If the moments at which Ralph had felt the happy enlargement of his
situation, during the past half-hour, had been much more numerous than
those at which he was held of a sudden in a sort of constriction, he now
knew within the minute that the elation of ease had caught him up high
and higher. This came at once from the sight of the gentleman who
entered to kiss Mrs. Midmore's hand before he did anything else, though
indeed he gave Ralph a glance by the way, and of whom our young man at
once conveniently noted that he performed the pretty act not at all as
by prescription but somehow as by special inspiration, or even by the
custom of oddity. He made a difference, the quickest--his arrival made
it, and his look at Ralph and his fine good-morning to the others,
before he had spoken a word but this last; the difference, that is, of
replacing by their interest in his presence a certain self-consciousness
on the part of each of the four into which their commerce of the last
ten minutes had perhaps a trifle awkwardly tightened. And this verily,
wasn't it? just by no more than the glance of his eye, a small sharp eye
in a long narrow face, giving a sense as it did on the spot for Ralph's
imagination to Mrs. Midmore's warrant of his keenness. Was it anything
more than that he was intelligent?--though why if it wasn't could
Ralph's heart leap up so without thereby implying that the others, the
so agreeable others (for hadn't Perry turned agreeable too!) had
beguiled him but with the common? However the question hovered but to
drop, for there was no conceivable tribute to taste that his grand
kinswoman didn't seem to render as she said to her new visitor: "I
desire your acquaintance for our cousin Mr. Pendrel--a faraway cousin,
but a near relation of another sort, as he is about to become my
son-in-law."
"Do you settle such grand matters in the turn of a hand?--if, as I
gather, Mr. Pendrel, whom I rejoice to see, has scarce had time to draw
breath in your house!" Sir Cantopher addressed this to the others, but
paying Ralph the compliment of it, as our young man felt, and letting
him see that he might figure for unduly driven should he choose. It
took, however, but this first vision of his fellow-visitor to put such a
choice quite out of the question; the effect of this gentleman was so to
make him throb again with the responsive curiosity that had carried him
the whole length of his first initiation. That tide was once more full
and strong, for here was a new relation, of the liveliest, which was
already in the brief moment drawing him on and which in fact had in its
different way as much force to that end, whatever the end might prove,
as had been put forth for his original welcome by Molly herself. Molly
had desired him, and Molly still did, as much as ever, he perfectly
felt, all outer ruffles of accident notwithstanding, just as his own
strongest pulse beat upon her for its satisfaction with a quickness
undiminished; but the very face and air and note of the man before him,
and who was as much taken with him, in the way of wonder, he could see,
as he was himself taken, now multiplied at a stroke his relations with
his actual world. Sir Cantopher's forehead was high and his chin long,
without other fulness, as was also his nose; his mouth, with its thin
tight edges and its inconsiderable size, repeated to the attention the
fashion of his eyes and their drawn lids, which showed the sharpness of
the pupil intermittently, much as the lips, opening too little, showed
the gleam of scarce more than a couple of such teeth as would have
announced on more liberal terms a proper array. Sir Cantopher's facial
terms were precisely not liberal--in the sense, as we might have put it,
that they made, in spite of resources close at hand, a hard bargain with
expression; Ralph even noting for it at once that he had his aspect
certainly, and that one took it somehow as a thing of high sufficiency,
if not of beauty or symmetry, but that not less surely, should it
continue to be denied larger play, it would have to do, unlike even the
Greek theatric mask, both for tragedy and comedy. Would one ever,
without other help, know which of the two he fixedly meant?--though
doubtless he was meaning comedy now and moreover was, by some
indescribable art and unsupported by a single direct grace, expressing a
high degree of elegance and of consequence. It might be a small world in
which he so much mattered, but there was exactly the charm, or at least
the challenge--curiosity always predominant--that one might come quite
to learn and to enjoy his conditions. His shoulders sloped, his stature
but sufficed, and wasn't some slight deflection from the straight to be
confessed to by his extraordinarily thin legs, in their understrapped
buff pantaloons, a pretty match to a complete puce-coloured frock of the
very finest smooth cloth, now left open to the bristle of frill and the
ribboned dangle of watch-fob? The point most of all made by him at any
rate was that of his being in his way, and the more remarkably as
without her facilities, not less the fine gentleman than Mrs. Midmore
was the fine lady.
"Oh our happy understanding was arrived at long ago!"--Ralph found
himself liking to speak as if endless generations had prepared it.
"You'll understand how with such a wind in my sails I couldn't be slow
to get into port. And the kindness," he said, "with which I have been
treated this hour----!" He left that to bridge all gaps while his face
invited his relatives to see how for others still than themselves he put
himself in their hands.
They saw it at once, they rallied, as he felt, altogether, and Sir
Cantopher's presence crowned all their confidence without at all
impairing his own. Ralph had been having from them this and that about
him, but to see him there was to understand him as the supremely valid
family friend, with certain of whose aspects liberties of remark might
be taken behind his back, but with whose judgment and whose taste they
would ever, and most particularly, wish their appearance as a family to
consort. Our young man, with the divinatory gift that so unfailingly
flared up in him under stress, was quickly mastering the truth that, for
that matter, criticism of his friends would enjoy a range on this
visitor's part which it could scarce hope to achieve in any conditions
on Molly's or her mother's, affirm their claim to the luxury as they
might. It was wonderful, it was already inspiring, that Sir Cantopher,
by the mere action of a sign or two of the simplest, seemed to blow on
the perceptive flame as if he had directly applied his breath. He
recognised, he recognised--Ralph took that almost exultingly in for the
quickening of interest it surely promised. What he recognised was that
the American cousin appeared to justify himself to sight; which was
perhaps no great showing, especially as an effect of but two or three
glances--yet it offered that pilgrim an inviting extension, one he only
asked to make the most of.
"I know how they've looked out for you, sir--and don't mind telling you
that I've myself looked out _with_ them; so that I perfectly conceive
their present satisfaction. We've landed our prize--the expression seems
peculiarly just, and you of course are assuring yourself with the last
conviction that your own is at least equal to anything you could have
imagined." Of these words Sir Cantopher delivered himself in a voice of
such an odd high nasality as again threw Ralph back on the question of
voices and caused him to note that he had never before heard a like tone
applied with such confidence. It was with confidence and to the happiest
effect that Mrs. Midmore applied hers, but hers was a charm and a rich
comfort, whereas Sir Cantopher's excited surprise, or was exciting
Ralph's at least, in proportion as it developed. There again accordingly
was our friend learning at a leap, learning that here was a scene where
the safe retention of properties and honours didn't in the least depend
on a gentleman's either denying a single mark of his ease or attempting
to please in violation of it. He himself had been acquainted, hadn't he?
with the reign of the nasal, but when and where had it flourished to his
ear as this gentleman, and doubtless quite unconsciously, made it
flourish? People were supposed at home to enjoy in that particular an
unresented license--which he had, however, never heard taken as he now
heard it without its having somehow seemed to pull the speaker down. Sir
Cantopher was up, up, up--yes, as he went on, up at the topmost note of
his queer fine squeak, which was clearly not less an element of felt
assurance in him than the most settled of his other titles. This didn't
withal diminish the fact that if you had caught the sound the first time
without sight of its source, you might have turned to expect some rather
ancient lady, of the highest fashion indeed, but playing her part,
presumably to her disadvantage, upon an organ cracked beyond repair.
