Ivory Tower — Book First, III, Part 2

It had remained with her that, given certain other facts, no incident of that order could well have had so little to confess by any of its aspects to the taint of vulgarity.

She had seen it, she believed, as he meant it, meant it with entire conviction: he had intended a tribute, of a high order, to her intelligence, which he had counted on, or at least faced with the opportunity, to recognise him as a greater value, taken all round, appraised by the _whole_ suitability, than she was likely ever again to find offered.

He was of course to take or to leave, and she saw him stand there in that light as he had then stood, not pleading, not pressing, not pretending to anything but the wish and the capacity to serve, only holding out her chance, appealing to her judgment, inviting her inspection, meeting it without either a shade of ambiguity or, so far as she could see, any vanity beyond the facts.

It had all been wonderful enough, and not least so that, although absolutely untouched and untempted, perfectly lucid on her own side and perfectly inaccessible, she had in a manner admired him, in a manner almost enjoyed him, in the act of denying him hope.

Extraordinary in especial had it been that he was probably right, right about his value, right about his rectitude, of conscious intention at least, right even as to his general calculation of effect, an effect probably producible on most women; right finally in judging that should he strike at all this would be the one way.

It was only less extraordinary that no faintest shade of regret, no lightest play of rueful imagination, no subordinate stir of pity or wonder, had attended her memory of having left him to the mere cold comfort of reflection.

It was his truth that had fallen short, not his error; the soundness, as it were, of his claim--so far as his fine intelligence, matching her own, that is, could make it sound--had had nothing to do with its propriety.

She had refused him, none the less, without disliking him, at the same time that she was at no moment afterwards conscious of having cared whether he had suffered.

She had been too unaware of the question even to remark that she seemed indifferent; though with a vague impression--so far as that went--that suffering was not in his chords.

His acceptance of his check she could but call inscrutably splendid--inscrutably perhaps because she couldn't quite feel that it had left nothing between them.

Something there was, something there had to be, if only the marvel, so to say, of her present, her permanent, backward vision of the force with which they had touched and separated.

It stuck to her somehow that they had touched still more than if they had loved, held each other still closer than if they had embraced: to such and so strange a tune had they been briefly intimate.

Would any man ever look at her so for passion as Mr. Vint had looked for reason?

and should her own eyes ever again so visit a man's depths and gaze about in them unashamed to a tune to match that adventure?

Literally what they had said was comparatively unimportant--once he had made his errand clear; whereby the rest might all have been but his silent exhibition of his personality, so to name it, his honour, his assumption, his situation, his life, and that failure on her own part to yield an inch which had but the more let him see how straight these things broke upon her.

For all the straightness, it was true, the fact that might most have affected, not to say concerned, her had remained the least expressed.

It wasn't for her now to know what difference it could have made that he was in relation with Gray Fielder; incontestably, however, _their_ relation, or their missing of one, hers and Haughty's, flushed anew in the sudden light.

"Oh I'm so glad he has good friends here then--with such a clever one as Mr. Vint we can certainly be easy about him."

So much Rosanna heard herself at last say, and it would doubtless have quite served for assent to Gussy's revelation without the further support given her by the simultaneous convergence upon them of various members of the party, who exactly struck our young woman as having guessed, by the sight of hostess and momentous guest withdrawn together, that the topic of the moment was there to be plucked from their hands.

Rosanna was now on her feet--she couldn't sit longer and just take things; and she was to ask herself afterwards with what cold stare of denial she mightn't have appeared quite unprecedentedly to face the inquiring rout under the sense that now certainly, if she didn't take care, she should have nothing left of her own.

It wasn't that they weren't, all laughter and shimmer, all senseless sound and expensive futility, the easiest people in the world to share with, and several the very prettiest and pleasantest, of the vaguest insistence after all, the most absurdly small awareness of what they were eager about; but that of the three or four things then taking place at once the brush across her heart of Gray's possible immediate question, "Have you brought me over then to live with _these_----?"

had most in common with alarm.

It positively helped her indeed withal that she found herself, the next thing, greeting with more sincerity of expression than she had, by her consciousness, yet used Mrs. Bradham's final leap to action in the form of "I want him to dinner of course right off!"

She said it with the big brave laugh that represented her main mercy for the general public view of her native eagerness, an eagerness appraised, not to say proclaimed, by herself as a passion for the service of society, and in connection with which it was mostly agreed that she never so drove her flock before her as when paying this theoretic tribute to grace of manner.

