Part 6

“You say Saltram was very fine?”

“Beyond everything. He surprised even me.”

“And I know what you’ve enjoyed.” After a moment I added: “Had he peradventure caught a glimpse of the money in the table-drawer?”

At this my companion honestly flushed. “How can you be so cruel when you know how little he calculates?”

“Forgive me, I do know it. But you tell me things that act on my nerves. I’m sure he hadn’t caught a glimpse of anything but some splendid idea.”

Mrs. Mulville brightly concurred. “And perhaps even of her beautiful listening face.”

“Perhaps even! And what was it all about?”

“His talk? It was apropos of her engagement, which I had told him about: the idea of marriage, the philosophy, the poetry, the sublimity of it.” It was impossible wholly to restrain one’s mirth at this, and some rude ripple that I emitted again caused my companion to admonish me. “It sounds a little stale, but you know his freshness.”

“Of illustration? Indeed I do!”

“And how he has always been right on that great question.”

“On what great question, dear lady, hasn’t he been right?”

“Of what other great men can you equally say it?—and that he has never, but never, had a deflexion?” Mrs. Mulville exultantly demanded.

I tried to think of some other great man, but I had to give it up. “Didn’t Miss Anvoy express her satisfaction in any less diffident way than by her charming present?” I was reduced to asking instead.

“Oh yes, she overflowed to me on the steps while he was getting into the carriage.” These words somehow brushed up a picture of Saltram’s big shawled back as he hoisted himself into the green landau. “She said she wasn’t disappointed,” Adelaide pursued.

I turned it over. “Did he wear his shawl?”

“His shawl?” She hadn’t even noticed.

“I mean yours.”

“He looked very nice, and you know he’s really clean. Miss Anvoy used such a remarkable expression—she said his mind’s like a crystal!”

I pricked up my ears. “A crystal?”

“Suspended in the moral world—swinging and shining and flashing there. She’s monstrously clever, you know.”

I thought again. “Monstrously!”

VIII

GEORGE GRAVENER didn’t follow her, for late in September, after the House had risen, I met him in a railway-carriage. He was coming up from Scotland and I had just quitted some relations who lived near Durham. The current of travel back to London wasn’t yet strong; at any rate on entering the compartment I found he had had it for some time to himself. We fared in company, and though he had a blue-book in his lap and the open jaws of his bag threatened me with the white teeth of confused papers, we inevitably, we even at last sociably conversed. I saw things weren’t well with him, but I asked no question till something dropped by himself made, as it had made on another occasion, an absence of curiosity invidious. He mentioned that he was worried about his good old friend Lady Coxon, who, with her niece likely to be detained some time in America, lay seriously ill at Clockborough, much on his mind and on his hands.

“Ah Miss Anvoy’s in America?”

“Her father has got into horrid straits—has lost no end of money.”

I waited, after expressing due concern, but I eventually said: “I hope that raises no objection to your marriage.”

“None whatever; moreover it’s my trade to meet objections. But it may create tiresome delays, of which there have been too many, from various causes, already. Lady Coxon got very bad, then she got much better. Then Mr. Anvoy suddenly began to totter, and now he seems quite on his back. I’m afraid he’s really in for some big reverse. Lady Coxon’s worse again, awfully upset by the news from America, and she sends me word that she must have Ruth. How can I supply her with Ruth? I haven’t got Ruth myself!”

“Surely you haven’t lost her?” I returned.