The Lesson of the Master, by Henry James

Published：2026-07-30 06:48:11 Source: construction vehicle toys for 6 year olds under 30 dollars Author: Packaging

Transcribed from the 1915 Martin Secker edition by DavidPrice,math toys for 5 year olds under 20 dollars email [email protected]

THE LESSON OF
THE MASTER

BY HENRY JAMES

LONDON: MARTIN SECKER
NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI

This editionfirst printed 1915

p. 5I

He had been told the ladies were atchurch, but this was corrected by what he saw from the top of thesteps—they descended from a great height in two arms, witha circular sweep of the most charming effect—at thethreshold of the door which, from the long bright gallery,overlooked the immense lawn.  Three gentlemen, on the grass,at a distance, sat under the great trees, while the fourth figureshowed a crimson dress that told as a “bit of colour”amid the fresh rich green.  The servant had so faraccompanied Paul Overt as to introduce him to this view, afterasking him if he wished first to go to his room.  The youngman declined that privilege, conscious of no disrepair from soshort and easy a journey and always liking to take at once ageneral perceptive possession of a new scene.  He stoodthere a little with his eyes on the group and on the admirablepicture, the wide grounds of an old country-house nearLondon—that only made it better—on a splendid Sundayin June.  “But that lady, who’sshe?” he said to the servant before the man lefthim.

“I think she’s Mrs. St. George, sir.”

“Mrs. St. George, the wife of thedistinguished—”  Then Paul Overt checkedhimself, doubting if a footman would know.

“Yes, sir—probably, sir,” said his guide,who appeared to wish to intimate that a person staying atSummersoft would naturally be, if only by alliance,distinguished.  His tone, however, made poor Overt himselffeel for the moment scantly so.

“And the gentlemen?” Overt went on.

“Well, sir, one of them’s GeneralFancourt.”

“Ah yes, I know; thank you.”  GeneralFancourt was distinguished, there was no doubt of that, forsomething he had done, or perhaps even hadn’tdone—the young man couldn’t remember which—someyears before in India.  The servant went away, leaving theglass doors open into the gallery, and Paul Overt remained at thehead of the wide double staircase, saying to himself that theplace was sweet and promised a pleasant visit, while he leaned onthe balustrade of fine old ironwork which, like all the otherdetails, was of the same period as the house.  It all wenttogether and spoke in one voice—a rich English voice of theearly part of the eighteenth century.  It might have beenchurch-time on a summer’s day in the reign of Queen Anne;the stillness was too perfect to be modern, the nearness countedso as distance, and there was something so fresh and sound in theoriginality of the large smooth house, the expanse of beautifulbrickwork that showed for pink rather than red and that had beenkept clear of messy creepers by the law under which a woman witha rare complexion disdains a veil.  When Paul Overt becameaware that the people under the trees had noticed him he turnedback through the open doors into the great gallery which was thepride of the place.  It marched across from end to end andseemed—with its bright colours, its high panelled windows,its faded flowered chintzes, its quickly-recognised portraits andpictures, the blue-and-white china of its cabinets and theattenuated festoons and rosettes of its ceiling—a cheerfulupholstered avenue into the other century.

Our friend was slightly nervous; that went with his characteras a student of fine prose, went with the artist’s generaldisposition to vibrate; and there was a particular thrill in theidea that Henry St. George might be a member of the party. For the young aspirant he had remained a high literary figure, inspite of the lower range of production to which he had fallenafter his first three great successes, the comparative absence ofquality in his later work.  There had been moments when PaulOvert almost shed tears for this; but now that he was nearhim—he had never met him—he was conscious only of thefine original source and of his own immense debt.  After hehad taken a turn or two up and down the gallery he came out againand descended the steps.  He was but slenderly supplied witha certain social boldness—it was really a weakness inhim—so that, conscious of a want of acquaintance with thefour persons in the distance, he gave way to motions recommendedby their not committing him to a positive approach.  Therewas a fine English awkwardness in this—he felt that too ashe sauntered vaguely and obliquely across the lawn, taking anindependent line.  Fortunately there was an equally fineEnglish directness in the way one of the gentlemen presently roseand made as if to “stalk” him, though with an air ofconciliation and reassurance.  To this demonstration PaulOvert instantly responded, even if the gentleman were not hishost.  He was tall, straight and elderly and had, like thegreat house itself, a pink smiling face, and into the bargain awhite moustache.  Our young man met him halfway while helaughed and said: “Er—Lady Watermouth told us youwere coming; she asked me just to look after you.” Paul Overt thanked him, liking him on the spot, and turned roundwith him to walk toward the others.  “They’veall gone to church—all except us,” the strangercontinued as they went; “we’re just sittinghere—it’s so jolly.”  Overt pronounced itjolly indeed: it was such a lovely place.  He mentioned thathe was having the charming impression for the first time.

“Ah you’ve not been here before?” said hiscompanion.  “It’s a nice little place—notmuch to do, you know”.  Overt wondered what hewanted to “do”—he felt that he himself wasdoing so much.  By the time they came to where the otherssat he had recognised his initiator for a military manand—such was the turn of Overt’simagination—had found him thus still moresympathetic.  He would naturally have a need for action, fordeeds at variance with the pacific pastoral scene.  He wasevidently so good-natured, however, that he accepted theinglorious hour for what it was worth.  Paul Overt shared itwith him and with his companions for the next twenty minutes; thelatter looked at him and he looked at them without knowing muchwho they were, while the talk went on without much telling himeven what it meant.  It seemed indeed to mean nothing inparticular; it wandered, with casual pointless pauses and shortterrestrial flights, amid names of persons and places—nameswhich, for our friend, had no great power of evocation.  Itwas all sociable and slow, as was right and natural of a warmSunday morning.

His first attention was given to the question, privatelyconsidered, of whether one of the two younger men would be HenrySt. George.  He knew many of his distinguishedcontemporaries by their photographs, but had never, as happened,seen a portrait of the great misguided novelist.  One of thegentlemen was unimaginable—he was too young; and the otherscarcely looked clever enough, with such mild undiscriminatingeyes.  If those eyes were St. George’s the problem,presented by the ill-matched parts of his genius would be stillmore difficult of solution.  Besides, the deportment oftheir proprietor was not, as regards the lady in the red dress,such as could be natural, toward the wife of his bosom, even to awriter accused by several critics of sacrificing too much tomanner.  Lastly Paul Overt had a vague sense that if thegentleman with the expressionless eyes bore the name that had sethis heart beating faster (he also had contradictory conventionalwhiskers—the young admirer of the celebrity had never in amental vision seen hisface in so vulgar a frame) he wouldhave given him a sign of recognition or of friendliness, wouldhave heard of him a little, would know something about“Ginistrella,” would have an impression of how thatfresh fiction had caught the eye of real criticism.  PaulOvert had a dread of being grossly proud, but even morbid modestymight view the authorship of “Ginistrella” asconstituting a degree of identity.  His soldierly friendbecame clear enough: he was “Fancourt,” but was also“the General”; and he mentioned to the new visitor inthe course of a few moments that he had but lately returned fromtwenty years service abroad.

“And now you remain in England?” the young manasked.

“Oh yes; I’ve bought a small house inLondon.”

“And I hope you like it,” said Overt, looking atMrs. St. George.

“Well, a little house in ManchesterSquare—there’s a limit to the enthusiasm thatinspires.”

“Oh I meant being at home again—being back inPiccadilly.”

“My daughter likes Piccadilly—that’s themain thing.  She’s very fond of art and music andliterature and all that kind of thing.  She missed it inIndia and she finds it in London, or she hopes she’ll findit.  Mr. St. George has promised to help her—he hasbeen awfully kind to her.  She has gone tochurch—she’s fond of that too—but they’llall be back in a quarter of an hour.  You must let meintroduce you to her—she’ll be so glad to knowyou.  I dare say she has read every blest word you’vewritten.”

“I shall be delighted—I haven’t written sovery many,” Overt pleaded, feeling, and without resentment,that the General at least was vagueness itself about that. But he wondered a little why, expressing this friendlydisposition, it didn’t occur to the doubtless eminentsoldier to pronounce the word that would put him in relation withMrs. St. George.  If it was a question of introductions MissFancourt—apparently as yet unmarried—was far away,while the wife of his illustrious confrère was almostbetween them.  This lady struck Paul Overt as altogetherpretty, with a surprising juvenility and a high smartness ofaspect, something that—he could scarcely have saidwhy—served for mystification.  St. George certainlyhad every right to a charming wife, but he himself would neverhave imagined the important little woman in the aggressivelyParisian dress the partner for life, the alter ego, of a man ofletters.  That partner in general, he knew, that secondself, was far from presenting herself in a single type:observation had taught him that she was not inveterately, notnecessarily plain.  But he had never before seen her look somuch as if her prosperity had deeper foundations than anink-spotted study-table littered with proof-sheets.  Mrs.St. George might have been the wife of a gentleman who“kept” books rather than wrote them, who carried ongreat affairs in the City and made better bargains than thosethat poets mostly make with publishers.  With this shehinted at a success more personal—a success peculiarlystamping the age in which society, the world of conversation, isa great drawing-room with the City for its antechamber. Overt numbered her years at first as some thirty, and then endedby believing that she might approach her fiftieth.  But shesomehow in this case juggled away the excess and thedifference—you only saw them in a rare glimpse, like therabbit in the conjurer’s sleeve.  She wasextraordinarily white, and her every element and item was pretty;her eyes, her ears, her hair, her voice, her hands, herfeet—to which her relaxed attitude in her wicker chair gavea great publicity—and the numerous ribbons and trinketswith which she was bedecked.  She looked as if she had puton her best clothes to go to church and then had decided theywere too good for that and had stayed at home.  She told astory of some length about the shabby way Lady Jane had treatedthe Duchess, as well as an anecdote in relation to a purchase shehad made in Paris—on her way back from Cannes; made forLady Egbert, who had never refunded the money.  Paul Overtsuspected her of a tendency to figure great people as larger thanlife, until he noticed the manner in which she handled LadyEgbert, which was so sharply mutinous that it reassuredhim.  He felt he should have understood her better if hemight have met her eye; but she scarcely so much as glanced athim.  “Ah here they come—all the goodones!” she said at last; and Paul Overt admired at hisdistance the return of the church-goers—several persons, incouples and threes, advancing in a flicker of sun and shade atthe end of a large green vista formed by the level grass and theoverarching boughs.

“If you mean to imply that we’rebad, Iprotest,” said one of the gentlemen—“aftermaking one’s self agreeable all the morning!”

“Ah if they’ve found you agreeable—!”Mrs. St. George gaily cried.  “But if we’re goodthe others are better.”

“They must be angels then,” said the amusedGeneral.

“Your husband was an angel, the way he went off at yourbidding,” the gentleman who had first spoken declared toMrs. St. George.

“At my bidding?”

“Didn’t you make him go to church?”

“I never made him do anything in my life butonce—when I made him burn up a bad book.  That’sall!”  At her “That’s all!” ouryoung friend broke into an irrepressible laugh; it lasted only asecond, but it drew her eyes to him.  His own met them,though not long enough to help him to understand her; unless itwere a step towards this that he saw on the instant how the burntbook—the way she alluded to it!—would have been oneof her husband’s finest things.

“A bad book?” her interlocutor repeated.

“I didn’t like it.  He went to church becauseyour daughter went,” she continued to GeneralFancourt.  “I think it my duty to call your attentionto his extraordinary demonstrations to your daughter.”

“Well, if you don’t mind them Idon’t,” the General laughed.

“Il s’attache à ses pas.  But Idon’t wonder—she’s so charming.”

“I hope she won’t make him burn any books!”Paul Overt ventured to exclaim.

“If she’d make him write a few it would be more tothe purpose,” said Mrs. St. George.  “He hasbeen of a laziness of late—!”

Our young man stared—he was so struck with thelady’s phraseology.  Her “Write a few”seemed to him almost as good as her “That’sall.”  Didn’t she, as the wife of a rare artist,know what it was to produce one perfect work of art?  How inthe world did she think they were turned on?  His privateconviction was that, admirably as Henry St. George wrote, he hadwritten for the last ten years, and especially for the last five,only too much, and there was an instant during which he feltinwardly solicited to make this public.  But before he hadspoken a diversion was effected by the return of theabsentees.  They strolled up dispersedly—there wereeight or ten of them—and the circle under the treesrearranged itself as they took their place in it.  They madeit much larger, so that Paul Overt could feel—he was alwaysfeeling that sort of thing, as he said to himself—that ifthe company had already been interesting to watch the interestwould now become intense.  He shook hands with his hostess,who welcomed him without many words, in the manner of a womanable to trust him to understand and conscious that so pleasant anoccasion would in every way speak for itself.  She offeredhim no particular facility for sitting by her, and when they hadall subsided again he found himself still next General Fancourt,with an unknown lady on his other flank.

“That’s my daughter—that oneopposite,” the General said to him without lose oftime.  Overt saw a tall girl, with magnificent red hair, ina dress of a pretty grey-green tint and of a limp silken texture,a garment that clearly shirked every modern effect.  It hadtherefore somehow the stamp of the latest thing, so that ourbeholder quickly took her for nothing if not contemporaneous.

“She’s very handsome—very handsome,”he repeated while he considered her.  There was somethingnoble in her head, and she appeared fresh and strong.

Her good father surveyed her with complacency, remarking soon:“She looks too hot—that’s her walk.  Butshe’ll be all right presently.  Then I’ll makeher come over and speak to you.”

“I should be sorry to give you that trouble.  Ifyou were to take me over there—!” the youngman murmured.

“My dear sir, do you suppose I put myself out thatway?  I don’t mean for you, but for Marian,” theGeneral added.

“Iwould put myself out for her soonenough,” Overt replied; after which he went on: “Willyou be so good as to tell me which of those gentlemen is HenrySt. George?”

“The fellow talking to my girl.  By Jove, heismaking up to her—they’re going off foranother walk.”

