Part 10

Horton's attention was deeply engaged; his hands, a little behind him, rested, as props to his slight backward inclination, on the convenient stone; his legs, extended before him, enabled him to dig in his heels a little, while his eyes, attached to the stretch of sea commanded by their rocky retreat, betrayed a fixed and quickened vision. Rich in fine lines and proportions was his handsome face--with scarce less, moreover, to be said of his lean, light and long-drawn, though so much more pointed and rounded figure. His features, after a manner of their own, announced an energy and composed an array that his expression seemed to disavow, or at least to be indifferent to, and had the practical effect of toning down; as if he had been conscious that his nose, of the bravest, strongest curve and intrinsically a great success, was too bold and big for its social connections, that his mouth protested or at least asserted more than he cared to back it up to, that his chin and jaw were of too tactless an importance, and his fine eyes, above all, which suggested choice samples of the more or less precious stone called aquamarine, too disposed to darken with the force of a straight look--so that the right way to treat such an excess of resource had become for him quite the incongruous way, the cultivation of every sign and gage that liberties might be taken with him. He seemed to keep saying that he was not, temperamentally and socially, in his own exaggerated style, and that a bony structure, for instance, as different as possible from the one he unfortunately had to flaunt, would have been no less in harmony with his real nature than he sought occasion to show it was in harmony with his conduct. His hard mouth sported, to its visible relief and the admiration of most beholders, a beautiful mitigating moustache; his eyes wandered and adventured as for fear of their very own stare; his smile and his laugh went all lengths, you would almost have guessed, in order that nothing less pleasant should occupy the ground; his chin advanced upon you with a grace fairly tantamount to the plea, absurd as that might have seemed, that it was in the act of receding. Thus you gained the impression--or could do so if your fancy quickened to him--that he would perhaps rather have been as unwrought and unfinished as so many monstrous men, on the general peopled scene of those climes, appeared more and more to show themselves, than appointed to bristle with a group of accents that, for want of a sense behind them, could attach themselves but to a group of blanks. The sense behind the outward man in Horton Vint bore no relation, it incessantly signified, to his being _importantly_ goodlooking; it was in itself as easily and freely human a sense, making as much for personal reassurance, as the appeal of opportunity in an enjoying world could ever have drawn forth and with the happy appearance of it confirmed by the whimsical, the quite ironic, turn given by the society in which he moved to the use of his name. It could never have been so pronounced and written Haughty if in spite of superficial accidents his charming clever humility and sociability hadn't thoroughly established themselves. He lived in the air of jokes, and yet an air in which bad ones fell flat; and there couldn't have been a worse one than to treat his designation as true.

It might have been, at the same time, scarce in the least as a joke that he presently said, in return for the remark on Cissy's part last reported: "Rosanna is surely enough of a man to be much more of one than Davey. However," he went on, "we agree, don't we? about the million of men it would have taken to handle Gussy. A Davey the more or the less, or with a shade more or less of the different sufficiency, would have made no difference in _that_ question"--which had indeed no interest for them anyhow, he conveyed, compared with the fun apparently proposed by this advent of old Gray. That, frankly, was to him, Horton, as amusing a thing as could have happened--at a time when if it hadn't been for Cissy's herself happening to be for him, by exception, a comfort to think of, there wasn't a blest thing in his life of the smallest interest. "It hadn't struck me as probable at all, this revulsion of the old man's," he mentioned, "and though Fielder must be now an awfully nice chap, whom you'll like and find charming, I own I didn't imagine he would come so tremendously forward. Over there, simply with his tastes, his 'artistic interests,' or literary ones, or whatever--I mean his array of intellectual resources and lack of any others--he was well enough, by my last impression, and I liked him both for his decent life and ways and for his liking me, if you can believe it, so extraordinarily much as he seemed to. What the situation appears most to mean, however, is that of a sudden he pops into a real light, a great blazing light visible from afar--which is quite a different affair. It can't not mean at least all sorts of odd things--or one has a right to wonder if it _mayn't_ mean them." And Horton might have been taken up for a minute of silence with his consideration of some of these glimmering possibilities; a moment during which Cissy Foy maintained their association by fairly, by quite visibly breathing with him in unison--after a fashion that testified more to her interest than any "cutting in" could have done. It would have been clear that they were far beyond any stage of association at which their capacity for interest in the contribution of either to what was between them should depend upon verbal proof. It depended in fact as little on any other sort, such for instance as searching eyes might invoke; she hadn't to look at her friend to follow him further--she but looked off to those spaces where his own vision played, and it was by pressing him close _there_ that she followed. Her companion's imagination, by the time he spoke again, might verily have travelled far.

