The Lesson of the Master

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THE LESSON OF THE MASTER
by Henry James


CHAPTER I


He had been told the ladies were at church, but this was corrected by
what he saw from the top of the steps--they descended from a great height
in two arms, with a circular sweep of the most charming effect--at the
threshold of the door which, from the long bright gallery, overlooked the
immense lawn. Three gentlemen, on the grass, at a distance, sat under
the great trees, while the fourth figure showed a crimson dress that told
as a "bit of colour" amid the fresh rich green. The servant had so far
accompanied Paul Overt as to introduce him to this view, after asking him
if he wished first to go to his room. The young man declined that
privilege, conscious of no disrepair from so short and easy a journey and
always liking to take at once a general perceptive possession of a new
scene. He stood there a little with his eyes on the group and on the
admirable picture, the wide grounds of an old country-house near
London--that only made it better--on a splendid Sunday in June. "But
that lady, who's _she_?" he said to the servant before the man left him.

"I think she's Mrs. St. George, sir."

"Mrs. St. George, the wife of the distinguished--" Then Paul Overt
checked himself, doubting if a footman would know.

"Yes, sir--probably, sir," said his guide, who appeared to wish to
intimate that a person staying at Summersoft would naturally be, if only
by alliance, distinguished. His tone, however, made poor Overt himself
feel for the moment scantly so.

"And the gentlemen?" Overt went on.

"Well, sir, one of them's General Fancourt."

"Ah yes, I know; thank you." General Fancourt was distinguished, there
was no doubt of that, for something he had done, or perhaps even hadn't
done--the young man couldn't remember which--some years before in India.
The servant went away, leaving the glass doors open into the gallery, and
Paul Overt remained at the head of the wide double staircase, saying to
himself that the place was sweet and promised a pleasant visit, while he
leaned on the balustrade of fine old ironwork which, like all the other
details, was of the same period as the house. It all went together and
spoke in one voice--a rich English voice of the early part of the
eighteenth century. It might have been church-time on a summer's day in
the reign of Queen Anne; the stillness was too perfect to be modern, the
nearness counted so as distance, and there was something so fresh and
sound in the originality of the large smooth house, the expanse of
beautiful brickwork that showed for pink rather than red and that had
been kept clear of messy creepers by the law under which a woman with a
rare complexion disdains a veil. When Paul Overt became aware that the
people under the trees had noticed him he turned back through the open
doors into the great gallery which was the pride of the place. It
marched across from end to end and seemed--with its bright colours, its
high panelled windows, its faded flowered chintzes, its
quickly-recognised portraits and pictures, the blue-and-white china of
its cabinets and the attenuated festoons and rosettes of its ceiling--a
cheerful upholstered avenue into the other century.

Our friend was slightly nervous; that went with his character as a
student of fine prose, went with the artist's general disposition to
vibrate; and there was a particular thrill in the idea that Henry St.
George might be a member of the party. For the young aspirant he had
remained a high literary figure, in spite of the lower range of
production to which he had fallen after his first three great successes,
the comparative absence of quality in his later work. There had been
moments when Paul Overt almost shed tears for this; but now that he was
near him--he had never met him--he was conscious only of the fine
original source and of his own immense debt. After he had taken a turn
or two up and down the gallery he came out again and descended the steps.
He was but slenderly supplied with a certain social boldness--it was
really a weakness in him--so that, conscious of a want of acquaintance
with the four persons in the distance, he gave way to motions recommended
by their not committing him to a positive approach. There was a fine
English awkwardness in this--he felt that too as he sauntered vaguely and
obliquely across the lawn, taking an independent line. Fortunately there
was an equally fine English directness in the way one of the gentlemen
presently rose and made as if to "stalk" him, though with an air of
conciliation and reassurance. To this demonstration Paul Overt instantly
responded, even if the gentleman were not his host. He was tall,
straight and elderly and had, like the great house itself, a pink smiling
face, and into the bargain a white moustache. Our young man met him
halfway while he laughed and said: "Er--Lady Watermouth told us you were
coming; she asked me just to look after you." Paul Overt thanked him,
liking him on the spot, and turned round with him to walk toward the
others. "They've all gone to church--all except us," the stranger
continued as they went; "we're just sitting here--it's so jolly." Overt
pronounced it jolly indeed: it was such a lovely place. He mentioned
that he was having the charming impression for the first time.