“Ah is that he—really?”  Our friendfelt a certain surprise, for the personage before him seemed totrouble a vision which had been vague only while not confrontedwith the reality.  As soon as the reality dawned the mentalimage, retiring with a sigh, became substantial enough to suffera slight wrong.  Overt, who had spent a considerable part ofhis short life in foreign lands, made now, but not for the firsttime, the reflexion that whereas in those countries he had almostalways recognised the artist and the man of letters by hispersonal “type,” the mould of his face, the characterof his head, the expression of his figure and even theindications of his dress, so in England this identification wasas little as possible a matter of course, thanks to the greaterconformity, the habit of sinking the profession instead ofadvertising it, the general diffusion of the air of thegentleman—the gentleman committed to no particular set ofideas.  More than once, on returning to his own country, hehad said to himself about people met in society: “One seesthem in this place and that, and one even talks with them; but tofind out what they doone would really have to be adetective.”  In respect to several individuals whosework he was the opposite of “drawn to”—perhapshe was wrong—he found himself adding “No wonder theyconceal it—when it’s so bad!”  He notedthat oftener than in France and in Germany his artist looked likea gentleman—that is like an English one—while,certainly outside a few exceptions, his gentlemen didn’tlook like an artist.  St. George was not one of theexceptions; that circumstance he definitely apprehended beforethe great man had turned his back to walk off with MissFancourt.  He certainly looked better behind than anyforeign man of letters—showed for beautifully correct inhis tall black hat and his superior frock coat.  Somehow,all the same, these very garments—he wouldn’t haveminded them so much on a weekday—were disconcerting to PaulOvert, who forgot for the moment that the head of the professionwas not a bit better dressed than himself.  He had caught aglimpse of a regular face, a fresh colour, a brown moustache anda pair of eyes surely never visited by a fine frenzy, and hepromised himself to study these denotements on the firstoccasion.  His superficial sense was that their owner mighthave passed for a lucky stockbroker—a gentleman drivingeastward every morning from a sanitary suburb in a smartdog-cart.  That carried out the impression already derivedfrom his wife.  Paul’s glance, after a moment,travelled back to this lady, and he saw how her own had followedher husband as he moved off with Miss Fancourt.  Overtpermitted himself to wonder a little if she were jealous whenanother woman took him away.  Then he made out that Mrs. St.George wasn’t glaring at the indifferent maiden.  Hereyes rested but on her husband, and with unmistakeableserenity.  That was the way she wanted him to be—sheliked his conventional uniform.  Overt longed to hear moreabout the book she had induced him to destroy.

p.21II

As they all came out from luncheonGeneral Fancourt took hold of him with an “I say, I wantyou to know my girl!” as if the idea had just occurred tohim and he hadn’t spoken of it before.  With the otherhand he possessed himself all paternally of the young lady. “You know all about him.  I’ve seen you with hisbooks.  She reads everything—everything!” hewent on to Paul.  The girl smiled at him and then laughed ather father.  The General turned away and his daughterspoke—“Isn’t papa delightful?”

“He is indeed, Miss Fancourt.”

“As if I read you because I read‘everything’!”

“Oh I don’t mean for saying that,” said PaulOvert.  “I liked him from the moment he began to bekind to me.  Then he promised me this privilege.”

“It isn’t for you he means it—it’s forme.  If you flatter yourself that he thinks of anything inlife but me you’ll find you’re mistaken.  Heintroduces every one.  He thinks me insatiable.”

“You speak just like him,” laughed our youth.

“Ah but sometimes I want to”—and the girlcoloured.  “I don’t read everything—I readvery little.  But I haveread you.”

“Suppose we go into the gallery,” said PaulOvert.  She pleased him greatly, not so much because of thislast remark—though that of course was not toodisconcerting—as because, seated opposite to him atluncheon, she had given him for half an hour the impression ofher beautiful face.  Something else had come with it—asense of generosity, of an enthusiasm which, unlike manyenthusiasms, was not all manner.  That was not spoiled forhim by his seeing that the repast had placed her again infamiliar contact with Henry St. George.  Sitting next herthis celebrity was also opposite our young man, who had been ableto note that he multiplied the attentions lately brought by hiswife to the General’s notice.  Paul Overt had gatheredas well that this lady was not in the least discomposed by thesefond excesses and that she gave every sign of an uncloudedspirit.  She had Lord Masham on one side of her and on theother the accomplished Mr. Mulliner, editor of the new high-classlively evening paper which was expected to meet a want felt incircles increasingly conscious that Conservatism must be madeamusing, and unconvinced when assured by those of anotherpolitical colour that it was already amusing enough.  At theend of an hour spent in her company Paul Overt thought her stillprettier than at the first radiation, and if her profaneallusions to her husband’s work had not still rung in hisears he should have liked her—so far as it could be aquestion of that in connexion with a woman to whom he had not yetspoken and to whom probably he should never speak if it were leftto her.  Pretty women were a clear need to this genius, andfor the hour it was Miss Fancourt who supplied the want.  IfOvert had promised himself a closer view the occasion was now ofthe best, and it brought consequences felt by the young man asimportant.  He saw more in St. George’s face, which heliked the better for its not having told its whole story in thefirst three minutes.  That story came out as one read, inshort instalments—it was excusable that one’sanalogies should be somewhat professional—and the text wasa style considerably involved, a language not easy to translateat sight.  There were shades of meaning in it and a vagueperspective of history which receded as you advanced.  Twofacts Paul had particularly heeded.  The first of these wasthat he liked the measured mask much better at inscrutable restthan in social agitation; its almost convulsive smile above alldispleased him (as much as any impression from that sourcecould), whereas the quiet face had a charm that grew inproportion as stillness settled again.  The change to theexpression of gaiety excited, he made out, very much the privateprotest of a person sitting gratefully in the twilight when thelamp is brought in too soon.  His second reflexion was that,though generally averse to the flagrant use of ingratiating artsby a man of age “making up” to a pretty girl, he wasnot in this case too painfully affected: which seemed to proveeither that St. George had a light hand or the air of beingyounger than he was, or else that Miss Fancourt’s ownmanner somehow made everything right.

Overt walked with her into the gallery, and they strolled tothe end of it, looking at the pictures, the cabinets, thecharming vista, which harmonised with the prospect of the summerafternoon, resembling it by a long brightness, with great divansand old chairs that figured hours of rest.  Such a place asthat had the added merit of giving those who came into it plentyto talk about.  Miss Fancourt sat down with her newacquaintance on a flowered sofa, the cushions of which, verynumerous, were tight ancient cubes of many sizes, and presentlysaid: “I’m so glad to have a chance to thankyou.”

“To thank me—?”  He had to wonder.

“I liked your book so much.  I think itsplendid.”

She sat there smiling at him, and he never asked himself whichbook she meant; for after all he had written three or four. That seemed a vulgar detail, and he wasn’t even gratifiedby the idea of the pleasure she told him—her handsomebright face told him—he had given her.  The feelingshe appealed to, or at any rate the feeling she excited, wassomething larger, something that had little to do with anyquickened pulsation of his own vanity.  It was responsiveadmiration of the life she embodied, the young purity andrichness of which appeared to imply that real success was toresemble that, to live, to bloom, to present theperfection of a fine type, not to have hammered out headachyfancies with a bent back at an ink-stained table.  While hergrey eyes rested on him—there was a wideish space betweenthese, and the division of her rich-coloured hair, so thick thatit ventured to be smooth, made a free arch above them—hewas almost ashamed of that exercise of the pen which it was herpresent inclination to commend.  He was conscious he shouldhave liked better to please her in some other way.  Thelines of her face were those of a woman grown, but the childlingered on in her complexion and in the sweetness of hermouth.  Above all she was natural—that was indubitablenow; more natural than he had supposed at first, perhaps onaccount of her æsthetic toggery, which was conventionallyunconventional, suggesting what he might have called a tortuousspontaneity.  He had feared that sort of thing in othercases, and his fears had been justified; for, though he was anartist to the essence, the modern reactionary nymph, with thebrambles of the woodland caught in her folds and a look as if thesatyrs had toyed with her hair, made him shrink not as a man ofstarch and patent leather, but as a man potentially himself apoet or even a faun.  The girl was really more candid thanher costume, and the best proof of it was her supposing herliberal character suited by any uniform.  This was afallacy, since if she was draped as a pessimist he was sure sheliked the taste of life.  He thanked her for herappreciation—aware at the same time that he didn’tappear to thank her enough and that she might think himungracious.  He was afraid she would ask him to explainsomething he had written, and he always winced atthat—perhaps too timidly—for to his own ear theexplanation of a work of art sounded fatuous.  But he likedher so much as to feel a confidence that in the long run heshould be able to show her he wasn’t rudely evasive. Moreover she surely wasn’t quick to take offence,wasn’t irritable; she could be trusted to wait.  Sowhen he said to her, “Ah don’t talk of anythingI’ve done, don’t talk of it here;there’s another man in the house who’s theactuality!”—when he uttered this short sincereprotest it was with the sense that she would see in the wordsneither mock humility nor the impatience of a successful manbored with praise.

“You mean Mr. St. George—isn’t hedelightful?”

Paul Overt met her eyes, which had a cool morning-light thatwould have half-broken his heart if he hadn’t been soyoung.  “Alas I don’t know him.  I onlyadmire him at a distance.”

“Oh you must know him—he wants so to talk toyou,” returned Miss Fancourt, who evidently had the habitof saying the things that, by her quick calculation, would givepeople pleasure.  Paul saw how she would always calculate oneverything’s being simple between others.

“I shouldn’t have supposed he knew anything aboutme,” he professed.

“He does then—everything.  And if hedidn’t I should be able to tell him.”

“To tell him everything?” our friend smiled.

“You talk just like the people in your book!” sheanswered.

“Then they must all talk alike.”

She thought a moment, not a bit disconcerted. “Well, it must be so difficult.  Mr. St. George tellsme it is—terribly.  I’ve triedtoo—and I find it so.  I’ve tried to write anovel.”

“Mr. St. George oughtn’t to discourage you,”Paul went so far as to say.

“You do much more—when you wear thatexpression.”

“Well, after all, why try to be an artist?” theyoung man pursued.  “It’s so poor—sopoor!”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said MissFancourt, who looked grave.

“I mean as compared with being a person ofaction—as living your works.”

“But what’s art but an intense life—if it bereal?” she asked.  “I think it’s the onlyone—everything else is so clumsy!”  Hercompanion laughed, and she brought out with her charming serenitywhat next struck her.  “It’s so interesting tomeet so many celebrated people.”

“So I should think—but surely it isn’t newto you.”

“Why I’ve never seen any one—any one: livingalways in Asia.”

The way she talked of Asia somehow enchanted him. “But doesn’t that continent swarm with greatfigures?  Haven’t you administered provinces in Indiaand had captive rajahs and tributary princes chained to yourcar?”

It was as if she didn’t care even shouldhe amusehimself at her cost.  “I was with my father, after Ileft school to go out there.  It was delightful being withhim—we’re alone together in the world, he andI—but there was none of the society I like best.  Onenever heard of a picture—never of a book, except badones.”

“Never of a picture?  Why, wasn’t all life apicture?”

She looked over the delightful place where they sat. “Nothing to compare to this.  I adore England!”she cried.

It fairly stirred in him the sacred chord.  “Ah ofcourse I don’t deny that we must do something with her,poor old dear, yet.”

“She hasn’t been touched, really,” said thegirl.

“Did Mr. St. George say that?”

There was a small and, as he felt, harmless spark of irony inhis question; which, however, she answered very simply, notnoticing the insinuation.  “Yes, he says Englandhasn’t been touched—not considering all thereis,” she went on eagerly.  “He’s sointeresting about our country.  To listen to him makes onewant so to do something.”

“It would make mewant to,” said PaulOvert, feeling strongly, on the instant, the suggestion of whatshe said and that of the emotion with which she said it, and wellaware of what an incentive, on St. George’s lips, such aspeech might be.

“Oh you—as if you hadn’t!  I shouldlike so to hear you talk together,” she added ardently.

“That’s very genial of you; but he’d have itall his own way.  I’m prostrate before him.”

She had an air of earnestness.  “Do you think thenhe’s so perfect?”

“Far from it.  Some of his later books seem to meof a queerness—!”

“Yes, yes—he knows that.”

Paul Overt stared.  “That they seem to me of aqueerness—!”

“Well yes, or at any rate that they’re not whatthey should be.  He told me he didn’t esteemthem.  He has told me such wonderful things—he’sso interesting.”

There was a certain shock for Paul Overt in the knowledge thatthe fine genius they were talking of had been reduced to soexplicit a confession and had made it, in his misery, to thefirst comer; for though Miss Fancourt was charming what was sheafter all but an immature girl encountered at acountry-house?  Yet precisely this was part of the sentimenthe himself had just expressed: he would make way completely forthe poor peccable great man not because he didn’t read himclear, but altogether because he did.  His consideration washalf composed of tenderness for superficialities which he wassure their perpetrator judged privately, judged more ferociouslythan any one, and which represented some tragic intellectualsecret.  He would have his reasons for his psychologyà fleur de peau, and these reasons could only be cruelones, such as would make him dearer to those who already werefond of him.  “You excite my envy.  I have myreserves, I discriminate—but I love him,” Paul saidin a moment.  “And seeing him for the first time thisway is a great event for me.”

“How momentous—how magnificent!” cried thegirl.  “How delicious to bring youtogether!”

“Your doing it—that makes it perfect,” ourfriend returned.

“He’s as eager as you,” she went on. “But it’s so odd you shouldn’t havemet.”

“It’s not really so odd as it strikes you. I’ve been out of England so much—made repeatedabsences all these last years.”

She took this in with interest.  “And yet you writeof it as well as if you were always here.”

“It’s just the being away perhaps.  At anyrate the best bits, I suspect, are those that were done in drearyplaces abroad.”

“And why were they dreary?”

“Because they were health-resorts—where my poormother was dying.”

“Your poor mother?”—she was all sweetwonder.

“We went from place to place to help her to getbetter.  But she never did.  To the deadly Riviera (Ihate it!) to the high Alps, to Algiers, and far away—ahideous journey—to Colorado.”

“And she isn’t better?” Miss Fancourt wenton.

“She died a year ago.”

“Really?—like mine!  Only that’s yearssince.  Some day you must tell me about your mother,”she added.

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

It pulled her up for a moment.  “I don’t knowwhat you mean.  He doesn’t make speeches andprofessions at all—he isn’t ridiculous.”

“I’m afraid you consider then that Iam.”

“No, I don’t”—she spoke it rathershortly.  And then she added: “Heunderstands—understands everything.”

The young man was on the point of saying jocosely: “AndI don’t—is that it?”  But these words, intime, changed themselves to others slightly less trivial:“Do you suppose he understands his wife?”

Miss Fancourt made no direct answer, but after amoment’s hesitation put it: “Isn’t shecharming?”

“Not in the least!”

“Here he comes.  Now you must know him,” shewent on.  A small group of visitors had gathered at theother end of the gallery and had been there overtaken by HenrySt. George, who strolled in from a neighbouring room.  Hestood near them a moment, not falling into the talk but taking upan old miniature from a table and vaguely regarding it.  Atthe end of a minute he became aware of Miss Fancourt and hercompanion in the distance; whereupon, laying down his miniature,he approached them with the same procrastinating air, his handsin his pockets and his eyes turned, right and left, to thepictures.  The gallery was so long that this transit tooksome little time, especially as there was a moment when hestopped to admire the fine Gainsborough.  “He saysMrs. St. George has been the making of him,” the girlcontinued in a voice slightly lowered.

