The Pupil, by Henry James

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Transcribed from the 1916 Le Roy Phillips edition by DavidPrice,sewing kits for boys email [email protected]

THE PUPIL

BY HENRY JAMES

LE ROY PHILLIPS
BOSTON

This edition first published1916

The text follows that of the
Definitive Edition

Printed in Great Britain

CHAPTER I

The poor young man hesitated and procrastinated: it cost himsuch an effort to broach the subject of terms, to speak of moneyto a person who spoke only of feelings and, as it were, of thearistocracy.  Yet he was unwilling to take leave, treatinghis engagement as settled, without some more conventional glancein that direction than he could find an opening for in the mannerof the large affable lady who sat there drawing a pair of soiledgants de Suède through a fat jewelled hand and, at oncepressing and gliding, repeated over and over everything but thething he would have liked to hear.  He would have liked tohear the figure of his salary; but just as he was nervously aboutto sound that note the little boy came back—the little boyMrs. Moreen had sent out of the room to fetch her fan.  Hecame back without the fan, only with the casual observation thathe couldn’t find it.  As he dropped this cynicalconfession he looked straight and hard at the candidate for thehonour of taking his education in hand.  This personagereflected somewhat grimly that the thing he should have to teachhis little charge would be to appear to address himself to hismother when he spoke to her—especially not to make her suchan improper answer as that.

When Mrs. Moreen bethought herself of this pretext for gettingrid of their companion Pemberton supposed it was precisely toapproach the delicate subject of his remuneration.  But ithad been only to say some things about her son that it was bettera boy of eleven shouldn’t catch.  They wereextravagantly to his advantage save when she lowered her voice tosigh, tapping her left side familiarly, “And alloverclouded by this, you know; all at the mercy of aweakness—!”  Pemberton gathered that theweakness was in the region of the heart.  He had known thepoor child was not robust: this was the basis on which he hadbeen invited to treat, through an English lady, an Oxfordacquaintance, then at Nice, who happened to know both his needsand those of the amiable American family looking out forsomething really superior in the way of a resident tutor.

The young man’s impression of his prospective pupil, whohad come into the room as if to see for himself the momentPemberton was admitted, was not quite the soft solicitation thevisitor had taken for granted.  Morgan Moreen was somehowsickly without being “delicate,” and that he lookedintelligent—it is true Pemberton wouldn’t haveenjoyed his being stupid—only added to the suggestion that,as with his big mouth and big ears he really couldn’t becalled pretty, he might too utterly fail to please. Pemberton was modest, was even timid; and the chance that hissmall scholar might prove cleverer than himself had quitefigured, to his anxiety, among the dangers of an untriedexperiment.  He reflected, however, that these were risksone had to run when one accepted a position, as it was called, ina private family; when as yet one’s university honours had,pecuniarily speaking, remained barren.  At any rate whenMrs. Moreen got up as to intimate that, since it was understoodhe would enter upon his duties within the week she would let himoff now, he succeeded, in spite of the presence of the child, insqueezing out a phrase about the rate of payment.  It wasnot the fault of the conscious smile which seemed a reference tothe lady’s expensive identity, it was not the fault of thisdemonstration, which had, in a sort, both vagueness and point, ifthe allusion didn’t sound rather vulgar.  This wasexactly because she became still more gracious to reply:“Oh I can assure you that all that will be quiteregular.”

Pemberton only wondered, while he took up his hat, what“all that” was to amount to—people had suchdifferent ideas.  Mrs. Moreen’s words, however, seemedto commit the family to a pledge definite enough to elicit fromthe child a strange little comment in the shape of the mockingforeign ejaculation “Oh la-la!”

Pemberton, in some confusion, glanced at him as he walkedslowly to the window with his back turned, his hands in hispockets and the air in his elderly shoulders of a boy whodidn’t play.  The young man wondered if he should beable to teach him to play, though his mother had said it wouldnever do and that this was why school was impossible.  Mrs.Moreen exhibited no discomfiture; she only continued blandly:“Mr. Moreen will be delighted to meet your wishes.  AsI told you, he has been called to London for a week.  Assoon as he comes back you shall have it out with him.”

This was so frank and friendly that the young man could onlyreply, laughing as his hostess laughed: “Oh I don’timagine we shall have much of a battle.”

“They’ll give you anything you like,” theboy remarked unexpectedly, returning from the window. “We don’t mind what anything costs—we liveawfully well.”

“My darling, you’re too quaint!” his motherexclaimed, putting out to caress him a practised but ineffectualhand.  He slipped out of it, but looked with intelligentinnocent eyes at Pemberton, who had already had time to noticethat from one moment to the other his small satiric face seemedto change its time of life.  At this moment it wasinfantine, yet it appeared also to be under the influence ofcurious intuitions and knowledges.  Pemberton ratherdisliked precocity and was disappointed to find gleams of it in adisciple not yet in his teens.  Nevertheless he divined onthe spot that Morgan wouldn’t prove a bore.  He wouldprove on the contrary a source of agitation.  This idea heldthe young man, in spite of a certain repulsion.

“You pompous little person!  We’re notextravagant!”  Mrs. Moreen gaily protested, makinganother unsuccessful attempt to draw the boy to her side. “You must know what to expect,” she went on toPemberton.

“The less you expect the better!” her companioninterposed.  “But we arepeople offashion.”

“Only so far as youmake us so!” Mrs.Moreen tenderly mocked.  “Well then, onFriday—don’t tell me you’resuperstitious—and mind you don’t fail us.  Thenyou’ll see us all.  I’m so sorry the girls areout.  I guess you’ll like the girls.  And, youknow, I’ve another son, quite different from thisone.”

“He tries to imitate me,” Morgan said to theirfriend.

“He tries?  Why he’s twenty years old!”cried Mrs. Moreen.

“You’re very witty,” Pemberton remarked tothe child—a proposition his mother echoed with enthusiasm,declaring Morgan’s sallies to be the delight of thehouse.

The boy paid no heed to this; he only enquired abruptly of thevisitor, who was surprised afterwards that he hadn’t struckhim as offensively forward: “Do you wantvery muchto come?”

“Can you doubt it after such a description of what Ishall hear?” Pemberton replied.  Yet he didn’twant to come at all; he was coming because he had to gosomewhere, thanks to the collapse of his fortune at the end of ayear abroad spent on the system of putting his scant patrimonyinto a single full wave of experience.  He had had his fullwave but couldn’t pay the score at his inn.  Moreoverhe had caught in the boy’s eyes the glimpse of a far-offappeal.

“Well, I’ll do the best I can for you,” saidMorgan; with which he turned away again.  He passed out ofone of the long windows; Pemberton saw him go and lean on theparapet of the terrace.  He remained there while the youngman took leave of his mother, who, on Pemberton’s lookingas if he expected a farewell from him, interposed with:“Leave him, leave him; he’s so strange!” Pemberton supposed her to fear something he might say. “He’s a genius—you’ll love him,”she added.  “He’s much the most interestingperson in the family.”  And before he could inventsome civility to oppose to this she wound up with: “Butwe’re all good, you know!”

“He’s a genius—you’ll love him!”were words that recurred to our aspirant before the Friday,suggesting among many things that geniuses were not invariablyloveable.  However, it was all the better if there was anelement that would make tutorship absorbing: he had perhaps takentoo much for granted it would only disgust him.  As he leftthe villa after his interview he looked up at the balcony and sawthe child leaning over it.  “We shall have greatlarks!” he called up.

Morgan hung fire a moment and then gaily returned: “Bythe time you come back I shall have thought of somethingwitty!”

This made Pemberton say to himself “After all he’srather nice.”

