"But has she any idea herself, poor thing?" was the way I had put it to
Mrs. Munden on our next meeting after the incident at my studio; with the
effect, however, only of leaving my friend at first to take me as
alluding to Mrs. Brash's possible prevision of the chatter she might
create. I had my own sense of that--this provision had been nil; the
question was of her consciousness of the office for which Lady Beldonald
had counted on her and for which we were so promptly proceeding to spoil
her altogether.
"Oh I think she arrived with a goodish notion," Mrs. Munden had replied
when I had explained; "for she's clever too, you know, as well as good-
looking, and I don't see how, if she ever really _knew_ Nina, she could
have supposed for a moment that she wasn't wanted for whatever she might
have left to give up. Hasn't she moreover always been made to feel that
she's ugly enough for anything?" It was even at this point already
wonderful how my friend had mastered the case and what lights, alike for
its past and its future, she was prepared to throw on it. "If she has
seen herself as ugly enough for anything she has seen herself--and that
was the only way--as ugly enough for Nina; and she has had her own manner
of showing that she understands without making Nina commit herself to
anything vulgar. Women are never without ways for doing such things--both
for communicating and receiving knowledge--that I can't explain to you,
and that you wouldn't understand if I could, since you must be a woman
even to do that. I daresay they've expressed it all to each other simply
in the language of kisses. But doesn't it at any rate make something
rather beautiful of the relation between them as affected by our
discovery--?"
I had a laugh for her plural possessive. "The point is of course that if
there was a conscious bargain, and our action on Mrs. Brash is to deprive
her of the sense of keeping her side of it, various things may happen
that won't be good either for her or for ourselves. She may
conscientiously throw up the position."
"Yes," my companion mused--"for she is conscientious. Or Nina, without
waiting for that, may cast her forth."
I faced it all. "Then we should have to keep her."
"As a regular model?" Mrs. Munden was ready for anything. "Oh that would
be lovely!"
But I further worked it out. "The difficulty is that she's not a model,
hang it--that she's too good for one, that she's the very thing herself.
When Outreau and I have each had our go, that will be all; there'll be
nothing left for any one else. Therefore it behoves us quite to
understand that our attitude's a responsibility. If we can't do for her
positively more than Nina does--"
"We must let her alone?" My companion continued to muse. "I see!"
"Yet don't," I returned, "see too much. We _can_ do more."
"Than Nina?" She was again on the spot. "It wouldn't after all be
difficult. We only want the directly opposite thing--and which is the
only one the poor dear can give. Unless indeed," she suggested, "we
simply retract--we back out."
I turned it over. "It's too late for that. Whether Mrs. Brash's peace
is gone I can't say. But Nina's is."
"Yes, and there's no way to bring it back that won't sacrifice her
friend. We can't turn round and say Mrs. Brash is ugly, can we? But
fancy Nina's not having _seen_!" Mrs. Munden exclaimed.
"She doesn't see now," I answered. "She can't, I'm certain, make out
what we mean. The woman, for _her_ still, is just what she always was.
But she has nevertheless had her stroke, and her blindness, while she
wavers and gropes in the dark, only adds to her discomfort. Her blow was
to see the attention of the world deviate."
"All the same I don't think, you know," my interlocutress said, "that
Nina will have made her a scene or that, whatever we do, she'll ever make
her one. That isn't the way it will happen, for she's exactly as
conscientious as Mrs. Brash."
"Then what is the way?" I asked.
"It will just happen in silence."
"And what will 'it,' as you call it, be?"
"Isn't that what we want really to see?"
"Well," I replied after a turn or two about, "whether we want it or not
it's exactly what we _shall_ see; which is a reason the more for
fancying, between the pair there--in the quiet exquisite house, and full
of superiorities and suppressions as they both are--the extraordinary
situation. If I said just now that it's too late to do anything but
assent it's because I've taken the full measure of what happened at my
studio. It took but a few moments--but she tasted of the tree."
My companion wondered. "Nina?"
"Mrs. Brash." And to have to put it so ministered, while I took yet
another turn, to a sort of agitation. Our attitude was a responsibility.
But I had suggested something else to my friend, who appeared for a
moment detached. "Should you say she'll hate her worse if she _doesn't_
see?"
"Lady Beldonald? Doesn't see what we see, you mean, than if she does? Ah
I give _that_ up!" I laughed. "But what I can tell you is why I hold
that, as I said just now, we can do most. We can do this: we can give to
a harmless and sensitive creature hitherto practically disinherited--and
give with an unexpectedness that will immensely add to its price--the
pure joy of a deep draught of the very pride of life, of an acclaimed
personal triumph in our superior sophisticated world."
Mrs. Munden had a glow of response for my sudden eloquence. Oh it will
be beautiful!