“Ah he’s often obscure!” Paul laughed.

“Obscure?” she repeated as if she heard it for thefirst time.  Her eyes rested on her other friend, and itwasn’t lost upon Paul that they appeared to send out greatshafts of softness.  “He’s going to speak tous!” she fondly breathed.  There was a sort of rapturein her voice, and our friend was startled.  “Bless mysoul, does she care for him like that?—is she inlove with him?” he mentally enquired. “Didn’t I tell you he was eager?” she hadmeanwhile asked of him.

“It’s eagerness dissimulated,” the young manreturned as the subject of their observation lingered before hisGainsborough.  “He edges toward us shyly.  Doeshe mean that she saved him by burning that book?”

“That book? what book did she burn?”  Thegirl quickly turned her face to him.

“Hasn’t he told you then?”

“Not a word.”

“Then he doesn’t tell you everything!” Paul had guessed that she pretty much supposed he did.  Thegreat man had now resumed his course and come nearer; in spite ofwhich his more qualified admirer risked a profane observation:“St. George and the Dragon is what the anecdotesuggests!”

His companion, however, didn’t hear it; she smiled atthe dragon’s adversary.  “He iseager—he is!” she insisted.

“Eager for you—yes.”

But meanwhile she had called out: “I’m sure youwant to know Mr. Overt.  You’ll be great friends, andit will always be delightful to me to remember I was here whenyou first met and that I had something to do with it.”

There was a freshness of intention in the words that carriedthem off; nevertheless our young man was sorry for Henry St.George, as he was sorry at any time for any person publiclyinvited to be responsive and delightful.  He would have beenso touched to believe that a man he deeply admired should care astraw for him that he wouldn’t play with such a presumptionif it were possibly vain.  In a single glance of the eye ofthe pardonable Master he read—having the sort of divinationthat belonged to his talent—that this personage had ever astore of friendly patience, which was part of his rich outfit,but was versed in no printed page of a rising scribbler. There was even a relief, a simplification, in that: liking him somuch already for what he had done, how could one have liked himany more for a perception which must at the best have beenvague?  Paul Overt got up, trying to show his compassion,but at the same instant he found himself encompassed by St.George’s happy personal art—a manner of which it wasthe essence to conjure away false positions.  It all tookplace in a moment.  Paul was conscious that he knew him now,conscious of his handshake and of the very quality of his hand;of his face, seen nearer and consequently seen better, of ageneral fraternising assurance, and in particular of thecircumstance that St. George didn’t dislike him (as yet atleast) for being imposed by a charming but too gushing girl,attractive enough without such danglers.  No irritation atany rate was reflected in the voice with which he questioned MissFancourt as to some project of a walk—a general walk of thecompany round the park.  He had soon said something to Paulabout a talk—“We must have a tremendous lot of talk;there are so many things, aren’t there?”—butour friend could see this idea wouldn’t in the present casetake very immediate effect.  All the same he was extremelyhappy, even after the matter of the walk had beensettled—the three presently passed back to the other partof the gallery, where it was discussed with several members ofthe party; even when, after they had all gone out together, hefound himself for half an hour conjoined with Mrs. St.George.  Her husband had taken the advance with MissFancourt, and this pair were quite out of sight.  It was theprettiest of rambles for a summer afternoon—a grassycircuit, of immense extent, skirting the limit of the parkwithin.  The park was completely surrounded by its oldmottled but perfect red wall, which, all the way on their left,constituted in itself an object of interest.  Mrs. St.George mentioned to him the surprising number of acres thusenclosed, together with numerous other facts relating to theproperty and the family, and the family’s other properties:she couldn’t too strongly urge on him the importance ofseeing their other houses.  She ran over the names of theseand rang the changes on them with the facility of practice,making them appear an almost endless list.  She had receivedPaul Overt very amiably on his breaking ground with her by themention of his joy in having just made her husband’sacquaintance, and struck him as so alert and so accommodating alittle woman that he was rather ashamed of his motabouther to Miss Fancourt; though he reflected that a hundred otherpeople, on a hundred occasions, would have been sure to makeit.  He got on with Ms. St. George, in short, better than heexpected; but this didn’t prevent her suddenly becomingaware that she was faint with fatigue and must take her way backto the house by the shortest cut.  She professed that shehadn’t the strength of a kitten and was a miserable wreck;a character he had been too preoccupied to discern in her whilehe wondered in what sense she could be held to have been themaking of her husband.  He had arrived at a glimmering ofthe answer when she announced that she must leave him, thoughthis perception was of course provisional.  While he was inthe very act of placing himself at her disposal for the returnthe situation underwent a change; Lord Masham had suddenly turnedup, coming back to them, overtaking them, emerging from theshrubbery—Overt could scarcely have said how heappeared—and Mrs. St. George had protested that she wantedto be left alone and not to break up the party.  A momentlater she was walking off with Lord Masham.  Our friend fellback and joined Lady Watermouth, to whom he presently mentionedthat Mrs. St. George had been obliged to renounce the attempt togo further.

“She oughtn’t to have come out at all,” herladyship rather grumpily remarked.

“Is she so very much of an invalid?”

“Very bad indeed.”  And his hostess addedwith still greater austerity: “She oughtn’t really tocome to one!”  He wondered what was implied by this,and presently gathered that it was not a reflexion on thelady’s conduct or her moral nature: it only representedthat her strength was not equal to her aspirations.

p.39III

The smoking-room at Summersoft wason the scale of the rest of the place; high light commodious anddecorated with such refined old carvings and mouldings that itseemed rather a bower for ladies who should sit at work at fadingcrewels than a parliament of gentlemen smoking strongcigars.  The gentlemen mustered there in considerable forceon the Sunday evening, collecting mainly at one end, in front ofone of the cool fair fireplaces of white marble, the entablatureof which was adorned with a delicate little Italian“subject.”  There was another in the wall thatfaced it, and, thanks to the mild summer night, a fire inneither; but a nucleus for aggregation was furnished on one sideby a table in the chimney-corner laden with bottles, decantersand tall tumblers.  Paul Overt was a faithless smoker; hewould puff a cigarette for reasons with which tobacco had nothingto do.  This was particularly the case on the occasion ofwhich I speak; his motive was the vision of a little direct talkwith Henry St. George.  The “tremendous”communion of which the great man had held out hopes to himearlier in the day had not yet come off, and this saddened himconsiderably, for the party was to go its several waysimmediately after breakfast on the morrow.  He had, however,the disappointment of finding that apparently the author of“Shadowmere” was not disposed to prolong hisvigil.  He wasn’t among the gentlemen assembled whenPaul entered, nor was he one of those who turned up, in brighthabiliments, during the next ten minutes.  The young manwaited a little, wondering if he had only gone to put onsomething extraordinary; this would account for his delay as wellas contribute further to Overt’s impression of his tendencyto do the approved superficial thing.  But he didn’tarrive—he must have been putting on something moreextraordinary than was probable.  Our hero gave him up,feeling a little injured, a little wounded, at this loss oftwenty coveted words.  He wasn’t angry, but he puffedhis cigarette sighingly, with the sense of something rarepossibly missed.  He wandered away with his regret and movedslowly round the room, looking at the old prints on thewalls.  In this attitude he presently felt a hand on hisshoulder and a friendly voice in his ear “This isgood.  I hoped I should find you.  I came down onpurpose.”  St. George was there without a change ofdress and with a fine face—his graver one—to whichour young man all in a flutter responded.  He explained thatit was only for the Master—the idea of a littletalk—that he had sat up, and that, not finding him, he hadbeen on the point of going to bed.

“Well, you know, I don’t smoke—my wifedoesn’t let me,” said St. George, looking for a placeto sit down.  “It’s very good for me—verygood for me.  Let us take that sofa.”

“Do you mean smoking’s good for you?”

“No no—her not letting me.  It’s agreat thing to have a wife who’s so sure of all the thingsone can do without.  One might never find them outone’s self.  She doesn’t allow me to touch acigarette.”  They took possession of a sofa at adistance from the group of smokers, and St. George went on:“Have you got one yourself?”

“Do you mean a cigarette?”

“Dear no—a wife.”

“No; and yet I’d give up my cigarette forone.”

“You’d give up a good deal more than that,”St. George returned.  “However, you’d get agreat deal in return.  There’s a something to be saidfor wives,” he added, folding his arms and crossing hisoutstretched legs.  He declined tobacco altogether and satthere without returning fire.  His companion stoppedsmoking, touched by his courtesy; and after all they were out ofthe fumes, their sofa was in a far-away corner.  It wouldhave been a mistake, St. George went on, a great mistake for themto have separated without a little chat; “for I know allabout you,” he said, “I know you’re veryremarkable.  You’ve written a very distinguishedbook.”

“And how do you know it?” Paul asked.

“Why, my dear fellow, it’s in the air, it’sin the papers, it’s everywhere.”  St. Georgespoke with the immediate familiarity of a confrère—atone that seemed to his neighbour the very rustle of thelaurel.  “You’re on all men’s lips and,what’s better, on all women’s.  And I’vejust been reading your book.”

“Just?  You hadn’t read it thisafternoon,” said Overt.

“How do you know that?”

“I think you should know how I know it,” the youngman laughed.

“I suppose Miss Fancourt told you.”

“No indeed—she led me rather to suppose youhad.”

“Yes—that’s much more what she’ddo.  Doesn’t she shed a rosy glow over life?  Butyou didn’t believe her?” asked St. George.

“No, not when you came to us there.”

“Did I pretend? did I pretend badly?”  Butwithout waiting for an answer to this St. George went on:“You ought always to believe such a girl asthat—always, always.  Some women are meant to be takenwith allowances and reserves; but you must take herjustas she is.”

“I like her very much,” said Paul Overt.

Something in his tone appeared to excite on hiscompanion’s part a momentary sense of the absurd; perhapsit was the air of deliberation attending this judgement. St. George broke into a laugh to reply.  “It’sthe best thing you can do with her.  She’s a rareyoung lady!  In point of fact, however, I confess Ihadn’t read you this afternoon.”

“Then you see how right I was in this particular casenot to believe Miss Fancourt.”

“How right? how can I agree to that when I lost creditby it?”

“Do you wish to pass exactly for what she representsyou?  Certainly you needn’t be afraid,” Paulsaid.

“Ah, my dear young man, don’t talk aboutpassing—for the likes of me!  I’m passingaway—nothing else than that.  She has a better use forher young imagination (isn’t it fine?) than in‘representing’ in any way such a weary wasted used-upanimal!”  The Master spoke with a sudden sadness thatproduced a protest on Paul’s part; but before the protestcould be uttered he went on, reverting to the latter’sstriking novel: “I had no idea you were so good—onehears of so many things.  But you’re surprisinglygood.”

“I’m going to be surprisingly better,” Overtmade bold to reply.

“I see that, and it’s what fetches me.  Idon’t see so much else—as one looksabout—that’s going to be surprisingly better. They’re going to be consistently worse—most of thethings.  It’s so much easier to be worse—heavenknows I’ve found it so.  I’m not in a greatglow, you know, about what’s breaking out all over theplace.  But you mustbe better—you really mustkeep it up.  I haven’t of course.  It’svery difficult—that’s the devil of the whole thing,keeping it up.  But I see you’ll be able to.  Itwill be a great disgrace if you don’t.”

“It’s very interesting to hear you speak ofyourself; but I don’t know what you mean by your allusionsto your having fallen off,” Paul Overt observed withpardonable hypocrisy.  He liked his companion so much nowthat the fact of any decline of talent or of care had ceased forthe moment to be vivid to him.

“Don’t say that—don’t say that,”St. George returned gravely, his head resting on the top of thesofa-back and his eyes on the ceiling.  “You knowperfectly what I mean.  I haven’t read twenty pages ofyour book without seeing that you can’t help it.”

“You make me very miserable,” Paul ecstaticallybreathed.

“I’m glad of that, for it may serve as a kind ofwarning.  Shocking enough it must be, especially to a youngfresh mind, full of faith—the spectacle of a man meant forbetter things sunk at my age in such dishonour.”  St.George, in the same contemplative attitude, spoke softly butdeliberately, and without perceptible emotion.  His toneindeed suggested an impersonal lucidity that was practicallycruel—cruel to himself—and made his young friend layan argumentative hand on his arm.  But he went on while hiseyes seemed to follow the graces of the eighteenth-centuryceiling: “Look at me well, take my lesson toheart—for it isa lesson.  Let that good comeof it at least that you shudder with your pitiful impression, andthat this may help to keep you straight in the future. Don’t become in your old age what I have in mine—thedepressing, the deplorable illustration of the worship of falsegods!”

“What do you mean by your old age?” the young manasked.

“It has made me old.  But I like youryouth.”

Paul answered nothing—they sat for a minute insilence.  They heard the others going on about thegovernmental majority.  Then “What do you mean byfalse gods?” he enquired.

His companion had no difficulty whatever in saying, “Theidols of the market; money and luxury and ‘theworld;’ placing one’s children and dressingone’s wife; everything that drives one to the short andeasy way.  Ah the vile things they make one do!”

“But surely one’s right to want to placeone’s children.”

“One has no business to have any children,” St.George placidly declared.  “I mean of course if onewants to do anything good.”

“But aren’t they an inspiration—anincentive?”

“An incentive to damnation, artisticallyspeaking.”

“You touch on very deep things—things I shouldlike to discuss with you,” Paul said.  “I shouldlike you to tell me volumes about yourself.  This is a greatfeast for me!”

“Of course it is, cruel youth.  But to show youI’m still not incapable, degraded as I am, of an act offaith, I’ll tie my vanity to the stake for you and burn itto ashes.  You must come and see me—you must come andsee us,” the Master quickly substituted.  “Mrs.St. George is charming; I don’t know whether you’vehad any opportunity to talk with her.  She’ll bedelighted to see you; she likes great celebrities, whetherincipient or predominant.  You must come and dine—mywife will write to you.  Where are you to befound?”

“This is my little address”—and Overt drewout his pocketbook and extracted a visiting-card.  On secondthoughts, however, he kept it back, remarking that hewouldn’t trouble his friend to take charge of it but wouldcome and see him straightway in London and leave it at his doorif he should fail to obtain entrance.

“Ah you’ll probably fail; my wife’s alwaysout—or when she isn’t out is knocked up from havingbeen out.  You must come and dine—though thatwon’t do much good either, for my wife insists on bigdinners.”  St. George turned it over further, but thenwent on: “You must come down and see us in the country,that’s the best way; we’ve plenty of room, and itisn’t bad.”

“You’ve a house in the country?” Paul askedenviously.