"Ah you've not been here before?" said his companion. "It's a nice
little place--not much to _do_, you know". Overt wondered what he wanted
to "do"--he felt that he himself was doing so much. By the time they
came to where the others sat he had recognised his initiator for a
military man and--such was the turn of Overt's imagination--had found him
thus still more sympathetic. He would naturally have a need for action,
for deeds at variance with the pacific pastoral scene. He was evidently
so good-natured, however, that he accepted the inglorious hour for what
it was worth. Paul Overt shared it with him and with his companions for
the next twenty minutes; the latter looked at him and he looked at them
without knowing much who they were, while the talk went on without much
telling him even what it meant. It seemed indeed to mean nothing in
particular; it wandered, with casual pointless pauses and short
terrestrial flights, amid names of persons and places--names which, for
our friend, had no great power of evocation. It was all sociable and
slow, as was right and natural of a warm Sunday morning.

His first attention was given to the question, privately considered, of
whether one of the two younger men would be Henry St. George. He knew
many of his distinguished contemporaries by their photographs, but had
never, as happened, seen a portrait of the great misguided novelist. One
of the gentlemen was unimaginable--he was too young; and the other
scarcely looked clever enough, with such mild undiscriminating eyes. If
those eyes were St. George's the problem, presented by the ill-matched
parts of his genius would be still more difficult of solution. Besides,
the deportment of their proprietor was not, as regards the lady in the
red dress, such as could be natural, toward the wife of his bosom, even
to a writer accused by several critics of sacrificing too much to manner.
Lastly Paul Overt had a vague sense that if the gentleman with the
expressionless eyes bore the name that had set his heart beating faster
(he also had contradictory conventional whiskers--the young admirer of
the celebrity had never in a mental vision seen _his_ face in so vulgar a
frame) he would have given him a sign of recognition or of friendliness,
would have heard of him a little, would know something about
"Ginistrella," would have an impression of how that fresh fiction had
caught the eye of real criticism. Paul Overt had a dread of being
grossly proud, but even morbid modesty might view the authorship of
"Ginistrella" as constituting a degree of identity. His soldierly friend
became clear enough: he was "Fancourt," but was also "the General"; and
he mentioned to the new visitor in the course of a few moments that he
had but lately returned from twenty years service abroad.

"And now you remain in England?" the young man asked.

"Oh yes; I've bought a small house in London."

"And I hope you like it," said Overt, looking at Mrs. St. George.

"Well, a little house in Manchester Square--there's a limit to the
enthusiasm _that_ inspires."

"Oh I meant being at home again--being back in Piccadilly."

"My daughter likes Piccadilly--that's the main thing. She's very fond of
art and music and literature and all that kind of thing. She missed it
in India and she finds it in London, or she hopes she'll find it. Mr.
St. George has promised to help her--he has been awfully kind to her. She
has gone to church--she's fond of that too--but they'll all be back in a
quarter of an hour. You must let me introduce you to her--she'll be so
glad to know you. I dare say she has read every blest word you've
written."

"I shall be delighted--I haven't written so very many," Overt pleaded,
feeling, and without resentment, that the General at least was vagueness
itself about that. But he wondered a little why, expressing this
friendly disposition, it didn't occur to the doubtless eminent soldier to
pronounce the word that would put him in relation with Mrs. St. George.
If it was a question of introductions Miss Fancourt--apparently as yet
unmarried--was far away, while the wife of his illustrious confrere was
almost between them. This lady struck Paul Overt as altogether pretty,
with a surprising juvenility and a high smartness of aspect, something
that--he could scarcely have said why--served for mystification. St.
George certainly had every right to a charming wife, but he himself would
never have imagined the important little woman in the aggressively
Parisian dress the partner for life, the alter ego, of a man of letters.
That partner in general, he knew, that second self, was far from
presenting herself in a single type: observation had taught him that she
was not inveterately, not necessarily plain. But he had never before
seen her look so much as if her prosperity had deeper foundations than an
ink-spotted study-table littered with proof-sheets. Mrs. St. George
might have been the wife of a gentleman who "kept" books rather than
wrote them, who carried on great affairs in the City and made better
bargains than those that poets mostly make with publishers. With this
she hinted at a success more personal--a success peculiarly stamping the
age in which society, the world of conversation, is a great drawing-room
with the City for its antechamber. Overt numbered her years at first as
some thirty, and then ended by believing that she might approach her
fiftieth. But she somehow in this case juggled away the excess and the
difference--you only saw them in a rare glimpse, like the rabbit in the
conjurer's sleeve. She was extraordinarily white, and her every element
and item was pretty; her eyes, her ears, her hair, her voice, her hands,
her feet--to which her relaxed attitude in her wicker chair gave a great
publicity--and the numerous ribbons and trinkets with which she was
bedecked. She looked as if she had put on her best clothes to go to
church and then had decided they were too good for that and had stayed at
home. She told a story of some length about the shabby way Lady Jane had
treated the Duchess, as well as an anecdote in relation to a purchase she
had made in Paris--on her way back from Cannes; made for Lady Egbert, who
had never refunded the money. Paul Overt suspected her of a tendency to
figure great people as larger than life, until he noticed the manner in
which she handled Lady Egbert, which was so sharply mutinous that it
reassured him. He felt he should have understood her better if he might
have met her eye; but she scarcely so much as glanced at him. "Ah here
they come--all the good ones!" she said at last; and Paul Overt admired
at his distance the return of the church-goers--several persons, in
couples and threes, advancing in a flicker of sun and shade at the end of
a large green vista formed by the level grass and the overarching boughs.

