‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Marian Fancourt, looking grave.
‘I mean as compared with being a person of action – as living your works.’
‘But what is art but a life – if it be real?’ asked the girl. ‘I think it’s the only one – everything else is so clumsy!’ Paul Overt laughed, and she continued: ‘It’s so interesting, meeting so many celebrated people.’
‘So I should think; but surely it isn’t new to you.’
‘Why, I have never seen any one – any one: living always in Asia.’
‘But doesn’t Asia swarm with personages? Haven’t you administered provinces in India and had captive rajahs and tributary princes chained to your car?’
‘I was with my father, after I left school to go out there. It was delightful being with him – we are alone together in the world, he and I – but there was none of the society I like best. One never heard of a picture – never of a book, except bad ones.’
‘Never of a picture? Why, wasn’t all life a picture?’
Miss Fancourt looked over the delightful place where they sat. ‘Nothing to compare with this. I adore England!’ she exclaimed.
‘Ah, of course I don’t deny that we must do something with it yet.’
‘It hasn’t been touched, really,’ said the girl.
‘Did Henry St George say that?’
There was a small and, as he felt it, venial intention of irony in his question; which, however, the girl took very simply, not noticing the insinuation. ‘Yes, he says it has not been touched – not touched comparatively,’ she answered, eagerly. ‘He’s so interesting about it. To listen to him makes one want so to do something.’
‘It would make me want to,’ said Paul Overt, feeling strongly, on the instant, the suggestion of what she said and of the emotion with which she said it, and what an incentive, on St George’s lips, such a speech might be.
‘Oh, you – as if you hadn’t! I should like so to hear you talk together,’ the girl added, ardently.
‘That’s very genial of you; but he would have it all his own way. I’m prostrate before him.’
Marian Fancourt looked earnest for a moment. ‘Do you think then he’s so perfect?’
‘Far from it. Some of his later books seem to me awfully queer.’
‘Yes, yes – he knows that.’
Paul Overt stared. ‘That they seem to me awfully queer?’
‘Well yes, or at any rate that they are not what they should be. He told me he didn’t esteem them. He has told me such wonderful things – he’s so interesting.’
There was a certain shock for Paul Overt in the knowledge that the fine genius they were talking of had been reduced to so explicit a confession and had made it, in his misery, to the first comer; for though Miss Fancourt was charming, what was she after all but an immature girl encountered at a country-house? Yet precisely this was a part of the sentiment that he himself had just expressed; he would make way completely for the poor peccable great man, not because he didn’t read him clear, but altogether because he did. His consideration was half composed of tenderness for superficialities which he was sure St George judged privately with supreme sternness and which denoted some tragic intellectual secret. He would have his reasons for his psychology à fleur de peau, and these reasons could only be cruel ones, such as would make him dearer to those who already were fond of him. ‘You excite my envy. I judge him, I discriminate – but I love him,’ Overt said in a moment. ‘And seeing him for the first time this way is a great event for me.’
‘How momentous – how magnificent!’ cried the girl. ‘How delicious to bring you together!’
‘Your doing it – that makes it perfect,’ Overt responded.
‘He’s as eager as you,’ Miss Fancourt went on. ‘But it’s so odd you shouldn’t have met.’
‘It’s not so odd as it seems. I’ve been out of England so much – repeated absences during all these last years.’
‘And yet you write of it as well as if you were always here.’
‘It’s just the being away perhaps. At any rate the best bits, I suspect, are those that were done in dreary places abroad.’
‘And why were they dreary?’
‘Because they were health-resorts – where my poor mother was dying.’
‘Your poor mother?’ the girl murmured, kindly.
‘We went from place to place to help her to get better. But she never did. To the deadly Riviera (I hate it!) to the high Alps, to Algiers, and far away – a hideous journey – to Colorado.’
‘And she isn’t better?’ Miss Fancourt went on.
‘She died a year ago.’
‘Really? – like mine! Only that is far away. Some day you must tell me about your mother,’ she added.
Overt looked at her a moment. ‘What right things you say! If you say them to St George I don’t wonder he’s in bondage.’
‘I don’t know what you mean. He doesn’t make speeches and professions at all – he isn’t ridiculous.’
‘I’m afraid you consider that I am.’
‘No, I don’t,’ the girl replied, rather shortly. ‘He understands everything.’
Overt was on the point of saying jocosely: ‘And I don’t – is that it?’ But these words, before he had spoken, changed themselves into others slightly less trivial: ‘Do you suppose he understands his wife?’
Miss Fancourt made no direct answer to his question; but after a moment’s hesitation she exclaimed: ‘Isn’t she charming?’
‘Not in the least!
‘Here he comes. Now you must know him,’ the girl went on. A small group of visitors had gathered at the other end of the gallery and they had been joined for a moment by Henry St George, who strolled in from a neighbouring room. He stood near them a moment, not, apparently, falling into the conversation, but taking up an old miniature from a table and vaguely examining it. At the end of a minute he seemed to perceive Miss Fancourt and her companion in the distance; whereupon, laying down his miniature, he approached them with the same procrastinating air, with his hands in his pockets, looking to right and left at the pictures. The gallery was so long that this transit took some little time, especially as there was a moment when he stopped to admire the fine Gainsborough. ‘He says she has been the making of him,’ Miss Fancourt continued, in a voice slightly lowered.