“Ah not like this!  But we have a sort of place wego to—an hour from Euston.  That’s one of thereasons.”

“One of the reasons?”

“Why my books are so bad.”

“You must tell me all the others!” Paul longinglylaughed.

His friend made no direct rejoinder to this, but spoke againabruptly.  “Why have I never seen youbefore?”

The tone of the question was singularly flattering to ourhero, who felt it to imply the great man’s now perceivinghe had for years missed something.  “Partly, Isuppose, because there has been no particular reason why youshould see me.  I haven’t lived in the world—inyour world.  I’ve spent many years out of England, indifferent places abroad.”

“Well, please don’t do it any more.  You mustdo England—there’s such a lot of it.”

“Do you mean I must write about it?” and Paulstruck the note of the listening candour of a child.

“Of course you must.  And tremendously well, do youmind?  That takes off a little of my esteem for this thingof yours—that it goes on abroad.  Hang‘abroad!’  Stay at home and do thingshere—do subjects we can measure.”

“I’ll do whatever you tell me,” Overt said,deeply attentive.  “But pardon me if I say Idon’t understand how you’ve been reading mybook,” he added.  “I’ve had you before meall the afternoon, first in that long walk, then at tea on thelawn, till we went to dress for dinner, and all the evening atdinner and in this place.”

St. George turned his face about with a smile.  “Igave it but a quarter of an hour.”

“A quarter of an hour’s immense, but I don’tunderstand where you put it in.  In the drawing-room afterdinner you weren’t reading—you were talking to MissFancourt.”

“It comes to the same thing, because we talked about‘Ginistrella.’  She described it to me—shelent me her copy.”

“Lent it to you?”

“She travels with it.”

“It’s incredible,” Paul blushed.

“It’s glorious for you, but it also turned outvery well for me.  When the ladies went off to bed shekindly offered to send the book down to me.  Her maidbrought it to me in the hall and I went to my room with it. I hadn’t thought of coming here, I do that so little. But I don’t sleep early, I always have to read an hour ortwo.  I sat down to your novel on the spot, withoutundressing, without taking off anything but my coat.  Ithink that’s a sign my curiosity had been strongly rousedabout it.  I read a quarter of an hour, as I tell you, andeven in a quarter of an hour I was greatly struck.”

“Ah the beginning isn’t very good—it’sthe whole thing!” said Overt, who had listened to thisrecital with extreme interest.  “And you laid down thebook and came after me?” he asked.

“That’s the way it moved me.  I said tomyself ‘I see it’s off his own bat, and he’sthere, by the way, and the day’s over and I haven’tsaid twenty words to him.’  It occurred to me thatyou’d probably be in the smoking-room and that itwouldn’t be too late to repair my omission.  I wantedto do something civil to you, so I put on my coat and camedown.  I shall read your book again when I go up.”

Our friend faced round in his place—he was touched as hehad scarce ever been by the picture of such a demonstration inhis favour.  “You’re really the kindest ofmen.  Cela s’est passé commeça?—and I’ve been sitting here with you allthis time and never apprehended it and never thankedyou!”

“Thank Miss Fancourt—it was she who wound meup.  She has made me feel as if I had read yournovel.”

“She’s an angel from heaven!” Pauldeclared.

“She is indeed.  I’ve never seen any one likeher.  Her interest in literature’stouching—something quite peculiar to herself; she takes itall so seriously.  She feels the arts and she wants to feelthem more.  To those who practise them it’s almosthumiliating—her curiosity, her sympathy, her goodfaith.  How can anything be as fine as she supposesit?”

“She’s a rare organisation,” the younger mansighed.

“The richest I’ve ever seen—an artisticintelligence really of the first order.  And lodged in sucha form!” St. George exclaimed.

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

“Ah there it is—there’s nothing likelife!” said his companion.  “When you’refinished, squeezed dry and used up and you think the sack’sempty, you’re still appealed to, you still get touches andthrills, the idea springs up—out of the lap of theactual—and shows you there’s always something to bedone.  But I shan’t do it—she’s not forme!”

“How do you mean, not for you?”

“Oh it’s all over—she’s for you, ifyou like.”

“Ah much less!” said Paul. “She’s not for a dingy little man of letters;she’s for the world, the bright rich world of bribes andrewards.  And the world will take hold of her—it willcarry her away.”

“It will try—but it’s just a case in whichthere may be a fight.  It would be worth fighting, for a manwho had it in him, with youth and talent on his side.”

These words rang not a little in Paul Overt’sconsciousness—they held him briefly silent. “It’s a wonder she has remained as she is; givingherself away so—with so much to give away.”

“Remaining, you mean, so ingenuous—sonatural?  Oh she doesn’t care a straw—she givesaway because she overflows.  She has her own feelings, herown standards; she doesn’t keep remembering that she mustbe proud.  And then she hasn’t been here long enoughto be spoiled; she has picked up a fashion or two, but only theamusing ones.  She’s a provincial—a provincialof genius,” St. George went on; “her very blundersare charming, her mistakes are interesting.  She has comeback from Asia with all sorts of excited curiosities andunappeased appetities.  She’s first-rate herself andshe expends herself on the second-rate.  She’s lifeherself and she takes a rare interest in imitations.  Shemixes all things up, but there are none in regard to which shehasn’t perceptions.  She sees things in aperspective—as if from the top of the Himalayas—andshe enlarges everything she touches.  Above all sheexaggerates—to herself, I mean.  She exaggerates youand me!”

There was nothing in that description to allay the agitationcaused in our younger friend by such a sketch of a finesubject.  It seemed to him to show the art of St.George’s admired hand, and he lost himself in gazing at thevision—this hovered there before him—of awoman’s figure which should be part of the glory of anovel.  But at the end of a moment the thing had turned intosmoke, and out of the smoke—the last puff of a bigcigar—proceeded the voice of General Fancourt, who had leftthe others and come and planted himself before the gentlemen onthe sofa.  “I suppose that when you fellows gettalking you sit up half the night.”

“Half the night?—jamais de la vie!  I followa hygiene”—and St. George rose to his feet.

“I see—you’re hothouse plants,”laughed the General.  “That’s the way youproduce your flowers.”

“I produce mine between ten and one everymorning—I bloom with a regularity!” St. George wenton.

“And with a splendour!” added the polite General,while Paul noted how little the author of“Shadowmere” minded, as he phrased it to himself,when addressed as a celebrated story-teller.  The young manhad an idea heshould never get used to that; it wouldalways make him uncomfortable—from the suspicion thatpeople would think they had to—and he would want to preventit.  Evidently his great colleague had toughened andhardened—had made himself a surface.  The group of menhad finished their cigars and taken up their bedroomcandlesticks; but before they all passed out Lord Watermouthinvited the pair of guests who had been so absorbed together to“have” something.  It happened that they bothdeclined; upon which General Fancourt said: “Is that thehygiene?  You don’t water the flowers?”

“Oh I should drown them!” St. George replied; but,leaving the room still at his young friend’s side, he addedwhimsically, for the latter’s benefit, in a lower tone:“My wife doesn’t let me.”

“Well I’m glad I’m not one of youfellows!” the General richly concluded.

The nearness of Summersoft to London had this consequence,chilling to a person who had had a vision of sociability in arailway-carriage, that most of the company, after breakfast,drove back to town, entering their own vehicles, which had comeout to fetch them, while their servants returned by train withtheir luggage.  Three or four young men, among whom was PaulOvert, also availed themselves of the common convenience; butthey stood in the portico of the house and saw the others rollaway.  Miss Fancourt got into a victoria with her fatherafter she had shaken hands with our hero and said, smiling in thefrankest way in the world, “I mustsee youmore.  Mrs. St. George is so nice: she has promised to askus both to dinner together.”  This lady and herhusband took their places in a perfectly-appointedbrougham—she required a closed carriage—and as ouryoung man waved his hat to them in response to their nods andflourishes he reflected that, taken together, they were anhonourable image of success, of the material rewards and thesocial credit of literature.  Such things were not the fullmeasure, but he nevertheless felt a little proud forliterature.

p.56IV

Before a week had elapsed he met Miss Fancourt in Bond Street,at a private view of the works of a young artist in“black-and-white” who had been so good as to invitehim to the stuffy scene.  The drawings were admirable, butthe crowd in the one little room was so dense that he felthimself up to his neck in a sack of wool.  A fringe ofpeople at the outer edge endeavoured by curving forward theirbacks and presenting, below them, a still more convex surface ofresistance to the pressure of the mass, to preserve an intervalbetween their noses and the glazed mounts of the pictures; whilethe central body, in the comparative gloom projected by a widehorizontal screen hung under the skylight and allowing only amargin for the day, remained upright dense and vague, lost in thecontemplation of its own ingredients.  This contemplationsat especially in the sad eyes of certain female heads,surmounted with hats of strange convolution and plumage, whichrose on long necks above the others.  One of the heads Paulperceived, was much the so most beautiful of the collection, andhis next discovery was that it belonged to Miss Fancourt. Its beauty was enhanced by the glad smile she sent him acrosssurrounding obstructions, a smile that drew him to her as fast ashe could make his way.  He had seen for himself atSummersoft that the last thing her nature contained was anaffectation of indifference; yet even with this circumspection hetook a fresh satisfaction in her not having pretended to awaithis arrival with composure.  She smiled as radiantly as ifshe wished to make him hurry, and as soon as he came withinearshot she broke out in her voice of joy: “He’shere—he’s here—he’s coming back in amoment!”

“Ah your father?” Paul returned as she offered himher hand.

“Oh dear no, this isn’t in my poor father’sline.  I mean Mr. St. George.  He has just left me tospeak to some one—he’s coming back.  It’she who brought me—wasn’t it charming?”

“Ah that gives him a pull over me—I couldn’thave ‘brought’ you, could I?”

“If you had been so kind as to propose it—why notyou as well as he?” the girl returned with a face that,expressing no cheap coquetry, simply affirmed a happy fact.

“Why he’s a père de famille. They’ve privileges,” Paul explained.  And thenquickly: “Will you go to see places with me?”he asked.

“Anything you like!” she smiled.  “Iknow what you mean, that girls have to have a lot ofpeople—”  Then she broke off: “Idon’t know; I’m free.  I’ve always beenlike that—I can go about with any one.  I’m soglad to meet you,” she added with a sweet distinctness thatmade those near her turn round.

“Let me at least repay that speech by taking you out ofthis squash,” her friend said.  “Surely peoplearen’t happy here!”

“No, they’re awfully mornes, aren’tthey?  But I’m very happy indeed and I promised Mr.St. George to remain in this spot till he comes back. He’s going to take me away.  They send him invitationsfor things of this sort—more than he wants.  It was sokind of him to think of me.”

“They also send me invitations of this kind—morethan Iwant.  And if thinking of youwill doit—!” Paul went on.

“Oh I delight in them—everything that’slife—everything that’s London!”

“They don’t have private views in Asia, Isuppose,” he laughed.  “But what a pity that forthis year, even in this gorged city, they’re pretty wellover.”

“Well, next year will do, for I hope you believewe’re going to be friends always.  Here hecomes!” Miss Fancourt continued before Paul had time torespond.

He made out St. George in the gaps of the crowd, and thisperhaps led to his hurrying a little to say: “I hope thatdoesn’t mean I’m to wait till next year to seeyou.”

“No, no—aren’t we to meet at dinner on thetwenty-fifth?” she panted with an eagerness as happy as hisown.

“That’s almost next year.  Is there no meansof seeing you before?”

She stared with all her brightness.  “Do you meanyou’d come?”

“Like a shot, if you’ll be so good as to askme!”

“On Sunday then—this next Sunday?”

“What have I done that you should doubt it?” theyoung man asked with delight.

Miss Fancourt turned instantly to St. George, who had nowjoined them, and announced triumphantly: “He’s comingon Sunday—this next Sunday!”

“Ah my day—my day too!” said the famousnovelist, laughing, to their companion.

“Yes, but not yours only.  You shall meet inManchester Square; you shall talk—you shall bewonderful!”

“We don’t meet often enough,” St. Georgeallowed, shaking hands with his disciple.  “Too manythings—ah too many things!  But we must make it up inthe country in September.  You won’t forgetyou’ve promised me that?”

“Why he’s coming on thetwenty-fifth—you’ll see him then,” said thegirl.

“On the twenty-fifth?” St. George askedvaguely.

“We dine with you; I hope you haven’tforgotten.  He’s dining out that day,” she addedgaily to Paul.

“Oh bless me, yes—that’s charming!  Andyou’re coming?  My wife didn’t tell me,”St. George said to him.  “Too many things—toomany things!” he repeated.

“Too many people—too many people!” Paulexclaimed, giving ground before the penetration of an elbow.

“You oughtn’t to say that.  They all readyou.”

“Me?  I should like to see them!  Only two orthree at most,” the young man returned.

“Did you ever hear anything like that?  He knows,haughtily, how good he is!” St. George declared, laughingto Miss Fancourt.  “They read me, but thatdoesn’t make me like them any better.  Come away fromthem, come away!”  And he led the way out of theexhibition.

“He’s going to take me to the Park,” MissFancourt observed to Overt with elation as they passed along thecorridor that led to the street.

“Ah does he go there?” Paul asked, taking the factfor a somewhat unexpected illustration of St. George’smoeurs.

“It’s a beautiful day—there’ll be agreat crowd.  We’re going to look at the people, tolook at types,” the girl went on.  “We shall situnder the trees; we shall walk by the Row.”

“I go once a year—on business,” said St.George, who had overheard Paul’s question.

“Or with a country cousin, didn’t you tellme?  I’m the country cousin!” she continued overher shoulder to Paul as their friend drew her toward a hansom towhich he had signalled.  The young man watched them get in;he returned, as he stood there, the friendly wave of the handwith which, ensconced in the vehicle beside her, St. George tookleave of him.  He even lingered to see the vehicle startaway and lose itself in the confusion of Bond Street.  Hefollowed it with his eyes; it put to him embarrassingthings.  “She’s not for me!” thegreat novelist had said emphatically at Summersoft; but hismanner of conducting himself toward her appeared not quite inharmony with such a conviction.  How could he have behaveddifferently if she hadbeen for him?  An indefiniteenvy rose in Paul Overt’s heart as he took his way on footalone; a feeling addressed alike strangely enough, to each of theoccupants of the hansom.  How much he should like to rattleabout London with such a girl!  How much he should like togo and look at “types” with St. George!