"If you mean to imply that _we're_ bad, I protest," said one of the
gentlemen--"after making one's self agreeable all the morning!"

"Ah if they've found you agreeable--!" Mrs. St. George gaily cried. "But
if we're good the others are better."

"They must be angels then," said the amused General.

"Your husband was an angel, the way he went off at your bidding," the
gentleman who had first spoken declared to Mrs. St. George.

"At my bidding?"

"Didn't you make him go to church?"

"I never made him do anything in my life but once--when I made him burn
up a bad book. That's all!" At her "That's all!" our young friend broke
into an irrepressible laugh; it lasted only a second, but it drew her
eyes to him. His own met them, though not long enough to help him to
understand her; unless it were a step towards this that he saw on the
instant how the burnt book--the way she alluded to it!--would have been
one of her husband's finest things.

"A bad book?" her interlocutor repeated.

"I didn't like it. He went to church because your daughter went," she
continued to General Fancourt. "I think it my duty to call your
attention to his extraordinary demonstrations to your daughter."

"Well, if you don't mind them I don't," the General laughed.

"Il s'attache a ses pas. But I don't wonder--she's so charming."

"I hope she won't make him burn any books!" Paul Overt ventured to
exclaim.

"If she'd make him write a few it would be more to the purpose," said
Mrs. St. George. "He has been of a laziness of late--!"

Our young man stared--he was so struck with the lady's phraseology. Her
"Write a few" seemed to him almost as good as her "That's all." Didn't
she, as the wife of a rare artist, know what it was to produce one
perfect work of art? How in the world did she think they were turned on?
His private conviction was that, admirably as Henry St. George wrote, he
had written for the last ten years, and especially for the last five,
only too much, and there was an instant during which he felt inwardly
solicited to make this public. But before he had spoken a diversion was
effected by the return of the absentees. They strolled up
dispersedly--there were eight or ten of them--and the circle under the
trees rearranged itself as they took their place in it. They made it
much larger, so that Paul Overt could feel--he was always feeling that
sort of thing, as he said to himself--that if the company had already
been interesting to watch the interest would now become intense. He
shook hands with his hostess, who welcomed him without many words, in the
manner of a woman able to trust him to understand and conscious that so
pleasant an occasion would in every way speak for itself. She offered
him no particular facility for sitting by her, and when they had all
subsided again he found himself still next General Fancourt, with an
unknown lady on his other flank.

"That's my daughter--that one opposite," the General said to him without
lose of time. Overt saw a tall girl, with magnificent red hair, in a
dress of a pretty grey-green tint and of a limp silken texture, a garment
that clearly shirked every modern effect. It had therefore somehow the
stamp of the latest thing, so that our beholder quickly took her for
nothing if not contemporaneous.

"She's very handsome--very handsome," he repeated while he considered
her. There was something noble in her head, and she appeared fresh and
strong.

Her good father surveyed her with complacency, remarking soon: "She looks
too hot--that's her walk. But she'll be all right presently. Then I'll
make her come over and speak to you."

"I should be sorry to give you that trouble. If you were to take me over
_there_--!" the young man murmured.

"My dear sir, do you suppose I put myself out that way? I don't mean for
you, but for Marian," the General added.

"_I_ would put myself out for her soon enough," Overt replied; after
which he went on: "Will you be so good as to tell me which of those
gentlemen is Henry St. George?"

"The fellow talking to my girl. By Jove, he _is_ making up to
her--they're going off for another walk."

