by Henry James
But would nobody notice it at all?—that was a question that added a prospective zest to one’s possession of a critical sense. So much depended upon it that I was rather relieved than otherwise not to know the answer too soon. I waited in fact a year—the year for which Limbert had cannily engaged on trial with Mr. Bousefield; the year as to which through the same sharpened shrewdness it had been conveyed in the agreement between them that Mr. Bousefield was not to intermeddle. It had been Limbert’s general prayer that we would during this period let him quite alone. His terror of my direct rays was a droll, dreadful force that always operated: he explained it by the fact that I understood him too well, expressed too much of his intention, saved him too little from himself. The less he was saved the more he didn’t sell: I literally interpreted, and that was simply fatal.
I held my breath accordingly; I did more—I closed my eyes, I guarded my treacherous ears. He induced several of us to do that (of such devotions we were capable) so that not even glancing at the thing from month to month, and having nothing but his shamed, anxious silence to go by, I participated only vaguely in the little hum that surrounded his act of sacrifice. It was blown about the town that the public would be surprised; it was hinted, it was printed that he was making a desperate bid. His new work was spoken of as “more calculated for general acceptance.” These tidings produced in some quarters much reprobation, and nowhere more, I think, than on the part of certain persons who had never read a word of him, or assuredly had never spent a shilling on him, and who hung for hours over the other attractions of the newspaper that announced his abasement. So much asperity cheered me a little—seemed to signify that he might really be doing something. On the other hand I had a distinct alarm; some one sent me for some alien reason an American journal (containing frankly more than that source of affliction) in which was quoted a passage from our friend’s last instalment. The passage—I couldn’t for my life help reading it—was simply superb. Ah, he would have to move to the country if that was the worst he could do! It gave me a pang to see how little after all he had improved since the days of his competition with Pat Moyle. There was nothing in the passage quoted in the American paper that Pat would for a moment have owned. During the last weeks, as the opportunity of reading the complete thing drew near, one’s suspense was barely endurable, and I shall never forget the July evening on which I put it to rout. Coming home to dinner I found the two volumes on my table, and I sat up with them half the night, dazed, bewildered, rubbing my eyes, wondering at the monstrous joke. Was it a monstrous joke, his second manner—was this the new line, the desperate bid, the scheme for more general acceptance and the remedy for material failure? Had he made a fool of all his following, or had he most injuriously made a still bigger fool of himself? Obvious?—where the deuce was it obvious? Popular?—how on earth could it be popular? The thing was charming with all his charm and powerful with all his power: it was an unscrupulous, an unsparing, a shameless, merciless masterpiece. It was, no doubt, like the old letters to the Beacon, the worst he could do; but the perversity of the effort, even though heroic, had been frustrated by the purity of the gift. Under what illusion had he laboured, with what wavering, treacherous compass had he steered? His honour was inviolable, his measurements were all wrong. I was thrilled with the whole impression and with all that came crowding in its train. It was too grand a collapse—it was too hideous a triumph; I exalted almost with tears—I lamented with a strange delight. Indeed as the short night waned and, threshing about in my emotion, I fidgeted to my high-perched window for a glimpse of the summer dawn, I became at last aware that I was staring at it out of eyes that had compassionately and admiringly filled. The eastern sky, over the London housetops, had a wonderful tragic crimson. That was the colour of his magnificent mistake.
IV
If something less had depended on my impression I daresay I should have communicated it as soon as I had swallowed my breakfast; but the case was so embarrassing that I spent the first half of the day in reconsidering it, dipping into the book again, almost feverishly turning its leaves and trying to extract from them, for my friend’s benefit, some symptom of reassurance, some ground for felicitation. This rash challenge had consequences merely dreadful; the wretched volumes, imperturbable and impeccable, with their shyer secrets and their second line of defence, were like a beautiful woman more denuded or a great symphony on a new hearing. There was something quite sinister in the way they stood up to me. I couldn’t however be dumb—that was to give the wrong tinge to my disappointment; so that later in the afternoon, taking my courage in both hands, I approached with a vain tortuosity poor Limbert’s door. A smart victoria waited before it in which from the bottom of the street I saw that a lady who had apparently just issued from the house was settling herself. I recognised Jane Highmore and instantly paused till she should drive down to me. She presently met me half-way and as soon as she saw me stopped her carriage in agitation. This was a relief—it postponed a moment the sight of that pale, fine face of our friend’s fronting me for the right verdict. I gathered from the flushed eagerness with which Mrs. Highmore asked me if I had heard the news that a verdict of some sort had already been rendered.
“What news?—about the book?”
“About that horrid magazine. They’re shockingly upset. He has lost his position—he has had a fearful flare-up with Mr. Bousefield.”
I stood there blank, but not unaware in my blankness of how history repeats itself. There came to me across the years Maud’s announcement of their ejection from the Beacon, and dimly, confusedly the same explanation was in the air. This time however I had been on my guard; I had had my suspicion. “He has made it too flippant?” I found breath after an instant to inquire.
