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diff --git a/old/55078.txt b/old/55078.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 11ed7cd..0000000 --- a/old/55078.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2557 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Birthplace, by Henry James - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Birthplace - -Author: Henry James - -Release Date: July 9, 2017 [EBook #55078] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BIRTHPLACE *** - - - - -Produced by Chris Blanton, with proofreading by Thomas L. Blanton - - - - -The Birthplace - -Henry James - -1922 - - -I - -It seemed to them at first, the offer, too good to be true, and their -friend's letter, addressed to them to feel, as he said, the ground, to -sound them as to inclinations and possibilities, had almost the effect of a -brave joke at their expense. Their friend, Mr. Grant-Jackson, a highly -preponderant pushing person, great in discussion and arrangement, abrupt in -overture, unexpected, if not perverse, in attitude, and almost equally -acclaimed and objected to in the wide midland region to which he had -taught, as the phrase was, the size of his foot--their friend had launched -his bolt quite out of the blue and had thereby so shaken them as to make -them fear almost more than hope. The place had fallen vacant by the death -of one of the two ladies, mother and daughter, who had discharged its -duties for fifteen years; the daughter was staying on alone, to -accommodate, but had found, though extremely mature, an opportunity of -marriage that involved retirement, and the question of the new incumbents -was not a little pressing. The want thus determined was of a united couple -of some sort, of the right sort, a pair of educated and competent sisters -possibly preferred, but a married pair having its advantages if other -qualifications were marked. Applicants, candidates, besiegers of the door -of every one supposed to have a voice in the matter, were already beyond -counting, and Mr. Grant-Jackson, who was in his way diplomatic and whose -voice, though not perhaps of the loudest, possessed notes of insistence, -had found his preference fixing itself on some person or brace of persons -who had been decent and dumb. The Gedges appeared to have struck him as -waiting in silence--though absolutely, as happened, no busy body had -brought them, far away in the North, a hint either of bliss or of danger; -and the happy spell, for the rest, had obviously been wrought in him by a -remembrance which, though now scarcely fresh, had never before borne any -such fruit. - -Morris Gedge had for a few years, as a young man, carried on a small -private school of the order known as preparatory, and had happened then to -receive under his roof the small son of the great man, who was not at that -time so great. The little boy, during an absence of his parents from -England, had been dangerously ill, so dangerously that they had been -recalled in haste, though with inevitable delays, from a far country--they -had gone to America, with the whole continent and the great sea to cross -again--and had got back to find the child saved, but saved, as couldn't -help coming to light, by the extreme devotion and perfect judgement of Mrs. -Gedge. Without children of her own she had particularly attached herself to -this tiniest and tenderest of her husband's pupils, and they had both -dreaded as a dire disaster the injury to their little enterprise that would -be caused by their losing him. Nervous anxious sensitive persons, with a -pride--as they were for that matter well aware--above their position, -never, at the best, to be anything but dingy, they had nursed him in terror -and had brought him through in exhaustion. Exhaustion, as befell, had thus -overtaken them early and had for one reason and another managed to assert -itself as their permanent portion. The little boy's death would, as they -said, have done for them, yet his recovery hadn't saved them; with which it -was doubtless also part of a shy but stiff candour in them that they didn't -regard themselves as having in a more indirect manner laid up treasure. -Treasure was not to be, in any form whatever, of their dreams or of their -waking sense; and the years that followed had limped under their weight, -had now and then rather grievously stumbled, had even barely escaped laying -them in the dust. The school hadn't prospered, had but dwindled to a close. -Gedge's health had failed and still more every sign in him of a capacity to -publish himself as practical. He had tried several things, he had tried -many, but the final appearance was of their having tried him not less. They -mostly, at the time I speak of, were trying his successors, while he found -himself, with an effect of dull felicity that had come in this case from -the mere postponement of change, in charge of the grey town-library of -Blackport-on-Dwindle, all granite, fog and female fiction. This was a -situation in which his general intelligence--admittedly his strong -point--was doubtless imaged, around him, as feeling less of a strain than -that mastery of particulars in which he was recognised as weak. - -It was at Blackport-on-Dwindle that the silver shaft reached and pierced -him; it was as an alternative to dispensing dog's-eared volumes the very -titles of which, on the lips of innumerable glib girls, were a challenge to -his nerves, that the wardenship of so different a temple presented itself. -The stipend named exceeded little the slim wage at present paid him, but -even had it been less the interest and the honour would have struck him as -determinant. The shrine at which he was to preside--though he had always -lacked occasion to approach it--figured to him as the most sacred known to -the steps of men, the early home of the supreme poet, the Mecca of the -English-speaking race. The tears came into his eyes sooner still than into -his wife's while he looked about with her at their actual narrow prison, so -grim with enlightenment, so ugly with industry, so turned away from any -dream, so intolerable to any taste. He felt as if a window had opened into -a great green woodland, a woodland that had a name all glorious, immortal, -that was peopled with vivid figures, each of them renowned, and that gave -out a murmur, deep as the sound of the sea, which was the rustle in forest -shade of all the poetry, the beauty, the colour of life. It would be -prodigious that of this transfigured world _he_ should keep the key. No--he -couldn't believe it, not even when Isabel, at sight of his face, came and -helpfully kissed him. He shook his head with a strange smile. "We shan't -get it. Why should we? It's perfect." - -"If we don't he'll simply have been cruel; which is impossible when he has -waited all this time to be kind." Mrs. Gedge did believe--she _would_; -since the wide doors of the world of poetry had suddenly pushed back for -them it was in the form of poetic justice that they were first to know it. -She had her faith in their patron; it was sudden, but now complete. "He -remembers--that's all; and that's our strength." - -"And what's _his_?" Gedge asked. "He may want to put us through, but that's -a different thing from being able. What are our special advantages?" - -"Well, that we're just the thing." Her knowledge of the needs of the case -was as yet, thanks to scant information, of the vaguest, and she had never, -more than her husband, stood on the sacred spot; but she saw herself waving -a nicely-gloved hand over a collection of remarkable objects and saying to -a compact crowd of gaping awestruck persons: "And now, please, _this_ way." -She even heard herself meeting with promptness and decision an occasional -inquiry from a visitor in whom audacity had prevailed over awe. She had -once been with a cousin, years before, to a great northern castle, and that -was the way the housekeeper had taken them round. And it was not moreover, -either, that she thought of herself as a housekeeper: she was well above -that, and the wave of her hand wouldn't fail to be such as to show it. This -and much else she summed up as she answered her mate. "Our special -advantages are that you're a gentleman." - -"Oh!" said Gedge as if he had never thought of it, and yet as if too it -were scarce worth thinking of. - -"I see it all," she went on; "they've _had_ the vulgar--they find they -don't do. We're poor and we're modest, but any one can see what we are." - -Gedge wondered. "Do you mean----?" More modest than she, he didn't know quite -what she meant. - -"We're refined. We know how to speak." - -"Do we?"--he still, suddenly, wondered. - -But she was from the first surer of everything than he; so that when a few -weeks more had elapsed and the shade of uncertainty--though it was only a -shade--had grown almost to sicken him, her triumph was to come with the -news that they were fairly named. "We're on poor pay, though we -manage"--she had at the present juncture contended for her point. "But -we're highly cultivated, and for them to get _that_, don't you see? without -getting too much with it in the way of pretensions and demands, must be -precisely their dream. We've no social position, but we don't _mind_ that -we haven't, do we? a bit; which is because we know the difference between -realities and shams. We hold to reality, and that gives us common sense, -which the vulgar have less than anything and which yet must be wanted -there, after all, as well as anywhere else." - -Her companion followed her, but musingly, as if his horizon had within a -few moments grown so great that he was almost lost in it and required a new -orientation. The shining spaces surrounded him; the association alone gave -a nobler arch to the sky. "Allow that we hold also a little to the romance. -It seems to me that that's the beauty. We've missed it all our life, and -now it's come. We shall be at headquarters for it. We shall have our fill -of it." - -She looked at his face, at the effect in it of these prospects, and her own -lighted as if he had suddenly grown handsome. "Certainly--we shall live as -in a fairy-tale. But what I mean is that we shall give, in a way--and so -gladly--quite as much as we get. With all the rest of it we're for instance -neat." Their letter had come to them at breakfast, and she picked a fly out -of the butter-dish. "It's the way we'll _keep_ the place"--with which she -removed from the sofa to the top of the cottage-piano a tin of biscuits -that had refused to squeeze into the cupboard. At Blackport they were in -lodgings--of the lowest description, she had been known to declare with a -freedom felt by Blackport to be slightly invidious. The Birthplace--and -that itself, after such a life, was exaltation--wouldn't be lodgings, since -a house close beside it was set apart for the warden, a house joining on to -it as a sweet old parsonage is often annexed to a quaint old church. It -would all together be their home, and such a home as would make a little -world that they would never want to leave. She dwelt on the gain, for that -matter, to their income; as obviously, though the salary was not a change -for the better, the house given them would make all the difference. He -assented to this, but absently, and she was almost impatient at the range -of his thoughts. It was as if something for him--the very swarm of -them--veiled the view; and he presently of himself showed what it was. - -"What I can't get over is its being such a man--!" He almost, from inward -emotion, broke down. - -"Such a man----?" - -"Him, _him_, HIM----!" It was too much. - -"Grant-Jackson? Yes, it's a surprise, but one sees how he has been meaning, -all the while, the right thing by us." - -"I mean _Him_," Gedge returned more coldly; "our becoming familiar and -intimate--for that's what it will come to. We shall just live with Him." - -"Of course--it _is_ the beauty." And she added quite gaily: "The more we do -the more we shall love Him." - -"No doubt--but it's rather awful. The more we _know_ Him," Gedge reflected, -"the more we shall love Him. We don't as yet, you see, know Him so very -tremendously." - -"We do so quite as well, I imagine, as the sort of people they've had. And -that probably isn't--unless you care, as we do--so awfully necessary. For -there are the facts." - -"Yes--there are the facts." - -"I mean the principal ones. They're all that the people--the people who -come--want." - -"Yes--they must be all _they_ want." - -"So that they're all that those who've been in charge have needed to know." - -"Ah," he said as if it were a question of honour, "we must know -everything." - -She cheerfully acceded: she had the merit, he felt, of keeping the case -within bounds. "Everything. But about him personally," she added, "there -isn't, is there? so very very much." - -"More, I believe, than there used to be. They've made discoveries." - -It was a grand thought. "Perhaps _we_ shall make some!" - -"Oh I shall be content to be a little better up in what has been done." And -his eyes rested on a shelf of books, half of which, little worn but much -faded, were of the florid "gift" order and belonged to the house. Of those -among them that were his own most were common specimens of the reference -sort, not excluding an old Bradshaw and a catalogue of the town-library. -"We've not even a Set of our own. Of the Works," he explained in quick -repudiation of the sense, perhaps more obvious, in which she might have -taken it. - -As a proof of their scant range of possessions this sounded almost abject, -till the painful flush with which they met on the admission melted -presently into a different glow. It was just for that kind of poorness that -their new situation was, by its intrinsic charm, to console them. And Mrs. -Gedge had a happy thought. "Wouldn't the Library more or less have them?" - -"Oh no, we've nothing of that sort: for what do you take us?" This, -however, was but the play of Gedge's high spirits: the form both depression -and exhilaration most frequently took with him being a bitterness on the -subject of the literary taste of Blackport. No one was so deeply acquainted -with it. It acted with him in fact as so lurid a sign of the future that -the charm of the thought of removal was sharply enhanced by the prospect of -escape from it. The institution he served didn't of course deserve the -particular reproach into which his irony had flowered; and indeed if the -several Sets in which the Works were present were a trifle dusty, the dust -was a little his own fault. To make up for that now he had the vision of -immediately giving his time to the study of them; he saw himself indeed, -inflamed with a new passion, earnestly commenting and collating. Mrs. -Gedge, who had suggested that, till their move should come, they ought to -read Him regularly of an evening--certain as they were to do it still more -when in closer quarters with Him--Mrs. Gedge felt also, in her degree, the -spell; so that the very happiest time of their anxious life was perhaps to -have been the series of lamplight hours, after supper, in which, -alternately taking the book, they declaimed, they almost performed, their -beneficent author. He became speedily more than their author--their -personal friend, their universal light, their final authority and divinity. -Where in the world, they were already