Part 3 (1/2)

”Why, my dear fellow, it's in the air, it's in the papers, it's everywhere.” St. George spoke with the immediate familiarity of a confrere--a tone that seemed to his neighbour the very rustle of the laurel. ”You're on all men's lips and, what's better, on all women's.

And I've just been reading your book.”

”Just? You hadn't read it this afternoon,” said Overt.

”How do you know that?”

”I think you should know how I know it,” the young man laughed.

”I suppose Miss Fancourt told you.”

”No indeed--she led me rather to suppose you had.”

”Yes--that's much more what she'd do. Doesn't she shed a rosy glow over life? But you didn't believe her?” asked St. George.

”No, not when you came to us there.”

”Did I pretend? did I pretend badly?” But without waiting for an answer to this St. George went on: ”You ought always to believe such a girl as that--always, always. Some women are meant to be taken with allowances and reserves; but you must take _her_ just as she is.”

”I like her very much,” said Paul Overt.

Something in his tone appeared to excite on his companion's part a momentary sense of the absurd; perhaps it was the air of deliberation attending this judgement. St. George broke into a laugh to reply. ”It's the best thing you can do with her. She's a rare young lady! In point of fact, however, I confess I hadn't read you this afternoon.”

”Then you see how right I was in this particular case not to believe Miss Fancourt.”

”How right? how can I agree to that when I lost credit by it?”

”Do you wish to pa.s.s exactly for what she represents you? Certainly you needn't be afraid,” Paul said.

”Ah, my dear young man, don't talk about pa.s.sing--for the likes of me!

I'm pa.s.sing away--nothing else than that. She has a better use for her young imagination (isn't it fine?) than in 'representing' in any way such a weary wasted used-up animal!” The Master spoke with a sudden sadness that produced a protest on Paul's part; but before the protest could be uttered he went on, reverting to the latter's striking novel: ”I had no idea you were so good--one hears of so many things. But you're surprisingly good.”

”I'm going to be surprisingly better,” Overt made bold to reply.

”I see that, and it's what fetches me. I don't see so much else--as one looks about--that's going to be surprisingly better. They're going to be consistently worse--most of the things. It's so much easier to be worse--heaven knows I've found it so. I'm not in a great glow, you know, about what's breaking out all over the place. But you _must_ be better--you really must keep it up. I haven't of course. It's very difficult--that's the devil of the whole thing, keeping it up. But I see you'll be able to. It will be a great disgrace if you don't.”

”It's very interesting to hear you speak of yourself; but I don't know what you mean by your allusions to your having fallen off,” Paul Overt observed with pardonable hypocrisy. He liked his companion so much now that the fact of any decline of talent or of care had ceased for the moment to be vivid to him.

”Don't say that--don't say that,” St. George returned gravely, his head resting on the top of the sofa-back and his eyes on the ceiling. ”You know perfectly what I mean. I haven't read twenty pages of your book without seeing that you can't help it.”

”You make me very miserable,” Paul ecstatically breathed.

”I'm glad of that, for it may serve as a kind of warning. Shocking enough it must be, especially to a young fresh mind, full of faith--the spectacle of a man meant for better things sunk at my age in such dishonour.” St. George, in the same contemplative att.i.tude, spoke softly but deliberately, and without perceptible emotion. His tone indeed suggested an impersonal lucidity that was practically cruel--cruel to himself--and made his young friend lay an argumentative hand on his arm.

But he went on while his eyes seemed to follow the graces of the eighteenth-century ceiling: ”Look at me well, take my lesson to heart--for it _is_ a lesson. Let that good come of it at least that you shudder with your pitiful impression, and that this may help to keep you straight in the future. Don't become in your old age what I have in mine--the depressing, the deplorable ill.u.s.tration of the wors.h.i.+p of false G.o.ds!”

”What do you mean by your old age?” the young man asked.

”It has made me old. But I like your youth.”

Paul answered nothing--they sat for a minute in silence. They heard the others going on about the governmental majority. Then ”What do you mean by false G.o.ds?” he enquired.

His companion had no difficulty whatever in saying, ”The idols of the market; money and luxury and 'the world;' placing one's children and dressing one's wife; everything that drives one to the short and easy way. Ah the vile things they make one do!”