CHAPTER II
The effect of my visit to Bridges was to turn me out for more
profundity. Hugh Vereker, as I saw him there, was of a contact so
void of angles that I blushed for the poverty of imagination
involved in my small precautions. If he was in spirits it wasn't
because he had read my review; in fact on the Sunday morning I felt
sure he hadn't read it, though The Middle had been out three days
and bloomed, I assured myself, in the stiff garden of periodicals
which gave one of the ormolu tables the air of a stand at a
station. The impression he made on me personally was such that I
wished him to read it, and I corrected to this end with a
surreptitious hand what might be wanting in the careless
conspicuity of the sheet. I'm afraid I even watched the result of
my manoeuvre, but up to luncheon I watched in vain.
When afterwards, in the course of our gregarious walk, I found
myself for half an hour, not perhaps without another manoeuvre, at
the great man's side, the result of his affability was a still
livelier desire that he shouldn't remain in ignorance of the
peculiar justice I had done him. It wasn't that he seemed to
thirst for justice; on the contrary I hadn't yet caught in his talk
the faintest grunt of a grudge--a note for which my young
experience had already given me an ear. Of late he had had more
recognition, and it was pleasant, as we used to say in The Middle,
to see how it drew him out. He wasn't of course popular, but I
judged one of the sources of his good humour to be precisely that
his success was independent of that. He had none the less become
in a manner the fashion; the critics at least had put on a spurt
and caught up with him. We had found out at last how clever he
was, and he had had to make the best of the loss of his mystery. I
was strongly tempted, as I walked beside him, to let him know how
much of that unveiling was my act; and there was a moment when I
probably should have done so had not one of the ladies of our
party, snatching a place at his other elbow, just then appealed to
him in a spirit comparatively selfish. It was very discouraging:
I almost felt the liberty had been taken with myself.
I had had on my tongue's end, for my own part, a phrase or two
about the right word at the right time; but later on I was glad not
to have spoken, for when on our return we clustered at tea I
perceived Lady Jane, who had not been out with us, brandishing The
Middle with her longest arm. She had taken it up at her leisure;
she was delighted with what she had found, and I saw that, as a
mistake in a man may often be a felicity in a woman, she would
practically do for me what I hadn't been able to do for myself.
"Some sweet little truths that needed to be spoken," I heard her
declare, thrusting the paper at rather a bewildered couple by the
fireplace. She grabbed it away from them again on the reappearance
of Hugh Vereker, who after our walk had been upstairs to change
something. "I know you don't in general look at this kind of
thing, but it's an occasion really for doing so. You HAVEN'T seen
it? Then you must. The man has actually got AT you, at what _I_
always feel, you know." Lady Jane threw into her eyes a look
evidently intended to give an idea of what she always felt; but she
added that she couldn't have expressed it. The man in the paper
expressed it in a striking manner. "Just see there, and there,
where I've dashed it, how he brings it out." She had literally
marked for him the brightest patches of my prose, and if I was a
little amused Vereker himself may well have been. He showed how
much he was when before us all Lady Jane wanted to read something
aloud. I liked at any rate the way he defeated her purpose by
jerking the paper affectionately out of her clutch. He'd take it
upstairs with him and look at it on going to dress. He did this
half an hour later--I saw it in his hand when he repaired to his
room. That was the moment at which, thinking to give her pleasure,
I mentioned to Lady Jane that I was the author of the review. I
did give her pleasure, I judged, but perhaps not quite so much as I
had expected. If the author was "only me" the thing didn't seem
quite so remarkable. Hadn't I had the effect rather of diminishing
the lustre of the article than of adding to my own? Her ladyship
was subject to the most extraordinary drops. It didn't matter; the
only effect I cared about was the one it would have on Vereker up
there by his bedroom fire.
