The text follows that of the
Definitive Edition
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I
“THEY’VE got him for life!” I said to myself that evening on my way back
to the station; but later on, alone in the compartment (from Wimbledon to
Waterloo, before the glory of the District Railway) I amended this
declaration in the light of the sense that my friends would probably
after all not enjoy a monopoly of Mr. Saltram. I won’t pretend to have
taken his vast measure on that first occasion, but I think I had achieved
a glimpse of what the privilege of his acquaintance might mean for many
persons in the way of charges accepted. He had been a great experience,
and it was this perhaps that had put me into the frame of foreseeing how
we should all, sooner or later, have the honour of dealing with him as a
whole. Whatever impression I then received of the amount of this total,
I had a full enough vision of the patience of the Mulvilles. He was to
stay all the winter: Adelaide dropped it in a tone that drew the sting
from the inevitable emphasis. These excellent people might indeed have
been content to give the circle of hospitality a diameter of six months;
but if they didn’t say he was to stay all summer as well it was only
because this was more than they ventured to hope. I remember that at
dinner that evening he wore slippers, new and predominantly purple, of
some queer carpet-stuff; but the Mulvilles were still in the stage of
supposing that he might be snatched from them by higher bidders. At a
later time they grew, poor dears, to fear no snatching; but theirs was a
fidelity which needed no help from competition to make them proud.
Wonderful indeed as, when all was said, you inevitably pronounced Frank
Saltram, it was not to be overlooked that the Kent Mulvilles were in
their way still more extraordinary: as striking an instance as could
easily be encountered of the familiar truth that remarkable men find
remarkable conveniences.
They had sent for me from Wimbledon to come out and dine, and there had
been an implication in Adelaide’s note—judged by her notes alone she
might have been thought silly—that it was a case in which something
momentous was to be determined or done. I had never known them not be in
a “state” about somebody, and I dare say I tried to be droll on this
point in accepting their invitation. On finding myself in the presence
of their latest discovery I had not at first felt irreverence droop—and,
thank heaven, I have never been absolutely deprived of that alternative
in Mr. Saltram’s company. I saw, however—I hasten to declare it—that
compared to this specimen their other phoenixes had been birds of
inconsiderable feather, and I afterwards took credit to myself for not
having even in primal bewilderments made a mistake about the essence of
the man. He had an incomparable gift; I never was blind to it—it dazzles
me still. It dazzles me perhaps even more in remembrance than in fact,
for I’m not unaware that for so rare a subject the imagination goes to
some expense, inserting a jewel here and there or giving a twist to a
plume. How the art of portraiture would rejoice in this figure if the
art of portraiture had only the canvas! Nature, in truth, had largely
rounded it, and if memory, hovering about it, sometimes holds her breath,
this is because the voice that comes back was really golden.
Though the great man was an inmate and didn’t dress, he kept dinner on
this occasion waiting, and the first words he uttered on coming into the
room were an elated announcement to Mulville that he had found out
something. Not catching the allusion and gaping doubtless a little at
his face, I privately asked Adelaide what he had found out. I shall
never forget the look she gave me as she replied: “Everything!” She
really believed it. At that moment, at any rate, he had found out that
the mercy of the Mulvilles was infinite. He had previously of course
discovered, as I had myself for that matter, that their dinners were
soignés. Let me not indeed, in saying this, neglect to declare that I
shall falsify my counterfeit if I seem to hint that there was in his
nature any ounce of calculation. He took whatever came, but he never
plotted for it, and no man who was so much of an absorbent can ever have
been so little of a parasite. He had a system of the universe, but he
had no system of sponging—that was quite hand-to-mouth. He had fine
gross easy senses, but it was not his good-natured appetite that wrought
confusion. If he had loved us for our dinners we could have paid with
our dinners, and it would have been a great economy of finer matter. I
make free in these connexions with the plural possessive because if I was
never able to do what the Mulvilles did, and people with still bigger
houses and simpler charities, I met, first and last, every demand of
reflexion, of emotion—particularly perhaps those of gratitude and of
resentment. No one, I think, paid the tribute of giving him up so often,
and if it’s rendering honour to borrow wisdom I’ve a right to talk of my
sacrifices. He yielded lessons as the sea yields fish—I lived for a
while on this diet. Sometimes it almost appeared to me that his massive
monstrous failure—if failure after all it was—had been designed for my
private recreation. He fairly pampered my curiosity; but the history of
that experience would take me too far. This is not the large canvas I
just now spoke of, and I wouldn’t have approached him with my present
hand had it been a question of all the features. Frank Saltram’s
features, for artistic purposes, are verily the anecdotes that are to be
gathered. Their name is legion, and this is only one, of which the
interest is that it concerns even more closely several other persons.
Such episodes, as one looks back, are the little dramas that made up the
innumerable facets of the big drama—which is yet to be reported.