"What comes to me is just the wonder of whether such a change of fortune may possibly not spoil him--he was so right and nice as he was. I remember he used really to exasperate me almost by seeming not to have wants, unless indeed it was by having only those that could be satisfied over there as a kind of matter of course and that were those I didn't myself have--in any degree at least that could make up for the non-satisfaction of my others. I suppose it amounted really," said Horton, "to the fact that, being each without anything to speak of in our pockets, or then any prospect of anything, he accepted that because he happened to like most the pleasures that were not expensive. I on my side raged at my inability to meet or to cultivate expense--which seemed to me good and happy, quite the thing most worth while, in itself: as for that matter it still seems. 'La lecture et la promenade,' which old Roulet, our pasteur at Neuchâtel used so to enjoin on us as the highest joys, really appealed to Gray, to all appearance, in the sense in which Roulet regarded, or pretended to regard, them--once he could have pictures and music and talk, which meant of course pleasant people, thrown in. He could go in for such things on his means--ready as he was to do all his travelling on foot (I wanted as much then to do all mine on horseback,) and to go to the opera or the play in the shilling seats when he couldn't go in the stalls. I loathed so everything _but_ the stalls--the stalls everywhere in life--that if I couldn't have it that way I didn't care to have it at all. So when I think it strikes me I must have liked him very much not to have wanted to slay him--for I don't remember having given way at any particular moment to threats or other aggressions. That may have been because I felt he rather extravagantly liked me--as I shouldn't at all wonder at his still doing. At the same time if I had found him beyond a certain point objectionable his showing he took me for anything wonderful would have been, I think," the young man reflected, "but an aggravation the more. However that may be, I'm bound to say, I shan't in the least resent his taking me for whatever he likes now--if he can at all go on with it himself I shall be able to hold up my end. The dream of my life, if you must know all, dear--the dream of my life has been to be admired, _really_ admired, admired for all he's worth, by some awfully rich man. Being admired by a rich woman even isn't so good--though I've tried for that too, as you know, and equally failed of it; I mean in the sense of their being ready to do it for all they are worth. I've only had it from the poor, haven't I?--and we've long since had to recognise, haven't we? how little that has done for either of us." So Horton continued--so, as if incited and agreeably, irresistibly inspired, he played, in the soft stillness and the protected nook, before the small salt tide that idled as if to listen, with old things and new, with actualities and possibilities, on top of the ancientries, that seemed to want but a bit of talking of in order to flush and multiply. "There's one thing at any rate I'll be hanged if I shall allow," he wound up; "I'll be hanged if what we may do for him shall--by any consent of mine at least--spoil him for the old relations without inspiring him for the new. He shan't become if I can help it as beastly vulgar as the rest of us."

The thing was said with a fine sincere ring, but it drew from Cissy a kind of quick wail of pain. "Oh, oh, oh--what a monstrous idea. Haughty, that he possibly _could_, ever!"

It had an immediate, even a remarkable effect; it made him turn at once to look at her, giving his lightest pleasantest laugh, than which no sound of that sort equally manful had less of mere male stridency. Then it made him, with a change of posture, shift his seat sufficiently nearer to her to put his arm round her altogether and hold her close, pressing his cheek a moment, with due precautions, against her hair. "That's awfully nice of you. We _will_ pull something off. Is what you're thinking of what your friend out there _dans le temps_, the stepfather, Mr. Wendover, was it? told you about him in that grand manner?"

"Of course it is," said Cissy in lucid surrender and as if this truth were of a flatness almost to blush for. "Don't you know I fell so in love with Mr. Northover, whose name you mispronounce, that I've kept true to him forever, and haven't been really in love with you in the least, and shall never be with Gray himself, however much I may want to, or you perhaps may even try to make me?--any more than I shall ever be with anyone else. What's inconceivable," she explained, "is that anyone that dear delicious man thought good enough to talk of to me as he talked of his stepson should be capable of anything in the least disgusting in any way."

"I see, I see." It made Horton, for reasons, hold her but the closer--yet not withal as if prompted by her remarks to affectionate levity. It was a sign of the intercourse of this pair that, move each other though they might to further affection, and therewith on occasion to a congruous gaiety, they treated no cause and no effect of that sort as waste; they had somehow already so worked off, in their common interest, all possible mistakes and vain imaginings, all false starts and false pursuits, all failures of unanimity. "Why then if he's really so decent, not to say so superior," Haughty went on, "won't it be the best thing in the world and a great simplification for you to fall--that is for you to be--in love with him? That will be better for me, you know, than if you're not; for it's the impression evidently made on you by the late Northover that keeps disturbing my peace of mind. I feel, though I can't quite tell you why," he explained, "that I'm never going to be in the least jealous of Gray, and probably not even so much as envious; so there's your chance--take advantage of it all the way. Like him at your ease, my dear, and God send he shall like you! Only be sure it's for himself you do it--and for your own self; as you make out your possibilities, de part et d'autre, on your getting nearer to them."

