My question produced in him a little gesture of elation--a gesture emphasised by a snap of his forefinger and thumb. "I knew you knew it was special! I knew you"ve been thinking about it!"
"You certainly," I replied with a.s.surance, "have, during the last five minutes, made me do so with some sharpness. I don"t pretend that I don"t now recognise that there _must_ be something the matter. I only desire--not unnaturally--that there _should_ be, to put me in the right for having thought, if, as you"re so sure, such a freedom as that can be brought home to me. If Mrs. Server is beautiful and gentle and strange," I speciously went on, "what are those things but an attraction?"
I saw how he had them, whatever they were, before him as he slowly shook his head. "They"re not an attraction. They"re too queer."
I caught in an instant my way to fall in with him; and not the less that I by this time felt myself committed, up to the intellectual eyes, to ascertaining just _how_ queer the person under discussion might be. "Oh, of course I"m not speaking of her as a party to a silly flirtation, or an object of any sort of trivial pursuit. But there are so many different ways of being taken."
"For a fellow like you. But not for a fellow like me. For me there"s only one."
"To be, you mean, in love?"
He put it a little differently. "Well, to be thoroughly pleased."
"Ah, that"s doubtless the best way and the firm ground. And you mean you"re _not_ thoroughly pleased with Mrs. Server?"
"No--and yet I want to be kind to her. Therefore what"s the matter?"
"Oh, if it"s what"s the matter with _you_ you ask me, that extends the question. If you want to be kind to her, you get on with her, as we were saying, quite enough for my argument. And isn"t the matter also, after all," I demanded, "that you simply feel she desires you to be kind?"
"She does that." And he looked at me as with the sense of drawing from me, for his relief, some greater help than I was as yet conscious of the courage to offer. "It _is_ that she desires me. She likes it. And the extraordinary thing is that _I_ like it."
"And why in the world shouldn"t you?"
"Because she terrifies me. She has something to hide."
"But, my dear man," I asked with a gaiety singularly out of relation to the small secret thrill produced in me by these words--"my dear man, what woman who"s worth anything hasn"t?"
"Yes, but there are different ways. What _she_ tries for is this false appearance of happiness."
I weighed it. "But isn"t that the best thing?"
"It"s terrible to have to keep it up."
"Ah, but if you don"t _for_ her? If it all comes on herself?"
"It doesn"t," Guy Brissenden presently said. "I do--"for" her--help to keep it up." And then, still unexpectedly to me, came out the rest of his confession. "I want to--I try to; that"s what I mean by being kind to her, and by the grat.i.tude with which she takes it. One feels that one doesn"t want her to break down."
It was on this--from the poignant touch in it--that I at last felt I had burnt my ships and didn"t care how much I showed I was with him. "Oh, but she won"t. You must keep her going."
He stood a little with a thumb in each pocket of his trousers, and his melancholy eyes ranging far over my head--over the tops of the highest trees. "Who am _I_ to keep people going?"
"Why, you"re just the man. Aren"t you happy?"
He still ranged the tree-tops. "Yes."
"Well, then, you belong to the useful cla.s.s. You"ve the wherewithal to give. It"s the happy people who should help the others."
He had, in the same att.i.tude, another pause. "It"s easy for _you_ to talk!"
"Because I"m not happy?"
It made him bring his eyes again down to me. "I think you"re a little so now at my expense."
I shook my head rea.s.suringly. "It doesn"t cost you anything if--as I confess to it now--I do to some extent understand."
"That"s more, then, than--after talking of it this way with you--I feel that _I_ do!"
He had brought that out with a sudden sigh, turning away to go on; so that we took a few steps more. "You"ve nothing to trouble about," I then freely remarked, "but that you _are_ as kind as the case requires and that you do help. I daresay that you"ll find her even now on the terrace looking out for you." I patted his back, as we went a little further, but as I still preferred to stay away from the house I presently stopped again. "Don"t fall below your chance. _n.o.blesse oblige._ We"ll pull her through."
"You say "we,"" he returned, "but you do keep out of it!"
"Why should you wish me to interfere with you?" I asked. "I wouldn"t keep out of it if she wanted me as much as she wants you. That, by your own admission, is exactly what she doesn"t."
"Well, then," said Brissenden, "I"ll make her go for you. I think I want your a.s.sistance quite as much as she can want mine."
"Oh," I protested for this, "I"ve really given you already every ounce of mine I can squeeze out. And you know for yourself far more than I do."
"No, I don"t!"--with which he became quite sharp; "for you know _how_ you know it--which I"ve not a notion of. It"s just what I think," he continued, facing me again, "you ought to tell me."
"I"m a little in doubt of what you"re talking of, but I suppose you to allude to the oddity of my being so much interested without my having been more informed."
"You"ve got some clue," Brissenden said; "and a clue is what I myself want."
"Then get it," I laughed, "from Mrs. Server!"
He wondered. "Does she know?"
I had still, after all, to dodge a little. "Know what?"
"Why, that you"ve found out what she has to hide."
"You"re perfectly free to ask her. I wonder even that you haven"t done so yet."
"Well," he said with the finest stroke of unconsciousness he had yet shown me--"well, I suppose it"s because I"m afraid of her."
"But not too much afraid," I risked suggesting, "to be hoping at this moment that you"ll find her if you go back to where most of our party is gathered. You"re not going for tea--you"re going for Mrs. Server: just of whom it was, as I say, you were thinking while you sat there with Lady John. So what is it you so greatly fear?"
It was as if I could see through his dim face a sort of grat.i.tude for my making all this out to him. "I don"t know that it"s anything that she may do to _me_." He could make it out in a manner for himself. "It"s as if something might happen to her. It"s what I told you--that she may break down. If you ask me how, or in what," he continued, "how can I tell you? In whatever it is that she"s trying to do. I don"t understand it." Then he wound up with a sigh that, in spite of its softness, he imperfectly stifled. "But it"s something or other!"
"What would it be, then," I asked, "but what you speak of as what I"ve "found out"? The effort you distinguish in her is the effort of concealment--vain, as I gather it strikes you both, so far as _I_, in my supernatural acuteness, am concerned."
Following this with the final ease to which my encouragement directly ministered, he yet gave me, before he had quite arrived, a queer sidelong glance. "Wouldn"t it really be better if you were to tell me? I don"t ask her myself, you see. I don"t put things to her in that way."
"Oh, no--I"ve shown you how I do see. That"s a part of your admirable consideration. But I must repeat that nothing would induce me to tell you."
His poor old face fairly pleaded. "But I want so to know."
"Ah, there it is!" I almost triumphantly laughed.