It was furthermore of moment that not a shade of disadvantage, even
while the impression was suddenest and sharpest, appeared attachable by
Ralph's fancy to Sir Cantopher's similar exercise, for how could one in
that case have been so moved more and more to advance in proportion as
it was suggested that one was awaited? It took no great number of more
words to represent to him that he was now in presence, and might ever so
fortunately continue to be, of more cleverness even than his cousins had
engaged for on behalf of their patron--his pulses telling him in this
remarkable way that the finest parts of it would probably come out to
him, and that, yes, positively, they were already wanting to come out.
He, Ralph Pendrel, should enjoy them even were that ambiguity of the
oral medium a condition involved. Mightn't he too grow with association
prolific enough fairly to like the ambiguity?--even as it couldn't but
be that the company Sir Cantopher kept had either to like it or, as the
phrase might be, lump it. Ralph had really not to wait longer than this
for the first glint of a truth that was soon to gather more force, the
virtual perception that the only way not to find one's self rather
afraid of such a companion might well be the device of getting and
keeping so near him that his power to alarm should by positive human
pressure be deprived of range and action. Not this calculation indeed do
we impute to our partaker of impressions during the first stages of the
relation that had begun so quickly to move him; it was quite enough that
a surrender to it--though to _have_ only just to surrender was a most
extraordinary turn--looked for all the world like the door of a society,
of knowledge, of pleasure in a rich sense in which he hadn't yet
encountered pleasure, standing ajar before him and asking but for a push
of his young hand.
"You'll understand, please, sir," Sir Cantopher had at any rate soon
said, "that I'm here this morning to pay _you_ in particular my respects
and to offer you any service in my power. I've only to meet your eye,
haven't I? to judge that our manners and customs will be an open book to
you almost at once, so far as a quick understanding is concerned; but
there may be a page here and there that I can help you to turn
over--even if your cousin Perry, who is also my good friend, may be a
much better guide for you to the sights of the town, as they are called,
let alone too most of the humours of the country. There are things Perry
could show me, I'm sure, that I've never seen in my life--but that must
be because he has never thought me worthy of 'em: isn't it, you great
keeper of your own counsel?" the family friend asked again of the family
hope, who now stood with his thumbs in his waistcoat armholes and his
eyes anywhere but on Sir Cantopher's. He had no answer for the question
addressed to him, which flowered out of the speaker's urbanity with a
special effect for that vivacity of observation in our own young man of
which Sir Cantopher, to his high credit, had lost so remarkably little
time in making sure.
What even he, however, in spite of that sharpness, couldn't have
guessed, and this by Ralph's private and immediate certainty, was what
the latter was at these instants most thinking of: which was neither
more nor less than that whereas their companions, not many minutes
before, had visibly not known what to make of various odd matters drawn
by the rare force of the situation from their kinsman's candour, so no
felt want of ease whatever could possibly greet on the score of its
ambiguity even the boldest push of this quite other and very much
greater cleverness. Yes, very much greater, Ralph at once owned, for
nothing yet had perhaps brushed his perception with such a wing as the
absolute interest of that light on the fact that Sir Cantopher, with
superior resources to _his_ of every kind (if the facial were excepted,
though perhaps indeed the facial but worked in their own way,) might
irritate, might exasperate, might really, to put it at the worst,
humiliate, his present auditors, but would never produce in them that
odd consequence, recently noted, of their finding themselves
disconcertedly at sea. Should Ralph again by any accident so leave them?
He hoped not, he had somehow felt the warning, we know, as the chill of
a misadventure. Still, amid the wondrous things that so positively
promised to happen, that, even that, had its suspended possibility;
which in fact cast a shadow just appreciably the larger and the darker
by reason of this appearance that he was in danger of expressing least,
to any practical end, just when desiring to express most, and that there
was on the other hand nothing his fellow-guest might treat them to, for
that gentleman's special amusement, that wouldn't be intelligible, and
quite cruelly so if need be, exactly in proportion to the fine taste of
it.
That was the point to which our adventurer reached out, the attraction
of such fine taste as he had heard of, as he had dreamed of, as he knew
existed in the world, without his having come even within remotest hail
of it, but which he now by the mere act of a step or two might
positively feel his hand touch. Of this he had for the instant so intent
an awareness that the precious quantity in question and its curious
master might, by the measure of the recognition, have seemed to
supersede his appointed mistress and her bloom and her beauty as the
main and original reading of his lesson and object of his aim. Wasn't he
afterwards quite to allow to himself that he had during certain moments
just then fairly invited the girl herself, so far as laughing toward her
as if he desired it went, to be glad with him for his so liking what was
thus promised them together, as might be--there having begun in him too,
under the very sense we commemorate, who should have been able to say
what instinct of the rightness of his making no sort of surrender to
which he shouldn't be able to introduce her as well? Was he to pretend
there, however, after but five minutes of their visitor's company, to be
ready himself with services in any such particular?--services from which
he might easily, if he didn't look out, borrow the air of an officious
ass. It quickened everything, it somehow, with a kind of still and not
absolutely harsh violence, jostled all things together, that she didn't,
no, didn't at all glow responsive to this evidence that he could show
eagerness, and eagerness so gapingly flagrant, for a cause with which
her concern would be but what she chose to let it. How long had it been
before he noted, and then almost with a start, that during the
establishment of his good relation with their fine friend, which clearly
was proceeding by Sir Cantopher's action still more than by his own, she
hadn't so much as once taken visual account of that worthy's presence,
had in fact turned an eye upon him as little as Perry himself was doing?
This would have been perhaps made up by her leaving of her lover to grin
demonstrative if she hadn't markedly appeared to fail of coming to his
help in it. They didn't help people with Sir Cantopher, Perry and she;
which fact might possibly be already a guiding influence, unless it was
a mere mark of the momentary case. On the former supposition it involved
more matters than required present attention, though throwing so much
light on the latter as might spring from one's guessing--what one after
all had by this time independently guessed!--that the girl wouldn't love
without jealousy and that here was a juncture for her at which, through
some occult cause, the sharp passion stood in front of the soft. Her
brother's incalculable attitude had become under the shift of the
general pressure just her brother's affair, but Ralph hadn't to wait to
see how Molly's discrimination against his own extravagance of
sociability corrected as much as he could possibly have wished that
quick fancy in him of her having through the sudden strange stress of a
short time before held off from him altogether. That had been an alarm,
and this even at the very worst wasn't, for that she didn't hold off in
ignoring the author of their actual complication, that she much rather
held on, held as she had at no moment held, could only be the true sense
of her manner. She had reasons, and what were they? for not caring that
he should want to see so supremely much of what other people, and this
one in particular should it come to that, could do for him. These
reasons of course essentially counted, even while she kept the
expression of them back, for a renewed assurance of all she felt she
could herself do; a truth contributing not a little to our hero's sense
of himself as more bedevilled at this moment perhaps than at any yet,
ridden since he was by the wish to lose nothing that he could on any
terms whatever grasp.
He faced at that moment, to all appearance, the signal inference that he
had come out, as who should say, for nothing singly and solely, not even
for bestowing his heart and plighting his troth; he had come out for the
whole, the finest integrity of the thing--the insistence of which now
flashed upon him with the hard cold light of a flourished steel blade.
In that light the whole was promised and figured ever so much more by
Sir Cantopher than by Molly and her mother and her brother--in whatever
separate harmony these three should move or act together. He gave it out
as they couldn't possibly give it, and as their attitude, in very
truth--for wasn't there a telltale shade even in Mrs. Midmore's
too?--showed they didn't so much as want to. Sir Cantopher cut across
them as with the edge of his fineness, waving them back a little and
keeping them in place by one free and practised hand while by the other
he sketched a hundred like possibilities upon the stretched expanse of
Ralph's vision, which might have been an artist's uppermost fair sheet.