asking themselves, would they have -been without Him? By the time their appointment arrived in form their -relation to Him had immensely developed. It was amusing to Morris Gedge -that he had so lately blushed for his ignorance, and he made this remark to -his wife during the last hour they were able to give their study before -proceeding, across half the country, to the scene of their romantic future. -It was as if, in deep close throbs, in cool after-waves that broke of a -sudden and bathed his mind, all possession and comprehension and sympathy, -all the truth and the life and the story, had come to him, and come, as the -newspapers said, to stay. "It's absurd," he didn't hesitate to say, "to -talk of our not 'knowing.' So far as we don't it's because we're dunces. -He's _in_ the thing, over His ears, and the more we get into it the more -we're with Him. I seem to myself at any rate," he declared, "to _see_ Him -in it as if He were painted on the wall." - -"Oh _doesn't_ one rather, the dear thing? And don't you feel where it is?" -Mrs. Gedge finely asked. "We see Him because we love Him--that's what we -do. How can we not, the old darling--with what He's doing for us? There's -no light"--she had a sententious turn--"like true affection." - -"Yes, I suppose that's it. And yet," her husband mused, "I see, confound -me, the faults." - -"That's because you're so critical. You see them, but you don't mind them. -You see them, but you forgive them. You mustn't mention them _there_. We -shan't, you know, be there for _that_." - -"Dear no!" he laughed: "we'll chuck out any one who hints at them." - - -II - -If the sweetness of the preliminary months had been great, great too, -though almost excessive as agitation, was the wonder of fairly being housed -with Him, of treading day and night in the footsteps He had worn, of -touching the objects, or at all events the surfaces, the substances, over -which His hands had played, which His arms, His shoulders had rubbed, of -breathing the air--or something not too unlike it--in which His voice had -sounded. They had had a little at first their bewilderments, their -disconcertedness; the place was both humbler and grander than they had -exactly prefigured, more at once of a cottage and of a museum, a little -more archaically bare and yet a little more richly official. But the sense -was strong with them that the point of view, for the inevitable ease of the -connexion, patiently, indulgently awaited them; in addition to which, from -the first evening, after closing-hour, when the last blank pilgrim had -gone, the mere spell, the mystic presence--as if they had had it quite to -themselves--were all they could have desired. They had received, at -Grant-Jackson's behest and in addition to a table of instructions and -admonitions by the number and in some particulars by the nature of which -they found themselves slightly depressed, various little guides, manuals, -travellers' tributes, literary memorials and other catch-penny -publications; which, however, were to be for the moment swallowed up in the -interesting episode of the induction or initiation appointed for them in -advance at the hands of several persons whose relation to the establishment -was, as superior to their own, still more official, and at those in -especial of one of the ladies who had for so many years borne the brunt. -About the instructions from above, about the shilling books and the -well-known facts and the full-blown legend, the supervision, the -subjection, the submission, the view as of a cage in which he should -circulate and a groove in which he should slide, Gedge had preserved a -certain play of mind; but all power of reaction appeared suddenly to desert -him in the presence of his so visibly competent predecessor and as an -effect of her good offices. He had not the resource, enjoyed by his wife, -of seeing himself, with impatience, attired in black silk of a make -characterised by just the right shade of austerity; so that this firm -smooth expert and consummately respectable middle-aged person had him -somehow, on the whole ground, completely at her mercy. - -It was evidently something of a rueful moment when, as a lesson--she being -for the day or two still in the field--he accepted Miss Putchin's -suggestion of "going round" with her and with the successive squads of -visitors she was there to deal with. He appreciated her method--he saw -there had to be one; he admired her as succinct and definite; for there -were the facts, as his wife had said at Blackport, and they were to be -disposed of in the time; yet he felt a very little boy as he dangled, more -than once, with Mrs. Gedge, at the tail of the human comet. The idea had -been that they should by this attendance more fully embrace the possible -accidents and incidents, so to put it, of the relation to the great public -in which they were to find themselves; and the poor man's excited -perception of the great public rapidly became such as to resist any -diversion meaner than that of the admirable manner of their guide. It -wandered from his gaping companions to that of the priestess in black silk, -whom he kept asking himself if either he or Isabel could hope by any -possibility ever remotely to resemble; then it bounded restlessly back to -the numerous persons who revealed to him as it had never yet been revealed -the happy power of the simple to hang upon the lips of the wise. The great -thing seemed to be--and quite surprisingly--that the business was easy and -the strain, which as a strain they had feared, moderate; so that he might -have been puzzled, had he fairly caught himself in the act, by his -recognising as the last effect of the impression an odd absence of the -power really to rest in it, an agitation deep within him that vaguely -threatened to grow. "It isn't, you see, so very complicated," the black -silk lady seemed to throw off, with everything else, in her neat crisp -cheerful way; in spite of which he already, the very first time--that is -after several parties had been in and out and up and down--went so far as -to wonder if there weren't more in it than she imagined. She was, so to -speak, kindness itself--was all encouragement and reassurance; but it was -just her slightly coarse redolence of these very things that, on -repetition, before they parted, dimmed a little, as he felt, the light of -his acknowledging smile. This again she took for a symptom of some pleading -weakness in him--he could never be as brave as she; so that she wound up -with a few pleasant words from the very depth of her experience. "You'll -get into it, never fear--it will _come_; and then you'll feel as if you had -never done anything else." He was afterwards to know that, on the spot, at -this moment, he must have begun to wince a little at such a menace; that he -might come to feel as if he had never done anything but what Miss Putchin -did loomed for him, in germ, as a penalty to pay. The support she offered, -none the less, continued to strike him; she put the whole thing on so sound -a basis when she said: "You see they're so nice about it--they take such an -interest. And they never do a thing they shouldn't. That was always every -thing to mother and me." "They," Gedge had already noticed, referred -constantly and hugely, in the good woman's talk, to the millions who -shuffled through the house; the pronoun in question was for ever on her -lips, the hordes it represented filled her consciousness, the addition of -their numbers ministered to her glory. Mrs. Gedge promptly fell in. "It -must be indeed delightful to see the effect on so many and to feel that one -may perhaps do something to make it--well, permanent." But he was kept -silent by his becoming more sharply aware that this was a new view, for -him, of the reference made, that he had never thought of the quality of the -place as derived from Them, but from Somebody Else, and that They, in -short, seemed to have got into the way of crowding Him out. He found -himself even a little resenting this for Him--which perhaps had something -to do with the slightly invidious cast of his next inquiry. - -"And are They always, as one might say--a--stupid?" - -"Stupid!" She stared, looking as if no one _could_ be such a thing in such -a connexion. No one had ever been anything but neat and cheerful and -fluent, except to be attentive and unobjectionable and, so far as was -possible, American. - -"What I mean is," he explained, "is there any perceptible proportion that -take an interest in Him?" - -His wife stepped on his toe; she deprecated levity. - -But his mistake fortunately was lost on their friend. - -"That's just why they come, that they take such an interest. I sometimes -think they take more than about anything else in the world." With which -Miss Putchin looked about at the place. "It _is_ pretty, don't you think, -the way they've got it now?" This, Gedge saw, was a different "They"; it -applied to the powers that were--the people who had appointed him, the -governing, visiting Body, in respect to which he was afterwards to remark -to Mrs. Gedge that a fellow--it was the difficulty--didn't know "where to -have her." His wife, at a loss, questioned at that moment the necessity of -having her anywhere, and he said, good-humouredly, "Of course; it's all -right." He was in fact content enough with the last touches their friend -had given the picture. "There are many who know all about it when they -come, and the Americans often are tremendously up. Mother and me really -enjoyed"--it was her only slip--"the interest of the Americans. We've -sometimes had ninety a day, and all wanting to see and hear everything. But -you'll work them off; you'll see the way--it's all experience." She came -back for his comfort to that. She came back also to other things: she did -justice to the considerable class who arrived positive and primed. "There -are those who know more about it than you do. But _that_ only comes from -their interest." - -"Who know more about what?" Gedge inquired. - -"Why about the place. I mean they have their ideas--of what everything is, -and _where_ it is, and what it isn't and where it _should_ be. They do ask -questions," she said, yet not so much in warning as in the complacency of -being herself seasoned and sound; "and they're down on you when they think -you go wrong. As if you ever could! You know too much," she astutely -smiled; "or you _will_." - -"Oh you mustn't know _too_ much, must you?" And Gedge now smiled as well. He -knew, he thought, what he meant. - -"Well, you must know as much as anybody else. I claim at any rate that I -do," Miss Putchin declared. "They never really caught me out." - -"I'm very certain of _that_"--and Mrs. Gedge had an elation almost -personal. - -"Surely," he said, "I don't want to be caught out." She rejoined that in -such a case he would have _Them_ down on him, and he saw that this time she -meant the powers above. It quickened his sense of all the elements that -were to reckon with, yet he felt at the same time that the powers above -were not what he should most fear. "I'm glad," he observed, "that they ever -ask questions; but I happened to notice, you know, that no one did to-day." - -"Then you missed several--and no loss. There were three or four put to me -too silly to remember. But of course they mostly _are_ silly." - -"You mean the questions?" - -She laughed with all her cheer. "Yes, sir; I don't mean the answers." - -Whereupon, for a moment snubbed and silent, he felt like one of the crowd. -Then it made him slightly vicious. "I didn't know but you meant the people -in general--till I remembered that I'm to understand from you that -_they're_ wise, only occasionally breaking down." - -It wasn't really till then, he thought, that she lost patience; and he had -had, much more than he meant no doubt, a cross-questioning air. "You'll see -for yourself." Of which he was sure enough. He was in fact so ready to take -this that she came round to full accommodation, put it frankly that every -now and then they broke out--not the silly, oh no, the intensely inquiring. -"We've had quite lively discussions, don't you know, about well-known -points. They want it all _their_ way, and I know the sort that are going to -as soon as I see them. That's one of the things you do--you get to know the -sorts. And if it's what you're afraid of--their taking you up," she was -further gracious enough to say, "you needn't mind a bit. What _do_ they -know, after all, when for us it's our life? I've never moved an inch, -because, you see, I shouldn't have been here if I didn't know where I was. -No more will _you_ be a year hence--you know what I mean, putting it -impossibly--if you don't. I expect you do, in spite of your fancies." And -she dropped once more to bed-rock. "There are the facts. Otherwise where -would any of us be? That's all you've got to go upon. A person, however -cheeky, can't have them _his_ way just because he takes it into his head. -There can only be _one_ way, and," she gaily added as she took leave of -them, "I'm sure it's quite enough!" - -III - -Gedge not only assented eagerly--one way _was_ quite enough if it were the -right one--but repeated it, after this conversation, at odd moments, -several times over to his wife. "There can only be one way, one way," he -continued to remark--though indeed much as if it were a joke; till she -asked him how many more he supposed she wanted. He failed to answer this -question, but resorted to another repetition. "There are the facts, the -facts," which perhaps, however, he kept a little more to himself, sounding -it at intervals in different parts of the house. Mrs. Gedge was full of -comment on their clever introductress, though not restrictively save in the -matter of her speech, "Me and mother," and a general tone--which certainly -was not their sort of thing. "I don't know," he said, "perhaps it comes -with the place, since speaking in immortal verse doesn't seem to come. It -must be, one seems to see, one thing or the other. I daresay that in a few -months I shall also be at it--'me and the wife.'" - -"Why not 'me and the missus' at once?" Mrs. Gedge resentfully inquired. "I -don't think," she observed at another time, "that I quite know what's the -matter with you." - -"It's only that I'm excited, awfully excited--as I don't see how one can't -be. You wouldn't have a fellow drop into this berth as into an appointment -at the Post Office. Here on the spot it goes to my head--how can that be -helped? But we shall live into it, and perhaps," he said with an -implication of the other possibility that was doubtless but part of his -fine ecstasy, "we shall live through it." The place acted on his -imagination--how, surely, shouldn't it? And his imagination acted on his -nerves, and these things together, with the general vividness and the new -and complete immersion, made rest for him almost impossible, so that he -could scarce go to bed at night and even during the first week more than -once rose in the small hours to move about, up and down, with his -lamp--standing, sitting, listening, wondering, in the stillness, as if -positively to recover some echo, to surprise some secret, of the _genius -loci_. He couldn't have explained it--and didn't in fact need to explain -it, at least to himself, since the impulse simply held him and shook him; -but the time after