"With the parties to an abandoned flirtation? Well, you've in common
your mutual attachment and the fact that you're thoroughly happy
together."
"Ah," she good-humouredly answered, "we don't flirt!"
"Well, at all events, you don't separate. He doesn't really suffer you
out of his sight, and, to circulate in the society you adorn, you don't
leave him at home."
"Why shouldn't I?" she asked, looking at me, I thought, just a trifle
harder.
"It isn't a question of why you shouldn't--it's a question of whether
you do. You don't--do you? That's all."
She thought it over as if for the first time. "It seems to me I often
leave him when I don't want him."
"Oh, when you don't want him--yes. But when don't you want him? You want
him when you want to be right, and you want to be right when you mix in
a scene like this. I mean," I continued for my private amusement, "when
you want to be happy. Happiness, you know, is, to a lady in the full
tide of social success, even more becoming than a new French frock. You
have the advantage, for your beauty, of being admirably married. You
bloom in your husband's presence. I don't say he need always be at your
elbow; I simply say that you're most completely yourself when he's not
far off. If there were nothing else there would be the help given you by
your quiet confidence in his lawful passion."
"I'm bound to say," Mrs. Brissenden replied, "that such help is
consistent with his not having spoken to me since we parted, yesterday,
to come down here by different trains. We haven't so much as met since
our arrival. My finding him so indispensable is consistent with my not
having so much as looked at him. Indispensable, please, for what?"
"For your not being without him."
"What then do I do _with_ him?"
I hesitated--there were so many ways of putting it; but I gave them all
up. "Ah, I think it will be only _he_ who can tell you! My point is that
you've the instinct--playing in you, on either side, with all the ease
of experience--of what you are to each other. All I mean is that it's
the instinct that Long and _his_ good friend must have. They too perhaps
haven't spoken to each other. But where he comes she does, and where she
comes he does. That's why I know she's among us."
"It's wonderful what you know!" Mrs. Brissenden again laughed. "How can
you think of them as enjoying the facilities of people in _our_
situation?"
"Of people married and therefore logically in presence? I don't," I was
able to reply, "speak of their facilities as the same, and I recognise
every limit to their freedom. But I maintain, none the less, that so far
as they _can_ go, they do go. It's a relation, and they work the
relation: the relation, exquisite surely, of knowing they help each
other to shine. Why are they not, therefore, like you and Brissenden?
What I make out is that when they do shine one will find--though only
after a hunt, I admit, as you see--they must both have been involved.
Feeling their need, and consummately expert, they will have managed,
have arranged."
She took it in with her present odd mixture of the receptive and the
derisive. "Arranged what?"
"Oh, ask _her_!"
"I would if I could find her!" After which, for a moment, my
interlocutress again considered. "But I thought it was just your
contention that _she_ doesn't shine. If it's Lady John's perfect repair
that puts that sort of thing out of the question, your image, it seems
to me, breaks down."
It did a little, I saw, but I gave it a tilt up. "Not at all. It's a
case of shining as Brissenden shines." I wondered if I might go
further--then risked it. "By sacrifice."
I perceived at once that I needn't fear: her conscience was too
good--she was only amused. "Sacrifice, for mercy's sake, of what?"
"Well--for mercy's sake--of his time."
"His time?" She stared. "Hasn't he all the time he wants?"
"My dear lady," I smiled, "he hasn't all the time _you_ want!"
But she evidently had not a glimmering of what I meant. "Don't I make
things of an ease, don't I make life of a charm, for him?"
I'm afraid I laughed out. "That's perhaps exactly it! It's what Gilbert
Long does for _his_ victim--makes things, makes life, of an ease and a
charm."
She stopped yet again, really wondering at me now. "Then it's the woman,
simply, who's happiest?"
"Because Brissenden's the man who is? Precisely!"
On which for a minute, without her going on, we looked at each other.
"Do you really mean that if you only knew _me_ as I am, it would come to
you in the same way to hunt for my confederate? I mean if he weren't
made obvious, you know, by his being my husband."
