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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a1a78c6 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #62979 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/62979) diff --git a/old/62979-0.txt b/old/62979-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 27fefa7..0000000 --- a/old/62979-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8396 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ivory Tower, 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 -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The Ivory Tower - -Author: Henry James - -Release Date: August 19, 2020 [EBook #62979] -Last Updated: May 20, 2023 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images -generously made available by The Internet Archive.) - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IVORY TOWER *** - - - - - - - - -THE IVORY TOWER - -BY - -HENRY JAMES - -NEW YORK - -CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS - -1917 - - - - -PREFACE - - -The Ivory Tower, _one of the two novels which Henry James left -unfinished at his death, was designed to consist of ten books. Three -only of these were written, with one chapter of the fourth, and except -for the correction of a few obvious slips the fragment is here printed -in full and without alteration. It was composed during the summer of_ -1914. _The novel seems to have grown out of another which had been -planned by Henry James in the winter of_ 1909-10. _Of this the opening -scenes had been sketched and a few pages written when it was interrupted -by illness. On taking it up again, four years later, Henry James almost -entirely recast his original scheme, retaining certain of the characters -(notably the Bradham couple,) but otherwise giving an altogether fresh -setting to the central motive. The new novel had reached the point where -it breaks off by the beginning of August_ 1914. _With the outbreak of -war Henry James found he could no longer work upon a fiction supposed to -represent contemporary or recent life. The completed chapters--which he -had dictated to his secretary, in accordance with his regular habit for -many years past--were revised and laid aside, not again to be resumed._ - -_The pages of preliminary notes, also here printed in full, were not of -course intended for publication. It was Henry James's constant practice, -before beginning a novel, to test and explore, in a written or dictated -sketch of this kind, the possibilities of the idea which he had in mind. -Such a sketch was in no way a first draft of the novel. He used it -simply as a means of close approach to his subject, in order that he -might completely possess himself of it in all its bearings. The -arrangement of chapters and scenes would so be gradually evolved, but -the details were generally left to be determined in the actual writing -of the book. It will be noticed, for example, that in the provisional -scheme of_ The Ivory Tower _no mention is made of the symbolic object -itself or of the letter which is deposited in it. The notes, having -served their purpose, would not be referred to again, and were -invariably destroyed when the book was finished._ - -_In the story of_ The Death of the Lion _Henry James has exactly -described the manner of these notes, in speaking of the "written scheme -of another book" which is shewn to the narrator by Neil Paraday: "Loose -liberal confident, it might have passed for a great gossiping eloquent -letter--the overflow into talk of an artist's amorous plan." If -justification were needed for the decision to publish this "overflow" it -might be found in Paraday's last injunction to his friend: "Print it as -it stands--beautifully._" - - -_PERCY LUBBOCK._ - - - - -CONTENTS - -The Ivory Tower -Notes for The Ivory Tower - - - - -THE IVORY TOWER - - - - -BOOK FIRST - - -I - - -It was but a question of leaving their own contracted "grounds," of -crossing the Avenue and proceeding then to Mr. Betterman's gate, which -even with the deliberate step of a truly massive young person she could -reach in three or four minutes. So, making no other preparation than to -open a vast pale-green parasol, a portable pavilion from which there -fluttered fringes, frills and ribbons that made it resemble the roof of -some Burmese palanquin or perhaps even pagoda, she took her way while -these accessories fluttered in the August air, the morning freshness, -and the soft sea-light. Her other draperies, white and voluminous, -yielded to the mild breeze in the manner of those of a ship held back -from speed yet with its canvas expanded; they conformed to their usual -law of suggestion that the large loose ponderous girl, mistress as she -might have been of the most expensive modern aids to the constitution of -a "figure," lived, as they said about her, in wrappers and tea-gowns; so -that, save for her enjoying obviously the rudest health, she might have -been a convalescent creeping forth from the consciousness of stale -bedclothes. She turned in at the short drive, making the firm neat -gravel creak under her tread, and at the end of fifty yards paused -before the florid villa, a structure smothered in senseless -architectural ornament, as if to put her question to its big fair -foolish face. How Mr. Betterman might be this morning, and what sort of -a night he might have had, was what she wanted to learn--an anxiety very -real with her and which, should she be challenged, would nominally and -decently have brought her; but her finer interest was in the possibility -that Graham Fielder might have come. - -The clean blank windows, however, merely gave her the impression of so -many showy picture-frames awaiting their subjects; even those of them -open to the charming Newport day seemed to tell her at the most that -nothing had happened since the evening before and that the situation was -still untouched by the change she dreamt of. A person essentially -unobservant of forms, which her amplitude somehow never found of the -right measure, so that she felt the misfit in many cases ridiculous, she -now passed round the house instead of applying at the rather grandly -gaping portal--which might in all conscience have accommodated her--and, -crossing a stretch of lawn to the quarter of the place turned to the -sea, rested here again some minutes. She sought indeed after a moment -the support of an elaborately rustic bench that ministered to ease and -contemplation, whence she would rake much of the rest of the small -sloping domain; the fair prospect, the great sea spaces, the line of low -receding coast that bristled, either way she looked, with still more -costly "places," and in particular the proprietor's wide and bedimmed -verandah, this at present commonly occupied by her "prowling" father, as -she now always thought of him, though if charged she would doubtless -have admitted with the candour she was never able to fail of that she -herself prowled during these days of tension quite as much as he. - -He would already have come over, she was well aware--come over on -grounds of his own, which were quite different from hers; yet she was -scarce the less struck, off at her point of vantage, with the way he now -sat unconscious of her, at the outer edge and where the light pointed -his presence, in a low basket-chair which covered him in save for little -more than his small sharp shrunken profile, detached against the bright -further distance, and his small protrusive foot, crossed over a knee and -agitated by incessant nervous motion whenever he was thus locked in -thought. Seldom had he more produced for her the appearance from which -she had during the last three years never known him to vary and which -would have told his story, all his story, every inch of it and with the -last intensity, she felt, to a spectator capable of being struck with -him as one might after all happen to be struck. What she herself -recognised at any rate, and really at this particular moment as she had -never done, was how his having retired from active business, as they -said, given up everything and entered upon the first leisure of his -life, had in the oddest way the effect but of emphasising his -absorption, denying his detachment and presenting him as steeped up to -the chin. Most of all on such occasions did what his life had meant come -home to her, and then most, frankly, did that meaning seem small; it was -exactly as the contracted size of his little huddled figure in the -basket-chair. - -He was a person without an alternative, and if any had ever been open to -him, at an odd hour or two, somewhere in his inner dimness, he had long -since closed the gate against it and now revolved in the hard-rimmed -circle from which he had not a single issue. You couldn't retire without -something or somewhere to retire to, you must have planted a single tree -at least for shade or be able to turn a key in some yielding door; but -to say that her extraordinary parent was surrounded by the desert was -almost to flatter the void into which he invited one to step. He -conformed in short to his necessity of absolute interest--interest, that -is, in his own private facts, which were facts of numerical calculation -altogether: how could it not be so when he had dispossessed himself, if -there had even been the slightest selection in the matter, of every -faculty except the calculating? If he hadn't thought in figures how -could he possibly have thought at all--and oh the intensity with which -he was thinking at that hour! It was as if she literally watched him -just then and there dry up in yet another degree to everything but his -genius. His genius might at the same time have gathered in to a point of -about the size of the end of a pin. Such at least was the image of these -things, or a part of it, determined for her under the impression of the -moment. - -He had come over with the same promptitude every morning of the last -fortnight and had stayed on nearly till luncheon, sitting about in -different places as if they were equally his own, smoking, always -smoking, the big portentously "special" cigars that were now the worst -thing for him and lost in the thoughts she had in general long since -ceased to wonder about, taking them now for granted with an indifference -from which the apprehension we have noted was but the briefest of -lapses. He had over and above that particular matter of her passing -perception, he had as they all had, goodness knew, and as she herself -must have done not least, the air of waiting for something he didn't -speak of and in fact couldn't gracefully mention; with which moreover -the adopted practice, and the irrepressible need of it, that she had -been having under her eye, brought out for her afresh, little as she -invited or desired any renewal of their salience, the several most -pointed parental signs--harmless oddities as she tried to content -herself with calling them, but sharp little symbols of stubborn little -facts as she would have felt them hadn't she forbidden herself to feel. -She had forbidden herself to feel, but was none the less as undefended -against one of the ugly truths that hovered there before her in the -charming silver light as against another. That the terrible little man -she watched at his meditations wanted nothing in the world so much in -these hours as to know what was "going to be left" by the old associate -of his operations and sharer of his spoils--this, as Mr. Gaw's sole -interest in the protracted crisis, matched quite her certainty of his -sense that, however their doomed friend should pan out, two-thirds of -the show would represent the unholy profits of the great wrong he -himself had originally suffered. - -This she knew was what it meant--that her father should perch there like -a ruffled hawk, motionless but for his single tremor, with his beak, -which had pecked so many hearts out, visibly sharper than ever, yet only -his talons nervous; not that he at last cared a straw, really, but that -he was incapable of thought save in sublimities of arithmetic, and that -the question of what old Frank would have done with the fruits of his -swindle, on the occasion of the rupture that had kept them apart in hate -and vituperation for so many years, was one of the things that could -hold him brooding, day by day and week by week, after the fashion of a -philosopher tangled in some maze of metaphysics. As the end, for the -other participant in that history, appeared to draw near, she had with -the firmest, wisest hand she could lay on it patched up the horrid -difference; had artfully induced her father to take a house at Newport -for the summer, and then, pleading, insisting, that they should in -common decency, or, otherwise expressed, in view of the sick man's sore -stricken state, meet again, had won the latter round, unable as he was -even then to do more than shuffle downstairs and take an occasional -drive, to some belief in the sincerity of her intervention. She had got -at him--under stress of an idea with which her ostensible motive had -nothing to do; she had obtained entrance, demanding as all from herself -that he should see her, and had little by little, to the further -illumination of her plan, felt that she made him wonder at her perhaps -more than he had ever wondered at anything; so that after this -everything else was a part of that impression. - -Strange to say, she had presently found herself quite independently -interested; more interested than by any transaction, any chapter of -intercourse, in her whole specifically filial history. Not that it -mattered indeed if, in all probability--and positively so far back as -during the time of active hostilities--this friend and enemy of other -days had been predominantly in the right: the case, at the best and for -either party, showed so scantly for edifying that where was the light in -which her success could have figured as a moral or a sentimental -triumph? There had been no real beauty for her, at its apparent highest -pitch, in that walk of the now more complacently valid of the two men -across the Avenue, a walk taken as she and her companion had continued -regularly to take it since, that he might hold out his so long clenched -hand, under her earnest admonition, to the antagonist cut into afresh -this year by sharper knives than any even in Gaw's armoury. They had -consented alike to what she wished, and without knowing why she most -wished it: old Frank, oddly enough, because he liked her, as she felt, -for herself, once she gave him the chance and took all the trouble; and -her father because--well, that was an old story. For a long time now, -three or four years at least, she had had, as she would have said, no -difficulty with him; and she knew just when, she knew almost just how, -the change had begun to show. - -Signal and supreme proof had come to him one day that save for his big -plain quiet daughter (quiet, that is, unless when she knocked over a -light gilt chair or swept off a rash table-ornament in brushing -expansively by,) he was absolutely alone on the human field, utterly -unattended by any betrayal whatever that a fellow-creature could like -him or, when the inevitable day should come, could disinterestedly miss -him. She knew how of old her inexplicable, her almost ridiculous type -had disconcerted and disappointed him; but with this, at a given moment, -it had come to him that she represented quantity and mass, that there -was a great deal of her, so that she would have pressed down even a -balance appointed to weigh bullion; and as there was nothing he was -fonder of than such attestations of value he had really ended by drawing -closer to her, as who should say, and by finding countenance in the -breadth of personal and social shadow that she projected. This was the -sole similitude about him of a living alternative, and it served only as -she herself provided it. He had actually turned into a personal relation -with her as he might have turned, out of the glare and the noise and the -harsh recognitions of the market, into some large cool dusky temple; a -place where idols other than those of his worship vaguely loomed and -gleamed, so that the effect at moments might be rather awful, but where -at least he could sit very still, could breathe very softly, could look -about obliquely and discreetly, could in fact wander a little on tiptoe -and treat the place, with a mixture of pride and fear, almost as his -own. - -He had brooded and brooded, even as he was brooding now; and that habit -she at least had in common with him, though their subjects of thought -were so different. Thus it was exactly that she began to make out at the -time his actual need to wonder at her, the only fact outside his proper -range that had ever cost him a speculative impulse, still more a -speculative failure; even as she was to make it out later on in the case -of their Newport neighbour, and to recognise above all that though a -certain savour of accepted discomfort had, in the connection, to pervade -her father's consciousness, no taste of resentment was needed, as in the -present case, to sweeten it. Nothing had more interested our intelligent -young woman than to note in each of these overstrained, yet at the same -time safely resting accumulators--and to note it as a thing -unprecedented up to this latest season--an unexpressed, even though to -some extent invoked, relief under the sense, the confirmed suspicion, of -certain anomalies of ignorance and indifference as to what they -themselves stood for, anomalies they could scarcely have begun, on the -first glimmer, by so much as taking for realities. It had become verily, -on the part of the poor bandaged and bolstered and heavily-breathing -object of her present solicitude, as she had found it on that of his -still comparatively agile and intensely acute critic, the queer mark of -an inward relief to meet, so far as they had arts or terms for it, any -intimation of what she might have to tell them. From _her_ they would -take things they never could have taken, and never had, from anyone -else. There were some such intimations that her father, of old, had only -either dodged with discernible art or directly set his little white face -against; he hadn't wanted them, and had in fact been afraid of them--so -that after all perhaps his caring so little what went on in any world -not subject to his direct intelligence might have had the qualification -that he guessed she could imagine, and that to see her, or at least to -feel her, imagine was like the sense of an odd draught about him when -doors and windows were closed. - -Up in the sick man's room the case was quite other; she had been -admitted there but three times, very briefly, and a week had elapsed -since the last, yet she had created in him a positive want to -communicate, or at any rate to receive communication. She shouldn't see -him again--the pair of doctors and the trio of nurses had been at one -about that; but he had caused her to be told that he liked to know of -her coming and hoped she would make herself quite at home. This she took -for an intended sign, a hint that what she had in spite of difficulties -managed to say now kept him company in the great bedimmed and -disinfected room from which other society was banished. Her father in -fine he ignored after that not particularly beautiful moment of bare -recognition brought about by her at the bedside; her father was the last -thing in the world that actually concerned him. But his not ignoring -herself could but have a positive meaning; which was that she had made -the impression she sought. Only _would_ Graham Fielder arrive in time? -She was not in a position to ask for news of him, but was sure each -morning that if there had been any gage of this Miss Mumby, the most -sympathetic of the nurses and with whom she had established a working -intelligence, would be sufficiently interested to come out and speak to -her. After waiting a while, however, she recognised that there could be -no Miss Mumby yet and went over to her father in the great porch. - -"Don't you get tired," she put to him, "of just sitting round here?" - -He turned to her his small neat finely-wrinkled face, of an extreme -yellowish pallor and which somehow suggested at this end of time an -empty glass that had yet held for years so much strong wine that a faint -golden tinge still lingered on from it. "I can't get any more tired than -I am already." His tone was flat, weak and so little charged with -petulance that it betrayed the long habit of an almost exasperating -mildness. This effect, at the same time, so far from suggesting any -positive tradition of civility was somehow that of a commonness -instantly and peculiarly exposed. "It's a better place than ours," he -added in a moment. "But I don't care." And then he went on: "I guess I'd -be more tired in your position." - -"Oh you know I'm never tired. And now," said Rosanna, "I'm too -interested." - -"Well then, so am I. Only for me it ain't a position." - -His daughter still hovered with her vague look about. "Well, if it's one -for me I feel it's a good one. I mean it's the right one." - -Mr. Gaw shook his little foot with renewed intensity, but his irony was -not gay. "The right one isn't always a good one. But ain't the question -what _his_ is going to be?" - -"Mr. Fielder's? Why, of course," said Rosanna quietly. "That's the whole -interest." - -"Well then, you've got to fix it." - -"I consider that I _have_ fixed it--I mean if we can hold out." - -"Well"--and Mr. Gaw shook on--"I guess _I_ can. It's pleasant here," he -went on, "even if it is funny." - -"Funny?" his daughter echoed--yet inattentively, for she had become -aware of another person, a middle-aged woman, but with neatly-kept hair -already grizzled and in a white dress covered with a large white apron, -who stood at the nearest opening of the house. "Here we are, you see, -Miss Mumby--but any news?" Miss Gaw was instantly eager. - -"Why he's right there upstairs," smiled the lady of the apron, who was -clearly well affected to the speaker. - -This young woman flushed for pleasure. "Oh how splendid! But when did he -come?" - -"Early this morning--by the New York boat. I was up at five, to change -with Miss Ruddle, and there of a sudden were his wheels. He seems so -nice!" Miss Mumby beamed. - -Rosanna's interest visibly rose, though she was prompt to explain it. -"Why it's _because_ he's nice! And he has seen him?" - -"He's seeing him now--alone. For five minutes. Not all at once." But -Miss Mumby was visibly serene. - -This made Miss Gaw rejoice. "I'm not afraid. It will do him good. It has -got to!" she finely declared. - -Miss Mumby was so much at ease that she could even sanction the joke. -"More good than the strain of waiting. They're quite satisfied." Rosanna -knew these judges for Doctor Root and Doctor Hatch, and felt the support -of her friend's firm freshness. "So we can hope," this authority -concluded. - -"Well, let my daughter run it--!" Abel Gaw had got up as if this change -in the situation qualified certain proprieties, but turned his small -sharpness to Miss Mumby, who had at first produced in him no change of -posture. "Well, if he couldn't stand _me_ I suppose it was because he -knows me--and doesn't know this other man. May Mr. Fielder prove -acceptable!" he added, stepping off the verandah to the path. But as -that left Rosanna's share in the interest still apparently unlimited he -spoke again. "Is it going to make you settle over here?" - -This mild irony determined her at once joining him, and they took leave -together of their friend. "Oh I feel it's right now!" She smiled back at -Miss Mumby, whose agitation of a confirmatory hand before disappearing -as she had come testified to the excellence of the understanding between -the ladies, and presently was trailing her light vague draperies over -the grass beside her father. They might have been taken to resemble as -they moved together a big ship staying its course to allow its belittled -tender to keep near, and the likeness grew when after a minute Mr. Gaw -himself stopped to address his daughter a question. He had, it was again -marked, so scant a range of intrinsic tone that he had to resort for -emphasis or point to some other scheme of signs--this surely also of no -great richness, but expressive of his possibilities when once you knew -him. "Is there any reason for your not telling me why you're so worked -up?" - -His companion, as she paused for accommodation, showed him a large flat -grave face in which the general intention of deference seemed somehow to -confess that it was often at the mercy--and perhaps most in this -particular relation--of such an inward habit of the far excursion as -could but incorrigibly qualify for Rosanna Gaw certain of the forms of -attention, certain of the necessities of manner. She was, sketchily -speaking, so much higher-piled a person than her father that the filial -attitude in her suffered at the best from the occasional air of her -having to come down to him. You would have guessed that she was not a -person to cultivate that air; and perhaps even if very acute would have -guessed some other things bearing on the matter from the little man's -careful way with her. This pair exhibited there in the great light of -the summer Sunday morning more than one of the essential, or perhaps the -rather finally constituted, conditions of their intercourse. Here was a -parent who clearly appealed to nobody in the world but his child, and a -child who condescended to nobody in the world but her parent; and this -with the anomaly of a constant care not to be too humble on one side and -an equal one not to be too proud on the other. Rosanna, her powerful -exposed arm raised to her broad shoulder, slowly made her heavy parasol -revolve, flinging with it a wide shadow that enclosed them together, for -their question and answer, as in a great bestreamered tent. "Do I strike -you as worked up? Why I've tried to keep as quiet about it as I possibly -could--as one does when one wants a thing so tremendously much." - -His eyes had been raised to her own, but after she had said this in her -perfunctory way they sank as from a sense of shyness and might have -rested for a little on one of their tent-pegs. "Well, daughter, that's -just what I want to understand--your personal motive." - -She gave a sigh for this, a strange uninforming sigh. "Ah father, 'my -personal motives'--!" - -With this she might have walked on, but when he barred the way it was as -if she could have done so but by stepping on him. "I don't complain of -your personal motives--I want you to have all you're entitled to and -should like to know who's entitled to more. But couldn't you have a -reason once in a while for letting me know what some of your reasons -are?" - -Her decent blandness dropped on him again, and she had clearly this time -come further to meet him. "You've always wanted me to have things I -don't care for--though really when you've made a great point of it I've -often tried. But want me now to have this." And then as he watched her -again to learn what "this," with the visibly rare importance she -attached to it, might be: "To make up to a person for a wrong I once did -him." - -"You wronged the man who has come?" - -"Oh dreadfully!" Rosanna said with great sweetness. - -He evidently held that any notice taken of anyone, to whatever effect, -by this great daughter of his was nothing less than an honour done, and -probably overdone; so what preposterous "wrong" could count? The worst -he could think of was still but a sign of her greatness. "You wouldn't -have him round----?" - -"Oh that would have been nothing!" she laughed; and this time she sailed -on again. - - - - -II - - -Rosanna found him again after luncheon shaking his little foot from the -depths of a piazza chair, but now on their own scene and at a point -where this particular feature of it, the cool spreading verandah, -commanded the low green cliff and a part of the immediate approach to -the house from the seaward side. She left him to the only range of -thought of which he was at present capable--she was so perfectly able to -follow it; and it had become for that matter an old story that as he -never opened a book, nor sought a chance for talk, nor took a step of -exercise, nor gave in any manner a sign of an unsatisfied want, the -extent of his vacancy, a detachment in which there just breathed a hint -of the dryly invidious, might thus remain unbroken for hours. She knew -what he was waiting for, and that if she hadn't been there to see him he -would take his way across to the other house again, where the plea of -solicitude for his old friend's state put him at his ease and where, -moreover, as she now felt, the possibility of a sight of Graham Fielder -might reward him. It was disagreeable to her that he should have such a -sight while she denied it to her own eyes; but the sense of their common -want of application for their faculties was a thing that repeatedly -checked in her the expression of judgments. Their idleness was as mean -and bare on her own side, she too much felt, as on his; and heaven knew -that if he could sit with screwed-up eyes for hours the case was as -flagrant in her aimless driftings, her incurable restless revolutions, -as a pretence of "interests" could consort with. - -She revolved and drifted then, out of his sight and in another quarter -of the place, till four o'clock had passed; when on returning to him she -found his chair empty and was sure of what had become of him. There was -nothing else in fact for his Sunday, as he on that day denied himself -the resource of driving, or rather of being driven, from which the claim -of the mechanical car had not, in the Newport connection, won him, and -which, deep in his barouche, behind his own admirable horses, could -maintain him in meditation for meditation's sake quite as well as a -poised rocking-chair. Left thus to herself, though conscious she well -might have visitors, she circled slowly and repeatedly round the -gallery, only pausing at last on sight of a gentleman who had come into -view by a path from the cliff. He presented himself in a minute as Davey -Bradham, and on drawing nearer called across to her without other -greeting: "Won't you walk back with me to tea? Gussy has sent me to -bring you." - -"Why yes, of course I will--that's nice of Gussy," she replied; adding -moreover that she wanted a walk, and feeling in the prospect, though she -didn't express this, a relief to her tension and a sanction for what she -called to herself her tact. She might without the diversion not quite -have trusted herself not to emulate, and even with the last crudity, her -father's proceeding; which she knew she should afterwards be ashamed of. -"Anyone that comes here," she said, "must come on to you--they'll know;" -and when Davey had replied that there wasn't the least chance of -anyone's not coming on she moved with him down the path, at the end of -which they entered upon the charming cliff walk, a vast carpet of -undivided lawns, kept in wondrous condition, with a meandering -right-of-way for a seaward fringe and bristling wide-winged villas that -spoke of a seated colony; many of these huge presences reducing to -marginal meanness their strip of the carpet. - -Davey was, like herself, richly and healthily replete, though with less -of his substance in stature; a frankly fat gentleman, blooming still at -eight-and-forty, with a large smooth shining face, void of a sign of -moustache or whisker and crowned with dense dark hair cropped close to -his head after the fashion of a French schoolboy or the inmate of a -jail. But for his half-a-dozen fixed wrinkles, as marked as the great -rivers of a continent on a map, and his thick and arched and active -eyebrows, which left almost nothing over for his forehead, he would have -scarce exhibited features--in spite of the absence of which, however, he -could look in alternation the most portentous things and the most -ridiculous. He would hang up a meaning in his large empty face as if he -had swung an awful example on a gibbet, or would let loose there a great -grin that you somehow couldn't catch in the fact but that pervaded his -expanses of cheek as poured wine pervades water. He differed certainly -from Rosanna in that he enjoyed, visibly, all he carnally -possessed--whereas you could see in a moment that she, poor young woman, -would have been content with, would have been glad of, a scantier -allowance. "You'll find Cissy Foy, to begin with," he said as they went; -"she arrived last night and told me to tell you she'd have walked over -with me but that Gussy wants her for something. However, as you know, -Gussy always wants her for something--she wants everyone for something -so much more than something for everyone--and there are none of us that -are not worked hard, even though we mayn't bloom on it like Cissy, who, -by the way, is looking a perfect vision." - -"Awfully lovely?"--Rosanna clearly saw as she asked. - -"Prettier than at any time yet, and wanting tremendously to hear from -you, you know, about your protégé--what's the fellow's name? Graham -Fielder?--whose arrival we're all agog about." - -Rosanna pulled up in the path; she somehow at once felt her possession -of this interest clouded--shared as yet as it had been only with her -father, whose share she could control. It then and there came to her in -one of the waves of disproportionate despair in which she felt half the -impressions of life break, that she wasn't going to be able to control -at all the great participations. She had a moment of reaction against -what she had done; she liked Gray to be called her protégé--forced -upon her as endless numbers of such were, he would be the only one in -the whole collection who hadn't himself pushed at her; but with the big -bright picture of the villas, the palaces, the lawns and the luxuries in -her eyes, and with something like the chink of money itself in the -murmur of the breezy little waves at the foot of the cliff, she felt -that, without her having thought of it enough in advance, she had handed -him over to complications and relations. These things shimmered in the -silver air of the wondrous perspective ahead, the region off there that -awaited her present approach and where Gussy hovered like a bustling -goddess in the enveloping cloud of her court. The man beside her was the -massive Mercury of this urgent Juno; but--without mythological -comparisons, which we make for her under no hint that she could herself -have dreamed of one--she found herself glad just then that she liked -Davey Bradham, and much less sorry than usual that she didn't respect -him. An extraordinary thing happened, and all in the instant before she -spoke again. It was very strange, and it made him look at her as if he -wondered that his words should have had so great an effect as even her -still face showed. There was absolutely no one, roundabout and far and -wide, whom she positively wanted Graham to know; no not one creature of -them all--"all" figuring for her, while she stood, the great collection -at the Bradhams'. She hadn't thought of this before in the least as it -came to her now; yet no more had she time to be sure that even with the -sharper consciousness she would, as her father was apt to say, have -acted different. So much was true, yet while she still a moment longer -hung fire Davey rounded himself there like something she could -comparatively rest on. "How in the world," she put to him then, "do you -know anything away off there--? He _has_ come to his uncle, but so -quietly that I haven't yet seen him." - -"Why, my dear thing, is it new to you that we're up and doing--bright -and lively? We're the most intelligent community on all this great -coast, and when precious knowledge is in the air we're not to be kept -from it. We knew at breakfast that the New York boat had brought him, -and Gussy of course wants him up to dinner tonight. Only Cissy claims, -you see, that she has rights in him first--rights beyond Gussy's, I -mean," Davey went on; "I don't know that she claims them beyond yours." - -She looked abroad again, his companion, to earth and sea and sky; she -wondered and felt threatened, yet knowing herself at the same time a -long way off from the point at which menace roused her to passion. She -had always to suffer so much before that, and was for the present in the -phase of feeling but weak and a little sick. But there was always Davey. -She started their walk again before saying more, while he himself said -things that she didn't heed. "I can't for the life of me imagine," she -nevertheless at last declared, "what Cissy has to do with him. When and -where has she ever seen him?" - -Davey did as always his best to oblige. "Somewhere abroad, some time -back, when she was with her mother at some baths or some cure-place. -Though when I think of it," he added, "it wasn't with the man -himself--it was with some relation: hasn't he an uncle, or perhaps a -stepfather? Cissy seems to know all about him, and he takes a great -interest in her." - -It again all but stopped Rosanna. "Gray Fielder an interest in -Cissy----?" - -"Let me not," laughed Davey, "sow any seed of trouble or engage for more -than I can stand to. She'll tell you all about it, she'll clothe it in -every grace. Only I assure you I myself am as much interested as -anyone," he added--"interested, I mean, in the question of whether the -old man there has really brought him out at the last gasp this way to do -some decent thing about him. An impression prevails," he further -explained, "that you're in some wonderful way in the old wretch's -confidence, and I therefore make no bones of telling you that your -arrival on our scene there, since you're so good as to consent to come, -has created an impatience beyond even what your appearances naturally -everywhere create. I give you warning that there's no limit to what we -want to know." - -Rosanna took this in now as she so often took things--working it down in -silence at first: it shared in the general weight of all direct -contributions to her consciousness. It might then, when she spoke, have -sunk deep. She looked about again, in her way, as if under her constant -oppression, and seeing, a little off from their gravelled walk, a public -bench to which a possible path branched down, she said, on a visibly -grave decision: "Look here, I want to talk to _you_--you're one of the -few people in all your crowd to whom I really can. So come and sit -down." - -Davey Bradham, arrested before her, had an air for his responsibilities -that quite matched her own. "Then what becomes of them all there?" - -"I don't care a hang what becomes of them. But if you want to know," -Rosanna said, "I do care what becomes of Mr. Fielder, and I trust you -enough, being as you are the only one of your lot I do trust, to help me -perhaps a little to do something about it." - -"Oh, my dear lady, I'm not a bit discreet, you know," Mr. Bradham -amusedly protested; "I'm perfectly unprincipled and utterly indelicate. -How can a fellow not be who likes as much as I do at all times to make -the kettle boil and the plot thicken? I've only got my beautiful -intelligence, though, as I say, I don't in the least _want_ to embroil -you. Therefore if I can really help you as the biggest babbler -alive----!" - -She waited again a little, but this time with her eyes on his good worn -worldly face, superficially so smooth, but with the sense of it lined -and scratched and hacked across much in the manner of the hard ice of a -large pond at the end of a long day's skating. The amount of -obstreperous exercise that had been taken on that recording field! The -difference between our pair, thus confronted, might have been felt as -the greater by the very fact of their outward likeness as creatures so -materially weighted; it would have been written all over Rosanna for the -considering eye that every grain of her load, from innermost soul to -outermost sense, was that of reality and sincerity; whereas it might by -the same token have been felt of Davey that in the temperature of life -as he knew it his personal identity had been, save for perhaps some -small tough lurking residuum, long since puffed away in pleasant spirals -of vapour. Our young woman was at this moment, however, less interested -in quantities than in qualities of candour; she could get what passed -for it by the bushel, by the ton, whenever, right or left, she chose to -chink her pocket. Her requirement for actual use was such a glimmer from -the candle of truth as a mere poor woman might have managed to kindle. -What was left of precious in Davey might thus have figured but as a -candle-end; yet for the lack of it she should perhaps move in darkness. -And her brief intensity of watch was in a moment rewarded; her -companion's candle-end was his not quite burnt-out value as a gentleman. -This was enough for her, and she seemed to see her way. "If I don't -trust you there's nobody else in all the wide world I can. So you've got -to know, and you've got to be good to me." - -"Then what awful thing _have_ you done?" he was saying to her three -minutes after they had taken their place temporarily on the bench. - -"Well, I got at Mr. Betterman," she said, "in spite of all the -difficulty. Father and he hadn't spoken for years--had had long ago the -blackest, ugliest difference; believing apparently the horridest things -of each other. Nevertheless it was as father's daughter that I went to -him--though after a little, I think, it was simply for the worth itself -of what I had to tell him that he listened to me." - -"And what you had to tell him," Davey asked while she kept her eyes on -the far horizon, "_was_ then that you take this tender interest in Mr. -Fielder?" - -"You may make my interest as ridiculous as you like----!" - -"Ah, my dear thing," Davey pleadingly protested, "don't deprive me, -please, of _anything_ nice there is to know!" - -"There was something that had happened years ago--a wrong I perhaps had -done him, though in perfect good faith. I thought I saw my way to make -up for it, and I seem to have succeeded beyond even what I hoped." - -"Then what have you to worry about?" said Davey. - -"Just my success," she answered simply. "Here he is and I've done it." - -"Made his rich uncle want him--who hadn't wanted him before? Is that -it?" - -"Yes, interfered afresh in his behalf--as I had interfered long ago. -When one has interfered one can't help wondering," she gravely -explained. - -"But dear lady, ever for his benefit of course," Davey extemporised. - -"Yes--except for the uncertainty of what is for a person's benefit. It's -hard enough to know," said Rosanna, "what's for one's own." - -"Oh, as to that," Davey joked, "I don't think that where mine's -concerned I've ever a doubt! But is the point that the old man had -quarrelled with him and that you've brought about a reconciliation?" - -She considered again with her far-wandering eyes; as if both moved by -her impulse to confidence and weighted with the sense of how much of it -there all was. "Well, in as few words as possible, it was like this. -He's the son but of a half-sister, the daughter of Mr. Betterman's -father by a second marriage which he in his youth hadn't at all liked, -and who made her case worse with him, as time went on, by marrying a -man, Graham's father, whom he had also some strong objection to. Yes," -she summarized, "he seems to have been difficult to please, but he's -making up for it now. His brother-in-law didn't live long to suffer from -the objection, and the sister, Mrs. Fielder, left a widow badly provided -for, went off with her boy, then very young, to Europe. There, later on, -during a couple of years that I spent abroad with my mother, we met them -and for the time saw much of them; she and my dear mother greatly took -to each other, they formed the friendliest relation, and we had in -common that my father's business association with Mr. Betterman still at -that time subsisted, though the terrible man--as he then was--hadn't at -all made it up with our friend. It was while we were with her in -Dresden, however, that something happened which brought about, by -correspondence, some renewal of intercourse. This was a matter on which -we were in her confidence and in which we took the greatest interest, -for we liked also the other person concerned in it. An opportunity had -come up for her to marry again, she had practically decided to embrace -it, and of this, though everything between them had broken off so short, -her unforgiving brother had heard, indirectly, in New York." - -Davey Bradham, lighting cigarettes, and having originally placed his -case, in a manner promptly appreciated, at his companion's disposal, -crowned this now adjusted relation with a pertinence of comment. "And -only again of course to be as horrid as possible about it! He hated -husbands in general." - -"Well, he himself, it was to be said, had been but little of one. He had -lost his own wife early and hadn't married again--though he was to lose -early also the two children born to him. The second of these deaths was -recent at the time I speak of, and had had to do, I imagine, with his -sudden overture to his absent relations. He let his sister know that he -had learnt her intention and thought very ill of it, but also that if -she would get rid of her low foreigner and come back with the boy he -would be happy to see what could be done for them." - -"What a jolly situation!"--Davey exhaled fine puffs. "Her second choice -then--at Dresden--was a German adventurer?" - -"No, an English one, Mr. Northover; an adventurer only as a man in love -is always one, I suppose, and who was there for us to see and extremely -to approve. He had nothing to do with Dresden beyond having come on to -join her; they had met elsewhere, in Switzerland or the Tyrol, and he -had shown an interest in her, and had made his own impression, from the -first. She answered her brother that his demand of her was excessive in -the absence of anything she could recognise that she owed him. To this -he replied that she might marry then whom she liked, but that if she -would give up her boy and send him home, where he would take charge of -him and bring him up to prospects she would be a fool not to appreciate, -there need be no more talk and she could lead her life as she perversely -preferred. This crisis came up during our winter with her--it was a very -cruel one, and my mother, as I have said, was all in her confidence." - -"Of course"--Davey Bradham abounded; "and you were all in your -mother's!" - -Rosanna leaned back on the bench, her cigarette between her strong and -rounded fingers; she sat at her ease now, this chapter of history -filling, under her view, the soft lap of space and the comfort of having -it well out, and yet of keeping it, as her friend somehow helped her to -do, well within her control, more and more operative. "Well, I was -sixteen years old, and Gray at that time fourteen. I was huge and -hideous and began then to enjoy the advantage--if advantage it was--of -its seeming so ridiculous to treat the monster I had grown as negligible -that I _had_ to be treated as important. I wasn't a bit stupider than I -am now--in fact I saw things much more sharply and simply and knew ever -so much better what I wanted and didn't. Gray and I had become excellent -friends--if you want to think of him as my 'first passion' you are -welcome to, unless you want to think of him rather as my fifth! He was a -charming little boy, much nicer than any I had ever seen; he didn't come -up higher than my shoulder, and, to tell you all, I remember how once, -in some game with a party of English and American children whom my -mother had got together for Christmas, I tried to be amusing by carrying -half-a-dozen of them successively on my back--all in order to have the -pleasure of carrying _him_, whom I felt, I remember, but as a -featherweight compared with most of the others. Such a romp was I--as -you can of course see I must have been, and at the same time so horridly -artful; which is doubtless now not so easy for you to believe of me. But -the point," Rosanna developed, "is that I entered all the way into our -friends' situation and that when I was with my mother alone we talked -for the time of nothing else. The strange, or at least the certain, -thing was that though we should have liked so to have them over here, we -hated to see them hustled even by a rich relative: we were rich -ourselves, though we rather hated that too, and there was no romance for -us in being so stuffed up. We liked Mr. Northover, their so devoted -friend, we saw how they cared for him, how even Graham did, and what an -interest he took in the boy, for whom we felt that a happy association -with him, each of them so open to it, would be a great thing; we threw -ourselves in short, and I dare say to extravagance, into the idea of the -success of Mr. Northover's suit. She was the charmingest little woman, -very pretty, very lonely, very vague, but very sympathetic, and we -perfectly understood that the pleasant Englishman, of great taste and -thoroughly a gentleman, should have felt encouraged. We didn't in the -least adore Mr. Betterman, between whom and my father the differences -that afterwards became so bad were already threatening, and when I saw -for myself how the life that might thus be opened to him where they -were, with his mother's marriage and a further good influence crowning -it, would compare with the awful game of grab, to express it mildly, for -which I was sure his uncle proposed to train him, I took upon myself to -get more roused and wound-up than I had doubtless any real right to, and -to wonder what I might really do to promote the benefit that struck me -as the greater and defeat the one against which my prejudice was -strong." - -She had drawn up a moment as if what was to come required her to gather -herself, while her companion seemed to assure her by the backward set of -his head, that of a man drinking at a cool spout, how little his -attention had lapsed. "I see at once, you dear grand creature, that you -were from that moment at the bottom of everything that was to happen; -and without knowing yet what these things were I back you for it now up -to the hilt." - -"Well," she said, "I'm much obliged, and you're never for an instant, -mind, to fail me; but I needed no backing then--I didn't even need my -mother's: I took on myself so much from the moment my chance turned up." - -"You just walked in and settled the whole question, of course." He quite -flaunted the luxury of his interest. "Clearly what moved you _was_ one -of those crowning passions of infancy." - -"Then why didn't I want, on the contrary, to have him, poor boy, where -his presence would feed my flame?" Rosanna at once inquired. "Why didn't -I obtain of my mother to say to his--for she would have said anything in -the world I wanted: 'You just quietly get married, don't disappoint this -delightful man; while we take Gray back to his uncle, which will be -awfully good for him, and let him learn to make his fortune, the decent -women that we are fondly befriending him and you and your husband coming -over whenever you like, to see how beautifully it answers.' Why if I was -so infatuated didn't I do _that?_" she repeated. - -He kept her waiting not a moment. "Just because you _were_ so -infatuated. Just because when you're infatuated you're sublime." She had -turned her eyes on him, facing his gorgeous hospitality, but facing it -with a visible flush. "Rosanna Gaw"--he took undisguised advantage of -her--"you're sublime now, just as sublime as you can be, and it's what -you want to be. You liked your young man so much that you were really -capable----!" - -He let it go at that, for even with his drop she had not completed his -sense. But the next thing, practically, she did so. "I've been capable -ever since--that's the point: of feeling that I did act upon him, that, -young and accessible as I found him, I gave a turn to his life." - -"Well," Davey continued to comment, "he's not so young now, and no more, -naturally, are you; but I guess, all the same, you'll give many -another." And then, as facing him altogether more now, she seemed to ask -how he could be so sure: "Why, if _I'm_ so accessible, through my tough -old hide, how is the exquisite creature formed to all the sensibilities -for which you sought to provide going in the least to hold out? He owes -you clearly everything he has become, and how can he decently not want -you should know he feels it? All's well that ends well: that at least I -foresee I shall want to say when I've had more of the beginning. You -were going to tell me how it was in particular that you got your pull." - -She puffed and puffed again, letting her eyes once more wander and rest; -after which, through her smoke, she recovered the sense of the past. -"One Sunday morning we went together to the great Gallery--it had been -between us for weeks that he was some day to take me and show me the -things he most admired: that wasn't at all what would have been my line -with _him._ The extent to which he was 'cleverer' than I and knew about -the things I didn't, and don't know even now----!" Greatly she made this -point. "And yet the beauty was that I felt there were ways I could help -him, all the same--I knew _that_ even with all the things I didn't know, -so that they remained ignorances of which I think I wasn't a bit -ashamed: any more in fact than I am now, there being too many things -else to be ashamed of. Never so much as that day, at any rate, had I -felt ready for my part--yes, it came to me there as my part; for after -he had called for me at our hotel and we had started together I knew -something particular was the matter and that he of a sudden didn't care -for what we were doing, though we had planned it as a great occasion -much before; that in short his thoughts were elsewhere and that I could -have made out the trouble in his face if I hadn't wished not to seem to -look for it. I hated that he should have it, whatever it was--just how I -hated it comes back to me as if from yesterday; and also how at the same -time I pretended not to notice, and he attempted not to show he did, but -to introduce me, in the rooms, to what we had come for instead--which -gave us half-an-hour that I recover vividly, recover, I assure you, -quite painfully still, as a conscious, solemn little farce. What put an -end to it was that we at last wandered away from the great things, the -famous Madonna, the Correggio, the Paul Veroneses, which he had quavered -out the properest remarks about, and got off into a small room of little -Dutch and other later masters, things that didn't matter and that we -couldn't pretend to go into, but where the German sunshine of a bright -winter day came down through some upper light and played on all the rich -little old colour and old gilding after a fashion that of a sudden -decided me. 'I don't care a hang for anything!' I stood before him and -boldly spoke out: 'I haven't cared a hang since we came in, if you want -to know--I care only for what you're worried about, and what must be -pretty bad, since I can see, if you don't mind my saying it, that it has -made you cry at home.'" - -"He can hardly have thanked you for _that!_" Davey's competence threw -off. - -"No, he didn't pretend to, and I had known he wouldn't; he hadn't to -tell me how a boy feels in taking such a charge from a girl. But there -he was on a small divan, swinging his legs a little and with his -head--he had taken his hat off--back against the top of the seat and the -queerest look in his flushed face. For a moment he stared hard, and -_then_ at least, I said to myself, his tears were coming up. They didn't -come, however--he only kept glaring as in fever; from which I presently -saw that I had said not a bit the wrong thing, but exactly the very -best. 'Oh if I were some good to you!' I went on--and with the sense the -next moment, ever so happily, that that was really what I was being. -'She has put it upon me to choose for myself--to think, to decide and to -settle it that way for both of us. She has put it _all_ upon me,' he -said--'and how can I choose, in such a difficulty,' he asked, 'when she -tells me, and when I believe, that she'll do exactly as I say?' 'You -mean your mother will marry Mr. Northover or give him up according as -you prefer?'--but of course I knew what he meant. It was a joy to me to -feel it clear up--with the good I had already done him, at a touch, by -making him speak. I saw how this relieved him even when he practically -spoke of his question as too frightful for his young intelligence, his -young conscience--literally his young nerves. It was as if he had -appealed to me to pronounce it positively cruel--while I had felt at the -first word that I really but blessed it. It wasn't too much for _my_ -young nerves--extraordinary as it may seem to you," Rosanna pursued, -"that I should but have wished to undertake at a jump such a very large -order. I wonder now from where my lucidity came, but just as I stood -there I saw some things in a light in which, even with still better -opportunities, I've never so _much_ seen them since. It was as if I took -everything in--and what everything meant; and, flopped there on his seat -and always staring up at me, he understood that I was somehow inspired -for him." - -"My dear child, you're inspired at this moment!"--Davey Bradham rendered -the tribute. "It's too splendid to hear of amid our greedy wants, our -timid ideas and our fishy passions. You ring out like Brünnhilde at the -opera. How jolly to have pronounced his doom!" - -"Yes," she gravely said, "and you see how jolly I now find it. I settled -it. I was fate," Rosanna puffed. "He recognised fate--all the more that -he really wanted to; and you see therefore," she went on, "how it was to -be in every single thing that has happened since." - -"You stuck him fast there"--Mr. Bradham filled in the picture. "Yet not -so fast after all," he understandingly added, "but that you've been able -to handle him again as you like. He does in other words whatever you -prescribe." - -"If he did it then I don't know what I should have done had he refused -to do it now. For now everything's changed. Everyone's dead or dying. -And I believe," she wound up, "that I was quite right then, that he has -led his life and been happy." - -"I see. If he hadn't been----!" Her companion's free glance ranged. - -"He would have had me to thank, yes. And at the best I should have cost -him much!" - -"Everything, you mean, that the old man had more or less from the first -in mind?" - -Davey had taken her up; but the next moment, without direct reply, she -was on her feet. "At any rate you see!" she said to finish with it. - -"Oh I see a lot! And if there's more in it than meets the eye I think I -see that too," her friend declared. "I want to see it all at any -rate--and just as you've started it. But what I want most naturally is -to see your little darling himself." - -"Well, if I had been afraid of you I wouldn't have spoken. You won't -hurt him," Rosanna said as they got back to the cliff walk. - -"Hurt him? Why I shall be his great warning light--or at least I shall -be yours, which is better still." To this, however, always pondering, -she answered nothing, but stood as if spent by her effort and half -disposed in consequence to retrace her steps; against which possibility -he at once protested. "You don't mean you're not coming on?" - -She thought another instant; then her eyes overreached the long smooth -interval beyond which the nondescript excrescences of Gussy's "cottage," -vast and florid, and in a kindred company of hunches and gables and -pinnacles confessed, even if in confused accents, to its monstrous -identity. The sight itself seemed after all to give her resolution. -"Yes, now for Cissy!" she said and braved the prospect. - - - - -III - - -Half-an-hour later, however, she still had this young lady before her in -extended perspective and as a satisfaction, if not as an embarrassment, -to come; thanks to the fact that Mrs. Bradham had forty persons, or -something like it, though all casually turning up, at tea, and that she -herself had perhaps never been so struck with the activity of the -charming girl's response to the considerations familiar alike to all of -them as Gussy's ideas about her. Gussy's ideas about her, as about -everything in the world, could on occasion do more to fill the air of -any scene over which Gussy presided than no matter what vociferation of -any massed crowd surrounding that lady: exactly which truth might have -been notable now to Rosanna in the light of Cissy's occasional clear -smile at her, always as yet from a distance, during lapses of intervals -and across shifting barriers of the more or less eminent and brilliant. -Mrs. Bradham's great idea--notoriously the most disinterested Gussy had -been known, through a career rich in announced intentions and glorious -designs, to entertain with any coherence--was that by placing and -keeping on exhibition, under her eye, the loveliest flower of girlhood a -splendid and confident society could have wished to wear on its bosom -she should at once signally enhance the dignity of the social part -played by herself and steep the precious object in a medium in which the -care of precious objects was supremely understood. "When she does so -much for me what in the world mustn't I do for _her?_" Cecilia Foy had -put that to Rosanna again and again with perfect lucidity, making her -sense of fair play shine out of it and her cultivation of that ideal -form perhaps not the least of the complications under which our elder -young woman, earnest in everything, endeavoured to stick to the just -view of her. Cissy had from the first appealed to her with restrictions, -but that was the way in which for poor brooding Rosanna every one -appealed; only there was in the present case the difference that whereas -in most cases the appeal, or rather her view of it, found itself somehow -smothered in the attendant wrong possibilities, the interest of this -bright victim of Mrs. Bradham's furtherance worked clearer, on the -whole, with the closer, with the closest, relation, never starting the -questions one might entertain about her except to dispose of them, even -if when they had been disposed of she mostly started them again. - -Not often had so big a one at all events been started for Rosanna as -when she saw the girl earn her keep, as they had so often called it -together, by multiplying herself for everyone else about the place -instead of remaining as single and possessable as her anxious friend had -come over to invite her to be. Present to this observer to the last -point indeed, and yet as nothing new, was the impression of that -insolence of ease on Gussy's part which was never so great as when her -sense for any relation was least fine and least true. She was naturally -never so the vulgar rich woman able to afford herself all luxuries as -when I she was most stupid about the right enjoyment of these and most -brutally systematic, as Rosanna's inward voice phrased the matter, for -some inferior and desecrating use of them. Mrs. Bradham would deeply -have resented--as deeply as a woman might who had no depth--any -imputation on her view of what would be fine and great for her young -friend, but Rosanna's envy and admiration of possibilities, to say -nothing of actualities, to which this view was quite blind, kept the -girl before her at times as a sacrificed, truly an even prostituted -creature; who yet also, it had to be added, could often alienate -sympathy by strange, by perverse concurrences. However, Rosanna thought, -Cissy wasn't in concurrence now, but was quite otherwise preoccupied -than with what their hostess could either give her or take from her. She -was happy--this our young woman perfectly perceived, to her own very -great increase of interest; so happy that, as had been repeatedly -noticeable before, she multiplied herself through the very agitation of -it, appearing to be, for particular things they had to say to her, -particular conversational grabs and snatches, all of the most violent, -they kept attempting and mostly achieving, at the service of everyone at -once, and thereby as obliging, as humane a beauty, after the fashion of -the old term, as could have charmed the sight. What Rosanna most noted -withal, and not for the first time either, every observation she had -hitherto made seeming now but intensified, what she most noted was the -huge general familiarity, the pitch of intimacy unmodulated, as if -exactly the same tie, from person to person, bound the whole company -together and nobody had anything to say to anyone that wasn't equally in -question for all. - -This, she knew, was the air and the sound, the common state, of -intimacy, and again and again, in taking it in, she had remained unsure -of whether it left her more hopelessly jealous or more rudely -independent. She would have liked to be intimate--with someone or other, -not indeed with every member of a crowd; but the faculty, as appeared, -hadn't been given her (for with whom had she ever exercised it? not even -with Cissy, she felt now,) and it was ground on which she knew alternate -languor and relief. The fact, however, that so much as all this could be -present to her while she encountered greetings, accepted tea, and failed -of felicity before forms of address for the most part so hilarious, or -at least so ingenious, as to remind her further that she might never -expect to be funny either--that fact might have shown her as hugging a -treasure of consciousness rather than as seeking a soil for its -interment. What they all took for granted!--this again and again had -been before her; and never so as when Gussy Bradham after a little -became possessed of her to the extent of their sharing a settee in one -of the great porches on the lawny margin of which, before sundry -over-archings in other and quite contradictious architectural interests -began to spread, a dozen dispersed couples and trios revolved and -lingered in sight. How was he, the young man at the other house, going -to like these enormous assumptions?--that of a sudden oddly came to her; -so far indeed as it was odd that Gussy should suggest such questions. -She suggested questions in her own way at all times; Rosanna indeed -mostly saw her in a sort of immodest glare of such, the chief being -doubtless the wonder, never assuaged, of how any circle of the supposed -amenities could go on "putting up" with her. The present was as a fact -perhaps the first time our young woman had seen her in the light of a -danger to herself. If society, or what they called such, had to reckon -with her and accepted the charge, that was society's own affair--it -appeared on the whole to understand its interest; but why should she, -Rosanna Gaw, recognise a complication she had done nothing ever to -provoke? It was literally as if the reckoning sat there between them and -all the terms they had ever made with felt differences, intensities of -separation and opposition, had now been superseded by the need for fresh -ones--forms of contact and exchange, forms of pretended intercourse, to -be improvised in presence of new truths. - -So it was at any rate that Rosanna's imagination worked while she asked -herself if there mightn't be something in an idea she had more than once -austerely harboured--the possibility that Mrs. Bradham could on occasion -be afraid of her. If this lady's great note was that of an astounding -assurance based on approved impunity, how, certainly, should a plain -dull shy spinster, with an entire incapacity for boldness and a perfect -horror, in general, of intermeddling, have broken the spell?--especially -as there was no other person in the world, not one, whom she could have -dreamed of wishing to put in fear. Deep was the discomfort for Miss Gaw -of losing with her entertainer the commonest advantage she perhaps knew, -that of her habit of escape from the relation of dislike, let alone of -hostility, through some active denial for the time of any relation at -all. What was there in Gussy that rendered impossible to Rosanna's sense -this very vulgarest of luxuries? She gave her always the impression of -looking at her with an exaggeration of ease, a guarded penetration, that -consciously betrayed itself; though how could one know, after all, that -this wasn't the horrid nature of her look for everyone?--which would -have been publicly denounced if people hadn't been too much involved -with her to be candid. With her wondrous bloom of life and health and -her hard confidence that had nothing to do with sympathy, Gussy might -have presented it as a matter of some pusillanimity, her present critic -at the same time felt, that one should but detect the displeasing in -such an exhibition of bright activity. The only way not to stand off -from her, no doubt, was to be of her "bossed" party and crew, or in -other words to be like everyone else; and perhaps one might on that -condition have enjoyed as a work of nature or even of art, an example of -all-efficient force, her braveries of aspect and attitude, resources of -resistance to time and thought, things not of beauty, for some -unyielding reason, and quite as little of dignity, but things of -assertion and application in an extraordinary degree, things of a -straight cold radiance and of an emphasis that was like the stamp of -hard flat feet. Even if she was to be envied it would be across such -gulfs; as it was indeed one couldn't so much as envy her the prodigy of -her "figure," which had been at eighteen, as one had heard, that of a -woman of forty and was now at forty, one saw, that of a girl of -eighteen: such a state of the person wasn't human, to the younger -woman's sombre sense, but might have been that of some shining humming -insect, a thing of the long-constricted waist, the minimised yet -caparisoned head, the fixed disproportionate eye and tough transparent -wing, gossamer guaranteed. With all of which, however, she had pushed -through every partition and was in the centre of her guest's innermost -preserve before she had been heard coming. - -"It's too lovely that you should have got him to do what he ought--that -dreadful old man! But I don't know if you feel how interesting it's all -going to be; in fact if you know yourself how wonderful it is that he -has already--Mr. Fielder has, I mean--such a tremendous friend in -Cissy." - -Rosanna waited, facing her, noting her extraordinary perfections of -neatness, of elegance, of arrangement, of which it couldn't be said -whether they most handed over to you, as on some polished salver, the -clear truth of her essential commonness or transposed it into an element -that could please, that could even fascinate, as a supreme attestation -of care. "Take her as an advertisement of all the latest knowledges of -how to 'treat' every inch of the human surface and where to 'get' every -scrap of the personal envelope, so far as she is enveloped, and she does -achieve an effect sublime in itself and thereby absolute in a wavering -world"--with so much even as that was Miss Gaw aware of helping to fill -for her own use the interval before she spoke. "No," she said, "I know -nothing of what any of you may suppose yourselves to know." After which, -however, with a sudden inspiration, a quick shift of thought as though -catching an alarm, "I haven't seen Mr. Fielder for a very long time, -haven't seen him at all yet here," she added; "but though I hoped -immensely he would come, and am awfully glad he has, what I want for him -is to have the very best time he possibly can; a much better one than I -shall myself at all know how to help him to." - -"Why, aren't you helping him to the greatest time he can have ever had -if you've waked up his uncle to a sense of decency?" Gussy demanded with -her brightest promptness. "You needn't think, Rosanna," she proceeded -with a well-nigh fantastic development of that ease, "you needn't think -you're going to be able to dodge the least little consequence of your -having been so wonderful. He's just going to owe you everything, and to -follow that feeling up; so I don't see why you shouldn't want to let -him--it would be so mean of him not to!--or be deprived of the credit of -so good a turn. When I do things"--Gussy always had every account of -herself ready--"I want to have them recognised; I like to make them pay, -without the least shame, in the way of glory gained. However, it's -between yourselves," her delicacy conceded, "and how can one -judge--except just to envy you such a lovely relation? All I want is -that you should feel that here we are if you do want help. He should -have here the best there is, and should have it, don't you think? before -he tumbles from ignorance into any mistake--mistakes have such a way of -sticking. So don't be unselfish about him, don't sacrifice him to the -fear of using your advantage: what are such advantages as you enjoy -meant for--all of them, I mean--but to be used up to the limit? You'll -see at any rate what Cissy says--she has great ideas about him. I mean," -said Mrs. Bradham with a qualification in which the expression of -Rosanna's still gaze suddenly seemed reflected, "I mean that it's so -interesting she should have all the clues." - -Rosanna still gazed; she might even after a little have struck a watcher -as held in spite of herself by some heavy spell. It was an old -sense--she had already often had it: when once Gussy had got her head -up, got away and away as Davey called it, she might appear to do what -she would with her victim; appear, that is, to Gussy herself--the -appearance never corresponded for Miss Gaw to an admission of her own. -Behind the appearance, at all events, things on one side and the other -piled themselves up, and Rosanna certainly knew what they were on her -side. Nevertheless it was as a vocal note too faintly quavered through -some loud orchestral sound that she heard herself echo: "The clues----?" - -"Why, it's so funny there should be such a lot--and all gathered about -here!" To this attestation of how everything in the world, for that -matter, was gathered right there Rosanna felt herself superficially -yield; and even before she knew what was coming--for something clearly -was--she was strangely conscious of a choice somehow involved in her -attitude and dependent on her mind, and this too as at almost the -acutest moment of her life. What it came to, with the presentiment of -forces at play such as she had really never yet had to count with, was -the question, all for herself, of whether she should be patently lying -in the profession of a readiness to hand the subject of her interest -over unreservedly to all waiting, all so remarkably gathering contacts -and chances, or whether the act wouldn't partake of the very finest -strain of her past sincerity. She was to remember the moment later on as -if she had really by her definition, by her selection, "behaved"--fairly -feeling the breath of her young man's experience on her cheek before -knowing with the least particularity what it would most be, and deciding -then and there to swallow down every fear of any cost of anything to -herself. She felt extraordinary in the presence of symptoms, symptoms of -life, of death, of danger, of delight, of what did she know? But this it -was exactly that cast derision, by contrast, on such poor obscurities as -her feelings, and settled it for her that when she had professed a few -minutes back that she hoped they would all, for his possible pleasure in -it, catch him up and, so far as they might, make him theirs, she wasn't -to have spoken with false frankness. Queer enough at the same time, and -a wondrous sign of her state of sensibility, that she should see -symptoms glimmer from so very far off. What was this one that was -already in the air before Mrs. Bradham had so much as answered her -question? - -Well, the next moment at any rate she knew, and more extraordinary then -than anything was the spread of her apprehension, off somehow to the -incalculable, under Gussy's mention of a name. What did this show most -of all, however, but how little the intensity of her private association -with the name had even yet died out, or at least how vividly it could -revive in a connection by which everything in her was quickened? -"Haughty" Vint, just lately conversed with by Cissy in New York, it -appeared, and now coming on to the Bradhams from one day to another, had -fed the girl with information, it also, and more wonderfully, -transpired--information about Gray's young past, all surprisingly -founded on close contacts, the most interesting, between the pair, as -well as the least suspected ever by Rosanna: to such an effect that the -transmitted trickle of it had after a moment swelled from Gussy's lips -into a stream by which our friend's consciousness was flooded. "Clues" -these connections might well be called when every touch could now set up -a vibration. It hummed away at once like a pressed button--if she had -been really and in the least meanly afraid of complications she might -now have sat staring at one that would do for oddity, for the oddity of -that relation of her own with Cissy's source of anecdote which could so -have come and gone and yet thrown no light for her on anything but -itself; little enough, by what she had tried to make of it at the time, -though that might have been. It had meanwhile scarce revived for her -otherwise, even if reviving now, as we have said, to intensity, that -Horton Vint's invitation to her some three years before to bestow her -hand upon him in marriage had been attended by impressions as singular -perhaps as had ever marked a like case in an equal absence of outward -show. The connection with him remaining for her had simply been that no -young man--in the clear American social air--had probably ever -approached a young woman on such ground with so utter a lack of -ostensible warrant and had yet at the same time so saved the situation -for himself, or for what he might have called his dignity, and even -hers; to the positive point of his having left her with the mystery, in -all the world, that she could still most pull out from old dim -confusions to wonder about, and wonder all in vain, when she had -nothing better to do. Everything was over between them save the fact -that they hadn't quarrelled, hadn't indeed so much as discussed; but -here withal was association, association unquenched--from the moment a -fresh breath, as just now, could blow upon it. He had had the -appearance--it was unmistakeable--of absolutely believing she might -accept him if he but put it to her lucidly enough and let her look at -him straight enough; and the extraordinary thing was that, for all her -sense of this at the hour, she hadn't imputed to him a real fatuity. - -It had remained with her that, given certain other facts, no incident of -that order could well have had so little to confess by any of its -aspects to the taint of vulgarity. She had seen it, she believed, as he -meant it, meant it with entire conviction: he had intended a tribute, of -a high order, to her intelligence, which he had counted on, or at least -faced with the opportunity, to recognise him as a greater value, taken -all round, appraised by the _whole_ suitability, than she was likely -ever again to find offered. He was of course to take or to leave, and -she saw him stand there in that light as he had then stood, not -pleading, not pressing, not pretending to anything but the wish and the -capacity to serve, only holding out her chance, appealing to her -judgment, inviting her inspection, meeting it without either a shade of -ambiguity or, so far as she could see, any vanity beyond the facts. It -had all been wonderful enough, and not least so that, although -absolutely untouched and untempted, perfectly lucid on her own side and -perfectly inaccessible, she had in a manner admired him, in a manner -almost enjoyed him, in the act of denying him hope. Extraordinary in -especial had it been that he was probably right, right about his value, -right about his rectitude, of conscious intention at least, right even -as to his general calculation of effect, an effect probably producible -on most women; right finally in judging that should he strike at all -this would be the one way. It was only less extraordinary that no -faintest shade of regret, no lightest play of rueful imagination, no -subordinate stir of pity or wonder, had attended her memory of having -left him to the mere cold comfort of reflection. It was his truth that -had fallen short, not his error; the soundness, as it were, of his -claim--so far as his fine intelligence, matching her own, that is, could -make it sound--had had nothing to do with its propriety. She had refused -him, none the less, without disliking him, at the same time that she was -at no moment afterwards conscious of having cared whether he had -suffered. She had been too unaware of the question even to remark that -she seemed indifferent; though with a vague impression--so far as that -went--that suffering was not in his chords. His acceptance of his check -she could but call inscrutably splendid--inscrutably perhaps because she -couldn't quite feel that it had left nothing between them. Something -there was, something there had to be, if only the marvel, so to say, of -her present, her permanent, backward vision of the force with which they -had touched and separated. It stuck to her somehow that they had touched -still more than if they had loved, held each other still closer than if -they had embraced: to such and so strange a tune had they been briefly -intimate. Would any man ever look at her so for passion as Mr. Vint had -looked for reason? and should her own eyes ever again so visit a man's -depths and gaze about in them unashamed to a tune to match that -adventure? Literally what they had said was comparatively -unimportant--once he had made his errand clear; whereby the rest might -all have been but his silent exhibition of his personality, so to name -it, his honour, his assumption, his situation, his life, and that -failure on her own part to yield an inch which had but the more let him -see how straight these things broke upon her. For all the straightness, -it was true, the fact that might most have affected, not to say -concerned, her had remained the least expressed. It wasn't for her now -to know what difference it could have made that he was in relation with -Gray Fielder; incontestably, however, _their_ relation, or their missing -of one, hers and Haughty's, flushed anew in the sudden light. - -"Oh I'm so glad he has good friends here then--with such a clever one as -Mr. Vint we can certainly be easy about him." So much Rosanna heard -herself at last say, and it would doubtless have quite served for assent -to Gussy's revelation without the further support given her by the -simultaneous convergence upon them of various members of the party, who -exactly struck our young woman as having guessed, by the sight of -hostess and momentous guest withdrawn together, that the topic of the -moment was there to be plucked from their hands. Rosanna was now on her -feet--she couldn't sit longer and just take things; and she was to ask -herself afterwards with what cold stare of denial she mightn't have -appeared quite unprecedentedly to face the inquiring rout under the -sense that now certainly, if she didn't take care, she should have -nothing left of her own. It wasn't that they weren't, all laughter and -shimmer, all senseless sound and expensive futility, the easiest people -in the world to share with, and several the very prettiest and -pleasantest, of the vaguest insistence after all, the most absurdly -small awareness of what they were eager about; but that of the three or -four things then taking place at once the brush across her heart of -Gray's possible immediate question, "Have you brought me over then to -live with _these_----?" had most in common with alarm. It positively -helped her indeed withal that she found herself, the next thing, -greeting with more sincerity of expression than she had, by her -consciousness, yet used Mrs. Bradham's final leap to action in the form -of "I want him to dinner of course right off!" She said it with the big -brave laugh that represented her main mercy for the general public view -of her native eagerness, an eagerness appraised, not to say proclaimed, -by herself as a passion for the service of society, and in connection -with which it was mostly agreed that she never so drove her flock before -her as when paying this theoretic tribute to grace of manner. Before -Rosanna could ejaculate, moved though she was to do so, the question had -been taken up by the extremely pretty person who was known to her -friends, and known even to Rosanna, as Minnie Undle and who at once put -in a plea for Mr. Fielder's presence that evening, her own having been -secured for it. Before such a rate of procedure as this evocation -implied even Gussy appeared to recoil, but with a prompt proviso in -favour of the gentleman's figuring rather on the morrow, when Mrs. -Undle, since she seemed so impatient, might again be of the party. Mrs. -Undle agreed on the spot, though by this time Rosanna's challenge had -ceased to hang fire. "But do you really consider that you _know_ him so -much as that?"--she let Gussy have it straight, even if at the -disadvantage that there were now as ever plenty of people to react, to -the last hilarity, at the idea that acquaintance enjoyed on either side -was needfully imputable to these participations. "That's just why--if we -don't know him!" Mrs. Undle further contributed; while Gussy declined -recognition of the relevance of any word of Miss Gaw's. She declined it -indeed in her own way, by a yet stiffer illustration of her general -resilience; an "Of course I mean, dear, that I look to you to bring -him!" expressing sufficiently her system. - -"Then you really expect him when his uncle's dying----?" sprang in all -honesty from Rosanna's lips; to be taken up on the instant, however, by -a voice that was not Gussy's and that rang clear before Gussy could -speak. - -"There can't be the least question of it--even if we're dying ourselves, -or even if I am at least!" was what Rosanna heard; with Cissy Foy, of a -sudden supremely exhibited, giving the case at once all happy sense, all -bright quick harmony with their general immediate interest. She pressed -to Rosanna straight, as if nothing as yet had had time to pass between -them--which very little in fact had; with the result for our young woman -of feeling helped, by the lightest of turns, not to be awkward herself, -or really, what came to the same thing, not to be anything herself. It -was a fine perception she had had before--of how Cissy could on occasion -"do" for one, and this, all extraordinarily and in a sort of double -sense, by quenching one in her light at the very moment she offered it -for guidance. She quenched Gussy, she was the single person who could, -Gussy almost gruntingly consenting; she quenched Minnie Undle, she -cheapened every other presence, scattering lovely looks, multiplying -happy touches, grasping Rosanna for possession, yet at the same time, as -with her free hand, waving away every other connection: so that a minute -or two later--for it scarce seemed more--the pair were isolated, still -on the verandah somewhere, but intensely confronted and talking at ease, -or in a way that had to pass for ease, with its not mattering at all -whether their companions, dazzled and wafted off, had dispersed and -ceased to be, or whether they themselves had simply been floated to -where they wished on the great surge of the girl's grace. The girl's -grace was, after its manner, such a force that Miss Gaw had had -repeatedly, on past occasions, to doubt even while she recognised--for -_could_ a young creature you weren't quite sure of use a weapon of such -an edge only for good? The young creature seemed at any rate now as -never yet to give out its play for a thing to be counted on and trusted; -and with Gussy Bradham herself shown just there behind them as letting -it take everything straight out of _her_ hands, nobody else at all -daring to touch, what were you to do but verily feel distinguished by -its so wrapping you about? The only sharpness in what had happened was -that with Cissy's act of presence Mrs. Bradham had exercised her great -function of social appraiser by staring and then, as under conclusions -drawn from it, giving way. One might have found it redeemingly soft in -her that before this particular suggestion she could melt, or that in -other words Cissy appeared the single fact in all the world about which -she had anything to call imagination. She imagined her, she imagined her -_now_, and as dealing somehow with their massive friend; which -consciousness, on the latter's part, it must be said, played for the -moment through everything else. - -Not indeed that there wasn't plenty for the girl to fill the fancy with; -since nothing could have been purer than the stream that she poured into -Rosanna's as from an upturned crystal urn while she repeated over, -holding her by the two hands, gazing at her in admiration: "I can _see_ -how you care for him--I can see, I can see!" And she felt indeed, our -young woman, how the cover was by this light hand whisked off her -secret--Cissy made it somehow a secret in the act of laying it bare; and -that she blushed for the felt exposure as even Gussy had failed to make -her. Seeing which her companion but tilted the further vessel of -confidence. "It's too funny, it's too wonderful that I too should know -something. But I do, and I'll tell you how--not now, for I haven't time, -but as soon as ever I can; which will make you see. So what you must do -for all you're worth," said Cissy, "is to care now more than ever. You -must keep him from us, because we're not good enough and you _are_; you -must act in the sense of what you feel, and must feel exactly as you've -a right to--for, as I say, I know, I know!" - -It was impossible, Rosanna seemed to see, that a generous young thing -should shine out in more beauty; so that what in the world might one -ever keep from her? Surpassingly strange the plea thus radiant on the -very brow of the danger! "You mean you know Mr. Fielder's history? from -your having met somebody----?" - -"Oh that of course, yes; Gussy, whom I've told of my having met Mr. -Northover, will have told you. That's curious and charming," Cissy went -on, "and I want awfully we should talk of it. But it isn't what I mean -by what I know--and what you don't, my dear thing!" - -Rosanna couldn't have told why, but she had begun to tremble, and also -to try not to show it. "What I don't know--about Gray Fielder? Why, of -course there's plenty!" she smiled. - -Cissy still held her hands; but Cissy now was grave. "No, there isn't -plenty--save so far as what I mean is enough. And I haven't told it to -Gussy. It's too good for her," the girl added. "It's too good for anyone -but you." - -Rosanna just waited, feeling herself perhaps grimace. "What, Cissy, -_are_ you talking about?" - -"About what I heard from Mr. Northover when we met him, when we saw so -much of him, three years ago at Ragatz, where we had gone for Mamma and -where we went through the cure with him. He and I struck up a friendship -and he often spoke to me of his stepson--who wasn't there with him, was -at that time off somewhere in the mountains or in Italy, I forget, but -to whom I could see he was devoted. He and I hit it off beautifully -together--he seemed to me awfully charming and to like to tell me -things. So what I allude to is something he said to me." - -"About me?" Rosanna gasped. - -"Yes--I see now it was about you. But it's only to-day that I've guessed -that. Otherwise, otherwise----!" And as if under the weight of her great -disclosure Cissy faltered. - -But she had now indeed made her friend desire it. "You mean that -otherwise you'd have told me before?" - -"Yes indeed--and it's such a miracle I didn't. It's such a miracle," -said Cissy, "that the person should all this time have been -you--or you have been the person. Of course I had no idea that all -_this_--everything that has taken place now, by what I understand--was -going so extraordinarily to happen. You see he never named Mr. -Betterman, or in fact, I think," the girl explained, "told me anything -about him. And he didn't name, either, Gray's friend--so that in spite -of the impression made on me you've never till to-day been identified." - -Immense, as she went, Rosanna felt, the number of things she gave her -thus together to think about. What was coming she clearly needn't -fear--might indeed, deep within, happily hold her breath for; but the -very interest somehow made her rest an instant, as for refinement of -suspense, on the minor surprises. "The impression then has been so great -that you call him 'Gray'?" - -The girl at this ceased holding hands; she folded her arms back together -across her slim young person--the frequent habit of it in her was of the -prettiest "quaint" effect; she laughed as if submitting to some just -correction of a freedom. "Oh, but my dear, _he_ did, the delightful -man--and isn't it borne in upon me that you do? Of course the impression -was great--and if Mr. Northover and I had met younger I don't know," her -laugh said, "what mightn't have happened. No, I never shall have had a -greater, a more intelligent admirer! As it was we remained true, -secretly true, for fond memory, to the end: at least I did, though ever -so secretly--you see I speak of it only now--and I want to believe so in -his impression. But how I torment you!" she suddenly said in another -tone. - -Rosanna, nursing her patience, had a sad slow headshake. "I don't -understand." - -"Of course you don't--and yet it's too beautiful. It was about -Gray--once when we talked of him, as I've told you we repeatedly did. It -was that he never would look at anyone else." - -Our friend could but appear at least to cast about. "Anyone else than -whom?" - -"Why than you," Cissy smiled. "The girl he had loved in boyhood. The -American girl who, years before, in Dresden, had done for him something -he could never forget." - -"And what had she done?" stared Rosanna. - -"Oh he didn't tell me _that!_ But if you don't take great care, as I -say," Cissy went on, "perhaps _he_ may--I mean Mr. Fielder himself may -when we close round him in the way that, in your place, as I assure you, -I would certainly do everything to prevent." - -Rosanna looked about as with a sudden sense of weakness, the effect of -overstrain; it was absurd, but these last minutes might almost, with -their queer action, and as to the ground they covered, have been as many -formidable days. A fine verandah settee again close at hand offered her -support, and she dropped upon it, as for large retrieval of menaced -ease, with a need she herself alone could measure. The need was to -recover some sense of perspective, to be able to place her young -friend's somehow portentous assault off in such conditions, if only of -mere space and time, as would make for some greater convenience of -relation with it. It did at once help her--and really even for the tone -in which she smiled across: "So you're sure?" - -Cissy hovered, shining, shifting, yet accepting the perspective as it -were--when in the world had she to fear _any?_--and positively painted -there in bright contradiction, her very grace again, after the odd -fashion in which it sometimes worked, seeming to deny her sincerity, and -her very candour seeming to deny her gravity. "Sure of what? Sure I'm -right about you?" - -Rosanna took a minute to say--so many things worked in her; yet when one -of these came uppermost, pushing certain of the others back, she found -for putting it forward a tone grateful to her own ear. This tone -represented on her part too a substitute for sincerity, but that was -exactly what she wanted. "I don't care a fig for any anecdote about -myself--which moreover it would be very difficult for you to have right. -What I ask you if you're certain of is your being really not fit for -him. Are you absolutely," said Miss Gaw, "as bad as that?" - -The girl, placed before her, looked at her now, with raised hands folded -together, as if she had been some seated idol, a great Buddha perched up -on a shrine. "Oh Rosanna, Rosanna----!" she admiringly, piously -breathed. - -But it was not such treatment that could keep Miss Gaw from completing -her chosen sense. "I should be extremely sorry--so far as I claim any -influence on him--to interfere against his getting over here whatever -impressions he may; interfere by his taking you for more important, in -any way, than seems really called for." - -"Taking _me?_" Cissy smiled. - -"Taking any of you--the people, in general and in particular, who haunt -this house. We mustn't be afraid for him of his having the interest, or -even the mere amusement, of learning all that's to be learnt about us." - -"Oh Rosanna, Rosanna"--the girl kept it up--"how you adore him; and how -you make me therefore, wretch that I am, fiendishly want to see him!" - -But it might quite have glanced now from our friend's idol surface. -"You're the best of us, no doubt--very much; and I immensely hope you'll -like him, since you've been so extraordinarily prepared. It's to be -supposed too that he'll have some sense of his own." - -Cissy continued rapt. "Oh but you're deep--deep deep deep!" - -It came out as another presence again, that of Davey Bradham, who had -the air of rather restlessly looking for her, emerged from one of the -long windows of the house, just at hand, to meet Rosanna's eyes. She -found herself glad to have him back, as if further to inform him. Wasn't -it after all rather he that was the best of them and by no means Cissy? -Her face might at any rate have conveyed as much while she reported of -that young lady. "She thinks me so deep." - -It made the girl, who had not seen him, turn round; but with an -immediate equal confidence. "And _she_ thinks _me_, Davey, so good!" - -Davey's eyes were only on Cissy, but Rosanna seemed to feel them on -herself. "How you must have got mixed!" he exclaimed. "But your father -has come for you," he then said to Rosanna, who had got up. - -"Father has walked it?"--she was amazed. - -"No, he's there in a hack to take you home--and too excited to come in." - -Rosanna's surprise but grew. "Has anything happened----?" - -"Wonders--I asked them. Mr. Betterman's sitting right up." - -"Really improving----?" Then her mystification spread. "'Them,' you -say?" - -"Why his nurse, as I at least suppose her," said Davey, "is with -him--apparently to give you the expert opinion." - -"Of the fiend's recuperating?" Cissy cried with a wail. And then before -her friend's bewilderment, "How dreadfully horrid!" she added. - -"Whose nurse, please?" Rosanna asked of Davey. - -"Why, hasn't he got a nurse?" Davey himself, as always, but desired -lucidity. "She's doing her duty by him all the same!" - -On which Cissy's young wit at once apprehended. "It's one of Mr. -Betterman's taking a joy-ride in honour of his recovery! Did you ever -hear anything so cool?" - -She had appealed to her friends alike, but Rosanna, under the force of -her suggestion, was already in advance. "Then father himself must be -ill!" Miss Gaw had declared, moving rapidly to the quarter in which he -so incongruously waited and leaving Davey to point a rapid moral for -Cissy's benefit while this couple followed. - -"If he _is_ so upset that he hasn't been trusted alone I'll be hanged if -I don't just see it!" - -But the marvel was the way in which after an instant Cissy saw it too. -"You mean because he can't stand Mr. Betterman's perhaps not dying?" - -"Yes, dear ingenuous child--he has wanted so to see him out." - -"Well then, isn't it what we're all wanting?" - -"Most undoubtedly, pure pearl of penetration!" Davey returned as they -went. "His pick-up _will_ be a sell," he ruefully added; "even though it -mayn't quite kill anyone of us but Mr. Gaw!" - - - - -BOOK SECOND - - -I - - -Graham's view of his case and of all his proprieties, from the moment of -his arrival, was that he should hold himself without reserve at his -uncle's immediate disposition, and even such talk as seemed indicated, -during the forenoon, with Doctor Hatch and Miss Mumby, the nurse then in -charge, did little to lighten for him the immense prescription of -delicacy. What he learnt was far from disconcerting; the patient, aware -of his presence, had shown for soothed, not for agitated; the drop of -the tension of waiting had had the benign effect; he had repeated over -to his attendant that now "the boy" was there, all would be for the -best, and had asked also with soft iteration if he were having -everything he wanted. The happy assurance of this right turn of their -affair, so far as they had got, he was now quietly to enjoy: he was to -rest two or three hours, and if possible to sleep, while Graham, on his -side, sought a like remedy--after the full indulgence in which their -meeting would take place. The excellent fact for "the boy," who was -two-and-thirty years of age and who now quite felt as if during the last -few weeks he had lived through a dozen more, was thus that he was doing -his uncle good and that somehow, to complete that harmony, he might feel -the operation of an equal virtue. At his invitation, at his decision, -the idea of some such wondrous matter as this had of course -presided--for waiting and obliging good, which one was simply to open -one's heart or one's hand to, had struck him ever as so little of the -common stuff of life that now, at closer range, it could but figure as -still more prodigious. At the same time there was nothing he dreaded, by -his very nature, more than a fond fatuity, and he had imposed on himself -from the first to proceed at every step as if without consideration he -might well be made an ass of. It was true that even such a danger as -this presented its interest--the process to which he should yield would -be without precedent for him, and his imagination, thank heaven, had -curiosity in a large measure for its principle; he wouldn't rush into -peril, however, and flattered himself that after all he should not -recognise its symptoms too late. - -What he said to himself just now on the spot was, at any rate, that he -should probably have been more excited if he hadn't been so amused. To -be amused to a high pitch while his nearest kinsman, apparently nursing, -as he had been told, a benevolence, lay dying a few rooms off--let this -impute levity to our young man only till we understand that his -liability to recreation represented in him a function serious indeed. -Everything played before him, everything his senses embraced; and since -his landing in New York on the morning before this the play had been of -a delightful violence. No slightest aspect or briefest moment of it but -had held and, so to say, rewarded him: if he had come back at last for -impressions, for emotions, for the sake of the rush upon him of the -characteristic, these things he was getting in a measure beyond his -dream. It was still beyond his dream that what everything merely seen -from the window of his room meant to him during these first hours should -move him first to a smile of such ecstasy, and then to such an inward -consumption of his smile, as might have made of happiness a substance -you could sweetly put under your tongue. He recognised--that was the -secret, recognised wherever he looked--and knew that when, from far -back, during his stretch of unbroken absence, he had still felt, and -liked to feel, what air had originally breathed upon him, these piercing -intensities of salience had really peopled the vision. He had much less -remembered the actual than forecast the inevitable, and the huge -involved necessity of its all showing as he found it seemed fairly to -shout in his ear. He had brought with him a fine intention, one of the -finest of which he was capable, and wasn't it, he put to himself, -already working? Wasn't he gathering in a perfect bloom of freshness the -fruit of his design rather to welcome the impression to extravagance, if -need be, than to undervalue it by the breadth of a hair? Inexpert he -couldn't help being, but too estranged to melt again at whatever touch -might make him, _that_ he'd be hanged if he couldn't help, since what -was the great thing again but to hold up one's face to _any_ drizzle of -light? - -There it was, the light, in a mist of silver, even as he took in the -testimony of his cool bedimmed room, where the air was toned by the -closing of the great green shutters. It was ample and elegant, of an -American elegance, which was so unlike any other, and so still more -unlike any lapse of it, ever met by him, that some of its material terms -and items held him as in rapt contemplation; what he had wanted, even to -intensity, being that things should prove different, should positively -glare with opposition--there would be no fun at all were they only -imperfectly like, as that wouldn't in the least mean character. Their -character might be if it would in their consistently having none--than -which deficiency nothing was more possible; but he should have to -decline to be charmed by unsuccessful attempts at sorts of expression he -had elsewhere known more or less happily achieved. This particular -disappointment indeed he was clearly not in for, since what could at -once be more interesting than thus to note that the range and scale kept -all their parts together, that each object or effect disowned -connections, as he at least had all his life felt connections, and that -his cherished hope of the fresh start and the broken link would have its -measure filled to the brim. There was an American way for a room to be a -room, a table a table, a chair a chair and a book a book--let alone a -picture on a wall a picture, and a cold gush of water in a bath of a hot -morning a promise of purification; and of this license all about him, in -fine, he beheld the refreshing riot. - -It cast on him for the time a spell; he moved about with soft steps and -long pauses, staring out between the slats of the shutters, which he -gently worked by their attachment, and then again living, with a -subtlety of sense that it was a pleasure to exercise, into the -conditions represented by whatever more nearly pressed. It was not only -that the process of assimilation, unlike any other he had yet been -engaged in, might stop short, to disaster, if he so much as breathed too -hard; but that if he made the sufficient surrender he might absolutely -himself be assimilated--and that was truly an experience he couldn't but -want to have. The great thing he held on to withal was a decent -delicacy, a dread of appearing even to himself to take big things for -granted. This of itself was restrictive as to freedoms--it stayed -familiarities, it kept uncertainty cool; for after all what had his -uncle done but cause to be conveyed to him across the sea the bare wish -that he should come? He had straightway come in consequence, but on no -explanation and for no signified reward; he had come simply to avoid a -possible ugliness in his not coming. Generally addicted to such -avoidances, to which it indeed seemed to him that the quest of beauty -was too often reduced, he had found his reason sufficient until the -present hour, when it was as if all reasons, all of his own at least, -had suddenly abandoned him, to the effect of his being surrounded only -with those of others, of which he was up to now ignorant, but which -somehow hung about the large still place, somehow stiffened the vague -summer Sunday and twinkled in the universal cleanness, a real revelation -to him of that possible immunity in things. He might have been sent for -merely to be blown up for the relief of the old man's mind on the -perversity and futility of his past. There was before him at all events -no gage of anything else, no intimation other than his having been, -materially speaking, preceded by preparations, to make him throw himself -on a survey of prospects. What was before him at the least was a "big" -experience--even to have come but to be cursed and dismissed would -really be a bigger thing than yet had befallen him. Not the form but the -fact of the experience accordingly mattered--so that wasn't it there to -a fine intensity by his standing ever and anon at the closed door of his -room and feeling that with his ear intent enough he could catch the -pressure on the other side? - -The pressure was at last unmistakeable, we note, in the form of Miss -Mumby, who, having gently tapped, appeared there both to remark to him -that he must surely at last want his luncheon and to affect him afresh -and in the supreme degree as a vessel of the American want of -correspondence. Miss Mumby was ample, genial, familiar and more -radiantly clean than he had ever known any vessel, to whatever purpose -destined; also the number of things _she_ took for granted--if it was a -question of that; or perhaps rather the number of things of which she -didn't doubt and was incapable of doubting, surrounded her together with -a kind of dazzling aura, a special radiance of disconnection. She wore a -beautiful white dress, and he scarce knew what apparatus of spotless -apron and cuffs and floating streamers to match; yet she could only -again report to him of the impression that had most jumped at him from -the moment of his arrival. He saw in a moment that any difficulty on his -part of beginning with her at some point in social space, so to say, at -which he had never begun before with any such person, would count for -nothing in face of her own perfect power to begin. The faculty of -beginning would be in truth Miss Mumby's very genius, and in the moment -of his apprehension of this he felt too--he had in fact already felt it -at their first meeting--how little his pale old postulates as to persons -being "such" might henceforth claim to serve him. What person met by him -during his thirty hours in American air was "such" again as any other -partaker of contact had appeared or proved, no matter where, before his -entering it? What person had not at once so struck him in the light of -violent repudiation of type, as he might save for his sensibility have -imputed type, that nothing else in the case seemed predicable? He might -have seen Miss Mumby, he was presently to recognise, in the light of a -youngish mother perhaps, a sister, a cousin, a friend, even a possible -bride, for these were aspects independent of type and boundlessly free -of range; but a "trained nurse" was a trained nurse, and that was a -category of the most evolved--in spite of which what category in all the -world could have lifted its head in Miss Mumby's aura? - -Still, she might have been a pleasant cousin, a first cousin, _the_ very -first a man had ever had and not in any degree "removed," while she thus -proclaimed the cheerful ease of everything and everyone, her own above -all, and made him yield on the spot to her lightest intimation. He -couldn't possibly have held off from her in any way, and if this was in -part because he always collapsed at a touch before nurses, it was at the -same time not at all the nurse in her that now so affected him, but the -incalculable other force, of which he had had no experience and which -was apparently that of the familiar in tone and manner. He had known, of -a truth, familiarity greater--much greater, but only with greater -occasions and supports for it; whereas on Miss Mumby's part it seemed -independent of any or of every motive. He could scarce have said in -fine, as he followed her to their repast, at which he foresaw in an -instant that they were both to sit down, whether it more alarmed or just -more coolingly enveloped him; his slight first bewilderment at any rate -had dropped--he had already forgotten the moment wasted two or three -hours before in wondering, with his sense of having known Nurses who -gloried in their title, how his dear second father, for instance, would -in his final extremity have liked the ministrations of a Miss. By those -he himself presently enjoyed in such different conditions, that is from -across the table, bare and polished and ever so delicately charged, of -the big dusky, yet just a little breezy dining-room, by those in short -under which every association he had ever had with anything crashed down -to pile itself as so much more tinklingly shivered glass at Miss Mumby's -feet, that sort of question was left far behind--and doubtless would -have been so even if the appeal of the particular refection served to -them had alone had the case in hand. "I'm going to make you like our -food, so you might as well begin at once," his companion had announced; -and he felt it on the spot as scarce less than delicious that this -element too should play, and with such fineness, into that harmony of -the amusingly exotic which was, under his benediction, working its will -on him. "Oh yes," she rejoiced in answer to his exhibition of the degree -in which what was before him did stir again to sweetness a chord of -memory, "oh yes, food's a great tie, it's like language--you can always -understand your own, whereas in Europe I had to learn about six others." - -Miss Mumby had been to Europe, and he saw soon enough how there was -nowhere one could say she hadn't gone and nothing one could say she -hadn't done--one's perception could bear only on what she hadn't become; -so that, as he thus perceived, though she might have affected Europe -even as she was now affecting _him_, she was a pure negation of its -having affected herself, unless perhaps by adding to her power to make -him feel how little he could impose on her. She knew all about his -references while he only missed hers, and that gave her a tremendous -advantage--or would have done so hadn't she been too much his cousin to -take it. He at any rate recognised in a moment that the so many things -she had had to learn to understand over there were not forms of speech -but alimentary systems--as to which view he quite agreed with her that -the element of the native was equally rooted in both supports of life. -This gave her of course her opportunity of remarking that she had indeed -made for the assimilation of "his" cookery--whichever of the varieties -his had most been--scarce less an effort than she must confess now to -making for that of his terms of utterance; where she had at once again -the triumph that he was nowhere, by his own reasoning, if he pretended -to an affinity with the nice things they were now eating and yet stood -off from the other ground. "Oh I _understand_ you, which appears to be -so much more than you do me!" he laughed; "but am I really committed to -everything because I'm committed, in the degree you see me, oh yes, to -waffles and maple syrup, followed, and on such a scale, by melons and -ice-cream? You see in the one case I have but to take in, and in the -other have to give out: so can't I have, in a quiet way the American -palate without emitting the American sounds?" Thus was he on the -straightest flattest level with Miss Mumby--it stretched, to his -imagination, without a break, a rise or a fall, _à perte de vue_; and -thus was it already attested that the Miss Mumbys (for it was evident -there would be thousands of them) were in society, or were, at any rate, -not out of it, society thereby becoming clearly colossal. What was it, -moreover, but the best society--as who should say anywhere--when his -companion made the bright point that if anything had to do with sounds -the palate did? returning with it also to the one already made, her due -warning that she wasn't going to have him not like everything. "But I -do, I do, I do," he declared, with his mouth full of a seasoned and -sweetened, a soft, substantial coldness and richness that were at once -the revelation of a world and the consecration of a fate; "I revel in -everything, I already wallow, behold: I move as in a dream, I assure -you, and I only fear to wake up." - -"Well, I don't know as I want you to wallow, and I certainly don't want -you to fear--though you'll wake up soon enough, I guess," his -entertainer continued, "whatever you do. You'll wake up to some of our -realities, and--well, we won't want anything better for you: will we. -Doctor?" Miss Mumby freely proceeded on their being joined for a moment -by the friendly physician who had greeted our young man, on his uncle's -behalf, at his hour of arrival, and who, having been again for awhile -with their interesting host, had left the second nurse in charge and was -about to be off to other cares. "I'm saying to Mr. Fielder that he's got -to wake up to some pretty big things," she explained to Doctor Hatch, -whom it struck Gray she addressed rather as he had heard doctors address -nurses than nurses doctors; a fact contributing offhand to his -awareness, already definite, that everyone addressed everyone as he had -nowhere yet heard the address perpetrated, and that so, evidently, there -were questions connected with it that must yet wait over. It was -pertinently to be felt furthermore that Doctor Hatch's own freedom, -which also had quite its own rare freshness of note, shared in the -general property of the whole appeal to him, the appeal of the very form -of the great sideboard, the very "school," though yet unrecognised by -him, of the pictures hung about, the very look and dress, the apparently -odd identity, of the selected and arrayed volumes in a bookcase charged -with ornament and occupying the place of highest dignity in the room, to -take his situation for guaranteed as it was surely not common for -earthly situations to be. This he could feel, however, without knowing, -to any great purpose, what it really meant; and he was afterwards even -scarce to know what had further taken place, under Doctor Hatch's -blessing, before he passed out of the house to the verandah and the -grounds, as their limitations of reach didn't prevent their being -called, and gave himself up to inquiries now permittedly direct. - -Doctor Hatch's message or momentary act of quaint bright presence came -to him thus, on the verandah, while shining expanses opened, as an -invitation to some extraordinary confidence, some flight of optimism -without a precedent, as a positive hint in fine that it depended on -himself alone to step straight into the chariot of the sun, which on his -mere nod would conveniently descend there to the edge of the piazza, and -whirl away for increase of acquaintance with the time, as it was -obviously going to be, of his life. This was but his reading indeed of -the funny terms in which the delightful man put it to him that he seemed -by his happy advent to have brought on for his uncle a prospect, a rise -of pitch, not dissimilar from that sort of vision; by so high a tide of -ease had the sick room above been flooded, and such a lot of good would -clearly await the patient from seeing him after a little and at the -perfect proper moment. It was to be that of Mr. Betterman's competent -choice: he lay there as just for the foretaste of it, which was wholly -tranquillising, and could be trusted--what else did doctor and nurse -engage for?--to know the psychological hour on its striking and then, to -complete felicity, have his visitor introduced. His present mere -assurance of the visitor was in short so agreeable to him, and by the -same token to Doctor Hatch himself--which was above all what the latter -had conveyed--that the implication of the agreeable to Graham in return -might fairly have been some imponderable yet ever so sensible tissue, -voluminous interwoven gold and silver, flung as a mantle over his -shoulders while he went. Gray had never felt around him any like -envelope whatever; so that on his looking forth at all the candid -clearness--which struck him too, ever so amusingly, as even more candid -when occasionally and aggressively, that is residentially, obstructed -than when not--what he inwardly and fantastically compared it to was -some presented quarto page, vast and fair, ever so distinctly printed -and ever so unexpectedly vignetted, of a volume of which the leaves -would be turned for him one by one and with no more trouble on his own -part than when a friendly service beside him at the piano, where he so -often sat, relieved him, from sheet to sheet, of touching his score. - -Wasn't he thus now again "playing," as it had been a lifelong resource -to him to play in that other posture?