“THE VELVET GLOVE”
I
HE thought he had already, poor John Berridge, tasted in their fulness
the sweets of success; but nothing yet had been more charming to him
than when the young Lord, as he irresistibly and, for greater certitude,
quite correctly figured him, fairly sought out, in Paris, the new
literary star that had begun to hang, with a fresh red light, over
the vast, even though rather confused, Anglo-Saxon horizon; positively
approaching that celebrity with a shy and artless appeal. The young Lord
invoked on this occasion the celebrity’s prized judgment of a special
literary case; and Berridge could take the whole manner of it for one of
the “quaintest” little acts displayed to his amused eyes, up to now, on
the stage of European society--albeit these eyes were quite aware, in
general, of missing everywhere no more of the human scene than possible,
and of having of late been particularly awake to the large extensions of
it spread before him (since so he could but fondly read his fate) under
the omen of his prodigious “hit.” It was because of his hit that he
was having rare opportunities--of which he was so honestly and humbly
proposing, as he would have said, to make the most: it was because every
one in the world (so far had the thing gone) was reading “The Heart of
Gold” as just a slightly too fat volume, or sitting out the same as just
a fifth-act too long play, that he found himself floated on a tide he
would scarce have dared to show his favourite hero sustained by, found
a hundred agreeable and interesting things happen to him which were all,
one way or another, affluents of the golden stream.
The great renewed resonance--renewed by the incredible luck of the
play--was always in his ears without so much as a conscious turn of his
head to listen; so that the queer world of his fame was not the mere
usual field of the Anglo-Saxon boom, but positively the bottom of the
whole theatric sea, unplumbed source of the wave that had borne him
in the course of a year or two over German, French, Italian, Russian,
Scandinavian foot-lights. Paris itself really appeared for the hour the
centre of his cyclone, with reports and “returns,” to say nothing of
agents and emissaries, converging from the minor capitals; though his
impatience was scarce the less keen to get back to London, where his
work had had no such critical excoriation to survive, no such lesson of
anguish to learn, as it had received at the hand of supreme authority,
of that French authority which was in such a matter the only one to be
artistically reckoned with. If his spirit indeed had had to reckon with
it his fourth act practically hadn’t: it continued to make him blush
every night for the public more even than the inimitable _feuilleton_
had made him blush for himself.
This had figured, however, after all, the one bad drop in his cup;
so that, for the rest, his high-water mark might well have been, that
evening at Gloriani’s studio, the approach of his odd and charming
applicant, vaguely introduced at the latter’s very own request by their
hostess, who, with an honest, helpless, genial gesture, washed her fat
begemmed hands of the name and identity of either, but left the fresh,
fair, ever so habitually assured, yet ever so easily awkward Englishman
with his plea to put forth. There was that in this pleasant personage
which could still make Berridge wonder what conception of profit from
him might have, all incalculably, taken form in such a head--these being
truly the last intrenchments of our hero’s modesty. He wondered,
the splendid young man, he wondered awfully, he wondered (it was
unmistakable) quite nervously, he wondered, to John’s ardent and acute
imagination, quite beautifully, if the author of “The Heart of Gold”
would mind just looking at a book by a friend of his, a great friend,
which he himself believed rather clever, and had in fact found very
charming, but as to which--if it really wouldn’t bore Mr. Berridge--he
should so like the verdict of some one who knew. His friend was awfully
ambitious, and he thought there was something in it--with all of which
might he send the book to any address?
Berridge thought of many things while the young Lord thus charged upon
him, and it was odd that no one of them was any question of the possible
worth of the offered achievement--which, for that matter, was certain to
be of the quality of _all_ the books, to say nothing of the plays, and
the projects for plays, with which, for some time past, he had seen his
daily post-bag distended. He had made out, on looking at these things,
no difference at all from one to the other. Here, however, was something
more--something that made his fellow-guest’s overture _independently_
interesting and, as he might imagine, important. He smiled, he was
friendly and vague; said “A work of fiction, I suppose?” and that he
didn’t pretend ever to pronounce, that he in fact quite hated, always,
to have to, not “knowing,” as he felt, any better than any one else; but
would gladly look at anything, under that demur, if it would give any
pleasure. Perhaps the very brightest and most diamond-like twinkle he
had yet seen the star of his renown emit was just the light brought into
his young Lord’s eyes by this so easy consent to oblige. It was easy
because the presence before him was from moment to moment, referring
itself back to some recent observation or memory; something caught
somewhere, within a few weeks or months, as he had moved about, and that
seemed to flutter forth at this stir of the folded leaves of his recent
experience very much as a gathered, faded flower, placed there for
“pressing,” might drop from between the pages of a volume opened at
hazard.
