AS they all came out from luncheon General Fancourt took hold of him with
an “I say, I want you to know my girl!” as if the idea had just occurred
to him and he hadn’t spoken of it before. With the other hand he
possessed himself all paternally of the young lady. “You know all about
him. I’ve seen you with his books. She reads everything—everything!” he
went on to Paul. The girl smiled at him and then laughed at her father.
The General turned away and his daughter spoke—“Isn’t papa delightful?”
“He is indeed, Miss Fancourt.”
“As if I read you because I read ‘everything’!”
“Oh I don’t mean for saying that,” said Paul Overt. “I liked him from
the moment he began to be kind to me. Then he promised me this
privilege.”
“It isn’t for you he means it—it’s for me. If you flatter yourself that
he thinks of anything in life but me you’ll find you’re mistaken. He
introduces every one. He thinks me insatiable.”
“You speak just like him,” laughed our youth.
“Ah but sometimes I want to”—and the girl coloured. “I don’t read
everything—I read very little. But I _have_ read you.”
“Suppose we go into the gallery,” said Paul Overt. She pleased him
greatly, not so much because of this last remark—though that of course
was not too disconcerting—as because, seated opposite to him at luncheon,
she had given him for half an hour the impression of her beautiful face.
Something else had come with it—a sense of generosity, of an enthusiasm
which, unlike many enthusiasms, was not all manner. That was not spoiled
for him by his seeing that the repast had placed her again in familiar
contact with Henry St. George. Sitting next her this celebrity was also
opposite our young man, who had been able to note that he multiplied the
attentions lately brought by his wife to the General’s notice. Paul
Overt had gathered as well that this lady was not in the least
discomposed by these fond excesses and that she gave every sign of an
unclouded spirit. She had Lord Masham on one side of her and on the
other the accomplished Mr. Mulliner, editor of the new high-class lively
evening paper which was expected to meet a want felt in circles
increasingly conscious that Conservatism must be made amusing, and
unconvinced when assured by those of another political colour that it was
already amusing enough. At the end of an hour spent in her company Paul
Overt thought her still prettier than at the first radiation, and if her
profane allusions to her husband’s work had not still rung in his ears he
should have liked her—so far as it could be a question of that in
connexion with a woman to whom he had not yet spoken and to whom probably
he should never speak if it were left to her. Pretty women were a clear
need to this genius, and for the hour it was Miss Fancourt who supplied
the want. If Overt had promised himself a closer view the occasion was
now of the best, and it brought consequences felt by the young man as
important. He saw more in St. George’s face, which he liked the better
for its not having told its whole story in the first three minutes. That
story came out as one read, in short instalments—it was excusable that
one’s analogies should be somewhat professional—and the text was a style
considerably involved, a language not easy to translate at sight. There
were shades of meaning in it and a vague perspective of history which
receded as you advanced. Two facts Paul had particularly heeded. The
first of these was that he liked the measured mask much better at
inscrutable rest than in social agitation; its almost convulsive smile
above all displeased him (as much as any impression from that source
could), whereas the quiet face had a charm that grew in proportion as
stillness settled again. The change to the expression of gaiety excited,
he made out, very much the private protest of a person sitting gratefully
in the twilight when the lamp is brought in too soon. His second
reflexion was that, though generally averse to the flagrant use of
ingratiating arts by a man of age “making up” to a pretty girl, he was
not in this case too painfully affected: which seemed to prove either
that St. George had a light hand or the air of being younger than he was,
or else that Miss Fancourt’s own manner somehow made everything right.
Overt walked with her into the gallery, and they strolled to the end of
it, looking at the pictures, the cabinets, the charming vista, which
harmonised with the prospect of the summer afternoon, resembling it by a
long brightness, with great divans and old chairs that figured hours of
rest. Such a place as that had the added merit of giving those who came
into it plenty to talk about. Miss Fancourt sat down with her new
acquaintance on a flowered sofa, the cushions of which, very numerous,
were tight ancient cubes of many sizes, and presently said: “I’m so glad
to have a chance to thank you.”
“To thank me—?” He had to wonder.
“I liked your book so much. I think it splendid.”