closing, the time above all after the people--Them, as -he felt himself on the way habitually to put it, predominant, insistent, -all in the foreground--brought him, or ought to have brought him, he seemed -to see, nearer to the enshrined Presence, enlarging the opportunity for -communion and intensifying the sense of it. These nightly prowls, as he -called them, were disquieting to his wife, who had no disposition to share -in them, speaking with decision of the whole place as just the place to be -forbidding after dark. She rejoiced in the distinctness, contiguous though -it was, of their own little residence, where she trimmed the lamp and -stirred the fire and heard the kettle sing, repairing the while the -omissions of the small domestic who slept out; she foresaw her self, with -some promptness, drawing rather sharply the line between her own precinct -and that in which the great spirit might walk. It would be with them, the -great spirit, all day--even if indeed on her making that remark, and in -just that form, to her husband, he replied with a queer "But will he -though?" And she vaguely imaged the development of a domestic antidote -after a while, precisely, in the shape of curtains more markedly drawn and -everything most modern and lively, tea, "patterns," the newspapers, the -female fiction itself that they had reacted against at Blackport, quite -defiantly cultivated. - -These possibilities, however, were all right, as her companion said it was, -all the first autumn--they had arrived at summer's end; and he might have -been more than content with a special set of his own that he had access to -from behind, passing out of their low door for the few steps between it and -the Birthplace. With his lamp ever so carefully guarded and his nursed keys -that made him free of treasures, he crossed the dusky interval so often -that she began to qualify it as a habit that "grew." She spoke of it almost -as if he had taken to drink, and he humoured that view of it by allowing -the cup to be strong. This had been in truth altogether his immediate sense -of it; strange and deep for him the spell of silent sessions before -familiarity and, to some small extent, disappointment had set in. The -exhibitional side of the establishment had struck him, even on arrival, as -qualifying too much its character; he scarce knew what he might best have -looked for, but the three or four rooms bristled overmuch, in the garish -light of day, with busts and relics, not even ostensibly always _His_, old -prints and old editions, old objects fashioned in His likeness, furniture -"of the time" and autographs of celebrated worshippers. In the quiet hours -and the deep dusk, none the less, under the play of the shifted lamp and -that of his own emotion, these things too recovered their advantage, -ministered to the mystery, or at all events to the impression, seemed -consciously to offer themselves as personal to the poet. Not one of them -was really or unchallengeably so, but they had somehow, through long -association, got, as Gedge always phrased it, into the secret, and it was -about the secret he asked them while he restlessly wandered. It wasn't till -months had elapsed that he found how little they had to tell him, and he -was quite at his ease with them when he knew they were by no means where -his sensibility had first placed them. They were as out of it as he; only, -to do them justice, they had made him immensely feel. And still, too, it -was not they who had done that most, since his sentiment had gradually -cleared itself to deep, to deeper refinements. - -The Holy of Holies of the Birthplace was the low, the sublime Chamber of -Birth, sublime because, as the Americans usually said--unlike the natives -they mostly found words--it was so pathetic; and pathetic because it -was--well, really nothing else in the world that one could name, number or -measure. It was as empty as a shell of which the kernel has withered, and -contained neither busts nor prints nor early copies; it contained only the -Fact--_the_ Fact itself--which, as he stood sentient there at midnight, our -friend, holding his breath, allowed to sink into him. He _had_ to take it -as the place where the spirit would most walk and where He would therefore -be most to be met, with possibilities of recognition and reciprocity. He -hadn't, most probably--_He_ hadn't--much inhabited the room, as men weren't -apt, as a rule, to convert to their later use and involve in their wider -fortune the scene itself of their nativity. But as there were moments when, -in the conflict of theories, the sole certainty surviving for the critic -threatened to be that He had not--unlike other successful men--_not_ been -born, so Gedge, though little of a critic, clung to the square feet of -space that connected themselves, however feebly, with the positive -appearance. He was little of a critic--he was nothing of one; he hadn't -pretended to the character before coming, nor come to pretend to it; also, -luckily for him, he was seeing day by day how little use he could possibly -have for it. It would be to him, the attitude of a high expert, distinctly -a stumbling-block, and that he rejoiced, as the winter waned, in his -ignorance, was one of the propositions he betook himself, in his odd -manner, to enunciating to his wife. She denied it, for hadn't she in the -first place been present, wasn't she still present, at his pious, his -tireless study of everything connected with the subject?--so present that -she had herself learned more about it than had ever seemed likely. Then in -the second place he wasn't to proclaim on the house-tops any point at which -he might be weak, for who knew, if it should get abroad that they were -ignorant, what effect might be produced----? - -"On the attraction"--he took her up--"of the Show?" - -He had fallen into the harmless habit of speaking of the place as the -"Show"; but she didn't mind this so much as to be diverted by it. "No; on -the attitude of the Body. You know they're pleased with us, and I don't see -why you should want to spoil it. We got in by a tight squeeze--you know -we've had evidence of that, and that it was about as much as our backers -could manage. But we're proving a comfort to them, and it's absurd of you -to question your suitability to people who were content with the Putchins." - -"I don't, my dear," he returned, "question any thing; but if I should do so -it would be precisely because of the greater advantage constituted for the -Putchins by the simplicity of their spirit. They were kept straight by the -quality of their ignorance--which was denser even than mine. It was a -mistake in us from the first to have attempted to correct or to disguise -ours. We should have waited simply to become good parrots, to learn our -lesson--all on the spot here, so little of it is wanted--and squawk it -off." - -"Ah 'squawk,' love--what a word to use about Him!" - -"It isn't about Him--nothing's about Him. None of Them care tuppence about -Him. The only thing They care about is this empty shell--or rather, for it -isn't empty, the extraneous preposterous stuffing of it." - -"Preposterous?"--he made her stare with this as he hadn't yet done. - -At sight of her look, however--the gleam, as it might have been, of a queer -suspicion--he bent to her kindly and tapped her cheek. "Oh it's all right. -We _must_ fall back on the Putchins. Do you remember what she -said?--'They've made it so pretty now.' They _have_ made it pretty, and -it's a first-rate show. It's a first-rate show and a first-rate billet, and -He was a first-rate poet, and you're a first-rate woman--to put up so -sweetly, I mean, with my nonsense." - -She appreciated his domestic charm and she justified that part of his -tribute which concerned herself. "I don't care how much of your nonsense -you talk to me, so long as you _keep_ it all for me and don't treat _Them_ -to it." - -"The pilgrims? No," he conceded--"it isn't fair to Them. They mean well." - -"What complaint have we after all to make of Them so long as They don't -break off bits--as They used, Miss Putchin told us, so awfully--in order to -conceal them about Their Persons? She broke Them at least of that." - -"Yes," Gedge mused again; "I wish awfully she hadn't!" - -"You'd like the relics destroyed, removed? That's all that's wanted!" - -"There _are_ no relics." - -"There won't be any _soon_--unless you take care." But he was already -laughing, and the talk wasn't dropped without his having patted her once -more. An impression or two nevertheless remained with her from it, as he -saw from a question she asked him on the morrow. "What did you mean -yesterday about Miss Putchin's simplicity--its keeping her 'straight'? Do -you mean mentally?" - -Her "mentally" was rather portentous, but he practically confessed. "Well, -it kept her up. I mean," he amended, laughing, "it kept her down." - -It was really as if she had been a little uneasy. "You consider there's a -danger of your being affected? You know what I mean--of its going to your -head. You do know," she insisted as he said nothing. "Through your caring -for him so. You'd certainly be right in that case about its having been a -mistake for you to plunge so deep." And then as his listening without -reply, though with his look a little sad for her, might have denoted that, -allowing for extravagance of statement, he saw there was something in it: -"Give up your prowls. Keep it for daylight. Keep it for _Them_." - -"Ah," he smiled, "if one could! My prowls," he added, "are what I most -enjoy. They're the only time, as I've told you before, that I'm really with -_Him_. Then I don't see the place. He isn't the place." - -"I don't care for what you 'don't see,'" she returned with vivacity; "the -question is of what you do see." - -Well, if it was, he waited before meeting it. "Do you know what I sometimes -do?" And then as she waited too: "In the Birthroom there, when I look in -late, I often put out my light. That makes it better." - -"Makes what----?" - -"Everything." - -"What is it then you see in the dark?" - -"Nothing!" said Morris Gedge. - -"And what's the pleasure of that?" - -"Well, what the American ladies say. It's so fascinating!" - - -IV - -The autumn was brisk, as Miss Putchin had told them it would be, but -business naturally fell off with the winter months and the short days. -There was rarely an hour indeed without a call of some sort, and they were -never allowed to forget that they kept the shop in all the world, as they -might say, where custom was least fluctuating. The seasons told on it, as -they tell on travel, but no other influence, consideration or convulsion to -which the population of the globe is exposed. This population, never -exactly in simultaneous hordes, but in a full swift and steady stream, -passed through the smoothly-working mill and went, in its variety of -degrees duly impressed and edified, on its artless way. Gedge gave himself -up, with much ingenuity of spirit, to trying to keep in relation with it; -having even at moments, in the early time, glimpses of the chance that the -impressions gathered from so rare an opportunity for contact with the -general mind might prove as interesting as anything else in the connexion. -Types, classes, nationalities, manners, diversities of behaviour, modes of -seeing, feeling, of expression, would pass before him and become for him, -after a fashion, the experience of an untravelled man. His journeys had -been short and saving, but poetic justice again seemed inclined to work for -him in placing him just at the point in all Europe perhaps where the -confluence of races was thickest. The theory at any rate carried him on, -operating helpfully for the term of his anxious beginnings and gilding in a -manner--it was the way he characterised the case to his wife--the somewhat -stodgy gingerbread of their daily routine. They hadn't known many people -and their visiting-list was small--which made it again poetic justice that -they should be visited on such a scale. They dressed and were at home, they -were under arms and received, and except for the offer of refreshment--and -Gedge had his view that there would eventually be a _buffet_ farmed out to -a great firm--their hospitality would have made them princely if mere -hospitality ever did. Thus they were launched, and it was interesting; so -that from having been ready to drop, originally, with fatigue they emerged -as even-winded and strong in the legs as if they had had an Alpine holiday. -This experience, Gedge opined, also represented, as a gain, a like -seasoning of the spirit--by which he meant a certain command of -impenetrable patience. - -The patience was needed for the particular feature of the ordeal that, by -the time the lively season was with them again, had disengaged itself as -the sharpest--the immense assumption of veracities and sanctities, of the -general soundness of the legend, with which every one arrived. He was well -provided certainly for meeting it, and he gave all he had, yet he had -sometimes the sense of a vague resentment on the part of his pilgrims at -his not ladling out their fare with a bigger spoon. An irritation had begun -to grumble in him during the comparatively idle months of winter when a -pilgrim would turn up singly. The pious individual, entertained for the -half-hour, had occasionally seemed to offer him the promise of beguilement -or the semblance of a personal relation; it came back again to the few -pleasant calls he had received in the course of a life almost void of -social amenity. Sometimes he liked the person, the face, the speech: an -educated man, a gentleman, not one of the herd; a graceful woman, vague, -accidental, unconscious of him, but making him wonder, while he hovered, -who she was. These chances represented for him light yearnings and faint -flutters; they acted indeed within him to a special, an extraordinary tune. -He would have liked to talk with such stray companions, to talk with them -_really_, to talk with them as he might have talked had he met them where -he couldn't meet them--at dinner, in the "world," on a visit at a -country-house. Then he could have said--and about the shrine and the idol -always--things he couldn't say now. The form in which his irritation first -came to him was that of his feeling obliged to say to them--to the single -visitor, even when sympathetic, quite as to the gaping group--the -particular things, a dreadful dozen or so, that they expected. If he had -thus arrived at characterising these things as dreadful the reason touched -the very point that, for a while turning everything over, he kept dodging, -not facing, trying to ignore. The point was that he was on his way to -become two quite different persons, the public and the private--as to which -it would somehow have to be managed that these persons should live -together. He was splitting into halves, unmistakably--he who, whatever else -he had been, had at least always been so entire and in his way so solid. -One of the halves, or perhaps even, since the split promised to be rather -unequal, one of the quarters, was the keeper, the showman, the priest of -the idol; the other piece was the poor unsuccessful honest man he had -always been. - -There were moments when he recognised this primary character as he had -never done before; when he in fact quite shook in his shoes at