CHAPTER II

On the Friday he saw them all, as Mrs. Moreen had promised,for her husband had come back and the girls and the other sonwere at home.  Mr. Moreen had a white moustache, a confidingmanner and, in his buttonhole, the ribbon of a foreignorder—bestowed, as Pemberton eventually learned, forservices.  For what services he never clearly ascertained:this was a point—one of a large number—that Mr.Moreen’s manner never confided.  What it emphaticallydid confide was that he was even more a man of the world than youmight first make out.  Ulick, the firstborn, was in visibletraining for the same profession—under the disadvantage asyet, however, of a buttonhole but feebly floral and a moustachewith no pretensions to type.  The girls had hair and figuresand manners and small fat feet, but had never been outalone.  As for Mrs. Moreen Pemberton saw on a nearer viewthat her elegance was intermittent and her parts didn’talways match.  Her husband, as she had promised, met withenthusiasm Pemberton’s ideas in regard to a salary. The young man had endeavoured to keep these stammerings modest,and Mr. Moreen made it no secret that hefound themwanting in “style.”  He further mentioned thathe aspired to be intimate with his children, to be their bestfriend, and that he was always looking out for them.  Thatwas what he went off for, to London and other places—tolook out; and this vigilance was the theory of life, as well asthe real occupation, of the whole family.  They all lookedout, for they were very frank on the subject of its beingnecessary.  They desired it to be understood that they wereearnest people, and also that their fortune, though quiteadequate for earnest people, required the most carefuladministration.  Mr. Moreen, as the parent bird, soughtsustenance for the nest.  Ulick invoked support mainly atthe club, where Pemberton guessed that it was usually served ongreen cloth.  The girls used to do up their hair and theirfrocks themselves, and our young man felt appealed to to be glad,in regard to Morgan’s education, that, though it mustnaturally be of the best, it didn’t cost too much. After a little he wasglad, forgetting at times his ownneeds in the interest inspired by the child’s character andculture and the pleasure of making easy terms for him.

During the first weeks of their acquaintance Morgan had beenas puzzling as a page in an unknown language—altogetherdifferent from the obvious little Anglo-Saxons who hadmisrepresented childhood to Pemberton.  Indeed the wholemystic volume in which the boy had been amateurishly bounddemanded some practice in translation.  To-day, after aconsiderable interval, there is something phantasmagoria, like aprismatic reflexion or a serial novel, in Pemberton’smemory of the queerness of the Moreens.  If it were not fora few tangible tokens—a lock of Morgan’s hair cut byhis own hand, and the half-dozen letters received from him whenthey were disjoined—the whole episode and the figurespeopling it would seem too inconsequent for anything butdreamland.  Their supreme quaintness was theirsuccess—as it appeared to him for a while at the time;since he had never seen a family so brilliantly equipped forfailure.  Wasn’t it success to have kept him sohatefully long?  Wasn’t it success to have drawn himin that first morning at déjeuner, the Friday hecame—it was enough to makeonesuperstitious—so that he utterly committed himself, andthis not by calculation or on a signal, but from a happy instinctwhich made them, like a band of gipsies, work so neatlytogether?  They amused him as much as if they had reallybeen a band of gipsies.  He was still young and had not seenmuch of the world—his English years had been properly arid;therefore the reversed conventions of the Moreens—for theyhad theirdesperate proprieties—struck him astopsy-turvy.  He had encountered nothing like them atOxford; still less had any such note been struck to his youngerAmerican ear during the four years at Yale in which he had richlysupposed himself to be reacting against a Puritan strain. The reaction of the Moreens, at any rate, went ever so muchfurther.  He had thought himself very sharp that first dayin hitting them all off in his mind with the“cosmopolite” label.  Later it seemed feeble andcolourless—confessedly helplessly provisional.

He yet when he first applied it felt a glow of joy—foran instructor he was still empirical—rise from theapprehension that living with them would really be to seelife.  Their sociable strangeness was an intimation ofthat—their chatter of tongues, their gaiety and goodhumour, their infinite dawdling (they were always gettingthemselves up, but it took forever, and Pemberton had once foundMr. Moreen shaving in the drawing-room), their French, theirItalian and, cropping up in the foreign fluencies, their coldtough slices of American.  They lived on macaroni andcoffee—they had these articles prepared inperfection—but they knew recipes for a hundred otherdishes.  They overflowed with music and song, were alwayshumming and catching each other up, and had a sort ofprofessional acquaintance with Continental cities.  Theytalked of “good places” as if they had beenpickpockets or strolling players.  They had at Nice a villa,a carriage, a piano and a banjo, and they went to officialparties.  They were a perfect calendar of the“days” of their friends, which Pemberton knew them,when they were indisposed, to get out of bed to go to, and whichmade the week larger than life when Mrs. Moreen talked of themwith Paula and Amy.  Their initiations gave their new inmateat first an almost dazzling sense of culture.  Mrs. Moreenhad translated something at some former period—an authorwhom it made Pemberton feel borné never to have heardof.  They could imitate Venetian and sing Neapolitan, andwhen they wanted to say something very particular communicatedwith each other in an ingenious dialect of their own, an elasticspoken cipher which Pemberton at first took for some patois ofone of their countries, but which he “caught on to”as he would not have grasped provincial development of Spanish orGerman.

“It’s the familylanguage—Ultramoreen,” Morgan explained to him drollyenough; but the boy rarely condescended to use it himself, thoughhe dealt in colloquial Latin as if he had been a littleprelate.

Among all the “days” with which Mrs.Moreen’s memory was taxed she managed to squeeze in one ofher own, which her friends sometimes forgot.  But the housedrew a frequented air from the number of fine people who werefreely named there and from several mysterious men with foreigntitles and English clothes whom Morgan called the princes andwho, on sofas with the girls, talked French veryloud—though sometimes with some oddity of accent—asif to show they were saying nothing improper.  Pembertonwondered how the princes could ever propose in that tone and sopublicly: he took for granted cynically that this was what wasdesired of them.  Then he recognised that even for thechance of such an advantage Mrs. Moreen would never allow Paulaand Amy to receive alone.  These young ladies were not atall timid, but it was just the safeguards that made them socandidly free.  It was a houseful of Bohemians who wantedtremendously to be Philistines.

In one respect, however, certainly they achieved norigour—they were wonderfully amiable and ecstatic aboutMorgan.  It was a genuine tenderness, an artless admiration,equally strong in each.  They even praised his beauty, whichwas small, and were as afraid of him as if they felt him of finerclay.  They spoke of him as a little angel and aprodigy—they touched on his want of health with long vaguefaces.  Pemberton feared at first an extravagance that mightmake him hate the boy, but before this happened he had becomeextravagant himself.  Later, when he had grown rather tohate the others, it was a bribe to patience for him that theywere at any rate nice about Morgan, going on tiptoe if theyfancied he was showing symptoms, and even giving upsomebody’s “day” to procure him apleasure.  Mixed with this too was the oddest wish to makehim independent, as if they had felt themselves not good enoughfor him.  They passed him over to the new members of theircircle very much as if wishing to force some charity of adoptionon so free an agent and get rid of their own charge.  Theywere delighted when they saw Morgan take so to his kindplayfellow, and could think of no higher praise for the youngman.  It was strange how they contrived to reconcile theappearance, and indeed the essential fact, of adoring the childwith their eagerness to wash their hands of him.  Did theywant to get rid of him before he should find them out? Pemberton was finding them out month by month.  Theboy’s fond family, however this might be, turned theirbacks with exaggerated delicacy, as if to avoid the reproach ofinterfering.  Seeing in time how little he had in commonwith them—it was by themhe first observed it; theyproclaimed it with complete humility—his companion wasmoved to speculate on the mysteries of transmission, the farjumps of heredity.  Where his detachment from most of thethings they represented had come from was more than an observercould say—it certainly had burrowed under two or threegenerations.