I turned this over. "If you were only in flirtation--as you reminded me
just now that you're not? Surely!" I declared. "I should arrive at him,
perfectly, after all eliminations, on the principle of looking for the
greatest happiness----"
"Of the smallest number? Well, he may be a small number," she
indulgently sighed, "but he's wholly content! Look at him now there,"
she added the next moment, "and judge." We had resumed our walk and
turned the corner of the house, a movement that brought us into view of
a couple just round the angle of the terrace, a couple who, like
ourselves, must have paused in a sociable stroll. The lady, with her
back to us, leaned a little on the balustrade and looked at the gardens;
the gentleman close to her, with the same support, offered us the face
of Guy Brissenden, as recognisable at a distance as the numbered card of
a "turn"--the black figure upon white--at a music-hall. On seeing us he
said a word to his companion, who quickly jerked round. Then his wife
exclaimed to me--only with more sharpness--as she had exclaimed at Mme.
de Dreuil: "By all that's lovely--May Server!" I took it, on the spot,
for a kind of "Eureka!" but without catching my friend's idea. I was
only aware at first that this idea left me as unconvinced as when the
other possibilities had passed before us. Wasn't it simply the result of
this lady's being the only one we had happened not to eliminate? She had
not even occurred to us. She was pretty enough perhaps for any magic,
but she hadn't the other signs. I didn't believe, somehow--certainly not
on such short notice--either in her happiness or in her flatness. There
was a vague suggestion, of a sort, in our having found her there with
Brissenden: there would have been a pertinence, to our curiosity, or at
least to mine, in this juxtaposition of the two persons who paid, as I
had amused myself with calling it, so heroically; yet I had only to have
it marked for me (to see them, that is, side by side,) in order to feel
how little--at any rate superficially--the graceful, natural, charming
woman ranged herself with the superannuated youth.
She had said a word to him at sight of us, in answer to his own, and in
a minute or two they had met us. This had given me time for more than
one reflection. It had also given Mrs. Brissenden time to insist to me
on her identification, which I could see she would be much less quick to
drop than in the former cases. "We have her," she murmured; "we have
her; it's _she_!" It was by her insistence in fact that my thought was
quickened. It even felt a kind of chill--an odd revulsion--at the touch
of her eagerness. Singular perhaps that only then--yet quite certainly
then--the curiosity to which I had so freely surrendered myself began to
strike me as wanting in taste. It was reflected in Mrs. Brissenden quite
by my fault, and I can't say just what cause for shame, after so much
talk of our search and our scent, I found in our awakened and confirmed
keenness. Why in the world hadn't I found it before? My scruple, in
short, was a thing of the instant; it was in a positive flash that the
amusing question was stamped for me as none of my business. One of the
reflections I have just mentioned was that I had not had a happy hand in
making it so completely Mrs. Brissenden's. Another was, however, that
nothing, fortunately, that had happened between us really signified. For
what had so suddenly overtaken me was the consciousness of this anomaly:
that I was at the same time as disgusted as if I had exposed Mrs. Server
and absolutely convinced that I had yet _not_ exposed her.
While, after the others had greeted us and we stood in vague talk, I
caught afresh the effect of their juxtaposition, I grasped, with a
private joy that was quite extravagant--as so beyond the needed mark--at
the reassurance it offered. This reassurance sprang straight from a
special source. Brissenden's secret was so aware of itself as to be
always on the defensive. Shy and suspicious, it was as much on the
defensive at present as I had felt it to be--so far as I was
concerned--the night before. What was there accordingly in Mrs.
Server--frank and fragrant in the morning air--to correspond to any such
consciousness? Nothing whatever--not a symptom. Whatever secrets she
might have had, she had not _that_ one; she was not in the same box; the
sacred fount, in her, was not threatened with exhaustion. We all soon
re-entered the house together, but Mrs. Brissenden, during the few
minutes that followed, managed to possess herself of the subject of her
denunciation. She put me off with Guy, and I couldn't help feeling it as
a sign of her concentration. She warmed to the question just as I had
thrown it over; and I asked myself rather ruefully what on earth I had
been thinking of. I hadn't in the least had it in mind to "compromise"
an individual; but an individual would be compromised if I didn't now
take care.