peradventure caught a glimpse of the money in the table-drawers?"
At this my companion honestly flushed. "How can you be so cruel when
you know how little he calculates?"
"Forgive me, I do know it. But you tell me things that act on my
nerves. I'm sure he hadn't caught a glimpse of anything but some
splendid idea."
Mrs. Mulville brightly concurred. "And perhaps even of her beautiful
listening face."
"Perhaps, even! And what was it all about?"
"His talk? It was _à propos_ of her engagement, which I had told him
about: the idea of marriage, the philosophy, the poetry, the
profundity of it." It was impossible wholly to restrain one's mirth at
this, and some rude ripple that I emitted again caused my companion to
admonish me. "It sounds a little stale, but you know his freshness."
"Of illustration? Indeed I do!"
"And how he has always been right on that great question."
"On what great question, dear lady, hasn't he been right?"
"Of what other great men can you equally say it? I mean that he has
never, but _never_, had a deviation?" Mrs. Mulville exultantly
demanded.
I tried to think of some other great man, but I had to give it up.
"Didn't Miss Anvoy express her satisfaction in any less diffident way
than by her charming present?" I was reduced to inquiring instead.
"Oh yes, she overflowed to me on the steps while he was getting into
the carriage." These words somehow brushed up a picture of Saltram's
big shawled back as he hoisted himself into the green landau. "She
said she was not disappointed," Adelaide pursued.
I meditated a moment. "Did he wear his shawl?"
"His shawl?" She had not even noticed.
"I mean yours."
"He looked very nice, and you know he's always clean. Miss Anvoy used
such a remarkable expression--she said his mind is like a crystal!"
I pricked up my ears. "A crystal?"
"Suspended in the moral world--swinging and shining and flashing
there. She's monstrously clever, you know."
I reflected again. "Monstrously!"
VIII
George Gravener didn't follow her, for late in September, after the
House had risen, I met him in a railway-carriage. He was coming up
from Scotland, and I had just quitted the abode of a relation who
lived near Durham. The current of travel back to London was not yet
strong; at any rate on entering the compartment I found he had had it
for some time to himself. We fared in company, and though he had a
blue-book in his lap and the open jaws of his bag threatened me with
the white teeth of confused papers, we inevitably, we even at last
sociably, conversed. I saw that things were not well with him, but I
asked no question until something dropped by himself made an absence
of curiosity almost rude. He mentioned that he was worried about his
good old friend Lady Coxon, who, with her niece likely to be detained
some time in America, lay seriously ill at Clockborough, much on his
mind and on his hands.
"Ah, Miss Anvoy's in America?"
"Her father has got into a horrid mess, lost no end of money."
I hesitated, after expressing due concern, but I presently said, "I
hope that raises no obstacle to your marriage."
"None whatever; moreover it's my trade to meet objections. But it may
create tiresome delays, of which there have been too many, from
various causes, already. Lady Coxon got very bad, then she got much
better. Then Mr. Anvoy suddenly began to totter, and now he seems
quite on his back. I'm afraid he's really in for some big disaster.
Lady Coxon is worse again, awfully upset by the news from America, and
she sends me word that she _must_ have Ruth. How can I give her Ruth?
I haven't got Ruth myself!"
"Surely you haven't lost her," I smiled.
"She's everything to her wretched father. She writes me by every post,
telling me to smooth her aunt's pillow. I've other things to smooth;
but the old lady, save for her servants, is really alone. She won't
receive her Coxon relations, because she's angry at so much of her
money going to them. Besides, she's off her head," said Gravener very
frankly.
I don't remember whether it was this, or what it was, that made me ask
if she had not such an appreciation of Mrs. Saltram as might render
that active person of some use.
He gave me a cold glance, asking me what had put Mrs. Saltram into my
head, and I replied that she was unfortunately never out of it. I
happened to remember the wonderful accounts she had given me of the
kindness Lady Coxon had shown her. Gravener declared this to be false:
Lady Coxon, who didn't care for her, hadn't seen her three times. The
only foundation for it was that Miss Anvoy, who used, poor girl, to
chuck money about in a manner she must now regret, had for an hour
seen in the miserable woman (you could never know what she would see
in people), an interesting pretext for the liberality with which her
nature overflowed. But even Miss Anvoy was now quite tired of her.