Absolutely he drew things, their companions turning away their heads
(and poor Ralph needing indeed to keep his own,) in recognition that as
they of course could flourish no such pencil, so might they not either
prudently snatch it from him; it not being in every house, even of the
best traditions, that such a master was content to perform--it having in
fact been to all probability quite noted that all impatience of his time
or disposition to finish worked infallibly against the challenger.
"Yes, I've collections, treasures, and all as pretty things of their
kind as you can hope anywhere to see"--this, Ralph knew at the end of
three minutes, was one of the points he had most promptly made, and had
then dropped for some other, though only next to retouch it with a
neatness of caprice, repeating it as in provision of interest for
himself and at once adding that there was nothing he either so loved or
so hated as to play showman--it all depended on the case. "I've things
I'd as soon smash with a hammer as invite people to admire who haven't
some struggling germ of a natural taste. I don't care a fig, you see,
for what's called an acquired one, which is sure to have been begged or
borrowed or stolen, sure not to have been grown. I don't know where
you've picked up yours, sir," he was so good as to remark to Ralph with
his sharpest civility--"for I can scarce imagine where you should. It
must grow therefore in the soil of your mind--in fact, upon my word, I
seem to see it grow in your very face while I speak to you: which is as
becoming to you as possible and as promising, mayn't I say? for my own
opportunity."
Sir Cantopher was struck--and Ralph was at once struck, as well, with
his being so: he had put his fine finger so straight upon the spot where
our young man's consciousness then most throbbed. Ralph _did_, as we
know, grow many of his perceptions and possibilities from moment to
moment and as they were wanted, but his sense of this had been up to
that instant that he grew them deep down within and then served them up
in the outer light only all prepared and garnished and denying their
improvised state. Here was Sir Cantopher catching them crude, and as
good as saying that he did; this at least with a confidence betrayed
neither by Molly nor by Perry, symptoms of something like their friend's
confounding note though they might have confusedly given. Ralph flushed
under the effect of the liveliest observation he had had to meet, and we
have already seen that flushing rather inevitably counted for him as
blushing--and not the less either for the fact that when he blushed he
took a perfect oddity of alarm, as if the telltale suffusion threatened
him by a nasty little law of its own with loss or defeat or exposure;
though exposure of what, in the name of goodness? These awarenesses
during the moment or two, so pressed upon him and upon each other, that
it was as if a recognition of what Sir Cantopher might mean fairly
surged up, under the squeeze, from his conscience to his countenance,
where it could thus only give such increased signs as made his critic
the more frankly appreciate them.
"Don't you see what I mean and what a treat it is to seize in the fact
such a candour of intelligence, a play of apprehension so full and yet
so fresh?--as if born but three minutes ago and yet already stepping out
as straight as you like!" So he pursued, the terrible man, inviting the
others fairly to admire their kinsman's expression, embarrassed or no,
and thereby, as we feel, making that expression almost glare about for a
refuge, some dart to cover, some snatch of a tag of disguise, from its
own very heat. "The next thing I shall cry!" Ralph reflected in a
central gasp; but if he felt the tears rise he couldn't for his life
rightly have apportioned the weight of shame in them against the joy of
emotion just as emotion. The joy was for the very tribute itself of Sir
Cantopher's advance upon him, whereas the shame was ever so much more
vague, attaching as it did at the most to its being rather ridiculous to
be so held up for transparent. _They_ had seemed to him transparent,
even with dim spots--he had been fairly on his way, hadn't he? to reduce
Sir Cantopher to it; so he panted a little, after his fashion, while the
Midmores, and just exactly as through some blur of tears, affected him
as rallying to their friend's invitation to see him in the light of that
damning charm. He was what he was of course, and with the full right to
be; but hadn't he half-seconds as of a push against dead walls, a sense
of the dash at them in the dark?--so that they were attested as closely
near without the fruit of it, since for one to call people reachable
they had really to be penetrable. He said things--that is he was a
little afterwards sure he _must_ have said them, laughing, interrupting,
deprecating, though he hoped not too literally--for he wouldn't as yet
have it that he didn't on the whole and at the pinch carry almost any
trouble off and see at the given moment more in the given matter than
the others did. He was seeing even now surely more than Sir Cantopher
was--which in fact however was exactly his complication, face to face as
it placed him of a truth with his need to betray that he saw only what
would save him; the idea of things that would lose him thus making its
discriminations.
If he stood up, at any rate, the most pressing of his four patrons not
only did that but struck him through it all as fairly spinning round
with excess of balance--so at least poor Ralph felt on hearing it
expressed as relevant that there was his handsome mistress, the finest
young woman in England, for such were Sir Cantopher's terms, in whom,
despite her thousand charms, no spark of the noble interest they
referred to could possibly be kindled. "I don't complain of that," Sir
Cantopher promptly added, "for she's a perfectly honest creature, with
the very highest spirit and no shade of affectation, and in fact so rare
a piece in herself that who can ask for more? You don't of course, sir,
and I don't advise you to!"--Sir Cantopher's jerk of these last words
was on an especially high note; "but there is a person in the family, if
you don't happen to know it, from whom you may expect anything in life
on the ground of taste; so long, of course I mean, as you don't propose
yourself--as a mere brother-in-law to be--for the object of it. She has
the most perfect understanding in the world," the speaker lucidly
pursued, "in addition to being formed otherwise very sufficiently to
please, and I'm such a fancier of every mode of the exquisite that I
should delight in finding her young mind open to me if she didn't insist
on keeping it perfectly closed. This is to show Mr. Pendrel"--he now
addressed himself to Mrs. Midmore--"that I speak without prejudice, that
I'm the most patient creature in the world, that I know when I'm beaten,
and that I'm hoping for better luck!"
"Luck with sweet Nan is what I'm to understand?" Ralph had broken out,
at the touch of this spring, before he could think twice, and very much
in fact as if at last fairly dizzied by a succession of perspectives.
It seemed to add an instant's brightness to Sir Cantopher's hard little
eyes, but Mrs. Midmore forestalled him. "Our cousin likes to name her
so, though he complains of never having heard of her. You're making that
up!" she said rather grandly to Ralph.
"Oh I seem to know all about her now," he more easily laughed, "and many
of your names do strike me as differing from ours and as having a kind
of charm." He was determined indeed to be easy at any cost. "I'm ever so
taken with Sir Cantopher's--we've nothing at home like that," he
instanced with a smile that covered the liberty taken, if liberty it
should appear.
"Do you find it so much better than your own?" Molly inquired on this,
in her outright way and as with a hint at impatience of many things.
"Ah, my dear, if mine's to be good enough for you I'm quite content with
it--and it's indeed better than a great many we have. But I like Sir
Cantopher more than I can perhaps make you understand"--our young man
but desired to explain. It had at once, however, the effect of so moving
to a queer small stridency of mirth the personage indicated, that a
further remark was required. "I mean of course that we've no such
honours, for the fine sound, and what shall I call it but the matching
of the parts, of 'em?"
