1885
I am glad I said to you the other night at Doubleton, inquiring--too
inquiring--compatriot, that I wouldn’t undertake to tell you the story
(about Ambrose Tester), but would write it out for you; inasmuch as,
thinking it over since I came back to town, I see that it may really be
made interesting. It _is_ a story, with a regular development, and for
telling it I have the advantage that I happened to know about it
from the first, and was more or less in the confidence of every one
concerned. Then it will amuse me to write it, and I shall do so as
carefully and as cleverly as possible The first winter days in London
are not madly gay, so that I have plenty of time; and if the fog is
brown outside, the fire is red within. I like the quiet of this season;
the glowing chimney-corner, in the midst of the December mirk, makes me
think, as I sit by it, of all sorts of things. The idea that is almost
always uppermost is the bigness and strangeness of this London world.
Long as I have lived here,--the sixteenth anniversary of my marriage is
only ten days off,--there is still a kind of novelty and excitement in
it It is a great pull, as they say here, to have remained sensitive,--to
have kept one’s own point of view. I mean it’s more entertaining,--it
makes you see a thousand things (not that they are all very charming).
But the pleasure of observation does not in the least depend on the
beauty of what one observes. You see innumerable little dramas; in fact,
almost everything has acts and scenes, like a comedy. Very often it is a
comedy with tears. There have been a good many of them, I am afraid,
in the case I am speaking of. It is because this history of Sir Ambrose
Tester and Lady Vandeleur struck me, when you asked me about the
relations of the parties, as having that kind of progression, that when
I was on the point of responding, I checked myself, thinking it a pity
to tell you a little when I might tell you all. I scarcely know what
made you ask, inasmuch as I had said nothing to excite your curiosity.
Whatever you suspected, you suspected on your own hook, as they say. You
had simply noticed the pair together that evening at Doubleton. If you
suspected anything in particular, it is a proof that you are rather
sharp, because they are very careful about the way they behave in
public. At least they think they are. The result, perhaps, doesn’t
necessarily follow. If I have been in their confidence you may say that
I make a strange use of my privilege in serving them up to feed the
prejudices of an opinionated American. You think English society very
wicked, and my little story will probably not correct the impression.
Though, after all, I don’t see why it should minister to it; for what I
said to you (it was all I did say) remains the truth. They are treading
together the path of duty. You would be quite right about its being base
in me to betray them. It is very true that they have ceased to confide
in me; even Joscelind has said nothing to me for more than a year. That
is doubtless a sign that the situation is more serious than before, all
round,--too serious to be talked about. It is also true that you are
remarkably discreet, and that even if you were not it would not make
much difference, inasmuch as if you were to repeat my revelations in
America, no one would know whom you were talking about. But all the
same, I should be base; and, therefore, after I have written out my
reminiscences for your delectation, I shall simply keep them for my own.
You must content yourself with the explanation I have already given you
of Sir Ambrose Tester and Lady Vandeleur: they are following--hand
in hand, as it were--the path of duty. This will not prevent me from
telling everything; on the contrary, don’t you see?