‘If you mean to imply that we are bad, I protest,’ said one of the gentlemen – ‘after making oneself agreeable all the morning!’
‘Ah, if they’ve found you agreeable!’ Mrs St George exclaimed, smiling. ‘But if we are good the others are better.’
‘They must be angels then,’ observed the General.
‘Your husband was an angel, the way he went off at your bidding,’ the gentleman who had first spoken said to Mrs St George.
‘At my bidding?’
‘Didn’t you make him go to church?’
‘I never made him do anything in my life but once, when I made him burn up a bad book. That’s all!’ At her ‘That’s all!’ Paul broke into an irrepressible laugh; it lasted only a second, but it drew her eyes to him. His own met them, but not long enough to help him to understand her; unless it were a step towards this that he felt sure on the instant that the burnt book (the way she alluded to it!) was one of her husband’s finest things.
‘A bad book?’ her interlocutor repeated.
‘I didn’t like it. He went to church because your daughter went,’ she continued, to General Fancourt. ‘I think it my duty to call your attention to his demeanour to your daughter.’
‘Well, if you don’t mind it, I don’t,’ the General laughed.
‘Il s’allache à ses pas. But I don’t wonder – she’s so charming.’
‘I hope she won’t make him burn any books!’ Paul Overt ventured to exclaim.
‘If she would make him write a few it would be more to the purpose,’ said Mrs St George. ‘He has been of an indolence this year!’
Our young man stared – he was so struck with the lady’s phraseology. Her ‘Write a few’ seemed to him almost as good as her ‘That’s all’. Didn’t she, as the wife of a rare artist, know what it was to produce one perfect work of art? How in the world did she think they were turned off? His private conviction was that admirably as Henry St George wrote, he had written for the last ten years, and especially for the last five, only too much, and there was an instant during which he felt the temptation to make this public. But before he had spoken a diversion was effected by the return of the absent guests. They strolled up dispersedly – there were eight or ten of them – and the circle under the trees rearranged itself as they took their place in it. They made it much larger; so that Paul Overt could feel (he was always feeling that sort of thing, as he said to himself) that if the company had already been interesting to watch it would now become a great deal more so. He shook hands with his hostess, who welcomed him without many words, in the manner of a woman able to trust him to understand – conscious that, in every way, so pleasant an occasion would speak for itself. She offered him no particular facility for sitting by her, and when they had all subsided again he found himself still next General Fancourt, with an unknown lady on his other flank.
‘That’s my daughter – that one opposite,’ the General said to him without loss of time. Overt saw a tall girl, with magnificent red hair, in a dress of a pretty grey-green tint and of a limp silken texture, in which every modern effect had been avoided. It had therefore somehow the stamp of the latest thing, so that Overt quickly perceived she was eminently a contemporary young lady.
‘She’s very handsome – very handsome,’ he repeated, looking at her. There was something noble in her head, and she appeared fresh and strong.
Her father surveyed her with complacency; then he said: ‘She looks too hot – that’s her walk. But she’ll be all right presently. Then I’ll make her come over and speak to you.’
‘I should be sorry to give you that trouble; if you were to take me over there –’ the young man murmured.
‘My dear sir, do you suppose I put myself out that way? I don’t mean for you, but for Marian,’ the General added.
‘I would put myself out for her, soon enough,’ Overt replied; after which he went on: ‘Will you be so good as to tell me which of those gentlemen is Henry St George?’
‘The fellow talking to my girl. By Jove, he is making up to her – they’re going off for another walk.’