As for Pemberton’s own estimate of his pupil, it was agood while before he got the point of view, so little had he beenprepared for it by the smug young barbarians to whom thetradition of tutorship, as hitherto revealed to him, had beenadjusted.  Morgan was scrappy and surprising, deficient inmany properties supposed common to the genus and abounding inothers that were the portion only of the supernaturallyclever.  One day his friend made a great stride: it clearedup the question to perceive that Morgan wassupernaturallyclever and that, though the formula was temporarily meagre, thiswould be the only assumption on which one could successfully dealwith him.  He had the general quality of a child for whomlife had not been simplified by school, a kind of homebredsensibility which might have been as bad for himself but wascharming for others, and a whole range of refinement andperception—little musical vibrations as taking as picked-upairs—begotten by wandering about Europe at the tail of hismigratory tribe.  This might not have been an education torecommend in advance, but its results with so special a subjectwere as appreciable as the marks on a piece of fineporcelain.  There was at the same time in him a small strainof stoicism, doubtless the fruit of having had to begin early tobear pain, which counted for pluck and made it of lessconsequence that he might have been thought at school rather apolyglot little beast.  Pemberton indeed quickly foundhimself rejoicing that school was out of the question: in anymillion of boys it was probably good for all but one, and Morganwas that millionth.  It would have made him comparative andsuperior—it might have made him really requirekicking.  Pemberton would try to be school himself—abigger seminary than five hundred grazing donkeys, so that,winning no prizes, the boy would remain unconscious andirresponsible and amusing—amusing, because, though life wasalready intense in his childish nature, freshness still madethere a strong draught for jokes.  It turned out that evenin the still air of Morgan’s various disabilities jokesflourished greatly.  He was a pale lean acute undevelopedlittle cosmopolite, who liked intellectual gymnastics and whoalso, as regards the behaviour of mankind, had noticed morethings than you might suppose, but who nevertheless had hisproper playroom of superstitions, where he smashed a dozen toys aday.

CHAPTER III

At Nice once, toward evening, as the pair rested in the openair after a walk, and looked over the sea at the pink westernlights, he said suddenly to his comrade: “Do you like it,you know—being with us all in this intimate way?”

“My dear fellow, why should I stay if Ididn’t?”

“How do I know you’ll stay?  I’m almostsure you won’t, very long.”

“I hope you don’t mean to dismiss me,” saidPemberton.

Morgan debated, looking at the sunset.  “I think ifI did right I ought to.”

“Well, I know I’m supposed to instruct you invirtue; but in that case don’t do right.”

“’You’re veryyoung—fortunately,” Morgan went on, turning to himagain.

“Oh yes, compared with you!”

“Therefore it won’t matter so much if you do losea lot of time.”

“That’s the way to look at it,” saidPemberton accommodatingly.

They were silent a minute; after which the boy asked:“Do you like my father and my mother very much?”

“Dear me, yes.  They’re charmingpeople.”

Morgan received this with another silence; then unexpectedly,familiarly, but at the same time affectionately, he remarked:“You’re a jolly old humbug!”

For a particular reason the words made our young man changecolour.  The boy noticed in an instant that he had turnedred, whereupon he turned red himself and pupil and masterexchanged a longish glance in which there was a consciousness ofmany more things than are usually touched upon, even tacitly, insuch a relation.  It produced for Pemberton anembarrassment; it raised in a shadowy form a question—thiswas the first glimpse of it—destined to play a singularand, as he imagined, owing to the altogether peculiar conditions,an unprecedented part in his intercourse with his littlecompanion.  Later, when he found himself talking with theyoungster in a way in which few youngsters could ever have beentalked with, he thought of that clumsy moment on the bench atNice as the dawn of an understanding that had broadened. What had added to the clumsiness then was that he thought it hisduty to declare to Morgan that he might abuse him, Pemberton, asmuch as he liked, but must never abuse his parents.  To thisMorgan had the easy retort that he hadn’t dreamed ofabusing them; which appeared to be true: it put Pemberton in thewrong.

“Then why am I a humbug for saying Ithink themcharming?” the young man asked, conscious of a certainrashness.

“Well—they’re not your parents.”

“They love you better than anything in theworld—never forget that,” said Pemberton.

“Is that why you like them so much?”

“They’re very kind to me,” Pemberton repliedevasively.

“You area humbug!” laughed Morgan, passingan arm into his tutor’s.  He leaned against himlooking oft at the sea again and swinging his long thin legs.

“Don’t kick my shins,” said Pemberton whilehe reflected “Hang it, I can’t complain of them tothe child!”

“There’s another reason, too,” Morgan wenton, keeping his legs still.

“Another reason for what?”

“Besides their not being your parents.”

“I don’t understand you,” saidPemberton.

“Well, you will before long.  All right!”

He did understand fully before long, but he made a fight evenwith himself before he confessed it.  He thought it theoddest thing to have a struggle with the child about.  Hewondered he didn’t hate the hope of the Moreens forbringing the struggle on.  But by the time it began any suchsentiment for that scion was closed to him.  Morgan was aspecial case, and to know him was to accept him on his own oddterms.  Pemberton had spent his aversion to special casesbefore arriving at knowledge.  When at last he did arrivehis quandary was great.  Against every interest he hadattached himself.  They would have to meet thingstogether.  Before they went home that evening at Nice theboy had said, clinging to his arm:

“Well, at any rate you’ll hang on to thelast.”

“To the last?”

“Till you’re fairly beaten.”

“Youought to be fairly beaten!” cried theyoung man, drawing him closer.

CHAPTER IV

A year after he had come to live with them Mr. and Mrs. Moreensuddenly gave up the villa at Nice.  Pemberton had got usedto suddenness, having seen it practised on a considerable scaleduring two jerky little tours—one in Switzerland the firstsummer, and the other late in the winter, when they all ran downto Florence and then, at the end of ten days, liking it much lessthan they had intended, straggled back in mysteriousdepression.  They had returned to Nice “forever,” as they said; but this didn’t prevent theirsqueezing, one rainy muggy May night, into a second-classrailway-carriage—you could never tell by which class theywould travel—where Pemberton helped them to stow away awonderful collection of bundles and bags.  The explanationof this manœuvre was that they had determined to spend thesummer “in some bracing place”; but in Paris theydropped into a small furnished apartment—a fourth floor ina third-rate avenue, where there was a smell on the staircase andthe portier was hateful—and passed the next four months inblank indigence.

The better part of this baffled sojourn was for the preceptorand his pupil, who, visiting the Invalides and Notre Dame, theConciergerie and all the museums, took a hundred remunerativerambles.  They learned to know their Paris, which wasuseful, for they came back another year for a longer stay, thegeneral character of which in Pemberton’s memory to-daymixes pitiably and confusedly with that of the first.  Hesees Morgan’s shabby knickerbockers—the everlastingpair that didn’t match his blouse and that as he grewlonger could only grow faded.  He remembers the particularholes in his three or four pair of coloured stockings.

Morgan was dear to his mother, but he never was better dressedthan was absolutely necessary—partly, no doubt, by his ownfault, for he was as indifferent to his appearance as a Germanphilosopher.  “My dear fellow, you arecomingto pieces,” Pemberton would say to him in scepticalremonstrance; to which the child would reply, looking at himserenely up and down: “My dear fellow, so are you!  Idon’t want to cast you in the shade.”  Pembertoncould have no rejoinder for this—the assertion so closelyrepresented the fact.  If however the deficiencies of hisown wardrobe were a chapter by themselves he didn’t likehis little charge to look too poor.  Later he used to say“Well, if we’re poor, why, after all, shouldn’twe look it?” and he consoled himself with thinking therewas something rather elderly and gentlemanly in Morgan’sdisrepair—it differed from the untidiness of the urchin whoplays and spoils his things.  He could trace perfectly thedegrees by which, in proportion as her little son confinedhimself to his tutor for society, Mrs. Moreen shrewdly forbore torenew his garments.  She did nothing that didn’t show,neglected him because he escaped notice, and then, as heillustrated this clever policy, discouraged at home his publicappearances.  Her position was logical enough—thosemembers of her family who did show had to be showy.