The next Sunday at four o’clock he called in ManchesterSquare, where his secret wish was gratified by his finding MissFancourt alone.  She was in a large bright friendly occupiedroom, which was painted red all over, draped with the quaintcheap florid stuffs that are represented as coming from southernand eastern countries, where they are fabled to serve as thecounterpanes of the peasantry, and bedecked with pottery of vividhues, ranged on casual shelves, and with many water-colourdrawings from the hand (as the visitor learned) of the young ladyherself, commemorating with a brave breadth the sunsets, themountains, the temples and palaces of India.  He sat anhour—more than an hour, two hours—and all the whileno one came in.  His hostess was so good as to remark, withher liberal humanity, that it was delightful they weren’tinterrupted; it was so rare in London, especially at that season,that people got a good talk.  But luckily now, of a fineSunday, half the world went out of town, and that made it betterfor those who didn’t go, when these others were insympathy.  It was the defect of London—one of two orthree, the very short list of those she recognised in the teemingworld-city she adored—that there were too few good chancesfor talk; you never had time to carry anything far.

“Too many things—too many things!” Paulsaid, quoting St. George’s exclamation of a few daysbefore.

“Ah yes, for him there are too many—hislife’s too complicated.”

“Have you seen it near?  That’s what Ishould like to do; it might explain some mysteries,” hervisitor went on.  She asked him what mysteries he meant, andhe said: “Oh peculiarities of his work, inequalities,superficialities.  For one who looks at it from the artisticpoint of view it contains a bottomless ambiguity.”

She became at this, on the spot, all intensity. “Ah do describe that more—it’s sointeresting.  There are no such suggestive questions. I’m so fond of them.  He thinks he’s afailure—fancy!” she beautifully wailed.

“That depends on what his ideal may have been. With his gifts it ought to have been high.  But till oneknows what he really proposed to himself—?  Doyouknow by chance?” the young man broke off.

“Oh he doesn’t talk to me about himself.  Ican’t make him.  It’s too provoking.”

Paul was on the point of asking what then he did talk about,but discretion checked it and he said instead: “Do youthink he’s unhappy at home?”

She seemed to wonder.  “At home?”

“I mean in his relations with his wife.  He has amystifying little way of alluding to her.”

“Not to me,” said Marian Fancourt with her cleareyes.  “That wouldn’t be right, would it?”she asked gravely.

“Not particularly; so I’m glad he doesn’tmention her to you.  To praise her might bore you, and hehas no business to do anything else.  Yet he knows youbetter than me.”

“Ah but he respects you!” the girl cried aswith envy.

Her visitor stared a moment, then broke into a laugh. “Doesn’t he respect you?”

“Of course, but not in the same way.  He respectswhat you’ve done—he told me so, the otherday.”

Paul drank it in, but retained his faculties. “When you went to look at types?”

“Yes—we found so many: he has such an observationof them!  He talked a great deal about your book.  Hesays it’s really important.”

“Important!  Ah the grandcreature!”—and the author of the work in questiongroaned for joy.

“He was wonderfully amusing, he was inexpressibly droll,while we walked about.  He sees everything; he has so manycomparisons and images, and they’re always exactlyright.  C’est d’un trouvé, as theysay.”

“Yes, with his gifts, such things as he ought to havedone!” Paul sighed.

“And don’t you think he hasdonethem?”

Ah it was just the point.  “A part of them, and ofcourse even that part’s immense.  But he might havebeen one of the greatest.  However, let us not make this anhour of qualifications.  Even as they stand,” ourfriend earnestly concluded, “his writings are a mine ofgold.”

To this proposition she ardently responded, and for half anhour the pair talked over the Master’s principalproductions.  She knew them well—she knew them evenbetter than her visitor, who was struck with her criticalintelligence and with something large and bold in the movement inher mind.  She said things that startled him and thatevidently had come to her directly; they weren’t picked-upphrases—she placed them too well.  St. George had beenright about her being first-rate, about her not being afraid togush, not remembering that she must be proud.  Suddenlysomething came back to her, and she said: “I recollect thathe did speak of Mrs. St. George to me once.  He said,apropos of something or other, that she didn’t care forperfection.”

“That’s a great crime in an artist’swife,” Paul returned.

“Yes, poor thing!” and the girl sighed with asuggestion of many reflexions, some of them mitigating.  Butshe presently added: “Ah perfection, perfection—howone ought to go in for it!  I wish Icould.”

“Every one can in his way,” her companionopined.

“In hisway, yes—but not in hers. Women are so hampered—so condemned!  Yet it’s akind of dishonour if you don’t, when you want to dosomething, isn’t it?”  Miss Fancourt pursued,dropping one train in her quickness to take up another, anaccident that was common with her.  So these two youngpersons sat discussing high themes in their eclecticdrawing-room, in their London“season”—discussing, with extreme seriousness,the high theme of perfection.  It must be said inextenuation of this eccentricity that they were interested in thebusiness.  Their tone had truth and their emotion beauty;they weren’t posturing for each other or for some oneelse.

The subject was so wide that they found themselves reducingit; the perfection to which for the moment they agreed to confinetheir speculations was that of the valid, the exemplary work ofart.  Our young woman’s imagination, it appeared, hadwandered far in that direction, and her guest had the raredelight of feeling in their conversation a fullinterchange.  This episode will have lived for years in hismemory and even in his wonder; it had the quality that fortunedistils in a single drop at a time—the quality thatlubricates many ensuing frictions.  He still, whenever helikes, has a vision of the room, the bright red sociabletalkative room with the curtains that, by a stroke of successfulaudacity, had the note of vivid blue.  He remembers wherecertain things stood, the particular book open on the table andthe almost intense odour of the flowers placed, at the left,somewhere behind him.  These facts were the fringe, as itwere, of a fine special agitation which had its birth in thosetwo hours and of which perhaps the main sign was in its leadinghim inwardly and repeatedly to breathe “I had no idea therewas any one like this—I had no idea there was any one likethis!”  Her freedom amazed him and charmedhim—it seemed so to simplify the practical question. She was on the footing of an independent personage—amotherless girl who had passed out of her teens and had aposition and responsibilities, who wasn’t held down to thelimitations of a little miss.  She came and went with nodragged duenna, she received people alone, and, though she wastotally without hardness, the question of protection or patronagehad no relevancy in regard to her.  She gave such animpression of the clear and the noble combined with the easy andthe natural that in spite of her eminent modern situation shesuggested no sort of sister-hood with the “fast”girl.  Modern she was indeed, and made Paul Overt, who lovedold colour, the golden glaze of time, think with some alarm ofthe muddled palette of the future.  He couldn’t getused to her interest in the arts he cared for; it seemed too goodto be real—it was so unlikely an adventure to tumble intosuch a well of sympathy.  One might stray into the deserteasily—that was on the cards and that was the law of life;but it was too rare an accident to stumble on a crystalwell.  Yet if her aspirations seemed at one moment tooextravagant to be real they struck him at the next as toointelligent to be false.  They were both high and lame, and,whims for whims, he preferred them to any he had met in a likerelation.  It was probable enough she would leave thembehind—exchange them for politics or“smartness” or mere prolific maternity, as was thecustom of scribbling daubing educated flattered girls in an ageof luxury and a society of leisure.  He noted that thewater-colours on the walls of the room she sat in had mainly thequality of being naïves, and reflected thatnaïveté in art is like a zero in a number: itsimportance depends on the figure it is united with. Meanwhile, however, he had fallen in love with her.  Beforehe went away, at any rate, he said to her: “I thought St.George was coming to see you to-day, but he doesn’t turnup.”

For a moment he supposed she was going to cry “Commentdonc?  Did you come here only to meet him?”  Butthe next he became aware of how little such a speech would havefallen in with any note of flirtation he had as yet perceived inher.  She only replied: “Ah yes, but I don’tthink he’ll come.  He recommended me not to expecthim.”  Then she gaily but all gently added: “Hesaid it wasn’t fair to you.  But I think I couldmanage two.”

“So could I,” Paul Overt returned, stretching thepoint a little to meet her.  In reality his appreciation ofthe occasion was so completely an appreciation of the womanbefore him that another figure in the scene, even so esteemed aone as St. George, might for the hour have appealed to himvainly.  He left the house wondering what the great man hadmeant by its not being fair to him; and, still more than that,whether he had actually stayed away from the force of thatidea.  As he took his course through the Sunday solitude ofManchester Square, swinging his stick and with a good deal ofemotion fermenting in his soul, it appeared to him he was livingin a world strangely magnanimous.  Miss Fancourt had toldhim it was possible she should be away, and that her fathershould be, on the following Sunday, but that she had the hope ofa visit from him in the other event.  She promised to lethim know should their absence fail, and then he might actaccordingly.  After he had passed into one of the streetsthat open from the Square he stopped, without definiteintentions, looking sceptically for a cab.  In a moment hesaw a hansom roll through the place from the other side and comea part of the way toward him.  He was on the point ofhailing the driver when he noticed a “fare” within;then he waited, seeing the man prepare to deposit his passengerby pulling up at one of the houses.  The house wasapparently the one he himself had just quitted; at least he drewthat inference as he recognised Henry St. George in the personwho stepped out of the hansom.  Paul turned off as quicklyas if he had been caught in the act of spying.  He gave uphis cab—he preferred to walk; he would go nowhereelse.  He was glad St. George hadn’t renounced hisvisit altogether—that would have been too absurd. Yes, the world was magnanimous, and even he himself felt so as,on looking at his watch, he noted but six o’clock, so thathe could mentally congratulate his successor on having an hourstill to sit in Miss Fancourt’s drawing-room.  Hehimself might use that hour for another visit, but by the time hereached the Marble Arch the idea of such a course had becomeincongruous to him.  He passed beneath that architecturaleffort and walked into the Park till he got upon the spreadinggrass.  Here he continued to walk; he took his way acrossthe elastic turf and came out by the Serpentine.  He watchedwith a friendly eye the diversions of the London people, he benta glance almost encouraging on the young ladies paddling theirsweethearts about the lake and the guardsmen tickling tenderlywith their bearskins the artificial flowers in the Sunday hats oftheir partners.  He prolonged his meditative walk; he wentinto Kensington Gardens, he sat upon the penny chairs, he lookedat the little sail-boats launched upon the round pond and wasglad he had no engagement to dine.  He repaired for thispurpose, very late, to his club, where he found himself unable toorder a repast and told the waiter to bring whatever therewas.  He didn’t even observe what he was served with,and he spent the evening in the library of the establishment,pretending to read an article in an American magazine.  Hefailed to discover what it was about; it appeared in a dim way tobe about Marian Fancourt.

Quite late in the week she wrote to him that she was not to gointo the country—it had only just been settled.  Herfather, she added, would never settle anything, but put it all onher.  She felt her responsibility—she had to—andsince she was forced this was the way she had decided.  Shementioned no reasons, which gave our friend all the clearer fieldfor bold conjecture about them.  In Manchester Square onthis second Sunday he esteemed his fortune less good, for she hadthree or four other visitors.  But there were three or fourcompensations; perhaps the greatest of which was that, learninghow her father had after all, at the last hour, gone out of townalone, the bold conjecture I just now spoke of found itselfbecoming a shade more bold.  And then her presence was herpresence, and the personal red room was there and was full of it,whatever phantoms passed and vanished, emitting incomprehensiblesounds.  Lastly, he had the resource of staying till everyone had come and gone and of believing this grateful to her,though she gave no particular sign.  When they were alonetogether he came to his point.  “But St. George didcome—last Sunday.  I saw him as I lookedback.”

“Yes; but it was the last time.”

“The last time?”

“He said he would never come again.”

Paul Overt stared.  “Does he mean he wishes tocease to see you?”

“I don’t know what he means,” the girlbravely smiled.  “He won’t at any rate see mehere.”

“And pray why not?”

“I haven’t the least idea,” said MarianFancourt, whose visitor found her more perversely sublime thanever yet as she professed this clear helplessness.

p. 74V

“Oh I say, I want you to stopa little,” Henry St. George said to him at eleveno’clock the night he dined with the head of theprofession.  The company—none of it indeed ofthe profession—had been numerous and was taking its leave;our young man, after bidding good-night to his hostess, had putout his hand in farewell to the master of the house. Besides drawing from the latter the protest I have cited thismovement provoked a further priceless word about their chance nowto have a talk, their going into his room, his having stilleverything to say.  Paul Overt was all delight at thiskindness; nevertheless he mentioned in weak jocose qualificationthe bare fact that he had promised to go to another place whichwas at a considerable distance.

“Well then you’ll break your promise, that’sall.  You quite awful humbug!” St. George added in atone that confirmed our young man’s ease.

“Certainly I’ll break it—but it was a realpromise.”

“Do you mean to Miss Fancourt?  You’refollowing her?” his friend asked.

He answered by a question.  “Oh is shegoing?”

“Base impostor!” his ironic host went on. “I’ve treated you handsomely on the article of thatyoung lady: I won’t make another concession.  Waitthree minutes—I’ll be with you.”  He gavehimself to his departing guests, accompanied the long-trainedladies to the door.  It was a hot night, the windows wereopen, the sound of the quick carriages and of the linkmen’scall came into the house.  The affair had rather glittered;a sense of festal things was in the heavy air: not only theinfluence of that particular entertainment, but the suggestion ofthe wide hurry of pleasure which in London on summer nights fillsso many of the happier quarters of the complicated town. Gradually Mrs. St. George’s drawing-room emptied itself;Paul was left alone with his hostess, to whom he explained themotive of his waiting.  “Ah yes, some intellectual,some professional, talk,” she leered; “at thisseason doesn’t one miss it?  Poor dear Henry,I’m so glad!”  The young man looked out of thewindow a moment, at the called hansoms that lurched up, at thesmooth broughams that rolled away.  When he turned roundMrs. St. George had disappeared; her husband’s voice roseto him from below—he was laughing and talking, in theportico, with some lady who awaited her carriage.  Paul hadsolitary possession, for some minutes, of the warm deserted roomswhere the covered tinted lamplight was soft, the seats had beenpushed about and the odour of flowers lingered.  They werelarge, they were pretty, they contained objects of value;everything in the picture told of a “goodhouse.”  At the end of five minutes a servant came inwith a request from the Master that he would join him downstairs;upon which, descending, he followed his conductor through a longpassage to an apartment thrown out, in the rear of thehabitation, for the special requirements, as he guessed, of abusy man of letters.

St. George was in his shirt-sleeves in the middle of a largehigh room—a room without windows, but with a wide skylightat the top, that of a place of exhibition.  It was furnishedas a library, and the serried bookshelves rose to the ceiling, asurface of incomparable tone produced by dimly-gilt“backs” interrupted here and there by the suspensionof old prints and drawings.  At the end furthest from thedoor of admission was a tall desk, of great extent, at which theperson using it could write only in the erect posture of a clerkin a counting-house; and stretched from the entrance to thisstructure was a wide plain band of crimson cloth, as straight asa garden-path and almost as long, where, in his mind’s eye,Paul at once beheld the Master pace to and fro during vexedhours—hours, that is, of admirable composition.  Theservant gave him a coat, an old jacket with a hang of experience,from a cupboard in the wall, retiring afterwards with the garmenthe had taken off.  Paul Overt welcomed the coat; it was acoat for talk, it promised confidences—having visiblyreceived so many—and had tragic literary elbows. “Ah we’re practical—we’repractical!” St. George said as he saw his visitor look theplace over.  “Isn’t it a good big cage for goinground and round?  My wife invented it and she locks me uphere every morning.”