‘Ah, is that he, really?’ The young man felt a certain surprise, for the personage before him contradicted a preconception which had been vague only till it was confronted with the reality. As soon as this happened the mental image, retiring with a sigh, became substantial enough to suffer a slight wrong. Overt, who had spent a considerable part of his short life in foreign lands, made now, but not for the first time, the reflection that whereas in those countries he had almost always recognised the artist and the man of letters by his personal ‘type’, the mould of his face, the character of his head, the expression of his figure and even the indications of his dress, in England this identification was as little as possible a matter of course, thanks to the greater conformity, the habit of sinking the profession instead of advertising it, the general diffusion of the air of the gentleman – the gentleman committed to no particular set of ideas. More than once, on returning to his own country, he had said to himself in regard to the people whom he met in society: ‘One sees them about and one even talks with them; but to find out what they do one would really have to be a detective.’ In respect to several individuals whose work he was unable to like (perhaps he was wrong) he found himself adding, ‘No wonder they conceal it – it’s so bad!’ He observed that oftener than in France and in Germany his artist looked like a gentleman (that is, like an English one), while he perceived that outside of a few exceptions his gentleman didn’t look like an artist. St George was not one of the exceptions; that circumstance he definitely apprehended before the great man had turned his back to walk off with Miss Fancourt. He certainly looked better behind than any foreign man of letters, and beautifully correct in his tall black hat and his superior frock coat. Somehow, all the same, these very garments (he wouldn’t have minded them so much on a weekday) were disconcerting to Paul Overt, who forgot for the moment that the head of the profession was not a bit better dressed than himself. He had caught a glimpse of a regular face, with a fresh colour, a brown moustache and a pair of eyes surely never visited by a fine frenzy, and he promised himself to study it on the first occasion. His temporary opinion was that St George looked like a lucky stockbroker – a gentleman driving eastward every morning from a sanitary suburb in a smart dog-cart. That carried out the impression already derived from his wife. Paul Overt’s glance, after a moment, travelled back to this lady, and he saw that her own had followed her husband as he moved off with Miss Fancourt. Overt permitted himself to wonder a little whether she were jealous when another woman took him away. Then he seemed to perceive that Mrs St George was not glaring at the indifferent maiden – her eyes rested only on her husband, and with unmistakable serenity. That was the way she wanted him to be – she liked his conventional uniform. Overt had a great desire to hear more about the book she had induced him to destroy.
II
As they all came out from luncheon General Fancourt took hold of Paul Overt and exclaimed, ‘I say, I want you to know my girl!’ as if the idea had just occurred to him and he had not spoken of it before. With the other hand he possessed himself of the young lady and said: ‘You know all about him. I’ve seen you with his books. She reads everything – everything!’ he added to the young man. The girl smiled at him and then laughed at her father. The General turned away and his daughter said:
‘Isn’t papa delightful?’
‘He is indeed, Miss Fancourt.’
‘As if I read you because I read “everything”!’
‘Oh, I don’t mean for saying that,’ said Paul Overt. ‘I liked him from the moment he spoke to me. Then he promised me this privilege.’
‘It isn’t for you he means it, it’s for me. If you flatter yourself that he thinks of anything in life but me you’ll find you are mistaken. He introduces every one to me. He thinks me insatiable.’
‘You speak like him,’ said Paul Overt, laughing.
‘Ah, but sometimes I want to,
’ the girl replied, colouring. ‘I don’t read everything – I read very little. But I have read you.’
‘Suppose we go into the gallery,’ said Paul Overt. She pleased him greatly, not so much because of this last remark (though that of course was not disagreeable to him), as because, seated opposite to him at luncheon, she had given him for half an hour the impression of her beautiful face. Something else had come with it – a sense of generosity, of an enthusiasm which, unlike many enthusiasms, was not all manner. That was not spoiled for him by the circumstance that the repast had placed her again in familiar contact with Henry St George. Sitting next to her he was also opposite to our young man, who had been able to observe that he multiplied the attentions which his wife had brought to the General’s notice. Paul Overt had been able to observe further that this lady was not in the least discomposed by these demonstrations and that she gave every sign of an unclouded spirit. She had Lord Masham on one side of her and on the other the accomplished Mr Mulliner, editor of the new high-class, lively evening paper which was expected to meet a want felt in circles increasingly conscious that Conservatism must be made amusing, and unconvinced when assured by those of another political colour that it was already amusing enough. At the end of an hour spent in her company Paul Overt thought her still prettier than she had appeared to him at first, and if her profane allusions to her husband’s work had not still rung in his ears he should have liked her – so far as it could be a question of that in connection with a woman to whom he had not yet spoken and to whom probably he should never speak if it were left to her. Pretty women evidently were necessary to Henry St George, and for the moment it was Miss Fancourt who was most indispensable. If Overt had promised himself to take a better look at him the opportunity now was of the best, and it brought consequences which the young man felt to be important. He saw more in his face, and he liked it the better for its not telling its whole story in the first three minutes. That story came out as one read, in little instalments (it was excusable that Overt’s mental comparisons should be somewhat professional), and the text was a style considerably involved – a language not easy to translate at sight. There were shades of meaning in it and a vague perspective of history which receded as you advanced. Of two facts Paul Overt had taken especial notice. The first of these was that he liked the countenance of the illustrious novelist much better when it was in repose than when it smiled; the smile displeased him (as much as anything from that source could), whereas the quiet face had a charm which increased in proportion as it became completely quiet. The change to the expression of gaiety excited on Overt’s part a private protest which resembled that of a person sitting in the twilight and enjoying it, when the lamp is brought in too soon. His second reflection was that, though generally he disliked the sight of a man of that age using arts to make himself agreeable to a pretty girl, he was not struck in this case by the ugliness of the thing, which seemed to prove that St George had a light hand or the air of being younger than he was, or else that Miss Fancourt showed that she was not conscious of an anomaly.
