cause,better; it had allowed him to stop and draw breath, and the case in-creased with the sight of the old black-and-white slabs. But what hemost felt was that now surely, with the element of impunity pullinghim as by hard firm hands, the case was settled for what he mighthave seen above had he dared that last look. The closed door, bless-edly remote now, was still closed—and he had only in short to reachthat of the house.

He came down further, he crossed the passage forming the accessto the last flight and if here again he stopped an instant it was al-most for the sharpness of the thrill of assured escape. It made himshut his eyes—which opened again to the straight slope of the re-mainder of the stairs. Here was impunity still, but impunity almostexcessive; inasmuch as the side-lights and the high fantracery of theentrance were glimmering straight into the hall; an appearance pro-duced, he the next instant saw, by the fact that the vestibule gapedwide, that the hinged halves of the inner door had been thrown farback. Out of that again the question sprang at him, making his eyes,as he felt, half-start from his head, as they had done, at the top ofthe house, before the sign of the other door. If he had left that oneopen, hadn’t he left this one closed, and wasn’t he now in most im-mediate presence of some inconceivable occult activity? It was assharp, the question, as a knife in his side, but the answer hung firestill and seemed to lose itself in the vague darkness to which thethin admitted dawn, glimmering archwise over the whole outer door,made a semicircular margin, a cold silvery nimbus that seemed toplay a little as he looked—to shift and expand and contract.

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It was as if there had been something within it, protected by in-distinctness and corresponding in extent with the opaque surfacebehind, the painted panels of the last barrier to his escape, of whichthe key was in his pocket. The indistinctness mocked him even whilehe stared, affected him as somehow shrouding or challenging certi-tude, so that after faltering an instant on his step he let himself gowith the sense that here was at last something to meet, to touch, totake, to know—something all unnatural and dreadful, but to ad-vance upon which was the condition for him either of liberation orof supreme defeat. The penumbra, dense and dark, was the virtualscreen of a figure which stood in it as still as some image erect in aniche or as some black-vizored sentinel guarding a treasure. Brydonwas to know afterwards, was to recall and make out, the particularthing he had believed during the rest of his descent. He saw, in itsgreat grey glimmering margin, the central vagueness diminish, andhe felt it to be taking the very form toward which, for so many days,the passion of his curiosity had yearned. It gloomed, it loomed, itwas something, it was somebody, the prodigy of a personal pres-ence.

Rigid and conscious, spectral yet human, a man of his own sub-stance and stature waited there to measure himself with his powerto dismay. This only could it be—this only till he recognised, withhis advance, that what made the face dim was the pair of raisedhands that covered it and in which, so far from being offered indefiance, it was buried, as for dark deprecation. So Brydon, beforehim, took him in; with every fact of him now, in the higher light,hard and acute—his planted stillness, his vivid truth, his grizzledbent head and white masking hands, his queer actuality of evening-dress, of dangling double eye-glass, of gleaming silk lappet and whitelinen, of pearl button and gold watch-guard and polished shoe. Noportrait by a great modern master could have presented him withmore intensity, thrust him out of his frame with more art, as if there

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had been “treatment,” of the consummate sort, in his every shadeand salience. The revulsion, for our friend, had become, before heknew it, immense—this drop, in the act of apprehension, to thesense of his adversary’s inscrutable manoeuvre. That meaning at least,while he gaped, it offered him; for he could but gape at his other selfin this other anguish, gape as a proof that he, standing there for theachieved, the enjoyed, the triumphant life, couldn’t be faced in histriumph. Wasn’t the proof in the splendid covering hands, strongand completely spread?—so spread and so intentional that, in spiteof a special verity that surpassed every other, the fact that one ofthese hands had lost two fingers, which were reduced to stumps, asif accidentally shot away, the face was effectually guarded and saved.

“Saved,” though, would it be?—Brydon breathed his wonder tillthe very impunity of his attitude and the very insistence of his eyesproduced, as he felt, a sudden stir which showed the next instant asa deeper portent, while the head raised itself, the betrayal of a braverpurpose. The hands, as he looked, began to move, to open; then, asif deciding in a flash, dropped from the face and left it uncoveredand presented. Horror, with the sight, had leaped into Brydon’sthroat, gasping there in a sound he couldn’t utter; for the baredidentity was too hideous as his, and his glare was the passion of hisprotest. The face, that face, Spencer Brydon’s? -he searched it still,but looking away from it in dismay and denial, falling straight fromhis height of sublimity. It was unknown, inconceivable, awful, dis-connected from any possibility!—He had been “sold,” he inwardlymoaned, stalking such game as this: the presence before him was apresence, the horror within him a horror, but the waste of his nightshad been only grotesque and the success of his adventure an irony.Such an identity fitted his at no point, made its alternative mon-strous. A thousand times yes, as it came upon him nearer now, theface was the face of a stranger. It came upon him nearer now, quiteas one of those expanding fantastic images projected by the magic

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lantern of childhood; for the stranger, whoever he might be, evil,odious, blatant, vulgar, had advanced as for aggression, and he knewhimself give ground. Then harder pressed still, sick with the force ofhis shock, and falling back as under the hot breath and the rousedpassion of a life larger than his own, a rage of personality beforewhich his own collapsed, he felt the whole vision turn to darknessand his very feet give way. His head went round; he was going; hehad gone.

