II

Whether or no by its so different appearance from that of Mr. Gaw, the

figure propped on pillows in the vast cool room and lighted in such a

way that the clear deepening west seemed to flush toward it, through a

wide high window, in the interest of its full effect, impressed our

young man as massive and expansive, as of a beautiful bland dignity

indeed--though emulating Rosanna's relative, he was at first to gather,

by a perfect readiness to stare rather than speak. Miss Goodenough had

hovered a little, for full assurance, but then had thrown off with a

_timbre_ of voice never yet used for Gray's own ear in any sick room,

"Well, I guess you won't come to blows!" and had left them face to

face--besides leaving the air quickened by the freedom of her humour.

They were face to face for the time across an interval which, to do her

justice, she had not taken upon herself to deal with directly; this in

spite of Gray's apprehension at the end of a minute that she might, by

the touch of her hand or the pitch of her spirit, push him further

forward than he had immediately judged decent to advance. He had stopped

at a certain distance from the great grave bed, stopped really for

consideration and deference, or through the instinct of submitting

himself first of all to approval, or at least to encouragement; the

space, not great enough for reluctance and not small enough for

presumption, showed him ready to obey any sign his uncle should make.

Mr. Betterman struck him, in this high quietude of contemplation, much

less as formidable than as mildly and touchingly august; he had not

supposed him, he became suddenly aware, so great a person--a presence

like that of some weary veteran of affairs, one of the admittedly

eminent whose last words would be expected to figure in history. The

large fair face, rather square than heavy, was neither clouded nor

ravaged, but finely serene; the silver-coloured hair seemed to bind the

broad high brow as with a band of splendid silk, while the eyes rested

on Gray with an air of acceptance beyond attestation by the mere play of

cheer or the comparative gloom of relief.

"Ah le beau type, le beau type!" was during these instants the visitor's

inward comment breaking into one of the strange tongues that experience

had appointed him privately to use, in many a case, for the

appropriation of aspects and appearances. It was not till afterwards

that he happened to learn how his uncle had been capable, two or three

hours before seeing him, of offering cheek and chin to the deft

ministration of a barber, a fact highly illuminating, though by that

time the gathered lights were thick. What the patient owed on the spot

to the sacrifice, he easily made out, was that look as of the last

refinement of preparation, that positive splendour of the immaculate,

which was really, on one's taking it all in, but part of an earnest

recognition of his guest's own dignity. The grave beauty of the personal

presence, the vague anticipation as of something that might go on to be

commemorated for its example, the great pure fragrant room, bathed in

the tempered glow of the afternoon's end, the general lucidity and

tranquillity and security of the whole presented case, begot in fine, on

our young friend's part, an extraordinary sense that as he himself was

important enough to be on show, so these peculiar perfections that met

him were but so many virtual honours rendered and signs of the high

level to which he had mounted. On show, yes--that was it, and more

wonderfully than could be said: Gray was sure after a little of how

right he was to stand off as yet in any interest of his own significance

that might be involved. There was clearly something his uncle so wanted

him to be that he should run no possible danger of being it to excess,

and that if he might only there and then grasp it he would ask but to

proceed, for decency's sake, according to his lights: just as so short a

time before a like force of suggestion had played upon him from Mr.

Gaw--each of these appeals clothing him in its own way with such an

oddity of pertinence, such a bristling set of attributes. This wait of

the parties to the present one for articulate expression, on either

side, of whatever it was that might most concern them together, promised

also to last as the tension had lasted down on the verandah, and would

perhaps indeed have drawn itself further out if Gray hadn't broken where

he stood into a cry of admiration--since it could scarcely be called

less--that blew to the winds every fear of overstepping.

"It's really worth one's coming so far, uncle, if you don't mind my

saying so--it's really worth a great pilgrimage to see anything so

splendid."

The old man heard, clearly, as by some process that was still deeply

active; and then after a pause that represented, Gray was sure, no

failure at all of perception, but only the wide embrace of a possibility

of pleasure, sounded bravely back: "Does it come up to what you've

seen?"

It was Gray rather who was for a moment mystified--though only to

further spontaneity when he had caught the sense of the question. "Oh,

you come up to everything--by which I mean, if I may, that nothing comes

up to _you!_ I mean, if I may," he smiled, "that you yourself, uncle,

affect me as the biggest and most native American impression that I can

possibly be exposed to."