--a question promoted by the way -the composition suddenly broke into the vividest illustrational figure, -that of a little man encountered on one of his turns of the verandah and -who, affecting him at first as a small waiting and watching, an almost -crouching gnome, the neat domestic goblin of some old Germanic, some -harmonised, familiarised legend, sat and stared at him from the depths -of an arrested rocking-chair after a fashion nothing up to then had led -him to preconceive. This was a different note from any yet, a queer, -sharp, hard particle in all the softness; and it was sensible too, oddly -enough, that the small force of their concussion but grew with its -coming over him the next moment that he simply had before him Rosanna -Gaw's prodigious parent. _Of course_ it was Mr. Gaw, whom he had never -seen, and of whom Rosanna in the old time had so little talked; her -mother alone had talked of him in those days, and to his own mother -only--with whom Gray had indeed himself afterwards talked not a little; -but the intensity of the certitude came not so much by any plain as by -quite the most roundabout presumption, the fact of his always having -felt that she required some strange accounting for, and that here was -the requirement met by just the ripest revelation. She had been involved -in something, produced by something, intimately pressing upon her and -yet as different as possible from herself; and here was the concentrated -difference--which showed him too, with each lapsing second, its quality -of pressure. Abel Gaw struck him in this light as very finely blanched, -as somehow squeezed together by the operation of an inward energy or -necessity, and as animated at the same time by the conviction that, -should he sit there long enough and still enough, the young man from -Europe, known to be on the premises, might finally reward his curiosity. -Mr. Gaw was curiosity embodied--Gray was by the end of the minute -entirely assured of that; it in fact quite seemed to him that he had -never yet in all his life caught the prying passion so shamelessly in -the act. Shamelessly, he was afterwards to remember having explained to -himself, because his sense of the reach of the sharp eyes in the small -white face, and of their not giving way for a moment before his own, -suggested to him, even if he could scarce have said why to that extent, -the act of listening at the door, at the very keyhole, of a room, -combined with the attempt to make it good under sudden detection. - -So it was, at any rate, that our speculative friend, the impression of -the next turn of the case aiding, figured the extension, without forms, -without the shade of a form, of their unmitigated mutual glare. The -initiation of this exchange by the little old gentleman in the chair, -who gave for so long no sign of moving or speaking, couldn't but -practically determine in Graham's own face some resistance to the -purpose exhibited and for which it was clear no apology impended. By the -time he had recognised that his presence was in question for Mr. Gaw -with such an intensity as it had never otherwise, he felt, had the -benefit of, however briefly, save under some offered gage or bribe, he -had also made out that no "form" would survive for twenty seconds in any -close relation with the personage, and that if ever he had himself known -curiosity as to what might happen when manners were consistently enough -ignored it was a point on which he should at once be enlightened. His -fellow-visitor, of whose being there Doctor Hatch and Miss Mumby were -presumably unaware, continued to ignore everything but the opportunity -he enjoyed and the certainty that Graham would contribute to it--which -certainty made in fact his profit. The profit, that is, couldn't -possibly fail unless Gray should turn his back and walk off; which was -of course possible, but would then saddle Gray himself with the -repudiation of forms: so that--yes, infallibly--in proportion as the -young man _had_ to be commonly civil would Mr. Gaw's perhaps unholy -satisfaction of it be able to prevail. The young man had taken it home -that he couldn't simply stare long enough for successful defence by the -time that, presently moving nearer, he uttered his adversary's name with -no intimation of a doubt. Mr. Gaw failed. Gray was afterwards to inform -Rosanna, "to so much as take this up"; he was left with everything on -his hands but the character of his identity, the indications of his -face, the betrayals he should so much less succeed in suppressing than -his adversary would succeed in reading them. The figure presented hadn't -stirred from his posture otherwise than by a motion of eye just -perceptible as Graham moved; it was drinking him in, our hero felt, and -by this treatment of the full cup, continuously applied to the lips, -stillness was of course imposed. It didn't again so much as recognise, -by any sign given, Graham's remark that an acquaintance with Miss Gaw -from of old involved naturally _their_ acquaintance: there was no -question of Miss Gaw, her friend found himself after another minute -divining, as there was none of objects or appearances immediately there -about them; the question was of something a thousand times more relevant -and present, of something the interloper's silence, far more than -breathed words could have done, represented the fond hope of mastering. - -Graham thus held already, by the old man's conviction, a secret of high -value, yet which, with the occasion stretched a little, would -practically be at his service--so much as that at least, with the -passage of another moment, he had concluded to; and all the while, in -the absurdest way, without his guessing, without his at all measuring, -his secret himself. Mr. Gaw fairly made him want to--want, that is, as a -preliminary or a stopgap, to guess what it had best, most desirably and -most effectively, become; for shouldn't he positively _like_ to have -something of the sort in order just to disoblige this gentleman? Strange -enough how it came to him at once as a result of the father's refusal of -attention to any connection he might have glanced at with the daughter, -strange enough how it came to him, under the first flush of heat he had -known since his arrival, that two could play at such a game and that if -Rosanna's interests were to be so slighted her relative himself should -miss even the minimum of application as one of them. "He must have -wanted to know, he must have wanted to know----!" this young woman was -on a later day to have begun to explain; without going on, however, -since by that time Gray had rather made out, the still greater rush of -his impressions helping, the truth of Mr. Gaw's desire. It bore, that -appetite, upon a single point and, daughter or no daughter, on nothing -else in the world--the question of what Gray's "interest," in the light -of his uncle's intentions, might size up to; those intentions having, to -the Gaw imagination, been of course apprehensible on the spot, and -within the few hours that had lapsed, by a nephew even of but -rudimentary mind. At the present hour meanwhile, short of the miracle -which our friend's counter-scrutiny alone could have brought about, -there worked for this young intelligence, and with no small sharpness, -the fact itself of such a revealed relation to the ebb of their host's -life--upon which was thrust the appearance of its being, watch in hand, -all impatiently, or in other words all offensively, timed. The very air -at this instant tasted to Gray, quite as if something under his tongue -had suddenly turned from the sweet to the appreciably sour, of an -assumption diffused through it in respect to the rudiments of mind. He -was afterwards to date the breaking-in upon him of the general measure -of the smallest vision of business a young man might self-respectingly -confess to from Mr. Gaw's extraordinary tacit "Oh come, you can't fool -_me_: don't I know you know what I want to know--don't I know what it -must mean for you to have been here since six o'clock this morning with -nothing whatever else to do than just to take it in?" - -That was it--Gray was to have taken in the more or less definite value -involved for him in his uncle's supposedly near extinction, and was to -be capable, if not of expressing it on the spot in the only terms in -which a value of any sort could exist for this worthy, yet still at -least of liability to such a betrayal as would yield him something to -conclude upon. It was only afterwards, once more, that our young man was -to master the logic of the conclusive as it prevailed for Mr. Gaw; what -concerned his curiosity was to settle whether or no they were in -presence together of a really big fact--distinguishing as the Gaw mind -did among such dimensions and addressed as it essentially was to a -special question--a question as yet unrecognised by Gray. He was -subsequently to have his friend's word to go upon--when, in the -extraordinary light of Rosanna's explication, he read clear what he had -been able on the verandah but half to glimmer out: the queer truth of -Mr. Gaw's hunger to learn to what extent he had anciently, to what -degree he had irremediably, ruined his whilom associate. He didn't -know--so strange was it, at the time and since, that, thanks to the way -Mr. Betterman had himself fixed things, he couldn't be sure; but what he -wanted, and what he hung about so displeasingly to sniff up the least -stray sign of, was a confirmation of his belief that Doctor Hatch's and -Miss Mumby's patient had never really recovered from the wound of years -before. They were nursing him now for another complaint altogether, this -one admittedly such as must, with but the scantest further reprieve, -dispose of him; whereas doubts were deep, as Mr. Gaw at least -entertained them, as to whether the damage he supposed his own just -resentment to have inflicted when propriety and opportunity combined to -inspire him was amenable even to nursing the most expert or to -medication the most subtle. These mysteries of calculation were of -course impenetrable to Gray during the moments at which we see him so -almost indescribably exposed at once and reinforced; but the effect of -the sharper and sharper sense as of a spring pressed by his companion -was that a _whole_ consciousness suddenly welled up in him and that -within a few more seconds he had become aware of a need absolutely -adverse to any trap that might be laid for his candour. He could as -little have then said why as he could vividly have phrased it under the -knowledge to come, but that his mute interlocutor desired somehow their -association in a judgment of what his uncle was "worth," a judgment from -which a comparatively conceited nephew might receive an incidental -lesson, played through him as a certitude and produced quite another -inclination. That recognition of the pleasant on which he had been -floating affirmed itself as in the very face of so embodied a pretension -to affirm the direct opposite, to thrust up at him in fine a horrid -contradiction--a contradiction which he next heard himself take, after -the happiest fashion, the straightest way to rebut. - -"I'm sure you'll be glad to know that I seem to be doing my uncle a -tremendous lot of good. They tell me I'm really bringing him round"--and -Graham smiled down at little blanched Mr. Gaw. "I don't despair at all -of his getting much better." - -It was on this that for the first time Mr. Gaw became articulate. -"Better----?" he strangely quavered, and as if his very eyes questioned -such conscious flippancy. - -"Why yes--through cheering him up. He takes, I gather," Gray went on, -"as much pleasure as I do----!" His assurance, however, had within the -minute dropped a little--the effect of it might really reach, he -apprehended, beyond his idea. The old man had been odd enough, but now -of a sudden he looked sick, and that one couldn't desire. - -"'Pleasure'----?" he was nevertheless able to echo; while it struck Gray -that no sound so weak had ever been so sharp, or none so sharp ever so -weak. "Pleasure in dying----?" Mr. Gaw asked in this flatness of doubt. - -"But my dear sir," said Gray, his impulse to be jaunty still -nevertheless holding out a little, "but, my dear sir, if, as it strikes -me, he isn't dying----?" - -"Oh twaddle!" snapped Mr. Gaw with the emphasis of his glare--shifted a -moment, Gray next saw, to a new object in range. Gray felt himself even -before turning for it rejoined by Miss Mumby, who, rounding the corner -of the house, had paused as in presence of an odd conjunction; not made -the less odd moreover by Mr. Gaw's instant appeal to her. "You think he -ain't then going to----?" - -He had to leave it at that, but Miss Mumby supplied, with the loudest -confidence, what appeared to be wanted. "He ain't going to get better? -Oh we hope so!" she declared to Graham's delight. - -It helped him to contribute in his own way. "Mr. Gaw's surprise seems -for his holding out!" - -"Oh I guess he'll hold out," Miss Mumby was pleased to say. - -"Then if he ain't dying what's the fuss about?" Mr. Gaw wanted to know. - -"Why there ain't any fuss--but what you seem to make," Miss Mumby could -quite assure him. - -"Oh well, if you answer for it----!" He got up on this, though with an -alertness that, to Gray's sense, didn't work quite truly, and stood an -instant looking from one of his companions to the other, while our young -man's eyes, for their part, put a question to Miss Mumby's--a question -which, articulated, would have had the sense of "What on earth's the -matter with him?" There seemed no knowing how Mr. Gaw would take -things--as Miss Mumby, for that matter, appeared also at once to -reflect. - -"We're sure enough not to want to have you sick too," she declared -indeed with more cheer than apprehension; to which she added, however, -to cover all the ground, "You just leave Mr. Betterman to us and take -care of yourself. We never say die and we won't have you say it--either -about him or anyone else, Mr. Gaw." - -This gentleman, so addressed, straightened and cleared himself in such a -manner as to show that he saw, for the moment, Miss Mumby's point; which -he then, a wondrous small concentration of studied blankness--studied, -that is, his companions were afterwards both to show they had -felt--commemorated his appreciation of in a tiny, yet triumphant, "Well, -that's all right!" - -"It ain't so right but what I'm going to see you home," Miss Mumby -returned with authority; adding, however, for Graham's benefit, that she -had come down to tell him his uncle was now ready. "You just go right -up--you'll find Miss Goodenough there. And you'll see for yourself," she -said, "how fresh he is!" - -"Thanks--that will be beautiful!" Gray brightly responded; but with his -eyes on Mr. Gaw, whom of a sudden, somehow, he didn't like to leave. - -It at any rate determined on the little man's part a surprised inquiry. -"Then you haven't seen him yet--with your grand account of him?" - -"No--but the account," Gray smiled, "has an authority beyond mine. -Besides," he kept on after this gallant reference, "I feel what I shall -do for him." - -"Oh they'll have great times!"--Miss Mumby, with an arm at the old man's -service, bravely guaranteed it. But she also admonished Graham: "Don't -keep him waiting, and mind what Miss Goodenough tells you! So now, Mr. -Gaw--you're to mind _me!_" she concluded; while this subject of her more -extemporised attention so far complied as slowly to face with her in the -direction of the other house. Gray wondered about him, but immensely -trusted Miss Mumby, and only watched till he saw them step off together -to the lawn, Mr. Gaw independent of support, with something in his -consciously stiffened even if not painfully assumed little air, as noted -thus from behind, that quite warranted his protectress. Seen that way, -yes, he was a tremendous little person; and Gray, excited, immensely -readvised and turning accordingly to his own business, felt the assault -of impressions fairly shake him as he went--shake him though it -apparently seemed most capable of doing but to the effect of hilarity. - - - - -II - - -Whether or no by its so different appearance from that of Mr. Gaw, the -figure propped on pillows in the vast cool room and lighted in such a -way that the clear deepening west seemed to flush toward it, through a -wide high window, in the interest of its full effect, impressed our -young man as massive and expansive, as of a beautiful bland dignity -indeed--though emulating Rosanna's relative, he was at first to gather, -by a perfect readiness to stare rather than speak. Miss Goodenough had -hovered a little, for full assurance, but then had thrown off with a -_timbre_ of voice never yet used for Gray's own ear in any sick room, -"Well, I guess you won't come to blows!" and had left them face to -face--besides leaving the air quickened by the freedom of her humour. -They were face to face for the time across an interval which, to do her -justice, she had not taken upon herself to deal with directly; this in -spite of Gray's apprehension at the end of a minute that she might, by -the touch of her hand or the pitch of her spirit, push him further -forward than he had immediately judged decent to advance. He had stopped -at a certain distance from the great grave bed, stopped really for -consideration and deference, or through the instinct of submitting -himself first of all to approval, or at least to encouragement; the -space, not great enough for reluctance and not small enough for -presumption, showed him ready to obey any sign his uncle should make. -Mr. Betterman struck him, in this high quietude of contemplation, much -less as formidable than as mildly and touchingly august; he had not -supposed him, he became suddenly aware, so great a person--a presence -like that of some weary veteran of affairs, one of the admittedly -eminent whose last words would be expected to figure in history. The -large fair face, rather square than heavy, was neither clouded nor -ravaged, but finely serene; the silver-coloured hair seemed to bind the -broad high brow as with a band of splendid silk, while the eyes rested -on Gray with an air of acceptance beyond attestation by the mere play of -cheer or the comparative gloom of relief. - -"Ah le beau type, le beau type!" was during these instants the visitor's -inward comment breaking into one of the strange tongues that experience -had appointed him privately to use, in many a case, for the -appropriation of aspects and appearances. It was not till afterwards -that he happened to learn how his uncle had been capable, two or three -hours before seeing him, of offering cheek and chin to the deft -ministration of a barber, a fact highly illuminating, though by that -time the gathered lights were thick. What the patient owed on the spot -to the sacrifice, he easily made out, was that look as of the last -refinement of preparation, that positive splendour of the immaculate, -which was really, on one's taking it all in, but part of an earnest -recognition of his guest's own dignity. The grave beauty of the personal -presence, the vague anticipation as of something that might go on to be -commemorated for its example, the great pure fragrant room, bathed in -the tempered glow of the afternoon's end, the general lucidity and -tranquillity and security of the whole presented case, begot in fine, on -our young friend's part, an extraordinary sense that as he himself was -important enough to be on show, so these peculiar perfections that met -him were but so many virtual honours rendered and signs of the high -level to which he had mounted. On show, yes--that was it, and more -wonderfully than could be said: Gray was sure after a little of how -right he was to stand off as yet in any interest of his own significance -that might be involved. There was clearly something his uncle so wanted -him to be that he should run no possible danger of being it to excess, -and that if he might only there and then grasp it he would ask but to -proceed, for decency's sake, according to his lights: just as so short a -time before a like force of suggestion had played upon him from Mr. -Gaw--each of these appeals clothing him in its own way with such an -oddity of pertinence, such a bristling set of attributes. This wait of -the parties to the present one for articulate expression, on either -side, of whatever it was that might most concern them together, promised -also to last as the tension had lasted down on the verandah, and would -perhaps indeed have drawn itself further out if Gray hadn't broken where -he stood into a cry of admiration--since it could scarcely be called -less--that blew to the winds every fear of overstepping. - -"It's really worth one's coming so far, uncle, if you don't mind my -saying so--it's really worth a great pilgrimage to see anything so -splendid." - -The old man heard, clearly, as by some process that was still deeply -active; and then after a pause that represented, Gray was sure, no -failure at all of perception, but only the wide embrace of a possibility -of pleasure, sounded bravely back: "Does it come up to what you've -seen?" - -It was Gray rather who was for a moment mystified--though only to -further spontaneity when he had caught the sense of the question. "Oh, -you come up to everything--by which I mean, if I may, that nothing comes -up to _you!_ I mean, if I may," he smiled, "that you yourself, uncle, -affect me as the biggest and most native American impression that I can -possibly be exposed to." - -"Well," said Mr. Betterman, and again as with a fond deliberation, "what -I'm going to like, I see, is to listen to the way you talk. That," he -added with his soft distinctness, a singleness of note somehow for the -many things meant, "that, I guess, is about what I most wanted you to -come for. Unless it be to look at you too. I like to look right at you." - -"Well," Gray harmoniously laughed again, "if even that can give you -pleasure----!" He stood as for inspection, easily awkward, pleasantly -loose, holding up his head as if to make the most of no great stature. -"I've never been so sorry that there isn't more of me." - -The fine old eyes on the pillow kept steadily taking him in; he could -quite see that he happened to be, as he might have called it, right; and -though he had never felt himself, within his years, extraordinarily or -excitingly wrong, so that this felicity might have turned rather flat -for him, there was still matter for emotion, for the immediate throb and -thrill, in finding success so crown him. He had been spared, thank -goodness, any positive shame, but had never known his brow brushed or so -much as tickled by the laurel or the bay. "Does it mean," he might have -murmured to himself, "the strangest shift of standards?"--but his uncle -had meanwhile spoken. "Well, there's all of you I'm going to want. And -there must be more of you than I see. Because you _are_ different," Mr. -Betterman considered. - -"But different from what?" Truly was Gray interested to know. - -It took Mr. Betterman a moment to say, but he seemed to convey that it -might have been guessed. "From what you'd have been if you had come." - -The young man was indeed drawn in. "If I had come years ago? Well, -perhaps," he so far happily agreed--"for I've often thought of that -myself. Only, you see," he laughed, "I'm different from _that_ too. I -mean from what I was when I didn't come." - -Mr. Betterman looked at it quietly. "You're different in the sense that -you're older--and you seem to me rather older than I supposed. All the -better, all the better," he continued to make out. "You're the same -person I didn't tempt, the same person I _couldn't_--that time when I -tried. I see you are, I see _what_ you are." - -"You see terribly much, sir, for the few minutes!" smiled Gray. - -"Oh when I _want_ to see----!" the old man comfortably enough sighed. "I -take you in, I take you in; though I grant that I don't quite see how -you can understand. Still," he pursued, "there are things for you to -tell me. You're different from _anything_, and if we had time for -particulars I should like to know a little how you've kept so. I was -afraid you wouldn't turn out perhaps so thoroughly the sort of thing I -liked to think--for I hadn't much more to go upon than what _she_ said, -you know. However," Mr. Betterman wound up as with due comfort, "it's by -what she says that I've gone--and I want her to know that I don't feel -fooled." - -If Gray's wonderment could have been said to rest anywhere, hour after -hour, long enough to be detected in the act, the detaining question -would have been more than any other perhaps that of whether Miss Gaw -would "come up." Now that she did so however, in this quiet way, it had -no strangeness that his being at once glad couldn't make but a mouthful -of; and the recent interest of what she had lately written to him was as -nothing to the interest of her becoming personally his uncle's theme. -With which, at the same time, it was pleasanter to him than anything -else to speak of her himself. "If you allude to Rosanna Gaw you'll no -doubt understand how tremendously I want to see her." - -The sick man waited a little--but not, it quite seemed, from lack of -understanding. "She wants tremendously to see you, Graham. You might -know that of course from her going to work so." Then again he gathered -his thoughts and again after a little went on. "She had a good idea, and -I love her for it; but I'm afraid my own hasn't been so very much to -give _her_ the satisfaction. I've wanted it myself, and--well, here I am -getting it from you. Yes," he kept up, his eyes never moving from his -nephew, "you couldn't give me more if you had tried, from so far back, -on purpose. But I can't tell you half!" He exhaled a long breath--he was -a little spent. "You tell _me._ You tell _me._" - -"I'm tiring you, sir," Gray said. - -"Not by letting me see--you'd only tire me if you didn't." Then for the -first time his eyes glanced about. "Haven't they put a place for you to -sit? Perhaps they knew," he suggested, while Gray reached out for a -chair, "perhaps they knew just how I'd want to see you. There seems -nothing they don't know," he contentedly threw off again. - -Gray had his chair before him, his hands on the back tilting it a -little. "They're extraordinary. I've never seen anything like them. They -help me tremendously," he cheerfully confessed. - -Mr. Betterman, at this, seemed to wonder. "Why, have you difficulties?" - -"Well," said Gray, still with his chair, "you say I'm different--if you -mean it for my being alien from what I feel surrounding me. But if you -knew how funny all _that_ seems to me," he laughed, "you'd understand -that I clutch at protection." - -"'Funny'?"--his host was clearly interested, without offence, in the -term. - -"Well," Gray explained, gently shaking his chair-back, "when one simply -sees that nothing of one's former experience serves, and that one -doesn't know anything about anything----!" - -More than ever at this his uncle's look might have covered him. -"Anything round here--no! That's it, that's it," the old man blandly -repeated. "That's just the way--I mean the way I hoped. _She_ knows you -don't know--and doesn't want you to either. But put down your chair," he -said; and then after, when Gray, instantly and delicately complying, had -placed the precious article with every precaution back where it had -stood: "Sit down here on the bed. There's margin." - -"Yes," smiled Gray, doing with all consideration as he was told, "you -don't seem anywhere very much _à l'étroit._" - -"I presume," his uncle returned, "you know French thoroughly." - -Gray confessed to the complication. "Of course when one has heard it -almost from the cradle----!" - -"And the other tongues too?" - -He seemed to wonder if, for his advantage, he mightn't deny them. "Oh a -couple of others. In the countries there they come easy." - -"Well, they wouldn't have come easy here--and I guess nothing else -would; I mean of the things _we_ principally grow. And I won't have you -tell me," Mr. Betterman said, "that if you had taken that old chance -they might have done so. We don't know anything about it, and at any -rate it would have spoiled you. I mean for what you _are._" - -"Oh," returned Gray, on the bed, but pressing lightly, "oh what I -'am'----!" - -"My point isn't so much for what you are as for what you're not. So I -won't have anything else; I mean I won't have you but as I want you," -his host explained. "I want you just this way." - -With which, while the young man kept his arms folded and his hands -tucked away as for compression of his personal extent and weight, they -exchanged, at their close range, the most lingering look yet. -Extraordinary to him, in the gravity of this relation, his deeper -impression of something beautiful and spreadingly clear--very much as if -the wide window and the quiet clean sea and the finer sunset light had -all had, for assistance and benediction, their word to say to it. They -seemed to combine most to remark together "What an exquisite person is -your uncle!" This is what he had for the minute the sense of taking from -them, and the expression of his assent to it was in the tone of his next -rejoinder. "If I could only know what it is you'd most like----!" - -"Never mind what I most like--only tell me, only tell me," his companion -again said: "You can't say anything that won't absolutely suit me; in -fact I defy you to, though you mayn't at all see why that's the case. -I've got you--without a flaw. So!" Mr. Betterman triumphantly breathed. -Gray's sense was by this time of his being examined and appraised as -never in his life before--very much as in the exposed state of an -important "piece," an object of value picked, for finer estimation, from -under containing glass. There was nothing then but to face it, unless -perhaps also to take a certain comfort in his being, as he might feel, -practically clean and in condition. That such an hour had its meaning, -and that the meaning might be great for him, this of course surged -softly in, more and more, from every point of the circle that held him; -but with the consciousness making also more at each moment for an -uplifting, a fantastic freedom, a sort of sublime simplification, in -which nothing seemed to depend on him or to have at any time so -depended. He was _really_ face to face thus with bright immensities, and -the handsome old presence from which, after a further moment, a hand had -reached forth a little to take his own, guaranteed by the quietest of -gestures at once their truth and the irrelevance, as he could only feel -it, of their scale. Cool and not weak, to his responsive grasp, this -retaining force, to which strength was added by what next came. "It's -not for myself, it's not for myself--I mean your being as I say. What do -I matter now except to have recognised it? No, Graham--it's in another -connection." Was the connection then with Rosanna? Graham had time to -wonder, and even to think what a big thing this might make of it, before -his uncle brought out: "It's for the world." - -"The world?"--Gray's vagueness again reigned. - -"Well, our great public." - -"Oh your great public----!" - -The exclamation, the cry of alarm, even if also of amusement in face of -such a connection as that, quickened for an instant the good touch of -the cool hand. "That's the way I like you to sound. It's the way she -told me you would--I mean that would be natural to you. And it's -precisely why--being the awful great public it is--we require the -difference that you'll make. So you see you're for our people." - -Poor Graham's eyes widened. "I shall make a difference for your -people----?" - -But his uncle serenely went on. "Don't think you know them yet, or what -it's like over here at all. You may think so and feel you're prepared. -But you don't know till you've had the whole thing up against you." - -"May I ask, sir," Gray smiled, "what you're talking about?" - -His host met his eyes on it, but let it drop. "You'll see soon enough -for yourself. Don't mind what I say. That isn't the thing for you -now--it's all done. Only be true," said Mr. Betterman. "You _are_ and, -as I've said, can't help yourself." With which he relapsed again to one -of his good conclusions. "And after all don't mind the public either." - -"Oh," returned Gray, "all great publics are awful." - -"Ah no no--I won't have that. Perhaps they may be, but the trouble we're -concerned with is about ours--and about some other things too." Gray -felt in the hand's tenure a small emphasizing lift of the arm, while the -head moved a little as off toward the world they spoke of--which -amounted for our young man, however, but to a glance at all the outside -harmony and prosperity, bathed as these now seemed in the colour of the -flushed sky. Absurd altogether that he should be in any way enlisted -against such things. His entertainer, all the same, continued to see the -reference and to point it. "The enormous preponderance of money. Money -is their life." - -"But surely even here it isn't everyone who has it. Also," he freely -laughed, "isn't it a good thing to have?" - -"A very good thing indeed." Then his uncle waited as in the longest -inspection yet. "But you don't know anything about it." - -"Not about large sums," Gray cheerfully admitted. - -"I mean it has never been near you. That sticks out of you--the way it -hasn't. I knew it couldn't have been--and then she told me she knew. I -see you're a blank--and nobody here's a blank, not a creature I've ever -touched. That's what I've wanted," the old man went on--"a perfect clean -blank. I don't mean there aren't heaps of them that are damned fools, -just as there are heaps of others, bigger heaps probably, that are -damned knaves; except that mostly the knave is the biggest fool. But -those are not blanks; they're full of the poison--without a blest other -idea. Now you're the blank I want, if you follow--and yet you're not the -blatant ass." - -"I'm not sure I quite follow," Gray laughed, "but I'm very much -obliged." - -"Have you ever done three cents' worth of business?" Mr. Betterman -judicially asked. - -It helped our young man to some ease of delay. "Well, I'm afraid I can't -claim to have had much business to do. Also you're wrong, sir," he -added, "about my not being a blatant ass. Oh please understand that I am -a blatant ass. Let there be no mistake about that," Gray touchingly -pleaded. - -"Yes--but not on the subject of anything but business." - -"Well--no doubt on the subject of business more than on any other." - -Still the good eyes rested. "Tell me one thing, other than that, for -which you haven't at least some intelligence." - -"Oh sir, there are no end of things, and it's odd one should have to -prove that--though it would take me long. But I allow there's nothing I -understand so little and like so little as the mystery of the 'market' -and the hustle of any sort." - -"You utterly loathe and abhor the hustle! That's what I blissfully want -of you," said Mr. Betterman. - -"You ask of me the declaration----?" Gray considered. "But how can I -_know_, don't you see?--when I _am_ such a blank, when I've never had -three cents' worth of business, as you say, to transact?" - -"The people who don't loathe it are always finding it somehow to do, -even if preposterously for the most part, and dishonestly. Your case," -Mr. Betterman reasoned, "is that you haven't a grain of the imagination -of any such interest. If you _had_ had," he wound up, "it would have -stirred in you that first time." - -Gray followed, as his kinsman called it, enough to be able to turn his -memory a moment on this. "Yes, I think my imagination, small scrap of a -thing as it was, did work then somehow against you." - -"Which was exactly against business"--the old man easily made the point. -"I was business. I've _been_ business and nothing else in the world. I'm -business at this moment still--because I can't be anything else. I mean -I've such a head for it. So don't think you can put it on me that I -haven't thought out what I'm doing to good purpose. I do what I do but -too abominably well." With which he weakened for the first time to a -faint smile. "It's none of your affair." - -"Isn't it a little my affair," Gray as genially objected, "to be more -touched than I can express by your attention to me--as well (if you'll -let me say so) as rather astonished at it?" And then while his host took -this without response, only engaged as to more entire repletion in the -steady measure of him, he added further, even though aware in sounding -it of the complacency or fatuity, of the particular absurdity, his -question might have seemed to embody: "What in the world can I want but -to meet you in every way?" His perception at last was full, the great -strange sense of everything smote his eyes; so that without the force of -his effort at the most general amenity possible his lids and his young -lips might have convulsively closed. Even for his own ear "What indeed?" -was thus the ironic implication--which he felt himself quite grimace to -show he should have understood somebody else's temptation to make. Here, -however, where his uncle's smile might pertinently have broadened, the -graver blandness settled again, leaving him in face of it but the more -awkwardly assured. He felt as if he couldn't say enough to abate the -ugliness of that--and perhaps it even did come out to the fact of beauty -that no profession of the decent could appear not to coincide with the -very candour of the greedy. "I'm prepared for anything, yes--in the way -of a huge inheritance": he didn't care if it _might_ sound like that -when he next went on, since what could he do but just melt to the whole -benignity? "If I only understood what it is I can best do for you." - -"Do? The question isn't of your doing, but simply of your being." - -Gray cast about. "But don't they come to the same thing?" - -"Well, I guess that for you they'll have to. Yes, sir," Gray -answered--"but suppose I should say 'Don't keep insisting so on me'?" -Then he had a romantic flight which was at the same time, for that -moment at least, a sincere one. "I don't know that I came out so very -much for myself." - -"Well, if you didn't it only shows the more what you are"--Mr. Betterman -made the point promptly. "It shows you've got the kind of imagination -that has nothing to do with the kind I so perfectly see you haven't. And -if you don't do things for yourself," he went on, "you'll be doing them -the more for just what I say." With which too, as Graham but pleadingly -gaped: "You'll be doing them for everyone else--that is finding it -impossible to do what they do. From the moment they notice that--well, -it will be what I want. We know, we know," he remarked further and as if -this quite settled it. - -Any ambiguity in his "we" after an instant cleared up; he was to have -alluded but ever so sparely, through all this scene, to Rosanna Gaw, but -he alluded now, and again it had for Gray an amount of reference that -was like a great sum of items in a bill imperfectly scanned. None the -less it left him desiring still more clearness. His whole soul centred -at this point in the need not to have contributed by some confused -accommodation to a strange theory of his future. Strange he could but -feel this one to be, however simply, that is on however large and vague -an assumption, it might suit others, amid their fathomless resources and -their luxuries or perversities of waste, to see it. He wouldn't be -smothered in the vague, whatever happened, and had now the gasp and -upward shake of the head of a man in too deep water. "What I want to -insist on," he broke out with it, "is that I mustn't consent to any -exaggeration in the interest of your, or of any other, sublime view of -me, view of my capacity of any sort. There's no sublime view of me to be -taken that consorts in the least with any truth; and I should be a very -poor creature if I didn't here and now assure you that no proof in the -world exists, or has for a moment existed, of my being capable of -anything whatever." - -He might have supposed himself for a little to have produced something -of the effect that would naturally attach to a due vividness in this -truth--for didn't his uncle now look at him just a shade harder, before -the fixed eyes closed, indeed, as under a pressure to which they had at -last really to yield? They closed, and the old white face was for the -couple of minutes so thoroughly still without them that a slight -uneasiness quickened him, and it would have taken but another moment to -make a slight sound, which he had to turn his head for the explanation -of, reach him as the response to an appeal. The door of the room, -opening gently, had closed again behind Miss Goodenough, who came -forward softly, but with more gravity, Gray thought, than he had -previously seen her show. Still in his place and conscious of the -undiminished freshness of her invalid's manual emphasis, he looked at -her for some opinion as to the latter's appearance, or to the move on -his own part next indicated; during which time her judgment itself, -considering Mr. Betterman, a trifle heavily waited. Gray's doubt, before -the stillness which had followed so great even if so undiscourageable an -effort, moved him to some play of disengagement; whereupon he knew -himself again checked, and there, once more, the fine old eyes rested on -him. "I'm afraid I've tired him out," he could but say to the nurse, who -made the motion to feel her patient's pulse without the effect of his -releasing his visitor. Gray's hand was retained still, but his kinsman's -eyes and next words were directed to Miss Goodenough. - -"It's all right--even more so than I told you it was going to be." - -"Why of course it's all right--you look too sweet together!" she -pronounced. - -"But I mean I've got him; I mean I make him squirm"--which words had -somehow the richest gravity of any yet; "but all it does for his -resistance is that he squirms right _to_ me." - -"Oh we won't have any resistance!" Miss Goodenough freely declared. -"Though for all the fight you've got in you still----!" she in fine -altogether backed Mr. Betterman. - -He covered his nephew again as for a final or crushing appraisement, -then going on for Miss Goodenough's benefit: "He tried something a -minute ago to settle me, but I wish you could just have heard how he -expressed himself." - -"It _is_ a pleasure to hear him--when he's good!" She laughed with a -shade of impatience. - -"He's never so good as when he wants to be bad. So there you are, sir!" -the old man said. "You're like the princess in the fairy-tale; you've -only to open your mouth----" - -"And the pearls and diamonds pop out!"--Miss Goodenough, for her -patient's relief, completed his meaning. "So don't try for toads and -snakes!" she promptly went on to Gray. To which she added with still -more point: "And now you must go." - -"Not one little minute more?" His uncle still held him. - -"Not one, sir!" Miss Goodenough decided. - -"It isn't to talk," the old man explained. "I like just to look at him." - -"So do I," said Miss Goodenough; "but we can't always do everything we -like." - -"No then, Graham--remember that. You'd like to have persuaded me that I -don't know what I mean. But you must understand you haven't." - -His hand had loosened, and Gray got up, turning a face now flushed and a -little disordered from one of them to the other. "I don't pretend to -understand anything!" - -It turned his uncle to their companion. "Isn't he fine?" - -"Of course he's fine," said Miss Goodenough; "but you've quite worn him -out." - -"Have I quite worn you out?" Mr. Betterman calmly inquired. - -As if indeed finished, each thumb now in a pocket of his trousers, the -young man dimly smiled. "I think you must have--quite." - -"Well, let Miss Mumby look after you. He'll find her there?" his uncle -asked of her colleague. And then as the latter showed at this her first -indecision, "Isn't she somewhere round?" he demanded. - -Miss Goodenough had wavered, but as if it really mattered for the friend -there present she responsibly concluded. "Well, no--just for a while." -And she appealed to Gray's indulgence. "She's had to go to Mr. Gaw." - -"Why, is Mr. Gaw sick?" Mr. Betterman asked with detachment. - -"That's what we shall know when she comes back. She'll come back all -right," she continued for Gray's encouragement. - -He met it with proper interest. "I'm sure I hope so!" - -"Well, don't be too sure!" his uncle judiciously said. - -"Oh he has only borrowed her." Miss Goodenough smoothed it down even as -she smoothed Mr. Betterman's sheet, while with the same movement of her -head she wafted Gray to the door. - -"Mr. Gaw," her patient returned, "has borrowed from me before. Mr. Gaw, -Graham----!" - -"Yes sir?" said Gray with the door ajar and his hand on the knob. - -The fine old presence on the pillow had faltered before expression; then -it appeared rather sighingly and finally to give the question up. "Well, -Mr. Gaw's an abyss." - -Gray found himself suddenly responsive. "_Isn't_ he, the strange man?" - -"The strange man--that's it." This summary description sufficed now to -Mr. Betterman's achieved indifference. "But you've seen him?" - -"Just for an instant." - -"And that was enough?" - -"Well, I don't know." Gray himself gave it up. "You're _all_ so fiercely -interesting!" - -"I think Rosanna's lovely!" Miss Good enough contributed, to all -appearance as an attenuation, while she tucked their companion in. - -"Oh Miss Gaw's quite another matter," our young man still paused long -enough to reply. - -"Well, I don't mean but what she's interesting in her way too," Miss -Goodenough's conscience prompted. - -"Oh he knows all about her. That's all right," Mr. Betterman remarked -for his nurse's benefit. - -"Why of course I know it," this lady candidly answered. "Miss Mumby and -I have had to feel that. I guess he'll want to send her his love," she -continued across to Gray. - -"To Miss Mumby?" asked Gray, his general bewilderment having moments of -aggravation. - -"Why no--_she's_ sure of his affection. To Miss Gaw. Don't you want," -she inquired of her patient, "to send your love to that poor anxious -girl?" - -"Is she anxious?" Gray returned in advance of his uncle. - -Miss Goodenough hung fire but a moment. "Well, I guess I'd be in her -place. But you'll see. - -"Then," said Gray to his host, "if Rosanna's in trouble I'll go to her -at once." - -The old man, at this, once more delivered himself. "She won't be in -trouble--any more than I am. But tell her--tell her----!" - -"Yes, sir"--Gray had again to wait. - -But Miss Goodenough now would have no more of it. "Tell her that _we're_ -about as fresh as we can live!"--the wave of her hand accompanying which -Gray could take at last for his dismissal. - - - - -III - - -It was nevertheless not at once that he sought out the way to find his -old friend; other questions than that of at once seeing her hummed for -the next half-hour about his ears--an interval spent by him in still -further contemplative motion within his uncle's grounds. He strolled and -stopped again and stared before him without seeing; he came and went and -sat down on benches and low rocky ledges only to get up and pace afresh; -he lighted cigarettes but to smoke them a quarter out and then chuck -them away to light others. He said to himself that he was enormously -agitated, agitated as never in his life before, but that, strangely -enough, he disliked that condition far less than the menace of it would -have made him suppose. He didn't, however, like it enough to say to -himself "This is happiness!"--as could scarcely have failed if the kind -of effect on his nerves had really consorted with the kind of advantage -that he was to understand his interview with his uncle to have promised -him; so far, that is, as he was yet to understand anything. His -after-sense of the scene expanded rather than settled, became an -impression of one of those great insistent bounties that are not of this -troubled world; the anomaly expressing itself in such beauty and -dignity, with all its elements conspiring together, as would have done -honour to a great page of literary, of musical or pictorial art. The -huge grace of the matter ought somehow to have left him simply -captivated--so at least, all wondering, he hung about there to reflect; -but excess of harmony might apparently work like excess of discord, -might practically be a negation of the idea of the quiet life. Ignoble -quiet he had never asked for--this he could now with assurance remember; -but something in the pitch of his uncle's guarantee of big things, -whatever they were, which should at the same time be pleasant things, -seemed to make him an accomplice in some boundless presumption. In what -light had he ever seen himself that made it proper the pleasant should -be so big for him or the big so pleasant? Suddenly, as he looked at his -watch and saw how the time had passed--time already, didn't it seem, of -his rather standing off and quaking?--it occurred to him that the last -thing he had proposed to himself in the whole connection was to be -either publicly or privately afraid; in the act of noting which he -became aware again of Miss Mumby, who, having come out of the house -apparently to approach him, was now at no great distance. She rose -before him the next minute as in fuller possession than ever of his -fate, and yet with no accretion of reserve in her own pleasure at this. - -"What I want you to do is just to go over to Miss Gaw." - -"It's just what _I_ should like, thank you--and perhaps you'll be so -good as to show me the way." He wasn't quite succeeding in not being -afraid--that a moment later came to him; since if this extraordinary -woman was in touch with his destiny what did such words on his own part -represent but the impulse to cling to her and, as who should say, keep -on her right side? His uncle had spoken to him of Rosanna as -protective--and what better warrant for such a truth than that here was -he thankful on the spot even for the countenance of a person speaking -apparently in her name? All of which was queer enough, verily--since it -came to the sense of his clutching for immediate light, through the now -gathered dusk, at the surge of guiding petticoats, the charity of women -more or less strange. Miss Mumby at once took charge of him, and he -learnt more things still before they had proceeded far. One of these -truths, though doubtless the most superficial, was that Miss Gaw -proposed he should dine with her just as he was--he himself recognising -that with her father suddenly and to all appearance gravely ill it was -no time for vain forms. Wasn't the rather odd thing, none the less, that -the crisis should have suggested her desiring company?--being as it was -so acute that the doctor, Doctor Hatch himself, would even now have -arrived with a nurse, both of which pair of ears Miss Mumby required for -her report of those symptoms in their new patient that had appealed to -her practised eye an hour before. Interesting enough withal was her -explanation to Gray of what she had noted on Mr. Gaw's part as a -consequence of her joining them at that moment under Mr. Betterman's -roof; all the more that he himself had then wondered and -surmised--struck as he was with the effect on the poor man's nerves of -their visitor's announcement that her prime patient had brightened. Mr. -Gaw but too truly, our young man now learned, had taken that news -ill--as, given the state of his heart, any strong shock might determine -a bad aggravation. Such a shock Miss Mumby had, to her lively regret, -administered, though she called Gray's attention to the prompt and -intelligent action of her remorse. Feeling at once responsible she had -taken their extraordinary little subject in charge--with every care -indeed not to alarm him; to the point that, on his absolute refusal to -let her go home with him and his arresting a hack, on the public road, -which happened to come into view empty, the two had entered the vehicle -and she had not lost sight of him till, his earnest call upon his -daughter at Mrs. Bradham's achieved, he had been in effect restored to -his own house. His daughter, who lived with her eyes on his liability to -lapses, was now watching with him, and was well aware, Miss Mumby -averred, of what the crisis might mean; as to whose own due presence of -mind in the connection indeed how could there be better proof than this -present lucidity of her appeal to Mr. Betterman's guest on such a matter -as her prompt thought for sparing him delay? - -"If she didn't want you to wait to dress, it can only be, I guess, to -make sure of seeing you before anything happens," his guide was at no -loss to remark; "and if she _can_ mention dinner while the old gentleman -is--well, _as_ he is--it shows she's not too beside herself to feel that -you'll at any rate want yours." - -"Oh for mercy's sake don't talk of dinner!" Gray pulled up under the -influence of these revelations quite impatiently to request. "That's not -what I'm most thinking of, I beg you to believe, in the midst of such -prodigies and portents." They had crossed the small stretch of road -which separated Mr. Betterman's gate from that of the residence they -were addressed to; and now, within the grounds of this latter, which -loomed there, through vague boskages, with an effect of windows -numerously and precipitately lighted, the forces of our young friend's -consciousness were all in vibration at once. "My wondrous uncle, I don't -mind telling you, since you're so kind to me, has given me more -extraordinary things to think of than I see myself prepared in any way -to do justice to; and if I'm further to understand you that we have -between us, you and I, destroyed this valuable life, I leave you to -judge whether what we may have to face in consequence finds me eager." - -"How do you know it's such a valuable life?" Miss Mumby surprisingly -rejoined; sinking that question, however, in a livelier interest, before -his surprise could express itself. "If she has sent me for you it's -because she knows what she's about, and because I also know what I -am--so that, wanting you myself so much to come, I guess I'd have gone -over for you on my own responsibility. Why, Mr. Fielder, your place is -right here _by_ her at such a time as this, and if you don't already -realise it I'm very glad I've helped you." - -Such was the consecration under which, but a few minutes later, Gray -found himself turning about in the lamp-lit saloon of the Gaws very much -as he had a few hours before revolved at the other house. Miss Mumby had -introduced him into this apartment straight from the terrace to which, -in the warm air, a long window or two stood open, and then had left him -with the assurance that matters upstairs would now be in shape for their -friend to join him at once. It was perhaps because he had rather -inevitably expected matters upstairs--and this in spite of his late -companion's warning word--to assault him in some fulness with Miss Gaw's -appearance at the door, that a certain failure of any such effect when -she did appear had for him a force, even if it was hardly yet to be -called a sense, beyond any air of her advancing on the tide of pain. He -fairly took in, face to face with her, that what she first called for -was no rattle of sound, however considerately pitched, about the -question of her own fear; she had pulled no long face, she cared for no -dismal deference: she but stood there, after she had closed the door -with a backward push that took no account, in the hushed house, of some -possible resonance, she but stood there smiling in her mild extravagance -of majesty, smiling and smiling as he had seen women do as a preface to -bursting into tears. He was to remember afterwards how he had felt for -an instant that whatever he said or did would deprive her of resistance -to an inward pressure which was growing as by the sight of him, but that -she would thus break down much more under the crowned than under the -menaced moment--thanks to which appearance what could be stranger than -his inviting her to clap her hands? Still again was he later to recall -that these hands had been the moment after held in his own while he knew -himself smiling too and saying: "Well, well, well, what wonders and what -splendours!" and seeing that though there was even more of her in -presence than he had reckoned there was somehow less of her in time; as -if she had at once grown and grown and grown, grown in all sorts of ways -save the most natural one of growing visibly older. Such an oddity as -that made her another person a good deal more than her show of not -having left him behind by any break with their common youth could keep -her the same. - -These perceptions took of course but seconds, with yet another on their -heels, to the effect that she had already seen him, and seen him to some -fine sense of pleasure, as himself enormously different--arriving at -that clearness before they had done more than thus waver between the -"fun," all so natural, of their meeting as the frankest of friends and -the quite other intelligence of their being parties to a crisis. It was -to remain on record for him too, and however over-scored, that their -crisis, surging up for three or four minutes by its essential force, -suffered them to stand there, with irrelevant words and motions, very -much as if it were all theirs alone and nobody's else, nobody's more -important, on either side, than they were, and so take a brush from the -wing of personal romance. He let her hands go, and then, if he wasn't -mistaken, held them afresh a moment in repeated celebration, he -exchanged with her the commonest remarks and the flattest and the -easiest, so long as it wasn't speaking but seeing, and seeing more and -more, that mattered: they literally talked of his journey and his -arrival and of whether he had had a good voyage and wasn't tired; they -said "You sit here, won't you?" and "Shan't you be better there?"--they -said "Oh I'm all right!" and "Fancy it's happening after all like this!" -before there even faintly quavered the call of a deeper note. This was -really because the deep one, from minute to minute, was that acute hush -of her so clearly finding him not a bit what she might have built up. He -had grown and grown just as she had, certainly; only here he was for her -clothed in the right interest of it, not bare of that grace as he -fancied her guessing herself in his eyes, and with the conviction -sharply thrust upon him, beyond any humour he might have cultivated, -that he was going to be so right for her and so predetermined, whatever -he did and however he should react there under conditions incalculable, -that this would perhaps more overload his consciousness than ease it. It -could have been further taken for strange, had there been somebody so to -note it, that even when their first vaguenesses dropped what she really -at once made easiest for him was to tell her that _the_ wonderful thing -had come to pass, the thing she had whisked him over for--he put it to -her that way; that it had taken place in conditions too exquisite to be -believed, and that under the bewilderment produced by these she must -regard him as still staggering. - -"Then it's done, then it's done--as I knew it would be if he could but -see you." Flushed, but with her large fan held up so that scarce more -than her eyes, their lids drawn together in the same nearsighted way he -remembered, presented themselves over it, she fairly hunched her high -shoulders higher for emphasis of her success. The more it might have -embarrassed her to consider him without reserve the more she had this -relief, as he took it, of her natural, her helpful blinking; so that -what it came to really for her general advantage was that the fine -closing of the eyes, _the_ fine thing in her big face, but expressed -effective scrutiny. Below her in stature--as various other men, for that -matter, couldn't but be--he hardly came higher than her ear; and he for -the shade of an instant struck himself as a small boy, literally not of -man's estate, reporting, under some research, just to the amplest of -mothers. He had reported to Mr. Betterman, so far as intent candour in -him hadn't found itself distraught, and for the half hour had somehow -affronted the immeasurable; but that didn't at all prevent his now quick -sense of his never in his life having been so watched and waited upon by -the uncharted infinite, or so subject to its operation--since -infinities, at the rate he was sinking in, _could_ apparently operate, -and do it too without growing smaller for the purpose. He cast about, -not at all upright on the small pink satin sofa to which he had -unconsciously dropped; it was for _him_ clearly to grow bigger, as -everything about expressively smiled, smiled absolutely through the -shadow cast by doctors and nurses again, in suggestion of; which, -naturally, was what one would always want to do--but which any failure -of, he after certain moments perfectly felt, wouldn't convert to the -least difference for this friend. How could that have been more -established than by her neglect of his having presently said, out of his -particular need, that he would do anything in reason that was asked of -him, but that he fairly ached with the desire to understand----? She -blinked upon his ache to her own sufficiency, no doubt; but no further -balm dropped upon it for the moment than by her appearing to brood with -still deeper assurance, in her place and her posture, on the beauty of -the accomplished fact, the fact of her performed purpose and her freedom -now but to take care--yes, herself take care--for what would come of it. -She might understand that _he_ didn't--all the way as yet; but nothing -could be more in the line of the mild and mighty mother than her -treating that as a trifle. It attenuated a little perhaps, it just let -light into the dark warmth of her spreading possession of what she had -done, that when he had said, as a thing already ten times on his lips -and now quite having to come out, "I feel some big mistake about me -somehow at work, and want to stop it in time!" she met this with the -almost rude decision of "There's nothing you can stop now, Graham, for -your fate, or our situation, has the gained momentum of a rush that -began ever so far away and that has been growing and growing. It would -be too late even if we wanted to--and you can judge for yourself how -little that's my wish. So here we are, you see, to make the best of it." - -"When you talk of my 'fate,'" he allowed himself almost the amusement of -answering, "you freeze the current of my blood; but when you say 'our -situation,' and that we're in it together, that's a little better, and I -assure you that I shall not for a moment stay in anything, whatever it -may be, in which you're not close beside me. So there you are at any -rate--and I matter at least as much as this, whatever the mistake: that -I have hold of you as tight as ever you've been held in your life, and -that, whatever and _whatever_ the mistake, you've got to see me -through." - -"Well, I took my responsibility years ago, and things came of it"--so -she made reply; "and the other day I took this other, and now _this_ has -come of it, and that was what I wanted, and wasn't afraid of, and am not -afraid of now--like the fears that came to me after the Dresden time." -No more direct than that was her answer to his protest, and what she -subjoined still took as little account of it. "I rather lost them, those -old fears--little by little; but one of the things I most wanted the -other day was to see whether before you here they wouldn't wholly die -down. They're over, they're over," she repeated; "I knew three minutes -of you would do it--and not a ghost of them remains." - -"I can't be anything but glad that you shouldn't have fears--and it's -horrid to me to learn, I assure you," he said, "that I've ever been the -occasion of any. But the extent to which," he then frankly laughed, -"'three minutes' of me seems to be enough for people----!" - -He left it there, just throwing up his arms, passive again as he had -accepted his having to be in the other place; but conscious more and -more of the anomaly of her showing so markedly at such an hour a -preoccupation, and of the very intensest, that should not have her -father for its subject. Nothing could have more represented this than -her abruptly saying to him, without recognition of his point just made, -so far as it might have been a point: "If your impression of your uncle, -and of his looking so fine and being so able to talk to you, makes you -think he has any power really to pick up or to last, I want you to know -that you're wholly mistaken. It has kept him up," she went on, "and the -effect may continue a day or two more--it _will_, in fact, till certain -things are done. But then the flicker will have dropped--for he won't -want it not to. He'll feel all right. The extraordinary inspiration, the -borrowed force, will have spent itself--it will die down and go out, but -with no pain. There has been at no time much of that," she said, "and -now I'm positively assured there's none. It can't come back--nothing can -but the weakness. It's too lovely," she remarkably added--"so there -indeed and indeed we are." - -To take in these words was to be, after a fashion he couldn't have -expressed, on a basis of reality with her the very rarest and queerest; -so that, bristling as it did with penetrative points, her speech left -him scarce knowing for the instant which penetrated furthest. That she -made no more of anything he himself said than if she had just sniffed it -as a pale pink rose and then tossed it into the heap of his other sweet -futilities, such another heap as had seemed to grow up for him in his -uncle's room, this might have pressed sharpest hadn't something else, -not wholly overscored by what followed, perhaps pricked his -consciousness most. "'It,' you say, has kept him up? May I ask you what -'it' then may so wonderfully have been?" - -She had no more objection to say than she apparently had difficulty. -"Why, his having let me get at him. _That_ was to make the whole -difference." - -It was somehow as much in the note of their reality as anything could -well be; which was perhaps why he could but respond with "Oh I see!" and -remain lolling a little with a sense of flatness--a flatness moreover -exclusively his own. - -So without flatness of _her_ own she didn't even mind his; something in -her brushed quite above it while she observed next, as if it were the -most important thing that now occurred to her: "That of course was my -poor father's mistake." And then as Gray but stared: "I mean the idea -that he _can_ pick up." - -"It's your father's mistake that _he_ can----?" - -She met it as if really a shade bewildered at his own misconception; she -was literally so far off from any vision of her parent in himself, a -philosopher might have said, that it took her an instant to do the -question justice. "Oh no--I mean that your uncle can. It was your own -report of that to him, with Miss Mumby backing you, that put things in -the bad light to him." - -"So bad a light that Mr. Gaw is in danger by it?" This was catching on -of a truth to realities--and most of all to the one he had most to face. -"I've been then at the bottom of that?" - -He was to wonder afterwards if she had very actually gone so far as to -let slip a dim smile for the intensity of his candour on this point, or -whether her so striking freedom from intensity in the general connection -had but suggested to him one of the images that were most in opposition. -Her answer at any rate couldn't have had more of the eminence of her -plainness. "That you yourself, after your uncertainties, should have -found Mr. Betterman surprising was perfectly natural--and how indeed -could you have dreamed that father so wanted him to die?" And then as -Gray, affected by the extreme salience of this link in the chain of her -logic, threw up his head a little for the catching of his breath, her -supreme lucidity, and which was lucidity all in his interest, further -shone out. "Father is indeed ill. He has had these bad times before, but -nothing quite of the present gravity. He has been in a critical state -for months, but one thing has kept him alive--the wish to see your uncle -so far on his way that there could be no doubt. It was the appearance of -doubt so suddenly this afternoon that gave him the shock." She continued -to explain the case without prejudice. "To take it there from you for -possible that Mr. Betterman might revive and that he should have in his -own so unsteady condition to wait was simply what father couldn't -stand." - -"So that I just dealt the blow----?" - -But it was as if she cared too little even to try to make that right. -"He doesn't want, you see, to live after." - -"After having found he is mistaken?" - -She had a faint impatience. "He isn't of course really--since what I -told you of your uncle is true. And he knows that now, having my word -for it." - -Gray couldn't be clear enough about her clearness. "Your word for it -that my uncle has revived but for the moment?" - -"Absolutely. Wasn't my giving him that," Rosanna asked, "a charming -filial touch?" - -This was tremendously much again to take in, but Gray's capacity grew. -"Promising him, you mean, for his benefit, that my uncle _shan't_ last?" - -The size of it on his lips might fairly, during the instant she looked -at him, have been giving her pleasure. "Yes, making it a bribe to -father's patience." - -"Then why doesn't the bribe act?" - -"Because it comes too late. It was amazing," she pursued, "that, feeling -as he did, he could take that drive to the Bradhams'--and Miss Mumby was -right in perfectly understanding that. The harm was already done--and -there it is." - -She had truly for the whole reference the most astounding tones. "You -literally mean then," said Gray, "that while you sit here with me he's -dying--dying of my want of sense?" - -"You've no want of sense"--she spoke as if this were the point really -involved. "You've a sense the most exquisite--and surely you had best -take in soon rather than late," she went on, "how you'll never be free -not to have on every occasion of life to reckon with it and pay for it." - -"Oh I say!" was all the wit with which he could at once meet this -charge; but she had risen as she spoke and, with a remark about there -being another matter, had moved off to a piece of furniture at a -distance where she appeared to take something from a drawer unlocked -with a sharp snap for the purpose. When she returned to him she had this -object in her hand, and Gray recognised in it an oblong envelope, -addressed, largely sealed in black, and seeming to contain a voluminous -letter. She kept it while he noted that the seal was intact, and she -then reverted not to the discomfiture she had last produced in him but -to his rueful reference of a minute before that. - -"He's not dying of anything you said or did, or of anyone's act or -words. He's just dying of twenty millions." - -"Twenty millions?" There was a kind of enormity in her very absence of -pomp, and Gray felt as if he had dropped of a sudden, from his height of -simplicity, far down into a familiar relation to quantities -inconceivable--out of which depths he fairly blew and splashed to -emerge, the familiar relation, of all things in the world, being so -strange a one. "_That's_ what you mean here when you talk of money?" - -"That's what we mean," said Rosanna, "when we talk of anything at -all--for of what else but money _do_ we ever talk? He's dying, at any -rate," she explained, "of his having wished to have to do with it on -that sort of scale. Having to do with it consists, you know, of the -things you do _for_ it--which are mostly very awful; and there are all -kinds of consequences that they eventually have. You pay by these -consequences for what you have done, and my father has been for a long -time paying." Then she added as if of a sudden to summarise and dismiss -the whole ugly truth: "The effect has been to dry up his life." Her -eyes, with this, reached away for the first time as in search of -something not at all before her, and it was on the perfunctory note that -she had the next instant concluded. "There's nothing at last left for -him to pay _with._" - -For Gray at least, whatever initiations he had missed, she couldn't keep -down the interest. "Mr. Gaw then will _leave_ twenty millions----?" - -"He has already left them--in the sense of having made his will; as your -uncle, equally to my knowledge, has already made his." Something visibly -had occurred to her, and in connection, it might seem, with the packet -she had taken from her drawer. She looked about--there being within the -scene, which was somehow at once blank and replete, sundry small -scattered objects of an expensive negligibility; not one of which, till -now, he could guess, had struck her as a thing of human application. -Human application had sprung up, the idea of selection at once -following, and she unmistakeably but wondered what would be best for her -use while she completed the statement on which she had so strikingly -embarked. "He has left me his whole fortune." Then holding up an article -of which she had immediately afterwards, with decision, proceeded to -possess herself, "Is that a thing you could at all bear?" she -irrelevantly asked. She had caught sight, in her embarrassed way, of -something apparently adapted to her unexplained end, and had left him -afresh to assure herself of its identity, taking up from a table at -first, however, a box in Japanese lacquer only to lay it down -unsatisfied. She had circled thus at a distance for a time, allowing him -now his free contemplation; she had tried in succession, holding them -close to her eyes, several embossed or embroidered superfluities, a -blotting-book covered with knobs of malachite, a silver box, flat, -largely circular and finely fretted, a gold cigar case of absurd -dimensions, of which she played for a moment the hinged lid. Such was -the object on which she puzzlingly challenged him. - -"I could bear it perhaps better if I ever used cigars." - -"You don't smoke?" she almost wailed. - -"Never cigars. Sometimes pipes--but mostly, thank goodness, cigarettes." - -"Thank the powers then indeed!"--and, the golden case restored to the -table, where she had also a moment before laid her prepared missive, she -went straight to a corner of the mantel-shelf, hesitations dropping from -her, and, opening there a plainer receptacle than any she had yet -touched, turned the next instant with a brace of cigarettes picked out -and an accent she had not yet used. "You _are_ a blessing, Gray--I'm -nowhere without one!" There were matches at hand, and she had struck a -light and applied it, at his lips, to the cigarette passively received -by him, afterwards touching her own with it, almost before he could -wonder again at the oddity of their transition. Their light smoke curled -while she went back to her table; it quickened for him with each puff -the marvel of a domestic altar graced at such a moment by the play of -that particular flame. Almost, to his fine vision, it made Rosanna -different--for wasn't there at once a gained ease in the tone with -which, her sealed letter still left lying on the table, she returned to -that convenience for the pocket of the rich person of which she had -clicked and re-clicked the cover? What strange things, Gray thought, -rich persons had!--and what strange things they did, he might mentally -even have added, when she developed in a way that mystified him but the -more: "I don't mean for your cigars, since you don't use them; but I -want you to have from my hand something in which to keep, with all due -consideration, a form of tribute that has been these last forty-eight -hours awaiting you here, and which, it occurs to me, would just slide -into this preposterous piece of furniture and nestle there till you may -seem to feel you want it." She proceeded to recover the packet and slide -it into the case, the shape of which, on a larger scale, just -corresponded with its own, and then, once more making the lid catch, -shook container and contents as sharply as she might have shaken a -bottle of medicine. "So--there it is; I somehow don't want just to -thrust at you the letter itself." - -"But may I be told what the letter itself _is?_" asked Gray, who had -followed these movements with interest. - -"Why of course--didn't I mention? Here are safely stowed," she said, her -gesture causing the smooth protective surfaces to twinkle more brightly -before him, "the very last lines (and many there appear to be of them!) -that, if I am not mistaken, my father's hand will have traced. He wrote -them, in your interest, as he considers, when he heard of your arrival -in New York, and, having sealed and directed them, gave them to me -yesterday to take care of and deliver to you. I put them away for the -purpose, and an hour ago, during our drive back from Mrs. Bradham's, he -reminded me of my charge. Before asking Miss Mumby to tell you I should -like to see you I transferred the letter from its place of safety in my -room to the cabinet from which, for your benefit, I a moment ago took -it. I carefully comply, as you see, with my father's request. I know -nothing whatever of what he has written you, and only want you to have -his words. But I want also," she pursued, "to make just this little -affair of them. I want"--and she bent her eyes on the queer costliness, -rubbing it with her pockethandkerchief--"to do what the Lord Mayor of -London does, doesn't he? when he offers the Freedom of the City; present -them in a precious casket in which they may always abide. I want in -short," she wound up, "to put them, for your use, beautifully away." - -Gray went from wonder to wonder. "It isn't then a thing you judge I -should open at once?" - -"I don't care whether you never open it in your life. But you don't, I -can see, like that vulgar thing!" With which having opened her -receptacle and drawn forth from it the subject of her attention she -tossed back to its place on the spread of brocade the former of these -trifles. The big black seal, under this discrimination, seemed to fix -our young man with a sombre eye. - -"Is there any objection to my just looking at the letter now?" And then -when he had taken it and yet was on the instant and as by the mere feel -and the nearer sight, rather less than more conscious of a free -connection with it, "Is it going to be bad for me?" he said. - -"Find out for yourself!" - -"Break the seal?" - -"Isn't it meant to break?" she asked with a shade of impatience. - -He noted the impatience, sounding her nervousness, but saw at the same -time that her interest in the communication, whatever it might be, was -of the scantest, and that she suffered from having to defer to his own. -"If I needn't answer tonight----!" - -"You needn't answer ever." - -"Oh well then it can wait. But you're right--it mustn't just wait in my -pocket." - -This pleased her. "As I say, it must have a place of its own." - -He considered of that. "You mean that when I _have_ read it I may still -want to treasure it?" - -She had in hand again the great fan that hung by a long fine chain from -her girdle, and, flaring it open, she rapidly closed it again, the -motion seeming to relieve her. "I mean that my father has written you at -this end of his days--and that that's all I know about it." - -"You asked him no question----?" - -"As to why he should write? I wouldn't," said Rosanna, "have asked him -for the world. It's many a day since we've done that, either he or I--at -least when a question could have a sense." - -"Thank you then," Gray smiled, "for answering mine." He looked about him -for whatever might still help them, and of a sudden had a light. "Why -the ivory tower!" And while her eyes followed: "That beautiful old thing -on the top of the secretary--happy thought if it _is_ old!" He had seen -at a glance that this object was what they wanted, and, a nearer view -confirming the thought, had reached for it and taken it down. "There it -was waiting for you. _Isn't_ it an ivory tower, and doesn't living in an -ivory tower just mean the most distinguished retirement? I don't want -yet awhile to settle in one myself--though I've always thought it a -thing I should like to come to; but till I do make acquaintance with -what you have for me a retreat for the mystery is pleasant to think of." -Such was the fancy he developed while he delicately placed his happy -find on the closed and polished lid of the grand piano, where the rare -surface reflected the pale rich ivory and his companion could have it -well before her. The subject of this attention might indeed pass, by a -fond conceit, on its very reduced scale, for a builded white-walled -thing, very tall in proportion to the rest of its size and rearing its -head from its rounded height as if a miniature flag might have flown -there. It was a remarkable product of some eastern, probably some -Indian, patience, and of some period as well when patience in such -causes was at the greatest--thanks to which Gray, loving ancient -artistry and having all his life seen much of it, had recognised at a -glance the one piece in the room that presented an interest. It -consisted really of a cabinet, of easily moveable size, seated in a -circular socket of its own material and equipped with a bowed door, -which dividing in the middle, after a minute gold key had been turned, -showed a superposition of small drawers that went upwards diminishing in -depth, so that the topmost was of least capacity. The high curiosity of -the thing was in the fine work required for making and keeping it -perfectly circular; an effect arrived at by the fitting together, -apparently by tiny golden rivets, of numerous small curved plates of the -rare substance, each of these, including those of the two wings of the -exquisitely convex door, contributing to the artful, the total -rotundity. The series of encased drawers worked to and fro of course -with straight sides, but also with small bowed fronts, these made up of -the same adjusted plates. The whole, its infinite neatness exhibited, -proved a wonder of wasted ingenuity, and Rosanna, pronouncing herself -stupid not to have anticipated him, rendered all justice, under her -friend's admiring emphasis, to this choicest of her resources. Of how -they had come by it, either she or her sparing parent, she couldn't at -once bethink herself: on their taking the Newport house for the few -weeks her direction had been general that an assortment of odds and ends -from New York should disperse itself, for mitigation of bleakness, in as -many of the rooms as possible; and with quite different matters to -occupy her since she had taken the desired effect for granted. Her -father's condition had precluded temporary inmates, and with Gray's -arrival also in mind she had been scarce aware of minor importances. "Of -course you know--I knew you _would!_" were the words in which she -assented to his preference for the ivory tower and which settled for -him, while he made it beautifully slide, the fact that the shallowest of -the drawers would exactly serve for his putting his document to sleep. -So then he slipped it in, rejoicing in the tight fit of the drawer, -carefully making the two divisions of the protective door meet, turning -the little gold key in its lock and finally, with his friend's -permission, attaching the key to a small silver ring carried in his -pocket and serving for a cluster of others. With this question at rest -it seemed at once, and as with an effect out of proportion to the cause, -that a great space before them had been cleared: they looked at each -other over it as if they had become more intimate, and as if now, in the -free air, the enormities already named loomed up again. All of which was -expressed in Gray's next words. - -"May I ask you, in reference to something you just now said, whether my -uncle took action for leaving me money before our meeting could be in -question? Because if he did, you know, I understand less than ever. That -he should want to see me if he was thinking of me, that of course I can -conceive; but that he shouldn't wait till he had seen me is what I find -extraordinary." - -If she gave him the impression of keeping her answer back a little, it -wasn't, he was next to see, that she was not fully sure of it. "He _had_ -seen you." - -"You mean as a small boy?" - -"No--at this distance of time that didn't count." She had another wait, -but also another assurance. "He had seen you in the great fact about -you." - -"And what in the world do you call that?" - -"Why, that you are more out of it all, out of the air he has breathed -all his life and that in these last years has more and more sickened -him, than anyone else in the least belonging to him, that he could -possibly put his hand on." - -He stood before her with his hands in his pockets--he could study her -now quite as she had studied himself. "The extent, Rosanna, to which you -must have answered for me!" - -She met his scrutiny from between more narrowed lids. "I did put it all -to him--I spoke for you as earnestly as one can ever speak for another. -But you're not to gather from it," she thus a trifle awkwardly smiled, -"that I have let you in for twenty millions, or for anything -approaching. He will have left you, by my conviction, all he has; but he -has nothing at all like that. That's all I'm sure of--of no details -what--ever. Even my father doesn't know," she added; "in spite of its -having been for a long time the thing he has most wanted to, most sat -here, these weeks, on some chance of his learning. The truth, I mean, of -Mr. Betterman's affairs." - -Gray felt a degree of relief at the restrictive note on his expectations -which might fairly have been taken, by its signs, for a betrayed joy in -their extent. The air had really, under Rosanna's touch, darkened itself -with numbers; but what she had just admitted was a rift of light. In -this light, which was at the same time that of her allusion to Mr. Gaw's -unappeased appetite, his vision of that gentleman at the other house -came back to him, and he said in a moment: "I see, I see. He tried to -get some notion out of me." - -"Poor father!" she answered to this--but without time for more -questions, as at the moment she spoke the door of the room opened and -Doctor Hatch appeared. He paused, softly portentous, where he stood, and -so he met Rosanna's eyes. He held them a few seconds, and the effect was -to press in her, to all appearance, the same spring our young man had -just touched. "Poor, poor, poor father!" she repeated, but as if brought -back to him from far away. She took in what had happened, but not at -once nor without an effort what it called on her for; so that "Won't you -come up?" her informant had next to ask. - -To this, while Gray watched her, she rallied--"If you'll stay here." -With which, looking at neither of them again, as the Doctor kept the -door open, she passed out, he then closing it on her and transferring -his eyes to Gray--who hadn't to put a question, so sharply did the -raised and dropped hands signify that all was over. The fact, in spite -of everything, startled our young man, who had with his companion a -moment's mute exchange. - -"He has died while I've kept her here?" - -Doctor Hatch just demurred. "You kept her through her having sent for -you to talk to you." - -"Yes, I know. But it's very extraordinary!" - -"You seem to _make_ people extraordinary. You've made your uncle, you -know----!" - -"Yes indeed--but haven't I made _him_ better?" Gray asked. - -The Doctor again for a moment hesitated. "Yes--in the sense that he must -be now at last really resting. But I go back to him." - -"I'll go with you of course," said Gray, looking about for his hat. As -he found it he oddly remembered. "Why she asked me to dinner!" - -It all but amused the Doctor. "You inspire remarkable efforts." - -"Well, I'm incapable of making them." It seemed now queer enough. "I -can't stay to dinner." - -"Then we'll go." With which however. Doctor Hatch was not too -preoccupied to have had his attention, within the minute, otherwise -taken. "What a splendid piece!" he exclaimed in presence of the ivory -tower. - -"It _is_ splendid," said Gray, feeling its beauty again the brightest -note in the strangeness; but with a pang of responsibility to it taking -him too. "Miss Gaw has made me a present of it." - -"Already? You do work them!"--and the good physician fairly grazed again -the act of mirth. "So you'll take it away?" - -Gray paused a moment before his acquisition, which seemed to have begun -to guard, within the very minute, a secret of greater weight. Then "No, -I'll come back to it," he said as they departed by the long window that -opened to the grounds and through which Miss Mumby had brought him in. - - - - -BOOK THIRD - - -I - - -"Why I haven't so much as seen him yet," Cissy perforce confessed to her -friend, Mrs. Bradham's friend, everybody's friend, even, already and so -coincidentally, Graham Fielder's; this recipient of her avowal having -motored that day from Boston, after detention there under a necessity of -business and the stress of intolerable heat, but having reached Newport -in time for tea, a bath, a quick "change" and a still quicker impression -of blest refreshment from the fine air and from various other matters. -He had come forth again, during the time left him between these -performed rites and the more formal dressing-hour, in undisguised quest -of our young lady, who had so disposed certain signs of her whereabouts -that he was to waste but few steps in selection of a short path over the -longest stretch of lawn and the mass of seaward rocks forming its limit. -Arriving to spend with the Bradhams as many or as few days as the -conditions to be recognised on the spot might enjoin, this hero, Horton -Vint, had alighted at one of those hours of brilliant bustle which could -show him as all in his element if he chose to appear so, or could -otherwise appeal at once to his perfect aptitude for the artful escape -and the undetected counterplot. But the pitch had by that moment dropped -and the company dispersed, so far as the quarter before him was -concerned: the tennis-ground was a velvet void, the afternoon breeze -conveyed soft nothings--all of which made his occasion more spacious for -Horton. Cissy, from below, her charmingly cool cove, had watchfully -signalled up, and they met afresh, on the firm clear sand where the -drowsy waves scarce even lapsed, with forms of intimacy that the -sequestered spot happily favoured. The sense of waiting understood and -crowned gave grace to her opened arms when the young man, as he was -still called, erect, slim, active, brightly refreshed and, like herself, -given the temperature, inconsiderably attired, first showed himself -against the sky; it had cost him but a few more strides and steps, an -easy descent, to spring to her welcome with the strongest answering -emphasis. They met as on ground already so prepared that not an -uncertainty, on either side, could make reunion less brave or confidence -less fine; they had to effect no clearance, to stand off from no risk; -and, observing them thus in their freedom, you might well have asked -yourself by what infallible tact they had mastered for intercourse such -perfect reciprocities of address. You would certainly have concluded to -their entire confidence in these. "With a dozen people in the house it -is luck," Horton had at once appreciatively said; but when their -fellow-visitors had been handled between them for a minute or so only to -collapse again like aproned puppets on removal of pressure from the -squeak, he had jumped to the question of Gray Fielder and to frank -interest in Cissy's news of him. This news, the death of Mr. Betterman -that morning, quite sufficiently explained her inability to produce the -more direct impression; that worthy's nephew and heir, in close and more -and more quickened attendance on him during the previous days, had been -seen as yet, to the best of her belief, by no one at all but dear -Davey--not counting of course Rosanna Gaw, of the fact of whose own -bereavement as well Horton was naturally in possession, and who had made -it possible, she understood, for their friend to call on Graham. - -"Oh Davey has called on Graham?" Horton was concerned to ask while they -sat together on a rude worn slab. "What then, if he has told you, was -his particular idea?" - -"Won't his particular idea," Cissy returned, "be exactly the one he -won't have told me? What he did speak to me of yesterday morning, and -what I told him I thought would be beautiful of him, was his learning by -inquiry, in case your friend could see him, whether there was any sort -of thing he could do for him in his possible want of a man to put a hand -on. Because poor Rosanna, for all one thinks of her," said the girl, -"isn't exactly a man." - -Horton's attention was deeply engaged; his hands, a little behind him, -rested, as props to his slight backward inclination, on the convenient -stone; his legs, extended before him, enabled him to dig in his heels a -little, while his eyes, attached to the stretch of sea commanded by -their rocky retreat, betrayed a fixed and quickened vision. Rich in fine -lines and proportions was his handsome face--with scarce less, moreover, -to be said of his lean, light and long-drawn, though so much more -pointed and rounded figure. His features, after a manner of their own, -announced an energy and composed an array that his expression seemed to -disavow, or at least to be indifferent to, and had the practical effect -of toning down; as if he had been conscious that his nose, of the -bravest, strongest curve and intrinsically a great success, was too bold -and big for its social connections, that his mouth protested or at least -asserted more than he cared to back it up to, that his chin and jaw were -of too tactless an importance, and his fine eyes, above all, which -suggested choice samples of the more or less precious stone called -aquamarine, too disposed to darken with the force of a straight look--so -that the right way to treat such an excess of resource had become for -him quite the incongruous way, the cultivation of every sign and gage -that liberties might be taken with him. He seemed to keep saying that he -was not, temperamentally and socially, in his own exaggerated style, and -that a bony structure, for instance, as different as possible from the -one he unfortunately had to flaunt, would have been no less in harmony -with his real nature than he sought occasion to show it was in harmony -with his conduct. His hard mouth sported, to its visible relief and the -admiration of most beholders, a beautiful mitigating moustache; his eyes -wandered and adventured as for fear of their very own stare; his smile -and his laugh went all lengths, you would almost have guessed, in order -that nothing less pleasant should occupy the ground; his chin advanced -upon you with a grace fairly tantamount to the plea, absurd as that -might have seemed, that it was in the act of receding. Thus you gained -the impression--or could do so if your fancy quickened to him--that he -would perhaps rather have been as unwrought and unfinished as so many -monstrous men, on the general peopled scene of those climes, appeared -more and more to show themselves, than appointed to bristle with a group -of accents that, for want of a sense behind them, could attach -themselves but to a group of blanks. The sense behind the outward man in -Horton Vint bore no relation, it incessantly signified, to his being -_importantly_ goodlooking; it was in itself as easily and freely human a -sense, making as much for personal reassurance, as the appeal of -opportunity in an enjoying world could ever have drawn forth and with -the happy appearance of it confirmed by the whimsical, the quite ironic, -turn given by the society in which he moved to the use of his name. It -could never have been so pronounced and written Haughty if in spite of -superficial accidents his charming clever humility and sociability -hadn't thoroughly established themselves. He lived in the air of jokes, -and yet an air in which bad ones fell flat; and there couldn't have been -a worse one than to treat his designation as true. - -It might have been, at the same time, scarce in the least as a joke that -he presently said, in return for the remark on Cissy's part last -reported: "Rosanna is surely enough of a man to be much more of one than -Davey. However," he went on, "we agree, don't we? about the million of -men it would have taken to handle Gussy. A Davey the more or the less, -or with a shade more or less of the different sufficiency, would have -made no difference in _that_ question"--which had indeed no interest for -them anyhow, he conveyed, compared with the fun apparently proposed by -this advent of old Gray. That, frankly, was to him, Horton, as amusing a -thing as could have happened--at a time when if it hadn't been for -Cissy's herself happening to be for him, by exception, a comfort to -think of, there wasn't a blest thing in his life of the smallest -interest. "It hadn't struck me as probable at all, this revulsion of the -old man's," he mentioned, "and though Fielder must be now an awfully -nice chap, whom you'll like and find charming, I own I didn't imagine he -would come so tremendously forward. Over there, simply with his tastes, -his 'artistic interests,' or literary ones, or whatever--I mean his -array of intellectual resources and lack of any others--he was well -enough, by my last impression, and I liked him both for his decent life -and ways and for his liking me, if you can believe it, so -extraordinarily much as he seemed to. What the situation appears most to -mean, however, is that of a sudden he pops into a real light, a great -blazing light visible from afar--which is quite a different affair. It -can't not mean at least all sorts of odd things--or one has a right to -wonder if it _mayn't_ mean them." And Horton might have been taken up -for a minute of silence with his consideration of some of these -glimmering possibilities; a moment during which Cissy Foy maintained -their association by fairly, by quite visibly breathing with him in -unison--after a fashion that testified more to her interest than any -"cutting in" could have done. It would have been clear that they were -far beyond any stage of association at which their capacity for interest -in the contribution of either to what was between them should depend -upon verbal proof. It depended in fact as little on any other sort, such -for instance as searching eyes might invoke; she hadn't to look at her -friend to follow him further--she but looked off to those spaces where -his own vision played, and it was by pressing him close _there_ that she -followed. Her companion's imagination, by the time he spoke again, might -verily have travelled far. - -"What comes to me is just the wonder of whether such a change of fortune -may possibly not spoil him--he was so right and nice as he was. I -remember he used really to exasperate me almost by seeming not to have -wants, unless indeed it was by having only those that could be satisfied -over there as a kind of matter of course and that were those I didn't -myself have--in any degree at least that could make up for the -non-satisfaction of my others. I suppose it amounted really," said -Horton, "to the fact that, being each without anything to speak of in -our pockets, or then any prospect of anything, he accepted that because -he happened to like most the pleasures that were not expensive. I on my -side raged at my inability to meet or to cultivate expense--which seemed -to me good and happy, quite the thing most worth while, in itself: as -for that matter it still seems. 'La lecture et la promenade,' which old -Roulet, our pasteur at Neuchâtel used so to enjoin on us as the highest -joys, really appealed to Gray, to all appearance, in the sense in which -Roulet regarded, or pretended to regard, them--once he could have -pictures and music and talk, which meant of course pleasant people, -thrown in. He could go in for such things on his means--ready as he was -to do all his travelling on foot (I wanted as much then to do all mine -on horseback,) and to go to the opera or the play in the shilling seats -when he couldn't go in the stalls. I loathed so everything _but_ the -stalls--the stalls everywhere in life--that if I couldn't have it that -way I didn't care to have it at all. So when I think it strikes me I -must have liked him very much not to have wanted to slay him--for I -don't remember having given way at any particular moment to threats or -other aggressions. That may have been because I felt he rather -extravagantly liked me--as I shouldn't at all wonder at his still doing. -At the same time if I had found him beyond a certain point objectionable -his showing he took me for anything wonderful would have been, I think," -the young man reflected, "but an aggravation the more. However that may -be, I'm bound to say, I shan't in the least resent his taking me for -whatever he likes now--if he can at all go on with it himself I shall be -able to hold up my end. The dream of my life, if you must know all, -dear--the dream of my life has been to be admired, _really_ admired, -admired for all he's worth, by some awfully rich man. Being admired by a -rich woman even isn't so good--though I've tried for that too, as you -know, and equally failed of it; I mean in the sense of their being ready -to do it for all they are worth. I've only had it from the poor, haven't -I?--and we've long since had to recognise, haven't we? how little that -has done for either of us." So Horton continued--so, as if incited and -agreeably, irresistibly inspired, he played, in the soft stillness and -the protected nook, before the small salt tide that idled as if to -listen, with old things and new, with actualities and possibilities, on -top of the ancientries, that seemed to want but a bit of talking of in -order to flush and multiply. "There's one thing at any rate I'll be -hanged if I shall allow," he wound up; "I'll be hanged if what we may do -for him shall--by any consent of mine at least--spoil him for the old -relations without inspiring him for the new. He shan't become if I can -help it as beastly vulgar as the rest of us." - -The thing was said with a fine sincere ring, but it drew from Cissy a -kind of quick wail of pain. "Oh, oh, oh--what a monstrous idea. Haughty, -that he possibly _could_, ever!" - -It had an immediate, even a remarkable effect; it made him turn at once -to look at her, giving his lightest pleasantest laugh, than which no -sound of that sort equally manful had less of mere male stridency. Then -it made him, with a change of posture, shift his seat sufficiently -nearer to her to put his arm round her altogether and hold her close, -pressing his cheek a moment, with due precautions, against her hair. -"That's awfully nice of you. We _will_ pull something off. Is what -you're thinking of what your friend out there _dans le temps_, the -stepfather, Mr. Wendover, was it? told you about him in that grand -manner?" - -"Of course it is," said Cissy in lucid surrender and as if this truth -were of a flatness almost to blush for. "Don't you know I fell so in -love with Mr. Northover, whose name you mispronounce, that I've kept -true to him forever, and haven't been really in love with you in the -least, and shall never be with Gray himself, however much I may want to, -or you perhaps may even try to make me?--any more than I shall ever be -with anyone else. What's inconceivable," she explained, "is that anyone -that dear delicious man thought good enough to talk of to me as he -talked of his stepson should be capable of anything in the least -disgusting in any way." - -"I see, I see." It made Horton, for reasons, hold her but the -closer--yet not withal as if prompted by her remarks to affectionate -levity. It was a sign of the intercourse of this pair that, move each -other though they might to further affection, and therewith on occasion -to a congruous gaiety, they treated no cause and no effect of that sort -as waste; they had somehow already so worked off, in their common -interest, all possible mistakes and vain imaginings, all false starts -and false pursuits, all failures of unanimity. "Why then if he's really -so decent, not to say so superior," Haughty went on, "won't it be the -best thing in the world and a great simplification for you to fall--that -is for you to be--in love with him? That will be better for me, you -know, than if you're not; for it's the impression evidently made on you -by the late Northover that keeps disturbing my peace of mind. I feel, -though I can't quite tell you why," he explained, "that I'm never going -to be in the least jealous of Gray, and probably not even so much as -envious; so there's your chance--take advantage of it all the way. Like -him at your ease, my dear, and God send he shall like you! Only be sure -it's for himself you do it--and for your own self; as you make out your -possibilities, de part et d'autre, on your getting nearer to them." - -"So as to be sure, you mean," Cissy inquired, "of not liking him for his -money?" - - - - -II - - -He waited a moment, and if she had not immediately after her words -sighed "Oh dear, oh dear!" in quite another, that is a much more -serious, key, the appearance would perhaps have been that for once in a -blue moon she had put into his mind a thought he couldn't have. He -couldn't have the thought that it was of the least importance she should -guard herself in the way she mentioned; and it was in the air, the very -next thing, that she couldn't so idiotically have strayed as to mean to -impute it. He quickly enough made the point that what he preferred was -her not founding her interest in Gray so very abjectly on another man's -authority--given the uncanny fact of the other man's having cast upon -her a charm which time and even his death had done so little to abate. -Yes, the late Northover had clearly had something about him that it -worried a fellow to have her perpetually rake up. _There_ she was in -peril of jealousy--his jealousy of the queer Northover ghost; unless -indeed it was she herself who was queerest, ridden as her spirit seemed -by sexagenarian charms! He could look after her with Gray--they were at -one about Gray; what would truly alienate them, should she persist, -would be his own exposure to comparison with the memory of a rococo -Briton he had no arms to combat. Which extravagance of fancy had of -course after a minute sufficiently testified to the clearance of their -common air that invariably sprang from their feeling themselves again -together and finding once more what this came to--all under sublime -palpability of proof. The renewed consciousness did perhaps nothing for -their difficulties as such, but it did everything for the interest, the -amusement, the immediate inspiration of their facing them: there was in -that such an element of their facing each other and knowing, each time -as if they had not known it before, that this had absolute beauty. It -had unmistakably never had more than now, even when their freedom in it -had rapidly led them, under Cissy's wonderment, to a consideration of -whether a happy relation with their friend (he was already thus her -friend too, without her ever having seen him!) mightn't have to count -with some inevitable claim, some natural sentiment, asserted and enjoyed -on Rosanna's part, not to speak of the effect on Graham himself of that -young woman's at once taking such an interest in him and coming in for -such a fortune. - -"In addition to which who shall pretend to deny," the girl earnestly -asked, "that Rosanna has in herself the most extraordinary charm?" - -"Oh you think she has extraordinary charm?" - -"Of course I do--and so do you: don't be absurd! She's simply superb," -Cissy expounded, "in her own original way, which no other woman over -here--except me a little perhaps!--has so much as a suspicion of -anything to compare with; and which, for all we know, constitutes a -luxury entirely at Graham's service." Cissy required but a single other -look at it all to go on: "I shouldn't in the least wonder if they were -already engaged." - -"I don't think there's a chance of it," Haughty said, "and I hold that -if any such fear is your only difficulty you may be quite at your ease. -Not only do I so see it," he went on, "but I know _why_ I do." - -Cissy just waited. "You consider that because she refused Horton Vint -she'll decline marriage altogether?" - -"I think that throws a light," this gentleman smiled--"though it isn't -_all_ my ground. She turned me down, two years ago, as utterly as I -shall ever have been turned in my life--and if I chose so to look at it -the experience would do for me beautifully as that of an humiliation -served up to a man in as good form as he need desire. That it was, that -it still is when I live it through again; that it will probably remain, -for my comfort--in the sense that I'm likely never to have a worse. I've -had my dose," he figured, "of that particular black draught, and I've -got the bottle there empty on the shelf." - -"And yet you signify that you're all the same glad----?" Cissy didn't -for the instant wholly follow. - -"Well, it _all_ came to me then; and that it did all come is what I have -the advantage of now--I mean, you see, in being able to reassure you as -I do. I had some wonderful minutes with her--it didn't take long," -Haughty laughed. "We saw in those few minutes, being both so horribly -intelligent; and what I recognised has remained with me. What she did is -her own affair--and that she could so perfectly make it such, without -leaving me a glimmer of doubt, is what I have, as I tell you, to blink -at forever. I may ask myself if you like," he pursued, "why I should -'mind' so much if I saw even at the moment that she wasn't at any rate -going to take someone else--and if you do I shall reply that I didn't -need that to make it bad. It was bad enough just in itself. My point is, -however," Horton concluded, "that I can give you at least the benefit of -my feeling utterly sure that Gray will have no chance. She's in the -dreadful position--and more than ever of course now--of not being able -to believe she can be loved for herself." - -"You mean because _you_ couldn't make her believe it?" asked Cissy after -taking this in. - -"No--not that, for I didn't so much as try. I didn't--and it was awfully -superior of me, you know--approach her at all on that basis. That," said -Horton, "is where it cuts. The basis was that of my own capacity -only--my capacity to serve her, in every particular, with every aptitude -I possess in the world, and which I could see she _saw_ I possess (it -was given me somehow to send that home to her!) without a hair's breadth -overlooked. I shouldn't have minded her taking me so for impossible, -blackly impossible, if she had done it under an illusion; but she really -believed in me as a general value, quite a first-rate value--_that_ I -stood there and didn't doubt. And yet she practically said 'You ass!'" - -His encircling arm gained, for response to this, however, but the -vibration of her headshake--without so much as any shudder at the pain -he so vividly imaged. "She practically said that she was already _then_ -in love with Mr. Graham, and you wouldn't have had a better chance had -a passion of your own stuck out of you. If I thought she didn't admire -you," Cissy said, "I shouldn't be able to do with her at all--it would -be too stupid of her; putting aside her not accepting you, I mean--for a -woman can't accept _every_ man she admires. I suppose you don't at -present object," she continued, "to her admiring Mr. Graham enough to -account for anything; especially as it accounts so for her having just -acted on his behalf with such extraordinary success. Doesn't that make -it out for him," she asked, "that he's admired by twenty millions _plus_ -the amount that her reconciliation of him with his uncle just in time to -save it, without an hour to spare, will represent for his pocket? We -don't know what that lucky amount may be----" - -"No, but we more or less _shall_"--Horton took her straight up. "Of -course, without exaggeration, that will be interesting--even though it -will be but a question, I'm quite certain, of comparatively small -things. Old Betterman--there are people who practically know, and I've -talked with them--isn't going to foot up to any faint likeness of what -Gaw does. That, however, has nothing to do with it: all that is -relevant--since I quite allow that, speculation for speculation, our -association in this sort represents finer fun than it has yet succeeded -in doing in other sorts--all that's relevant is that when you've seen -Gray you mayn't be in such a hurry to figure him as a provoker of -insatiable passions. Your insidious Northover has, as you say, worked -you up, but wait a little to see if the reality corresponds." - -"He showed me a photograph, my insidious Northover," Cissy promptly -recalled; "he was _naïf_ enough, poor dear, for that. In fact he made -me a present of several, including one of himself; I owe him as well two -or three other mementos, all of which I've cherished." - -"What was he up to anyway, the old corrupter of your youth?"--Horton -seemed really to wonder. "Unless it was that you simply reduced him to -infatuated babble." - -"Well, there are the photographs and things to show," she answered -unembarrassed--"though I haven't them with me here; they're put away in -New York. His portrait's extremely good-looking." - -"Do you mean Mr. Northover's own?" - -"Oh _his_ is of course quite beautiful. But I mean Mr. Fielder's--at his -then lovely age. I remember it," said Cissy, "as a nice, nice face." - -Haughty on his side indulged in the act of memory, concluding after an -instant to a head-shake. "He isn't at all remarkable for looks; but -putting his nice face at its best, granting that he _has_ a high degree -of that advantage, do you see Rosanna so carried away by it as to cast -everything to the winds for him?" - -Cissy weighed the question. "We've seen surely what she has been carried -away enough to do." - -"She has had other reasons--independent of headlong passion. And -remember," he further argued--"if you impute to her a high degree of -that sort of sensibility--how perfectly proof she was to _my_ physical -attractions, which I declare to you without scruple leave the very -brightest you may discover in Gray completely in the shade." - -Again his companion considered. "Of course you're dazzlingly handsome; -but are you, my dear, after all--I mean in appearance--so very -_interesting?_" - -The inquiry was so sincere that it could be met but in the same spirit. -"Didn't you then find me so from the first minute you ever looked at -me?" - -"We're not talking of me," she returned, "but of people who happen to -have been subjects less predestined and victims less abject. What," she -then at once went on, "_is_ Gray's appearance 'anyway'? Is he black, to -begin with, or white, or betwixt and between? Is he little or big or -neither one thing or t'other? Is he fat or thin or of 'medium weight'? -There are always such lots to be told about people, and never a creature -in all the wide world to tell. Even Mr. Northover, when I come to think -of it, never mentioned is size. - -"Well, you _wouldn't_ mention it," Horton amiably argued. The appeal, he -showed withal, stirred him to certain recoveries. "And I should call him -black--black as to his straight thick hair, which I see rather -distinctively 'slick' and soigné--the hair of a good little boy who -never played at things that got it tumbled. No, he's only very middling -tall; in fact so very middling," Haughty made out, "that it probably -comes to his being rather short. But he has neither a hump nor a limp, -no marked physical deformity of any sort; has in fact a kind of futile -fidgetty quickness which suggests the little man, and the nervous and -the active and the ready; the ready, I mean, for anything in the way of -interest and talk--given that the matter isn't too big for him. The -'active,' I say, though at the same time," he noted, "I ask myself what -the deuce the activity will have been _about._" - -The girl took in these impressions to the effect of desiring still more -of them. "Doesn't he happen then to have eyes and things?" - -"Oh yes"--Horton bethought himself--"lots and lots of eyes, though not -perhaps so many of other things. Good eyes, fine eyes, in fact I think -anything whatever you may require in the way of eyes." - -"Then clearly they're not 'black': I never require black ones," she -said, "in any conceivable connection: his eyes--blue-grey, or grey-blue, -whichever you may call it, and far and away the most charming kind when -one doesn't happen to be looking into your glorious green ones--his -satisfactory eyes are what will more than anything else have done the -business. They'll have done it so," she went on, "that if he isn't red -in the face, which I defy him to be, his features don't particularly -matter--though there's not the least reason either why he should have -mean or common ones. In fact he hasn't them in the photograph, and what -are photographs, the wretched things, but the very truth of life?" - -"He's not red in the face," Haughty was able to state--"I think of him -rather as of a pale, very pale, clean brown; and entirely unaddicted," -he felt sure, "to flushing or blushing. What I do sort of remember in -the feature way is that his teeth though good, fortunately, as they're -shown a good deal, are rather too small and square; for a man's, that -is, so that they make his smile a trifle----" - -"A trifle irresistible of course," Cissy broke in--"through their being, -in their charming form, of the happy Latin model; extremely like my own, -be so good as to notice for once in your life, and not like the usual -Anglo-Saxon fangs. You're simply describing, you know," she added, -"about as gorgeous a being as one could wish to see." - -"It's not I who am describing him--it's you, love; and ever so -delightfully." With which, in consistency with that, he himself put a -question. "What does it come to, by the way, in the sense of a -moustache? Does he, or _doesn't_ he after all, wear one? It's odd I -shouldn't remember, but what does the photograph say?" - -"It seems odd indeed _I_ shouldn't"--Cissy had a moment's brooding. She -gave herself out as ashamed. "Fancy my not remembering if the photograph -is _moustachue!_" - -"It can't be then _very_" Horton contributed--the point was really so -interesting. - -"No," Cissy tried to settle, "the photograph can't be so very -moustachue." - -"His moustaches, I mean, if he wears 'em, can't be so very prodigious; -or one could scarcely have helped noticing, could one?" - -"Certainly no one can ever have failed to notice yours--and therefore -Gray's, if he has any, must indeed be very inferior. And yet he can't be -shaved like a sneak-thief--or like all the world here," she developed; -"for I won't have him with nothing at all any more than I'll have him -with anything prodigious, as you say; which is worse than nothing. When -I say I won't have him with nothing," she explained, "I mean I won't -have him subject to the so universally and stupidly applied American law -that every man's face without exception shall be scraped as clean, as -_glabre_, as a fish's--which it makes so many of them so much resemble. -I won't have him so," she said, "because I won't have him so idiotically -gregarious and without that sense of differences in things, and of their -relations and suitabilities, which such exhibitions make one so ache -for. If he's gregarious to that sort of tune we must renounce our -idea--that is you must drop yours--of my working myself up to snatch him -from the arms of Rosanna. I must believe in him, for that, I must see -him at least in my own way," she pursued; "believing in myself, or even -believing in you, is a comparative detail. I won't have him bristle with -horrid demagogic notes. I shouldn't be able to act a scrap on that -basis." - -It was as if what she said had for him the interest at once of the most -intimate and the most enlarged application; it was in fact as if she -alone in all the world could touch him in such fine ways--could amuse -him, could verily instruct him, to anything like such a tune. "It seems -peculiarly a question of bristles if it all depends on his moustache. -Our suspense as to that, however, needn't so much ravage us," Haughty -added, "when we remember that Davey, who, you tell me, will by this time -have seen him, can settle the question for us as soon as we meet at -dinner. It will by the same stroke then settle that of the witchcraft -which has according to your theory so bedevilled poor dear Rosanna's -sensibility--leading it such a dance, I mean, and giving such an empire -to certain special items of our friend's 'personality,' that the -connection was practically immediate with his brilliant status." - - - - -III - - -Horton, looking at his watch, had got up as he spoke--which Cissy at -once also did under this recall of the lapse of their precious minutes. -There was a point, however, left for her to make; which she did with the -remark that the item they had been discussing in particular couldn't -have been by itself the force that had set their young woman originally -in motion, inasmuch as Gray wouldn't have had a moustache when a small -boy or whatever, and as since that young condition, she understood, -Rosanna hadn't again seen him. A proposition to which Haughty's assent -was to remain vague, merged as it suddenly became in the cry of "Hello, -here he is!" and a prompt gay brandish of arms up at their host Bradham, -arrayed for the evening, white-waistcoated and buttonholed, robustly -erect on an overlooking ledge and explaining his presence, from the -moment it was thus observed, by calling down that Gussy had sent him to -see if she wasn't to expect them at dinner. It was practically a summons -to Cissy, as the girl easily recognised, to leave herself at least ten -minutes to dress decently--in spite of the importance of which she so -challenged Davey on another score that, as a consequence, the good -gorgeous man, who shone with every effect of the bath and every resource -of the toilet, had within the pair of minutes picked out such easiest -patent-leather steps as would enable him to convict the companions of a -shameless dawdle. She had had time to articulate for Horton's benefit, -with no more than due distinctness, that he must have seen them, and -Horton had as quickly found the right note and the right wit for the -simple reassurance "Oh Davey----!" As occupants of a place of -procrastination that they only were not such fools as to leave unhaunted -they frankly received their visitor, any impulse in whom to sprinkle -stale banter on their search for solitude would have been forestalled, -even had it been supposable of so perfect a man of the world, by the -instant action of his younger guest's strategic curiosity. - -"Has he, please, just _has_ he or no, got a moustache?"