She sat there smiling at him, and he never asked himself which book she
meant; for after all he had written three or four. That seemed a vulgar
detail, and he wasn’t even gratified by the idea of the pleasure she told
him—her handsome bright face told him—he had given her. The feeling she
appealed to, or at any rate the feeling she excited, was something
larger, something that had little to do with any quickened pulsation of
his own vanity. It was responsive admiration of the life she embodied,
the young purity and richness of which appeared to imply that real
success was to resemble _that_, to live, to bloom, to present the
perfection of a fine type, not to have hammered out headachy fancies with
a bent back at an ink-stained table. While her grey eyes rested on
him—there was a wideish space between these, and the division of her
rich-coloured hair, so thick that it ventured to be smooth, made a free
arch above them—he was almost ashamed of that exercise of the pen which
it was her present inclination to commend. He was conscious he should
have liked better to please her in some other way. The lines of her face
were those of a woman grown, but the child lingered on in her complexion
and in the sweetness of her mouth. Above all she was natural—that was
indubitable now; more natural than he had supposed at first, perhaps on
account of her æsthetic toggery, which was conventionally unconventional,
suggesting what he might have called a tortuous spontaneity. He had
feared that sort of thing in other cases, and his fears had been
justified; for, though he was an artist to the essence, the modern
reactionary nymph, with the brambles of the woodland caught in her folds
and a look as if the satyrs had toyed with her hair, made him shrink not
as a man of starch and patent leather, but as a man potentially himself a
poet or even a faun. The girl was really more candid than her costume,
and the best proof of it was her supposing her liberal character suited
by any uniform. This was a fallacy, since if she was draped as a
pessimist he was sure she liked the taste of life. He thanked her for
her appreciation—aware at the same time that he didn’t appear to thank
her enough and that she might think him ungracious. He was afraid she
would ask him to explain something he had written, and he always winced
at that—perhaps too timidly—for to his own ear the explanation of a work
of art sounded fatuous. But he liked her so much as to feel a confidence
that in the long run he should be able to show her he wasn’t rudely
evasive. Moreover she surely wasn’t quick to take offence, wasn’t
irritable; she could be trusted to wait. So when he said to her, “Ah
don’t talk of anything I’ve done, don’t talk of it _here_; there’s
another man in the house who’s the actuality!”—when he uttered this short
sincere protest it was with the sense that she would see in the words
neither mock humility nor the impatience of a successful man bored with
praise.
“You mean Mr. St. George—isn’t he delightful?”
Paul Overt met her eyes, which had a cool morning-light that would have
half-broken his heart if he hadn’t been so young. “Alas I don’t know
him. I only admire him at a distance.”
“Oh you must know him—he wants so to talk to you,” returned Miss
Fancourt, who evidently had the habit of saying the things that, by her
quick calculation, would give people pleasure. Paul saw how she would
always calculate on everything’s being simple between others.
“I shouldn’t have supposed he knew anything about me,” he professed.
“He does then—everything. And if he didn’t I should be able to tell
him.”
“To tell him everything?” our friend smiled.
“You talk just like the people in your book!” she answered.
“Then they must all talk alike.”
She thought a moment, not a bit disconcerted. “Well, it must be so
difficult. Mr. St. George tells me it _is_—terribly. I’ve tried too—and
I find it so. I’ve tried to write a novel.”
“Mr. St. George oughtn’t to discourage you,” Paul went so far as to say.
“You do much more—when you wear that expression.”
“Well, after all, why try to be an artist?” the young man pursued. “It’s
so poor—so poor!”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Miss Fancourt, who looked grave.
“I mean as compared with being a person of action—as living your works.”
“But what’s art but an intense life—if it be real?” she asked. “I think
it’s the only one—everything else is so clumsy!” Her companion laughed,
and she brought out with her charming serenity what next struck her.
“It’s so interesting to meet so many celebrated people.”
“So I should think—but surely it isn’t new to you.”
“Why I’ve never seen any one—any one: living always in Asia.”
The way she talked of Asia somehow enchanted him. “But doesn’t that
continent swarm with great figures? Haven’t you administered provinces
in India and had captive rajahs and tributary princes chained to your
car?”
It was as if she didn’t care even _should_ he amuse himself at her cost.
“I was with my father, after I left school to go out there. It was
delightful being with him—we’re alone together in the world, he and I—but
there was none of the society I like best. One never heard of a
picture—never of a book, except bad ones.”
“Never of a picture? Why, wasn’t all life a picture?”
She looked over the delightful place where they sat. “Nothing to compare
to this. I adore England!” she cried.
It fairly stirred in him the sacred chord. “Ah of course I don’t deny
that we must do something with her, poor old dear, yet.”
“She hasn’t been touched, really,” said the girl.
“Did Mr. St. George say that?”
There was a small and, as he felt, harmless spark of irony in his
question; which, however, she answered very simply, not noticing the
insinuation. “Yes, he says England hasn’t been touched—not considering
all there is,” she went on eagerly. “He’s so interesting about our
country. To listen to him makes one want so to do something.”