Our young man breathed—by way of tribute—with acertain oppression.  “You don’t miss awindow—a place to look out?”

“I did at first awfully; but her calculation wasjust.  It saves time, it has saved me many months in theseten years.  Here I stand, under the eye of day—inLondon of course, very often, it’s rather a bleared oldeye—walled in to my trade.  I can’t getaway—so the room’s a fine lesson inconcentration.  I’ve learnt the lesson, I think; lookat that big bundle of proof and acknowledge it.”  Hepointed to a fat roll of papers, on one of the tables, which hadnot been undone.

“Are you bringing out another—?” Paul askedin a tone the fond deficiencies of which he didn’trecognise till his companion burst out laughing, and indeedscarce even then.

“You humbug, you humbug!”—St. Georgeappeared to enjoy caressing him, as it were, with thatopprobrium.  “Don’t I know what you think ofthem?” he asked, standing there with his hands in hispockets and with a new kind of smile.  It was as if he weregoing to let his young votary see him all now.

“Upon my word in that case you know more than Ido!” the latter ventured to respond, revealing a part ofthe torment of being able neither clearly to esteem nordistinctly to renounce him.

“My dear fellow,” said the more and moreinteresting Master, “don’t imagine I talk about mybooks specifically; they’re not a decent subject—ilne manquerait plus que ça!  I’m not so bad asyou may apprehend!  About myself, yes, a little, if youlike; though it wasn’t for that I brought you downhere.  I want to ask you something—very much indeed; Ivalue this chance.  Therefore sit down.  We’repractical, but there isa sofa, you see—for she doeshumour my poor bones so far.  Like all really greatadministrators and disciplinarians she knows when wisely torelax.”  Paul sank into the corner of a deep leatherncouch, but his friend remained standing and explanatory. “If you don’t mind, in this room, this is myhabit.  From the door to the desk and from the desk to thedoor.  That shakes up my imagination gently; and don’tyou see what a good thing it is that there’s no window forher to fly out of?  The eternal standing as I write (I stopat that bureau and put it down, when anything comes, and so we goon) was rather wearisome at first, but we adopted it with an eyeto the long run; you’re in better order—if your legsdon’t break down!—and you can keep it up for moreyears.  Oh we’re practical—we’repractical!” St. George repeated, going to the table andtaking up all mechanically the bundle of proofs.  But,pulling off the wrapper, he had a change of attention thatappealed afresh to our hero.  He lost himself a moment,examining the sheets of his new book, while the youngerman’s eyes wandered over the room again.

“Lord, what good things I should do if I had such acharming place as this to do them in!” Paulreflected.  The outer world, the world of accident andugliness, was so successfully excluded, and within the richprotecting square, beneath the patronising sky, thedream-figures, the summoned company, could hold their particularrevel.  It was a fond prevision of Overt’s rather thanan observation on actual data, for which occasions had been toofew, that the Master thus more closely viewed would have thequality, the charming gift, of flashing out, all surprisingly, inpersonal intercourse and at moments of suspended or perhaps evenof diminished expectation.  A happy relation with him wouldbe a thing proceeding by jumps, not by traceable stages.

“Do you read them—really?” he asked, layingdown the proofs on Paul’s enquiring of him how soon thework would be published.  And when the young man answered“Oh yes, always,” he was moved to mirth again bysomething he caught in his manner of saying that. “You go to see your grandmother on her birthday—andvery proper it is, especially as she won’t last forever.  She has lost every faculty and every sense; sheneither sees, nor hears, nor speaks; but all customary pietiesand kindly habits are respectable.  Only you’re strongif you doread ’em!  Icouldn’t,my dear fellow.  You are strong, I know; and that’sjust a part of what I wanted to say to you.  You’revery strong indeed.  I’ve been going into your otherthings—they’ve interested me immensely.  Someone ought to have told me about them before—some one Icould believe.  But whom can one believe?  You’rewonderfully on the right road—it’s awfully decentwork.  Now do you mean to keep it up?—that’swhat I want to ask you.”

“Do I mean to do others?” Paul asked, looking upfrom his sofa at his erect inquisitor and feeling partly like ahappy little boy when the school-master is gay, and partly likesome pilgrim of old who might have consulted a world-famousoracle.  St. George’s own performance had been infirm,but as an adviser he would be infallible.

“Others—others?  Ah the number won’tmatter; one other would do, if it were really a furtherstep—a throb of the same effort.  What I mean is haveyou it in your heart to go in for some sort of decentperfection?”

“Ah decency, ah perfection—!” the young mansincerely sighed.  “I talked of them the other Sundaywith Miss Fancourt.”

It produced on the Master’s part a laugh of oddacrimony.  “Yes, they’ll ‘talk’ ofthem as much as you like!  But they’ll do little tohelp one to them.  There’s no obligation of course;only you strike me as capable,” he went on. “You must have thought it all over.  I can’tbelieve you’re without a plan.  That’s thesensation you give me, and it’s so rare that it reallystirs one up—it makes you remarkable.  If youhaven’t a plan, if you don’tmean to keep itup, surely you’re within your rights; it’snobody’s business, no one can force you, and not more thantwo or three people will notice you don’t gostraight.  The others—allthe rest, every blestsoul in England, will think you do—will think you arekeeping it up: upon my honour they will!  I shall be one ofthe two or three who know better.  Now the question iswhether you can do it for two or three.  Is that the stuffyou’re made of?”

It locked his guest a minute as in closed throbbingarms.  “I could do it for one, if you were theone.”

“Don’t say that; I don’t deserve it; itscorches me,” he protested with eyes suddenly grave andglowing.  “The ‘one’ is of courseone’s self, one’s conscience, one’s idea, thesingleness of one’s aim.  I think of that pure spiritas a man thinks of a woman he has in some detested hour of hisyouth loved and forsaken.  She haunts him with reproachfuleyes, she lives for ever before him.  As an artist, youknow, I’ve married for money.”  Paul stared andeven blushed a little, confounded by this avowal; whereupon hishost, observing the expression of his face, dropped a quick laughand pursued: “You don’t follow my figure. I’m not speaking of my dear wife, who had a smallfortune—which, however, was not my bribe.  I fell inlove with her, as many other people have done.  I refer tothe mercenary muse whom I led to the altar of literature. Don’t, my boy, put your nose into thatyoke. The awful jade will lead you a life!”

Our hero watched him, wondering and deeply touched. “Haven’t you been happy!”

“Happy?  It’s a kind of hell.”

“There are things I should like to ask you,” Paulsaid after a pause.

“Ask me anything in all the world.  I’d turnmyself inside out to save you.”

“To ‘save’ me?” he quavered.

“To make you stick to it—to make you see itthrough.  As I said to you the other night at Summersoft,let my example be vivid to you.”

“Why your books are not so bad as that,” saidPaul, fairly laughing and feeling that if ever a fellow hadbreathed the air of art—!

“So bad as what?”

“Your talent’s so great that it’s ineverything you do, in what’s less good as well as inwhat’s best.  You’ve some forty volumes to showfor it—forty volumes of wonderful life, of rareobservation, of magnificent ability.”

“I’m very clever, of course I knowthat”—but it was a thing, in fine, this author madenothing of.  “Lord, what rot they’d all be if Ihadn’t been I’m a successful charlatan,” hewent on—“I’ve been able to pass off mysystem.  But do you know what it is?  It’scartonpierre.”

“Carton-pierre?” Paul was struck, and gaped.

“Lincrusta-Walton!”

“Ah don’t say such things—you make mebleed!” the younger man protested.  “I see youin a beautiful fortunate home, living in comfort andhonour.”

“Do you call it honour?”—his host took himup with an intonation that often comes back to him. “That’s what I want youto go in for.  Imean the real thing.  This is brummagem.”

“Brummagem?” Paul ejaculated while his eyeswandered, by a movement natural at the moment, over the luxuriousroom.

“Ah they make it so well to-day—it’swonderfully deceptive!”

Our friend thrilled with the interest and perhaps even morewith the pity of it.  Yet he wasn’t afraid to seem topatronise when he could still so far envy.  “Is itdeceptive that I find you living with every appearance ofdomestic felicity—blest with a devoted, accomplished wife,with children whose acquaintance I haven’t yet had thepleasure of making, but who mustbe delightful youngpeople, from what I know of their parents?”

St. George smiled as for the candour of his question. “It’s all excellent, my dear fellow—heavenforbid I should deny it.  I’ve made a great deal ofmoney; my wife has known how to take care of it, to use itwithout wasting it, to put a good bit of it by, to make itfructify.  I’ve got a loaf on the shelf; I’vegot everything in fact but the great thing.”

“The great thing?” Paul kept echoing.

“The sense of having done the best—the sense whichis the real life of the artist and the absence of which is hisdeath, of having drawn from his intellectual instrument thefinest music that nature had hidden in it, of having played it asit should be played.  He either does that or hedoesn’t—and if he doesn’t he isn’t worthspeaking of.  Therefore, precisely, those who really knowdon’tspeak of him.  He may still hear a greatchatter, but what he hears most is the incorruptible silence ofFame.  I’ve squared her, you may say, for my littlehour—but what’s my little hour?  Don’timagine for a moment,” the Master pursued, “thatI’m such a cad as to have brought you down here to abuse orto complain of my wife to you.  She’s a woman ofdistinguished qualities, to whom my obligations are immense; sothat, if you please, we’ll say nothing about her.  Myboys—my children are all boys—are straight andstrong, thank God, and have no poverty of growth about them, nopenury of needs.  I receive periodically the mostsatisfactory attestation from Harrow, from Oxford, fromSandhurst—oh we’ve done the best for them!—oftheir eminence as living thriving consuming organisms.”

“It must be delightful to feel that the son ofone’s loins is at Sandhurst,” Paul remarkedenthusiastically.

“It is—it’s charming.  Oh I’m apatriot!”

The young man then could but have the greater tribute ofquestions to pay.  “Then what did you mean—theother night at Summersoft—by saying that children are acurse?”

“My dear youth, on what basis are we talking?” andSt. George dropped upon the sofa at a short distance fromhim.  Sitting a little sideways he leaned back against theopposite arm with his hands raised and interlocked behind hishead.  “On the supposition that a certainperfection’s possible and even desirable—isn’tit so?  Well, all I say is that one’s childreninterfere with perfection.  One’s wifeinterferes.  Marriage interferes.”

“You think then the artist shouldn’tmarry?”

“He does so at his peril—he does so at hiscost.”

“Not even when his wife’s in sympathy with hiswork?”

“She never is—she can’t be!  Womenhaven’t a conception of such things.”

“Surely they on occasion work themselves,” Paulobjected.

“Yes, very badly indeed.  Oh of course, often, theythink they understand, they think they sympathise.  Then itis they’re most dangerous.  Their idea is that youshall do a great lot and get a great lot of money.  Theirgreat nobleness and virtue, their exemplary conscientiousness asBritish females, is in keeping you up to that.  My wifemakes all my bargains with my publishers for me, and has done sofor twenty years.  She does it consummatelywell—that’s why I’m really pretty welloff.  Aren’t you the father of their innocent babes,and will you withhold from them their natural sustenance? You asked me the other night if they’re not an immenseincentive.  Of course they are—there’s no doubtof that!”

Paul turned it over: it took, from eyes he had never felt openso wide, so much looking at.  “For myself I’vean idea I need incentives.”

“Ah well then, n’en parlons plus!” hiscompanion handsomely smiled.

“Youare an incentive, I maintain,” theyoung man went on.  “You don’t affect me in theway you’d apparently like to.  Your great success iswhat I see—the pomp of Ennismore Gardens!”

“Success?”—St. George’s eyes had acold fine light.  “Do you call it success to be spokenof as you’d speak of me if you were sitting here withanother artist—a young man intelligent and sincere likeyourself?  Do you call it success to make you blush—asyou would blush!—if some foreign critic (some fellow, ofcourse I mean, who should know what he was talking about andshould have shown you he did, as foreign critics like to show it)were to say to you: ‘He’s the one, in this country,whom they consider the most perfect, isn’t he?’ Is it success to be the occasion of a young Englishman’shaving to stammer as you would have to stammer at such a momentfor old England?  No, no; success is to have made peoplewriggle to another tune.  Do try it!”

Paul continued all gravely to glow.  “Trywhat?”

“Try to do some really good work.”

“Oh I want to, heaven knows!”

“Well, you can’t do it withoutsacrifices—don’t believe that for a moment,”the Master said.  “I’ve made none. I’ve had everything.  In other words I’ve missedeverything.”

“You’ve had the full rich masculine human generallife, with all the responsibilities and duties and burdens andsorrows and joys—all the domestic and social initiationsand complications.  They must be immensely suggestive,immensely amusing,” Paul anxiously submitted.

“Amusing?”

“For a strong man—yes.”

“They’ve given me subjects without number, ifthat’s what you mean; but they’ve taken away at thesame time the power to use them.  I’ve touched athousand things, but which one of them have I turned intogold?  The artist has to do only with that—he knowsnothing of any baser metal.  I’ve led the life of theworld, with my wife and my progeny; the clumsy conventionalexpensive materialised vulgarised brutalised life ofLondon.  We’ve got everything handsome, even acarriage—we’re perfect Philistines and prosperoushospitable eminent people.  But, my dear fellow, don’ttry to stultify yourself and pretend you don’t know what wehaven’tgot.  It’s bigger than all therest.  Between artists—come!” the Master woundup.  “You know as well as you sit there thatyou’d put a pistol-ball into your brain if you had writtenmy books!”