‘Ah, he’s often obscure!’ laughed Paul Overt.
‘Obscure?’ she repeated, interrogatively. Her eyes rested upon her other friend, and it was not lost upon Paul that they appeared to send out great shafts of softness. ‘He is going to speak to us!’ she exclaimed, almost breathlessly. There was a sort of rapture in her voice; Paul Overt was startled. ‘Bless my soul, is she so fond of him as that – is she in love with him?’ he mentally inquired. ‘Didn’t I tell you he was eager?’ she added, to her companion.
‘It’s eagerness dissimulated,’ the young man rejoined, as the subject of their observation lingered before his Gainsborough. ‘He edges toward us shyly. Does he mean that she saved him by burning that book?’
‘That book? what book did she burn?’ The girl turned her face quickly upon him.
‘Hasn’t he told you, then?’
‘Not a word.’
‘Then he doesn’t tell you everything!’ Paul Overt had guessed that Miss Fancourt pretty much supposed he did. The great man had now resumed his course and come nearer; nevertheless Overt risked the profane observation: ‘St George and the dragon, the anecdote suggests!’
Miss Fancourt, however, did not hear it; she was smiling at her approaching friend. ‘He is eager – he is!’ she repeated.
‘Eager for you – yes.’
The girl called out frankly, joyously: ‘I know you want to know Mr Overt. You’ll be great friends, and it will always be delightful to me to think that I was here when you first met and that I had something to do with it.’
There was a freshness of intention in this speech which carried it off; nevertheless our young
man was sorry for Henry St George, as he was sorry at any time for any one who was publicly invited to be responsive and delightful. He would have been so contented to believe that a man he deeply admired attached an importance to him that he was determined not to play with such a presumption if it possibly were vain. In a single glance of the eye of the pardonable master he discovered (having the sort of divination that belonged to his talent) that this personage was full of general good-will, but had not read a word he had written. There was even a relief, a simplification, in that: liking him so much already for what he had done, how could he like him more for having been struck with a certain promise? He got up, trying to show his compassion, but at the same instant he found himself encompassed by St George’s happy personal art – a manner of which it was the essence to conjure away false positions. It all took place in a moment. He was conscious that he knew him now, conscious of his handshake and of the very quality of his hand; of his face, seen nearer and consequently seen better, of a general fraternising assurance, and in particular of the circumstance that St George didn’t dislike him (as yet at least) for being imposed by a charming but too gushing girl, valuable enough without such danglers. At any rate no irritation was reflected in the voice with which he questioned Miss Fancourt in respect to some project of a walk – a general walk of the company round the park. He had said something to Overt about a talk – ‘We must have a tremendous lot of talk; there are so many things, aren’t there?’ – but Paul perceived that this idea would not in the present case take very immediate effect. All the same he was extremely happy, even after the matter of the walk had been settled (the three presently passed back to the other part of the gallery, where it was discussed with several members of the party), even when, after they had all gone out together, he found himself for half an hour in contact with Mrs St George. Her husband had taken the advance with Miss Fancourt, and this pair were quite out of sight. It was the prettiest of rambles for a summer afternoon – a grassy circuit, of immense extent, skirting the limit of the park within. The park was completely surrounded by its old mottled but perfect red wall, which, all the way on their left, made a picturesque accompaniment. Mrs St George mentioned to him the surprising number of acres that were thus enclosed, together with numerous other facts relating to the property and the family, and its other properties: she could not too strongly urge upon him the importance of seeing their other houses. She ran over the names of these and rang the changes on them with the facility of practice, making them appear an almost endless list. She had received Paul Overt very amiably when he broke ground with her by telling her that he had just had the joy of making her husband’s acquaintance, and struck him as so alert and so accommodating a little woman that he was rather ashamed of his mot about her to Miss Fancourt; though he reflected that a hundred other people, on a hundred occasions, would have been sure to make it. He got on with Mrs St George, in short, better than he expected; but this did not prevent her from suddenly becoming aware that she was faint with fatigue and must take her way back to the house by the shortest cut. She hadn’t the strength of a kitten, she said – she was awfully seedy; a state of things that Overt had been too preoccupied to perceive – preoccupied with a private effort to ascertain in what sense she could be held to have been the making of her husband. He had arrived at a glimmering of the answer when she announced that she must leave him, though this perception was of course provisional. While he was in the very act of placing himself at her disposal for the return the situation underwent a change; Lord Masham suddenly turned up, coming back to them, overtaking them, emerging from the shrubbery – Overt could scarcely have said how he appeared, and Mrs St George had protested that she wanted to be left alone and not to break up the party. A moment later she was walking off with Lord Masham. Paul Overt fell back and joined Lady Watermouth, to whom he presently mentioned that Mrs St George had been obliged to renounce the attempt to go further.
‘She oughtn’t to have come out at all,’ her ladyship remarked, rather grumpily.
‘Is she so very much of an invalid?’