“It would make _me_ want to,” said Paul Overt, feeling strongly, on the
instant, the suggestion of what she said and that of the emotion with
which she said it, and well aware of what an incentive, on St. George’s
lips, such a speech might be.
“Oh you—as if you hadn’t! I should like so to hear you talk together,”
she added ardently.
“That’s very genial of you; but he’d have it all his own way. I’m
prostrate before him.”
She had an air of earnestness. “Do you think then he’s so perfect?”
“Far from it. Some of his later books seem to me of a queerness—!”
“Yes, yes—he knows that.”
Paul Overt stared. “That they seem to me of a queerness—!”
“Well yes, or at any rate that they’re not what they should be. He told
me he didn’t esteem them. He has told me such wonderful things—he’s so
interesting.”
There was a certain shock for Paul Overt in the knowledge that the fine
genius they were talking of had been reduced to so explicit a confession
and had made it, in his misery, to the first comer; for though Miss
Fancourt was charming what was she after all but an immature girl
encountered at a country-house? Yet precisely this was part of the
sentiment he himself had just expressed: he would make way completely for
the poor peccable great man not because he didn’t read him clear, but
altogether because he did. His consideration was half composed of
tenderness for superficialities which he was sure their perpetrator
judged privately, judged more ferociously than any one, and which
represented some tragic intellectual secret. He would have his reasons
for his psychology à fleur de peau, and these reasons could only be cruel
ones, such as would make him dearer to those who already were fond of
him. “You excite my envy. I have my reserves, I discriminate—but I love
him,” Paul said in a moment. “And seeing him for the first time this way
is a great event for me.”
“How momentous—how magnificent!” cried the girl. “How delicious to bring
you together!”
“Your doing it—that makes it perfect,” our friend returned.
“He’s as eager as you,” she went on. “But it’s so odd you shouldn’t have
met.”
“It’s not really so odd as it strikes you. I’ve been out of England so
much—made repeated absences all these last years.”
She took this in with interest. “And yet you write of it as well as if
you were always here.”
“It’s just the being away perhaps. At any rate the best bits, I suspect,
are those that were done in dreary places abroad.”
“And why were they dreary?”
“Because they were health-resorts—where my poor mother was dying.”
“Your poor mother?”—she was all sweet wonder.
“We went from place to place to help her to get better. But she never
did. To the deadly Riviera (I hate it!) to the high Alps, to Algiers,
and far away—a hideous journey—to Colorado.”
“And she isn’t better?” Miss Fancourt went on.
“She died a year ago.”
“Really?—like mine! Only that’s years since. Some day you must tell me
about your mother,” she added.
He could at first, on this, only gaze at her. “What right things you
say! If you say them to St. George I don’t wonder he’s in bondage.”
It pulled her up for a moment. “I don’t know what you mean. He doesn’t
make speeches and professions at all—he isn’t ridiculous.”
“I’m afraid you consider then that I am.”
“No, I don’t”—she spoke it rather shortly. And then she added: “He
understands—understands everything.”
The young man was on the point of saying jocosely: “And I don’t—is that
it?” But these words, in time, changed themselves to others slightly
less trivial: “Do you suppose he understands his wife?”
Miss Fancourt made no direct answer, but after a moment’s hesitation put
it: “Isn’t she charming?”
“Not in the least!”
“Here he comes. Now you must know him,” she went on. A small group of
visitors had gathered at the other end of the gallery and had been there
overtaken by Henry St. George, who strolled in from a neighbouring room.
He stood near them a moment, not falling into the talk but taking up an
old miniature from a table and vaguely regarding it. At the end of a
minute he became aware of Miss Fancourt and her companion in the
distance; whereupon, laying down his miniature, he approached them with
the same procrastinating air, his hands in his pockets and his eyes
turned, right and left, to the pictures. The gallery was so long that
this transit took some little time, especially as there was a moment when
he stopped to admire the fine Gainsborough. “He says Mrs. St. George has
been the making of him,” the girl continued in a voice slightly lowered.
“Ah he’s often obscure!” Paul laughed.
“Obscure?” she repeated as if she heard it for the first time. Her eyes
rested on her other friend, and it wasn’t lost upon Paul that they
appeared to send out great shafts of softness. “He’s going to speak to
us!” she fondly breathed. There was a sort of rapture in her voice, and
our friend was startled. “Bless my soul, does she care for him like
_that_?—is she in love with him?” he mentally enquired. “Didn’t I tell
you he was eager?” she had meanwhile asked of him.
“It’s eagerness dissimulated,” the young man returned as the subject of
their observation lingered before his Gainsborough. “He edges toward us
shyly. Does he mean that she saved him by burning that book?”
“That book? what book did she burn?” The girl quickly turned her face to
him.