the idea -that it perhaps had in reserve some supreme assertion of its identity. It -was honest, verily, just by reason of the possibility. It was poor and -unsuccessful because here it was just on the verge of quarrelling with its -bread and butter. Salvation would be of course--the salvation of the -showman--rigidly to _keep_ it on the verge; not to let it, in other words, -overpass by an inch. He might count on this, he said to himself, if there -weren't any public--if there weren't thousands of people demanding of him -what he was paid for. He saw the approach of the stage at which they would -affect him, the thousands of people--and perhaps even more the earnest -individual--as coming really to see if he were earning his wage. Wouldn't -he soon begin to fancy them in league with the Body, practically deputed by -it--given, no doubt, a kindled suspicion--to look in and report -observations? It was the way he broke down with the lonely pilgrim that led -to his first heart-searchings--broke down as to the courage required for -damping an uncritical faith. What they all most wanted was to feel that -everything was "just as it was"; only the shock of having to part with that -vision was greater than any individual could bear unsupported. The bad -moments were upstairs in the Birthroom, for here the forces pressing on the -very edge assumed a dire intensity. The mere expression of eye, -all-credulous, omnivorous and fairly moistening in the act, with which many -persons gazed about, might eventually make it difficult for him to remain -fairly civil. Often they came in pairs--sometimes one had come before---and -then they explained to each other. He in that case never corrected; he -listened, for the lesson of listening: after which he would remark to his -wife that there was no end to what he was learning. He saw that if he -should really ever break down it would be with her he would begin. He had -given her hints and digs enough, but she was so inflamed with appreciation -that she either didn't feel them or pretended not to understand. - -This was the greater complication that, with the return of the spring and -the increase of the public, her services were more required. She took the -field with him from an early hour; she was present with the party above -while he kept an eye, and still more an ear, on the party below; and how -could he know, he asked himself, what she might say to them and what she -might suffer _Them_ to say--or in other words, poor wretches, to -believe--while removed from his control? Some day or other, and before too -long, he couldn't but think, he must have the matter out with her--the -matter, namely, of the _morality_ of their position. The morality of women -was special--he was getting lights on that. Isabel's conception of her -office was to cherish and enrich the legend. It was already, the legend, -very taking, but what was she there for but to make it more so? She -certainly wasn't there to chill any natural piety. If it was all in the -air--all in their "eye," as the vulgar might say--that He _had_ been born -in the Birthroom, where was the value of the sixpences they took? where the -equivalent they had engaged to supply? "Oh dear, yes--just about _here_"; -and she must tap the place with her foot. "Altered? Oh dear, no--save in a -few trifling particulars; you see the place--and isn't that just the charm -of it?--quite as _He_ saw it. Very poor and homely, no doubt; but that's -just what's so wonderful." He didn't want to hear her, and yet he didn't -want to give her her head; he didn't want to make difficulties or to snatch -the bread from her mouth. But he must none the less give her a warning -before they had gone _too_ far. That was the way, one evening in June, he -put it to her; the affluence, with the finest weather, having lately been -of the largest and the crowd all day fairly gorged with the story. "We -mustn't, you know, go _too_ far." - -The odd thing was that she had now ceased even to be conscious of what -troubled him--she was so launched in her own career. "Too far for what?" - -"To save our immortal souls. We mustn't, love, tell too many lies." - -She looked at him with dire reproach. "Ah now are you going to begin -again?" - -"I never _have_ begun; I haven't wanted to worry you. But, you know, we -don't know anything about it." And then as she stared, flushing: "About His -having been born up there. About anything really. Not the least little -scrap that would weigh in any other connexion as evidence. So don't rub it -in so." - -"Rub it in how?" - -"That He _was_ born----" But at sight of her face he only sighed. "Oh dear, -oh dear!" - -"Don't you think," she replied cuttingly, "that He was born anywhere?" - -He hesitated--it was such an edifice to shake. "Well, we don't know. -There's very little _to_ know. He covered His tracks as no other human -being has ever done." - -She was still in her public costume and hadn't taken off the gloves she -made a point of wearing as a part of that uniform; she remembered how the -rustling housekeeper in the Border castle, on whom she had begun by -modelling herself, had worn them. She seemed official and slightly distant. -"To cover His tracks He must have had to exist. Have we got to give -_that_ up?" - -"No, I don't ask you to give it up _yet_. But there's very little to go -upon." - -"And is that what I'm to tell Them in return for everything?" - -Gedge waited--he walked about. The place was doubly still after the bustle of -the day, and the summer evening rested on it as a blessing, making it, in its -small state and ancientry, mellow and sweet. It was good to be there and it -would be good to stay. At the same time there was something incalculable in the -effect on one's nerves of the great gregarious density. This was an attitude -that had nothing to do with degrees and shades, the attitude of wanting all or -nothing. And you couldn't talk things over with it. You could only do that with -friends, and then but in cases where you were sure the friends wouldn't betray -you. "Couldn't you adopt," he replied at last, "a slightly more discreet method? -What we can say is that things have been _said_; that's all we have to do with. -'And is this really'--when they jam their umbrellas into the floor--'the very -_spot_ where He was born?' 'So it has, from a long time back, been described as -being.' Couldn't one meet Them, to be decent a little, in some such way as -that?" - -She looked at him very hard. "Is that the way _you_ meet them?" - -"No; I've kept on lying--without scruple, without shame." - -"Then why do you haul me up?" - -"Because it has seemed to me we might, like true companions, work it out a -little together." - -This was not strong, he felt, as, pausing with his hands in his pockets, he -stood before her; and he knew it as weaker still after she had looked at -him a minute. "Morris Gedge, I propose to be _your_ true companion, and -I've come here to stay. That's all I've got to say." It was not, however, -for "You had better try yourself and see," she presently added. "Give the -place, give the story away, by so much as a look, and--well, I'd allow you -about nine days. Then you'd see." - -He feigned, to gain time, an innocence. "They'd take it so ill?" And then -as she said nothing: "They'd turn and rend me? They'd tear me to pieces?" - -But she wouldn't make a joke of it. "They wouldn't _have_ it, simply." - -"No--They wouldn't. That's what I say. They won't." - -"You had better," she went on, "begin with Grant-Jackson. But even that -isn't necessary. It would get to him, it would get to the Body, like -wildfire." - -"I see," said poor Gedge. And indeed for the moment he did see, while his -companion followed up what she believed her advantage. - -"Do you consider it's _all_ a fraud?" - -"Well, I grant you there was somebody. But the details are naught. The -links are missing. The evidence--in particular about that room upstairs, in -itself our Casa Santa--is _nil_. It was so awfully long ago." Which he knew -again sounded weak. - -"Of course it was awfully long ago--that's just the beauty and the -interest. Tell Them, _tell_ Them," she continued, "that the evidence is -_nil_, and I'll tell Them something else." She spoke it with such meaning -that his face seemed to show a question, to which she was on the spot of -replying, "I'll tell Them you're a----" She stopped, however, changing it. -"I'll tell Them exactly the opposite. And I'll find out what you say--it -won't take long--to do it. If we tell different stories _that_ possibly may -save us." - -"I see what you mean. It would perhaps, as an oddity, have a success of -curiosity. It might become a draw. Still, They but want broad masses." And -he looked at her sadly. "You're no more than one of Them." - -"If it's being no more than one of Them to love it," she answered, "then I -certainly am. And I'm not ashamed of my company." - -"To love _what_?" said Morris Gedge. - -"To love to think He was born there." - -"You think too much. It's bad for you." He turned away with his chronic -moan. But it was without losing what she called after him. - -"I decline to let the place down." And what was there indeed to say? They -_were_ there to keep it up. - - -V - -He kept it up through the summer, but with the queerest consciousness, at times, -of the want of proportion between his secret rage and the spirit of those from -whom the friction came. He said to himself--so sore his sensibility had -grown--that They were gregariously ferocious at the very time he was seeing Them -as individually mild. He said to himself that They were mild only because _he_ -was--he flattered himself that he was divinely so, considering what he might be; -and that he should, as his wife had warned him, soon enough have news of it were -he to deflect by a hair's breadth from the line traced for him. _That_ was the -collective fatuity--that it was capable of turning on the instant both to a -general and to a particular resentment. Since the least breath of discrimination -would get him the sack without mercy, it was absurd, he reflected, to speak of -his discomfort as light. He was gagged, he was goaded, as in omnivorous -companies he doubtless sometimes showed by a strange silent glare. They'd get -him the sack for that as well, if he didn't look out; therefore wasn't it in -effect ferocity when you mightn't even hold your tongue? They wouldn't let you -off with silence--They insisted on your committing yourself. It was the pound of -flesh--They _would_ have it; so under his coat he bled. But a wondrous peace, by -exception, dropped on him one afternoon at the end of August. The pressure had, -as usual, been high, but it had diminished with the fall of day, and the place -was empty before the hour for closing. Then it was that, within a few minutes of -this hour, there presented themselves a pair of pilgrims to whom in the ordinary -course he would have remarked that they were, to his regret, too late. He was to -wonder afterwards why the course had at sight of the visitors--a gentleman and a -lady, appealing and fairly young--shown for him as other than ordinary; the -consequence sprang doubtless from something rather fine and unnameable, -something for example in the tone of the young man or in the light of his eye, -after hearing the statement on the subject of the hour. "Yes, we know it's late; -but it's just, I'm afraid, _because_ of that. We've had rather a notion of -escaping the crowd--as I suppose you mostly have one now; and it was really on -the chance of finding you alone----!" - -These things the young man said before being quite admitted, and they were -words any one might have spoken who hadn't taken the trouble to be punctual -or who desired, a little ingratiatingly, to force the door. Gedge even -guessed at the sense that might lurk in them, the hint of a special tip if -the point were stretched. There were no tips, he had often thanked his -stars, at the Birthplace; there was the charged fee and nothing more; -everything else was out of order, to the relief of a palm not formed by -nature as a scoop. Yet in spite of everything, in spite especially of the -almost audible chink of the gentleman's sovereigns, which might in another -case exactly have put him out, he presently found himself, in the -Birthroom, access to which he had gracefully enough granted, almost -treating the visit as personal and private. The reason--well, the reason -would have been, if anywhere, in something naturally persuasive on the part -of the couple; unless it had been rather again, in the way the young man, -once he was in the place, met the caretaker's expression of face, held it a -moment and seemed to wish to sound it. That they were Americans was -promptly clear, and Gedge could very nearly have told what kind; he had -arrived at the point of distinguishing kinds, though the difficulty might -have been with him now that the case before him was rare. He saw it -suddenly in the light of the golden midland evening which reached them -through low old windows, saw it with a rush of feeling, unexpected and -smothered, that made him a moment wish to keep it before him as a case of -inordinate happiness. It made him feel old shabby poor, but he watched it -no less intensely for its doing so. They were children of fortune, of the -greatest, as it might seem to Morris Gedge, and they were of course lately -married; the husband, smooth-faced and soft, but resolute and fine, several -years older than the wife, and the wife vaguely, delicately, irregularly, -but mercilessly pretty. Some how the world was theirs; they gave the person -who took the sixpences at the Birthplace such a sense of the high luxury of -freedom as he had never had. The thing was that the world was theirs not -simply because they had money--he had seen rich people enough--but because -they could in a supreme degree think and feel and say what they liked. They -had a nature and a culture, a tradition, a facility of some sort--and all -producing in them an effect of positive beauty--that gave a light to their -liberty and an ease to their tone. These things moreover suffered nothing -from the fact that they happened to be in mourning; this was probably worn -for some lately-deceased opulent father--if not some delicate mother who -would be sure to have been a part of the source of the beauty; and it -affected Gedge, in the gathered twilight and at his odd crisis, as the very -uniform of their distinction. - -He couldn't quite have said afterwards by what steps the point had been -reached, but it had become at the end of five minutes a part of their -presence in the Birthroom, a part of the young man's look, a part of the -charm of the moment, and a part above all of a strange sense within him of -"Now or never!" that Gedge had suddenly, thrillingly, let himself go. He -hadn't been definitely conscious of drifting to it; he had been, for that, -too conscious merely of thinking how different, in all their range, were -such a united couple from another united couple known to him. They were -everything he and his wife weren't; this was more than anything else the -first lesson of their talk. Thousands of couples of whom the same was true -certainly had passed before him, but none of whom it was true with just -that engaging intensity. And just _because_ of their transcendent freedom; -that was what, at the end of five minutes, he saw it all come back to. The -husband, who had been there at some earlier time, had his impression, which -he wished now to make his wife share. But he already, Gedge could see, -hadn't concealed it from her. A pleasant irony in fine our friend seemed to -taste in the air--he who hadn't yet felt free to taste his own. - -"I think you weren't here four years ago"--that was what the young man had -almost begun by remarking. Gedge liked his remembering it, liked his -frankly speaking to him; all the more that he had offered, as it were, no -opening. He had let them look about below and then had taken them up, but -without words, without the usual showman's song, of which he would have -been afraid. The visitors didn't ask for it; the young man had taken the -matter out of his hands by himself dropping for the benefit of the young -woman a few detached remarks. What Gedge oddly felt was that these remarks -were not inconsiderate of him; he had heard others, both of the priggish -order and the crude, that might have been called so. And as the young man -hadn't been aided to this cognition of him as new, it already began to make -for them a certain common ground. The ground became immense when the -visitor presently added with a smile: "There was a good lady, I recollect, -who had a great deal to say." - -It was the gentleman's smile that had done it; the irony _was_ there. "Ah -there has been a great deal said." And Gedge's look at his interlocutor -doubtless showed his sense of being sounded. It was extraordinary of course -that a perfect stranger should have guessed the travail of his spirit, -should have caught the gleam of his inner commentary. That probably leaked -in spite of him out of his poor old eyes. "Much of it, in such places as -this," he heard himself adding, "is of course said very irresponsibly." -_Such places as this!