Whenever he explained--this perception grew--he produced a particular
attention, the attention to which even Molly's impatiences yielded, and
which had been most marked in the cold hush, consequent to all
appearance on too much precipitation, vaguely scaring him just before
his fellow-guest's arrival. It was the way indeed in which this
fellow-guest now fixed him that made him grasp for an instant, as a sort
of ban upon scares, the idea either of explaining a great deal more or
of not explaining a mite. Yes, there was an extraordinary moment during
which the four of them, Sir Cantopher included, affected him really as
hanging on his choice--watching, that is, to see which course he would
take. It was as if he did precipitate wonders, at a given juncture, just
by some shade of a tone, a mere semiquaver, perhaps lighted too with a
flicker of facial earnestness--though there was something all the while
that he clearly couldn't help. It might, it must, have been the sense
itself of spreading his wings, which would catch him up this way again
and again, and which, when it came to that, he wouldn't have checked if
he could, for how otherwise was he to surmount?--to surmount and
surmount being exactly his affair, and success in it his inspiration,
together with the fine truth that if the choice had to be between their
puzzlement and his he'd be blest if he wouldn't risk theirs, since this
there would doubtless after all be ways of surmounting, whereas he felt
that mightn't be at all the case for his own. It had been repeated for
him that each time he didn't flounder made somehow, almost immediately
after, for the greater felicity of another time, and thus not to
flounder at the actual point he was dealing with would be best assured
by his right selection of the alternative they seemed so to wait for him
to take.
He had taken it within ten seconds, had chosen: not again, no, not again
would he explain the least mite; and they might make what they could of
that--they would make more of it at the worst than they surely would
make of its opposite. He kept up his gaiety for Sir Cantopher, hard as
his innocence sought to temper it; which was what had just all but
happened in his ridiculous identification of his sister-in-law to be. He
mustn't use ridiculous terms--for now he could see that the name of his
designation of her was so tainted, and what a trap had virtually been
set him by Mr. Perry there, prodigiously instinctive Mr. Perry, who
withal gave him the impression of a straighter and easier relation with
Sir Cantopher than that enjoyed by the ladies of his house. This might
have been but because they _were_ ladies, any woman's relation with
almost any man proceeding, it was needless to reflect, by curves and
crooks and hooks much more than by ruled line. Ralph, however that might
be, felt himself face Sir Cantopher as with an accepted exposure to such
penalties as would attach to leading him a bit of a dance by some turn
that should possibly affect him as violent. Yes, he risked so affecting
him, so far as the withholding of conciliatory graces of thought, those
he had been scattering too many of, represented a danger. It would do
most toward leaving him blankish, and being so left was probably always
the accident with which Sir Cantopher had least to reckon. Ralph
moreover wouldn't have been able to say, reducing it to that finest
point, that if such a condition on the part of the patron of the
Midmores might amount to a rather arid complication it would be after
all the complication he should most mind. He was minding, that is he was
averting, another much more than this in taking up what Sir Cantopher
had been saying about his affianced bride. He did so under the
conviction that leaving that personage to make the best of things would
prove a less danger than leaving it to Molly--who, for that matter,
waited upon his dealing with his difficulties, since as difficulties he
so oddly chose to feel them, in a manner that almost put words into his
mouth.
"I haven't the least idea where this young lady may be deficient for
other people--I can only feel that I haven't a single flaw to pick
either in her beauty, her mind, or her manners." Not only so much as
that Ralph rejoiced to hear himself say, liking the sound of it still
more, as ever, the moment he had uttered it, but he knew at once also
how long he could have kept it up if he hadn't presently been stopped.
"As far as ever she'll go in any sense I'll go with her all the way, and
wherever she stops or wanders off I shall like her reasons for it,
because they'll be hers--let alone that I'll wander with her too,
believing that whatever turn we take together can only be for our
happiness." The further words were perhaps a bit sententious, spoken
that way before the others, but not enough, certainly not enough, could
he publicly commit himself, with the effect of it again and still again
that fresh and strange one of the motive, with all its rich force,
constituted so much more after the fact than before it. He knew
moreover, knew by something now as much represented in her face as if it
had been a face painted on canvas just to express it, that he was acting
as directly upon his mistress as if no word of it concerned their
companions. That was his boon, to whatever result he did it, for he
measured at this moment that he couldn't again have borne her having
lost touch of him. It was indeed now as if he had read the words from
her lips before she spoke them.
"I do like so waiting for what you say to such clever people--and then,"
she added with the greatest gravity, "not being in the least
disappointed."
"My dear, my dear, how can a man as much in love as I am be
disappointing?--I mean," Ralph laughed, "to the loved object herself?"
"I don't know. I'm sure, sir," Molly returned with a sort of solemnity,
almost a sort of anxiety, that made her handsomer than any look she had
yet worn. "If there were a way you'd be wise enough to find it; because,
so far from my believing possible that you can fall short anywhere, as
you have had to listen to so much about my doing, I see that the
cleverness even of the most famous people will always find you ready,
and don't care with whom it may ever be that I pass for a fool if I have
wit enough for you as between ourselves. I like you as you are, sir. I
like you as you are," Molly Midmore repeated.
"Now do you see sir, how fortune insists and insists on smiling on me?"
Ralph asked of Sir Cantopher after he had done the most radiant justice
to this declaration.
"I shall believe in you whatever you do--whatever, whatever!" the girl
went on, her head very high, before their friend, whose curious hard
connoisseurship had never strayed from Ralph's face, could reply to this
appeal. And then it was that for the first time she rested her eyes on
Sir Cantopher, whose own, however, they failed to divert. "You find out
things about people, sir--though I really think them for the most part
things for which one needn't mind your outcry. If I were to commit a
crime, no matter what villainy, you wouldn't be the wiser, but you'd
feel it at once in every bone, even if you were fifty miles away, should
I knock over the dark blue jar that you gave my mother once upon a time
and that's the pride of the breakfast-parlour at Drydown."
"And pray, Miss, wouldn't you call that a villainy?" Sir Cantopher said
without taking other notice. "When I next go to Drydown," he continued
to Ralph, "I shall count on finding it smashed----!"
"Oh sir, not if I interpose to save it!" Ralph again laughed, though
keeping his eyes on the girl with a satisfaction that candidly grew. It
was a queer necessity perhaps, this of his holding fast with one hand to
a relation that he playfully ruffled with the other, even if not at all
queerer, no doubt, than Sir Cantopher's own appearance of not being able
to afford for an instant to remit his observation of our friend. It was
at a triumph of the interesting that Ralph at this time thus assisted,
and not a bit the less that the interest was imputed to himself. Was it
in danger of disappearing if the sharpest of the pairs of eyes were for
an instant removed from him? Ralph asked himself this with an odd
recognition, it must be confessed, that what kept him up to expectation,
if indeed it mightn't be what perhaps pretended to find him below it,
really did, as an applied force, keep him up. "The worst you shall ever
find out about Molly (though it's no more indeed than what she herself
says) is that the blue pot at Drydown will stand as steady as I keep my
balance here, for all your so watching me as if I were on the
tight-rope; and, so far as she or I at least are concerned, will rule
the scene there from the, from the--wherever the place is: wait a
minute, wait!" He checked himself suddenly to plead for that indication,
and yet too that they should let it come to him of itself; taking them
all in now as if it glimmered and snapping with a fine impatience his
thumb and his middle finger. "Don't tell me, don't tell me; I really all
but see the thing and the very place: yes, a pot of about the size
of--well, of that one there: only of a darker and richer blue. Bleu du
Roy, don't you call it? and with something or other on the cabinet or
wherever, the place where it 'lives', as we say, rather branching out on
either side of it."