“Hasn’t he told you then?”
“Not a word.”
“Then he doesn’t tell you everything!” Paul had guessed that she pretty
much supposed he did. The great man had now resumed his course and come
nearer; in spite of which his more qualified admirer risked a profane
observation: “St. George and the Dragon is what the anecdote suggests!”
His companion, however, didn’t hear it; she smiled at the dragon’s
adversary. “He _is_ eager—he is!” she insisted.
“Eager for you—yes.”
But meanwhile she had called out: “I’m sure you want to know Mr. Overt.
You’ll be great friends, and it will always be delightful to me to
remember I was here when you first met and that I had something to do
with it.”
There was a freshness of intention in the words that carried them off;
nevertheless our young man was sorry for Henry St. George, as he was
sorry at any time for any person publicly invited to be responsive and
delightful. He would have been so touched to believe that a man he
deeply admired should care a straw for him that he wouldn’t play with
such a presumption if it were possibly vain. In a single glance of the
eye of the pardonable Master he read—having the sort of divination that
belonged to his talent—that this personage had ever a store of friendly
patience, which was part of his rich outfit, but was versed in no printed
page of a rising scribbler. There was even a relief, a simplification,
in that: liking him so much already for what he had done, how could one
have liked him any more for a perception which must at the best have been
vague? Paul Overt got up, trying to show his compassion, but at the same
instant he found himself encompassed by St. George’s happy personal art—a
manner of which it was the essence to conjure away false positions. It
all took place in a moment. Paul was conscious that he knew him now,
conscious of his handshake and of the very quality of his hand; of his
face, seen nearer and consequently seen better, of a general fraternising
assurance, and in particular of the circumstance that St. George didn’t
dislike him (as yet at least) for being imposed by a charming but too
gushing girl, attractive enough without such danglers. No irritation at
any rate was reflected in the voice with which he questioned Miss
Fancourt as to some project of a walk—a general walk of the company round
the park. He had soon said something to Paul about a talk—“We must have
a tremendous lot of talk; there are so many things, aren’t there?”—but
our friend could see this idea wouldn’t in the present case take very
immediate effect. All the same he was extremely happy, even after the
matter of the walk had been settled—the three presently passed back to
the other part of the gallery, where it was discussed with several
members of the party; even when, after they had all gone out together, he
found himself for half an hour conjoined with Mrs. St. George. Her
husband had taken the advance with Miss Fancourt, and this pair were
quite out of sight. It was the prettiest of rambles for a summer
afternoon—a grassy circuit, of immense extent, skirting the limit of the
park within. The park was completely surrounded by its old mottled but
perfect red wall, which, all the way on their left, constituted in itself
an object of interest. Mrs. St. George mentioned to him the surprising
number of acres thus enclosed, together with numerous other facts
relating to the property and the family, and the family’s other
properties: she couldn’t too strongly urge on him the importance of
seeing their other houses. She ran over the names of these and rang the
changes on them with the facility of practice, making them appear an
almost endless list. She had received Paul Overt very amiably on his
breaking ground with her by the mention of his joy in having just made
her husband’s acquaintance, and struck him as so alert and so
accommodating a little woman that he was rather ashamed of his _mot_
about her to Miss Fancourt; though he reflected that a hundred other
people, on a hundred occasions, would have been sure to make it. He got
on with Ms. St. George, in short, better than he expected; but this
didn’t prevent her suddenly becoming aware that she was faint with
fatigue and must take her way back to the house by the shortest cut. She
professed that she hadn’t the strength of a kitten and was a miserable
wreck; a character he had been too preoccupied to discern in her while he
wondered in what sense she could be held to have been the making of her
husband. He had arrived at a glimmering of the answer when she announced
that she must leave him, though this perception was of course
provisional. While he was in the very act of placing himself at her
disposal for the return the situation underwent a change; Lord Masham had
suddenly turned up, coming back to them, overtaking them, emerging from
the shrubbery—Overt could scarcely have said how he appeared—and Mrs. St.
George had protested that she wanted to be left alone and not to break up
the party. A moment later she was walking off with Lord Masham. Our
friend fell back and joined Lady Watermouth, to whom he presently
mentioned that Mrs. St. George had been obliged to renounce the attempt
to go further.
“She oughtn’t to have come out at all,” her ladyship rather grumpily
remarked.
“Is she so very much of an invalid?”
“Very bad indeed.” And his hostess added with still greater austerity:
“She oughtn’t really to come to one!” He wondered what was implied by
this, and presently gathered that it was not a reflexion on the lady’s
conduct or her moral nature: it only represented that her strength was
not equal to her aspirations.