Part 20

I catch, it seems to me, with a certain amount of vision already two or three, not to say three or four, of my essential hinges or, as I have called 'em, _clous_, that mark the turns or steps of the action. The first of these is the appearance on the scene of the second daughter after things have got well under way in respect to the first. The first is the fullblown flower--she mustn't be at all too young, by the way; must be going on to thirty, say--and very little trumpet-blow takes place about her, on the part of the others, in advance: all pointing to the fact that she's a sort of neglected quantity--whom nevertheless the little Horace Walpole man does appreciate and pretend to; under all encouragement from the others who think him quite _more_ than good enough for her, though not good enough, no, for the elder sister. Beware, by the way, of any little false step here: don't make the pretender in question too too eligible or, in the modern lingo, smart; since if this were so Ralph wouldn't pass for more desirable. I must keep him a bit down, in the right sort of way and degree, in comparison with Ralph; bearing in mind at the same time that a sort of leading note in it all is his, our's, sense of the hard old class rigour governing the life about him and of which he sees the salience at every turn. The reappearance at home of the second girl, from wherever she has been (expressible in 10 words) at any rate is, as it were, my first clou or hinge; a fact, an impression, an apprehension, that immediately makes such a difference for Ralph. I forget already whether I said just above that the H.W. man talks to him, takes him into his confidence about her, even to the point of recognising to R. that she doesn't care for his suit and has much incurred her mother's, sister's and even brother's reprobation by that attitude. Vividness to R. of the reign of authority at that time, the much harder rule and discipline; and how half terrified at what she is doing by hanging back, by resisting, the poor girl herself is all the while. Her first relation to him is that of her appealing exactly from this rigour; her first impression of him and emotion about him, he sees, he gives us to see, is that of a sudden this fine young American relation is a person who may side with her, may help her, may intervene and back her up in not accepting addresses from a person she can't get over her dislike of. Yes, that's their first basis, and for this appeal Ralph must have been prepared by his own sense of the kind of uncanny, to put it in a simplified way, little personage her aspirant is. They come nearer together on that, they meet on that, they talk, they begin to understand each other on that--very great though Ralph's responsibility in the matter, the matter of backing up her refusal, may be. It's at any rate the way the real relation with them, with him--his sense of the ancient brutality of the others to her, her mother, her brother, her sister, stirring finely within him. She hasn't dreamed herself, he sees, of any real equality of transaction, of relation with him at all; for if the others are under the dazzle, so much the more under it is she. She sees--that is _he_ sees _that_ she sees; he likes her to like him;--which is what gives her the sense of a privilege she trembles up into the enjoyment of, astonished at herself in her exquisite humility (this so touching to R.) even while doing so, The great thing is that he gets into relation with them, and that by the time he has done so the sense of how he needs it, the dim vagueness as yet of how she may perhaps help him, has begun to work in him. He sees, he feels, I make out, that she, as it were, understands him--though how and why she does demands full specification; that in fine what affects the others as his secret, as his queerness, as what they don't know what to make of in him, does the reverse of putting _her_ off--it makes her somehow feel that beneath or within all his dazzle he is an object for pity, for pity "about which" she could perhaps do something. The ideal thing for dramatic interest and sharpness would be that there is just one matter in which, just one point at which, just one link with his other identity by which, he betrays himself, gives himself away, testifies supremely to his alienism, abnormalism, the nature of his identity in fine; the ideal thing would be that, I say, and that it should be definite and visible, absolutely catchable-in-the-act, enough for her to seize it, come into possession of it, and yet not merely terrify or horrify her: affect her in short, on the contrary, with but a finer yearningness of interest. The ideal, as I say, would be that this fact or circumstance should be tremendously right from the tone of the "Screw" point of view, should be intensely in the note of that tone, should be a concrete and definite thing. Find it find it; get it right and it will be the making of the story. It must consist of something he has to do, some condition he has to execute, some moment he has to traverse, or rite or sacrifice he has to perform--say even some liability he has to face and the occurrence of which depends somehow on the state in which he keeps himself. I seem to see it, it glimmers upon me; though I didn't think of it at first--I hadn't originally got as far as it--it hovers before me though in the form of the only thing it _can_ be. When I call it a liability I seem to catch it by the tip of the tail; seem to get a sort of sense of what it _may_ in a manner be. Let me figure it out a bit, and under gentle, or rather patiently firm, direct pressure it will come out. He is liable then say to glimpses of vision of the other man, the one portrayed in the picture and whom he had had the portentous passage with before going to the Ambassador; he is liable, put it, to recurrences of a sense of that presence--which thus, instead of being off in the boundless vast of the modern, that is of the Future, as he has described its being to the Ambassador, _does_ seem to him at times to hover and to menace: only not to the appearance or effect of reassuring or relieving him, but only to that of really quite mocking and not pitying him, of showing him to himself as "sold", horribly sold. Say it's as if the man of 1820, the Pendrel of that age, is having so much better a time in the modern, that is in the Future, than he is having in the present, _his_ Present, which is the Past, that a chill and a fear, the growth of a despair and a terror, drop upon him from it and signify somehow that he must begin to feel himself lost. That's it, that's it, that may be admirable, if I can get the right hinge or play for it--which of course I can. He hasn't expected it, I think--unless I represent something of it as coming back to him, while he wonders, from that passage between him and the other fellow which we know, so far as we do know, only by his projection of it to the Ambassador--after our having seen the other fellow approach, that is, at the climax of the first, or the critical, night spent by Ralph in the house. We have come to know something of this later on by our sight of his own mental references to it; so that these relations may quite sufficiently hang together