During this period and several others Pemberton was quiteaware of how he and his comrade might strike people; wanderinglanguidly through the Jardin des Plantes as if they had nowhereto go, sitting on the winter days in the galleries of the Louvre,so splendidly ironical to the homeless, as if for the advantageof the calorifère.  They joked about it sometimes: itwas the sort of joke that was perfectly within the boy’scompass.  They figured themselves as part of the vast vaguehand-to-mouth multitude of the enormous city and pretended theywere proud of their position in it—it showed them“such a lot of life” and made them conscious of ademocratic brotherhood.  If Pemberton couldn’t feel asympathy in destitution with his small companion—for afterall Morgan’s fond parents would never have let him reallysuffer—the boy would at least feel it with him, so it cameto the same thing.  He used sometimes to wonder what peoplewould think they were—to fancy they were looked askance at,as if it might be a suspected case of kidnapping.  Morganwouldn’t be taken for a young patrician with apreceptor—he wasn’t smart enough; though he mightpass for his companion’s sickly little brother.  Nowand then he had a five-franc piece, and except once, when theybought a couple of lovely neckties, one of which he madePemberton accept, they laid it out scientifically in oldbooks.  This was sure to be a great day, always spent on thequays, in a rummage of the dusty boxes that garnish theparapets.  Such occasions helped them to live, for theirbooks ran low very soon after the beginning of theiracquaintance.  Pemberton had a good many in England, but hewas obliged to write to a friend and ask him kindly to get somefellow to give him something for them.

If they had to relinquish that summer the advantage of thebracing climate the young man couldn’t but suspect thisfailure of the cup when at their very lips to have been theeffect of a rude jostle of his own.  This had representedhis first blow-out, as he called it, with his patrons; his firstsuccessful attempt—though there was little other successabout it—to bring them to a consideration of his impossibleposition.  As the ostensible eve of a costly journey themoment had struck him as favourable to an earnest protest, thepresentation of an ultimatum.  Ridiculous as it sounded, hehad never yet been able to compass an uninterrupted privateinterview with the elder pair or with either of themsingly.  They were always flanked by their elder children,and poor Pemberton usually had his own little charge at hisside.  He was conscious of its being a house in which thesurface of one’s delicacy got rather smudged; neverthelesshe had preserved the bloom of his scruple against announcing toMr. and Mrs. Moreen with publicity that he shouldn’t beable to go on longer without a little money.  He was stillsimple enough to suppose Ulick and Paula and Amy might not knowthat since his arrival he had only had a hundred and fortyfrancs; and he was magnanimous enough to wish not to compromisetheir parents in their eyes.  Mr. Moreen now listened tohim, as he listened to every one and to every thing, like a manof the world, and seemed to appeal to him—though not ofcourse too grossly—to try and be a little more of onehimself.  Pemberton recognised in fact the importance of thecharacter—from the advantage it gave Mr. Moreen.  Hewas not even confused or embarrassed, whereas the young man inhis service was more so than there was any reason for. Neither was he surprised—at least any more than a gentlemanhad to be who freely confessed himself a littleshocked—though not perhaps strictly at Pemberton.

“We must go into this, mustn’t we, dear?” hesaid to his wife.  He assured his young friend that thematter should have his very best attention; and he melted intospace as elusively as if, at the door, he were taking aninevitable but deprecatory precedence.  When, the nextmoment, Pemberton found himself alone with Mrs. Moreen it was tohear her say “I see, I see”—stroking theroundness of her chin and looking as if she were only hesitatingbetween a dozen easy remedies.  If they didn’t maketheir push Mr. Moreen could at least disappear for severaldays.  During his absence his wife took up the subject againspontaneously, but her contribution to it was merely that she hadthought all the while they were getting on so beautifully. Pemberton’s reply to this revelation was that unless theyimmediately put down something on account he would leave them onthe spot and for ever.  He knew she would wonder how hewould get away, and for a moment expected her to enquire. She didn’t, for which he was almost grateful to her, solittle was he in a position to tell.

“You won’t, you knowyouwon’t—you’re too interested,” shesaid.  “You are interested, you know you are, you dearkind man!”  She laughed with almost condemnatoryarchness, as if it were a reproach—though shewouldn’t insist; and flirted a soiled pocket-handkerchiefat him.

Pemberton’s mind was fully made up to take his step thefollowing week.  This would give him time to get an answerto a letter he had despatched to England.  If he did in theevent nothing of the sort—that is if he stayed another yearand then went away only for three months—it was not merelybecause before the answer to his letter came (most unsatisfactorywhen it did arrive) Mr. Moreen generously counted out to him, andagain with the sacrifice to “form” of a marked man ofthe world, three hundred francs in elegant ringing gold.  Hewas irritated to find that Mrs. Moreen was right, that hecouldn’t at the pinch bear to leave the child.  Thisstood out clearer for the very reason that, the night of hisdesperate appeal to his patrons, he had seen fully for the firsttime where he was.  Wasn’t it another proof of thesuccess with which those patrons practised their arts that theyhad managed to avert for so long the illuminating flash?  Itdescended on our friend with a breadth of effect which perhapswould have struck a spectator as comical, after he had returnedto his little servile room, which looked into a close court wherea bare dirty opposite wall took, with the sound of shrillclatter, the reflexion of lighted back windows.  He hadsimply given himself away to a band of adventurers.  Theidea, the word itself, wore a romantic horror for him—hehad always lived on such safe lines.  Later it assumed amore interesting, almost a soothing, sense: it pointed a moral,and Pemberton could enjoy a moral.  The Moreens wereadventurers not merely because they didn’t pay their debts,because they lived on society, but because their whole view oflife, dim and confused and instinctive, like that of clevercolour-blind animals, was speculative and rapacious andmean.  Oh they were “respectable,” and that onlymade them more immondes.  The young man’s analysis,while he brooded, put it at last very simply—they wereadventurers because they were toadies and snobs.  That wasthe completest account of them—it was the law of theirbeing.  Even when this truth became vivid to their ingeniousinmate he remained unconscious of how much his mind had beenprepared for it by the extraordinary little boy who had nowbecome such a complication in his life.  Much less could hethen calculate on the information he was still to owe theextraordinary little boy.

CHAPTER V

But it was during the ensuing time that the real problem cameup—the problem of how far it was excusable to discuss theturpitude of parents with a child of twelve, of thirteen, offourteen.  Absolutely inexcusable and quite impossible it ofcourse at first appeared; and indeed the question didn’tpress for some time after Pemberton had received his threehundred francs.  They produced a temporary lull, a relieffrom the sharpest pressure.  The young man frugally amendedhis wardrobe and even had a few francs in his pocket.  Hethought the Moreens looked at him as if he were almost too smart,as if they ought to take care not to spoil him.  If Mr.Moreen hadn’t been such a man of the world he would perhapshave spoken of the freedom of such neckties on the part of asubordinate.  But Mr. Moreen was always enough a man of theworld to let things pass—he had certainly shown that. It was singular how Pemberton guessed that Morgan, though sayingnothing about it, knew something had happened.  But threehundred francs, especially when one owed money, couldn’tlast for ever; and when the treasure was gone—the boy knewwhen it had failed—Morgan did break ground.  The partyhad returned to Nice at the beginning of the winter, but not tothe charming villa.  They went to an hotel, where theystayed three months, and then moved to another establishment,explaining that they had left the first because, after waitingand waiting, they couldn’t get the rooms they wanted. These apartments, the rooms they wanted, were generally verysplendid; but fortunately they never couldgetthem—fortunately, I mean, for Pemberton, who reflectedalways that if they had got them there would have been a stillscantier educational fund.  What Morgan said at last wassaid suddenly, irrelevantly, when the moment came, in the middleof a lesson, and consisted of the apparently unfeeling words:“You ought to filer, you know—you reallyought.”

Pemberton stared.  He had learnt enough French slang fromMorgan to know that to filer meant to cut sticks.  “Ahmy dear fellow, don’t turn me off!”

Morgan pulled a Greek lexicon toward him—he used aGreek-German—to look out a word, instead of asking it ofPemberton.  “You can’t go on like this, youknow.”

“Like what, my boy?”

“You know they don’t pay you up,” saidMorgan, blushing and turning his leaves.

“Don’t pay me?” Pemberton stared again andfeigned amazement.  “What on earth put that into yourhead?”

“It has been there a long time,” the boy repliedrummaging his book.

Pemberton was silent, then he went on: “I say, what areyou hunting for?  They pay me beautifully.”

“I’m hunting for the Greek for awfulwhopper,” Morgan dropped.

“Find that rather for gross impertinence and disabuseyour mind.  What do I want of money?”

