The Sacred Fount. Генри Джеймс
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in general, of such association on such terms. The particular case before us, I easily granted, sinned by over-emphasis, but it was a fair, though a gross, illustration of what almost always occurred when twenty and forty, when thirty and sixty, mated or mingled, lived together in intimacy. Intimacy of course had to be postulated. Then either the high number or the low always got the upper hand, and it was usually the high that succeeded. It seemed, in other words, more possible to go back than to keep still, to grow young than to remain so. If Brissenden had been of his wife's age and his wife of Brissenden's, it would thus be he who must have redescended the hill, it would be she who would have been pushed over the brow. There was really a touching truth in it, the stuff of—what did people call such things?—an apologue or a parable. "One of the pair," I said, "has to pay for the other. What ensues is a miracle, and miracles are expensive. What's a greater one than to have your youth twice over? It's a second wind, another 'go'—which isn't the sort of thing life mostly treats us to. Mrs. Briss had to get her new blood, her extra allowance of time and bloom, somewhere; and from whom could she so conveniently extract them as from Guy himself? She has, by an extraordinary feat of legerdemain, extracted them; and he, on his side, to supply her, has had to tap the sacred fount. But the sacred fount is like the greedy man's description of the turkey as an 'awkward' dinner dish. It may be sometimes too much for a single share, but it's not enough to go round."
Obert was at all events sufficiently struck with my view to throw out a question on it. "So that, paying to his last drop, Mr. Briss, as you call him, can only die of the business?"
"Oh, not yet, I hope. But before her—yes: long."
He was much amused. "How you polish them off!"
"I only talk," I returned, "as you paint; not a bit worse! But one must indeed wonder," I conceded, "how the poor wretches feel."
"You mean whether Brissenden likes it?"
I made up my mind on the spot. "If he loves her he must. That is if he loves her passionately, sublimely." I saw it all. "It's in fact just because he does so love her that the miracle, for her, is wrought."
"Well," my friend reflected, "for taking a miracle coolly–!"
"She hasn't her equal? Yes, she does take it. She just quietly, but just selfishly, profits by it."
"And doesn't see then how her victim loses?"
"No. She can't. The perception, if she had it, would be painful and terrible—might even be fatal to the process. So she hasn't it. She passes round it. It takes all her flood of life to meet her own chance. She has only a wonderful sense of success and well-being. The other consciousness–"
"Is all for the other party?"
"The author of the sacrifice."
"Then how beautifully 'poor Briss,'" my companion said, "must have it!"
I had already assured myself. He had gone to bed, and my fancy followed him. "Oh, he has it so that, though he goes, in his passion, about with her, he dares scarcely show his face." And I made a final induction. "The agents of the sacrifice are uncomfortable, I gather, when they suspect or fear that you see."
My friend was charmed with my ingenuity. "How you've worked it out!"
"Well, I feel as if I were on the way to something."
He looked surprised. "Something still more?"
"Something still more." I had an impulse to tell him I scarce knew what. But I kept it under. "I seem to snuff up–"
"Quoi donc?"
"The sense of a discovery to be made."
"And of what?"
"I'll tell you to-morrow. Good-night."
III
I did on the morrow several things, but the first was not to redeem that vow. It was to address myself straight to Grace Brissenden. "I must let you know that, in spite of your guarantee, it doesn't go at all—oh, but not at all! I've tried Lady John, as you enjoined, and I can't but feel that she leaves us very much where we were." Then, as my listener seemed not quite to remember where we had been, I came to her help. "You said yesterday at Paddington, to explain the change in Gilbert Long—don't you recall?—that that woman, plying him with her genius and giving him of her best, is clever enough for two. She's not clever enough then, it strikes me, for three—or at any rate for four. I confess I don't see it. Does she really dazzle you?"
My friend had caught up. "Oh, you've a standard of wit!"
"No, I've only a sense of reality—a sense not at all satisfied by the theory of such an influence as Lady John's."
She wondered. "Such a one as whose else then?"
"Ah, that's for us still to find out! Of course this can't be easy; for as the appearance is inevitably a kind of betrayal, it's in somebody's interest to conceal it."
This Mrs. Brissenden grasped. "Oh, you mean in the lady's?"
"In the lady's most. But also in Long's own, if he's really tender of the lady—which is precisely what our theory posits."
My companion, once roused, was all there. "I see. You call the appearance a kind of betrayal because it points to the relation behind it."
"Precisely."
"And the relation—to do that sort of thing—must be necessarily so awfully intimate."
"Intimissima."
"And kept therefore in the background exactly in that proportion."
"Exactly in that proportion."
"Very well then," said Mrs. Brissenden, "doesn't Mr. Long's tenderness of Lady John quite fall in with what I mentioned to you?"
I remembered what she had mentioned to me. "His making her come down with poor Briss?"
"Nothing less."
"And is that all you go upon?"
"That and lots more."
I thought a minute—but I had been abundantly thinking. "I know what you mean by 'lots.' Is Brissenden in it?"
"Dear no—poor Briss! He wouldn't like that. I saw the manœuvre, but Guy didn't. And you must have noticed how he stuck to her all last evening."
"How Gilbert Long stuck to Lady John? Oh yes, I noticed. They were like Lord Lutley and Mrs. Froome. But is that what one can call being tender of her?"
My companion weighed it. "He must speak to her sometimes. I'm glad you admit, at any rate," she continued, "that it does take what you so prettily call some woman's secretly giving him of her best to account for him."
"Oh, that I admit with all my heart—or at least with all my head. Only, Lady John has none of the signs–"
"Of being the beneficent woman? What then are they—the signs—to be so plain?" I was not yet quite ready to say, however; on which she added: "It proves nothing, you know, that you don't like her."
"No. It would prove more if she didn't like me, which—fatuous fool as you may find me—I verily believe she does. If she hated me it would be, you see, for my ruthless analysis of her secret. She has no secret. She would like awfully to have—and she would like almost as much to be believed to have. Last evening, after dinner, she could feel perhaps for a while that she was believed. But it won't do. There's nothing in it. You asked me just now," I pursued, "what the signs of such a secret would naturally be. Well, bethink yourself a moment of what the secret itself must naturally be."
Oh, she looked as if she knew all about that! "Awfully charming—mustn't it?—to act upon a person, through an affection, so deeply."
"Yes—it can certainly be no vulgar flirtation." I felt a little like a teacher encouraging an apt pupil; but I could only go on with the lesson. "Whoever she is, she gives all she has. She keeps nothing back—nothing for herself."
"I see—because he takes everything. He just cleans her out." She looked at me—pleased at last really to understand—with the best conscience in