"No--I don't think _he_ cared. I speak of Mr. Gaw's own animus. He
disliked so mortally his old associate, the man who lies dead
upstairs--and in spite of my consideration for him I still preserve his
record."
"How do you know about his hate," Horton asked, "or if your letter,
since you haven't read it, is a record?"
"Well, I don't trust it--I mean not to be. I don't see what else he
could have written me about. Besides," Gray added, "I've my personal
impression."
"Of old Gaw? You have seen him then?"
"I saw him out there on this verandah, where he was hovering in the most
extraordinary fashion, a few hours before his death. It was only for a
few minutes," Gray said--"but they were minutes I shall never forget."
Horton's interest, though so deeply engaged, was not unattended with
perplexity. "You mean he expressed to you such a feeling at such an
hour?"
"He expressed to me in about three minutes, without speech, to which it
seemed he couldn't trust himself, as much as it might have taken him, or
taken anyone else, to express in three months at another time and on
another subject. If you ever yourself saw him," Gray went on, "perhaps
you'll understand."
"Oh I often saw him--and should indeed in your place perhaps have
understood. I never heard him accused of not making people do so. But
you hold," said Horton, "that he must have backed up for you further the
mystic revelation?"
"He had written before he saw me--written on the chance of my being a
person to be affected by it; and after seeing me he didn't destroy or
keep back his message, but emphasised his wish for a punctual delivery."
"By which it is evident," Horton concluded, "that you struck him exactly
as such a person."
"He saw me, by my idea, as giving my attention to what he had there
ready for me." Gray clearly had talked himself into possession of his
case. "That's the sort of person I succeeded in seeming to him--though I
can assure you without my the least wanting to."
"What you feel is then that he thought he might attack with some sort of
shock for you the character of your uncle?" Vinty's question had a
special straightness.
"What I feel is that he has so attacked it, shock or no shock, and that
that thing in my cabinet, which I haven't examined, can only be the
proof."
It gave Horton much to turn over. "But your conviction has an
extraordinary bearing. Do I understand that the thing was handed you by
your friend with a knowledge of its contents?"
"Don't, please," Gray said at once, "understand anything either so
hideous or so impossible. She but carried out a wish uttered on her
father's deathbed, and hasn't so much as suggested that I break the
portentous seal. I think in fact," he assured himself, "that she greatly
prefers I shouldn't."
"Which fact," Horton observed, "but adds of course to your curiosity."
Gray's look at him betrayed on this a still finer interest in _his_
interest. "You see the limits in me of that passion."
"Well, my dear chap, I've seen greater limits to many things than your
having your little secret tucked away under your thumb. Do you mind my
asking," Horton risked, "whether what deters you from action--and by
action I mean opening your letter--is just a real apprehension of the
effect designed by the good gentleman? Do you feel yourself exposed, by
the nature of your mind or any presumption on Gaw's behalf, to give
credit, vulgarly speaking, to whatever charge or charges he may bring?"
Gray weighed the question, his wide dark eyes would have told us, in,
his choicest silver scales. "Neither the nature of my mind, bless it,
nor the utmost force of any presumption to the contrary, prevents my
having found my uncle, in his wonderful latest development, the very
most charming person that I've ever seen in my life. Why he impressed me
as a model of every virtue."
"I confess I don't see," said Horton, "how a relative so behaving could
have failed to endear himself. With such convictions why don't you risk
looking?"
Gray was but for a moment at a loss--he quite undertook to know.
"Because the whole thing would be so horrible. I mean the question
itself is--and even our here and at such a time discussing it."
"Nothing is horrible--to the point of making one quake," Horton opined,
"that falls to the ground with a smash from the moment one drops it. The
sense of your document is exactly what's to be appreciated. It would
have no sense at all if you didn't believe."
Gray considered, but still differed. "Yes, to find it merely vindictive
and base, and thereby to have to take it for false, that would still be
an odious experience."
"Then why the devil don't you simply destroy the thing?" Horton at last
quite impatiently inquired.
Gray showed perhaps he had scarce a reason, but had, to the very
brightest effect, an answer. "That's just what I want you to help me to.
To help me, that is," he explained, "after a little to decide for."