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CHAPTER III

WHAT HAD NEXT brought him back, clearly—though after how long?—was Mrs. Muldoon’s voice, coming to him from quite near, from sonear that he seemed presently to see her as kneeling on the groundbefore him while he lay looking up at her; himself not wholly on theground, but half-raised and upheld—conscious, yes, of tenderness ofsupport and, more particularly, of a head pillowed in extraordinarysoftness and faintly refreshing fragrance. He considered, he wondered,his wit but half at his service; then another face intervened, bendingmore directly over him, and he finally knew that Alice Staverton hadmade her lap an ample and perfect cushion to him, and that she hadto this end seated herself on the lowest degree of the staircase, the restof his long person remaining stretched on his old black-and-whiteslabs. They were cold, these marble squares of his youth; but he some-how was not, in this rich return of consciousness—the most wonder-ful hour, little by little, that he had ever known, leaving him, as it did,so gratefully, so abysmally passive, and yet as with a treasure of intel-ligence waiting all round him for quiet appropriation; dissolved, hemight call it, in the air of the place and producing the golden glow ofa late autumn afternoon. He had come back, yes—come back fromfurther away than any man but himself had ever travelled; but it wasstrange how with this sense what he had come back to seemed reallythe great thing, and as if his prodigious journey had been all for thesake of it. Slowly but surely his consciousness grew, his vision of hisstate thus completing itself; he had been miraculously carried back—

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lifted and carefully borne as from where he had been picked up, theuttermost end of an interminable grey passage. Even with this he wassuffered to rest, and what had now brought him to knowledge wasthe break in the long mild motion.

It had brought him to knowledge, to knowledge—yes, this wasthe beauty of his state; which came to resemble more and more thatof a man who has gone to sleep on some news of a great inheritance,and then, after dreaming it away, after profaning it with mattersstrange to it, has waked up again to serenity of certitude and hasonly to lie and watch it grow. This was the drift of his patience—that he had only to let it shine on him. He must moreover, withintermissions, still have been lifted and borne; since why and howelse should he have known himself, later on, with the afternoonglow intenser, no longer at the foot of his stairs—situated as thesenow seemed at that dark other end of his tunnel—but on a deepwindow-bench of his high saloon, over which had been spread,couch-fashion, a mantle of soft stuff lined with grey fur that wasfamiliar to his eyes and that one of his hands kept fondly feeling asfor its pledge of truth. Mrs. Muldoon’s face had gone, but the other,the second he had recognised, hung over him in a way that showedhow he was still propped and pillowed. He took it all in, and themore he took it the more it seemed to suffice: he was as much atpeace as if he had had food and drink. It was the two women whohad found him, on Mrs. Muldoon’s having plied, at her usual hour,her latch-key—and on her having above all arrived while MissStaverton still lingered near the house. She had been turning away,all anxiety, from worrying the vain bell-handle—her calculationhaving been of the hour of the good woman’s visit; but the latter,blessedly, had come up while she was still there, and they had en-tered together. He had then lain, beyond the vestibule, very muchas he was lying now—quite, that is, as he appeared to have fallen,but all so wondrously without bruise or gash; only in a depth of

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stupor. What he most took in, however, at present, with the steadierclearance, was that Alice Staverton had for a long unspeakable mo-ment not doubted he was dead.

“It must have been that I was.” He made it out as she held him.“Yes—I can only have died. You brought me literally to life. Only,”he wondered, his eyes rising to her, “only, in the name of all thebenedictions, how?”

It took her but an instant to bend her face and kiss him, andsomething in the manner of it, and in the way her hands claspedand locked his head while he felt the cool charity and virtue of herlips, something in all this beatitude somehow answered everything.

“And now I keep you,” she said.“Oh keep me, keep me!” he pleaded while her face still hung over

him: in response to which it dropped again and stayed close,clingingly close. It was the seal of their situation—of which he tastedthe impress for a long blissful moment in silence. But he came back.“Yet how did you know—?”

“I was uneasy. You were to have come, you remember—and youhad sent no word.”

“Yes, I remember—I was to have gone to you at one to-day.” Itcaught on to their “old” life and relation—which were so near andso far. “I was still out there in my strange darkness—where was it,what was it? I must have stayed there so long.” He could but won-der at the depth and the duration of his swoon.

“Since last night?” she asked with a shade of fear for her possibleindiscretion.

“Since this morning—it must have been: the cold dim dawn ofto-day. Where have I been,” he vaguely wailed, “where have I been?”He felt her hold him close, and it was as if this helped him now tomake in all security his mild moan. “What a long dark day!”

All in her tenderness she had waited a moment. “In the cold dimdawn?” she quavered.

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But he had already gone on piecing together the parts of the wholeprodigy. “As I didn’t turn up you came straight—?”

