"There!" triumphed Mrs.Brissenden again--for the lady was unmistakably Mrs.Server.Amusement was inevitable--the fact showed her as so correctly described by the words to which I had twice had to listen.She seemed really all over the place."I thought you said," my companion remarked, "that you had left her tucked away somewhere with M.de Dreuil.""Well," I returned after consideration, "that is obviously M.de Dreuil.""Are you so sure? I don't make out the person," my friend continued--"Ionly see she's not alone.I understood you moreover that you had lately left them in the house.""They WERE in the house, but there was nothing to keep them from coming out.They've had plenty of time while we've talked; they must have passed down by some of the other steps.Perhaps also," I added, "it's another man."But by this time she was satisfied."It's HE!""Gilbert Long? I thought you just said," I observed, "that you can make nobody out."We watched together, but the distance was considerable, and the second figure continued to be screened."It MUST be he," Mrs.Brissenden resumed with impatience, "since it was with him I so distinctly saw her.""Let me once more hold you to the fact," I answered, "that she had, to my knowledge, succumbed to M.de Dreuil afterwards.The moments have fled, you see, in our fascinating discussion, and various things, on your theory of her pounce, have come and gone.Don't I moreover make out a brown shoe, in a white gaiter, protruding from the other side of her dress? It must be Lord Lutley."Mrs.Brissenden looked and mused."A brown shoe in a white gaiter?"At this moment Mrs.Server moved, and the next--as if it were time for another pounce--she had got up.We could, however, still distinguish but a shoulder and an outstretched leg of her gentleman, who, on her movement, appeared, as in protest, to have affirmed by an emphatic shift of his seat his preference for their remaining as they were.This carried him further round the tree.We thus lost him, but she stood there while we waited, evidently exhorting him; after a minute of which she came away as in confidence that he would follow.During this process, with a face more visible, she had looked as charming as a pretty woman almost always does in rising eloquent before the apathetic male.She hadn't yet noticed us, but something in her attitude and manner particularly spoke to me.There were implications in it to which I couldn't be blind, and I felt how my neighbour also would have caught them and been confirmed in her certitude.In fact I felt the breath of her confirmation in another elated "There!"--in a "Look at her NOW!" Incontestably, while not yet aware of us, Mrs.Server confessed with every turn of her head to a part in a relation.It stuck out of her, her part in a relation; it hung before us, her part in a relation; it was large to us beyond the breadth of the glade.And since, off her guard, she so let us have it, with whom in the world could the relation--so much of one as that--be but with Gilbert Long? The question was not settled till she had come on some distance; then the producer of our tension, emerging and coming after her, offered himself to our united, to our confounded, anxiety once more as poor Briss.
That we should have been confounded was doubtless but a proof of the impression--the singular assurance of intimacy borne toward us on the soft summer air--that we had, however delusively, received.I should myself have been as ready as my neighbour to say "Whoever he is, they're in deep!"--and on grounds, moreover, quite as recklessly, as fantastically constructive as hers.There was nothing to explain our impression but the fact of our already having seen them figure together, and of this we needed breathing-time to give them the natural benefit.It was not indeed as an absolute benefit for either that Grace Brissenden's tone marked our recognition."Dear Guy AGAIN?"--but she had recovered herself enough to laugh."I should have thought he had had more than his turn!" She had recovered herself in fact much more than I; for somehow, from this instant, convinced as she had been and turning everything to her conviction, I found myself dealing, in thought, with still larger material.It was odd what a difference was made for me by the renewed sight of dear Guy.I didn't of course analyse this sense at the time; that was still to come.Our friends meanwhile had noticed us, and something clearly passed between them--it almost produced, for an instant, a visible arrest in their advance--on the question of their having perhaps been for some time exposed.
They came on, however, and I waved them from afar a greeting, to which Mrs.Server alone replied.Distances were great at Newmarch and landscape-gardening on the grand scale; it would take them still some minutes to reach our place of vantage or to arrive within sound of speech.There was accordingly nothing marked in our turning away and strolling back to the house.We had been so intent that we confessed by this movement to a quick impulse to disown it.Yet it was remarkable that, before we went in, Mrs.Brissenden should have struck me afresh as having got all she wanted.Her recovery from our surprise was already so complete that her high lucidity now alone reigned."You don't require, I suppose, anything more than THAT?""Well, I don't quite see, I'm bound to say, just where even 'that' comes in." It incommoded me singularly little, at the point to which I had jumped, that this statement was the exact reverse of the truth.Where it came in was what I happened to be in the very act of seeing--seeing to the exclusion of almost everything else.It was sufficient that I might perhaps feel myself to have done at last with Mrs.Brissenden.I desired, at all events, quite as if this benefit were assured me, to leave her the honours of the last word.
She was finely enough prepared to take them."Why, this invention of using my husband--!" She fairly gasped at having to explain.
"Of 'using' him?"
"Trailing him across the scent as she does all of you, one after the other.Excuse my comparing you to so many red herrings.You each have your turn; only HIS seems repeated, poor dear, till he's quite worn out with it."I kept for a little this image in my eye."I can see of course that his whole situation must be something of a strain for him; for I've not forgotten what you told me yesterday of his service with Lady John.To have to work in such a way for two of them at once"--it couldn't help, I admitted, being a tax on a fellow.Besides, when one came to think of it, the same man couldn't be TWO red herrings.To show as Mrs.Server's would directly impair his power to show as Lady John's.It would seem, in short, a matter for his patronesses to have out together.
Mrs.Brissenden betrayed, on this, some annoyance at my levity."Oh, the cases are not the same, for with Lady John it amuses him: he thinks he knows.""Knows what?"
"What she wants him for.He doesn't know"--she kept it wonderfully clear--"that she really doesn't want him for anything; for anything except, of course"--this came as a droll second thought--"himself.""And he doesn't know, either"--I tried to remain at her level--"that Mrs.Server does.""No," she assented, "he doesn't know what it's her idea to do with him.""He doesn't know, in fine," I cheerfully pursued, "the truth about anything.
And of course, by your agreement with me, he's not to learn it."She recognised her agreement with me, yet looked as if she had reserved a certain measure of *******.Then she handsomely gave up even that."Icertainly don't want him to become conscious.""It's his unconsciousness," I declared, "that saves him.""Yes, even from himself."
"We must accordingly feed it." In the house, with intention, we parted company; but there was something that, before this, I felt it due to my claim of consistency to bring out."It wasn't, at all events, Gilbert Long behind the tree!"My triumph, however, beneath the sponge she was prepared to pass again over much of our experience, was short-lived."Of course it wasn't.We shouldn't have been treated to the scene if it HAD been.What could she possibly have put poor Briss there for but just to show it wasn't?"