At dinner I watched for the signs of this impression, tried to
fancy some happier light in his eyes; but to my disappointment Lady
Jane gave me no chance to make sure. I had hoped she'd call
triumphantly down the table, publicly demand if she hadn't been
right. The party was large--there were people from outside as
well, but I had never seen a table long enough to deprive Lady Jane
of a triumph. I was just reflecting in truth that this
interminable board would deprive ME of one when the guest next me,
dear woman--she was Miss Poyle, the vicar's sister, a robust
unmodulated person--had the happy inspiration and the unusual
courage to address herself across it to Vereker, who was opposite,
but not directly, so that when he replied they were both leaning
forward. She enquired, artless body, what he thought of Lady
Jane's "panegyric," which she had read--not connecting it however
with her right-hand neighbour; and while I strained my ear for his
reply I heard him, to my stupefaction, call back gaily, his mouth
full of bread: "Oh, it's all right--the usual twaddle!"
I had caught Vereker's glance as he spoke, but Miss Poyle's
surprise was a fortunate cover for my own. "You mean he doesn't do
you justice?" said the excellent woman.
Vereker laughed out, and I was happy to be able to do the same.
"It's a charming article," he tossed us.
Miss Poyle thrust her chin half across the cloth. "Oh, you're so
deep!" she drove home.
"As deep as the ocean! All I pretend is that the author doesn't
see--" But a dish was at this point passed over his shoulder, and
we had to wait while he helped himself.
"Doesn't see what?" my neighbour continued.
"Doesn't see anything."
"Dear me--how very stupid!"
"Not a bit," Vereker laughed main. "Nobody does."
The lady on his further side appealed to him, and Miss Poyle sank
back to myself. "Nobody sees anything!" she cheerfully announced;
to which I replied that I had often thought so too, but had somehow
taken the thought for a proof on my own part of a tremendous eye.
I didn't tell her the article was mine; and I observed that Lady
Jane, occupied at the end of the table, had not caught Vereker's
words.
I rather avoided him after dinner, for I confess he struck me as
cruelly conceited, and the revelation was a pain. "The usual
twaddle"--my acute little study! That one's admiration should have
had a reserve or two could gall him to that point! I had thought
him placid, and he was placid enough; such a surface was the hard
polished glass that encased the bauble of his vanity. I was really
ruffled, and the only comfort was that if nobody saw anything
George Corvick was quite as much out of it as I. This comfort
however was not sufficient, after the ladies had dispersed, to
carry me in the proper manner--I mean in a spotted jacket and
humming an air--into the smoking-room. I took my way in some
dejection to bed; but in the passage I encountered Mr. Vereker, who
had been up once more to change, coming out of his room. HE was
humming an air and had on a spotted jacket, and as soon as he saw
me his gaiety gave a start.
"My dear young man," he exclaimed, "I'm so glad to lay hands on
you! I'm afraid I most unwittingly wounded you by those words of
mine at dinner to Miss Poyle. I learned but half an hour ago from
Lady Jane that you're the author of the little notice in The
Middle."
I protested that no bones were broken; but he moved with me to my
own door, his hand, on my shoulder, kindly feeling for a fracture;
and on hearing that I had come up to bed he asked leave to cross my
threshold and just tell me in three words what his qualification of
my remarks had represented. It was plain he really feared I was
hurt, and the sense of his solicitude suddenly made all the
difference to me. My cheap review fluttered off into space, and
the best things I had said in it became flat enough beside the
brilliancy of his being there. I can see him there still, on my
rug, in the firelight and his spotted jacket, his fine clear face
all bright with the desire to be tender to my youth. I don't know
what he had at first meant to say, but I think the sight of my
relief touched him, excited him, brought up words to his lips from
far within. It was so these words presently conveyed to me
something that, as I afterwards knew, he had never uttered to any
one. I've always done justice to the generous impulse that made
him speak; it was simply compunction for a snub unconsciously
administered to a man of letters in a position inferior to his own,
a man of letters moreover in the very act of praising him. To make
the thing right he talked to me exactly as an equal and on the
ground of what we both loved best. The hour, the place, the
unexpectedness deepened the impression: he couldn't have done
anything more intensely effective.
