第48章

It's a matter as to which the truth sounds priggish, but I can't help it if--yes, positively--it affected me as hopelessly vulgar to have made any induction at all about our companions BUT those I have recorded, in such detail, on behalf of my own energy.It was better verily not to have touched them--which was the case of everyone else--than to have taken them up, with knowing gestures, only to do so little with them.That I felt the interest of May Server, that May Server felt the interest of poor Briss, and that my feeling incongruously presented itself as putting up, philosophically, with the inconvenience of the lady's--these were, in fine, circumstances to which she clearly attached ideas too commonplace for me to judge it useful to gather them in.She read all things, Lady John, heaven knows, in the light of the universal possibility of a "relation"; but most of the relations that she had up her sleeve could thrust themselves into my theory only to find themselves, the next minute, eliminated.They were of alien substance--insoluble in the whole.Gilbert Long had for her no connection, in my deeper sense, with Mrs.Server, nor Mrs.Server with Gilbert Long, nor the husband with the wife, nor the wife with the husband, nor I with either member of either pair, nor anyone with anything, nor anything with anyone.She was thus exactly where I wanted her to be, for, frankly, I became conscious, at this climax of my conclusion, that I a little wanted her to be where she bad distinctly ended by betraying to me that her proper inspiration had placed her.If I have just said that my apprehensions, of various kinds, had finally and completely subsided, a more exact statement would perhaps have been that from the moment our eyes met over the show of our couple on the sofa, the question of any other calculable thing than THAT hint of a relation had simply known itself superseded.

Reduced to its plainest terms, this sketch of an improved acquaintance between our comrades was designed to make Lady John think.It was designed to make me do no less, but we thought, inevitably, on different lines.

I have already so represented my successions of reflection as rapid that I may not appear to exceed in mentioning the amusement and philosophy with which I presently perceived it as unmistakable that she believed in the depth of her new sounding.It visibly went down for her much nearer to the bottom of the sea than any plumb I might be qualified to drop.Poor Briss was in love with his wife--that, when driven to the wall, she had had to recognise; but she had not had to recognise that his wife was in love with poor Briss.What was then to militate on that lady's part, against a due consciousness, at the end of a splendid summer day, a day on which occasions had been so multiplied, of an impression of a special order?

What was to prove that there was "nothing in it" when two persons sat looking so very exceptionally MUCH as if there were everything in it, as if they were for the first time--thanks to finer opportunity--doing each other full justice? Mustn't it indeed at this juncture have come a little over my friend that Grace had lent herself with uncommon good nature, the previous afternoon, to the arrangement by which, on the way from town, her ladyship's reputation was to profit by no worse company, precisely, than poor Briss's?

Mrs.Brissenden's own was obviously now free to profit by my companion's remembering--if the fact had reached her ears--that Mrs.Brissenden had meanwhile had Long for an escort.So much, at least, I saw Lady John as seeing, and my vision may be taken as representing the dash I have confessed myself as making from my end of our field.It offers us, to be exact, as jostling each other just sensibly--though i only might feel the bruise--in our business of picking up straws.Our view of the improved acquaintance was only a straw, but as I stooped to it I felt my head bump with my neighbour's.

This might have made me ashamed of my eagerness, but, oddly enough, that effect was not to come.I felt in fact that, since we had even pulled against each other at the straw, I carried off, in turning away, the larger piece.