"After a little?" wondered Horton. "After how long?"
"Well, after long enough for me to feel sure I don't act in fear. I
don't want," he went on as in fresh illustration of the pleasure taken
by him, to the point, as it were, of luxury, in feeling no limit to his
companion's comprehension, or to the patience involved in it either,
amusedly as Horton might at moments attempt to belie that, adding
thereby to the whole service something still more spacious--"I don't
want to act in fear of anything or of anyone whatever; I said to myself
at home three weeks ago, or whenever, that it wasn't for that I was
going to come over; and I propose therefore, you see, to know so far as
possible where I am and what I'm about: morally speaking at least, if
not financially."
His friend but looked at him again on this in rather desperate
diversion. "I don't see how you're to know where you are, I confess, if
you take no means to find out."
"Well, my acquisition of property seems by itself to promise me
information, and for the understanding of the lesson I shall have to
take a certain time. What I want," Gray finely argued, "is to act but in
the light of that."
"In the light of time? Then why do you begin by so oddly wasting it?"
"Because I think it may be the only way for me not to waste
understanding. Don't be afraid," he went on, moving as by the effect of
Horton's motion, which had brought that subject of appeal a few steps
nearer the rare repository, "that I shall commit the extravagance of at
all wasting _you._"
Horton, from where he had paused, looked up at the ivory tower; though
as Gray was placed in the straight course of approach to it he had after
a fashion to catch and meet his eyes by the way. "What you really want
of me, it's clear, is to help you to fidget and fumble--or in other
words to prolong the most absurd situation; and what I ought to do, if
you'd believe it of me, is to take that stuff out of your hands and just
deal with it myself."
"And what do you mean by dealing with it yourself?"
"Why destroying it unread by either of us--which," said Horton, looking
about, "I'd do in a jiffy, on the spot, if there were only a fire in
that grate. The place is clear, however, and we've matches; let me chuck
your letter in and enjoy the blaze with you."
"Ah, my dear man, don't! Don't!" Gray repeated, putting it rather as a
plea for indulgence than as any ghost of a defiance, but instinctively
stepping backward in defence of his treasure.
His companion, for a little, gazed at the cabinet, in speculation, it
might really have seemed, as to an extraordinary reach of arm. "You
positively prefer to hug the beastly thing?"
"Let me alone," Gray presently returned, "and you'll probably find I've
hugged it to death."
Horton took, however, on his side, a moment for further reflection. "I
thought what you wanted of me to be exactly _not_ that I should let you
alone, but that I should give you on the contrary my very best
attention!"
"Well," Gray found felicity to answer, "I feel that you'll see how your
very best attention will sometimes consist in your not at all minding
me."
So then for the minute Horton looked as if he took it. The great clock
on the mantel appeared to have stopped with the stop of its late owner's
life; so that he eyed his watch and startled at the hour to which they
had talked. He put out his hand for good-night, and this returned grasp
held them together in silence a minute. Something then in his sense of
the situation determined his breaking out with an intensity not yet
produced in him. "Yes--you're really prodigious. I mean for trust in a
fellow. For upon my honour you know nothing whatever about me."
"That's quite what I mean," said Gray--"that I suffer from my ignorance
of so much that's important, and want naturally to correct it."
"'Naturally'?" his visitor gloomed.
"Why, I do know _this_ about you, that when we were together with old
Roulet at Neuchâtel and, off on our _cours_ that summer, had strayed
into a high place, in the Oberland, where I was ass enough to have slid
down to a scrap of a dizzy ledge, and so hung helpless over the void,
unable to get back, in horror of staying and in greater horror of not,
you got near enough to me, at the risk of your life, to lower to me the
rope we so luckily had with us and that made an effort of my own
possible by my managing to pass it under my arms. You helped that effort
from a place of vantage above that nobody but you, in your capacity for
playing up, would for a moment have taken for one, and you so hauled and
steadied and supported me, in spite of your almost equal exposure, that
little by little I climbed, I scrambled, my absolute confidence in you
helping, for it amounted to inspiration, and got near to where you
were."