Ralph had been again caught up, as he had learnt to figure it: there had
been nothing like it but his production, out of the breast-pocket of his
coat, under Molly's inspiration, of that miniature portrait of herself
which he hadn't then a minute before been so much as aware of his
carrying about him and which had yet on his exhibition of it served all
the purpose. How long ago had this been? He couldn't have said, such
waves of experience had coursed through him since; but his present
growth of confidence, recalling that other, seemed to be serving the
purpose too, with a quick appeal to Mrs. Midmore, and a very impatient
withal, determined by it on Sir Cantopher's part. "Have you really left
that perfect piece with those clumsy candlesticks----?"
Ralph couldn't for a few instants have said what had happened: the
effect was of his having by a word or two shaken his position, and that
of his companions with it, quite as by seizing it in two strong hands
and feeling it momentarily sway there. Mrs. Midmore, so far from
replying to Sir Cantopher's challenge, just expressed that very
sense--expressed it in a "What in the world is the matter with you,
cousin?" which would doubtless have recalled to him that he positively
glared with vision had the glare not, within the few seconds, caught a
still bigger reflection from Perry. He was taken up for the instant with
seeing, seeing what was half across the world, his world of these
intense moments, at Drydown; and Perry, on whom in their searching way
his eyes had thus lighted, seemed at that moment to be telling him
things beyond belief. It wasn't even Molly now, still less was it Mrs.
Midmore, so sharply spoken to and, in her indifference to it, with
wonder only for _him_; it wasn't the prodigy of his right guess, so
right, yes, clearly so right, about the posture of the prize at Drydown,
attested thus by Sir Cantopher's recognition: it was the very horror in
poor Perry's countenance, which conversed ever so straitly, as who
should say, with the amused growth of confidence in his own and which
once more lighted matters up for him while they were unexplained. Blest
if he wasn't, therefore, before he knew it, in spite of lessons already
learnt, mounted on the back of explanation--even though that winged
horse whirled round as if to throw him; which it wouldn't do, however,
so long as he held on to Perry's attention. Other things reached him but
through his sense of that, above all Molly's comment on the question of
how the blue pot was neighboured, guarded or whatever; this uttered, he
knew, but without his caring, immediately after her mother's remark on
his manner. He in fact scarce cared when his mistress pursued, as if it
would account for almost anything:
"Most certainly she can't be accused of not heeding how things look: the
place, when she's there, is at her mercy--she can keep her hands off
nothing and spends her time in moving articles about to see how they
look in other places. If Sir Cantopher means that I wouldn't touch a
thing for the world I plead as guilty as he likes," the girl wound up
while Ralph simply let the information float and fade--he had of a
sudden got so beyond it.
Yes, launched on his demonstration he saw and saw--since it was his
extraordinary communion with the affrighted Perry that helped him.
Wasn't he seeing something that Perry himself had seen, or learning at
least something that Perry knew, just by this compulsion of feeding, as
it were, on his young kinsman's terror--for it had frankly to be taken
for nothing less--and drawing to himself the sense of it? "Sweet Nan,
poor sweet Nan!" he next found himself exclaiming, for what had happened
was that he had with the strangest celerity read a particular knowledge
into Perry's expression, and read into it as well the consciousness that
he was giving it up, though to one's self only, not to the others, and
that nothing so strange had in all his life befallen the hapless youth
as to feel thus under the pressure of such an intelligence, which did
definitely at last show the man betraying it for different, quite
dreadfully different, from other men. Perry knew, unmistakeably,
something intensely relevant to what they had been speaking of, and had
known it all along, had had it in the place with him there from the
moment, whenever that had been, of his first coming in; and now what was
our friend not capable of, as a climax for this certainty, but just the
final twist of appropriation which gave him use of the truth? Something
had happened at Drydown between the head of the house and his younger
sister, something of the day before, or of the day before that, which he
would have made no great matter of hadn't the thought going on before
him, to his scant participation, pulled it into view, into Ralph's, that
is, as Ralph mutely showed him--but as Ralph also now at once next gave
him reassurance for. Yes, yes again, there was something to save the
girl at Drydown from, and he himself, with the flagrancy of his happy
guess at the usual position there of Sir Cantopher's grand gift, had
just grazed the treachery of publishing it. To have apprehended the
accident, to have caught Perry catching him aware of it, like that, from
one moment to the other, was by the same stroke to feel himself close
his bodily eyes to it, ever so tight, and with more intention, for the
three seconds, than in any act of all his life; this too in the midst of
their mutual glare and, by what he could tell, after Sir Cantopher's
attention, as well as that of the two women, was back upon the queer
proceeding, which Molly's indeed had not quitted.
The duration of the exchange was assuredly to have been measured but in
seconds, though in no such number of them had so much happened up to
now, by Ralph's private measure, which indeed had considerably grown;
only he couldn't not keep looking at Perry--wish as he might to explain,
to go on explaining, for the benefit of the others, whose three pair of
eyes treated him with anxiety, with admiration, or to the effect again
of the sinister estrangement, whichever of these things it might be. The
great reality was that his words, as they came, had to mean most to
Perry, and could only come thus also by the help of his horror. That
horror, by the end of a couple of moments, was what he was afraid of for
the others still more than of his own queer visionary pull-up, his
invitation to them to see him in presence of the Drydown sideboard, or
whatever the ambiguous object, and then see him, in the very act, both
turn his back upon it and try to scatter gold-dust round his revulsion.
"I'm not a prophet or a soothsayer, and still less a charlatan, and
don't pretend to the gift of second sight--I only confess to have
cultivated my imagination, as one has to in a country where there is
nothing to take that trouble off one's hands. Therefore perhaps it is
that things glimmer upon me at moments from a distance, so that I find
myself in the act of catching them, but am liable to lose them again,
and to feel nervous, as if I had made a fool of myself, when an honest
man like my cousin Perry looks at me as if he thought me a little mad.
I'm _not_ mad, cousin Perry--I'm only a mite bewildered by the way I
seem to affect you, since it might be catching for your mother and Molly
and Sir Cantopher if I didn't convince you that I don't on the whole
confess myself anything worse than rather a free talker."
"I like your free talk--I like it, I like it!" Molly broke in at this.
"I wouldn't have it a bit different, though we have certainly never
heard anything like it in all our lives. I'm not afraid of you now," the
girl continued, "or else I'm no more so than I want to be--for I think I
told you a while ago that I should miss your not sometimes putting me in
fear. If you're doing that now--and I see you _are_ doing it to Perry,
whom I declare I'm sorry for!--I'm enjoying it still more than I could
have hoped, and wishing I could only have some of my friends about me to
see my pride, which means perhaps to see what _they_ would make of you
for a grand match. You'll understand that I'm in the greatest possible
hurry to show you off," Miss Midmore wound up.
"Ah but I don't engage to perform by appointment," Ralph laughed--"at
least in the sense of making our friends uneasy."
He rejoiced in Molly's reassurances, even if he couldn't yet let go of
Perry either to acknowledge them properly or to be clear again as to the
particular shade now of Sir Cantopher's curiosity. He somehow felt Sir
Cantopher suspended, almost dangling in air, but ready to alight on one
or the other side of a line that Ralph had himself the sense of actually
tracing. As for Mrs. Midmore, it was as if she had just sunk down
somehow or somewhere, looking very handsome on every contingency, but
vague, certainly vague at present, and positively rather white. These
things he took in while still resolute that he couldn't drop Perry till
Perry had turned to safety for him or otherwise than by mere limpness.