--she appealed as -if the fate of empires depended on it. - -"I've been telling her," Horton explained, "whatever I can remember of -Gray Fielder, but she won't listen to anything if I can't first be sure -as to _that._ So as I want her enormously to like him, we both hang, you -see, on your lips; unless you call it, more correctly, on his." - -Davey's evening bloom opened to them a dense but perfectly pathless -garden of possibilities; out of which, while he faced them, he left them -to pluck by their own act any bright flower they sufficiently desired to -reach. Wonderful during the few instants, between these flagrant -world-lings, the exchange of fine recognitions. It would have been hard -perhaps to say of them whether it was most discernible that Haughty and -Cissy trusted most his intelligence or his indifference, and whether he -most applauded or ignored the high perfection of their assurance. What -was testified to all round, at all events--[1] - - -"Ah then he _is_ as 'odd' as I was sure--in spite of Haughty's perverse -theory that we shall find him the flattest of the flat!" - -It might have been at Haughty's perverse theory that Davey was most -moved to stare--had he not quickly betrayed, instead of this, a marked -attention to the girl herself. "Oh you little wonder and joy!" - -"She is a little wonder and joy," Horton said--that at any rate came out -clear. - -"What you are, my boy, I'm not pretending to say," Davey returned in -answer to this; "for I don't accept her account of your vision of Gray -as throwing any light on it at all." - -"On his judgment of Mr. Fielder, do you mean," Cissy earnestly asked, -"or on your evidently awful opinion of his own dark nature?" - -"Haughty knows that I lose myself in his dark nature, at my spare -moments, and with wind enough on to whistle in that dark, very much as -if I had the fine excitement of the Forêt de Bondy to deal with. He's -well aware that I know no greater pleasure of the imagination than that -sort of interest in him--when I happen also to have the time and the -nerve. Let these things serve me now, however, only to hurry you up," -Davey went on; "and to say that I of course had with our fortunate -friend an impressive quarter of an hour--which everyone will want to -know about, so that I must keep it till we sit down. But the great thing -is after all for yourself, Haughty," he added--"and you had better know -at once that he particularly wants to see you. He'll be glad of you at -the very first moment----" - -But Horton had already taken him easily up. "Of course I know, my dear -man, that he particularly wants to see me. He has written me nothing -else from the moment he arrived." - -"He has written you, you wretch," Cissy at once extravagantly -echoed--"he has written you all sorts of things and you haven't so much -as told me?" - -"He hasn't written me all sorts of things"--Horton directed this answer -to Davey alone--"but has written me in such straight confidence and -friendship that Eve been wondering if I mayn't go round to him this -evening." - -"Gussy will no doubt excuse you for that purpose with the utmost joy," -Davey rejoined--"though I don't think I advise you to ask her leave if -you don't want her at once to insist on going with you. Go to him alone, -very quietly--and with the happy confidence of doing him good." - -It had been on Cissy that, for his part, Davey had, in speaking, rested -his eyes; and it might by the same token have been for the benefit of -universal nature, suspended to listen over the bosom of the deep, that -Horton's lips phrased his frank reaction upon their entertainer's words. -"Well then, ye powers, the amount of good that I shall undertake----!" - -Davey Bradham and Cissy Foy exchanged on the whole ground for a moment a -considerable smile; his share in which, however, it might exactly have -been that prompted the young woman's further expression of their -intelligence. "It's too charming that he yearns so for Haughty--and too -sweet that Haughty can now rush to him at once." To which she then -appended in another tone: "One takes for granted of course that Rosanna -was with him." - -Davey at this but continued to bloom and beam; which gave Horton, even -with a moment's delay, time to assist his better understanding. "She -doesn't even yet embrace the fact, tremendously as I've driven it into -her, that if Rosanna had been there he couldn't have breathed my name." - -This made Davey, however, but throw up derisive hands; though as with an -impatient turn now for their regaining the lawn. "My dear man, Rosanna -breathes your name with all the force of her lungs!" - -Horton, jerking back his head for the bright reassurance, laughed out -with amusement. "What a jolly cue then for my breathing of hers! I'll -roar it to all the echoes, and everything will be well. But what one's -talking about," he said, "is the question of Gray's naming _me._" He -looked from one of his friends to the other, and then, as gathering them -into the interest of it: "I'll bet you a fiver that he doesn't at any -rate speak to me of Miss Gaw." - -"Well, what will that prove?" Davey asked, quite easy about it and -leading the way up the rocks. - -"In the first place how much he thinks of her," said Cissy, who followed -close behind. "And in the second that it's ten to one Haughty will find -her there." - -"I don't care if I do--not a scrap!" Horton also took his way. "I don't -care for anything now but the jolly fun, the jolly fun----!" He had -committed it all again, by the time they reached the cliff's edge, to -the bland participating elements. - -"Oh the treat the poor boy is evidently going to stand us _all!_"--well, -was something that Davey, rather out of breath as they reached the lawn -again and came in sight of the villa, had just yet no more than those -light words for. He was more definite in remarking immediately after to -Cissy that Rosanna would be as little at the other house that evening as -she had been at the moment of his own visit, and that, since the nurses -and other outsiders appeared to have dispersed, there would be no one to -interfere with Gray's free welcome of his friend. The girl was so -attentive for this that it made them pause again while she brought out -in surprise: "There's nobody else there, you mean then, to watch with -the dead----?" - -It made Mr. Bradham for an instant wonder, Horton, a little apart from -them now and with his back turned, seeming at the same moment, and -whether or no her inquiry reached his ear, struck with something that -had pulled him up as well and that made him stand and look down in -thought. "Why, I suppose the nephew' must be himself a sort of watcher," -Davey found himself not other than decently vague to suggest. - -But it scarce more contented Cissy than if the point had really -concerned her. She appeared indeed to question the more, though her eyes -were on Haughty's rather brooding back while she did so. "Then if he -does stay in the room, when he comes out of it to see people----?" - -Her very drop seemed to present the state of things to which the poor -deceased was in that case left; for which, however, her good host -declined to be responsible. "I don't suppose he comes out for so many." - -"He came out at any rate for you." The sense of it all rather remarkably -held her, and it might have been some communication of this that, -overtaking Horton at his slight distance, determined in him the impulse -to leave them, without more words, and walk by himself to the house. "We -don't surround such occasions with any form or state of -imagination--scarcely with any decency, do we?" Cissy adventured while -observing Haughty's retreat. "I should like to think for him of a -catafalque and great draped hangings--I should like to think for him of -tall flambeaux in the darkened room, and of relays of watchers, sisters -of charity or suchlike, surrounding the grand affair and counting their -beads." - -Davey's rich patience had a shrug. "The grand affair, my dear child, is -_their_ affair, over there, and not mine; though when you indulge in -such fancies 'for him,' I can't but wonder who it is you mean." - -"Who it is----?" She mightn't have understood his difficulty. - -"Why the dead man or the living!" - -They had gone on again; Horton had, with a quickened pace, disappeared; -and she had before answering cast about over the fair face of the great -house, paler now in the ebb of day, yet with dressing-time glimmers from -upper windows flushing it here and there like touches of pink paint in -an elegant evening complexion. "Oh I care for the dead man, I'm afraid, -only because it's the living who appeals. I don't want him to like it." - -"To like----?" Davey was again at a loss. "What on earth?" - -"Why all that ugliness and bareness, that poverty of form." - -He had nothing but derision for her here. "It didn't occur to me at all -to associate him with the idea of poverty." - -"The place must all the same be hideous," she said, "and the conditions -mean--for him to prowl about in alone. It comes to me," she further -risked, "that if Rosanna _isn't_ there, as you say, she quite ought to -be--and that in her place I should feel it no more than decent to go -over and sit with him." - -This appeared to strike Davey in a splendid number of lights--which, -however, though collectively dazzling, allowed discriminations. "It -perhaps bears a little on the point that she has herself just sustained -a grave bereavement--with her offices to her own dead to think of first. -That was present to me in your talk a moment since of Haughty's finding -her." - -"Very true"--it was Cissy's practice, once struck, ever amusedly to play -with the missile: "it is of course extraordinary that those bloated old -_richards_, at one time so associated, should have flickered out almost -at the same hour. What it comes to then," she went on, "is that Mr. Gray -might be, or perhaps even ought to be, condoling over at the other house -with her. However, it's their own business, and all I really care for is -that he should be so keen as you say about seeing Haughty. I just -delight," she said, "in his being keen about Haughty." - -"I'm glad it satisfies you then," Davey returned--"for I was on the -point of suggesting that with the sense of his desolation you just -expressed you might judge your own place to be at once at his side." - -"That would have been helpful of you--but I'm content, dear Davey," she -smiled. "We're all devoted to Haughty--but," she added after an instant, -"there's just this. Did Mr. Graham while you were there say by chance a -word about the likes of _me?_" - -"Well, really, no--our short talk didn't take your direction. That would -have been for me, I confess," Davey frankly made bold to add, "a trifle -unexpected." - -"I see"--Cissy did him the justice. "But that's a little, I think, -because you don't know----!" It was more, however, than with her sigh -she could tell him. - -"Don't know by this time, my dear, and after all I've been through," he -nevertheless supplied, "what the American girl always so sublimely takes -for granted?" - -She looked at him on this with intensity--but that of compassion rather -than of the conscious wound. "Dear old Davey, il n'y a que vous for not -knowing, by this time, as you say, that I've notoriously nothing in -common with the creature you mention. I loathe," she said with her -purest gentleness, "the American girl." - -He faced her an instant more as for a view of the whole incongruity; -then he fetched, on his side, a sigh which might have signified, at her -choice, either that he was wrong or that he was finally bored. "Well, -you do of course brilliantly misrepresent her. But we're all"--he -hastened to patch it up--"unspeakably corrupt." - -"That would be a fine lookout for Mr. Fielder if it were true," she -judiciously threw off. - -"But as you're a judge you know it isn't?" - -"It's not as a judge I know it, but as a victim. I don't say we don't do -our best," she added; "but we're still of an innocence, an -innocence----! - -"Then perhaps," Davey offered, "Mr. Fielder will help us; unless he -proves, by your measure, worse than ourselves!" - -"The worse he may be the better; for it's not possible, as I see him," -she said, "that he doesn't know." - -"Know, you mean," Davey blandly wondered, "how wrong we are--to be so -right?" - -"Know more on _every_ subject than all of us put together!" she called -back at him as she now hurried off to dress. - - -[Footnote 1: There is a gap here in the MS., with the following note by -the author: "It is the security of the two others with him that is -testified to; but I mustn't make any sort of spread about it or about -anything else here now, and only put Davey on some non-committal reply -to the question addressed him, such as keeps up the mystery or ambiguity -or suspense about Gray, his moustache and everything else, so as to -connect properly with what follows. The real point is--_that_ comes back -to me, and it is in essence enough--that he pleads he doesn't remember, -didn't notice, at all; and thereby oddly enough can't say. It will come -to me right once I get into it. One sees that Davey plays with them."] - - - - -IV - - -Horton Vint, on being admitted that evening at the late Mr. Betterman's, -walked about the room to which he had been directed and awaited there -the friend of his younger time very much as we have seen that friend -himself wait under stress of an extraordinary crisis. Horton's sense of -a crisis might have been almost equally sharp; he was alone for some -minutes during which he shifted his place and circled, indulged in wide -vague movements and vacuous stares at incongruous objects--the place -being at once so spacious and so thickly provided--quite after the -fashion in which Gray Fielder's nerves and imagination had on the same -general scene sought and found relief at the hour of the finest suspense -up to that moment possessing him. Haughty too, it would thus have -appeared for the furtherance of our interest, had imagination and -nerves--had in his way as much to reflect upon as we have allowed -ourselves to impute to the dying Mr. Betterman's nephew. No one was -dying now, all that was ended, or would be after the funeral, and the -nephew himself was surely to be supposed alive, in face of great -sequels, including preparations for those obsequies, with an intensity -beyond all former experience. This in fact Horton had all the air of -recognising under proof as soon as Gray advanced upon him with both -hands out; he couldn't not have taken in the highly quickened state of -the young black-clad figure so presented, even though soon and -unmistakably invited to note that his own visit and his own presence had -much to do with the quickening. Gray was in complete mourning, which had -the effect of making his face show pale, as compared with old aspects of -it remembered by his friend--who was, it may be mentioned, afterwards to -describe him to Cissy Foy as looking, in the conditions, these including -the air of the big bedimmed palace room, for all the world like a sort -of "happy Hamlet." For so happy indeed our young man at once proclaimed -himself at sight of his visitor, for so much the most interesting thing -that had befallen or been offered him within the week did he take, by -his immediate testimony, his reunion with this character and every -element of the latter's aspect and tone, that the pitch of his -acclamation clearly had, with no small delay, to drop a little under -some unavoidable reminder that they met almost in the nearest presence -of death. Was the reminder Horton's own, some pull, for decorum, of a -longer face, some expression of his having feared to act in undue haste -on the message brought him by Davey?--which might have been, we may say, -in view of the appearance after a little that it was Horton rather than -Gray who began to suggest a shyness, momentary, without doubt, and -determined by the very plenitude of his friend's welcome, yet so far -incongruous as that it was not his adoption of a manner and betrayal of -a cheer that ran the risk of seeming a trifle gross, but quite these -indications on the part of the fortunate heir of the old person awaiting -interment somewhere above. He could only have seen with the lapse of the -moments that Gray was going to be simple--admirably, splendidly simple, -one would probably have pronounced it, in estimating and comparing the -various possible dangers; but the simplicity of subjects tremendously -educated, tremendously "cultivated" and cosmopolitised, as Horton would -have called it, especially when such persons were naturally rather -extra-refined and ultra-perceptive, was a different affair from the -crude candour of the common sort; the consequence of which apprehensions -and reflections must have been, in fine, that he presently recognised in -the product of "exceptional advantages" now already more and more -revealed to him such a pliability of accent as would easily keep -judgment, or at least observation, suspended. Gray wasn't going to be at -a loss for any shade of decency that didn't depend, to its -inconvenience, on some uncertainty about a guest's prejudice; so that -once the air was cleared of awkwardness by that perception, exactly, in -Horton's ready mind that he and his traditions, his susceptibilities, in -fact (of all the queer things!) his own very simplicities and, -practically, stupidities were being superfluously allowed for and -deferred to, and that this, only this, was the matter, he should have -been able to surrender without a reserve to the proposed measure of -their common rejoicing. Beautiful might it have been to him to find his -friend so considerately glad of him that the spirit of it could consort -to the last point with any, with every, other felt weight in the -consciousness so attested; in accordance with which we may remark that -continued embarrassment for our gallant caller would have implied on his -own side, or in other words deep within his own spirit, some obscure -source of confusion. - -What distinguishably happened was thus that he first took Graham for -exuberant and then for repentant, with the reflection accompanying this -that he mustn't, to increase of subsequent shame, have been too open an -accomplice in mere jubilation. Then the simple sense of his restored -comrade's holding at his disposal a general confidence in which they -might absolutely breathe together would have superseded everything else -hadn't his individual self-consciousness been perhaps a trifle worried -by the very pitch of so much openness. Open, not less generously so, was -what he could himself have but wanted to be--in proof of which we may -conceive him insist to the happy utmost, for promotion of his comfort, -on those sides of their relation the working of which would cast no -shadow. They had within five minutes got over much ground--all of which, -however, must be said to have represented, and only in part, the extent -of Gray's requisition of what he called just elementary human help. He -was in a situation at which, as he assured his friend, he had found -himself able, those several days, but blankly and inanely to stare. He -didn't suppose it had been his uncle's definite design to make an idiot -of him, but that seemed to threaten as the practical effect of the dear -man's extraordinary course. "You see," he explained, bringing it almost -pitifully out, "he appears to have left me a most monstrous fortune. I -mean"--for under his appeal Haughty had still waited a little--"a really -tremendous lot of money." - -The effect of the tone of it was to determine in Haughty a peal of -laughter quickly repressed--or reduced at least to the intention of -decent cheer. "He 'appears,' my dear man? Do you mean there's an -ambiguity about his will?" - -Gray justified his claim of vagueness by having, with his animated eyes -on his visitor's, to take an instant or two to grasp so technical an -expression. "No--not an ambiguity. Mr. Crick tells me that he has never -in all his experience seen such an amount of property disposed of in -terms so few and simple and clear. It would seem a kind of masterpiece -of a will." - -"Then what's the matter with it?" Horton smiled. "Or at least what's the -matter with _you?_--who are so remarkably intelligent and clever?" - -"Oh no, I'm not the least little bit clever!" Gray in his earnestness -quite excitedly protested. "I haven't a single ray of the intelligence -that among you all here clearly passes for rudimentary. But the luxury -of you, Haughty," he broke out on a still higher note, "the luxury, the -pure luxury of you!" - -Something of beauty in the very tone of which, some confounding force in -the very clearness, might it have been that made Horton himself gape for -a moment even as Gray had just described his own wit as gaping. They had -first sat down, for hospitality offered and accepted--though with no -production of the smokable or the drinkable to profane the general -reference; but the agitation of all that was latent in this itself had -presently broken through, and by the end of a few moments we might -perhaps scarce have been able to say whether the host had more set the -guest or the guest more the host in motion. Horton Vint had everywhere -so the air of a prime social element that it took in any case, and above -all in any case of the spacious provision or the sumptuous setting, a -good deal of practically combative proof to reduce the implications of -his presence to the minor right. He _might_ inveterately have been -master or, in quantitative terms, owner--so could he have been taken for -the most part as offering you the enjoyment of anything fine that -surrounded him: this in proportion to the scale of such matters and to -any glimpse of that sense of them in you which was what came nearest to -putting you on his level. All of which sprang doubtless but from the -fact that his relation to things of expensive interest was so much at -the mercy of his appearance; representing as it might be said to do a -contradiction of the law under which it is mostly to be observed, in our -modernest conditions, that the figure least congruous with scenic -splendour is the figure awaiting the reference. More references than may -here be detailed, at any rate, would Horton have seemed ready to gather -up during the turns he had resumed his indulgence in after the original -arrest and the measurements of the whole place practically determined -for him by Gray's own so suggestive revolutions. It was positively now -as if these last had all met, in their imperfect expression, what that -young man's emotion was in the act of more sharply attaining to--the -plain conveyance that if Horton had in his friendliness, not to say his -fidelity, presumed to care to know, this disposition was as naught -beside the knowledge apparently about to drench him. They were there, -the companions, in their second brief arrest, with everything good in -the world that he might have conceived or coveted just taking for him -the radiant form of precious knowledges that he must be so obliging as -to submit to. Let it be fairly inspiring to us to imagine the acuteness -of his perception during these minutes of the possibilities of good -involved; the refinement of pleasure in his seeing how the advantage -thrust upon him would wear the dignity and grace of his consenting -unselfishly to learn--inasmuch as, quite evidently, the more he learnt, -and though it should be ostensibly and exclusively about Mr. Betterman's -heir, the more vividly it all would stare at him as a marked course of -his own. Wonderful thus the little space of his feeling the great wave -set in motion by that quiet worthy break upon him out of Gray's face, -Gray's voice, Gray's contact of hands laid all appealingly and -affirmingly on his shoulders, and then as it retreated, washing him -warmly down, expose to him, off in the intenser light and the uncovered -prospect, something like his entire personal future. Something -extraordinarily like, yes, could he but keep steady to recognise it -through a deepening consciousness, at the same time, of how he was more -than matching the growth of his friend's need of him by growing there at -once, and to rankness, under the friend's nose, all the values to which -this need supplied a soil. - -"Well, I won't pretend I'm not glad you don't adopt me as pure -ornament--glad you see, I mean, a few connections in which one may -perhaps be able, as well as certainly desirous, to be of service to you. -Only one should honestly tell you," Horton went on, "that people wanting -to help you will spring up round you like mushrooms, and that you'll be -able to pick and choose as even a king on his throne can't. Therefore, -my boy," Haughty said, "don't exaggerate my modest worth." - -Gray, though releasing him, still looked at him hard--so hard perhaps -that, having imagination, he might in an instant more have felt it go -down too deep. It hadn't done that, however, when "What I want of you -above all is exactly that _you_ shall pick and choose" was merely what -at first came of it. And the case was still all of the rightest as -Graham at once added: "You see 'people' are exactly my difficulty--I'm -so mortally afraid of them, and so equally sure that it's the last thing -you are. If I want you for myself I want you still more for others--by -which you may judge," said Gray, "that I've cut you out work." - -"That you're mortally afraid of people is, I confess," Haughty answered, -"news to me. I seem to remember you, on the contrary, as so remarkably -and--what was it we used to call it?--so critico-analytically interested -in 'em." - -"That's just it--I am so beastly interested! Don't you therefore see," -Gray asked, "how I may dread the complication?" - -"Dread it so that you seek to work it off on another?"--and Haughty -looked about as if he would after all have rather relished a cigarette. - -Clearly, none the less, this awkwardness was lost on his friend. "I want -to work off on you, Vinty, every blest thing that you'll let me; and -when you've seen into my case a little further my reasons will so jump -at your eyes that I'm convinced you'll have patience with them." - -"I'm not then, you think, too beastly interested myself----? I've got -such a free mind, you mean, and such a hard heart, and such a record of -failure to have been any use at all to myself, that I _must_ be just the -person, it strikes you, to save you all the trouble and secure you all -the enjoyment?" That inquiry Horton presently made, but with an addition -ere Gray could answer. "My difficulty for myself, you see, has always -been that I also am by my nature too beastly interested." - -"Yes"--Gray promptly met it--"but you like it, take that easily, -immensely enjoy it and are not a bit afraid of it. You carry it off and -you don't pay for it." - -"Don't you make anything," Horton simply went on, "of my being for -instance so uncannily interested in yourself?" - -Gray's eyes again sounded him. "_Are_ you really and truly?--to the -extent of its not boring you?" But with all he had even at the worst to -take for granted he waited for no reassurance. "You'll be so sorry for -me that I shall wring your heart and you'll assist me for common pity." - -"Well," Horton returned, a natural gaiety of response not wholly kept -under, "how can I absurdly make believe that pitying you, if it comes to -that, won't be enough against nature to have some fascination? Endowed -with every advantage, personal, physical, material, moral, in other -words, brilliantly clever, inordinately rich, strikingly handsome and -incredibly good, your state yet insists on being such as to nip in the -bud the hardy flower of envy. What's the matter with you to bring that -about would seem, I quite agree, well worth one's looking into--even if -it proves, by its perversity or its folly, something of a trial to one's -practical philosophy. When I pressed you some minutes ago for the reason -of your not facing the future with a certain ease you gave as that -reason your want of education and wit. But please understand," Horton -added, "that I've no time to waste with you on sophistry that isn't so -much as plausible." He stopped a moment, his hands in his pockets, his -head thrown all but extravagantly back, so that his considering look -might have seemed for the time to descend from a height designed a -little to emphasise Gray's comparative want of stature. That young man's -own eyes remained the while, none the less, unresentfully raised; to -such an effect indeed that, after some duration of this exchange, the -bigger man's fine irony quite visibly shaded into a still finer, and -withal frankly kinder, curiosity. Poor Gray, with a strained face and an -agitation but half controlled, breathed quick and hard, as from inward -pressure, and then, renouncing choice--there were so many things to -say--shook his head, slowly and repeatedly, after a fashion that -discouraged levity. "My dear boy," said his friend under this sharper -impression, "you do take it hard." Which made Graham turn away, move -about in vagueness of impatience and, still panting and still hesitating -for other expression, approach again, as from a blind impulse, the big -chimneypiece, reach for a box that raised a presumption of cigarettes -and, the next instant, thrust it out in silence at his visitor. The -latter's welcome of the motion, his prompt appropriation of relief, was -also mute; with which he found matches in advance of Gray's own notice -of them and had a light ready, of which our young man himself partook, -before the box went back to its shelf. Odd again might have been for a -protected witness of this scene--which of course is exactly what you are -invited to be--the lapse of speech that marked it for the several -minutes. Horton, truly touched now, and to the finer issue we have -glanced at, waited unmistakably for the sign of something more important -than his imagination, even at its best, could give him, and which, not -less conceivably, would be the sort of thing he himself hadn't signs, -either actual or possible, for. He waited while they did the place at -last the inevitable small violence--this being long enough to make him -finally say: "Do you mean, on your honour, that you don't _like_ what -has happened to you?" - -This unloosed then for Gray the gate of possible expression. "Of course -I like it--that is of course I try to. I've been trying here, day after -day, as hard as ever a decent man can have tried for anything; and yet I -remain, don't you see? a wretched little worm." - -"Deary, deary me," stared Horton, "that you should have to bring up your -appreciation of it from such depths! You go in for it as you would for -the electric light or the telephone, and then find half-way that you -can't stand the expense and want the next-door man somehow to combine -with you?" - -"That's exactly it, Vinty, and you're the next-door man!"--Gray embraced -the analogy with glee. "I _can't_ stand the expense, and yet I don't for -a moment deny I should immensely enjoy the convenience. I want," he -asseverated, "to like my luck. I want to go in for it, as you say, with -every inch of any such capacity as I have. And I want to believe in my -capacity; I want to work it up and develop it--I assure you on my honour -I do. I've lashed myself up into feeling that if I don't I shall be a -base creature, a worm of worms, as I say, and fit only to be utterly -ashamed. But that's where you come in. You'll help me to develop. To -develop my capacity I mean," he explained with a wondrous candour. - -Horton was now, small marvel, all clear faith; even, the cigarettes -helping, to the verge again of hilarity. "Your capacity--I see. Not so -much your property itself." - -"Well"--Gray considered of it--"what will my property be _except_ my -capacity?" He spoke really as for the pleasure of seeing very finely and -very far. "It won't if I don't like it, that is if I don't _understand_ -it, don't you see? enough to make it count. Yes, yes, don't revile me," -he almost feverishly insisted: "I do want it to count for all it's -worth, and to get everything out of it, to the very last drop of -interest, pleasure, experience, whatever you may call it, that such a -possession can yield. And I'm going to keep myself up to it, to the top -of the pitch, by every art and prop, by every helpful dodge, that I can -put my hand on. You see if I don't. I breathe defiance," he continued, -with his rare radiance, "at any suspicion or doubt. But I come back," he -had to add, "to my point that it's you that I essentially most depend -on." - -Horton again looked at him long and frankly; this subject of appeal -might indeed for the moment have been as embarrassed between the various -requisitions of response as Gray had just before shown himself. But as -the tide could surge for one of the pair so it could surge for the -other, and the large truth of what Horton most grasped appeared as soon -as he had spoken. "The name of your complaint, you poor dear delightful -person, or the name at least of your necessity, your predicament and -your solution, is marriage to a wife at short order. I mean of course to -an amiable one. _There_, so obviously, is your aid and your prop, there -are the sources of success for interest in your fortune, and for the -whole experience and enjoyment of it, as you can't find them elsewhere. -What are you but just 'fixed' to marry, and what is the sense of your -remarks but a more or less intelligent clamour for it?" - -Triumphant indeed, as we have said, for lucidity and ease, was this -question, and yet it had filled the air, for its moment, but to drop at -once by the practical puncture of Gray's perfect recognition. "Oh of -course I've thought of that--but it doesn't meet my case at all." Had he -been capable of disappointment in his friend he might almost have been -showing it now. - -Horton had, however, no heat about it. "You mean you absolutely don't -want a wife--in connection, so to speak, with your difficulties; or with -the idea, that is, of their being resolved into blessings?" - -"Well"--Gray was here at least all prompt and clear--"I keep down, in -that matter, so much as I can any _a priori_ or mere theoretic want. I -see my possibly marrying as an effect, I mean--I somehow don't see it at -all as a cause. A cause, that is"--he easily worked it out--"of my -getting other things right. It may be, in conditions, the greatest -rightness of all; but I want to be sure of the conditions." - -"The first of which is, I understand then"--for this at least had been -too logical for Haughty not to have to match it--"that you should fall -so tremendously in love that you won't be able to help yourself." - -Graham just debated; he was all intelligence here. "Falling tremendously -in love--the way you _grands amoureux_ talk of such things!" - -"Where do you find, my boy," Horton asked, "that I'm a grand amoureux?" - -Well, Gray had but to consult his memory of their young days together; -there was the admission, under pressure, that he might have confused the -appearances. "They were at any rate always up and at you--which seems to -have left me with the impression that your life is full of them." - -"Every man's life is full of them that has a door or a window they can -come in by. But the question's of yourself," said Haughty, "and just -exactly of the number of such that you'll have to keep open or shut in -the immense façade you'll now present." - -Our young man might well have struck him as before all else -inconsequent. "I shall present an immense façade?"--Gray, from his tone -of surprise, to call it nothing more, would have thought of this for the -first time. - -But Horton just hesitated. "You've great ideas if you see it yourself as -a small one." - -"I don't see it as any. I decline," Gray remarked, "to _have_ a façade. -And if I don't I shan't have the windows and doors." - -"You've got 'em already, fifty in a row"--Haughty was remorseless--"and -it isn't a question of 'having': you _are_ a façade; stretching a mile -right and left. How can you not be when I'm walking up and down in front -of you?" - -"Oh you walk up and down, you _make_ the things you pass, and you can -behave of course if you want like one of the giants in uniform, outside -the big shops, who attend the ladies in and out. In fact," Gray went on, -"I don't in the least judge that I _am_, or can be at all advertised as, -one of the really big. You seem all here so hideously rich that I -needn't fear to count as extraordinary; indeed I'm very competently -assured I'm by all your standards a very moderate affair. And even if I -were a much greater one"--he gathered force--"my appearance of it would -depend only on myself. You can have means and not be blatant; you can -take up, by the very fact itself, if you happen to be decent, no more -room than may suit your taste. I'll be hanged if I consent to take up an -inch more than suits mine. Even though not of the truly bloated I've at -least means to be quiet. Every one among us--I mean among the -moneyed--isn't a monster on exhibition." In proof of which he abounded. -"I know people myself who aren't." - -Horton considered him with amusement, as well apparently as the people -that he knew! "Of course you may dig the biggest hole in the ground that -ever was dug--spade-work comes high, but you'll have the means--and get -down into it and sit at the very bottom. Only your hole will become then -_the_ feature of the scene, and we shall crowd a thousand deep all round -the edge of it." - -Gray stood for a moment looking down, then faced his guest as with a -slight effort. "Do you know about Rosanna Gaw?" And then while Horton, -for reasons of his own, failed at once to answer: "_She_ has come in for -millions----" - -"Twenty-two and a fraction," Haughty said at once. "Do you mean that she -sits, like Truth, at the bottom of a well?" he asked still more -divertedly. - -Gray had a sharp gesture. "If there's a person in the world whom I don't -call a façade----!" - -"You don't call _her_ one?"--Haughty took it right up. And he added as -for very compassion: "My poor man, my poor man----!" - -"She loathes self-exhibition; she loathes being noticed; she loathes -every form of publicity." Gray quite flushed for it. - -Horton went to the mantel for another cigarette, and there was that in -the calm way of it that made his friend, even though helping him this -time to a light, wait in silence for his word. "She does more than -that"--it was brought quite dryly out. "She loathes every separate -dollar she possesses." - -Gray's sense of the matter, strenuous though it was, could just stare at -this extravagance of assent; seeing however, on second thoughts, what -there might be in it. "Well then if what I have is a molehill beside her -mountain, I can the more easily emulate her in standing back." - -"What you have is a molehill?" Horton was concerned to inquire. - -Gray showed a shade of guilt, but faced his judge. "Well--so I gather." - -The judge at this lost patience. "Am I to understand that you positively -_cultivate_ vagueness and water it with your tears?" - -"Yes"--the culprit was at least honest--"I should rather say I do. And I -want you to let me. Do let me." - -"It's apparently more then than Miss Gaw does!" - -"Yes"--Gray again considered; "she seems to know more or less what she's -worth, and she tells me that I can't even begin to approach it." - -"Very crushing of her!" his friend laughed. "You 'make the pair', as -they say, and you must help each other much. Her 'loathing' it exactly -is--since we know all about it!--that gives her a frontage as wide as -the Capitol at Washington. Therefore your comparison proves -little--though I confess it would rather help us," Horton pursued, "if -you could seem, as you say, to have asked one or two of the questions -that I should suppose would have been open to you. - -"Asked them of Mr. Crick, you mean?" - -"Well, yes--if you've nobody else, and as you appear not to have been -able to have cared to look at the will yourself." - -Something like a light of hope, at this, kindled in Gray's face. "Would -_you_ care to look at it, Vinty?" - -The inquiry gave Horton pause. "Look at it now, you mean?" - -"Well--whenever you like. I think," said Gray, "it must be in the -house." - -"You're not sure even of _that?_" his companion wailed. - -"Oh I know there are two"--our young man had coloured. "I don't mean -different ones, but copies of the same," he explained; "one of which Mr. -Crick must have." - -"And the other of which"--Horton pieced it together--"is the one you -offer to show me?" - -"Unless, unless----!" and Gray, casting about, bethought himself. -"Unless _that_ one----!" With his eyes on his friend's he still -shamelessly wondered. - -"Unless that one has happened to get lost," Horton tenderly suggested, -"so that you can't after all produce it?" - -"No, but it may be upstairs, upstairs----" Gray continued to turn this -over. "I think it _is_," he then recognised, "where I had perhaps better -not just now disturb it." - -His recognition was nothing, apparently, however, to the clear quickness -of Horton's. "It's in your uncle's own room?" - -"The room," Gray assented, "where he lies in death while we talk here." -This, his tone suggested, sufficiently enjoined delay. - -Horton's concurrence was immediately such that, once more turning off, -he measured, for the intensity of it, half the room. "I can't advise you -without the facts that you're unable to give," he said as he came back, -"but I don't indeed invite you to go and rummage in that presence." He -might have exhaled the faintest irony, save that verily by this time, -between these friends--by which I mean of course as from one of them -only, the more generally assured, to the other--irony would, to an at -all exhaustive analysis, have been felt to flicker in their medium. Gray -might in fact, on the evidence of his next words, have found it just -distinguishable. - - - - -V - - -"We do talk here while he lies in death"--they had in fine all serenity -for it. "But the extraordinary thing is that my putting myself this way -at my ease--and for that matter putting you at yours--is exactly what -the dear man made to me the greatest point of. I haven't the shade of a -sense, and don't think I ever shall have, of not doing what he wanted of -me; for what he wanted of me," our particular friend continued, -"is--well, so utterly unconventional. He would _like_ my being the right -sort of well-meaning idiot that you catch me in the very fact of. I -warned him, I sincerely, passionately warned him, that I'm not fit, in -the smallest degree, for the use, for the care, for even the most -rudimentary comprehension, of a fortune; and that exactly it was which -seemed most to settle him. He wanted me clear, to the last degree, not -only of the financial brain, but of any sort of faint germ of the -money-sense whatever--down to the very lack of power, if he might be so -happy (or if _I_ might!) to count up to ten on my fingers. Satisfied of -the limits of my arithmetic he passed away in bliss." - -To this, as fairly lucid, Horton had applied his understanding. "You -can't count up to ten?" - -"Not all the way. Still," our young man smiled, "the greater inspiration -may now give me the lift." - -His guest looked as if one might by that time almost have doubted. But -it was indeed an extraordinary matter. "How comes it then that your want -of arithmetic hasn't given you a want of order?--unless indeed I'm -mistaken and you _were_ perhaps at sixes and sevens?" - -"Well, I think I was at sixes--though I never got up to sevens! I've -never had the least rule or method; but that has been a sort of thing I -could more or less cover up--from others, I mean, not from myself, who -have always been helplessly ashamed of it. It hasn't been the disorder -of extravagance," Gray explained, "but the much more ignoble kind, the -wasteful thrift that doesn't really save, that simply misses, and that -neither enjoys things themselves nor enjoys their horrid little -equivalent of hoarded pence. I haven't needed to count far, the fingers -of one hand serving for my four or five possessions; and also I've kept -straight not by taking no liberties with my means, but by taking none -with my understanding of them. From fear of counting wrong, and from -loathing of the act of numerical calculation, and of the humiliation of -having to give it up after so few steps from the start, I've never -counted at all--and that, you see, is what has saved me. That has been -my sort of disorder--which you'll agree is the most pitiful of all." - -Horton once more turned away from him, but slowly this time, not in -impatience, rather with something of the preoccupation of a cup-bearer -whose bowl has been filled to the brim and who must carry it a distance -with a steady hand. So for a minute or two might he have been taking -this care; at the end of which, however, Gray saw him stop in apparent -admiration before a tall inlaid and brass-bound French _bahut_; with the -effect, after a further moment, of a sharp break of their thread of -talk. "You've got some things here at least to enjoy and that you ought -to know how to keep hold of; though I don't so much mean," he explained, -"this expensive piece of furniture as the object of interest perched on -top." - -"Oh the ivory tower!--yes, isn't that, Vinty, a prize piece and worthy -of the lovely name?" - -Vinty remained for the time all admiration, having, as you would easily -have seen, lights enough to judge by. "It appears to have been your -uncle's only treasure--as everything else about you here is of a -newness! And it isn't so much too small, Gray," he laughed, "for you to -get into it yourself, when you want to get rid of us, and draw the doors -to. If it's a symbol of any retreat you really have an eye on I much -congratulate you; I don't know what I wouldn't give myself for the 'run' -of an ivory tower." - -"Well, I can't ask you to share mine," Gray returned; "for the situation -to have a sense, I take it, one must sit in one's tower alone. And I -should properly say," he added after an hesitation, "that mine is the -one object, all round me here, that I don't owe my uncle: it has been -placed at my disposition, in the handsomest way in the world, by Rosanna -Gaw." - -"Ah that does increase the interest--even if susceptible of seeming to -mean, to one's bewilderment, that it's the sort of thing she would like -to thrust you away into; which I hope, however, is far from the case. -Does she then _keep_ ivory towers, a choice assortment?" Horton quite -gaily continued; "in the sense of having a row of them ready for -occupation, and with tenants to match perchable in each and signalling -along the line from summit to summit? Because"--and, facing about from -his contemplation, he piled up his image even as the type of object -represented by it might have risen in the air--"you give me exactly, you -see, the formula of that young lady herself: perched aloft in an ivory -tower is what she is, and I'll be hanged if this isn't a hint to you to -mount, yourself, into just such another; under the same provocation, I -fancy her pleading, as she has in her own case taken for sufficient." -Thus it was that, suddenly more brilliant than ever yet, to Graham's -apprehension, you might well have guessed, his friend stood nearer -again--stood verily quite irradiating responsive ingenuity. Markedly -would it have struck you that at such instants as this, most of all, the -general hush that was so thick about them pushed upward and still -further upward the fine flower of the inferential. Following the pair -closely from the first, and beginning perhaps with your idea that this -life of the intelligence had its greatest fineness in Gray Fielder, you -would by now, I dare say, have been brought to a more or less -apprehensive foretaste of its possibilities in our other odd agent. For -how couldn't it have been to the full stretch of his elastic imagination -that Haughty was drawn out by the time of his putting a certain matter -beautifully to his companion? "Don't I, 'gad, take the thing straight -over from you--all of it you've been trying to convey to me here!--when -I see you, up in the blue, behind your parapet, just gracefully lean -over and call down to where I mount guard at your door in the dust and -comparative darkness? It's well to understand"--his thumbs now in his -waistcoat-holes he measured his idea as if Gray's own face fairly -reflected it: "you want me to take _all_ the trouble for you simply, in -order that you may have all the fun. And you want me at the same time, -in order that things shall be for you at their ideal of the easiest, to -make you believe, as a salve to your conscience, that the fun _isn't_ so -mixed with the trouble as that you can't have it, on the right -arrangement made with me, quite by itself. This is most ingenious of -you," Horton added, "but it doesn't in the least show me, don't you see? -where my fun comes in." - -"I wonder if I can do that," Gray returned, "without making you -understand first something of the nature of mine--or for that matter -without my first understanding myself perhaps what my queer kind of it -is most likely to be." - -His companion showed withal for more and more ready to risk amused -recognitions. "You _are_ 'rum' with your queer kinds, and might make my -flesh creep, in these conditions, if it weren't for something in me of -rude pluck." Gray, in speaking, had moved towards the great French -meuble with some design upon it or upon the charge it carried; which -Horton's eyes just wonderingly noted--and to the effect of an -exaggeration of tone in his next remark. "However, there are assurances -one doesn't keep repeating: it's so little in me, I feel, to refuse you -any service I'm capable of, no matter how clumsily, that if you take me -but confidently enough for the agent even of your unholiest pleasures, -you'll find me still putting them through for you when you've broken -down in horror yourself." - -"Of course it's my idea that whatever I ask you shall be of interest to -you, and of the liveliest, in itself--quite apart from any virtue of my -connection with it. If it speaks to you that way so much the better," -Gray went on, standing now before the big _bahut_ with both hands raised -and resting on the marble top. This lifted his face almost to the level -of the base of his perched treasure--so that he stared at the ivory -tower without as yet touching it. He only continued to talk, though with -his thought, as he brought out the rest of it, almost superseded -by the new preoccupation. "I shall absolutely decline any good of -anything that isn't attended by some equivalent or--what do you call -it?--proportionate good for you. I shall propose to you a percentage, if -that's the right expression, on every blest benefit I get from you in -the way of the sense of safety." Gray now moved his hands, laying them -as in finer fondness to either smoothly-plated side of the tall -repository, against which a finger or two caressingly rubbed. His back -turned therefore to Horton, he was divided between the growth of his -response to him and that of this more sensible beauty. "Don't I kind of -insure my life, my moral consciousness, I mean, for your advantage?--or -_with_ you, as it were, taking you for the officeman or actuary, if I'm -not muddling: to whom I pay a handsome premium for the certainty of -there being to my credit, on my demise, a sufficient sum to clear off my -debts and bury me." - -"You propose to me a handsome premium? Catch me," Horton laughed, "not -jumping at _that!_" - -"Yes, and you'll of course fix the premium yourself." But Gray was now -quite detached, occupied only in opening his ivory doors with light -fingers and then playing these a little, whether for hesitation or for -the intenser pointing of inquiry, up and down the row of drawers so -exposed. Against the topmost they then rested a moment--drawing out this -one, however, with scant further delay and enabling themselves to feel -within and so become possessed of an article contained. It was with this -article in his hand that he presently faced about again, turning it -over, resting his eyes on it and then raising them to his visitor, who -perceived in it a heavy letter, duly addressed, to all appearance, but -not stamped and as yet unopened. "The distinguished retreat, you see, -_has_ its tenant." - -"Do you mean by its tenant the author of those evidently numerous -pages?--unless you rather mean," Horton asked, "that you seal up in -packets the love-letters addressed to you and find that charming -receptacle a congruous place to keep them? Is there a packet in every -drawer, and do you take them out this way to remind yourself fondly that -you have them and that it mayn't be amiss for me to feel your conquests -and their fine old fragrance dangled under my nose?" - -Our young man, at these words, had but returned to the consideration of -his odd property, attaching it first again to the superscription and -then to the large firm seal. "I haven't the least idea what this is; and -I'm divided in respect of it, I don't mind telling you, between -curiosity and repulsion." - -Horton then also eyed the ambiguity, but at his discreet distance and -reaching out for it as little as his friend surrendered it. "Do you -appeal to me by chance to help you to decide either way?" - -Poor Gray, still wondering and fingering, had a long demur. "No--I don't -think I want to decide." With which he again faced criticism. "The -extent, Vinty, to which I think I must just _like_ to drift----!" - -Vinty seemed for a moment to give this indicated quantity the attention -invited to it, but without more action for the case than was represented -by his next saying: "Why then do you produce your question--apparently -so much for my benefit?" - -"Because in the first place you noticed the place it lurks in, and -because in the second I like to tell you things." - -This might have struck us as making the strained note in Vinty's smile -more marked. "But that's exactly, confound you, what you _don't_ do! -Here have I been with you half an hour without your practically telling -me anything!" - -Graham, very serious, stood a minute looking at him hard; succeeding -also quite it would seem in taking his words not in the least for a -reproach but for a piece of information of the greatest relevance, and -thus at once dismissing any minor importance. He turned back with his -minor importance to his small open drawer, laid it within again and, -pushing the drawer to, closed the doors of the cabinet. The act disposed -of the letter, but had the air of introducing as definite a statement as -Horton could have dreamt of. "It's a bequest from Mr. Gaw." - -"A bequest"--Horton wondered--"of banknotes?" - -"No--it's a letter addressed to me just before his death, handed me by -his daughter, to whom he intrusted it, and not likely, I think, to -contain money. He was then sure, apparently, of my coming in for money; -and even if he hadn't been would have had no ground on earth for leaving -me anything." - -Horton's visible interest was yet consonant with its waiting a little -for expression. "He leaves you the great Rosanna." - -Graham, at this, had a stare, followed by a flush as the largest -possible sense of it came out. "You suppose it perhaps the expression of -a wish----?" And then as Horton forbore at first as to what he supposed: -"A wish that I may find confidence to apply to his daughter for her -hand?" - -"That hasn't occurred to you before?" Horton asked--"nor the measure of -the confidence suggested been given you by the fact of your receiving -the document from Rosanna herself? You do give me, you extraordinary -person," he gaily proceeded, "as good opportunities as I could possibly -desire to 'help' you!" - -Graham, for all the felicity of this, needed but an instant to think. "I -have it from Miss Gaw herself that she hasn't an idea of what the letter -contains--any more than she has the least desire that I shall for the -present open it." - -"Well, mayn't that very attitude in her rather point to a suspicion?" -was his guest's ingenious reply. "Nothing could be less like -her certainly than to appear in such a case to want to force -your hand. It makes her position--with exquisite filial piety, you -see--extraordinarily delicate." - -Prompt as that might be, Gray appeared to show, no sportive sophistry, -however charming, could work upon him. "Why should Mr. Gaw want me to -marry his daughter?" - -Horton again hung about a little. "Why should you be so afraid of -ascertaining his idea that you don't so much as peep into what he writes -on the subject?" - -"Afraid? _Am_ I afraid?" Gray fairly spoke with a shade of the hopeful, -as if even that would be richer somehow than drifting. - -"Well, you looked at your affair just now as you might at some small -dangerous, some biting or scratching, animal whom you're not at all sure -of." - -"And yet you see I keep him about." - -"Yes--you keep him in his cage, for which I suppose you have a key." - -"I have indeed a key, a charming little golden key." With which Gray -took another turn; once more facing criticism, however, to say with -force: "He hated him most awfully!" - -Horton appeared to wonder. "Your uncle hated old Gaw?" - -"No--I don't think _he_ cared. I speak of Mr. Gaw's own animus. He -disliked so mortally his old associate, the man who lies dead -upstairs--and in spite of my consideration for him I still preserve his -record." - -"How do you know about his hate," Horton asked, "or if your letter, -since you haven't read it, is a record?" - -"Well, I don't trust it--I mean not to be. I don't see what else he -could have written me about. Besides," Gray added, "I've my personal -impression." - -"Of old Gaw? You have seen him then?" - -"I saw him out there on this verandah, where he was hovering in the most -extraordinary fashion, a few hours before his death. It was only for a -few minutes," Gray said--"but they were minutes I shall never forget." - -Horton's interest, though so deeply engaged, was not unattended with -perplexity. "You mean he expressed to you such a feeling at such an -hour?" - -"He expressed to me in about three minutes, without speech, to which it -seemed he couldn't trust himself, as much as it might have taken him, or -taken anyone else, to express in three months at another time and on -another subject. If you ever yourself saw him," Gray went on, "perhaps -you'll understand." - -"Oh I often saw him--and should indeed in your place perhaps have -understood. I never heard him accused of not making people do so. But -you hold," said Horton, "that he must have backed up for you further the -mystic revelation?" - -"He had written before he saw me--written on the chance of my being a -person to be affected by it; and after seeing me he didn't destroy or -keep back his message, but emphasised his wish for a punctual delivery." - -"By which it is evident," Horton concluded, "that you struck him exactly -as such a person." - -"He saw me, by my idea, as giving my attention to what he had there -ready for me." Gray clearly had talked himself into possession of his -case. "That's the sort of person I succeeded in seeming to him--though I -can assure you without my the least wanting to." - -"What you feel is then that he thought he might attack with some sort of -shock for you the character of your uncle?" Vinty's question had a -special straightness. - -"What I feel is that he has so attacked it, shock or no shock, and that -that thing in my cabinet, which I haven't examined, can only be the -proof." - -It gave Horton much to turn over. "But your conviction has an -extraordinary bearing. Do I understand that the thing was handed you by -your friend with a knowledge of its contents?" - -"Don't, please," Gray said at once, "understand anything either so -hideous or so impossible. She but carried out a wish uttered on her -father's deathbed, and hasn't so much as suggested that I break the -portentous seal. I think in fact," he assured himself, "that she greatly -prefers I shouldn't." - -"Which fact," Horton observed, "but adds of course to your curiosity." - -Gray's look at him betrayed on this a still finer interest in _his_ -interest. "You see the limits in me of that passion." - -"Well, my dear chap, I've seen greater limits to many things than your -having your little secret tucked away under your thumb. Do you mind my -asking," Horton risked, "whether what deters you from action--and by -action I mean opening your letter--is just a real apprehension of the -effect designed by the good gentleman? Do you feel yourself exposed, by -the nature of your mind or any presumption on Gaw's behalf, to give -credit, vulgarly speaking, to whatever charge or charges he may bring?" - -Gray weighed the question, his wide dark eyes would have told us, in, -his choicest silver scales. "Neither the nature of my mind, bless it, -nor the utmost force of any presumption to the contrary, prevents my -having found my uncle, in his wonderful latest development, the very -most charming person that I've ever seen in my life. Why he impressed me -as a model of every virtue." - -"I confess I don't see," said Horton, "how a relative so behaving could -have failed to endear himself. With such convictions why don't you risk -looking?" - -Gray was but for a moment at a loss--he quite undertook to know. -"Because the whole thing would be so horrible. I mean the question -itself is--and even our here and at such a time discussing it." - -"Nothing is horrible--to the point of making one quake," Horton opined, -"that falls to the ground with a smash from the moment one drops it. The -sense of your document is exactly what's to be appreciated. It would -have no sense at all if you didn't believe." - -Gray considered, but still differed. "Yes, to find it merely vindictive -and base, and thereby to have to take it for false, that would still be -an odious experience." - -"Then why the devil don't you simply destroy the thing?" Horton at last -quite impatiently inquired. - -Gray showed perhaps he had scarce a reason, but had, to the very -brightest effect, an answer. "That's just what I want you to help me to. -To help me, that is," he explained, "after a little to decide for." - -"After a little?" wondered Horton. "After how long?" - -"Well, after long enough for me to feel sure I don't act in fear. I -don't want," he went on as in fresh illustration of the pleasure taken -by him, to the point, as it were, of luxury, in feeling no limit to his -companion's comprehension, or to the patience involved in it either, -amusedly as Horton might at moments attempt to belie that, adding -thereby to the whole service something still more spacious--"I don't -want to act in fear of anything or of anyone whatever; I said to myself -at home three weeks ago, or whenever, that it wasn't for that I was -going to come over; and I propose therefore, you see, to know so far as -possible where I am and what I'm about: morally speaking at least, if -not financially." - -His friend but looked at him again on this in rather desperate -diversion. "I don't see how you're to know where you are, I confess, if -you take no means to find out." - -"Well, my acquisition of property seems by itself to promise me -information, and for the understanding of the lesson I shall have to -take a certain time. What I want," Gray finely argued, "is to act but in -the light of that." - -"In the light of time? Then why do you begin by so oddly wasting it?" - -"Because I think it may be the only way for me not to waste -understanding. Don't be afraid," he went on, moving as by the effect of -Horton's motion, which had brought that subject of appeal a few steps -nearer the rare repository, "that I shall commit the extravagance of at -all wasting _you._" - -Horton, from where he had paused, looked up at the ivory tower; though -as Gray was placed in the straight course of approach to it he had after -a fashion to catch and meet his eyes by the way. "What you really want -of me, it's clear, is to help you to fidget and fumble--or in other -words to prolong the most absurd situation; and what I ought to do, if -you'd believe it of me, is to take that stuff out of your hands and just -deal with it myself." - -"And what do you mean by dealing with it yourself?" - -"Why destroying it unread by either of us--which," said Horton, looking -about, "I'd do in a jiffy, on the spot, if there were only a fire in -that grate. The place is clear, however, and we've matches; let me chuck -your letter in and enjoy the blaze with you." - -"Ah, my dear man, don't! Don't!" Gray repeated, putting it rather as a -plea for indulgence than as any ghost of a defiance, but instinctively -stepping backward in defence of his treasure. - -His companion, for a little, gazed at the cabinet, in speculation, it -might really have seemed, as to an extraordinary reach of arm. "You -positively prefer to hug the beastly thing?" - -"Let me alone," Gray presently returned, "and you'll probably find I've -hugged it to death." - -Horton took, however, on his side, a moment for further reflection. "I -thought what you wanted of me to be exactly _not_ that I should let you -alone, but that I should give you on the contrary my very best -attention!" - -"Well," Gray found felicity to answer, "I feel that you'll see how your -very best attention will sometimes consist in your not at all minding -me." - -So then for the minute Horton looked as if he took it. The great clock -on the mantel appeared to have stopped with the stop of its late owner's -life; so that he eyed his watch and startled at the hour to which they -had talked. He put out his hand for good-night, and this returned grasp -held them together in silence a minute. Something then in his sense of -the situation determined his breaking out with an intensity not yet -produced in him. "Yes--you're really prodigious. I mean for trust in a -fellow. For upon my honour you know nothing whatever about me." - -"That's quite what I mean," said Gray--"that I suffer from my ignorance -of so much that's important, and want naturally to correct it." - -"'Naturally'?" his visitor gloomed. - -"Why, I do know _this_ about you, that when we were together with old -Roulet at Neuchâtel and, off on our _cours_ that summer, had strayed -into a high place, in the Oberland, where I was ass enough to have slid -down to a scrap of a dizzy ledge, and so hung helpless over the void, -unable to get back, in horror of staying and in greater horror of not, -you got near enough to me, at the risk of your life, to lower to me the -rope we so luckily had with us and that made an effort of my own -possible by my managing to pass it under my arms. You helped that effort -from a place of vantage above that nobody but you, in your capacity for -playing up, would for a moment have taken for one, and you so hauled and -steadied and supported me, in spite of your almost equal exposure, that -little by little I climbed, I scrambled, my absolute confidence in you -helping, for it amounted to inspiration, and got near to where you -were." - -"From which point," said Horton, whom this reminiscence had kept gravely -attentive, "you in your turn rendered me such assistance, I remember, -though I can't for the life of me imagine how you contrived, that the -tables were quite turned and I shouldn't in the least have got out of my -fix without you." He now pulled up short however; he stood a moment -looking down. "It isn't pleasant to remember." - -"It wouldn't," Gray judged, "be pleasant to forget. You gave proof of -extraordinary coolness." - -Horton still had his eyes on the ground. "We both kept our heads. I -grant it's a decent note for us." - -"If you mean we were associated in keeping our heads, you kept mine," -Gray remarked, "much more than I kept yours. I should be without a head -to-day if you hadn't seen so to my future, just as I should be without a -heart, you must really let me remark, if I didn't look now to your past. -I consider that to know that fact in it takes me of itself well-nigh far -enough in appreciation of you for my curiosity, even at its most -exasperated, to rest on a bed of roses. However, my imagination itself," -Gray still more beautifully went on, "insists on making additions--since -how can't it, for that matter, picture again the rate at which it made -them then? I hadn't even at the time waited for you to save my life in -order to think you a swell. If I thought you the biggest kind of one, -and if in your presence now I see just as much as ever why I did, what -does that amount to but that my mind isn't a blank about you?" - -"Well, if mine had ever been one about you," said Horton, once more -facing it, "our so interesting conversation here would have sufficed to -cram it full. The least I can make of you, whether for your protection -or my profit, is just that you're insanely romantic." - -"Romantic--yes," Gray smiled; "but oh, but oh, so systematically!" - -"It's your system that's exactly your madness. How can you take me, -without a stroke of success, without a single fact of performance, to my -credit, for anything but an abject failure? You're in possession of no -faintest sign, kindly note, that I'm not a mere impudent ass." - -Gray accepted this reminder, for all he showed to the contrary, in the -admiring spirit in which he might have regarded a splendid somersault or -an elegant trick with cards; indulging, that is, by his appearance, in -the forward bend of attention to it, but then falling back to more -serious ground. "It's my romance that's itself my reason; by which I -mean that I'm never so reasonable, so deliberate, so lucid and so -capable--to call myself capable at any hour!--as when I'm most romantic. -I'm methodically and consistently so, and nothing could make and keep -me, for any dealings with me, I hold, more conveniently safe and quiet. -You see that you can lead me about by a string if you'll only tie it to -my appropriate finger--which you'll find out, if you don't mind the -trouble, by experience of the wrong ones, those where the attachment -won't 'act.'" He drew breath to give his friend the benefit of this -illustration, but another connection quickly caught him up. "How can you -pretend to suggest that you're in these parts the faintest approach to -an insignificant person? How can you pretend that you're not as clever -as you can stick together, and with the cleverness of the right kind? -For there are odious kinds, I know--the kind that redresses other -people's stupidity instead of sitting upon it." - -"I'll answer you those questions," Horton goodhumouredly said, "as soon -as you tell me how you've come by your wonderful ground for them. Till -you're able to do that I shall resent your torrent of abuse. The -appalling creature you appear to wish to depict!" - -"Well, you're simply a _figure_--what I call--in all the force of the -term; one has only to look at you to see it, and I shall give up drawing -conclusions from it only when I give up looking. You can make out that -there's nothing in a prejudice," Gray developed, "for a prejudice may -be, or must be, so to speak, single-handed; but you can't not count with -a relation--I mean one you're a party to, because a relation is exactly -a _fact_ of reciprocity. Our reciprocity, which exists and which makes -me a party to it by existing for my benefit, just as it makes you one by -existing for yours, can't possibly result in your not 'figuring' to me, -don't you see? with the most admirable intensity. And I simply decline," -our young man wound up, "not to believe tremendous things of any subject -of a relation of mine." - -"'Any' subject?" Vinty echoed in a tone that showed how intelligently he -had followed. "That condition, I'm afraid," he smiled, "will cut down -not a little your general possibilities of relation." And then as if -this were cheap talk, but a point none the less remained: "In this -country one's a figure (whatever you may mean by that!) on easy terms; -and if I correspond to your idea of the phenomenon you'll have much to -do--I won't say for my simple self, but for the comfort of your mind--to -make your fond imagination fit the funny facts. You pronounce me an -awful swell--which, like everything else over here, has less weight of -sense in it for the saying than it could have anywhere else; but what -barest evidence have you of any positive trust in me shown on any -occasion or in any connection by one creature you can name?" - -"Trust?"--Gray looked at the red tip of the cigarette between his -fingers. - -"Trust, trust, trust!" - -Well, it didn't take long to say. "What do you call it but trust that -such people as the Bradhams, and all the people here, as he tells me, -receive you with open arms?" - -"Such people as the Bradhams and as 'all the people here'!"--Horton -beamed on him for the beauty of that. "Such authorities and such -'figures,' such allegations, such perfections and such proofs! Oh," he -said, "I'm going to have great larks with you!" - -"You give me then the evidence I want in the very act of challenging me -for it. What better proof of your situation and your character than your -possession exactly of such a field for whatever you like, of such a dish -for serving me up? Mr. Bradham, as you know," Gray continued, "was this -morning so good as to pay me a visit, and the form in which he put your -glory to me--because we talked of you ever so pleasantly--was that, by -his appreciation, you know your way about the place better than all the -rest of the knowing put together." - -Horton smiled, smoked, kept his hands in his pockets. "Dear deep old -Davey!" - -"Yes," said Gray consistently, "isn't he a wise old specimen? It's -rather horrid for me having thus to mention, as if you had applied to me -for a place, that I've picked up a good 'character' of you, but since -you insist on it he assured me that I couldn't possibly have a better -friend." - -"Well, he's a most unscrupulous old person and ought really to be -ashamed. What it comes to," Haughty added, "is that though I've -repeatedly stayed with them they've to the best of his belief never -missed one of the spoons. The fact is that even if they had poor Davey -wouldn't know it." - -"He doesn't take care of the spoons?" Gray asked in a tone that made his -friend at once swing round and away. He appeared to note an -unexpectedness in this, yet, "out" as he was for unexpectedness, it -could grow, on the whole, clearly, but to the raising of his spirits. -"Well, I shall take care of _my_ loose valuables and, unwarned by the -Bradhams and likely to have such things to all appearance in greater -number than ever before, what can I do but persist in my notion of -asking you to keep with me, at your convenience, some proper count of -them?" After which as Horton's movement had carried him quite to the far -end of the room, where the force of it even detained him a little. Gray -had him again well in view for his return, and was prompted thereby to a -larger form of pressure. "How can you pretend to palm off on me that -women mustn't in prodigious numbers 'trust' you?" - -Haughty made of his shoulders the most prodigious hunch. "What -importance, under the sun, has the trust of women--in numbers however -prodigious? It's never what's best in a man they trust--it's exactly -what's worst, what's most irrelevant to anything or to any class but -themselves. Their _kind_ of confidence," he further elucidated, "is -concerned only with the effect of their own operations or with those to -which they are subject; it has no light either for a man's other friends -or for his enemies: it proves nothing about him but in that particular -and wholly detached relation. So neither hate me nor like me, please, -for anything any woman may tell you." - -Horton's hand had on this renewed and emphasised its proposal of -good-night; to which his host acceded with the remark: "What superfluous -precautions you take!" - -"How can you call them superfluous," he asked in answer to this, "when -you've been taking them at such a rate yourself?--in the interest, I -mean, of trying to persuade me that you can't stand on your feet?" - -"It hasn't been to show you that I'm silly about life--which is what -you've just been talking of. It has only been to show you that I'm silly -about affairs," Gray said as they went at last through the big bedimmed -hall to the house doors, which stood open to the warm summer night under -the protection of the sufficient outward reaches. - -"Well, what are affairs but life?" Vinty, at the top of the steps, -sought to know. - -"You'll make me feel, no doubt, how much they are--which would be very -good for me. Only life isn't affairs--that's my subtle distinction," -Gray went on. - -"I'm not sure, I'm not sure!" said Horton while he looked at the stars. - -"Oh rot--_I_ am!" Gray happily declared; to which he the next moment -added: "What it makes you contend for, you see, is the fact of my -silliness." - -"Well, what is that but the most splendid fact about you, you jolly old -sage?"--and his visitor, getting off, fairly sprang into the shade of -the shrubberies. - - - - -BOOK FOURTH - - -I - - -Again and again, during the fortnight that followed his uncle's death, -were his present and his future to strike our young man as an -extraordinary blank cheque signed by Mr. Betterman and which, from the -moment he accepted it at all, he must fill out, according to his -judgment, his courage and his faith, with figures, monstrous, fantastic, -almost cabalistic, that it seemed to him he should never learn to -believe in. It was not so much the wonder of there being in various New -York institutions strange deposits of money, to amounts that, like -familiar mountain masses, appeared to begin at the blue horizon and, -sloping up and up toward him, grew bigger and bigger the nearer he or -they got, till they fairly overhung him with their purple power to meet -whatever drafts upon them he should make; it was not the tone, the -climax of dryness, of that dryest of men Mr. Crick, whose answering -remark as to any and every particular presumption of credit was "Well, I -guess I've fixed it so as you'll find _something_ there"; that sort of -thing was of course fairy-tale enough in itself, was all the while and -in a hundred connections a sweet assault on his credulity, but was at -the same time a phase of experience comparatively vulgar and that tended -to lose its edge with repetition. The real, the overwhelming sense of -his adventure was much less in the fact that he could lisp in dollars, -as it were, and see the dollars come, than in those vast vague -quantities, those spreading tracts, of his own consciousness itself on -which his kinsman's prodigious perversity had imposed, as for his -exploration, the aspect of a boundless capital. This trust of the dead -man in his having a nature that would show to advantage under a bigger -strain than it had ever dreamed of meeting, and the corresponding -desolate freedom on his own part to read back into the mystery such -refinements either, or such crude candours, of meaning and motive as -might seem best to fit it, that was the huge vague inscribable sum which -ran up into the millions and for which the signature that lettered -itself to the last neatness wherever his mind's eye rested was "good" -enough to reduce any more casual sign in the scheme of nature or of art -to the state of a negligible blur. Mr. Crick's want of colour, as Gray -qualified this gentleman's idiosyncrasy from the moment he saw how it -would be their one point of contact, became, by the extreme rarity and -clarity with which it couldn't but affect him, the very most gorgeous -gem, of the ruby or topaz order, that the smooth forehead of the actual -was for the present to flash upon him. - -For dry did it appear inevitable to take the fact of a person's turning -up, from New York, with no other retinue than an attendant scribe in a -straw hat, a few hours before his uncle's last one, and being beholden -to mere Miss Mumby for simple introduction to Gray as Mr. Betterman's -lawyer. So had such sparenesses and barenesses of form to register -themselves for a mind beset with the tradition that consequences were -always somehow voluminous things; and yet the dryness was of a sort, -Gray soon apprehended, that he might take up in handfuls, as if it had -been the very sand of the Sahara, and thereby find in it, at the least -exposure to light, the collective shimmer of myriads of fine particles. -It was with the substance of the desert taken as monotonously sparkling -under any motion to dig in it that the abyss of Mr. Crick's functional -efficiency was filled. That efficiency, in respect to the things to be -done, would clearly so answer to any demand upon it within the compass -of our young man's subtlety, that the result for him could only be a -couple of days of inexpressible hesitation as to the outward air he -himself should be best advised to aim at wearing. He reminded himself at -this crisis of the proprietor of a garden, newly acquired, who might -walk about with his gardener and try to combine, in presence of -abounding plants and the vast range of luxuriant nature, an -ascertainment of names and properties and processes with a -dissimulation, for decent appearance, of the positive side of his -cockneyism. By no imagination of a state of mind so unfurnished would -the gardener ever have been visited; such gaping seams in the garment of -knowledge must affect him at the worst as mere proprietary languor, the -offhandedness of repletion; and no effective circumvention of -traditional takings for granted could late-born curiosity therefore -achieve. Gray's hesitation ceased only when he had decided that he -needn't care, comparatively speaking, for what Mr. Crick might think of -him. He was going to care for what others might--this at least he seemed -restlessly to apprehend; he was going to care tremendously, he felt -himself make out, for what Rosanna Gaw might, for what Horton Vint -might--even, it struck him, for what Davey Bradham might. But in -presence of Mr. Crick, who insisted on having no more personal identity -than the omnibus conductor stopping before you but just long enough to -bite into a piece of pasteboard with a pair of small steel jaws, the -question of his having a character either to keep or to lose declined -all relevance--and for the reason in especial that whichever way it -might turn for him would remain perhaps, so to speak, the most -unexpressed thing that should ever have happened in the world. - -The effect producible by him on the persons just named, and extending -possibly to whole groups of which these were members, would be an effect -because somehow expressed and encountered as expression: when had he in -all his life, for example, so lived in the air of expression and so -depended on the help of it, as in that so thrilling night-hour just -spent with the mystifying and apparently mystified, yet also apparently -attached and, with whatever else, attaching, Vinty? It wasn't that Mr. -Crick, whose analogue he had met on every occasion of his paying his -fare in the public conveyances--where the persons to whom he paid it, -without perhaps in their particulars resembling each other, all managed -nevertheless to be felt as gathered into this reference--wasn't in a -high degree conversible; it was that the more he conversed the less Gray -found out what he thought not only of Mr. Betterman's heir but of any -other subject on which they touched. The gentleman who would, by Gray's -imagination, have been acting for the executors of his uncle's will had -not that precious document appeared to dispense with every superfluity, -could state a fact, under any rash invitation, and endow it, as a fact, -with the greatest conceivable amplitude--this too moreover not because -he was garrulous or gossiping, but because those facts with which he was -acquainted, the only ones on which you would have dreamed of appealing -to him, seemed all perfect nests or bags of other facts, bristling or -bulging thus with every intensity of the positive and leaving no room in -their interstices for mere appreciation to so much as turn round. They -were themselves appreciation--they became so by the simple force of -their existing for Mr. Crick's arid mention, and they so covered the -ground of his consciousness to the remotest edge that no breath of the -air either of his own mind or of anyone's else could have pretended to -circulate about them. Gray made the reflection--tending as he now felt -himself to waste rather more than less time in this idle trick--that the -different matters of content in some misunderstandings have so glued -themselves together that separation has quite broken down and one -continuous block, suggestive of dimensional squareness, with mechanical -perforations and other aids to use subsequently introduced, comes to -represent the whole life of the subject. What it amounted to, he might -have gathered, was that Mr. Crick was of such a common commonness as he -had never up to now seen so efficiently embodied, so completely -organised, so securely and protectedly active, in a word--not to say so -garnished and adorned with strange refinements of its own: he had -somehow been used to thinking of the extreme of that quality as a note -of defeated application, just as the extreme of rarity would have to be. -His domestic companion of these days again and again struck him as most -touching the point at issue, and that point alone, when most proclaiming -at every pore that there wasn't a difference, in all the world, between -one thing and another. The refusal of his whole person to figure as a -fact invidiously distinguishable, that of his aspect to have an -identity, of his eyes to have a consciousness, of his hair to have a -colour, of his nose to have a form, of his mouth to have a motion, of -his voice to consent to any separation of sounds, made intercourse with -him at once extremely easy and extraordinarily empty; it was deprived of -the flicker of anything by the way and resembled the act of moving -forward in a perfectly-rolling carriage with the blind of each window -neatly drawn down. - -Gray sometimes advanced to the edge of trying him, so to call it, as to -the impression made on him by lack of recognitions assuredly without -precedent in any experience, any, least of all, of the ways of -beneficiaries; but under the necessity on each occasion of our young -man's falling back from the vanity of supposing himself really -presentable or apprehensible. For a grasp of him on such ground to take -place he should have had first to show himself and to catch his image -somehow reflected; simply walking up and down and shedding bland -gratitude didn't convey or exhibit or express him in this case, as he -was sure these things _had_ on the other hand truly done where everyone -else, where his uncle and Rosanna, where Mr. Gaw and even Miss Mumby, -where splendid Vinty, whom he so looked to, and awfully nice Davey -Bradham, whom he so took to, were concerned. It all came back to the -question of terms and to the perception, in varying degrees, on the part -of these persons, of his own; for there were somehow none by which Mr. -Crick was penetrable that would really tell anything about him, and he -could wonder in freedom if he wasn't then to know too that last immunity -from any tax on his fortune which would consist in his having never to -wince. Against wincing in other relations than this one he was prepared, -he only desired, to take his precautions--visionary precautions in those -connections truly swarming upon him; but apparently he was during these -first days of the mere grossness of his reality to learn something of -the clear state of seeing every fond sacrifice to superstition that he -could think of thrust back at him. If he could but have brought his -visitor to say after twenty-four hours of him "Well, you're the -damnedest little idiot Eve ever had to pretend to hold commerce with!" -_that_ would on the spot have pressed the spring of his rich sacrificial -"Oh I must be, I must be!--how can I not abjectly and gratefully be?" -Something at least would so have been done to placate the jealous gods. -But instead of that the grossness of his reality just flatly included -this supremely useful friend's perhaps supposing him a vulgar -voluptuary, or at least a mere gaping maw, cynically, which amounted to -say frivolously, indifferent to everything but the general fact of his -windfall. Strange that it should be impossible in any particular -whatever to inform or to correct Mr. Crick, who sat unapproachable in -the midst of the only knowledge that concerned him. - -He couldn't help feeling it conveyed in the very breath of the summer -airs that played about him, to his fancy, in a spirit of frolic still -lighter and quicker than they had breathed in other climes, he couldn't -help almost seeing it as the spray of sea-nymphs, or hearing it as the -sounded horn of tritons, emerging, to cast their spell, from the -foam-flecked tides around, that he was regarded as a creature rather -unnaturally "quiet" there on his averted verandahs and in his darkened -halls, even at moments when quite immense things, by his own measure, -were happening to him. Everything, simply, seemed to be happening, and -happening all at once--as he could say to himself, for instance, by the -fact of such a mere matter as his pulling up at some turn of his now -renewedly ceaseless pacing to take in he could scarce have said what -huge though soft collective rumble, what thick though dispersed -exhalation, of the equipped and appointed life, the life that phrased -itself with sufficient assurance as the multitudinous throb of Newport, -borne toward him from vague regions, from behind and beyond his -temporary blest barriers, and representing for the first time in his -experience an appeal directed at him from a source not somewhat shabbily -single. An impression like that was in itself an event--so repeatedly in -his other existence (it was already his quite unconnectedly other) had -the rumour of the world, the voice of society, the harmonies of -possession, been charged, for his sensibility, with reminders which, so -far from suggesting association, positively waved him off from it. Mr. -Betterman's funeral, for all the rigour of simplicity imposed on it by -his preliminary care, had enacted itself in a ponderous, numerous, in -fact altogether swarming and resounding way; the old local cemetery on -the seaward-looking hillside, as Gray seemed to identify it, had served -for the final scene, and our young man's sense of the whole thing -reached its finest point in an unanswered question as to whether the New -York business world or the New York newspaper interest were the more -copiously present. The business world broke upon him during the recent -rites in large smooth tepid waves--he was conscious of a kind of -generalised or, as they seemed to be calling it, standardised face, as -of sharpness without edge, save when edge was unexpectedly improvised, -bent upon him for a hint of what might have been better expressed could -it but have been expressed humorously; while the newspaper interest only -fed the more full, he felt even at the time, from the perfectly bare -plate offered its flocking young emissaries by the most recognising eye -at once and the most deprecating dumbness that he could command. - -He had asked Vinty, on the morrow of Vinty's evening visit, to "act" for -him in so far as this might be; upon which Vinty had said gaily--he was -unexceptionally gay now--"Do you mean as your best man at your marriage -to the bride who is so little like St. Francis's? much as you yourself -strike me, you know, as resembling the man of Assisi." Vinty, at his -great present ease, constantly put things in such wonderful ways; which -were nothing, however, to the way he mostly did them during the days he -was able to spare before going off again to other calls, other -performances in other places, braver and breezier places on the bolder -northern coast, it mostly seemed: his allusions to which excited -absolutely the more curious interest in his friend, by an odd law, in -proportion as he sketched them, under pressure, as probably altogether -alien to the friend's sympathies. That was to be for the time, by every -indication, his amusing "line"--his taking so confident and insistent a -view of what it must be in Gray's nature and tradition to like or not to -like that, as our young man for that matter himself assured him, he -couldn't have invented a more successfully insidious way of creating an -appetite than by passing under a fellow's nose every sort of whiff of -the indigestible. One thing at least was clear, namely: that, let his -presumption of a comrade's susceptibilities, his possible reactions, -under general or particular exposure, approve itself or not, the extent -to which this free interpreter was going personally to signify for the -savour of the whole stretched there as a bright assurance. Thus he was -all the while acting indeed--acting so that fond formulations of it -could only become in the promptest way mere redundancies of reference; -he acted because his approach, his look, his touch made somehow, by -their simply projecting themselves, a definite difference for any -question, great or small, in the least subject to them; and this, after -the most extraordinary fashion, not in the least through his pressing or -interfering or even so much as intending, but just as a consequence of -his having a sense and an intelligence of the given affair, such as it -might be, to which, once he was present at it, he was truly ashamed not -to conform. That concentrated passage between the two men while the -author of their situation was still unburied would of course always -hover to memory's eye like a votive object in the rich gloom of a -chapel; but it was now disconnected, attached to its hook once for all, -its whole meaning converted with such small delay into working, playing -force and multiplied tasteable fruit. - -Quiet as he passed for keeping himself, by the impression I have noted, -how could Gray have felt more plunged in history, how could he by his -own sense more have waked up to it each morning and gone to bed with it -each night, sat down to it whenever he did sit down, which was never for -long, whether at a meal, at a book, at a letter, or at the wasted -endeavour to become, by way of a change, really aware of his -consciousness, than through positively missing as he did the hint of -anything in particular to do?--missing and missing it all the while and -yet at no hour paying the least of the penalties that are supposed to -attend the drop of responsibility and the substituted rule of fatuity. -How couldn't it be agitation of a really sublime order to have it come -over one that the personage in the world one must most resemble at such -a pitch would be simply, at one's choice, the Kaiser or the Czar, -potentates who only know their situation is carried on by attestation of -the fact that push it wherever they will they never find it isn't? Thus -they are referred to the existence of machinery, the working of which -machinery is answered for, they may feel, whenever their eyes rest on -one of those figures, ministerial or ceremonial, who may be, as it is -called, in waiting. Mr. Crick was in waiting, Horton Vint was in -waiting, Rosanna Gaw even, at this moment a hundred miles away, was in -waiting, and so was Davey Bradham, though with but a single appearance -at the palace as yet to his credit. Neither Horton nor Mr. Crick, it was -true, were more materially, more recurrently present than a fellow's -nerves, for the wonder of it all, could bear; but what was it but just -being Czar or Kaiser to keep thrilling on one's own side before the fact -that this made no difference? Vulgar reassurance was the greatest of -vulgarities; monarchs could still be irresponsible, thanks to their -ministers' not being, and Gray repeatedly asked himself how he should -ever have felt as he generally did if it hadn't been so absolutely -exciting that while the scattered moments of Horton's presence and the -fitful snatches of telephonic talk with him lasted the gage of -protection, perfectly certain patronising protection, added a still -pleasanter light to his eye and ring to his voice, casual and trivial as -he clearly might have liked to keep these things. Great monarchies might -be "run," but great monarchs weren't--unless of course often by the -favourite or the mistress; and one hadn't a mistress yet, goodness knew, -and if one was threatened with a favourite it would be but with a -favourite of the people too. - -History and the great life surged in upon our hero through such images -as these at their fullest tide, finding him out however he might have -tried to hide from them, and shaking him perhaps even with no livelier -question than when it occurred to him for the first time within the -week, oddly enough, that the guest of the Bradhams never happened, while -his own momentary guest, to meet Mr. Crick, in his counsels, by so much -as an instant's overlapping, any more than it would chance on a single -occasion that he should name his friend to that gentleman or otherwise -hint at his existence, still less his importance. Was it just that the -king was _usually_ shy of mentioning the favourite to the head of the -treasury and that various decencies attached, by tradition, to keeping -public and private advisers separate? "Oh I absolutely decline to come -in, at any point whatever, between you and _him_; as if there were any -sort of help I can give you that he won't ever so much better!"--those -words had embodied, on the morrow, Vinty's sole allusion to the main -sense of their first talk, which he had gone on with in no direct -fashion. He had thrown a ludicrous light on his committing himself to -any such atrocity of taste while the empowered person and quite ideally -right man was about; but points would come up more and more, did come -up, in fact already had, that they doubtless might work out together -happily enough; and it took Horton in fine the very fewest hours to give -example after example of his familiar and immediate wit. Nothing could -have better illustrated this than the interest thrown by him for Gray -over a couple of subjects that, with many others indeed, beguiled three -or four rides taken by the friends along the indented shores and other -seaside stretches and reaches of their low-lying promontory in the -freshness of the early morning and when the scene might figure for -themselves alone. Gray, clinging as yet to his own premises very much -even as a stripped swimmer might loiter to enjoy an air-bath before his -dive, had yet mentioned that he missed exercise and had at once found -Vinty full of resource for his taking it in that pleasantest way. -Everything, by his assurance, was going to be delightful but the -generality of the people; thus, accordingly, was the generality of the -people not yet in evidence, thus at the sweet hour following the cool -dawn could the world he had become possessed of spread about him -unspoiled. - -It was perhaps in Gray to wonder a little in these conditions what _was_ -then in evidence, with decks so invidiously cleared; this being, -however, a remark he forbore to make, mystified as he had several times -been, and somehow didn't like too much being, by having had to note that -to differ at all from Vinty on occasions apparently offered was to -provoke in him at once a positive excess of agreement. He always went -further, as it were, and Gray himself, as he might say, didn't want to -go _those_ lengths, which were out of the range of practical politics -altogether. Horton's habit, as it seemed to show itself, was to make out -of saving sociability or wanton ingenuity or whatever, a distinction for -which a companion might care, but for which he himself didn't with any -sincerity, and then to give his own side of it away, from the moment -doubt had been determined, with an almost desolating sweep of surrender. -His own side of it was by that logic no better a side, in a beastly -vulgar world, than any other, and if anyone wanted to mean that such a -mundane basis was deficient why he himself had but meant it from the -first and pretended something else only not to be too shocking. He was -ready to mean the worst--was ready for anything, that is, in the -interest of ceasing from humbug. And if Gray was prepared for that -_then_ il ne s'agissait que de s'entendre. What Gray was prepared for -would really take, this young man frankly opined, some threshing out; -but it wasn't at all in readiness for the worst that he had come to -America--he had come on the contrary to indulge, by God's help, in -appreciations, comparisons, observations, reflections and other -luxuries, that were to minister, fond old prejudice aiding, to life at -the high pitch, the pitch, as who should say, of immortality. If on -occasion, under the dazzle of Horton's facility, he might ask himself -how he tracked through it the silver thread of sincerity--consistency -wasn't pretended to--something at once supervened that was better than -any answer, some benefit of information that the circumstance required, -of judgment that assisted or supported or even amused, by felicity of -contradiction, and that above all pushed the question so much further, -multiplying its relations and so giving it air and colour and the slap -of the brush, that it straightway became a picture and, for the kind of -attention Gray could best render, a conclusive settled matter. He hated -somehow to detract from his friend, wanting so much more to keep adding -to him; but it was after a little as if he had felt that his loyalty, or -whatever he might call it, could yet not be mean in deciding that -Horton's generalisations, his opinions as distinguished from his -perceptions and direct energies and images, signified little enough: if -he would only go on bristling as he promised with instances and items, -would only consent to consist at the same rate and in his very self of -material for history, one might propose to gather from it all at one's -own hours and without troubling him the occasional big inference. - -How good he could be on the particular case appeared for example after -Gray had expressed to him, just subsequently to their first encounter, -a certain light and measured wonderment at Rosanna Gaw's appearing not -to intend to absent herself long enough from her cares in the other -State, immense though these conceivably were, to do what the rest of -them were doing roundabout Mr. Betterman's grave. Our young man had half -taken for granted that she would have liked, expressing it simply, to -assist with him at the last attentions to a memory that had meant, in -the current phrase, so much for them both--though of course he withal -quite remembered that her interest in it had but rested on his own and -that since his own, as promoted by her, had now taken such effect there -was grossness perhaps in looking to her for further demonstrations: this -at least in view of her being under her filial stress not unimaginably -sated with ritual. He had caught himself at any rate in the act of -dreaming that Rosanna's return for the funeral would be one of the -inevitabilities of her sympathy with his fortune--every element of which -(that was overwhelmingly certain) he owed to her; and even the due sense -that, put her jubilation or whatever at its highest, it could scarce be -expected to dance the same jig as his, didn't prevent his remarking to -his friend that clearly Miss Gaw would come, since he himself was still -in the stage of supposing that when you had the consciousness of a lot -of money you sort of did violent things. He played with the idea that -her arrival for the interment would partake of this element, proceeding -as it might from the exhilaration of her monstrous advantages, her now -assured state. "Look at the violent things _I'm_ doing," he seemed to -observe with this, "and see how natural I must feel it that any violence -should meet me. Yours, for example"--Gray really went so -far--"recognises how I want, or at least how I enjoy, a harmony; though -at the same time, I assure you, I'm already prepared for any disgusted -snub to the attitude of unlimited concern about me, gracious goodness, -that I may seem to go about taking for granted." Unlimited concern about -him on the part of the people who weren't up at the cool of dawn save in -so far as they here and there hadn't yet gone to bed--this, in -combination with something like it on the part of numberless others too, -had indeed to be faced as the inveterate essence of Vinty's forecast, -and formed perhaps the hardest nut handed to Gray's vice of cogitation -to crack; it was the thing that he just now most found himself, as they -said, up against--involving as it did some conception of reasons other -than ugly for so much patience with the boring side of him. - -An interest founded on the mere beastly fact of his pecuniary luck, what -was that but an ugly thing to see, from the moment his circle, since a -circle he was apparently to have, shouldn't soon be moved to some decent -reaction from it? How was he going himself to like breathing an air in -which the reaction didn't break out, how was he going not to get sick of -finding so large a part played, over the place, by the mere -_constatation_, in a single voice, a huge monotone restlessly and -untiringly directed, but otherwise without application, of the state of -being worth dollars to inordinate amounts? Was he really going to want -to live with many specimens of the sort of person who wouldn't presently -rather loathe him than know him blindedly on such terms? would it be -possible, for that matter, that he should feel people unashamed of not -providing for their attention to him any better account of it than his -uncle's form of it had happened to supply, without his by that token -coming to regard them either as very "interested," according to the good -old word, or as themselves much too foredoomed bores to merit tolerance? -When it reached the pitch of his asking himself whether it could be -possible Vinty wouldn't at once see what he meant by that reservation, -he patched the question up but a bit provisionally perhaps by falling -back on a remark about this confidant that was almost always equally in -order. They weren't on the basis yet of any treatable reality, any that -could be directly handled and measured, other than such as were, so to -speak, the very children of accident, those the old man's still -unexplained whim had with its own special shade of grimness let him in -for. _Naturally_ must it come to pass with time that the better of the -set among whom this easy genius was the best would stop thinking money -about him to the point that prevented their thinking anything else--so -that he should only break off and not go in further after giving them a -chance to show in a less flurried way to what their range of imagination -might reach invited and encouraged. Should they markedly fail to take -that chance it would be all up with them so far as any entertainment -that _he_ should care to offer them was concerned. How could it stick -out _more_ disconcertingly--so his appeal might have run--that a fuss -about him was as yet absolutely a fuss on a vulgar basis? having begun, -by what he gathered, quite before the growth even of such independent -rumours as Horton's testimony, once he was on the spot, or as Mr. -Bradham's range of anecdote, consequent on Mr. Bradham's call, might -give warrant for: it couldn't have behind it, he felt sure, so much as a -word of Rosanna's, of the heralding or promising sort--he would so have -staked his right hand on the last impossibility of the least rash -overflow on that young woman's part. - -There was this other young woman, of course, whom he heard of at these -hours for the first time from Haughty and whom he remembered well enough -to have heard praise of from his adopted father, three or four years -previous, on his rejoining the dear man after a summer's separation. She -would be, "Gussy's" charming friend, Haughty's charming friend, no end -of other people's charming friend, as appeared, the heroine of the -charming friendship his own admirable friend had formed, in a -characteristically headlong manner (some exceptional cluster of graces, -in her case, clearly much aiding) with a young American girl, the very -nicest anyone had ever seen, met at the waters of Ragatz during one of -several seasons there and afterwards described in such extravagant terms -as were to make her remain, between himself and his elder, a subject of -humorous reference and retort. It had had to do with Gray's liking his -companion of those years always better and better that persons -intrinsically distinguished inveterately took to him so naturally--even -if the number of the admirers rallying was kept down a little by the -rarity, of course, of intrinsic distinction. It wasn't, either, as if -this blest associate had been by constitution an elderly flirt, or some -such sorry type, addicted to vain philanderings with young persons he -might have fathered: he liked young persons, small blame to him, but -they had never, under Gray's observation, made a fool of him, and he was -only as much of one about the young lady in question, Cecilia Foy, yes, -of New York, as served to keep all later inquiry and pleasantry at the -proper satiric pitch. She _would_ have been a fine little creature, by -our friend's beguiled conclusion, to have at once so quickened and so -appreciated the accidental relation; for was anything truly quite so -charming in a clever girl as the capacity for admiring _disinterestedly_ -a brave gentleman even to the point of willingness to take every trouble -about him?--when the disinterestedness dwelt, that is, in the very -pleasure she could seek and find, so much more creditable a matter to -her than any she could give and be complimented for giving, involved as -this could be with whatever vanity, vulgarity or other personal -pretence. - -Gray remembered even his not having missed by any measure of his own -need or play of his own curiosity the gain of Miss Foy's -acquaintance--so might the felicity of the quaint affair, given the -actual parties, have been too sacred to be breathed on; he in fact -recalled, and could still recall, every aspect of their so excellent -time together reviving now in a thick rich light, how he had inwardly -closed down the cover on his stepfather's accession of fortune--which -the pretty episode really seemed to amount to; extracting from it -himself a particular relief of conscience. He could let him alone, by -this showing, without black cruelty--so little had the day come for his -ceasing to attract admirers, as they said, at public places or being -handed over to the sense of desertion. That left Gray as little as -possible haunted with the young Cecilia's image, so completely was his -interest in her, in her photograph and in her letters, one of the -incidents of his virtually filial solicitude; all the less in fact no -doubt that she had written during the aftermonths frequently and very -advertisedly, though perhaps, in spite of Mr. Northover's gay exhibition -of it, not so very remarkably. She was apparently one of the bright -persons who are not at their brightest with the pen--which question -indeed would perhaps come to the proof for him, thanks to his having it -ever so vividly, not to say derisively, from Horton that this observer -didn't really know what had stayed her hand, for the past week, from an -outpouring to the one person within her reach who would constitute a -link with the delightful old hero of her European adventure. That so -close a representative of the party to her romance was there in the -flesh and but a mile or two off, was a fact so extraordinary as to have -waked up the romance again in her and produced a state of fancy from -which she couldn't rest--for some shred of the story that might be still -afloat. Gray therefore needn't be surprised to receive some sign of this -commotion, and that he hadn't yet done so was to be explained, Haughty -guessed, by the very intensity of the passions involved. - -One of them, it thus appeared, burnt also in Gussy's breast; devoted as -she was to Cissy, she had taken the fond anecdote that so occupied them -as much under her protection as she had from far back taken the girl's -every other interest, and what for the hour paralysed their action, that -of the excited pair, must simply have been that Mrs. Bradham couldn't on -the one hand listen to anything so horrid as that her young friend -should make an advance unprepared and unaccompanied, and that the ardent -girl, on the other, had for the occasion, as for all occasions, her -ideal of independence. Gray was not himself impatient--he felt no jump -in him at the chance to discuss so dear a memory in an air still -incongruous; it depended on who might propose to him the delicate -business, let alone its not making for a view of the great Gussy's fine -tact that she should even possibly put herself forward as a proposer. -However, he didn't mind thinking that if Cissy should prove all that was -likely enough their having a subject in common couldn't but practically -conduce; though the moral of it all amounted rather to a portent, the -one that Haughty, by the same token, had done least to reassure him -against, of the extent to which the native jungle harboured the female -specimen and to which its ostensible cover, the vast level of mixed -growths stirred wavingly in whatever breeze, was apt to be identifiable -but as an agitation of the latest redundant thing in ladies' hats. It -was true that when Rosanna had perfectly failed to rally, merely writing -a kind short note to the effect that she should have to give herself -wholly, for she didn't know how long, to the huge assault of her own -questions, that might have seemed to him to make such a clearance as -would count against any number of positively hovering shades. Horton had -answered for her not turning up, and nothing perhaps had made him feel -so right as this did for a faith in those general undertakings of -assurance; only, when at the end of some days he saw that vessel of -light obscured by its swing back to New York and other ranges of action, -the sense of exposure--even as exposure to nothing worse than the -lurking or pouncing ladies--became sharper through contrast with the -late guarded interval; this to the extent positively of a particular -hour at which it seemed to him he had better turn tail and simply flee, -stepping from under the too vast orb of his fate. - -He was alone with that quantity on the September morning after breakfast -as he had not felt himself up to now; he had taken to pacing the great -verandah that had become his own as he had paced it when it was still -his uncle's, and it might truly have been a rush of nervous -apprehension, a sudden determination of terror, that quickened and yet -somehow refused to direct his steps. He had turned out there for the -company of sea and sky and garden, less conscious than within doors, for -some reason, that Horton was a lost luxury; but that impression was -presently to pass with a return of a queer force in his view of Rosanna -as above all somehow wanting, off and withdrawn verily to the pitch of -her having played him some trick, merely let him in where she was to -have seen him through, failed in fine of a sociability implied in all -her preliminaries. He found his attention caught, in one of his -revolutions, by the chair in which Abel Gaw had sat that first -afternoon, pulling him up for their so unexpectedly intense mutual -scrutiny, and when he turned away a moment after, quitting the spot -almost as if the strange little man's death that very night had already -made him apparitional, which was unpleasant, it was to drop upon the -lawn and renew his motion there. He circled round the house altogether -at last, looking at it more critically than had hitherto seemed -relevant, taking the measure, disconcertedly, of its unabashed ugliness, -and at the end coming to regard it very much as he might have eyed some -monstrous modern machine, one of those his generation was going to be -expected to master, to fly in, to fight in, to take the terrible women -of the future out for airings in, and that mocked at _his_ incompetence -in such matters while he walked round and round it and gave it, as for -dread of what it might do to him, the widest berth his enclosure -allowed. In the midst of all of which, quite wonderfully, everything -changed; he _wasn't_ alone with his monster, he was in, by this -reminder, for connections, nervous ass as he had just missed writing -himself, and connections fairly glittered, swarming out at him, in the -person of Mr. Bradham, who stood at the top of a flight of steps from -the gallery, which he had been ushered through the house to reach, and -there at once, by some odd felicity of friendliness, some pertinence of -presence, of promise, appeared to make up for whatever was wrong and -supply whatever was absent. It came over him with extraordinary -quickness that the way not to fear the massed ambiguity was to trust it, -and this florid, solid, smiling person, who waved a prodigious -gold-coloured straw hat as if in sign of ancient amity, had come exactly -at that moment to show him how.