Gravener told me more about the crash in New York and the annoyance it
had been to him, and we also glanced here and there in other
directions; but by the time we got to Doncaster the principal thing he
had communicated was that he was keeping something back. We stopped at
that station, and, at the carriage door, some one made a movement to
get in. Gravener uttered a sound of impatience, and I said to myself
that but for this I should have had the secret. Then the intruder, for
some reason, spared us his company; we started afresh, and my hope of
the secret returned. Gravener remained silent however, and I pretended
to go to sleep; in fact, in discouragement, I really dozed. When I
opened my eyes I found he was looking at me with an injured air. He
tossed away with some vivacity the remnant of a cigarette and then he
said: "If you're not too sleepy I want to put you a case." I answered
that I would make every effort to attend, and I felt it was going to
be interesting when he went on: "As I told you a while ago, Lady
Coxon, poor dear, is a maniac." His tone had much behind it--was full
of promise. I inquired if her ladyship's misfortune were a feature of
her malady or only of her character, and he replied that it was a
product of both. The case he wanted to put me was a matter on which it
would interest him to have the impression--the judgment, he might also
say--of another person. "I mean of the average intelligent man," he
said: "but you see I take what I can get." There would be the
technical, the strictly legal view; then there would be the way the
question would strike a man of the world. He had lighted another
cigarette while he talked, and I saw he was glad to have it to handle
when he brought out at last, with a laugh slightly artificial: "In
fact it's a subject on which Miss Anvoy and I are pulling different
ways."
"And you want me to pronounce between you? I pronounce in advance for
Miss Anvoy."
"In advance--that's quite right. That's how I pronounced when I asked
her to marry me. But my story will interest you only so far as your
mind is not made up." Gravener puffed his cigarette a minute and then
continued: "Are you familiar with the idea of the Endowment of
Research?"
"Of Research?" I was at sea for a moment.
"I give you Lady Coxon's phrase. She has it on the brain."
"She wishes to endow----?"
"Some earnest and disinterested seeker," Gravener said. "It was a
half-baked plan of her late husband's, and he handed it on to her;
setting apart in his will a sum of money of which she was to enjoy the
interest for life, but of which, should she eventually see her
opportunity--the matter was left largely to her discretion--she would
best honour his memory by determining the exemplary public use. This
sum of money, no less than thirteen thousand pounds, was to be called
the Coxon Fund; and poor Sir Gregory evidently proposed to himself
that the Coxon Fund should cover his name with glory--be universally
desired and admired. He left his wife a full declaration of his views;
so far at least as that term may be applied to views vitiated by a
vagueness really infantine. A little learning is a dangerous thing,
and a good citizen who happens to have been an ass is worse for a
community than the small-pox. He's worst of all when he's dead,
because then he can't be stopped. However, such as they were, the poor
man's aspirations are now in his wife's bosom, or fermenting rather in
her foolish brain: it lies with her to carry them out. But of course
she must first catch her hare."
"Her earnest, disinterested seeker?"
"The man suffering most from want of means, want of the pecuniary
independence necessary to cause the light that is in him to shine upon
the human race. The man, in a word, who, having the rest of the
machinery, the spiritual, the intellectual, is most hampered in his
search."
"His search for what?"
"For Moral Truth. That's what Sir Gregory calls it."
I burst out laughing. "Delightful, munificent Sir Gregory! It's a
charming idea."
"So Miss Anvoy thinks."
"Has she a candidate for the Fund?"
"Not that I know of; and she's perfectly reasonable about it. But Lady
Coxon has put the matter before her, and we've naturally had a lot of
talk."
"Talk that, as you've so interestingly intimated, has landed you in a
disagreement."
"She considers there's something in it," Gravener said.
"And you consider there's nothing?"
"It seems to me a puerility fraught with consequences inevitably
grotesque and possibly immoral. To begin with, fancy the idea of
constituting an endowment without establishing a tribunal--a bench of
competent people, of judges."
"The sole tribunal is Lady Coxon?"
"And any one she chooses to invite."
"But she has invited you."
"I'm not competent--I hate the thing. Besides, she hasn't. The real
history of the matter, I take it, is that the inspiration was
originally Lady Coxon's own, that she infected him with it, and that
the flattering option left her is simply his tribute to her beautiful,
her aboriginal enthusiasm. She came to England forty years ago, a thin
transcendental Bostonian, and even her odd, happy, frumpy Clockborough
marriage never really materialised her. She feels indeed that she has
become very British--as if that, as a process, as a _Werden_, were
conceivable; but it's precisely what makes her cling to the notion of
the 'Fund' as to a link with the ideal."
"How can she cling if she's dying?"
"Do you mean how can she act in the matter?" my companion asked.
"That's precisely the question. She can't! As she has never yet caught
her hare, never spied out her lucky impostor (how should she, with the
life she has led?) her husband's intention has come very near lapsing.