"Ah is that he--really?" Our friend felt a certain surprise, for the
personage before him seemed to trouble a vision which had been vague only
while not confronted with the reality. As soon as the reality dawned the
mental image, retiring with a sigh, became substantial enough to suffer a
slight wrong. Overt, who had spent a considerable part of his short life
in foreign lands, made now, but not for the first time, the reflexion
that whereas in those countries he had almost always recognised the
artist and the man of letters by his personal "type," the mould of his
face, the character of his head, the expression of his figure and even
the indications of his dress, so in England this identification was as
little as possible a matter of course, thanks to the greater conformity,
the habit of sinking the profession instead of advertising it, the
general diffusion of the air of the gentleman--the gentleman committed to
no particular set of ideas. More than once, on returning to his own
country, he had said to himself about people met in society: "One sees
them in this place and that, and one even talks with them; but to find
out what they _do_ one would really have to be a detective." In respect
to several individuals whose work he was the opposite of "drawn
to"--perhaps he was wrong--he found himself adding "No wonder they
conceal it--when it's so bad!" He noted that oftener than in France and
in Germany his artist looked like a gentleman--that is like an English
one--while, certainly outside a few exceptions, his gentlemen didn't look
like an artist. St. George was not one of the exceptions; that
circumstance he definitely apprehended before the great man had turned
his back to walk off with Miss Fancourt. He certainly looked better
behind than any foreign man of letters--showed for beautifully correct in
his tall black hat and his superior frock coat. Somehow, all the same,
these very garments--he wouldn't have minded them so much on a
weekday--were disconcerting to Paul Overt, who forgot for the moment that
the head of the profession was not a bit better dressed than himself. He
had caught a glimpse of a regular face, a fresh colour, a brown moustache
and a pair of eyes surely never visited by a fine frenzy, and he promised
himself to study these denotements on the first occasion. His
superficial sense was that their owner might have passed for a lucky
stockbroker--a gentleman driving eastward every morning from a sanitary
suburb in a smart dog-cart. That carried out the impression already
derived from his wife. Paul's glance, after a moment, travelled back to
this lady, and he saw how her own had followed her husband as he moved
off with Miss Fancourt. Overt permitted himself to wonder a little if
she were jealous when another woman took him away. Then he made out that
Mrs. St. George wasn't glaring at the indifferent maiden. Her eyes
rested but on her husband, and with unmistakeable serenity. That was the
way she wanted him to be--she liked his conventional uniform. Overt
longed to hear more about the book she had induced him to destroy.




CHAPTER II


As they all came out from luncheon General Fancourt took hold of him with
an "I say, I want you to know my girl!" as if the idea had just occurred
to him and he hadn't spoken of it before. With the other hand he
possessed himself all paternally of the young lady. "You know all about
him. I've seen you with his books. She reads everything--everything!"
he went on to Paul. The girl smiled at him and then laughed at her
father. The General turned away and his daughter spoke--"Isn't papa
delightful?"

"He is indeed, Miss Fancourt."

"As if I read you because I read 'everything'!"

"Oh I don't mean for saying that," said Paul Overt. "I liked him from
the moment he began to be kind to me. Then he promised me this
privilege."

"It isn't for you he means it--it's for me. If you flatter yourself that
he thinks of anything in life but me you'll find you're mistaken. He
introduces every one. He thinks me insatiable."

"You speak just like him," laughed our youth.

"Ah but sometimes I want to"--and the girl coloured. "I don't read
everything--I read very little. But I _have_ read you."