Before Rosanna could ejaculate, moved though she was to do so, the question had been taken up by the extremely pretty person who was known to her friends, and known even to Rosanna, as Minnie Undle and who at once put in a plea for Mr. Fielder's presence that evening, her own having been secured for it.

Before such a rate of procedure as this evocation implied even Gussy appeared to recoil, but with a prompt proviso in favour of the gentleman's figuring rather on the morrow, when Mrs. Undle, since she seemed so impatient, might again be of the party.

Mrs. Undle agreed on the spot, though by this time Rosanna's challenge had ceased to hang fire.

"But do you really consider that you _know_ him so much as that?"

--she let Gussy have it straight, even if at the disadvantage that there were now as ever plenty of people to react, to the last hilarity, at the idea that acquaintance enjoyed on either side was needfully imputable to these participations.

"That's just why--if we don't know him!"

Mrs. Undle further contributed; while Gussy declined recognition of the relevance of any word of Miss Gaw's. She declined it indeed in her own way, by a yet stiffer illustration of her general resilience; an "Of course I mean, dear, that I look to you to bring him!"

expressing sufficiently her system.

"Then you really expect him when his uncle's dying----?"

sprang in all honesty from Rosanna's lips; to be taken up on the instant, however, by a voice that was not Gussy's and that rang clear before Gussy could speak.

"There can't be the least question of it--even if we're dying ourselves, or even if I am at least!"

was what Rosanna heard; with Cissy Foy, of a sudden supremely exhibited, giving the case at once all happy sense, all bright quick harmony with their general immediate interest.

She pressed to Rosanna straight, as if nothing as yet had had time to pass between them--which very little in fact had; with the result for our young woman of feeling helped, by the lightest of turns, not to be awkward herself, or really, what came to the same thing, not to be anything herself.

It was a fine perception she had had before--of how Cissy could on occasion "do" for one, and this, all extraordinarily and in a sort of double sense, by quenching one in her light at the very moment she offered it for guidance.

She quenched Gussy, she was the single person who could, Gussy almost gruntingly consenting; she quenched Minnie Undle, she cheapened every other presence, scattering lovely looks, multiplying happy touches, grasping Rosanna for possession, yet at the same time, as with her free hand, waving away every other connection: so that a minute or two later--for it scarce seemed more--the pair were isolated, still on the verandah somewhere, but intensely confronted and talking at ease, or in a way that had to pass for ease, with its not mattering at all whether their companions, dazzled and wafted off, had dispersed and ceased to be, or whether they themselves had simply been floated to where they wished on the great surge of the girl's grace.

The girl's grace was, after its manner, such a force that Miss Gaw had had repeatedly, on past occasions, to doubt even while she recognised--for _could_ a young creature you weren't quite sure of use a weapon of such an edge only for good?

The young creature seemed at any rate now as never yet to give out its play for a thing to be counted on and trusted;

and with Gussy Bradham herself shown just there behind them as letting it take everything straight out of _her_ hands, nobody else at all daring to touch, what were you to do but verily feel distinguished by its so wrapping you about?

The only sharpness in what had happened was that with Cissy's act of presence Mrs. Bradham had exercised her great function of social appraiser by staring and then, as under conclusions drawn from it, giving way.

One might have found it redeemingly soft in her that before this particular suggestion she could melt, or that in other words Cissy appeared the single fact in all the world about which she had anything to call imagination.

She imagined her, she imagined her _now_, and as dealing somehow with their massive friend; which consciousness, on the latter's part, it must be said, played for the moment through everything else.

Not indeed that there wasn't plenty for the girl to fill the fancy with;

since nothing could have been purer than the stream that she poured into Rosanna's as from an upturned crystal urn while she repeated over, holding her by the two hands, gazing at her in admiration: "I can _see_ how you care for him--I can see, I can see!"

And she felt indeed, our young woman, how the cover was by this light hand whisked off her secret--Cissy made it somehow a secret in the act of laying it bare; and that she blushed for the felt exposure as even Gussy had failed to make her.

Seeing which her companion but tilted the further vessel of confidence.

"It's too funny, it's too wonderful that I too should know something.

But I do, and I'll tell you how--not now, for I haven't time, but as soon as ever I can; which will make you see.

So what you must do for all you're worth," said Cissy, "is to care now more than ever.

You must keep him from us, because we're not good enough and you _are_; you must act in the sense of what you feel, and must feel exactly as you've a right to--for, as I say, I know, I know!"

