Chapter 9 - Page 2

building contracted for under a forfeit. She can't have a
personal taste any more than, when her husband succeeds, she can
have a personal crown, and her opinion on any matter is rusty and
heavy and plain - made, in the night of ages, to last and be
transmitted. I feel as if I ought to 'tip' some custode for my
glimpse of it. She has been told everything in the world and has
never perceived anything, and the echoes of her education respond
awfully to the rash footfall - I mean the casual remark - in the
cold Valhalla of her memory. Mrs. Wimbush delights in her wit and
says there's nothing so charming as to hear Mr. Paraday draw it
out. He's perpetually detailed for this job, and he tells me it
has a peculiarly exhausting effect. Every one's beginning - at the
end of two days - to sidle obsequiously away from her, and Mrs.
Wimbush pushes him again and again into the breach. None of the
uses I have yet seen him put to infuriate me quite so much. He
looks very fagged and has at last confessed to me that his
condition makes him uneasy - has even promised me he'll go straight
home instead of returning to his final engagements in town. Last
night I had some talk with him about going to-day, cutting his
visit short; so sure am I that he'll be better as soon as he's shut
up in his lighthouse. He told me that this is what he would like
to do; reminding me, however, that the first lesson of his
greatness has been precisely that he can't do what he likes. Mrs.
Wimbush would never forgive him if he should leave her before the
Princess has received the last hand. When I hint that a violent
rupture with our hostess would be the best thing in the world for
him he gives me to understand that if his reason assents to the
proposition his courage hangs woefully back. He makes no secret of
being mortally afraid of her, and when I ask what harm she can do
him that she hasn't already done he simply repeats: 'I'm afraid,
I'm afraid! Don't enquire too closely,' he said last night; 'only
believe that I feel a sort of terror. It's strange, when she's so
kind! At any rate, I'd as soon overturn that piece of priceless
Sevres as tell her I must go before my date.' It sounds dreadfully
weak, but he has some reason, and he pays for his imagination,
which puts him (I should hate it) in the place of others and makes
him feel, even against himself, their feelings, their appetites,
their motives. It's indeed inveterately against himself that he
makes his imagination act. What a pity he has such a lot of it!
He's too beastly intelligent. Besides, the famous reading's still
to come off, and it has been postponed a day to allow Guy
Walsingham to arrive. It appears this eminent lady's staying at a
house a few miles off, which means of