So you came to see where the fascination resides? Well, youve seen!
My young lady raised fine eyebrows. Do you mean in his bad faith?
In the extraordinary effects of it; his possession, that is, of some quality or other that condemns us in advance to forgive him the humiliation, as I may call it, to which he has subjected us.
The humiliation?
Why mine, for instance, as one of his guarantors, before you as the purchaser of a ticket.
She let her charming gay eyes rest on me. You dont look humiliated a bit, and if you did I should let you off, disappointed as I am; for the mysterious quality you speak of is just the quality I came to see.
Oh, you cant see it! I cried.
How then do you get at it?
You dont! You mustnt suppose hes good-looking, I added.
Why his wife says hes lovely!
My hilarity may have struck her as excessive, but I confess it broke out afresh. Had she acted only in obedience to this singular plea, so characteristic, on Mrs. Saltrams part, of what was irritating in the narrowness of that ladys point of view? Mrs. Saltram, I explained, undervalues him where hes strongest, so that, to make up for it perhaps, she overpraises him where hes weak. Hes not, assuredly, superficially attractive; hes middle-aged, fat, featureless save for his great eyes.
Yes, his great eyes, said my young lady attentively. She had evidently heard all about his great eyesthe beaux yeux for which alone we had really done it all.
Theyre tragic and splendidlights on a dangerous coast. But he moves badly and dresses worse, and altogether hes anything but smart.
My companion, who appeared to reflect on this, after a moment appealed. Do you call him a real gentleman?
I started slightly at the question, for I had a sense of recognising it: George Gravener, years before, that first flushed night, had put me face to face with it. It had embarrassed me then, but it didnt embarrass me now, for I had lived with it and overcome it and disposed of it. A real gentleman? Emphatically not!
My promptitude surprised her a little, but I quickly felt how little it was to Gravener I was now talking. Do you say that because heswhat do you call it in England?of humble extraction?
Not a bit. His father was a country school-master and his mother the widow of a sexton, but that has nothing to do with it. I say it simply because I know him well.
But isnt it an awful drawback?
Awfulquite awful.
I mean isnt it positively fatal?
Fatal to what? Not to his magnificent vitality.
Again she had a meditative moment. And is his magnificent vitality the cause of his vices?
Your questions are formidable, but Im glad you put them. I was thinking of his noble intellect. His vices, as you say, have been much exaggerated: they consist mainly after all in one comprehensive defect.
A want of will?
A want of dignity.
He doesnt recognise his obligations?
On the contrary, he recognises them with effusion, especially in public: he smiles and bows and beckons across the street to them. But when they pass over he turns away, and he speedily loses them in the crowd. The recognitions purely spiritualit isnt in the least social. So he leaves all his belongings to other people to take care of. He accepts favours, loans, sacrificesall with nothing more deterrent than an agony of shame. Fortunately were a little faithful band, and we do what we can. I held my tongue about the natural children, engendered, to the number of three, in the wantonness of his youth. I only remarked that he did make effortsoften tremendous ones. But the efforts, I said, never come to much: the only things that come to much are the abandonments, the surrenders.
And how much do they come to?
Youre right to put it as if we had a big bill to pay, but, as Ive told you before, your questions are rather terrible. They come, these mere exercises of genius, to a great sum total of poetry, of philosophy, a mighty mass of speculation, notation, quotation. The genius is there, you see, to meet the surrender; but theres no genius to support the defence.
But what is there, after all, at his age, to show?
In the way of achievement recognised and reputation established? I asked. To show if you will, there isnt much, since his writing, mostly, isnt as fine, isnt certainly as showy, as his talk. Moreover two-thirds of his work are merely colossal projects and announcements. Showing Frank Saltram is often a poor business, I went on: we endeavoured, youll have observed, to show him to-night! However, if he had lectured hed have lectured divinely. It would just have been his talk.
And what would his talk just have been?
I was conscious of some ineffectiveness, as well perhaps as of a little impatience, as I replied: The exhibition of a splendid intellect. My young lady looked not quite satisfied at this, but as I wasnt prepared for another question I hastily pursued: The sight of a great suspended swinging crystalhuge lucid lustrous, a block of lightflashing back every impression of life and every possibility of thought!
This gave her something to turn over till we had passed out to the dusky porch of the hall, in front of which the lamps of a quiet brougham were almost the only thing Saltrams treachery hadnt extinguished. I went with her to the door of her carriage, out of which she leaned a moment after she had thanked me and taken her seat. Her smile even in the darkness was pretty. I do want to see that crystal!
Youve only to come to the next lecture.
I go abroad in a day or two with my aunt.
Wait over till next week, I suggested. Its quite worth it.
She became grave. Not unless he really comes! At which the brougham started off, carrying her away too fast, fortunately for my manners, to allow me to exclaim Ingratitude!
IV
Mrs. Saltram made a great affair of her right to be informed where her husband had been the second evening he failed to meet his audience. She came to me to ascertain, but I couldnt satisfy her, for in spite of my ingenuity I remained in ignorance. It wasnt till much later that I found this had not been the case with Kent Mulville, whose hope for the best never twirled the thumbs of him more placidly than when he happened to know the worst. He had known it on the occasion I speak ofthat is immediately after. He was impenetrable then, but ultimately confessed. What he confessed was more than I shall now venture to make public. It was of course familiar to me that Saltram was incapable of keeping the engagements which, after their separation, he had entered into with regard to his wife, a deeply wronged, justly resentful, quite irreproachable and insufferable person. She often appeared at my chambers to talk over his lapses; for if, as she declared, she had washed her hands of him, she had carefully preserved the water of this ablution, which she handed about for analysis. She had arts of her own of exciting ones impatience, the most infallible of which was perhaps her assumption that we were kind to her because we liked her. In reality her personal fall had been a sort of social risesince I had seen the moment when, in our little conscientious circle, her desolation almost made her the fashion. Her voice was grating and her children ugly; moreover she hated the good Mulvilles, whom I more and more loved. They were the people who by doing most for her husband had in the long run done most for herself; and the warm confidence with which he had laid his length upon them was a pressure gentle compared with her stiffer persuadability. Im bound to say he didnt criticise his benefactors, though practically he got tired of them; she, however, had the highest standards about eleemosynary forms. She offered the odd spectacle of a spirit puffed up by dependence, and indeed it had introduced her to some excellent society. She pitied me for not knowing certain people who aided her and whom she doubtless patronised in turn for their luck in not knowing me. I dare say I should have got on with her better if she had had a ray of imaginationif it had occasionally seemed to occur to her to regard Saltrams expressions of his nature in any other manner than as separate subjects of woe. They were all flowers of his character, pearls strung on an endless thread; but she had a stubborn little way of challenging them one after the other, as if she never suspected that he had a character, such as it was, or that deficiencies might be organic; the irritating effect of a mind incapable of a generalisation. One might doubtless have overdone the idea that there was a general licence for such a man; but if this had happened it would have been through ones feeling that there could be none for such a woman.