It struck his listener that the tremendous talk promised byhim at Summersoft had indeed come off, and with a promptitude, afulness, with which the latter’s young imagination hadscarcely reckoned.  His impression fairly shook him and hethrobbed with the excitement of such deep soundings and suchstrange confidences.  He throbbed indeed with the conflictof his feelings—bewilderment and recognition and alarm,enjoyment and protest and assent, all commingled with tenderness(and a kind of shame in the participation) for the sores andbruises exhibited by so fine a creature, and with a sense of thetragic secret nursed under his trappings.  The idea ofhis, Paul Overt’s, becoming the occasion of such anact of humility made him flush and pant, at the same time thathis consciousness was in certain directions too much alive not toswallow—and not intensely to taste—every offeredspoonful of the revelation.  It had been his odd fortune toblow upon the deep waters, to make them surge and break in wavesof strange eloquence.  But how couldn’t he give out apassionate contradiction of his host’s last extravagance,how couldn’t he enumerate to him the parts of his work heloved, the splendid things he had found in it, beyond the compassof any other writer of the day?  St. George listened awhile, courteously; then he said, laying his hand on hisvisitor’s: “That’s all very well; and if youridea’s to do nothing better there’s no reason youshouldn’t have as many good things as I—as many humanand material appendages, as many sons or daughters, a wife withas many gowns, a house with as many servants, a stable with asmany horses, a heart with as many aches.”  The Mastergot up when he had spoken thus—he stood a moment—nearthe sofa looking down on his agitated pupil.  “Are youpossessed of any property?” it occurred to him to ask.

“None to speak of.”

“Oh well then there’s no reason why youshouldn’t make a goodish income—if you set about itthe right way.  Study mefor that—study mewell.  You may really have horses.”

Paul sat there some minutes without speaking.  He lookedstraight before him—he turned over many things.  Hisfriend had wandered away, taking up a parcel of letters from thetable where the roll of proofs had lain.  “What wasthe book Mrs. St. George made you burn—the one shedidn’t like?” our young man brought out.

“The book she made me burn—how did you knowthat?”  The Master looked up from his letters quitewithout the facial convulsion the pupil had feared.

“I heard her speak of it at Summersoft.”

“Ah yes—she’s proud of it.  Idon’t know—it was rather good.”

“What was it about?”

“Let me see.”  And he seemed to make aneffort to remember.  “Oh yes—it was aboutmyself.”  Paul gave an irrepressible groan for thedisappearance of such a production, and the elder man went on:“Oh but youshould write it—youshoulddo me.”  And he pulled up—from the restlessmotion that had come upon him; his fine smile a generousglare.  “There’s a subject, my boy: no end ofstuff in it!”

Again Paul was silent, but it was all tormenting. “Are there no women who really understand—who cantake part in a sacrifice?”

“How can they take part?  They themselves are thesacrifice.  They’re the idol and the altar and theflame.”

“Isn’t there even onewho seesfurther?” Paul continued.

For a moment St. George made no answer; after which, havingtorn up his letters, he came back to the point all ironic. “Of course I know the one you mean.  But not even MissFancourt.”

“I thought you admired her so much.”

“It’s impossible to admire her more.  Are youin love with her?” St. George asked.

“Yes,” Paul Overt presently said.

“Well then give it up.”

Paul stared.  “Give up my‘love’?”

“Bless me, no.  Your idea.”  And then asour hero but still gazed: “The one you talked with herabout.  The idea of a decent perfection.”

“She’d help it—she’d help it!”the young man cried.

“For about a year—the first year, yes.  Afterthat she’d be as a millstone round its neck.”

Paul frankly wondered.  “Why she has a passion forthe real thing, for good work—for everything you and I carefor most.”

“‘You and I’ is charming, my dearfellow!” his friend laughed.  “She has itindeed, but she’d have a still greater passion for herchildren—and very proper too.  She’d insist oneverything’s being made comfortable, advantageous,propitious for them.  That isn’t the artist’sbusiness.”

“The artist—the artist!  Isn’t he a manall the same?”

St. George had a grand grimace.  “I mostly thinknot.  You know as well as I what he has to do: theconcentration, the finish, the independence he must strive forfrom the moment he begins to wish his work really decent. Ah my young friend, his relation to women, and especially to theone he’s most intimately concerned with, is at the mercy ofthe damning fact that whereas he can in the nature of things havebut one standard, they have about fifty.  That’s whatmakes them so superior,” St. George amusingly added. “Fancy an artist with a change of standards as you’dhave a change of shirts or of dinner-plates.  To doit—to do it and make it divine—is the only thing hehas to think about.  ‘Is it done or not?’ is hisonly question.  Not ‘Is it done as well as a propersolicitude for my dear little family will allow?’  Hehas nothing to do with the relative—he has only to do withthe absolute; and a dear little family may represent a dozenrelatives.”

“Then you don’t allow him the common passions andaffections of men?” Paul asked.

“Hasn’t he a passion, an affection, which includesall the rest?  Besides, let him have all the passions helikes—if he only keeps his independence.  He must beable to be poor.”

Paul slowly got up.  “Why then did you advise me tomake up to her?”

St. George laid his hand on his shoulder.  “Becauseshe’d make a splendid wife!  And I hadn’t readyou then.”

The young man had a strained smile.  “I wish youhad left me alone!”

“I didn’t know that that wasn’t good enoughfor you,” his host returned.

“What a false position, what a condemnation of theartist, that he’s a mere disfranchised monk and can producehis effect only by giving up personal happiness.  What anarraignment of art!” Paul went on with a tremblingvoice.

“Ah you don’t imagine by chance that I’mdefending art?  ‘Arraignment’—I shouldthink so!  Happy the societies in which it hasn’t madeits appearance, for from the moment it comes they have aconsuming ache, they have an incurable corruption, in theirbreast.  Most assuredly is the artist in a falseposition!  But I thought we were taking him forgranted.  Pardon me,” St. George continued:“‘Ginistrella’ made me!”

Paul stood looking at the floor—one o’clockstruck, in the stillness, from a neighbouring church-tower. “Do you think she’d ever look at me?” he put tohis friend at last.

“Miss Fancourt—as a suitor?  Whyshouldn’t I think it?  That’s why I’vetried to favour you—I’ve had a little chance or twoof bettering your opportunity.”

“Forgive my asking you, but do you mean by keeping awayyourself?” Paul said with a blush.

“I’m an old idiot—my place isn’tthere,” St. George stated gravely.

“I’m nothing yet, I’ve no fortune; and theremust be so many others,” his companion pursued.

The Master took this considerably in, but made little ofit.  “You’re a gentleman and a man ofgenius.  I think you might do something.”

“But if I must give that up—the genius?”

“Lots of people, you know, think I’ve keptmine,” St. George wonderfully grinned.

“You’ve a genius for mystification!” Pauldeclared; but grasping his hand gratefully in attenuation of thisjudgement.

“Poor dear boy, I do worry you!  But try, try, allthe same.  I think your chances are good and you’llwin a great prize.”

Paul held fast the other’s hand a minute; he looked intothe strange deep face.  “No, I amanartist—I can’t help it!”

“Ah show it then!” St. George pleadingly brokeout.  “Let me see before I die the thing I most want,the thing I yearn for: a life in which thepassion—ours—is really intense.  If you can berare don’t fail of it!  Think what it is—how itcounts—how it lives!”

They had moved to the door and he had closed both his handsover his companion’s.  Here they paused again and ourhero breathed deep.  “I want to live!”

“In what sense?”

“In the greatest.”

“Well then stick to it—see it through.”

“With your sympathy—your help?”

“Count on that—you’ll be a great figure tome.  Count on my highest appreciation, my devotion. You’ll give me satisfaction—if that has any weightwith you.”  After which, as Paul appeared still towaver, his host added: “Do you remember what you said to meat Summersoft?”

“Something infatuated, no doubt!”

“‘I’ll do anything in the world you tellme.’  You said that.”

“And you hold me to it?”

“Ah what am I?” the Master expressivelysighed.

“Lord, what things I shall have to do!” Paulalmost moaned as be departed.

p.98VI

“It goes on too muchabroad—hang abroad!”  These or something likethem had been the Master’s remarkable words in relation tothe action of “Ginistrella”; and yet, though they hadmade a sharp impression on the author of that work, like almostall spoken words from the same source, he a week after theconversation I have noted left England for a long absence andfull of brave intentions.  It is not a perversion of thetruth to pronounce that encounter the direct cause of hisdeparture.  If the oral utterance of the eminent writer hadthe privilege of moving him deeply it was especially on histurning it over at leisure, hours and days later, that itappeared to yield him its full meaning and exhibit its extremeimportance.  He spent the summer in Switzerland and, havingin September begun a new task, determined not to cross the Alpstill he should have made a good start.  To this end hereturned to a quiet corner he knew well, on the edge of the Lakeof Geneva and within sight of the towers of Chillon: a region anda view for which he had an affection that sprang from oldassociations and was capable of mysterious revivals andrefreshments.  Here he lingered late, till the snow was onthe nearer hills, almost down to the limit to which he couldclimb when his stint, on the shortening afternoons, wasperformed.  The autumn was fine, the lake was blue and hisbook took form and direction.  These felicities, for thetime, embroidered his life, which he suffered to cover him withits mantle.  At the end of six weeks he felt he had learntSt. George’s lesson by heart, had tested and proved itsdoctrine.  Nevertheless he did a very inconsistent thing:before crossing the Alps he wrote to Marian Fancourt.  Hewas aware of the perversity of this act, and it was only as aluxury, an amusement, the reward of a strenuous autumn, that hejustified it.  She had asked of him no such favour when,shortly before he left London, three days after their dinner inEnnismore Gardens, he went to take leave of her.  It wastrue she had had no ground—he hadn’t named hisintention of absence.  He had kept his counsel for want ofdue assurance: it was that particular visit that was, the nextthing, to settle the matter.  He had paid the visit to seehow much he really cared for her, and quick departure, without somuch as an explicit farewell, was the sequel to this enquiry, theanswer to which had created within him a deep yearning. When he wrote her from Clarens he noted that he owed her anexplanation (more than three months after!) for not having toldher what he was doing.

She replied now briefly but promptly, and gave him a strikingpiece of news: that of the death, a week before, of Mrs. St.George.  This exemplary woman had succumbed, in the country,to a violent attack of inflammation of the lungs—he wouldremember that for a long time she had been delicate.  MissFancourt added that she believed her husband overwhelmed by theblow; he would miss her too terribly—she had beeneverything in life to him.  Paul Overt, on this, immediatelywrote to St. George.  He would from the day of their partinghave been glad to remain in communication with him, but hadhitherto lacked the right excuse for troubling so busy aman.  Their long nocturnal talk came back to him in everydetail, but this was no bar to an expression of proper sympathywith the head of the profession, for hadn’t that very talkmade it clear that the late accomplished lady was the influencethat ruled his life?  What catastrophe could be more cruelthan the extinction of such an influence?  This was to beexactly the tone taken by St. George in answering his youngfriend upwards of a month later.  He made no allusion ofcourse to their important discussion.  He spoke of his wifeas frankly and generously as if he had quite forgotten thatoccasion, and the feeling of deep bereavement was visible in hiswords.  “She took everything off my hands—off mymind.  She carried on our life with the greatest art, therarest devotion, and I was free, as few men can have been, todrive my pen, to shut myself up with my trade.  This was arare service—the highest she could have rendered me. Would I could have acknowledged it more fitly!”

A certain bewilderment, for our hero, disengaged itself fromthese remarks: they struck him as a contradiction, aretractation, strange on the part of a man who hadn’t theexcuse of witlessness.  He had certainly not expected hiscorrespondent to rejoice in the death of his wife, and it wasperfectly in order that the rupture of a tie of more than twentyyears should have left him sore.  But if she had been soclear a blessing what in the name of consistency had the dear manmeant by turning him upside down that night—by dosing himto that degree, at the most sensitive hour of his life, with thedoctrine of renunciation?  If Mrs. St. George was anirreparable loss, then her husband’s inspired advice hadbeen a bad joke and renunciation was a mistake.  Overt wason the point of rushing back to London to show that, for hispart, he was perfectly willing to consider it so, and he went sofar as to take the manuscript of the first chapters of his newbook out of his table-drawer, to insert it into a pocket of hisportmanteau.  This led to his catching a glimpse of certainpages he hadn’t looked at for months, and that accident, inturn, to his being struck with the high promise theyrevealed—a rare result of such retrospections, which it washis habit to avoid as much as possible: they usually brought hometo him that the glow of composition might be a purely subjectiveand misleading emotion.  On this occasion a certain beliefin himself disengaged itself whimsically from the serriederasures of his first draft, making him think it best after allto pursue his present trial to the end.  If he could writeas well under the rigour of privation it might be a mistake tochange the conditions before that spell had spent itself. He would go back to London of course, but he would go back onlywhen he should have finished his book.  This was the vow heprivately made, restoring his manuscript to thetable-drawer.  It may be added that it took him a long timeto finish his book, for the subject was as difficult as it wasfine, and he was literally embarrassed by the fulness of hisnotes.  Something within him warned him that he must make itsupremely good—otherwise he should lack, as regards hisprivate behaviour, a handsome excuse.  He had a horror ofthis deficiency and found himself as firm as need be on thequestion of the lamp and the file.  He crossed the Alps atlast and spent the winter, the spring, the ensuing summer, inItaly, where still, at the end of a twelvemonth, his task wasunachieved.  “Stick to it—see it through”:this general injunction of St. George’s was good also forthe particular case.  He applied it to the utmost, with theresult that when in its slow order the summer had come roundagain he felt he had given all that was in him.  This timehe put his papers into his portmanteau, with the address of hispublisher attached, and took his way northward.

He had been absent from London for two years—two yearswhich, seeming to count as more, had made such a difference inhis own life—through the production of a novel farstronger, he believed, than “Ginistrella”—thathe turned out into Piccadilly, the morning after his arrival,with a vague expectation of changes, of finding great things hadhappened.  But there were few transformations inPiccadilly—only three or four big red houses where therehad been low black ones—and the brightness of the end ofJune peeped through the rusty railings of the Green Park andglittered in the varnish of the rolling carriages as he had seenit in other, more cursory Junes.  It was a greeting heappreciated; it seemed friendly and pointed, added to theexhilaration of his finished book, of his having his own countryand the huge oppressive amusing city that suggested everything,that contained everything, under his hand again. “Stay at home and do things here—do subjects we canmeasure,” St. George had said; and now it struck him heshould ask nothing better than to stay at home for ever. Late in the afternoon he took his way to Manchester Square,looking out for a number he hadn’t forgotten.  MissFancourt, however, was not at home, so that he turned ratherdejectedly from the door.  His movement brought him face toface with a gentleman just approaching it and recognised onanother glance as Miss Fancourt’s father.  Paulsaluted this personage, and the General returned the greetingwith his customary good manner—a manner so good, however,that you could never tell whether it meant he placed you. The disappointed caller felt the impulse to address him; then,hesitating, became both aware of having no particular remark tomake, and convinced that though the old soldier remembered him heremembered him wrong.  He therefore went his way withoutcomputing the irresistible effect his own evident recognitionwould have on the General, who never neglected a chance togossip.  Our young man’s face was expressive, andobservation seldom let it pass.  He hadn’t taken tensteps before he heard himself called after with a friendlysemi-articulate “Er—I beg your pardon!” He turned round and the General, smiling at him from the porch,said: “Won’t you come in?  I won’t leaveyou the advantage of me!”  Paul declined to come in,and then felt regret, for Miss Fancourt, so late in theafternoon, might return at any moment.  But her father gavehim no second chance; he appeared mainly to wish not to havestruck him as ungracious.  A further look at the visitor hadrecalled something, enough at least to enable him to say:“You’ve come back, you’ve comeback?”  Paul was on the point of replying that he hadcome back the night before, but he suppressed, the next instant,this strong light on the immediacy of his visit and, givingmerely a general assent, alluded to the young lady he deplorednot having found.  He had come late in the hope she would bein.  “I’ll tell her—I’ll tellher,” said the old man; and then he added quickly,gallantly: “You’ll be giving us something new? It’s a long time, isn’t it?”  Now heremembered him right.