“Oh that’s another question!”

Pemberton wavered—he was drawn in different ways. The severely correct thing would have been to tell the boy thatsuch a matter was none of his business and bid him go on with hislines.  But they were really too intimate for that; it wasnot the way he was in the habit of treating him; there had beenno reason it should be.  On the other hand Morgan had quitelighted on the truth—he really shouldn’t be able tokeep it up much longer; therefore why not let him knowone’s real motive for forsaking him?  At the same timeit wasn’t decent to abuse to one’s pupil the familyof one’s pupil; it was better to misrepresent than to dothat.  So in reply to his comrade’s last exclamationhe just declared, to dismiss the subject, that he had receivedseveral payments.

“I say—I say!” the boy ejaculated,laughing.

“That’s all right,” Pembertoninsisted.  “Give me your written rendering.”

Morgan pushed a copybook across the table, and he began toread the page, but with something running in his head that madeit no sense.  Looking up after a minute or two he found thechild’s eyes fixed on him and felt in them somethingstrange.  Then Morgan said: “I’m not afraid ofthe stern reality.”

“I haven’t yet seen the thing you areafraid of—I’ll do you that justice!”

This came out with a jump—it was perfectlytrue—and evidently gave Morgan pleasure. “I’ve thought of it a long time,” he presentlyresumed.

“Well, don’t think of it any more.”

The boy appeared to comply, and they had a comfortable andeven an amusing hour.  They had a theory that they were verythorough, and yet they seemed always to be in the amusing part oflessons, the intervals between the dull dark tunnels, where therewere waysides and jolly views.  Yet the morning was broughtto a violent as end by Morgan’s suddenly leaning his armson the table, burying his head in them and bursting into tears:at which Pemberton was the more startled that, as it then cameover him, it was the first time he had ever seen the boy cry andthat the impression was consequently quite awful.

The next day, after much thought, he took a decision and,believing it to be just, immediately acted on it.  Hecornered Mr. and Mrs. Moreen again and let them know that if onthe spot they didn’t pay him all they owed him hewouldn’t only leave their house but would tell Morganexactly what had brought him to it.

“Oh you haven’ttold him?” cried Mrs.Moreen with a pacifying hand on her well-dressed bosom.

“Without warning you?  For what do you takeme?” the young man returned.

Mr. and Mrs. Moreen looked at each other; he could see thatthey appreciated, as tending to their security, his superstitionof delicacy, and yet that there was a certain alarm in theirrelief.  “My dear fellow,” Mr. Moreen demanded,“what use can you have, leading the quiet life we all do,for such a lot of money?”—a question to whichPemberton made no answer, occupied as he was in noting that whatpassed in the mind of his patrons was something like: “Ohthen, if we’ve felt that the child, dear little angel, hasjudged us and how he regards us, and we haven’t beenbetrayed, he must have guessed—and in short it’sgeneral!” an inference that rather stirred up Mr.and Mrs. Moreen, as Pemberton had desired it should.  At thesame time, if he had supposed his threat would do somethingtowards bringing them round, he was disappointed to find themtaking for granted—how vulgar their perception hadbeen!—that he had already given them away.  There wasa mystic uneasiness in their parental breasts, and that had beenthe inferior sense of it.  None the less however, his threatdid touch them; for if they had escaped it was only to meet a newdanger.  Mr. Moreen appealed to him, on every precedent, asa man of the world; but his wife had recourse, for the first timesince his domestication with them, to a fine hauteur, remindinghim that a devoted mother, with her child, had arts thatprotected her against gross misrepresentation.

“I should misrepresent you grossly if I accused you ofcommon honesty!” our friend replied; but as he closed thedoor behind him sharply, thinking he had not done himself muchgood, while Mr. Moreen lighted another cigarette, he heard hishostess shout after him more touchingly:

“Oh you do, you do, put the knife to one’sthroat!”

The next morning, very early, she came to his room.  Herecognised her knock, but had no hope she brought him money; asto which he was wrong, for she had fifty francs in herhand.  She squeezed forward in her dressing-gown, and hereceived her in his own, between his bath-tub and his bed. He had been tolerably schooled by this time to the “foreignways” of his hosts.  Mrs. Moreen was ardent, and whenshe was ardent she didn’t care what she did; so she now satdown on his bed, his clothes being on the chairs, and, in herpreoccupation, forgot, as she glanced round, to be ashamed ofgiving him such a horrid room.  What Mrs. Moreen’sardour now bore upon was the design of persuading him that in thefirst place she was very good-natured to bring him fifty francs,and that in the second, if he would only see it, he was reallytoo absurd to expect to be paid.  Wasn’t he paidenough without perpetual money—wasn’t he paid by thecomfortable luxurious home he enjoyed with them all, without acare, an anxiety, a solitary want?  Wasn’t he sure ofhis position, and wasn’t that everything to a young manlike him, quite unknown, with singularly little to show, theground of whose exorbitant pretensions it had never been easy todiscover?  Wasn’t he paid above all by the sweetrelation he had established with Morgan—quite ideal as frommaster to pupil—and by the simple privilege of knowing andliving with so amazingly gifted a child; than whom really (andshe meant literally what she said) there was no better company inEurope?  Mrs. Moreen herself took to appealing to him as aman of the world; she said “Voyons, mon cher,” and“My dear man, look here now”; and urged him to bereasonable, putting it before him that it was truly a chance forhim.  She spoke as if, according as he shouldbereasonable, he would prove himself worthy to be her son’stutor and of the extraordinary confidence they had placed inhim.

After all, Pemberton reflected, it was only a difference oftheory and the theory didn’t matter much.  They hadhitherto gone on that of remunerated, as now they would go onthat of gratuitous, service; but why should they have so manywords about it?  Mrs. Moreen at all events continued to beconvincing; sitting there with her fifty francs she talked andreiterated, as women reiterate, and bored and irritated him,while he leaned against the wall with his hands in the pockets ofhis wrapper, drawing it together round his legs and looking overthe head of his visitor at the grey negations of hiswindow.  She wound up with saying: “You see I bringyou a definite proposal.”

“A definite proposal?”

“To make our relations regular, as it were—to putthem on a comfortable footing.”

“I see—it’s a system,” saidPemberton.  “A kind of organised blackmail.”

Mrs. Moreen bounded up, which was exactly what hewanted.  “What do you mean by that?”

“You practise on one’s fears—one’sfears about the child if one should go away.”

“And pray what would happen to him in that event?”she demanded, with majesty.

“Why he’d be alone with you.”

“And pray with whom shoulda child be but withthose whom he loves most?”

“If you think that, why don’t you dismissme?”

“Do you pretend he loves you more than he lovesus?” cried Mrs. Moreen.

“I think he ought to.  I make sacrifices forhim.  Though I’ve heard of those youmake Idon’t see them.”

Mrs. Moreen stared a moment; then with emotion she grasped herinmate’s hand.  “Willyou makeit—the sacrifice?”

He burst out laughing.  “I’ll see. I’ll do what I can.  I’ll stay a littlelonger.  Your calculation’s just—I dohate intensely to give him up; I’m fond of him and hethoroughly interests me, in spite of the inconvenience Isuffer.  You know my situation perfectly.  Ihaven’t a penny in the world and, occupied as you see mewith Morgan, am unable to earn money.”

Mrs. Moreen tapped her undressed arm with her foldedbank-note.  “Can’t you write articles? Can’t you translate as Ido?”

“I don’t know about translating; it’swretchedly paid.”

“I’m glad to earn what I can,” said Mrs.Moreen with prodigious virtue.

“You ought to tell me who you do it for.” Pemberton paused a moment, and she said nothing; so he added:“I’ve tried to turn off some little sketches, but themagazines won’t have them—they’re declined withthanks.”

“You see then you’re not such aphœnix,” his visitor pointedly smiled—“topretend to abilities you’re sacrificing for oursake.”

“I haven’t time to do things properly,” heruefully went on.  Then as it came over him that he wasalmost abjectly good-natured to give these explanations he added:“If I stay on longer it must be on one condition—thatMorgan shall know distinctly on what footing I am.”