There was always the obvious chance that almost any far range of wit,
which he never could have beheld such a stretch of as just now, would
stir him to something of the same suspicion as a case of proved
dementia. Moreover the young man was during these instants really
plastic: he didn't want to back away--he but wanted again (and it
recalled what he had seemed to want just after their making
acquaintance) to have a perch held out to him across the fall-away of
familiar ground, long enough to be grasped without his moving. "I do
guess I figure rightly the features of Drydown," Ralph said, "and seem
to see them, in perfect order, absolutely perfect order, thanks to you,
sir, and the earnest young lady there, await my paying them a
visit--which, however, you're to understand I shall only pay in your
company, as master of the house and my proper first, introducer."
Molly had been herself launched by her speech of a moment before and her
voice, as she did renewed justice to the pitch of her preference, fairly
betrayed to Ralph's ear how finely she was agitated. "If you mean that
to signify that you'd like to start for the country at once on a visit
to my sister, I give you leave with all my heart to wait upon her there
until you're tired of her. Because, you see, if I grant that you torment
me by pretending you're already, after so little of me, tired of myself
(of which, however, I don't believe a word!) the least I could do would
be to torment you in return by the air of indifference under outrage. Of
course, really, we're neither of us pretending, and you've more for all
of us to be pleased with than we as yet understand. In that confidence
of my own I think I should wait for you to come back to me from even
further away than the breakfast-parlour at Drydown. You're to
understand, please, that nothing you can do--so far as I rightly
conceive what a gentleman may!--will break my confidence down."
"It's a poor reply to those beautiful things, isn't it, Perry? to say,
if I haven't by now convinced her, that I'm not a gadabout, and that if
your friends are so good as to want to see me it's they who have only to
wait upon me here--it's a poor reply," Ralph went on, "but it must serve
till I have it from yourself that you take me for accommodating and
believe that I shall make you like me if you'll only help me a little to
do it. Haven't I already as good as said to you that I'll do for you
anything in life that you may be kind enough to mention, from the moment
it's the least in my power? There it is, and I think you do already see
that I absolutely want but to oblige you"--with which Ralph hung fire an
instant as to drive it in by his very pleasantest intelligence, and then
went on--"_am_ in fact obliging you, _have_ supremely obliged you. Good,
good--and steady, steady:" he took it up in triumph, turning with it now
to the others and inwardly sustained in his free attitude of inviting
them to witness something that he didn't much care at that moment
whether they understood or not, so long as he overrode them by a
blinding assumption. It would be extraordinary to blind Sir Cantopher,
but under that inward pressure he was ready to risk almost anything for
it, as he had risked everything successfully, hadn't he? for the
bedazement, the renewed conquest, or whatever he might call it, of
Molly, of his action on whose nerves and senses and own pride of
conquest he felt with each instant more certain. He smiled at them all
again, carrying it off, carrying them on, and still but wanting Perry to
take in that he impressed them. Molly in fact left her brother in as
little doubt of that as if she had understood more than was supposable
of the remarkable exchange, just concluded on his part, with their
kinsman.
"You see we've never known any great wit, or any brilliant person at all
except Sir Cantopher--and my brother, like the rest of us, has got used
to _him._ Give him time, give my mother time, give even our friend here
time," the girl pursued with a courage that was a match for his
own--"though I ask you for no more myself: I don't know whether you've
made me blind or made me see as never before, but what I really want is
that you shall take me so for granted, in spite of all your odd ways,
not one of which I'd now nevertheless have you fail of, that if I'm
noticed at all when we begin to go out together, as we presently shall,
I shall be noticed no more than your shadow and just according as you
happen to cast it!"
This assuredly corresponded for Ralph to his own actual spirit of play,
and even went beyond it for the great air it gave her, something akin to
which he was hoping he had himself put forth. He met it to extravagance,
wanting to know if he hadn't taken _her_ for granted with the very first
stir of his response from the other side of the world, protesting he'd
go out with her on the spot and cast his shadow in any light she should
choose; which was at once reflected on, however, in the most anxious
admonition that Mrs. Midmore had uttered.
"We'll have our friends here first, please, and it will be your mother.
Miss, and not you, who will make our cousin and your relation to him
known."
She had gathered herself up for this, though it was visible again to
Ralph that if she uttered the proviso for Molly's control, not less than
in a high degree for his own, she yet appeared to press it, restlessly
and appealingly, upon her son and her other guest, who nevertheless,
engaged for the time in considerations of their own, gave it no
particular heed. Ralph, at sight and in suspicion of a certain effect
produced in her which was the very opposite of what he intended--for
this evasion of his aspect didn't come, did it? to his overriding
her--blinked for an instant at a splendid impulse, and then fairly lost
sight of its splendour in the straightest, friendliest, homeliest
application of it; moving from his place straight across to her, laying
a hand on each of her shoulders and, with the bravest, kindest face in
the world, making as if she should look at him in spite of herself. He
had entertained, during these extraordinary hours that he had been in
the room (few or many, he couldn't have said which,) a hundred wondrous
sentiments, but hadn't yet, to the clearest of his consciousness, been
sorry for anyone--which was what he desired under that special stress to
testify to his being for this great and distressed, though nobly
resisting and now of a sudden coldly submissive lady. Was he going to be
sorry for people on any such scale as this accepted prompting
portended?--so he dimly wondered, as if it were the last thing that had
been in the bargain, even while Mrs. Midmore closed her eyes under his
touch and left him fairly to appeal to the others, to her son, to her
daughter, to Sir Cantopher himself, whose lids indeed were not
noticeably much less narrowed than those of their hostess, for
attestation that he meant the very most charming things. If he only
hadn't once more, all the same, to wince the while with awareness of
that overdone grimace of his own!--he had effectively enough shaken it
off some time previous, but his relative's pale rigour, while his action
lasted, threatened to set it up afresh! Nothing, however, could have
exceeded the respectful form of the freedom he now used. He had kissed
her on either cheek, under encouragement offered, on first seeing her,
and he at present repeated the homage in conditions that might well have
suggested to him that ever so much time, days or weeks instead of mere
mixed moments, had elapsed between the two transactions.
"I desire so to conform to your every wish and to renew every assurance.
I get every now and then the impression that I'm not quite so
much with you, or you not quite so much with me, as you would like
me to be, and as I certainly should like to--and then I wonder what's
really the matter. Nothing surely is the matter, with our perfect
understanding--unless it be that I worry you somehow just from
ignorance. Yes, I'm clever"--Ralph kept it up--"but I'm not so sure I'm
wise; at the same time that I _am_ sure I shall be able to learn not to
trouble you if you'll only name to me always at the moment just how I'm
doing it."
Marked withal was her oddity of not really meeting his face; he was
close to her, he had folded his hands as in supplication the most
suggestive, but she looked straight down at his feet. "I wouldn't for
the world, sir, take you up on anything. I like too much to listen to
you, and you've only too many grand fancies. The great thing is that you
like us--for if you like us you won't hurt us." She had a pause, but
while he still waited she did at last look up at him. "There," she
exhaled; "there!"--and she showed him, clearly wishing to do it, that
she could smile a bit convulsively, and with the most excruciating
dimness, as well as he; holding up her head, drawing in her lips,
meeting his eyes and after an instant letting him see, as he thought,
something in them like the strange long look, the questioning fear, that
he had just been dealing with in her son. He hadn't hitherto caught in
her face any such hint of resemblance, but here she was fairly
overcoming something, even something akin to what he knew, or what he at
least hoped, that he had just made Perry overcome. There was the pity,
his having to think of being sorry; she talked of his "hurting", or
rather of his not hurting them, and he'd be hanged if he'd hurt them in
whatever disconcertment--he'd himself suffer in any way first; which he
was on the point of making, gaily and familiarly, his answer, when it
struck him that this would be openly to take account of danger, the idea
he sought most to repudiate. So he uttered his cheer, which indeed
truly, from the tone of it, might have been his compassion, in another
form.