He had seen him before, this splendid and sympathetic person--whose
flattering appeal was by no means _all_ that made him sympathetic;
he had met him, had noted, had wondered about him, had in fact
imaginatively, intellectually, so to speak, quite yearned over him, in
some conjunction lately, though ever so fleet-ingly, apprehended: which
circumstance constituted precisely an association as tormenting, for
the few minutes, as it was vague, and set him to sounding, intensely
and vainly, the face that itself figured everything agreeable except
recognition. He couldn’t remember, and the young man didn’t; distinctly,
yes, they had been in presence, during the previous winter, by some
chance of travel, through Sicily, through Italy, through the south of
France, but his _Seigneurie_--so Berridge liked exotically to phrase
it--had then (in ignorance of the present reasons) not noticed _him_. It
was positive for the man of established identity, all the while too,
and through the perfect lucidity of his sense of achievement in an air
“conducting” nothing but the loudest bang, that this was fundamentally
much less remarkable than the fact of his being made up to in such a
quarter now. That was the disservice, in a manner, of one’s having so
much imagination: the mysterious values of other types kept looming
larger before you than the doubtless often higher but comparatively
familiar ones of your own, and if you had anything of the artist’s
real feeling for life the attraction and amusement of possibilities so
projected were worth more to you, in nineteen moods out of twenty, than
the sufficiency, the serenity, the felicity, whatever it might be,
of your stale personal certitudes. You were intellectually, you were
“artistically” rather abject, in fine, if your curiosity (in the grand
sense of the term) wasn’t worth more to you than your dignity. What was
your dignity, “anyway,” but just the consistency of your curiosity, and
what moments were ever so ignoble for you as, under the blighting breath
of the false gods, stupid conventions, traditions, examples, your lapses
from that consistency? His _Seigneurie_, at all events, delightfully,
hadn’t the least real idea of what any John Berridge was talking about,
and the latter felt that if he had been less beautifully witless, and
thereby less true to his right figure, it might scarce have been
forgiven him.
His right figure was that of life in irreflective joy and at the highest
thinkable level of prepared security and unconscious insolence. What was
the pale page of fiction compared with the intimately personal adventure
that, in almost any direction, he would have been all so stupidly,
all so gallantly, all so instinctively and, by every presumption,
so prevailingly ready for? Berridge would have given six months’
“royalties” for even an hour of his looser dormant consciousness--since
one was oneself, after all, no worm, but an heir of all the ages
too--and yet without being able to supply chapter and verse for the
felt, the huge difference. His _Seigneurie_ was tall and straight, but
so, thank goodness, was the author of “The Heart of Gold,” who had no
such vulgar “mug” either; and there was no intrinsic inferiority in
being a bit inordinately, and so it might have seemed a bit strikingly,
black-browed instead of being fair as the morning. Again while his new
friend delivered himself our own tried in vain to place him; he
indulged in plenty of pleasant, if rather restlessly headlong sound, the
confessed incoherence of a happy mortal who had always many things “on,”
and who, while waiting at any moment for connections and consummations,
had fallen into the way of talking, as they said, all artlessly, and
a trifle more betrayingly, against time. He would always be having
appointments, and somehow of a high “romantic” order, to keep, and the
imperfect punctualities of others to wait for--though who would be of
a quality to make such a pampered personage wait very much our young
analyst could only enjoy asking himself. There were women who might be
of a quality--half a dozen of those perhaps, of those alone, about the
world; our friend was as sure of this, by the end of four minutes, as if
he knew all about it.
After saying he would send him the book the young Lord indeed dropped
that subject; he had asked where he might send it, and had had an “Oh,
I shall remember!” on John’s mention of an hotel; but he had made no
further dash into literature, and it was ten to one that this would be
the last the distinguished author might hear of the volume. Such again
was a note of these high existences--that made one content to ask
of them no whit of other consistency than that of carrying off the
particular occasion, whatever it might be, in a dazzle of amiability
and felicity and leaving _that_ as a sufficient trace of their passage.
Sought and achieved consistency was but an angular, a secondary motion;
compared with the air of complete freedom it might have an effect
of deformity. There was no placing this figure of radiant ease, for
Berridge, in any relation that didn’t appear not good enough--that is
among the relations that hadn’t been too good for Berridge himself. He
was all right where he was; the great Gloriani somehow made that law;
his house, with his supreme artistic position, was good enough for any
one, and to-night in especial there were charming people, more charming
than our friend could recall from any other scene, as the natural
train or circle, as he might say, of such a presence. For an instant he
thought he had got the face as a specimen of imperturbability watched,
with wonder, across the hushed rattle of roulette at Monte-Carlo; but
this quickly became as improbable as any question of a vulgar
_table d’hote_, or a steam-boat deck, or a herd of fellow-pilgrims
cicerone-led, or even an opera-box serving, during a performance, for
frame of a type observed from the stalls. One placed young gods and
goddesses only when one placed them on Olympus, and it met the case,
always, that they were of Olympian race, and that they glimmered
for one, at the best, through their silver cloud, like the visiting
apparitions in an epic.