Mrs. Highmore’s vacuity exceeded my own. “Too ‘flippant’? He has made it too oracular. Mr. Bousefield says he has killed it.” Then perceiving my stupefaction: “Don’t you know what has happened?” she pursued; “isn’t it because in his trouble, poor love, he has sent for you that you’ve come? You’ve heard nothing at all? Then you had better know before you see them. Get in here with me—I’ll take you a turn and tell you.” We were close to the Park, the Regent’s, and when with extreme alacrity I had placed myself beside her and the carriage had begun to enter it she went on: “It was what I feared, you know. It reeked with culture. He keyed it up too high.”
I felt myself sinking in the general collapse. “What are you talking about?”
“Why, about that beastly magazine. They’re all on the streets. I shall have to take mamma.”
I pulled myself together. “What on earth then did Bousefield want? He said he wanted intellectual power.”
“Yes, but Ray overdid it.”
“Why, Bousefield said it was a thing he couldn’t overdo.”
“Well, Ray managed: he took Mr. Bousefield too literally. It appears the thing has been doing dreadfully, but the proprietor couldn’t say anything, because he had covenanted to leave the editor quite free. He describes himself as having stood there in a fever and seen his ship go down. A day or two ago the year was up, so he could at last break out. Maud says he did break out quite fearfully; he came to the house and let poor Ray have it. Ray gave it to him back; he reminded him of his own idea of the way the cat was going to jump.”
I gasped with dismay. “Has Bousefield abandoned that idea? Isn’t the cat going to jump?”
Mrs. Highmore hesitated. “It appears that she doesn’t seem in a hurry. Ray at any rate has jumped too far ahead of her. He should have temporised a little, Mr. Bousefield says; but I’m beginning to think, you know,” said my companion, “that Ray can’t temporise.” Fresh from my emotions of the previous twenty-four hours I was scarcely in a position to disagree with her. “He published too much pure thought.”
“Pure thought?” I cried. “Why, it struck me so often—certainly in a due proportion of cases—as pure drivel!”
“Oh, you’re more keyed up than he! Mr. Bousefield says
that of course he wanted things that were suggestive and clever, things that he could point to with pride. But he contends that Ray didn’t allow for human weakness. He gave everything in too stiff doses.”
Sensibly, I fear, to my neighbour I winced at her words; I felt a prick that made me meditate. Then I said: “Is that, by chance, the way he gave me?” Mrs. Highmore remained silent so long that I had somehow the sense of a fresh pang; and after a minute, turning in my seat, I laid my hand on her arm, fixed my eyes upon her face and pursued pressingly: “Do you suppose it to be to my ‘Occasional Remarks’ that Mr. Bousefield refers?”
At last she met my look. “Can you bear to hear it?”
“I think I can bear anything now.”
“Well then, it was really what I wanted to give you an inkling of. It’s largely over you that they’ve quarrelled. Mr. Bousefield wants him to chuck you.”
I grabbed her arm again. “And Limbert won’t?”
“He seems to cling to you. Mr. Bousefield says no magazine can afford you.”
I gave a laugh that agitated the very coachman. “Why, my dear lady, has he any idea of my price?”
“It isn’t your price—he says you’re dear at any price; you do so much to sink the ship. Your ‘Remarks’ are called ‘Occasional,’ but nothing could be more deadly regular: you’re there month after month and you’re never anywhere else. And you supply no public want.”
“I supply the most delicious irony.”
“So Ray appears to have declared. Mr. Bousefield says that’s not in the least a public want. No one can make out what you’re talking about and no one would care if he could. I’m only quoting him, mind.”
“Quote, quote—if Limbert holds out. I think I must leave you now, please: I must rush back to express to him what I feel.”
“I’ll drive you to his door. That isn’t all,” said Mrs. Highmore. And on the way, when the carriage had turned, she communicated the rest. “Mr. Bousefield really arrived with an ultimatum: it had the form of something or other by Minnie Meadows.”
“Minnie Meadows?” I was stupefied.
“The new lady-humourist every one is talking about. It’s the first of a series of screaming sketches for which poor Ray was to find a place.” “Is that Mr. Bousefield’s idea of literature?” “No, but he says it’s the public’s, and you’ve got to take some account of the public. Aux grands maux les grands remèdes. They had a tremendous lot of ground to make up, and no one would make it up like Minnie. She would be the best concession they could make to human weakness; she would strike at least this note of showing that it was not going to be quite all—well, all you. Now Ray draws the line at Minnie; he won’t stoop to Minnie; he declines to touch, to look at Minnie. When Mr. Bousefield—rather imperiously, I believe—made Minnie a sine quâ non of his retention of his post he said something rather violent, told him to go to some unmentionable place and take Minnie with him. That of course put the fat on the fire. They had really a considerable scene.”