[2] - - -[Footnote 2: This ends the first chapter of Book IV. The MS. breaks off -with an unfinished sentence opening the next chapter: "Not the least -pointed of the reflections Gray was to indulge in a fortnight later and -as by a result of Davey Bradham's intervention in the very nick was that -if he had turned tail that afternoon, at the very oddest of all his -hours, if he had prematurely taken to his heels and missed the emissary -from the wonderful place of his fresh domestication, the article on -which he would most irretrievably have dished himself . . ."] - - - - -NOTES FOR THE IVORY TOWER - - -AUGUSTA BRADHAM, "Gussie" Bradham, for the big social woman. Basil Hunn -I think on the whole for Hero. Graham Rising, which becomes familiarly -Gray Rising, I have considered but incline to keep for another occasion. - -Horton Crimper, among his friends Haughty Crimper, seems to me right and -best, on the whole, for my second young man. I don't want for him a -surname intrinsically pleasing; and this seems to me of about the good -nuance. My Third Man hereby becomes, I seem to see, Davey Bradham; on -which, I think, for the purpose and association, I can't improve. - -My Girl, in the relinquished thing, was Cissy Foy; and this was all -right for the figure there intended, but the girl here is a very -different one, and everything is altered. I want her name moreover, her -Christian one, to be Moyra, and must have some bright combination with -that; the essence of which is a surname of two syllables and ending in a -consonant--also beginning with one. I am thinking of Moyra Grabham, the -latter excellent thing was in the Times of two or three days ago; its -only fault is a little too much meaning, but the sense here wouldn't be -thrown into undue relief, and I don't want anything pretty or -conventionally "pleasing." Everything of the shade of the real. Remain -thus important the big, the heavy Daughter of the billionaire, with her -father; in connection with whom I think I give up Betterman. That must -stand over, and I want, above all, a single syllable. All the other -names have two or three; and this makes an objection to the Shimple, -which I originally thought of as about odd and ugly enough without being -more so than I want it. But that also will keep, while I see that I have -the monosyllable Hench put down; only put down for another connection. I -see I thought of "Wenty" Hench, short for Wentworth, as originally good -for Second Young Man. If I balance that against Haughty Crimper, I -incline still to the latter, for the small amusement of the Haughty. On -the other hand I am not content with Hench, though a monosyllable, for -the dear Billionaire girl, in the light of whom it is alone important to -consider the question, her Father so little mattering after she becomes -by his death the great Heiress of the time. And I kind of want to make -_her_ Moyra; with which I just spy in the Times a wonderful and -admirable "Chown"; which makes me think that Moyra Chown may do. Besides -which if I keep Grabham for my "heroine" I feel the Christian name -should there be of one syllable. All my others are of two; and I shall -presently make the ease right for this, finding the good thing. The -above provides for the time for the essential. Yet suddenly I am pulled -up--Grabham, after all, won't at all do if I keep Bradham for the other -connection; which I distinctly prefer: I want nothing with any shade of -a special sense there. Accordingly, I don't know but what I may go in -for a different note altogether and lavish on her the fine Cantupher; -which I don't want however really to waste. When Cantupher is used there -ought to be several of it, and above all men: no, I see it won't do, and -besides I don't want anything positively fine. I like Wither, and I like -Augurer, and I like, in another note, Damper, and I even see a little -Bessie as a combination with it, though I don't on the whole want a -Bessie. At any rate I now get on. - -[3]What I want the first Book to do is to present the Gaws, the Bradhams -and Cissy Foy, in Three Chapters or Scenes, call them Scenes of the -Acts, in such a way that I thus present with them the first immediate -facts involved; or in other words present the first essence of the -Situation. What I see is, as I further reflect, that it is better to get -Graham Fielder there within the Act, to have him on the premises -already, and learnt so to be, before it has progressed beyond the first -Scene; though he be not seen till the Second Book. When Rosanna goes -over to her Father it befals before she has had more than twenty words -with him that one of the Nurses who is most sympathetic to her appears -in the long window that opens from the house on to the verandah, and it -is thus at once disclosed that he has come. Rosanna has taken for -granted from the quiet air of the place that this event hasn't yet -occurred; but Gray has in fact arrived with the early morning, has come -on the boat from New York, the night one, and is there above with, or -ready to be with, the dying man. Perfectly natural and plausible I make -it that he doesn't begin at once to pervade the place; delicacy, -discretion, anxiety naturally operating with him; so that we know only -he is there, and that matters are more or less taking place above, -during the rest of the Book. But the fact in question immediately -determines, for proprieties' and discretions' sake, the withdrawal of -Rosanna and her Father; they return to their own abode; and I see the -rest of the business of the act as taking place partly there and partly, -by what I make out, on the Bradhams' own premises, the field of the -Third Scene. Here is the passage between the two young women that I -require, and my Heroine, I think, must be on a visit of a number of days -to Gussie. I want Davey first with Rosanna, and think I get something -like his having walked over, along the cliff, to their house, to bring -her, at his wife's request, over to tea. Yes, I have Davey's walk back -with Rosanna, and her Father's declining to come, or saying that he will -follow afterward; his real design being to sneak over again, as I may -call it, to the other house, in the exercise of his intense curiosity. -That special founded and motived condition is what we sufficiently know -him by and what he is for the time (which is all the time we have of -him) identified by. I get thus for Book 2 that Gray, latish in the -afternoon, coming down from his uncle's quarter, finds him, has a -passage or scene with him, above all an impression of him; and this -before he has had any other: we learn that he hasn't seen his uncle yet; -the judgment of the doctors about this being operative and they wishing -a further wait. I want Rosanna's Father for his first very sharp -impression; this really making, I think, Scene First of Book 2. It gives -me Scene 2 for what I shall then want without further delay of his first -introduction to his Uncle's room and his half hour, or whatever, there; -with the fact determined of the non-collapse of the latter, his good -effect from the meeting quite rather, and the duration of him determined -to end of Book 2. After Book 2 he is no more. Scene 3 of Book 2 then can -only be, for Gray, with Rosanna; that scene having functions to be -exercised with no more delay at all, by what I make out, and being put -in, straight, then and there, that we may have the support of it. I by -the same token see Book 3 now as functional entirely for the encounter -of Gray with the two other women and, for the first time, with Davey; -and also as preparing the appearance of Horton Vint, though not -producing it. I see _him_, in fact, I think, as introduced independently -of his first appearance to Gray, see it as a matter of his relation with -Cissy, and as lighting up what I immediately want of _their_ situation. -In fact don't I see this as Horton's "Act" altogether, as I shall have -seen and treated Book I as Rosanna's, and Book 2 as Gray's. By the blest -operation this time of my Dramatic principle, my law of successive -Aspects, each treated from its own centre, as, though with -qualifications. The Awkward Age, I have the great help of flexibility -and variety; my persons in turn, or at least the three or four foremost, -having control, as it were, of the Act and Aspect, and so making it his -or making it _hers._ This of course with the great inevitable and -desirable preponderance, in the Series, of Gray's particular weight. But -I seem to make out, to a certainty, at least another "Act" for Rosanna -and probably another for Horton; though perhaps not more than one, all -to herself, for Cissy. I say at least another for Horton on account of -my desire to give Gray as affecting Horton, only less than I want to -give Horton as affecting Gray. It is true that I get Gray as affecting -Horton more or less in Book 3, but as the situation developes it will -make new needs, determinations and possibilities. All this for feeling -my way and making things come, more and more come. I want an Aspect -under control of Davey, at all events--this I seem pretty definitely to -feel; but things will only come too much. At all events, to retreat, -remount, a little there are my 3 first Books sufficiently started -without my having as yet exactly noted the absolutely fundamental -antecedents. But before I do this, even, I memorise that Gray's Scene -with Rosanna for 3 of Book 2 shall be by her coming over to Mr. -Betterman's house herself that evening, all frankly and directly, to see -him there; not by his going over to her. And I seem to want it evening; -the summer night outside, with their moving about on the Terrace and -above the sea etc. Withal, by the same token, I want such interesting -things between them from immediately after the promulgation of Mr. -Betterman's Will; I want that, but of course can easily get it, so far -as anything is easy, in Book 4, the function of which is to present Gray -as face to face with the situation so created for him. This is -obviously, of course, one of Gray's Aspects, and the next will desirably -be, I dare say too; can only be, so far as I can now tell, when I -consider that the Book being my Fourth, only Six of the Ten which I most -devoutly desire to limit the thing to then remain for my full evolution -on the momentum by that time imparted. Certainly, at all events, the -Situation leaves Newport, to come to life, its full life, in New York, -where I seem to see it as going on to the end, unless I manage to treat -myself to some happy and helpful mise-en-scène or exploitation of my -memory of (say) California. The action entirely of American -localisation, as goes without saying, yet making me thus kind of hanker, -for dear "amusement's" sake, to decorate the thing with a bit of a -picture of some American Somewhere that is not either Newport or N.Y. I -even ask myself whether Boston wouldn't serve for this garniture, serve -with a narrower economy than "dragging in" California. I kind of want to -drag in Boston a little, feeling it as naturally and thriftily workable. -But these are details which will only too much come; and I seem to see -already how my action, however tightly packed down, will strain my Ten -Books, most blessedly, to cracking. That is exactly what I want, the -tight packing _and_ the beautifully audible cracking; the most -magnificent masterly little vivid economy, with a beauty of its own -equal to the beauty of the donnée itself, that ever was. - -However, what the devil _are_, exactly, the little fundamentals in the -past? Fix them, focus them hard; they need only be perfectly -conceivable, but they must be of the most lucid sharpness. I want to -have it that for Gray, and essentially for Rosanna, it's a _renewal_ of -an early, almost, or even quite positively, childish beginning; and for -Gray it's the same with Horton Vint--the impression of Horton already -existing in him, a very strong and "dazzled" one, made in the quite -young time, though in a short compass of days, weeks, possibly months, -or whatever, and having lasted on (always for Gray) after a fashion that -makes virtually a sort of relation already established, small as it -ostensibly is. Such his relation with Rosanna, such his relation with -Horton--but for his relation with Cissy----? Do I want that to be also a -renewal, the residuum of an old impression, or a fresh thing altogether? -What strikes me prima facie is that it's better to have two such -pre-established origins for the affair than three; the only question is -does that sort of connection more complicate or more simplify for that -with Cissy? It more simplifies if I see myself wanting to give, by my -plan, the full effect of a revolution in her, a revolution marked the -more by the germ of the relation being thrown back, marked the more, -that is, in the sense of the shade of perfidy, treachery, the shade of -the particular element and image that is of the essence, so far as she -is concerned, of my action. How this exactly works I must in a moment go -into--hammer it out clear; but meanwhile there are these other -fundamentals. Gray then is the son of his uncle's half-sister, not -sister (on the whole, I think); whose dissociation from her rich -brother, before he was anything like _so_ rich, must have followed upon -her marrying a man with whom he, Mr. Betterman, was on some peculiarly -bad terms resulting from a business difference or quarrel of one of -those rancorous kinds that such lives (as Mr. Betterman's) are -plentifully bestrown with. The husband has been his victim, and he -hasn't hated him, or objected to him for a brother-in-law, any the less -for that. The objected-to brother-in-law has at all events died early, -and the young wife, with her boy, her scant means, her disconnection -from any advantage to her represented by her half-brother, has betaken -herself to Europe; where the rest of _that_ history has been enacted. I -see the young husband, Gray's father, himself Graham Fielder the elder -or whatever, as dying early, but probably dying in Europe, through some -catastrophe to be determined, two or three years after their going -there. This is better than his dying at home, for removal of everything -from nearness to Mr. Betterman. Betterman has been married and has had -children, a son and a daughter, this is indispensable, for diminution of -the fact of paucity of children; but he has lost successively these -belongings--there is nothing over strange in it; the death of his son, -at 16 or 18 or thereabouts, having occurred a few years, neither too few -nor too many, before my beginning, and having been the sorest fact of -his life. Well then, young Mrs. Fielder or whoever, becomes thus in -Europe an early widow, with her little boy, and there, after no long -time, marries again, marries an alien, a European of some nationality to -be determined, but probably an Englishman; which completes the effect of -alienation from her brother--easily conceivable and representable as "in -his way," disliking this union; and indeed as having made known to her, -across the sea, that if she will forbear from it (this when he first -hears of it and before it has taken place) and will come back to America -with her boy, he will "forgive" her and do for her over there what he -can. The great fact is that she declines this condition, the giving up -of her new fiancé, and thereby declines an advantage that may, or might -have, become great for her boy. Not so great then--Betterman not _then_ -so rich. But in fine--With which I cry Eureka, eureka; I have found what -I want for Rosanna's connection, though it will have to make Rosanna a -little older than Gray, 2 or 3 or 3 or 4 years, instead of same age. I -see Gray's mother at any rate, with her small means, in one of the -smaller foreign cities, Florence or Dresden, probably the latter, and -also see there Rosanna and her mother, this preceding by no long time -the latter's death. Mrs. Gaw has come abroad with her daughter, for -advantages, in the American way, while the husband and father is -immersed in business cares at home; and when the two couples, mother and -son, and mother and daughter, meet in a natural way, a connection is -more or less prepared by the fact of Mr. Gaw having had the business -association with Mrs. Fielder's half-brother, Mr. Betterman, at home, -even though the considerably violent rupture or split between the two -men will have already taken place. Mrs. Gaw is a very good simple, a -bewildered and pathetic rich woman, in delicate health, and is -sympathetic to Gray's mother, on whom she more or less throws herself -for comfort and support, and Gray and Rosanna, Rosanna with a governess -and all the facilities and accessories natural to wealth, while the -boy's conditions are much leaner and plainer--the two, I say, fraternise -and are good friends; he figuring to Rosanna (say he is about 13, while -she is 16) as a tremendously initiated and informed little polyglot -European, knowing France, Germany, Italy etc. from the first. It is at -this juncture that Mrs. Fielder's second marriage has come into view, or -the question and the appearance of it; and that, very simultaneously, -the proposal has come over from her half-brother on some rumour of it -reaching him. As already mentioned, Betterman proposes to her that if -she will come back to America with her boy, and not enter upon the union -that threatens, and which must have particular elements in it of a -nature to displease and irritate him, he will look after them both, -educate the boy at home, do something substantial for them. Mrs. Fielder -takes her American friend into her confidence in every way, introduces -to her the man who desires to marry her, whom Rosanna sees and with whom -the boy himself has made great friends, so that the dilemma of the poor -lady becomes a great and lively interest to them all; the pretendant -himself forming also a very good relation with the American mother and -daughter, the friends of his friend, and putting to Mrs. Gaw very -eagerly the possibility of her throwing her weight into the scale in his -favour. Her meeting, that is Mrs. Fielder's meeting, the proposition -from New York involves absolutely her breaking off with him; and he is -very much in love with her, likes the boy, and, though he doesn't want -to stand in the latter's light, has hopes that he won't be quite thrown -over. The engagement in fact, with the marriage near at hand, must be an -existing reality. It is for Mrs. Fielder something of a dilemma; but she -is very fond of her honourable suitor, and her inclinations go strongly -to sticking to him. She takes the boy himself into her confidence, young -as he is,--perhaps I can afford him a year or two more--make him 15, -say; in which case Rosanna becomes 18, and the subsequent chronology is -thereby affected. It isn't, I must remember, as a young man in his very -first youth, at all, that I want Gray, or see him, with the opening of -the story at Newport. On the contrary all the proprieties, elements of -interest, convenience etc., are promoted by his being not less than 30. -I don't see why I shouldn't make him 33, with Rosanna thus _two_ years -older, not three. If he is 15 in Dresden and she 17, it will be old -enough for each, without being too old, I think, for Gray. 18 years will -thus have elapsed from the crisis at Florence or wherever to the arrival -at Newport. I want that time, I think, I can do with it very well for -what I see of elements operative for him; and a period of some length -moreover is required for bringing the two old men at Newport to a proper -pitch of antiquity. Mr. Betterman dies very much in the fulness of -years, and as Rosanna's parent is to pass away soon after I want him to -have come to the end. If Gray is 15, however, I mustn't make his mother -too mature to inspire the devotion of her friend; at the same time that -there must have been years enough for her to have lived awhile with her -first husband and lost him. Of course this first episode may have been -very brief--there is nothing to prevent that. If she had married at 20 -she will then be, say, about 36 or so at the time of the crisis, and -this will be quite all right for the question of her second marriage. -Say she lives a considerable number of years after this, in great -happiness, her marriage having taken place; I in fact require her to do -so, for I want Gray to have had reasons fairly strong for his not having -been back to America in the interval. I may put it that he has, even, -been back for a very short time, on some matter connected with his -mother's interests, or his own, or whatever; but I complicate the case -thereby and have to deal somehow with the question of whether or no he -has then seen Mr. Betterman. No, I don't want him to have been back, and -can't do with it; keep this simple and workable. All I am doing here is -just to fix a little his chronology. Say he has been intending to go -over at about 25, when his mother's death takes place, about 10 years -after her second marriage. Say then, as is very conceivable, that his -stepfather, with whom he has become great friends, then requires and -appeals to his care and interest in a way that keeps him on and on till -the latter's death takes place just previous to Mr. Betterman's sending -for him. This gives me quite sufficiently what I want of the previous -order of things; but doesn't give me yet the fact about Rosanna's -connection in her young history which I require. I see accordingly what -has happened in Florence or Dresden as something of this kind: that Mrs. -Fielder, having put it to her boy that he shall decide, if he can, about -what they shall do, she lets Mrs. Gaw, who was at this juncture in -constant intercourse with her, know that she has done so--Mrs. Gaw and -Rosanna being, together, exceedingly interested about her, and Rosanna -extremely interested, in a young dim friendly way, about Gray; very much -as if he were the younger brother she hasn't got, and whom, or an older, -she would have given anything to have. Rosanna hates Mr. Betterman, who -has, as she understands and believes, in some iniquitous business way, -wronged or swindled her father; and isn't at all for what he has -proposed to the Fielders. In addition she is infatuated with Europe, -makes everything of being there, dreams, or would dream, of staying on -if she could, and has already in germ, in her mind, those feelings about -the dreadful American money-world of which she figures as the embodiment -or expression in the eventual situation. She knows thus that the boy has -had, practically, the decision laid upon him, and with the whole case -with all its elements and possibilities before her she takes upon -herself to act upon him, influence and determine him. She wouldn't have -him accept Mr. Betterman's cruel proposition, as she declares she sees -it, for the world. She proceeds with him as she would in fact with a -younger brother: there is a passage to be alluded to with a later -actuality, which figures for her in memory as her creation of a -responsibility; her very considerably passionate, and thereby -meddlesome, intervention. I see some long beautiful walk or stroll, some -visit to some charming old place or things--and Florence is here -indicated--during which she puts it all to him, and from which he, much -inspired and affected by her, comes back to say to his mother that he -doesn't want what is offered--at any such price as she will have to pay. -I see this occasion as really having settled it--and Rosanna's having -always felt and known that it did. She and her mother separate then from -the others; Mrs. Fielder communicates her refusal, sticks to her friend, -marries him shortly afterwards, and her subsequent years take the form I -have noted. The American mother and daughter go back across the sea; the -mother in time dies etc. I see also how much better it is to have -sufficient time for these various deaths to happen. But the point is -that the sense of responsibility, begetting gradually a considerable, a -deepening force of reflection, and even somewhat of remorse, as to all -that it has meant, is what has taken place for Rosanna in proportion as, -by the sequence of events and the happening of many things, Mr. -Betterman has grown into an apparently very rich old man with no natural -heir. His losses, his bereavements, I have already alluded to, and a -considerable relaxation of her original feeling about him in the light -of more knowledge and of other things that have happened. In the light, -for instance, of her now mature sense of what her father's career has -been and of all that his great ferocious fortune, as she believes it to -be, represents of rapacity, of financial cruelty, of consummate special -ability etc. She has kept to some extent in touch with Gray, so far that -is as knowing about his life and general situation are concerned; but -the element of compunction in her itself, and the sense of what she may -perhaps have deprived him of in the way of a great material advantage, -may be very well seen, I think, as keeping her shy and backward in -respect to following him up or remaining in intercourse. It isn't -likely, for the American truth of things, that she hasn't been back to -Europe again, more than once, whether before or after her mother's -death; but what I can easily and even interestingly see is that on -whatever occasion of being there she has yet not tried to meet him -again. She knows that neither he nor his stepfather are at all well off, -she has a good many general impressions and has tried to get knowledge -of them, without directly appealing for it to themselves, whenever she -can. Thus it is, to state things very simply, that, on hearing of the -stepfather's death, during the Newport summer, she has got at Mr. -Betterman and spoken to him about Gray; she has found him accessible to -what she wants to say, and has perceived above all what a pull it gives -her to be able to work, in her appeal, the fact, quite vivid in the -fulness of time to the old man himself indeed, that the young man, so -nearly, after all, related to him, and over there in Europe all these -years, is about the only person, who could get at him in any way, who -hasn't ever asked anything of him or tried to get something out of him. -Not only this, but he and his mother, in the time, are the only ones who -ever refused a proffered advantage. I think I must make it that Rosanna -finds that she can really tell her story to Mr. Betterman, can make a -confidant of him and so interest him only the more. She feels that he -likes her, and this a good deal on account of her enormous difference -from her father. But I need only put it here quite simply: she does -interest him, she does move him, and it is as a consequence of her -appeal that he sends for Gray and that Gray comes. What I must above all -take care of is the fact that she has represented him to the old man as -probably knowing less about money, having had less to do with it, having -moved in a world entirely outside of it, in a degree utterly unlike -anyone and everyone whom Mr. Betterman has ever seen. - -But I have got it all, I needn't develop; what I want now independently -is the beginning, quite back in the early years, of some relation on -Gray's part with Horton Vint, and some effect, which I think I really -must find right, of Horton's having done something for him, in their -boyish time, something important and gallant, rather showy, but at all -events really of moment, which has always been present to Gray. This I -must find--it need present no difficulty; with something in the general -way of their having been at school together--in Switzerland, with the -service rendered in Switzerland, say on a holiday cours among the -mountains, when Horty has fished Gray out of a hole, I don't mean quite -a crevasse, but something like, or come to his aid in a tight place of -some sort, and at his own no small risk, to bring him to safety. In fine -it's something like having saved his life, though that has a tiresome -little old romantic and conventional note. However I will make the thing -right and give it the right nuance; remember that it is all allusional -only now and a matter of reference on Gray's part. What must have -further happened, I think, is that Horty has been in Europe again, in -much later years, after College, indeed only a very few years previous, -and has met Gray again and they have renewed together; to the effect of -his apprehension of Gray's (to him) utterly queer and helpless and -unbusinesslike, unfinancial, type; and of Gray's great admiration of -everything of the opposite sort in him--combined, that is, with other -very attractive (as they appear) qualities. He has made Gray think a lot -about the wonderful American world that he himself long ago cut so loose -from, and of which Horty is all redolent and reverberant; and I think -must have told him, most naturally told him, of what happened in the far -off time in Florence. Only when, then, was the passage of their being at -school, or, better still, with the Swiss pasteur, or private tutor, -together? If it was before the episode in Florence they were rather -younger than I seem to see them; if it was after they were rather older. -Yet I don't at all see why it should not have been just after--this -perfectly natural at 16 for Gray, at 17 for Horty; both thoroughly -natural ages for being with the pasteur, and for the incident -afterwards; Gray going very naturally to the pasteur, whom in fact he -may have been with already before, during the first year of his mother's -new marriage. That provides for the matter well enough, and Eve only to -see it to possess it; and gives a basis for their taking up together -somehow when they meet, wherever I may put it, in the aftertime. There -are forms of life for Gray and his stepfather to be focussed as the -right ones--Horty sees this pair _together_ somewhere; and nothing is -more arrangeable, though I don't think I want to show the latter as -having dangled and dawdled about Italy only; and on the other hand do -see that Gray's occupation and main interest, other than that of looking -after his elder companions, must be conceived and presented for him. -Again no difficulty, however, with the right imagination of it. Horty -goes back to America; the 3 or 4, or at the most 4 or 5, years elapse, -so that it is with that comparative freshness of mutual remembrance that -the two men meet again. What I do see as definite is that Horty has had -up to the time of Gray's return no sort of relation whatever with Mr. -Betterman or his affairs, or any point of the question with which the -action begins at Newport. He is on the other hand in relation with -Cissy; and there are things I have got to account for in his actual -situation. Why is he without money, with his interest in the getting of -it etc.? But that is a question exactly _of_ interest--I mean to which -the answer may afford the greatest. And settle about the degree of his -apprehension of, relation to, designs on, or general lively -consciousness of Rosanna. Important the fact that the enormous extent of -her father's fortune is known only after his death, and is larger even -than was supposed; though it is to be remembered that in American -financial conditions, with the immense public activity of money there -taking place, these things are gauged in advance and by the general -knowledge, or speculative measure, as the oldfashioned private fortune -couldn't be. But I am here up against the very nodus of my history, the -facts of Horty's connection with the affairs that come into being for -Gray under his uncle's Will; the whole mechanism, in fine, of this part -of the action, the situation so created and its consequences. Enormous -difficulty of pretending to show various things here as with a business -vision, in my total absence of business initiation; so that of course my -idea has been from the first not to show them with a business vision, -but in some other way altogether; this will take much threshing out, but -it is the very basis of the matter, the core of the subject, and I shall -worry it through with patience. But I must get it, plan it, utterly -right in advance, and this is what takes the doing. The other doing, the -use of it when schemed, is comparatively easy. What strikes me first of -all is that the amount of money that Gray comes in for must, for reasons -I needn't waste time in stating, so obvious are they, be no such huge -one, by the New York measure, as in many another case: it's a tremendous -lot of money for Gray, from his point of view and in relation to his -needs or experience. Thus the case is that if Mr. Gaw's accumulations or -whatever have distinctly surpassed expectation, the other old man's have -fallen much below it--or at least have been known to be no such great -affair anyhow. Various questions come up for me here, though there is no -impossibility of settling them if taken one by one. The whole point is -of course that Mr. Betterman _has_ been a ruthless operator or whatever, -and with doings Davey Bradham is able to give Gray so dark an account -of; therefore if the mass of money of the acquisition of which such a -picture can be made is not pretty big, the force of the picture falls a -good deal to the ground. The difficulty in that event, in view of the -bigness, is that the conception of any act on Horton's part that amounts -to a swindle practised on Gray to such a tremendous tune is neither a -desirable nor a possible one. As one presses and presses light -breaks--there are so many ways in which one begins little by little to -wonder if one may not turn it about. There is the way in the first place -of lowering the pitch altogether of the quantities concerned for either -men. I see that from the moment ill--gotten money is concerned the -essence of my subject stands firm whatever the amount of the -same--whatever the amounts in either case. I haven't proposed from the -first at all to be definite, in the least, about financial details or -mysteries--I need hardly say; and have even seen myself absolutely not -stating or formulating at all the figure of the property accruing to -Gray. I haven't the least need of that, and can make the absence of it -in fact a positively good and happy effect. That is an immense gain for -my freedom of conduct; and in fine there glimmers upon me, there -glimmers upon me----! The idea, which was vaguely my first, of the -absolute theft practised upon Gray by Horty, and which Gray's large -appeal to his cleverness and knowledge, and large trust in his -competence, his own being nil--this theft accepted and condoned by Gray -as a manner of washing his own hands of the use of the damnosa -hereditas--this thinkable enough in respect to some limited, even if -considerable, amount etc., but losing its virtue of conceivability if -applied to larger and more complicated things. Vulgar theft I don't -want, but I want something to which Horty is led on and encouraged by -Gray's whole attitude and state of mind face to face with the impression -which he gets over there of so many of the black and merciless things -that are behind the great possessions. I want Gray absolutely to inherit -the money, to have it, to have had it, and to let it go; and it seems to -me that a whole element of awkwardness will be greatly minimised for me -if I never exactly express, or anything like it, what the money is. The -difficulty is in seeing any one particular stroke by which Horty can do -what he wants; it will have to be much rather a whole train of -behaviour, a whole process of depredation and misrepresentation, which -constitutes his delinquency. This, however, would be and _could_ be only -an affair of time; and my whole intention, a straight and compact -action, would suffer from this. What I originally saw was the fact of -Gray's detection of Horty in a piece of extremely ingenious and able -malversation of his funds, the care of which he has made over to him, -and the then determination on his part simply to show the other in -silence that he understands, and on consideration will do nothing; this -being, he feels in his wrought-up condition after what he has learnt -about the history of the money, the most congruous way of his ceasing -himself to be concerned with it and of resigning it to its natural -associations. That was the essence of my subject, and I see as much in -it as ever; only I see too that it is imaginable about a comparatively -small pecuniary interest much more than about a great. It has to depend -upon the kind of malpractice involved; and I am partly tempted to ask -myself whether Horty's connection with the situation may not be -thinkable as having begun somewhat further back. One thing is certain, -however; I don't want any hocus-pocus about the Will itself--which an -anterior connection for H. would more or less amount to: I want it just -as I have planned it up to the edge of the circle in which his misdeed -is perpetrated. What glimmers upon me, as I said just now, is the -conception of an extreme frankness of understanding between the two -young men on the question of Gray's inaptitudes, which at first are not -at all disgusts--because he doesn't _know_; but which makes them, the -two, have it out together at an early stage. Yes, there glimmers, there -glimmers; something really more interesting, I think, than the mere -nefarious act; something like a profoundly nefarious attitude, or even -genius: I see, I really think I see, the real fine truth of the matter -in _that._ With which I keep present to me the whole significance and -high dramatic value of the part played in the action by Cissy Foy; have -distinct to me her active function as a wheel in the machine. How it -isn't simply Gray and Horty at all, but Gray and Horty and _her_; how it -isn't She and Gray, any more than it's She and Horty, simply, but is for -her too herself and the _two_ men: in which I see possibilities of the -most interesting. But I must put her on her feet perfectly in order to -see as I should. Without at all overstraining the point of previous -contacts for Gray with these three or four others--than which even at -the worst there is nothing in the world more verisimilitudinous--I want -some sort of relation for him with her _started_; this being a distinct -economy, purchased by no extravagance, and seeing me, to begin with, so -much further on my way. And who, when I bethink myself, have his -contacts been with, after all, over there, but Horty and Rosanna--the -relation to Mr. Betterman being but of the mere essence. Of the people -who matter the Bradhams are new to him, and that is all right; Cissy may -have been seen of him on some occasion over there that is quite recent, -as recent as I like; all the more that I must remember how if I want her -truly a Girl I must mind what I'm about with the age I'm attributing to -Gray. I want a disparity, but not too great, at the same time that -though I want her a Girl, I want her not too young a one either. -Everything about her, her intelligence, character, sense of life and -knowledge of it, imply a certain experience and a certain time for that. -The great fact is that she is the poor Girl, and the "exceptionally -clever," in a society of the rich, living her life with them, and more -or less by their bounty; being, I seem to see, already a friend and -protégée of Rosanna's, though it isn't Rosanna but the Bradhams who -put her in relation with Gray, whether designedly or not. I seem to run -here the risk a bit of exposure to the charge of more or less repeating -the figure of Charlotte in The Golden Bowl, with the Bradhams repeating -even a little the Assinghams in that fiction; but I shake this -reflection off, as having no weight beyond duly warning; the situation -being such another affair and the real characteristics and exhibited -proceedings of these three persons being likewise so other. Say -something shall have passed between Cissy at a _then_ 25, or 24 at most, -and Gray "on the other side"; this a matter of but two or three -occasions, interesting to him, shortly before his stepfather's death--a -person with whom she has then professed herself greatly struck, to whom -she has been somehow very "nice": a circumstance pleasing and touching -at the time to Gray, given his great attachment to that charming, or at -any rate to Gray very attaching, though for us slightly mysterious, -character. Say even if it doesn't take, or didn't, too much exhibition -or insistence, that the meeting has been with the stepfather only, who -has talked with her about Gray, made a point of Gray, wished she could -know Gray, excited her interest and prepared her encounter for Gray, in -some conditions in which Gray has been temporarily absent from him. Say -this little intercourse has taken place at some "health resort", some -sanatorium or other like scene of possibilities, where the stepfather, -for whom I haven't even yet a name, is established, making his cure, -staving off the affection of which he dies, while this interesting young -American creature is also there in attendance on some relative whom she -also has since lost. I multiply my orphans rather, Charlotte too having -been an orphan; but I can keep this girl only a half-orphan perhaps if I -like. I kind of want her, for the sake of the characteristic, to have a -mother, without a father; in which case her mother, who hasn't died, but -got better, will have been her companion at the health resort; though it -breaks a little into my view of the girl's dependence, her isolation -etc., her living so much with these other people, if her mother is -about. On the other hand the mother may be as gently but a charge the -more for her, and so in a manner conducive; though it's a detail, at any -rate, settling itself as I get in close--and she would be at the worst -the only mother in the business. What I seem to like to have at all -events is that Gray and Cissy, have _not_ met, yet have been in this -indirect relation--complicated further by the fact of her existing -"friendship", say, as a temporary name for it, with Horton Vint. She -arrives thus with her curiosity, her recollections, her -intelligence--for, there's no doubt about it, I am, rather as usual, -offering a group of the personally remarkable, in a high degree, all -round. Augusta Bradham, really, is about the only stupid one, the only -approach to a fool, though she too in her way is a force, a driving -one--that is the whole point; which happens to mark a difference also, -so far good, from the Assinghams, where it was the wife who had the -intelligence and the husband who was in a manner the fool. The fact of -the personal values, so to call them, thus clustered, I of course not -only accept, but cherish; that they are each the particular individual -of the particular weight being of course of the essence of my donnée. -They are interesting that way--I have no use for them here in any other. - -Horton has meanwhile become in a sort tied up with Cissy, as she has -with him; through the particular conditions of their sentiment for each -other--she in love with him, so far as she, by her conviction and -theory, has allowed herself to go in that direction for a man without -money, though destined somehow to have it, as she feels; and he in love -with her under the interdict of a parity of attitude on the whole -"interested" question. The woman whom he would give truly one of his -limbs to commend himself to is Rosanna, who perfectly knows it and for -whom he serves as the very compendium and symbol of that danger of her -being approached only on that ground, the ground of her wealth, which -is, by all the mistrusts and terrors it creates, the deep note of her -character and situation; that he serves to her as the very type of what -she most dreads, not only the victory, but the very approach of it, -almost constituting thus a kind of frank relation, a kind of closeness -of contact between them, that involves for her almost a sinister (or -whatever) fascination. It is between him and my ambitious young woman (I -call her ambitious to simplify) that they are in a manner allies in what -may be called their "attitude to society"; the frankness of their -recognition, on either side, that in a world of money they can't _not_ -go in for it, and that accordingly so long as neither has it, they can't -go in for each other: though how each would--each makes the other -feel--if it could all be only on a different basis! Horty's attitude is -that he's going to have it somehow, and he to a certain extent infects -her with this conviction--but that he doesn't wholly do so is exactly -part of the evidence as to that latent limitation of the _general_ trust -in him which I must a good deal depend on to explain how it is that, -with his ability, or the impression of this that he also produces, he -hasn't come on further. Deep down in the girl is her element of -participation in this mistrust too--which is part of the reason why she -hangs back, in spite of the kind of attraction he has for her, from any -consent to, say, marry him. He, for that matter, hasn't in the least -urged the case either--it hasn't been in him up to now, in spite of a -failure or two, in spite of the failure notably with Rosanna, to close -by a positive act the always possibly open door to his marrying money. -I see the recognition of all this between them as of well-nigh the -crudest and the most typical, the most "modern"; in fact I see their -relation as of a highly exhibitional value and interest. What the Girl -indeed doesn't, and doesn't want to (up to now) express, is exactly that -limit, and the ground of it, of her faith in him as a financial -conqueror. She is willing more or less to believe, to confide, in his -own confidence--she sees him indeed as more probably than not marked for -triumphant acquisition; but the latent, "deep down" thing is her -wonderment as to the character of his methods--if the so-called straight -ones won't have served or sufficed. She sees him as a fine -adventurer--which is a good deal too how she sees herself; but almost -crude though I have called their terms of mutual understanding it hasn't -come up for them, and I think it is absolutely never to come up for -them, that she so far faces this question of his "honour", or of any -capacity in him for deviation from it, as even to conjure it away. There -are depths within depths between them--and I think I understand what I -mean if I say there are also shallows beside shallows. They give each -other rope and yet at the same time remain tied; that for the moment is -a sufficient formula--once I keep the case lucid as to what their tie -is. - -What accordingly does her situation in respect to Gray come to, and how -do I see it work out? The answer to that involves of course the question -of what his, in respect to her, comes to, and what it gives me for -interest. She has got her original impression about him over there as of -the man without means to speak of; but it is as the heir to a fortune -that she now first sees him, and as the person coming in virtue of that -into the world she lives in, where her power to guide, introduce and -generally help and aid and comfort him, shows from the first as -considerable. She strikes him at once as the creature, in all this -world, the most European and the most capable of, as it were, -understanding him intellectually, entering into his tastes etc. He -recognises quickly that, putting Davey Bradham perhaps somewhat aside, -she is the being, up and down the place, with whom he is going to be -able most to _communicate._ With Rosanna he isn't going to communicate -"intellectually", æsthetically, and all the rest, the least little bit: -Rosanna has no more taste than an elephant; Rosanna is only _morally_ -elephantine, or whatever it is that is morally most massive and -magnificent. What I want is to get my right firm _joints_, each working -on its own hinge, and forming together the play of my machine: they -_are_ the machine, and when each of them is settled and determined it -will work as I want it. The first of these, definitely, is that Gray -does inherit, has inherited. The next is that he is face to face with -what it means to have inherited. The next to that is that one of the -things it means--though this isn't the light in which he first sees the -fact--is that the world immensely opens to him, and that one of the -things it seems most to give him, to offer and present to him, is this -brilliant, or whatever, and interesting young woman. He doesn't at first -at all see her in the light of her making up to him on account of his -money; she is too little of a crudely interested specimen for that, and -too sincere in fact to herself--feeling very much about him that she -would certainly have been drawn to him, after this making of -acquaintance, even if no such advantages attached to him and he had -remained what he had been up to then. But all the same it is a Joint, -and we see that it is by seeing _her_ as we shall; I mean I make it and -keep it one by showing "what goes on" between herself and Horton. I have -blessedly that view, that alternation of view, for my process throughout -the action. The determination of her interest towards him--that then is -a Joint. And let me make the point just here that at first he has -nothing but terror, but horror, of seeing himself affected as Rosanna -has been by her own situation--from the moment, that is, he begins to -take in that she is so affected. He takes this in betimes from various -signs--before that passes between them which gives him her case in the -full and lucid way in which he comes to have it. _She_ gives it to him -presently--but at first as her own simply, holding her hand entirely -from intimating that his need be at all like it; as she must do, for -that matter, given the fact that it is really through her action that he -was brought over to see his uncle. She thinks her feelings about her own -case right and inevitable for herself; but I want to make it an -interesting and touching inconsistency in her that she desires not to -inspire him, in respect to his circumstances, with any correspondingly -justified sense. Definite is it that what he learns, he learns not the -least mite from herself, though after a while he comes quite to -challenge her on it, but from Davey Bradham, so far as he learns it, for -the most part, concretely and directly--as many other impressions as I -can suggest helping besides. I want him at all events to have a full -large clear moment or season of exhilaration, of something like -intoxication, over the change in his conditions, before questions begin -to come up. An essential Joint is constituted by their beginning to come -up, and the difference that this begins to make. What I want of Davey -Bradham is that he is a determinant in this shift of Gray's point of -view, though I want also (and my scenario has practically provided for -that) that the immediate amusement of his contact with Davey shall be -quite compatible with his _not_ yet waking up, _not_ yet seeing -questions loom. I must keep it well before me too that his whole -enlarged vision of the money-world, so much more than any other sort of -world, that all these people constitute, operates inevitably by itself, -promotes infinite reflection, makes a hundred queer and ugly things, a -thousand, ten thousand, glare at him right and left. A Joint again is -constituted by Gray's first consciousness of malaise, first -determination of malaise, in the presence of more of a vision, and more -and more impression of everything; which determination, as I call it, I -want to proceed from some sense in him of Cissy's attitude as affected -by his own reactions, exhibition of questions, wonderments and, to put -it simply and strongly, rising disgusts. She has appealed to him at the -outset, on his first apprehension of her, exactly as a poor girl who -wasn't meant to be one, who has been formed by her nature and her -experience to rise to big brilliant conditions, carry them, take them -splendidly, in fine do all justice to them; this under all the first -flush of what I have called his own exhilaration. He hasn't then -committed himself, in the vulgar sense, at all--had only committed -himself, that is, to the appearance of being interested and charmed: his -imaginative expansion for that matter being naturally too great to -permit for the moment of particular concentration or limitations. But -isn't his incipient fear of beginning to be, of becoming, such another -example, to put it comprehensively, as Rosanna, doesn't this proceed -precisely from the stir in him of certain disconcerting, complicating, -in fact if they go a little further quite blighting, wonderments in -respect to Cissy's possibilities? She throws her weight with him into -the _happy_ view of his own; which is what he likes her, wants her, at -first encourages her to do, lending himself to it while he feels -himself, as it were, all over. Mrs. Bradham, all the while, backs her up -and backs _him_ up, and is in general as crude and hard and blatant, as -vulgar is what it essentially comes to, in her exhibited desire to bring -about their engagement, as is exactly required for producing on him just -the wrong effect. Gray's tone to the girl becomes, again to simplify: -"Oh yes, it's all right that you should be rich, should have all the -splendid things of this world; but I don't see, I'm not sure, of its -being in the least right that _I_ should--while I seem to be making out -more and more, round me, how so many of them are come by." It is the -insistence on them, the way everyone, among that lot at any rate, -appears aware of no values but those, that sets up more and more its -effect on his nerves, his moral nerves as it were, and his reflective -imagination. The girl counters to this of course--she isn't so crude a -case as not to; she denies that she's the sort of existence that he thus -imputes--all the while that she only sees in his attitude and his -position a kind of distinction that would simply add to their situation, -simply gild and after a fashion decorate it, were she to marry him. I -want to make another Joint with her beginning, all the same, to doubt of -him, to think him really perhaps capable of strange and unnatural -things, which she doesn't yet see at all clearly; but which take the -form for her of his possibly handing over great chunks of his money to -public services and interests, deciding to be munificent with it, after -the fashion of Rockefellers and their like: though with the enormous -difference that his resources are not in the slightest degree of that -calibre. He's rich, yes, but not rich enough to remain rich if he goes -in for that sort of overdone idealism. Some passage bearing on this -takes place, I can see, about at the time when he has the so to call it -momentous season, or scene, or whatever, of confidence or exchange with -Rosanna in which she goes the whole "figure", as they say, and puts to -him that exactly her misery is in having come in for resources that -should enable her to do immense things, but that are so dishonoured and -stained and blackened at their very roots, that it seems to her that -they carry their curse with them, and that she asks herself what -application to "benevolence" as commonly understood, can purge them, can -make them anything but continuators, somehow or other, of the wrongs in -which they had their origin. This, dramatically speaking, is momentous -for Gray, and it makes a sort of clearing up to realities between him -and Rosanna which offers itself in its turn, distinctly, as a Joint. It -makes its mark for value, has an effect, leaves things not as they were. - -But meanwhile what do I see about Horton, about the situation between -them, so part and parcel of the situation between Gray and Cissy and -between Horton and Cissy. Absolute the importance, I of course -recognise, of such a presentation of matters between her and Horton, and -Horton and her, as shall stand behind and under everything that takes -place from this point. In my adumbration of a scenario for these earlier -aspects I have provided, I think, for this; at any rate I do hereby -provide. I want to give the effect, for all it's worth, of their being -constantly, chronically, naturally and, for my drama, determinatively, -in communication; with which it more and more comes to me that when the -great _coup_ of the action effects itself Gray shall have been brought -to it as much by the forces determining it on her behalf, in relation to -her, in a word, as by those determining it in connection with Horton. -She helps him to his solution about as much as Horton does, and, -lucidly, logically, ever so interestingly, everything between them up to -the verge is but a preparation for that. Enormous meanwhile the relation -with Horton constituted by his making over to this dazzling person (by -whom moreover he wants to be, consents to be, dazzled) the care or -administration of his fortune; for which highly characteristic, but -almost, in its freehandedness, abnormally, there must have been -preparation, absolutely, and oh, as I can see, ever so interestingly, in -Book 2, the section containing his face to face parts with Mr. -Betterman. It comes to me as awfully fine, given the way in which I -represent the old dying man as affected and determined, to sweep away -everything in the matter of precautions and usualisms, provisions for -trusteeships and suchlike, and lump the whole thing straight on to the -young man, without his having a condition or a proviso to consider. What -I have wanted is that he should at a stroke, as it were, in those last -enshrouded, but perfectly possessed hours, make over his testament -utterly and entirely, in the most simplified way possible; in short by -a sweeping codicil that annihilates what he has done before and puts -Gray in what I want practically to count as unconditioned possession. -Thank the Lord I have only to give the effect of this, for which I can -trust myself, without going into the ghost of a technicality, any -specialising demonstration. I need scarcely tell myself that I don't by -this mean that Gray makes over matters definitely and explicitly to -Horton at once, with attention called to the tightness with which his -eyes are shut and all his senses stopped or averted; but that naturally -and inevitably, also interestingly, this result proceeds, in fact very -directly and promptly springs, from his viewing and treating his friend -as his best and cleverest and vividest adviser--whom he only doesn't -rather abjectly beg to take complete and irresponsible charge because he -is ashamed of doing so. Two things very definite here; one being that -Gray isn't in the least blatant or glorious about his want, absolutely -phenomenal in that world, of any faint shade of business comprehension -or imagination, but is on the contrary so rather helplessly ashamed of -it that he keeps any attitude imputable to him as much as possible out -of the question--and in fact proceeds in the way I know. He has moments -of confidence--he tells Rosanna, makes a clean breast to her and with -Horton doesn't need to be explicit, beyond a point, since all his -conduct expresses it. What happens is that little by little, inevitably, -as a consequence of first doing this for him and then doing that and -then the other, Horton more and more gets control, gets a kind of -unlimited play of hand in the matter which practically amounts to a sort -of general power of attorney; as Gray falls into the position, under a -feeling insurmountably directing him, of signing anything, everything, -that Horton brings to him for the purpose--but only what Horton brings. -The state of mind and vision and feeling, the state of dazzlement with -reserves and reflections, the play of reserves and reflections with -dazzlement (which is my convenient word covering here all that I intend -and prefigure) is a part of the very essence of my subject--which in -fine I perfectly possess. What happens is, further, that, even with the -rapidity which is of the remarkable nature of the case, Horton shows for -a more and more monied, or call it at first a less and less non-monied -individual; with an undisguisedness in this respect which of itself -imposes and, vulgarly speaking, succeeds. I express these things here -crudely and summarily, by rude signs and hints, in order to express them -at all; but what is of so high an interest, and so bright and -characteristic, is that Horton is "splendid", plausible, delightful, -_because_ exactly so logical and happily suggestive, about all this; he -puts it to Gray that _of course_ he is helping himself by helping Gray, -that _of course_ his connection with Gray does him good in the business -world and gives him such help to do things for himself as he has never -before had. I needn't abound in this sense here, I am too well possessed -of what I see--as I find myself in general more and more. A tremendous -Joint is formed, in all this connection, when the first definite -question begins to glimmer upon Gray, under some intimation, suggestion, -impression, springing up as dramatically as I can make it, as to what -Horton is really doing with him, and as to whether or no he shall really -try to find out. That question of whether or no he _shall becomes_ the -question; just as the way he answers it, not all at once, but under -further impressions invoked, becomes a thing of the liveliest interest -for us; becomes a consideration the climax of which represents exactly -the Joint that is in a sense the climax of the Joints. He sees--well -what I see him see, and it is of course not at all this act of vision in -itself, but what takes place in consequence of it, and the process of -confrontation, reflection, resolution, that ensues--it is this that -brings me up to my high point of beautiful difficulty and clarity. An -exquisite quality of representation here of course comes in, with -everything that is involved to make it rich and interesting. A Joint -here, a Joint of the Joint, for perfect flexible working, is Horton's -vision of his vision, and Horton's exhibited mental, moral audacity of -certainty as to what that may mean for himself. There is a scene of -course in which, between them, this is what it can only be provisionally -gross and approximate to call settled: as to which I needn't insist -further, it's _there_; what I want is there; I've only to pull it out: -it's _all_ there, heaped up and pressed together and awaiting the -properest hand. So much just now for _that._ - -As to Cissy Foy meanwhile, the case seems to me to clear up and clear up -to the last perfection; or to be destined and committed so to do, at any -rate, as one presses it with the right pressure. How shall I put it for -the moment, _her_ case, in the very simplest and most rudimentary terms? -She sees the improvement in Horton's situation, she assists at it, it -gives her pleasure, it even to a certain extent causes her wonder, but a -wonder which the pleasure only perches on, so to speak, and converts to -its use; so does the vision appeal to her and hold her of the exercise -on his part, the more vivid exercise than any she has yet been able to -enjoy an exhibition of, of the ability and force, the _doing_ and -man-of-action quality, as to the show of which he has up to now been so -hampered. She likes his success at last, plainly, and he has it from her -that she likes it; she likes to let him know that she likes it, and we -have her for the time in contemplation, as it were, of these two -beautiful cases of possession and acquisition, out of which indeed poor -little impecunious she gets as yet no direct advantage, but which are -somehow together there _for_ her with a kind of glimmering looming -option well before her as to how they shall _come_ yet to concern her. -Awfully interesting and attractive, as one says, to mark the point (such -a Joint _this!_) at which the case begins to glimmer for Gray about her, -as it has begun to glimmer for him about Horton. I make out here, so far -as I catch the tip of the tail of it, such an interesting connection and -dependence, for what I may roughly call Gray's state of mind, as to what -is taking place within Cissy, so to speak. Since I speak of the most -primitive statement of it possible he catches the moment at which she -begins to say to herself "But if Horton, if _he_, is going to be -rich----?" as a positive arrest, say significant warning or omen, in his -own nearer approach to her; which takes on thereby a portentous, a kind -of ominous and yet enjoyable air of evidence as to his own likelihood, -at this rate, of getting poor. He catches her not asking herself withal, -at least _then_, "_How_ is Horton going to be rich, _how_, at such a -rate, has it come on, and what does it mean?"--it is only the "_If_ -Horton, oh _if_----?" that he comes up against; it's as if he comes up -against, as well, some wondrous implication in it of "If, if, _if_ Mr. -Gray is, 'in such a funny way,' going to be poor----?" He sees her -_there_, seeing at the same time that it's as near as she yet gets; as -near perhaps even--for this splendid apprehension sort of begins to take -place in him--as she's going to allow herself to get; and after the -first chill of it, shock of it, pain of it (because I want him to be at -the point at which he has _that_) fades a little away for him, he -emerging or shaking himself out of it, the beautiful way in which it -falls into the general ironic apprehension, imagination, appropriation, -of the Whole, becomes for him _the_ fact about it. She has them, each on -his side, there in her balance--and this is between them, between him -and her; I must have prepared everything right for its being oh such a -fine moment. What I want to do of course is to get out of _this_ -particular situation all it can give; what it most gives being, to the -last point, the dramatic quality, intensity, force, current or whatever, -of Gray's apprehension of it, once this is determined, and of course -wondering interest in it--as a light, so to speak, on both of the -persons concerned. What I see is that she gives him the measure, as it -were, of Horton's successful proceeding--and does so, in a sort, without -positively having it herself, or truly wanting to have it beyond the -fact that it is success, is promise and prospect of acquisition on a big -scale. What it comes to is that he finds her believing in Horton just at -the time and in proportion as he has found himself ceasing to believe, -so far as the latter's disinterestedness is concerned. No better, no -more vivid illustration of the force of the money-power and -money-prestige rises there before him, innumerably as other examples -assault him from all round. The effect on her is there for him to -"study," even, if he will; and in fact he does study it, studies it in a -way that (as he also sees) makes her think that this closer -consideration of her, approach to her, as it were, is the expression of -an increased sympathy, faith and good will, increased desire, in fine, -to make her like him. All the while it is, for Gray himself, something -other; yet something at the same time wellnigh as absorbing as if it -were what she takes it for. The fascination of seeing what will come of -it--that is of the situation, the state of vigilance, the wavering -equilibrium, at work, or at play, in the young woman--this "fascination" -very "amusing" to show, with everything that clusters about it. He -really enjoys getting so detached from it as to be able to have it -before him for observation and wonder as he does, and I must make the -point very much of how this fairly soothes and relieves him, begins to -glimmer upon him exactly _through_ that consciousness as something like -the sort of issue he has been worrying about and longing for. Just so -something that he makes out as distinguishable there in Horton, a -confidence more or less dissimulated but also, deeply within, more or -less determined, operates in its way as a measure for him of Horton's -intimate sense of how things will go for him; the confidence referring, -I mustn't omit, to his possibility of Cissy, after all, whom his -sentiment for makes his most disinterested interest, so to call it: all -this in a manner corresponding to that apprehension in Gray of _her_ -confidence, which I have just been sketchily noting. The one -disinterested thing in Horton, that is, consists of his being so -attached to her that he really cares for her freedom, cares for her -doing what on the whole she most wants to, if it will but come as she -wants it, by the operation, the evolution, so to say, of her clear -preference. He has somehow within him a sense that anyway, whatever -happens, they shall not fail of being "friends" after all. I see myself -wanting to have Gray come up against some conclusive sign of how things -_are_ at last between them--though I say "at last" as if he has had -_much_ other light as to how such things _have_ been, precedently. I -don't want him to _have_ had much other light, though he needs of course -to have had _some_; there being people enough to tell him, he being so -in the circle of talk, reference, gossip; but with his own estimate of -the truth of ever so much of the chatter in general, and of that chatter -in particular, taking its course. What I seem to see just in this -connection is that he has "believed" so far as to take it that she _has_ -"cared" for his friend in the previous time, but that Horton hasn't -really at all cared for her, keeping himself in reserve as it is of his -essence to do, and in particular (this absolutely _known_ to Gray) never -having wholly given up his views on Rosanna. Gray believes that he -hasn't, at any rate, and this helps him not to fit the fact of the -younger girl's renounced, quenched, outlived, passion, or whatever one -may call it, to any game of patience or calculation, rooted in a like -state of feeling, on Horton's part. I want the full effect of what I can -only call for convenience Gray's Discovery, his full discovery of them -"together", in some situation, and its illuminating and signifying, its -in a high degree, to repeat again my cherished word, determinant -character. This effect requires exactly what I have been roughly -marking--the line of argument in which appearances, as interpreted for -himself, have been supporting Gray. "She has been in love with him, -yes--but nothing has come of it--nothing could come of it; because, -though he has been aware, and has been nice and kind to her, he isn't -affected in the same way--is, in these matters, too cool and calculating -a bird. He likes women, yes; and has had lots to do with them; but in -the way of what a real relation with _her_ would have meant--not! She -has given him up, she has given it up--whereby one is free not to worry, -not to have scruples, not to fear to cut across the possibility of one's -friend." That's a little compendium of what I see. But it comes to me -that I also want something more--for the full effect and the exact -particular and most pointed bearing of what I dub Gray's discovery. He -must have put it to Horton, as their relations have permitted at some -suggested hour, or in some relevant connection: "Do you mind telling me -if it's true--what I've heard a good deal affirmed--that there has been -a question of an engagement between you and Miss Foy?--or that you are -so interested in her that to see somebody else making up to her would be -to you as a pang, an affront, a ground of contention or challenge or -whatever?" I seem to see that, very much indeed; and by the same token -to see Horton's straight denegation. I see Horton say emphatically -No--and this for reasons quite conceivable in him, once one apprehends -their connection with his wishing above all, beyond anything else that -he at this moment wishes, to keep well with Gray. His denegation is -plausible; Gray believes it and accepts it--all the more that at the -moment in question he _wants_ to, in the interest of his own freedom of -action. Accordingly the point I make is that when he in particular -conditions finds them all unexpectedly and unmistakably "together", the -discovery becomes for him _doubly_ illuminating. I might even better say -trebly; showing him in the very first place that Horton has lied to him, -and thereby that Horton _can_ lie. This very interesting and -important--but also, in a strange way, "fascinating" to him. It shows in -the second way how much Cissy is "thinking" of Horton, as well as he of -her; and it shows in the last place, which makes it triple, how well -Horton must think of the way his affairs are getting on that he can now -consider the possibility of a marriage--that he can feel, I mean, he can -_afford_ to marry; not having need of one of the Rosanna's to make up -for his own destitution. This clinches enormously, as by a flash of -vision, Gray's perception of what he is about; and is thus very -intensely a Joint of the first water! What I want to be carried on to -is the point at which all that he sees and feels and puts together in -this connection eventuates in a decision or attitude, in a clearing-up -of all the troubled questions, obscurities and difficulties that have -hung for him about what I call his Solution, about what he shall be -most at ease, most clear and consistent for himself, in making up his -mind to. The process here and the position on his part, with all the -implications and consequences of the same in which it results, is -difficult and delicate to formulate, but I see with the last intensity -the sense of it, and feel how it will all come and come as I get nearer -to it. What is a big and beautiful challenge to a whole fine handling -of these connections in particular is the making conceivable and clear, -or in other words credible, consistent, vivid and interesting, the -particular extraordinary relation thus constituted between the two men. -That one may make it these things for Gray is more or less calculable, -and, as I seem to make out, workable; but the greatest beauty of the -difficulty is in getting it and keeping it in the right note and at the -right pitch for Horton. Horton's "acceptance"--on what prodigious basis -save the straight and practical view of Gray's exalted queerness and -constitutional, or whatever, perversity, can _that_ be shown as resting? -Two fine things--that is one of them strikes me as very fine--here come -to me; one of these my seeing (_don't_ I see it?) how it will fall in, -not to say fall out, as of the essence of the true workability, that the -extent to which i's are not dotted between them, are left consciously -undotted, to which, to the most extraordinary tune, and yet with the -logic of it all straight, they stand off, or rather Gray does, the other -all demonstrably thus taking his cue--the way, I say, in which the -standing-off from sharp or supreme clearances is, and confirms itself as -being, a note of my hero's action in the matter, throws upon one the -most interesting work. Horton accepts it as exactly part of the -prodigious queerness which he humours and humours in proportion as Gray -will have it that he shall; the "fine thing", the second of the two, -just spoken of, being that Horton never flinches from his perfectly -splendid theory that he is "taking care", consummately, of his friend, -and that he is arranging, by my exhibition of him, just as consummately -to _show_ for so doing. No end, I think, to be got out of this wondrous -fact of Gray's sparing Horton, or saving him, the putting of anything to -a real and direct Test; such a Test as would reside in his asking -straight for a large sum of money, a big amount, really consonant with -his theoretically intact resources arid such as he with the highest -propriety in the world might simply say that he has an immediate use -for, or can make some important application of. No end, no end, as I -say, to what I see as given me by this--this huge constituted and -accepted eccentricity of Gray's holdings-off. I have the image of the -relation between them made by it in my vision thus of the way, or the -ways, they look at each other even while talking together to a tune -which would logically or consistently make these ways _other_; the sort -of education of the look that it breeds in Horton on the whole ground of -"how far he may go." The things that pass between them after this -fashion quite beautiful to do if kept from an overdoing; with Horton's -formula of his "looking after" Gray completely interwoven with his whole -ostensibility. It is with this formula that Horton meets the world all -the while--the world that at a given moment can only find itself so full -of wonderment and comment. It is with it above all that he meets Cissy, -who takes it from him in a way that absolutely helps him to keep it up; -and it _would_ be with it that he should meet Rosanna if, after a given -day or season, he might find it in him to dare, as it were, to "meet" -Rosanna at all. It is with Horton's formula, which I think I finally -show him as quite publicly delighting in, that Gray himself meets -Rosanna, whom he meets a great deal all this time; with such passages -between them as are only matched in another sense, and with all the -other values with which they swell, so to speak, by his passages with -the consummate Horton. Charming, by which I mean such interesting, -things resident in what I _there_ touch on; with the way _they_ look at -each other, Rosanna and Gray, if one is talking about looks. Gray keeps -it in comedy, so far as he can--making a tone, a spell, that Rosanna -doesn't break into, as she breaks, anything to call _really_ breaks, -into nothing as yet: I seem to see the final, from-far-back-prepared -moment when she does, for the first and last time, break as of a big and -beautiful value. _That_ will be a Joint of Joints; but meanwhile what is -between them is the sombre confidence, tenderness, fascination, anxiety, -a dozen admirable things, with which she waits on Gray's tone, not -playing up to it at all (playings-up and suchlike not being verily in -her) but taking it from him, accommodating herself to it with all her -anxiety and her confidence somehow mixed together, as if to see how far -it will carry her. Such a lot to be done with Gussie Bradham, portentous -woman, even to the very cracking or bursting of the mould meanwhile--so -functional do I see her, in spite of the crowding and pressing together -of functions, as to the production of those (after all early-determined) -reactions in Gray by the simple complete exhibition of her type and -pressure and aggressive mass. She is really worth a book by herself, or -would be should I look that way; and I just here squeeze what I most -want about her into a sort of nutshell by saying that it marks for Gray -just where and how his Solution, or at any rate some of its significant -and attendant aspects, swims into his ken, with the very first scene she -makes him about the meanness then of his conception of his opportunity. -Then it is he feels he must be getting a bit into the truth of -things--if that's the way he strikes her. His very measure of taste and -delicacy and the sympathetic and the nice and the what he wants, becomes -after a fashion what she will want most to make him a scene about. I -have it at first that he lends himself, that her great driving tone and -pressure, her would-be act of possession of him, Cissy and the question -of Cissy being the link, have amounted to a sort of trouble-saving thing -which he has let himself "go to", which he has suffered as his -convenient push or handy determinant, for the hour (sceptical even then -as to its lasting)--but which has inordinately overdosed him, -overhustled him, almost, as he feels in his old habit of financial -contraction, overspent and overruined him. He does the things, the -social things, for the moment, that she prescribes, that she foists upon -him as the least ones he can decently do; does them even with a certain -bewildered amusement--while Rosanna, brooding apart, so to speak, out of -the circle and on her own ground, but ever so attentive, draws his eye -to the effect of what one might almost call the intelligent, the -patience-inviting, wink! Oh for the pity of scant space for specific -illustration of Mrs. Bradham; where-with indeed of course I reflect on -the degree to which my planned compactness, absolutely precious and not -to be compromised with, must restrict altogether the larger -illustrational play. Intensities of foreshortening, with alternate -vividnesses of extension: that is the rough label of the process. I keep -it before me how mixed Cissy is with certain of the consequences of this -hustlement of Mrs. Bradham, and how bullyingly, so to call it almost, -she has put the whole matter of what he ought to "do for them all," on -the ground in particular of what it is so open to him, so indicated for -him, to do for that poor dear exquisite thing in especial. -Illustrational, illustrational, yes; but oh how every inch of it will -have to count. I seem to want her to have made him do some one rather -gross big thing above all, as against his own sense of fineness in these -matters; and to have this thing count somehow very much in the matter of -his relation with Cissy. I seem to want something like his having -consented to be "put up" by her to the idea of offering Cissy something -very handsome by way of a "kind" tribute to her mingled poverty and -charm--jolly, jolly, I think Eve exactly got it! I keep in mind that -Mrs. Bradham wants him to marry her--this amount of "disinterestedness" -giving the measure of Mrs. B. at her most exalted "best". Wherewith, to -consolidate this, her delicacy being capable--well, of what we shall -see, she works of course to exaggeration the idea of his "recognising" -how nice Cissy was, over there in the other time, to his poor sick -stepfather, who himself so recognised it, who wrote to her so charmingly -a couple of times "about it", after her return to America and quite -shortly before his death. Gray "knows about this", and of course will -quite see what she means. Therefore wouldn't it be nice for Gray to give -her, Cissy, something really beautiful and valuable and socially helpful -to her--as of course he can't give her money, which is what would be -most helpful. Under this hustlement, in fine, and with a sense, born of -his goodnature, his imagination, and his own delicacy, such a very -different affair, of what Gussie Bradham has done for him, by her -showing, he finds himself in for having bought a very rare single row of -pearls, such as a girl, in New York at least, may happily wear, and -presenting it to our young person as the token of recognition that Mrs. -Bradham has imagined for them. The beauty in which, I see, is that it -may be illustrational in more ways than one--illustrational of the -hustle, of the length Gray has "appreciatively" let himself go, and, -above all, of Cissy's really interesting intelligence and "subtlety". -She refuses the gift, very gently and pleadingly, but as it seems to him -really pretty well finally--refuses it as not relevant or proportionate -or congruous to any relation in which they yet stand to each other, and -as oh ever so much over-expressing any niceness she may have shown in -Europe. She does, in doing this, exactly what he has felt at the back of -his head that she would really do, and what he likes her for doing--the -effect of which is that she has furthered her interest with him -decidedly more (as she of course says to herself) than if she had taken -it. He is left with it for the moment on his hands, and what I want is -that he shall the next thing find himself, in revulsion, in reaction, -there being for him no question of selling it again etc., finds himself, -I say, offering it to Mrs. Bradham herself, who swallows it without -winking. Yet, in a way, this little history of the pearls, of her not -having had them, and of his after a fashion owing her a certain -compensation for that, owing her something she _can_ accept, is there -_between_ him and my young person. They figure again between them, -humorously, freely, ironically--the girl being of an irony!--in their -appearances on Mrs. Bradham's person, to whose huge possession of -ornament they none the less conspicuously add. - -But my point here is above all that Gray exactly _doesn't_ put the -question of what is becoming of his funds under Horty's care of them to -the test by any cultivation of that courage for large drafts and big -hauls, that nerve for believing in the fairy-tale of his sudden fact of -possession, which was briefly and in a manner amusingly possible to him -at the first go off of his situation. He forbears, abstains, stands off, -and finds himself, or in particular is found by others, to the extent of -their observing, wondering and presently challenging him, to be living, -to be drawing on his supposed income, with what might pass for the most -extraordinarily timorous and limited imagination. He _likes_ this -arrest, enjoys it and feels a sort of wondrous refreshing decency, at -any rate above all a refreshing interest and curiosity about it, or, -rather, for it; but what his position involves is his explaining it to -others, his making up his mind, his having to, for a line to take about -it, without his thereby giving Horton away. He isn't to give Horton away -the least scrap from this point on; but at the same time he is to have -to deal with the world, with society, with the entourage consisting for -him, in its most pressing form, of, say, three representative -persons--he has to deal with this challenge, as I have called it, in -some way that will sort of meet it _without_ givings-away. These three -persons are in especial Rosanna and the two Bradhams; and it is before -me definitely, I think, that I want to express, and in the very vividest -way, his sense of his situation here, of what it means, and of what _he_ -means, _in_ it, through what takes place for him about it with Rosanna -and with the Bradhams. It is by what he "says" to the Bradhams and to -Rosanna (in the way, that is largely, of _not_ saying) that I seem to -see my values here as best got, and the presentation of their different -states most vivified and dramatised. These are scenes, and the function -of them to serve up for us exactly, and ever so lucidly, what I desire -them to represent. If the greatest interest of them, of sorts, belongs -to them in so far as they are "with" Rosanna, there are yet particular -values that belong to the relation with Davey, and the three relations, -at any rate, work the thing for me. They are perfectly different, on -this lively ground, though the "point" involved is the same in each; and -the having each of them to do it with should enable me to do it -beautifully; I mean to squeeze _all_ the dramatic sense from it. The -great beauty is of course for the aspects with Rosanna, between whom and -him everything passes--and there is so much basis already in what has -been between them--without his "explaining", as I have called it, -anything. Even without explanations--or all the more by reason of their -very absence--there is so much of it all; of the question and the -dramatic illumination. With Gussie Bradham--_that_ aspect I needn't -linger or insist on, here, so much as a scrap. I have that, see it all, -it's _there._ But with Davey I want something very good, that is in -other words very functional; and I think I even wonder if I don't want -to see Davey as attempting to borrow money of him. This--if I do see -it--will take much putting on the right basis; and it seems to kind of -glimmer upon me richly what the right basis is. My idea has been from -the first that the Bradham money is all Gussie's; I have seen Davey, by -the very type and aspect, by all his detached irony and humour and -indiscretion and general value as the unmonied young man who has married -the heiress, as Horton would have been had he been able to marry -Rosanna. But no interfering analogy need trouble me here; Horton's not -having done that, and the essential difference between the men, eases -off any such question. Only don't I seem to want it that Gussie's -fortune, besides not having been even remotely comparable to Rosanna's, -is, though with a fair outward face, a dilapidated and undermined -quantity, much ravaged by Gussie's violent strain upon it, and -representing thus, through her general enormous habit and attitude, an -association and connection with the money world, but all the more -characteristically so, for Gray as he begins to see, that almost -everything but the pitch of Gussie's wants and arrangements and ideals -has been chucked, as it were, out of its windows and doors. Don't I -really see the Bradhams thus as _predatory?_ Predatory on the very rich, -that is; with Gussie's insistence that Gray shall _be_ and shall proceed -as quite one of the _very_, oh the very, very, exactly in order that she -_may_ so prey? Yes and so it is that Gray learns--so it is that a part -of Davey's abysses of New York financial history, is his own, their own, -but his in particular, abyss of inconvenience, abyss of inability to -keep it up combined with all the social impossibility of not doing so. I -somehow want such values of the supporting and functional and -illustrative sort in Davey that I really think I kind of want him to be -the person, _the_ person, to whom Gray gives--as a kind of recognition -of the remarkable part, the precious part, don't I feel it as being? -that Davey plays for him. He likes so the illuminating Davey, whom I'm -quite sure I want to show in no malignant or vicious light, but just as -a regular rag or sponge of saturation in the surrounding medium. He is -beyond, he is outside of, all moral judgments, all scandalised states; -he is amused at what he himself does, at his general and particular -effect and effects on Gray, who is his luxury of a relation, as it were, -and whom I somehow seem to want to show him feel as the only person in -the whole medium appreciating his genius; in other words his detached -play of mind and the deep "American humour" of it. Don't I seem to want -him even as asking for something rather big?--a kind of a lump of a sum -which Gray, always with amusement, answers that he will have to see -about. Gray's seeing about anything of this sort means, all notedly, -absolutely _all_, as I think I have it, asking Horton whether he can, -whether he may, whether Horton will give it to him, whether in short the -thing will suit Horton; even without any disposition of the sum, any -account of what he wants to do, indicated or reported or confessed to -Horton? Don't I see something like this?--that Gray, having put it to -Horton, has precisely determined, for his vision, on Horton's part, just -that first important plea of "Really you can't, you know, at this -rate"--even after Gray has been for some time so "ascetic"--"It won't be -convenient for you just now; and I must ask you really, you know, to -take my word for it that you'd much better not distract from what I am -in the act of doing for you such a sum"--by which I mean, for I am -probably using here not the terms Horton _would_ use--"much better not -make such a call (call is the word) when I am exactly doing for you -etc." What I seem to see is that Davey does have money from him, but has -it only on a scale that falls short, considerably, of his appeal or -proposal or whatever; in other words that Gray accommodates him to the -third, or some other fraction, of the whole extent; and that this -involves for him practically the need of his saying that Horton won't -let him have more. I want that, I see it as a value; I see Davey's -aspect on it as a value, I see what is determined thus between them as a -value; and I seem to see most this _covering_ by Gray of Horton in -answer to the insinuations, not indignant but amused, in answer to the -humorously fantastic picture, on Davey's lips, of the rate at which -Horton is cleaning him out or whatever, this taking of the line of so -doing and of piling up plausibilities of defence, excuse etc., so far as -poor Gray can be plausible in these difficult "technical" connections, -as the vivid image, the vividest, I am most concerned to give of what I -show him as doing. The covering of Horton, the covering of Horton--this -is much more than not giving him away; this active and positive -protection of him seems to me really what my subject logically asks. -Well then if that is it, is what it most of all, for the dramatic value, -asks, how can this be consistently less than Gray's act of going all the -way indeed? I don't know why--as it has been hovering before me--I don't -want the complete vivid sense of it to take the form of an awful, a -horrible or hideous, crisis on Horton's part which, under the stress of -it, he "suddenly" discloses to Gray, throwing himself upon him in the -most fevered, the most desperate appeal for relief. What then -constitutes the nature of the crisis, what _then_ can, or constitute the -urgency of the relief, unless the fact of his having something -altogether dreadful to confess; so dreadful that it can only involve the -very essence of his reputation, honour and decency, his safety in short -before the law? He has been guilty of some huge irregularity, say--but -which yet is a different thing from whatever irregularities he has been -guilty of in respect to Gray himself; and which up to now, at the worst, -have left a certain substantial part of Gray's funds intact. Say that, -say that; turn it over, that is, to see if it's really wanted. I think -of it as wanted because I feel the need of the effect of some _acute_ -determination play up as I consider all this--and yet also see -objections; which probably will multiply as I look a little closer. I -throw this off, at all events, for the moment, as I go, to be looked at -straighter, to return to presently--after I've got away from it a bit, I -mean from this special aspect a little, in order to come back to it -fresher; picking up meanwhile two or three different matters. - -The whole question of what my young man has been positively interested -in, been all the while more or less definitely occupied with, I have -found myself leaving, or at any rate have left, in abeyance, by reason -of a certain sense of its comparative unimportance. That is I have felt -my instinct to make him definitely and frankly as complete a case as -possible of the sort of thing that will make him an anomaly and an -outsider alike in the New York world of business, the N. Y. world of -ferocious acquisition, and the world there of enormities of expenditure -and extravagance, so that the real suppression for him of anything that -shall count in the American air as a money-making, or even as a -wage-earning, or as a pecuniarily picking-up character, strikes me as -wanted for my emphasis of his entire difference of sensibility and of -association. I have always wanted to do an out and out non-producer, in -the ordinary sense of non-accumulator of material gain, from the moment -one should be able to give him a positively interested aspect on another -side or in another sense, or even definitely a _generally_ responsive -intelligence. I see my figure then in this case as an absolutely frank -example of the tradition and superstition, the habit and rule so -inveterate there, frankly and serenely deviated from--these things -meaning there essentially some mode of sharp reaching out for money over -a counter or sucking it up through a thousand contorted channels. Yet I -want something as different as possible, no less different, I mean, from -the people who are "idle" there than from the people who are what is -called active; in short, as I say, an out and out case, and of course an -avowedly, an exceptionally fine and special one, which antecedents and -past history up to then may more or less vividly help to account for. A -very special case indeed is of course our Young Man--without his being -which my donnée wouldn't come off at all; his being so is just of the -very core of the subject. It's a question therefore of the way to make -him _most_ special--but I so distinctly see this that I need scarce here -waste words----! There are three or four definite facts and -considerations, however; conditions to be seen clear. I want to steer -clear of the tiresome "artistic" associations hanging about the usual -type of young Anglo-Saxon "brought up abroad"; though only indeed so far -as they _are_ tiresome. My idea involves absolutely Gray's taking his -stand, a bit ruefully at first, but quite boldly when he more and more -sees what the opposite of it over there is so much an implication of, on -the acknowledgment that, no, absolutely, he hasn't anything at all to -show in the way of work achieved--with _such_ work as he has seen -achieved, whether apologetically or pretentiously, as he has lived -about; and yet has up to now not had at all the sense of a vacuous -consciousness or a so-called wasted life. This however by reason of -course of certain things, certain ideas, possibilities, inclinations and -dispositions, that he has cared about and felt, in his way, the -fermentation of. Of course the trouble with him is a sort of excess of -"culture", so far as the form taken by his existence up to then has -represented the growth of that article. Again, however, I see that I -really am in complete possession of him, and that no plotting of it as -to any but one or two material particulars need here detain me. He -isn't, N.B., big, personally, by which I mean physically; I see that I -want him rather below than above the middling stature, and light and -nervous and restless; extremely restless above all in presence of -swarming new and more or less aggressive, in fact quite assaulting -phenomena. Of course he has had _some_ means--that he and his stepfather -were able to live in a quiet "European" way and on an income of an -extreme New York deplorability, is of course of the basis of what has -been before; with which he must have come in for whatever his late -companion has had to leave. So with what there was from his mother, very -modest, and what there is from this other source, not less so, he _can_, -he could, go back to Europe on a sufficient basis: this fact to be kept -in mind both as mitigating the prodigy of his climax in N.Y., and yet at -the same time as making whatever there is of "appeal" to him over there -conceivable enough. Note that the statement he makes, when we first know -him, to his dying uncle, the completeness of the picture of detachment -then and there drawn for him, and which, precisely, by such an -extraordinary and interesting turn, is what most "refreshes" and works -upon Mr. Betterman--note, I say, that I absolutely require the utterness -of his difference to _be_ a sort of virtual determinant in this -relation. He puts it so to Rosanna, tells her how extraordinarily he -feels that this is what it _has_ been. Heaven forbid he should -"paint"--but there glimmers before me the sense of the connection in -which I can see him as more or less covertly and waitingly, fastidiously -and often too sceptically, conscious of possibilities of "writing". -Quite frankly accept for him the complication or whatever of his -fastidiousness, yet of his recognition withal of what makes for -sterility; but again and again I have all this, I have it. His -"culture", his initiations of intelligence and experience, his -possibilities of imagination, if one will, to say nothing of other -things, make for me a sort of figure of a floating island on which he -drifts and bumps and coasts about, wanting to get alongside as much as -possible, yet always with the gap of water, the little island _fact_, to -be somehow bridged over. All of which makes him, I of course desperately -recognise, another of the "intelligent", another exposed and assaulted, -active and passive "mind" engaged in an adventure and interesting in -_itself_ by so being; but I rejoice in that aspect of my material as -dramatically and determinantly _general._ It isn't _centrally_ a drama -of fools or vulgarians; it's only circumferentially and surroundedly -so--these being enormously implied and with the effect of their hovering -and pressing upon the whole business from without, but seen and felt by -us only with that rich indirectness. So far so good; but I come back for -a moment to an issue left standing yesterday--and beyond which, for that -matter, two or three other points raise their heads. Why did it appear -to come up for me again--I having had it present to me before and then -rather waved it away--that one might see Horton in the _kind_ of crisis -that I glanced at as throwing him upon Gray with what I called violence? -Is it because I feel "something more" is wanted for the process by which -my Young Man works off the distaste, his distaste, for the ugliness of -his inheritance--something more than his just _generally_ playing into -Horton's hands? I am in presence there of a beautiful difficulty, -beautiful to solve, yet which one must be to the last point -crystal-clear about; and this difficulty is certainly added to if Gray -sees Horton as "dishonest" in relation to others over and above his -being "queer" in the condoned way I have so to picture for his relation -to Gray. Here are complexities not quite easily unravelled, yet -manageable by getting sufficiently close to them; complexities, I mean, -of the question of whether----? Horton is abysmal, yes--but with the -mixture in it that Gray sees. Ergo I want the mixture, and if I adopt -what I threw off speculatively yesterday I strike myself as letting the -mixture more or less go and having the non-mixture, that is the "bad" in -him, preponderate. It has been my idea that this "bad" figures in a -degree to Gray as after a fashion his own creation, the creation, that -is, of the enormous and fantastic opportunity and temptation he has held -out--even though these wouldn't have operated in the least, or couldn't, -without predispositions in Horton's very genius. If Gray saw him as a -mere vulgar practiser of what he does practise, the interest would by -that fact exceedingly drop; there would be no interest indeed, and the -beauty of my "psychological" picture wouldn't come off, would have no -foot to stand on. The beauty is in the complexity of the -question--which, stated in the simplest terms possible, reduces itself -to Horton's practically saying to Gray, or seeing himself as saying to -Gray should it come to the absolute touch: "You _mind_, in your -extraordinary way, how this money was accumulated and hanky-pankied, you -suffer, and cultivate a suffering, from the perpetrated wrong of which -you feel it the embodied evidence, and with which the possession of it -is thereby poisoned for you. But I don't mind one little scrap--and -there is a great deal more to be said than you seem so much as able to -understand, or so much as able to want to, about the whole question of -how money comes to those who know _how_ to make it. Here you are then, -if it's so disagreeable to you--and what can one really say, with the -chances you give me to say it, but that if you are so burdened and -afflicted, there are ways of relieving you which, upon my honour, I -should perfectly undertake to work--given the facilities that you so -morbidly, so fantastically, so all but incredibly save for the testimony -of my senses, permit me to enjoy." _That_, yes; but that is very -different from the wider range of application of the aptitudes -concerned. The confession, and the delinquency preceding it, that played -a bit up for me yesterday--what do they do but make Horton just as -vulgar as I _don't_ want him, and, as I immediately recognise, Gray -wouldn't in the least be able to stomach seeing him under any -continuance of relations. I have it, I have it, and it comes as an -answer to _why_ I _worried?_ Because of felt want of a way of providing -for some Big Haul, really big; which my situation absolutely requires. -There must be at a given moment a big haul in order to produce the big -sacrifice; the latter being of the absolute essence. I say I have it -when I ask myself why the Big Haul shouldn't simply consist of the -consequence of a confession made by Horton to Gray, yes; but made not -about what he has lost, whether dishonestly or not, for somebody else, -but what he has lost for Gray. Solutions here bristle, positively, for -the case seems to clear up from the moment I make Horton put his matter -as a mere disastrous loss, of unwisdom, of having been "done" by others -and not as a thing involving his own obliquity. What I want is that he -_pleads the loss_--whether loss to Gray, loss to another party, or loss -to both, is a detail. I incline to think loss to Gray sufficient--loss -that Gray accepts, which is different from his meeting the disaster -inflicted on another by Horton. What I want a bit is all contained in -Gray's question, afterwards determined, not absolutely present at the -moment, of whether this fact has not been a feigned or simulated one, -not a genuine gulf of accident, but an appeal for relinquishment -practised on Gray by the latter's liability to believe that the cause is -genuine. I clutch the idea of this determinant of rightness of suspicion -being one with the circumstance that Cissy in a sort of _thereupon_ -manner "takes up" with Horton, instead of not doing so, as figures to -Gray as discernible if Horton were merely minus. Is it cleared up for -Gray that the cause is not genuine?--does he get, or does he seek, any -definite light on this? Does he tell any one, that is does he tell -Rosanna of the incident (though I want the thing of proportions bigger -than those of a mere incident)--does he put it to her, in short does he -take her into his confidence about it? I think I see that he does to -this extent, that she is the only person to whom he speaks, but that he -then speaks with a kind of transparent and, as it were, (as it is in her -sight) "sublime" dissimulation. Yes, I think that's the way I want -it--that he tells her what has happened, tells it to her as having -happened, as a statement of what he has done or means to do--perhaps his -mind isn't even yet made up to it; whereby I seem to get a very -interesting passage of drama and another very fine "Joint." He doesn't, -no, decidedly, communicate anything to Davey Bradham--his instinct has -been against that--and I feel herewith how much I want this D.B. -relation for him to have all its possibility of irony, "comedy", -humorous colour, so to speak. I want awfully to do D.B. to the full and -give him all his value. However, it's of the situation here with Rosanna -that the question is, and I seem to feel that still further clear up for -me. There has been the passage, the big circumstance, with Horton--as to -which, as to the sense of which and of what it involves for him, don't I -after all see him as taking time? after all see him as a bit staggered -quand même, and, as it were, _asking_ for time, though without any -betrayal of "suspicion", any expression tantamount to "What a queer -story!" Yes, yes, it seems to come to me that I want the _determination -of suspicion_ not to come at once; I want it to hang back and wait for a -big "crystallisation," a falling together of many things, which now -takes place, as it were, in Rosanna's presence and under her -extraordinary tacit action, in that atmosphere of their relation which -has already given me, or _will_ have given, not to speak presumptuously, -so much. It kind of comes over me even that I don't want _any_ -articulation to _himself_ of the "integrity" question in respect to -Horton to have taken place at all--till it very momentously takes place -all at once in the air, as I say, and on the ground, and in the course, -of this present scene. Immensely interesting to have made Everything -precedent to have consisted but in preparation for this momentousness, -so that the whole effect has been gathered there ready to break. At the -same time, if I make it break not in the right way, unless I so rightly -condition its breaking, I do what I was moved just above to bar, the -giving away of Horton to Rosanna in the sense that fixing his behaviour -upon him, or inviting or allowing her to fix it, is a thing I see my -finer alternative to. The great thing, the great find, I really think, -for the moment, is this fact of his having gone to her in a sort of -still preserved uncertainty of light that amounts virtually to darkness, -and then after a time with her coming away with the uncertainty -dispelled and the remarkable light instead taking its place. That gives -me my very form and climax--in respect to the "way" that has most -perplexed me, and gathers my action up to the fulness so proposed and -desired; to the point after which I want to make it workable that there -shall be but two Books left. In other words the ideal will be that this -whole passage, using the word in the largest sense, with all the -accompanying aspects, shall constitute Book 8, "Act" 8, as I call it, of -my drama, with the dénouement occupying the space to the end--for the -foregoing is of course not in the least the dénouement, but only -prepares it, just as what is thus involved is the occupancy of Book 7 by -the history with Horton. Of course I can but reflect that to bring this -splendid economy off it must have been practised up _to_ VII with the -most intense and immense art: the scheme I have already sketched for I -and II leaving me therewith but III, IV, V, and VI to arrive at the -completeness of preparation for VII, which carries in its bosom the -completeness of preparation for VIII--this last, by a like grand law, -carrying in _its_ pocket the completeness of preparation for IX and X. -But why not? Who's afraid? and what has the very essence of my design -been but the most magnificent packed and calculated closeness? Keep this -closeness up to the notch while admirably _animating_ it, and I do what -I should simply be sickened to death not to! Of course it means the -absolute exclusively _economic_ existence and situation of every -sentence and every letter; but again what is that but the most desirable -of beauties in _itself?_ The chapters of history with Rosanna leave me -then to show, speaking simply, its effect with regard to (I assume I put -first) Gray and Horton, to Gray and Cissy, to Cissy and Horton, to Gray -and Mrs. Bradham on the one hand and to Gray and Davey on the other and -finally and supremely to Gray and Rosanna herself. It is of course -definitely on that note the thing closes--but wait a little before I -come to it. Let me state as "plainly" as may be what "happens" as the -next step in my drama, the next Joint in the action after the climax of -the "scene" with Rosanna. Obviously the first thing is a passage with -Horton, the passage _after_, which shall be a pendant to the passage -before. But don't I want some episode to interpose here on the momentous -ground of the Girl? These sequences to be absolutely planned and fitted -together, of course, up to their last point of relation; to work such -complexity into such compass can only be a difficulty of the most -inspiring--the prize being, naturally, to achieve the lucidity _with_ -the complexity. What then is the lucidity for us about my heroine, and -exactly what is it that I want and don't want to show? I want something -to take place here between Gray and her that _crowns_ his vision and his -action in respect to Horton. As I of course want every point and comma -to be "functional", so there's nothing I want that more for than for -this aspect of my crisis--which does, yes, decidedly, present itself -before Gray has again seen Horton. I seem even to want this aspect, as I -call it, to be the decisive thing in respect to his "decision". I want -something to have still depended for him on the question of how she is, -what she does, what she makes him see, however little intending it, of -her sensibility to the crisis, as it were--knowing as I do what I mean -by this. But what does come up for me, and has to be faced, is all the -appearance that all this later development that I have sketched and am -sketching, rather directly involves a deviation from that _help by -alternations_ which I originally counted on, and which I began by -drawing upon in the first three or four Books. What becomes after the -first three or four then of that variation--if I make my march between -IV and VIII inclusive all a matter of what appears to Gray? Perhaps on -closer view I can for the "finer amusement" escape that -frustration--though it would take some doing; and the fact remains that -I don't really want, and can't, any other exhibition than Gray's own -_except_ in the case of Horton and the Young Woman. I should like _more_ -variation than just that will yield me withal--so at least it strikes -me; but if I press a bit a possibility perhaps will rise. Two things -strike me: one of these being that instead of making Book 9 Gray's "act" -I may make it in a manner Cissy's own; save that a terrific little -question here comes up as involved in the very essence of my cherished -symmetry and "unity". The absolute prime compositional idea ruling me is -thus the unity of each Act, and I get unity with the Girl for IX only if -I keep it _to_ her and whoever else. To her and Horton, yes, to her and -Gray (Gray first) yes; only how then comes in the "passage" of Gray and -Horton without her, and which I don't want to push over to X. It would -be an "æsthetic" ravishment to make Book 10 balance with Book 1 as -Rosanna's affair; which I glimmeringly see as interestingly possible if -I can wind up somehow as I want to do between Gray and Horton. In -connection with which, however, something again glimmers--the -possibility of making Book 9 quand même Cissy and Horton and Gray; -twisting out, that is, some admirable way of her being participant in, -"present at", what here happens between them as to their own affair. I -say these things after all with the sense, so founded on past -experience, that, in closer quarters and the intimacy of composition, -pre-noted arrangements, proportions and relations, do most uncommonly -insist on making themselves different by shifts and variations, always -improving, which impose themselves as one goes and keep the door open -always to something _more_ right and _more_ related. It is subject to -that constant possibility, all the while, that one does pre-note and -tentatively sketch; a fact so constantly before one as to make too idle -any waste of words on it. At the same time I do absolutely and utterly -want to stick, even to the very depth, to the _general_ distribution -here imagined as I have groped on; and I am at least now taking a -certain rightness and conclusiveness of parts and items for granted -until the intimate tussle, as I say, happens, if it does happen, to -dislocate or modify them. Such an assumption for instance I find myself -quite loving to make in presence of the vision quite colouring up for me -yesterday of Book 9 as given to Gray and Horton and Cissy Together, as I -may rudely express it, and Book 10, to repeat, given, with a splendid -richness and comprehensiveness, to Rosanna, as I hope to have shown Book -I as so given. Variety, variety--I want to go in for that for all the -possibilities of my case may be worth; and I see, I feel, how a sort of -fond fancy of it is met by the distribution, the little cluster of -determinations, or, so to speak, for the pleasure of putting it, -determinatenesses, so noted. It gives me the central mass of the thing -for my hero's own embrace and makes beginning and end sort of confront -each other over it. - -Is it vain to do anything but say, that is but feel, that this situation -of the Three in Book 9 absolutely demands the intimate grip for clearing -itself up, working itself out? Yes, perfectly vain, I reflect, as at all -precluding the high urgency and decency of my seeing in advance just how -and where I plant my feet and direct my steps. Express absolutely, to -this end, the conclusive sense, the clear firm function, of Book 9--out -of which the rest bristles. I want it, as for that matter I want each -Book, with the last longing and fullest intention, to be what it is -"amusing" and regaling to think of as "complete in itself"; otherwise a -thoroughly expressed Occasion, or as I have kept calling it Aspect, such -as one can go at, thanks to the flow of the current in it, in the -firmest possible little narrative way. The form of the Occasion is the -form that I somehow see as here very _particularly_ presenting itself -and contributing its aid to that impression of the Three Together which -I try to focus. Where, exactly, and exactly how, are they thus vividly -and workably together?--what is the most "amusing" way of making them -so? It is fundamental for me to note that my action represents and -embraces the sequences of a Year, not going beyond this and not falling -short of it. I can't get my Unity, can't keep it, on the basis of more -than a year, and can't get my complexity, don't want to, in anything a -bit less. I see a Year right, in fine, and it brings me round therefore -to the early summer from the time of my original Exposition. With which -it comes to me of course that one of the things accruing to Gray under -his Uncle's Will is the house at Newport, which belonged to the old man, -and which I have no desire to go into any reason whatever for his heir's -having got rid of. There is the house at Newport--as to which it comes -over me that I kind of see him in it once or twice during the progress -of the autumn's, the winter's, the spring's events. Isn't it also a part -of my affair that I see the Bradhams with a Newport place, and am more -or less encouraged herewith to make out the Scene of Book 9, the -embracing Occasion, of the three, as a "staying" of them, in the natural -way, the inevitable, the illustrative, under some roof that places them -vividly in relation to each other. Of _course_ Mrs. Bradham has her -great characteristic house away from N.Y., where anything and everything -may characteristically find their background--the whole case being -compatible with that lively shakiness of fortune that I have glanced at; -only I want to keep the whole thing, so far as my poor little -"documented" state permits, on the lines of absolutely current New York -practice, as I further reflect I probably don't want to move Gray an -inch out of N.Y. "during the winter", this probably a quite -unnecessarily bad economy. Having what I have of New York isn't the -question of using it, and it only, as entirely adequate from Book 4 to 8 -inclusive? To keep everything as like these actualities of N.Y. as -possible, for the sake of my "atmosphere", I must be wary and wise; in -the sense for instance that said actualities don't at all comprise -people's being at Newport _early_ in the summer. How then, however, came -the Bradhams to be there at the time noted in my Book 1? I reflect -happily apropos of this that my there positing the early summer (in Book -1) is a stroke that I needn't at all now take account of; it having been -but an accident of my small vague plan as it glimmered to me from the -very first go-off. No, definitely, the time-scheme must a bit move on, -and give help there--by to the place-scheme; if I want Gray to arrive en -plein Newport, as I do for immediate control of the assault of his -impressions, it must be a matter of August rather than of June; and -nothing is simpler than to shift. Let me indeed so far modify as to -conceive that 15 or 16 months will be as workable as a Year--practically -they will count as the period both short enough and long enough; and -will bring me for Nine and Ten round to the Newport or whatever of -August, and to the whatever else of some moment of beauty and harmony in -the American autumn. Let me wind up on a kind of strong October or -perhaps even better still--yes, better still--latish November, in other -words admirable Indian Summer, note. That brings me round and makes the -circle whole. Well then I don't seem to want a repetition of Newport--as -if it were, poor old dear, the only place known to me in the -country!--for the images that this last suggestion causes more or less -to swarm. By the blessing of heaven I am possessed, sufficiently to say -so, of Lenox, and Lenox for the autumn is much more characteristic too. -What do I seem to see then?--as I don't at all want, or imagine myself -wanting at the scratch, to make a local jump between Nine and Ten. These -things come--I see them coming now. Of course it's perfectly -conceivable, and entirely characteristic, that Mrs. Bradham should have -a place at Lenox as well as at Newport; if it's necessary to posit her -for the previous summer in her own house at the latter place. It's -perfectly in order that she may have taken one there for the summer--and -that having let the Lenox place at that time may figure as a sort of -note of the crack in her financial aspect that is part, to _call_ it -part, of my concern. All of which are considerations entirely meetable -at the short range--save that I do really seem to kind of want Book 10 -at Lenox and to want Nine there by the same stroke. I should like to -stick Rosanna at the beautiful Dublin, if it weren't for the grotesque -anomaly of the name; and after all what need serve my purpose better -than what I already have? It's provided for in Book I that she and her -father had only taken the house at Newport for a couple of months or -whatever; so that is all to the good. Oh yes, all that New England -mountain-land that I thus get by radiation, and thus welcome the idea of -for values surging after a fashion upon Gray, appeals to one to "do" a -bit, even in a measure beyond one's hope of space to do it. Well before -me surely too the fact that my whole action does, can only, take place -in the air of the last actuality; which supports so, and plays into, its -sense and its portée. Therefore it's a question of all the intensest -modernity of every American description; cars and telephones and -facilities and machineries and resources of certain sorts not to be -exaggerated; which I can't not take account of. Assume then, in fine, -the Bradhams this second autumn at Lenox, assume Gussie blazing away as -if at the very sincerest and validest top of her push; assume Rosanna as -naturally there in the "summer home" which has been her and her father's -only possessional alternative to N.Y. I violate verisimilitude in not -brushing them all, all of the N.Y. "social magnates", off to Paris as -soon as Lent sets in, by their prescribed oscillation; but who knows but -what it will be convenient quite exactly to shift Gussie across for the -time, as nothing then would be more in the line of truth than to have -her bustle expensively back for her Lenox proceedings of the autumn. -These things, however, are trifles. All I have wanted to thresh out a -bit has been the "placing" of Nine and Ten; and for this I have more -than enough provided. - -What it seems to come to then is the "positing" of Cissy at Lenox with -the Bradhams at the time the circumstances of Book Eight have occurred; -it's coming to me with which that I seem exactly to want them to occur -in the empty town, the New York of a more or less torrid -mid-August--this I feel so "possessed of"; to which Gray has "come back" -(say from Newport where he has been for a bit alone in his own house -there, to think, as it were, with concentration); come back precisely -for the passage with Horton. So at any rate for the moment I seem to see -_that_; my actual point being, however, that Cissy is posited at Lenox, -that the Book "opens" with her, and that it is in the sense I mean "her" -Book. She is there waiting as it were on what Horton does, so far as I -allow her intelligence of this; and it is there that Gray finds her on -his going on to Lenox whether under constraint (by what has gone before) -of a visit to the Bradhams, a stay of some days with them, or under the -interest of a conceivable stay with Rosanna; a sort of thing that I -represent, or at any rate "posit", as perfectly in the line of Rosanna's -present freedom and attributes. Would I rather have him with Rosanna and -"going over" to the Bradhams? would I rather have him with the Bradhams -and going over to Rosanna?--or would I rather have him at neither place -and staying by himself at an hotel, which seems to leave me the right -margin? There has been no staying up to this point for him with either -party, and I have as free a hand as could be. With which there glimmer -upon me advantages--oh yes--in placing him in his own independence; -especially for Book 10: in short it seems to come. Don't I see Cissy as -having obtained from Gussie Bradham that Horton shall be invited--which -fact in itself I here provisionally throw off as giving me perhaps a -sort of starting value. - - -[Footnote 3: From this point the names of the characters, most of which -were still uncertain, are given in accordance with Henry James' final -choice; though it may be noted that he was to the end dissatisfied with -the name of Cissy Foy and meant to choose another.] - - - - - - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IVORY TOWER *** - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SISTERS *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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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 <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: </div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Henry James</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: August 19, 2020 [EBook #62979]<br /> -[Most recently updated: May 20, 2023]</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images -generously made available by The Internet Archive.)</div> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IVORY TOWER ***</div> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="500" alt="" /> -</div> - - -<h1>THE IVORY TOWER</h1> - -<h4>BY</h4> - -<h3>HENRY JAMES</h3> - -<h4>NEW YORK</h4> - -<h4>CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS</h4> - -<h5>1917</h5> - - - - -<hr class="chap" /> - - -<h4>PREFACE</h4> - - -<p>The Ivory Tower, <i>one of the two novels which Henry James left -unfinished at his death, was designed to consist of ten books. Three -only of these were written, with one chapter of the fourth, and except -for the correction of a few obvious slips the fragment is here printed -in full and without alteration. It was composed during the summer of</i> -1914. <i>The novel seems to have grown out of another which had been -planned by Henry James in the winter of</i> 1909-10. <i>Of this the opening -scenes had been sketched and a few pages written when it was interrupted -by illness. On taking it up again, four years later, Henry James almost -entirely recast his original scheme, retaining certain of the characters -(notably the Bradham couple,) but otherwise giving an altogether fresh -setting to the central motive. The new novel had reached the point where -it breaks off by the beginning of August</i> 1914. <i>With the outbreak of -war Henry James found he could no longer work upon a fiction supposed to -represent contemporary or recent life. The completed chapters—which -he had dictated to his secretary, in accordance with his regular habit for -many years past—were revised and laid aside, not again to be -resumed.</i></p> - -<p><i>The pages of preliminary notes, also here printed in full, were not -of course intended for publication. It was Henry James's constant practice, -before beginning a novel, to test and explore, in a written or dictated -sketch of this kind, the possibilities of the idea which he had in mind. -Such a sketch was in no way a first draft of the novel. He used it -simply as a means of close approach to his subject, in order that he -might completely possess himself of it in all its bearings. The -arrangement of chapters and scenes would so be gradually evolved, but -the details were generally left to be determined in the actual writing -of the book. It will be noticed, for example, that in the provisional -scheme of</i> The Ivory Tower <i>no mention is made of the symbolic object -itself or of the letter which is deposited in it. The notes, having -served their purpose, would not be referred to again, and were -invariably destroyed when the book was finished.</i></p> - -<p><i>In the story of</i> The Death of the Lion <i>Henry James has exactly -described the manner of these notes, in speaking of the "written scheme -of another book" which is shewn to the narrator by Neil Paraday: "Loose -liberal confident, it might have passed for a great gossiping eloquent -letter—the overflow into talk of an artist's amorous plan." If -justification were needed for the decision to publish this "overflow" it -might be found in Paraday's last injunction to his friend: "Print it as -it stands—beautifully.