"Keep tight hold of me, don't let go of me for the tenth of a second--as
you seem to do when you won't look at me. I'd rather you all stared me
out of countenance at once than kept from me, either one of you, the
light of your own. It mayn't strike you that I want more encouragement
than I've already had, but I feel I can do with every scrap you'll give
me, and that if you'll remember as much as that we shall still have a
merry life."
"'Still, still'?" Molly caught this up; she had risen again to her
highest pitch. "What on earth, pray, has happened that we
shouldn't?--and what _can_, you wretch, unless it be that we all die for
love of you at once? That's the only thing that may be the matter with
us--isn't it, mamma?" the girl appealed; "that you're killing us, I
mean, with the wonder of you, and that our mother is apparently the
first to succumb. Don't change, nevertheless; don't waver by a hair's
breadth from what you are at this moment. I want to show you off--I do,
I do; and yet I seem at the same time to want you not to be touched--and
don't know how that's to be managed!"
This figure, on her lips, determined in Sir Cantopher the play of
comment that Ralph had felt to be gathering force; a remark which
sufficiently told him, as it dropped, on which side of the line of
confidence in him it had fallen. "You're very fine porcelain indeed, no
doubt; but, for myself, I shall like, as you'll see, the sense of
handling you with care."
It was after Sir Cantopher had spoken that our young man felt himself
measure best the attention he had honoured him with, and how much
achieved possession of him was noted in the tone of these words. They
were even startling as a sequel to his wait for decision, as who should
have said, and it was almost as if they quite supremely clinched for our
friend in these few instants the irreconcilability of his various
desires to oblige. More and more was it that he had come, that he only
wanted and needed, to oblige all round; and while he now expressed, so
far as any attitude might, whatever intelligence should be most in
order, he had the quick idea of suggesting to the four together that
they should try to understand and arrange with each other only, making
somehow a common ground and not troubling him about the manner of it. He
looked thus in the face the fear of being quarrelled about, and was on
the point of breaking out with an "Oh there's plenty of me for you _all_
if you'd only believe it and let me see each of you enjoy it!" when Sir
Cantopher practically blighted the impulse as by a positive queer revel
in that idea of precautions.
"Molly may do what she likes and risk what she likes; she thinks you a
wonder and wants to call others to admire, and I think you one too and
prefer to be selfish about you--that is to handle you as wisely as
wonders should only be handled: we should always know perfectly what
we're doing with them. No, no, don't deny it," this eminent judge
pursued--"I don't think I should care for you if I really understood
you, though I'm at the same time quite willing to believe that when I do
understand you, as I hope to on better opportunity, I shall not care for
you less. I don't get tired of my treasures, you see--and that's the way
to estimate real treasures. We get tired of the false, but see more and
more, to the end of time, in the true. I shall nevertheless not
interfere," he wound up, turning to Molly--"I shall be so far from
wanting him to live only for me, and a monstrous pretension it would be
certainly, that seeing how he supports your wear and tear will be half
the interest of him, and you must therefore be prepared, my dear child,
for my taking still more in yourself than I've perhaps ever yet made you
feel."
Ralph broke at once into this with the most nervous of his laughs. "Lord
have mercy on us then, how very attentive to each other we're all now
going to be! But all I want is that you shan't differ about me--I want
you so to agree for your own comfort. I don't want you to like me
separately--and in fact don't think I should want you to dislike me in
that way either, if you should have to come to it. I want you to like me
together"--he talked himself more and more into ease; "I should feel
either of you lonely, feel you in difficulties and be sad about you, if
one of you, or even two of you, should be moved to any view of me that
the others couldn't share. Now don't you call that kind?" he asked of
Molly under this growth of assurance; "don't you call that providing for
your liking me, and, upon my word, for your hating me still again, with
the least trouble to yourselves, since I'm ready to shoulder almost
anything?"
The question had the tenderest directness, but once more, for a minute,
their common understanding of it, and Molly's own not least, seemed to
lapse--his sense was touched by that strange convergent wait. He truly
could thus, he should have felt, know at least by renewed experience
what it was to feel them united in blankness, make free as he might with
those other vanities. It was in the nature of these surprises of their
collected wit to be blest in proportion as they were brief, however--and
this even though they suggested to him while lasting the question of
what would become of him, what would become of all of them, if they did
last more than they should. The break was somehow better as coming, if
possible, from one of themselves--and now he knew, probably indeed very
soon, that it had come in the form of an inquiry of Mrs. Midmore's, made
in all gentleness and elegance. "Why is it, please, that you provide so
for our hating you? It sounds so dreadfully as if you knew
something----!" She pulled up, her words expired, and it was for an
instant as if the high and handsome lady, the pitch and sound of whose
presence he had so begun with enjoying, had shrunken to a pale,
pleading, pathetic person, a person engaged for a moment in the
fantastic act of trying to buy him off by conciliation. He had a glimpse
of something stranger than any conceivable expression of it--of the
possibility, that is, of a fear in her of being frightened, with its
instinct of gaining time before the danger increased. She smiled a bit
convulsively again--she had done so some moments before; but good it was
at once withal that the very delicacy of her dread or her desire could
make him glow as with foreseeing pity, another throb of the same queer
kindness that had stirred him a while back. Yes, yes, he himself
shouldn't have cared to apprehend what she apprehended, however the
particular point of it might show; and why accordingly _shouldn't_ one
be in horror and in pity of contributing to an alarm so gratuitous or in
fact, as they said, so false? It was true at the same time indeed that
there was no answer to her last imputation which wouldn't leave him
still rather more staring at it for himself than brushing it away for
her: which was the sense in fact in which he promptly enough replied.
"I ask myself, when you tell me that I strike you as 'knowing'
something, what it is I can know that wouldn't be a good deal more to
your advantage than to mine if you were to find it out! I don't know
anything that I _conceal_," he smiled and smiled; "no, no, no, I seem to
myself to know so much more than anything else what I've learnt from
yourselves in the last hour or two, that if you were to turn me inside
out I can't imagine your coming on the least little scrap that would
shock you!" So he spoke, though, carry it off as he would, this plea of
his own didn't meet the fact that parts of his consciousness into which
he didn't _want_ to peep, into which he could positively choose not to,
appeared to beset him even while he thus reasoned. And somehow it
contributed to this appearance that Molly had, at contact with her
mother's peculiar earnestness, quickly rallied again to the defence of
her apparently fond fancy.
"Ah I won't have _that_, sir, again--that you're not in possession of
matters of your own which it may be our affair, say, to find out if we
can, and yours to keep us from learning if we haven't the courage or the
cleverness. I won't have it, as I told you long ago"--and she herself
spoke, it oddly struck him, as if it had been a month--"that the
character I marry should be a bigger simpleton than I, since of course a
young lady bred as my mother has bred me really knows less about the
world in many ways than even the most commonplace man, let alone such
gentlemen as Mr. Pendrel and Sir Cantopher."
Sir Cantopher took this from her as if she really rendered him a service
by associating her two gentlemen in that connection: it so supremely
stuck out of him at last that he must desire but to refine, under a
strong motive, upon the pleasant propriety of their being thrown
together. "Every word you say"--he addressed himself to Ralph--"adds to
the pleasure your company seems to promise, and I had best warn you at
once perhaps that if you have some singular reason for wanting to appear
commonplace you would do well to forswear it at once: your effort to act
upon it makes you, you see, so remarkable!"