“Rather long.  I’m very slow.” Paulexplained.  “I met you at Summersoft a long timeago.”

“Oh yes—with Henry St. George.  I remembervery well.  Before his poor wife—” GeneralFancourt paused a moment, smiling a little less.  “Idare say you know.”

“About Mrs. St. George’s death? Certainly—I heard at the time.”

“Oh no, I mean—I mean he’s to bemarried.”

“Ah I’ve not heard that!”  But just asPaul was about to add “To whom?” the General crossedhis intention.

“When did you come back?  I know you’ve beenaway—by my daughter.  She was very sorry.  Youought to give her something new.”

“I came back last night,” said our young man, towhom something had occurred which made his speech for the momenta little thick.

“Ah most kind of you to come so soon. Couldn’t you turn up at dinner?”

“At dinner?” Paul just mechanically repeated, notliking to ask whom St. George was going to marry, but thinkingonly of that.

“There are several people, I believe.  CertainlySt. George.  Or afterwards if you like better.  Ibelieve my daughter expects—”  He appeared tonotice something in the visitor’s raised face (on his stepshe stood higher) which led him to interrupt himself, and theinterruption gave him a momentary sense of awkwardness, fromwhich he sought a quick issue.  “Perhaps then youhaven’t heard she’s to be married.”

Paul gaped again.  “To be married?”

“To Mr. St. George—it has just been settled. Odd marriage, isn’t it?”  Our listener utteredno opinion on this point: he only continued to stare. “But I dare say it will do—she’s so awfullyliterary!” said the General.

Paul had turned very red.  “Oh it’s asurprise—very interesting, very charming!  I’mafraid I can’t dine—so many thanks!”

“Well, you must come to the wedding!” cried theGeneral.  “Oh I remember that day at Summersoft. He’s a great man, you know.”

“Charming—charming!” Paul stammered forretreat.  He shook hands with the General and got off. His face was red and he had the sense of its growing more andmore crimson.  All the evening at home—he wentstraight to his rooms and remained there dinnerless—hischeek burned at intervals as if it had been smitten.  Hedidn’t understand what had happened to him, what trick hadbeen played him, what treachery practised.  “None,none,” he said to himself.  “I’ve nothingto do with it.  I’m out of it—it’s none ofmy business.”  But that bewildered murmur was followedagain and again by the incongruous ejaculation: “Was it aplan—was it a plan?”  Sometimes he cried tohimself, breathless, “Have I been duped, sold,swindled?”  If at all, he was an absurd, an abjectvictim.  It was as if he hadn’t lost her tillnow.  He had renounced her, yes; but that was anotheraffair—that was a closed but not a locked door.  Nowhe seemed to see the door quite slammed in his face.  Did heexpect her to wait—was she to give him his time like that:two years at a stretch?  He didn’t know what he hadexpected—he only knew what he hadn’t.  Itwasn’t this—it wasn’t this.  Mystificationbitterness and wrath rose and boiled in him when he thought ofthe deference, the devotion, the credulity with which he hadlistened to St. George.  The evening wore on and the lightwas long; but even when it had darkened he remained without alamp.  He had flung himself on the sofa, where he laythrough the hours with his eyes either closed or gazing at thegloom, in the attitude of a man teaching himself to bearsomething, to bear having been made a fool of.  He had madeit too easy—that idea passed over him like a hotwave.  Suddenly, as he heard eleven o’clock strike, hejumped up, remembering what General Fancourt had said about hiscoming after dinner.  He’d go—he’d see herat least; perhaps he should see what it meant.  He felt asif some of the elements of a hard sum had been given him and theothers were wanting: he couldn’t do his sum till he had gotall his figures.

He dressed and drove quickly, so that by half-past eleven hewas at Manchester Square.  There were a good many carriagesat the door—a party was going on; a circumstance which atthe last gave him a slight relief, for now he would rather seeher in a crowd.  People passed him on the staircase; theywere going away, going “on” with the hunted herdlikemovement of London society at night.  But sundry groupsremained in the drawing-room, and it was some minutes, as shedidn’t hear him announced, before he discovered and spoketo her.  In this short interval he had seen St. Georgetalking to a lady before the fireplace; but he at once lookedaway, feeling unready for an encounter, and thereforecouldn’t be sure the author of “Shadowmere”noticed him.  At all events he didn’t come over thoughMiss Fancourt did as soon as she saw him—she almost rushedat him, smiling rustling radiant beautiful.  He hadforgotten what her head, what her face offered to the sight; shewas in white, there were gold figures on her dress and her hairwas a casque of gold.  He saw in a single moment that shewas happy, happy with an aggressive splendour.  But shewouldn’t speak to him of that, she would speak only ofhimself.

“I’m so delighted; my father told me.  Howkind of you to come!”  She struck him as so fresh andbrave, while his eyes moved over her, that he said to himselfirresistibly: “Why to him, why not to youth, to strength,to ambition, to a future?  Why, in her rich young force, tofailure, to abdication to superannuation?”  In histhought at that sharp moment he blasphemed even against all thathad been left of his faith in the peccable Master. “I’m so sorry I missed you,” she went on. “My father told me.  How charming of you to have comeso soon!”

“Does that surprise you?” Paul Overt asked.

“The first day?  No, from you—nothingthat’s nice.”  She was interrupted by a lady whobade her good-night, and he seemed to read that it cost hernothing to speak to him in that tone; it was her old liberallavish way, with a certain added amplitude that time had brought;and if this manner began to operate on the spot, at such ajuncture in her history, perhaps in the other days too it hadmeant just as little or as much—a mere mechanical charity,with the difference now that she was satisfied, ready to give butin want of nothing.  Oh she was satisfied—and whyshouldn’t she be?  Why shouldn’t she have beensurprised at his coming the first day—for all the good shehad ever got from him?  As the lady continued to hold herattention Paul turned from her with a strange irritation in hiscomplicated artistic soul and a sort of disinteresteddisappointment.  She was so happy that it was almoststupid—a disproof of the extraordinary intelligence he hadformerly found in her.  Didn’t she know how bad St.George could be, hadn’t she recognised the awfulthinness—?  If she didn’t she was nothing, andif she did why such an insolence of serenity?  This questionexpired as our young man’s eyes settled at last on thegenius who had advised him in a great crisis.  St. Georgewas still before the chimney-piece, but now he wasalone—fixed, waiting, as if he meant to stop after everyone—and he met the clouded gaze of the young friend sotroubled as to the degree of his right (the right his resentmentwould have enjoyed) to regard himself as a victim.  Somehowthe ravage of the question was checked by the Master’sradiance.  It was as fine in its way as MarianFancourt’s, it denoted the happy human being; but also itrepresented to Paul Overt that the author of“Shadowmere” had now definitely ceased tocount—ceased to count as a writer.  As he smiled awelcome across the place he was almost banal, was almostsmug.  Paul fancied that for a moment he hesitated to make amovement, as if for all the world he hadhis badconscience; then they had already met in the middle of the roomand had shaken hands—expressively, cordially on St.George’s part.  With which they had passed backtogether to where the elder man had been standing, while St.George said: “I hope you’re never going awayagain.  I’ve been dining here; the General toldme.”  He was handsome, he was young, he looked as ifhe had still a great fund of life.  He bent the friendliest,most unconfessing eyes on his disciple of a couple of yearsbefore; asked him about everything, his health, his plans, hislate occupations, the new book.  “When will it beout—soon, soon, I hope?  Splendid, eh? That’s right; you’re a comfort, you’re aluxury!  I’ve read you all over again these last sixmonths.”  Paul waited to see if he would tell him whatthe General had told him in the afternoon and what Miss Fancourt,verbally at least, of course hadn’t.  But as itdidn’t come out he at last put the question.

“Is it true, the great news I hear—thatyou’re to be married?”

“Ah you have heard it then?”

“Didn’t the General tell you?” Paulasked.

The Master’s face was wonderful.  “Tell mewhat?”

“That he mentioned it to me this afternoon?”

“My dear fellow, I don’t remember. We’ve been in the midst of people.  I’m sorry,in that case, that I lose the pleasure, myself, of announcing toyou a fact that touches me so nearly.  It isa fact,strange as it may appear.  It has only just becomeone.  Isn’t it ridiculous?”  St. Georgemade this speech without confusion, but on the other hand, so faras our friend could judge, without latent impudence.  Itstruck his interlocutor that, to talk so comfortably and coolly,he must simply have forgotten what had passed between them. His next words, however, showed he hadn’t, and theyproduced, as an appeal to Paul’s own memory, an effectwhich would have been ludicrous if it hadn’t beencruel.  “Do you recall the talk we had at my housethat night, into which Miss Fancourt’s name entered? I’ve often thought of it since.”

“Yes; no wonder you said what you did”—Paulwas careful to meet his eyes.

“In the light of the present occasion?  Ah butthere was no light then.  How could I have foreseen thishour?”

“Didn’t you think it probable?”

“Upon my honour, no,” said Henry St. George. “Certainly I owe you that assurance.  Think how mysituation has changed.”

“I see—I see,” our young man murmured.

His companion went on as if, now that the subject had beenbroached, he was, as a person of imagination and tact, quiteready to give every satisfaction—being both by his geniusand his method so able to enter into everything another mightfeel.  “But it’s not only that; for honestly, atmy age, I never dreamed—a widower with big boys and with solittle else!  It has turned out differently from anythingone could have dreamed, and I’m fortunate beyond allmeasure.  She has been so free, and yet she consents. Better than any one else perhaps—for I remember how youliked her before you went away, and how she liked you—youcan intelligently congratulate me.”

“She has been so free!”  Those words made agreat impression on Paul Overt, and he almost writhed under thatirony in them as to which it so little mattered whether it wasdesigned or casual.  Of course she had been free, andappreciably perhaps by his own act; for wasn’t theMaster’s allusion to her having liked him a part of theirony too?  “I thought that by your theory youdisapproved of a writer’s marrying.”

“Surely—surely.  But you don’t call mea writer?”

“You ought to be ashamed,” said Paul.

“Ashamed of marrying again?”

“I won’t say that—but ashamed of yourreasons.”

The elder man beautifully smiled.  “You must let mejudge of them, my good friend.”

“Yes; why not?  For you judged wonderfully ofmine.”

The tone of these words appeared suddenly, for St. George, tosuggest the unsuspected.  He stared as if divining abitterness.  “Don’t you think I’ve beenstraight?”

“You might have told me at the time perhaps.”

“My dear fellow, when I say I couldn’t piercefuturity—!”

“I mean afterwards.”

The Master wondered.  “After my wife’sdeath?”

“When this idea came to you.”

“Ah never, never!  I wanted to save you, rare andprecious as you are.”

Poor Overt looked hard at him.  “Are you marryingMiss Fancourt to save me?”

“Not absolutely, but it adds to the pleasure.  Ishall be the making of you,” St. George smiled. “I was greatly struck, after our talk, with the bravedevoted way you quitted the country, and still more perhaps withyour force of character in remaining abroad.  You’revery strong—you’re wonderfully strong.”

Paul tried to sound his shining eyes; the strange thing wasthat he seemed sincere—not a mocking fiend.  He turnedaway, and as he did so heard the Master say something about hisgiving them all the proof, being the joy of his old age.  Hefaced him again, taking another look.  “Do you mean tosay you’ve stopped writing?”

“My dear fellow, of course I have.  It’s toolate.  Didn’t I tell you?”

“I can’t believe it!”

“Of course you can’t—with your owntalent!  No, no; for the rest of my life I shall only readyou.”

“Does she know that—Miss Fancourt?”

“She will—she will.”  Did he mean this,our young man wondered, as a covert intimation that theassistance he should derive from that young lady’s fortune,moderate as it was, would make the difference of putting it inhis power to cease to work ungratefully an exhausted vein? Somehow, standing there in the ripeness of his successfulmanhood, he didn’t suggest that any of his veins wereexhausted.  “Don’t you remember the moral Ioffered myself to you that night as pointing?” St. Georgecontinued.  “Consider at any rate the warning I am atpresent.”

This was too much—he wasthe mocking fiend. Paul turned from him with a mere nod for good-night and the sensein a sore heart that he might come back to him and his easygrace, his fine way of arranging things, some time in the farfuture, but couldn’t fraternise with him now.  It wasnecessary to his soreness to believe for the hour in theintensity of his grievance—all the more cruel for its notbeing a legal one.  It was doubtless in the attitude ofhugging this wrong that he descended the stairs without takingleave of Miss Fancourt, who hadn’t been in view at themoment he quitted the room.  He was glad to get out into thehonest dusky unsophisticating night, to move fast, to take hisway home on foot.  He walked a long time, going astray,paying no attention.  He was thinking of too many otherthings.  His steps recovered their direction, however, andat the end of an hour he found himself before his door in thesmall inexpensive empty street.  He lingered, questioninghimself still before going in, with nothing around and above himbut moonless blackness, a bad lamp or two and a few far-away dimstars.  To these last faint features he raised his eyes; hehad been saying to himself that he should have been“sold” indeed, diabolically sold, if now, on his newfoundation, at the end of a year, St. George were to put forthsomething of his prime quality—something of the type of“Shadowmere” and finer than his finest.  Greatlyas he admired his talent Paul literally hoped such an incidentwouldn’t occur; it seemed to him just then that heshouldn’t be able to bear it.  His lateadviser’s words were still in hisears—“You’re very strong, wonderfullystrong.”  Was he really?  Certainly he would haveto be, and it might a little serve for revenge.  Ishe? the reader may ask in turn, if his interest has followed theperplexed young man so far.  The best answer to that perhapsis that he’s doing his best, but that it’s too soonto say.  When the new book came out in the autumn Mr. andMrs. St. George found it really magnificent.  The formerstill has published nothing but Paul doesn’t even yet feelsafe.  I may say for him, however, that if this event wereto occur he would really be the very first to appreciate it:which is perhaps a proof that the Master was essentially rightand that Nature had dedicated him to intellectual, not topersonal passion.

Related articles