This was brief and beautiful indeed till something happened that gave
it, for Berridge, on the spot, a prodigious extension--an extension
really as prodigious, after a little, as if he had suddenly seen the
silver clouds multiply and then the whole of Olympus presently open.
Music, breaking upon the large air, enjoined immediate attention, and in
a moment he was listening, with the rest of the company, to an eminent
tenor, who stood by the piano; and was aware, with it, that his
Englishman had turned away and that in the vast, rich, tapestried room
where, in spite of figures and objects so numerous, clear spaces, wide
vistas, and, as they might be called, becoming situations abounded,
there had been from elsewhere, at the signal of unmistakable song, a
rapid accession of guests. At first he but took this in, and the way
that several young women, for whom seats had been found, looked charming
in the rapt attitude; while even the men, mostly standing and grouped,
“composed,” in their stillness, scarce less impressively, under the sway
of the divine voice. It ruled the scene, to the last intensity, and yet
our young man’s fine sense found still a resource in the range of the
eyes, without sound or motion, while all the rest of consciousness was
held down as by a hand mailed in silver. It was better, in this way,
than the opera--John alertly thought of that: the composition sung might
be Wagnerian, but no Tristram, no Iseult, no Parsifal and, no Kundry of
them all could ever show, could ever “act” to the music, as our friend
had thus the power of seeing his dear contemporaries of either sex
(armoured _they_ so otherwise than in cheap Teutonic tinsel!) just
continuously and inscrutably sit to it.
It made, the whole thing together, an enchantment amid which he had in
truth, at a given moment, ceased to distinguish parts--so that he was
himself certainly at last soaring as high as the singer’s voice and
forgetting, in a lost gaze at the splendid ceiling, everything of the
occasion but what his intelligence poured into it. This, as happened,
was a flight so sublime that by the time he had dropped his eyes again
a cluster of persons near the main door had just parted to give way to a
belated lady who slipped in, through the gap made for her, and stood for
some minutes full in his view. It was a proof of the perfect hush that
no one stirred to offer her a seat, and her entrance, in her high
grace, had yet been so noiseless that she could remain at once immensely
exposed and completely unabashed. For Berridge, once more, if the scenic
show before him so melted into the music, here precisely might have
been the heroine herself advancing to the foot-lights at her cue. The
interest deepened to a thrill, and everything, at the touch of his
recognition of this personage, absolutely the most beautiful woman now
present, fell exquisitely together and gave him what he had been wanting
from the moment of his taking in his young Englishman.
It was there, the missing connection: her arrival had on the instant
lighted it by a flash. Olympian herself, supremely, divinely Olympian,
she had arrived, could _only_ have arrived, for the one person present
of really equal race, our young man’s late converser, whose flattering
demonstration might now stand for one of the odd extravagant forms taken
by nervous impatience. This charming, this dazzling woman had been one
member of the couple disturbed, to his intimate conviction, the autumn
previous, on his being pushed by the officials, at the last moment,
into a compartment of the train that was to take him from Cremona to
Mantua--where, failing a stop, he had had to keep his place. The other
member, by whose felt but unseized identity he had been haunted, was
the unconsciously insolent form of guaranteed happiness he had just been
engaged with. The sense of the admirable intimacy that, having taken
its precautions, had not reckoned with his irruption--this image had
remained with him; to say nothing of the interest of aspect of the
associated figures, so stamped somehow with rarity, so beautifully
distinct from the common occupants of padded corners, and yet on the
subject of whom, for the romantic structure he was immediately to raise,
he had not had a scrap of evidence.
If he had imputed to them conditions it was all his own doing: it came
from his inveterate habit of abysmal imputation, the snatching of the
ell wherever the inch peeped out, without which where would have been
the tolerability of life? It didn’t matter now what he had imputed--and
he always held that his expenses of imputation were, at the worst, a
compliment to those inspiring them. It only mattered that each of the
pair had been then what he really saw each now--full, that is, of the
pride of their youth and beauty and fortune and freedom, though at
the same time particularly preoccupied: preoccupied, that is, with the
affairs, and above all with the passions, of Olympus. Who had they been,
and what? Whence had they come, whither were they bound, what tie united
them, what adventure engaged, what felicity, tempered by what peril,
magnificently, dramatically attended? These had been his questions, all
so inevitable and so impertinent, at the time, and to the exclusion of
any scruples over his not postulating an inane honeymoon, his not taking
the “tie,” as he should doubtless properly have done, for the mere blest
matrimonial; and he now retracted not one of them, flushing as they did
before him again with their old momentary life. To feel his two friends
renewedly in presence--friends of the fleeting hour though they had but
been, and with whom he had exchanged no sign save the vaguest of salutes
on finally relieving them of his company--was only to be conscious that
he hadn’t, on the spot, done them, so to speak, half justice, and that,
for his superior entertainment, there would be ever so much more of them
to come.