"Suppose we go into the gallery," said Paul Overt. She pleased him
greatly, not so much because of this last remark--though that of course
was not too disconcerting--as because, seated opposite to him at
luncheon, she had given him for half an hour the impression of her
beautiful face. Something else had come with it--a sense of generosity,
of an enthusiasm which, unlike many enthusiasms, was not all manner. That
was not spoiled for him by his seeing that the repast had placed her
again in familiar contact with Henry St. George. Sitting next her this
celebrity was also opposite our young man, who had been able to note that
he multiplied the attentions lately brought by his wife to the General's
notice. Paul Overt had gathered as well that this lady was not in the
least discomposed by these fond excesses and that she gave every sign of
an unclouded spirit. She had Lord Masham on one side of her and on the
other the accomplished Mr. Mulliner, editor of the new high-class lively
evening paper which was expected to meet a want felt in circles
increasingly conscious that Conservatism must be made amusing, and
unconvinced when assured by those of another political colour that it was
already amusing enough. At the end of an hour spent in her company Paul
Overt thought her still prettier than at the first radiation, and if her
profane allusions to her husband's work had not still rung in his ears he
should have liked her--so far as it could be a question of that in
connexion with a woman to whom he had not yet spoken and to whom probably
he should never speak if it were left to her. Pretty women were a clear
need to this genius, and for the hour it was Miss Fancourt who supplied
the want. If Overt had promised himself a closer view the occasion was
now of the best, and it brought consequences felt by the young man as
important. He saw more in St. George's face, which he liked the better
for its not having told its whole story in the first three minutes. That
story came out as one read, in short instalments--it was excusable that
one's analogies should be somewhat professional--and the text was a style
considerably involved, a language not easy to translate at sight. There
were shades of meaning in it and a vague perspective of history which
receded as you advanced. Two facts Paul had particularly heeded. The
first of these was that he liked the measured mask much better at
inscrutable rest than in social agitation; its almost convulsive smile
above all displeased him (as much as any impression from that source
could), whereas the quiet face had a charm that grew in proportion as
stillness settled again. The change to the expression of gaiety excited,
he made out, very much the private protest of a person sitting gratefully
in the twilight when the lamp is brought in too soon. His second
reflexion was that, though generally averse to the flagrant use of
ingratiating arts by a man of age "making up" to a pretty girl, he was
not in this case too painfully affected: which seemed to prove either
that St. George had a light hand or the air of being younger than he was,
or else that Miss Fancourt's own manner somehow made everything right.

Overt walked with her into the gallery, and they strolled to the end of
it, looking at the pictures, the cabinets, the charming vista, which
harmonised with the prospect of the summer afternoon, resembling it by a
long brightness, with great divans and old chairs that figured hours of
rest. Such a place as that had the added merit of giving those who came
into it plenty to talk about. Miss Fancourt sat down with her new
acquaintance on a flowered sofa, the cushions of which, very numerous,
were tight ancient cubes of many sizes, and presently said: "I'm so glad
to have a chance to thank you."

"To thank me--?" He had to wonder.

"I liked your book so much. I think it splendid."

She sat there smiling at him, and he never asked himself which book she
meant; for after all he had written three or four. That seemed a vulgar
detail, and he wasn't even gratified by the idea of the pleasure she told
him--her handsome bright face told him--he had given her. The feeling
she appealed to, or at any rate the feeling she excited, was something
larger, something that had little to do with any quickened pulsation of
his own vanity. It was responsive admiration of the life she embodied,
the young purity and richness of which appeared to imply that real
success was to resemble _that_, to live, to bloom, to present the
perfection of a fine type, not to have hammered out headachy fancies with
a bent back at an ink-stained table. While her grey eyes rested on
him--there was a wideish space between these, and the division of her
rich-coloured hair, so thick that it ventured to be smooth, made a free
arch above them--he was almost ashamed of that exercise of the pen which
it was her present inclination to commend. He was conscious he should
have liked better to please her in some other way. The lines of her face
were those of a woman grown, but the child lingered on in her complexion
and in the sweetness of her mouth. Above all she was natural--that was
indubitable now; more natural than he had supposed at first, perhaps on
account of her aesthetic toggery, which was conventionally
unconventional, suggesting what he might have called a tortuous
spontaneity. He had feared that sort of thing in other cases, and his
fears had been justified; for, though he was an artist to the essence,
the modern reactionary nymph, with the brambles of the woodland caught in
her folds and a look as if the satyrs had toyed with her hair, made him
shrink not as a man of starch and patent leather, but as a man
potentially himself a poet or even a faun. The girl was really more
candid than her costume, and the best proof of it was her supposing her
liberal character suited by any uniform. This was a fallacy, since if
she was draped as a pessimist he was sure she liked the taste of life. He
thanked her for her appreciation--aware at the same time that he didn't
appear to thank her enough and that she might think him ungracious. He
was afraid she would ask him to explain something he had written, and he
always winced at that--perhaps too timidly--for to his own ear the
explanation of a work of art sounded fatuous. But he liked her so much
as to feel a confidence that in the long run he should be able to show
her he wasn't rudely evasive. Moreover she surely wasn't quick to take
offence, wasn't irritable; she could be trusted to wait. So when he said
to her, "Ah don't talk of anything I've done, don't talk of it _here_;
there's another man in the house who's the actuality!"--when he uttered
this short sincere protest it was with the sense that she would see in
the words neither mock humility nor the impatience of a successful man
bored with praise.