for us. Well, what I want is that once he has the extraordinary experience (the experience _within_ the experience) of his being under observation by his alter ego, once he has had it in an acute form and connected it wonderingly with some cause, he feels liable to it again if the same kind of cause shall recur; which by the time the phenomenon takes place has for him much more, as I have said above, a suggestion of menace than a suggestion of relief. That's it--it's as if the other fellow feels, knows, has some incalculable divination, of his, Ralph's _weakening_, while nothing is further from himself _than_ to weaken; whereby Ralph connects, as I quite grasp, the consequence with the cause. There must be sequences here of the strongest, I make out--the successive driving in of the successive silver-headed nails at the very points and under the very taps that I reserve for them. That's it, the silver nail, the recurrence of it in the right place, the perfection and salience of each, and the trick is played. I seem to see it thus a silver nail that my young man recognises--well--what he does recognise--when the younger girl (for whom, as for them all, I should do well to provide a name without more delay) swims into his ken, and it's another one, another clou d'argent, when the wave of his confidence seems to have begun to spend itself, doing this, however, in face of something that has taken place. Just what this thing is must constitute another silver nail, and I see it thereby as some symptom given, on the part of the others, of a change of attitude, a change of sensibility, as I must call it, or at least may, for want of a better word. I think it of superior force that they, the others, all except my young heroine, shall begin on _their_ side the betrayal of malaise, which Ralph is then affected by; rather than that he should begin it, making it thus that they are by the operation, the outward betrayal, of that condition of his own. Here I have the action of the little H.W., who, moved thereto (I express myself thus roughly) by the situation determined for his own interest through the terms appearing destined to develop between R. and the girl, and this though R. isn't at all free for the girl, opens himself on the subject to the three others and so calls their attention to certain things that they before long find themselves, and confess it to him and to each other, affected too in the sense he communicates. To be perfectly definite it seems to me I must have it that the marriage of Ralph and the elder daughter is definitely arranged and fixed for a tolerably near date; since I want the elder girl, "under the effect," to break off something, and there is nothing so good for her to break off as their engagement. The rupture of that, with R's apprehension of how and why it is coming and has come, is of course a silver nail of perfect salience; just as it is another, I see, that this catastrophe, or whatever one may call it, places Ralph and the younger girl face to face as they have not yet been placed. Their recognition of that, his at least, which is also a perception and a comprehension of hers, what has _this_, in its concreteness, but one more silver nail? What I see myself, at the same time, here concerned with is the question of the outward footing Ralph remains on, finds or makes possible, with the two other women etc. when the rupture developes and after it has occurred. I can't have it end the relation, everything so collapsing--so that there must be still grounds for the relation, and they must be strong and positive, or at least definite and presentable. I get something by the provision that the engagement has not been given out nor the marriage announced as to take place; which, meanwhile, is not at all natural unless some advantage not to be too lightly sacrificed is involved with their still superficially keeping on. This requires thinking of, but doesn't in the least defy handling; and indeed I think I get it at a stroke by the fact that they all cling to him, in a sort, even in spite of the malaise, by reason of the convenience proceeding from his means. Decidedly, yes, they must be, through disorders, extravagances, turpitudes or whatever, of the late head of the family, and vraisemblablement through like actualities on the part of the son who has succeeded him in the proprietorship of Drydown, they must be on a hollow and quaking pecuniary basis--which makes Ralph have to have money, even though this wasn't in the least a _common_ felicity or luxury in the American world of that period. None the less were there _some_ fortunes, without overstrain of the point, and in short I have only to make Ralph all disposed, very peculiarly disposed indeed and very particularly inspired and inwardly needing and wanting, to pay his way handsomely, to be the free-handed-from-over-the-sea relative of the house, in order to pick up whatever link might have seemed missing here, and make it serve my turn. He pays his way, he regales and "treats", right and left; and nothing can be more in the note of the time I give him the sense of than the extraordinary readiness he finds in everyone to profit by this, the want of delicacy and dignity, by our modern measure, in the general attitude toward pecuniary favours. The smaller still lives on the greater, the minor folk on the great, and Ralph literally sees himself, feels himself, enjoys in a manner feeling himself, figure verily as one of the great by his taste of this play of money-patronage that is open to him. There it is: if I get a clou d'argent by the rupture, in short, I get another, still another, by some "dramatic" demonstration of the fashion after which they are going in spite of their malaise to hold on to him as beneficiaries of a sort. Yes, yes, yes, I have it, I have it: the brother has borrowed money, borrowed it of him bravely, from the first; and the brother opposes the rupture of the marriage for fear that, a complete rupture thus also involved, he will have to pay up to his creditor, his so probably indignant creditor, in consequence of the changed situation. The other two women know this, and what it means for him; and then thereafter see that it needn't mean what they fear, what _he_ fears, and isn't going to--for here I just get a sublime little silver nail in the fact that Ralph, comprehending this, beautifully seeing the way it may help him, quite seems to show on the contrary that he won't push his hand, won't expose their private gene; seeing what he can get for himself by not doing so. Doesn't he in fact even "lend" the brother more money, lend it after the very rupture, in order to reassure them and keep on with them and show he doesn't "mind" the breach on the part of the elder girl?--this all because it keeps him along and on the footing of his still possible relation with the younger. In plain terms mayn't one put it that he buys, pays for, in hard cash, the pursuance of his opportunity?--as well as put it that his "dramatic" assurance of this, with its readjustment of his footing, constitutes again a silver nail. (There's nothing, I think, that one must so keep before one as that at first he is made ever so much of--much more of than he could at all have hoped.)