"Well," said Mr. Betterman, and again as with a fond deliberation, "what

I'm going to like, I see, is to listen to the way you talk. That," he

added with his soft distinctness, a singleness of note somehow for the

many things meant, "that, I guess, is about what I most wanted you to

come for. Unless it be to look at you too. I like to look right at you."

"Well," Gray harmoniously laughed again, "if even that can give you

pleasure----!" He stood as for inspection, easily awkward, pleasantly

loose, holding up his head as if to make the most of no great stature.

"I've never been so sorry that there isn't more of me."

The fine old eyes on the pillow kept steadily taking him in; he could

quite see that he happened to be, as he might have called it, right; and

though he had never felt himself, within his years, extraordinarily or

excitingly wrong, so that this felicity might have turned rather flat

for him, there was still matter for emotion, for the immediate throb and

thrill, in finding success so crown him. He had been spared, thank

goodness, any positive shame, but had never known his brow brushed or so

much as tickled by the laurel or the bay. "Does it mean," he might have

murmured to himself, "the strangest shift of standards?"--but his uncle

had meanwhile spoken. "Well, there's all of you I'm going to want. And

there must be more of you than I see. Because you _are_ different," Mr.

Betterman considered.

"But different from what?" Truly was Gray interested to know.

It took Mr. Betterman a moment to say, but he seemed to convey that it

might have been guessed. "From what you'd have been if you had come."

The young man was indeed drawn in. "If I had come years ago? Well,

perhaps," he so far happily agreed--"for I've often thought of that

myself. Only, you see," he laughed, "I'm different from _that_ too. I

mean from what I was when I didn't come."

Mr. Betterman looked at it quietly. "You're different in the sense that

you're older--and you seem to me rather older than I supposed. All the

better, all the better," he continued to make out. "You're the same

person I didn't tempt, the same person I _couldn't_--that time when I

tried. I see you are, I see _what_ you are."

"You see terribly much, sir, for the few minutes!" smiled Gray.

"Oh when I _want_ to see----!" the old man comfortably enough sighed. "I

take you in, I take you in; though I grant that I don't quite see how

you can understand. Still," he pursued, "there are things for you to

tell me. You're different from _anything_, and if we had time for

particulars I should like to know a little how you've kept so. I was

afraid you wouldn't turn out perhaps so thoroughly the sort of thing I

liked to think--for I hadn't much more to go upon than what _she_ said,

you know. However," Mr. Betterman wound up as with due comfort, "it's by

what she says that I've gone--and I want her to know that I don't feel

fooled."

If Gray's wonderment could have been said to rest anywhere, hour after

hour, long enough to be detected in the act, the detaining question

would have been more than any other perhaps that of whether Miss Gaw

would "come up." Now that she did so however, in this quiet way, it had

no strangeness that his being at once glad couldn't make but a mouthful

of; and the recent interest of what she had lately written to him was as

nothing to the interest of her becoming personally his uncle's theme.

With which, at the same time, it was pleasanter to him than anything

else to speak of her himself. "If you allude to Rosanna Gaw you'll no

doubt understand how tremendously I want to see her."

The sick man waited a little--but not, it quite seemed, from lack of

understanding. "She wants tremendously to see you, Graham. You might

know that of course from her going to work so." Then again he gathered

his thoughts and again after a little went on. "She had a good idea, and

I love her for it; but I'm afraid my own hasn't been so very much to

give _her_ the satisfaction. I've wanted it myself, and--well, here I am

getting it from you. Yes," he kept up, his eyes never moving from his

nephew, "you couldn't give me more if you had tried, from so far back,

on purpose. But I can't tell you half!" He exhaled a long breath--he was

a little spent. "You tell _me._ You tell _me._"

"I'm tiring you, sir," Gray said.

"Not by letting me see--you'd only tire me if you didn't." Then for the

first time his eyes glanced about. "Haven't they put a place for you to

sit? Perhaps they knew," he suggested, while Gray reached out for a

chair, "perhaps they knew just how I'd want to see you. There seems

nothing they don't know," he contentedly threw off again.

Gray had his chair before him, his hands on the back tilting it a

little. "They're extraordinary. I've never seen anything like them. They

help me tremendously," he cheerfully confessed.