They were as usual in the garden, and it hadn't yet been so present to
him that if he were only a happy cad there would be a good way to
protect her. As she wouldn't hear of his being yet beyond precautions
she had gone into the house for a particular shawl that was just the
thing for his knees, and, blinking in the watery sunshine, had come back
with it across the fine little lawn. He was neither fatuous nor asinine,
but he had almost to put it to himself as a small task to resist the
sense of his absurd advantage with her. It filled him with horror and
awkwardness, made him think of he didn't know what, recalled something
of Maupassant's--the smitten "Miss Harriet" and her tragic fate. There
was a preposterous possibility--yes, he held the strings quite in his
hands--of keeping the treasure for himself. That was the art of
life--what the real artist would consistently do. He would close the
door on his impression, treat it as a private museum. He would see that
he could lounge and linger there, live with wonderful things there, lie
up there to rest and refit. For himself he was sure that after a little
he should be able to paint there--do things in a key he had never
thought of before. When she brought him the rug he took it from her and
made her sit down on the bench and resume her knitting; then, passing
behind her with a laugh, he placed it over her own shoulders; after
which he moved to and fro before her, his hands in his pockets and his
cigarette in his teeth. He was ashamed of the cigarette--a villainous
false note; but she allowed, liked, begged him to smoke, and what he
said to her on it, in one of the pleasantries she benevolently missed,
was that he did so for fear of doing worse. That only showed how the end
was really in sight. "I dare say it will strike you as quite awful, what
I'm going to say to you, but I can't help it. I speak out of the depths
of my respect for you. It will seem to you horrid disloyalty to poor
Addie. Yes--there we are; there _I_ am at least in my naked
monstrosity." He stopped and looked at her till she might have been
almost frightened. "Don't let her come. Tell her not to. I've tried to
prevent it, but she suspects."
The poor woman wondered. "Suspects?"
"Well, I drew it, in writing to her, on reflexion, as mild as I
could--having been visited in the watches of the night by the instinct
of what might happen. Something told me to keep back my first letter--in
which, under the first impression, I myself rashly 'raved'; and I
concocted instead of it an insincere and guarded report. But guarded as
I was I clearly didn't keep you 'down,' as we say, enough. The wonder of
your colour--daub you over with grey as I might--must have come through
and told the tale. She scents battle from afar--by which I mean she
scents 'quaintness.' But keep her off. It's hideous, what I'm
saying--but I owe it to you. I owe it to the world. She'll kill you."
"You mean I shan't get on with her?"
"Oh fatally! See how _I_ have. And see how you have with ME. She's
intelligent, moreover, remarkably pretty, remarkably good. And she'll
adore you."
"Well then?"
"Why that will be just how she'll do for you."
"Oh I can hold my own!" said Miss Wenham with the headshake of a horse
making his sleigh-bells rattle in frosty air.
"Ah but you can't hold hers! She'll rave about you. She'll write about
you. You're Niagara before the first white traveller--and you know, or
rather you can't know, what Niagara became AFTER that gentleman. Addie
will have discovered Niagara. She'll understand you in perfection;
she'll feel you down to the ground; not a delicate shade of you will she
lose or let any one else lose. You'll be too weird for words, but the
words will nevertheless come. You'll be too exactly the real thing and
be left too utterly just as you are, and all Addie's friends and all
Addie's editors and contributors and readers will cross the Atlantic and
flock to Flickerbridge just in order so--unanimously, universally,
vociferously--to leave you. You'll be in the magazines with
illustrations; you'll be in the papers with headings; you'll be
everywhere with everything. You don't understand--you think you do, but
you don't. Heaven forbid you SHOULD understand! That's just your
beauty--your 'sleeping' beauty. But you needn't. You can take me on
trust. Don't have her. Give as a pretext, as a reason, anything in the
world you like. Lie to her--scare her away. I'll go away and give you
up--I'll sacrifice everything myself." Granger pursued his exhortation,
convincing himself more and more. "If I saw my way out, my way
completely through, I'D pile up some fabric of fiction for her--I should
only want to be sure of its not tumbling down. One would have, you see,
to keep the thing up. But I'd throw dust in her eyes. I'd tell her you
don't do at all--that you're not in fact a desirable acquaintance. I'd
tell her you're vulgar, improper, scandalous; I'd tell her you're
mercenary, designing, dangerous; I'd tell her the only safe course is
immediately to let you drop. I'd thus surround you with an impenetrable
legend of conscientious misrepresentation, a circle of pious fraud, and
all the while privately keep you for myself."
She had listened to him as if he were a band of music and she herself a
small shy garden-party. "I shouldn't like you to go away. I shouldn't in
the least like you not to come again."
"Ah there it is!" he replied. "How can I come again if Addie ruins you?"
"But how will she ruin me--even if she does what you say? I know I'm too
old to change and really much too queer to please in any of the
extraordinary ways you speak of. If it's a question of quizzing me I
don't think my cousin, or any one else, will have quite the hand for it
that YOU seem to have. So that if YOU haven't ruined me--!"
"But I HAVE--that's just the point!" Granger insisted. "I've undermined
you at least. I've left after all terribly little for Addie to do."
She laughed in clear tones. "Well then, we'll admit that you've done
everything but frighten me."
He looked at her with surpassing gloom. "No--that again is one of the
most dreadful features. You'll positively like it--what's to come.
You'll be caught up in a chariot of fire like the prophet--wasn't there,
was there one?--of old. That's exactly why--if one could but have done
it--you'd have been to be kept ignorant and helpless. There's something
or other in Latin that says it's the finest things that change the most
easily for the worse. You already enjoy your dishonour and revel in your
shame. It's too late--you're lost!"