Mrs. Moreen demurred.  “Surely you don’t wantto show off to a child?”

“To show youoff, do you mean?”

Again she cast about, but this time it was to produce a stillfiner flower.  “And youtalk ofblackmail!”

“You can easily prevent it,” said Pemberton.

“And youtalk of practising on fears,” shebravely pushed on.

“Yes, there’s no doubt I’m a greatscoundrel.”

His patroness met his eyes—it was clear she was instraits.  Then she thrust out her money at him. “Mr. Moreen desired me to give you this onaccount.”

“I’m much obliged to Mr. Moreen, but wehaveno account.”

“You won’t take it?”

“That leaves me more free,” said Pemberton.

“To poison my darling’s mind?” groaned Mrs.Moreen.

“Oh your darling’s mind—!” the youngman laughed.

She fixed him a moment, and he thought she was going to breakout tormentedly, pleadingly: “For God’s sake, tell mewhat isin it!”  But she checked thisimpulse—another was stronger.  She pocketed themoney—the crudity of the alternative was comical—andswept out of the room with the desperate concession: “Youmay tell him any horror you like!”

CHAPTER VI

A couple of days after this, during which he had failed toprofit by so free a permission, he had been for a quarter of anhour walking with his charge in silence when the boy becamesociable again with the remark: “I’ll tell you how Iknow it; I know it through Zénobie.”

“Zénobie?  Who in the world isshe?”

“A nurse I used to have—ever so many yearsago.  A charming woman.  I liked her awfully, and sheliked me.”

“There’s no accounting for tastes.  What isit you know through her?”

“Why what their idea is.  She went away becausethey didn’t fork out.  She did like me awfully, andshe stayed two years.  She told me all about it—thatat last she could never get her wages.  As soon as they sawhow much she liked me they stopped giving her anything. They thought she’d stay for nothing—justbecause, don’t you know?”  And Morgan hada queer little conscious lucid look.  “She did stayever so long—as long an she could.  She was only apoor girl.  She used to send money to her mother.  Atlast she couldn’t afford it any longer, and went away in afearful rage one night—I mean of course in a rage againstthem.  She cried over me tremendously, she hugged menearly to death.  She told me all about it,” the boyrepeated.  “She told me it was their idea.  So Iguessed, ever so long ago, that they have had the same idea withyou.”

“Zénobie was very sharp,” saidPemberton.  “And she made you so.”

“Oh that wasn’t Zénobie; that wasnature.  And experience!” Morgan laughed.

“Well, Zénobie was a part of yourexperience.”

“Certainly I was a part of hers, poor dear!” theboy wisely sighed.  “And I’m part ofyours.”

“A very important part.  But I don’t see howyou know that I’ve been treated likeZénobie.”

“Do you take me for the biggest dunce you’veknown?” Morgan asked.  “Haven’t I beenconscious of what we’ve been through together?”

“What we’ve been through?”

“Our privations—our dark days.”

“Oh our days have been bright enough.”

Morgan went on in silence for a moment.  Then he said:“My dear chap, you’re a hero!”

“Well, you’re another!” Pembertonretorted.

“No I’m not, but I ain’t a baby.  Iwon’t stand it any longer.  You must get someoccupation that pays.  I’m ashamed, I’mashamed!” quavered the boy with a ring of passion, likesome high silver note from a small cathedral cloister, thatdeeply touched his friend.

“We ought to go off and live somewhere together,”the young man said.

“I’ll go like a shot if you’ll takeme.”

“I’d get some work that would keep us bothafloat,” Pemberton continued.

“So would I.  Why shouldn’t I work?  Iain’t such a beastly little muff as that comesto.”

“The difficulty is that your parents wouldn’t hearof it.  They’d never part with you; they worship theground you tread on.  Don’t you see the proof ofit?” Pemberton developed.  “They don’tdislike me; they wish me no harm; they’re very amiablepeople; but they’re perfectly ready to expose me to anyawkwardness in life for your sake.”

The silence in which Morgan received his fond sophistry struckPemberton somehow as expressive.  After a moment the childrepeated: “You are a hero!”  Then he added:“They leave me with you altogether.  You’ve allthe responsibility.  They put me off on you from morningtill night.  Why then should they object to my taking upwith you completely?  I’d help you.”

“They’re not particularly keen about my beinghelped, and they delight in thinking of you astheirs.  They’re tremendously proud ofyou.”

“I’m not proud of them.  But you knowthat,” Morgan returned.

“Except for the little matter we speak of they’recharming people,” said Pemberton, not taking up the pointmade for his intelligence, but wondering greatly at theboy’s own, and especially at this fresh reminder ofsomething he had been conscious of from the first—thestrangest thing in his friend’s large little composition, atemper, a sensibility, even a private ideal, which made him asprivately disown the stuff his people were made of.  Morganhad in secret a small loftiness which made him acute aboutbetrayed meanness; as well as a critical sense for the mannersimmediately surrounding him that was quite without precedent in ajuvenile nature, especially when one noted that it had not madethis nature “old-fashioned,” as the word is ofchildren—quaint or wizened or offensive.  It was as ifhe had been a little gentleman and had paid the penalty bydiscovering that he was the only such person in his family. This comparison didn’t make him vain, but it could make himmelancholy and a trifle austere.  While Pemberton guessed atthese dim young things, shadows of shadows, he was partly drawnon and partly checked, as for a scruple, by the charm ofattempting to sound the little cool shallows that were so quicklygrowing deeper.  When he tried to figure to himself themorning twilight of childhood, so as to deal with it safely, hesaw it was never fixed, never arrested, that ignorance, at theinstant he touched it, was already flushing faintly intoknowledge, that there was nothing that at a given moment youcould say an intelligent child didn’t know.  It seemedto him that he himself knew too much to imagine Morgan’ssimplicity and too little to disembroil his tangle.

The boy paid no heed to his last remark; he only went on:“I’d have spoken to them about their idea, as I callit, long ago, if I hadn’t been sure what they’dsay.”

“And what would they say?”

“Just what they said about what poor Zénobie toldme—that it was a horrid dreadful story, that they had paidher every penny they owed her.”

“Well, perhaps they had,” said Pemberton.

“Perhaps they’ve paid you!”

“Let us pretend they have, and n’en parlonsplus.”

“They accused her of lying andcheating”—Morgan stuck to historic truth. “That’s why I don’t want to speak tothem.”

“Lest they should accuse me, too?”  To thisMorgan made no answer, and his companion, looking down athim—the boy turned away his eyes, which hadfilled—saw what he couldn’t have trusted himself toutter.  “You’re right.  Don’t worrythem,” Pemberton pursued.  “Except for that,they arecharming people.”

“Except for theirlying and theircheating?”

“I say—I say!” cried Pemberton, imitating alittle tone of the lad’s which was itself an imitation.

“We must be frank, at the last; we mustcome toan understanding,” said Morgan with the importance of thesmall boy who lets himself think he is arranging greataffairs—almost playing at shipwreck or at Indians. “I know all about everything.”

“I dare say your father has his reasons,”Pemberton replied, but too vaguely, as he was aware.

“For lying and cheating?”

“For saving and managing and turning his means to thebest account.  He has plenty to do with his money. You’re an expensive family.”

“Yes, I’m very expensive,” Morgan concurredin a manner that made his preceptor burst out laughing.

“He’s saving for you,” saidPemberton.  “They think of you in everything theydo.”

“He might, while he’s about it, save alittle—”  The boy paused, and his friend waitedto hear what.  Then Morgan brought out oddly: “Alittle reputation.”

“Oh there’s plenty of that.  That’s allright!”

“Enough of it for the people they know, no doubt. The people they know are awful.”

“Do you mean the princes?  We mustn’t abusethe princes.”

“Why not?  They haven’t marriedPaula—they haven’t married Amy.  They only cleanout Ulick.”

“You doknow everything!” Pembertondeclared.

