I shall never forget the impressions of that evening, nor the way, in particular, the immediate effect of some of them was to merge the light of my extravagant perceptions in a glamour much more diffused.I remember feeling seriously warned, while dinner lasted, not to yield further to my idle habit of reading into mere human things an interest so much deeper than mere human things were in general prepared to supply.This especial hour, at Newmarch, had always a splendour that asked little of interpretation, that even carried itself, with an amiable arrogance, as indifferent to what the imagination could do for it.I think the imagination, in those halls of art and fortune, was almost inevitably accounted a poor matter;the whole place and its participants abounded so in pleasantness and picture, in all the felicities, for every sense, taken for granted there by the very basis of life, that even the sense most finely poetic, aspiring to extract the moral, could scarce have helped feeling itself treated to something of the snub that affects--when it does affect--the uninvited reporter in whose face a door is closed.I said to myself during dinner that these were scenes in which a transcendent intelligence had after all no application, and that, in short, any preposterous acuteness might easily suffer among them such a loss of dignity as overtakes the newspaper-man kicked out.
We existed, all of us together, to be handsome and happy, to be really what we looked--since we looked tremendously well; to be that and neither more nor less, so not discrediting by musty secrets and aggressive doubts our high privilege of harmony and taste.We were concerned only with what was bright and open, and the expression that became us all was, at worst, that of the shaded but gratified eye, the air of being forgivingly dazzled by too much lustre.
Mrs.Server, at table, was out of my range, but I wondered if, had she not been so, I shouldn't now have been moved to recognise in her fixed expressiveness nothing more than our common reciprocal tribute.Hadn't everyone my eyes could at present take in a fixed expressiveness? Was Inot very possibly myself, on this ground of physiognomic congruity, more physiognomic than anyone else? I made my excellence, on the chance, go as far as it would to cover my temporary doubts.I saw Mrs.Brissenden, in another frock, naturally, and other jewels from those of the evening before; but she gave me, across the board, no more of a look than if she had quite done with me.It struck me that she felt she HAD done--that, as to the subject of our discussion, she deemed her case by this time so established as to offer comparatively little interest.I couldn't come to her to renew the discussion; I could only come to her to make my submission;and it doubtless appeared to her--to do her justice--more delicate not to triumph over me in advance.The profession of joy, however, reigned in her handsome face none the less largely for my not having the benefit of it.If I seem to falsify my generalisation by acknowledging that her husband, on the same side, made no more public profession of joy than usual, I am still justified by the fact that there was something in a manner decorative even in Brissenden's wonted gloom.He reminded me at this hour more than ever of some fine old Velasquez or other portrait--a presentation of ugliness and melancholy that might have been royal.There was as little of the common in his dry, distinguished patience as in the case I had made out for him.
Blighted and ensconced, he looked at it over the rigid convention, his peculiar perfection of necktie, shirt-front and waistcoat, as some aged remnant of sovereignty at the opera looks over the ribbon of an order and the ledge of a box.
I must add, however, that in spite of my sense of his wife's indulgence I kept quite aware of the nearer approach, as course followed course, of my hour of reckoning with her--more and more saw the moment of the evening at which, frankly amused at last at having me in a cleft stick, she would draw me a little out of the throng.Of course, also, I was much occupied in asking myself to what degree I was prepared to be perjured.WAS I ready to pretend that my candour was still unconvinced? And was I in this case only instinctively mustering my arguments? I was certainly as sorry that Mrs.Server was out of my view as if I proposed still to fight; and I really felt, so far as that went, as if there might be something to fight for after the lady on my left had given me a piece of news.I had asked her if she happened to know, as we couldn't see, who was next Mrs.Server, and, though unable to say at the moment, she made no scruple, after a short interval, of ascertaining with the last directness.The stretch forward in which she had indulged, or the information she had caused to be passed up to her while I was again engaged on my right, established that it was Lord Lutley who had brought the lovely lady in and that it was Mr.Long who was on her other side.These things indeed were not the finest point of my companion's communication, for I saw that what she felt I would be really interested in was the fact that Mr.Long had brought in Lady John, who was naturally, therefore, his other neighbour.Beyond Lady John was Mr.Obert, and beyond Mr.Obert Mrs.Froome, not, for a wonder, this time paired, as by the immemorial tradition, so fairly comical in its candour, with Lord Lutley.Wasn't it too funny, the kind of grandmotherly view of their relation shown in their always being put together? If I perhaps questioned whether "grandmotherly" were exactly the name for the view, what yet at least was definite in the light of this evening's arrangement was that there did occur occasions on which they were put apart.My friend of course disposed of this observation by the usual exception that "proved the rule";but it was absurd how I had thrilled with her announcement, and our exchange of ideas meanwhile helped to carry me on.