‘Very bad indeed.’ And his hostess added, with still greater austerity: ‘She oughtn’t to come to stay with one!’ He wondered what was implied by this, and presently gathered that it was not a reflection on the lady’s conduct or her moral nature: it only represented that her strength was not equal to her aspirations.
III
THE smoking-room at Summersoft was on the scale of the rest of the place; that is it was high and light and commodious, and decorated with such refined old carvings and mouldings that it seemed rather a bower for ladies who should sit at work at fading crewels than a parliament of gentlemen smoking strong cigars. The gentlemen mustered there in considerable force on the Sunday evening, collecting mainly at one end, in front of one of the cool fair fireplaces of white marble, the entablature of which was adorned with a delicate little Italian ‘subject’. There was another in the wall that faced it, and, thanks to the mild summer night, there was no fire in either; but a nucleus for aggregation was furnished on one side by a table in the chimney-corner laden with bottles, decanters and tall tumblers. Paul Overt was an insincere smoker; he puffed cigarettes occasionally for reasons with which tobacco had nothing to do. This was particularly the case on the occasion of which I speak; his motive was the vision of a little direct talk with Henry St George. The ‘tremendous’ communion of which the great man had held out hopes to him earlier in the day had not yet come off, and this saddened him considerably, for the party was to go its several ways immediately after breakfast on the morrow. He had, however, the disappointment of finding that apparently the author of Shadowmere was not disposed to prolong his vigil. He was not among the gentlemen assembled in the smoking-room when Overt entered it, nor was he one of those who turned up, in bright habiliments, during the next ten minutes. The young man waited a little, wondering whether he had only gone to put on something extraordinary; this would account for his delay as well as contribute further to Overt’s observation of his tendency to do the approved superficial thing. But he didn’t arrive – he must have been putting on something more extraordinary than was probable. Paul gave him up, feeling a little injured, a little wounded at his not having managed to say twenty words to him. He was not angry, but he puffed his cigarette sighingly, with the sense of having lost a precious chance. He wandered away with his regret, moved slowly round the room, looking at the old prints on the walls. In this attitude he presently felt a hand laid on his shoulder and a friendly voice in his ear. ‘This is good. I hoped I should find you. I came down on purpose.’ St George was there, without a change of dress and with a kind face – his graver one – to which Overt eagerly responded. He explained that it was only for the Master – the idea of a little talk – that he had sat up and that, not finding him, he had been on the point of going to bed.
‘Well, you know, I don’t smoke – my wife doesn’t let me,’ said St George, looking for a place to sit down. ‘It’s very good for me – very good for me. Let us take that sofa.’
‘Do you mean smoking is good for you?’
‘No, no, her not letting me. It’s a great thing to have a wife who proves to one all the things one can do without. One might never find them out for oneself. She doesn’t allow me to touch a cigarette.’
They took possession of the sofa, which was at a distance from the group of smokers, and St George went on: ‘Have you got one yourself?’
‘Do you mean a cigarette?’
‘Dear no! a wife.’
‘No; and yet I would give up my cigarette for one.’
‘You would give up a good deal more than that,’ said St George. ‘However, you would get a great deal in return. There is a great deal to be said for wives,’ he added, folding his arms and crossing his outstretched legs. He declined tobacco altogether and sat there without returning fire. Paul Overt stopped smoking, touched by his courtesy; and after all they were out of the fumes, their sofa was in a far-away cor
ner. It would have been a mistake, St George went on, a great mistake for them to have separated without a little chat; ‘for I know all about you,’ he said, ‘I know you’re very remarkable. You’ve written a very distinguished book.’
‘And how do you know it?’ Overt asked.
‘Why, my dear fellow, it’s in the air, it’s in the papers, it’s everywhere,’ St George replied, with the immediate familiarity of a confrère – a tone that seemed to his companion the very rustle of the laurel. ‘You’re on all men’s lips and, what’s better, you’re on all women’s. And I’ve just been reading your book.’
‘Just? You hadn’t read it this afternoon,’ said Overt.
‘How do you know that?’
‘You know how I know it,’ the young man answered, laughing.
‘I suppose Miss Fancourt told you.’
‘No, indeed; she led me rather to suppose that you had.’
‘Yes; that’s much more what she would do. Doesn’t she shed a rosy glow over life? But you didn’t believe her?’ asked St George.
‘No, not when you came to us there.’
‘Did I pretend? did I pretend badly?’ But without waiting for an answer to this St George went on: ‘You ought always to believe such a girl as that – always, always. Some women are meant to be taken with allowances and reserves; but you must take her just as she is.’
‘I like her very much,’ said Paul Overt.
Something in his tone appeared to excite on his companion’s part a momentary sense of the absurd; perhaps it was the air of deliberation attending this judgement. St George broke into a laugh and returned: ‘It’s the best thing you can do with her. She’s a rare young lady! In point of fact, however, I confess I hadn’t read you this afternoon.’
‘Then you see how right I was in this particular case not to believe Miss Fancourt.’
‘How right? how can I agree to that, when I lost credit by it?’
‘Do you wish to pass for exactly what she represents you? Certainly you needn’t be afraid,’ Paul said.