</i>"</p> - - -<p style="margin-left: 60%;"><i>PERCY LUBBOCK.</i></p> - - - - -<hr class="chap" /> - - -<h4>CONTENTS</h4> - -<p><a href="#THE_IVORY_TOWER">The Ivory Tower</a><br /> -<a href="#NOTES_FOR_THE_IVORY_TOWER">Notes for The Ivory Tower</a></p> - - - - -<hr class="r5" /> - - -<h4><a id="THE_IVORY_TOWER">THE IVORY TOWER</a></h4> - - - - -<hr class="r5" /> - - -<h4>BOOK FIRST</h4> - - -<h4>I</h4> - - -<p>It was but a question of leaving their own contracted "grounds," of -crossing the Avenue and proceeding then to Mr. Betterman's gate, which -even with the deliberate step of a truly massive young person she could -reach in three or four minutes. So, making no other preparation than to -open a vast pale-green parasol, a portable pavilion from which there -fluttered fringes, frills and ribbons that made it resemble the roof of -some Burmese palanquin or perhaps even pagoda, she took her way while -these accessories fluttered in the August air, the morning freshness, -and the soft sea-light. Her other draperies, white and voluminous, -yielded to the mild breeze in the manner of those of a ship held back -from speed yet with its canvas expanded; they conformed to their usual -law of suggestion that the large loose ponderous girl, mistress as she -might have been of the most expensive modern aids to the constitution of -a "figure," lived, as they said about her, in wrappers and tea-gowns; so -that, save for her enjoying obviously the rudest health, she might have -been a convalescent creeping forth from the consciousness of stale -bedclothes. She turned in at the short drive, making the firm neat -gravel creak under her tread, and at the end of fifty yards paused -before the florid villa, a structure smothered in senseless -architectural ornament, as if to put her question to its big fair -foolish face. How Mr. Betterman might be this morning, and what sort of -a night he might have had, was what she wanted to learn—an anxiety -very real with her and which, should she be challenged, would nominally -and decently have brought her; but her finer interest was in the -possibility that Graham Fielder might have come.</p> - -<p>The clean blank windows, however, merely gave her the impression of so -many showy picture-frames awaiting their subjects; even those of them -open to the charming Newport day seemed to tell her at the most that -nothing had happened since the evening before and that the situation was -still untouched by the change she dreamt of. A person essentially -unobservant of forms, which her amplitude somehow never found of the -right measure, so that she felt the misfit in many cases ridiculous, she -now passed round the house instead of applying at the rather grandly -gaping portal—which might in all conscience have accommodated -her—and, crossing a stretch of lawn to the quarter of the place -turned to the sea, rested here again some minutes. She sought indeed after -a moment the support of an elaborately rustic bench that ministered to -ease and contemplation, whence she would rake much of the rest of the small -sloping domain; the fair prospect, the great sea spaces, the line of low -receding coast that bristled, either way she looked, with still more -costly "places," and in particular the proprietor's wide and bedimmed -verandah, this at present commonly occupied by her "prowling" father, as -she now always thought of him, though if charged she would doubtless -have admitted with the candour she was never able to fail of that she -herself prowled during these days of tension quite as much as he.</p> - -<p>He would already have come over, she was well aware—come over on -grounds of his own, which were quite different from hers; yet she was -scarce the less struck, off at her point of vantage, with the way he now -sat unconscious of her, at the outer edge and where the light pointed -his presence, in a low basket-chair which covered him in save for little -more than his small sharp shrunken profile, detached against the bright -further distance, and his small protrusive foot, crossed over a knee and -agitated by incessant nervous motion whenever he was thus locked in -thought. Seldom had he more produced for her the appearance from which -she had during the last three years never known him to vary and which -would have told his story, all his story, every inch of it and with the -last intensity, she felt, to a spectator capable of being struck with -him as one might after all happen to be struck. What she herself -recognised at any rate, and really at this particular moment as she had -never done, was how his having retired from active business, as they -said, given up everything and entered upon the first leisure of his -life, had in the oddest way the effect but of emphasising his -absorption, denying his detachment and presenting him as steeped up to -the chin. Most of all on such occasions did what his life had meant come -home to her, and then most, frankly, did that meaning seem small; it was -exactly as the contracted size of his little huddled figure in the -basket-chair.</p> - -<p>He was a person without an alternative, and if any had ever been open to -him, at an odd hour or two, somewhere in his inner dimness, he had long -since closed the gate against it and now revolved in the hard-rimmed -circle from which he had not a single issue. You couldn't retire without -something or somewhere to retire to, you must have planted a single tree -at least for shade or be able to turn a key in some yielding door; but -to say that her extraordinary parent was surrounded by the desert was -almost to flatter the void into which he invited one to step. He -conformed in short to his necessity of absolute interest—interest, -that is, in his own private facts, which were facts of numerical -calculation altogether: how could it not be so when he had dispossessed -himself, if there had even been the slightest selection in the matter, of -every faculty except the calculating? If he hadn't thought in figures how -could he possibly have thought at all—and oh the intensity with which -he was thinking at that hour! It was as if she literally watched him -just then and there dry up in yet another degree to everything but his -genius. His genius might at the same time have gathered in to a point of -about the size of the end of a pin. Such at least was the image of these -things, or a part of it, determined for her under the impression of the -moment.</p> - -<p>He had come over with the same promptitude every morning of the last -fortnight and had stayed on nearly till luncheon, sitting about in -different places as if they were equally his own, smoking, always -smoking, the big portentously "special" cigars that were now the worst -thing for him and lost in the thoughts she had in general long since -ceased to wonder about, taking them now for granted with an indifference -from which the apprehension we have noted was but the briefest of -lapses. He had over and above that particular matter of her passing -perception, he had as they all had, goodness knew, and as she herself -must have done not least, the air of waiting for something he didn't -speak of and in fact couldn't gracefully mention; with which moreover -the adopted practice, and the irrepressible need of it, that she had -been having under her eye, brought out for her afresh, little as she -invited or desired any renewal of their salience, the several most -pointed parental signs—harmless oddities as she tried to content -herself with calling them, but sharp little symbols of stubborn little -facts as she would have felt them hadn't she forbidden herself to feel. -She had forbidden herself to feel, but was none the less as undefended -against one of the ugly truths that hovered there before her in the -charming silver light as against another. That the terrible little man -she watched at his meditations wanted nothing in the world so much in -these hours as to know what was "going to be left" by the old associate -of his operations and sharer of his spoils—this, as Mr. Gaw's sole -interest in the protracted crisis, matched quite her certainty of his -sense that, however their doomed friend should pan out, two-thirds of -the show would represent the unholy profits of the great wrong he -himself had originally suffered.</p> - -<p>This she knew was what it meant—that her father should perch there -like a ruffled hawk, motionless but for his single tremor, with his beak, -which had pecked so many hearts out, visibly sharper than ever, yet only -his talons nervous; not that he at last cared a straw, really, but that -he was incapable of thought save in sublimities of arithmetic, and that -the question of what old Frank would have done with the fruits of his -swindle, on the occasion of the rupture that had kept them apart in hate -and vituperation for so many years, was one of the things that could -hold him brooding, day by day and week by week, after the fashion of a -philosopher tangled in some maze of metaphysics. As the end, for the -other participant in that history, appeared to draw near, she had with -the firmest, wisest hand she could lay on it patched up the horrid -difference; had artfully induced her father to take a house at Newport -for the summer, and then, pleading, insisting, that they should in -common decency, or, otherwise expressed, in view of the sick man's sore -stricken state, meet again, had won the latter round, unable as he was -even then to do more than shuffle downstairs and take an occasional -drive, to some belief in the sincerity of her intervention. She had got -at him—under stress of an idea with which her ostensible motive had -nothing to do; she had obtained entrance, demanding as all from herself -that he should see her, and had little by little, to the further -illumination of her plan, felt that she made him wonder at her perhaps -more than he had ever wondered at anything; so that after this -everything else was a part of that impression.</p> - -<p>Strange to say, she had presently found herself quite independently -interested; more interested than by any transaction, any chapter of -intercourse, in her whole specifically filial history. Not that it -mattered indeed if, in all probability—and positively so far back as -during the time of active hostilities—this friend and enemy of other -days had been predominantly in the right: the case, at the best and for -either party, showed so scantly for edifying that where was the light in -which her success could have figured as a moral or a sentimental -triumph? There had been no real beauty for her, at its apparent highest -pitch, in that walk of the now more complacently valid of the two men -across the Avenue, a walk taken as she and her companion had continued -regularly to take it since, that he might hold out his so long clenched -hand, under her earnest admonition, to the antagonist cut into afresh -this year by sharper knives than any even in Gaw's armoury. They had -consented alike to what she wished, and without knowing why she most -wished it: old Frank, oddly enough, because he liked her, as she felt, -for herself, once she gave him the chance and took all the trouble; and -her father because—well, that was an old story. For a long time now, -three or four years at least, she had had, as she would have said, no -difficulty with him; and she knew just when, she knew almost just how, -the change had begun to show.</p> - -<p>Signal and supreme proof had come to him one day that save for his big -plain quiet daughter (quiet, that is, unless when she knocked over a -light gilt chair or swept off a rash table-ornament in brushing -expansively by,) he was absolutely alone on the human field, utterly -unattended by any betrayal whatever that a fellow-creature could like -him or, when the inevitable day should come, could disinterestedly miss -him. She knew how of old her inexplicable, her almost ridiculous type -had disconcerted and disappointed him; but with this, at a given moment, -it had come to him that she represented quantity and mass, that there -was a great deal of her, so that she would have pressed down even a -balance appointed to weigh bullion; and as there was nothing he was -fonder of than such attestations of value he had really ended by drawing -closer to her, as who should say, and by finding countenance in the -breadth of personal and social shadow that she projected. This was the -sole similitude about him of a living alternative, and it served only as -she herself provided it. He had actually turned into a personal relation -with her as he might have turned, out of the glare and the noise and the -harsh recognitions of the market, into some large cool dusky temple; a -place where idols other than those of his worship vaguely loomed and -gleamed, so that the effect at moments might be rather awful, but where -at least he could sit very still, could breathe very softly, could look -about obliquely and discreetly, could in fact wander a little on tiptoe -and treat the place, with a mixture of pride and fear, almost as his -own.</p> - -<p>He had brooded and brooded, even as he was brooding now; and that habit -she at least had in common with him, though their subjects of thought -were so different. Thus it was exactly that she began to make out at the -time his actual need to wonder at her, the only fact outside his proper -range that had ever cost him a speculative impulse, still more a -speculative failure; even as she was to make it out later on in the case -of their Newport neighbour, and to recognise above all that though a -certain savour of accepted discomfort had, in the connection, to pervade -her father's consciousness, no taste of resentment was needed, as in the -present case, to sweeten it. Nothing had more interested our intelligent -young woman than to note in each of these overstrained, yet at the same -time safely resting accumulators—and to note it as a thing -unprecedented up to this latest season—an unexpressed, even though to -some extent invoked, relief under the sense, the confirmed suspicion, of -certain anomalies of ignorance and indifference as to what they -themselves stood for, anomalies they could scarcely have begun, on the -first glimmer, by so much as taking for realities. It had become verily, -on the part of the poor bandaged and bolstered and heavily-breathing -object of her present solicitude, as she had found it on that of his -still comparatively agile and intensely acute critic, the queer mark of -an inward relief to meet, so far as they had arts or terms for it, any -intimation of what she might have to tell them. From <i>her</i> they would -take things they never could have taken, and never had, from anyone -else. There were some such intimations that her father, of old, had only -either dodged with discernible art or directly set his little white face -against; he hadn't wanted them, and had in fact been afraid of -them—so that after all perhaps his caring so little what went on in -any world not subject to his direct intelligence might have had the -qualification that he guessed she could imagine, and that to see her, or -at least to feel her, imagine was like the sense of an odd draught about -him when doors and windows were closed.</p> - -<p>Up in the sick man's room the case was quite other; she had been -admitted there but three times, very briefly, and a week had elapsed -since the last, yet she had created in him a positive want to -communicate, or at any rate to receive communication. She shouldn't see -him again—the pair of doctors and the trio of nurses had been at one -about that; but he had caused her to be told that he liked to know of -her coming and hoped she would make herself quite at home. This she took -for an intended sign, a hint that what she had in spite of difficulties -managed to say now kept him company in the great bedimmed and -disinfected room from which other society was banished. Her father in -fine he ignored after that not particularly beautiful moment of bare -recognition brought about by her at the bedside; her father was the last -thing in the world that actually concerned him. But his not ignoring -herself could but have a positive meaning; which was that she had made the -impression she sought. Only <i>would</i> Graham Fielder arrive in time? -She was not in a position to ask for news of him, but was sure each -morning that if there had been any gage of this Miss Mumby, the most -sympathetic of the nurses and with whom she had established a working -intelligence, would be sufficiently interested to come out and speak to -her. After waiting a while, however, she recognised that there could be -no Miss Mumby yet and went over to her father in the great porch.</p> - -<p>"Don't you get tired," she put to him, "of just sitting round here?"</p> - -<p>He turned to her his small neat finely-wrinkled face, of an extreme -yellowish pallor and which somehow suggested at this end of time an -empty glass that had yet held for years so much strong wine that a faint -golden tinge still lingered on from it. "I can't get any more tired than -I am already." His tone was flat, weak and so little charged with -petulance that it betrayed the long habit of an almost exasperating -mildness. This effect, at the same time, so far from suggesting any -positive tradition of civility was somehow that of a commonness -instantly and peculiarly exposed. "It's a better place than ours," he -added in a moment. "But I don't care." And then he went on: "I guess I'd -be more tired in your position."</p> - -<p>"Oh you know I'm never tired. And now," said Rosanna, "I'm too -interested."</p> - -<p>"Well then, so am I. Only for me it ain't a position."</p> - -<p>His daughter still hovered with her vague look about. "Well, if it's one -for me I feel it's a good one. I mean it's the right one."</p> - -<p>Mr. Gaw shook his little foot with renewed intensity, but his irony was -not gay. "The right one isn't always a good one. But ain't the question -what <i>his</i> is going to be?"</p> - -<p>"Mr. Fielder's? Why, of course," said Rosanna quietly. "That's the whole -interest."</p> - -<p>"Well then, you've got to fix it."</p> - -<p>"I consider that I <i>have</i> fixed it—I mean if we can hold -out."</p> - -<p>"Well"—and Mr. Gaw shook on—"I guess <i>I</i> can. It's -pleasant here," he went on, "even if it is funny."</p> - -<p>"Funny?" his daughter echoed—yet inattentively, for she had become -aware of another person, a middle-aged woman, but with neatly-kept hair -already grizzled and in a white dress covered with a large white apron, -who stood at the nearest opening of the house. "Here we are, you see, -Miss Mumby—but any news?" Miss Gaw was instantly eager.</p> - -<p>"Why he's right there upstairs," smiled the lady of the apron, who was -clearly well affected to the speaker.</p> - -<p>This young woman flushed for pleasure. "Oh how splendid! But when did he -come?"</p> - -<p>"Early this morning—by the New York boat. I was up at five, to -change with Miss Ruddle, and there of a sudden were his wheels. He seems so -nice!" Miss Mumby beamed.</p> - -<p>Rosanna's interest visibly rose, though she was prompt to explain it. -"Why it's <i>because</i> he's nice! And he has seen him?"</p> - -<p>"He's seeing him now—alone. For five minutes. Not all at once." -But Miss Mumby was visibly serene.</p> - -<p>This made Miss Gaw rejoice. "I'm not afraid. It will do him good. It has -got to!" she finely declared.</p> - -<p>Miss Mumby was so much at ease that she could even sanction the joke. -"More good than the strain of waiting. They're quite satisfied." Rosanna -knew these judges for Doctor Root and Doctor Hatch, and felt the support -of her friend's firm freshness. "So we can hope," this authority -concluded.</p> - -<p>"Well, let my daughter run it—!" Abel Gaw had got up as if this -change in the situation qualified certain proprieties, but turned his small -sharpness to Miss Mumby, who had at first produced in him no change of -posture. "Well, if he couldn't stand <i>me</i> I suppose it was because he -knows me—and doesn't know this other man. May Mr. Fielder prove -acceptable!" he added, stepping off the verandah to the path. But as -that left Rosanna's share in the interest still apparently unlimited he -spoke again. "Is it going to make you settle over here?"</p> - -<p>This mild irony determined her at once joining him, and they took leave -together of their friend. "Oh I feel it's right now!" She smiled back at -Miss Mumby, whose agitation of a confirmatory hand before disappearing -as she had come testified to the excellence of the understanding between -the ladies, and presently was trailing her light vague draperies over -the grass beside her father. They might have been taken to resemble as -they moved together a big ship staying its course to allow its belittled -tender to keep near, and the likeness grew when after a minute Mr. Gaw -himself stopped to address his daughter a question. He had, it was again -marked, so scant a range of intrinsic tone that he had to resort for -emphasis or point to some other scheme of signs—this surely also of -no great richness, but expressive of his possibilities when once you knew -him. "Is there any reason for your not telling me why you're so worked -up?"</p> - -<p>His companion, as she paused for accommodation, showed him a large flat -grave face in which the general intention of deference seemed somehow to -confess that it was often at the mercy—and perhaps most in this -particular relation—of such an inward habit of the far excursion as -could but incorrigibly qualify for Rosanna Gaw certain of the forms of -attention, certain of the necessities of manner. She was, sketchily -speaking, so much higher-piled a person than her father that the filial -attitude in her suffered at the best from the occasional air of her -having to come down to him. You would have guessed that she was not a -person to cultivate that air; and perhaps even if very acute would have -guessed some other things bearing on the matter from the little man's -careful way with her. This pair exhibited there in the great light of -the summer Sunday morning more than one of the essential, or perhaps the -rather finally constituted, conditions of their intercourse. Here was a -parent who clearly appealed to nobody in the world but his child, and a -child who condescended to nobody in the world but her parent; and this -with the anomaly of a constant care not to be too humble on one side and -an equal one not to be too proud on the other. Rosanna, her powerful -exposed arm raised to her broad shoulder, slowly made her heavy parasol -revolve, flinging with it a wide shadow that enclosed them together, for -their question and answer, as in a great bestreamered tent. "Do I strike -you as worked up? Why I've tried to keep as quiet about it as I possibly -could—as one does when one wants a thing so tremendously much."</p> - -<p>His eyes had been raised to her own, but after she had said this in her -perfunctory way they sank as from a sense of shyness and might have -rested for a little on one of their tent-pegs. "Well, daughter, that's -just what I want to understand—your personal motive."</p> - -<p>She gave a sigh for this, a strange uninforming sigh. "Ah father, 'my -personal motives'—!"</p> - -<p>With this she might have walked on, but when he barred the way it was as -if she could have done so but by stepping on him. "I don't complain of -your personal motives—I want you to have all you're entitled to and -should like to know who's entitled to more. But couldn't you have a -reason once in a while for letting me know what some of your reasons -are?"</p> - -<p>Her decent blandness dropped on him again, and she had clearly this time -come further to meet him. "You've always wanted me to have things I don't -care for—though really when you've made a great point of it I've -often tried. But want me now to have this." And then as he watched her -again to learn what "this," with the visibly rare importance she -attached to it, might be: "To make up to a person for a wrong I once did -him."</p> - -<p>"You wronged the man who has come?"</p> - -<p>"Oh dreadfully!" Rosanna said with great sweetness.</p> - -<p>He evidently held that any notice taken of anyone, to whatever effect, -by this great daughter of his was nothing less than an honour done, and -probably overdone; so what preposterous "wrong" could count? The worst -he could think of was still but a sign of her greatness. "You wouldn't -have him round——?"</p> - -<p>"Oh that would have been nothing!" she laughed; and this time she -sailed on again.</p> - - - - -<h4>II</h4> - - -<p>Rosanna found him again after luncheon shaking his little foot from the -depths of a piazza chair, but now on their own scene and at a point -where this particular feature of it, the cool spreading verandah, -commanded the low green cliff and a part of the immediate approach to -the house from the seaward side. She left him to the only range of -thought of which he was at present capable—she was so perfectly able -to follow it; and it had become for that matter an old story that as he -never opened a book, nor sought a chance for talk, nor took a step of -exercise, nor gave in any manner a sign of an unsatisfied want, the -extent of his vacancy, a detachment in which there just breathed a hint -of the dryly invidious, might thus remain unbroken for hours. She knew -what he was waiting for, and that if she hadn't been there to see him he -would take his way across to the other house again, where the plea of -solicitude for his old friend's state put him at his ease and where, -moreover, as she now felt, the possibility of a sight of Graham Fielder -might reward him. It was disagreeable to her that he should have such a -sight while she denied it to her own eyes; but the sense of their common -want of application for their faculties was a thing that repeatedly -checked in her the expression of judgments. Their idleness was as mean -and bare on her own side, she too much felt, as on his; and heaven knew -that if he could sit with screwed-up eyes for hours the case was as -flagrant in her aimless driftings, her incurable restless revolutions, -as a pretence of "interests" could consort with.</p> - -<p>She revolved and drifted then, out of his sight and in another quarter -of the place, till four o'clock had passed; when on returning to him she -found his chair empty and was sure of what had become of him. There was -nothing else in fact for his Sunday, as he on that day denied himself -the resource of driving, or rather of being driven, from which the claim -of the mechanical car had not, in the Newport connection, won him, and -which, deep in his barouche, behind his own admirable horses, could -maintain him in meditation for meditation's sake quite as well as a -poised rocking-chair. Left thus to herself, though conscious she well -might have visitors, she circled slowly and repeatedly round the -gallery, only pausing at last on sight of a gentleman who had come into -view by a path from the cliff. He presented himself in a minute as Davey -Bradham, and on drawing nearer called across to her without other -greeting: "Won't you walk back with me to tea? Gussy has sent me to -bring you."</p> - -<p>"Why yes, of course I will—that's nice of Gussy," she replied; -adding moreover that she wanted a walk, and feeling in the prospect, though -she didn't express this, a relief to her tension and a sanction for what -she called to herself her tact. She might without the diversion not quite -have trusted herself not to emulate, and even with the last crudity, her -father's proceeding; which she knew she should afterwards be ashamed of. -"Anyone that comes here," she said, "must come on to you—they'll -know;" and when Davey had replied that there wasn't the least chance of -anyone's not coming on she moved with him down the path, at the end of -which they entered upon the charming cliff walk, a vast carpet of -undivided lawns, kept in wondrous condition, with a meandering -right-of-way for a seaward fringe and bristling wide-winged villas that -spoke of a seated colony; many of these huge presences reducing to -marginal meanness their strip of the carpet.</p> - -<p>Davey was, like herself, richly and healthily replete, though with less -of his substance in stature; a frankly fat gentleman, blooming still at -eight-and-forty, with a large smooth shining face, void of a sign of -moustache or whisker and crowned with dense dark hair cropped close to -his head after the fashion of a French schoolboy or the inmate of a -jail. But for his half-a-dozen fixed wrinkles, as marked as the great -rivers of a continent on a map, and his thick and arched and active -eyebrows, which left almost nothing over for his forehead, he would have -scarce exhibited features—in spite of the absence of which, however, -he could look in alternation the most portentous things and the most -ridiculous. He would hang up a meaning in his large empty face as if he -had swung an awful example on a gibbet, or would let loose there a great -grin that you somehow couldn't catch in the fact but that pervaded his -expanses of cheek as poured wine pervades water. He differed -certainly from Rosanna in that he enjoyed, visibly, all he carnally -possessed—whereas you could see in a moment that she, poor young -woman, would have been content with, would have been glad of, a scantier -allowance. "You'll find Cissy Foy, to begin with," he said as they went; -"she arrived last night and told me to tell you she'd have walked over -with me but that Gussy wants her for something. However, as you know, -Gussy always wants her for something—she wants everyone for something -so much more than something for everyone—and there are none of us -that are not worked hard, even though we mayn't bloom on it like Cissy, -who, by the way, is looking a perfect vision."</p> - -<p>"Awfully lovely?"—Rosanna clearly saw as she asked.</p> - -<p>"Prettier than at any time yet, and wanting tremendously to hear from -you, you know, about your protégé—what's the fellow's name? Graham -Fielder?—whose arrival we're all agog about."</p> - -<p>Rosanna pulled up in the path; she somehow at once felt her possession -of this interest clouded—shared as yet as it had been only with her -father, whose share she could control. It then and there came to her in -one of the waves of disproportionate despair in which she felt half the -impressions of life break, that she wasn't going to be able to control -at all the great participations. She had a moment of reaction against -what she had done; she liked Gray to be called her protégé—forced -upon her as endless numbers of such were, he would be the only one in -the whole collection who hadn't himself pushed at her; but with the big -bright picture of the villas, the palaces, the lawns and the luxuries in -her eyes, and with something like the chink of money itself in the -murmur of the breezy little waves at the foot of the cliff, she felt -that, without her having thought of it enough in advance, she had handed -him over to complications and relations. These things shimmered in the -silver air of the wondrous perspective ahead, the region off there that -awaited her present approach and where Gussy hovered like a bustling -goddess in the enveloping cloud of her court. The man beside her was the -massive Mercury of this urgent Juno; but—without mythological -comparisons, which we make for her under no hint that she could herself -have dreamed of one—she found herself glad just then that she liked -Davey Bradham, and much less sorry than usual that she didn't respect -him. An extraordinary thing happened, and all in the instant before she -spoke again. It was very strange, and it made him look at her as if he -wondered that his words should have had so great an effect as even her -still face showed. There was absolutely no one, roundabout and far and -wide, whom she positively wanted Graham to know; no not one creature of -them all—"all" figuring for her, while she stood, the great -collection at the Bradhams'. She hadn't thought of this before in the least -as it came to her now; yet no more had she time to be sure that even with -the sharper consciousness she would, as her father was apt to say, have -acted different. So much was true, yet while she still a moment longer -hung fire Davey rounded himself there like something she could -comparatively rest on. "How in the world," she put to him then, "do you -know anything away off there—? He <i>has</i> come to his uncle, but -so quietly that I haven't yet seen him."</p> - -<p>"Why, my dear thing, is it new to you that we're up and doing—bright -and lively? We're the most intelligent community on all this great -coast, and when precious knowledge is in the air we're not to be kept -from it. We knew at breakfast that the New York boat had brought him, -and Gussy of course wants him up to dinner tonight. Only Cissy claims, -you see, that she has rights in him first—rights beyond Gussy's, I -mean," Davey went on; "I don't know that she claims them beyond yours."</p> - -<p>She looked abroad again, his companion, to earth and sea and sky; she -wondered and felt threatened, yet knowing herself at the same time a -long way off from the point at which menace roused her to passion. She -had always to suffer so much before that, and was for the present in the -phase of feeling but weak and a little sick. But there was always Davey. -She started their walk again before saying more, while he himself said -things that she didn't heed. "I can't for the life of me imagine," she -nevertheless at last declared, "what Cissy has to do with him. When and -where has she ever seen him?"</p> - -<p>Davey did as always his best to oblige. "Somewhere abroad, some time -back, when she was with her mother at some baths or some cure-place. -Though when I think of it," he added, "it wasn't with the man -himself—it was with some relation: hasn't he an uncle, or perhaps a -stepfather? Cissy seems to know all about him, and he takes a great -interest in her."</p> - -<p>It again all but stopped Rosanna. "Gray Fielder an interest in -Cissy——?"</p> - -<p>"Let me not," laughed Davey, "sow any seed of trouble or engage for more -than I can stand to. She'll tell you all about it, she'll clothe it in -every grace. Only I assure you I myself am as much interested as -anyone," he added—"interested, I mean, in the question of whether the -old man there has really brought him out at the last gasp this way to do -some decent thing about him. An impression prevails," he further -explained, "that you're in some wonderful way in the old wretch's -confidence, and I therefore make no bones of telling you that your -arrival on our scene there, since you're so good as to consent to come, -has created an impatience beyond even what your appearances naturally -everywhere create. I give you warning that there's no limit to what we -want to know."</p> - -<p>Rosanna took this in now as she so often took things—working it -down in silence at first: it shared in the general weight of all direct -contributions to her consciousness. It might then, when she spoke, have -sunk deep. She looked about again, in her way, as if under her constant -oppression, and seeing, a little off from their gravelled walk, a public -bench to which a possible path branched down, she said, on a visibly -grave decision: "Look here, I want to talk to <i>you</i>—you're one -of the few people in all your crowd to whom I really can. So come and sit -down."</p> - -<p>Davey Bradham, arrested before her, had an air for his responsibilities -that quite matched her own. "Then what becomes of them all there?"</p> - -<p>"I don't care a hang what becomes of them. But if you want to know," -Rosanna said, "I do care what becomes of Mr. Fielder, and I trust you -enough, being as you are the only one of your lot I do trust, to help me -perhaps a little to do something about it."</p> - -<p>"Oh, my dear lady, I'm not a bit discreet, you know," Mr. Bradham -amusedly protested; "I'm perfectly unprincipled and utterly indelicate. -How can a fellow not be who likes as much as I do at all times to make -the kettle boil and the plot thicken? I've only got my beautiful -intelligence, though, as I say, I don't in the least <i>want</i> to embroil -you. Therefore if I can really help you as the biggest babbler -alive——!"</p> - -<p>She waited again a little, but this time with her eyes on his good worn -worldly face, superficially so smooth, but with the sense of it lined -and scratched and hacked across much in the manner of the hard ice of a -large pond at the end of a long day's skating. The amount of -obstreperous exercise that had been taken on that recording field! The -difference between our pair, thus confronted, might have been felt as -the greater by the very fact of their outward likeness as creatures so -materially weighted; it would have been written all over Rosanna for the -considering eye that every grain of her load, from innermost soul to -outermost sense, was that of reality and sincerity; whereas it might by -the same token have been felt of Davey that in the temperature of life -as he knew it his personal identity had been, save for perhaps some -small tough lurking residuum, long since puffed away in pleasant spirals -of vapour. Our young woman was at this moment, however, less interested -in quantities than in qualities of candour; she could get what passed -for it by the bushel, by the ton, whenever, right or left, she chose to -chink her pocket. Her requirement for actual use was such a glimmer from -the candle of truth as a mere poor woman might have managed to kindle. -What was left of precious in Davey might thus have figured but as a -candle-end; yet for the lack of it she should perhaps move in darkness. -And her brief intensity of watch was in a moment rewarded; her -companion's candle-end was his not quite burnt-out value as a gentleman. -This was enough for her, and she seemed to see her way. "If I don't -trust you there's nobody else in all the wide world I can. So you've got -to know, and you've got to be good to me."</p> - -<p>"Then what awful thing <i>have</i> you done?" he was saying to her three -minutes after they had taken their place temporarily on the bench.</p> - -<p>"Well, I got at Mr. Betterman," she said, "in spite of all the -difficulty. Father and he hadn't spoken for years—had had long ago -the blackest, ugliest difference; believing apparently the horridest things -of each other. Nevertheless it was as father's daughter that I went to -him—though after a little, I think, it was simply for the worth -itself of what I had to tell him that he listened to me."</p> - -<p>"And what you had to tell him," Davey asked while she kept her eyes on -the far horizon, "<i>was</i> then that you take this tender interest in Mr. -Fielder?"</p> - -<p>"You may make my interest as ridiculous as you like——!"</p> - -<p>"Ah, my dear thing," Davey pleadingly protested, "don't deprive me, -please, of <i>anything</i> nice there is to know!"</p> - -<p>"There was something that had happened years ago—a wrong I perhaps -had done him, though in perfect good faith. I thought I saw my way to make -up for it, and I seem to have succeeded beyond even what I hoped."</p> - -<p>"Then what have you to worry about?" said Davey.</p> - -<p>"Just my success," she answered simply. "Here he is and I've done -it."</p> - -<p>"Made his rich uncle want him—who hadn't wanted him -before? Is that it?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, interfered afresh in his behalf—as I had interfered long -ago. When one has interfered one can't help wondering," she gravely -explained.</p> - -<p>"But dear lady, ever for his benefit of course," Davey extemporised.</p> - -<p>"Yes—except for the uncertainty of what is for a person's -benefit. It's hard enough to know," said Rosanna, "what's for one's -own."</p> - -<p>"Oh, as to that," Davey joked, "I don't think that where mine's -concerned I've ever a doubt! But is the point that the old man had -quarrelled with him and that you've brought about a reconciliation?"</p> - -<p>She considered again with her far-wandering eyes; as if both moved by -her impulse to confidence and weighted with the sense of how much of it -there all was. "Well, in as few words as possible, it was like this. -He's the son but of a half-sister, the daughter of Mr. Betterman's -father by a second marriage which he in his youth hadn't at all liked, -and who made her case worse with him, as time went on, by marrying a -man, Graham's father, whom he had also some strong objection to. Yes," -she summarized, "he seems to have been difficult to please, but he's -making up for it now. His brother-in-law didn't live long to suffer from -the objection, and the sister, Mrs. Fielder, left a widow badly provided -for, went off with her boy, then very young, to Europe. There, later on, -during a couple of years that I spent abroad with my mother, we met them -and for the time saw much of them; she and my dear mother greatly took -to each other, they formed the friendliest relation, and we had in -common that my father's business association with Mr. Betterman still -at that time subsisted, though the terrible man—as he then -was—hadn't at all made it up with our friend. It was while we were -with her in Dresden, however, that something happened which brought about, -by correspondence, some renewal of intercourse. This was a matter on which -we were in her confidence and in which we took the greatest interest, -for we liked also the other person concerned in it. An opportunity had -come up for her to marry again, she had practically decided to embrace -it, and of this, though everything between them had broken off so short, -her unforgiving brother had heard, indirectly, in New York."</p> - -<p>Davey Bradham, lighting cigarettes, and having originally placed his -case, in a manner promptly appreciated, at his companion's disposal, -crowned this now adjusted relation with a pertinence of comment. "And -only again of course to be as horrid as possible about it! He hated -husbands in general."</p> - -<p>"Well, he himself, it was to be said, had been but little of one. He had -lost his own wife early and hadn't married again—though he was to -lose early also the two children born to him. The second of these deaths -was recent at the time I speak of, and had had to do, I imagine, with his -sudden overture to his absent relations. He let his sister know that he -had learnt her intention and thought very ill of it, but also that if -she would get rid of her low foreigner and come back with the boy he -would be happy to see what could be done for them."</p> - -<p>"What a jolly situation!"—Davey exhaled fine puffs. "Her second -choice then—at Dresden—was a German adventurer?"</p> - -<p>"No, an English one, Mr. Northover; an adventurer only as a man in love -is always one, I suppose, and who was there for us to see and extremely -to approve. He had nothing to do with Dresden beyond having come on to -join her; they had met elsewhere, in Switzerland or the Tyrol, and he -had shown an interest in her, and had made his own impression, from the -first. She answered her brother that his demand of her was excessive in -the absence of anything she could recognise that she owed him. To this -he replied that she might marry then whom she liked, but that if she -would give up her boy and send him home, where he would take charge of -him and bring him up to prospects she would be a fool not to appreciate, -there need be no more talk and she could lead her life as she perversely -preferred. This crisis came up during our winter with her—it was a -very cruel one, and my mother, as I have said, was all in her -confidence."</p> - -<p>"Of course"—Davey Bradham abounded; "and you were all in your -mother's!"</p> - -<p>Rosanna leaned back on the bench, her cigarette between her strong and -rounded fingers; she sat at her ease now, this chapter of history -filling, under her view, the soft lap of space and the comfort of having -it well out, and yet of keeping it, as her friend somehow helped her to -do, well within her control, more and more operative. "Well, I was -sixteen years old, and Gray at that time fourteen. I was huge and hideous -and began then to enjoy the advantage—if advantage it was—of -its seeming so ridiculous to treat the monster I had grown as negligible -that I <i>had</i> to be treated as important. I wasn't a bit stupider than -I am now—in fact I saw things much more sharply and simply and knew -ever so much better what I wanted and didn't. Gray and I had become -excellent friends—if you want to think of him as my 'first passion' -you are welcome to, unless you want to think of him rather as my fifth! He -was a charming little boy, much nicer than any I had ever seen; he didn't -come up higher than my shoulder, and, to tell you all, I remember how once, -in some game with a party of English and American children whom my -mother had got together for Christmas, I tried to be amusing by carrying -half-a-dozen of them successively on my back—all in order to have the -pleasure of carrying <i>him</i>, whom I felt, I remember, but as a -featherweight compared with most of the others. Such a romp was I—as -you can of course see I must have been, and at the same time so horridly -artful; which is doubtless now not so easy for you to believe of me. But -the point," Rosanna developed, "is that I entered all the way into our -friends' situation and that when I was with my mother alone we talked -for the time of nothing else. The strange, or at least the certain, -thing was that though we should have liked so to have them over here, we -hated to see them hustled even by a rich relative: we were rich -ourselves, though we rather hated that too, and there was no romance for -us in being so stuffed up. We liked Mr. Northover, their so devoted -friend, we saw how they cared for him, how even Graham did, and what an -interest he took in the boy, for whom we felt that a happy association -with him, each of them so open to it, would be a great thing; we threw -ourselves in short, and I dare say to extravagance, into the idea of the -success of Mr. Northover's suit. She was the charmingest little woman, -very pretty, very lonely, very vague, but very sympathetic, and we -perfectly understood that the pleasant Englishman, of great taste and -thoroughly a gentleman, should have felt encouraged. We didn't in the -least adore Mr. Betterman, between whom and my father the differences -that afterwards became so bad were already threatening, and when I saw -for myself how the life that might thus be opened to him where they -were, with his mother's marriage and a further good influence crowning -it, would compare with the awful game of grab, to express it mildly, for -which I was sure his uncle proposed to train him, I took upon myself to -get more roused and wound-up than I had doubtless any real right to, and -to wonder what I might really do to promote the benefit that struck me -as the greater and defeat the one against which my prejudice was -strong."</p> - -<p>She had drawn up a moment as if what was to come required her to gather -herself, while her companion seemed to assure her by the backward set of -his head, that of a man drinking at a cool spout, how little his -attention had lapsed. "I see at once, you dear grand creature, that you -were from that moment at the bottom of everything that was to happen; -and without knowing yet what these things were I back you for it now up -to the hilt."</p> - -<p>"Well," she said, "I'm much obliged, and you're never for an instant, -mind, to fail me; but I needed no backing then—I didn't even need my -mother's: I took on myself so much from the moment my chance -turned up."</p> - -<p>"You just walked in and settled the whole question, of course." He quite -flaunted the luxury of his interest. "Clearly what moved you <i>was</i> one -of those crowning passions of infancy."</p> - -<p>"Then why didn't I want, on the contrary, to have him, poor boy, where -his presence would feed my flame?" Rosanna at once inquired. "Why didn't -I obtain of my mother to say to his—for she would have said anything -in the world I wanted: 'You just quietly get married, don't disappoint this -delightful man; while we take Gray back to his uncle, which will be -awfully good for him, and let him learn to make his fortune, the decent -women that we are fondly befriending him and you and your husband coming -over whenever you like, to see how beautifully it answers.' Why if I was -so infatuated didn't I do <i>that?</i>" she repeated.</p> - -<p>He kept her waiting not a moment. "Just because you <i>were</i> so -infatuated. Just because when you're infatuated you're sublime." She had -turned her eyes on him, facing his gorgeous hospitality, but facing it -with a visible flush. "Rosanna Gaw"—he took undisguised advantage of -her—"you're sublime now, just as sublime as you can be, and it's what -you want to be. You liked your young man so much that you were really -capable——!"</p> - -<p>He let it go at that, for even with his drop she had not completed his -sense. But the next thing, practically, she did so. "I've been capable -ever since—that's the point: of feeling that I did act upon him, -that, young and accessible as I found him, I gave a turn to his life."</p> - -<p>"Well," Davey continued to comment, "he's not so young now, and no more, -naturally, are you; but I guess, all the same, you'll give many -another." And then, as facing him altogether more now, she seemed to ask -how he could be so sure: "Why, if <i>I'm</i> so accessible, through my tough -old hide, how is the exquisite creature formed to all the sensibilities -for which you sought to provide going in the least to hold out? He owes -you clearly everything he has become, and how can he decently not want -you should know he feels it? All's well that ends well: that at least I -foresee I shall want to say when I've had more of the beginning. You -were going to tell me how it was in particular that you got your pull."</p> - -<p>She puffed and puffed again, letting her eyes once more wander and rest; -after which, through her smoke, she recovered the sense of the past. -"One Sunday morning we went together to the great Gallery—it had been -between us for weeks that he was some day to take me and show me the -things he most admired: that wasn't at all what would have been my line -with <i>him.</i> The extent to which he was 'cleverer' than I and knew -about the things I didn't, and don't know even now——!" Greatly -she made this point. "And yet the beauty was that I felt there were ways I -could help him, all the same—I knew <i>that</i> even with all the -things I didn't know, so that they remained ignorances of which I think I -wasn't a bit ashamed: any more in fact than I am now, there being too many -things else to be ashamed of. Never so much as that day, at any rate, had I -felt ready for my part—yes, it came to me there as my part; for after -he had called for me at our hotel and we had started together I knew -something particular was the matter and that he of a sudden didn't care -for what we were doing, though we had planned it as a great occasion -much before; that in short his thoughts were elsewhere and that I could -have made out the trouble in his face if I hadn't wished not to seem to -look for it. I hated that he should have it, whatever it was—just how -I hated it comes back to me as if from yesterday; and also how at the same -time I pretended not to notice, and he attempted not to show he did, but -to introduce me, in the rooms, to what we had come for instead—which -gave us half-an-hour that I recover vividly, recover, I assure you, -quite painfully still, as a conscious, solemn little farce. What put an -end to it was that we at last wandered away from the great things, the -famous Madonna, the Correggio, the Paul Veroneses, which he had quavered -out the properest remarks about, and got off into a small room of little -Dutch and other later masters, things that didn't matter and that we -couldn't pretend to go into, but where the German sunshine of a bright -winter day came down through some upper light and played on all the rich -little old colour and old gilding after a fashion that of a sudden -decided me. 'I don't care a hang for anything!' I stood before him and -boldly spoke out: 'I haven't cared a hang since we came in, if you want -to know—I care only for what you're worried about, and what must be -pretty bad, since I can see, if you don't mind my saying it, that it has -made you cry at home.'"</p> - -<p>"He can hardly have thanked you for <i>that!</i>" Davey's competence -threw off.</p> - -<p>"No, he didn't pretend to, and I had known he wouldn't; he hadn't to -tell me how a boy feels in taking such a charge from a girl. But there -he was on a small divan, swinging his legs a little and with his -head—he had taken his hat off—back against the top of the seat -and the queerest look in his flushed face. For a moment he stared hard, and -<i>then</i> at least, I said to myself, his tears were coming up. They -didn't come, however—he only kept glaring as in fever; from which I -presently saw that I had said not a bit the wrong thing, but exactly the -very best. 'Oh if I were some good to you!' I went on—and with the -sense the next moment, ever so happily, that that was really what I was -being. 'She has put it upon me to choose for myself—to think, to -decide and to settle it that way for both of us. She has put it <i>all</i> -upon me,' he said—'and how can I choose, in such a difficulty,' he -asked, 'when she tells me, and when I believe, that she'll do exactly as I -say?' 'You mean your mother will marry Mr. Northover or give him up -according as you prefer?'—but of course I knew what he meant. It was -a joy to me to feel it clear up—with the good I had already done him, -at a touch, by making him speak. I saw how this relieved him even when he -practically spoke of his question as too frightful for his young -intelligence, his young conscience—literally his young nerves. It was -as if he had appealed to me to pronounce it positively cruel—while I -had felt at the first word that I really but blessed it. It wasn't too much -for <i>my</i> young nerves—extraordinary as it may seem to you," -Rosanna pursued, "that I should but have wished to undertake at a jump such -a very large order. I wonder now from where my lucidity came, but just as I -stood there I saw some things in a light in which, even with still better -opportunities, I've never so <i>much</i> seen them since. It was as if I -took everything in—and what everything meant; and, flopped there on -his seat and always staring up at me, he understood that I was somehow -inspired for him."</p> - -<p>"My dear child, you're inspired at this moment!"—Davey Bradham -rendered the tribute. "It's too splendid to hear of amid our greedy wants, -our timid ideas and our fishy passions. You ring out like Brünnhilde at the -opera. How jolly to have pronounced his doom!"</p> - -<p>"Yes," she gravely said, "and you see how jolly I now find it. I settled -it. I was fate," Rosanna puffed. "He recognised fate—all the more -that he really wanted to; and you see therefore," she went on, "how it was -to be in every single thing that has happened since."</p> - -<p>"You stuck him fast there"—Mr. Bradham filled in the picture. "Yet -not so fast after all," he understandingly added, "but that you've been -able to handle him again as you like. He does in other words whatever you -prescribe."</p> - -<p>"If he did it then I don't know what I should have done had he refused -to do it now. For now everything's changed. Everyone's dead or dying. -And I believe," she wound up, "that I was quite right then, that he has -led his life and been happy."</p> - -<p>"I see. If he hadn't been——!" Her companion's free glance -ranged.</p> - -<p>"He would have had me to thank, yes. And at the best I should have cost -him much!"</p> - -<p>"Everything, you mean, that the old man had more or less from the first -in mind?"</p> - -<p>Davey had taken her up; but the next moment, without direct reply, she -was on her feet. "At any rate you see!" she said to finish with it.</p> - -<p>"Oh I see a lot! And if there's more in it than meets the eye I think I -see that too," her friend declared. "I want to see it all at any -rate—and just as you've started it. But what I want most naturally is -to see your little darling himself."</p> - -<p>"Well, if I had been afraid of you I wouldn't have spoken. You won't -hurt him," Rosanna said as they got back to the cliff walk.</p> - -<p>"Hurt him? Why I shall be his great warning light—or at least I -shall be yours, which is better still." To this, however, always pondering, -she answered nothing, but stood as if spent by her effort and half -disposed in consequence to retrace her steps; against which possibility -he at once protested. "You don't mean you're not coming on?"</p> - -<p>She thought another instant; then her eyes overreached the long smooth -interval beyond which the nondescript excrescences of Gussy's "cottage," -vast and florid, and in a kindred company of hunches and gables and -pinnacles confessed, even if in confused accents, to its monstrous -identity. The sight itself seemed after all to give her resolution. -"Yes, now for Cissy!" she said and braved the prospect.</p> - - - - -<h4>III</h4> - - -<p>Half-an-hour later, however, she still had this young lady before her in -extended perspective and as a satisfaction, if not as an embarrassment, -to come; thanks to the fact that Mrs. Bradham had forty persons, or -something like it, though all casually turning up, at tea, and that she -herself had perhaps never been so struck with the activity of the -charming girl's response to the considerations familiar alike to all of -them as Gussy's ideas about her. Gussy's ideas about her, as about -everything in the world, could on occasion do more to fill the air of -any scene over which Gussy presided than no matter what vociferation of -any massed crowd surrounding that lady: exactly which truth might have -been notable now to Rosanna in the light of Cissy's occasional clear -smile at her, always as yet from a distance, during lapses of intervals -and across shifting barriers of the more or less eminent and brilliant. -Mrs. Bradham's great idea—notoriously the most disinterested Gussy -had been known, through a career rich in announced intentions and glorious -designs, to entertain with any coherence—was that by placing and -keeping on exhibition, under her eye, the loveliest flower of girlhood a -splendid and confident society could have wished to wear on its bosom -she should at once signally enhance the dignity of the social part -played by herself and steep the precious object in a medium in which the -care of precious objects was supremely understood. "When she does so -much for me what in the world mustn't I do for <i>her?</i>" Cecilia Foy had -put that to Rosanna again and again with perfect lucidity, making her -sense of fair play shine out of it and her cultivation of that ideal -form perhaps not the least of the complications under which our elder -young woman, earnest in everything, endeavoured to stick to the just -view of her. Cissy had from the first appealed to her with restrictions, -but that was the way in which for poor brooding Rosanna every one -appealed; only there was in the present case the difference that whereas -in most cases the appeal, or rather her view of it, found itself somehow -smothered in the attendant wrong possibilities, the interest of this -bright victim of Mrs. Bradham's furtherance worked clearer, on the -whole, with the closer, with the closest, relation, never starting the -questions one might entertain about her except to dispose of them, even -if when they had been disposed of she mostly started them again.</p> - -<p>Not often had so big a one at all events been started for Rosanna as -when she saw the girl earn her keep, as they had so often called it -together, by multiplying herself for everyone else about the place -instead of remaining as single and possessable as her anxious friend had -come over to invite her to be. Present to this observer to the last -point indeed, and yet as nothing new, was the impression of that -insolence of ease on Gussy's part which was never so great as when her -sense for any relation was least fine and least true. She was naturally -never so the vulgar rich woman able to afford herself all luxuries as -when I she was most stupid about the right enjoyment of these and most -brutally systematic, as Rosanna's inward voice phrased the matter, for -some inferior and desecrating use of them. Mrs. Bradham would deeply -have resented—as deeply as a woman might who had no depth—any -imputation on her view of what would be fine and great for her young -friend, but Rosanna's envy and admiration of possibilities, to say -nothing of actualities, to which this view was quite blind, kept the -girl before her at times as a sacrificed, truly an even prostituted -creature; who yet also, it had to be added, could often alienate -sympathy by strange, by perverse concurrences. However, Rosanna thought, -Cissy wasn't in concurrence now, but was quite otherwise preoccupied -than with what their hostess could either give her or take from her. She -was happy—this our young woman perfectly perceived, to her own very -great increase of interest; so happy that, as had been repeatedly -noticeable before, she multiplied herself through the very agitation of -it, appearing to be, for particular things they had to say to her, -particular conversational grabs and snatches, all of the most violent, -they kept attempting and mostly achieving, at the service of everyone at -once, and thereby as obliging, as humane a beauty, after the fashion of -the old term, as could have charmed the sight. What Rosanna most noted -withal, and not for the first time either, every observation she had -hitherto made seeming now but intensified, what she most noted was the -huge general familiarity, the pitch of intimacy unmodulated, as if -exactly the same tie, from person to person, bound the whole company -together and nobody had anything to say to anyone that wasn't equally in -question for all.</p> - -<p>This, she knew, was the air and the sound, the common state, of -intimacy, and again and again, in taking it in, she had remained unsure -of whether it left her more hopelessly jealous or more rudely independent. -She would have liked to be intimate—with someone or other, -not indeed with every member of a crowd; but the faculty, as appeared, -hadn't been given her (for with whom had she ever exercised it? not even -with Cissy, she felt now,) and it was ground on which she knew alternate -languor and relief. The fact, however, that so much as all this could be -present to her while she encountered greetings, accepted tea, and failed -of felicity before forms of address for the most part so hilarious, or -at least so ingenious, as to remind her further that she might never -expect to be funny either—that fact might have shown her as hugging a -treasure of consciousness rather than as seeking a soil for its -interment. What they all took for granted!—this again and again had -been before her; and never so as when Gussy Bradham after a little -became possessed of her to the extent of their sharing a settee in one -of the great porches on the lawny margin of which, before sundry -over-archings in other and quite contradictious architectural interests -began to spread, a dozen dispersed couples and trios revolved and -lingered in sight. How was he, the young man at the other house, going to -like these enormous assumptions?—that of a sudden oddly came to her; -so far indeed as it was odd that Gussy should suggest such questions. -She suggested questions in her own way at all times; Rosanna indeed -mostly saw her in a sort of immodest glare of such, the chief being -doubtless the wonder, never assuaged, of how any circle of the supposed -amenities could go on "putting up" with her. The present was as a fact -perhaps the first time our young woman had seen her in the light of a -danger to herself. If society, or what they called such, had to reckon -with her and accepted the charge, that was society's own affair—it -appeared on the whole to understand its interest; but why should she, -Rosanna Gaw, recognise a complication she had done nothing ever to -provoke? It was literally as if the reckoning sat there between them and -all the terms they had ever made with felt differences, intensities of -separation and opposition, had now been superseded by the need for fresh -ones—forms of contact and exchange, forms of pretended intercourse, -to be improvised in presence of new truths.</p> - -<p>So it was at any rate that Rosanna's imagination worked while she asked -herself if there mightn't be something in an idea she had more than once -austerely harboured—the possibility that Mrs. Bradham could on -occasion be afraid of her. If this lady's great note was that of an -astounding assurance based on approved impunity, how, certainly, should a -plain dull shy spinster, with an entire incapacity for boldness and a -perfect horror, in general, of intermeddling, have broken the -spell?—especially as there was no other person in the world, not one, -whom she could have dreamed of wishing to put in fear. Deep was the -discomfort for Miss Gaw of losing with her entertainer the commonest -advantage she perhaps knew, that of her habit of escape from the relation -of dislike, let alone of hostility, through some active denial for the -time of any relation at all. What was there in Gussy that rendered -impossible to Rosanna's sense this very vulgarest of luxuries? She gave her -always the impression of looking at her with an exaggeration of ease, a -guarded penetration, that consciously betrayed itself; though how could one -know, after all, that this wasn't the horrid nature of her look for -everyone?—which would have been publicly denounced if people hadn't -been too much involved with her to be candid. With her wondrous bloom of -life and health and her hard confidence that had nothing to do with -sympathy, Gussy might have presented it as a matter of some pusillanimity, -her present critic at the same time felt, that one should but detect the -displeasing in such an exhibition of bright activity. The only way not to -stand off from her, no doubt, was to be of her "bossed" party and crew, or -in other words to be like everyone else; and perhaps one might on that -condition have enjoyed as a work of nature or even of art, an example of -all-efficient force, her braveries of aspect and attitude, resources of -resistance to time and thought, things not of beauty, for some -unyielding reason, and quite as little of dignity, but things of -assertion and application in an extraordinary degree, things of a -straight cold radiance and of an emphasis that was like the stamp of -hard flat feet. Even if she was to be envied it would be across such -gulfs; as it was indeed one couldn't so much as envy her the prodigy of -her "figure," which had been at eighteen, as one had heard, that of a -woman of forty and was now at forty, one saw, that of a girl of -eighteen: such a state of the person wasn't human, to the younger -woman's sombre sense, but might have been that of some shining humming -insect, a thing of the long-constricted waist, the minimised yet -caparisoned head, the fixed disproportionate eye and tough transparent -wing, gossamer guaranteed. With all of which, however, she had pushed -through every partition and was in the centre of her guest's innermost -preserve before she had been heard coming.</p> - -<p>"It's too lovely that you should have got him to do what he -ought—that dreadful old man! But I don't know if you feel how -interesting it's all going to be; in fact if you know yourself how -wonderful it is that he has already—Mr. Fielder has, I -mean—such a tremendous friend in Cissy."</p> - -<p>Rosanna waited, facing her, noting her extraordinary perfections of -neatness, of elegance, of arrangement, of which it couldn't be said -whether they most handed over to you, as on some polished salver, the -clear truth of her essential commonness or transposed it into an element -that could please, that could even fascinate, as a supreme attestation -of care. "Take her as an advertisement of all the latest knowledges of -how to 'treat' every inch of the human surface and where to 'get' every -scrap of the personal envelope, so far as she is enveloped, and she does -achieve an effect sublime in itself and thereby absolute in a wavering -world"—with so much even as that was Miss Gaw aware of helping to -fill for her own use the interval before she spoke. "No," she said, "I know -nothing of what any of you may suppose yourselves to know." After which, -however, with a sudden inspiration, a quick shift of thought as though -catching an alarm, "I haven't seen Mr. Fielder for a very long time, -haven't seen him at all yet here," she added; "but though I hoped -immensely he would come, and am awfully glad he has, what I want for him -is to have the very best time he possibly can; a much better one than I -shall myself at all know how to help him to."</p> - -<p>"Why, aren't you helping him to the greatest time he can have ever had -if you've waked up his uncle to a sense of decency?" Gussy demanded with -her brightest promptness. "You needn't think, Rosanna," she proceeded -with a well-nigh fantastic development of that ease, "you needn't think -you're going to be able to dodge the least little consequence of your -having been so wonderful. He's just going to owe you everything, and to -follow that feeling up; so I don't see why you shouldn't want to let -him—it would be so mean of him not to!—or be deprived of the -credit of so good a turn. When I do things"—Gussy always had every -account of herself ready—"I want to have them recognised; I like to -make them pay, without the least shame, in the way of glory gained. -However, it's between yourselves," her delicacy conceded, "and how can one -judge—except just to envy you such a lovely relation? All I want is -that you should feel that here we are if you do want help. He should -have here the best there is, and should have it, don't you think? before -he tumbles from ignorance into any mistake—mistakes have such a way -of sticking. So don't be unselfish about him, don't sacrifice him to the -fear of using your advantage: what are such advantages as you enjoy -meant for—all of them, I mean—but to be used up to the limit? -You'll see at any rate what Cissy says—she has great ideas about him. -I mean," said Mrs. Bradham with a qualification in which the expression of -Rosanna's still gaze suddenly seemed reflected, "I mean that it's so -interesting she should have all the clues."</p> - -<p>Rosanna still gazed; she might even after a little have struck a watcher -as held in spite of herself by some heavy spell. It was an old -sense—she had already often had it: when once Gussy had got her head -up, got away and away as Davey called it, she might appear to do what -she would with her victim; appear, that is, to Gussy herself—the -appearance never corresponded for Miss Gaw to an admission of her own. -Behind the appearance, at all events, things on one side and the other -piled themselves up, and Rosanna certainly knew what they were on her -side. Nevertheless it was as a vocal note too faintly quavered through -some loud orchestral sound that she heard herself echo: "The -clues——?"</p> - -<p>"Why, it's so funny there should be such a lot—and all gathered -about here!" To this attestation of how everything in the world, for that -matter, was gathered right there Rosanna felt herself superficially -yield; and even before she knew what was coming—for something clearly -was—she was strangely conscious of a choice somehow involved in her -attitude and dependent on her mind, and this too as at almost the -acutest moment of her life. What it came to, with the presentiment of -forces at play such as she had really never yet had to count with, was -the question, all for herself, of whether she should be patently lying -in the profession of a readiness to hand the subject of her interest -over unreservedly to all waiting, all so remarkably gathering contacts -and chances, or whether the act wouldn't partake of the very finest strain -of her past sincerity. She was to remember the moment later on as if -she had really by her definition, by her selection, "behaved"—fairly -feeling the breath of her young man's experience on her cheek before -knowing with the least particularity what it would most be, and deciding -then and there to swallow down every fear of any cost of anything to -herself. She felt extraordinary in the presence of symptoms, symptoms of -life, of death, of danger, of delight, of what did she know? But this it -was exactly that cast derision, by contrast, on such poor obscurities as -her feelings, and settled it for her that when she had professed a few -minutes back that she hoped they would all, for his possible pleasure in -it, catch him up and, so far as they might, make him theirs, she wasn't -to have spoken with false frankness. Queer enough at the same time, and -a wondrous sign of her state of sensibility, that she should see -symptoms glimmer from so very far off. What was this one that was -already in the air before Mrs. Bradham had so much as answered her -question?</p> - -<p>Well, the next moment at any rate she knew, and more extraordinary then -than anything was the spread of her apprehension, off somehow to the -incalculable, under Gussy's mention of a name. What did this show most -of all, however, but how little the intensity of her private association -with the name had even yet died out, or at least how vividly it could -revive in a connection by which everything in her was quickened? -"Haughty" Vint, just lately conversed with by Cissy in New York, it -appeared, and now coming on to the Bradhams from one day to another, had -fed the girl with information, it also, and more wonderfully, -transpired—information about Gray's young past, all surprisingly -founded on close contacts, the most interesting, between the pair, as -well as the least suspected ever by Rosanna: to such an effect that the -transmitted trickle of it had after a moment swelled from Gussy's lips -into a stream by which our friend's consciousness was flooded. "Clues" -these connections might well be called when every touch could now set up -a vibration. It hummed away at once like a pressed button—if she had -been really and in the least meanly afraid of complications she might -now have sat staring at one that would do for oddity, for the oddity of -that relation of her own with Cissy's source of anecdote which could so -have come and gone and yet thrown no light for her on anything but -itself; little enough, by what she had tried to make of it at the time, -though that might have been. It had meanwhile scarce revived for her -otherwise, even if reviving now, as we have said, to intensity, that -Horton Vint's invitation to her some three years before to bestow her -hand upon him in marriage had been attended by impressions as singular -perhaps as had ever marked a like case in an equal absence of outward -show. The connection with him remaining for her had simply been that no -young man—in the clear American social air—had probably ever -approached a young woman on such ground with so utter a lack of -ostensible warrant and had yet at the same time so saved the situation -for himself, or for what he might have called his dignity, and even -hers; to the positive point of his having left her with the mystery, in -all the world, that she could still most pull out from old dim -confusions to wonder about, and wonder all in vain, when she had -nothing better to do. Everything was over between them save the fact -that they hadn't quarrelled, hadn't indeed so much as discussed; but -here withal was association, association unquenched—from the moment a -fresh breath, as just now, could blow upon it. He had had the -appearance—it was unmistakeable—of absolutely believing she -might accept him if he but put it to her lucidly enough and let her look at -him straight enough; and the extraordinary thing was that, for all her -sense of this at the hour, she hadn't imputed to him a real fatuity.</p> - -<p>It had remained with her that, given certain other facts, no incident of -that order could well have had so little to confess by any of its -aspects to the taint of vulgarity. She had seen it, she believed, as he -meant it, meant it with entire conviction: he had intended a tribute, of -a high order, to her intelligence, which he had counted on, or at least -faced with the opportunity, to recognise him as a greater value, taken -all round, appraised by the <i>whole</i> suitability, than she was likely -ever again to find offered. He was of course to take or to leave, and -she saw him stand there in that light as he had then stood, not -pleading, not pressing, not pretending to anything but the wish and the -capacity to serve, only holding out her chance, appealing to her -judgment, inviting her inspection, meeting it without either a shade of -ambiguity or, so far as she could see, any vanity beyond the facts. It -had all been wonderful enough, and not least so that, although -absolutely untouched and untempted, perfectly lucid on her own side and -perfectly inaccessible, she had in a manner admired him, in a manner -almost enjoyed him, in the act of denying him hope. Extraordinary in -especial had it been that he was probably right, right about his value, -right about his rectitude, of conscious intention at least, right even -as to his general calculation of effect, an effect probably producible -on most women; right finally in judging that should he strike at all -this would be the one way. It was only less extraordinary that no -faintest shade of regret, no lightest play of rueful imagination, no -subordinate stir of pity or wonder, had attended her memory of having -left him to the mere cold comfort of reflection. It was his truth that -had fallen short, not his error; the soundness, as it were, of his -claim—so far as his fine intelligence, matching her own, that is, -could make it sound—had had nothing to do with its propriety. She had -refused him, none the less, without disliking him, at the same time that -she was at no moment afterwards conscious of having cared whether he had -suffered. She had been too unaware of the question even to remark that -she seemed indifferent; though with a vague impression—so far as that -went—that suffering was not in his chords. His acceptance of his -check she could but call inscrutably splendid—inscrutably perhaps -because she couldn't quite feel that it had left nothing between them. -Something there was, something there had to be, if only the marvel, so to -say, of her present, her permanent, backward vision of the force with -which they had touched and separated. It stuck to her somehow that they had -touched still more than if they had loved, held each other still closer -than if they had embraced: to such and so strange a tune had they been -briefly intimate. Would any man ever look at her so for passion as Mr. Vint -had looked for reason? and should her own eyes ever again so visit a man's -depths and gaze about in them unashamed to a tune to match that -adventure? Literally what they had said was comparatively -unimportant—once he had made his errand clear; whereby the rest might -all have been but his silent exhibition of his personality, so to name -it, his honour, his assumption, his situation, his life, and that -failure on her own part to yield an inch which had but the more let him -see how straight these things broke upon her. For all the straightness, -it was true, the fact that might most have affected, not to say -concerned, her had remained the least expressed. It wasn't for her now -to know what difference it could have made that he was in relation with -Gray Fielder; incontestably, however, <i>their</i> relation, or their -missing of one, hers and Haughty's, flushed anew in the sudden light.</p> - -<p>"Oh I'm so glad he has good friends here then—with such a clever -one as Mr. Vint we can certainly be easy about him." So much Rosanna heard -herself at last say, and it would doubtless have quite served for assent -to Gussy's revelation without the further support given her by the -simultaneous convergence upon them of various members of the party, who -exactly struck our young woman as having guessed, by the sight of -hostess and momentous guest withdrawn together, that the topic of the -moment was there to be plucked from their hands. Rosanna was now on her -feet—she couldn't sit longer and just take things; and she was to ask -herself afterwards with what cold stare of denial she mightn't have -appeared quite unprecedentedly to face the inquiring rout under the -sense that now certainly, if she didn't take care, she should have -nothing left of her own. It wasn't that they weren't, all laughter and -shimmer, all senseless sound and expensive futility, the easiest people -in the world to share with, and several the very prettiest and -pleasantest, of the vaguest insistence after all, the most absurdly -small awareness of what they were eager about; but that of the three or -four things then taking place at once the brush across her heart of -Gray's possible immediate question, "Have you brought me over then to -live with <i>these</i>——?" had most in common with alarm. It -positively helped her indeed withal that she found herself, the next thing, -greeting with more sincerity of expression than she had, by her -consciousness, yet used Mrs. Bradham's final leap to action in the form -of "I want him to dinner of course right off!" She said it with the big -brave laugh that represented her main mercy for the general public view -of her native eagerness, an eagerness appraised, not to say proclaimed, -by herself as a passion for the service of society, and in connection -with which it was mostly agreed that she never so drove her flock before -her as when paying this theoretic tribute to grace of manner. Before -Rosanna could ejaculate, moved though she was to do so, the question had -been taken up by the extremely pretty person who was known to her -friends, and known even to Rosanna, as Minnie Undle and who at once put -in a plea for Mr. Fielder's presence that evening, her own having been -secured for it. Before such a rate of procedure as this evocation -implied even Gussy appeared to recoil, but with a prompt proviso in -favour of the gentleman's figuring rather on the morrow, when Mrs. -Undle, since she seemed so impatient, might again be of the party. Mrs. -Undle agreed on the spot, though by this time Rosanna's challenge had -ceased to hang fire. "But do you really consider that you <i>know</i> him -so much as that?"—she let Gussy have it straight, even if at the -disadvantage that there were now as ever plenty of people to react, to -the last hilarity, at the idea that acquaintance enjoyed on either side -was needfully imputable to these participations. "That's just why—if -we don't know him!" Mrs. Undle further contributed; while Gussy declined -recognition of the relevance of any word of Miss Gaw's. She declined it -indeed in her own way, by a yet stiffer illustration of her general -resilience; an "Of course I mean, dear, that I look to you to bring -him!" expressing sufficiently her system.</p> - -<p>"Then you really expect him when his uncle's dying——?" -sprang in all honesty from Rosanna's lips; to be taken up on the instant, -however, by a voice that was not Gussy's and that rang clear before Gussy -could speak.</p> - -<p>"There can't be the least question of it—even if we're dying -ourselves, or even if I am at least!" was what Rosanna heard; with Cissy -Foy, of a sudden supremely exhibited, giving the case at once all happy -sense, all bright quick harmony with their general immediate interest. She -pressed to Rosanna straight, as if nothing as yet had had time to pass -between them—which very little in fact had; with the result for our -young woman of feeling helped, by the lightest of turns, not to be awkward -herself, or really, what came to the same thing, not to be anything -herself. It was a fine perception she had had before—of how Cissy -could on occasion "do" for one, and this, all extraordinarily and in a -sort of double sense, by quenching one in her light at the very moment she -offered it for guidance. She quenched Gussy, she was the single person who -could, Gussy almost gruntingly consenting; she quenched Minnie Undle, she -cheapened every other presence, scattering lovely looks, multiplying -happy touches, grasping Rosanna for possession, yet at the same time, as -with her free hand, waving away every other connection: so that a minute -or two later—for it scarce seemed more—the pair were isolated, -still on the verandah somewhere, but intensely confronted and talking at -ease, or in a way that had to pass for ease, with its not mattering at all -whether their companions, dazzled and wafted off, had dispersed and -ceased to be, or whether they themselves had simply been floated to -where they wished on the great surge of the girl's grace. The girl's -grace was, after its manner, such a force that Miss Gaw had had -repeatedly, on past occasions, to doubt even while she recognised—for -<i>could</i> a young creature you weren't quite sure of use a weapon of -such an edge only for good? The young creature seemed at any rate now as -never yet to give out its play for a thing to be counted on and trusted; -and with Gussy Bradham herself shown just there behind them as letting -it take everything straight out of <i>her</i> hands, nobody else at all -daring to touch, what were you to do but verily feel distinguished by -its so wrapping you about? The only sharpness in what had happened was -that with Cissy's act of presence Mrs. Bradham had exercised her great -function of social appraiser by staring and then, as under conclusions -drawn from it, giving way. One might have found it redeemingly soft in -her that before this particular suggestion she could melt, or that in -other words Cissy appeared the single fact in all the world about which -she had anything to call imagination. She imagined her, she imagined her -<i>now</i>, and as dealing somehow with their massive friend; which -consciousness, on the latter's part, it must be said, played for the -moment through everything else.</p> - -<p>Not indeed that there wasn't plenty for the girl to fill the fancy with; -since nothing could have been purer than the stream that she poured into -Rosanna's as from an upturned crystal urn while she repeated over, -holding her by the two hands, gazing at her in admiration: "I can <i>see</i> -how you care for him—I can see, I can see!" And she felt indeed, our -young woman, how the cover was by this light hand whisked off her -secret—Cissy made it somehow a secret in the act of laying it bare; -and that she blushed for the felt exposure as even Gussy had failed to make -her. Seeing which her companion but tilted the further vessel of -confidence. "It's too funny, it's too wonderful that I too should know -something. But I do, and I'll tell you how—not now, for I haven't -time, but as soon as ever I can; which will make you see. So what you must -do for all you're worth," said Cissy, "is to care now more than ever. You -must keep him from us, because we're not good enough and you <i>are</i>; you -must act in the sense of what you feel, and must feel exactly as you've -a right to—for, as I say, I know, I know!"</p> - -<p>It was impossible, Rosanna seemed to see, that a generous young thing -should shine out in more beauty; so that what in the world might one -ever keep from her? Surpassingly strange the plea thus radiant on the -very brow of the danger! "You mean you know Mr. Fielder's history? from -your having met somebody——?"</p> - -<p>"Oh that of course, yes; Gussy, whom I've told of my having met Mr. -Northover, will have told you. That's curious and charming," Cissy went -on, "and I want awfully we should talk of it. But it isn't what I mean -by what I know—and what you don't, my dear thing!"</p> - -<p>Rosanna couldn't have told why, but she had begun to tremble, and also -to try not to show it. "What I don't know—about Gray Fielder? Why, of -course there's plenty!" she smiled.</p> - -<p>Cissy still held her hands; but Cissy now was grave. "No, there isn't -plenty—save so far as what I mean is enough. And I haven't told it to -Gussy. It's too good for her," the girl added. "It's too good for anyone -but you."</p> - -<p>Rosanna just waited, feeling herself perhaps grimace. "What, Cissy, -<i>are</i> you talking about?"</p> - -<p>"About what I heard from Mr. Northover when we met him, when we saw so -much of him, three years ago at Ragatz, where we had gone for Mamma and -where we went through the cure with him. He and I struck up a friendship -and he often spoke to me of his stepson—who wasn't there with him, -was at that time off somewhere in the mountains or in Italy, I forget, but -to whom I could see he was devoted. He and I hit it off beautifully -together—he seemed to me awfully charming and to like to tell me -things. So what I allude to is something he said to me."</p> - -<p>"About me?" Rosanna gasped.</p> - -<p>"Yes—I see now it was about you. But it's only to-day that I've -guessed that. Otherwise, otherwise——!" And as if under the -weight of her great disclosure Cissy faltered.</p> - -<p>But she had now indeed made her friend desire it. "You mean that -otherwise you'd have told me before?"</p> - -<p>"Yes indeed—and it's such a miracle I didn't. It's such a -miracle," said Cissy, "that the person should all this time have been -you—or you have been the person. Of course I had no idea that all -<i>this</i>—everything that has taken place now, by what I -understand—was going so extraordinarily to happen. You see he never -named Mr. Betterman, or in fact, I think," the girl explained, "told -me anything about him. And he didn't name, either, Gray's friend—so -that in spite of the impression made on me you've never till to-day been -identified."</p> - -<p>Immense, as she went, Rosanna felt, the number of things she gave her -thus together to think about. What was coming she clearly needn't -fear—might indeed, deep within, happily hold her breath for; but the -very interest somehow made her rest an instant, as for refinement of -suspense, on the minor surprises. "The impression then has been so great -that you call him 'Gray'?"</p> - -<p>The girl at this ceased holding hands; she folded her arms back together -across her slim young person—the frequent habit of it in her was of -the prettiest "quaint" effect; she laughed as if submitting to some just -correction of a freedom. "Oh, but my dear, <i>he</i> did, the delightful -man—and isn't it borne in upon me that you do? Of course the -impression was great—and if Mr. Northover and I had met younger I -don't know," her laugh said, "what mightn't have happened. No, I never -shall have had a greater, a more intelligent admirer! As it was we remained -true, secretly true, for fond memory, to the end: at least I did, though -ever so secretly—you see I speak of it only now—and I want to -believe so in his impression. But how I torment you!" she suddenly said in -another tone.</p> - -<p>Rosanna, nursing her patience, had a sad slow headshake. "I don't -understand."</p> - -<p>"Of course you don't—and yet it's too beautiful. It was about -Gray—once when we talked of him, as I've told you we repeatedly did. -It was that he never would look at anyone else."</p> - -<p>Our friend could but appear at least to cast about. "Anyone else than -whom?"</p> - -<p>"Why than you," Cissy smiled. "The girl he had loved in boyhood. The -American girl who, years before, in Dresden, had done for him something -he could never forget."</p> - -<p>"And what had she done?" stared Rosanna.</p> - -<p>"Oh he didn't tell me <i>that!</i> But if you don't take great care, as -I say," Cissy went on, "perhaps <i>he</i> may—I mean Mr. Fielder -himself may when we close round him in the way that, in your place, as I -assure you, I would certainly do everything to prevent."</p> - -<p>Rosanna looked about as with a sudden sense of weakness, the effect of -overstrain; it was absurd, but these last minutes might almost, with -their queer action, and as to the ground they covered, have been as many -formidable days. A fine verandah settee again close at hand offered her -support, and she dropped upon it, as for large retrieval of menaced -ease, with a need she herself alone could measure. The need was to -recover some sense of perspective, to be able to place her young -friend's somehow portentous assault off in such conditions, if only of -mere space and time, as would make for some greater convenience of -relation with it. It did at once help her—and really even for the -tone in which she smiled across: "So you're sure?"</p> - -<p>Cissy hovered, shining, shifting, yet accepting the perspective -as it were—when in the world had she to fear <i>any?</i>—and -positively painted there in bright contradiction, her very grace again, -after the odd fashion in which it sometimes worked, seeming to deny her -sincerity, and her very candour seeming to deny her gravity. "Sure of -what? Sure I'm right about you?"</p> - -<p>Rosanna took a minute to say—so many things worked in her; yet -when one of these came uppermost, pushing certain of the others back, she -found for putting it forward a tone grateful to her own ear. This tone -represented on her part too a substitute for sincerity, but that was -exactly what she wanted. "I don't care a fig for any anecdote about -myself—which moreover it would be very difficult for you to have -right. What I ask you if you're certain of is your being really not fit for -him. Are you absolutely," said Miss Gaw, "as bad as that?"</p> - -<p>The girl, placed before her, looked at her now, with raised hands folded -together, as if she had been some seated idol, a great Buddha perched up -on a shrine. "Oh Rosanna, Rosanna——!" she admiringly, piously -breathed.</p> - -<p>But it was not such treatment that could keep Miss Gaw from completing -her chosen sense. "I should be extremely sorry—so far as I claim any -influence on him—to interfere against his getting over here whatever -impressions he may; interfere by his taking you for more important, in -any way, than seems really called for."</p> - -<p>"Taking <i>me?</i>" Cissy smiled.</p> - -<p>"Taking any of you—the people, in general and in particular, who -haunt this house. We mustn't be afraid for him of his having the interest, -or even the mere amusement, of learning all that's to be learnt about -us."</p> - -<p>"Oh Rosanna, Rosanna"—the girl kept it up—"how you adore -him; and how you make me therefore, wretch that I am, fiendishly want to -see him!"</p> - -<p>But it might quite have glanced now from our friend's idol surface. -"You're the best of us, no doubt—very much; and I immensely hope -you'll like him, since you've been so extraordinarily prepared. It's to be -supposed too that he'll have some sense of his own."</p> - -<p>Cissy continued rapt. "Oh but you're deep—deep deep deep!"</p> - -<p>It came out as another presence again, that of Davey Bradham, who had -the air of rather restlessly looking for her, emerged from one of the -long windows of the house, just at hand, to meet Rosanna's eyes. She -found herself glad to have him back, as if further to inform him. Wasn't -it after all rather he that was the best of them and by no means Cissy? -Her face might at any rate have conveyed as much while she reported of -that young lady. "She thinks me so deep."</p> - -<p>It made the girl, who had not seen him, turn round; but with an -immediate equal confidence. "And <i>she</i> thinks <i>me</i>, Davey, so -good!"</p> - -<p>Davey's eyes were only on Cissy, but Rosanna seemed to feel them on -herself. "How you must have got mixed!" he exclaimed. "But your father -has come for you," he then said to Rosanna, who had got up.</p> - -<p>"Father has walked it?"—she was amazed.</p> - -<p>"No, he's there in a hack to take you home—and too excited to -come in."</p> - -<p>Rosanna's surprise but grew. "Has anything happened——?"</p> - -<p>"Wonders—I asked them. Mr. Betterman's sitting right up."</p> - -<p>"Really improving——?" Then her mystification spread. -"'Them,' you say?"</p> - -<p>"Why his nurse, as I at least suppose her," said Davey, "is with -him—apparently to give you the expert opinion."</p> - -<p>"Of the fiend's recuperating?" Cissy cried with a wail. And then before -her friend's bewilderment, "How dreadfully horrid!" she added.</p> - -<p>"Whose nurse, please?" Rosanna asked of Davey.</p> - -<p>"Why, hasn't he got a nurse?" Davey himself, as always, but desired -lucidity. "She's doing her duty by him all the same!"</p> - -<p>On which Cissy's young wit at once apprehended. "It's one of Mr. -Betterman's taking a joy-ride in honour of his recovery! Did you ever -hear anything so cool?"</p> - -<p>She had appealed to her friends alike, but Rosanna, under the force of -her suggestion, was already in advance. "Then father himself must be -ill!" Miss Gaw had declared, moving rapidly to the quarter in which he -so incongruously waited and leaving Davey to point a rapid moral for -Cissy's benefit while this couple followed.</p> - -<p>"If he <i>is</i> so upset that he hasn't been trusted alone I'll be -hanged if I don't just see it!"</p> - -<p>But the marvel was the way in which after an instant Cissy saw it too. -"You mean because he can't stand Mr. Betterman's perhaps not dying?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, dear ingenuous child—he has wanted so to see him out."</p> - -<p>"Well then, isn't it what we're all wanting?"</p> - -<p>"Most undoubtedly, pure pearl of penetration!" Davey returned as they -went. "His pick-up <i>will</i> be a sell," he ruefully added; "even though -it mayn't quite kill anyone of us but Mr. Gaw!"</p> - - - - -<hr class="r5" /> - - -<h4>BOOK SECOND</h4> - - -<h4>I</h4> - - -<p>Graham's view of his case and of all his proprieties, from the moment of -his arrival, was that he should hold himself without reserve at his -uncle's immediate disposition, and even such talk as seemed indicated, -during the forenoon, with Doctor Hatch and Miss Mumby, the nurse then in -charge, did little to lighten for him the immense prescription of -delicacy. What he learnt was far from disconcerting; the patient, aware -of his presence, had shown for soothed, not for agitated; the drop of -the tension of waiting had had the benign effect; he had repeated over -to his attendant that now "the boy" was there, all would be for the -best, and had asked also with soft iteration if he were having -everything he wanted. The happy assurance of this right turn of their -affair, so far as they had got, he was now quietly to enjoy: he was to -rest two or three hours, and if possible to sleep, while Graham, on his -side, sought a like remedy—after the full indulgence in which their -meeting would take place. The excellent fact for "the boy," who was -two-and-thirty years of age and who now quite felt as if during the last -few weeks he had lived through a dozen more, was thus that he was doing -his uncle good and that somehow, to complete that harmony, he might feel -the operation of an equal virtue. At his invitation, at his decision, -the idea of some such wondrous matter as this had of course -presided—for waiting and obliging good, which one was simply to open -one's heart or one's hand to, had struck him ever as so little of the -common stuff of life that now, at closer range, it could but figure as -still more prodigious. At the same time there was nothing he dreaded, by -his very nature, more than a fond fatuity, and he had imposed on himself -from the first to proceed at every step as if without consideration he -might well be made an ass of. It was true that even such a danger as this -presented its interest—the process to which he should yield would -be without precedent for him, and his imagination, thank heaven, had -curiosity in a large measure for its principle; he wouldn't rush into -peril, however, and flattered himself that after all he should not -recognise its symptoms too late.</p> - -<p>What he said to himself just now on the spot was, at any rate, that he -should probably have been more excited if he hadn't been so amused. To -be amused to a high pitch while his nearest kinsman, apparently nursing, -as he had been told, a benevolence, lay dying a few rooms off—let -this impute levity to our young man only till we understand that his -liability to recreation represented in him a function serious indeed. -Everything played before him, everything his senses embraced; and since -his landing in New York on the morning before this the play had been of -a delightful violence. No slightest aspect or briefest moment of it but -had held and, so to say, rewarded him: if he had come back at last for -impressions, for emotions, for the sake of the rush upon him of the -characteristic, these things he was getting in a measure beyond his -dream. It was still beyond his dream that what everything merely seen -from the window of his room meant to him during these first hours should -move him first to a smile of such ecstasy, and then to such an inward -consumption of his smile, as might have made of happiness a substance -you could sweetly put under your tongue. He recognised—that was the -secret, recognised wherever he looked—and knew that when, from far -back, during his stretch of unbroken absence, he had still felt, and -liked to feel, what air had originally breathed upon him, these piercing -intensities of salience had really peopled the vision. He had much less -remembered the actual than forecast the inevitable, and the huge -involved necessity of its all showing as he found it seemed fairly to -shout in his ear. He had brought with him a fine intention, one of the -finest of which he was capable, and wasn't it, he put to himself, -already working? Wasn't he gathering in a perfect bloom of freshness the -fruit of his design rather to welcome the impression to extravagance, if -need be, than to undervalue it by the breadth of a hair? Inexpert he -couldn't help being, but too estranged to melt again at whatever touch -might make him, <i>that</i> he'd be hanged if he couldn't help, since what -was the great thing again but to hold up one's face to <i>any</i> drizzle -of light?</p> - -<p>There it was, the light, in a mist of silver, even as he took in the -testimony of his cool bedimmed room, where the air was toned by the -closing of the great green shutters. It was ample and elegant, of an -American elegance, which was so unlike any other, and so still more -unlike any lapse of it, ever met by him, that some of its material terms -and items held him as in rapt contemplation; what he had wanted, even to -intensity, being that things should prove different, should positively -glare with opposition—there would be no fun at all were they only -imperfectly like, as that wouldn't in the least mean character. Their -character might be if it would in their consistently having none—than -which deficiency nothing was more possible; but he should have to -decline to be charmed by unsuccessful attempts at sorts of expression he -had elsewhere known more or less happily achieved. This particular -disappointment indeed he was clearly not in for, since what could at -once be more interesting than thus to note that the range and scale kept -all their parts together, that each object or effect disowned -connections, as he at least had all his life felt connections, and that -his cherished hope of the fresh start and the broken link would have its -measure filled to the brim. There was an American way for a room to be a -room, a table a table, a chair a chair and a book a book—let alone a -picture on a wall a picture, and a cold gush of water in a bath of a hot -morning a promise of purification; and of this license all about him, in -fine, he beheld the refreshing riot.</p> - -<p>It cast on him for the time a spell; he moved about with soft steps and -long pauses, staring out between the slats of the shutters, which he -gently worked by their attachment, and then again living, with a -subtlety of sense that it was a pleasure to exercise, into the -conditions represented by whatever more nearly pressed. It was not only -that the process of assimilation, unlike any other he had yet been -engaged in, might stop short, to disaster, if he so much as breathed too -hard; but that if he made the sufficient surrender he might absolutely -himself be assimilated—and that was truly an experience he couldn't -but want to have. The great thing he held on to withal was a decent -delicacy, a dread of appearing even to himself to take big things for -granted. This of itself was restrictive as to freedoms—it stayed -familiarities, it kept uncertainty cool; for after all what had his -uncle done but cause to be conveyed to him across the sea the bare wish -that he should come? He had straightway come in consequence, but on no -explanation and for no signified reward; he had come simply to avoid a -possible ugliness in his not coming. Generally addicted to such -avoidances, to which it indeed seemed to him that the quest of beauty -was too often reduced, he had found his reason sufficient until the -present hour, when it was as if all reasons, all of his own at least, -had suddenly abandoned him, to the effect of his being surrounded only -with those of others, of which he was up to now ignorant, but which -somehow hung about the large still place, somehow stiffened the vague -summer Sunday and twinkled in the universal cleanness, a real revelation -to him of that possible immunity in things. He might have been sent for -merely to be blown up for the relief of the old man's mind on the -perversity and futility of his past. There was before him at all events -no gage of anything else, no intimation other than his having been, -materially speaking, preceded by preparations, to make him throw himself -on a survey of prospects. What was before him at the least was a "big" -experience—even to have come but to be cursed and dismissed would -really be a bigger thing than yet had befallen him. Not the form but the -fact of the experience accordingly mattered—so that wasn't it there -to a fine intensity by his standing ever and anon at the closed door of his -room and feeling that with his ear intent enough he could catch the -pressure on the other side?</p> - -<p>The pressure was at last unmistakeable, we note, in the form of Miss -Mumby, who, having gently tapped, appeared there both to remark to him -that he must surely at last want his luncheon and to affect him afresh -and in the supreme degree as a vessel of the American want of -correspondence. Miss Mumby was ample, genial, familiar and more -radiantly clean than he had ever known any vessel, to whatever purpose -destined; also the number of things <i>she</i> took for granted—if -it was a question of that; or perhaps rather the number of things of which -she didn't doubt and was incapable of doubting, surrounded her together -with a kind of dazzling aura, a special radiance of disconnection. She wore -a beautiful white dress, and he scarce knew what apparatus of spotless -apron and cuffs and floating streamers to match; yet she could only -again report to him of the impression that had most jumped at him from -the moment of his arrival. He saw in a moment that any difficulty on his -part of beginning with her at some point in social space, so to say, at -which he had never begun before with any such person, would count for -nothing in face of her own perfect power to begin. The faculty of -beginning would be in truth Miss Mumby's very genius, and in the moment of -his apprehension of this he felt too—he had in fact already felt it -at their first meeting—how little his pale old postulates as to -persons being "such" might henceforth claim to serve him. What person met -by him during his thirty hours in American air was "such" again as any -other partaker of contact had appeared or proved, no matter where, before -his entering it? What person had not at once so struck him in the light of -violent repudiation of type, as he might save for his sensibility have -imputed type, that nothing else in the case seemed predicable? He might -have seen Miss Mumby, he was presently to recognise, in the light of a -youngish mother perhaps, a sister, a cousin, a friend, even a possible -bride, for these were aspects independent of type and boundlessly free -of range; but a "trained nurse" was a trained nurse, and that was a -category of the most evolved—in spite of which what category in all -the world could have lifted its head in Miss Mumby's aura?</p> - -<p>Still, she might have been a pleasant cousin, a first cousin, -<i>the</i> very first a man had ever had and not in any degree "removed," -while she thus proclaimed the cheerful ease of everything and everyone, her -own above all, and made him yield on the spot to her lightest intimation. -He couldn't possibly have held off from her in any way, and if this was in -part because he always collapsed at a touch before nurses, it was at the -same time not at all the nurse in her that now so affected him, but the -incalculable other force, of which he had had no experience and which -was apparently that of the familiar in tone and manner. He had known, of -a truth, familiarity greater—much greater, but only with greater -occasions and supports for it; whereas on Miss Mumby's part it seemed -independent of any or of every motive. He could scarce have said in -fine, as he followed her to their repast, at which he foresaw in an -instant that they were both to sit down, whether it more alarmed or just -more coolingly enveloped him; his slight first bewilderment at any rate -had dropped—he had already forgotten the moment wasted two or three -hours before in wondering, with his sense of having known Nurses who -gloried in their title, how his dear second father, for instance, would -in his final extremity have liked the ministrations of a Miss. By those -he himself presently enjoyed in such different conditions, that is from -across the table, bare and polished and ever so delicately charged, of -the big dusky, yet just a little breezy dining-room, by those in short -under which every association he had ever had with anything crashed down -to pile itself as so much more tinklingly shivered glass at Miss Mumby's -feet, that sort of question was left far behind—and doubtless would -have been so even if the appeal of the particular refection served to -them had alone had the case in hand. "I'm going to make you like our -food, so you might as well begin at once," his companion had announced; -and he felt it on the spot as scarce less than delicious that this -element too should play, and with such fineness, into that harmony of -the amusingly exotic which was, under his benediction, working its will -on him. "Oh yes," she rejoiced in answer to his exhibition of the degree -in which what was before him did stir again to sweetness a chord of -memory, "oh yes, food's a great tie, it's like language—you can -always understand your own, whereas in Europe I had to learn about six -others."</p> - -<p>Miss Mumby had been to Europe, and he saw soon enough how there was -nowhere one could say she hadn't gone and nothing one could say she hadn't -done—one's perception could bear only on what she hadn't become; -so that, as he thus perceived, though she might have affected Europe -even as she was now affecting <i>him</i>, she was a pure negation of its -having affected herself, unless perhaps by adding to her power to make -him feel how little he could impose on her. She knew all about his -references while he only missed hers, and that gave her a tremendous -advantage—or would have done so hadn't she been too much his cousin -to take it. He at any rate recognised in a moment that the so many things -she had had to learn to understand over there were not forms of speech -but alimentary systems—as to which view he quite agreed with her that -the element of the native was equally rooted in both supports of life. -This gave her of course her opportunity of remarking that she had indeed -made for the assimilation of "his" cookery—whichever of the varieties -his had most been—scarce less an effort than she must confess now to -making for that of his terms of utterance; where she had at once again -the triumph that he was nowhere, by his own reasoning, if he pretended -to an affinity with the nice things they were now eating and yet stood -off from the other ground. "Oh I <i>understand</i> you, which appears to be -so much more than you do me!" he laughed; "but am I really committed to -everything because I'm committed, in the degree you see me, oh yes, to -waffles and maple syrup, followed, and on such a scale, by melons and -ice-cream? You see in the one case I have but to take in, and in the -other have to give out: so can't I have, in a quiet way the American -palate without emitting the American sounds?" Thus was he on the -straightest flattest level with Miss Mumby—it stretched, to his -imagination, without a break, a rise or a fall, <i>à perte de vue</i>; and -thus was it already attested that the Miss Mumbys (for it was evident -there would be thousands of them) were in society, or were, at any rate, -not out of it, society thereby becoming clearly colossal. What was it, -moreover, but the best society—as who should say anywhere—when -his companion made the bright point that if anything had to do with sounds -the palate did? returning with it also to the one already made, her due -warning that she wasn't going to have him not like everything. "But I -do, I do, I do," he declared, with his mouth full of a seasoned and -sweetened, a soft, substantial coldness and richness that were at once -the revelation of a world and the consecration of a fate; "I revel in -everything, I already wallow, behold: I move as in a dream, I assure -you, and I only fear to wake up."</p> - -<p>"Well, I don't know as I want you to wallow, and I certainly don't want -you to fear—though you'll wake up soon enough, I guess," his -entertainer continued, "whatever you do. You'll wake up to some of our -realities, and—well, we won't want anything better for you: will we. -Doctor?" Miss Mumby freely proceeded on their being joined for a moment -by the friendly physician who had greeted our young man, on his uncle's -behalf, at his hour of arrival, and who, having been again for awhile -with their interesting host, had left the second nurse in charge and was -about to be off to other cares. "I'm saying to Mr. Fielder that he's got -to wake up to some pretty big things," she explained to Doctor Hatch, -whom it struck Gray she addressed rather as he had heard doctors address -nurses than nurses doctors; a fact contributing offhand to his -awareness, already definite, that everyone addressed everyone as he had -nowhere yet heard the address perpetrated, and that so, evidently, there -were questions connected with it that must yet wait over. It was -pertinently to be felt furthermore that Doctor Hatch's own freedom, -which also had quite its own rare freshness of note, shared in the -general property of the whole appeal to him, the appeal of the very form -of the great sideboard, the very "school," though yet unrecognised by -him, of the pictures hung about, the very look and dress, the apparently -odd identity, of the selected and arrayed volumes in a bookcase charged -with ornament and occupying the place of highest dignity in the room, to -take his situation for guaranteed as it was surely not common for -earthly situations to be. This he could feel, however, without knowing, -to any great purpose, what it really meant; and he was afterwards even -scarce to know what had further taken place, under Doctor Hatch's -blessing, before he passed out of the house to the verandah and the -grounds, as their limitations of reach didn't prevent their being -called, and gave himself up to inquiries now permittedly direct.</p> - -<p>Doctor Hatch's message or momentary act of quaint bright presence came -to him thus, on the verandah, while shining expanses opened, as an -invitation to some extraordinary confidence, some flight of optimism -without a precedent, as a positive hint in fine that it depended on -himself alone to step straight into the chariot of the sun, which on his -mere nod would conveniently descend there to the edge of the piazza, and -whirl away for increase of acquaintance with the time, as it was -obviously going to be, of his life. This was but his reading indeed of -the funny terms in which the delightful man put it to him that he seemed -by his happy advent to have brought on for his uncle a prospect, a rise -of pitch, not dissimilar from that sort of vision; by so high a tide of -ease had the sick room above been flooded, and such a lot of good would -clearly await the patient from seeing him after a little and at the -perfect proper moment. It was to be that of Mr. Betterman's competent -choice: he lay there as just for the foretaste of it, which was wholly -tranquillising, and could be trusted—what else did doctor and nurse -engage for?—to know the psychological hour on its striking and then, -to complete felicity, have his visitor introduced. His present mere -assurance of the visitor was in short so agreeable to him, and by the -same token to Doctor Hatch himself—which was above all what the -latter had conveyed—that the implication of the agreeable to Graham -in return might fairly have been some imponderable yet ever so sensible -tissue, voluminous interwoven gold and silver, flung as a mantle over his -shoulders while he went. Gray had never felt around him any like -envelope whatever; so that on his looking forth at all the candid -clearness—which struck him too, ever so amusingly, as even more -candid when occasionally and aggressively, that is residentially, -obstructed than when not—what he inwardly and fantastically compared -it to was some presented quarto page, vast and fair, ever so distinctly -printed and ever so unexpectedly vignetted, of a volume of which the leaves -would be turned for him one by one and with no more trouble on his own -part than when a friendly service beside him at the piano, where he so -often sat, relieved him, from sheet to sheet, of touching his score.</p> - -<p>Wasn't he thus now again "playing," as it had been a lifelong resource -to him to play in that other posture?—a question promoted by the way -the composition suddenly broke into the vividest illustrational figure, -that of a little man encountered on one of his turns of the verandah and -who, affecting him at first as a small waiting and watching, an almost -crouching gnome, the neat domestic goblin of some old Germanic, some -harmonised, familiarised legend, sat and stared at him from the depths -of an arrested rocking-chair after a fashion nothing up to then had led -him to preconceive. This was a different note from any yet, a queer, -sharp, hard particle in all the softness; and it was sensible too, oddly -enough, that the small force of their concussion but grew with its -coming over him the next moment that he simply had before him Rosanna -Gaw's prodigious parent. <i>Of course</i> it was Mr. Gaw, whom he had never -seen, and of whom Rosanna in the old time had so little talked; her -mother alone had talked of him in those days, and to his own mother -only—with whom Gray had indeed himself afterwards talked not a -little; but the intensity of the certitude came not so much by any plain as -by quite the most roundabout presumption, the fact of his always having -felt that she required some strange accounting for, and that here was -the requirement met by just the ripest revelation. She had been involved -in something, produced by something, intimately pressing upon her and -yet as different as possible from herself; and here was the concentrated -difference—which showed him too, with each lapsing second, its -quality of pressure. Abel Gaw struck him in this light as very finely -blanched, as somehow squeezed together by the operation of an inward energy -or necessity, and as animated at the same time by the conviction that, -should he sit there long enough and still enough, the young man from -Europe, known to be on the premises, might finally reward his curiosity. -Mr. Gaw was curiosity embodied—Gray was by the end of the minute -entirely assured of that; it in fact quite seemed to him that he had -never yet in all his life caught the prying passion so shamelessly in -the act. Shamelessly, he was afterwards to remember having explained to -himself, because his sense of the reach of the sharp eyes in the small -white face, and of their not giving way for a moment before his own, -suggested to him, even if he could scarce have said why to that extent, -the act of listening at the door, at the very keyhole, of a room, -combined with the attempt to make it good under sudden detection.