_--he winced at the words as soon as he had uttered -them. - -There was no wincing, however, on the part of his pleasant companions. -"Exactly so; the whole thing becomes a sort of stiff smug convention--like -a dressed-up sacred doll in a Spanish church--which you're a monster if you -touch." - -"A monster," Gedge assented, meeting his eyes. - -The young man smiled, but he thought looking at him a little harder. "A -blasphemer." - -"A blasphemer." - -It seemed to do his visitor good--he certainly _was_ looking at him harder. -Detached as he was he was interested--he was at least amused. "Then you -don't claim or at any rate don't insist----? I mean you personally." - -He had an identity for him, Gedge felt, that he couldn't have had for a -Briton, and the impulse was quick in our friend to testify to this -perception. "I don't insist to _you_." - -The young man laughed. "It really--I assure you if I may--wouldn't do any -good. I'm too awfully interested." - -"Do you mean," his wife lightly inquired, "in--a--pulling it down? That's -rather in what you've said to me." - -"Has he said to you," Gedge intervened, though quaking a little, "that he -would like to pull it down?" - -She met, in her free sweetness, this appeal with such a charm! "Oh perhaps -not quite the _house_----!" - -"Good. You see we live on it--I mean _we_ people." - -The husband had laughed, but had now so completely ceased to look about him -that there seemed nothing left for him but to talk avowedly with the -caretaker. "I'm interested," he explained, "in what I think _the_ -interesting thing--or at all events the eternally tormenting one. The fact -of the abysmally little that, in proportion, we know." - -"In proportion to what?" his companion asked. - -"Well, to what there must have been--to what in fact there _is_--to wonder -about. That's the interest; it's immense. He escapes us like a thief at -night, carrying off--well, carrying off everything. And people pretend to -catch Him like a flown canary, over whom you can close your hand, and put -Him back in the cage. He won't _go_ back; he won't _come_ back. He's -not"--the young man laughed--"such a fool! It makes Him the happiest of all -great men." - -He had begun by speaking to his wife, but had ended, with his friendly, his -easy, his indescribable competence, for Gedge--poor Gedge who quite held -his breath and who felt, in the most unexpected way, that he had somehow -never been in such good society. The young wife, who for herself meanwhile -had continued to look about, sighed out, smiled out--Gedge couldn't have -told which--her little answer to these remarks. "It's rather a pity, you -know, that He _isn't_ here. I mean as Goethe's at Weimar. For Goethe _is_ -at Weimar." - -"Yes, my dear; that's Goethe's bad luck. There he sticks. _This_ man isn't -anywhere. I defy you to catch him." - -"Why not say, beautifully," the young woman laughed, "that, like the wind, -He's everywhere?" - -It wasn't of course the tone of discussion, it was the tone of pleasantry, -though of better pleasantry, Gedge seemed to feel, and more within his own -appreciation, than he had ever listened to; and this was precisely why the -young man could go on without the effect of irritation, answering his wife -but still with eyes for their companion. "I'll be hanged if He's _here_!" - -It was almost as if he were taken--that is, struck and rather held--by -their companion's unruffled state, which they hadn't meant to ruffle, but -which suddenly presented its interest, perhaps even projected its light. -The gentleman didn't know, Gedge was afterwards to say to himself, how that -hypocrite was inwardly all of a tremble, how it seemed to him his fate was -being literally pulled down on his head. He was trembling for the moment -certainly too much to speak; abject he might be, but he didn't want his -voice to have the absurdity of a quaver. And the young woman--charming -creature!--still had another word. It was for the guardian of the spot, and -she made it in her way delightful. They had remained in the Holy of Holies, -where she had been looking for a minute, with a ruefulness just marked -enough to be pretty, at the queer old floor. "Then if you say it _wasn't_ -in this room He was born--well, what's the use?" - -"What's the use of what?" her husband asked. "The use, you mean, of our -coming here? Why the place is charming in itself. And it's also -interesting," he added to Gedge, "to know how you get on." - -Gedge looked at him a moment in silence, but answering the young woman -first. If poor Isabel, he was thinking, could only have been like -that!--not as to youth, beauty, arrangement of hair or picturesque grace of -hat--these things he didn't mind; but as to sympathy, facility, light -perceptive, and yet not cheap, detachment! "I don't say it wasn't--but I -don't say it _was_." - -"Ah but doesn't that," she returned, "come very much to the same thing? And -don't They want also to see where He had His dinner and where He had His -tea?" - -"They want everything," said Morris Gedge. "They want to see where He hung -up His hat and where He kept His boots and where His mother boiled her -pot." - -"But if you don't show them----?" - -"They show _me_. It's in all their little books." - -"You mean," the husband asked, "that you've only to hold your tongue?" - -"I try to," said Gedge. - -"Well," his visitor smiled, "I see you _can_." - -Gedge hesitated. "I can't." - -"Oh well," said his friend, "what does it matter?" - -"I do speak," he continued. "I can't sometimes not." - -"Then how do you get on?" - -Gedge looked at him more abjectly, to his own sense, than ever at any -one--even at Isabel when she frightened him. "I don't get on. I speak," he -said--"since I've spoken to _you_." - -"Oh _we_ shan't hurt you!" the young man reassuringly laughed. - -The twilight meanwhile had sensibly thickened, the end of the visit was -indicated. They turned together out of the upper room and came down the -narrow stair. The words just exchanged might have been felt as producing an -awkwardness which the young woman gracefully felt the impulse to dissipate. -"You must rather wonder why we've come." And it was the first note for -Gedge of a further awkwardness--as if he had definitely heard it make the -husband's hand, in a full pocket, begin to fumble. - -It was even a little awkwardly that the husband still held off. "Oh we like -it as it is. There's always _something_." With which they had approached -the door of egress. - -"What is there, please?" asked Morris Gedge, not yet opening the door, -since he would fain have kept the pair on, and conscious only for a moment -after he had spoken that his question was just having for the young man too -dreadfully wrong a sound. This personage wondered yet feared, and had -evidently for some minutes been putting himself a question; so that, with -his preoccupation, the caretaker's words had represented to him inevitably: -"What is there, please, for _me_?" Gedge already knew with it moreover -that he wasn't stopping him in time. He had uttered that challenge to show -he himself wasn't afraid, and he must have had in consequence, he was -subsequently to reflect, a lamentable air of waiting. - -The visitor's hand came out. "I hope I may take the liberty----?" What -afterwards happened our friend scarcely knew, for it fell into a slight -confusion, the confusion of a queer gleam of gold--a sovereign fairly -thrust at him; of a quick, almost violent motion on his own part, which, to -make the matter worse, might well have sent the money roiling on the floor; -and then of marked blushes all round and a sensible embarrassment; -producing indeed in turn rather oddly and ever so quickly an increase of -communion. It was as if the young man had offered him money to make up to -him for having, as it were, led him on, and then, perceiving the mistake, -but liking him the better for his refusal, had wanted to obliterate this -aggravation of his original wrong. He had done so, presently, while Gedge -got the door open, by saying the best thing, he could, and by saying it -frankly and gaily. "Luckily it doesn't at all affect the _work_!" - -The small town-street, quiet and empty in the summer eventide, stretched to -right and left, with a gabled and timbered house or two, and fairly seemed -to have cleared itself to congruity with the historic void over which our -friends, lingering an instant to converse, looked at each other. The young -wife, rather, looked about a moment at all there wasn't to be seen, and -then, before Gedge had found a reply to her husband's remark, uttered, -evidently in the interest of conciliation, a little question of her own -that she tried to make earnest. "It's our unfortunate ignorance, you mean, -that doesn't?" - -"Unfortunate or fortunate. I like it so," said the husband. "'The play's -the thing.' Let the author alone." - -Gedge, with his key on his forefinger, leaned against the door-post, took -in the stupid little street and was sorry to see them go--they seemed so to -abandon him. "That's just what They won't do--nor let _me_ do. It's all I -want--to let the author alone. Practically"--he felt himself getting the -last of his chance--"there is no author; that is for us to deal with. There -are all the immortal people--_in_ the work; but there's nobody else." - -"Yes," said the young man--"that's what it comes to. There should really, -to clear the matter up, be no such Person." - -"As you say," Gedge returned, "it's what it comes to. There _is_ no such -Person." - -The evening air listened, in the warm thick midland stillness, while the -wife's little cry rang out. "But _wasn't_ there----?" - -"There was somebody," said Gedge against the door-post. "But They've killed -Him. And, dead as He is, They keep it up, They do it over again, They kill -Him every day." - -He was aware of saying this so grimly--more than he wished--that his -companions exchanged a glance and even perhaps looked as if they felt him -extravagant. That was really the way Isabel had warned him all the others -would be looking if he should talk to Them as he talked to _her_. He liked, -however, for that matter, to hear how he should sound when pronounced -incapable through deterioration of the brain. "Then if there's no author, -if there's nothing to be said but that there isn't anybody," the young -woman smilingly asked, "why in the world should there be a house?" - -"There shouldn't," said Morris Gedge. - -Decidedly, yes, he affected the young man. "Oh, I don't say, mind you, that -you should pull it down!" - -"Then where would you _go_?" their companion sweetly inquired. - -"That's what my wife asks," Gedge returned. - -"Then keep it up, keep it up!" And the husband held out his hand. - -"That's what my wife says," Gedge went on as he shook it. - -The young woman, charming creature, emulated the other visitor; she offered -their remarkable friend her handshake. "Then mind your wife." - -The poor man faced her gravely. "I would if she were such a wife as you!" - - -VI - -It had made for him, all the same, an immense difference; it had given him -an extraordinary lift, so that a certain sweet aftertaste of his freedom -might a couple of months later have been suspected of aiding to produce for -him another and really a more considerable adventure. It was an absurd way -to reason, but he had been, to his imagination, for twenty minutes in good -society--that being the term that best described for him the company of -people to whom he hadn't to talk, as he phrased it, rot. It was his title -to good society that he had, in his doubtless awkward way, affirmed; and -the difficulty was just that, having affirmed it, he couldn't take back the -affirmation. Few things had happened to him in life, that is few that were -agreeable, but at least _this_ had, and he wasn't so constructed that he -could go on as if it hadn't. It was going on as if it had, however, that -landed him, alas! in the situation unmistakably marked by a visit from -Grant-Jackson late one afternoon toward the end of October. This had been -the hour of the call of the young Americans. Every day that hour had come -round something of the deep throb of it, the successful secret, woke up; -but the two occasions were, of a truth, related only by being so intensely -opposed. The secret had been successful in that he had said nothing of it -to Isabel, who, occupied in their own quarter while the incident lasted, -had neither heard the visitors arrive nor seen them depart. It was on the -other hand scarcely successful in guarding itself from indirect betrayals. -There were two persons in the world at least who felt as he did; they were -persons also who had treated him, benignly, as feeling after _their_ style; -who had been ready in fact to overflow in gifts as a sign of it, and though -they were now off in space they were still with him sufficiently in spirit -to make him play, as it were, with the sense of their sympathy. This in -turn made him, as he was perfectly aware, more than a shade or two -reckless, so that, in his reaction from that gluttony of the public for -false facts which had from the first tormented him, he fell into the habit -of sailing, as he would have said, too near the wind, or in other -words--all in presence of the people--of washing his hands of the legend. -He had crossed the line--he knew it; he had struck wild--They drove him to -it; he had substituted, by a succession of uncontrollable profanities, an -attitude that couldn't be understood for an attitude that but too evidently -_had_ been. - -This was of course the franker line, only he hadn't taken it, alas! for -frankness--hadn't in the least really adopted it at all, but had been -simply himself caught up and disposed of by it, hurled by his fate against -the bedizened walls of the temple, quite in the way of a priest possessed -to excess of the god, or, more vulgarly, that of a blind bull in a -china-shop--an animal to which he often compared himself. He had let -himself fatally go, in fine, just for irritation, for rage, having, in his -predicament, nothing whatever to do with frankness--a luxury reserved for -quite other situations. It had always been his view that one lived to -learn; he had learned something every hour of his life, though people -mostly never knew what, in spite of its having generally been--hadn't -it?