IX

THE thing I had been most sensible of in that talk with George Gravener

was the way Saltram’s name kept out of it. It seemed to me at the time

that we were quite pointedly silent about him; but afterwards it appeared

more probable there had been on my companion’s part no conscious

avoidance. Later on I was sure of this, and for the best of reasons—the

simple reason of my perceiving more completely that, for evil as well as

for good, he said nothing to Gravener’s imagination. That honest man

didn’t fear him—he was too much disgusted with him. No more did I,

doubtless, and for very much the same reason. I treated my friend’s

story as an absolute confidence; but when before Christmas, by Mrs.

Saltram, I was informed of Lady Coxon’s death without having had news of

Miss Anvoy’s return, I found myself taking for granted we should hear no

more of these nuptials, in which, as obscurely unnatural, I now saw I had

never _too_ disconcertedly believed. I began to ask myself how people

who suited each other so little could please each other so much. The

charm was some material charm, some afffinity, exquisite doubtless, yet

superficial some surrender to youth and beauty and passion, to force and

grace and fortune, happy accidents and easy contacts. They might dote on

each other’s persons, but how could they know each other’s souls? How

could they have the same prejudices, how could they have the same

horizon? Such questions, I confess, seemed quenched but not answered

when, one day in February, going out to Wimbledon, I found our young lady

in the house. A passion that had brought her back across the wintry

ocean was as much of a passion as was needed. No impulse equally strong

indeed had drawn George Gravener to America; a circumstance on which,

however, I reflected only long enough to remind myself that it was none

of my business. Ruth Anvoy was distinctly different, and I felt that the

difference was not simply that of her marks of mourning. Mrs. Mulville

told me soon enough what it was: it was the difference between a handsome

girl with large expectations and a handsome girl with only four hundred a

year. This explanation indeed didn’t wholly content me, not even when I

learned that her mourning had a double cause—learned that poor Mr. Anvoy,

giving way altogether, buried under the ruins of his fortune and leaving

next to nothing, had died a few weeks before.

“So she has come out to marry George Gravener?” I commented. “Wouldn’t

it have been prettier of him to have saved her the trouble?”

“Hasn’t the House just met?” Adelaide replied. “And for Mr. Gravener the

House—!” Then she added: “I gather that her having come is exactly a

sign that the marriage is a little shaky. If it were quite all right a

self-respecting girl like Ruth would have waited for him over there.”

I noted that they were already Ruth and Adelaide, but what I said was:

“Do you mean she’ll have had to return to _make_ it so?”

“No, I mean that she must have come out for some reason independent of

it.” Adelaide could only surmise, however, as yet, and there was more,

as we found, to be revealed. Mrs. Mulville, on hearing of her arrival,

had brought the young lady out in the green landau for the Sunday. The

Coxons were in possession of the house in Regent’s Park, and Miss Anvoy

was in dreary lodgings. George Gravener had been with her when Adelaide

called, but had assented graciously enough to the little visit at

Wimbledon. The carriage, with Mr. Saltram in it but not mentioned, had

been sent off on some errand from which it was to return and pick the

ladies up. Gravener had left them together, and at the end of an hour,

on the Saturday afternoon, the party of three had driven out to

Wimbledon. This was the girl’s second glimpse of our great man, and I

was interested in asking Mrs. Mulville if the impression made by the

first appeared to have been confirmed. On her replying after

consideration, that of course with time and opportunity it couldn’t fail

to be, but that she was disappointed, I was sufficiently struck with her

use of this last word to question her further.

“Do you mean you’re disappointed because you judge Miss Anvoy to be?”

“Yes; I hoped for a greater effect last evening. We had two or three

people, but he scarcely opened his mouth.”

“He’ll be all the better to-night,” I opined after a moment. Then I

pursued: “What particular importance do you attach to the idea of her

being impressed?”

Adelaide turned her mild pale eyes on me as for rebuke of my levity.

“Why the importance of her being as happy as _we_ are!”