“No, I don’t, after all.  I don’t knowwhat they live on, or how they live, or whytheylive!  What have they got and how did they get it?  Arethey rich, are they poor, or have they a modeste aisance? Why are they always chiveying me about—living one year likeambassadors and the next like paupers?  Who are they, anyway, and what are they?  I’ve thought of allthat—I’ve thought of a lot of things. They’re so beastly worldly.  That’s what I hatemost—oh, I’ve seenit!  All they careabout is to make an appearance and to pass for something orother.  What the dickens do they want to pass for? What dothey, Mr. Pemberton?”

“You pause for a reply,” said Pemberton, treatingthe question as a joke, yet wondering too and greatly struck withhis mate’s intense if imperfect vision.  “Ihaven’t the least idea.”

“And what good does it do?  Haven’t I seenthe way people treat them—the ‘nice’ people,the ones they want to know?  They’ll take anythingfrom them—they’ll lie down and be trampled on. The nice ones hate that—they just sicken them. You’re the only really nice person we know.”

“Are you sure?  They don’t lie down forme!”

“Well, you shan’t lie down for them. You’ve got to go—that’s what you’ve gotto do,” said Morgan.

“And what will become of you?”

“Oh I’m growing up.  I shall get off beforelong.  I’ll see you later.”

“You had better let me finish you,” Pembertonurged, lending himself to the child’s strangesuperiority.

Morgan stopped in their walk, looking up at him.  He hadto look up much less than a couple of years before—he hadgrown, in his loose leanness, so long and high. “Finish me?” he echoed.

“There are such a lot of jolly things we can do togetheryet.  I want to turn you out—I want you to do mecredit.”

Morgan continued to look at him.  “To give youcredit—do you mean?”

“My dear fellow, you’re too clever tolive.”

“That’s just what I’m afraid youthink.  No, no; it isn’t fair—I can’tendure it.  We’ll separate next week.  The soonerit’s over the sooner to sleep.”

“If I hear of anything—any other chance—Ipromise to go,” Pemberton said.

Morgan consented to consider this.  “Butyou’ll be honest,” he demanded; “youwon’t pretend you haven’t heard?”

“I’m much more likely to pretend Ihave.”

“But what can you hear of, this way, stuck in a holewith us?  You ought to be on the spot, to go toEngland—you ought to go to America.”

“One would think you were mytutor!” saidPemberton.

Morgan walked on and after a little had begun again:“Well, now that you know I know and that we look at thefacts and keep nothing back—it’s much morecomfortable, isn’t it?”

“My dear boy, it’s so amusing, so interesting,that it will surely be quite impossible for me to forego suchhours as these.”

This made Morgan stop once more.  “You dokeep something back.  Oh you’re notstraight—Iam!”

“How am I not straight?”

“Oh you’ve got your idea!”

“My idea?”

“Why that I probably shan’t make old—makeolder—bones, and that you can stick it out till I’mremoved.”

“You aretoo clever to live!” Pembertonrepeated.

“I call it a mean idea,” Morgan pursued. “But I shall punish you by the way I hang on.”

“Look out or I’ll poison you!” Pembertonlaughed.

“I’m stronger and better every year. Haven’t you noticed that there hasn’t been a doctornear me since you came?”

“I’myour doctor,” said the youngman, taking his arm and drawing him tenderly on again.

Morgan proceeded and after a few steps gave a sigh of mingledweariness and relief.  “Ah now that we look at thefacts it’s all right!”

CHAPTER VII

They looked at the facts a good deal after this and one of thefirst consequences of their doing so was that Pemberton stuck itout, in his friend’s parlance, for the purpose. Morgan made the facts so vivid and so droll, and at the same timeso bald and so ugly, that there was fascination in talking themover with him, just as there would have been heartlessness inleaving him alone with them.  Now that the pair had suchperceptions in common it was useless for them to pretend theydidn’t judge such people; but the very judgement and theexchange of perceptions created another tie.  Morgan hadnever been so interesting as now that he himself was made plainerby the sidelight of these confidences.  What came out in itmost was the small fine passion of his pride.  He had plentyof that, Pemberton felt—so much that one might perhapswisely wish for it some early bruises.  He would have likedhis people to have a spirit and had waked up to the sense oftheir perpetually eating humble-pie.  His mother wouldconsume any amount, and his father would consume even more thanhis mother.  He had a theory that Ulick had wriggled out ofan “affair” at Nice: there had once been a flurry athome, a regular panic, after which they all went to bed and tookmedicine, not to be accounted for on any other supposition. Morgan had a romantic imagination, led by poetry and history, andhe would have liked those who “bore hisname”—as he used to say to Pemberton with the humourthat made his queer delicacies manly—to carry themselveswith an air.  But their one idea was to get in with peoplewho didn’t want them and to take snubs as it they werehonourable scars.  Why people didn’t want them more hedidn’t know—that was people’s own affair; afterall they weren’t superficially repulsive, they were ahundred times cleverer than most of the dreary grandees, the“poor swells” they rushed about Europe to catch upwith.  “After all they areamusing—theyare!” he used to pronounce with the wisdom of theages.  To which Pemberton always replied:“Amusing—the great Moreen troupe?  Whythey’re altogether delightful; and if it weren’t forthe hitch that you and I (feeble performers!) make in theensemble they’d carry everything before them.”

What the boy couldn’t get over was the fact that thisparticular blight seemed, in a tradition of self-respect, soundeserved and so arbitrary.  No doubt people had a right totake the line they liked; but why should his people have likedthe line of pushing and toadying and lying and cheating? What had their forefathers—all decent folk, so far as heknew—done to them, or what had he done to them?  Whohad poisoned their blood with the fifth-rate social ideal, thefixed idea of making smart acquaintances and getting into themonde chic, especially when it was foredoomed to failure andexposure?  They showed so what they were after; that waswhat made the people they wanted not want them.  Andnever a wince for dignity, never a throb of shame at looking eachother in the face, never any independence or resentment ordisgust.  If his father or his brother would only knock someone down once or twice a year!  Clever as they were theynever guessed the impression they made.  They weregood-natured, yes—as good-natured as Jews at the doors ofclothing-shops!  But was that the model one wantedone’s family to follow?  Morgan had dim memories of anold grandfather, the maternal, in New York, whom he had beentaken across the ocean at the age of five to see: a gentlemanwith a high neck-cloth and a good deal of pronunciation, who worea dress-coat in the morning, which made one wonder what he worein the evening, and had, or was supposed to have“property” and something to do with the BibleSociety.  It couldn’t have been but that he was a goodtype.  Pemberton himself remembered Mrs. Clancy, a widowedsister of Mr. Moreen’s, who was as irritating as a moraltale and had paid a fortnight’s visit to the family at Niceshortly after he came to live with them.  She was“pure and refined,” as Amy said over the banjo, andhad the air of not knowing what they meant when they talked, andof keeping something rather important back.  Pembertonjudged that what she kept back was an approval of many of theirways; therefore it was to be supposed that she too was of a goodtype, and that Mr. and Mrs. Moreen and Ulick and Paula and Amymight easily have been of a better one if they would.

But that they wouldn’t was more and more perceptiblefrom day to day.  They continued to “chivey,” asMorgan called it, and in due time became aware of a variety ofreasons for proceeding to Venice.  They mentioned a greatmany of them—they were always strikingly frank and had thebrightest friendly chatter, at the late foreign breakfast inespecial, before the ladies had made up their faces, when theyleaned their arms on the table, had something to follow thedemitasse, and, in the heat of familiar discussion as to whatthey “really ought” to do, fell inevitably into thelanguages in which they could tutoyer.  Even Pemberton likedthem then; he could endure even Ulick when he heard him give hislittle flat voice for the “sweet sea-city.” That was what made him have a sneaking kindness forthem—that they were so out of the workaday world and kepthim so out of it.  The summer had waned when, with cries ofecstasy, they all passed out on the balcony that overhung theGrand Canal.  The sunsets then were splendid and theDorringtons had arrived.  The Dorringtons were the onlyreason they hadn’t talked of at breakfast; but the reasonsthey didn’t talk of at breakfast always came out in theend.  The Dorringtons on the other hand came out verylittle; or else when they did they stayed—as wasnatural—for hours, during which periods Mrs. Moreen and thegirls sometimes called at their hotel (to see if they hadreturned) as many as three times running.  The gondola wasfor the ladies, as in Venice too there were “days,”which Mrs. Moreen knew in their order an hour after shearrived.  She immediately took one herself, to which theDorringtons never came, though on a certain occasion whenPemberton and his pupil were together at St.Mark’s—where, taking the best walks they had ever hadand haunting a hundred churches, they spent a great deal oftime—they saw the old lord turn up with Mr. Moreen andUlick, who showed him the dim basilica as if it belonged tothem.  Pemberton noted how much less, among its curiosities,Lord Dorrington carried himself as a man of the world; wonderingtoo whether, for such services, his companions took a fee fromhim.  The autumn at any rate waned, the Dorringtonsdeparted, and Lord Verschoyle, the eldest son, had proposedneither for Amy nor for Paula.