His idea, to do him justice, was that it _should_ lapse if exactly the
right person, the perfect mixture of genius and chill penury, should
fail to turn up. Ah! Lady Coxon's very particular--she says there must
be no mistake."
I found all this quite thrilling--I took it in with avidity. "If she
dies without doing anything, what becomes of the money?" I demanded.
"It goes back to his family, if she hasn't made some other disposition
of it."
"She may do that, then--she may divert it?"
"Her hands are not tied. The proof is that three months ago she
offered to make it over to her niece."
"For Miss Anvoy's own use?"
"For Miss Anvoy's own use--on the occasion of her prospective
marriage. She was discouraged--the earnest seeker required so earnest
a search. She was afraid of making a mistake; every one she could
think of seemed either not earnest enough or not poor enough. On the
receipt of the first bad news about Mr. Anvoy's affairs she proposed
to Ruth to make the sacrifice for her. As the situation in New York
got worse she repeated her proposal."
"Which Miss Anvoy declined?"
"Except as a formal trust."
"You mean except as committing herself legally to place the money?"
"On the head of the deserving object, the great man frustrated," said
Gravener. "She only consents to act in the spirit of Sir Gregory's
scheme."
"And you blame her for that?" I asked with an excited smile.
My tone was not harsh, but he coloured a little and there was a queer
light in his eye. "My dear fellow, if I 'blamed' the young lady I'm
engaged to, I shouldn't immediately say so even to so old a friend as
you." I saw that some deep discomfort, some restless desire to be
sided with, reassuringly, becomingly reflected, had been at the bottom
of his drifting so far, and I was genuinely touched by his confidence.
It was inconsistent with his habits; but being troubled about a woman
was not, for him, a habit: that itself was an inconsistency. George
Gravener could stand straight enough before any other combination of
forces. It amused me to think that the combination he had succumbed to
had an American accent, a transcendental aunt and an insolvent father;
but all my old loyalty to him mustered to meet this unexpected hint
that I could help him. I saw that I could from the insincere tone in
which he pursued: "I've criticised her of course, I've contended with
her, and it has been great fun." It clearly couldn't have been such
great fun as to make it improper for me presently to ask if Miss Anvoy
had nothing at all settled upon herself. To this he replied that she
had only a trifle from her mother--a mere four hundred a year, which
was exactly why it would be convenient to him that she shouldn't
decline, in the face of this total change in her prospects, an
accession of income which would distinctly help them to marry. When I
inquired if there were no other way in which so rich and so
affectionate an aunt could cause the weight of her benevolence to be
felt, he answered that Lady Coxon was affectionate indeed, but was
scarcely to be called rich. She could let her project of the Fund
lapse for her niece's benefit, but she couldn't do anything else. She
had been accustomed to regard her as tremendously provided for, and
she was up to her eyes in promises to anxious Coxons. She was a woman
of an inordinate conscience, and her conscience was now a distress to
her, hovering round her bed in irreconcilable forms of resentful
husbands, portionless nieces and undiscoverable philosophers.
We were by this time getting into the whirr of fleeting platforms, the
multiplication of lights. "I think you'll find," I said with a laugh,
"that the difficulty will disappear in the very fact that the
philosopher _is_ undiscoverable."
He began to gather up his papers. "Who can set a limit to the
ingenuity of an extravagant woman?"
"Yes, after all, who indeed?" I echoed as I recalled the extravagance
commemorated in Mrs. Mulville's anecdote of Miss Anvoy and the thirty
pounds.
IX
The thing I had been most sensible of in that talk with George
Gravener was the way Saltram's name kept out of it. It seemed to me at
the time that we were quite pointedly silent about him; yet afterwards
I inclined to think that there had been on my companion's part no
conscious avoidance. Later on I was sure of this, and for the best of
reasons--the reason, namely, of my perceiving more completely that,
for evil as well as for good, he left Gravener's imagination utterly
cold. Gravener was not afraid of him; he was too much disgusted with
him. No more was I, doubtless, and for very much the same reason. I
treated my friend's story as an absolute confidence; but when before
Christmas, by Mrs. Saltram, I was informed of Lady Coxon's death
without having had news of Miss Anvoy's return, I found myself taking
for granted that we should hear no more of these nuptials, in which I
now recognised an element incongruous from the first. I began to ask
myself how people who suited each other so little could please each
other so much. The charm was some material charm, some affinity
exquisite doubtless, but superficial; some surrender to youth and
beauty and passion, to force and grace and fortune, happy accidents
and easy contacts. They might dote on each other's persons, but how
could they know each other's souls? How could they have the same
prejudices, how could they have the same horizon? Such questions, I
confess, seemed quenched but not answered when, one day in February,
going out to Wimbledon, I found my young lady in the house. A passion
that had brought her back across the wintry ocean was as much of a
passion as was necessary. No impulse equally strong indeed had drawn
George Gravener to America; a circumstance on which, however, I
reflected only long enough to remind myself that it was none of my
business. Ruth Anvoy was distinctly different, and I felt that the
difference was not simply that of her being in mourning. Mrs. Mulville
told me soon enough what it was: it was the difference between a
handsome girl with large expectations and a handsome girl with only
four hundred a year. This explanation indeed didn't wholly content me,
not even when I learned that her mourning had a double cause--learned
that poor Mr. Anvoy, giving way altogether, buried under the ruins of
his fortune and leaving next to nothing, had died a few weeks before.
