I HAVE said that I did many things on this wonderful day, but perhaps the simplest way to describe the rest of them is as a sustained attempt to avert that disaster.I succeeded, by vigilance, in preventing my late companion from carrying Mrs.Server off; I had no wish to see her studied--by anyone but myself at least--in the light of my theory.I felt by this time that I understood my theory, but I was not obliged to believe that Mrs.
Brissenden did.I am afraid I must frankly confess that I called deception to my aid; to separate the two ladies I gave the more initiated a look in which I invited her to read volumes.This look, or rather the look she returned, comes back to me as the first note of a tolerably tight, tense little drama, a little drama of which our remaining hours at Newmarch were the all too ample stage.She understood me, as I meant, that she had better leave me to get at the truth--owing me some obligation, as she did, for so much of it as I had already communicated.This step was of course a tacit pledge that she should have the rest from me later on.I knew of some pictures in one of the rooms that had not been lighted the previous evening, and I made these my pretext for the effect I desired.I asked Mrs.Server if she wouldn't come and see them with me, admitting at the same time that I could scarce expect her to forgive me for my share in the invasion of the quiet corner in which poor Briss had evidently managed so to interest her.
"Oh, yes," she replied as we went our way, "he HAD managed to interest me.Isn't he curiously interesting? But I hadn't," she continued on my being too struck with her question for an immediate answer--"I hadn't managed to interest HIM.Of course you know why!" she laughed."No one interests him but Lady John, and he could think of nothing, while I kept him there, but of how soon he could return to her."These remarks--of which I give rather the sense than the form, for they were a little scattered and troubled, and I helped them out and pieced them together--these remarks had for me, I was to find, unexpected suggestions, not all of which was I prepared on the spot to take up."And is Lady John interested in our friend?""Not, I suppose, given her situation, so much as he would perhaps desire.
You don't know what her situation IS?" she went on while I doubtless appeared to be sunk in innocence."Isn't it rather marked that there's only one person she's interested in?""One person?" I was thoroughly at sea.
But we had reached with it the great pictured saloon with which I had proposed to assist her to renew acquaintance and in which two visitors had anticipated us."Why, here he is!" she exclaimed as we paused, for admiration, in the doorway.The high frescoed ceiling arched over a floor so highly polished that it seemed to reflect the faded pastels set, in rococo borders, in the walls and constituting the distinction of the place.
Our companions, examining together one of the portraits and turning their backs, were at the opposite end, and one of them was Gilbert Long.
I immediately named the other."Do you mean Ford Obert?"She gave me, with a laugh, one of her beautiful looks."Yes!"It was answer enough for the moment, and the manner of it showed me to what legend she was committed.I asked myself, while the two men faced about to meet us, why she was committed to it, and I further considered that if Grace Brissenden, against every appearance, was right, there would now be something for me to see.Which of the two--the agent or the object of the sacrifice--would take most precautions? I kept my companion purposely, for a little while, on our side of the room, leaving the others, interested in their observations, to take their time to join us.It gave me occasion to wonder if the question mightn't be cleared up on the spot.There WASno question, I had compunctiously made up my mind, for Mrs.Server; but now I should see the proof of that conclusion.The proof of it would be, between her and her imputed lover, the absence of anything that was not perfectly natural.Mrs.Server, with her eyes raised to the painted dome, with response charmed almost to solemnity in her exquisite face, struck me at this moment, I had to concede, as more than ever a person to have a lover imputed.The place, save for its pictures of later date, a triumph of the florid decoration of two centuries ago, evidently met her special taste, and a kind of profane piety had dropped on her, drizzling down, in the cold light, in silver, in crystal, in faint, mixed delicacies of colour, almost as on a pilgrim at a shrine.I don't know what it was in her--save, that is, the positive pitch of delicacy in her beauty--that made her, so impressed and presented, indescribably touching.She was like an awestruck child; she might have been herself--all Greuze tints, all pale pinks and blues and pearly whites and candid eyes--an old dead pastel under glass.
She was not too reduced to this state, however, not to take, soon enough, her own precaution--if a precaution it was to be deemed.I was acutely conscious that the naturalness to which I have just alluded would be, for either party, the only precaution worth speaking of.We moved slowly round the room, pausing here and there for curiosity; during which time the two men remained where we had found them.She had begun at last to watch them and had proposed that we should see in what they were so absorbed; but I checked her in the movement, raising my hand in a friendly admonition to wait.We waited then, face to face, looking at each other as if to catch a strain of music.This was what I had intended, for it had just come to me that one of the voices was in the air and that it had imposed close attention.The distinguished painter listened while--to all appearance--Gilbert Long did, in the presence of the picture, the explaining.Ford Obert moved, after a little, but not so as to interrupt--only so as to show me his face in a recall of what had passed between us the night before in the smoking-room.