</p> - -<p>So it was, at any rate, that our speculative friend, the impression of -the next turn of the case aiding, figured the extension, without forms, -without the shade of a form, of their unmitigated mutual glare. The -initiation of this exchange by the little old gentleman in the chair, -who gave for so long no sign of moving or speaking, couldn't but -practically determine in Graham's own face some resistance to the -purpose exhibited and for which it was clear no apology impended. By the -time he had recognised that his presence was in question for Mr. Gaw -with such an intensity as it had never otherwise, he felt, had the -benefit of, however briefly, save under some offered gage or bribe, he -had also made out that no "form" would survive for twenty seconds in any -close relation with the personage, and that if ever he had himself known -curiosity as to what might happen when manners were consistently enough -ignored it was a point on which he should at once be enlightened. His -fellow-visitor, of whose being there Doctor Hatch and Miss Mumby were -presumably unaware, continued to ignore everything but the opportunity -he enjoyed and the certainty that Graham would contribute to it—which -certainty made in fact his profit. The profit, that is, couldn't -possibly fail unless Gray should turn his back and walk off; which was -of course possible, but would then saddle Gray himself with the -repudiation of forms: so that—yes, infallibly—in proportion as -the young man <i>had</i> to be commonly civil would Mr. Gaw's perhaps -unholy satisfaction of it be able to prevail. The young man had taken it -home that he couldn't simply stare long enough for successful defence by -the time that, presently moving nearer, he uttered his adversary's name -with no intimation of a doubt. Mr. Gaw failed. Gray was afterwards to -inform Rosanna, "to so much as take this up"; he was left with everything -on his hands but the character of his identity, the indications of his -face, the betrayals he should so much less succeed in suppressing than -his adversary would succeed in reading them. The figure presented hadn't -stirred from his posture otherwise than by a motion of eye just -perceptible as Graham moved; it was drinking him in, our hero felt, and -by this treatment of the full cup, continuously applied to the lips, -stillness was of course imposed. It didn't again so much as recognise, -by any sign given, Graham's remark that an acquaintance with Miss Gaw -from of old involved naturally <i>their</i> acquaintance: there was no -question of Miss Gaw, her friend found himself after another minute -divining, as there was none of objects or appearances immediately there -about them; the question was of something a thousand times more relevant -and present, of something the interloper's silence, far more than -breathed words could have done, represented the fond hope of mastering.</p> - -<p>Graham thus held already, by the old man's conviction, a secret of high -value, yet which, with the occasion stretched a little, would -practically be at his service—so much as that at least, with the -passage of another moment, he had concluded to; and all the while, in -the absurdest way, without his guessing, without his at all measuring, -his secret himself. Mr. Gaw fairly made him want to—want, that is, as -a preliminary or a stopgap, to guess what it had best, most desirably and -most effectively, become; for shouldn't he positively <i>like</i> to have -something of the sort in order just to disoblige this gentleman? Strange -enough how it came to him at once as a result of the father's refusal of -attention to any connection he might have glanced at with the daughter, -strange enough how it came to him, under the first flush of heat he had -known since his arrival, that two could play at such a game and that if -Rosanna's interests were to be so slighted her relative himself should -miss even the minimum of application as one of them. "He must have wanted -to know, he must have wanted to know——!" this young woman was -on a later day to have begun to explain; without going on, however, -since by that time Gray had rather made out, the still greater rush of -his impressions helping, the truth of Mr. Gaw's desire. It bore, that -appetite, upon a single point and, daughter or no daughter, on nothing -else in the world—the question of what Gray's "interest," in the -light of his uncle's intentions, might size up to; those intentions having, -to the Gaw imagination, been of course apprehensible on the spot, and -within the few hours that had lapsed, by a nephew even of but -rudimentary mind. At the present hour meanwhile, short of the miracle -which our friend's counter-scrutiny alone could have brought about, -there worked for this young intelligence, and with no small sharpness, -the fact itself of such a revealed relation to the ebb of their host's -life—upon which was thrust the appearance of its being, watch in -hand, all impatiently, or in other words all offensively, timed. The very -air at this instant tasted to Gray, quite as if something under his tongue -had suddenly turned from the sweet to the appreciably sour, of an -assumption diffused through it in respect to the rudiments of mind. He -was afterwards to date the breaking-in upon him of the general measure -of the smallest vision of business a young man might self-respectingly -confess to from Mr. Gaw's extraordinary tacit "Oh come, you can't fool -<i>me</i>: don't I know you know what I want to know—don't I know -what it must mean for you to have been here since six o'clock this morning -with nothing whatever else to do than just to take it in?"</p> - -<p>That was it—Gray was to have taken in the more or less definite -value involved for him in his uncle's supposedly near extinction, and was -to be capable, if not of expressing it on the spot in the only terms in -which a value of any sort could exist for this worthy, yet still at -least of liability to such a betrayal as would yield him something to -conclude upon. It was only afterwards, once more, that our young man was -to master the logic of the conclusive as it prevailed for Mr. Gaw; what -concerned his curiosity was to settle whether or no they were in -presence together of a really big fact—distinguishing as the Gaw mind -did among such dimensions and addressed as it essentially was to a -special question—a question as yet unrecognised by Gray. He was -subsequently to have his friend's word to go upon—when, in the -extraordinary light of Rosanna's explication, he read clear what he had -been able on the verandah but half to glimmer out: the queer truth of -Mr. Gaw's hunger to learn to what extent he had anciently, to what -degree he had irremediably, ruined his whilom associate. He didn't -know—so strange was it, at the time and since, that, thanks to the -way Mr. Betterman had himself fixed things, he couldn't be sure; but what -he wanted, and what he hung about so displeasingly to sniff up the least -stray sign of, was a confirmation of his belief that Doctor Hatch's and -Miss Mumby's patient had never really recovered from the wound of years -before. They were nursing him now for another complaint altogether, this -one admittedly such as must, with but the scantest further reprieve, -dispose of him; whereas doubts were deep, as Mr. Gaw at least -entertained them, as to whether the damage he supposed his own just -resentment to have inflicted when propriety and opportunity combined to -inspire him was amenable even to nursing the most expert or to -medication the most subtle. These mysteries of calculation were of -course impenetrable to Gray during the moments at which we see him so -almost indescribably exposed at once and reinforced; but the effect of -the sharper and sharper sense as of a spring pressed by his companion -was that a <i>whole</i> consciousness suddenly welled up in him and that -within a few more seconds he had become aware of a need absolutely -adverse to any trap that might be laid for his candour. He could as -little have then said why as he could vividly have phrased it under the -knowledge to come, but that his mute interlocutor desired somehow their -association in a judgment of what his uncle was "worth," a judgment from -which a comparatively conceited nephew might receive an incidental -lesson, played through him as a certitude and produced quite another -inclination. That recognition of the pleasant on which he had been -floating affirmed itself as in the very face of so embodied a pretension -to affirm the direct opposite, to thrust up at him in fine a horrid -contradiction—a contradiction which he next heard himself take, after -the happiest fashion, the straightest way to rebut.</p> - -<p>"I'm sure you'll be glad to know that I seem to be doing my uncle a -tremendous lot of good. They tell me I'm really bringing him -round"—and Graham smiled down at little blanched Mr. Gaw. "I don't -despair at all of his getting much better."</p> - -<p>It was on this that for the first time Mr. Gaw became articulate. -"Better——?" he strangely quavered, and as if his very eyes -questioned such conscious flippancy.</p> - -<p>"Why yes—through cheering him up. He takes, I gather," Gray went -on, "as much pleasure as I do——!" His assurance, however, had -within the minute dropped a little—the effect of it might really -reach, he apprehended, beyond his idea. The old man had been odd enough, -but now of a sudden he looked sick, and that one couldn't desire.</p> - -<p>"'Pleasure'——?" he was nevertheless able to echo; while it -struck Gray that no sound so weak had ever been so sharp, or none so sharp -ever so weak. "Pleasure in dying——?" Mr. Gaw asked in this -flatness of doubt.</p> - -<p>"But my dear sir," said Gray, his impulse to be jaunty still -nevertheless holding out a little, "but, my dear sir, if, as it strikes -me, he isn't dying——?"</p> - -<p>"Oh twaddle!" snapped Mr. Gaw with the emphasis of his glare—shifted -a moment, Gray next saw, to a new object in range. Gray felt himself even -before turning for it rejoined by Miss Mumby, who, rounding the corner -of the house, had paused as in presence of an odd conjunction; not made -the less odd moreover by Mr. Gaw's instant appeal to her. "You think he -ain't then going to——?"</p> - -<p>He had to leave it at that, but Miss Mumby supplied, with the loudest -confidence, what appeared to be wanted. "He ain't going to get better? -Oh we hope so!" she declared to Graham's delight.</p> - -<p>It helped him to contribute in his own way. "Mr. Gaw's surprise seems -for his holding out!"</p> - -<p>"Oh I guess he'll hold out," Miss Mumby was pleased to say.</p> - -<p>"Then if he ain't dying what's the fuss about?" Mr. Gaw wanted to -know.</p> - -<p>"Why there ain't any fuss—but what you seem to make," Miss Mumby -could quite assure him.</p> - -<p>"Oh well, if you answer for it——!" He got up on this, though -with an alertness that, to Gray's sense, didn't work quite truly, and stood -an instant looking from one of his companions to the other, while our young -man's eyes, for their part, put a question to Miss Mumby's—a question -which, articulated, would have had the sense of "What on earth's the -matter with him?" There seemed no knowing how Mr. Gaw would take -things—as Miss Mumby, for that matter, appeared also at once to -reflect.</p> - -<p>"We're sure enough not to want to have you sick too," she declared -indeed with more cheer than apprehension; to which she added, however, -to cover all the ground, "You just leave Mr. Betterman to us and take -care of yourself. We never say die and we won't have you say -it—either about him or anyone else, Mr. Gaw."</p> - -<p>This gentleman, so addressed, straightened and cleared himself in such a -manner as to show that he saw, for the moment, Miss Mumby's point; which -he then, a wondrous small concentration of studied blankness—studied, -that is, his companions were afterwards both to show they had -felt—commemorated his appreciation of in a tiny, yet triumphant, -"Well, that's all right!"</p> - -<p>"It ain't so right but what I'm going to see you home," Miss Mumby -returned with authority; adding, however, for Graham's benefit, that she -had come down to tell him his uncle was now ready. "You just go right -up—you'll find Miss Goodenough there. And you'll see for yourself," -she said, "how fresh he is!"</p> - -<p>"Thanks—that will be beautiful!" Gray brightly responded; but with -his eyes on Mr. Gaw, whom of a sudden, somehow, he didn't like to leave.</p> - -<p>It at any rate determined on the little man's part a surprised inquiry. -"Then you haven't seen him yet—with your grand account of him?"</p> - -<p>"No—but the account," Gray smiled, "has an authority beyond mine. -Besides," he kept on after this gallant reference, "I feel what I shall -do for him."</p> - -<p>"Oh they'll have great times!"—Miss Mumby, with an arm at the old -man's service, bravely guaranteed it. But she also admonished Graham: -"Don't keep him waiting, and mind what Miss Goodenough tells you! So now, -Mr. Gaw—you're to mind <i>me!</i>" she concluded; while this subject -of her more extemporised attention so far complied as slowly to face with -her in the direction of the other house. Gray wondered about him, but -immensely trusted Miss Mumby, and only watched till he saw them step off -together to the lawn, Mr. Gaw independent of support, with something in his -consciously stiffened even if not painfully assumed little air, as noted -thus from behind, that quite warranted his protectress. Seen that way, -yes, he was a tremendous little person; and Gray, excited, immensely -readvised and turning accordingly to his own business, felt the assault -of impressions fairly shake him as he went—shake him though it -apparently seemed most capable of doing but to the effect of hilarity.</p> - - - - -<h4>II</h4> - - -<p>Whether or no by its so different appearance from that of Mr. Gaw, the -figure propped on pillows in the vast cool room and lighted in such a -way that the clear deepening west seemed to flush toward it, through a -wide high window, in the interest of its full effect, impressed our -young man as massive and expansive, as of a beautiful bland dignity -indeed—though emulating Rosanna's relative, he was at first to -gather, by a perfect readiness to stare rather than speak. Miss Goodenough -had hovered a little, for full assurance, but then had thrown off with a -<i>timbre</i> of voice never yet used for Gray's own ear in any sick room, -"Well, I guess you won't come to blows!" and had left them face to -face—besides leaving the air quickened by the freedom of her humour. -They were face to face for the time across an interval which, to do her -justice, she had not taken upon herself to deal with directly; this in -spite of Gray's apprehension at the end of a minute that she might, by -the touch of her hand or the pitch of her spirit, push him further -forward than he had immediately judged decent to advance. He had stopped -at a certain distance from the great grave bed, stopped really for -consideration and deference, or through the instinct of submitting -himself first of all to approval, or at least to encouragement; the -space, not great enough for reluctance and not small enough for -presumption, showed him ready to obey any sign his uncle should make. -Mr. Betterman struck him, in this high quietude of contemplation, much -less as formidable than as mildly and touchingly august; he had not -supposed him, he became suddenly aware, so great a person—a presence -like that of some weary veteran of affairs, one of the admittedly -eminent whose last words would be expected to figure in history. The -large fair face, rather square than heavy, was neither clouded nor -ravaged, but finely serene; the silver-coloured hair seemed to bind the -broad high brow as with a band of splendid silk, while the eyes rested -on Gray with an air of acceptance beyond attestation by the mere play of -cheer or the comparative gloom of relief.</p> - -<p>"Ah le beau type, le beau type!" was during these instants the visitor's -inward comment breaking into one of the strange tongues that experience -had appointed him privately to use, in many a case, for the -appropriation of aspects and appearances. It was not till afterwards -that he happened to learn how his uncle had been capable, two or three -hours before seeing him, of offering cheek and chin to the deft -ministration of a barber, a fact highly illuminating, though by that -time the gathered lights were thick. What the patient owed on the spot -to the sacrifice, he easily made out, was that look as of the last -refinement of preparation, that positive splendour of the immaculate, -which was really, on one's taking it all in, but part of an earnest -recognition of his guest's own dignity. The grave beauty of the personal -presence, the vague anticipation as of something that might go on to be -commemorated for its example, the great pure fragrant room, bathed in -the tempered glow of the afternoon's end, the general lucidity and -tranquillity and security of the whole presented case, begot in fine, on -our young friend's part, an extraordinary sense that as he himself was -important enough to be on show, so these peculiar perfections that met -him were but so many virtual honours rendered and signs of the high -level to which he had mounted. On show, yes—that was it, and more -wonderfully than could be said: Gray was sure after a little of how -right he was to stand off as yet in any interest of his own significance -that might be involved. There was clearly something his uncle so wanted -him to be that he should run no possible danger of being it to excess, -and that if he might only there and then grasp it he would ask but to -proceed, for decency's sake, according to his lights: just as so short a -time before a like force of suggestion had played upon him from Mr. -Gaw—each of these appeals clothing him in its own way with such an -oddity of pertinence, such a bristling set of attributes. This wait of -the parties to the present one for articulate expression, on either -side, of whatever it was that might most concern them together, promised -also to last as the tension had lasted down on the verandah, and would -perhaps indeed have drawn itself further out if Gray hadn't broken where -he stood into a cry of admiration—since it could scarcely be called -less—that blew to the winds every fear of overstepping.</p> - -<p>"It's really worth one's coming so far, uncle, if you don't mind my -saying so—it's really worth a great pilgrimage to see anything so -splendid."</p> - -<p>The old man heard, clearly, as by some process that was still deeply -active; and then after a pause that represented, Gray was sure, no -failure at all of perception, but only the wide embrace of a possibility -of pleasure, sounded bravely back: "Does it come up to what you've -seen?"</p> - -<p>It was Gray rather who was for a moment mystified—though only to -further spontaneity when he had caught the sense of the question. "Oh, -you come up to everything—by which I mean, if I may, that nothing -comes up to <i>you!</i> I mean, if I may," he smiled, "that you yourself, -uncle, affect me as the biggest and most native American impression that I -can possibly be exposed to."</p> - -<p>"Well," said Mr. Betterman, and again as with a fond deliberation, "what -I'm going to like, I see, is to listen to the way you talk. That," he -added with his soft distinctness, a singleness of note somehow for the -many things meant, "that, I guess, is about what I most wanted you to -come for. Unless it be to look at you too. I like to look right at you."</p> - -<p>"Well," Gray harmoniously laughed again, "if even that can give you -pleasure——!" He stood as for inspection, easily awkward, -pleasantly loose, holding up his head as if to make the most of no great -stature. "I've never been so sorry that there isn't more of me."</p> - -<p>The fine old eyes on the pillow kept steadily taking him in; he could -quite see that he happened to be, as he might have called it, right; and -though he had never felt himself, within his years, extraordinarily or -excitingly wrong, so that this felicity might have turned rather flat -for him, there was still matter for emotion, for the immediate throb and -thrill, in finding success so crown him. He had been spared, thank -goodness, any positive shame, but had never known his brow brushed or so -much as tickled by the laurel or the bay. "Does it mean," he might have -murmured to himself, "the strangest shift of standards?"—but his -uncle had meanwhile spoken. "Well, there's all of you I'm going to want. -And there must be more of you than I see. Because you <i>are</i> -different," Mr. Betterman considered.</p> - -<p>"But different from what?" Truly was Gray interested to know.</p> - -<p>It took Mr. Betterman a moment to say, but he seemed to convey that it -might have been guessed. "From what you'd have been if you had come."</p> - -<p>The young man was indeed drawn in. "If I had come years ago? Well, -perhaps," he so far happily agreed—"for I've often thought of that -myself. Only, you see," he laughed, "I'm different from <i>that</i> too. I -mean from what I was when I didn't come."</p> - -<p>Mr. Betterman looked at it quietly. "You're different in the sense that -you're older—and you seem to me rather older than I supposed. All the -better, all the better," he continued to make out. "You're the same -person I didn't tempt, the same person I <i>couldn't</i>—that time -when I tried. I see you are, I see <i>what</i> you are."</p> - -<p>"You see terribly much, sir, for the few minutes!" smiled Gray.</p> - -<p>"Oh when I <i>want</i> to see——!" the old man comfortably -enough sighed. "I take you in, I take you in; though I grant that I don't -quite see how you can understand. Still," he pursued, "there are things for -you to tell me. You're different from <i>anything</i>, and if we had time -for particulars I should like to know a little how you've kept so. I was -afraid you wouldn't turn out perhaps so thoroughly the sort of thing I -liked to think—for I hadn't much more to go upon than what <i>she</i> -said, you know. However," Mr. Betterman wound up as with due comfort, "it's -by what she says that I've gone—and I want her to know that I don't -feel fooled."</p> - -<p>If Gray's wonderment could have been said to rest anywhere, hour after -hour, long enough to be detected in the act, the detaining question -would have been more than any other perhaps that of whether Miss Gaw -would "come up." Now that she did so however, in this quiet way, it had -no strangeness that his being at once glad couldn't make but a mouthful -of; and the recent interest of what she had lately written to him was as -nothing to the interest of her becoming personally his uncle's theme. -With which, at the same time, it was pleasanter to him than anything -else to speak of her himself. "If you allude to Rosanna Gaw you'll no -doubt understand how tremendously I want to see her."</p> - -<p>The sick man waited a little—but not, it quite seemed, from lack -of understanding. "She wants tremendously to see you, Graham. You might -know that of course from her going to work so." Then again he gathered -his thoughts and again after a little went on. "She had a good idea, and -I love her for it; but I'm afraid my own hasn't been so very much to -give <i>her</i> the satisfaction. I've wanted it myself, and—well, -here I am getting it from you. Yes," he kept up, his eyes never moving from -his nephew, "you couldn't give me more if you had tried, from so far back, -on purpose. But I can't tell you half!" He exhaled a long breath—he -was a little spent. "You tell <i>me.</i> You tell <i>me.</i>"</p> - -<p>"I'm tiring you, sir," Gray said.</p> - -<p>"Not by letting me see—you'd only tire me if you didn't." Then for -the first time his eyes glanced about. "Haven't they put a place for you to -sit? Perhaps they knew," he suggested, while Gray reached out for a -chair, "perhaps they knew just how I'd want to see you. There seems -nothing they don't know," he contentedly threw off again.</p> - -<p>Gray had his chair before him, his hands on the back tilting it a -little. "They're extraordinary. I've never seen anything like them. They -help me tremendously," he cheerfully confessed.</p> - -<p>Mr. Betterman, at this, seemed to wonder. "Why, have you -difficulties?"</p> - -<p>"Well," said Gray, still with his chair, "you say I'm different—if -you mean it for my being alien from what I feel surrounding me. But if you -knew how funny all <i>that</i> seems to me," he laughed, "you'd understand -that I clutch at protection."</p> - -<p>"'Funny'?"—his host was clearly interested, without offence, in -the term.</p> - -<p>"Well," Gray explained, gently shaking his chair-back, "when one simply -sees that nothing of one's former experience serves, and that one -doesn't know anything about anything——!"</p> - -<p>More than ever at this his uncle's look might have covered him. -"Anything round here—no! That's it, that's it," the old man blandly -repeated. "That's just the way—I mean the way I hoped. <i>She</i> -knows you don't know—and doesn't want you to either. But put down -your chair," he said; and then after, when Gray, instantly and delicately -complying, had placed the precious article with every precaution back where -it had stood: "Sit down here on the bed. There's margin."</p> - -<p>"Yes," smiled Gray, doing with all consideration as he was told, "you -don't seem anywhere very much <i>à l'étroit.</i>"</p> - -<p>"I presume," his uncle returned, "you know French thoroughly."</p> - -<p>Gray confessed to the complication. "Of course when one has heard it -almost from the cradle——!"</p> - -<p>"And the other tongues too?"</p> - -<p>He seemed to wonder if, for his advantage, he mightn't deny them. "Oh a -couple of others. In the countries there they come easy."</p> - -<p>"Well, they wouldn't have come easy here—and I guess nothing else -would; I mean of the things <i>we</i> principally grow. And I won't have -you tell me," Mr. Betterman said, "that if you had taken that old chance -they might have done so. We don't know anything about it, and at any -rate it would have spoiled you. I mean for what you <i>are.</i>"</p> - -<p>"Oh," returned Gray, on the bed, but pressing lightly, "oh what I -'am'——!"</p> - -<p>"My point isn't so much for what you are as for what you're not. So I -won't have anything else; I mean I won't have you but as I want you," -his host explained. "I want you just this way."</p> - -<p>With which, while the young man kept his arms folded and his hands -tucked away as for compression of his personal extent and weight, they -exchanged, at their close range, the most lingering look yet. -Extraordinary to him, in the gravity of this relation, his deeper -impression of something beautiful and spreadingly clear—very much as -if the wide window and the quiet clean sea and the finer sunset light had -all had, for assistance and benediction, their word to say to it. They -seemed to combine most to remark together "What an exquisite person is -your uncle!" This is what he had for the minute the sense of taking from -them, and the expression of his assent to it was in the tone of his next -rejoinder. "If I could only know what it is you'd most like——!"</p> - -<p>"Never mind what I most like—only tell me, only tell me," his -companion again said: "You can't say anything that won't absolutely suit -me; in fact I defy you to, though you mayn't at all see why that's the -case. I've got you—without a flaw. So!" Mr. Betterman triumphantly -breathed. Gray's sense was by this time of his being examined and appraised -as never in his life before—very much as in the exposed state of an -important "piece," an object of value picked, for finer estimation, from -under containing glass. There was nothing then but to face it, unless -perhaps also to take a certain comfort in his being, as he might feel, -practically clean and in condition. That such an hour had its meaning, -and that the meaning might be great for him, this of course surged -softly in, more and more, from every point of the circle that held him; -but with the consciousness making also more at each moment for an -uplifting, a fantastic freedom, a sort of sublime simplification, in -which nothing seemed to depend on him or to have at any time so depended. -He was <i>really</i> face to face thus with bright immensities, and -the handsome old presence from which, after a further moment, a hand had -reached forth a little to take his own, guaranteed by the quietest of -gestures at once their truth and the irrelevance, as he could only feel -it, of their scale. Cool and not weak, to his responsive grasp, this -retaining force, to which strength was added by what next came. "It's not -for myself, it's not for myself—I mean your being as I say. What do -I matter now except to have recognised it? No, Graham—it's in another -connection." Was the connection then with Rosanna? Graham had time to -wonder, and even to think what a big thing this might make of it, before -his uncle brought out: "It's for the world."</p> - -<p>"The world?"—Gray's vagueness again reigned.</p> - -<p>"Well, our great public."</p> - -<p>"Oh your great public——!"</p> - -<p>The exclamation, the cry of alarm, even if also of amusement in face of -such a connection as that, quickened for an instant the good touch of -the cool hand. "That's the way I like you to sound. It's the way she -told me you would—I mean that would be natural to you. And it's -precisely why—being the awful great public it is—we require the -difference that you'll make. So you see you're for our people."</p> - -<p>Poor Graham's eyes widened. "I shall make a difference for your -people——?"</p> - -<p>But his uncle serenely went on. "Don't think you know them yet, or what -it's like over here at all. You may think so and feel you're prepared. -But you don't know till you've had the whole thing up against you."</p> - -<p>"May I ask, sir," Gray smiled, "what you're talking about?"</p> - -<p>His host met his eyes on it, but let it drop. "You'll see soon enough -for yourself. Don't mind what I say. That isn't the thing for you -now—it's all done. Only be true," said Mr. Betterman. "You <i>are</i> -and, as I've said, can't help yourself." With which he relapsed again to -one of his good conclusions. "And after all don't mind the public -either."</p> - -<p>"Oh," returned Gray, "all great publics are awful."</p> - -<p>"Ah no no—I won't have that. Perhaps they may be, but the trouble -we're concerned with is about ours—and about some other things too." -Gray felt in the hand's tenure a small emphasizing lift of the arm, while -the head moved a little as off toward the world they spoke of—which -amounted for our young man, however, but to a glance at all the outside -harmony and prosperity, bathed as these now seemed in the colour of the -flushed sky. Absurd altogether that he should be in any way enlisted -against such things. His entertainer, all the same, continued to see the -reference and to point it. "The enormous preponderance of money. Money -is their life."</p> - -<p>"But surely even here it isn't everyone who has it. Also," he freely -laughed, "isn't it a good thing to have?"</p> - -<p>"A very good thing indeed." Then his uncle waited as in the longest -inspection yet. "But you don't know anything about it."</p> - -<p>"Not about large sums," Gray cheerfully admitted.</p> - -<p>"I mean it has never been near you. That sticks out of you—the way -it hasn't. I knew it couldn't have been—and then she told me she -knew. I see you're a blank—and nobody here's a blank, not a creature -I've ever touched. That's what I've wanted," the old man went on—"a -perfect clean blank. I don't mean there aren't heaps of them that are -damned fools, just as there are heaps of others, bigger heaps probably, -that are damned knaves; except that mostly the knave is the biggest fool. -But those are not blanks; they're full of the poison—without a blest -other idea. Now you're the blank I want, if you follow—and yet you're -not the blatant ass."</p> - -<p>"I'm not sure I quite follow," Gray laughed, "but I'm very much -obliged."</p> - -<p>"Have you ever done three cents' worth of business?" Mr. Betterman -judicially asked.</p> - -<p>It helped our young man to some ease of delay. "Well, I'm afraid I can't -claim to have had much business to do. Also you're wrong, sir," he -added, "about my not being a blatant ass. Oh please understand that I am -a blatant ass. Let there be no mistake about that," Gray touchingly -pleaded.</p> - -<p>"Yes—but not on the subject of anything but business."</p> - -<p>"Well—no doubt on the subject of business more than on any other."</p> - -<p>Still the good eyes rested. "Tell me one thing, other than that, for -which you haven't at least some intelligence."</p> - -<p>"Oh sir, there are no end of things, and it's odd one should have to -prove that—though it would take me long. But I allow there's nothing -I understand so little and like so little as the mystery of the 'market' -and the hustle of any sort."</p> - -<p>"You utterly loathe and abhor the hustle! That's what I blissfully want -of you," said Mr. Betterman.</p> - -<p>"You ask of me the declaration——?" Gray considered. "But how -can I <i>know</i>, don't you see?—when I <i>am</i> such a blank, when -I've never had three cents' worth of business, as you say, to transact?"</p> - -<p>"The people who don't loathe it are always finding it somehow to do, -even if preposterously for the most part, and dishonestly. Your case," -Mr. Betterman reasoned, "is that you haven't a grain of the imagination -of any such interest. If you <i>had</i> had," he wound up, "it would have -stirred in you that first time."</p> - -<p>Gray followed, as his kinsman called it, enough to be able to turn his -memory a moment on this. "Yes, I think my imagination, small scrap of a -thing as it was, did work then somehow against you."</p> - -<p>"Which was exactly against business"—the old man easily made the -point. "I was business. I've <i>been</i> business and nothing else in the -world. I'm business at this moment still—because I can't be anything -else. I mean I've such a head for it. So don't think you can put it on me -that I haven't thought out what I'm doing to good purpose. I do what I do -but too abominably well." With which he weakened for the first time to a -faint smile. "It's none of your affair."</p> - -<p>"Isn't it a little my affair," Gray as genially objected, "to be more -touched than I can express by your attention to me—as well (if you'll -let me say so) as rather astonished at it?" And then while his host took -this without response, only engaged as to more entire repletion in the -steady measure of him, he added further, even though aware in sounding -it of the complacency or fatuity, of the particular absurdity, his -question might have seemed to embody: "What in the world can I want but -to meet you in every way?" His perception at last was full, the great -strange sense of everything smote his eyes; so that without the force of -his effort at the most general amenity possible his lids and his young -lips might have convulsively closed. Even for his own ear "What indeed?" -was thus the ironic implication—which he felt himself quite grimace -to show he should have understood somebody else's temptation to make. Here, -however, where his uncle's smile might pertinently have broadened, the -graver blandness settled again, leaving him in face of it but the more -awkwardly assured. He felt as if he couldn't say enough to abate the -ugliness of that—and perhaps it even did come out to the fact of -beauty that no profession of the decent could appear not to coincide with -the very candour of the greedy. "I'm prepared for anything, yes—in -the way of a huge inheritance": he didn't care if it <i>might</i> sound -like that when he next went on, since what could he do but just melt to -the whole benignity? "If I only understood what it is I can best do for -you."</p> - -<p>"Do? The question isn't of your doing, but simply of your being."</p> - -<p>Gray cast about. "But don't they come to the same thing?"</p> - -<p>"Well, I guess that for you they'll have to. Yes, sir," Gray -answered—"but suppose I should say 'Don't keep insisting so on me'?" -Then he had a romantic flight which was at the same time, for that -moment at least, a sincere one. "I don't know that I came out so very -much for myself."</p> - -<p>"Well, if you didn't it only shows the more what you are"—Mr. -Betterman made the point promptly. "It shows you've got the kind of -imagination that has nothing to do with the kind I so perfectly see you -haven't. And if you don't do things for yourself," he went on, "you'll be -doing them the more for just what I say." With which too, as Graham but -pleadingly gaped: "You'll be doing them for everyone else—that is -finding it impossible to do what they do. From the moment they notice -that—well, it will be what I want. We know, we know," he remarked -further and as if this quite settled it.</p> - -<p>Any ambiguity in his "we" after an instant cleared up; he was to have -alluded but ever so sparely, through all this scene, to Rosanna Gaw, but -he alluded now, and again it had for Gray an amount of reference that -was like a great sum of items in a bill imperfectly scanned. None the -less it left him desiring still more clearness. His whole soul centred -at this point in the need not to have contributed by some confused -accommodation to a strange theory of his future. Strange he could but -feel this one to be, however simply, that is on however large and vague -an assumption, it might suit others, amid their fathomless resources and -their luxuries or perversities of waste, to see it. He wouldn't be -smothered in the vague, whatever happened, and had now the gasp and -upward shake of the head of a man in too deep water. "What I want to -insist on," he broke out with it, "is that I mustn't consent to any -exaggeration in the interest of your, or of any other, sublime view of -me, view of my capacity of any sort. There's no sublime view of me to be -taken that consorts in the least with any truth; and I should be a very -poor creature if I didn't here and now assure you that no proof in the -world exists, or has for a moment existed, of my being capable of -anything whatever."</p> - -<p>He might have supposed himself for a little to have produced something -of the effect that would naturally attach to a due vividness in this -truth—for didn't his uncle now look at him just a shade harder, -before the fixed eyes closed, indeed, as under a pressure to which they had -at last really to yield? They closed, and the old white face was for the -couple of minutes so thoroughly still without them that a slight -uneasiness quickened him, and it would have taken but another moment to -make a slight sound, which he had to turn his head for the explanation -of, reach him as the response to an appeal. The door of the room, -opening gently, had closed again behind Miss Goodenough, who came -forward softly, but with more gravity, Gray thought, than he had -previously seen her show. Still in his place and conscious of the -undiminished freshness of her invalid's manual emphasis, he looked at -her for some opinion as to the latter's appearance, or to the move on -his own part next indicated; during which time her judgment itself, -considering Mr. Betterman, a trifle heavily waited. Gray's doubt, before -the stillness which had followed so great even if so undiscourageable an -effort, moved him to some play of disengagement; whereupon he knew -himself again checked, and there, once more, the fine old eyes rested on -him. "I'm afraid I've tired him out," he could but say to the nurse, who -made the motion to feel her patient's pulse without the effect of his -releasing his visitor. Gray's hand was retained still, but his kinsman's -eyes and next words were directed to Miss Goodenough.</p> - -<p>"It's all right—even more so than I told you it was going to -be."</p> - -<p>"Why of course it's all right—you look too sweet together!" she -pronounced.</p> - -<p>"But I mean I've got him; I mean I make him squirm"—which words -had somehow the richest gravity of any yet; "but all it does for his -resistance is that he squirms right <i>to</i> me."</p> - -<p>"Oh we won't have any resistance!" Miss Goodenough freely declared. -"Though for all the fight you've got in you still——!" she in -fine altogether backed Mr. Betterman.</p> - -<p>He covered his nephew again as for a final or crushing appraisement, -then going on for Miss Goodenough's benefit: "He tried something a -minute ago to settle me, but I wish you could just have heard how he -expressed himself."</p> - -<p>"It <i>is</i> a pleasure to hear him—when he's good!" She laughed -with a shade of impatience.</p> - -<p>"He's never so good as when he wants to be bad. So there you are, sir!" -the old man said. "You're like the princess in the fairy-tale; you've -only to open your mouth——"</p> - -<p>"And the pearls and diamonds pop out!"—Miss Goodenough, for her -patient's relief, completed his meaning. "So don't try for toads and -snakes!" she promptly went on to Gray. To which she added with still -more point: "And now you must go."</p> - -<p>"Not one little minute more?" His uncle still held him.</p> - -<p>"Not one, sir!" Miss Goodenough decided.</p> - -<p>"It isn't to talk," the old man explained. "I like just to look at -him."</p> - -<p>"So do I," said Miss Goodenough; "but we can't always do everything we -like."</p> - -<p>"No then, Graham—remember that. You'd like to have persuaded me -that I don't know what I mean. But you must understand you haven't."</p> - -<p>His hand had loosened, and Gray got up, turning a face now flushed and a -little disordered from one of them to the other. "I don't pretend to -understand anything!"</p> - -<p>It turned his uncle to their companion. "Isn't he fine?"</p> - -<p>"Of course he's fine," said Miss Goodenough; "but you've quite worn him -out."</p> - -<p>"Have I quite worn you out?" Mr. Betterman calmly inquired.</p> - -<p>As if indeed finished, each thumb now in a pocket of his trousers, the -young man dimly smiled. "I think you must have—quite."</p> - -<p>"Well, let Miss Mumby look after you. He'll find her there?" his uncle -asked of her colleague. And then as the latter showed at this her first -indecision, "Isn't she somewhere round?" he demanded.</p> - -<p>Miss Goodenough had wavered, but as if it really mattered for the friend -there present she responsibly concluded. "Well, no—just for a while." -And she appealed to Gray's indulgence. "She's had to go to Mr. Gaw."</p> - -<p>"Why, is Mr. Gaw sick?" Mr. Betterman asked with detachment.</p> - -<p>"That's what we shall know when she comes back. She'll come back all -right," she continued for Gray's encouragement.</p> - -<p>He met it with proper interest. "I'm sure I hope so!"</p> - -<p>"Well, don't be too sure!" his uncle judiciously said.</p> - -<p>"Oh he has only borrowed her." Miss Goodenough smoothed it down even as -she smoothed Mr. Betterman's sheet, while with the same movement of her -head she wafted Gray to the door.</p> - -<p>"Mr. Gaw," her patient returned, "has borrowed from me before. Mr. Gaw, -Graham——!"</p> - -<p>"Yes sir?" said Gray with the door ajar and his hand on the knob.</p> - -<p>The fine old presence on the pillow had faltered before expression; then -it appeared rather sighingly and finally to give the question up. "Well, -Mr. Gaw's an abyss."</p> - -<p>Gray found himself suddenly responsive. "<i>Isn't</i> he, the strange -man?"</p> - -<p>"The strange man—that's it." This summary description sufficed now -to Mr. Betterman's achieved indifference. "But you've seen him?"</p> - -<p>"Just for an instant."</p> - -<p>"And that was enough?"</p> - -<p>"Well, I don't know." Gray himself gave it up. "You're <i>all</i> so -fiercely interesting!"</p> - -<p>"I think Rosanna's lovely!" Miss Good enough contributed, to all -appearance as an attenuation, while she tucked their companion in.</p> - -<p>"Oh Miss Gaw's quite another matter," our young man still paused long -enough to reply.</p> - -<p>"Well, I don't mean but what she's interesting in her way too," Miss -Goodenough's conscience prompted.</p> - -<p>"Oh he knows all about her. That's all right," Mr. Betterman remarked -for his nurse's benefit.</p> - -<p>"Why of course I know it," this lady candidly answered. "Miss Mumby and -I have had to feel that. I guess he'll want to send her his love," she -continued across to Gray.</p> - -<p>"To Miss Mumby?" asked Gray, his general bewilderment having moments of -aggravation.</p> - -<p>"Why no—<i>she's</i> sure of his affection. To Miss Gaw. Don't you -want," she inquired of her patient, "to send your love to that poor anxious -girl?"</p> - -<p>"Is she anxious?" Gray returned in advance of his uncle.</p> - -<p>Miss Goodenough hung fire but a moment. "Well, I guess I'd be in her -place. But you'll see.</p> - -<p>"Then," said Gray to his host, "if Rosanna's in trouble I'll go to her -at once."</p> - -<p>The old man, at this, once more delivered himself. "She won't be in -trouble—any more than I am. But tell her—tell her——!"</p> - -<p>"Yes, sir"—Gray had again to wait.</p> - -<p>But Miss Goodenough now would have no more of it. "Tell her that -<i>we're</i> about as fresh as we can live!"—the wave of her hand -accompanying which Gray could take at last for his dismissal.</p> - - - - -<h4>III</h4> - - -<p>It was nevertheless not at once that he sought out the way to find his -old friend; other questions than that of at once seeing her hummed for -the next half-hour about his ears—an interval spent by him in still -further contemplative motion within his uncle's grounds. He strolled and -stopped again and stared before him without seeing; he came and went and -sat down on benches and low rocky ledges only to get up and pace afresh; -he lighted cigarettes but to smoke them a quarter out and then chuck -them away to light others. He said to himself that he was enormously -agitated, agitated as never in his life before, but that, strangely -enough, he disliked that condition far less than the menace of it would -have made him suppose. He didn't, however, like it enough to say to himself -"This is happiness!"—as could scarcely have failed if the kind -of effect on his nerves had really consorted with the kind of advantage -that he was to understand his interview with his uncle to have promised -him; so far, that is, as he was yet to understand anything. His -after-sense of the scene expanded rather than settled, became an -impression of one of those great insistent bounties that are not of this -troubled world; the anomaly expressing itself in such beauty and -dignity, with all its elements conspiring together, as would have done -honour to a great page of literary, of musical or pictorial art. The -huge grace of the matter ought somehow to have left him simply -captivated—so at least, all wondering, he hung about there to -reflect; but excess of harmony might apparently work like excess of -discord, might practically be a negation of the idea of the quiet life. -Ignoble quiet he had never asked for—this he could now with assurance -remember; but something in the pitch of his uncle's guarantee of big things, -whatever they were, which should at the same time be pleasant things, -seemed to make him an accomplice in some boundless presumption. In what -light had he ever seen himself that made it proper the pleasant should -be so big for him or the big so pleasant? Suddenly, as he looked at his -watch and saw how the time had passed—time already, didn't it seem, -of his rather standing off and quaking?—it occurred to him that the -last thing he had proposed to himself in the whole connection was to be -either publicly or privately afraid; in the act of noting which he -became aware again of Miss Mumby, who, having come out of the house -apparently to approach him, was now at no great distance. She rose -before him the next minute as in fuller possession than ever of his -fate, and yet with no accretion of reserve in her own pleasure at this.</p> - -<p>"What I want you to do is just to go over to Miss Gaw."</p> - -<p>"It's just what <i>I</i> should like, thank you—and perhaps you'll -be so good as to show me the way." He wasn't quite succeeding in not being -afraid—that a moment later came to him; since if this extraordinary -woman was in touch with his destiny what did such words on his own part -represent but the impulse to cling to her and, as who should say, keep -on her right side? His uncle had spoken to him of Rosanna as -protective—and what better warrant for such a truth than that here -was he thankful on the spot even for the countenance of a person speaking -apparently in her name? All of which was queer enough, verily—since -it came to the sense of his clutching for immediate light, through the now -gathered dusk, at the surge of guiding petticoats, the charity of women -more or less strange. Miss Mumby at once took charge of him, and he -learnt more things still before they had proceeded far. One of these -truths, though doubtless the most superficial, was that Miss Gaw proposed -he should dine with her just as he was—he himself recognising -that with her father suddenly and to all appearance gravely ill it was -no time for vain forms. Wasn't the rather odd thing, none the less, that -the crisis should have suggested her desiring company?—being as it -was so acute that the doctor, Doctor Hatch himself, would even now have -arrived with a nurse, both of which pair of ears Miss Mumby required for -her report of those symptoms in their new patient that had appealed to -her practised eye an hour before. Interesting enough withal was her -explanation to Gray of what she had noted on Mr. Gaw's part as a -consequence of her joining them at that moment under Mr. Betterman's -roof; all the more that he himself had then wondered and -surmised—struck as he was with the effect on the poor man's nerves of -their visitor's announcement that her prime patient had brightened. Mr. -Gaw but too truly, our young man now learned, had taken that news -ill—as, given the state of his heart, any strong shock might -determine a bad aggravation. Such a shock Miss Mumby had, to her lively -regret, administered, though she called Gray's attention to the prompt and -intelligent action of her remorse. Feeling at once responsible she had -taken their extraordinary little subject in charge—with every care -indeed not to alarm him; to the point that, on his absolute refusal to -let her go home with him and his arresting a hack, on the public road, -which happened to come into view empty, the two had entered the vehicle -and she had not lost sight of him till, his earnest call upon his -daughter at Mrs. Bradham's achieved, he had been in effect restored to -his own house. His daughter, who lived with her eyes on his liability to -lapses, was now watching with him, and was well aware, Miss Mumby -averred, of what the crisis might mean; as to whose own due presence of -mind in the connection indeed how could there be better proof than this -present lucidity of her appeal to Mr. Betterman's guest on such a matter -as her prompt thought for sparing him delay?</p> - -<p>"If she didn't want you to wait to dress, it can only be, I guess, to -make sure of seeing you before anything happens," his guide was at no -loss to remark; "and if she <i>can</i> mention dinner while the old -gentleman is—well, <i>as</i> he is—it shows she's not too -beside herself to feel that you'll at any rate want yours."</p> - -<p>"Oh for mercy's sake don't talk of dinner!" Gray pulled up under the -influence of these revelations quite impatiently to request. "That's not -what I'm most thinking of, I beg you to believe, in the midst of such -prodigies and portents." They had crossed the small stretch of road -which separated Mr. Betterman's gate from that of the residence they -were addressed to; and now, within the grounds of this latter, which -loomed there, through vague boskages, with an effect of windows -numerously and precipitately lighted, the forces of our young friend's -consciousness were all in vibration at once. "My wondrous uncle, I don't -mind telling you, since you're so kind to me, has given me more -extraordinary things to think of than I see myself prepared in any way -to do justice to; and if I'm further to understand you that we have -between us, you and I, destroyed this valuable life, I leave you to -judge whether what we may have to face in consequence finds me eager."</p> - -<p>"How do you know it's such a valuable life?" Miss Mumby surprisingly -rejoined; sinking that question, however, in a livelier interest, before -his surprise could express itself. "If she has sent me for you it's -because she knows what she's about, and because I also know what I -am—so that, wanting you myself so much to come, I guess I'd have gone -over for you on my own responsibility. Why, Mr. Fielder, your place is -right here <i>by</i> her at such a time as this, and if you don't already -realise it I'm very glad I've helped you."</p> - -<p>Such was the consecration under which, but a few minutes later, Gray -found himself turning about in the lamp-lit saloon of the Gaws very much -as he had a few hours before revolved at the other house. Miss Mumby had -introduced him into this apartment straight from the terrace to which, -in the warm air, a long window or two stood open, and then had left him -with the assurance that matters upstairs would now be in shape for their -friend to join him at once. It was perhaps because he had rather -inevitably expected matters upstairs—and this in spite of his late -companion's warning word—to assault him in some fulness with Miss -Gaw's appearance at the door, that a certain failure of any such effect -when she did appear had for him a force, even if it was hardly yet to be -called a sense, beyond any air of her advancing on the tide of pain. He -fairly took in, face to face with her, that what she first called for -was no rattle of sound, however considerately pitched, about the -question of her own fear; she had pulled no long face, she cared for no -dismal deference: she but stood there, after she had closed the door -with a backward push that took no account, in the hushed house, of some -possible resonance, she but stood there smiling in her mild extravagance -of majesty, smiling and smiling as he had seen women do as a preface to -bursting into tears. He was to remember afterwards how he had felt for -an instant that whatever he said or did would deprive her of resistance -to an inward pressure which was growing as by the sight of him, but that -she would thus break down much more under the crowned than under the -menaced moment—thanks to which appearance what could be stranger than -his inviting her to clap her hands? Still again was he later to recall -that these hands had been the moment after held in his own while he knew -himself smiling too and saying: "Well, well, well, what wonders and what -splendours!" and seeing that though there was even more of her in -presence than he had reckoned there was somehow less of her in time; as -if she had at once grown and grown and grown, grown in all sorts of ways -save the most natural one of growing visibly older. Such an oddity as -that made her another person a good deal more than her show of not -having left him behind by any break with their common youth could keep -her the same.</p> - -<p>These perceptions took of course but seconds, with yet another on their -heels, to the effect that she had already seen him, and seen him to some -fine sense of pleasure, as himself enormously different—arriving at -that clearness before they had done more than thus waver between the -"fun," all so natural, of their meeting as the frankest of friends and -the quite other intelligence of their being parties to a crisis. It was -to remain on record for him too, and however over-scored, that their -crisis, surging up for three or four minutes by its essential force, -suffered them to stand there, with irrelevant words and motions, very -much as if it were all theirs alone and nobody's else, nobody's more -important, on either side, than they were, and so take a brush from the -wing of personal romance. He let her hands go, and then, if he wasn't -mistaken, held them afresh a moment in repeated celebration, he -exchanged with her the commonest remarks and the flattest and the -easiest, so long as it wasn't speaking but seeing, and seeing more and -more, that mattered: they literally talked of his journey and his -arrival and of whether he had had a good voyage and wasn't tired; they -said "You sit here, won't you?" and "Shan't you be better there?"—they -said "Oh I'm all right!" and "Fancy it's happening after all like this!" -before there even faintly quavered the call of a deeper note. This was -really because the deep one, from minute to minute, was that acute hush -of her so clearly finding him not a bit what she might have built up. He -had grown and grown just as she had, certainly; only here he was for her -clothed in the right interest of it, not bare of that grace as he -fancied her guessing herself in his eyes, and with the conviction -sharply thrust upon him, beyond any humour he might have cultivated, -that he was going to be so right for her and so predetermined, whatever -he did and however he should react there under conditions incalculable, -that this would perhaps more overload his consciousness than ease it. It -could have been further taken for strange, had there been somebody so to -note it, that even when their first vaguenesses dropped what she really -at once made easiest for him was to tell her that <i>the</i> wonderful -thing had come to pass, the thing she had whisked him over for—he put -it to her that way; that it had taken place in conditions too exquisite to -be believed, and that under the bewilderment produced by these she must -regard him as still staggering.</p> - -<p>"Then it's done, then it's done—as I knew it would be if he could -but see you." Flushed, but with her large fan held up so that scarce more -than her eyes, their lids drawn together in the same nearsighted way he -remembered, presented themselves over it, she fairly hunched her high -shoulders higher for emphasis of her success. The more it might have -embarrassed her to consider him without reserve the more she had this -relief, as he took it, of her natural, her helpful blinking; so that -what it came to really for her general advantage was that the fine -closing of the eyes, <i>the</i> fine thing in her big face, but expressed -effective scrutiny. Below her in stature—as various other men, for -that matter, couldn't but be—he hardly came higher than her ear; and -he for the shade of an instant struck himself as a small boy, literally not -of man's estate, reporting, under some research, just to the amplest of -mothers. He had reported to Mr. Betterman, so far as intent candour in -him hadn't found itself distraught, and for the half hour had somehow -affronted the immeasurable; but that didn't at all prevent his now quick -sense of his never in his life having been so watched and waited upon by -the uncharted infinite, or so subject to its operation—since -infinities, at the rate he was sinking in, <i>could</i> apparently operate, -and do it too without growing smaller for the purpose. He cast about, -not at all upright on the small pink satin sofa to which he had -unconsciously dropped; it was for <i>him</i> clearly to grow bigger, as -everything about expressively smiled, smiled absolutely through the -shadow cast by doctors and nurses again, in suggestion of; which, -naturally, was what one would always want to do—but which any failure -of, he after certain moments perfectly felt, wouldn't convert to the -least difference for this friend. How could that have been more -established than by her neglect of his having presently said, out of his -particular need, that he would do anything in reason that was asked of -him, but that he fairly ached with the desire to understand——? -She blinked upon his ache to her own sufficiency, no doubt; but no further -balm dropped upon it for the moment than by her appearing to brood with -still deeper assurance, in her place and her posture, on the beauty of -the accomplished fact, the fact of her performed purpose and her freedom -now but to take care—yes, herself take care—for what would come -of it. She might understand that <i>he</i> didn't—all the way as yet; -but nothing could be more in the line of the mild and mighty mother than -her treating that as a trifle. It attenuated a little perhaps, it just let -light into the dark warmth of her spreading possession of what she had -done, that when he had said, as a thing already ten times on his lips -and now quite having to come out, "I feel some big mistake about me -somehow at work, and want to stop it in time!" she met this with the -almost rude decision of "There's nothing you can stop now, Graham, for -your fate, or our situation, has the gained momentum of a rush that -began ever so far away and that has been growing and growing. It would -be too late even if we wanted to—and you can judge for yourself how -little that's my wish. So here we are, you see, to make the best of it."</p> - -<p>"When you talk of my 'fate,'" he allowed himself almost the amusement of -answering, "you freeze the current of my blood; but when you say 'our -situation,' and that we're in it together, that's a little better, and I -assure you that I shall not for a moment stay in anything, whatever it -may be, in which you're not close beside me. So there you are at any -rate—and I matter at least as much as this, whatever the mistake: -that I have hold of you as tight as ever you've been held in your life, and -that, whatever and <i>whatever</i> the mistake, you've got to see me -through."</p> - -<p>"Well, I took my responsibility years ago, and things came of it"—so -she made reply; "and the other day I took this other, and now <i>this</i> -has come of it, and that was what I wanted, and wasn't afraid of, and am -not afraid of now—like the fears that came to me after the Dresden -time." No more direct than that was her answer to his protest, and what she -subjoined still took as little account of it. "I rather lost them, those -old fears—little by little; but one of the things I most wanted the -other day was to see whether before you here they wouldn't wholly die -down. They're over, they're over," she repeated; "I knew three minutes -of you would do it—and not a ghost of them remains."</p> - -<p>"I can't be anything but glad that you shouldn't have fears—and -it's horrid to me to learn, I assure you," he said, "that I've ever been -the occasion of any. But the extent to which," he then frankly laughed, -"'three minutes' of me seems to be enough for people——!"</p> - -<p>He left it there, just throwing up his arms, passive again as he had -accepted his having to be in the other place; but conscious more and -more of the anomaly of her showing so markedly at such an hour a -preoccupation, and of the very intensest, that should not have her -father for its subject. Nothing could have more represented this than -her abruptly saying to him, without recognition of his point just made, -so far as it might have been a point: "If your impression of your uncle, -and of his looking so fine and being so able to talk to you, makes you -think he has any power really to pick up or to last, I want you to know -that you're wholly mistaken. It has kept him up," she went on, "and the -effect may continue a day or two more—it <i>will</i>, in fact, till -certain things are done. But then the flicker will have dropped—for -he won't want it not to. He'll feel all right. The extraordinary -inspiration, the borrowed force, will have spent itself—it will die -down and go out, but with no pain. There has been at no time much of that," -she said, "and now I'm positively assured there's none. It can't come -back—nothing can but the weakness. It's too lovely," she remarkably -added—"so there indeed and indeed we are."</p> - -<p>To take in these words was to be, after a fashion he couldn't have -expressed, on a basis of reality with her the very rarest and queerest; -so that, bristling as it did with penetrative points, her speech left -him scarce knowing for the instant which penetrated furthest. That she -made no more of anything he himself said than if she had just sniffed it -as a pale pink rose and then tossed it into the heap of his other sweet -futilities, such another heap as had seemed to grow up for him in his -uncle's room, this might have pressed sharpest hadn't something else, -not wholly overscored by what followed, perhaps pricked his -consciousness most. "'It,' you say, has kept him up? May I ask you what -'it' then may so wonderfully have been?"</p> - -<p>She had no more objection to say than she apparently had difficulty. -"Why, his having let me get at him. <i>That</i> was to make the whole -difference."</p> - -<p>It was somehow as much in the note of their reality as anything could -well be; which was perhaps why he could but respond with "Oh I see!" and -remain lolling a little with a sense of flatness—a flatness moreover -exclusively his own.</p> - -<p>So without flatness of <i>her</i> own she didn't even mind his; -something in her brushed quite above it while she observed next, as if it -were the most important thing that now occurred to her: "That of course was -my poor father's mistake." And then as Gray but stared: "I mean the idea -that he <i>can</i> pick up."</p> - -<p>"It's your father's mistake that <i>he</i> can——?"</p> - -<p>She met it as if really a shade bewildered at his own misconception; she -was literally so far off from any vision of her parent in himself, a -philosopher might have said, that it took her an instant to do the -question justice. "Oh no—I mean that your uncle can. It was your own -report of that to him, with Miss Mumby backing you, that put things in -the bad light to him."</p> - -<p>"So bad a light that Mr. Gaw is in danger by it?" This was catching on -of a truth to realities—and most of all to the one he had most to -face. "I've been then at the bottom of that?"</p> - -<p>He was to wonder afterwards if she had very actually gone so far as to -let slip a dim smile for the intensity of his candour on this point, or -whether her so striking freedom from intensity in the general connection -had but suggested to him one of the images that were most in opposition. -Her answer at any rate couldn't have had more of the eminence of her -plainness. "That you yourself, after your uncertainties, should have -found Mr. Betterman surprising was perfectly natural—and how indeed -could you have dreamed that father so wanted him to die?" And then as -Gray, affected by the extreme salience of this link in the chain of her -logic, threw up his head a little for the catching of his breath, her -supreme lucidity, and which was lucidity all in his interest, further -shone out. "Father is indeed ill. He has had these bad times before, but -nothing quite of the present gravity. He has been in a critical state -for months, but one thing has kept him alive—the wish to see your -uncle so far on his way that there could be no doubt. It was the appearance -of doubt so suddenly this afternoon that gave him the shock." She continued -to explain the case without prejudice. "To take it there from you for -possible that Mr. Betterman might revive and that he should have in his -own so unsteady condition to wait was simply what father couldn't -stand."</p> - -<p>"So that I just dealt the blow——?"</p> - -<p>But it was as if she cared too little even to try to make that right. -"He doesn't want, you see, to live after."</p> - -<p>"After having found he is mistaken?"</p> - -<p>She had a faint impatience. "He isn't of course really—since what -I told you of your uncle is true. And he knows that now, having my word -for it."</p> - -<p>Gray couldn't be clear enough about her clearness. "Your word for it -that my uncle has revived but for the moment?"</p> - -<p>"Absolutely. Wasn't my giving him that," Rosanna asked, "a charming -filial touch?"</p> - -<p>This was tremendously much again to take in, but Gray's capacity grew. -"Promising him, you mean, for his benefit, that my uncle <i>shan't</i> -last?"</p> - -<p>The size of it on his lips might fairly, during the instant she looked -at him, have been giving her pleasure. "Yes, making it a bribe to -father's patience."</p> - -<p>"Then why doesn't the bribe act?"</p> - -<p>"Because it comes too late. It was amazing," she pursued, "that, feeling -as he did, he could take that drive to the Bradhams'—and Miss Mumby -was right in perfectly understanding that. The harm was already -done—and there it is."</p> - -<p>She had truly for the whole reference the most astounding tones. "You -literally mean then," said Gray, "that while you sit here with me he's -dying—dying of my want of sense?"</p> - -<p>"You've no want of sense"—she spoke as if this were the point -really involved. "You've a sense the most exquisite—and surely you -had best take in soon rather than late," she went on, "how you'll never be -free not to have on every occasion of life to reckon with it and pay -for it."</p> - -<p>"Oh I say!" was all the wit with which he could at once meet this -charge; but she had risen as she spoke and, with a remark about there -being another matter, had moved off to a piece of furniture at a -distance where she appeared to take something from a drawer unlocked -with a sharp snap for the purpose. When she returned to him she had this -object in her hand, and Gray recognised in it an oblong envelope, -addressed, largely sealed in black, and seeming to contain a voluminous -letter. She kept it while he noted that the seal was intact, and she -then reverted not to the discomfiture she had last produced in him but -to his rueful reference of a minute before that.</p> - -<p>"He's not dying of anything you said or did, or of anyone's act or -words. He's just dying of twenty millions."</p> - -<p>"Twenty millions?" There was a kind of enormity in her very absence of -pomp, and Gray felt as if he had dropped of a sudden, from his height of -simplicity, far down into a familiar relation to quantities -inconceivable—out of which depths he fairly blew and splashed to -emerge, the familiar relation, of all things in the world, being so -strange a one. "<i>That's</i> what you mean here when you talk of money?"</p> - -<p>"That's what we mean," said Rosanna, "when we talk of anything at -all—for of what else but money <i>do</i> we ever talk? He's dying, at -any rate," she explained, "of his having wished to have to do with it on -that sort of scale. Having to do with it consists, you know, of the -things you do <i>for</i> it—which are mostly very awful; and there -are all kinds of consequences that they eventually have. You pay by these -consequences for what you have done, and my father has been for a long -time paying." Then she added as if of a sudden to summarise and dismiss -the whole ugly truth: "The effect has been to dry up his life." Her -eyes, with this, reached away for the first time as in search of -something not at all before her, and it was on the perfunctory note that -she had the next instant concluded. "There's nothing at last left for -him to pay <i>with.</i>"</p> - -<p>For Gray at least, whatever initiations he had missed, she couldn't keep -down the interest. "Mr. Gaw then will <i>leave</i> twenty millions——?"</p> - -<p>"He has already left them—in the sense of having made his will; as -your uncle, equally to my knowledge, has already made his." Something -visibly had occurred to her, and in connection, it might seem, with the -packet she had taken from her drawer. She looked about—there being -within the scene, which was somehow at once blank and replete, sundry small -scattered objects of an expensive negligibility; not one of which, till -now, he could guess, had struck her as a thing of human application. -Human application had sprung up, the idea of selection at once -following, and she unmistakeably but wondered what would be best for her -use while she completed the statement on which she had so strikingly -embarked. "He has left me his whole fortune." Then holding up an article -of which she had immediately afterwards, with decision, proceeded to -possess herself, "Is that a thing you could at all bear?" she -irrelevantly asked. She had caught sight, in her embarrassed way, of -something apparently adapted to her unexplained end, and had left him -afresh to assure herself of its identity, taking up from a table at -first, however, a box in Japanese lacquer only to lay it down -unsatisfied. She had circled thus at a distance for a time, allowing him -now his free contemplation; she had tried in succession, holding them -close to her eyes, several embossed or embroidered superfluities, a -blotting-book covered with knobs of malachite, a silver box, flat, -largely circular and finely fretted, a gold cigar case of absurd -dimensions, of which she played for a moment the hinged lid. Such was -the object on which she puzzlingly challenged him.</p> - -<p>"I could bear it perhaps better if I ever used cigars."</p> - -<p>"You don't smoke?" she almost wailed.</p> - -<p>"Never cigars. Sometimes pipes—but mostly, thank goodness, -cigarettes."</p> - -<p>"Thank the powers then indeed!"—and, the golden case restored to -the table, where she had also a moment before laid her prepared missive, -she went straight to a corner of the mantel-shelf, hesitations dropping -from her, and, opening there a plainer receptacle than any she had yet -touched, turned the next instant with a brace of cigarettes picked out -and an accent she had not yet used. "You <i>are</i> a blessing, -Gray—I'm nowhere without one!" There were matches at hand, and she -had struck a light and applied it, at his lips, to the cigarette passively -received by him, afterwards touching her own with it, almost before he -could wonder again at the oddity of their transition. Their light smoke -curled while she went back to her table; it quickened for him with each -puff the marvel of a domestic altar graced at such a moment by the play of -that particular flame. Almost, to his fine vision, it made Rosanna -different—for wasn't there at once a gained ease in the tone with -which, her sealed letter still left lying on the table, she returned to -that convenience for the pocket of the rich person of which she had -clicked and re-clicked the cover? What strange things, Gray thought, -rich persons had!—and what strange things they did, he might mentally -even have added, when she developed in a way that mystified him but the -more: "I don't mean for your cigars, since you don't use them; but I -want you to have from my hand something in which to keep, with all due -consideration, a form of tribute that has been these last forty-eight -hours awaiting you here, and which, it occurs to me, would just slide -into this preposterous piece of furniture and nestle there till you may -seem to feel you want it." She proceeded to recover the packet and slide -it into the case, the shape of which, on a larger scale, just -corresponded with its own, and then, once more making the lid catch, -shook container and contents as sharply as she might have shaken a -bottle of medicine. "So—there it is; I somehow don't want just to -thrust at you the letter itself."</p> - -<p>"But may I be told what the letter itself <i>is?</i>" asked Gray, who -had followed these movements with interest.</p> - -<p>"Why of course—didn't I mention? Here are safely stowed," she -said, her gesture causing the smooth protective surfaces to twinkle more -brightly before him, "the very last lines (and many there appear to be of -them!) that, if I am not mistaken, my father's hand will have traced. He -wrote them, in your interest, as he considers, when he heard of your -arrival in New York, and, having sealed and directed them, gave them to me -yesterday to take care of and deliver to you. I put them away for the -purpose, and an hour ago, during our drive back from Mrs. Bradham's, he -reminded me of my charge. Before asking Miss Mumby to tell you I should -like to see you I transferred the letter from its place of safety in my -room to the cabinet from which, for your benefit, I a moment ago took -it. I carefully comply, as you see, with my father's request. I know -nothing whatever of what he has written you, and only want you to have -his words. But I want also," she pursued, "to make just this little affair -of them. I want"—and she bent her eyes on the queer costliness, -rubbing it with her pockethandkerchief—"to do what the Lord Mayor of -London does, doesn't he? when he offers the Freedom of the City; present -them in a precious casket in which they may always abide. I want in -short," she wound up, "to put them, for your use, beautifully away."</p> - -<p>Gray went from wonder to wonder. "It isn't then a thing you judge I -should open at once?"</p> - -<p>"I don't care whether you never open it in your life. But you don't, I -can see, like that vulgar thing!" With which having opened her -receptacle and drawn forth from it the subject of her attention she -tossed back to its place on the spread of brocade the former of these -trifles. The big black seal, under this discrimination, seemed to fix -our young man with a sombre eye.</p> - -<p>"Is there any objection to my just looking at the letter now?" And then -when he had taken it and yet was on the instant and as by the mere feel -and the nearer sight, rather less than more conscious of a free -connection with it, "Is it going to be bad for me?" he said.</p> - -<p>"Find out for yourself!"</p> - -<p>"Break the seal?"</p> - -<p>"Isn't it meant to break?" she asked with a shade of impatience.</p> - -<p>He noted the impatience, sounding her nervousness, but saw at the same -time that her interest in the communication, whatever it might be, was -of the scantest, and that she suffered from having to defer to his own. -"If I needn't answer tonight——!"</p> - -<p>"You needn't answer ever."</p> - -<p>"Oh well then it can wait. But you're right—it mustn't just wait -in my pocket."</p> - -<p>This pleased her. "As I say, it must have a place of its own."</p> - -<p>He considered of that. "You mean that when I <i>have</i> read it I may -still want to treasure it?"</p> - -<p>She had in hand again the great fan that hung by a long fine chain from -her girdle, and, flaring it open, she rapidly closed it again, the -motion seeming to relieve her. "I mean that my father has written you at -this end of his days—and that that's all I know about it."</p> - -<p>"You asked him no question——?"</p> - -<p>"As to why he should write? I wouldn't," said Rosanna, "have asked him -for the world. It's many a day since we've done that, either he or -I—at least when a question could have a sense."</p> - -<p>"Thank you then," Gray smiled, "for answering mine." He looked about him -for whatever might still help them, and of a sudden had a light. "Why -the ivory tower!" And while her eyes followed: "That beautiful old thing -on the top of the secretary—happy thought if it <i>is</i> old!" He -had seen at a glance that this object was what they wanted, and, a nearer -view confirming the thought, had reached for it and taken it down. "There -it was waiting for you. <i>Isn't</i> it an ivory tower, and doesn't living -in an ivory tower just mean the most distinguished retirement? I don't want -yet awhile to settle in one myself—though I've always thought it a -thing I should like to come to; but till I do make acquaintance with -what you have for me a retreat for the mystery is pleasant to think of." -Such was the fancy he developed while he delicately placed his happy -find on the closed and polished lid of the grand piano, where the rare -surface reflected the pale rich ivory and his companion could have it -well before her. The subject of this attention might indeed pass, by a -fond conceit, on its very reduced scale, for a builded white-walled -thing, very tall in proportion to the rest of its size and rearing its -head from its rounded height as if a miniature flag might have flown -there. It was a remarkable product of some eastern, probably some -Indian, patience, and of some period as well when patience in such -causes was at the greatest—thanks to which Gray, loving ancient -artistry and having all his life seen much of it, had recognised at a -glance the one piece in the room that presented an interest. It -consisted really of a cabinet, of easily moveable size, seated in a -circular socket of its own material and equipped with a bowed door, -which dividing in the middle, after a minute gold key had been turned, -showed a superposition of small drawers that went upwards diminishing in -depth, so that the topmost was of least capacity. The high curiosity of -the thing was in the fine work required for making and keeping it -perfectly circular; an effect arrived at by the fitting together, -apparently by tiny golden rivets, of numerous small curved plates of the -rare substance, each of these, including those of the two wings of the -exquisitely convex door, contributing to the artful, the total -rotundity. The series of encased drawers worked to and fro of course -with straight sides, but also with small bowed fronts, these made up of -the same adjusted plates. The whole, its infinite neatness exhibited, -proved a wonder of wasted ingenuity, and Rosanna, pronouncing herself -stupid not to have anticipated him, rendered all justice, under her -friend's admiring emphasis, to this choicest of her resources. Of how -they had come by it, either she or her sparing parent, she couldn't at -once bethink herself: on their taking the Newport house for the few -weeks her direction had been general that an assortment of odds and ends -from New York should disperse itself, for mitigation of bleakness, in as -many of the rooms as possible; and with quite different matters to -occupy her since she had taken the desired effect for granted. Her -father's condition had precluded temporary inmates, and with Gray's -arrival also in mind she had been scarce aware of minor importances. "Of -course you know—I knew you <i>would!</i>" were the words in which she -assented to his preference for the ivory tower and which settled for -him, while he made it beautifully slide, the fact that the shallowest of -the drawers would exactly serve for his putting his document to sleep. -So then he slipped it in, rejoicing in the tight fit of the drawer, -carefully making the two divisions of the protective door meet, turning -the little gold key in its lock and finally, with his friend's -permission, attaching the key to a small silver ring carried in his -pocket and serving for a cluster of others. With this question at rest -it seemed at once, and as with an effect out of proportion to the cause, -that a great space before them had been cleared: they looked at each -other over it as if they had become more intimate, and as if now, in the -free air, the enormities already named loomed up again. All of which was -expressed in Gray's next words.</p> - -<p>"May I ask you, in reference to something you just now said, whether my -uncle took action for leaving me money before our meeting could be in -question? Because if he did, you know, I understand less than ever. That -he should want to see me if he was thinking of me, that of course I can -conceive; but that he shouldn't wait till he had seen me is what I find -extraordinary."</p> - -<p>If she gave him the impression of keeping her answer back a little, it -wasn't, he was next to see, that she was not fully sure of it. "He -<i>had</i> seen you."</p> - -<p>"You mean as a small boy?"</p> - -<p>"No—at this distance of time that didn't count." She had another -wait, but also another assurance. "He had seen you in the great fact about -you."</p> - -<p>"And what in the world do you call that?"</p> - -<p>"Why, that you are more out of it all, out of the air he has breathed -all his life and that in these last years has more and more sickened -him, than anyone else in the least belonging to him, that he could -possibly put his hand on."</p> - -<p>He stood before her with his hands in his pockets—he could study -her now quite as she had studied himself. "The extent, Rosanna, to which -you must have answered for me!"</p> - -<p>She met his scrutiny from between more narrowed lids. "I did put it all -to him—I spoke for you as earnestly as one can ever speak for -another. But you're not to gather from it," she thus a trifle awkwardly -smiled, "that I have let you in for twenty millions, or for anything -approaching. He will have left you, by my conviction, all he has; but he -has nothing at all like that. That's all I'm sure of—of no details -what—ever. Even my father doesn't know," she added; "in spite of its -having been for a long time the thing he has most wanted to, most sat -here, these weeks, on some chance of his learning. The truth, I mean, of -Mr. Betterman's affairs."</p> - -<p>Gray felt a degree of relief at the restrictive note on his expectations -which might fairly have been taken, by its signs, for a betrayed joy in -their extent. The air had really, under Rosanna's touch, darkened itself -with numbers; but what she had just admitted was a rift of light. In -this light, which was at the same time that of her allusion to Mr. Gaw's -unappeased appetite, his vision of that gentleman at the other house -came back to him, and he said in a moment: "I see, I see. He tried to -get some notion out of me."</p> - -<p>"Poor father!" she answered to this—but without time for more -questions, as at the moment she spoke the door of the room opened and -Doctor Hatch appeared. He paused, softly portentous, where he stood, and -so he met Rosanna's eyes. He held them a few seconds, and the effect was -to press in her, to all appearance, the same spring our young man had -just touched. "Poor, poor, poor father!" she repeated, but as if brought -back to him from far away. She took in what had happened, but not at -once nor without an effort what it called on her for; so that "Won't you -come up?" her informant had next to ask.</p> - -<p>To this, while Gray watched her, she rallied—"If you'll stay -here." With which, looking at neither of them again, as the Doctor kept the -door open, she passed out, he then closing it on her and transferring -his eyes to Gray—who hadn't to put a question, so sharply did the -raised and dropped hands signify that all was over. The fact, in spite -of everything, startled our young man, who had with his companion a -moment's mute exchange.</p> - -<p>"He has died while I've kept her here?"</p> - -<p>Doctor Hatch just demurred. "You kept her through her having sent for -you to talk to you."</p> - -<p>"Yes, I know. But it's very extraordinary!"</p> - -<p>"You seem to <i>make</i> people extraordinary. You've made your uncle, -you know——!"</p> - -<p>"Yes indeed—but haven't I made <i>him</i> better?" Gray asked.</p> - -<p>The Doctor again for a moment hesitated. "Yes—in the sense that he -must be now at last really resting. But I go back to him."</p> - -<p>"I'll go with you of course," said Gray, looking about for his hat. As -he found it he oddly remembered. "Why she asked me to dinner!"</p> - -<p>It all but amused the Doctor. "You inspire remarkable efforts."</p> - -<p>"Well, I'm incapable of making them." It seemed now queer enough. "I -can't stay to dinner."</p> - -<p>"Then we'll go." With which however. Doctor Hatch was not too -preoccupied to have had his attention, within the minute, otherwise -taken. "What a splendid piece!" he exclaimed in presence of the ivory -tower.</p> - -<p>"It <i>is</i> splendid," said Gray, feeling its beauty again the -brightest note in the strangeness; but with a pang of responsibility to it -taking him too. "Miss Gaw has made me a present of it."</p> - -<p>"Already? You do work them!"—and the good physician fairly grazed -again the act of mirth. "So you'll take it away?"</p> - -<p>Gray paused a moment before his acquisition, which seemed to have begun -to guard, within the very minute, a secret of greater weight. Then "No, -I'll come back to it," he said as they departed by the long window that -opened to the grounds and through which Miss Mumby had brought him in.</p> - - - - -<hr class="r5" /> - - -<h4>BOOK THIRD</h4> - - -<h4>I</h4> - - -<p>"Why I haven't so much as seen him yet," Cissy perforce confessed to her -friend, Mrs. Bradham's friend, everybody's friend, even, already and so -coincidentally, Graham Fielder's; this recipient of her avowal having -motored that day from Boston, after detention there under a necessity of -business and the stress of intolerable heat, but having reached Newport -in time for tea, a bath, a quick "change" and a still quicker impression -of blest refreshment from the fine air and from various other matters. -He had come forth again, during the time left him between these -performed rites and the more formal dressing-hour, in undisguised quest -of our young lady, who had so disposed certain signs of her whereabouts -that he was to waste but few steps in selection of a short path over the -longest stretch of lawn and the mass of seaward rocks forming its limit. -Arriving to spend with the Bradhams as many or as few days as the -conditions to be recognised on the spot might enjoin, this hero, Horton -Vint, had alighted at one of those hours of brilliant bustle which could -show him as all in his element if he chose to appear so, or could -otherwise appeal at once to his perfect aptitude for the artful escape -and the undetected counterplot. But the pitch had by that moment dropped -and the company dispersed, so far as the quarter before him was -concerned: the tennis-ground was a velvet void, the afternoon breeze -conveyed soft nothings—all of which made his occasion more spacious -for Horton. Cissy, from below, her charmingly cool cove, had watchfully -signalled up, and they met afresh, on the firm clear sand where the -drowsy waves scarce even lapsed, with forms of intimacy that the -sequestered spot happily favoured. The sense of waiting understood and -crowned gave grace to her opened arms when the young man, as he was -still called, erect, slim, active, brightly refreshed and, like herself, -given the temperature, inconsiderably attired, first showed himself -against the sky; it had cost him but a few more strides and steps, an -easy descent, to spring to her welcome with the strongest answering -emphasis. They met as on ground already so prepared that not an -uncertainty, on either side, could make reunion less brave or confidence -less fine; they had to effect no clearance, to stand off from no risk; -and, observing them thus in their freedom, you might well have asked -yourself by what infallible tact they had mastered for intercourse such -perfect reciprocities of address. You would certainly have concluded to -their entire confidence in these. "With a dozen people in the house it -is luck," Horton had at once appreciatively said; but when their -fellow-visitors had been handled between them for a minute or so only to -collapse again like aproned puppets on removal of pressure from the -squeak, he had jumped to the question of Gray Fielder and to frank -interest in Cissy's news of him. This news, the death of Mr. Betterman -that morning, quite sufficiently explained her inability to produce the -more direct impression; that worthy's nephew and heir, in close and more -and more quickened attendance on him during the previous days, had been -seen as yet, to the best of her belief, by no one at all but dear -Davey—not counting of course Rosanna Gaw, of the fact of whose own -bereavement as well Horton was naturally in possession, and who had made -it possible, she understood, for their friend to call on Graham.</p> - -<p>"Oh Davey has called on Graham?" Horton was concerned to ask while they -sat together on a rude worn slab. "What then, if he has told you, was -his particular idea?"</p> - -<p>"Won't his particular idea," Cissy returned, "be exactly the one he -won't have told me? What he did speak to me of yesterday morning, and -what I told him I thought would be beautiful of him, was his learning by -inquiry, in case your friend could see him, whether there was any sort -of thing he could do for him in his possible want of a man to put a hand -on. Because poor Rosanna, for all one thinks of her," said the girl, -"isn't exactly a man."</p> - -<p>Horton's attention was deeply engaged; his hands, a little behind him, -rested, as props to his slight backward inclination, on the convenient -stone; his legs, extended before him, enabled him to dig in his heels a -little, while his eyes, attached to the stretch of sea commanded by -their rocky retreat, betrayed a fixed and quickened vision. Rich in fine -lines and proportions was his handsome face—with scarce less, -moreover, to be said of his lean, light and long-drawn, though so much more -pointed and rounded figure. His features, after a manner of their own, -announced an energy and composed an array that his expression seemed to -disavow, or at least to be indifferent to, and had the practical effect -of toning down; as if he had been conscious that his nose, of the -bravest, strongest curve and intrinsically a great success, was too bold -and big for its social connections, that his mouth protested or at least -asserted more than he cared to back it up to, that his chin and jaw were -of too tactless an importance, and his fine eyes, above all, which -suggested choice samples of the more or less precious stone called -aquamarine, too disposed to darken with the force of a straight -look—so that the right way to treat such an excess of resource had -become for him quite the incongruous way, the cultivation of every sign and -gage that liberties might be taken with him. He seemed to keep saying that -he was not, temperamentally and socially, in his own exaggerated style, and -that a bony structure, for instance, as different as possible from the -one he unfortunately had to flaunt, would have been no less in harmony -with his real nature than he sought occasion to show it was in harmony -with his conduct. His hard mouth sported, to its visible relief and the -admiration of most beholders, a beautiful mitigating moustache; his eyes -wandered and adventured as for fear of their very own stare; his smile -and his laugh went all lengths, you would almost have guessed, in order -that nothing less pleasant should occupy the ground; his chin advanced -upon you with a grace fairly tantamount to the plea, absurd as that -might have seemed, that it was in the act of receding. Thus you gained the -impression—or could do so if your fancy quickened to him—that -he would perhaps rather have been as unwrought and unfinished as so many -monstrous men, on the general peopled scene of those climes, appeared -more and more to show themselves, than appointed to bristle with a group -of accents that, for want of a sense behind them, could attach -themselves but to a group of blanks. The sense behind the outward man in -Horton Vint bore no relation, it incessantly signified, to his being -<i>importantly</i> goodlooking; it was in itself as easily and freely human -a sense, making as much for personal reassurance, as the appeal of -opportunity in an enjoying world could ever have drawn forth and with -the happy appearance of it confirmed by the whimsical, the quite ironic, -turn given by the society in which he moved to the use of his name. It -could never have been so pronounced and written Haughty if in spite of -superficial accidents his charming clever humility and sociability -hadn't thoroughly established themselves. He lived in the air of jokes, -and yet an air in which bad ones fell flat; and there couldn't have been -a worse one than to treat his designation as true.</p> - -<p>It might have been, at the same time, scarce in the least as a joke that -he presently said, in return for the remark on Cissy's part last -reported: "Rosanna is surely enough of a man to be much more of one than -Davey. However," he went on, "we agree, don't we? about the million of -men it would have taken to handle Gussy. A Davey the more or the less, -or with a shade more or less of the different sufficiency, would have made -no difference in <i>that</i> question"—which had indeed no interest -for them anyhow, he conveyed, compared with the fun apparently proposed by -this advent of old Gray. That, frankly, was to him, Horton, as amusing a -thing as could have happened—at a time when if it hadn't been for -Cissy's herself happening to be for him, by exception, a comfort to -think of, there wasn't a blest thing in his life of the smallest -interest. "It hadn't struck me as probable at all, this revulsion of the -old man's," he mentioned, "and though Fielder must be now an awfully -nice chap, whom you'll like and find charming, I own I didn't imagine he -would come so tremendously forward. Over there, simply with his tastes, -his 'artistic interests,' or literary ones, or whatever—I mean his -array of intellectual resources and lack of any others—he was well -enough, by my last impression, and I liked him both for his decent life -and ways and for his liking me, if you can believe it, so -extraordinarily much as he seemed to. What the situation appears most to -mean, however, is that of a sudden he pops into a real light, a great -blazing light visible from afar—which is quite a different affair. It -can't not mean at least all sorts of odd things—or one has a right to -wonder if it <i>mayn't</i> mean them." And Horton might have been taken up -for a minute of silence with his consideration of some of these -glimmering possibilities; a moment during which Cissy Foy maintained -their association by fairly, by quite visibly breathing with him in -unison—after a fashion that testified more to her interest than any -"cutting in" could have done. It would have been clear that they were -far beyond any stage of association at which their capacity for interest -in the contribution of either to what was between them should depend -upon verbal proof. It depended in fact as little on any other sort, such -for instance as searching eyes might invoke; she hadn't to look at her -friend to follow him further—she but looked off to those spaces where -his own vision played, and it was by pressing him close <i>there</i> that -she followed. Her companion's imagination, by the time he spoke again, -might verily have travelled far.</p> - -<p>"What comes to me is just the wonder of whether such a change of fortune -may possibly not spoil him—he was so right and nice as he was. I -remember he used really to exasperate me almost by seeming not to have -wants, unless indeed it was by having only those that could be satisfied -over there as a kind of matter of course and that were those I didn't -myself have—in any degree at least that could make up for the -non-satisfaction of my others. I suppose it amounted really," said -Horton, "to the fact that, being each without anything to speak of in -our pockets, or then any prospect of anything, he accepted that because -he happened to like most the pleasures that were not expensive. I on my -side raged at my inability to meet or to cultivate expense—which -seemed to me good and happy, quite the thing most worth while, in itself: -as for that matter it still seems. 'La lecture et la promenade,' which old -Roulet, our pasteur at Neuchâtel used so to enjoin on us as the highest -joys, really appealed to Gray, to all appearance, in the sense in which -Roulet regarded, or pretended to regard, them—once he could have -pictures and music and talk, which meant of course pleasant people, thrown -in. He could go in for such things on his means—ready as he was -to do all his travelling on foot (I wanted as much then to do all mine -on horseback,) and to go to the opera or the play in the shilling seats -when he couldn't go in the stalls. I loathed so everything <i>but</i> the -stalls—the stalls everywhere in life—that if I couldn't have it -that way I didn't care to have it at all. So when I think it strikes me I -must have liked him very much not to have wanted to slay him—for I -don't remember having given way at any particular moment to threats or -other aggressions. That may have been because I felt he rather -extravagantly liked me—as I shouldn't at all wonder at his still -doing. At the same time if I had found him beyond a certain point -objectionable his showing he took me for anything wonderful would have -been, I think," the young man reflected, "but an aggravation the more. -However that may be, I'm bound to say, I shan't in the least resent his -taking me for whatever he likes now—if he can at all go on with it -himself I shall be able to hold up my end. The dream of my life, if you -must know all, dear—the dream of my life has been to be admired, -<i>really</i> admired, admired for all he's worth, by some awfully rich -man. Being admired by a rich woman even isn't so good—though I've -tried for that too, as you know, and equally failed of it; I mean in the -sense of their being ready to do it for all they are worth. I've only had -it from the poor, haven't I?—and we've long since had to recognise, -haven't we? how little that has done for either of us." So Horton -continued—so, as if incited and agreeably, irresistibly inspired, he -played, in the soft stillness and the protected nook, before the small salt -tide that idled as if to listen, with old things and new, with actualities -and possibilities, on top of the ancientries, that seemed to want but a bit -of talking of in order to flush and multiply. "There's one thing at any -rate I'll be hanged if I shall allow," he wound up; "I'll be hanged if what -we may do for him shall—by any consent of mine at least—spoil -him for the old relations without inspiring him for the new. He shan't -become if I can help it as beastly vulgar as the rest of us."</p> - -<p>The thing was said with a fine sincere ring, but it drew from Cissy a -kind of quick wail of pain. "Oh, oh, oh—what a monstrous idea. -Haughty, that he possibly <i>could</i>, ever!"</p> - -<p>It had an immediate, even a remarkable effect; it made him turn at once -to look at her, giving his lightest pleasantest laugh, than which no -sound of that sort equally manful had less of mere male stridency. Then -it made him, with a change of posture, shift his seat sufficiently -nearer to her to put his arm round her altogether and hold her close, -pressing his cheek a moment, with due precautions, against her hair. -"That's awfully nice of you. We <i>will</i> pull something off. Is what -you're thinking of what your friend out there <i>dans le temps</i>, the -stepfather, Mr. Wendover, was it? told you about him in that grand -manner?"</p> - -<p>"Of course it is," said Cissy in lucid surrender and as if this truth -were of a flatness almost to blush for. "Don't you know I fell so in -love with Mr. Northover, whose name you mispronounce, that I've kept -true to him forever, and haven't been really in love with you in the -least, and shall never be with Gray himself, however much I may want to, -or you perhaps may even try to make me?—any more than I shall ever be -with anyone else. What's inconceivable," she explained, "is that anyone -that dear delicious man thought good enough to talk of to me as he -talked of his stepson should be capable of anything in the least -disgusting in any way."</p> - -<p>"I see, I see." It made Horton, for reasons, hold her but the -closer—yet not withal as if prompted by her remarks to affectionate -levity. It was a sign of the intercourse of this pair that, move each -other though they might to further affection, and therewith on occasion -to a congruous gaiety, they treated no cause and no effect of that sort -as waste; they had somehow already so worked off, in their common -interest, all possible mistakes and vain imaginings, all false starts -and false pursuits, all failures of unanimity. "Why then if he's really -so decent, not to say so superior," Haughty went on, "won't it be the best -thing in the world and a great simplification for you to fall—that -is for you to be—in love with him? That will be better for me, you -know, than if you're not; for it's the impression evidently made on you -by the late Northover that keeps disturbing my peace of mind. I feel, -though I can't quite tell you why," he explained, "that I'm never going -to be in the least jealous of Gray, and probably not even so much as -envious; so there's your chance—take advantage of it all the way. -Like him at your ease, my dear, and God send he shall like you! Only be -sure it's for himself you do it—and for your own self; as you make -out your possibilities, de part et d'autre, on your getting nearer to -them."</p> - -<p>"So as to be sure, you mean," Cissy inquired, "of not liking him for his -money?"</p> - - - - -<h4>II</h4> - - -<p>He waited a moment, and if she had not immediately after her words -sighed "Oh dear, oh dear!" in quite another, that is a much more -serious, key, the appearance would perhaps have been that for once in a -blue moon she had put into his mind a thought he couldn't have. He -couldn't have the thought that it was of the least importance she should -guard herself in the way she mentioned; and it was in the air, the very -next thing, that she couldn't so idiotically have strayed as to mean to -impute it. He quickly enough made the point that what he preferred was -her not founding her interest in Gray so very abjectly on another man's -authority—given the uncanny fact of the other man's having cast upon -her a charm which time and even his death had done so little to abate. -Yes, the late Northover had clearly had something about him that it -worried a fellow to have her perpetually rake up. <i>There</i> she was in -peril of jealousy—his jealousy of the queer Northover ghost; unless -indeed it was she herself who was queerest, ridden as her spirit seemed -by sexagenarian charms! He could look after her with Gray—they were -at one about Gray; what would truly alienate them, should she persist, -would be his own exposure to comparison with the memory of a rococo -Briton he had no arms to combat. Which extravagance of fancy had of -course after a minute sufficiently testified to the clearance of their -common air that invariably sprang from their feeling themselves again -together and finding once more what this came to—all under sublime -palpability of proof. The renewed consciousness did perhaps nothing for -their difficulties as such, but it did everything for the interest, the -amusement, the immediate inspiration of their facing them: there was in -that such an element of their facing each other and knowing, each time -as if they had not known it before, that this had absolute beauty. It -had unmistakably never had more than now, even when their freedom in it -had rapidly led them, under Cissy's wonderment, to a consideration of -whether a happy relation with their friend (he was already thus her -friend too, without her ever having seen him!) mightn't have to count -with some inevitable claim, some natural sentiment, asserted and enjoyed -on Rosanna's part, not to speak of the effect on Graham himself of that -young woman's at once taking such an interest in him and coming in for -such a fortune.</p> - -<p>"In addition to which who shall pretend to deny," the girl earnestly -asked, "that Rosanna has in herself the most extraordinary charm?"</p> - -<p>"Oh you think she has extraordinary charm?"</p> - -<p>"Of course I do—and so do you: don't be absurd! She's simply -superb," Cissy expounded, "in her own original way, which no other woman -over here—except me a little perhaps!—has so much as a -suspicion of anything to compare with; and which, for all we know, -constitutes a luxury entirely at Graham's service." Cissy required but a -single other look at it all to go on: "I shouldn't in the least wonder if -they were already engaged."</p> - -<p>"I don't think there's a chance of it," Haughty said, "and I hold that -if any such fear is your only difficulty you may be quite at your ease. -Not only do I so see it," he went on, "but I know <i>why</i> I do."</p> - -<p>Cissy just waited. "You consider that because she refused Horton Vint -she'll decline marriage altogether?"</p> - -<p>"I think that throws a light," this gentleman smiled—"though it -isn't <i>all</i> my ground. She turned me down, two years ago, as utterly -as I shall ever have been turned in my life—and if I chose so to look -at it the experience would do for me beautifully as that of an humiliation -served up to a man in as good form as he need desire. That it was, that -it still is when I live it through again; that it will probably remain, -for my comfort—in the sense that I'm likely never to have a worse. -I've had my dose," he figured, "of that particular black draught, and I've -got the bottle there empty on the shelf."</p> - -<p>"And yet you signify that you're all the same glad——?" Cissy -didn't for the instant wholly follow.</p> - -<p>"Well, it <i>all</i> came to me then; and that it did all come is what I -have the advantage of now—I mean, you see, in being able to reassure -you as I do. I had some wonderful minutes with her—it didn't take -long," Haughty laughed. "We saw in those few minutes, being both so -horribly intelligent; and what I recognised has remained with me. What she -did is her own affair—and that she could so perfectly make it such, -without leaving me a glimmer of doubt, is what I have, as I tell you, to -blink at forever. I may ask myself if you like," he pursued, "why I should -'mind' so much if I saw even at the moment that she wasn't at any rate -going to take someone else—and if you do I shall reply that I didn't -need that to make it bad. It was bad enough just in itself. My point is, -however," Horton concluded, "that I can give you at least the benefit of -my feeling utterly sure that Gray will have no chance. She's in the -dreadful position—and more than ever of course now—of not being -able to believe she can be loved for herself."</p> - -<p>"You mean because <i>you</i> couldn't make her believe it?" asked Cissy -after taking this in.</p> - -<p>"No—not that, for I didn't so much as try. I didn't—and it -was awfully superior of me, you know—approach her at all on that -basis. That," said Horton, "is where it cuts. The basis was that of my own -capacity only—my capacity to serve her, in every particular, with -every aptitude I possess in the world, and which I could see she <i>saw</i> -I possess (it was given me somehow to send that home to her!) without a -hair's breadth overlooked. I shouldn't have minded her taking me so for -impossible, blackly impossible, if she had done it under an illusion; but -she really believed in me as a general value, quite a first-rate -value—<i>that</i> I stood there and didn't doubt. And yet she -practically said 'You ass!'"</p> - -<p>His encircling arm gained, for response to this, however, but the -vibration of her headshake—without so much as any shudder at the -pain he so vividly imaged. "She practically said that she was already -<i>then</i> in love with Mr. Graham, and you wouldn't have had a better -chance had a passion of your own stuck out of you. If I thought she -didn't admire you," Cissy said, "I shouldn't be able to do with her at -all—it would be too stupid of her; putting aside her not accepting -you, I mean—for a woman can't accept <i>every</i> man she admires. -I suppose you don't at present object," she continued, "to her admiring -Mr. Graham enough to account for anything; especially as it accounts so -for her having just acted on his behalf with such extraordinary success. -Doesn't that make it out for him," she asked, "that he's admired by -twenty millions <i>plus</i> the amount that her reconciliation of him -with his uncle just in time to save it, without an hour to spare, will -represent for his pocket? We don't know what that lucky amount may -be——"</p> - -<p>"No, but we more or less <i>shall</i>"—Horton took her -straight up. "Of course, without exaggeration, that will be -interesting—even though it will be but a question, I'm quite -certain, of comparatively small things. Old Betterman—there are -people who practically know, and I've talked with them—isn't going -to foot up to any faint likeness of what Gaw does. That, however, has -nothing to do with it: all that is relevant—since I quite allow -that, speculation for speculation, our association in this sort -represents finer fun than it has yet succeeded in doing in other -sorts—all that's relevant is that when you've seen Gray you mayn't -be in such a hurry to figure him as a provoker of insatiable passions. -Your insidious Northover has, as you say, worked you up, but wait a -little to see if the reality corresponds."</p> - -<p>"He showed me a photograph, my insidious Northover," Cissy promptly -recalled; "he was <i>naïf</i> enough, poor dear, for that. In fact he made -me a present of several, including one of himself; I owe him as well two -or three other mementos, all of which I've cherished."</p> - -<p>"What was he up to anyway, the old corrupter of your -youth?"—Horton seemed really to wonder. "Unless it was that you -simply reduced him to infatuated babble."</p> - -<p>"Well, there are the photographs and things to show," she answered -unembarrassed—"though I haven't them with me here; they're put away -in New York. His portrait's extremely good-looking."</p> - -<p>"Do you mean Mr. Northover's own?"</p> - -<p>"Oh <i>his</i> is of course quite beautiful. But I mean Mr. -Fielder's—at his then lovely age. I remember it," said Cissy, "as a -nice, nice face."</p> - -<p>Haughty on his side indulged in the act of memory, concluding after an -instant to a head-shake. "He isn't at all remarkable for looks; but -putting his nice face at its best, granting that he <i>has</i> a high -degree of that advantage, do you see Rosanna so carried away by it as to -cast everything to the winds for him?"</p> - -<p>Cissy weighed the question. "We've seen surely what she has been carried -away enough to do."</p> - -<p>"She has had other reasons—independent of headlong passion. And -remember," he further argued—"if you impute to her a high degree of -that sort of sensibility—how perfectly proof she was to <i>my</i> -physical attractions, which I declare to you without scruple leave the very -brightest you may discover in Gray completely in the shade."</p> - -<p>Again his companion considered. "Of course you're dazzlingly handsome; -but are you, my dear, after all—I mean in appearance—so very -<i>interesting?</i>"</p> - -<p>The inquiry was so sincere that it could be met but in the same spirit. -"Didn't you then find me so from the first minute you ever looked at -me?"</p> - -<p>"We're not talking of me," she returned, "but of people who happen to -have been subjects less predestined and victims less abject. What," she -then at once went on, "<i>is</i> Gray's appearance 'anyway'? Is he black, -to begin with, or white, or betwixt and between? Is he little or big or -neither one thing or t'other? Is he fat or thin or of 'medium weight'? -There are always such lots to be told about people, and never a creature -in all the wide world to tell. Even Mr. Northover, when I come to think -of it, never mentioned is size.</p> - -<p>"Well, you <i>wouldn't</i> mention it," Horton amiably argued. The -appeal, he showed withal, stirred him to certain recoveries. "And I should -call him black—black as to his straight thick hair, which I see -rather distinctively 'slick' and soigné—the hair of a good little boy -who never played at things that got it tumbled. No, he's only very middling -tall; in fact so very middling," Haughty made out, "that it probably -comes to his being rather short. But he has neither a hump nor a limp, -no marked physical deformity of any sort; has in fact a kind of futile -fidgetty quickness which suggests the little man, and the nervous and -the active and the ready; the ready, I mean, for anything in the way of -interest and talk—given that the matter isn't too big for him. The -'active,' I say, though at the same time," he noted, "I ask myself what -the deuce the activity will have been <i>about.</i>"</p> - -<p>The girl took in these impressions to the effect of desiring still more -of them. "Doesn't he happen then to have eyes and things?"</p> - -<p>"Oh yes"—Horton bethought himself—"lots and lots of eyes, -though not perhaps so many of other things. Good eyes, fine eyes, in fact I -think anything whatever you may require in the way of eyes."</p> - -<p>"Then clearly they're not 'black': I never require black ones," she -said, "in any conceivable connection: his eyes—blue-grey, or grey-blue, -whichever you may call it, and far and away the most charming kind when -one doesn't happen to be looking into your glorious green ones—his -satisfactory eyes are what will more than anything else have done the -business. They'll have done it so," she went on, "that if he isn't red -in the face, which I defy him to be, his features don't particularly -matter—though there's not the least reason either why he should have -mean or common ones. In fact he hasn't them in the photograph, and what -are photographs, the wretched things, but the very truth of life?"</p> - -<p>"He's not red in the face," Haughty was able to state—"I think of -him rather as of a pale, very pale, clean brown; and entirely unaddicted," -he felt sure, "to flushing or blushing. What I do sort of remember in -the feature way is that his teeth though good, fortunately, as they're -shown a good deal, are rather too small and square; for a man's, that -is, so that they make his smile a trifle——"</p> - -<p>"A trifle irresistible of course," Cissy broke in—"through their -being, in their charming form, of the happy Latin model; extremely like my -own, be so good as to notice for once in your life, and not like the usual -Anglo-Saxon fangs. You're simply describing, you know," she added, -"about as gorgeous a being as one could wish to see."</p> - -<p>"It's not I who am describing him—it's you, love; and ever so -delightfully." With which, in consistency with that, he himself put a -question. "What does it come to, by the way, in the sense of a -moustache? Does he, or <i>doesn't</i> he after all, wear one? It's odd I -shouldn't remember, but what does the photograph say?"</p> - -<p>"It seems odd indeed <i>I</i> shouldn't"—Cissy had a moment's -brooding. She gave herself out as ashamed. "Fancy my not remembering if the -photograph is <i>moustachue!</i>"</p> - -<p>"It can't be then <i>very</i>" Horton contributed—the point was -really so interesting.</p> - -<p>"No," Cissy tried to settle, "the photograph can't be so very -moustachue."</p> - -<p>"His moustaches, I mean, if he wears 'em, can't be so very prodigious; -or one could scarcely have helped noticing, could one?"</p> - -<p>"Certainly no one can ever have failed to notice yours—and -therefore Gray's, if he has any, must indeed be very inferior. And yet -he can't be shaved like a sneak-thief—or like all the world here," -she developed; "for I won't have him with nothing at all any more than -I'll have him with anything prodigious, as you say; which is worse than -nothing. When I say I won't have him with nothing," she explained, "I -mean I won't have him subject to the so universally and stupidly applied -American law that every man's face without exception shall be scraped as -clean, as <i>glabre</i>, as a fish's—which it makes so many of -them so much resemble. I won't have him so," she said, "because I won't -have him so idiotically gregarious and without that sense of differences -in things, and of their relations and suitabilities, which such -exhibitions make one so ache for. If he's gregarious to that sort -of tune we must renounce our idea—that is you must drop -yours—of my working myself up to snatch him from the arms of -Rosanna. I must believe in him, for that, I must see him at least in my -own way," she pursued; "believing in myself, or even believing in you, -is a comparative detail. I won't have him bristle with horrid demagogic -notes. I shouldn't be able to act a scrap on that basis."</p> - -<p>It was as if what she said had for him the interest at once of the most -intimate and the most enlarged application; it was in fact as if she -alone in all the world could touch him in such fine ways—could amuse -him, could verily instruct him, to anything like such a tune. "It seems -peculiarly a question of bristles if it all depends on his moustache. -Our suspense as to that, however, needn't so much ravage us," Haughty -added, "when we remember that Davey, who, you tell me, will by this time -have seen him, can settle the question for us as soon as we meet at -dinner. It will by the same stroke then settle that of the witchcraft -which has according to your theory so bedevilled poor dear Rosanna's -sensibility—leading it such a dance, I mean, and giving such an -empire to certain special items of our friend's 'personality,' that the -connection was practically immediate with his brilliant status."</p> - - - - -<h4>III</h4> - - -<p>Horton, looking at his watch, had got up as he spoke—which Cissy -at once also did under this recall of the lapse of their precious minutes. -There was a point, however, left for her to make; which she did with the -remark that the item they had been discussing in particular couldn't -have been by itself the force that had set their young woman originally -in motion, inasmuch as Gray wouldn't have had a moustache when a small -boy or whatever, and as since that young condition, she understood, -Rosanna hadn't again seen him. A proposition to which Haughty's assent -was to remain vague, merged as it suddenly became in the cry of "Hello, -here he is!" and a prompt gay brandish of arms up at their host Bradham, -arrayed for the evening, white-waistcoated and buttonholed, robustly -erect on an overlooking ledge and explaining his presence, from the -moment it was thus observed, by calling down that Gussy had sent him to -see if she wasn't to expect them at dinner. It was practically a summons -to Cissy, as the girl easily recognised, to leave herself at least ten -minutes to dress decently—in spite of the importance of which she so -challenged Davey on another score that, as a consequence, the good -gorgeous man, who shone with every effect of the bath and every resource -of the toilet, had within the pair of minutes picked out such easiest -patent-leather steps as would enable him to convict the companions of a -shameless dawdle. She had had time to articulate for Horton's benefit, -with no more than due distinctness, that he must have seen them, and -Horton had as quickly found the right note and the right wit for the -simple reassurance "Oh Davey——!" As occupants of a place of -procrastination that they only were not such fools as to leave unhaunted -they frankly received their visitor, any impulse in whom to sprinkle -stale banter on their search for solitude would have been forestalled, -even had it been supposable of so perfect a man of the world, by the -instant action of his younger guest's strategic curiosity.</p> - -<p>"Has he, please, just <i>has</i> he or no, got a moustache?"—she -appealed as if the fate of empires depended on it.</p> - -<p>"I've been telling her," Horton explained, "whatever I can remember of -Gray Fielder, but she won't listen to anything if I can't first be sure -as to <i>that.</i> So as I want her enormously to like him, we both hang, -you see, on your lips; unless you call it, more correctly, on his."</p> - -<p>Davey's evening bloom opened to them a dense but perfectly pathless -garden of possibilities; out of which, while he faced them, he left them -to pluck by their own act any bright flower they sufficiently desired to -reach. Wonderful during the few instants, between these flagrant -world-lings, the exchange of fine recognitions. It would have been hard -perhaps to say of them whether it was most discernible that Haughty and -Cissy trusted most his intelligence or his indifference, and whether he -most applauded or ignored the high perfection of their assurance. What -was testified to all round, at all events—<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>"Ah then he <i>is</i> as 'odd' as I was sure—in spite of Haughty's -perverse theory that we shall find him the flattest of the flat!"