"So she has come out to marry George Gravener?" I demanded. "Wouldn't
it have been prettier of him to have saved her the trouble?"
"Hasn't the House just met?" said Adelaide. Then she added: "I gather
that her having come is exactly a sign that the marriage is a little
shaky. If it were certain, so self-respecting a girl as Ruth would
have waited for him over there."
I noted that they were already Ruth and Adelaide, but what I said was:
"Do you mean that she has returned to make it a certainty?"
"No, I mean that I imagine she has come out for some reason
independent of it." Adelaide could only imagine as yet, and there was
more, as we found, to be revealed. Mrs. Mulville, on hearing of her
arrival, had brought the young lady out, in the green landau, for the
Sunday. The Coxons were in possession of the house in the Regent's
Park, and Miss Anvoy was in dreary lodgings. George Gravener was with
her when Adelaide called, but he had assented graciously enough to the
little visit at Wimbledon. The carriage, with Mr. Saltram in it but
not mentioned, had been sent off on some errand from which it was to
return and pick the ladies up. Gravener left them together, and at the
end of an hour, on the Saturday afternoon, the party of three drove
out to Wimbledon. This was the girl's second glimpse of our great man,
and I was interested in asking Mrs. Mulville if the impression made by
the first appeared to have been confirmed. On her replying, after
consideration, that of course with time and opportunity it couldn't
fail to be, but that as yet she was disappointed, I was sufficiently
struck with her use of this last word to question her further.
"Do you mean that you're disappointed because you judge that Miss
Anvoy is?"
"Yes; I hoped for a greater effect last evening. We had two or three
people, but he scarcely opened his mouth."
"He'll be all the better this evening," I added after a moment. "What
particular importance do you attach to the idea of her being
impressed?"
Adelaide turned her clear, pale eyes on me as if she were amazed at my
levity. "Why, the importance of her being as happy as _we_ are!"
I'm afraid that at this my levity increased. "Oh, that's a happiness
almost too great to wish a person!" I saw she had not yet in her mind
what I had in mine, and at any rate the visitor's actual bliss was
limited to a walk in the garden with Kent Mulville. Later in the
afternoon I also took one, and I saw nothing of Miss Anvoy till
dinner, at which we were without the company of Saltram, who had
caused it to be reported that he was out of sorts and lying down. This
made us, most of us--for there were other friends present--convey to
each other in silence some of the unutterable things which in those
years our eyes had inevitably acquired the art of expressing. If an
American inquirer had not been there we would have expressed them
otherwise, and Adelaide would have pretended not to hear. I had seen
her, before the very fact, abstract herself nobly; and I knew that
more than once, to keep it from the servants, managing, dissimulating
cleverly, she had helped her husband to carry him bodily to his room.
Just recently he had been so wise and so deep and so high that I had
begun to be nervous--to wonder if by chance there were something
behind it, if he were kept straight, for instance, by the knowledge
that the hated Pudneys would have more to tell us if they chose. He
was lying low, but unfortunately it was common knowledge with us that
the biggest splashes took place in the quietest pools. We should have
had a merry life indeed if all the splashes had sprinkled us as
refreshingly as the waters we were even then to feel about our ears.
Kent Mulville had been up to his room, but had come back with a facial
inscrutability that I had seen him achieve in equal measure only on
the evening I waited in the lecture-room with Miss Anvoy. I said to
myself that our friend had gone out, but I was glad that the presence
of a comparative stranger deprived us of the dreary duty of suggesting
to each other, in respect of his errand, edifying possibilities in
which we didn't ourselves believe. At ten o'clock he came into the
drawing-room with his waistcoat much awry but his eyes sending out
great signals. It was precisely with his entrance that I ceased to be
vividly conscious of him. I saw that the crystal, as I had called it,
had begun to swing, and I had need of my immediate attention for Miss
Anvoy.