I did on the morrow several things, but the first was not to redeem that vow.It was to address myself straight to Grace Brissenden."I must let you know that, in spite of your guarantee, it doesn't go at all--oh, but not at all! I've tried Lady John, as you enjoined, and I can't but feel that she leaves us very much where we were." Then, as my listener seemed not quite to remember where we had been, I came to her help."You said yesterday at Paddington, to explain the change in Gilbert Long--don't you recall?--that that woman, plying him with her genius and giving him of her best, is clever enough for two.She's not clever enough then, it strikes me, for three--or at any rate for four.I confess I don't see it.
Does she really dazzle you?" My friend had caught up."Oh, you've a standard of wit!""No, I've only a sense of reality--a sense not at all satisfied by the theory of such an influence as Lady John's."She wondered."Such a one as whose else then?""Ah, that's for us still to find out! Of course this can't be easy;for as the appearance is inevitably a kind of betrayal, it's in somebody's interest to conceal it."This Mrs.Brissenden grasped."Oh, you mean in the lady's?""In the lady's most.But also in Long's own, if he's really tender of the lady--which is precisely what our theory posits."My companion, once roused, was all there."I see.You call the appearance a kind of betrayal because it points to the relation behind it.""Precisely."
"And the relation--to do that sort of thing--must be necessarily so awfully intimate.""Intimissima."
"And kept therefore in the background exactly in that proportion.""Exactly in that proportion."
"Very well then," said Mrs.Brissenden, "doesn't Mr.Long's tenderness of Lady John quite fall in with what I mentioned to you?"I remembered what she had mentioned to me."His making her come down with poor Briss?""Nothing less."
"And is that all you go upon?"
"That and lots more."
I thought a minute--but I had been abundantly thinking."I know what you mean by 'lots.' Is Brissenden in it?""Dear no--poor Briss! He wouldn't like that.i saw the manoeuvre, but Guy didn't.And you must have noticed how he stuck to her all last evening.""How Gilbert Long stuck to Lady John? Oh yes, I noticed.They were like Lord Lutley and Mrs.Froome.But is that what one can call being tender of her?"My companion weighed it."He must speak to her SOMETIMES.I'm glad you admit, at any rate," she continued, "that it does take what you so prettily call some woman's secretly giving him of her best to account for him.""Oh, that I admit with all my heart--or at least with all my head.Only, Lady John has none of the signs--""Of being the beneficent woman? What then ARE they--the signs--to be so plain?" I was not yet quite ready to say, however; on which she added:
"It proves nothing, you know, that YOU don't like her.""No.It would prove more if she didn't like ME, which--fatuous fool as you may find me--I verily believe she does.If she hated me it would be, you see, for my ruthless analysis of her secret.She HAS no secret.
She would like awfully to have--and she would like almost as much to be believed to have.Last evening, after dinner, she could feel perhaps for a while that she WAS believed.But it won't do.There's nothing in it.
You asked me just now," I pursued, "what the signs of such a secret would naturally be.Well, bethink yourself a moment of what the secret itself must naturally be."Oh, she looked as if she knew all about THAT! "Awfully charming--mustn't it?--to act upon a person, through an affection, so deeply.""Yes--it can certainly be no vulgar flirtation." I felt a little like a teacher encouraging an apt pupil; but I could only go on with the lesson.
"Whoever she is, she gives all she has.She keeps nothing back--nothing for herself.""I see because HE takes everything.He just cleans her out." She looked at me pleased at last really to understand--with the best conscience in the world."Who IS the lady then?"But I could answer as yet only by a question."How can she possibly be a woman who gives absolutely nothing whatever; who scrapes and saves and hoards; who keeps every crumb for herself? The whole show's there--to minister to Lady John's vanity and advertise the business--behind her smart shop-window.You can see it, as much as you like, and even amuse yourself with pricing it.But she never parts with an article.If poor Long depended on HER--""Well, what?" She was really interested.
"Why, he'd be the same poor Long as ever.He would go as he used to go--naked and unashamed.No," I wound up, "he deals--turned out as we now see him--at another establishment.""I'll grant it," said Mrs.Brissenden, "if you'll only name me the place."Ah, I could still but laugh and resume! "He doesn't screen Lady John--she doesn't screen herself--with your husband or with anybody.It's she who's herself the screen! And pleased as she is at being so clever, and at being thought so, she doesn't even know it.She doesn't so much as suspect it.