Overt walked with her into the gallery, and they strolled to the end of it, looking at the pictures, the cabinets, the charming vista, which harmonised with the prospect of the summer afternoon, resembling it in its long brightness, with great divans and old chairs like hours of rest. Such a place as that had the added merit of giving persons who came into it plenty to talk about. Miss Fancourt sat down with Paul Overt on a flowered sofa, the cushions of which, very numerous, were tight, ancient cubes, of many sizes, and presently she said: ‘I’m so glad to have a chance to thank you.’
‘To thank me?’
‘I liked your book so much. I think it’s splendid.’
She sat there smiling at him, and he never asked himself which book she meant; for after all he had written three or four. That seemed a vulgar detail, and he was not even gratified by the idea of the pleasure she told him – her bright, handsome face told him – he had given her. The feeling she appealed to, or at any rate the feeling she excited, was something larger – something that had little to do with any quickened pulsation of his own vanity. It was responsive admiration of the life she embodied, the young purity and richness of which appeared to imply that real success was to resemble that, to live, to bloom, to present the perfection of a fine type, not to have hammered out headachy fancies with a bent back at an ink-stained table. While her grey eyes rested on him (there was a wideish space between them, and the division of her rich-coloured hair, which was so thick that it ventured to be smooth, made a free arch above them), he was almost ashamed of that exercise of the pen which it was her present inclination to eulogise. He was conscious that he should have liked better to please her in some other way. The lines of her face were those of a woman grown, but there was something childish in her complexion and the sweetness of her mouth. Above all she was natural – that was indubitable now – more natural than he had supposed at first, perhaps on account of her aesthetic drapery, which was conventionally unconventional, suggesting a tortuous spontaneity. He had feared that sort of thing in other cases, and his fears had been justified; though he was an artist to the essence, the modern reactionary nymph, with the brambles of the woodland caught in her folds and a look as if the satyrs had toyed with her hair, was apt to make him uncomfortable. Miss Fancourt was really more candid than her costume, and the best proof of it was her supposing that such garments suited her liberal character. She was robed like a pessimist, but Overt was sure she liked the taste of life. He thanked her for her appreciation – aware at the same time that he didn’t appear to thank her enough and that she might think him ungracious. He was afraid she would ask him to explain something that he had written, and he always shrank from that (perhaps too timidly), for to his own ear the explanation of a work of art sounded fatuous. But he liked her so much as to feel a confidence that in the long run he should be able to show her that he was not rudely evasive. Moreover it was very certain that she was not quick to take offence; she was not irritable, she could be trusted to wait. So when he said to her, ‘Ah! don’t talk of anything I have done, here; there is another man in the house who is the actuality!’ when he uttered this short, sincere protest, it was with the sense that she would see in the words neither mock humility nor the ungraciousness of a successful man bored with praise.
‘You mean Mr St George – isn’t he delightful?’
Paul Overt looked at her a moment; there was a species of morning-light in her eyes.
‘Alas, I don’t know him. I only admire him at a distance.’
‘Oh, you must know him – he wants so to talk to you,’ rejoined Miss Fancourt, who evidently had the habit of saying the things that, by her quick calculation, would give people pleasure. Overt divined that she would always calculate on everything’s being simple between others.
‘I shouldn’t have supposed he knew anything about me,’ Paul said, smiling.
‘He does then – everything. And if he didn’t, I should be able to tell him.’
‘To tell him everything?’
‘You talk just like the people in your book!’ the girl exclaimed.
‘Then they must all talk alike.’
‘Well, it must be so difficult. Mr St George tells me it is, terribly. I’ve tried too and I find it so. I’ve tried to write a novel.’
‘Mr St George oughtn’t to discourage you,’ said Paul Overt.
‘You do much more – when you wear that expression.’
‘Well, after all, why try to be an artist?’ the young man went on. ‘It’s so poor – so poor!’