"From which point," said Horton, whom this reminiscence had kept gravely
attentive, "you in your turn rendered me such assistance, I remember,
though I can't for the life of me imagine how you contrived, that the
tables were quite turned and I shouldn't in the least have got out of my
fix without you." He now pulled up short however; he stood a moment
looking down. "It isn't pleasant to remember."
"It wouldn't," Gray judged, "be pleasant to forget. You gave proof of
extraordinary coolness."
Horton still had his eyes on the ground. "We both kept our heads. I
grant it's a decent note for us."
"If you mean we were associated in keeping our heads, you kept mine,"
Gray remarked, "much more than I kept yours. I should be without a head
to-day if you hadn't seen so to my future, just as I should be without a
heart, you must really let me remark, if I didn't look now to your past.
I consider that to know that fact in it takes me of itself well-nigh far
enough in appreciation of you for my curiosity, even at its most
exasperated, to rest on a bed of roses. However, my imagination itself,"
Gray still more beautifully went on, "insists on making additions--since
how can't it, for that matter, picture again the rate at which it made
them then? I hadn't even at the time waited for you to save my life in
order to think you a swell. If I thought you the biggest kind of one,
and if in your presence now I see just as much as ever why I did, what
does that amount to but that my mind isn't a blank about you?"
"Well, if mine had ever been one about you," said Horton, once more
facing it, "our so interesting conversation here would have sufficed to
cram it full. The least I can make of you, whether for your protection
or my profit, is just that you're insanely romantic."
"Romantic--yes," Gray smiled; "but oh, but oh, so systematically!"
"It's your system that's exactly your madness. How can you take me,
without a stroke of success, without a single fact of performance, to my
credit, for anything but an abject failure? You're in possession of no
faintest sign, kindly note, that I'm not a mere impudent ass."
Gray accepted this reminder, for all he showed to the contrary, in the
admiring spirit in which he might have regarded a splendid somersault or
an elegant trick with cards; indulging, that is, by his appearance, in
the forward bend of attention to it, but then falling back to more
serious ground. "It's my romance that's itself my reason; by which I
mean that I'm never so reasonable, so deliberate, so lucid and so
capable--to call myself capable at any hour!--as when I'm most romantic.
I'm methodically and consistently so, and nothing could make and keep
me, for any dealings with me, I hold, more conveniently safe and quiet.
You see that you can lead me about by a string if you'll only tie it to
my appropriate finger--which you'll find out, if you don't mind the
trouble, by experience of the wrong ones, those where the attachment
won't 'act.'" He drew breath to give his friend the benefit of this
illustration, but another connection quickly caught him up. "How can you
pretend to suggest that you're in these parts the faintest approach to
an insignificant person? How can you pretend that you're not as clever
as you can stick together, and with the cleverness of the right kind?
For there are odious kinds, I know--the kind that redresses other
people's stupidity instead of sitting upon it."
"I'll answer you those questions," Horton goodhumouredly said, "as soon
as you tell me how you've come by your wonderful ground for them. Till
you're able to do that I shall resent your torrent of abuse. The
appalling creature you appear to wish to depict!"
"Well, you're simply a _figure_--what I call--in all the force of the
term; one has only to look at you to see it, and I shall give up drawing
conclusions from it only when I give up looking. You can make out that
there's nothing in a prejudice," Gray developed, "for a prejudice may
be, or must be, so to speak, single-handed; but you can't not count with
a relation--I mean one you're a party to, because a relation is exactly
a _fact_ of reciprocity. Our reciprocity, which exists and which makes
me a party to it by existing for my benefit, just as it makes you one by
existing for yours, can't possibly result in your not 'figuring' to me,
don't you see? with the most admirable intensity. And I simply decline,"
our young man wound up, "not to believe tremendous things of any subject
of a relation of mine."
"'Any' subject?" Vinty echoed in a tone that showed how intelligently he
had followed. "That condition, I'm afraid," he smiled, "will cut down
not a little your general possibilities of relation." And then as if
this were cheap talk, but a point none the less remained: "In this
country one's a figure (whatever you may mean by that!) on easy terms;
and if I correspond to your idea of the phenomenon you'll have much to
do--I won't say for my simple self, but for the comfort of your mind--to
make your fond imagination fit the funny facts. You pronounce me an
awful swell--which, like everything else over here, has less weight of
sense in it for the saying than it could have anywhere else; but what
barest evidence have you of any positive trust in me shown on any
occasion or in any connection by one creature you can name?"