--at somebody's expense. What he was at present continually learning was -the sense of a form of words heretofore so vain--the famous "false -position" that had so often helped out a phrase. One used names in that way -without knowing what they were worth; then of a sudden, one fine day, their -meaning grew bitter in the mouth. This was a truth with the relish of which -his fireside hours were occupied, and he was aware of how much it exposed a -man to look so perpetually as if something had disagreed with him. The look -to be worn at the Birthplace was properly the beatific, and when once it -had fairly been missed by those who took it for granted, who indeed paid -sixpence for it--like the table-wine in provincial France it was -_compris_--one would be sure to have news of the remark. - -News accordingly was what Gedge had been expecting--and what he knew, above -all, had been expected by his wife, who had a way of sitting at present as -with an ear for a certain knock. She didn't watch him, didn't follow him -about the house, at the public hours, to spy upon his treachery; and that -could touch him even though her averted eyes went through him more than her -fixed. Her mistrust was so perfectly expressed by her manner of showing she -trusted that he never felt so nervous, never tried so to keep straight, as -when she most let him alone. When the crowd thickened and they had of -necessity to receive together he tried himself to get off by allowing her -as much as possible the word. When people appealed to him he turned to -her--and with more of ceremony than their relation warranted: he couldn't -help _this_ either, if it seemed ironic--as to the person most concerned or -most competent. He flattered himself at these moments that no one would -have guessed her being his wife; especially as to do her justice, she met -his manner with a wonderful grim bravado--grim, so to say, for himself, -grim by its outrageous cheerfulness for the simple-minded. The lore she -_did_ produce for them, the associations of the sacred spot she developed, -multiplied, embroidered; the things in short she said and the stupendous -way she said them! She wasn't a bit ashamed, since why need virtue be ever -ashamed? It was virtue, for it put bread into his mouth--he meanwhile on -his side taking it out of hers. He had seen Grant-Jackson on the October -day in the Birthplace itself--the right setting of course for such an -interview; and what had occurred was that, precisely, when the scene had -ended and he had come back to their own sitting-room, the question she put -to him for information was: "Have you settled it that I'm to starve?" - -She had for a long time said nothing to him so straight--which was but a proof -of her real anxiety; the straightness of Grant-Jackson's visit, following on the -very slight sinuosity of a note shortly before received from him, made tension -show for what it was. By this time, really, however, his decision had been -taken; the minutes elapsing between his reappearance at the domestic fireside -and his having, from the other threshold, seen Grant-Jackson's broad well-fitted -back, the back of a banker and a patriot, move away, had, though few, presented -themselves to him as supremely critical. They formed, as it were, the hinge of -his door, that door actually ajar so as to show him a possible fate beyond it, -but which, with his hand, in a spasm, thus tightening on the knob, he might -either open wide or close partly or altogether. He stood at autumn dusk in the -little museum that constituted the vestibule of the temple, and there, as with a -concentrated push at the crank of a windlass, he brought himself round. The -portraits on the walls seemed vaguely to watch for it; it was in their august -presence--kept dimly august for the moment by Grant-Jackson's impressive check -of his application of a match to the vulgar gas--that the great man had uttered, -as if it said all, his "You know, my dear fellow, really----!" He had managed it -with the special tact of a fat man, always, when there _was_ any, very fine; -he had got the most out of the time, the place, the setting, all the little -massed admonitions and symbols; confronted there with his victim on the spot -that he took occasion to name afresh as, to _his_ piety and patriotism, the most -sacred on earth, he had given it to be understood that in the first place he was -lost in amazement and that in the second he expected a single warning now to -suffice. Not to insist too much moreover on the question of gratitude, he would -let his remonstrance rest, if need be, solely on the question of taste. _As_ a -matter of taste alone----! But he was surely not to be obliged to follow that -up. Poor Gedge indeed would have been sorry to oblige him, for he saw it was -exactly to the atrocious taste of unthankfulness the allusion was made. When he -said he wouldn't dwell on what the fortunate occupant of the post owed him for -the stout battle originally fought on his behalf, he simply meant he _would_. -That was his tact--which, with everything else that has been mentioned, in the -scene, to help, really had the ground to itself. The day _had_ been when Gedge -couldn't have thanked him enough--though he had thanked him, he considered, -almost fulsomely--and nothing, nothing that he could coherently or reputably -name, had happened since then. From the moment he was pulled up, in short, he -had no case, and if he exhibited, instead of one, only hot tears in his eyes, -the mystic gloom of the temple either prevented his friend from seeing them or -rendered it possible that they stood for remorse. He had dried them, with the -pads formed by the base of his bony thumbs, before he went in to Isabel. This -was the more fortunate as, in spite of her inquiry, prompt and pointed, he but -moved about the room looking at her hard. Then he stood before the fire a little -with his hands behind him and his coat-tails divided, quite as the person in -permanent possession. It was an indication his wife appeared to take in; but she -put nevertheless presently another question. "You object to telling me what he -said?" - -"He said 'You know, my dear fellow, really----!'" - -"And is that all?" - -"Practically. Except that I'm a thankless beast." - -"Well!" she responded, not with dissent. - -"You mean that I _am_?" - -"Are those the words he used?" she asked with a scruple. - -Gedge continued to think. "The words he used were that I give away the Show -and that, from several sources, it has come round to Them." - -"As of course a baby would have known!" And then as her husband said -nothing: "Were _those_ the words he used?" - -"Absolutely. He couldn't have used better ones." - -"Did he call it," Mrs. Gedge inquired, "the 'Show'?" - -"Of course he did. The Biggest on Earth." - -She winced, looking at him hard--she wondered, but only for a moment. -"Well, it _is_." - -"Then it's something," Gedge went on, "to have given _that_ away. But," he -added, "I've taken it back." - -"You mean you've been convinced?" - -"I mean I've been scared." - -"At last, at last!" she gratefully breathed. - -"Oh it was easily done. It was only two words. But here I am." - -Her face was now less hard for him. "And what two words?" - -"'You know, Mr. Gedge, that it simply won't do.' That was all. But it was -the way such a man says them." - -"I'm glad then," Mrs. Gedge frankly averred, "that he _is_ such a man. How -did you ever think it _could_ do?" - -"Well, it was my critical sense. I didn't ever know I had one--till They -came and (by putting me here) waked it up in me. Then I had somehow, don't -you see? to live with it; and I seemed to feel that, with one thing and -another, giving it time and in the long run, it might, it _ought_ to, come -out on top of the heap. Now that's where, he says, it simply won't 'do.' So -I must put it--I _have_ put it--at the bottom." - -"A very good place then for a critical sense!" And Isabel, more placidly -now, folded her work. "_If_, that is, you can only keep it there. If it -doesn't struggle up again." - -"It can't struggle." He was still before the fire, looking round at the -warm low room, peaceful in the lamplight, with the hum of the kettle for -the ear, with the curtain drawn over the leaded casement, a short moreen -curtain artfully chosen by Isabel for the effect of the olden time, its -virtue of letting the light within show ruddy to the street. "It's dead," -he went on; "I killed it just now." - -He really spoke so that she wondered. "Just now?" - -"There in the other place--I strangled it, poor thing, in the dark. If -you'll go out and see, there must be blood. Which, indeed," he added, "on -an altar of sacrifice, is all right. But the place is for ever spattered." - -"I don't want to go out and see." She locked her hands over the needlework -folded on her knee, and he knew, with her eyes on him, that a look he had -seen before was in her face. "You're off your head, you know, my dear, in a -way." Then, however, more cheeringly: "It's a good job it hasn't been too -late." - -"Too late to get it under?" - -"Too late for Them to give you the second chance that I thank God you -accept." - -"Yes, if it _had_ been----!" And he looked away as through the ruddy curtain -and into the chill street. Then he faced her again. "I've scarcely got over -my fright yet. I mean," he went on, "for you." - -"And I mean for _you_. Suppose what you had come to announce to me now were -that we had _got_ the sack. How should I enjoy, do you think, seeing you turn -out? Yes, out _there_!" she added as his eyes again moved from their little -warm circle to the night of early winter on the other side of the pane, to -the rare quick footsteps, to the closed doors, to the curtains drawn like -their own, behind which the small flat town, intrinsically dull, was -sitting down to supper. - -He stiffened himself as he warmed his back; he held up his head, shaking -himself a little as if to shake the stoop out of his shoulders, but he had -to allow she was right. "What would have become of us?" - -"What indeed? We should have begged our bread--or I should be taking in -washing." - -He was silent a little. "I'm too old. I should have begun sooner." - -"Oh God forbid!" she cried. - -"The pinch," he pursued, "is that I can do nothing else." - -"Nothing whatever!" she agreed with elation. - -"Whereas here--if I cultivate it--I perhaps _can_ still lie. But I must -cultivate it." - -"Oh you old dear!" And she got up to kiss him. - -"I'll do my best," he said. - - -VII - -"Do you remember us?" the gentleman asked and smiled--with the lady beside -him smiling too; speaking so much less as an earnest pilgrim or as a -tiresome tourist than as an old acquaintance. It was history repeating -itself as Gedge had somehow never expected, with almost everything the same -except that the evening was now a mild April-end, except that the visitors -had put off mourning and showed all their bravery--besides showing, as he -doubtless did himself, though so differently, for a little older; except, -above all, that--oh seeing them again suddenly affected him not a bit as -the thing he'd have supposed it. "We're in England again and we were near; -I've a brother at Oxford with whom we've been spending a day, so that we -thought we'd come over." This the young man pleasantly said while our -friend took in the queer fact that he must himself seem to them rather -coldly to gape. They had come in the same way at the quiet close; another -August had passed, and this was the second spring; the Birthplace, given -the hour, was about to suspend operations till the morrow; the last -lingerer had gone and the fancy of the visitors was once more for a look -round by themselves. This represented surely no greater presumption than -the terms on which they had last parted with him seemed to warrant; so that -if he did inconsequently stare it was just in fact because he was so -supremely far from having forgotten them. But the sight of the pair luckily -had a double effect, and the first precipitated the second--the second -being really his sudden vision that everything perhaps depended for him on -his recognising no complication. He must go straight on, since it was what -had for more than a year now so handsomely answered; he must brazen it out -consistently, since that only was what his dignity was at last reduced to. -He mustn't be afraid in one way any more than he had been in another; -besides which it came over him to the point of his flushing for it that -their visit, in its essence, must have been for himself. It was good -society again, and _they_ were the same. It wasn't for him therefore to -behave as if he couldn't meet them. - -These deep vibrations, on Gedge's part, were as quick as they were deep; -they came in fact all at once, so that his response, his declaration that -it was all right--"Oh _rather_; the hour doesn't matter for _you_!"