第63章

It was in any case what evoked for me most the contrasted image, so fresh with me, of the other, the tragic lady--the image that had so embodied the unutterable opposite of everything actually before me.What was actually before me was the positive pride of life and expansion, the amplitude of conscious action and design; not the arid channel forsaken by the stream, but the full-fed river sweeping to the sea, the volume of water, the stately current, the flooded banks into which the source had swelled.There was nothing Mrs.Server had been able to risk, but there was a rich indifference to risk in the mere carriage of Grace Brissenden's head.Her reference, for that matter, to our discussed subject had the effect of relegating to the realm of dim shades the lady representing it, and there was small soundness in her glance at the possibility on the part of this person of an anxious prowl back.There was indeed--there could be--small sincerity in any immediate demonstration from a woman so markedly gaining time and getting her advantages in hand.The connections between the two, certainly, were indirect and intricate, but it was positive to me that, for the spiritual ear, my companion's words had the sound of a hard bump, a contact from the force of which the weaker vessel might have been felt to crack.At last, merciful powers, it was in pieces! The shock of the brass had told upon the porcelain, and I fancied myself for an instant facing Mrs.Briss over the damage--a damage from which I was never, as I knew, to see the poor banished ghost recover.As strange as anything was this effect almost of surprise for me in the freedom of her mention of "May." For what had she come to me, if for anything, but to insist on her view of May, and what accordingly was more to the point than to mention her? Yet it was almost already as if to mention her had been to get rid of her.She was mentioned, however, inevitably and none the less promptly, anew--even as if simply to receive a final shake before being quite dropped.My friend kept it up."If you were so bent on not losing what I might have to give you that you fortunately stuck to the ship, for poor Briss to pick you up, wasn't this also"--she roundly put it to me--"a good deal because you've been nursing all day the grievance with which I this morning so comfortably furnished you?"I just waited, but fairly for admiration."Oh, I certainly had my reasons--as I've no less certainly had my luck--for not indeed deserting our dear little battered, but still just sufficiently buoyant vessel, from which everyone else appears, I recognise; to s'etre sauve.She'll float a few minutes more! But (before she sinks!) do you mean by my grievance--""Oh, you know what I mean by your grievance!" SHE had no intention, Mrs.Briss, of sinking."I was to give you time to make up your mind that Mrs.Server was our lady.You so resented, for some reason, my suggesting it that I scarcely believed you'd consider it at all; only I hadn't forgotten, when I spoke to you a while since, that you had nevertheless handsomely promised me that you would do your best.""Yes, and, still more handsomely, that if I changed my mind, I would eat, in your presence, for my error, the largest possible slice of humble pie.If you didn't see this morning," I continued, "quite why I should have cared so much, so I don't quite see why, in your different way, you should; at the same time that I do full justice to the good faith with which you've given me my chance.Please believe that if I COULD candidly embrace that chance I should feel all the joy in the world in repaying you.It's only, alas! because I cling to my candour that I venture to disappoint you.If I cared this morning it was really simple enough.You didn't convince me, but I should have cared just as much if you had.I only didn't see what you saw.I needed more than you could then give me.I knew, you see, what I needed--I mean before I struck! It was the element of collateral support that we both lacked.I couldn't do without it as you could.This was what I, clumsily enough, tried to show you I felt.You, on your side,"I pursued, "grasped admirably the evident truth that that element COULDbe present only in such doses as practically to escape detection." I kept it up as she had done, and I remember striking myself as scarce less excitedly voluble.I was conscious of being at a point at which I should have to go straight, to go fast, to go it, as the phrase is, blind, in order to go at all.I was also conscious--and it came from the look with which she listened to me and that told me more than she wished--I felt sharply, though but instinctively, in fine, that I should still, whatever I practically had lost, make my personal experience most rich and most complete by putting it definitely to her that, sorry as I might be not to oblige her, I had, even at this hour, no submission to make.I doubted in fact whether my making one WOULD have obliged her; but I felt that, for all so much had come and gone, I was not there to take, for her possible profit, any new tone with her.She would sufficiently profit, at the worst, by the old.