"My dear fellow," said the more and more interesting Master, "don't imagine I talk about my books specifically; they're not a decent subject - il ne manquerait plus que ca! I'm not so bad as you may apprehend! About myself, yes, a little, if you like; though it wasn't for that I brought you down here. I want to ask you something - very much indeed; I value this chance. Therefore sit down. We're practical, but there IS a sofa, you see - for she does humour my poor bones so far. Like all really great administrators and disciplinarians she knows when wisely to relax." Paul sank into the corner of a deep leathern couch, but his friend remained standing and explanatory. "If you don't mind, in this room, this is my habit. From the door to the desk and from the desk to the door. That shakes up my imagination gently; and don't you see what a good thing it is that there's no window for her to fly out of?
The eternal standing as I write (I stop at that bureau and put it down, when anything comes, and so we go on) was rather wearisome at first, but we adopted it with an eye to the long run; you're in better order - if your legs don't break down! - and you can keep it up for more years. Oh we're practical - we're practical!" St.
George repeated, going to the table and taking up all mechanically the bundle of proofs. But, pulling off the wrapper, he had a change of attention that appealed afresh to our hero. He lost himself a moment, examining the sheets of his new book, while the younger man's eyes wandered over the room again.
"Lord, what good things I should do if I had such a charming place as this to do them in!" Paul reflected. The outer world, the world of accident and ugliness, was so successfully excluded, and within the rich protecting square, beneath the patronising sky, the dream-figures, the summoned company, could hold their particular revel.
It was a fond prevision of Overt's rather than an observation on actual data, for which occasions had been too few, that the Master thus more closely viewed would have the quality, the charming gift, of flashing out, all surprisingly, in personal intercourse and at moments of suspended or perhaps even of diminished expectation. Ahappy relation with him would be a thing proceeding by jumps, not by traceable stages.
"Do you read them - really?" he asked, laying down the proofs on Paul's enquiring of him how soon the work would be published. And when the young man answered "Oh yes, always," he was moved to mirth again by something he caught in his manner of saying that. "You go to see your grandmother on her birthday - and very proper it is, especially as she won't last for ever. She has lost every faculty and every sense; she neither sees, nor hears, nor speaks; but all customary pieties and kindly habits are respectable. Only you're strong if you DO read 'em! I couldn't, my dear fellow. You are strong, I know; and that's just a part of what I wanted to say to you. You're very strong indeed. I've been going into your other things - they've interested me immensely. Some one ought to have told me about them before - some one I could believe. But whom can one believe? You're wonderfully on the right road - it's awfully decent work. Now do you mean to keep it up? - that's what I want to ask you.""Do I mean to do others?" Paul asked, looking up from his sofa at his erect inquisitor and feeling partly like a happy little boy when the school-master is gay, and partly like some pilgrim of old who might have consulted a world-famous oracle. St. George's own performance had been infirm, but as an adviser he would be infallible.
"Others - others? Ah the number won't matter; one other would do, if it were really a further step - a throb of the same effort.
What I mean is have you it in your heart to go in for some sort of decent perfection?""Ah decency, ah perfection -!" the young man sincerely sighed. "Italked of them the other Sunday with Miss Fancourt."It produced on the Master's part a laugh of odd acrimony. "Yes, they'll 'talk' of them as much as you like! But they'll do little to help one to them. There's no obligation of course; only you strike me as capable," he went on. "You must have thought it all over. I can't believe you're without a plan. That's the sensation you give me, and it's so rare that it really stirs one up - it makes you remarkable. If you haven't a plan, if you DON'T mean to keep it up, surely you're within your rights; it's nobody's business, no one can force you, and not more than two or three people will notice you don't go straight. The others - ALL the rest, every blest soul in England, will think you do - will think you are keeping it up: upon my honour they will! I shall be one of the two or three who know better. Now the question is whether you can do it for two or three. Is that the stuff you're made of?"It locked his guest a minute as in closed throbbing arms. "I could do it for one, if you were the one.""Don't say that; I don't deserve it; it scorches me," he protested with eyes suddenly grave and glowing. "The 'one' is of course one's self, one's conscience, one's idea, the singleness of one's aim. I think of that pure spirit as a man thinks of a woman he has in some detested hour of his youth loved and forsaken. She haunts him with reproachful eyes, she lives for ever before him. As an artist, you know, I've married for money." Paul stared and even blushed a little, confounded by this avowal; whereupon his host, observing the expression of his face, dropped a quick laugh and pursued: "You don't follow my figure. I'm not speaking of my dear wife, who had a small fortune - which, however, was not my bribe.
I fell in love with her, as many other people have done. I refer to the mercenary muse whom I led to the altar of literature.
Don't, my boy, put your nose into THAT yoke. The awful jade will lead you a life!"Our hero watched him, wondering and deeply touched. "Haven't you been happy!""Happy? It's a kind of hell."
"There are things I should like to ask you," Paul said after a pause.