</p> - -<p>It might have been at Haughty's perverse theory that Davey was most -moved to stare—had he not quickly betrayed, instead of this, a marked -attention to the girl herself. "Oh you little wonder and joy!"</p> - -<p>"She is a little wonder and joy," Horton said—that at any rate -came out clear.</p> - -<p>"What you are, my boy, I'm not pretending to say," Davey returned in -answer to this; "for I don't accept her account of your vision of Gray -as throwing any light on it at all."</p> - -<p>"On his judgment of Mr. Fielder, do you mean," Cissy earnestly asked, -"or on your evidently awful opinion of his own dark nature?"</p> - -<p>"Haughty knows that I lose myself in his dark nature, at my spare -moments, and with wind enough on to whistle in that dark, very much as -if I had the fine excitement of the Forêt de Bondy to deal with. He's -well aware that I know no greater pleasure of the imagination than that -sort of interest in him—when I happen also to have the time and the -nerve. Let these things serve me now, however, only to hurry you up," -Davey went on; "and to say that I of course had with our fortunate -friend an impressive quarter of an hour—which everyone will want to -know about, so that I must keep it till we sit down. But the great thing -is after all for yourself, Haughty," he added—"and you had better -know at once that he particularly wants to see you. He'll be glad of you at -the very first moment——"</p> - -<p>But Horton had already taken him easily up. "Of course I know, my dear -man, that he particularly wants to see me. He has written me nothing -else from the moment he arrived."</p> - -<p>"He has written you, you wretch," Cissy at once extravagantly -echoed—"he has written you all sorts of things and you haven't so -much as told me?"</p> - -<p>"He hasn't written me all sorts of things"—Horton directed this -answer to Davey alone—"but has written me in such straight confidence -and friendship that Eve been wondering if I mayn't go round to him this -evening."</p> - -<p>"Gussy will no doubt excuse you for that purpose with the utmost joy," -Davey rejoined—"though I don't think I advise you to ask her leave if -you don't want her at once to insist on going with you. Go to him alone, -very quietly—and with the happy confidence of doing him good."</p> - -<p>It had been on Cissy that, for his part, Davey had, in speaking, rested -his eyes; and it might by the same token have been for the benefit of -universal nature, suspended to listen over the bosom of the deep, that -Horton's lips phrased his frank reaction upon their entertainer's words. -"Well then, ye powers, the amount of good that I shall undertake——!"</p> - -<p>Davey Bradham and Cissy Foy exchanged on the whole ground for a moment a -considerable smile; his share in which, however, it might exactly have -been that prompted the young woman's further expression of their -intelligence. "It's too charming that he yearns so for Haughty—and -too sweet that Haughty can now rush to him at once." To which she then -appended in another tone: "One takes for granted of course that Rosanna -was with him."</p> - -<p>Davey at this but continued to bloom and beam; which gave Horton, even -with a moment's delay, time to assist his better understanding. "She -doesn't even yet embrace the fact, tremendously as I've driven it into -her, that if Rosanna had been there he couldn't have breathed my name."</p> - -<p>This made Davey, however, but throw up derisive hands; though as with an -impatient turn now for their regaining the lawn. "My dear man, Rosanna -breathes your name with all the force of her lungs!"</p> - -<p>Horton, jerking back his head for the bright reassurance, laughed out -with amusement. "What a jolly cue then for my breathing of hers! I'll -roar it to all the echoes, and everything will be well. But what one's -talking about," he said, "is the question of Gray's naming <i>me.</i>" He -looked from one of his friends to the other, and then, as gathering them -into the interest of it: "I'll bet you a fiver that he doesn't at any -rate speak to me of Miss Gaw."</p> - -<p>"Well, what will that prove?" Davey asked, quite easy about it and -leading the way up the rocks.</p> - -<p>"In the first place how much he thinks of her," said Cissy, who followed -close behind. "And in the second that it's ten to one Haughty will find -her there."</p> - -<p>"I don't care if I do—not a scrap!" Horton also took his way. -"I don't care for anything now but the jolly fun, the jolly -fun——!" He had committed it all again, by the time they -reached the cliff's edge, to the bland participating elements.</p> - -<p>"Oh the treat the poor boy is evidently going to stand us -<i>all!</i>"—well, was something that Davey, rather out of breath -as they reached the lawn again and came in sight of the villa, had just -yet no more than those light words for. He was more definite in -remarking immediately after to Cissy that Rosanna would be as little at -the other house that evening as she had been at the moment of his own -visit, and that, since the nurses and other outsiders appeared to have -dispersed, there would be no one to interfere with Gray's free welcome -of his friend. The girl was so attentive for this that it made them -pause again while she brought out in surprise: "There's nobody else -there, you mean then, to watch with the dead——?"</p> - -<p>It made Mr. Bradham for an instant wonder, Horton, a little apart from -them now and with his back turned, seeming at the same moment, and -whether or no her inquiry reached his ear, struck with something that -had pulled him up as well and that made him stand and look down in -thought. "Why, I suppose the nephew' must be himself a sort of watcher," -Davey found himself not other than decently vague to suggest.</p> - -<p>But it scarce more contented Cissy than if the point had really -concerned her. She appeared indeed to question the more, though her eyes -were on Haughty's rather brooding back while she did so. "Then if he -does stay in the room, when he comes out of it to see people——?"</p> - -<p>Her very drop seemed to present the state of things to which the poor -deceased was in that case left; for which, however, her good host -declined to be responsible. "I don't suppose he comes out for so many."</p> - -<p>"He came out at any rate for you." The sense of it all rather remarkably -held her, and it might have been some communication of this that, -overtaking Horton at his slight distance, determined in him the impulse -to leave them, without more words, and walk by himself to the house. "We -don't surround such occasions with any form or state of -imagination—scarcely with any decency, do we?" Cissy adventured while -observing Haughty's retreat. "I should like to think for him of a -catafalque and great draped hangings—I should like to think for him -of tall flambeaux in the darkened room, and of relays of watchers, sisters -of charity or suchlike, surrounding the grand affair and counting their -beads."</p> - -<p>Davey's rich patience had a shrug. "The grand affair, my dear child, is -<i>their</i> affair, over there, and not mine; though when you indulge in -such fancies 'for him,' I can't but wonder who it is you mean."</p> - -<p>"Who it is——?" She mightn't have understood his difficulty.</p> - -<p>"Why the dead man or the living!"</p> - -<p>They had gone on again; Horton had, with a quickened pace, disappeared; -and she had before answering cast about over the fair face of the great -house, paler now in the ebb of day, yet with dressing-time glimmers from -upper windows flushing it here and there like touches of pink paint in -an elegant evening complexion. "Oh I care for the dead man, I'm afraid, -only because it's the living who appeals. I don't want him to like it."</p> - -<p>"To like——?" Davey was again at a loss. "What on earth?"</p> - -<p>"Why all that ugliness and bareness, that poverty of form."</p> - -<p>He had nothing but derision for her here. "It didn't occur to me at all -to associate him with the idea of poverty."</p> - -<p>"The place must all the same be hideous," she said, "and the conditions -mean—for him to prowl about in alone. It comes to me," she further -risked, "that if Rosanna <i>isn't</i> there, as you say, she quite ought to -be—and that in her place I should feel it no more than decent to go -over and sit with him."</p> - -<p>This appeared to strike Davey in a splendid number of lights—which, -however, though collectively dazzling, allowed discriminations. "It -perhaps bears a little on the point that she has herself just sustained -a grave bereavement—with her offices to her own dead to think of -first. That was present to me in your talk a moment since of Haughty's -finding her."</p> - -<p>"Very true"—it was Cissy's practice, once struck, ever amusedly to -play with the missile: "it is of course extraordinary that those bloated -old <i>richards</i>, at one time so associated, should have flickered out -almost at the same hour. What it comes to then," she went on, "is that Mr. -Gray might be, or perhaps even ought to be, condoling over at the other -house with her. However, it's their own business, and all I really care for -is that he should be so keen as you say about seeing Haughty. I just -delight," she said, "in his being keen about Haughty."</p> - -<p>"I'm glad it satisfies you then," Davey returned—"for I was on the -point of suggesting that with the sense of his desolation you just -expressed you might judge your own place to be at once at his side."</p> - -<p>"That would have been helpful of you—but I'm content, dear -Davey," she smiled. "We're all devoted to Haughty—but," she added -after an instant, "there's just this. Did Mr. Graham while you were -there say by chance a word about the likes of <i>me?</i>"</p> - -<p>"Well, really, no—our short talk didn't take your direction. That -would have been for me, I confess," Davey frankly made bold to add, "a -trifle unexpected."</p> - -<p>"I see"—Cissy did him the justice. "But that's a little, I think, -because you don't know——!" It was more, however, than with her -sigh she could tell him.</p> - -<p>"Don't know by this time, my dear, and after all I've been through," he -nevertheless supplied, "what the American girl always so sublimely takes -for granted?"</p> - -<p>She looked at him on this with intensity—but that of compassion -rather than of the conscious wound. "Dear old Davey, il n'y a que vous for -not knowing, by this time, as you say, that I've notoriously nothing in -common with the creature you mention. I loathe," she said with her -purest gentleness, "the American girl."</p> - -<p>He faced her an instant more as for a view of the whole incongruity; -then he fetched, on his side, a sigh which might have signified, at her -choice, either that he was wrong or that he was finally bored. "Well, -you do of course brilliantly misrepresent her. But we're all"—he -hastened to patch it up—"unspeakably corrupt."</p> - -<p>"That would be a fine lookout for Mr. Fielder if it were true," she -judiciously threw off.</p> - -<p>"But as you're a judge you know it isn't?"</p> - -<p>"It's not as a judge I know it, but as a victim. I don't say we don't do -our best," she added; "but we're still of an innocence, an -innocence——!</p> - -<p>"Then perhaps," Davey offered, "Mr. Fielder will help us; unless he -proves, by your measure, worse than ourselves!"</p> - -<p>"The worse he may be the better; for it's not possible, as I see him," -she said, "that he doesn't know."</p> - -<p>"Know, you mean," Davey blandly wondered, "how wrong we are—to be -so right?"</p> - -<p>"Know more on <i>every</i> subject than all of us put together!" she -called back at him as she now hurried off to dress.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a>There is a gap here in the MS., with the following note by -the author: "It is the security of the two others with him that is -testified to; but I mustn't make any sort of spread about it or about -anything else here now, and only put Davey on some non-committal reply -to the question addressed him, such as keeps up the mystery or ambiguity -or suspense about Gray, his moustache and everything else, so as to -connect properly with what follows. The real point is—<i>that</i> -comes back to me, and it is in essence enough—that he pleads he -doesn't remember, didn't notice, at all; and thereby oddly enough can't -say. It will come to me right once I get into it. One sees that Davey plays -with them."</p></div> - - - - -<h4>IV</h4> - - -<p>Horton Vint, on being admitted that evening at the late Mr. Betterman's, -walked about the room to which he had been directed and awaited there -the friend of his younger time very much as we have seen that friend -himself wait under stress of an extraordinary crisis. Horton's sense of -a crisis might have been almost equally sharp; he was alone for some -minutes during which he shifted his place and circled, indulged in wide -vague movements and vacuous stares at incongruous objects—the place -being at once so spacious and so thickly provided—quite after the -fashion in which Gray Fielder's nerves and imagination had on the same -general scene sought and found relief at the hour of the finest suspense -up to that moment possessing him. Haughty too, it would thus have -appeared for the furtherance of our interest, had imagination and -nerves—had in his way as much to reflect upon as we have allowed -ourselves to impute to the dying Mr. Betterman's nephew. No one was -dying now, all that was ended, or would be after the funeral, and the -nephew himself was surely to be supposed alive, in face of great -sequels, including preparations for those obsequies, with an intensity -beyond all former experience. This in fact Horton had all the air of -recognising under proof as soon as Gray advanced upon him with both -hands out; he couldn't not have taken in the highly quickened state of -the young black-clad figure so presented, even though soon and -unmistakably invited to note that his own visit and his own presence had -much to do with the quickening. Gray was in complete mourning, which had -the effect of making his face show pale, as compared with old aspects of -it remembered by his friend—who was, it may be mentioned, afterwards -to describe him to Cissy Foy as looking, in the conditions, these including -the air of the big bedimmed palace room, for all the world like a sort -of "happy Hamlet." For so happy indeed our young man at once proclaimed -himself at sight of his visitor, for so much the most interesting thing -that had befallen or been offered him within the week did he take, by -his immediate testimony, his reunion with this character and every -element of the latter's aspect and tone, that the pitch of his -acclamation clearly had, with no small delay, to drop a little under -some unavoidable reminder that they met almost in the nearest presence -of death. Was the reminder Horton's own, some pull, for decorum, of a -longer face, some expression of his having feared to act in undue haste on -the message brought him by Davey?—which might have been, we may say, -in view of the appearance after a little that it was Horton rather than -Gray who began to suggest a shyness, momentary, without doubt, and -determined by the very plenitude of his friend's welcome, yet so far -incongruous as that it was not his adoption of a manner and betrayal of -a cheer that ran the risk of seeming a trifle gross, but quite these -indications on the part of the fortunate heir of the old person awaiting -interment somewhere above. He could only have seen with the lapse of the -moments that Gray was going to be simple—admirably, splendidly -simple, one would probably have pronounced it, in estimating and comparing -the various possible dangers; but the simplicity of subjects tremendously -educated, tremendously "cultivated" and cosmopolitised, as Horton would -have called it, especially when such persons were naturally rather -extra-refined and ultra-perceptive, was a different affair from the -crude candour of the common sort; the consequence of which apprehensions -and reflections must have been, in fine, that he presently recognised in -the product of "exceptional advantages" now already more and more -revealed to him such a pliability of accent as would easily keep -judgment, or at least observation, suspended. Gray wasn't going to be at -a loss for any shade of decency that didn't depend, to its -inconvenience, on some uncertainty about a guest's prejudice; so that -once the air was cleared of awkwardness by that perception, exactly, in -Horton's ready mind that he and his traditions, his susceptibilities, in -fact (of all the queer things!) his own very simplicities and, -practically, stupidities were being superfluously allowed for and -deferred to, and that this, only this, was the matter, he should have -been able to surrender without a reserve to the proposed measure of -their common rejoicing. Beautiful might it have been to him to find his -friend so considerately glad of him that the spirit of it could consort -to the last point with any, with every, other felt weight in the -consciousness so attested; in accordance with which we may remark that -continued embarrassment for our gallant caller would have implied on his -own side, or in other words deep within his own spirit, some obscure -source of confusion.</p> - -<p>What distinguishably happened was thus that he first took Graham for -exuberant and then for repentant, with the reflection accompanying this -that he mustn't, to increase of subsequent shame, have been too open an -accomplice in mere jubilation. Then the simple sense of his restored -comrade's holding at his disposal a general confidence in which they -might absolutely breathe together would have superseded everything else -hadn't his individual self-consciousness been perhaps a trifle worried -by the very pitch of so much openness. Open, not less generously so, was -what he could himself have but wanted to be—in proof of which we may -conceive him insist to the happy utmost, for promotion of his comfort, -on those sides of their relation the working of which would cast no -shadow. They had within five minutes got over much ground—all of -which, however, must be said to have represented, and only in part, the -extent of Gray's requisition of what he called just elementary human help. -He was in a situation at which, as he assured his friend, he had found -himself able, those several days, but blankly and inanely to stare. He -didn't suppose it had been his uncle's definite design to make an idiot -of him, but that seemed to threaten as the practical effect of the dear -man's extraordinary course. "You see," he explained, bringing it almost -pitifully out, "he appears to have left me a most monstrous fortune. I -mean"—for under his appeal Haughty had still waited a little—"a -really tremendous lot of money."</p> - -<p>The effect of the tone of it was to determine in Haughty a peal of -laughter quickly repressed—or reduced at least to the intention of -decent cheer. "He 'appears,' my dear man? Do you mean there's an -ambiguity about his will?"</p> - -<p>Gray justified his claim of vagueness by having, with his animated eyes -on his visitor's, to take an instant or two to grasp so technical an -expression. "No—not an ambiguity. Mr. Crick tells me that he has -never in all his experience seen such an amount of property disposed of in -terms so few and simple and clear. It would seem a kind of masterpiece -of a will."</p> - -<p>"Then what's the matter with it?" Horton smiled. "Or at least what's the -matter with <i>you?</i>—who are so remarkably intelligent and clever?"</p> - -<p>"Oh no, I'm not the least little bit clever!" Gray in his earnestness -quite excitedly protested. "I haven't a single ray of the intelligence -that among you all here clearly passes for rudimentary. But the luxury -of you, Haughty," he broke out on a still higher note, "the luxury, the -pure luxury of you!"</p> - -<p>Something of beauty in the very tone of which, some confounding force in -the very clearness, might it have been that made Horton himself gape for -a moment even as Gray had just described his own wit as gaping. They had -first sat down, for hospitality offered and accepted—though with no -production of the smokable or the drinkable to profane the general -reference; but the agitation of all that was latent in this itself had -presently broken through, and by the end of a few moments we might -perhaps scarce have been able to say whether the host had more set the -guest or the guest more the host in motion. Horton Vint had everywhere -so the air of a prime social element that it took in any case, and above -all in any case of the spacious provision or the sumptuous setting, a -good deal of practically combative proof to reduce the implications of -his presence to the minor right. He <i>might</i> inveterately have been -master or, in quantitative terms, owner—so could he have been taken -for the most part as offering you the enjoyment of anything fine that -surrounded him: this in proportion to the scale of such matters and to -any glimpse of that sense of them in you which was what came nearest to -putting you on his level. All of which sprang doubtless but from the -fact that his relation to things of expensive interest was so much at -the mercy of his appearance; representing as it might be said to do a -contradiction of the law under which it is mostly to be observed, in our -modernest conditions, that the figure least congruous with scenic -splendour is the figure awaiting the reference. More references than may -here be detailed, at any rate, would Horton have seemed ready to gather -up during the turns he had resumed his indulgence in after the original -arrest and the measurements of the whole place practically determined -for him by Gray's own so suggestive revolutions. It was positively now -as if these last had all met, in their imperfect expression, what that -young man's emotion was in the act of more sharply attaining to—the -plain conveyance that if Horton had in his friendliness, not to say his -fidelity, presumed to care to know, this disposition was as naught -beside the knowledge apparently about to drench him. They were there, -the companions, in their second brief arrest, with everything good in -the world that he might have conceived or coveted just taking for him -the radiant form of precious knowledges that he must be so obliging as -to submit to. Let it be fairly inspiring to us to imagine the acuteness -of his perception during these minutes of the possibilities of good -involved; the refinement of pleasure in his seeing how the advantage -thrust upon him would wear the dignity and grace of his consenting -unselfishly to learn—inasmuch as, quite evidently, the more he -learnt, and though it should be ostensibly and exclusively about Mr. -Betterman's heir, the more vividly it all would stare at him as a marked -course of his own. Wonderful thus the little space of his feeling the great -wave set in motion by that quiet worthy break upon him out of Gray's face, -Gray's voice, Gray's contact of hands laid all appealingly and -affirmingly on his shoulders, and then as it retreated, washing him -warmly down, expose to him, off in the intenser light and the uncovered -prospect, something like his entire personal future. Something -extraordinarily like, yes, could he but keep steady to recognise it -through a deepening consciousness, at the same time, of how he was more -than matching the growth of his friend's need of him by growing there at -once, and to rankness, under the friend's nose, all the values to which -this need supplied a soil.</p> - -<p>"Well, I won't pretend I'm not glad you don't adopt me as pure -ornament—glad you see, I mean, a few connections in which one may -perhaps be able, as well as certainly desirous, to be of service to you. -Only one should honestly tell you," Horton went on, "that people wanting -to help you will spring up round you like mushrooms, and that you'll be -able to pick and choose as even a king on his throne can't. Therefore, -my boy," Haughty said, "don't exaggerate my modest worth."</p> - -<p>Gray, though releasing him, still looked at him hard—so hard -perhaps that, having imagination, he might in an instant more have felt -it go down too deep. It hadn't done that, however, when "What I want of -you above all is exactly that <i>you</i> shall pick and choose" was -merely what at first came of it. And the case was still all of the -rightest as Graham at once added: "You see 'people' are exactly my -difficulty—I'm so mortally afraid of them, and so equally sure -that it's the last thing you are. If I want you for myself I want you -still more for others—by which you may judge," said Gray, "that -I've cut you out work."</p> - -<p>"That you're mortally afraid of people is, I confess," Haughty answered, -"news to me. I seem to remember you, on the contrary, as so remarkably -and—what was it we used to call it?—so critico-analytically -interested in 'em."</p> - -<p>"That's just it—I am so beastly interested! Don't you therefore -see," Gray asked, "how I may dread the complication?"</p> - -<p>"Dread it so that you seek to work it off on another?"—and Haughty -looked about as if he would after all have rather relished a cigarette.</p> - -<p>Clearly, none the less, this awkwardness was lost on his friend. "I want -to work off on you, Vinty, every blest thing that you'll let me; and -when you've seen into my case a little further my reasons will so jump -at your eyes that I'm convinced you'll have patience with them."</p> - -<p>"I'm not then, you think, too beastly interested -myself——? I've got such a free mind, you mean, and such a -hard heart, and such a record of failure to have been any use at all to -myself, that I <i>must</i> be just the person, it strikes you, to save -you all the trouble and secure you all the enjoyment?" That inquiry -Horton presently made, but with an addition ere Gray could answer. "My -difficulty for myself, you see, has always been that I also am by my -nature too beastly interested."</p> - -<p>"Yes"—Gray promptly met it—"but you like it, take that -easily, immensely enjoy it and are not a bit afraid of it. You carry it off -and you don't pay for it."</p> - -<p>"Don't you make anything," Horton simply went on, "of my being for -instance so uncannily interested in yourself?"</p> - -<p>Gray's eyes again sounded him. "<i>Are</i> you really and -truly?—to the extent of its not boring you?" But with all he had -even at the worst to take for granted he waited for no reassurance. -"You'll be so sorry for me that I shall wring your heart and you'll -assist me for common pity."</p> - -<p>"Well," Horton returned, a natural gaiety of response not wholly kept -under, "how can I absurdly make believe that pitying you, if it comes to -that, won't be enough against nature to have some fascination? Endowed -with every advantage, personal, physical, material, moral, in other -words, brilliantly clever, inordinately rich, strikingly handsome and -incredibly good, your state yet insists on being such as to nip in the -bud the hardy flower of envy. What's the matter with you to bring that -about would seem, I quite agree, well worth one's looking into—even -if it proves, by its perversity or its folly, something of a trial to one's -practical philosophy. When I pressed you some minutes ago for the reason -of your not facing the future with a certain ease you gave as that -reason your want of education and wit. But please understand," Horton -added, "that I've no time to waste with you on sophistry that isn't so -much as plausible." He stopped a moment, his hands in his pockets, his -head thrown all but extravagantly back, so that his considering look -might have seemed for the time to descend from a height designed a -little to emphasise Gray's comparative want of stature. That young man's -own eyes remained the while, none the less, unresentfully raised; to -such an effect indeed that, after some duration of this exchange, the -bigger man's fine irony quite visibly shaded into a still finer, and -withal frankly kinder, curiosity. Poor Gray, with a strained face and an -agitation but half controlled, breathed quick and hard, as from inward -pressure, and then, renouncing choice—there were so many things to -say—shook his head, slowly and repeatedly, after a fashion that -discouraged levity. "My dear boy," said his friend under this sharper -impression, "you do take it hard." Which made Graham turn away, move -about in vagueness of impatience and, still panting and still hesitating -for other expression, approach again, as from a blind impulse, the big -chimneypiece, reach for a box that raised a presumption of cigarettes -and, the next instant, thrust it out in silence at his visitor. The -latter's welcome of the motion, his prompt appropriation of relief, was -also mute; with which he found matches in advance of Gray's own notice -of them and had a light ready, of which our young man himself partook, -before the box went back to its shelf. Odd again might have been for a -protected witness of this scene—which of course is exactly what you -are invited to be—the lapse of speech that marked it for the several -minutes. Horton, truly touched now, and to the finer issue we have -glanced at, waited unmistakably for the sign of something more important -than his imagination, even at its best, could give him, and which, not -less conceivably, would be the sort of thing he himself hadn't signs, -either actual or possible, for. He waited while they did the place at -last the inevitable small violence—this being long enough to make him -finally say: "Do you mean, on your honour, that you don't <i>like</i> what -has happened to you?"</p> - -<p>This unloosed then for Gray the gate of possible expression. "Of course -I like it—that is of course I try to. I've been trying here, day -after day, as hard as ever a decent man can have tried for anything; and -yet I remain, don't you see? a wretched little worm."</p> - -<p>"Deary, deary me," stared Horton, "that you should have to bring up your -appreciation of it from such depths! You go in for it as you would for -the electric light or the telephone, and then find half-way that you -can't stand the expense and want the next-door man somehow to combine -with you?"</p> - -<p>"That's exactly it, Vinty, and you're the next-door man!"—Gray -embraced the analogy with glee. "I <i>can't</i> stand the expense, and -yet I don't for a moment deny I should immensely enjoy the convenience. -I want," he asseverated, "to like my luck. I want to go in for it, as -you say, with every inch of any such capacity as I have. And I want to -believe in my capacity; I want to work it up and develop it—I -assure you on my honour I do. I've lashed myself up into feeling that if -I don't I shall be a base creature, a worm of worms, as I say, and fit -only to be utterly ashamed. But that's where you come in. You'll help me -to develop. To develop my capacity I mean," he explained with a wondrous -candour.</p> - -<p>Horton was now, small marvel, all clear faith; even, the cigarettes -helping, to the verge again of hilarity. "Your capacity—I see. Not so -much your property itself."</p> - -<p>"Well"—Gray considered of it—"what will my property be -<i>except</i> my capacity?" He spoke really as for the pleasure of -seeing very finely and very far. "It won't if I don't like it, that is -if I don't <i>understand</i> it, don't you see? enough to make it count. -Yes, yes, don't revile me," he almost feverishly insisted: "I do want it -to count for all it's worth, and to get everything out of it, to the -very last drop of interest, pleasure, experience, whatever you may call -it, that such a possession can yield. And I'm going to keep myself up to -it, to the top of the pitch, by every art and prop, by every helpful -dodge, that I can put my hand on. You see if I don't. I breathe -defiance," he continued, with his rare radiance, "at any suspicion or -doubt. But I come back," he had to add, "to my point that it's you that -I essentially most depend on."</p> - -<p>Horton again looked at him long and frankly; this subject of appeal -might indeed for the moment have been as embarrassed between the various -requisitions of response as Gray had just before shown himself. But as -the tide could surge for one of the pair so it could surge for the -other, and the large truth of what Horton most grasped appeared as soon -as he had spoken. "The name of your complaint, you poor dear delightful -person, or the name at least of your necessity, your predicament and -your solution, is marriage to a wife at short order. I mean of course to -an amiable one. <i>There</i>, so obviously, is your aid and your prop, -there are the sources of success for interest in your fortune, and for the -whole experience and enjoyment of it, as you can't find them elsewhere. -What are you but just 'fixed' to marry, and what is the sense of your -remarks but a more or less intelligent clamour for it?"</p> - -<p>Triumphant indeed, as we have said, for lucidity and ease, was this -question, and yet it had filled the air, for its moment, but to drop at -once by the practical puncture of Gray's perfect recognition. "Oh of -course I've thought of that—but it doesn't meet my case at all." Had -he been capable of disappointment in his friend he might almost have been -showing it now.</p> - -<p>Horton had, however, no heat about it. "You mean you absolutely don't -want a wife—in connection, so to speak, with your difficulties; or -with the idea, that is, of their being resolved into blessings?"</p> - -<p>"Well"—Gray was here at least all prompt and clear—"I -keep down, in that matter, so much as I can any <i>a priori</i> or mere -theoretic want. I see my possibly marrying as an effect, I mean—I -somehow don't see it at all as a cause. A cause, that is"—he -easily worked it out—"of my getting other things right. It may be, -in conditions, the greatest rightness of all; but I want to be sure of -the conditions."</p> - -<p>"The first of which is, I understand then"—for this at least had -been too logical for Haughty not to have to match it—"that you should -fall so tremendously in love that you won't be able to help yourself."</p> - -<p>Graham just debated; he was all intelligence here. "Falling tremendously -in love—the way you <i>grands amoureux</i> talk of such things!"</p> - -<p>"Where do you find, my boy," Horton asked, "that I'm a grand -amoureux?"</p> - -<p>Well, Gray had but to consult his memory of their young days together; -there was the admission, under pressure, that he might have confused the -appearances. "They were at any rate always up and at you—which seems -to have left me with the impression that your life is full of them."</p> - -<p>"Every man's life is full of them that has a door or a window they can -come in by. But the question's of yourself," said Haughty, "and just -exactly of the number of such that you'll have to keep open or shut in -the immense façade you'll now present."</p> - -<p>Our young man might well have struck him as before all else -inconsequent. "I shall present an immense façade?"—Gray, from his -tone of surprise, to call it nothing more, would have thought of this for -the first time.</p> - -<p>But Horton just hesitated. "You've great ideas if you see it yourself as -a small one."</p> - -<p>"I don't see it as any. I decline," Gray remarked, "to <i>have</i> a -façade. And if I don't I shan't have the windows and doors."</p> - -<p>"You've got 'em already, fifty in a row"—Haughty was -remorseless—"and it isn't a question of 'having': you <i>are</i> a -façade; stretching a mile right and left. How can you not be when I'm -walking up and down in front of you?"</p> - -<p>"Oh you walk up and down, you <i>make</i> the things you pass, and -you can behave of course if you want like one of the giants in uniform, -outside the big shops, who attend the ladies in and out. In fact," Gray -went on, "I don't in the least judge that I <i>am</i>, or can be at all -advertised as, one of the really big. You seem all here so hideously -rich that I needn't fear to count as extraordinary; indeed I'm very -competently assured I'm by all your standards a very moderate affair. -And even if I were a much greater one"—he gathered force—"my -appearance of it would depend only on myself. You can have means and not -be blatant; you can take up, by the very fact itself, if you happen to -be decent, no more room than may suit your taste. I'll be hanged if I -consent to take up an inch more than suits mine. Even though not of the -truly bloated I've at least means to be quiet. Every one among -us—I mean among the moneyed—isn't a monster on exhibition." -In proof of which he abounded. "I know people myself who aren't."</p> - -<p>Horton considered him with amusement, as well apparently as the -people that he knew! "Of course you may dig the biggest hole in the -ground that ever was dug—spade-work comes high, but you'll have -the means—and get down into it and sit at the very bottom. Only -your hole will become then <i>the</i> feature of the scene, and we shall -crowd a thousand deep all round the edge of it."</p> - -<p>Gray stood for a moment looking down, then faced his guest as with a -slight effort. "Do you know about Rosanna Gaw?" And then while Horton, -for reasons of his own, failed at once to answer: "<i>She</i> has come in -or millions——"</p> - -<p>"Twenty-two and a fraction," Haughty said at once. "Do you mean that she -sits, like Truth, at the bottom of a well?" he asked still more -divertedly.</p> - -<p>Gray had a sharp gesture. "If there's a person in the world whom I don't -call a façade——!"</p> - -<p>"You don't call <i>her</i> one?"—Haughty took it right up. And he -added as for very compassion: "My poor man, my poor man——!"</p> - -<p>"She loathes self-exhibition; she loathes being noticed; she loathes -every form of publicity." Gray quite flushed for it.</p> - -<p>Horton went to the mantel for another cigarette, and there was that in -the calm way of it that made his friend, even though helping him this -time to a light, wait in silence for his word. "She does more than -that"—it was brought quite dryly out. "She loathes every separate -dollar she possesses."</p> - -<p>Gray's sense of the matter, strenuous though it was, could just stare at -this extravagance of assent; seeing however, on second thoughts, what -there might be in it. "Well then if what I have is a molehill beside her -mountain, I can the more easily emulate her in standing back."</p> - -<p>"What you have is a molehill?" Horton was concerned to inquire.</p> - -<p>Gray showed a shade of guilt, but faced his judge. "Well—so I -gather."</p> - -<p>The judge at this lost patience. "Am I to understand that you positively -<i>cultivate</i> vagueness and water it with your tears?"</p> - -<p>"Yes"—the culprit was at least honest—"I should rather say -I do. And I want you to let me. Do let me."</p> - -<p>"It's apparently more then than Miss Gaw does!"</p> - -<p>"Yes"—Gray again considered; "she seems to know more or less what -she's worth, and she tells me that I can't even begin to approach it."</p> - -<p>"Very crushing of her!" his friend laughed. "You 'make the pair', as -they say, and you must help each other much. Her 'loathing' it exactly -is—since we know all about it!—that gives her a frontage as -wide as the Capitol at Washington. Therefore your comparison proves -little—though I confess it would rather help us," Horton pursued, "if -you could seem, as you say, to have asked one or two of the questions -that I should suppose would have been open to you.</p> - -<p>"Asked them of Mr. Crick, you mean?"</p> - -<p>"Well, yes—if you've nobody else, and as you appear not to have -been able to have cared to look at the will yourself."</p> - -<p>Something like a light of hope, at this, kindled in Gray's face. "Would -<i>you</i> care to look at it, Vinty?"</p> - -<p>The inquiry gave Horton pause. "Look at it now, you mean?"</p> - -<p>"Well—whenever you like. I think," said Gray, "it must be in the -house."</p> - -<p>"You're not sure even of <i>that?</i>" his companion wailed.</p> - -<p>"Oh I know there are two"—our young man had coloured. "I don't mean -different ones, but copies of the same," he explained; "one of which Mr. -Crick must have."</p> - -<p>"And the other of which"—Horton pieced it together—"is the -one you offer to show me?"</p> - -<p>"Unless, unless——!" and Gray, casting about, bethought -himself. "Unless <i>that</i> one——!" With his eyes on his -friend's he still shamelessly wondered.</p> - -<p>"Unless that one has happened to get lost," Horton tenderly suggested, -"so that you can't after all produce it?"</p> - -<p>"No, but it may be upstairs, upstairs——" Gray continued to -turn this over. "I think it <i>is</i>," he then recognised, "where I had -perhaps better not just now disturb it."</p> - -<p>His recognition was nothing, apparently, however, to the clear quickness -of Horton's. "It's in your uncle's own room?"</p> - -<p>"The room," Gray assented, "where he lies in death while we talk here." -This, his tone suggested, sufficiently enjoined delay.</p> - -<p>Horton's concurrence was immediately such that, once more turning off, -he measured, for the intensity of it, half the room. "I can't advise you -without the facts that you're unable to give," he said as he came back, -"but I don't indeed invite you to go and rummage in that presence." He -might have exhaled the faintest irony, save that verily by this time, -between these friends—by which I mean of course as from one of them -only, the more generally assured, to the other—irony would, to an at -all exhaustive analysis, have been felt to flicker in their medium. Gray -might in fact, on the evidence of his next words, have found it just -distinguishable.</p> - - - - -<h4>V</h4> - - -<p>"We do talk here while he lies in death"—they had in fine all -serenity for it. "But the extraordinary thing is that my putting myself -this way at my ease—and for that matter putting you at -yours—is exactly what the dear man made to me the greatest point -of. I haven't the shade of a sense, and don't think I ever shall have, -of not doing what he wanted of me; for what he wanted of me," our -particular friend continued, "is—well, so utterly unconventional. -He would <i>like</i> my being the right sort of well-meaning idiot that -you catch me in the very fact of. I warned him, I sincerely, -passionately warned him, that I'm not fit, in the smallest degree, for -the use, for the care, for even the most rudimentary comprehension, of a -fortune; and that exactly it was which seemed most to settle him. He -wanted me clear, to the last degree, not only of the financial brain, -but of any sort of faint germ of the money-sense whatever—down to -the very lack of power, if he might be so happy (or if <i>I</i> might!) -to count up to ten on my fingers. Satisfied of the limits of my -arithmetic he passed away in bliss."</p> - -<p>To this, as fairly lucid, Horton had applied his understanding. "You -can't count up to ten?"</p> - -<p>"Not all the way. Still," our young man smiled, "the greater inspiration -may now give me the lift."</p> - -<p>His guest looked as if one might by that time almost have doubted. But -it was indeed an extraordinary matter. "How comes it then that your want -of arithmetic hasn't given you a want of order?—unless indeed I'm -mistaken and you <i>were</i> perhaps at sixes and sevens?"</p> - -<p>"Well, I think I was at sixes—though I never got up to sevens! -I've never had the least rule or method; but that has been a sort of thing -I could more or less cover up—from others, I mean, not from myself, -who have always been helplessly ashamed of it. It hasn't been the disorder -of extravagance," Gray explained, "but the much more ignoble kind, the -wasteful thrift that doesn't really save, that simply misses, and that -neither enjoys things themselves nor enjoys their horrid little -equivalent of hoarded pence. I haven't needed to count far, the fingers -of one hand serving for my four or five possessions; and also I've kept -straight not by taking no liberties with my means, but by taking none -with my understanding of them. From fear of counting wrong, and from -loathing of the act of numerical calculation, and of the humiliation of -having to give it up after so few steps from the start, I've never -counted at all—and that, you see, is what has saved me. That has been -my sort of disorder—which you'll agree is the most pitiful of all."</p> - -<p>Horton once more turned away from him, but slowly this time, not in -impatience, rather with something of the preoccupation of a cup-bearer -whose bowl has been filled to the brim and who must carry it a distance -with a steady hand. So for a minute or two might he have been taking -this care; at the end of which, however, Gray saw him stop in apparent -admiration before a tall inlaid and brass-bound French <i>bahut</i>; with -the effect, after a further moment, of a sharp break of their thread of -talk. "You've got some things here at least to enjoy and that you ought -to know how to keep hold of; though I don't so much mean," he explained, -"this expensive piece of furniture as the object of interest perched on -top."</p> - -<p>"Oh the ivory tower!—yes, isn't that, Vinty, a prize piece and -worthy of the lovely name?"</p> - -<p>Vinty remained for the time all admiration, having, as you would easily -have seen, lights enough to judge by. "It appears to have been your -uncle's only treasure—as everything else about you here is of a -newness! And it isn't so much too small, Gray," he laughed, "for you to -get into it yourself, when you want to get rid of us, and draw the doors -to. If it's a symbol of any retreat you really have an eye on I much -congratulate you; I don't know what I wouldn't give myself for the 'run' -of an ivory tower."</p> - -<p>"Well, I can't ask you to share mine," Gray returned; "for the situation -to have a sense, I take it, one must sit in one's tower alone. And I -should properly say," he added after an hesitation, "that mine is the -one object, all round me here, that I don't owe my uncle: it has been -placed at my disposition, in the handsomest way in the world, by Rosanna -Gaw."</p> - -<p>"Ah that does increase the interest—even if susceptible of -seeming to mean, to one's bewilderment, that it's the sort of thing she -would like to thrust you away into; which I hope, however, is far from -the case. Does she then <i>keep</i> ivory towers, a choice assortment?" -Horton quite gaily continued; "in the sense of having a row of them -ready for occupation, and with tenants to match perchable in each and -signalling along the line from summit to summit? Because"—and, -facing about from his contemplation, he piled up his image even as the -type of object represented by it might have risen in the air—"you -give me exactly, you see, the formula of that young lady herself: -perched aloft in an ivory tower is what she is, and I'll be hanged if -this isn't a hint to you to mount, yourself, into just such another; -under the same provocation, I fancy her pleading, as she has in her own -case taken for sufficient." Thus it was that, suddenly more brilliant -than ever yet, to Graham's apprehension, you might well have guessed, -his friend stood nearer again—stood verily quite irradiating -responsive ingenuity. Markedly would it have struck you that at such -instants as this, most of all, the general hush that was so thick about -them pushed upward and still further upward the fine flower of the -inferential. Following the pair closely from the first, and beginning -perhaps with your idea that this life of the intelligence had its -greatest fineness in Gray Fielder, you would by now, I dare say, have -been brought to a more or less apprehensive foretaste of its -possibilities in our other odd agent. For how couldn't it have been to -the full stretch of his elastic imagination that Haughty was drawn out -by the time of his putting a certain matter beautifully to his -companion? "Don't I, 'gad, take the thing straight over from -you—all of it you've been trying to convey to me here!—when -I see you, up in the blue, behind your parapet, just gracefully lean -over and call down to where I mount guard at your door in the dust and -comparative darkness? It's well to understand"—his thumbs now in -his waistcoat-holes he measured his idea as if Gray's own face fairly -reflected it: "you want me to take <i>all</i> the trouble for you -simply, in order that you may have all the fun. And you want me at the -same time, in order that things shall be for you at their ideal of the -easiest, to make you believe, as a salve to your conscience, that the -fun <i>isn't</i> so mixed with the trouble as that you can't have it, on -the right arrangement made with me, quite by itself. This is most -ingenious of you," Horton added, "but it doesn't in the least show me, -don't you see? where my fun comes in."</p> -<p>"I wonder if I can do that," Gray returned, "without making you -understand first something of the nature of mine—or for that matter -without my first understanding myself perhaps what my queer kind of it -is most likely to be."</p> - -<p>His companion showed withal for more and more ready to risk amused -recognitions. "You <i>are</i> 'rum' with your queer kinds, and might make -my flesh creep, in these conditions, if it weren't for something in me of -rude pluck." Gray, in speaking, had moved towards the great French -meuble with some design upon it or upon the charge it carried; which -Horton's eyes just wonderingly noted—and to the effect of an -exaggeration of tone in his next remark. "However, there are assurances -one doesn't keep repeating: it's so little in me, I feel, to refuse you -any service I'm capable of, no matter how clumsily, that if you take me -but confidently enough for the agent even of your unholiest pleasures, -you'll find me still putting them through for you when you've broken -down in horror yourself."</p> - -<p>"Of course it's my idea that whatever I ask you shall be of interest -to you, and of the liveliest, in itself—quite apart from any -virtue of my connection with it. If it speaks to you that way so much -the better," Gray went on, standing now before the big <i>bahut</i> with -both hands raised and resting on the marble top. This lifted his face -almost to the level of the base of his perched treasure—so that he -stared at the ivory tower without as yet touching it. He only continued -to talk, though with his thought, as he brought out the rest of it, -almost superseded by the new preoccupation. "I shall absolutely decline -any good of anything that isn't attended by some equivalent -or—what do you call it?—proportionate good for you. I shall -propose to you a percentage, if that's the right expression, on every -blest benefit I get from you in the way of the sense of safety." Gray -now moved his hands, laying them as in finer fondness to either -smoothly-plated side of the tall repository, against which a finger or -two caressingly rubbed. His back turned therefore to Horton, he was -divided between the growth of his response to him and that of this more -sensible beauty. "Don't I kind of insure my life, my moral -consciousness, I mean, for your advantage?—or <i>with</i> you, as -it were, taking you for the officeman or actuary, if I'm not muddling: -to whom I pay a handsome premium for the certainty of there being to my -credit, on my demise, a sufficient sum to clear off my debts and bury -me."</p> - -<p>"You propose to me a handsome premium? Catch me," Horton laughed, "not -jumping at <i>that!</i>"</p> - -<p>"Yes, and you'll of course fix the premium yourself." But Gray was now -quite detached, occupied only in opening his ivory doors with light -fingers and then playing these a little, whether for hesitation or for -the intenser pointing of inquiry, up and down the row of drawers so -exposed. Against the topmost they then rested a moment—drawing out -this one, however, with scant further delay and enabling themselves to feel -within and so become possessed of an article contained. It was with this -article in his hand that he presently faced about again, turning it -over, resting his eyes on it and then raising them to his visitor, who -perceived in it a heavy letter, duly addressed, to all appearance, but -not stamped and as yet unopened. "The distinguished retreat, you see, -<i>has</i> its tenant."</p> - -<p>"Do you mean by its tenant the author of those evidently numerous -pages?—unless you rather mean," Horton asked, "that you seal up in -packets the love-letters addressed to you and find that charming -receptacle a congruous place to keep them? Is there a packet in every -drawer, and do you take them out this way to remind yourself fondly that -you have them and that it mayn't be amiss for me to feel your conquests -and their fine old fragrance dangled under my nose?"</p> - -<p>Our young man, at these words, had but returned to the consideration of -his odd property, attaching it first again to the superscription and -then to the large firm seal. "I haven't the least idea what this is; and -I'm divided in respect of it, I don't mind telling you, between -curiosity and repulsion."</p> - -<p>Horton then also eyed the ambiguity, but at his discreet distance and -reaching out for it as little as his friend surrendered it. "Do you -appeal to me by chance to help you to decide either way?"</p> - -<p>Poor Gray, still wondering and fingering, had a long demur. "No—I -don't think I want to decide." With which he again faced criticism. "The -extent, Vinty, to which I think I must just <i>like</i> to drift——!"</p> - -<p>Vinty seemed for a moment to give this indicated quantity the attention -invited to it, but without more action for the case than was represented -by his next saying: "Why then do you produce your question—apparently -so much for my benefit?"</p> - -<p>"Because in the first place you noticed the place it lurks in, and -because in the second I like to tell you things."</p> - -<p>This might have struck us as making the strained note in Vinty's smile -more marked. "But that's exactly, confound you, what you <i>don't</i> do! -Here have I been with you half an hour without your practically telling -me anything!"</p> - -<p>Graham, very serious, stood a minute looking at him hard; succeeding -also quite it would seem in taking his words not in the least for a -reproach but for a piece of information of the greatest relevance, and -thus at once dismissing any minor importance. He turned back with his -minor importance to his small open drawer, laid it within again and, -pushing the drawer to, closed the doors of the cabinet. The act disposed -of the letter, but had the air of introducing as definite a statement as -Horton could have dreamt of. "It's a bequest from Mr. Gaw."</p> - -<p>"A bequest"—Horton wondered—"of banknotes?"</p> - -<p>"No—it's a letter addressed to me just before his death, handed me -by his daughter, to whom he intrusted it, and not likely, I think, to -contain money. He was then sure, apparently, of my coming in for money; -and even if he hadn't been would have had no ground on earth for leaving -me anything."</p> - -<p>Horton's visible interest was yet consonant with its waiting a little -for expression. "He leaves you the great Rosanna."</p> - -<p>Graham, at this, had a stare, followed by a flush as the largest -possible sense of it came out. "You suppose it perhaps the expression of -a wish——?" And then as Horton forbore at first as to what he -supposed: "A wish that I may find confidence to apply to his daughter for -her hand?"</p> - -<p>"That hasn't occurred to you before?" Horton asked—"nor the -measure of the confidence suggested been given you by the fact of your -receiving the document from Rosanna herself? You do give me, you -extraordinary person," he gaily proceeded, "as good opportunities as I -could possibly desire to 'help' you!"</p> - -<p>Graham, for all the felicity of this, needed but an instant to think. "I -have it from Miss Gaw herself that she hasn't an idea of what the letter -contains—any more than she has the least desire that I shall for the -present open it."</p> - -<p>"Well, mayn't that very attitude in her rather point to a suspicion?" -was his guest's ingenious reply. "Nothing could be less like -her certainly than to appear in such a case to want to force -your hand. It makes her position—with exquisite filial piety, you -see—extraordinarily delicate."</p> - -<p>Prompt as that might be, Gray appeared to show, no sportive sophistry, -however charming, could work upon him. "Why should Mr. Gaw want me to -marry his daughter?"</p> - -<p>Horton again hung about a little. "Why should you be so afraid of -ascertaining his idea that you don't so much as peep into what he writes -on the subject?"</p> - -<p>"Afraid? <i>Am</i> I afraid?" Gray fairly spoke with a shade of the -hopeful, as if even that would be richer somehow than drifting.</p> - -<p>"Well, you looked at your affair just now as you might at some small -dangerous, some biting or scratching, animal whom you're not at all sure -of."</p> - -<p>"And yet you see I keep him about."</p> - -<p>"Yes—you keep him in his cage, for which I suppose you have -a key."</p> - -<p>"I have indeed a key, a charming little golden key." With which Gray -took another turn; once more facing criticism, however, to say with -force: "He hated him most awfully!"</p> - -<p>Horton appeared to wonder. "Your uncle hated old Gaw?"</p> - -<p>"No—I don't think <i>he</i> cared. I speak of Mr. Gaw's own -animus. He disliked so mortally his old associate, the man who lies dead -upstairs—and in spite of my consideration for him I still preserve -his record."</p> - -<p>"How do you know about his hate," Horton asked, "or if your letter, -since you haven't read it, is a record?"</p> - -<p>"Well, I don't trust it—I mean not to be. I don't see what else he -could have written me about. Besides," Gray added, "I've my personal -impression."</p> - -<p>"Of old Gaw? You have seen him then?"</p> - -<p>"I saw him out there on this verandah, where he was hovering in the most -extraordinary fashion, a few hours before his death. It was only for a -few minutes," Gray said—"but they were minutes I shall never forget."</p> - -<p>Horton's interest, though so deeply engaged, was not unattended with -perplexity. "You mean he expressed to you such a feeling at such an -hour?"</p> - -<p>"He expressed to me in about three minutes, without speech, to which it -seemed he couldn't trust himself, as much as it might have taken him, or -taken anyone else, to express in three months at another time and on -another subject. If you ever yourself saw him," Gray went on, "perhaps -you'll understand."</p> - -<p>"Oh I often saw him—and should indeed in your place perhaps have -understood. I never heard him accused of not making people do so. But -you hold," said Horton, "that he must have backed up for you further the -mystic revelation?"</p> - -<p>"He had written before he saw me—written on the chance of my being -a person to be affected by it; and after seeing me he didn't destroy or -keep back his message, but emphasised his wish for a punctual delivery."</p> - -<p>"By which it is evident," Horton concluded, "that you struck him exactly -as such a person."</p> - -<p>"He saw me, by my idea, as giving my attention to what he had there -ready for me." Gray clearly had talked himself into possession of his -case. "That's the sort of person I succeeded in seeming to him—though -I can assure you without my the least wanting to."</p> - -<p>"What you feel is then that he thought he might attack with some sort of -shock for you the character of your uncle?" Vinty's question had a -special straightness.</p> - -<p>"What I feel is that he has so attacked it, shock or no shock, and that -that thing in my cabinet, which I haven't examined, can only be the -proof."</p> - -<p>It gave Horton much to turn over. "But your conviction has an -extraordinary bearing. Do I understand that the thing was handed you by -your friend with a knowledge of its contents?"</p> - -<p>"Don't, please," Gray said at once, "understand anything either so -hideous or so impossible. She but carried out a wish uttered on her -father's deathbed, and hasn't so much as suggested that I break the -portentous seal. I think in fact," he assured himself, "that she greatly -prefers I shouldn't."</p> - -<p>"Which fact," Horton observed, "but adds of course to your curiosity."</p> - -<p>Gray's look at him betrayed on this a still finer interest in <i>his</i> -interest. "You see the limits in me of that passion."</p> - -<p>"Well, my dear chap, I've seen greater limits to many things than your -having your little secret tucked away under your thumb. Do you mind my -asking," Horton risked, "whether what deters you from action—and by -action I mean opening your letter—is just a real apprehension of the -effect designed by the good gentleman? Do you feel yourself exposed, by -the nature of your mind or any presumption on Gaw's behalf, to give -credit, vulgarly speaking, to whatever charge or charges he may bring?"</p> - -<p>Gray weighed the question, his wide dark eyes would have told us, in, -his choicest silver scales. "Neither the nature of my mind, bless it, -nor the utmost force of any presumption to the contrary, prevents my -having found my uncle, in his wonderful latest development, the very -most charming person that I've ever seen in my life. Why he impressed me -as a model of every virtue."</p> - -<p>"I confess I don't see," said Horton, "how a relative so behaving could -have failed to endear himself. With such convictions why don't you risk -looking?"</p> - -<p>Gray was but for a moment at a loss—he quite undertook to know. -"Because the whole thing would be so horrible. I mean the question -itself is—and even our here and at such a time discussing it."</p> - -<p>"Nothing is horrible—to the point of making one quake," Horton -opined, "that falls to the ground with a smash from the moment one drops -it. The sense of your document is exactly what's to be appreciated. It -would have no sense at all if you didn't believe."</p> - -<p>Gray considered, but still differed. "Yes, to find it merely vindictive -and base, and thereby to have to take it for false, that would still be -an odious experience."</p> - -<p>"Then why the devil don't you simply destroy the thing?" Horton at last -quite impatiently inquired.</p> - -<p>Gray showed perhaps he had scarce a reason, but had, to the very -brightest effect, an answer. "That's just what I want you to help me to. -To help me, that is," he explained, "after a little to decide for."</p> - -<p>"After a little?" wondered Horton. "After how long?"</p> - -<p>"Well, after long enough for me to feel sure I don't act in fear. I -don't want," he went on as in fresh illustration of the pleasure taken -by him, to the point, as it were, of luxury, in feeling no limit to his -companion's comprehension, or to the patience involved in it either, -amusedly as Horton might at moments attempt to belie that, adding -thereby to the whole service something still more spacious—"I don't -want to act in fear of anything or of anyone whatever; I said to myself -at home three weeks ago, or whenever, that it wasn't for that I was -going to come over; and I propose therefore, you see, to know so far as -possible where I am and what I'm about: morally speaking at least, if -not financially."</p> - -<p>His friend but looked at him again on this in rather desperate -diversion. "I don't see how you're to know where you are, I confess, if -you take no means to find out."</p> - -<p>"Well, my acquisition of property seems by itself to promise me -information, and for the understanding of the lesson I shall have to -take a certain time. What I want," Gray finely argued, "is to act but in -the light of that."</p> - -<p>"In the light of time? Then why do you begin by so oddly wasting it?"</p> - -<p>"Because I think it may be the only way for me not to waste -understanding. Don't be afraid," he went on, moving as by the effect of -Horton's motion, which had brought that subject of appeal a few steps -nearer the rare repository, "that I shall commit the extravagance of at -all wasting <i>you.</i>"</p> - -<p>Horton, from where he had paused, looked up at the ivory tower; though -as Gray was placed in the straight course of approach to it he had after -a fashion to catch and meet his eyes by the way. "What you really want -of me, it's clear, is to help you to fidget and fumble—or in other -words to prolong the most absurd situation; and what I ought to do, if -you'd believe it of me, is to take that stuff out of your hands and just -deal with it myself."</p> - -<p>"And what do you mean by dealing with it yourself?"</p> - -<p>"Why destroying it unread by either of us—which," said Horton, -looking about, "I'd do in a jiffy, on the spot, if there were only a fire -in that grate. The place is clear, however, and we've matches; let me chuck -your letter in and enjoy the blaze with you."</p> - -<p>"Ah, my dear man, don't! Don't!" Gray repeated, putting it rather as a -plea for indulgence than as any ghost of a defiance, but instinctively -stepping backward in defence of his treasure.</p> - -<p>His companion, for a little, gazed at the cabinet, in speculation, it -might really have seemed, as to an extraordinary reach of arm. "You -positively prefer to hug the beastly thing?"</p> - -<p>"Let me alone," Gray presently returned, "and you'll probably find I've -hugged it to death."</p> - -<p>Horton took, however, on his side, a moment for further reflection. "I -thought what you wanted of me to be exactly <i>not</i> that I should let -you alone, but that I should give you on the contrary my very best -attention!"</p> - -<p>"Well," Gray found felicity to answer, "I feel that you'll see how your -very best attention will sometimes consist in your not at all minding -me."</p> - -<p>So then for the minute Horton looked as if he took it. The great clock -on the mantel appeared to have stopped with the stop of its late owner's -life; so that he eyed his watch and startled at the hour to which they -had talked. He put out his hand for good-night, and this returned grasp -held them together in silence a minute. Something then in his sense of -the situation determined his breaking out with an intensity not yet -produced in him. "Yes—you're really prodigious. I mean for trust in a -fellow. For upon my honour you know nothing whatever about me."</p> - -<p>"That's quite what I mean," said Gray—"that I suffer from my -ignorance of so much that's important, and want naturally to correct it."</p> - -<p>"'Naturally'?" his visitor gloomed.</p> - -<p>"Why, I do know <i>this</i> about you, that when we were together with -old Roulet at Neuchâtel and, off on our <i>cours</i> that summer, had -strayed into a high place, in the Oberland, where I was ass enough to have -slid down to a scrap of a dizzy ledge, and so hung helpless over the void, -unable to get back, in horror of staying and in greater horror of not, -you got near enough to me, at the risk of your life, to lower to me the -rope we so luckily had with us and that made an effort of my own -possible by my managing to pass it under my arms. You helped that effort -from a place of vantage above that nobody but you, in your capacity for -playing up, would for a moment have taken for one, and you so hauled and -steadied and supported me, in spite of your almost equal exposure, that -little by little I climbed, I scrambled, my absolute confidence in you -helping, for it amounted to inspiration, and got near to where you -were."</p> - -<p>"From which point," said Horton, whom this reminiscence had kept gravely -attentive, "you in your turn rendered me such assistance, I remember, -though I can't for the life of me imagine how you contrived, that the -tables were quite turned and I shouldn't in the least have got out of my -fix without you." He now pulled up short however; he stood a moment -looking down. "It isn't pleasant to remember."</p> - -<p>"It wouldn't," Gray judged, "be pleasant to forget. You gave proof of -extraordinary coolness."</p> - -<p>Horton still had his eyes on the ground. "We both kept our heads. I -grant it's a decent note for us."</p> - -<p>"If you mean we were associated in keeping our heads, you kept mine," -Gray remarked, "much more than I kept yours. I should be without a head -to-day if you hadn't seen so to my future, just as I should be without a -heart, you must really let me remark, if I didn't look now to your past. -I consider that to know that fact in it takes me of itself well-nigh far -enough in appreciation of you for my curiosity, even at its most -exasperated, to rest on a bed of roses. However, my imagination itself," -Gray still more beautifully went on, "insists on making additions—since -how can't it, for that matter, picture again the rate at which it made -them then? I hadn't even at the time waited for you to save my life in -order to think you a swell. If I thought you the biggest kind of one, -and if in your presence now I see just as much as ever why I did, what -does that amount to but that my mind isn't a blank about you?"</p> - -<p>"Well, if mine had ever been one about you," said Horton, once more -facing it, "our so interesting conversation here would have sufficed to -cram it full. The least I can make of you, whether for your protection -or my profit, is just that you're insanely romantic."</p> - -<p>"Romantic—yes," Gray smiled; "but oh, but oh, so systematically!"</p> - -<p>"It's your system that's exactly your madness. How can you take me, -without a stroke of success, without a single fact of performance, to my -credit, for anything but an abject failure? You're in possession of no -faintest sign, kindly note, that I'm not a mere impudent ass."</p> - -<p>Gray accepted this reminder, for all he showed to the contrary, in the -admiring spirit in which he might have regarded a splendid somersault or -an elegant trick with cards; indulging, that is, by his appearance, in -the forward bend of attention to it, but then falling back to more -serious ground. "It's my romance that's itself my reason; by which I -mean that I'm never so reasonable, so deliberate, so lucid and so -capable—to call myself capable at any hour!—as when I'm most -romantic. I'm methodically and consistently so, and nothing could make and -keep me, for any dealings with me, I hold, more conveniently safe and -quiet. You see that you can lead me about by a string if you'll only tie it -to my appropriate finger—which you'll find out, if you don't mind the -trouble, by experience of the wrong ones, those where the attachment -won't 'act.'" He drew breath to give his friend the benefit of this -illustration, but another connection quickly caught him up. "How can you -pretend to suggest that you're in these parts the faintest approach to -an insignificant person? How can you pretend that you're not as clever -as you can stick together, and with the cleverness of the right kind? -For there are odious kinds, I know—the kind that redresses other -people's stupidity instead of sitting upon it."</p> - -<p>"I'll answer you those questions," Horton goodhumouredly said, "as soon -as you tell me how you've come by your wonderful ground for them. Till -you're able to do that I shall resent your torrent of abuse. The -appalling creature you appear to wish to depict!"</p> - -<p>"Well, you're simply a <i>figure</i>—what I call—in all the -force of the term; one has only to look at you to see it, and I shall give -up drawing conclusions from it only when I give up looking. You can make -out that there's nothing in a prejudice," Gray developed, "for a prejudice -maybe, or must be, so to speak, single-handed; but you can't not count with -a relation—I mean one you're a party to, because a relation is -exactly a <i>fact</i> of reciprocity. Our reciprocity, which exists and -which makes me a party to it by existing for my benefit, just as it makes -you one by existing for yours, can't possibly result in your not 'figuring' -to me, don't you see? with the most admirable intensity. And I simply -decline," our young man wound up, "not to believe tremendous things of any -subject of a relation of mine."</p> - -<p>"'Any' subject?" Vinty echoed in a tone that showed how intelligently he -had followed. "That condition, I'm afraid," he smiled, "will cut down -not a little your general possibilities of relation." And then as if -this were cheap talk, but a point none the less remained: "In this -country one's a figure (whatever you may mean by that!) on easy terms; -and if I correspond to your idea of the phenomenon you'll have much to -do—I won't say for my simple self, but for the comfort of your mind—to -make your fond imagination fit the funny facts. You pronounce me an -awful swell—which, like everything else over here, has less weight of -sense in it for the saying than it could have anywhere else; but what -barest evidence have you of any positive trust in me shown on any -occasion or in any connection by one creature you can name?"</p> - -<p>"Trust?"—Gray looked at the red tip of the cigarette between his -fingers.</p> - -<p>"Trust, trust, trust!"</p> - -<p>Well, it didn't take long to say. "What do you call it but trust that -such people as the Bradhams, and all the people here, as he tells me, -receive you with open arms?"</p> - -<p>"Such people as the Bradhams and as 'all the people here'!"—Horton -beamed on him for the beauty of that. "Such authorities and such -'figures,' such allegations, such perfections and such proofs! Oh," he -said, "I'm going to have great larks with you!"</p> - -<p>"You give me then the evidence I want in the very act of challenging me -for it. What better proof of your situation and your character than your -possession exactly of such a field for whatever you like, of such a dish -for serving me up? Mr. Bradham, as you know," Gray continued, "was this -morning so good as to pay me a visit, and the form in which he put your -glory to me—because we talked of you ever so pleasantly—was -that, by his appreciation, you know your way about the place better than -all the rest of the knowing put together."</p> - -<p>Horton smiled, smoked, kept his hands in his pockets. "Dear deep old -Davey!"</p> - -<p>"Yes," said Gray consistently, "isn't he a wise old specimen? It's -rather horrid for me having thus to mention, as if you had applied to me -for a place, that I've picked up a good 'character' of you, but since -you insist on it he assured me that I couldn't possibly have a better -friend."</p> - -<p>"Well, he's a most unscrupulous old person and ought really to be -ashamed. What it comes to," Haughty added, "is that though I've -repeatedly stayed with them they've to the best of his belief never -missed one of the spoons. The fact is that even if they had poor Davey -wouldn't know it."</p> - -<p>"He doesn't take care of the spoons?" Gray asked in a tone that made his -friend at once swing round and away. He appeared to note an -unexpectedness in this, yet, "out" as he was for unexpectedness, it -could grow, on the whole, clearly, but to the raising of his spirits. -"Well, I shall take care of <i>my</i> loose valuables and, unwarned by the -Bradhams and likely to have such things to all appearance in greater -number than ever before, what can I do but persist in my notion of -asking you to keep with me, at your convenience, some proper count of -them?" After which as Horton's movement had carried him quite to the far -end of the room, where the force of it even detained him a little. Gray -had him again well in view for his return, and was prompted thereby to a -larger form of pressure. "How can you pretend to palm off on me that -women mustn't in prodigious numbers 'trust' you?"</p> - -<p>Haughty made of his shoulders the most prodigious hunch. "What -importance, under the sun, has the trust of women—in numbers however -prodigious? It's never what's best in a man they trust—it's exactly -what's worst, what's most irrelevant to anything or to any class but -themselves. Their <i>kind</i> of confidence," he further elucidated, "is -concerned only with the effect of their own operations or with those to -which they are subject; it has no light either for a man's other friends -or for his enemies: it proves nothing about him but in that particular -and wholly detached relation. So neither hate me nor like me, please, -for anything any woman may tell you."</p> - -<p>Horton's hand had on this renewed and emphasised its proposal of -good-night; to which his host acceded with the remark: "What superfluous -precautions you take!"</p> - -<p>"How can you call them superfluous," he asked in answer to this, "when -you've been taking them at such a rate yourself?—in the interest, I -mean, of trying to persuade me that you can't stand on your feet?"</p> - -<p>"It hasn't been to show you that I'm silly about life—which is -what you've just been talking of. It has only been to show you that I'm -silly about affairs," Gray said as they went at last through the big -bedimmed hall to the house doors, which stood open to the warm summer night -under the protection of the sufficient outward reaches.</p> - -<p>"Well, what are affairs but life?" Vinty, at the top of the steps, -sought to know.</p> - -<p>"You'll make me feel, no doubt, how much they are—which would be -very good for me. Only life isn't affairs—that's my subtle -distinction," Gray went on.</p> - -<p>"I'm not sure, I'm not sure!" said Horton while he looked at the stars.</p> - -<p>"Oh rot—<i>I</i> am!" Gray happily declared; to which he the next -moment added: "What it makes you contend for, you see, is the fact of my -silliness."</p> - -<p>"Well, what is that but the most splendid fact about you, you jolly old -sage?"—and his visitor, getting off, fairly sprang into the shade of -the shrubberies.</p> - - - - -<hr class="r5" /> - - -<h4>BOOK FOURTH</h4> - - -<h4>I</h4> - - -<p>Again and again, during the fortnight that followed his uncle's death, -were his present and his future to strike our young man as an -extraordinary blank cheque signed by Mr. Betterman and which, from the -moment he accepted it at all, he must fill out, according to his -judgment, his courage and his faith, with figures, monstrous, fantastic, -almost cabalistic, that it seemed to him he should never learn to -believe in. It was not so much the wonder of there being in various New -York institutions strange deposits of money, to amounts that, like -familiar mountain masses, appeared to begin at the blue horizon and, -sloping up and up toward him, grew bigger and bigger the nearer he or -they got, till they fairly overhung him with their purple power to meet -whatever drafts upon them he should make; it was not the tone, the -climax of dryness, of that dryest of men Mr. Crick, whose answering -remark as to any and every particular presumption of credit was "Well, I -guess I've fixed it so as you'll find <i>something</i> there"; that sort of -thing was of course fairy-tale enough in itself, was all the while and -in a hundred connections a sweet assault on his credulity, but was at -the same time a phase of experience comparatively vulgar and that tended -to lose its edge with repetition. The real, the overwhelming sense of -his adventure was much less in the fact that he could lisp in dollars, -as it were, and see the dollars come, than in those vast vague -quantities, those spreading tracts, of his own consciousness itself on -which his kinsman's prodigious perversity had imposed, as for his -exploration, the aspect of a boundless capital. This trust of the dead -man in his having a nature that would show to advantage under a bigger -strain than it had ever dreamed of meeting, and the corresponding -desolate freedom on his own part to read back into the mystery such -refinements either, or such crude candours, of meaning and motive as -might seem best to fit it, that was the huge vague inscribable sum which -ran up into the millions and for which the signature that lettered -itself to the last neatness wherever his mind's eye rested was "good" -enough to reduce any more casual sign in the scheme of nature or of art -to the state of a negligible blur. Mr. Crick's want of colour, as Gray -qualified this gentleman's idiosyncrasy from the moment he saw how it -would be their one point of contact, became, by the extreme rarity and -clarity with which it couldn't but affect him, the very most gorgeous -gem, of the ruby or topaz order, that the smooth forehead of the actual -was for the present to flash upon him.</p> - -<p>For dry did it appear inevitable to take the fact of a person's turning -up, from New York, with no other retinue than an attendant scribe in a -straw hat, a few hours before his uncle's last one, and being beholden -to mere Miss Mumby for simple introduction to Gray as Mr. Betterman's -lawyer. So had such sparenesses and barenesses of form to register -themselves for a mind beset with the tradition that consequences were -always somehow voluminous things; and yet the dryness was of a sort, -Gray soon apprehended, that he might take up in handfuls, as if it had -been the very sand of the Sahara, and thereby find in it, at the least -exposure to light, the collective shimmer of myriads of fine particles. -It was with the substance of the desert taken as monotonously sparkling -under any motion to dig in it that the abyss of Mr. Crick's functional -efficiency was filled. That efficiency, in respect to the things to be -done, would clearly so answer to any demand upon it within the compass -of our young man's subtlety, that the result for him could only be a -couple of days of inexpressible hesitation as to the outward air he -himself should be best advised to aim at wearing. He reminded himself at -this crisis of the proprietor of a garden, newly acquired, who might -walk about with his gardener and try to combine, in presence of -abounding plants and the vast range of luxuriant nature, an -ascertainment of names and properties and processes with a -dissimulation, for decent appearance, of the positive side of his -cockneyism. By no imagination of a state of mind so unfurnished would -the gardener ever have been visited; such gaping seams in the garment of -knowledge must affect him at the worst as mere proprietary languor, the -offhandedness of repletion; and no effective circumvention of -traditional takings for granted could late-born curiosity therefore -achieve. Gray's hesitation ceased only when he had decided that he -needn't care, comparatively speaking, for what Mr. Crick might think of -him. He was going to care for what others might—this at least he -seemed restlessly to apprehend; he was going to care tremendously, he felt -himself make out, for what Rosanna Gaw might, for what Horton Vint -might—even, it struck him, for what Davey Bradham might. But in -presence of Mr. Crick, who insisted on having no more personal identity -than the omnibus conductor stopping before you but just long enough to -bite into a piece of pasteboard with a pair of small steel jaws, the -question of his having a character either to keep or to lose declined -all relevance—and for the reason in especial that whichever way it -might turn for him would remain perhaps, so to speak, the most -unexpressed thing that should ever have happened in the world.</p> - -<p>The effect producible by him on the persons just named, and extending -possibly to whole groups of which these were members, would be an effect -because somehow expressed and encountered as expression: when had he in -all his life, for example, so lived in the air of expression and so -depended on the help of it, as in that so thrilling night-hour just -spent with the mystifying and apparently mystified, yet also apparently -attached and, with whatever else, attaching, Vinty? It wasn't that Mr. -Crick, whose analogue he had met on every occasion of his paying his -fare in the public conveyances—where the persons to whom he paid it, -without perhaps in their particulars resembling each other, all managed -nevertheless to be felt as gathered into this reference—wasn't in a -high degree conversible; it was that the more he conversed the less Gray -found out what he thought not only of Mr. Betterman's heir but of any -other subject on which they touched. The gentleman who would, by Gray's -imagination, have been acting for the executors of his uncle's will had -not that precious document appeared to dispense with every superfluity, -could state a fact, under any rash invitation, and endow it, as a fact, -with the greatest conceivable amplitude—this too moreover not because -he was garrulous or gossiping, but because those facts with which he was -acquainted, the only ones on which you would have dreamed of appealing -to him, seemed all perfect nests or bags of other facts, bristling or -bulging thus with every intensity of the positive and leaving no room in -their interstices for mere appreciation to so much as turn round. They -were themselves appreciation—they became so by the simple force of -their existing for Mr. Crick's arid mention, and they so covered the -ground of his consciousness to the remotest edge that no breath of the -air either of his own mind or of anyone's else could have pretended to -circulate about them. Gray made the reflection—tending as he now felt -himself to waste rather more than less time in this idle trick—that -the different matters of content in some misunderstandings have so glued -themselves together that separation has quite broken down and one -continuous block, suggestive of dimensional squareness, with mechanical -perforations and other aids to use subsequently introduced, comes to -represent the whole life of the subject. What it amounted to, he might -have gathered, was that Mr. Crick was of such a common commonness as he -had never up to now seen so efficiently embodied, so completely -organised, so securely and protectedly active, in a word—not to say -so garnished and adorned with strange refinements of its own: he had -somehow been used to thinking of the extreme of that quality as a note -of defeated application, just as the extreme of rarity would have to be. -His domestic companion of these days again and again struck him as most -touching the point at issue, and that point alone, when most proclaiming -at every pore that there wasn't a difference, in all the world, between -one thing and another. The refusal of his whole person to figure as a -fact invidiously distinguishable, that of his aspect to have an -identity, of his eyes to have a consciousness, of his hair to have a -colour, of his nose to have a form, of his mouth to have a motion, of -his voice to consent to any separation of sounds, made intercourse with -him at once extremely easy and extraordinarily empty; it was deprived of -the flicker of anything by the way and resembled the act of moving -forward in a perfectly-rolling carriage with the blind of each window -neatly drawn down.</p> - -<p>Gray sometimes advanced to the edge of trying him, so to call it, as to -the impression made on him by lack of recognitions assuredly without -precedent in any experience, any, least of all, of the ways of -beneficiaries; but under the necessity on each occasion of our young -man's falling back from the vanity of supposing himself really -presentable or apprehensible. For a grasp of him on such ground to take -place he should have had first to show himself and to catch his image -somehow reflected; simply walking up and down and shedding bland -gratitude didn't convey or exhibit or express him in this case, as he was -sure these things <i>had</i> on the other hand truly done where everyone -else, where his uncle and Rosanna, where Mr. Gaw and even Miss Mumby, -where splendid Vinty, whom he so looked to, and awfully nice Davey -Bradham, whom he so took to, were concerned. It all came back to the -question of terms and to the perception, in varying degrees, on the part -of these persons, of his own; for there were somehow none by which Mr. -Crick was penetrable that would really tell anything about him, and he -could wonder in freedom if he wasn't then to know too that last immunity -from any tax on his fortune which would consist in his having never to -wince. Against wincing in other relations than this one he was prepared, -he only desired, to take his precautions—visionary precautions in -those connections truly swarming upon him; but apparently he was during -these first days of the mere grossness of his reality to learn something of -the clear state of seeing every fond sacrifice to superstition that he -could think of thrust back at him. If he could but have brought his -visitor to say after twenty-four hours of him "Well, you're the -damnedest little idiot Eve ever had to pretend to hold commerce with!" -<i>that</i> would on the spot have pressed the spring of his rich -sacrificial "Oh I must be, I must be!—how can I not abjectly and -gratefully be?" Something at least would so have been done to placate the -jealous gods. But instead of that the grossness of his reality just flatly -included this supremely useful friend's perhaps supposing him a vulgar -voluptuary, or at least a mere gaping maw, cynically, which amounted to -say frivolously, indifferent to everything but the general fact of his -windfall. Strange that it should be impossible in any particular -whatever to inform or to correct Mr. Crick, who sat unapproachable in -the midst of the only knowledge that concerned him.</p> - -<p>He couldn't help feeling it conveyed in the very breath of the summer -airs that played about him, to his fancy, in a spirit of frolic still -lighter and quicker than they had breathed in other climes, he couldn't -help almost seeing it as the spray of sea-nymphs, or hearing it as the -sounded horn of tritons, emerging, to cast their spell, from the -foam-flecked tides around, that he was regarded as a creature rather -unnaturally "quiet" there on his averted verandahs and in his darkened -halls, even at moments when quite immense things, by his own measure, -were happening to him. Everything, simply, seemed to be happening, and -happening all at once—as he could say to himself, for instance, by -the fact of such a mere matter as his pulling up at some turn of his now -renewedly ceaseless pacing to take in he could scarce have said what -huge though soft collective rumble, what thick though dispersed -exhalation, of the equipped and appointed life, the life that phrased -itself with sufficient assurance as the multitudinous throb of Newport, -borne toward him from vague regions, from behind and beyond his -temporary blest barriers, and representing for the first time in his -experience an appeal directed at him from a source not somewhat shabbily -single. An impression like that was in itself an event—so repeatedly -in his other existence (it was already his quite unconnectedly other) had -the rumour of the world, the voice of society, the harmonies of -possession, been charged, for his sensibility, with reminders which, so -far from suggesting association, positively waved him off from it. Mr. -Betterman's funeral, for all the rigour of simplicity imposed on it by -his preliminary care, had enacted itself in a ponderous, numerous, in -fact altogether swarming and resounding way; the old local cemetery on -the seaward-looking hillside, as Gray seemed to identify it, had served -for the final scene, and our young man's sense of the whole thing -reached its finest point in an unanswered question as to whether the New -York business world or the New York newspaper interest were the more -copiously present. The business world broke upon him during the recent -rites in large smooth tepid waves—he was conscious of a kind of -generalised or, as they seemed to be calling it, standardised face, as -of sharpness without edge, save when edge was unexpectedly improvised, -bent upon him for a hint of what might have been better expressed could -it but have been expressed humorously; while the newspaper interest only -fed the more full, he felt even at the time, from the perfectly bare -plate offered its flocking young emissaries by the most recognising eye -at once and the most deprecating dumbness that he could command.</p> - -<p>He had asked Vinty, on the morrow of Vinty's evening visit, to "act" -for him in so far as this might be; upon which Vinty had said -gaily—he was unexceptionally gay now—"Do you mean as your -best man at your marriage to the bride who is so little like St. -Francis's? much as you yourself strike me, you know, as resembling the -man of Assisi." Vinty, at his great present ease, constantly put things -in such wonderful ways; which were nothing, however, to the way he -mostly did them during the days he was able to spare before going off -again to other calls, other performances in other places, braver and -breezier places on the bolder northern coast, it mostly seemed: his -allusions to which excited absolutely the more curious interest in his -friend, by an odd law, in proportion as he sketched them, under -pressure, as probably altogether alien to the friend's sympathies. That -was to be for the time, by every indication, his amusing -"line"—his taking so confident and insistent a view of what it -must be in Gray's nature and tradition to like or not to like that, as -our young man for that matter himself assured him, he couldn't have -invented a more successfully insidious way of creating an appetite than -by passing under a fellow's nose every sort of whiff of the -indigestible. One thing at least was clear, namely: that, let his -presumption of a comrade's susceptibilities, his possible reactions, -under general or particular exposure, approve itself or not, the extent -to which this free interpreter was going personally to signify for the -savour of the whole stretched there as a bright assurance. Thus he was -all the while acting indeed—acting so that fond formulations of it -could only become in the promptest way mere redundancies of reference; -he acted because his approach, his look, his touch made somehow, by -their simply projecting themselves, a definite difference for any -question, great or small, in the least subject to them; and this, after -the most extraordinary fashion, not in the least through his pressing or -interfering or even so much as intending, but just as a consequence of -his having a sense and an intelligence of the given affair, such as it -might be, to which, once he was present at it, he was truly ashamed not -to conform. That concentrated passage between the two men while the -author of their situation was still unburied would of course always -hover to memory's eye like a votive object in the rich gloom of a -chapel; but it was now disconnected, attached to its hook once for all, -its whole meaning converted with such small delay into working, playing -force and multiplied tasteable fruit.</p> - -<p>Quiet as he passed for keeping himself, by the impression I have noted, -how could Gray have felt more plunged in history, how could he by his -own sense more have waked up to it each morning and gone to bed with it -each night, sat down to it whenever he did sit down, which was never for -long, whether at a meal, at a book, at a letter, or at the wasted -endeavour to become, by way of a change, really aware of his -consciousness, than through positively missing as he did the hint of -anything in particular to do?—missing and missing it all the while -and yet at no hour paying the least of the penalties that are supposed to -attend the drop of responsibility and the substituted rule of fatuity. -How couldn't it be agitation of a really sublime order to have it come -over one that the personage in the world one must most resemble at such -a pitch would be simply, at one's choice, the Kaiser or the Czar, -potentates who only know their situation is carried on by attestation of -the fact that push it wherever they will they never find it isn't? Thus -they are referred to the existence of machinery, the working of which -machinery is answered for, they may feel, whenever their eyes rest on -one of those figures, ministerial or ceremonial, who may be, as it is -called, in waiting. Mr. Crick was in waiting, Horton Vint was in -waiting, Rosanna Gaw even, at this moment a hundred miles away, was in -waiting, and so was Davey Bradham, though with but a single appearance -at the palace as yet to his credit. Neither Horton nor Mr. Crick, it was -true, were more materially, more recurrently present than a fellow's -nerves, for the wonder of it all, could bear; but what was it but just -being Czar or Kaiser to keep thrilling on one's own side before the fact -that this made no difference? Vulgar reassurance was the greatest of -vulgarities; monarchs could still be irresponsible, thanks to their -ministers' not being, and Gray repeatedly asked himself how he should -ever have felt as he generally did if it hadn't been so absolutely -exciting that while the scattered moments of Horton's presence and the -fitful snatches of telephonic talk with him lasted the gage of -protection, perfectly certain patronising protection, added a still -pleasanter light to his eye and ring to his voice, casual and trivial as -he clearly might have liked to keep these things. Great monarchies might -be "run," but great monarchs weren't—unless of course often by the -favourite or the mistress; and one hadn't a mistress yet, goodness knew, -and if one was threatened with a favourite it would be but with a -favourite of the people too.</p> - -<p>History and the great life surged in upon our hero through such images -as these at their fullest tide, finding him out however he might have -tried to hide from them, and shaking him perhaps even with no livelier -question than when it occurred to him for the first time within the -week, oddly enough, that the guest of the Bradhams never happened, while -his own momentary guest, to meet Mr. Crick, in his counsels, by so much -as an instant's overlapping, any more than it would chance on a single -occasion that he should name his friend to that gentleman or otherwise -hint at his existence, still less his importance. Was it just that the -king was <i>usually</i> shy of mentioning the favourite to the head of the -treasury and that various decencies attached, by tradition, to keeping -public and private advisers separate? "Oh I absolutely decline to come -in, at any point whatever, between you and <i>him</i>; as if there were any -sort of help I can give you that he won't ever so much better!"—those -words had embodied, on the morrow, Vinty's sole allusion to the main -sense of their first talk, which he had gone on with in no direct -fashion. He had thrown a ludicrous light on his committing himself to -any such atrocity of taste while the empowered person and quite ideally -right man was about; but points would come up more and more, did come -up, in fact already had, that they doubtless might work out together -happily enough; and it took Horton in fine the very fewest hours to give -example after example of his familiar and immediate wit. Nothing could -have better illustrated this than the interest thrown by him for Gray -over a couple of subjects that, with many others indeed, beguiled three -or four rides taken by the friends along the indented shores and other -seaside stretches and reaches of their low-lying promontory in the -freshness of the early morning and when the scene might figure for -themselves alone. Gray, clinging as yet to his own premises very much -even as a stripped swimmer might loiter to enjoy an air-bath before his -dive, had yet mentioned that he missed exercise and had at once found -Vinty full of resource for his taking it in that pleasantest way. -Everything, by his assurance, was going to be delightful but the -generality of the people; thus, accordingly, was the generality of the -people not yet in evidence, thus at the sweet hour following the cool -dawn could the world he had become possessed of spread about him -unspoiled.</p> - -<p>It was perhaps in Gray to wonder a little in these conditions what -<i>was</i> then in evidence, with decks so invidiously cleared; this being, -however, a remark he forbore to make, mystified as he had several times -been, and somehow didn't like too much being, by having had to note that -to differ at all from Vinty on occasions apparently offered was to -provoke in him at once a positive excess of agreement. He always went -further, as it were, and Gray himself, as he might say, didn't want to -go <i>those</i> lengths, which were out of the range of practical politics -altogether. Horton's habit, as it seemed to show itself, was to make out -of saving sociability or wanton ingenuity or whatever, a distinction for -which a companion might care, but for which he himself didn't with any -sincerity, and then to give his own side of it away, from the moment -doubt had been determined, with an almost desolating sweep of surrender. -His own side of it was by that logic no better a side, in a beastly -vulgar world, than any other, and if anyone wanted to mean that such a -mundane basis was deficient why he himself had but meant it from the -first and pretended something else only not to be too shocking. He was -ready to mean the worst—was ready for anything, that is, in the -interest of ceasing from humbug. And if Gray was prepared for that -<i>then</i> il ne s'agissait que de s'entendre. What Gray was prepared for -would really take, this young man frankly opined, some threshing out; -but it wasn't at all in readiness for the worst that he had come to -America—he had come on the contrary to indulge, by God's help, in -appreciations, comparisons, observations, reflections and other -luxuries, that were to minister, fond old prejudice aiding, to life at -the high pitch, the pitch, as who should say, of immortality. If on -occasion, under the dazzle of Horton's facility, he might ask himself -how he tracked through it the silver thread of sincerity—consistency -wasn't pretended to—something at once supervened that was better than -any answer, some benefit of information that the circumstance required, -of judgment that assisted or supported or even amused, by felicity of -contradiction, and that above all pushed the question so much further, -multiplying its relations and so giving it air and colour and the slap -of the brush, that it straightway became a picture and, for the kind of -attention Gray could best render, a conclusive settled matter. He hated -somehow to detract from his friend, wanting so much more to keep adding -to him; but it was after a little as if he had felt that his loyalty, or -whatever he might call it, could yet not be mean in deciding that -Horton's generalisations, his opinions as distinguished from his -perceptions and direct energies and images, signified little enough: if -he would only go on bristling as he promised with instances and items, -would only consent to consist at the same rate and in his very self of -material for history, one might propose to gather from it all at one's -own hours and without troubling him the occasional big inference.</p> - -<p>How good he could be on the particular case appeared for example after -Gray had expressed to him, just subsequently to their first encounter, -a certain light and measured wonderment at Rosanna Gaw's appearing not -to intend to absent herself long enough from her cares in the other -State, immense though these conceivably were, to do what the rest of -them were doing roundabout Mr. Betterman's grave. Our young man had half -taken for granted that she would have liked, expressing it simply, to -assist with him at the last attentions to a memory that had meant, in -the current phrase, so much for them both—though of course he withal -quite remembered that her interest in it had but rested on his own and -that since his own, as promoted by her, had now taken such effect there -was grossness perhaps in looking to her for further demonstrations: this -at least in view of her being under her filial stress not unimaginably -sated with ritual. He had caught himself at any rate in the act of -dreaming that Rosanna's return for the funeral would be one of the -inevitabilities of her sympathy with his fortune—every element of -which (that was overwhelmingly certain) he owed to her; and even the due -sense that, put her jubilation or whatever at its highest, it could scarce -be expected to dance the same jig as his, didn't prevent his remarking to -his friend that clearly Miss Gaw would come, since he himself was still -in the stage of supposing that when you had the consciousness of a lot -of money you sort of did violent things. He played with the idea that -her arrival for the interment would partake of this element, proceeding -as it might from the exhilaration of her monstrous advantages, her now -assured state. "Look at the violent things <i>I'm</i> doing," he seemed to -observe with this, "and see how natural I must feel it that any -violence should meet me. Yours, for example"—Gray really went so -far—"recognises how I want, or at least how I enjoy, a harmony; -though at the same time, I assure you, I'm already prepared for any -disgusted snub to the attitude of unlimited concern about me, gracious -goodness, that I may seem to go about taking for granted." Unlimited -concern about him on the part of the people who weren't up at the cool of -dawn save in so far as they here and there hadn't yet gone to -bed—this, in combination with something like it on the part of -numberless others too, had indeed to be faced as the inveterate essence of -Vinty's forecast, and formed perhaps the hardest nut handed to Gray's vice -of cogitation to crack; it was the thing that he just now most found -himself, as they said, up against—involving as it did some conception -of reasons other than ugly for so much patience with the boring side -of him.</p> - -<p>An interest founded on the mere beastly fact of his pecuniary luck, what -was that but an ugly thing to see, from the moment his circle, since a -circle he was apparently to have, shouldn't soon be moved to some decent -reaction from it? How was he going himself to like breathing an air in -which the reaction didn't break out, how was he going not to get sick of -finding so large a part played, over the place, by the mere -<i>constatation</i>, in a single voice, a huge monotone restlessly and -untiringly directed, but otherwise without application, of the state of -being worth dollars to inordinate amounts? Was he really going to want -to live with many specimens of the sort of person who wouldn't presently -rather loathe him than know him blindedly on such terms? would it be -possible, for that matter, that he should feel people unashamed of not -providing for their attention to him any better account of it than his -uncle's form of it had happened to supply, without his by that token -coming to regard them either as very "interested," according to the good -old word, or as themselves much too foredoomed bores to merit tolerance? -When it reached the pitch of his asking himself whether it could be -possible Vinty wouldn't at once see what he meant by that reservation, -he patched the question up but a bit provisionally perhaps by falling -back on a remark about this confidant that was almost always equally in -order. They weren't on the basis yet of any treatable reality, any that -could be directly handled and measured, other than such as were, so to -speak, the very children of accident, those the old man's still -unexplained whim had with its own special shade of grimness let him in -for. <i>Naturally</i> must it come to pass with time that the better of the -set among whom this easy genius was the best would stop thinking money -about him to the point that prevented their thinking anything else—so -that he should only break off and not go in further after giving them a -chance to show in a less flurried way to what their range of imagination -might reach invited and encouraged. Should they markedly fail to take -that chance it would be all up with them so far as any entertainment -that <i>he</i> should care to offer them was concerned. How could it stick -out <i>more</i> disconcertingly—so his appeal might have -run—that a fuss about him was as yet absolutely a fuss on a vulgar -basis? having begun, by what he gathered, quite before the growth even of -such independent rumours as Horton's testimony, once he was on the spot, or -as Mr. Bradham's range of anecdote, consequent on Mr. Bradham's call, might -give warrant for: it couldn't have behind it, he felt sure, so much as a -word of Rosanna's, of the heralding or promising sort—he would so -have staked his right hand on the last impossibility of the least rash -overflow on that young woman's part.</p> - -<p>There was this other young woman, of course, whom he heard of at these -hours for the first time from Haughty and whom he remembered well enough -to have heard praise of from his adopted father, three or four years -previous, on his rejoining the dear man after a summer's separation. She -would be, "Gussy's" charming friend, Haughty's charming friend, no end -of other people's charming friend, as appeared, the heroine of the -charming friendship his own admirable friend had formed, in a -characteristically headlong manner (some exceptional cluster of graces, -in her case, clearly much aiding) with a young American girl, the very -nicest anyone had ever seen, met at the waters of Ragatz during one of -several seasons there and afterwards described in such extravagant terms -as were to make her remain, between himself and his elder, a subject of -humorous reference and retort. It had had to do with Gray's liking his -companion of those years always better and better that persons -intrinsically distinguished inveterately took to him so naturally—even -if the number of the admirers rallying was kept down a little by the -rarity, of course, of intrinsic distinction. It wasn't, either, as if -this blest associate had been by constitution an elderly flirt, or some -such sorry type, addicted to vain philanderings with young persons he -might have fathered: he liked young persons, small blame to him, but -they had never, under Gray's observation, made a fool of him, and he was -only as much of one about the young lady in question, Cecilia Foy, yes, -of New York, as served to keep all later inquiry and pleasantry at the -proper satiric pitch. She <i>would</i> have been a fine little creature, by -our friend's beguiled conclusion, to have at once so quickened and so -appreciated the accidental relation; for was anything truly quite so -charming in a clever girl as the capacity for admiring <i>disinterestedly</i> -a brave gentleman even to the point of willingness to take every trouble -about him?—when the disinterestedness dwelt, that is, in the very -pleasure she could seek and find, so much more creditable a matter to -her than any she could give and be complimented for giving, involved as -this could be with whatever vanity, vulgarity or other personal -pretence.</p> - -<p>Gray remembered even his not having missed by any measure of his own -need or play of his own curiosity the gain of Miss Foy's -acquaintance—so might the felicity of the quaint affair, given the -actual parties, have been too sacred to be breathed on; he in fact -recalled, and could still recall, every aspect of their so excellent -time together reviving now in a thick rich light, how he had inwardly -closed down the cover on his stepfather's accession of fortune—which -the pretty episode really seemed to amount to; extracting from it -himself a particular relief of conscience. He could let him alone, by -this showing, without black cruelty—so little had the day come for -his ceasing to attract admirers, as they said, at public places or being -handed over to the sense of desertion. That left Gray as little as -possible haunted with the young Cecilia's image, so completely was his -interest in her, in her photograph and in her letters, one of the -incidents of his virtually filial solicitude; all the less in fact no -doubt that she had written during the aftermonths frequently and very -advertisedly, though perhaps, in spite of Mr. Northover's gay exhibition -of it, not so very remarkably. She was apparently one of the bright -persons who are not at their brightest with the pen—which question -indeed would perhaps come to the proof for him, thanks to his having it -ever so vividly, not to say derisively, from Horton that this observer -didn't really know what had stayed her hand, for the past week, from an -outpouring to the one person within her reach who would constitute a -link with the delightful old hero of her European adventure. That so -close a representative of the party to her romance was there in the -flesh and but a mile or two off, was a fact so extraordinary as to have -waked up the romance again in her and produced a state of fancy from -which she couldn't rest—for some shred of the story that might be -still afloat. Gray therefore needn't be surprised to receive some sign of -this commotion, and that he hadn't yet done so was to be explained, Haughty -guessed, by the very intensity of the passions involved.</p> - -<p>One of them, it thus appeared, burnt also in Gussy's breast; devoted as -she was to Cissy, she had taken the fond anecdote that so occupied them -as much under her protection as she had from far back taken the girl's -every other interest, and what for the hour paralysed their action, that -of the excited pair, must simply have been that Mrs. Bradham couldn't on -the one hand listen to anything so horrid as that her young friend -should make an advance unprepared and unaccompanied, and that the ardent -girl, on the other, had for the occasion, as for all occasions, her -ideal of independence. Gray was not himself impatient—he felt no jump -in him at the chance to discuss so dear a memory in an air still -incongruous; it depended on who might propose to him the delicate -business, let alone its not making for a view of the great Gussy's fine -tact that she should even possibly put herself forward as a proposer. -However, he didn't mind thinking that if Cissy should prove all that was -likely enough their having a subject in common couldn't but practically -conduce; though the moral of it all amounted rather to a portent, the -one that Haughty, by the same token, had done least to reassure him -against, of the extent to which the native jungle harboured the female -specimen and to which its ostensible cover, the vast level of mixed -growths stirred wavingly in whatever breeze, was apt to be identifiable -but as an agitation of the latest redundant thing in ladies' hats. It -was true that when Rosanna had perfectly failed to rally, merely writing -a kind short note to the effect that she should have to give herself -wholly, for she didn't know how long, to the huge assault of her own -questions, that might have seemed to him to make such a clearance as -would count against any number of positively hovering shades. Horton had -answered for her not turning up, and nothing perhaps had made him feel -so right as this did for a faith in those general undertakings of -assurance; only, when at the end of some days he saw that vessel of -light obscured by its swing back to New York and other ranges of action, -the sense of exposure—even as exposure to nothing worse than the -lurking or pouncing ladies—became sharper through contrast with the -late guarded interval; this to the extent positively of a particular -hour at which it seemed to him he had better turn tail and simply flee, -stepping from under the too vast orb of his fate.</p> - -<p>He was alone with that quantity on the September morning after breakfast -as he had not felt himself up to now; he had taken to pacing the great -verandah that had become his own as he had paced it when it was still -his uncle's, and it might truly have been a rush of nervous -apprehension, a sudden determination of terror, that quickened and yet -somehow refused to direct his steps. He had turned out there for the -company of sea and sky and garden, less conscious than within doors, for -some reason, that Horton was a lost luxury; but that impression was -presently to pass with a return of a queer force in his view of Rosanna -as above all somehow wanting, off and withdrawn verily to the pitch of -her having played him some trick, merely let him in where she was to -have seen him through, failed in fine of a sociability implied in all -her preliminaries. He found his attention caught, in one of his -revolutions, by the chair in which Abel Gaw had sat that first -afternoon, pulling him up for their so unexpectedly intense mutual -scrutiny, and when he turned away a moment after, quitting the spot -almost as if the strange little man's death that very night had already -made him apparitional, which was unpleasant, it was to drop upon the -lawn and renew his motion there. He circled round the house altogether -at last, looking at it more critically than had hitherto seemed -relevant, taking the measure, disconcertedly, of its unabashed ugliness, -and at the end coming to regard it very much as he might have eyed some -monstrous modern machine, one of those his generation was going to be -expected to master, to fly in, to fight in, to take the terrible women -of the future out for airings in, and that mocked at <i>his</i> incompetence -in such matters while he walked round and round it and gave it, as for -dread of what it might do to him, the widest berth his enclosure -allowed. In the midst of all of which, quite wonderfully, everything -changed; he <i>wasn't</i> alone with his monster, he was in, by this -reminder, for connections, nervous ass as he had just missed writing -himself, and connections fairly glittered, swarming out at him, in the -person of Mr. Bradham, who stood at the top of a flight of steps from -the gallery, which he had been ushered through the house to reach, and -there at once, by some odd felicity of friendliness, some pertinence of -presence, of promise, appeared to make up for whatever was wrong and -supply whatever was absent. It came over him with extraordinary -quickness that the way not to fear the massed ambiguity was to trust it, -and this florid, solid, smiling person, who waved a prodigious -gold-coloured straw hat as if in sign of ancient amity, had come exactly -at that moment to show him how.<a name="FNanchor_2_1" id="FNanchor_2_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_1" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_2_1" id="Footnote_2_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_1"><span class="label">[2]</span></a>This ends the first chapter of Book IV. The MS. breaks off -with an unfinished sentence opening the next chapter: "Not the least -pointed of the reflections Gray was to indulge in a fortnight later and -as by a result of Davey Bradham's intervention in the very nick was that -if he had turned tail that afternoon, at the very oddest of all his -hours, if he had prematurely taken to his heels and missed the emissary -from the wonderful place of his fresh domestication, the article on -which he would most irretrievably have dished himself . . ."</p></div> - - - - -<hr class="chap" /> - - -<h4><a id="NOTES_FOR_THE_IVORY_TOWER">NOTES FOR THE IVORY TOWER</a></h4> - - -<p>AUGUSTA BRADHAM, "Gussie" Bradham, for the big social woman. Basil Hunn -I think on the whole for Hero. Graham Rising, which becomes familiarly -Gray Rising, I have considered but incline to keep for another occasion.</p> - -<p>Horton Crimper, among his friends Haughty Crimper, seems to me right and -best, on the whole, for my second young man. I don't want for him a -surname intrinsically pleasing; and this seems to me of about the good -nuance. My Third Man hereby becomes, I seem to see, Davey Bradham; on -which, I think, for the purpose and association, I can't improve.</p> - -<p>My Girl, in the relinquished thing, was Cissy Foy; and this was all -right for the figure there intended, but the girl here is a very -different one, and everything is altered. I want her name moreover, her -Christian one, to be Moyra, and must have some bright combination with -that; the essence of which is a surname of two syllables and ending in a -consonant—also beginning with one. I am thinking of Moyra Grabham, -the latter excellent thing was in the Times of two or three days ago; its -only fault is a little too much meaning, but the sense here wouldn't be -thrown into undue relief, and I don't want anything pretty or -conventionally "pleasing." Everything of the shade of the real. Remain -thus important the big, the heavy Daughter of the billionaire, with her -father; in connection with whom I think I give up Betterman. That must -stand over, and I want, above all, a single syllable. All the other -names have two or three; and this makes an objection to the Shimple, -which I originally thought of as about odd and ugly enough without being -more so than I want it. But that also will keep, while I see that I have -the monosyllable Hench put down; only put down for another connection. I -see I thought of "Wenty" Hench, short for Wentworth, as originally good -for Second Young Man. If I balance that against Haughty Crimper, I -incline still to the latter, for the small amusement of the Haughty. On -the other hand I am not content with Hench, though a monosyllable, for -the dear Billionaire girl, in the light of whom it is alone important to -consider the question, her Father so little mattering after she becomes -by his death the great Heiress of the time. And I kind of want to make -<i>her</i> Moyra; with which I just spy in the Times a wonderful and -admirable "Chown"; which makes me think that Moyra Chown may do. Besides -which if I keep Grabham for my "heroine" I feel the Christian name -should there be of one syllable. All my others are of two; and I shall -presently make the ease right for this, finding the good thing. The -above provides for the time for the essential. Yet suddenly I am pulled -up—Grabham, after all, won't at all do if I keep Bradham for the -other connection; which I distinctly prefer: I want nothing with any shade -of a special sense there. Accordingly, I don't know but what I may go in -for a different note altogether and lavish on her the fine Cantupher; -which I don't want however really to waste. When Cantupher is used there -ought to be several of it, and above all men: no, I see it won't do, and -besides I don't want anything positively fine. I like Wither, and I like -Augurer, and I like, in another note, Damper, and I even see a little -Bessie as a combination with it, though I don't on the whole want a -Bessie. At any rate I now get on.