"Trust?"--Gray looked at the red tip of the cigarette between his
fingers.
"Trust, trust, trust!"
Well, it didn't take long to say. "What do you call it but trust that
such people as the Bradhams, and all the people here, as he tells me,
receive you with open arms?"
"Such people as the Bradhams and as 'all the people here'!"--Horton
beamed on him for the beauty of that. "Such authorities and such
'figures,' such allegations, such perfections and such proofs! Oh," he
said, "I'm going to have great larks with you!"
"You give me then the evidence I want in the very act of challenging me
for it. What better proof of your situation and your character than your
possession exactly of such a field for whatever you like, of such a dish
for serving me up? Mr. Bradham, as you know," Gray continued, "was this
morning so good as to pay me a visit, and the form in which he put your
glory to me--because we talked of you ever so pleasantly--was that, by
his appreciation, you know your way about the place better than all the
rest of the knowing put together."
Horton smiled, smoked, kept his hands in his pockets. "Dear deep old
Davey!"
"Yes," said Gray consistently, "isn't he a wise old specimen? It's
rather horrid for me having thus to mention, as if you had applied to me
for a place, that I've picked up a good 'character' of you, but since
you insist on it he assured me that I couldn't possibly have a better
friend."
"Well, he's a most unscrupulous old person and ought really to be
ashamed. What it comes to," Haughty added, "is that though I've
repeatedly stayed with them they've to the best of his belief never
missed one of the spoons. The fact is that even if they had poor Davey
wouldn't know it."
"He doesn't take care of the spoons?" Gray asked in a tone that made his
friend at once swing round and away. He appeared to note an
unexpectedness in this, yet, "out" as he was for unexpectedness, it
could grow, on the whole, clearly, but to the raising of his spirits.
"Well, I shall take care of _my_ loose valuables and, unwarned by the
Bradhams and likely to have such things to all appearance in greater
number than ever before, what can I do but persist in my notion of
asking you to keep with me, at your convenience, some proper count of
them?" After which as Horton's movement had carried him quite to the far
end of the room, where the force of it even detained him a little. Gray
had him again well in view for his return, and was prompted thereby to a
larger form of pressure. "How can you pretend to palm off on me that
women mustn't in prodigious numbers 'trust' you?"
Haughty made of his shoulders the most prodigious hunch. "What
importance, under the sun, has the trust of women--in numbers however
prodigious? It's never what's best in a man they trust--it's exactly
what's worst, what's most irrelevant to anything or to any class but
themselves. Their _kind_ of confidence," he further elucidated, "is
concerned only with the effect of their own operations or with those to
which they are subject; it has no light either for a man's other friends
or for his enemies: it proves nothing about him but in that particular
and wholly detached relation. So neither hate me nor like me, please,
for anything any woman may tell you."
Horton's hand had on this renewed and emphasised its proposal of
good-night; to which his host acceded with the remark: "What superfluous
precautions you take!"
"How can you call them superfluous," he asked in answer to this, "when
you've been taking them at such a rate yourself?--in the interest, I
mean, of trying to persuade me that you can't stand on your feet?"
"It hasn't been to show you that I'm silly about life--which is what
you've just been talking of. It has only been to show you that I'm silly
about affairs," Gray said as they went at last through the big bedimmed
hall to the house doors, which stood open to the warm summer night under
the protection of the sufficient outward reaches.
"Well, what are affairs but life?" Vinty, at the top of the steps,
sought to know.
"You'll make me feel, no doubt, how much they are--which would be very
good for me. Only life isn't affairs--that's my subtle distinction,"
Gray went on.
"I'm not sure, I'm not sure!" said Horton while he looked at the stars.
"Oh rot--_I_ am!" Gray happily declared; to which he the next moment
added: "What it makes you contend for, you see, is the fact of my
silliness."
"Well, what is that but the most splendid fact about you, you jolly old
sage?"--and his visitor, getting off, fairly sprang into the shade of
the shrubberies.