“But now, to fill the picture in, a detail is necessary. When Janet and her brother Hubert came to Stratton, which, as you may know, is a village in Surrey, they were in mourning for their father, who but recently had left them, and who had left them, moreover, with means so slender that Janet gave lessons and Hubert wrote.
“If there are two more beggarly ways of making a living, I have yet to hear of them. Tennyson, I believe, got a guinea a word. For five minutes’ instruction De Reszke, I understand, gets as much. But there has been but one Tennyson—though there are two De Reszkes. For the horde of other teachers and other writers, rates fall sheerly from relative munificence to absolute minims. Sometimes they lack even that.
“Sometimes Janet and Hubert supped on dry bread. Sometimes they had cheese with it. But they knew—what epicures rarely do know—that Epicurus never had more and Caesar frequently less. They were poor, but they were young, and it is a form of genius to be that. Besides, they worked, and I always pity those who do not, though, of course, we both know people who pity those that do. But am I wearying you?”
The question reminded me of Doctor Johnson, who, asked by Boswell how he would feel if he were alone in a tower with a baby, replied that he could not be more vilely distressed than he was. But I am less brave than Johnson, and I hope more polite. As a consequence, I lied. Yet obviously my companion did not expect me to do otherwise. He accepted the lie for what it was not worth, and ran on at once:
“You have now, then, not the frame—that will come in a moment—but the picture. That is, you see that while Hubert hacked in Fleet Street, Janet toiled at home; or, more exactly—and what is worse—in the homes of other people. To children who would never succeed in more than hiccuping French, she tried to impart the proper façon de parler. With others, who had as much taste for music as those who detest mathematics have for algebra, she connived in the murder of Chopin. And for what? In the States a scullion would have been better paid.
“But everything happens because it has to happen. In the course of the lessons, she saw that which she mistook for the recompense. She saw the splendor of splendors, the face and flaming wings of Love.”
“He is becoming lyrical,” I tormentedly reflected, and felt, if possible, more Johnsonian than before. To be alone with a baby is bad, but to be alone with a bore is bitter. For relief, I tried to pretend to myself that I was not there. I even succeeded, I think, for for a minute or two I lost him. When I caught up with him again he was playing another air:
“That was, I think, the case with Janet. She had never loved before, and, now that she did love, the universe became concentrated in this individual who to her was the Unique. To Hubert he was a very ordinary person, the form and substance of that curious thing that is called Antipathy. He said as much and more—and might have saved his breath, for Janet was madly in love with this man, who, at the time, was quite mad about her.
“But madmen have lucid intervals. I have told you of Janet’s beauty; I have told you, too, of her poverty. The one was a charm, the other a douche. Beauty her lover wanted, but also he needed coin. To give the due to the devil, who usually takes it, I have no doubt that in the first fevers, which are so contagious, he meant well by the girl; but to certain temperaments the menace of moneyless matrimony is, perhaps, a febrifuge. Do you not agree with me? Do you not agree, rather, that circumstances alter kisses?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Particularly reduced circumstances.”
“Precisely, and there you have what dramatists call the central situation—a delicious girl wildly in love with a brute whom she considered an angel. The fellow had a keep of his own, and little or nothing to keep it up on—a gaunt, gloomy Tudor affair which had come down to him, and which, unless repaired, would come down on him. Around and about were secular trees that made it all the gloomier. A moment ago I mentioned Tennyson. Somewhere he tells of ‘the moan of doves in immemorial elms.’ That line will give you the place.”
“I don’t want it,” I threw in.
“No, and you will want it less when I tell you more. Where was I?”
“In the central situation.”
“Ah, yes. Well, now enters the other woman, the widow of an astronomer who had died of sunstroke. Her grief for his death, which, if abrupt, was not disagreeably paradoxical, could not have been excessive. In any event, such as it may have been, it was at least assuaged by the fortune that he left her.”
“And which,” I hazarded, “appealed to the brute.”
My companion gestured. “And which, as you say, appealed to Lord Cullen. Now, you will think, we are in the thick of it. Wait a second and you will find it gets thicker. For at the moment—that is, when the blue eyes of the widow’s check book first entranced this man—Janet was unconscious that he was looking into other eyes than her own.
“Not so the widow. She was discerning possibilities in Cullen, who, instead of following the traditions of his caste, and marrying a Gayety girl, had become engaged to a governess. But, if discerning, she was decent, which, of course, the brute understood, or, rather, he realized that no decent woman, however discerning, would consider a man who was the property of another.
“The point with him, therefore, as you may see, was to fight free of Janet and then lay siege to that check book. Already mobilization had been secretly