“So had he with the Beacon man,” I musingly replied. “Poor dear, he seems born for considerable scenes! It’s on Minnie, then, that they’ve really split?” Mrs. Highmore exhaled her despair in a sound which I took for an assent, and when we had rolled a little further I rather in-consequently and to her visible surprise broke out of my reverie. “It will never do in the world—he must stoop to Minnie!”
“It’s too late—and what I’ve told you still isn’t all. Mr. Bousefield raises another objection.”
“What other, pray?”
“Can’t you guess?”
I wondered. “No more of Ray’s fiction?”
“Not a line. That’s something else no magazine can stand. Now that his novel has run its course Mr. Bousefield is distinctly disappointed.”
I fairly bounded in my place. “Then it may do?”
Mrs. Highmore looked bewildered. “Why so, if he finds it too dull?”
“Dull? Ralph Limbert? He’s as fine as a needle!”
“It comes to the same thing—he won’t penetrate leather. Mr. Bousefield had counted on something that would, on something that would have a wider acceptance. Ray says he wants iron pegs.” I collapsed again; my flicker of elation dropped to a throb of quieter comfort; and after a moment’s silence I asked my neighbour if she had herself read the work our friend had just put forth. “No,” she replied, “I gave him my word at the beginning, on his urgent request, that I wouldn’t.”
“Not even as a book?”
“He begged me never to look at it at all. He said he was trying a low experiment. Of course I knew what he meant and I entreated him to let me just for curiosity take a peep. But he was firm, he declared he couldn’t bear the thought that a woman like me should see him in the depths.”
“He’s only, thank God, in the depths of distress,” I replied. “His experiment’s nothing worse than a failure.”
“Then Bousefield is right—his circulation won’t budge?”
“It won’t move one, as they say in Fleet Street. The book has extraordinary beauty.”
“Poor duck—after trying so hard!” Jane Highmore sighed with real tenderness. “What will then become of them?”
I was silent an instant. “You must take your mother.”
She was silent too. “I must speak of it to Cecil!” she presently said. Cecil is Mr. Highmore, who then entertained, I knew, strong views on the inadjustability of circumstances in general to the idiosyncrasies of Mrs. Stannace. He held it supremely happy that in an important relation she should have met her match. Her match was Ray Limbert—not much of a writer but a practical man. “The dear things still think, you know,” my companion continued, “that the book will be the beginning of their fortune. Their illusion, if you’re right, will be rudely dispelled.”
“That’s what makes me dread to face them. I’ve just spent with his volumes an unforgettable night. His illusion has lasted because so many of us have been pledged till this moment to turn our faces the other way. We haven’t known the truth and have therefore had nothing to say. Now that we do know it indeed we have practically quite as little. I hang back from the threshold. How can I follow up with a burst of enthusiasm such a catastrophe as Mr. Bousefield’s visit?”
As I turned uneasily about my neighbour more comfortably snuggled. “Well, I’m glad then I haven’t read him and have nothing unpleasant to say!” We had come back to Limbert’s door, and I made the coachman stop short of it. “But he’ll try again, with that determination of his: he’ll build his hopes on the next time.”
“On what else has he built them from the very first? It’s never the present for him that bears the fruit; that’s always postponed and for somebody else: there has always to be another try. I admit that his idea of a ‘new line’ has made him try harder than ever. It makes no difference,” I brooded, still timorously lingering; “his achievement of his necessity, his hope of a market will continue to attach themselves to the future. But the next time will disappoint him as each last time has done—and then the next and the next and the next!”
I found myself seeing it all with a clearness almost inspired: it evidently cast a chill on Mrs. Highmore. “Then what on earth will become of him?” she plaintively asked.
“I don’t think I particularly care what may become of him,” I returned with a conscious, reckless increase of my exaltation; “I feel it almost enough to be concerned with what may become of one’s enjoyment of him. I don’t know in short what will become of his circulation; I am only quite at my ease as to what will become of his work. It will simply keep all its quality. He’ll try again for the common with what he’ll believe to be a still more infernal cunning, and again the common will fatally elude him, for his infernal cunning will have been only his genius in an ineffectual disguise.” We sat drawn up by the pavement, facing poor Limbert’s future as I saw it. It relieved me in a manner to know the worst, and I prophesied with an assurance which as I look back upon it strikes me as rather remarkable. “Q
ue voulez-vous?” I went on; “you can’t make a sow’s ear of a silk purse! It’s grievous indeed if you like—there are people who can’t be vulgar for trying. He can’t—it wouldn’t come off, I promise you, even once. It takes more than trying—it comes by grace. It happens not to be given to Limbert to fall. He belongs to the heights—he breathes there, he lives there, and it’s accordingly to the heights I must ascend,” I said as I took leave of my conductress, “to carry him this wretched news from where wemove!”