"So as to be sure, you mean," Cissy inquired, "of not liking him for his money?"

II

He waited a moment, and if she had not immediately after her words sighed "Oh dear, oh dear!" in quite another, that is a much more serious, key, the appearance would perhaps have been that for once in a blue moon she had put into his mind a thought he couldn't have. He couldn't have the thought that it was of the least importance she should guard herself in the way she mentioned; and it was in the air, the very next thing, that she couldn't so idiotically have strayed as to mean to impute it. He quickly enough made the point that what he preferred was her not founding her interest in Gray so very abjectly on another man's authority--given the uncanny fact of the other man's having cast upon her a charm which time and even his death had done so little to abate. Yes, the late Northover had clearly had something about him that it worried a fellow to have her perpetually rake up. _There_ she was in peril of jealousy--his jealousy of the queer Northover ghost; unless indeed it was she herself who was queerest, ridden as her spirit seemed by sexagenarian charms! He could look after her with Gray--they were at one about Gray; what would truly alienate them, should she persist, would be his own exposure to comparison with the memory of a rococo Briton he had no arms to combat. Which extravagance of fancy had of course after a minute sufficiently testified to the clearance of their common air that invariably sprang from their feeling themselves again together and finding once more what this came to--all under sublime palpability of proof. The renewed consciousness did perhaps nothing for their difficulties as such, but it did everything for the interest, the amusement, the immediate inspiration of their facing them: there was in that such an element of their facing each other and knowing, each time as if they had not known it before, that this had absolute beauty. It had unmistakably never had more than now, even when their freedom in it had rapidly led them, under Cissy's wonderment, to a consideration of whether a happy relation with their friend (he was already thus her friend too, without her ever having seen him!) mightn't have to count with some inevitable claim, some natural sentiment, asserted and enjoyed on Rosanna's part, not to speak of the effect on Graham himself of that young woman's at once taking such an interest in him and coming in for such a fortune.

"In addition to which who shall pretend to deny," the girl earnestly asked, "that Rosanna has in herself the most extraordinary charm?"

"Oh you think she has extraordinary charm?"

"Of course I do--and so do you: don't be absurd! She's simply superb," Cissy expounded, "in her own original way, which no other woman over here--except me a little perhaps!--has so much as a suspicion of anything to compare with; and which, for all we know, constitutes a luxury entirely at Graham's service." Cissy required but a single other look at it all to go on: "I shouldn't in the least wonder if they were already engaged."

"I don't think there's a chance of it," Haughty said, "and I hold that if any such fear is your only difficulty you may be quite at your ease. Not only do I so see it," he went on, "but I know _why_ I do."

Cissy just waited. "You consider that because she refused Horton Vint she'll decline marriage altogether?"

"I think that throws a light," this gentleman smiled--"though it isn't _all_ my ground. She turned me down, two years ago, as utterly as I shall ever have been turned in my life--and if I chose so to look at it the experience would do for me beautifully as that of an humiliation served up to a man in as good form as he need desire. That it was, that it still is when I live it through again; that it will probably remain, for my comfort--in the sense that I'm likely never to have a worse. I've had my dose," he figured, "of that particular black draught, and I've got the bottle there empty on the shelf."

"And yet you signify that you're all the same glad----?" Cissy didn't for the instant wholly follow.

"Well, it _all_ came to me then; and that it did all come is what I have the advantage of now--I mean, you see, in being able to reassure you as I do. I had some wonderful minutes with her--it didn't take long," Haughty laughed. "We saw in those few minutes, being both so horribly intelligent; and what I recognised has remained with me. What she did is her own affair--and that she could so perfectly make it such, without leaving me a glimmer of doubt, is what I have, as I tell you, to blink at forever. I may ask myself if you like," he pursued, "why I should 'mind' so much if I saw even at the moment that she wasn't at any rate going to take someone else--and if you do I shall reply that I didn't need that to make it bad. It was bad enough just in itself. My point is, however," Horton concluded, "that I can give you at least the benefit of my feeling utterly sure that Gray will have no chance. She's in the dreadful position--and more than ever of course now--of not being able to believe she can be loved for herself."

"You mean because _you_ couldn't make her believe it?" asked Cissy after taking this in.

"No--not that, for I didn't so much as try. I didn't--and it was awfully superior of me, you know--approach her at all on that basis. That," said Horton, "is where it cuts. The basis was that of my own capacity only--my capacity to serve her, in every particular, with every aptitude I possess in the world, and which I could see she _saw_ I possess (it was given me somehow to send that home to her!) without a hair's breadth overlooked. I shouldn't have minded her taking me so for impossible, blackly impossible, if she had done it under an illusion; but she really believed in me as a general value, quite a first-rate value--_that_ I stood there and didn't doubt. And yet she practically said 'You ass!'"