She barely cast about. “I went first to your hotel—where theytold me of your absence. You had dined out last evening and hadn’tbeen back since. But they appeared to know you had been at yourclub.”

“So you had the idea of this—?”“Of what?” she asked in a moment.“Well—of what has happened.”“I believed at least you’d have been here. I’ve known, all along,”

she said, “that you’ve been coming.”“‘Known’ it -?”“Well, I’ve believed it. I said nothing to you after that talk we had

a month ago—but I felt sure. I knew you would,” she declared.“That I’d persist, you mean?”“That you’d see him.”“Ah but I didn’t!” cried Brydon with his long wail. “There’s some-

body—an awful beast; whom I brought, too horribly, to bay. Butit’s not me.”

At this she bent over him again, and her eyes were in his eyes.“No—it’s not you.” And it was as if, while her face hovered, hemight have made out in it, hadn’t it been so near, some particularmeaning blurred by a smile. “No, thank heaven,” she repeated, “it’snot you! Of course it wasn’t to have been.”

“Ah but it was,” he gently insisted. And he stared before him nowas he had been staring for so many weeks. “I was to have knownmyself.”

“You couldn’t!” she returned consolingly. And then reverting, andas if to account further for what she had herself done, “But it wasn’tonly that, that you hadn’t been at home,” she went on. “I waited tillthe hour at which we had found Mrs. Muldoon that day of mygoing with you; and she arrived, as I’ve told you, while, failing to

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bring any one to the door, I lingered in my despair on the steps.After a little, if she hadn’t come, by such a mercy, I should havefound means to hunt her up. But it wasn’t,” said Alice Staverton, asif once more with her fine intentions—“it wasn’t only that.”

His eyes, as he lay, turned back to her. “What more then?”She met it, the wonder she had stirred. “In the cold dim dawn,

you say? Well, in the cold dim dawn of this morning I too saw you.”“Saw me—?”“Saw him,” said Alice Staverton. “It must have been at the same

moment.”He lay an instant taking it in—as if he wished to be quite reason-

able. “At the same moment?”“Yes—in my dream again, the same one I’ve named to you. He

came back to me. Then I knew it for a sign. He had come to you.”At this Brydon raised himself; he had to see her better. She helped

him when she understood his movement, and he sat up, steadyinghimself beside her there on the window-bench and with his righthand grasping her left. “He didn’t come to me.”

“You came to yourself,” she beautifully smiled.“Ah I’ve come to myself now—thanks to you, dearest. But this

brute, with his awful face—this brute’s a black stranger. He’s noneof me, even as I might have been,” Brydon sturdily declared.

But she kept the clearness that was like the breath of infallibility.“Isn’t the whole point that you’d have been different?”

He almost scowled for it. “As different as that—?”Her look again was more beautiful to him than the things of this

world. “Haven’t you exactly wanted to know how different? So thismorning,” she said, “you appeared to me.”

“Like him?”“A black stranger!”“Then how did you know it was I?”“Because, as I told you weeks ago, my mind, my imagination, has

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worked so over what you might, what you mightn’t have been—toshow you, you see, how I’ve thought of you. In the midst of thatyou came to me—that my wonder might be answered. So I knew,”she went on; “and believed that, since the question held you too sofast, as you told me that day, you too would see for yourself. Andwhen this morning I again saw I knew it would be because you had-and also then, from the first moment, because you somehow wantedme. HE seemed to tell me of that. So why,” she strangely smiled,“shouldn’t I like him?”

It brought Spencer Brydon to his feet. “You ‘like’ that horror—?”“I could have liked him. And to me,” she said, “he was no horror.

I had accepted him.”“‘Accepted’—?” Brydon oddly sounded.“Before, for the interest of his difference—yes. And as I didn’t

disown him, as I knew him—which you at last, confronted withhim in his difference, so cruelly didn’t, my dear,—well, he musthave been, you see, less dreadful to me. And it may have pleasedhim that I pitied him.”

She was beside him on her feet, but still holding his hand—stillwith her arm supporting him. But though it all brought for himthus a dim light, “You ‘pitied’ him?” he grudgingly, resentfully asked.

“He has been unhappy, he has been ravaged,” she said.“And haven’t I been unhappy? Am not I—you’ve only to look at

me!—ravaged?”“Ah I don’t say I like him better,” she granted after a thought. “But

he’s grim, he’s worn—and things have happened to him. He doesn’tmake shift, for sight, with your charming monocle.”

“No”—it struck Brydon; “I couldn’t have sported mine ‘down-town.’ They’d have guyed me there.”

“His great convex pince-nez—I saw it, I recognised the kind—isfor his poor ruined sight. And his poor right hand—!”

“Ah!” Brydon winced—whether for his proved identity or for his

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lost fingers. Then, “He has a million a year,” he lucidly added. “Buthe hasn’t you.”

“And he isn’t—no, he isn’t—you!” she murmured, as he drew herto his breast.

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22255449933 Figure in the Carpet and Other Stories - H. James

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Transcript of 22255449933 Figure in the Carpet and Other Stories - H. James