He had dropped, a little wearily, the poor dear man, into a seat at the
shady end of the terrace, whither he had wended or, it came over him
with a sense of the blest “irony” of vulgar misinterpretation, almost
zig-zagged his way after lunch. For he had permitted himself the merest
sip of the ducal Yquem or Brane Cantenac, or whatever—he knew too well,
oh, _didn’t_ he? after all these years of Scratchem house-parties,
the dangerous convivialities one had better show for beautifully
appreciating than freely partake of—but he had been unable, in his
exposure as the author of established reputation, the celebrity of the
hour, the “master,” as chattering Lady Jemima _would_ call him between
the omelette and the chaudfroid, to “take cover” from the ducal dates.
Well, the “All clear” was now sounded, but his head was still dizzy
with the reverberating ’87’s and ’90’s and ’96’s and other such bombs
of chronological precision that the host had dropped upon the guests as
the butler filled their glasses. His subsequent consciousness was quite
to cherish the view that dates which went thus distressingly to one’s
head must somehow not be allowed to slip out of it again, but be turned
into “copy” for readers who innocently look to their favourite romancers
for connoisseurship in wines. What Lady Jemima had flung out at lunch
was true, readers _are_ a “rum lot,” and, hang it all, who says art says
sacrifice, readers were a necessary evil, the many-headed monster must
be fed, and he’d be blest if he wouldn’t feed it with dates, and show
himself for, indulgently, richly, chronologically, “rum.”
It marked, however, the feeling of the hour with him that this vision of
future “bluffing” about vintages interfered not at all with the measure
of his actual _malaise_. He still nervously fingered the telegram handed
to him at lunch, and, when read, furtively crumpled into his pocket
under Lady Jemima’s celebrated nose. It was entirely odious to him, the
crude purport of the message, as well as the hideous yellow ochre of
its envelope. “Confidently expect you,” the horrid thing ran, “to come
and see your own play.” This Stage Society, if that was its confounded
name, was indeed of a confidence! Yes, and of the last vulgarity!
His conscience was not void, but, on the contrary, quite charged and
brimming with remembered lapses from the ideal life of letters—it was
the hair-shirt he secretly wore even in the Scratchem world under the
conventional garment which the Lady Jemimas of that world teased him by
calling a “boiled rag”—but the “expected,” _that_, thank goodness, he
had never been guilty of. Nay, was it not his “note,” as the reviewers
said, blithely and persistently to balk “expectation”? Had he not in
every book of his successfully hugged his own mystery? Had not these same
reviewers always missed his little point with a perfection exactly as
admirable when they patted him on the back as when they kicked him on the
shins? Did a single one of them ever discover “the figure in the carpet”?
How many baffled readers hadn’t written to him imploring him to divulge
what _really_ happened between Milly and Densher in that last meeting
at Venice? Certainly he was in no chuckling mood under the smart of the
telegram, but it seemed to him that he could almost have chuckled at the
thought that he beautifully didn’t know what happened in that Venetian
meeting himself! And this impossible Stage Society, with that collective
fatuity which seems always so much more gross than any individual sort,
“confidently expected” him to come!
What was it, please, he put the question to himself with a heat which
seemed to give even the shady end of the terrace the inconvenience of an
exposure to full sun, they expected him to come _to_, or, still worse,
for having probed the wound he must not flinch with the scalpel, to come
_for_? Oh, no, he had not forgotten _The Reprobate_, and what angered
him was that _they_ hadn’t, either. He had not forgotten a blessed one
of the plays he had written for the country towns a score of years ago,
when he had been bitten by the tarantula of the theatre, and, remembering
them, he felt now viciously capable of biting the tarantula back. He had
written them, God forgive him, for country towns. He positively shuddered
when he found himself in a country town, to this day. The terrace at
Scratchem notoriously commanded a distant prospect of at least three,
in as many counties, with cathedrals, famous inns, theatres—the whole
orthodox equipment, he summed it up vindictively in cheap journalese, of
country towns. Vindictive, too, was his reflection that these objects
of his old crazy solicitude must have been revolutionized in twenty
years, their cathedrals “restored,” their inns (the “A.B.C.” vouched
for it) “entirely refitted with electric light,” their theatres turned
into picture palaces. All the old associations of _The Reprobate_ were
extinct. It was monstrous that it should be entirely refitted with
electric light.
And in the crude glare of that powerful illuminant, with every switch
or whatever mercilessly turned—didn’t they call it?—“on,” he seemed to
see the wretched thing, bare and hideous, with no cheap artifice of
“make-up,” no dab of rouge or streak of burnt cork, spared the dishonour
of exposure. The crack in the golden bowl would be revealed, his awkward
age would be brought up against him, what Maisie knew would be nothing
to what everybody would now know. His agony was not long purely mental;
it suddenly became intercostal. A sharp point had dug him in the ribs.
It was Lady Jemima’s, it couldn’t _not_ be Lady Jemima’s, pink parasol.
Aware of the really great ease of really great ladies he forced a smile,
as he rubbed his side. Ah, Olympians were unconventional indeed—that was
a part of their high bravery and privilege.
“Dear Master,” she began, and the phrase hurt him even more than the
parasol, “won’t you take poor little _me_?”
The great lady had read his telegram! Olympian unconventionality was of a
licence!
“Yes,” she archly beamed, “I looked over your shoulder at lunch, and——”
“And,” he interruptingly wailed, “you know all.”
“All,” she nodded, “_tout le tremblement_, the whole caboodle. Now be an
angel and take me.”
“But, dear lady,” he gloomed at her, “that’s just it. The blest play is
so naïvely, so vulgarly, beyond all redemption though not, thank Heaven,
beyond my repudiation, caboodle.”
“Oh, fiddlesticks,” she playfully rejoined, and the artist in him
registered for future use her rich Olympian vocabulary, “you _wrote_ it,
Master, anyhow. We’ve all been young once. Take me, and we’ll both be
young again,” she gave it him straight, “together.”
Ah, then the woman _was_ dangerous. Scratchem gossip had, for once, not
overshot the mark. He would show her, all Olympian though she was, that
giving it straight was a game two could play at.
“Dear lady,” he said, “you’re wonderful. But I won’t take you. What’s
more, I’m not”—and he had it to himself surprisingly ready—“taking
_any_.”