--had -hung fire but an instant; and when they were well across the threshold and -the door closed behind them, housed in the twilight of the temple, where, -as before, the votive offerings glimmered on the walls, he drew the long -breath of one who might by a self-betrayal have done something too -dreadful. For what had brought them back was indubitably not the glamour of -the shrine itself--since he had had a glimpse of their analysis of that -quantity; but their critical (not to say their sentimental) interest in the -queer case of the priest. Their call was the tribute of curiosity, of -sympathy, of a compassion really, as such things went, exquisite--a tribute -_to_ that queerness which entitled them to the frankest welcome. They had -wanted, for the generous wonder of it, to judge how he was getting on, how -such a man in such a place _could_; and they had doubtless more than -half-expected to see the door opened by somebody who had succeeded him. -Well, somebody _had_--only with a strange equivocation; as they would have, -poor things, to make out themselves, an embarrassment for which he pitied -them. Nothing could have been more odd, but verily it was this troubled -vision of their possible bewilderment, and this compunctious view of such a -return for their amenity, that practically determined in him his tone. The -lapse of the months had but made their name familiar to him; they had on -the other occasion inscribed it, among the thousand names, in the current -public register, and he had since then, for reasons of his own, reasons of -feeling, again and again turned back to it. It was nothing in itself; it -told him nothing--"Mr. and Mrs. B. D. Hayes, New York"--one of those -American labels that were just like every other American label and that -were precisely the most remarkable thing about people reduced to achieving -an identity in such other ways. They could be Mr. and Mrs. B. D. Hayes and -yet could be, with all presumptions missing--well, what these callers were. -It had quickly enough indeed cleared the situation a little further that -his friends had absolutely, the other time, as it came back to him, warned -him of his original danger, their anxiety about which had been the last -note sounded among them. What he was afraid of, with this reminiscence, was -that, finding him still safe, they would, the next thing, definitely -congratulate him and perhaps even, no less candidly, ask him how he had -managed. It was with the sense of nipping some such inquiry in the bud -that, losing no time and holding himself with a firm grip, he began on the -spot, downstairs, to make plain to them how he had managed. He routed the -possibility of the question in short by the assurance of his answer. "Yes, -yes, I'm still here; I suppose it _is_ in a manner to one's profit that one -does, such as it is, one's best." He did his best on the present occasion, -did it with the gravest face he had ever worn and a soft serenity that was -like a large damp sponge passed over their previous meeting--over -everything in it, that is, but the fact of its pleasantness. - -"We stand here, you see, in the old living-room, happily still to be -reconstructed in the mind's eye, in spite of the havoc of time, which we -have fortunately of late years been able to arrest. It was of course rude -and humble, but it must have been snug and quaint, and we have at least the -pleasure of knowing that the tradition in respect to the features that do -remain is delightfully uninterrupted. Across that threshold He habitually -passed; through those low windows, in childhood, He peered out into the -world that He was to make so much happier by the gift to it of His genius; -over the boards of this floor--that is over _some_ of them, for we mustn't -be carried away!--his little feet often pattered; and the beams of this -ceiling (we must really in some places take care of _our_ heads!) he -endeavoured, in boyish strife, to jump up and touch. It's not often that in -the early home of genius and renown the whole tenor of existence is laid so -bare, not often that we are able to retrace, from point to point and from -step to step, its connexion with objects, with influences--to build it -round again with the little solid facts out of which it sprang. This -therefore, I need scarcely remind you, is what makes the small space -between these walls--so modest to measurement, so insignificant of -aspect--unique on all the earth. _There's nothing like it_," Morris Gedge -went on, insisting as solemnly and softly, for his bewildered hearers, as -over a pulpit-edge; "there's nothing at all like it anywhere in the world. -There's nothing, only reflect, for the combination of greatness and, as we -venture to say, of intimacy. You may find elsewhere perhaps absolutely -fewer changes, but where shall you find a _Presence_ equally diffused, -uncontested and undisturbed? Where in particular shall you find, on the -part of the abiding spirit, an equally towering eminence? You may find -elsewhere eminence of a considerable order, but where shall you find _with_ -it, don't you see, changes after all so few and the contemporary element -caught so, as it were, in the very fact?" His visitors, at first confounded -but gradually spellbound, were still gaping with the universal -gape--wondering, he judged, into what strange pleasantry he had been -suddenly moved to explode, and yet beginning to see in him an intention -beyond a joke, so that they started, at this point, they almost jumped, -when, by as rapid a transition, he made, toward the old fireplace, a dash -that seemed to illustrate precisely the act of eager catching. "It is in -this old chimney-corner, the quaint inglenook of our ancestors--just there -in the far angle, where His little stool was placed, and where, I daresay, -if we could look close enough, we should find the hearth stone scraped with -His little feet--that we see the inconceivable child gazing into the blaze -of the old oaken logs and making out there pictures and stories, see Him -conning, with curly bent head, His well-worn hornbook, or poring over some -scrap of an ancient ballad, some page of some such rudely-bound volume of -chronicles as lay, we may be sure, in His father's window-seat." - -It was, he even himself felt at this moment, wonderfully done; no auditors, -for all his thousands, had ever yet so inspired him. The odd slightly -alarmed shyness in the two faces, as if in a drawing-room, in their "good -society" exactly, some act incongruous, something grazing the indecent, had -abruptly been perpetrated, the painful reality of which stayed itself -before coming home--the visible effect on his friends in fine wound him up -as to the sense that _they_ were worth the trick. It came of itself now--he -had got it so by heart; but perhaps really it had never come so well, with -the staleness so disguised, the interest so renewed and the clerical -unction demanded by the priestly character so successfully distilled. Mr. -Hayes of New York had more than once looked at his wife, and Mrs. Hayes of -New York had more than once looked at her husband--only, up to now, with a -stolen glance, with eyes it hadn't been easy to detach from the remarkable -countenance by the aid of which their entertainer held them. At present, -however, after an exchange less furtive, they ventured on a sign that they -hadn't been appealed to in vain. "Charming, charming, Mr. Gedge!" Mr. Hayes -broke out. "We feel that we've caught you in the mood." - -His wife hastened to assent--it eased the tension. "It _would_ be quite the -way; except," she smiled, "that you'd be too dangerous. You've really a -genius!" - -Gedge looked at her hard, but yielding no inch, even though she touched him -there at a point of consciousness that quivered. This was the prodigy for -him, and had been, the year through--that he did it all, he found, easily, -did it better than he had done anything else in life; with so high and -broad an effect, in truth, an inspiration so rich and free, that his poor -wife now, literally, had been moved more than once to fresh fear. She had -had her bad moments, he knew, after taking the measure of his new -direction--moments of readjusted suspicion in which she wondered if he -hadn't simply adopted another, a different perversity. There would be more -than one fashion of giving away the Show, and wasn't _this_ perhaps a -question of giving it away by excess? He could dish them by too much -romance as well as by too little; she hadn't hitherto fairly grasped that -there might _be_ too much. It was a way like another, at any rate, of -reducing the place to the absurd; which reduction, if he didn't look out, -would reduce _them_ again to the prospect of the streets, and this time -surely without appeal. It all depended indeed--he knew she knew that--on -how much Grant-Jackson and the others, how much the Body, in a word, would -take. He knew she knew what he himself held it would take--that he -considered no limit could be imputed to the quantity. They simply wanted it -piled up, and so did every one else; wherefore if no one reported him as -before why were They to be uneasy? It was in consequence of idiots tempted -to reason that he had been dealt with before; but as there was now no form -of idiocy that he didn't systematically flatter, goading it on really to -its _own_ private doom, who was ever to pull the string of the guillotine? -The axe was in the air--yes; but in a world gorged to satiety there were no -revolutions. And it had been vain for Isabel to ask if the other -thunder-growl also hadn't come out of the blue. There was actually proof -positive that the winds were now at rest. How could they be more so?--he -appealed to the receipts. These were golden days--the Show had never so -flourished. So he had argued, so he was arguing still--and, it had to be -owned, with every appearance in his favour. Yet if he inwardly winced at -the tribute to his plausibility rendered by his flushed friends, this was -because he felt in it the real ground of his optimism. The charming woman -before him acknowledged his "genius" as he himself had had to do. He had -been surprised at his facility until he had grown used to it. Whether or no -he had, as a fresh menace to his future, found a new perversity, he had -found a vocation much older, evidently, than he had at first been prepared -to recognise. He had done himself injustice. He liked to be brave because -it came so easy; he could measure it off by the yard. It was in the -Birthroom, above all, that he continued to do this, having ushered up his -companions without, as he was still more elated to feel, the turn of a -hair. She might take it as she liked, but he had had the lucidity--all, -that is, for his own safety--to meet without the grace of an answer the -homage of her beautiful smile. She took it apparently, and her husband took -it, but as a part of his odd humour, and they followed him aloft with faces -now a little more responsive to the manner in which on _that_ spot he would -naturally come out. He came out, according to the word of his assured -private receipt, "strong." He missed a little, in truth, the usual -round-eyed question from them--the inveterate artless cue with which, from -moment to moment, clustered troops had for a year obliged him. Mr. and Mrs. -Hayes were from New York, but it was a little like singing, as he had heard -one of his Americans once say about something, to a Boston audience. He did -none the less what he could, and it was ever his practice to stop still at -a certain spot in the room and, after having secured attention by look and -gesture, suddenly shoot off: "Here!" - -They always understood, the good people--he could fairly love them now for it; -they always said breathlessly and unanimously "There?" and stared down at the -designated point quite as if some trace of the grand event were still to be made -out. This movement produced he again looked round. "Consider it well: _the_ spot -of earth----!" "Oh but it isn't _earth_!" the boldest spirit--there was always a -boldest--would generally pipe out. Then the guardian of the Birthplace would be -truly superior--as if the unfortunate had figured the Immortal coming up, like a -potato, through the soil. "I'm not suggesting that He was born on the bare -ground. He was born _here_!"--with an uncompromising dig of his heel. "There -ought to be a brass, with an inscription, let in." "Into the floor?"--it always -came. "Birth and burial: seedtime, summer, autumn!"--that always, with its -special right cadence, thanks to his unfailing spring, came too. "Why not as -well as into the pavement of the church?--you've _seen_ our grand old church?" -The former of which questions nobody ever answered--abounding, on the other -hand, to make up, in relation to the latter. Mr. and Mrs. Hayes even were at -first left dumb by it--not indeed, to do them justice, having uttered the word -that called for it. They had uttered no word while he kept the game up, and -(though that made it a little more difficult) he could yet stand triumphant -before them after he had finished with his flourish. Only then it was that Mr. -Hayes of New York broke silence. - -"Well, if we wanted to see I think I may say we're quite satisfied. As my -wife says, it _would_ seem your line." He spoke now, visibly, with more -ease, as if a light had come: though he made no joke of it, for a reason -that presently appeared. They were coming down the little stair, and it was -on the descent that his companion added her word. - -"Do you know what we half _did_ think----?" And then to her husband: "Is it -dreadful to tell him?" They were in the room below, and the young woman, -also relieved, expressed the feeling with gaiety. She smiled as before at -Morris Gedge, treating him as a person with whom relations were possible, -yet remaining just uncertain enough to invoke Mr. Hayes's opinion. "We -_have_ awfully wanted--from what we had heard." But she met her husband's -graver face; he was not quite out of the wood. At this she was slightly -flurried--but she cut it short. "You must know--don't you?--that, with the -crowds who listen to you, we'd have heard." - -He looked from one to the other, and once more again, with force, something -came over him. They had kept him in mind, they were neither ashamed nor -afraid to show it, and it was positively an interest on the part of this -charming creature and this keen cautious gentleman, an interest resisting -oblivion and surviving separation, that had governed their return. Their -other visit had been the brightest thing that had ever happened to him, but -this was the gravest; so that at the end of a minute something broke in him -and his mask dropped of itself. He chucked, as he would have said, -consistency; which, in its extinction, left the tears in his eyes. His -smile was therefore queer. "Heard how I'm going it?" - -The young man, though still looking at him hard, felt sure, with this, of -his own ground. "Of course you're tremendously talked about. You've gone -round the world." - -"You've heard of me in America?" - -"Why almost of nothing else!" - -"That was what made us feel----!" Mrs. Hayes contributed. - -"That you must see for yourselves?" Again he compared, poor Gedge, their -faces. "Do you mean I excite--a--scandal?" - -"Dear no! Admiration. You renew so," the young man observed, "the -interest." - -"Ah there it is!" said Gedge with eyes of adventure that seemed to rest -beyond the Atlantic. - -"They listen, month after month, when they're out here, as you must have -seen; then they go home and talk. But they sing your praise." - -Our friend could scarce take it in. "Over _there_!" - -"Over there. I think you must be even in the papers." - -"Without abuse?" - -"Oh we don't abuse every one." - -Mrs. Hayes, in her beauty, it was clear, stretched the point. "They rave -about you." - -"Then they _don't_ know?" - -"Nobody knows," the young man declared; "it wasn't any one's knowledge, at -any rate, that made us uneasy." - -"It was your own? I mean your own sense?" - -"Well, call it that. We remembered, and we wondered what had happened. So," -Mr. Hayes now frankly laughed, "we came to see." - -Gedge stared through his film of tears. "Came from America to see _me_?" - -"Oh a part of the way. But we wouldn't, in England, have missed you." - -"And now we _haven't_!" the young woman soothingly added. - -Gedge still could only gape at the candour of the tribute. But he tried to -meet them--it was what was least poor for him--in their own key. "Well, how -do you like it?" - -Mrs. Hayes, he thought--if their answer were important--laughed a little -nervously. "Oh you see." - -Once more he looked from one to the other. "It's too beastly easy, you -know." - -Her husband raised his eyebrows. "You conceal your art. The emotion--yes; -that must be easy; the general tone must flow. But about your facts--you've -so many: how do you get _them_ through?" - -Gedge wondered. "You think I get too many----?" - -At