"Gilbert Long? I thought you just said," I observed, "that you can make
nobody out."
We watched together, but the distance was considerable, and the second
figure continued to be screened. "It _must_ be he," Mrs. Brissenden
resumed with impatience, "since it was with him I so distinctly saw
her."
"Let me once more hold you to the fact," I answered, "that she had, to
my knowledge, succumbed to M. de Dreuil afterwards. The moments have
fled, you see, in our fascinating discussion, and various things, on
your theory of her pounce, have come and gone. Don't I moreover make out
a brown shoe, in a white gaiter, protruding from the other side of her
dress? It must be Lord Lutley."
Mrs. Brissenden looked and mused. "A brown shoe in a white gaiter?" At
this moment Mrs. Server moved, and the next--as if it were time for
another pounce--she had got up. We could, however, still distinguish but
a shoulder and an out-stretched leg of her gentleman, who, on her
movement, appeared, as in protest, to have affirmed by an emphatic shift
of his seat his preference for their remaining as they were. This
carried him further round the tree. We thus lost him, but she stood
there while we waited, evidently exhorting him; after a minute of which
she came away as in confidence that he would follow. During this
process, with a face more visible, she had looked as charming as a
pretty woman almost always does in rising eloquent before the apathetic
male. She hadn't yet noticed us, but something in her attitude and
manner particularly spoke to me. There were implications in it to which
I couldn't be blind, and I felt how my neighbour also would have caught
them and been confirmed in her certitude. In fact I felt the breath of
her confirmation in another elated "There!"--in a "Look at her _now_!"
Incontestably, while not yet aware of us, Mrs. Server confessed with
every turn of her head to a part in a relation. It stuck out of her, her
part in a relation; it hung before us, her part in a relation; it was
large to us beyond the breadth of the glade. And since, off her guard,
she so let us have it, with whom in the world could the relation--so
much of one as that--be but with Gilbert Long? The question was not
settled till she had come on some distance; then the producer of our
tension, emerging and coming after her, offered himself to our united,
to our confounded, anxiety once more as poor Briss.
That we should have been confounded was doubtless but a proof of the
impression--the singular assurance of intimacy borne toward us on the
soft summer air--that we had, however delusively, received. I should
myself have been as ready as my neighbour to say "Whoever he is, they're
in deep!"--and on grounds, moreover, quite as recklessly, as
fantastically constructive as hers. There was nothing to explain our
impression but the fact of our already having seen them figure together,
and of this we needed breathing-time to give them the natural benefit.
It was not indeed as an absolute benefit for either that Grace
Brissenden's tone marked our recognition. "Dear Guy _again_?"--but she
had recovered herself enough to laugh. "I should have thought he had had
more than his turn!" She had recovered herself in fact much more than I;
for somehow, from this instant, convinced as she had been and turning
everything to her conviction, I found myself dealing, in thought, with
still larger material. It was odd what a difference was made for me by
the renewed sight of dear Guy. I didn't of course analyse this sense at
the time; that was still to come. Our friends meanwhile had noticed us,
and something clearly passed between them--it almost produced, for an
instant, a visible arrest in their advance--on the question of their
having perhaps been for some time exposed.
They came on, however, and I waved them from afar a greeting, to which
Mrs. Server alone replied. Distances were great at Newmarch and
landscape-gardening on the grand scale; it would take them still some
minutes to reach our place of vantage or to arrive within sound of
speech. There was accordingly nothing marked in our turning away and
strolling back to the house. We had been so intent that we confessed by
this movement to a quick impulse to disown it. Yet it was remarkable
that, before we went in, Mrs. Brissenden should have struck me afresh as
having got all she wanted. Her recovery from our surprise was already so
complete that her high lucidity now alone reigned. "You don't require, I
suppose, anything more than _that_?"
"Well, I don't quite see, I'm bound to say, just where even 'that' comes
in." It incommoded me singularly little, at the point to which I had
jumped, that this statement was the exact reverse of the truth. Where it
came in was what I happened to be in the very act of seeing--seeing to
the exclusion of almost everything else. It was sufficient that I might
perhaps feel myself to have done at last with Mrs. Brissenden. I
desired, at all events, quite as if this benefit were assured me, to
leave her the honours of the last word.
She was finely enough prepared to take them. "Why, this invention of
using my husband----!" She fairly gasped at having to explain.
"Of 'using' him?"
"Trailing him across the scent as she does all of you, one after the
other. Excuse my comparing you to so many red herrings. You each have
your turn; only _his_ seems repeated, poor dear, till he's quite worn
out with it."
I kept for a little this image in my eye. "I can see of course that his
whole situation must be something of a strain for him; for I've not
forgotten what you told me yesterday of his service with Lady John. To
have to work in such a way for two of them at once"--it couldn't help, I
admitted, being a tax on a fellow. Besides, when one came to think of
it, the same man couldn't be _two_ red herrings. To show as Mrs.
Server's would directly impair his power to show as Lady John's. It
would seem, in short, a matter for his patronesses to have out together.
Mrs. Brissenden betrayed, on this, some annoyance at my levity. "Oh, the
cases are not the same, for with Lady John it amuses him: he thinks he
knows."
"Knows what?"
"What she wants him for. He doesn't know"--she kept it wonderfully
clear--"that she really doesn't want him for anything; for anything
except, of course"--this came as a droll second thought--"himself."
"And he doesn't know, either"--I tried to remain at her level--"that
Mrs. Server does."
"No," she assented, "he doesn't know what it's her idea to do with
him."
"He doesn't know, in fine," I cheerfully pursued, "the truth about
anything. And of course, by your agreement with me, he's not to learn
it."
She recognised her agreement with me, yet looked as if she had reserved
a certain measure of freedom. Then she handsomely gave up even that. "I
certainly don't want him to become conscious."
"It's his unconsciousness," I declared, "that saves him."
"Yes, even from himself."
"We must accordingly feed it." In the house, with intention, we parted
company; but there was something that, before this, I felt it due to my
claim of consistency to bring out. "It wasn't, at all events, Gilbert
Long behind the tree!"
My triumph, however, beneath the sponge she was prepared to pass again
over much of our experience, was short-lived. "Of course it wasn't. We
shouldn't have been treated to the scene if it _had_ been. What could
she possibly have put poor Briss there for but just to show it wasn't?"