Still wound up to his amenity then, Ralph yielded to this plea--even if
it seemed to breathe upon him afresh that chill of the inevitable,
residing now in his so witnessed power to raise to the highest point the
forces of attention he excited, the repetition of which, from one
quarter and another, hadn't even yet taught him how to carry off the
fact that he braved it. For he did brave it, he was braving it, braving
it at that very moment in his grimaced understanding with Sir Cantopher,
the understanding that his face invited the others also to see he didn't
fear. What had been deep within him for weeks and weeks but exactly that
measure of it now more and more heaped up and the interest of dealing
with which had originally so inspired him? "I'm in your hands, as I've
told you before"--he smiled and smiled; "I'm in your hands, I'm in your
hands!"
"Ah but don't say it as if I were going to drag you to the assizes or
the pillory!" Sir Cantopher gave way to that special shade of his
amusement which was somehow all edges and points.
Ralph winced for a moment as one who feels in an offered love-pat the
touch of a prickly glove--winced fairly to the extent of again dropping
his presence of mind and once more snatching it up. "_Is_ that the way I
say it?" he asked of Molly with such a flush of tender protest as to
make her fix him an instant with the very widest eyes she had yet opened
and then come at him straight. She didn't speak as she crossed to him,
and it was wondrous to him to feel and to know a few seconds later that
this was because the attempt for her would have been but formless sound.
She answered him otherwise; her arms were round his neck and her face
pressed there, while, with his own gratefully bent to it, he felt her
hold him in a clasp of possession that was like a resistance to
something unseen. He couldn't for that minute himself speak, though the
sense of his clutch articulated would have been "Hold me, yes; hold me
close, close, and let us stay this way!" They did stay in fact--or when
he next measured time it was as if they had been wholly and incalculably
absent: so absent, and for so long, that on his reckoning again with the
conditions about him they struck him at once as different and as somehow
mastered. Had he literally and in so extraordinary a manner slept in his
mistress's arms? There was no one to ask it of but poor Perry--for Sir
Cantopher apparently had in the interval departed, Mrs. Midmore
attending him out of sight, and Molly, herself aware of that, was
already at the door, her hand on it for the moment, holding it open,
while her look at him recognised even to extravagance what they had
"done"--as if she wanted him to know that she knew it, though with
something in it for her too that drove her, as he might feel, before it.
This was not prolonged, and yet Ralph could note, for his bewilderment,
that some time must already have elapsed, since there came in to him by
the open door, from hall or staircase, no after-sound of Mrs. Midmore's
retirement with her friend. That explained itself, however, with his
quick apprehension that they would have passed out by the other door of
the room, which was ajar, as it hadn't been before, and which
communicated, as he was afterwards to know, with other parts of the
ample house, including the secondary staircase and his kinswoman's
boudoir--he was for the first time in his life really to conceive that
last convenience. He was at any rate apparently to be left alone with
Perry, not taking leave of the others, but suddenly quitted by them or
with Molly, for the next thing, at the most, committing him a little
portentously to her brother. For she had in a few seconds more turned
her eyes to Perry, who spoke at once as if she had put him a mute
question and as if he had caught some sound from below. This sound in
fact, as more of it came by Molly's door, reached Ralph sufficiently to
explain her brother's lively comment, the liveliest he had yet uttered
on anything at all: "It's Nan, it's Nan!"
The words had on Molly a remarkable effect, making her listen hard for a
moment where she stood, and then, without as yet meeting again her
lover's attention, appear to understand what was happening. As soon as
she had understood she sharply closed the door, while Perry repeated his
elation, or whatever it was, of assurance.
"She has got here by herself--she has travelled by the coach! She has
come up to see him, damn him!" he said to his sister quite as if Ralph
hadn't been present.
"'Damn him'?" she echoed, now looking queerly at Ralph.
"Damn _her_ then!" Perry cried, but again with a happier frankness than
he had hitherto used and as if now at last taking Ralph in on his own
account.
"I beg your pardon, cousin--but when you wonder so you must damn
somebody!"
"Oh _I'm_ quite willing to be damned--if it's at all better for sweet
Nan!" And Ralph addressed this by his laugh to Molly as well, who at
present, clearly astounded by her sister's act, if they rightly viewed
it, hesitated as to the tone about it which should best conform to that
understanding with her lover which she had just renewed. He felt in her
as she hovered there a certain nobleness of doubt, and how supremely she
was enhanced by all these latter signs of a new strain and stress. It
was as if she measured as he lacked matter for doing the extravagance of
the girl's step, of which she wished, however, to make neither too much
nor too little. She ended after a minute by making nearly nothing, for
if she simply said to him, as the rather unexpected issue of her
thought, "Give her the right advice--she'd take it from _you!_" this
presented the transaction as a brief and inconsiderable thing; almost
indeed in the light of Nan's very own motive and with a proportionate
readiness involved.
Ralph wreathed himself again in grace. "Why should she take it from me,
whom she has never seen and knows nothing about, when she hasn't taken
it from others who have so much more title?" So he spoke, but conscious
as soon as he had done so that it wasn't really for him to have drawn
out the question--it was much rather for him to have kept it as small as
she preferred it. He had begun so, hours back, with the reign of
felicity, and how the devil came it therefore that he now repeatedly
missed that trick? The inquiry did in fact, to all appearance, somewhat
disconcert his friend, who still waited long enough there before him to
find her answer, which she brought out, as it struck him, with a quick
perversity.
"Well then, frighten her straight away again, if you like that better!"
With which she simply left him, passing out at once by the door opposite
the one she had quitted and closing it sharply behind her.
Ralph turned to Perry in his flush of wonder. "Frighten her away? _Do_ I
frighten----?"
Perry kept his great distance, but spoke after an instant in the sense
of accommodation. "You don't frighten _me_--now. You can't, I wouldn't
have it even if you wanted to--which I now guess you don't."
"But why in the name of my dearest interest _should_ I?" It was strange
again to Ralph, his facing his young kinsman's so exposed, yet so
inscrutable sensibility; yet this aspect of him somehow suggested withal
that he mightn't at all prove the person from whom there was most to
fear. Why, however, at the same time, did this question of fear,
suddenly let loose by Molly in her retreat--for wasn't it a
retreat?--seem to flutter about the room, itself a scared bird, and make
as if for perching on Ralph's own shoulder? It might verily have been
perching as our young man, staring about, plucked a fresh apprehension
from Perry. "You don't mean that Molly and I frightened off your mother
and Sir Cantopher?"
Perry, though always at his distance, was placed by this almost at his
ease. "Molly must answer you for herself--but she doesn't really know
much more what to make of you than I do."
Ralph's wide eyes stared his reply still more than his lips could form
it. "You don't know what to make of me----?"
"Only she likes nevertheless what you do to her that way as her lover.
She's not too afraid of you yet for _that!_" Perry explained with a new
authority.
This was extraordinary to Ralph--his having gathered such things to tell
from that lapse of their consciousness, Molly's and his own, of anything
but their possession of each other. "Oh well, I'm glad I have still that
advantage!"--and Ralph kept his laugh at least brave. "But was it
because _they_ didn't know what to make of us----?" Perry had really
arrived at an approach to clear suggestion. "We're lovers so accepted
and blessed----!" He would puzzle it out, but appealed to his Companion
for help.
"No, it isn't that they were shocked at your freedom"--Perry
said--"though you _were_ free!"
"Then why did they make off?" our young man pressed.
"Well, you must get it from themselves."
"Then is there nothing I shall get from you--as my
brother-that's-to-be?"