The Sacred Fount

I continued to look at her. "He would have no need then of her having transformed and inspired him."

"Or of her having deformed and idiotised herself," my friend subjoined.

Oh, how it sharpened my look! "No, no—she wouldn't need that."

"The great point is that he wouldn't!" Mrs. Briss laughed.

I kept it up. "She would do perfectly."

Mrs. Briss was not behind. "My dear man, she has got to do!"

This was brisker still, but I held my way. "Almost anyone would do."

It seemed for a little, between humour and sadness, to strike her. "Almost anyone would. Still," she less pensively declared, "we want the right one."

"Surely; the right one"—I could only echo it. "But how," I then proceeded, "has it happily been confirmed to you?"

It pulled her up a trifle. "'Confirmed'–?"

"That he's her lover."

My eyes had been meeting hers without, as it were, hers quite meeting mine. But at this there had to be intercourse. "By my husband."

It pulled me up a trifle. "Brissenden knows?"

She hesitated; then, as if at my tone, gave a laugh. "Don't you suppose I've told him?"

I really couldn't but admire her. "Ah—so you have talked!"

It didn't confound her. "One's husband isn't talk. You're cruel moreover," she continued, "to my joke. It was Briss, poor dear, who talked—though, I mean, only to me. He knows."

I cast about. "Since when?"

But she had it ready. "Since this evening."

Once more I couldn't but smile. "Just in time then! And the way he knows–?"

"Oh, the way!"—she had at this a slight drop. But she came up again. "I take his word."

"You haven't then asked him?"

"The beauty of it was—half an hour ago, upstairs—that I hadn't to ask. He came out with it himself, and that—to give you the whole thing—was, if you like, my moment. He dropped it on me," she continued to explain, "without in the least, sweet innocent, knowing what he was doing; more, at least, that is, than give her away."

"Which," I concurred, "was comparatively nothing!"

But she had no ear for irony, and she made out still more of her story. "He's simple—but he sees."

"And when he sees"—I completed the picture—"he luckily tells."

She quite agreed with me that it was lucky, but without prejudice to his acuteness and to what had been in him moreover a natural revulsion. "He has seen, in short; there comes some chance when one does. His, as luckily as you please, came this evening. If you ask me what it showed him you ask more than I've either cared or had time to ask. Do you consider, for that matter"—she put it to me—"that one does ask?" As her high smoothness—such was the wonder of this reascendancy—almost deprived me of my means, she was wise and gentle with me. "Let us leave it alone."

I fairly, while my look at her turned rueful, scratched my head. "Don't you think it a little late for that?"

"Late for everything!" she impatiently said. "But there you are."

I fixed the floor. There indeed I was. But I tried to stay there—just there only—as short a time as possible. Something, moreover, after all, caught me up. "But if Brissenden already knew–?"

"If he knew–?" She still gave me, without prejudice to her ingenuity—and indeed it was a part of this—all the work she could.

"Why, that Long and Lady John were thick?"

"Ah, then," she cried, "you admit they are!"

"Am I not admitting everything you tell me? But the more I admit," I explained, "the more I must understand. It's to admit, you see, that I inquire. If Briss came down with Lady John yesterday to oblige Mr. Long–"

"He didn't come," she interrupted, "to oblige Mr. Long!"

"Well, then, to oblige Lady John herself–"

"He didn't come to oblige Lady John herself!"

"Well, then, to oblige his clever wife–"

"He didn't come to oblige his clever wife! He came," said Mrs. Briss, "just to amuse himself. He has his amusements, and it's odd," she remarkably laughed, "that you should grudge them to him!"

"It would be odd indeed if I did! But put his proceeding," I continued, "on any ground you like; you described to me the purpose of it as a screening of the pair."

"I described to you the purpose of it as nothing of the sort. I didn't describe to you the purpose of it," said Mrs. Briss, "at all. I described to you," she triumphantly set forth, "the effect of it—which is a very different thing."

I could only meet her with admiration. "You're of an astuteness–!"

"Of course I'm of an astuteness! I see effects. And I saw that one. How much Briss himself had seen it is, as I've told you, another matter; and what he had, at any rate, quite taken the affair for was the sort of flirtation in which, if one is a friend to either party, and one's own feelings are not at stake, one may now and then give people a lift. Haven't I asked you before," she demanded, "if you suppose he would have given one had he had an idea where these people are?"

"I scarce know what you have asked me before!" I sighed; "and 'where they are' is just what you haven't told me."

"It's where my husband was so annoyed unmistakably to discover them." And as if she had quite fixed the point she passed to another. "He's peculiar, dear old Briss, but in a way by which, if one uses him—by which, I mean, if one depends on him—at all, one gains, I think, more than one loses. Up to a certain point, in any case that's the least a case for subtlety, he sees nothing at all; but beyond it—when once he does wake up—he'll go through a house. Nothing then escapes him, and what he drags to light is sometimes appalling."

"Rather," I thoughtfully responded—"since witness this occasion!"

"But isn't the interest of this occasion, as I've already suggested," she propounded, "simply that it makes an end, bursts a bubble, rids us of an incubus and permits us to go to bed in peace? I thank God," she moralised, "for dear old Briss to-night."

"So do I," I after a moment returned; "but I shall do so with still greater fervour if you'll have for the space of another question a still greater patience." With which, as a final movement from her seemed to say how much this was to ask, I had on my own side a certain exasperation of soreness for all I had to acknowledge—even were it mere acknowledgment—that she had brought rattling down. "Remember," I pleaded, "that you're costing me a perfect palace of thought!"

I could see too that, held unexpectedly by something in my tone, she really took it in. Couldn't I even almost see that, for an odd instant, she regretted the blighted pleasure of the pursuit of truth with me? I needed, at all events, no better proof either of the sweet or of the bitter in her comprehension than the accent with which she replied: "Oh, those who live in glass houses–"

"Shouldn't—no, I know they shouldn't—throw stones; and that's precisely why I don't." I had taken her immediately up, and I held her by it and by something better still. "You, from your fortress of granite, can chuck them about as you will! All the more reason, however," I quickly added, "that, before my frail, but, as I maintain, quite sublime structure, you honour me, for a few seconds, with an intelligent look at it. I seem myself to see it again, perfect in every part," I pursued, "even while I thus speak to you, and to feel afresh that, weren't the wretched accident of its weak foundation, it wouldn't have the shadow of a flaw. I've spoken of it in my conceivable regret," I conceded, "as already a mere heap of disfigured fragments; but that was the extravagance of my vexation, my despair. It's in point of fact so beautifully fitted that it comes apart piece by piece—which, so far as that goes, you've seen it do in the last quarter of an hour at your own touch, quite handing me the pieces, one by one, yourself and watching me stack them along the ground. They're not even in this state—see!" I wound up—"a pile of ruins!" I wound up, as I say, but only for long enough to have, with the vibration, the exaltation, of my eloquence, my small triumph as against her great one. "I should almost like, piece by piece, to hand them back to you." And this time I completed my figure. "I believe that, for the very charm of it, you'd find yourself placing them by your own sense in their order and rearing once more the splendid pile. Will you take just one of them from me again," I insisted, "and let me see if only to have it in your hands doesn't positively start you off? That's what I meant just now by asking you for another answer." She had remained silent, as if really in the presence of the rising magnificence of my metaphor, and it was not too late for the one chance left me. "There was nothing, you know, I had so fitted as your account of poor Mrs. Server when, on our seeing them, from the terrace, together below, you struck off your explanation that old Briss was her screen for Long."

"Fitted?"—and there was sincerity in her surprise. "I thought my stupid idea the one for which you had exactly no use!"