Part 7

“Of course it is, cruel youth. But to show you I’m still not incapable, degraded as I am, of an act of faith, I’ll tie my vanity to the stake for you and burn it to ashes. You must come and see me—you must come and see us,” the Master quickly substituted. “Mrs. St. George is charming; I don’t know whether you’ve had any opportunity to talk with her. She’ll be delighted to see you; she likes great celebrities, whether incipient or predominant. You must come and dine—my wife will write to you. Where are you to be found?”

“This is my little address”—and Overt drew out his pocketbook and extracted a visiting-card. On second thoughts, however, he kept it back, remarking that he wouldn’t trouble his friend to take charge of it but would come and see him straightway in London and leave it at his door if he should fail to obtain entrance.

“Ah you’ll probably fail; my wife’s always out—or when she isn’t out is knocked up from having been out. You must come and dine—though that won’t do much good either, for my wife insists on big dinners.” St. George turned it over further, but then went on: “You must come down and see us in the country, that’s the best way; we’ve plenty of room, and it isn’t bad.”

“You’ve a house in the country?” Paul asked enviously.

“Ah not like this! But we have a sort of place we go to—an hour from Euston. That’s one of the reasons.”

“One of the reasons?”

“Why my books are so bad.”

“You must tell me all the others!” Paul longingly laughed.

His friend made no direct rejoinder to this, but spoke again abruptly. “Why have I never seen you before?”

The tone of the question was singularly flattering to our hero, who felt it to imply the great man’s now perceiving he had for years missed something. “Partly, I suppose, because there has been no particular reason why you should see me. I haven’t lived in the world—in your world. I’ve spent many years out of England, in different places abroad.”

“Well, please don’t do it any more. You must do England—there’s such a lot of it.”

“Do you mean I must write about it?” and Paul struck the note of the listening candour of a child.

“Of course you must. And tremendously well, do you mind? That takes off a little of my esteem for this thing of yours—that it goes on abroad. Hang ‘abroad!’ Stay at home and do things here—do subjects we can measure.”

“I’ll do whatever you tell me,” Overt said, deeply attentive. “But pardon me if I say I don’t understand how you’ve been reading my book,” he added. “I’ve had you before me all the afternoon, first in that long walk, then at tea on the lawn, till we went to dress for dinner, and all the evening at dinner and in this place.”

St. George turned his face about with a smile. “I gave it but a quarter of an hour.”

“A quarter of an hour’s immense, but I don’t understand where you put it in. In the drawing-room after dinner you weren’t reading—you were talking to Miss Fancourt.”

“It comes to the same thing, because we talked about ‘Ginistrella.’ She described it to me—she lent me her copy.”

“Lent it to you?”

“She travels with it.”

“It’s incredible,” Paul blushed.

“It’s glorious for you, but it also turned out very well for me. When the ladies went off to bed she kindly offered to send the book down to me. Her maid brought it to me in the hall and I went to my room with it. I hadn’t thought of coming here, I do that so little. But I don’t sleep early, I always have to read an hour or two. I sat down to your novel on the spot, without undressing, without taking off anything but my coat. I think that’s a sign my curiosity had been strongly roused about it. I read a quarter of an hour, as I tell you, and even in a quarter of an hour I was greatly struck.”

“Ah the beginning isn’t very good—it’s the whole thing!” said Overt, who had listened to this recital with extreme interest. “And you laid down the book and came after me?” he asked.

“That’s the way it moved me. I said to myself ‘I see it’s off his own bat, and he’s there, by the way, and the day’s over and I haven’t said twenty words to him.’ It occurred to me that you’d probably be in the smoking-room and that it wouldn’t be too late to repair my omission. I wanted to do something civil to you, so I put on my coat and came down. I shall read your book again when I go up.”

Our friend faced round in his place—he was touched as he had scarce ever been by the picture of such a demonstration in his favour. “You’re really the kindest of men. Cela s’est passé comme ça?—and I’ve been sitting here with you all this time and never apprehended it and never thanked you!”

“Thank Miss Fancourt—it was she who wound me up. She has made me feel as if I had read your novel.”

“She’s an angel from heaven!” Paul declared.

“She is indeed. I’ve never seen any one like her. Her interest in literature’s touching—something quite peculiar to herself; she takes it all so seriously. She feels the arts and she wants to feel them more. To those who practise them it’s almost humiliating—her curiosity, her sympathy, her good faith. How can anything be as fine as she supposes it?”

“She’s a rare organisation,” the younger man sighed.