I stayed him there while I put it to him that he would probably in fact prefer to go back.
"You're not going then yourself?"
"No, I don't particularly want tea; and I may as well now confess to you that I'm taking a lonely, unsociable walk.I don't enjoy such occasions as these," I said, "unless I from time to time get off by myself somewhere long enough to tell myself how much I do enjoy them.That's what I was cultivating solitude for when I happened just now to come upon you.When I found you there with Lady John there was nothing for me but to make the best of it; but I'm glad of this chance to assure you that, every appearance to the contrary notwithstanding, I wasn't prowling about in search of you.""Well," my companion frankly replied, "I'm glad you turned up.I wasn't especially amusing myself.""Oh, I think I know how little!"
He fixed me a moment with his pathetic old face, and I knew more than ever that I was sorry for him.I was quite extraordinarily sorry, and Iwondered whether I mightn't without offence or indiscretion really let him see it.It was to this end I had held him and wanted a little to keep him, and I was reassured as I felt him, though I had now released him, linger instead of leaving me.I had made him uneasy last night, and a new reason or two for my doing so had possibly even since then come up; yet these things also would depend on the way he might take them.The look with which he at present faced me seemed to hint that he would take them as I hoped, and there was no curtness, but on the contrary the dawn of a dim sense that I might possibly aid him, in the tone with which he came half-way."You 'know'?""Ah," I laughed, "I know everything!"
He didn't laugh; I hadn't seen him laugh, at Newmarch, once; he was continuously, portentously grave, and I at present remembered how the effect of this had told for me at luncheon, contrasted as it was with that of Mrs.Server's desperate, exquisite levity."You know I decidedly have too much of that dreadful old woman?"There was a sound in the question that would have made me, to my own sense, start, though I as quickly hoped I had not done so to Brissenden's.
I couldn't have persuaded myself, however, that I had escaped showing him the flush of my effort to show nothing.I had taken his disgusted allusion as to Mrs.Brissenden, and the action of that was upsetting.But nothing, fortunately, was psychologically more interesting than to grasp the next moment the truth of his reference.It was only the fact of his himself looking so much older than Lady John that had blinded me for an instant to the propriety of his not thinking of her as young.She wasn't young as HE had a right to call people, and I felt a glow--also, I feared, too visible--as soon as I had seen whom he meant.His meaning Lady John did me somehow so much good that I believed it would have done me still more to hear him call her a harridan or a Jezebel.It was none of my business;how little was anything, when it came to that, my business!--yet indefinably, unutterably, I felt assuaged for him and comforted.I verily believe it hung in the balance a minute or two that in my impulse to draw him out, so that I might give him my sympathy, I was prepared to risk overturning the edifice of my precautions.I luckily, as it happened, did nothing of the sort; I contrived to breathe consolingly on his secret without betraying an intention.There was almost no one in the place save two or three of the very youngest women whom he wouldn't have had a right to call old.
Lady John was a hag, then; Mrs.Server herself was more than on the turn;Gilbert Long was fat and forty; and I cast about for some light in which I could show that I--a plus forte raison--was a pantaloon."Of course you can't quite see the fun of it, and it really isn't fair to you.You struck me as much more in your element," I ventured to add, "when, this morning, more than once, I chanced to observe you led captive by Mrs.Server.""Oh, that's a different affair," he answered with an accent that promised a growth of confidence.
"Mrs.Server's an old woman," I continued, "but she can't seem to a fellow like you as old as Lady John.She has at any rate more charm; though perhaps not," I added, "quite so much talk."On this he said an extraordinary thing, which all but made me start again."Oh, she hasn't any TALK!"I took, as quickly as possible, refuge in a surprised demurrer."Not ANY?""None to speak of."
I let all my wonder come."But wasn't she chattering to you at luncheon?"It forced him to meet my eyes at greater length, and I could already see that my experiment--for insidiously and pardonably such I wished to make it--was on the way to succeed.I had been right then, and I knew where I stood.He couldn't have been "drawn" on his wife, and he couldn't have been drawn, in the least directly, on himself, but as he could thus easily be on Lady John, so likewise he could on other women, or on the particular one, at least, who mattered to me.I felt I really knew what I was about, for to draw him on Mrs.Server was in truth to draw him indirectly on himself.
It was indeed perhaps because I had by this time in a measure expressed, in terms however general, the interest with which he inspired me, that I now found myself free to shift the ground of my indiscretion.I only wanted him to know that on the question of Mrs.Server I was prepared to go as far with him as he should care to move.How it came to me now that he was THE absolutely safe person in the house to tall of her with! "Iwas too far away from you to hear," I had gone on; "and I could only judge of her flow of conversation from the animated expression of her face.It was extraordinarily animated.But that, I admit," I added, "strikes one always as a sort of parti pris with her.She's never NOT extraordinarily animated.""She has no flow of conversation whatever," said Guy Brissenden.
I considered."Really?"