His encircling arm gained, for response to this, however, but the vibration of her headshake--without so much as any shudder at the pain he so vividly imaged. "She practically said that she was already _then_ in love with Mr. Graham, and you wouldn't have had a better chance had a passion of your own stuck out of you. If I thought she didn't admire you," Cissy said, "I shouldn't be able to do with her at all--it would be too stupid of her; putting aside her not accepting you, I mean--for a woman can't accept _every_ man she admires. I suppose you don't at present object," she continued, "to her admiring Mr. Graham enough to account for anything; especially as it accounts so for her having just acted on his behalf with such extraordinary success. Doesn't that make it out for him," she asked, "that he's admired by twenty millions _plus_ the amount that her reconciliation of him with his uncle just in time to save it, without an hour to spare, will represent for his pocket? We don't know what that lucky amount may be----"

"No, but we more or less _shall_"--Horton took her straight up. "Of course, without exaggeration, that will be interesting--even though it will be but a question, I'm quite certain, of comparatively small things. Old Betterman--there are people who practically know, and I've talked with them--isn't going to foot up to any faint likeness of what Gaw does. That, however, has nothing to do with it: all that is relevant--since I quite allow that, speculation for speculation, our association in this sort represents finer fun than it has yet succeeded in doing in other sorts--all that's relevant is that when you've seen Gray you mayn't be in such a hurry to figure him as a provoker of insatiable passions. Your insidious Northover has, as you say, worked you up, but wait a little to see if the reality corresponds."

"He showed me a photograph, my insidious Northover," Cissy promptly recalled; "he was _naïf_ enough, poor dear, for that. In fact he made me a present of several, including one of himself; I owe him as well two or three other mementos, all of which I've cherished."

"What was he up to anyway, the old corrupter of your youth?"--Horton seemed really to wonder. "Unless it was that you simply reduced him to infatuated babble."

"Well, there are the photographs and things to show," she answered unembarrassed--"though I haven't them with me here; they're put away in New York. His portrait's extremely good-looking."

"Do you mean Mr. Northover's own?"

"Oh _his_ is of course quite beautiful. But I mean Mr. Fielder's--at his then lovely age. I remember it," said Cissy, "as a nice, nice face."

Haughty on his side indulged in the act of memory, concluding after an instant to a head-shake. "He isn't at all remarkable for looks; but putting his nice face at its best, granting that he _has_ a high degree of that advantage, do you see Rosanna so carried away by it as to cast everything to the winds for him?"

Cissy weighed the question. "We've seen surely what she has been carried away enough to do."

"She has had other reasons--independent of headlong passion. And remember," he further argued--"if you impute to her a high degree of that sort of sensibility--how perfectly proof she was to _my_ physical attractions, which I declare to you without scruple leave the very brightest you may discover in Gray completely in the shade."

Again his companion considered. "Of course you're dazzlingly handsome; but are you, my dear, after all--I mean in appearance--so very _interesting?_"

The inquiry was so sincere that it could be met but in the same spirit. "Didn't you then find me so from the first minute you ever looked at me?"

"We're not talking of me," she returned, "but of people who happen to have been subjects less predestined and victims less abject. What," she then at once went on, "_is_ Gray's appearance 'anyway'? Is he black, to begin with, or white, or betwixt and between? Is he little or big or neither one thing or t'other? Is he fat or thin or of 'medium weight'? There are always such lots to be told about people, and never a creature in all the wide world to tell. Even Mr. Northover, when I come to think of it, never mentioned is size.

"Well, you _wouldn't_ mention it," Horton amiably argued. The appeal, he showed withal, stirred him to certain recoveries. "And I should call him black--black as to his straight thick hair, which I see rather distinctively 'slick' and soigné--the hair of a good little boy who never played at things that got it tumbled. No, he's only very middling tall; in fact so very middling," Haughty made out, "that it probably comes to his being rather short. But he has neither a hump nor a limp, no marked physical deformity of any sort; has in fact a kind of futile fidgetty quickness which suggests the little man, and the nervous and the active and the ready; the ready, I mean, for anything in the way of interest and talk--given that the matter isn't too big for him. The 'active,' I say, though at the same time," he noted, "I ask myself what the deuce the activity will have been _about._"

The girl took in these impressions to the effect of desiring still more of them. "Doesn't he happen then to have eyes and things?"

"Oh yes"--Horton bethought himself--"lots and lots of eyes, though not perhaps so many of other things. Good eyes, fine eyes, in fact I think anything whatever you may require in the way of eyes."