Chapter 3

If that first night was one of the liveliest, or at any rate was
the freshest, of my exaltations, there was another, four years
later, that was one of my great discomposures. Repetition, I well
knew by this time, was the secret of Saltram's power to alienate,
and of course one would never have seen him at his finest if one
hadn't seen him in his remorses. They set in mainly at this season
and were magnificent, elemental, orchestral. I was quite aware
that one of these atmospheric disturbances was now due; but none
the less, in our arduous attempt to set him on his feet as a
lecturer, it was impossible not to feel that two failures were a
large order, as we said, for a short course of five. This was the
second time, and it was past nine o'clock; the audience, a muster
unprecedented and really encouraging, had fortunately the attitude
of blandness that might have been looked for in persons whom the
promise of (if I'm not mistaken) An Analysis of Primary Ideas had
drawn to the neighbourhood of Upper Baker Street. There was in
those days in that region a petty lecture-hall to be secured on
terms as moderate as the funds left at our disposal by the
irrepressible question of the maintenance of five small Saltrams--I
include the mother--and one large one. By the time the Saltrams,
of different sizes, were all maintained we had pretty well poured
out the oil that might have lubricated the machinery for enabling
the most original of men to appear to maintain them.

It was I, the other time, who had been forced into the breach,
standing up there for an odious lamplit moment to explain to half a
dozen thin benches, where earnest brows were virtuously void of
anything so cynical as a suspicion, that we couldn't so much as put
a finger on Mr. Saltram. There was nothing to plead but that our
scouts had been out from the early hours and that we were afraid
that on one of his walks abroad--he took one, for meditation,
whenever he was to address such a company--some accident had
disabled or delayed him. The meditative walks were a fiction, for
he never, that any one could discover, prepared anything but a
magnificent prospectus; hence his circulars and programmes, of
which I possess an almost complete collection, are the solemn
ghosts of generations never born. I put the case, as it seemed to
me, at the best; but I admit I had been angry, and Kent Mulville
was shocked at my want of public optimism. This time therefore I
left the excuses to his more practised patience, only relieving
myself in response to a direct appeal from a young lady next whom,
in the hall, I found myself sitting. My position was an accident,
but if it had been calculated the reason would scarce have eluded
an observer of the fact that no