this they were amused together. "That's just what we came to see!" - -"Well, you know, I've felt my way; I've gone step by step; you wouldn't -believe how I've tried it on. _This_--where you see me--is where I've come -out." After which, as they said nothing: "You hadn't thought I _could_ come -out?" - -Again they just waited, but the husband spoke: "Are you so awfully sure you -are out?" - -Gedge drew himself up in the manner of his moments of emotion, almost -conscious even that, with his sloping shoulders, his long lean neck and his -nose so prominent in proportion to other matters, he resembled the more a -giraffe. It was now at last he really caught on. "I _may_ be in danger -again--and the danger is what has moved you? Oh!" the poor man fairly -moaned. His appreciation of it quite weakened him, yet he pulled himself -together. "You've your view of my danger?" - -It was wondrous how, with that note definitely sounded, the air was -cleared. Lucid Mr. Hayes, at the end of a minute, had put the thing in a -nutshell. "I don't know what you'll think of us--for being so beastly -curious." - -"I think," poor Gedge grimaced, "you're only too beastly kind." - -"It's all your own fault," his friend returned, "for presenting us (who are -not idiots, say) with so striking a picture of a crisis. At our other -visit, you remember," he smiled, "you created an anxiety for the opposite -reason. Therefore if _this_ should again be a crisis for you, you'd really -give us the case with an ideal completeness." - -"You make me wish," said Morris Gedge, "that it might be one." - -"Well, don't try--for our amusement--to bring one on. I don't see, you -know, how you can have much margin. Take care--take care." - -Gedge did it pensive justice. "Yes, that was what you said a year ago. You -did me the honour to be uneasy--as my wife was." - -Which determined on the young woman's part an immediate question. "May I -ask then if Mrs. Gedge is now at rest?" - -"No--since you do ask. _She_ fears at least that I go too far; she doesn't -believe in my margin. You see we _had_ our scare after your visit. They -came down." - -His friends were all interest. "Ah! They came down?" - -"Heavy. They brought _me_ down. That's _why_--" - -"Why you _are_ down?" Mrs. Hayes sweetly demanded. - -"Ah but my dear man," her husband interposed, "you're not down; you're -_up_! You're only up a different tree, but you're up at the tip-top." - -"You mean I take it too high?" - -"That's exactly the question," the young man answered; "and the -possibility, as matching your first danger, is just what we felt we -couldn't, if you didn't mind, miss the measure of." - -Gedge gazed at him. "I feel that I know what you at bottom _hoped_." - -"We at bottom 'hope,' surely, that you're all right?" - -"In spite of the fool it makes of every one?" - -Mr. Hayes of New York smiled. "Say _because_ of that. We only ask to -believe every one _is_ a fool!" - -"Only you haven't been, without reassurance, able to imagine fools of the -size that my case demands?" And Gedge had a pause while, as if on the -chance of some proof, his companion waited. "Well, I won't pretend to you -that your anxiety hasn't made me, doesn't threaten to make me, a bit -nervous; though I don't quite understand it if, as you say, people but rave -about me." - -"Oh _that_ report was from the other side; people in our country so very -easily rave. You've seen small children laugh to shrieks when tickled in a -new place. So there are amiable millions with us who are but small -shrieking children. They perpetually present new places for the tickler. -What we've seen in further lights," Mr. Hayes good-humouredly pursued, "is -your people _here_--the Committee, the Board, or whatever the powers to -whom you're responsible." - -"Call them my friend Grant-Jackson then--my original backer, though I admit -for that reason perhaps my most formidable critic. It's with him -practically I deal; or rather it's by him I'm dealt with--_was_ dealt with -before. I stand or fall by him. But he has given me my head." - -"Mayn't he then want you," Mrs. Hayes inquired, "just to show as flagrantly -running away?" - -"Of course--I see what you mean. I'm riding, blindly, for a fall, and -They're watching (to be tender of me!) for the smash that may come of -itself. It's Machiavellic--but everything's possible. And what did you just -now mean," Gedge asked--"especially if you've only heard of my -prosperity--by your 'further lights'?" - -His friends for an instant looked embarrassed, but Mr. Hayes came to the -point. "We've heard of your prosperity, but we've also, remember, within a -few minutes, heard _you_." - -"I was determined you _should_," said Gedge. "I'm good then--but I overdo?" -His strained grin was still sceptical. - -Thus challenged, at any rate, his visitor pronounced. "Well, if you don't; -if at the end of six months more it's clear that you haven't overdone; -then, _then_----" - -"Then what?" - -"Then it's great." - -"But it _is_ great--greater than anything of the sort ever was. I overdo, -thank goodness, yes; or I would if it were a thing you _could_." - -"Oh well, if there's _proof_ that you can't----!" With which and an -expressive gesture Mr. Hayes threw up his fears. - -His wife, however, for a moment seemed unable to let them go. "Don't They -want then _any_ truth?--none even for the mere look of it?" - -"The look of it," said Morris Gedge, "is what I give!" - -It made them, the others, exchange a look of their own. Then she smiled. -"Oh, well, if they think so----!" - -"You at least don't? You're like my wife--which indeed, I remember," Gedge -added, "is a similarity I expressed a year ago the wish for! At any rate I -frighten _her_." - -The young husband, with an "Ah wives are terrible!" smoothed it over, and -their visit would have failed of further excuse had not at this instant a -movement at the other end of the room suddenly engaged them. The evening -had so nearly closed in, though Gedge, in the course of their talk, had -lighted the lamp nearest them, that they had not distinguished, in -connexion with the opening of the door of communication to the warden's -lodge, the appearance of another person, an eager woman who in her -impatience had barely paused before advancing. Mrs. Gedge--her identity -took but a few seconds to become vivid--was upon them, and she had not been -too late for Mr. Hayes's last remark. Gedge saw at once that she had come -with news; no need even, for that certitude, of her quick retort to the -words in the air--"You may say as well, sir, that they're often, poor -wives, terrified!" She knew nothing of the friends whom, at so unnatural an -hour, he was showing about; but there was no livelier sign for him that -this didn't matter than the possibility with which she intensely charged -her "Grant-Jackson, to see you at once!"--letting it, so to speak, fly in -his face. - -"He has been with you?" - -"Only a minute--he's there. But it's you he wants to see." - -He looked at the others. "And what does he want, dear?" - -"God knows! There it is. It's his horrid hour--it _was_ that other time." - -She had nervously turned to the others, overflowing to them, in her dismay, -for all their strangeness--quite, as he said to himself, like a woman of -the people. She was the bareheaded good wife talking in the street about -the row in the house, and it was in this character that he instantly -introduced her: "My dear doubting wife, who will do her best to entertain -you while I wait upon our friend." And he explained to her as he could his -now protesting companions--"Mr. and Mrs. Hayes of New York, who have been -here before." He knew, without knowing why, that her announcement chilled -him; he failed at least to see why it should chill him so much. His good -friends had themselves been visibly affected by it, and heaven knew that -the depths of brooding fancy in him were easily stirred by contact. If they -had wanted a crisis they accordingly had found one, albeit they had already -asked leave to retire before it. This he wouldn't have. "Ah no, you must -really see!" - -"But we shan't be able to bear it, you know," said the young woman, "if it -_is_ to turn you out." - -Her crudity attested her sincerity, and it was the latter, doubtless, that -instantly held Mrs. Gedge. "It _is_ to turn us out." - -"Has he told you that, madam?" Mr. Hayes inquired of her--it being wondrous -how the breath of doom had drawn them together. - -"No, not told me; but there's something in him there--I mean in his awful -manner--that matches too well with other things. We've seen," said the poor -pale lady, "other things enough." - -The young woman almost clutched her. "Is his manner very awful?" - -"It's simply the manner," Gedge interposed, "of a very great man." - -"Well, very great men," said his wife, "are very awful things." - -"It's exactly," he laughed, "what we're finding out! But I mustn't keep him -waiting. Our friends here," he went on, "are directly interested. You -mustn't, mind you, let them go until we know." - -Mr. Hayes, however, held him; he found himself stayed. "We're so directly -interested that I want you to understand this. If anything happens----" - -"Yes?" said Gedge, all gentle as he faltered. - -"Well, _we_ must set you up." - -Mrs. Hayes quickly abounded. "Oh _do_ come to us!" - -Again he could but take them in. They were really wonderful folk. And with -it all but Mr. and Mrs. Hayes! It affected even Isabel through her alarm; -though the balm, in a manner, seemed to foretell the wound. He had reached -the threshold of his own quarters; he stood there as at the door of the -chamber of judgement. But he laughed; at least he could be gallant in going -up for sentence. "Very good then--I'll come to you!" - -This was very well, but it didn't prevent his heart, a minute later, at the -end of the passage, from thumping with beats he could count. He had paused -again before going in; on the other side of this second door his poor -future was to be let loose at him. It was broken, at best, and spiritless, -but wasn't Grant-Jackson there like a beast-tamer in a cage, all tights and -spangles and circus attitudes, to give it a cut with the smart official -whip and make it spring at him? It was during this moment that he fully -measured the effect for his nerves of the impression made on his so oddly -earnest friends--whose earnestness he verily, in the spasm of this last -effort, came within an ace of resenting. They had upset him by contact; he -was afraid literally of meeting his doom on his knees; it wouldn't have -taken much more, he absolutely felt, to make him approach with his forehead -in the dust the great man whose wrath was to be averted. Mr. and Mrs. Hayes -of New York had brought tears to his eyes, but was it to be reserved for -Grant-Jackson to make him cry like a baby? He wished, yes, while he -palpitated, that Mr. and Mrs. Hayes of New York hadn't had such an -eccentricity of interest, for it seemed somehow to come from _them_ that he -was going so fast to pieces. Before he turned the knob of the door, -however, he had another queer instant; making out that it had been, -strictly, his case that was interesting, his funny power, however -accidental, to show as in a picture the attitude of others--not his poor -pale personality. It was this latter quantity, none the less, that was -marching to execution. It is to our friend's credit that he _believed_, as -he prepared to turn the knob, that he was going to be hanged; and it's -certainly not less to his credit that his wife, on the chance, had his -supreme thought. Here it was that--possibly with his last articulate -breath--he thanked his stars, such as they were, for Mr. and Mrs. Hayes of -New York. At least they would take care of her. - -They were doing that certainly with some success when he returned to them -ten minutes later. She sat between them in the beautified Birthplace, and -he couldn't have been sure afterwards that each wasn't holding her hand. -The three together had at any rate the effect of recalling to him--it was -too whimsical--some picture, a sentimental print, seen and admired in his -youth, a "Waiting for the Verdict," a "Counting the Hours," or something of -that sort; humble respectability in suspense about humble innocence. He -didn't know how he himself looked, and he didn't care; the great thing was -that he wasn't crying--though he might have been; the glitter in his eyes -was assuredly dry, though that there _was_ a glitter, or something -slightly to bewilder, the faces of the others as they rose to meet him -sufficiently proved. His wife's eyes pierced his own, but it was Mrs. Hayes -of New York who spoke. "_Was_ it then for that----?" - -He only looked at them at first--he felt he might now enjoy it. "Yes, it -was for 'that.' I mean it was about the way I've been going on. He came to -speak of it." - -"And he's gone?" Mr. Hayes permitted himself to inquire. - -"He's gone." - -"It's over?" Isabel hoarsely asked. - -"It's over." - -"Then we go?" - -This it was that he enjoyed. "No, my dear; we stay." - -There was fairly a triple gasp; relief took time to operate. "Then why did -he come?" - -"In the fulness of his kind heart and of _Their_ discussed and decreed -satisfaction. To express Their sense----!" - -Mr. Hayes broke into a laugh, but his wife wanted to know. "Of the grand -work you're doing?" - -"Of the way I polish it off. They're most handsome about it. The receipts, -it appears, speak----" - -He was nursing his effect; Isabel intently watched him and the others hung -on his lips. "Yes, speak----?" - -"Well, volumes. They tell the truth." - -At this Mr. Hayes laughed again. "Oh _they_ at least do?" - -Near him thus once more Gedge knew their intelligence as one--which was so -good a consciousness to get back that his tension now relaxed as by the -snap of a spring and he felt his old face at ease. "So you can't say," he -continued, "that we don't want it." - -"I bow to it," the young man smiled. "It's what I said then. It's _great_." - -"It's great," said Morris Gedge. "It couldn't be greater." - -His wife still watched him; her irony hung behind. "Then we're just as we -were?" - -"No, not as we were." - -She jumped at it. "Better?" - -"Better. They give us a rise." - -"Of income?" - -"Of our sweet little stipend--by a vote of the Committee. That's what, as -Chairman, he came to announce." - -The very echoes of the Birthplace were themselves, for the instant, hushed; -the warden's three companions showed in the conscious air a struggle for -their own breath. But Isabel, almost with a shriek, was the first to -recover hers. "They double us?" - -"Well--call it that. 'In recognition.' There you are." Isabel uttered -another sound--but this time inarticulate; partly because Mrs. Hayes of New -York had already jumped at her to kiss her. Mr. Hayes meanwhile, as with -too much to say, but put out his hand, which our friend took in silence. So -Gedge had the last word. "And there _you_ are!" - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Birthplace, by Henry James - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BIRTHPLACE *** - -***** This file should be named 55078.txt or 55078.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/5/0/7/55078/ - -Produced by Chris Blanton, with proofreading by Thomas L. 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