第5章

"He's nothing less than supreme, Mrs.Ambient! There are pages in each of his books of a perfection classing them with the greatest things.Accordingly for me to see him in this familiar way, in his habit as he lives, and apparently to find the man as delightful as the artist--well, I can't tell you how much too good to be true it seems and how great a privilege I think it." I knew I was gushing, but I couldn't help it, and what I said was a good deal less than what I felt.I was by no means sure I should dare to say even so much as this to the master himself, and there was a kind of rapture in speaking it out to his wife which was not affected by the fact that, as a wife, she appeared peculiar.She listened to me with her face grave again and her lips a little compressed, listened as if in no doubt, of course, that her husband was remarkable, but as if at the same time she had heard it frequently enough and couldn't treat it as stirring news.There was even in her manner a suggestion that I was so young as to expose myself to being called forward--an imputation and a word I had always loathed; as well as a hinted reminder that people usually got over their early extravagance."Iassure you that for me this is a red-letter day," I added.

She didn't take this up, but after a pause, looking round her, said abruptly and a trifle dryly: "We're very much afraid about the fruit this year."My eyes wandered to the mossy mottled garden-walls, where plum-trees and pears, flattened and fastened upon the rusty bricks, looked like crucified figures with many arms."Doesn't it promise well?""No, the trees look very dull.We had such late frosts."Then there was another pause.She addressed her attention to the opposite end of the grounds, kept it for her husband's return with the child."Is Mr.Ambient fond of gardening?" it occurred to me to ask, irresistibly impelled as I felt myself, moreover, to bring the conversation constantly back to him.

"He's very fond of plums," said his wife.

"Ah well, then, I hope your crop will be better than you fear.It's a lovely old place," I continued."The whole impression's that of certain places he has described.Your house is like one of his pictures."She seemed a bit frigidly amused at my glow."It's a pleasant little place.There are hundreds like it.""Oh it has his TONE," I laughed, but sounding my epithet and insisting on my point the more sharply that my companion appeared to see in my appreciation of her simple establishment a mark of mean experience.

It was clear I insisted too much."His tone?" she repeated with a harder look at me and a slightly heightened colour.

"Surely he has a tone, Mrs.Ambient."

"Oh yes, he has indeed! But I don't in the least consider that I'm living in one of his books at all.I shouldn't care for that in the least," she went on with a smile that had in some degree the effect of converting her really sharp protest into an insincere joke."I'm afraid I'm not very literary.And I'm not artistic," she stated.

"I'm very sure you're not ignorant, not stupid," I ventured to reply, with the accompaniment of feeling immediately afterwards that I had been both familiar and patronising.My only consolation was in the sense that she had begun it, had fairly dragged me into it.She had thrust forward her limitations.

"Well, whatever I am I'm very different from my husband.If you like him you won't like me.You needn't say anything.Your liking me isn't in the least necessary!""Don't defy me!" I could but honourably make answer.

She looked as if she hadn't heard me, which was the best thing she could do; and we sat some time without further speech.Mrs.Ambient had evidently the enviable English quality of being able to be mute without unrest.But at last she spoke--she asked me if there seemed many people in town.I gave her what satisfaction I could on this point, and we talked a little of London and of some of its characteristics at that time of the year.At the end of this I came back irrepressibly to Mark.

"Doesn't he like to be there now? I suppose he doesn't find the proper quiet for his work.I should think his things had been written for the most part in a very still place.They suggest a great stillness following on a kind of tumult.Don't you think so?"I laboured on."I suppose London's a tremendous place to collect impressions, but a refuge like this, in the country, must be better for working them up.Does he get many of his impressions in London, should you say?" I proceeded from point to point in this malign inquiry simply because my hostess, who probably thought me an odious