</p> - -<p><a name="FNanchor_3_1" id="FNanchor_3_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_1" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>What I want the first Book to do is to present the Gaws, the Bradhams -and Cissy Foy, in Three Chapters or Scenes, call them Scenes of the -Acts, in such a way that I thus present with them the first immediate -facts involved; or in other words present the first essence of the -Situation. What I see is, as I further reflect, that it is better to get -Graham Fielder there within the Act, to have him on the premises -already, and learnt so to be, before it has progressed beyond the first -Scene; though he be not seen till the Second Book. When Rosanna goes -over to her Father it befals before she has had more than twenty words -with him that one of the Nurses who is most sympathetic to her appears -in the long window that opens from the house on to the verandah, and it -is thus at once disclosed that he has come. Rosanna has taken for -granted from the quiet air of the place that this event hasn't yet -occurred; but Gray has in fact arrived with the early morning, has come -on the boat from New York, the night one, and is there above with, or -ready to be with, the dying man. Perfectly natural and plausible I make -it that he doesn't begin at once to pervade the place; delicacy, -discretion, anxiety naturally operating with him; so that we know only -he is there, and that matters are more or less taking place above, -during the rest of the Book. But the fact in question immediately -determines, for proprieties' and discretions' sake, the withdrawal of -Rosanna and her Father; they return to their own abode; and I see the -rest of the business of the act as taking place partly there and partly, -by what I make out, on the Bradhams' own premises, the field of the -Third Scene. Here is the passage between the two young women that I -require, and my Heroine, I think, must be on a visit of a number of days -to Gussie. I want Davey first with Rosanna, and think I get something -like his having walked over, along the cliff, to their house, to bring -her, at his wife's request, over to tea. Yes, I have Davey's walk back -with Rosanna, and her Father's declining to come, or saying that he will -follow afterward; his real design being to sneak over again, as I may -call it, to the other house, in the exercise of his intense curiosity. -That special founded and motived condition is what we sufficiently know -him by and what he is for the time (which is all the time we have of -him) identified by. I get thus for Book 2 that Gray, latish in the -afternoon, coming down from his uncle's quarter, finds him, has a -passage or scene with him, above all an impression of him; and this -before he has had any other: we learn that he hasn't seen his uncle yet; -the judgment of the doctors about this being operative and they wishing -a further wait. I want Rosanna's Father for his first very sharp -impression; this really making, I think, Scene First of Book 2. It gives -me Scene 2 for what I shall then want without further delay of his first -introduction to his Uncle's room and his half hour, or whatever, there; -with the fact determined of the non-collapse of the latter, his good -effect from the meeting quite rather, and the duration of him determined -to end of Book 2. After Book 2 he is no more. Scene 3 of Book 2 then can -only be, for Gray, with Rosanna; that scene having functions to be -exercised with no more delay at all, by what I make out, and being put -in, straight, then and there, that we may have the support of it. I by -the same token see Book 3 now as functional entirely for the encounter -of Gray with the two other women and, for the first time, with Davey; -and also as preparing the appearance of Horton Vint, though not producing -it. I see <i>him</i>, in fact, I think, as introduced independently -of his first appearance to Gray, see it as a matter of his relation with -Cissy, and as lighting up what I immediately want of <i>their</i> situation. -In fact don't I see this as Horton's "Act" altogether, as I shall have -seen and treated Book I as Rosanna's, and Book 2 as Gray's. By the blest -operation this time of my Dramatic principle, my law of successive -Aspects, each treated from its own centre, as, though with -qualifications. The Awkward Age, I have the great help of flexibility -and variety; my persons in turn, or at least the three or four foremost, -having control, as it were, of the Act and Aspect, and so making it his -or making it <i>hers.</i> This of course with the great inevitable and -desirable preponderance, in the Series, of Gray's particular weight. But -I seem to make out, to a certainty, at least another "Act" for Rosanna -and probably another for Horton; though perhaps not more than one, all -to herself, for Cissy. I say at least another for Horton on account of -my desire to give Gray as affecting Horton, only less than I want to -give Horton as affecting Gray. It is true that I get Gray as affecting -Horton more or less in Book 3, but as the situation developes it will -make new needs, determinations and possibilities. All this for feeling -my way and making things come, more and more come. I want an Aspect -under control of Davey, at all events—this I seem pretty definitely -to feel; but things will only come too much. At all events, to retreat, -remount, a little there are my 3 first Books sufficiently started -without my having as yet exactly noted the absolutely fundamental -antecedents. But before I do this, even, I memorise that Gray's Scene -with Rosanna for 3 of Book 2 shall be by her coming over to Mr. -Betterman's house herself that evening, all frankly and directly, to see -him there; not by his going over to her. And I seem to want it evening; -the summer night outside, with their moving about on the Terrace and -above the sea etc. Withal, by the same token, I want such interesting -things between them from immediately after the promulgation of Mr. -Betterman's Will; I want that, but of course can easily get it, so far -as anything is easy, in Book 4, the function of which is to present Gray -as face to face with the situation so created for him. This is -obviously, of course, one of Gray's Aspects, and the next will desirably -be, I dare say too; can only be, so far as I can now tell, when I -consider that the Book being my Fourth, only Six of the Ten which I most -devoutly desire to limit the thing to then remain for my full evolution -on the momentum by that time imparted. Certainly, at all events, the -Situation leaves Newport, to come to life, its full life, in New York, -where I seem to see it as going on to the end, unless I manage to treat -myself to some happy and helpful mise-en-scène or exploitation of my -memory of (say) California. The action entirely of American -localisation, as goes without saying, yet making me thus kind of hanker, -for dear "amusement's" sake, to decorate the thing with a bit of a -picture of some American Somewhere that is not either Newport or N.Y. I -even ask myself whether Boston wouldn't serve for this garniture, serve -with a narrower economy than "dragging in" California. I kind of want to -drag in Boston a little, feeling it as naturally and thriftily workable. -But these are details which will only too much come; and I seem to see -already how my action, however tightly packed down, will strain my Ten -Books, most blessedly, to cracking. That is exactly what I want, the -tight packing <i>and</i> the beautifully audible cracking; the most -magnificent masterly little vivid economy, with a beauty of its own -equal to the beauty of the donnée itself, that ever was.</p> - -<p>However, what the devil <i>are</i>, exactly, the little fundamentals in -the past? Fix them, focus them hard; they need only be perfectly -conceivable, but they must be of the most lucid sharpness. I want to -have it that for Gray, and essentially for Rosanna, it's a <i>renewal</i> of -an early, almost, or even quite positively, childish beginning; and for -Gray it's the same with Horton Vint—the impression of Horton already -existing in him, a very strong and "dazzled" one, made in the quite -young time, though in a short compass of days, weeks, possibly months, -or whatever, and having lasted on (always for Gray) after a fashion that -makes virtually a sort of relation already established, small as it -ostensibly is. Such his relation with Rosanna, such his relation with -Horton—but for his relation with Cissy——? Do I want that -to be also a renewal, the residuum of an old impression, or a fresh thing -altogether? What strikes me prima facie is that it's better to have two -such pre-established origins for the affair than three; the only question -is does that sort of connection more complicate or more simplify for that -with Cissy? It more simplifies if I see myself wanting to give, by my -plan, the full effect of a revolution in her, a revolution marked the -more by the germ of the relation being thrown back, marked the more, -that is, in the sense of the shade of perfidy, treachery, the shade of -the particular element and image that is of the essence, so far as she -is concerned, of my action. How this exactly works I must in a moment go -into—hammer it out clear; but meanwhile there are these other -fundamentals. Gray then is the son of his uncle's half-sister, not -sister (on the whole, I think); whose dissociation from her rich brother, -before he was anything like <i>so</i> rich, must have followed upon -her marrying a man with whom he, Mr. Betterman, was on some peculiarly -bad terms resulting from a business difference or quarrel of one of -those rancorous kinds that such lives (as Mr. Betterman's) are -plentifully bestrown with. The husband has been his victim, and he -hasn't hated him, or objected to him for a brother-in-law, any the less -for that. The objected-to brother-in-law has at all events died early, -and the young wife, with her boy, her scant means, her disconnection -from any advantage to her represented by her half-brother, has betaken -herself to Europe; where the rest of <i>that</i> history has been enacted. -I see the young husband, Gray's father, himself Graham Fielder the elder -or whatever, as dying early, but probably dying in Europe, through some -catastrophe to be determined, two or three years after their going -there. This is better than his dying at home, for removal of everything -from nearness to Mr. Betterman. Betterman has been married and has had -children, a son and a daughter, this is indispensable, for diminution of -the fact of paucity of children; but he has lost successively these -belongings—there is nothing over strange in it; the death of his son, -at 16 or 18 or thereabouts, having occurred a few years, neither too few -nor too many, before my beginning, and having been the sorest fact of -his life. Well then, young Mrs. Fielder or whoever, becomes thus in -Europe an early widow, with her little boy, and there, after no long -time, marries again, marries an alien, a European of some nationality to -be determined, but probably an Englishman; which completes the effect of -alienation from her brother—easily conceivable and representable as -"in his way," disliking this union; and indeed as having made known to her, -across the sea, that if she will forbear from it (this when he first -hears of it and before it has taken place) and will come back to America -with her boy, he will "forgive" her and do for her over there what he -can. The great fact is that she declines this condition, the giving up -of her new fiancé, and thereby declines an advantage that may, or might -have, become great for her boy. Not so great then—Betterman not <i>then</i> -so rich. But in fine—With which I cry Eureka, eureka; I have found -what I want for Rosanna's connection, though it will have to make Rosanna a -little older than Gray, 2 or 3 or 3 or 4 years, instead of same age. I -see Gray's mother at any rate, with her small means, in one of the -smaller foreign cities, Florence or Dresden, probably the latter, and -also see there Rosanna and her mother, this preceding by no long time -the latter's death. Mrs. Gaw has come abroad with her daughter, for -advantages, in the American way, while the husband and father is -immersed in business cares at home; and when the two couples, mother and -son, and mother and daughter, meet in a natural way, a connection is -more or less prepared by the fact of Mr. Gaw having had the business -association with Mrs. Fielder's half-brother, Mr. Betterman, at home, -even though the considerably violent rupture or split between the two -men will have already taken place. Mrs. Gaw is a very good simple, a -bewildered and pathetic rich woman, in delicate health, and is -sympathetic to Gray's mother, on whom she more or less throws herself -for comfort and support, and Gray and Rosanna, Rosanna with a governess -and all the facilities and accessories natural to wealth, while the boy's -conditions are much leaner and plainer—the two, I say, fraternise -and are good friends; he figuring to Rosanna (say he is about 13, while -she is 16) as a tremendously initiated and informed little polyglot -European, knowing France, Germany, Italy etc. from the first. It is at -this juncture that Mrs. Fielder's second marriage has come into view, or -the question and the appearance of it; and that, very simultaneously, -the proposal has come over from her half-brother on some rumour of it -reaching him. As already mentioned, Betterman proposes to her that if -she will come back to America with her boy, and not enter upon the union -that threatens, and which must have particular elements in it of a -nature to displease and irritate him, he will look after them both, -educate the boy at home, do something substantial for them. Mrs. Fielder -takes her American friend into her confidence in every way, introduces -to her the man who desires to marry her, whom Rosanna sees and with whom -the boy himself has made great friends, so that the dilemma of the poor -lady becomes a great and lively interest to them all; the pretendant -himself forming also a very good relation with the American mother and -daughter, the friends of his friend, and putting to Mrs. Gaw very -eagerly the possibility of her throwing her weight into the scale in his -favour. Her meeting, that is Mrs. Fielder's meeting, the proposition -from New York involves absolutely her breaking off with him; and he is -very much in love with her, likes the boy, and, though he doesn't want -to stand in the latter's light, has hopes that he won't be quite thrown -over. The engagement in fact, with the marriage near at hand, must be an -existing reality. It is for Mrs. Fielder something of a dilemma; but she -is very fond of her honourable suitor, and her inclinations go strongly -to sticking to him. She takes the boy himself into her confidence, young -as he is,—perhaps I can afford him a year or two more—make him -15, say; in which case Rosanna becomes 18, and the subsequent chronology is -thereby affected. It isn't, I must remember, as a young man in his very -first youth, at all, that I want Gray, or see him, with the opening of -the story at Newport. On the contrary all the proprieties, elements of -interest, convenience etc., are promoted by his being not less than 30. -I don't see why I shouldn't make him 33, with Rosanna thus <i>two</i> years -older, not three. If he is 15 in Dresden and she 17, it will be old -enough for each, without being too old, I think, for Gray. 18 years will -thus have elapsed from the crisis at Florence or wherever to the arrival -at Newport. I want that time, I think, I can do with it very well for -what I see of elements operative for him; and a period of some length -moreover is required for bringing the two old men at Newport to a proper -pitch of antiquity. Mr. Betterman dies very much in the fulness of -years, and as Rosanna's parent is to pass away soon after I want him to -have come to the end. If Gray is 15, however, I mustn't make his mother -too mature to inspire the devotion of her friend; at the same time that -there must have been years enough for her to have lived awhile with her -first husband and lost him. Of course this first episode may have been -very brief—there is nothing to prevent that. If she had married at 20 -she will then be, say, about 36 or so at the time of the crisis, and -this will be quite all right for the question of her second marriage. -Say she lives a considerable number of years after this, in great -happiness, her marriage having taken place; I in fact require her to do -so, for I want Gray to have had reasons fairly strong for his not having -been back to America in the interval. I may put it that he has, even, -been back for a very short time, on some matter connected with his -mother's interests, or his own, or whatever; but I complicate the case -thereby and have to deal somehow with the question of whether or no he -has then seen Mr. Betterman. No, I don't want him to have been back, and -can't do with it; keep this simple and workable. All I am doing here is -just to fix a little his chronology. Say he has been intending to go -over at about 25, when his mother's death takes place, about 10 years -after her second marriage. Say then, as is very conceivable, that his -stepfather, with whom he has become great friends, then requires and -appeals to his care and interest in a way that keeps him on and on till -the latter's death takes place just previous to Mr. Betterman's sending -for him. This gives me quite sufficiently what I want of the previous -order of things; but doesn't give me yet the fact about Rosanna's -connection in her young history which I require. I see accordingly what -has happened in Florence or Dresden as something of this kind: that Mrs. -Fielder, having put it to her boy that he shall decide, if he can, about -what they shall do, she lets Mrs. Gaw, who was at this juncture in -constant intercourse with her, know that she has done so—Mrs. Gaw and -Rosanna being, together, exceedingly interested about her, and Rosanna -extremely interested, in a young dim friendly way, about Gray; very much -as if he were the younger brother she hasn't got, and whom, or an older, -she would have given anything to have. Rosanna hates Mr. Betterman, who -has, as she understands and believes, in some iniquitous business way, -wronged or swindled her father; and isn't at all for what he has -proposed to the Fielders. In addition she is infatuated with Europe, -makes everything of being there, dreams, or would dream, of staying on -if she could, and has already in germ, in her mind, those feelings about -the dreadful American money-world of which she figures as the embodiment -or expression in the eventual situation. She knows thus that the boy has -had, practically, the decision laid upon him, and with the whole case -with all its elements and possibilities before her she takes upon -herself to act upon him, influence and determine him. She wouldn't have -him accept Mr. Betterman's cruel proposition, as she declares she sees -it, for the world. She proceeds with him as she would in fact with a -younger brother: there is a passage to be alluded to with a later -actuality, which figures for her in memory as her creation of a -responsibility; her very considerably passionate, and thereby -meddlesome, intervention. I see some long beautiful walk or stroll, some -visit to some charming old place or things—and Florence is here -indicated—during which she puts it all to him, and from which he, -much inspired and affected by her, comes back to say to his mother that he -doesn't want what is offered—at any such price as she will have to pay. -I see this occasion as really having settled it—and Rosanna's having -always felt and known that it did. She and her mother separate then from -the others; Mrs. Fielder communicates her refusal, sticks to her friend, -marries him shortly afterwards, and her subsequent years take the form I -have noted. The American mother and daughter go back across the sea; the -mother in time dies etc. I see also how much better it is to have -sufficient time for these various deaths to happen. But the point is -that the sense of responsibility, begetting gradually a considerable, a -deepening force of reflection, and even somewhat of remorse, as to all -that it has meant, is what has taken place for Rosanna in proportion as, -by the sequence of events and the happening of many things, Mr. -Betterman has grown into an apparently very rich old man with no natural -heir. His losses, his bereavements, I have already alluded to, and a -considerable relaxation of her original feeling about him in the light -of more knowledge and of other things that have happened. In the light, -for instance, of her now mature sense of what her father's career has -been and of all that his great ferocious fortune, as she believes it to -be, represents of rapacity, of financial cruelty, of consummate special -ability etc. She has kept to some extent in touch with Gray, so far that -is as knowing about his life and general situation are concerned; but -the element of compunction in her itself, and the sense of what she may -perhaps have deprived him of in the way of a great material advantage, -may be very well seen, I think, as keeping her shy and backward in -respect to following him up or remaining in intercourse. It isn't -likely, for the American truth of things, that she hasn't been back to -Europe again, more than once, whether before or after her mother's -death; but what I can easily and even interestingly see is that on -whatever occasion of being there she has yet not tried to meet him -again. She knows that neither he nor his stepfather are at all well off, -she has a good many general impressions and has tried to get knowledge -of them, without directly appealing for it to themselves, whenever she -can. Thus it is, to state things very simply, that, on hearing of the -stepfather's death, during the Newport summer, she has got at Mr. -Betterman and spoken to him about Gray; she has found him accessible to -what she wants to say, and has perceived above all what a pull it gives -her to be able to work, in her appeal, the fact, quite vivid in the -fulness of time to the old man himself indeed, that the young man, so -nearly, after all, related to him, and over there in Europe all these -years, is about the only person, who could get at him in any way, who -hasn't ever asked anything of him or tried to get something out of him. -Not only this, but he and his mother, in the time, are the only ones who -ever refused a proffered advantage. I think I must make it that Rosanna -finds that she can really tell her story to Mr. Betterman, can make a -confidant of him and so interest him only the more. She feels that he -likes her, and this a good deal on account of her enormous difference -from her father. But I need only put it here quite simply: she does -interest him, she does move him, and it is as a consequence of her -appeal that he sends for Gray and that Gray comes. What I must above all -take care of is the fact that she has represented him to the old man as -probably knowing less about money, having had less to do with it, having -moved in a world entirely outside of it, in a degree utterly unlike -anyone and everyone whom Mr. Betterman has ever seen.</p> - -<p>But I have got it all, I needn't develop; what I want now independently -is the beginning, quite back in the early years, of some relation on -Gray's part with Horton Vint, and some effect, which I think I really -must find right, of Horton's having done something for him, in their -boyish time, something important and gallant, rather showy, but at all -events really of moment, which has always been present to Gray. This I must -find—it need present no difficulty; with something in the general -way of their having been at school together—in Switzerland, with the -service rendered in Switzerland, say on a holiday cours among the -mountains, when Horty has fished Gray out of a hole, I don't mean quite -a crevasse, but something like, or come to his aid in a tight place of -some sort, and at his own no small risk, to bring him to safety. In fine -it's something like having saved his life, though that has a tiresome -little old romantic and conventional note. However I will make the thing -right and give it the right nuance; remember that it is all allusional -only now and a matter of reference on Gray's part. What must have -further happened, I think, is that Horty has been in Europe again, in -much later years, after College, indeed only a very few years previous, -and has met Gray again and they have renewed together; to the effect of -his apprehension of Gray's (to him) utterly queer and helpless and -unbusinesslike, unfinancial, type; and of Gray's great admiration of -everything of the opposite sort in him—combined, that is, with other -very attractive (as they appear) qualities. He has made Gray think a lot -about the wonderful American world that he himself long ago cut so loose -from, and of which Horty is all redolent and reverberant; and I think -must have told him, most naturally told him, of what happened in the far -off time in Florence. Only when, then, was the passage of their being at -school, or, better still, with the Swiss pasteur, or private tutor, -together? If it was before the episode in Florence they were rather -younger than I seem to see them; if it was after they were rather older. -Yet I don't at all see why it should not have been just after—this -perfectly natural at 16 for Gray, at 17 for Horty; both thoroughly -natural ages for being with the pasteur, and for the incident -afterwards; Gray going very naturally to the pasteur, whom in fact he -may have been with already before, during the first year of his mother's -new marriage. That provides for the matter well enough, and Eve only to -see it to possess it; and gives a basis for their taking up together -somehow when they meet, wherever I may put it, in the aftertime. There -are forms of life for Gray and his stepfather to be focussed as the right -ones—Horty sees this pair <i>together</i> somewhere; and nothing is -more arrangeable, though I don't think I want to show the latter as -having dangled and dawdled about Italy only; and on the other hand do -see that Gray's occupation and main interest, other than that of looking -after his elder companions, must be conceived and presented for him. -Again no difficulty, however, with the right imagination of it. Horty -goes back to America; the 3 or 4, or at the most 4 or 5, years elapse, -so that it is with that comparative freshness of mutual remembrance that -the two men meet again. What I do see as definite is that Horty has had -up to the time of Gray's return no sort of relation whatever with Mr. -Betterman or his affairs, or any point of the question with which the -action begins at Newport. He is on the other hand in relation with -Cissy; and there are things I have got to account for in his actual -situation. Why is he without money, with his interest in the getting of it -etc.? But that is a question exactly <i>of</i> interest—I mean to -which the answer may afford the greatest. And settle about the degree of -his apprehension of, relation to, designs on, or general lively -consciousness of Rosanna. Important the fact that the enormous extent of -her father's fortune is known only after his death, and is larger even -than was supposed; though it is to be remembered that in American -financial conditions, with the immense public activity of money there -taking place, these things are gauged in advance and by the general -knowledge, or speculative measure, as the oldfashioned private fortune -couldn't be. But I am here up against the very nodus of my history, the -facts of Horty's connection with the affairs that come into being for -Gray under his uncle's Will; the whole mechanism, in fine, of this part -of the action, the situation so created and its consequences. Enormous -difficulty of pretending to show various things here as with a business -vision, in my total absence of business initiation; so that of course my -idea has been from the first not to show them with a business vision, -but in some other way altogether; this will take much threshing out, but -it is the very basis of the matter, the core of the subject, and I shall -worry it through with patience. But I must get it, plan it, utterly -right in advance, and this is what takes the doing. The other doing, the -use of it when schemed, is comparatively easy. What strikes me first of -all is that the amount of money that Gray comes in for must, for reasons -I needn't waste time in stating, so obvious are they, be no such huge -one, by the New York measure, as in many another case: it's a tremendous -lot of money for Gray, from his point of view and in relation to his -needs or experience. Thus the case is that if Mr. Gaw's accumulations or -whatever have distinctly surpassed expectation, the other old man's have -fallen much below it—or at least have been known to be no such great -affair anyhow. Various questions come up for me here, though there is no -impossibility of settling them if taken one by one. The whole point is of -course that Mr. Betterman <i>has</i> been a ruthless operator or whatever, -and with doings Davey Bradham is able to give Gray so dark an account -of; therefore if the mass of money of the acquisition of which such a -picture can be made is not pretty big, the force of the picture falls a -good deal to the ground. The difficulty in that event, in view of the -bigness, is that the conception of any act on Horton's part that amounts -to a swindle practised on Gray to such a tremendous tune is neither a -desirable nor a possible one. As one presses and presses light -breaks—there are so many ways in which one begins little by little to -wonder if one may not turn it about. There is the way in the first place -of lowering the pitch altogether of the quantities concerned for either -men. I see that from the moment ill—gotten money is concerned the -essence of my subject stands firm whatever the amount of the -same—whatever the amounts in either case. I haven't proposed from the -first at all to be definite, in the least, about financial details or -mysteries—I need hardly say; and have even seen myself absolutely not -stating or formulating at all the figure of the property accruing to -Gray. I haven't the least need of that, and can make the absence of it -in fact a positively good and happy effect. That is an immense gain for -my freedom of conduct; and in fine there glimmers upon me, there -glimmers upon me——! The idea, which was vaguely my first, of -the absolute theft practised upon Gray by Horty, and which Gray's large -appeal to his cleverness and knowledge, and large trust in his -competence, his own being nil—this theft accepted and condoned by Gray -as a manner of washing his own hands of the use of the damnosa -hereditas—this thinkable enough in respect to some limited, even if -considerable, amount etc., but losing its virtue of conceivability if -applied to larger and more complicated things. Vulgar theft I don't -want, but I want something to which Horty is led on and encouraged by -Gray's whole attitude and state of mind face to face with the impression -which he gets over there of so many of the black and merciless things -that are behind the great possessions. I want Gray absolutely to inherit -the money, to have it, to have had it, and to let it go; and it seems to -me that a whole element of awkwardness will be greatly minimised for me -if I never exactly express, or anything like it, what the money is. The -difficulty is in seeing any one particular stroke by which Horty can do -what he wants; it will have to be much rather a whole train of -behaviour, a whole process of depredation and misrepresentation, which -constitutes his delinquency. This, however, would be and <i>could</i> be -only an affair of time; and my whole intention, a straight and compact -action, would suffer from this. What I originally saw was the fact of -Gray's detection of Horty in a piece of extremely ingenious and able -malversation of his funds, the care of which he has made over to him, -and the then determination on his part simply to show the other in -silence that he understands, and on consideration will do nothing; this -being, he feels in his wrought-up condition after what he has learnt -about the history of the money, the most congruous way of his ceasing -himself to be concerned with it and of resigning it to its natural -associations. That was the essence of my subject, and I see as much in -it as ever; only I see too that it is imaginable about a comparatively -small pecuniary interest much more than about a great. It has to depend -upon the kind of malpractice involved; and I am partly tempted to ask -myself whether Horty's connection with the situation may not be -thinkable as having begun somewhat further back. One thing is certain, -however; I don't want any hocus-pocus about the Will itself—which an -anterior connection for H. would more or less amount to: I want it just -as I have planned it up to the edge of the circle in which his misdeed -is perpetrated. What glimmers upon me, as I said just now, is the -conception of an extreme frankness of understanding between the two -young men on the question of Gray's inaptitudes, which at first are not at -all disgusts—because he doesn't <i>know</i>; but which makes them, -the two, have it out together at an early stage. Yes, there glimmers, there -glimmers; something really more interesting, I think, than the mere -nefarious act; something like a profoundly nefarious attitude, or even -genius: I see, I really think I see, the real fine truth of the matter -in <i>that.</i> With which I keep present to me the whole significance and -high dramatic value of the part played in the action by Cissy Foy; have -distinct to me her active function as a wheel in the machine. How it isn't -simply Gray and Horty at all, but Gray and Horty and <i>her</i>; how it -isn't She and Gray, any more than it's She and Horty, simply, but is for -her too herself and the <i>two</i> men: in which I see possibilities of the -most interesting. But I must put her on her feet perfectly in order to -see as I should. Without at all overstraining the point of previous -contacts for Gray with these three or four others—than which even at -the worst there is nothing in the world more verisimilitudinous—I want -some sort of relation for him with her <i>started</i>; this being a distinct -economy, purchased by no extravagance, and seeing me, to begin with, so -much further on my way. And who, when I bethink myself, have his -contacts been with, after all, over there, but Horty and Rosanna—the -relation to Mr. Betterman being but of the mere essence. Of the people -who matter the Bradhams are new to him, and that is all right; Cissy may -have been seen of him on some occasion over there that is quite recent, -as recent as I like; all the more that I must remember how if I want her -truly a Girl I must mind what I'm about with the age I'm attributing to -Gray. I want a disparity, but not too great, at the same time that -though I want her a Girl, I want her not too young a one either. -Everything about her, her intelligence, character, sense of life and -knowledge of it, imply a certain experience and a certain time for that. -The great fact is that she is the poor Girl, and the "exceptionally -clever," in a society of the rich, living her life with them, and more -or less by their bounty; being, I seem to see, already a friend and -protégée of Rosanna's, though it isn't Rosanna but the Bradhams who -put her in relation with Gray, whether designedly or not. I seem to run -here the risk a bit of exposure to the charge of more or less repeating -the figure of Charlotte in The Golden Bowl, with the Bradhams repeating -even a little the Assinghams in that fiction; but I shake this -reflection off, as having no weight beyond duly warning; the situation -being such another affair and the real characteristics and exhibited -proceedings of these three persons being likewise so other. Say something -shall have passed between Cissy at a <i>then</i> 25, or 24 at most, -and Gray "on the other side"; this a matter of but two or three -occasions, interesting to him, shortly before his stepfather's death—a -person with whom she has then professed herself greatly struck, to whom -she has been somehow very "nice": a circumstance pleasing and touching -at the time to Gray, given his great attachment to that charming, or at -any rate to Gray very attaching, though for us slightly mysterious, -character. Say even if it doesn't take, or didn't, too much exhibition -or insistence, that the meeting has been with the stepfather only, who -has talked with her about Gray, made a point of Gray, wished she could -know Gray, excited her interest and prepared her encounter for Gray, in -some conditions in which Gray has been temporarily absent from him. Say -this little intercourse has taken place at some "health resort", some -sanatorium or other like scene of possibilities, where the stepfather, -for whom I haven't even yet a name, is established, making his cure, -staving off the affection of which he dies, while this interesting young -American creature is also there in attendance on some relative whom she -also has since lost. I multiply my orphans rather, Charlotte too having -been an orphan; but I can keep this girl only a half-orphan perhaps if I -like. I kind of want her, for the sake of the characteristic, to have a -mother, without a father; in which case her mother, who hasn't died, but -got better, will have been her companion at the health resort; though it -breaks a little into my view of the girl's dependence, her isolation -etc., her living so much with these other people, if her mother is -about. On the other hand the mother may be as gently but a charge the -more for her, and so in a manner conducive; though it's a detail, at any -rate, settling itself as I get in close—and she would be at the worst -the only mother in the business. What I seem to like to have at all -events is that Gray and Cissy, have <i>not</i> met, yet have been in this -indirect relation—complicated further by the fact of her existing -"friendship", say, as a temporary name for it, with Horton Vint. She -arrives thus with her curiosity, her recollections, her -intelligence—for, there's no doubt about it, I am, rather as usual, -offering a group of the personally remarkable, in a high degree, all -round. Augusta Bradham, really, is about the only stupid one, the only -approach to a fool, though she too in her way is a force, a driving -one—that is the whole point; which happens to mark a difference also, -so far good, from the Assinghams, where it was the wife who had the -intelligence and the husband who was in a manner the fool. The fact of -the personal values, so to call them, thus clustered, I of course not -only accept, but cherish; that they are each the particular individual -of the particular weight being of course of the essence of my donnée. -They are interesting that way—I have no use for them here in any -other.</p> - -<p>Horton has meanwhile become in a sort tied up with Cissy, as she has -with him; through the particular conditions of their sentiment for each -other—she in love with him, so far as she, by her conviction and -theory, has allowed herself to go in that direction for a man without -money, though destined somehow to have it, as she feels; and he in love -with her under the interdict of a parity of attitude on the whole -"interested" question. The woman whom he would give truly one of his -limbs to commend himself to is Rosanna, who perfectly knows it and for -whom he serves as the very compendium and symbol of that danger of her -being approached only on that ground, the ground of her wealth, which -is, by all the mistrusts and terrors it creates, the deep note of her -character and situation; that he serves to her as the very type of what -she most dreads, not only the victory, but the very approach of it, -almost constituting thus a kind of frank relation, a kind of closeness -of contact between them, that involves for her almost a sinister (or -whatever) fascination. It is between him and my ambitious young woman (I -call her ambitious to simplify) that they are in a manner allies in what -may be called their "attitude to society"; the frankness of their -recognition, on either side, that in a world of money they can't <i>not</i> -go in for it, and that accordingly so long as neither has it, they can't -go in for each other: though how each would—each makes the other -feel—if it could all be only on a different basis! Horty's attitude -is that he's going to have it somehow, and he to a certain extent infects -her with this conviction—but that he doesn't wholly do so is exactly -part of the evidence as to that latent limitation of the <i>general</i> -trust in him which I must a good deal depend on to explain how it is that, -with his ability, or the impression of this that he also produces, he -hasn't come on further. Deep down in the girl is her element of -participation in this mistrust too—which is part of the reason why -she hangs back, in spite of the kind of attraction he has for her, from any -consent to, say, marry him. He, for that matter, hasn't in the least -urged the case either—it hasn't been in him up to now, in spite of a -failure or two, in spite of the failure notably with Rosanna, to close -by a positive act the always possibly open door to his marrying money. -I see the recognition of all this between them as of well-nigh the -crudest and the most typical, the most "modern"; in fact I see their -relation as of a highly exhibitional value and interest. What the Girl -indeed doesn't, and doesn't want to (up to now) express, is exactly that -limit, and the ground of it, of her faith in him as a financial -conqueror. She is willing more or less to believe, to confide, in his own -confidence—she sees him indeed as more probably than not marked for -triumphant acquisition; but the latent, "deep down" thing is her -wonderment as to the character of his methods—if the so-called -straight ones won't have served or sufficed. She sees him as a fine -adventurer—which is a good deal too how she sees herself; but almost -crude though I have called their terms of mutual understanding it hasn't -come up for them, and I think it is absolutely never to come up for -them, that she so far faces this question of his "honour", or of any -capacity in him for deviation from it, as even to conjure it away. There -are depths within depths between them—and I think I understand what I -mean if I say there are also shallows beside shallows. They give each -other rope and yet at the same time remain tied; that for the moment is -a sufficient formula—once I keep the case lucid as to what their tie -is.</p> - -<p>What accordingly does her situation in respect to Gray come to, and how -do I see it work out? The answer to that involves of course the question -of what his, in respect to her, comes to, and what it gives me for -interest. She has got her original impression about him over there as of -the man without means to speak of; but it is as the heir to a fortune -that she now first sees him, and as the person coming in virtue of that -into the world she lives in, where her power to guide, introduce and -generally help and aid and comfort him, shows from the first as -considerable. She strikes him at once as the creature, in all this -world, the most European and the most capable of, as it were, -understanding him intellectually, entering into his tastes etc. He -recognises quickly that, putting Davey Bradham perhaps somewhat aside, -she is the being, up and down the place, with whom he is going to be -able most to <i>communicate.</i> With Rosanna he isn't going to communicate -"intellectually", æsthetically, and all the rest, the least little bit: -Rosanna has no more taste than an elephant; Rosanna is only <i>morally</i> -elephantine, or whatever it is that is morally most massive and -magnificent. What I want is to get my right firm <i>joints</i>, each working -on its own hinge, and forming together the play of my machine: they -<i>are</i> the machine, and when each of them is settled and determined it -will work as I want it. The first of these, definitely, is that Gray -does inherit, has inherited. The next is that he is face to face with -what it means to have inherited. The next to that is that one of the things -it means—though this isn't the light in which he first sees the -fact—is that the world immensely opens to him, and that one of the -things it seems most to give him, to offer and present to him, is this -brilliant, or whatever, and interesting young woman. He doesn't at first -at all see her in the light of her making up to him on account of his -money; she is too little of a crudely interested specimen for that, and -too sincere in fact to herself—feeling very much about him that she -would certainly have been drawn to him, after this making of -acquaintance, even if no such advantages attached to him and he had -remained what he had been up to then. But all the same it is a Joint, and -we see that it is by seeing <i>her</i> as we shall; I mean I make it and -keep it one by showing "what goes on" between herself and Horton. I have -blessedly that view, that alternation of view, for my process throughout -the action. The determination of her interest towards him—that then -is a Joint. And let me make the point just here that at first he has -nothing but terror, but horror, of seeing himself affected as Rosanna -has been by her own situation—from the moment, that is, he begins to -take in that she is so affected. He takes this in betimes from various -signs—before that passes between them which gives him her case in the -full and lucid way in which he comes to have it. <i>She</i> gives it to him -presently—but at first as her own simply, holding her hand entirely -from intimating that his need be at all like it; as she must do, for -that matter, given the fact that it is really through her action that he -was brought over to see his uncle. She thinks her feelings about her own -case right and inevitable for herself; but I want to make it an -interesting and touching inconsistency in her that she desires not to -inspire him, in respect to his circumstances, with any correspondingly -justified sense. Definite is it that what he learns, he learns not the -least mite from herself, though after a while he comes quite to -challenge her on it, but from Davey Bradham, so far as he learns it, for -the most part, concretely and directly—as many other impressions as I -can suggest helping besides. I want him at all events to have a full -large clear moment or season of exhilaration, of something like -intoxication, over the change in his conditions, before questions begin -to come up. An essential Joint is constituted by their beginning to come -up, and the difference that this begins to make. What I want of Davey -Bradham is that he is a determinant in this shift of Gray's point of -view, though I want also (and my scenario has practically provided for -that) that the immediate amusement of his contact with Davey shall be -quite compatible with his <i>not</i> yet waking up, <i>not</i> yet seeing -questions loom. I must keep it well before me too that his whole -enlarged vision of the money-world, so much more than any other sort of -world, that all these people constitute, operates inevitably by itself, -promotes infinite reflection, makes a hundred queer and ugly things, a -thousand, ten thousand, glare at him right and left. A Joint again is -constituted by Gray's first consciousness of malaise, first -determination of malaise, in the presence of more of a vision, and more -and more impression of everything; which determination, as I call it, I -want to proceed from some sense in him of Cissy's attitude as affected -by his own reactions, exhibition of questions, wonderments and, to put -it simply and strongly, rising disgusts. She has appealed to him at the -outset, on his first apprehension of her, exactly as a poor girl who -wasn't meant to be one, who has been formed by her nature and her -experience to rise to big brilliant conditions, carry them, take them -splendidly, in fine do all justice to them; this under all the first -flush of what I have called his own exhilaration. He hasn't then -committed himself, in the vulgar sense, at all—had only committed -himself, that is, to the appearance of being interested and charmed: his -imaginative expansion for that matter being naturally too great to -permit for the moment of particular concentration or limitations. But -isn't his incipient fear of beginning to be, of becoming, such another -example, to put it comprehensively, as Rosanna, doesn't this proceed -precisely from the stir in him of certain disconcerting, complicating, -in fact if they go a little further quite blighting, wonderments in -respect to Cissy's possibilities? She throws her weight with him into -the <i>happy</i> view of his own; which is what he likes her, wants her, at -first encourages her to do, lending himself to it while he feels -himself, as it were, all over. Mrs. Bradham, all the while, backs her up -and backs <i>him</i> up, and is in general as crude and hard and blatant, -as vulgar is what it essentially comes to, in her exhibited desire to bring -about their engagement, as is exactly required for producing on him just -the wrong effect. Gray's tone to the girl becomes, again to simplify: -"Oh yes, it's all right that you should be rich, should have all the -splendid things of this world; but I don't see, I'm not sure, of its being -in the least right that <i>I</i> should—while I seem to be making out -more and more, round me, how so many of them are come by." It is the -insistence on them, the way everyone, among that lot at any rate, -appears aware of no values but those, that sets up more and more its -effect on his nerves, his moral nerves as it were, and his reflective -imagination. The girl counters to this of course—she isn't so crude a -case as not to; she denies that she's the sort of existence that he thus -imputes—all the while that she only sees in his attitude and his -position a kind of distinction that would simply add to their situation, -simply gild and after a fashion decorate it, were she to marry him. I -want to make another Joint with her beginning, all the same, to doubt of -him, to think him really perhaps capable of strange and unnatural -things, which she doesn't yet see at all clearly; but which take the -form for her of his possibly handing over great chunks of his money to -public services and interests, deciding to be munificent with it, after -the fashion of Rockefellers and their like: though with the enormous -difference that his resources are not in the slightest degree of that -calibre. He's rich, yes, but not rich enough to remain rich if he goes -in for that sort of overdone idealism. Some passage bearing on this -takes place, I can see, about at the time when he has the so to call it -momentous season, or scene, or whatever, of confidence or exchange with -Rosanna in which she goes the whole "figure", as they say, and puts to -him that exactly her misery is in having come in for resources that -should enable her to do immense things, but that are so dishonoured and -stained and blackened at their very roots, that it seems to her that -they carry their curse with them, and that she asks herself what -application to "benevolence" as commonly understood, can purge them, can -make them anything but continuators, somehow or other, of the wrongs in -which they had their origin. This, dramatically speaking, is momentous -for Gray, and it makes a sort of clearing up to realities between him -and Rosanna which offers itself in its turn, distinctly, as a Joint. It -makes its mark for value, has an effect, leaves things not as they were.</p> - -<p>But meanwhile what do I see about Horton, about the situation between -them, so part and parcel of the situation between Gray and Cissy and -between Horton and Cissy. Absolute the importance, I of course -recognise, of such a presentation of matters between her and Horton, and -Horton and her, as shall stand behind and under everything that takes -place from this point. In my adumbration of a scenario for these earlier -aspects I have provided, I think, for this; at any rate I do hereby -provide. I want to give the effect, for all it's worth, of their being -constantly, chronically, naturally and, for my drama, determinatively, -in communication; with which it more and more comes to me that when the -great <i>coup</i> of the action effects itself Gray shall have been brought -to it as much by the forces determining it on her behalf, in relation to -her, in a word, as by those determining it in connection with Horton. -She helps him to his solution about as much as Horton does, and, -lucidly, logically, ever so interestingly, everything between them up to -the verge is but a preparation for that. Enormous meanwhile the relation -with Horton constituted by his making over to this dazzling person (by -whom moreover he wants to be, consents to be, dazzled) the care or -administration of his fortune; for which highly characteristic, but -almost, in its freehandedness, abnormally, there must have been -preparation, absolutely, and oh, as I can see, ever so interestingly, in -Book 2, the section containing his face to face parts with Mr. -Betterman. It comes to me as awfully fine, given the way in which I -represent the old dying man as affected and determined, to sweep away -everything in the matter of precautions and usualisms, provisions for -trusteeships and suchlike, and lump the whole thing straight on to the -young man, without his having a condition or a proviso to consider. What -I have wanted is that he should at a stroke, as it were, in those last -enshrouded, but perfectly possessed hours, make over his testament -utterly and entirely, in the most simplified way possible; in short by -a sweeping codicil that annihilates what he has done before and puts -Gray in what I want practically to count as unconditioned possession. -Thank the Lord I have only to give the effect of this, for which I can -trust myself, without going into the ghost of a technicality, any -specialising demonstration. I need scarcely tell myself that I don't by -this mean that Gray makes over matters definitely and explicitly to -Horton at once, with attention called to the tightness with which his -eyes are shut and all his senses stopped or averted; but that naturally -and inevitably, also interestingly, this result proceeds, in fact very -directly and promptly springs, from his viewing and treating his friend -as his best and cleverest and vividest adviser—whom he only doesn't -rather abjectly beg to take complete and irresponsible charge because he -is ashamed of doing so. Two things very definite here; one being that -Gray isn't in the least blatant or glorious about his want, absolutely -phenomenal in that world, of any faint shade of business comprehension -or imagination, but is on the contrary so rather helplessly ashamed of -it that he keeps any attitude imputable to him as much as possible out of -the question—and in fact proceeds in the way I know. He has moments -of confidence—he tells Rosanna, makes a clean breast to her and with -Horton doesn't need to be explicit, beyond a point, since all his -conduct expresses it. What happens is that little by little, inevitably, -as a consequence of first doing this for him and then doing that and -then the other, Horton more and more gets control, gets a kind of -unlimited play of hand in the matter which practically amounts to a sort -of general power of attorney; as Gray falls into the position, under a -feeling insurmountably directing him, of signing anything, everything, -that Horton brings to him for the purpose—but only what Horton brings. -The state of mind and vision and feeling, the state of dazzlement with -reserves and reflections, the play of reserves and reflections with -dazzlement (which is my convenient word covering here all that I intend -and prefigure) is a part of the very essence of my subject—which in -fine I perfectly possess. What happens is, further, that, even with the -rapidity which is of the remarkable nature of the case, Horton shows for -a more and more monied, or call it at first a less and less non-monied -individual; with an undisguisedness in this respect which of itself -imposes and, vulgarly speaking, succeeds. I express these things here -crudely and summarily, by rude signs and hints, in order to express them -at all; but what is of so high an interest, and so bright and -characteristic, is that Horton is "splendid", plausible, delightful, -<i>because</i> exactly so logical and happily suggestive, about all this; -he puts it to Gray that <i>of course</i> he is helping himself by helping -Gray, that <i>of course</i> his connection with Gray does him good in the -business world and gives him such help to do things for himself as he has -never before had. I needn't abound in this sense here, I am too well -possessed of what I see—as I find myself in general more and more. A -tremendous Joint is formed, in all this connection, when the first definite -question begins to glimmer upon Gray, under some intimation, suggestion, -impression, springing up as dramatically as I can make it, as to what -Horton is really doing with him, and as to whether or no he shall really -try to find out. That question of whether or no he <i>shall becomes</i> the -question; just as the way he answers it, not all at once, but under -further impressions invoked, becomes a thing of the liveliest interest -for us; becomes a consideration the climax of which represents exactly -the Joint that is in a sense the climax of the Joints. He sees—well -what I see him see, and it is of course not at all this act of vision in -itself, but what takes place in consequence of it, and the process of -confrontation, reflection, resolution, that ensues—it is this that -brings me up to my high point of beautiful difficulty and clarity. An -exquisite quality of representation here of course comes in, with -everything that is involved to make it rich and interesting. A Joint -here, a Joint of the Joint, for perfect flexible working, is Horton's -vision of his vision, and Horton's exhibited mental, moral audacity of -certainty as to what that may mean for himself. There is a scene of -course in which, between them, this is what it can only be provisionally -gross and approximate to call settled: as to which I needn't insist -further, it's <i>there</i>; what I want is there; I've only to pull it out: -it's <i>all</i> there, heaped up and pressed together and awaiting the -properest hand. So much just now for <i>that.</i></p> - -<p>As to Cissy Foy meanwhile, the case seems to me to clear up and clear -up to the last perfection; or to be destined and committed so to do, at -any rate, as one presses it with the right pressure. How shall I put it -for the moment, <i>her</i> case, in the very simplest and most -rudimentary terms? She sees the improvement in Horton's situation, she -assists at it, it gives her pleasure, it even to a certain extent causes -her wonder, but a wonder which the pleasure only perches on, so to -speak, and converts to its use; so does the vision appeal to her and -hold her of the exercise on his part, the more vivid exercise than any -she has yet been able to enjoy an exhibition of, of the ability and -force, the <i>doing</i> and man-of-action quality, as to the show of -which he has up to now been so hampered. She likes his success at last, -plainly, and he has it from her that she likes it; she likes to let him -know that she likes it, and we have her for the time in contemplation, -as it were, of these two beautiful cases of possession and acquisition, -out of which indeed poor little impecunious she gets as yet no direct -advantage, but which are somehow together there <i>for</i> her with a -kind of glimmering looming option well before her as to how they shall -<i>come</i> yet to concern her. Awfully interesting and attractive, as -one says, to mark the point (such a Joint <i>this!</i>) at which the -case begins to glimmer for Gray about her, as it has begun to glimmer -for him about Horton. I make out here, so far as I catch the tip of the -tail of it, such an interesting connection and dependence, for what I -may roughly call Gray's state of mind, as to what is taking place within -Cissy, so to speak. Since I speak of the most primitive statement of it -possible he catches the moment at which she begins to say to herself -"But if Horton, if <i>he</i>, is going to be rich——?" as a -positive arrest, say significant warning or omen, in his own nearer -approach to her; which takes on thereby a portentous, a kind of ominous -and yet enjoyable air of evidence as to his own likelihood, at this -rate, of getting poor. He catches her not asking herself withal, at -least <i>then</i>, "<i>How</i> is Horton going to be rich, <i>how</i>, -at such a rate, has it come on, and what does it mean?"—it is only -the "<i>If</i> Horton, oh <i>if</i>——?" that he comes up -against; it's as if he comes up against, as well, some wondrous -implication in it of "If, if,<i>if</i> Mr. Gray is, 'in such a funny -way,' going to be poor——?" He sees her <i>there</i>, seeing -at the same time that it's as near as she yet gets; as near perhaps -even—for this splendid apprehension sort of begins to take place -in him—as she's going to allow herself to get; and after the first -chill of it, shock of it, pain of it (because I want him to be at the -point at which he has <i>that</i>) fades a little away for him, he -emerging or shaking himself out of it, the beautiful way in which it -falls into the general ironic apprehension, imagination, appropriation, -of the Whole, becomes for him <i>the</i> fact about it. She has them, -each on his side, there in her balance—and this is between them, -between him and her; I must have prepared everything right for its being -oh such a fine moment. What I want to do of course is to get out of -<i>this</i> particular situation all it can give; what it most gives -being, to the last point, the dramatic quality, intensity, force, -current or whatever, of Gray's apprehension of it, once this is -determined, and of course wondering interest in it—as a light, so -to speak, on both of the persons concerned. What I see is that she gives -him the measure, as it were, of Horton's successful proceeding—and -does so, in a sort, without positively having it herself, or truly -wanting to have it beyond the fact that it is success, is promise and -prospect of acquisition on a big scale. What it comes to is that he -finds her believing in Horton just at the time and in proportion as he -has found himself ceasing to believe, so far as the latter's -disinterestedness is concerned. No better, no more vivid illustration of -the force of the money-power and money-prestige rises there before him, -innumerably as other examples assault him from all round. The effect on -her is there for him to "study," even, if he will; and in fact he does -study it, studies it in a way that (as he also sees) makes her think -that this closer consideration of her, approach to her, as it were, is -the expression of an increased sympathy, faith and good will, increased -desire, in fine, to make her like him. All the while it is, for Gray -himself, something other; yet something at the same time wellnigh as -absorbing as if it were what she takes it for. The fascination of seeing -what will come of it—that is of the situation, the state of -vigilance, the wavering equilibrium, at work, or at play, in the young -woman—this "fascination" very "amusing" to show, with everything -that clusters about it. He really enjoys getting so detached from it as -to be able to have it before him for observation and wonder as he does, -and I must make the point very much of how this fairly soothes and -relieves him, begins to glimmer upon him exactly <i>through</i> that -consciousness as something like the sort of issue he has been worrying -about and longing for. Just so something that he makes out as -distinguishable there in Horton, a confidence more or less dissimulated -but also, deeply within, more or less determined, operates in its way as -a measure for him of Horton's intimate sense of how things will go for -him; the confidence referring, I mustn't omit, to his possibility of -Cissy, after all, whom his sentiment for makes his most disinterested -interest, so to call it: all this in a manner corresponding to that -apprehension in Gray of <i>her</i> confidence, which I have just been -sketchily noting. The one disinterested thing in Horton, that is, -consists of his being so attached to her that he really cares for her -freedom, cares for her doing what on the whole she most wants to, if it -will but come as she wants it, by the operation, the evolution, so to -say, of her clear preference. He has somehow within him a sense that -anyway, whatever happens, they shall not fail of being "friends" after -all. I see myself wanting to have Gray come up against some conclusive -sign of how things <i>are</i> at last between them—though I say -"at last" as if he has had <i>much</i> other light as to how such things -<i>have</i> been, precedently. I don't want him to <i>have</i> had much -other light, though he needs of course to have had <i>some</i>; there -being people enough to tell him, he being so in the circle of talk, -reference, gossip; but with his own estimate of the truth of ever so -much of the chatter in general, and of that chatter in particular, -taking its course. What I seem to see just in this connection is that he -has "believed" so far as to take it that she <i>has</i> "cared" for his -friend in the previous time, but that Horton hasn't really at all cared -for her, keeping himself in reserve as it is of his essence to do, and -in particular (this absolutely <i>known</i> to Gray) never having wholly -given up his views on Rosanna. Gray believes that he hasn't, at any -rate, and this helps him not to fit the fact of the younger girl's -renounced, quenched, outlived, passion, or whatever one may call it, to -any game of patience or calculation, rooted in a like state of feeling, -on Horton's part. I want the full effect of what I can only call for -convenience Gray's Discovery, his full discovery of them "together", in -some situation, and its illuminating and signifying, its in a high -degree, to repeat again my cherished word, determinant character. This -effect requires exactly what I have been roughly marking—the line -of argument in which appearances, as interpreted for himself, have been -supporting Gray. "She has been in love with him, yes—but nothing -has come of it—nothing could come of it; because, though he has -been aware, and has been nice and kind to her, he isn't affected in the -same way—is, in these matters, too cool and calculating a bird. He -likes women, yes; and has had lots to do with them; but in the way of -what a real relation with <i>her</i> would have meant—not! She has -given him up, she has given it up—whereby one is free not to -worry, not to have scruples, not to fear to cut across the possibility -of one's friend." That's a little compendium of what I see. But it comes -to me that I also want something more—for the full effect and the -exact particular and most pointed bearing of what I dub Gray's -discovery. He must have put it to Horton, as their relations have -permitted at some suggested hour, or in some relevant connection: "Do -you mind telling me if it's true—what I've heard a good deal -affirmed—that there has been a question of an engagement between -you and Miss Foy?—or that you are so interested in her that to see -somebody else making up to her would be to you as a pang, an affront, a -ground of contention or challenge or whatever?" I seem to see that, very -much indeed; and by the same token to see Horton's straight denegation. -I see Horton say emphatically No—and this for reasons quite -conceivable in him, once one apprehends their connection with his -wishing above all, beyond anything else that he at this moment wishes, -to keep well with Gray. His denegation is plausible; Gray believes it -and accepts it—all the more that at the moment in question he -<i>wants</i> to, in the interest of his own freedom of action. -Accordingly the point I make is that when he in particular conditions -finds them all unexpectedly and unmistakably "together", the discovery -becomes for him <i>doubly</i> illuminating. I might even better say -trebly; showing him in the very first place that Horton has lied to him, -and thereby that Horton <i>can</i> lie. This very interesting and -important—but also, in a strange way, "fascinating" to him. It -shows in the second way how much Cissy is "thinking" of Horton, as well -as he of her; and it shows in the last place, which makes it triple, how -well Horton must think of the way his affairs are getting on that he can -now consider the possibility of a marriage—that he can feel, I -mean, he can <i>afford</i> to marry; not having need of one of the -Rosanna's to make up for his own destitution. This clinches enormously, -as by a flash of vision, Gray's perception of what he is about; and is -thus very intensely a Joint of the first water! What I want to be -carried on to is the point at which all that he sees and feels and puts -together in this connection eventuates in a decision or attitude, in a -clearing-up of all the troubled questions, obscurities and difficulties -that have hung for him about what I call his Solution, about what he -shall be most at ease, most clear and consistent for himself, in making -up his mind to. The process here and the position on his part, with all -the implications and consequences of the same in which it results, is -difficult and delicate to formulate, but I see with the last intensity -the sense of it, and feel how it will all come and come as I get nearer -to it. What is a big and beautiful challenge to a whole fine handling of -these connections in particular is the making conceivable and clear, or -in other words credible, consistent, vivid and interesting, the -particular extraordinary relation thus constituted between the two men. -That one may make it these things for Gray is more or less calculable, -and, as I seem to make out, workable; but the greatest beauty of the -difficulty is in getting it and keeping it in the right note and at the -right pitch for Horton. Horton's "acceptance"—on what prodigious -basis save the straight and practical view of Gray's exalted queerness -and constitutional, or whatever, perversity, can <i>that</i> be shown as -resting? Two fine things—that is one of them strikes me as very -fine—here come to me; one of these my seeing (<i>don't</i> I see -it?) how it will fall in, not to say fall out, as of the essence of the -true workability, that the extent to which i's are not dotted between -them, are left consciously undotted, to which, to the most extraordinary -tune, and yet with the logic of it all straight, they stand off, or -rather Gray does, the other all demonstrably thus taking his -cue—the way, I say, in which the standing-off from sharp or -supreme clearances is, and confirms itself as being, a note of my hero's -action in the matter, throws upon one the most interesting work. Horton -accepts it as exactly part of the prodigious queerness which he humours -and humours in proportion as Gray will have it that he shall; the "fine -thing", the second of the two, just spoken of, being that Horton never -flinches from his perfectly splendid theory that he is "taking care", -consummately, of his friend, and that he is arranging, by my exhibition -of him, just as consummately to <i>show</i> for so doing. No end, I -think, to be got out of this wondrous fact of Gray's sparing Horton, or -saving him, the putting of anything to a real and direct Test; such a -Test as would reside in his asking straight for a large sum of money, a -big amount, really consonant with his theoretically intact resources -arid such as he with the highest propriety in the world might simply say -that he has an immediate use for, or can make some important application -of. No end, no end, as I say, to what I see as given me by -this—this huge constituted and accepted eccentricity of Gray's -holdings-off. I have the image of the relation between them made by it -in my vision thus of the way, or the ways, they look at each other even -while talking together to a tune which would logically or consistently -make these ways <i>other</i>; the sort of education of the look that it -breeds in Horton on the whole ground of "how far he may go." The things -that pass between them after this fashion quite beautiful to do if kept -from an overdoing; with Horton's formula of his "looking after" Gray -completely interwoven with his whole ostensibility. It is with this -formula that Horton meets the world all the while—the world that -at a given moment can only find itself so full of wonderment and -comment. It is with it above all that he meets Cissy, who takes it from -him in a way that absolutely helps him to keep it up; and it -<i>would</i> be with it that he should meet Rosanna if, after a given -day or season, he might find it in him to dare, as it were, to "meet" -Rosanna at all. It is with Horton's formula, which I think I finally -show him as quite publicly delighting in, that Gray himself meets -Rosanna, whom he meets a great deal all this time; with such passages -between them as are only matched in another sense, and with all the -other values with which they swell, so to speak, by his passages with -the consummate Horton. Charming, by which I mean such interesting, -things resident in what I <i>there</i> touch on; with the way -<i>they</i> look at each other, Rosanna and Gray, if one is talking -about looks. Gray keeps it in comedy, so far as he can—making a -tone, a spell, that Rosanna doesn't break into, as she breaks, anything -to call <i>really</i> breaks, into nothing as yet: I seem to see the -final, from-far-back-prepared moment when she does, for the first and -last time, break as of a big and beautiful value. <i>That</i> will be a -Joint of Joints; but meanwhile what is between them is the sombre -confidence, tenderness, fascination, anxiety, a dozen admirable things, -with which she waits on Gray's tone, not playing up to it at all -(playings-up and suchlike not being verily in her) but taking it from -him, accommodating herself to it with all her anxiety and her confidence -somehow mixed together, as if to see how far it will carry her. Such a -lot to be done with Gussie Bradham, portentous woman, even to the very -cracking or bursting of the mould meanwhile—so functional do I see -her, in spite of the crowding and pressing together of functions, as to -the production of those (after all early-determined) reactions in Gray -by the simple complete exhibition of her type and pressure and -aggressive mass. She is really worth a book by herself, or would be -should I look that way; and I just here squeeze what I most want about -her into a sort of nutshell by saying that it marks for Gray just where -and how his Solution, or at any rate some of its significant and -attendant aspects, swims into his ken, with the very first scene she -makes him about the meanness then of his conception of his opportunity. -Then it is he feels he must be getting a bit into the truth of -things—if that's the way he strikes her. His very measure of taste -and delicacy and the sympathetic and the nice and the what he wants, -becomes after a fashion what she will want most to make him a scene -about. I have it at first that he lends himself, that her great driving -tone and pressure, her would-be act of possession of him, Cissy and the -question of Cissy being the link, have amounted to a sort of -trouble-saving thing which he has let himself "go to", which he has -suffered as his convenient push or handy determinant, for the hour -(sceptical even then as to its lasting)—but which has inordinately -overdosed him, overhustled him, almost, as he feels in his old habit of -financial contraction, overspent and overruined him. He does the things, -the social things, for the moment, that she prescribes, that she foists -upon him as the least ones he can decently do; does them even with a -certain bewildered amusement—while Rosanna, brooding apart, so to -speak, out of the circle and on her own ground, but ever so attentive, -draws his eye to the effect of what one might almost call the -intelligent, the patience-inviting, wink! Oh for the pity of scant space -for specific illustration of Mrs. Bradham; where-with indeed of course I -reflect on the degree to which my planned compactness, absolutely -precious and not to be compromised with, must restrict altogether the -larger illustrational play. Intensities of foreshortening, with -alternate vividnesses of extension: that is the rough label of the -process. I keep it before me how mixed Cissy is with certain of the -consequences of this hustlement of Mrs. Bradham, and how bullyingly, so -to call it almost, she has put the whole matter of what he ought to "do -for them all," on the ground in particular of what it is so open to him, -so indicated for him, to do for that poor dear exquisite thing in -especial. Illustrational, illustrational, yes; but oh how every inch of -it will have to count. I seem to want her to have made him do some one -rather gross big thing above all, as against his own sense of fineness -in these matters; and to have this thing count somehow very much in the -matter of his relation with Cissy. I seem to want something like his -having consented to be "put up" by her to the idea of offering Cissy -something very handsome by way of a "kind" tribute to her mingled -poverty and charm—jolly, jolly, I think Eve exactly got it! I keep -in mind that Mrs. Bradham wants him to marry her—this amount of -"disinterestedness" giving the measure of Mrs. B. at her most exalted -"best". Wherewith, to consolidate this, her delicacy being -capable—well, of what we shall see, she works of course to -exaggeration the idea of his "recognising" how nice Cissy was, over -there in the other time, to his poor sick stepfather, who himself so -recognised it, who wrote to her so charmingly a couple of times "about -it", after her return to America and quite shortly before his death. -Gray "knows about this", and of course will quite see what she means. -Therefore wouldn't it be nice for Gray to give her, Cissy, something -really beautiful and valuable and socially helpful to her—as of -course he can't give her money, which is what would be most helpful. -Under this hustlement, in fine, and with a sense, born of his -goodnature, his imagination, and his own delicacy, such a very different -affair, of what Gussie Bradham has done for him, by her showing, he -finds himself in for having bought a very rare single row of pearls, -such as a girl, in New York at least, may happily wear, and presenting -it to our young person as the token of recognition that Mrs. Bradham has -imagined for them. The beauty in which, I see, is that it may be -illustrational in more ways than one—illustrational of the hustle, -of the length Gray has "appreciatively" let himself go, and, above all, -of Cissy's really interesting intelligence and "subtlety". She refuses -the gift, very gently and pleadingly, but as it seems to him really -pretty well finally—refuses it as not relevant or proportionate or -congruous to any relation in which they yet stand to each other, and as -oh ever so much over-expressing any niceness she may have shown in -Europe. She does, in doing this, exactly what he has felt at the back of -his head that she would really do, and what he likes her for -doing—the effect of which is that she has furthered her interest -with him decidedly more (as she of course says to herself) than if she -had taken it. He is left with it for the moment on his hands, and what I -want is that he shall the next thing find himself, in revulsion, in -reaction, there being for him no question of selling it again etc., -finds himself, I say, offering it to Mrs. Bradham herself, who swallows -it without winking. Yet, in a way, this little history of the pearls, of -her not having had them, and of his after a fashion owing her a certain -compensation for that, owing her something she <i>can</i> accept, is -there <i>between</i> him and my young person. They figure again between -them, humorously, freely, ironically—the girl being of an -irony!—in their appearances on Mrs. Bradham's person, to whose -huge possession of ornament they none the less conspicuously add.</p> - -<p>But my point here is above all that Gray exactly <i>doesn't</i> put -the question of what is becoming of his funds under Horty's care of them -to the test by any cultivation of that courage for large drafts and big -hauls, that nerve for believing in the fairy-tale of his sudden fact of -possession, which was briefly and in a manner amusingly possible to him -at the first go off of his situation. He forbears, abstains, stands off, -and finds himself, or in particular is found by others, to the extent of -their observing, wondering and presently challenging him, to be living, -to be drawing on his supposed income, with what might pass for the most -extraordinarily timorous and limited imagination. He <i>likes</i> this -arrest, enjoys it and feels a sort of wondrous refreshing decency, at -any rate above all a refreshing interest and curiosity about it, or, -rather, for it; but what his position involves is his explaining it to -others, his making up his mind, his having to, for a line to take about -it, without his thereby giving Horton away. He isn't to give Horton away -the least scrap from this point on; but at the same time he is to have -to deal with the world, with society, with the entourage consisting for -him, in its most pressing form, of, say, three representative -persons—he has to deal with this challenge, as I have called it, -in some way that will sort of meet it <i>without</i> givings-away. These -three persons are in especial Rosanna and the two Bradhams; and it is -before me definitely, I think, that I want to express, and in the very -vividest way, his sense of his situation here, of what it means, and of -what <i>he</i> means, <i>in</i> it, through what takes place for him -about it with Rosanna and with the Bradhams. It is by what he "says" to -the Bradhams and to Rosanna (in the way, that is largely, of <i>not</i> -saying) that I seem to see my values here as best got, and the -presentation of their different states most vivified and dramatised. -These are scenes, and the function of them to serve up for us exactly, -and ever so lucidly, what I desire them to represent. If the greatest -interest of them, of sorts, belongs to them in so far as they are "with" -Rosanna, there are yet particular values that belong to the relation -with Davey, and the three relations, at any rate, work the thing for me. -They are perfectly different, on this lively ground, though the "point" -involved is the same in each; and the having each of them to do it with -should enable me to do it beautifully; I mean to squeeze <i>all</i> the -dramatic sense from it. The great beauty is of course for the aspects -with Rosanna, between whom and him everything passes—and there is -so much basis already in what has been between them—without his -"explaining", as I have called it, anything. Even without -explanations—or all the more by reason of their very -absence—there is so much of it all; of the question and the -dramatic illumination. With Gussie Bradham—<i>that</i> aspect I -needn't linger or insist on, here, so much as a scrap. I have that, see -it all, it's <i>there.</i> But with Davey I want something very good, -that is in other words very functional; and I think I even wonder if I -don't want to see Davey as attempting to borrow money of him. -This—if I do see it—will take much putting on the right -basis; and it seems to kind of glimmer upon me richly what the right -basis is. My idea has been from the first that the Bradham money is all -Gussie's; I have seen Davey, by the very type and aspect, by all his -detached irony and humour and indiscretion and general value as the -unmonied young man who has married the heiress, as Horton would have -been had he been able to marry Rosanna. But no interfering analogy need -trouble me here; Horton's not having done that, and the essential -difference between the men, eases off any such question. Only don't I -seem to want it that Gussie's fortune, besides not having been even -remotely comparable to Rosanna's, is, though with a fair outward face, a -dilapidated and undermined quantity, much ravaged by Gussie's violent -strain upon it, and representing thus, through her general enormous -habit and attitude, an association and connection with the money world, -but all the more characteristically so, for Gray as he begins to see, -that almost everything but the pitch of Gussie's wants and arrangements -and ideals has been chucked, as it were, out of its windows and doors. -Don't I really see the Bradhams thus as <i>predatory?</i> Predatory on -the very rich, that is; with Gussie's insistence that Gray shall -<i>be</i> and shall proceed as quite one of the <i>very</i>, oh the -very, very, exactly in order that she <i>may</i> so prey? Yes and so it -is that Gray learns—so it is that a part of Davey's abysses of New -York financial history, is his own, their own, but his in particular, -abyss of inconvenience, abyss of inability to keep it up combined with -all the social impossibility of not doing so. I somehow want such values -of the supporting and functional and illustrative sort in Davey that I -really think I kind of want him to be the person, <i>the</i> person, to -whom Gray gives—as a kind of recognition of the remarkable part, -the precious part, don't I feel it as being? that Davey plays for him. -He likes so the illuminating Davey, whom I'm quite sure I want to show -in no malignant or vicious light, but just as a regular rag or sponge of -saturation in the surrounding medium. He is beyond, he is outside of, -all moral judgments, all scandalised states; he is amused at what he -himself does, at his general and particular effect and effects on Gray, -who is his luxury of a relation, as it were, and whom I somehow seem to -want to show him feel as the only person in the whole medium -appreciating his genius; in other words his detached play of mind and -the deep "American humour" of it. Don't I seem to want him even as -asking for something rather big?—a kind of a lump of a sum which -Gray, always with amusement, answers that he will have to see about. -Gray's seeing about anything of this sort means, all notedly, absolutely -<i>all</i>, as I think I have it, asking Horton whether he can, whether -he may, whether Horton will give it to him, whether in short the thing -will suit Horton; even without any disposition of the sum, any account -of what he wants to do, indicated or reported or confessed to Horton? -Don't I see something like this?—that Gray, having put it to -Horton, has precisely determined, for his vision, on Horton's part, just -that first important plea of "Really you can't, you know, at this -rate"—even after Gray has been for some time so -"ascetic"—"It won't be convenient for you just now; and I must ask -you really, you know, to take my word for it that you'd much better not -distract from what I am in the act of doing for you such a sum"—by -which I mean, for I am probably using here not the terms Horton -<i>would</i> use—"much better not make such a call (call is the -word) when I am exactly doing for you etc." What I seem to see is that -Davey does have money from him, but has it only on a scale that falls -short, considerably, of his appeal or proposal or whatever; in other -words that Gray accommodates him to the third, or some other fraction, -of the whole extent; and that this involves for him practically the need -of his saying that Horton won't let him have more. I want that, I see it -as a value; I see Davey's aspect on it as a value, I see what is -determined thus between them as a value; and I seem to see most this -<i>covering</i> by Gray of Horton in answer to the insinuations, not -indignant but amused, in answer to the humorously fantastic picture, on -Davey's lips, of the rate at which Horton is cleaning him out or -whatever, this taking of the line of so doing and of piling up -plausibilities of defence, excuse etc., so far as poor Gray can be -plausible in these difficult "technical" connections, as the vivid -image, the vividest, I am most concerned to give of what I show him as -doing. The covering of Horton, the covering of Horton—this is much -more than not giving him away; this active and positive protection of -him seems to me really what my subject logically asks. Well then if that -is it, is what it most of all, for the dramatic value, asks, how can -this be consistently less than Gray's act of going all the way indeed? I -don't know why—as it has been hovering before me—I don't -want the complete vivid sense of it to take the form of an awful, a -horrible or hideous, crisis on Horton's part which, under the stress of -it, he "suddenly" discloses to Gray, throwing himself upon him in the -most fevered, the most desperate appeal for relief. What then -constitutes the nature of the crisis, what <i>then</i> can, or -constitute the urgency of the relief, unless the fact of his having -something altogether dreadful to confess; so dreadful that it can only -involve the very essence of his reputation, honour and decency, his -safety in short before the law? He has been guilty of some huge -irregularity, say—but which yet is a different thing from whatever -irregularities he has been guilty of in respect to Gray himself; and -which up to now, at the worst, have left a certain substantial part of -Gray's funds intact. Say that, say that; turn it over, that is, to see -if it's really wanted. I think of it as wanted because I feel the need -of the effect of some <i>acute</i> determination play up as I consider -all this—and yet also see objections; which probably will multiply -as I look a little closer. I throw this off, at all events, for the -moment, as I go, to be looked at straighter, to return to -presently—after I've got away from it a bit, I mean from this -special aspect a little, in order to come back to it fresher; picking up -meanwhile two or three different matters.</p> - -<p>The whole question of what my young man has been positively -interested in, been all the while more or less definitely occupied with, -I have found myself leaving, or at any rate have left, in abeyance, by -reason of a certain sense of its comparative unimportance. That is I -have felt my instinct to make him definitely and frankly as complete a -case as possible of the sort of thing that will make him an anomaly and -an outsider alike in the New York world of business, the N. Y. world of -ferocious acquisition, and the world there of enormities of expenditure -and extravagance, so that the real suppression for him of anything that -shall count in the American air as a money-making, or even as a -wage-earning, or as a pecuniarily picking-up character, strikes me as -wanted for my emphasis of his entire difference of sensibility and of -association. I have always wanted to do an out and out non-producer, in -the ordinary sense of non-accumulator of material gain, from the moment -one should be able to give him a positively interested aspect on another -side or in another sense, or even definitely a <i>generally</i> -responsive intelligence. I see my figure then in this case as an -absolutely frank example of the tradition and superstition, the habit -and rule so inveterate there, frankly and serenely deviated -from—these things meaning there essentially some mode of sharp -reaching out for money over a counter or sucking it up through a -thousand contorted channels. Yet I want something as different as -possible, no less different, I mean, from the people who are "idle" -there than from the people who are what is called active; in short, as I -say, an out and out case, and of course an avowedly, an exceptionally -fine and special one, which antecedents and past history up to then may -more or less vividly help to account for. A very special case indeed is -of course our Young Man—without his being which my donnée -wouldn't come off at all; his being so is just of the very core of the -subject. It's a question therefore of the way to make him <i>most</i> -special—but I so distinctly see this that I need scarce here waste -words——! There are three or four definite facts and -considerations, however; conditions to be seen clear. I want to steer -clear of the tiresome "artistic" associations hanging about the usual -type of young Anglo-Saxon "brought up abroad"; though only indeed so far -as they <i>are</i> tiresome. My idea involves absolutely Gray's taking -his stand, a bit ruefully at first, but quite boldly when he more and -more sees what the opposite of it over there is so much an implication -of, on the acknowledgment that, no, absolutely, he hasn't anything at -all to show in the way of work achieved—with <i>such</i> work as -he has seen achieved, whether apologetically or pretentiously, as he has -lived about; and yet has up to now not had at all the sense of a vacuous -consciousness or a so-called wasted life. This however by reason of -course of certain things, certain ideas, possibilities, inclinations and -dispositions, that he has cared about and felt, in his way, the -fermentation of. Of course the trouble with him is a sort of excess of -"culture", so far as the form taken by his existence up to then has -represented the growth of that article. Again, however, I see that I -really am in complete possession of him, and that no plotting of it as -to any but one or two material particulars need here detain me. He -isn't, N.B., big, personally, by which I mean physically; I see that I -want him rather below than above the middling stature, and light and -nervous and restless; extremely restless above all in presence of -swarming new and more or less aggressive, in fact quite assaulting -phenomena. Of course he has had <i>some</i> means—that he and his -stepfather were able to live in a quiet "European" way and on an income -of an extreme New York deplorability, is of course of the basis of what -has been before; with which he must have come in for whatever his late -companion has had to leave. So with what there was from his mother, very -modest, and what there is from this other source, not less so, he -<i>can</i>, he could, go back to Europe on a sufficient basis: this fact -to be kept in mind both as mitigating the prodigy of his climax in N.Y., -and yet at the same time as making whatever there is of "appeal" to him -over there conceivable enough. Note that the statement he makes, when we -first know him, to his dying uncle, the completeness of the picture of -detachment then and there drawn for him, and which, precisely, by such -an extraordinary and interesting turn, is what most "refreshes" and -works upon Mr. Betterman—note, I say, that I absolutely require -the utterness of his difference to <i>be</i> a sort of virtual -determinant in this relation. He puts it so to Rosanna, tells her how -extraordinarily he feels that this is what it <i>has</i> been. Heaven -forbid he should "paint"—but there glimmers before me the sense of -the connection in which I can see him as more or less covertly and -waitingly, fastidiously and often too sceptically, conscious of -possibilities of "writing". Quite frankly accept for him the -complication or whatever of his fastidiousness, yet of his recognition -withal of what makes for sterility; but again and again I have all this, -I have it. His "culture", his initiations of intelligence and -experience, his possibilities of imagination, if one will, to say -nothing of other things, make for me a sort of figure of a floating -island on which he drifts and bumps and coasts about, wanting to get -alongside as much as possible, yet always with the gap of water, the -little island <i>fact</i>, to be somehow bridged over. All of which -makes him, I of course desperately recognise, another of the -"intelligent", another exposed and assaulted, active and passive "mind" -engaged in an adventure and interesting in <i>itself</i> by so being; -but I rejoice in that aspect of my material as dramatically and -determinantly <i>general.</i> It isn't <i>centrally</i> a drama of fools -or vulgarians; it's only circumferentially and surroundedly -so—these being enormously implied and with the effect of their -hovering and pressing upon the whole business from without, but seen and -felt by us only with that rich indirectness. So far so good; but I come -back for a moment to an issue left standing yesterday—and beyond -which, for that matter, two or three other points raise their heads. Why -did it appear to come up for me again—I having had it present to -me before and then rather waved it away—that one might see Horton -in the <i>kind</i> of crisis that I glanced at as throwing him upon Gray -with what I called violence? Is it because I feel "something more" is -wanted for the process by which my Young Man works off the distaste, his -distaste, for the ugliness of his inheritance—something more than -his just <i>generally</i> playing into Horton's hands? I am in presence -there of a beautiful difficulty, beautiful to solve, yet which one must -be to the last point crystal-clear about; and this difficulty is -certainly added to if Gray sees Horton as "dishonest" in relation to -others over and above his being "queer" in the condoned way I have so to -picture for his relation to Gray. Here are complexities not quite easily -unravelled, yet manageable by getting sufficiently close to them; -complexities, I mean, of the question of whether——? Horton -is abysmal, yes—but with the mixture in it that Gray sees. Ergo I -want the mixture, and if I adopt what I threw off speculatively -yesterday I strike myself as letting the mixture more or less go and -having the non-mixture, that is the "bad" in him, preponderate. It has -been my idea that this "bad" figures in a degree to Gray as after a -fashion his own creation, the creation, that is, of the enormous and -fantastic opportunity and temptation he has held out—even though -these wouldn't have operated in the least, or couldn't, without -predispositions in Horton's very genius. If Gray saw him as a mere -vulgar practiser of what he does practise, the interest would by that -fact exceedingly drop; there would be no interest indeed, and the beauty -of my "psychological" picture wouldn't come off, would have no foot to -stand on. The beauty is in the complexity of the question—which, -stated in the simplest terms possible, reduces itself to Horton's -practically saying to Gray, or seeing himself as saying to Gray should -it come to the absolute touch: "You <i>mind</i>, in your extraordinary -way, how this money was accumulated and hanky-pankied, you suffer, and -cultivate a suffering, from the perpetrated wrong of which you feel it -the embodied evidence, and with which the possession of it is thereby -poisoned for you. But I don't mind one little scrap—and there is a -great deal more to be said than you seem so much as able to understand, -or so much as able to want to, about the whole question of how money -comes to those who know <i>how</i> to make it. Here you are then, if -it's so disagreeable to you—and what can one really say, with the -chances you give me to say it, but that if you are so burdened and -afflicted, there are ways of relieving you which, upon my honour, I -should perfectly undertake to work—given the facilities that you -so morbidly, so fantastically, so all but incredibly save for the -testimony of my senses, permit me to enjoy." <i>That</i>, yes; but that -is very different from the wider range of application of the aptitudes -concerned. The confession, and the delinquency preceding it, that played -a bit up for me yesterday—what do they do but make Horton just as -vulgar as I <i>don't</i> want him, and, as I immediately recognise, Gray -wouldn't in the least be able to stomach seeing him under any -continuance of relations. I have it, I have it, and it comes as an -answer to <i>why</i> I <i>worried?</i> Because of felt want of a way of -providing for some Big Haul, really big; which my situation absolutely -requires. There must be at a given moment a big haul in order to produce -the big sacrifice; the latter being of the absolute essence. I say I -have it when I ask myself why the Big Haul shouldn't simply consist of -the consequence of a confession made by Horton to Gray, yes; but made -not about what he has lost, whether dishonestly or not, for somebody -else, but what he has lost for Gray. Solutions here bristle, positively, -for the case seems to clear up from the moment I make Horton put his -matter as a mere disastrous loss, of unwisdom, of having been "done" by -others and not as a thing involving his own obliquity. What I want is -that he <i>pleads the loss</i>—whether loss to Gray, loss to -another party, or loss to both, is a detail. I incline to think loss to -Gray sufficient—loss that Gray accepts, which is different from -his meeting the disaster inflicted on another by Horton. What I want a -bit is all contained in Gray's question, afterwards determined, not -absolutely present at the moment, of whether this fact has not been a -feigned or simulated one, not a genuine gulf of accident, but an appeal -for relinquishment practised on Gray by the latter's liability to -believe that the cause is genuine. I clutch the idea of this determinant -of rightness of suspicion being one with the circumstance that Cissy in -a sort of <i>thereupon</i> manner "takes up" with Horton, instead of not -doing so, as figures to Gray as discernible if Horton were merely minus. -Is it cleared up for Gray that the cause is not genuine?—does he -get, or does he seek, any definite light on this? Does he tell any one, -that is does he tell Rosanna of the incident (though I want the thing of -proportions bigger than those of a mere incident)—does he put it -to her, in short does he take her into his confidence about it? I think -I see that he does to this extent, that she is the only person to whom -he speaks, but that he then speaks with a kind of transparent and, as it -were, (as it is in her sight) "sublime" dissimulation. Yes, I think -that's the way I want it—that he tells her what has happened, -tells it to her as having happened, as a statement of what he has done -or means to do—perhaps his mind isn't even yet made up to it; -whereby I seem to get a very interesting passage of drama and another -very fine "Joint." He doesn't, no, decidedly, communicate anything to -Davey Bradham—his instinct has been against that—and I feel -herewith how much I want this D.B. relation for him to have all its -possibility of irony, "comedy", humorous colour, so to speak. I want -awfully to do D.B. to the full and give him all his value. However, it's -of the situation here with Rosanna that the question is, and I seem to -feel that still further clear up for me. There has been the passage, the -big circumstance, with Horton—as to which, as to the sense of -which and of what it involves for him, don't I after all see him as -taking time? after all see him as a bit staggered quand même, and, as -it were, <i>asking</i> for time, though without any betrayal of -"suspicion", any expression tantamount to "What a queer story!" Yes, -yes, it seems to come to me that I want the <i>determination of -suspicion</i> not to come at once; I want it to hang back and wait for a -big "crystallisation," a falling together of many things, which now -takes place, as it were, in Rosanna's presence and under her -extraordinary tacit action, in that atmosphere of their relation which -has already given me, or <i>will</i> have given, not to speak -presumptuously, so much. It kind of comes over me even that I don't want -<i>any</i> articulation to <i>himself</i> of the "integrity" question in -respect to Horton to have taken place at all—till it very -momentously takes place all at once in the air, as I say, and on the -ground, and in the course, of this present scene. Immensely interesting -to have made Everything precedent to have consisted but in preparation -for this momentousness, so that the whole effect has been gathered there -ready to break. At the same time, if I make it break not in the right -way, unless I so rightly condition its breaking, I do what I was moved -just above to bar, the giving away of Horton to Rosanna in the sense -that fixing his behaviour upon him, or inviting or allowing her to fix -it, is a thing I see my finer alternative to. The great thing, the great -find, I really think, for the moment, is this fact of his having gone to -her in a sort of still preserved uncertainty of light that amounts -virtually to darkness, and then after a time with her coming away with -the uncertainty dispelled and the remarkable light instead taking its -place. That gives me my very form and climax—in respect to the -"way" that has most perplexed me, and gathers my action up to the -fulness so proposed and desired; to the point after which I want to make -it workable that there shall be but two Books left. In other words the -ideal will be that this whole passage, using the word in the largest -sense, with all the accompanying aspects, shall constitute Book 8, "Act" -8, as I call it, of my drama, with the dénouement occupying the space -to the end—for the foregoing is of course not in the least the -dénouement, but only prepares it, just as what is thus involved is the -occupancy of Book 7 by the history with Horton. Of course I can but -reflect that to bring this splendid economy off it must have been -practised up <i>to</i> VII with the most intense and immense art: the -scheme I have already sketched for I and II leaving me therewith but -III, IV, V, and VI to arrive at the completeness of preparation for VII, -which carries in its bosom the completeness of preparation for -VIII—this last, by a like grand law, carrying in <i>its</i> pocket -the completeness of preparation for IX and X. But why not? Who's afraid? -and what has the very essence of my design been but the most magnificent -packed and calculated closeness? Keep this closeness up to the notch -while admirably <i>animating</i> it, and I do what I should simply be -sickened to death not to! Of course it means the absolute exclusively -<i>economic</i> existence and situation of every sentence and every -letter; but again what is that but the most desirable of beauties in -<i>itself?</i> The chapters of history with Rosanna leave me then to -show, speaking simply, its effect with regard to (I assume I put first) -Gray and Horton, to Gray and Cissy, to Cissy and Horton, to Gray and -Mrs. Bradham on the one hand and to Gray and Davey on the other and -finally and supremely to Gray and Rosanna herself. It is of course -definitely on that note the thing closes—but wait a little before -I come to it. Let me state as "plainly" as may be what "happens" as the -next step in my drama, the next Joint in the action after the climax of -the "scene" with Rosanna. Obviously the first thing is a passage with -Horton, the passage <i>after</i>, which shall be a pendant to the -passage before. But don't I want some episode to interpose here on the -momentous ground of the Girl? These sequences to be absolutely planned -and fitted together, of course, up to their last point of relation; to -work such complexity into such compass can only be a difficulty of the -most inspiring—the prize being, naturally, to achieve the lucidity -<i>with</i> the complexity. What then is the lucidity for us about my -heroine, and exactly what is it that I want and don't want to show? I -want something to take place here between Gray and her that -<i>crowns</i> his vision and his action in respect to Horton. As I of -course want every point and comma to be "functional", so there's nothing -I want that more for than for this aspect of my crisis—which does, -yes, decidedly, present itself before Gray has again seen Horton. I seem -even to want this aspect, as I call it, to be the decisive thing in -respect to his "decision". I want something to have still depended for -him on the question of how she is, what she does, what she makes him -see, however little intending it, of her sensibility to the crisis, as -it were—knowing as I do what I mean by this. But what does come up -for me, and has to be faced, is all the appearance that all this later -development that I have sketched and am sketching, rather directly -involves a deviation from that <i>help by alternations</i> which I -originally counted on, and which I began by drawing upon in the first -three or four Books. What becomes after the first three or four then of -that variation—if I make my march between IV and VIII inclusive -all a matter of what appears to Gray? Perhaps on closer view I can for -the "finer amusement" escape that frustration—though it would take -some doing; and the fact remains that I don't really want, and can't, -any other exhibition than Gray's own <i>except</i> in the case of Horton -and the Young Woman. I should like <i>more</i> variation than just that -will yield me withal—so at least it strikes me; but if I press a -bit a possibility perhaps will rise. Two things strike me: one of these -being that instead of making Book 9 Gray's "act" I may make it in a -manner Cissy's own; save that a terrific little question here comes up -as involved in the very essence of my cherished symmetry and "unity". -The absolute prime compositional idea ruling me is thus the unity of -each Act, and I get unity with the Girl for IX only if I keep it -<i>to</i> her and whoever else. To her and Horton, yes, to her and Gray -(Gray first) yes; only how then comes in the "passage" of Gray and -Horton without her, and which I don't want to push over to X. It would -be an "æsthetic" ravishment to make Book 10 balance with Book 1 as -Rosanna's affair; which I glimmeringly see as interestingly possible if -I can wind up somehow as I want to do between Gray and Horton. In -connection with which, however, something again glimmers—the -possibility of making Book 9 quand même Cissy and Horton and Gray; -twisting out, that is, some admirable way of her being participant in, -"present at", what here happens between them as to their own affair. I -say these things after all with the sense, so founded on past -experience, that, in closer quarters and the intimacy of composition, -pre-noted arrangements, proportions and relations, do most uncommonly -insist on making themselves different by shifts and variations, always -improving, which impose themselves as one goes and keep the door open -always to something <i>more</i> right and <i>more</i> related. It is -subject to that constant possibility, all the while, that one does -pre-note and tentatively sketch; a fact so constantly before one as to -make too idle any waste of words on it. At the same time I do absolutely -and utterly want to stick, even to the very depth, to the <i>general</i> -distribution here imagined as I have groped on; and I am at least now -taking a certain rightness and conclusiveness of parts and items for -granted until the intimate tussle, as I say, happens, if it does happen, -to dislocate or modify them. Such an assumption for instance I find -myself quite loving to make in presence of the vision quite colouring up -for me yesterday of Book 9 as given to Gray and Horton and Cissy -Together, as I may rudely express it, and Book 10, to repeat, given, -with a splendid richness and comprehensiveness, to Rosanna, as I hope to -have shown Book I as so given. Variety, variety—I want to go in -for that for all the possibilities of my case may be worth; and I see, I -feel, how a sort of fond fancy of it is met by the distribution, the -little cluster of determinations, or, so to speak, for the pleasure of -putting it, determinatenesses, so noted. It gives me the central mass of -the thing for my hero's own embrace and makes beginning and end sort of -confront each other over it.</p> - -<p>Is it vain to do anything but say, that is but feel, that this -situation of the Three in Book 9 absolutely demands the intimate grip -for clearing itself up, working itself out? Yes, perfectly vain, I -reflect, as at all precluding the high urgency and decency of my seeing -in advance just how and where I plant my feet and direct my steps. -Express absolutely, to this end, the conclusive sense, the clear firm -function, of Book 9—out of which the rest bristles. I want it, as -for that matter I want each Book, with the last longing and fullest -intention, to be what it is "amusing" and regaling to think of as -"complete in itself"; otherwise a thoroughly expressed Occasion, or as I -have kept calling it Aspect, such as one can go at, thanks to the flow -of the current in it, in the firmest possible little narrative way. The -form of the Occasion is the form that I somehow see as here very -<i>particularly</i> presenting itself and contributing its aid to that -impression of the Three Together which I try to focus. Where, exactly, -and exactly how, are they thus vividly and workably together?—what -is the most "amusing" way of making them so? It is fundamental for me to -note that my action represents and embraces the sequences of a Year, not -going beyond this and not falling short of it. I can't get my Unity, -can't keep it, on the basis of more than a year, and can't get my -complexity, don't want to, in anything a bit less. I see a Year right, -in fine, and it brings me round therefore to the early summer from the -time of my original Exposition. With which it comes to me of course that -one of the things accruing to Gray under his Uncle's Will is the house -at Newport, which belonged to the old man, and which I have no desire to -go into any reason whatever for his heir's having got rid of. There is -the house at Newport—as to which it comes over me that I kind of -see him in it once or twice during the progress of the autumn's, the -winter's, the spring's events. Isn't it also a part of my affair that I -see the Bradhams with a Newport place, and am more or less encouraged -herewith to make out the Scene of Book 9, the embracing Occasion, of the -three, as a "staying" of them, in the natural way, the inevitable, the -illustrative, under some roof that places them vividly in relation to -each other. Of <i>course</i> Mrs. Bradham has her great characteristic -house away from N.Y., where anything and everything may -characteristically find their background—the whole case being -compatible with that lively shakiness of fortune that I have glanced at; -only I want to keep the whole thing, so far as my poor little -"documented" state permits, on the lines of absolutely current New York -practice, as I further reflect I probably don't want to move Gray an -inch out of N.Y. "during the winter", this probably a quite -unnecessarily bad economy. Having what I have of New York isn't the -question of using it, and it only, as entirely adequate from Book 4 to 8 -inclusive? To keep everything as like these actualities of N.Y. as -possible, for the sake of my "atmosphere", I must be wary and wise; in -the sense for instance that said actualities don't at all comprise -people's being at Newport <i>early</i> in the summer. How then, however, -came the Bradhams to be there at the time noted in my Book 1? I reflect -happily apropos of this that my there positing the early summer (in Book -1) is a stroke that I needn't at all now take account of; it having been -but an accident of my small vague plan as it glimmered to me from the -very first go-off. No, definitely, the time-scheme must a bit move on, -and give help there—by to the place-scheme; if I want Gray to -arrive en plein Newport, as I do for immediate control of the assault of -his impressions, it must be a matter of August rather than of June; and -nothing is simpler than to shift. Let me indeed so far modify as to -conceive that 15 or 16 months will be as workable as a -Year—practically they will count as the period both short enough -and long enough; and will bring me for Nine and Ten round to the Newport -or whatever of August, and to the whatever else of some moment of beauty -and harmony in the American autumn. Let me wind up on a kind of strong -October or perhaps even better still—yes, better -still—latish November, in other words admirable Indian Summer, -note. That brings me round and makes the circle whole. Well then I don't -seem to want a repetition of Newport—as if it were, poor old dear, -the only place known to me in the country!—for the images that -this last suggestion causes more or less to swarm. By the blessing of -heaven I am possessed, sufficiently to say so, of Lenox, and Lenox for -the autumn is much more characteristic too. What do I seem to see -then?—as I don't at all want, or imagine myself wanting at the -scratch, to make a local jump between Nine and Ten. These things -come—I see them coming now. Of course it's perfectly conceivable, -and entirely characteristic, that Mrs. Bradham should have a place at -Lenox as well as at Newport; if it's necessary to posit her for the -previous summer in her own house at the latter place. It's perfectly in -order that she may have taken one there for the summer—and that -having let the Lenox place at that time may figure as a sort of note of -the crack in her financial aspect that is part, to <i>call</i> it part, -of my concern. All of which are considerations entirely meetable at the -short range—save that I do really seem to kind of want Book 10 at -Lenox and to want Nine there by the same stroke. I should like to stick -Rosanna at the beautiful Dublin, if it weren't for the grotesque anomaly -of the name; and after all what need serve my purpose better than what I -already have? It's provided for in Book I that she and her father had -only taken the house at Newport for a couple of months or whatever; so -that is all to the good. Oh yes, all that New England mountain-land that -I thus get by radiation, and thus welcome the idea of for values surging -after a fashion upon Gray, appeals to one to "do" a bit, even in a -measure beyond one's hope of space to do it. Well before me surely too -the fact that my whole action does, can only, take place in the air of -the last actuality; which supports so, and plays into, its sense and its -portée. Therefore it's a question of all the intensest modernity of -every American description; cars and telephones and facilities and -machineries and resources of certain sorts not to be exaggerated; which -I can't not take account of. Assume then, in fine, the Bradhams this -second autumn at Lenox, assume Gussie blazing away as if at the very -sincerest and validest top of her push; assume Rosanna as naturally -there in the "summer home" which has been her and her father's only -possessional alternative to N.Y. I violate verisimilitude in not -brushing them all, all of the N.Y. "social magnates", off to Paris as -soon as Lent sets in, by their prescribed oscillation; but who knows but -what it will be convenient quite exactly to shift Gussie across for the -time, as nothing then would be more in the line of truth than to have -her bustle expensively back for her Lenox proceedings of the autumn. -These things, however, are trifles. All I have wanted to thresh out a -bit has been the "placing" of Nine and Ten; and for this I have more -than enough provided.</p> - -<p>What it seems to come to then is the "positing" of Cissy at Lenox -with the Bradhams at the time the circumstances of Book Eight have -occurred; it's coming to me with which that I seem exactly to want them -to occur in the empty town, the New York of a more or less torrid -mid-August—this I feel so "possessed of"; to which Gray has "come -back" (say from Newport where he has been for a bit alone in his own -house there, to think, as it were, with concentration); come back -precisely for the passage with Horton. So at any rate for the moment I -seem to see <i>that</i>; my actual point being, however, that Cissy is -posited at Lenox, that the Book "opens" with her, and that it is in the -sense I mean "her" Book. She is there waiting as it were on what Horton -does, so far as I allow her intelligence of this; and it is there that -Gray finds her on his going on to Lenox whether under constraint (by -what has gone before) of a visit to the Bradhams, a stay of some days -with them, or under the interest of a conceivable stay with Rosanna; a -sort of thing that I represent, or at any rate "posit", as perfectly in -the line of Rosanna's present freedom and attributes. Would I rather -have him with Rosanna and "going over" to the Bradhams? would I rather -have him with the Bradhams and going over to Rosanna?—or would I -rather have him at neither place and staying by himself at an hotel, -which seems to leave me the right margin? There has been no staying up -to this point for him with either party, and I have as free a hand as -could be. With which there glimmer upon me advantages—oh -yes—in placing him in his own independence; especially for Book -10: in short it seems to come. Don't I see Cissy as having obtained from -Gussie Bradham that Horton shall be invited—which fact in itself I -here provisionally throw off as giving me perhaps a sort of starting -value.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_3_1" id="Footnote_3_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_1"><span class="label">[3]</span></a>From this point the names of the characters, most of which -were still uncertain, are given in accordance with Henry James' final -choice; though it may be noted that he was to the end dissatisfied with -the name of Cissy Foy and meant to choose another.</p></div> - - - - - - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IVORY TOWER ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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