Chapter 6 - Page 2

constructed of steel and leather, and all I asked of her for our
tractable friend was not to do him to death. He had consented for
a time to be of india-rubber, but my thoughts were fixed on the day
he should resume his shape or at least get back into his box. It
was evidently all right, but I should be glad when it was well
over. I had a special fear - the impression was ineffaceable of
the hour when, after Mr. Morrow's departure, I had found him on the
sofa in his study. That pretext of indisposition had not in the
least been meant as a snub to the envoy of THE TATLER - he had gone
to lie down in very truth. He had felt a pang of his old pain, the
result of the agitation wrought in him by this forcing open of a
new period. His old programme, his old ideal even had to be
changed. Say what one would, success was a complication and
recognition had to be reciprocal. The monastic life, the pious
illumination of the missal in the convent cell were things of the
gathered past. It didn't engender despair, but at least it
required adjustment. Before I left him on that occasion we had
passed a bargain, my part of which was that I should make it my
business to take care of him. Let whoever would represent the
interest in his presence (I must have had a mystical prevision of
Mrs. Weeks Wimbush) I should represent the interest in his work -
or otherwise expressed in his absence. These two interests were in
their essence opposed; and I doubt, as youth is fleeting, if I
shall ever again know the intensity of joy with which I felt that
in so good a cause I was willing to make myself odious.

One day in Sloane Street I found myself questioning Paraday's
landlord, who had come to the door in answer to my knock. Two
vehicles, a barouche and a smart hansom, were drawn up before the
house.

"In the drawing-room, sir? Mrs. Weeks Wimbush."

"And in the dining-room?"

"A young lady, sir - waiting: I think a foreigner."

It was three o'clock, and on days when Paraday didn't lunch out he
attached a value to these appropriated hours. On which days,
however, didn't the dear man lunch out? Mrs. Wimbush, at such a
crisis, would have rushed round immediately after her own repast.
I went into the dining-room first, postponing the pleasure of
seeing how, upstairs, the lady of the barouche would, on my
arrival, point the moral of my sweet solicitude. No one took such
an interest as herself in his doing only what was good for him, and
she was always on the spot to see that he did it. She made
appointments with him to discuss the best means of economising his
time and protecting his privacy. She further made his health her
special business, and had so much sympathy with my own zeal for it
that she