"We at bottom 'hope,' surely, that you're all right?"
"In spite of the fool it makes of every one?"
Mr. Hayes of New York smiled. "Say _because_ of that. We only ask to
believe every one _is_ a fool!"
"Only you haven't been, without reassurance, able to imagine fools of the
size that my case demands?" And Gedge had a pause while, as if on the
chance of some proof, his companion waited. "Well, I won't pretend to you
that your anxiety hasn't made me, doesn't threaten to make me, a bit
nervous; though I don't quite understand it if, as you say, people but rave
about me."
"Oh _that_ report was from the other side; people in our country so very
easily rave. You've seen small children laugh to shrieks when tickled in a
new place. So there are amiable millions with us who are but small
shrieking children. They perpetually present new places for the tickler.
What we've seen in further lights," Mr. Hayes good-humouredly pursued, "is
your people _here_--the Committee, the Board, or whatever the powers to
whom you're responsible."
"Call them my friend Grant-Jackson then--my original backer, though I admit
for that reason perhaps my most formidable critic. It's with him
practically I deal; or rather it's by him I'm dealt with--_was_ dealt with
before. I stand or fall by him. But he has given me my head."
"Mayn't he then want you," Mrs. Hayes inquired, "just to show as flagrantly
running away?"
"Of course--I see what you mean. I'm riding, blindly, for a fall, and
They're watching (to be tender of me!) for the smash that may come of
itself. It's Machiavellic--but everything's possible. And what did you just
now mean," Gedge asked--"especially if you've only heard of my
prosperity--by your 'further lights'?"
His friends for an instant looked embarrassed, but Mr. Hayes came to the
point. "We've heard of your prosperity, but we've also, remember, within a
few minutes, heard _you_."
"I was determined you _should_," said Gedge. "I'm good then--but I overdo?"
His strained grin was still sceptical.
Thus challenged, at any rate, his visitor pronounced. "Well, if you don't;
if at the end of six months more it's clear that you haven't overdone;
then, _then_----"
"Then what?"
"Then it's great."
"But it _is_ great--greater than anything of the sort ever was. I overdo,
thank goodness, yes; or I would if it were a thing you _could_."
"Oh well, if there's _proof_ that you can't----!" With which and an
expressive gesture Mr. Hayes threw up his fears.
His wife, however, for a moment seemed unable to let them go. "Don't They
want then _any_ truth?--none even for the mere look of it?"
"The look of it," said Morris Gedge, "is what I give!"
It made them, the others, exchange a look of their own. Then she smiled.
"Oh, well, if they think so----!"
"You at least don't? You're like my wife--which indeed, I remember," Gedge
added, "is a similarity I expressed a year ago the wish for! At any rate I
frighten _her_."
The young husband, with an "Ah wives are terrible!" smoothed it over, and
their visit would have failed of further excuse had not at this instant a
movement at the other end of the room suddenly engaged them. The evening
had so nearly closed in, though Gedge, in the course of their talk, had
lighted the lamp nearest them, that they had not distinguished, in
connexion with the opening of the door of communication to the warden's
lodge, the appearance of another person, an eager woman who in her
impatience had barely paused before advancing. Mrs. Gedge--her identity
took but a few seconds to become vivid--was upon them, and she had not been
too late for Mr. Hayes's last remark. Gedge saw at once that she had come
with news; no need even, for that certitude, of her quick retort to the
words in the air--"You may say as well, sir, that they're often, poor
wives, terrified!" She knew nothing of the friends whom, at so unnatural an
hour, he was showing about; but there was no livelier sign for him that
this didn't matter than the possibility with which she intensely charged
her "Grant-Jackson, to see you at once!"--letting it, so to speak, fly in
his face.
"He has been with you?"
"Only a minute--he's there. But it's you he wants to see."