I’m afraid that at this my levity grew. “Oh that’s a happiness almost

too great to wish a person!” I saw she hadn’t yet in her mind what I had

in mine, and at any rate the visitor’s actual bliss was limited to a walk

in the garden with Kent Mulville. Later in the afternoon I also took

one, and I saw nothing of Miss Anvoy till dinner, at which we failed of

the company of Saltram, who had caused it to be reported that he was

indisposed and lying down. This made us, most of us—for there were other

friends present—convey to each other in silence some of the unutterable

things that in those years our eyes had inevitably acquired the art of

expressing. If a fine little American enquirer hadn’t been there we

would have expressed them otherwise, and Adelaide would have pretended

not to hear. I had seen her, before the very fact, abstract herself

nobly; and I knew that more than once, to keep it from the servants,

managing, dissimulating cleverly, she had helped her husband to carry him

bodily to his room. Just recently he had been so wise and so deep and so

high that I had begun to get nervous—to wonder if by chance there were

something behind it, if he were kept straight for instance by the

knowledge that the hated Pudneys would have more to tell us if they

chose. He was lying low, but unfortunately it was common wisdom with us

in this connexion that the biggest splashes took place in the quietest

pools. We should have had a merry life indeed if all the splashes had

sprinkled us as refreshingly as the waters we were even then to feel

about our ears. Kent Mulville had been up to his room, but had come back

with a face that told as few tales as I had seen it succeed in telling on

the evening I waited in the lecture-room with Miss Anvoy. I said to

myself that our friend had gone out, but it was a comfort that the

presence of a comparative stranger deprived us of the dreary duty of

suggesting to each other, in respect of his errand, edifying

possibilities in which we didn’t ourselves believe. At ten o’clock he

came into the drawing-room with his waistcoat much awry but his eyes

sending out great signals. It was precisely with his entrance that I

ceased to be vividly conscious of him. I saw that the crystal, as I had

called it, had begun to swing, and I had need of my immediate attention

for Miss Anvoy.

Even when I was told afterwards that he had, as we might have said

to-day, broken the record, the manner in which that attention had been

rewarded relieved me of a sense of loss. I had of course a perfect

general consciousness that something great was going on: it was a little

like having been etherised to hear Herr Joachim play. The old music was

in the air; I felt the strong pulse of thought, the sink and swell, the

flight, the poise, the plunge; but I knew something about one of the

listeners that nobody else knew, and Saltram’s monologue could reach me

only through that medium. To this hour I’m of no use when, as a witness,

I’m appealed to—for they still absurdly contend about it—as to whether or

no on that historic night he was drunk; and my position is slightly

ridiculous, for I’ve never cared to tell them what it really was I was

taken up with. What I got out of it is the only morsel of the total

experience that is quite my own. The others were shared, but this is

incommunicable. I feel that now, I’m bound to say, even in thus roughly

evoking the occasion, and it takes something from my pride of clearness.

However, I shall perhaps be as clear as is absolutely needful if I remark

that our young lady was too much given up to her own intensity of

observation to be sensible of mine. It was plainly not the question of

her marriage that had brought her back. I greatly enjoyed this discovery

and was sure that had that question alone been involved she would have

stirred no step. In this case doubtless Gravener would, in spite of the

House of Commons, have found means to rejoin her. It afterwards made me

uncomfortable for her that, alone in the lodging Mrs. Mulville had put

before me as dreary, she should have in any degree the air of waiting for

her fate; so that I was presently relieved at hearing of her having gone

to stay at Coldfield. If she was in England at all while the engagement

stood the only proper place for her was under Lady Maddock’s wing. Now

that she was unfortunate and relatively poor, perhaps her prospective

sister-in-law would be wholly won over.

There would be much to say, if I had space, about the way her behaviour,

as I caught gleams of it, ministered to the image that had taken birth in

my mind, to my private amusement, while that other night I listened to

George Gravener in the railway-carriage. I watched her in the light of

this queer possibility—a formidable thing certainly to meet—and I was

aware that it coloured, extravagantly perhaps, my interpretation of her

very looks and tones. At Wimbledon for instance it had appeared to me

she was literally afraid of Saltram, in dread of a coercion that she had

begun already to feel. I had come up to town with her the next day and

had been convinced that, though deeply interested, she was immensely on

her guard. She would show as little as possible before she should be

ready to show everything. What this final exhibition might be on the

part of a girl perceptibly so able to think things out I found it great

sport to forecast. It would have been exciting to be approached by her,

appealed to by her for advice; but I prayed to heaven I mightn’t find

myself in such a predicament. If there was really a present rigour in

the situation of which Gravener had sketched for me the elements, she

would have to get out of her difficulty by herself. It wasn’t I who had

launched her and it wasn’t I who could help her. I didn’t fail to ask

myself why, since I couldn’t help her, I should think so much about her.

It was in part my suspense that was responsible for this; I waited

impatiently to see whether she wouldn’t have told Mrs. Mulville a portion

at least of what I had learned from Gravener. But I saw Mrs. Mulville

was still reduced to wonder what she had come out again for if she hadn’t

come as a conciliatory bride. That she had come in some other character

was the only thing that fitted all the appearances. Having for family

reasons to spend some time that spring in the west of England, I was in a

manner out of earshot of the great oceanic rumble—I mean of the

continuous hum of Saltram’s thought—and my uneasiness tended to keep me

quiet. There was something I wanted so little to have to say that my

prudence surmounted my curiosity. I only wondered if Ruth Anvoy talked

over the idea of The Coxon Fund with Lady Maddock, and also somewhat why

I didn’t hear from Wimbledon. I had a reproachful note about something

or other from Mrs. Saltram, but it contained no mention of Lady Coxon’s

niece, on whom her eyes had been much less fixed since the recent

untoward events.

