"Don't I seem to remember, my dear man, that it was you yourself who
knew? He's thirty at the most. He can't possibly be more. And there he
is: as fine, as swaddled, as royal a mummy, to the eye, as one would
wish to see. Don't pretend! But it's all right." I laughed as I took
myself up. "I must talk to Lady John."
I did talk to her, but I must come to it. What is most to the point just
here is an observation or two that, in the smoking-room, before going
to bed, I exchanged with Ford Obert. I forbore, as I have hinted, to
show all I saw, but it was lawfully open to me to judge of what other
people did; and I had had before dinner my little proof that, on
occasion, Obert could see as much as most. Yet I said nothing more to
him for the present about Mrs. Server. The Brissendens were new to him,
and his experience of every sort of facial accident, of human sign, made
him just the touchstone I wanted. Nothing, naturally, was easier than to
turn him on the question of the fair and the foul, type and character,
weal and woe, among our fellow-visitors; so that my mention of the air
of disparity in the couple I have just named came in its order and
produced its effect. This effect was that of my seeing--which was all I
required--that if the disparity was marked for him this expert observer
could yet read it quite the wrong way. Why had so fine a young creature
married a man three times her age? He was of course astounded when I
told him the young creature was much nearer three times Brissenden's,
and this led to some interesting talk between us as to the consequences,
in general, of such association on such terms. The particular case
before us, I easily granted, sinned by over-emphasis, but it was a fair,
though a gross, illustration of what almost always occurred when twenty
and forty, when thirty and sixty, mated or mingled, lived together in
intimacy. Intimacy of course had to be postulated. Then either the high
number or the low always got the upper hand, and it was usually the high
that succeeded. It seemed, in other words, more possible to go back than
to keep still, to grow young than to remain so. If Brissenden had been
of his wife's age and his wife of Brissenden's, it would thus be he who
must have redescended the hill, it would be she who would have been
pushed over the brow. There was really a touching truth in it, the stuff
of--what did people call such things?--an apologue or a parable. "One of
the pair," I said, "has to pay for the other. What ensues is a miracle,
and miracles are expensive. What's a greater one than to have your youth
twice over? It's a second wind, another 'go'--which isn't the sort of
thing life mostly treats us to. Mrs. Briss had to get her new blood, her
extra allowance of time and bloom, somewhere; and from whom could she so
conveniently extract them as from Guy himself? She _has_, by an
extraordinary feat of legerdemain, extracted them; and he, on his side,
to supply her, has had to tap the sacred fount. But the sacred fount is
like the greedy man's description of the turkey as an 'awkward' dinner
dish. It may be sometimes too much for a single share, but it's not
enough to go round."
Obert was at all events sufficiently struck with my view to throw out a
question on it. "So that, paying to his last drop, Mr. Briss, as you
call him, can only die of the business?"
"Oh, not yet, I hope. But before _her_--yes: long."