I turned my eyes from Mrs.Server's; I allowed myself to commune a little, across the shining space, with those of our fellow-auditor.The occasion had thus for a minute the oddest little air of an aesthetic lecture prompted by accidental, but immense, suggestions and delivered by Gilbert Long.
I couldn't, at the distance, with my companion, quite follow it, but Obert was clearly patient enough to betray that he was struck.His impression was at any rate doubtless his share of surprise at Long's gift of talk.
This was what his eyes indeed most seemed to throw over to me--"What an unexpected demon of a critic!" It was extraordinarily interesting--I don't mean the special drift of Long's eloquence, which I couldn't, as I say, catch; but the phenomenon of his, of all people, dealing in that article.
It put before me the question of whether, in these strange relations that I believed I had thus got my glimpse of, the action of the person "sacrificed"mightn't be quite out of proportion to the resources of that person.It was as if these elements might really multiply in the transfer made of them; as if the borrower practically found himself--or herself--in possession of a greater sum than the known property of the creditor.The surrender, in this way, added, by pure beauty, to the thing surrendered.We all know the French adage about that plus belle fille du monde who can give but what she has; yet if Mrs.Server, for instance, HAD been the heroine of this particular connection, the communication of her intelligence to her friend would quite have falsified it.She would have given much more than she had.
When Long had finished his demonstration and his charged voice had dropped, we crossed to claim acquaintance with the work that had inspired him.The place had not been completely new to Mrs.Server any more than to myself, and the impression now made on her was but the intenser vibration of a chord already stirred; nevertheless I was struck with her saying, as a result of more remembrance than I had attributed to her "Oh yes,--the man with the mask in his hand!" On our joining the others I expressed regret at our having turned up too late for the ideas that, on a theme so promising, they would have been sure to produce, and Obert, quite agreeing that we had lost a treat, said frankly, in reference to Long, but addressing himself more especially to Mrs.Server: "He's perfectly amazing, you know--he's perfectly amazing!"I observed that as a consequence of this Long looked neither at Mrs.
Server nor at Obert; he looked only at me, and with quite a penetrable shade of shyness.Then again a strange thing happened, a stranger thing even than my quick sense, the previous afternoon at the station, that he was a changed man.It was as if he were still more changed--had altered as much since the evening before as during the so much longer interval of which I had originally to take account.He had altered almost like Grace Brissenden--he looked fairly distinguished.I said to myself that, without his stature and certain signs in his dress, I should probably not have placed him.Engrossed an instant with this view and with not losing touch of the uneasiness that I conceived I had fastened on him, I became aware only after she had spoken that Mrs.Server had gaily and gracefully asked of Obert why in the world so clever a man should NOT have been clever.
"Obert," I accordingly took upon myself to remark, "had evidently laboured under some extraordinary delusion.He must literally have doubted if Long WAS clever.""Fancy!" Mrs.Server explained with a charming smile at Long, who, still looking pleasantly competent and not too fatuous, amiably returned it.
"They're natural, they're natural," I privately reflected; "that is, he's natural to HER, but he's not so to me." And as if seeing depths in this, and to try it, I appealed to him."Do, my dear man, let us have it again.It's the picture, of all pictures, that most needs an interpreter.
DON'T we want," I asked of Mrs.Server, "to know what it means?" The figure represented is a young man in black--a quaint, tight black dress, fashioned in years long past; with a pale, lean, livid face and a stare, from eyes without eyebrows, like that of some whitened old-world clown.In his hand he holds an object that strikes the spectator at first simply as some obscure, some ambiguous work of art, but that on a second view becomes a representation of a human face, modelled and coloured, in wax, in enamelled metal, in some substance not human.The object thus appears a complete mask, such as might have been fantastically fitted and worn.
"Yes, what in the world does it mean?" Mrs.Server replied."One could call it--though that doesn't get one much further--the Mask of Death.""Why so?" I demanded while we all again looked at the picture."Isn't it much rather the Mask of Life? It's the man's own face that's Death.
The other one, blooming and beautiful--"
"Ah, but with an awful grimace!" Mrs.Server broke in.
"The other one, blooming and beautiful," I repeated, "is Life, and he's going to put it on; unless indeed he has just taken it off.""He's dreadful, he's awful--that's what I mean," said Mrs.Server."But what does Mr.Long think?""The artificial face, on the other hand," I went on, as Long now said nothing, "is extremely studied and, when you carefully look at it, charmingly pretty.I don't see the grimace.""I don't see anything else!" Mrs.Server good-humouredly insisted."And what does Mr.Obert think?"He kept his eyes on her a moment before replying."He thinks it looks like a lovely lady.""That grinning mask? What lovely lady?"