X

POOR Adelaide’s silence was fully explained later—practically explained

when in June, returning to London, I was honoured by this admirable woman

with an early visit. As soon as she arrived I guessed everything, and as

soon as she told me that darling Ruth had been in her house nearly a

month I had my question ready. “What in the name of maidenly modesty is

she staying in England for?”

“Because she loves me so!” cried Adelaide gaily. But she hadn’t come to

see me only to tell me Miss Anvoy loved her: that was quite sufficiently

established, and what was much more to the point was that Mr. Gravener

had now raised an objection to it. He had protested at least against her

being at Wimbledon, where in the innocence of his heart he had originally

brought her himself; he called on her to put an end to their engagement

in the only proper, the only happy manner.

“And why in the world doesn’t she do do?” I asked.

Adelaide had a pause. “She says you know.”

Then on my also hesitating she added: “A condition he makes.”

“The Coxon Fund?” I panted.

“He has mentioned to her his having told you about it.”

“Ah but so little! Do you mean she has accepted the trust?”

“In the most splendid spirit—as a duty about which there can be no two

opinions.” To which my friend added: “Of course she’s thinking of Mr.

Saltram.”

I gave a quick cry at this, which, in its violence, made my visitor turn

pale. “How very awful!”

“Awful?”

“Why, to have anything to do with such an idea one’s self.”

“I’m sure _you_ needn’t!” and Mrs. Mulville tossed her head.

“He isn’t good enough!” I went on; to which she opposed a sound almost as

contentious as my own had been. This made me, with genuine immediate

horror, exclaim: “You haven’t influenced her, I hope!” and my emphasis

brought back the blood with a rush to poor Adelaide’s face. She declared

while she blushed—for I had frightened her again—that she had never

influenced anybody and that the girl had only seen and heard and judged

for herself. _He_ had influenced her, if I would, as he did every one

who had a soul: that word, as we knew, even expressed feebly the power of

the things he said to haunt the mind. How could she, Adelaide, help it

if Miss Anvoy’s mind was haunted? I demanded with a groan what right a

pretty girl engaged to a rising M.P. had to _have_ a mind; but the only

explanation my bewildered friend could give me was that she was so

clever. She regarded Mr. Saltram naturally as a tremendous force for

good. She was intelligent enough to understand him and generous enough

to admire.

“She’s many things enough, but is she, among them, rich enough?” I

demanded. “Rich enough, I mean, to sacrifice such a lot of good money?”

“That’s for herself to judge. Besides, it’s not her own money; she

doesn’t in the least consider it so.”

“And Gravener does, if not _his_ own; and that’s the whole difficulty?”

“The difficulty that brought her back, yes: she had absolutely to see her

poor aunt’s solicitor. It’s clear that by Lady Coxon’s will she may have

the money, but it’s still clearer to her conscience that the original

condition, definite, intensely implied on her uncle’s part, is attached

to the use of it. She can only take one view of it. It’s for the

Endowment or it’s for nothing.”

“The Endowment,” I permitted myself to observe, “is a conception

superficially sublime, but fundamentally ridiculous.”

“Are you repeating Mr. Gravener’s words?” Adelaide asked.

“Possibly, though I’ve not seen him for months. It’s simply the way it

strikes me too. It’s an old wife’s tale. Gravener made some reference

to the legal aspect, but such an absurdly loose arrangement has _no_

legal aspect.”

“Ruth doesn’t insist on that,” said Mrs. Mulville; “and it’s, for her,

exactly this technical weakness that constitutes the force of the moral

obligation.”

“Are you repeating _her_ words?” I enquired. I forget what else Adelaide

said, but she said she was magnificent. I thought of George Gravener

confronted with such magnificence as that, and I asked what could have

made two such persons ever suppose they understood each other. Mrs.

Mulville assured me the girl loved him as such a woman could love and

that she suffered as such a woman could suffer. Nevertheless she wanted

to see _me_. At this I sprang up with a groan. “Oh I’m so sorry!—when?”

Small though her sense of humour, I think Adelaide laughed at my

sequence. We discussed the day, the nearest it would be convenient I

should come out; but before she went I asked my visitor how long she had

been acquainted with these prodigies.

“For several weeks, but I was pledged to secrecy.”

“And that’s why you didn’t write?”

“I couldn’t very well tell you she was with me without telling you that

no time had even yet been fixed for her marriage. And I couldn’t very

well tell you as much as that without telling you what I knew of the

reason of it. It was not till a day or two ago,” Mrs. Mulville went on,

“that she asked me to ask you if you wouldn’t come and see her. Then at

last she spoke of your knowing about the idea of the Endowment.”