Part 27 (1/2)

”Well, then, to oblige Lady John herself----”

”He didn't come to oblige Lady John herself!”

”Well, then, to oblige his clever wife----”

”He didn't come to oblige his clever wife! He came,” said Mrs. Briss, ”just to amuse himself. He _has_ his amus.e.m.e.nts, and it's odd,” she remarkably laughed, ”that you should grudge them to him!”

”It would be odd indeed if I did! But put his proceeding,” I continued, ”on any ground you like; you described to me the purpose of it as a screening of the pair.”

”I described to you the purpose of it as nothing of the sort. I didn't describe to you the purpose of it,” said Mrs. Briss, ”at all. I described to you,” she triumphantly set forth, ”the _effect_ of it--which is a very different thing.”

I could only meet her with admiration. ”You're of an astuteness----!”

”Of course I'm of an astuteness! I _see_ effects. And I saw that one.

How much Briss himself had seen it is, as I've told you, another matter; and what he had, at any rate, quite taken the affair for was the sort of flirtation in which, if one is a friend to either party, and one's own feelings are not at stake, one may now and then give people a lift.

Haven't I asked you before,” she demanded, ”if you suppose he would have given one had he had an idea where these people _are_?”

”I scarce know what you have asked me before!” I sighed; ”and 'where they are' is just what you haven't told me.”

”It's where my husband was so annoyed unmistakably to discover them.”

And as if she had quite fixed the point she pa.s.sed to another. ”He's peculiar, dear old Briss, but in a way by which, if one uses him--by which, I mean, if one depends on him--at all, one gains, I think, more than one loses. Up to a certain point, in any case that's the least a case for subtlety, he sees nothing at all; but beyond it--when once he does wake up--he'll go through a house. Nothing then escapes him, and what he drags to light is sometimes appalling.”

”Rather,” I thoughtfully responded--”since witness this occasion!”

”But isn't the interest of this occasion, as I've already suggested,”

she propounded, ”simply that it makes an end, bursts a bubble, rids us of an incubus and permits us to go to bed in peace? I thank G.o.d,” she moralised, ”for dear old Briss to-night.”

”So do I,” I after a moment returned; ”but I shall do so with still greater fervour if you'll have for the s.p.a.ce of another question a still greater patience.” With which, as a final movement from her seemed to say how much this was to ask, I had on my own side a certain exasperation of soreness for all I had to acknowledge--even were it mere acknowledgment--that she had brought rattling down. ”Remember,” I pleaded, ”that you're costing me a perfect palace of thought!”

I could see too that, held unexpectedly by something in my tone, she really took it in. Couldn't I even almost see that, for an odd instant, she regretted the blighted pleasure of the pursuit of truth with me? I needed, at all events, no better proof either of the sweet or of the bitter in her comprehension than the accent with which she replied: ”Oh, those who live in gla.s.s houses----”

”Shouldn't--no, I know they shouldn't--throw stones; and that's precisely why I don't.” I had taken her immediately up, and I held her by it and by something better still. ”You, from your fortress of granite, can chuck them about as you will! All the more reason, however,” I quickly added, ”that, before my frail, but, as I maintain, quite sublime structure, you honour me, for a few seconds, with an intelligent look at it. I seem myself to see it again, perfect in every part,” I pursued, ”even while I thus speak to you, and to feel afresh that, weren't the wretched accident of its weak foundation, it wouldn't have the shadow of a flaw. I've spoken of it in my conceivable regret,”

I conceded, ”as already a mere heap of disfigured fragments; but that was the extravagance of my vexation, my despair. It's in point of fact so beautifully fitted that it comes apart piece by piece--which, so far as that goes, you've seen it do in the last quarter of an hour at your own touch, quite handing me the pieces, one by one, yourself and watching me stack them along the ground. They're not even in this state--see!” I wound up--”a pile of ruins!” I wound up, as I say, but only for long enough to have, with the vibration, the exaltation, of my eloquence, my small triumph as against her great one. ”I should almost like, piece by piece, to hand them back to you.” And this time I completed my figure. ”I believe that, for the very charm of it, you'd find yourself placing them by your own sense in their order and rearing once more the splendid pile. Will you take just _one_ of them from me again,” I insisted, ”and let me see if only to have it in your hands doesn't positively start you off? That's what I meant just now by asking you for another answer.” She had remained silent, as if really in the presence of the rising magnificence of my metaphor, and it was not too late for the one chance left me. ”There was nothing, you know, I had so fitted as your account of poor Mrs. Server when, on our seeing them, from the terrace, together below, you struck off your explanation that old Briss was _her_ screen for Long.”

”Fitted?”--and there was sincerity in her surprise. ”I thought my stupid idea the one for which you had exactly no use!”

”I had no use,” I instantly concurred, ”for your stupid idea, but I had great use for your stupidly, alas! having it. _That_ fitted beautifully,” I smiled, ”till the piece came out. And even now,” I added, ”I don't feel it quite accounted for.”

”Their being there together?”

”No. Your not liking it that they were.”

She stared. ”Not liking it?”

I could see how little indeed she minded now, but I also kept the thread of my own intellectual history. ”Yes. Your not liking it is what I speak of as the piece. I hold it, you see, up before you. What, artistically, would you do with it?”

But one might take a horse to water----! I held it up before her, but I couldn't make her look at it. ”How do you know what I mayn't, or may, have liked?”

It did bring me to. ”Because you were conscious of not telling me? Well, even if you didn't----!”