It was impossible, Rosanna seemed to see, that a generous young thing should shine out in more beauty; so that what in the world might one ever keep from her?

Surpassingly strange the plea thus radiant on the very brow of the danger!

"You mean you know Mr. Fielder's history?

from your having met somebody----?"

"Oh that of course, yes; Gussy, whom I've told of my having met Mr. Northover, will have told you.

That's curious and charming," Cissy went on, "and I want awfully we should talk of it.

But it isn't what I mean by what I know--and what you don't, my dear thing!"

Rosanna couldn't have told why, but she had begun to tremble, and also to try not to show it.

"What I don't know--about Gray Fielder?

Why, of course there's plenty!"

she smiled.

Cissy still held her hands; but Cissy now was grave.

"No, there isn't plenty--save so far as what I mean is enough.

And I haven't told it to Gussy.

It's too good for her," the girl added.

"It's too good for anyone but you."

Rosanna just waited, feeling herself perhaps grimace.

"What, Cissy, _are_ you talking about?"

"About what I heard from Mr. Northover when we met him, when we saw so much of him, three years ago at Ragatz, where we had gone for Mamma and where we went through the cure with him.

He and I struck up a friendship and he often spoke to me of his stepson--who wasn't there with him, was at that time off somewhere in the mountains or in Italy, I forget, but to whom I could see he was devoted.

He and I hit it off beautifully together--he seemed to me awfully charming and to like to tell me things.

So what I allude to is something he said to me."

"About me?"

Rosanna gasped.

"Yes--I see now it was about you.

But it's only to-day that I've guessed that.

Otherwise, otherwise----!"

And as if under the weight of her great disclosure Cissy faltered.

But she had now indeed made her friend desire it.

"You mean that otherwise you'd have told me before?"

"Yes indeed--and it's such a miracle I didn't. It's such a miracle," said Cissy, "that the person should all this time have been you--or you have been the person.

Of course I had no idea that all _this_--everything that has taken place now, by what I understand--was going so extraordinarily to happen.

You see he never named Mr. Betterman, or in fact, I think," the girl explained, "told me anything about him.

And he didn't name, either, Gray's friend--so that in spite of the impression made on me you've never till to-day been identified."

Immense, as she went, Rosanna felt, the number of things she gave her thus together to think about.

What was coming she clearly needn't fear--might indeed, deep within, happily hold her breath for; but the very interest somehow made her rest an instant, as for refinement of suspense, on the minor surprises.

"The impression then has been so great that you call him 'Gray'?"

The girl at this ceased holding hands; she folded her arms back together across her slim young person--the frequent habit of it in her was of the prettiest "quaint" effect; she laughed as if submitting to some just correction of a freedom.

"Oh, but my dear, _he_ did, the delightful man--and isn't it borne in upon me that you do?

Of course the impression was great--and if Mr. Northover and I had met younger I don't know," her laugh said, "what mightn't have happened.

No, I never shall have had a greater, a more intelligent admirer!

As it was we remained true, secretly true, for fond memory, to the end: at least I did, though ever so secretly--you see I speak of it only now--and I want to believe so in his impression.

But how I torment you!"

she suddenly said in another tone.

Rosanna, nursing her patience, had a sad slow headshake.

"I don't understand."

"Of course you don't--and yet it's too beautiful.

It was about Gray--once when we talked of him, as I've told you we repeatedly did.

It was that he never would look at anyone else."

Our friend could but appear at least to cast about.

"Anyone else than whom?"

"Why than you," Cissy smiled.

"The girl he had loved in boyhood.

The American girl who, years before, in Dresden, had done for him something he could never forget."

"And what had she done?"

stared Rosanna.

"Oh he didn't tell me _that!

_ But if you don't take great care, as I say," Cissy went on, "perhaps _he_ may--I mean Mr. Fielder himself may when we close round him in the way that, in your place, as I assure you, I would certainly do everything to prevent."

Rosanna looked about as with a sudden sense of weakness, the effect of overstrain; it was absurd, but these last minutes might almost, with their queer action, and as to the ground they covered, have been as many formidable days.

A fine verandah settee again close at hand offered her support, and she dropped upon it, as for large retrieval of menaced ease, with a need she herself alone could measure.

The need was to recover some sense of perspective, to be able to place her young friend's somehow portentous assault off in such conditions, if only of mere space and time, as would make for some greater convenience of relation with it.

