Part 11 (1/2)

I fairly bounded in my place. ”Then it may do?”

Mrs. Highmore looked bewildered. ”Why so, if he finds it too dull?”

”Dull? Ralph Limbert? He's as fine as a needle!”

”It comes to the same thing--he won't penetrate leather. Mr. Bousefield had counted on something that _would_, on something that would have a wider acceptance. Ray says he wants iron pegs.” I collapsed again; my flicker of elation dropped to a throb of quieter comfort; and after a moment's silence I asked my neighbour if she had herself read the work our friend had just put forth. ”No,” she replied, ”I gave him my word at the beginning, on his urgent request, that I wouldn't.”

”Not even as a book?”

”He begged me never to look at it at all. He said he was trying a low experiment. Of course I knew what he meant and I entreated him to let me just for curiosity take a peep. But he was firm, he declared he couldn't bear the thought that a woman like me should see him in the depths.”

”He's only, thank G.o.d, in the depths of distress,” I replied. ”His experiment's nothing worse than a failure.”

”Then Bousefield _is_ right--his circulation won't budge?”

”It won't move one, as they say in Fleet Street. The book has extraordinary beauty.”

”Poor duck--after trying so hard!” Jane Highmore sighed with real tenderness. ”What _will_ then become of them?”

I was silent an instant. ”You must take your mother.”

She was silent too. ”I must speak of it to Cecil!” she presently said.

Cecil is Mr. Highmore, who then entertained, I knew, strong views on the inadjustability of circ.u.mstances in general to the idiosyncrasies of Mrs. Stannace. He held it supremely happy that in an important relation she should have met her match. Her match was Ray Limbert--not much of a writer but a practical man. ”The dear things still think, you know,”

my companion continued, ”that the book will be the beginning of their fortune. Their illusion, if you're right, will be rudely dispelled.”

”That's what makes me dread to face them. I've just spent with his volumes an unforgettable night. His illusion has lasted because so many of us have been pledged till this moment to turn our faces the other way. We haven't known the truth and have therefore had nothing to say.

Now that we do know it indeed we have practically quite as little.

I hang back from the threshold. How can I follow up with a burst of enthusiasm such a catastrophe as Mr. Bousefield's visit?”

As I turned uneasily about my neighbour more comfortably snuggled.

”Well, I'm glad then I haven't read him and have nothing unpleasant to say!” We had come back to Limbert's door, and I made the coachman stop short of it. ”But he'll try again, with that determination of his: he'll build his hopes on the next time.”

”On what else has he built them from the very first? It's never the present for him that bears the fruit; that's always postponed and for somebody else: there has always to be another try. I admit that his idea of a 'new line' has made him try harder than ever. It makes no difference,” I brooded, still timorously lingering; ”his achievement of his necessity, his hope of a market will continue to attach themselves to the future. But the next time will disappoint him as each last time has done--and then the next and the next and the next!”

I found myself seeing it all with a clearness almost inspired: it evidently cast a chill on Mrs. Highmore. ”Then what on earth will become of him?” she plaintively asked.

”I don't think I particularly care what may become of _him_,” I returned with a conscious, reckless increase of my exaltation; ”I feel it almost enough to be concerned with what may become of one's enjoyment of him. I don't know in short what will become of his circulation; I am only quite at my ease as to what will become of his work. It will simply keep all its quality. He'll try again for the common with what he'll believe to be a still more infernal cunning, and again the common will fatally elude him, for his infernal cunning will have been only his genius in an ineffectual disguise.” We sat drawn up by the pavement, facing poor Limbert's future as I saw it. It relieved me in a manner to know the worst, and I prophesied with an a.s.surance which as I look back upon it strikes me as rather remarkable. ”_Que voulez-vous?_” I went on; ”you can't make a sow's ear of a silk purse! It's grievous indeed if you like--there are people who can't be vulgar for trying. _He_ can't--it wouldn't come off, I promise you, even once. It takes more than trying--it comes by grace. It happens not to be given to Limbert to fall. He belongs to the heights--he breathes there, he lives there, and it's accordingly to the heights I must ascend,” I said as I took leave of my conductress, ”to carry him this wretched news from where _we_ move!”

V

A few months were sufficient to show how right I had been about his circulation. It didn't move one, as I had said; it stopped short in the same place, fell off in a sheer descent, like some precipice gaped up at by tourists. The public in other words drew the line for him as sharply as he had drawn it for Minnie Meadows. Minnie has skipped with a flouncing caper over his line, however; whereas the mark traced by a l.u.s.tier cudgel has been a barrier insurmountable to Limbert. Those next times I had spoken of to Jane Highmore, I see them simplified by retrocession. Again and again he made his desperate bid--again and again he tried to. His rupture with Mr. Bousefield caused him, I fear, in professional circles to be thought impracticable, and I am perfectly aware, to speak candidly, that no sordid advantage ever accrued to him from such public patronage of my performances as he had occasionally been in a position to offer. I reflect for my comfort that any injury I may have done him by untimely application of a faculty of a.n.a.lysis which could point to no converts gained by honourable exercise was at least equalled by the injury he did himself. More than once, as I have hinted, I held my tongue at his request, but my frequent plea that such favours weren't politic never found him, when in other connections there was an opportunity to give me a lift, anything but indifferent to the danger of the a.s.sociation. He let them have me in a word whenever he could; sometimes in periodicals in which he had credit, sometimes only at dinner. He talked about me when he couldn't get me in, but it was always part of the bargain that I shouldn't make him a topic. ”How can I successfully serve you if you do?” he used to ask: he was more afraid than I thought he ought to have been of the charge of t.i.t for tat. I didn't care, for I never could distinguish tat from t.i.t; but as I have intimated I dropped into silence really more than anything else because there was a certain fascinated observation of his course which was quite testimony enough and to which in this huddled conclusion of it he practically reduced me.

I see it all foreshortened, his wonderful remainder--see it from the end backward, with the direction widening toward me as if on a level with the eye. The migration to the country promised him at first great things--smaller expenses, larger leisure, conditions eminently conducive on each occasion to the possible triumph of the next time. Mrs.

Stannace, who altogether disapproved of it, gave as one of her reasons that her son-in-law, living mainly in a village on the edge of a goose-green, would be deprived of that contact with the great world which was indispensable to the painter of manners. She had the showiest arguments for keeping him in touch, as she called it, with good society; wis.h.i.+ng to know with some force where, from the moment he ceased to represent it from observation, the novelist could be said to be. In London fortunately a clever man was just a clever man; there were charming houses in which a person of Ray's undoubted ability, even though without the knack of making the best use of it, could always be sure of a quiet corner for watching decorously the social kaleidoscope.

But the kaleidoscope of the goose-green, what in the world was that, and what such delusive thrift as drives about the land (with a fearful account for flys from the inn) to leave cards on the country magnates?