It did at once help her--and really even for the tone in which she smiled across: "So you're sure?"

Cissy hovered, shining, shifting, yet accepting the perspective as it were--when in the world had she to fear _any?

_--and positively painted there in bright contradiction, her very grace again, after the odd fashion in which it sometimes worked, seeming to deny her sincerity, and her very candour seeming to deny her gravity.

"Sure of what?

Sure I'm right about you?"

Rosanna took a minute to say--so many things worked in her; yet when one of these came uppermost, pushing certain of the others back, she found for putting it forward a tone grateful to her own ear.

This tone represented on her part too a substitute for sincerity, but that was exactly what she wanted.

"I don't care a fig for any anecdote about myself--which moreover it would be very difficult for you to have right.

What I ask you if you're certain of is your being really not fit for him.

Are you absolutely," said Miss Gaw, "as bad as that?"

The girl, placed before her, looked at her now, with raised hands folded together, as if she had been some seated idol, a great Buddha perched up on a shrine.

"Oh Rosanna, Rosanna----!"

she admiringly, piously breathed.

But it was not such treatment that could keep Miss Gaw from completing her chosen sense.

"I should be extremely sorry--so far as I claim any influence on him--to interfere against his getting over here whatever impressions he may; interfere by his taking you for more important, in any way, than seems really called for."

"Taking _me?

_" Cissy smiled.

"Taking any of you--the people, in general and in particular, who haunt this house.

We mustn't be afraid for him of his having the interest, or even the mere amusement, of learning all that's to be learnt about us."

"Oh Rosanna, Rosanna"--the girl kept it up--"how you adore him; and how you make me therefore, wretch that I am, fiendishly want to see him!"

But it might quite have glanced now from our friend's idol surface.

"You're the best of us, no doubt--very much; and I immensely hope you'll like him, since you've been so extraordinarily prepared.

It's to be supposed too that he'll have some sense of his own."

Cissy continued rapt.

"Oh but you're deep--deep deep deep!"

It came out as another presence again, that of Davey Bradham, who had the air of rather restlessly looking for her, emerged from one of the long windows of the house, just at hand, to meet Rosanna's eyes.

She found herself glad to have him back, as if further to inform him.

Wasn't it after all rather he that was the best of them and by no means Cissy?

Her face might at any rate have conveyed as much while she reported of that young lady.

"She thinks me so deep."

It made the girl, who had not seen him, turn round; but with an immediate equal confidence.

"And _she_ thinks _me_, Davey, so good!"

Davey's eyes were only on Cissy, but Rosanna seemed to feel them on herself.

"How you must have got mixed!"

he exclaimed.

"But your father has come for you," he then said to Rosanna, who had got up.

"Father has walked it?"

--she was amazed.

"No, he's there in a hack to take you home--and too excited to come in."

Rosanna's surprise but grew.

"Has anything happened----?"

"Wonders--I asked them.

Mr. Betterman's sitting right up."

"Really improving----?"

Then her mystification spread.

"'Them,' you say?"

"Why his nurse, as I at least suppose her," said Davey, "is with him--apparently to give you the expert opinion."

"Of the fiend's recuperating?"

Cissy cried with a wail.

And then before her friend's bewilderment, "How dreadfully horrid!"

she added.

"Whose nurse, please?"

Rosanna asked of Davey.

"Why, hasn't he got a nurse?"

Davey himself, as always, but desired lucidity.

"She's doing her duty by him all the same!"

On which Cissy's young wit at once apprehended.

"It's one of Mr. Betterman's taking a joy-ride in honour of his recovery!

Did you ever hear anything so cool?"

She had appealed to her friends alike, but Rosanna, under the force of her suggestion, was already in advance.

"Then father himself must be ill!"

Miss Gaw had declared, moving rapidly to the quarter in which he so incongruously waited and leaving Davey to point a rapid moral for Cissy's benefit while this couple followed.

"If he _is_ so upset that he hasn't been trusted alone I'll be hanged if I don't just see it!"

But the marvel was the way in which after an instant Cissy saw it too.

"You mean because he can't stand Mr. Betterman's perhaps not dying?"

"Yes, dear ingenuous child--he has wanted so to see him out."

"Well then, isn't it what we're all wanting?"

"Most undoubtedly, pure pearl of penetration!"

Davey returned as they went.

"His pick-up _will_ be a sell," he ruefully added; "even though it mayn't quite kill anyone of us but Mr. Gaw!"

BOOK SECOND