One sad November day, while the wind roared round the oldpalace and the rain lashed the lagoon, Pemberton, for exerciseand even somewhat for warmth—the Moreens were horriblyfrugal about fires; it was a cause of suffering to theirinmate—walked up and down the big bare sala with hispupil.  The scagliola floor was cold, the high batteredcasements shook in the storm, and the stately decay of the placewas unrelieved by a particle of furniture. Pemberton’s spirits were low, and it came over him that thefortune of the Moreens was now even lower.  A blast ofdesolation, a portent of disgrace and disaster, seemed to drawthrough the comfortless hall.  Mr. Moreen and Ulick were inthe Piazza, looking out for something, strolling drearily, inmackintoshes, under the arcades; but still, in spite ofmackintoshes, unmistakeable men of the world.  Paula and Amywere in bed—it might have been thought they were stayingthere to keep warm.  Pemberton looked askance at the boy athis side, to see to what extent he was conscious of these darkomens.  But Morgan, luckily for him, was now mainlyconscious of growing taller and stronger and indeed of being inhis fifteenth year.  This fact was intensely interesting tohim and the basis of a private theory—which, however, hehad imparted to his tutor—that in a little while he shouldstand on his own feet.  He considered that the situationwould change—that in short he should be“finished,” grown up, producible in the world ofaffairs and ready to prove himself of sterling ability. Sharply as he was capable at times of analysing, as he called it,his life, there were happy hours when he remained, as he alsocalled it—and as the name, really, of their rightideal—“jolly” superficial; the proof of whichwas his fundamental assumption that he should presently go toOxford, to Pemberton’s college, and, aided and abetted byPemberton, do the most wonderful things.  It depressed theyoung man to see how little in such a project he took account ofways and means: in other connexions he mostly kept to themeasure.  Pemberton tried to imagine the Moreens at Oxfordand fortunately failed; yet unless they were to adopt it as aresidence there would be no modus vivendi for Morgan.  Howcould he live without an allowance, and where was the allowanceto come from?  He, Pemberton, might live on Morgan; but howcould Morgan live on him?  What was to become of himanyhow?  Somehow the fact that he was a big boy now, withbetter prospects of health, made the question of his future moredifficult.  So long as he was markedly frail the greatconsideration he inspired seemed enough of an answer to it. But at the bottom of Pemberton’s heart was the recognitionof his probably being strong enough to live and not yet strongenough to struggle or to thrive.  Morgan himself at any ratewas in the first flush of the rosiest consciousness ofadolescence, so that the beating of the tempest seemed to himafter all but the voice of life and the challenge of fate. He had on his shabby little overcoat, with the collar up, but wasenjoying his walk.

It was interrupted at last by the appearance of his mother atthe end of the sala.  She beckoned him to come to her, andwhile Pemberton saw him, complaisant, pass down the long vistaand over the damp false marble, he wondered what was in theair.  Mrs. Moreen said a word to the boy and made him gointo the room she had quitted.  Then, having closed the doorafter him, she directed her steps swiftly to Pemberton. There was something in the air, but his wildest flight of fancywouldn’t have suggested what it proved to be.  Shesignified that she had made a pretext to get Morgan out of theway, and then she enquired—without hesitation—if theyoung man could favour her with the loan of three louis. While, before bursting into a laugh, he stared at her withsurprise, she declared that she was awfully pressed for themoney; she was desperate for it—it would save her life.

“Dear lady, c’est trop fort!” Pemberton laughed in the manner and with the borrowed grace ofidiom that marked the best colloquial, the best anecdotic,moments of his friends themselves.  “Where in theworld do you suppose I should get three louis, du train dont vousallez?”

“I thought you worked—wrote things. Don’t they pay you?”

“Not a penny.”

“Are you such a fool as to work for nothing?”

“You ought surely to know that.”

Mrs. Moreen stared, then she coloured a little. Pemberton saw she had quite forgotten the terms—if“terms” they could be called—that he had endedby accepting from herself; they had burdened her memory as littleas her conscience.  “Oh yes, I see what youmean—you’ve been very nice about that; but why dragit in so often?”  She had been perfectly urbane withhim ever since the rough scene of explanation in his room themorning he made her accept his“terms”—the necessity of his making his caseknown to Morgan.  She had felt no resentment after seeingthere was no danger Morgan would take the matter up withher.  Indeed, attributing this immunity to the good taste ofhis influence with the boy, she had once said to Pemberton“My dear fellow, it’s an immense comfort you’rea gentleman.”  She repeated this in substancenow.  “Of course you’re agentleman—that’s a bother the less!” Pemberton reminded her that he had not “dragged in”anything that wasn’t already in as much as his foot was inhis shoe; and she also repeated her prayer that, somewhere andsomehow, he would find her sixty francs.  He took theliberty of hinting that if he could find them it wouldn’tbe to lend them to her—as to which he consciouslydid himself injustice, knowing that if he had them he wouldcertainly put them at her disposal.  He accused himself, atbottom and not unveraciously, of a fantastic, a demoralisedsympathy with her.  If misery made strange bedfellows italso made strange sympathies.  It was moreover a part of theabasement of living with such people that one had to make vulgarretorts, quite out of one’s own tradition of goodmanners.  “Morgan, Morgan, to what pass have I comefor you?” he groaned while Mrs. Moreen floated voluminouslydown the sala again to liberate the boy, wailing as she went thateverything was too odious.

Before their young friend was liberated there came a thump atthe door communicating with the staircase, followed by theapparition of a dripping youth who poked in his head. Pemberton recognised him as the bearer of a telegram andrecognised the telegram as addressed to himself.  Morgancame back as, after glancing at the signature—that of arelative in London—he was reading the words: “Found ajolly job for you, engagement to coach opulent youth on ownterms.  Come at once.”  The answer happily waspaid and the messenger waited.  Morgan, who had drawn near,waited too and looked hard at Pemberton; and Pemberton, after amoment, having met his look, handed him the telegram.  Itwas really by wise looks—they knew each other so wellnow—that, while the telegraph-boy, in his waterproof cape,made a great puddle on the floor, the thing was settled betweenthem.  Pemberton wrote the answer with a pencil against thefrescoed wall, and the messenger departed.  When he had gonethe young man explained himself.

“I’ll make a tremendous charge; I’ll earn alot of money in a short time, and we’ll live onit.”

“Well, I hope the opulent youth will be a dismaldunce—he probably will—” Morganparenthesised—“and keep you a long time a-hammeringof it in.”

“Of course the longer he keeps me the more we shall havefor our old age.”

“But suppose theydon’t pay you!”Morgan awfully suggested.

“Oh there are not two such—!”  ButPemberton pulled up; he had been on the point of using tooinvidious a term.  Instead of this he said “Two suchfatalities.”

Morgan flushed—the tears came to his eyes. “Dites toujours two such rascally crews!”  Thenin a different tone he added: “Happy opulentyouth!”

“Not if he’s a dismal dunce.”

“Oh they’re happier then.  But youcan’t have everything, can you?” the boy smiled.

Pemberton held him fast, hands on his shoulders—he hadnever loved him so.  “What will become of you, whatwill you do?”  He thought of Mrs. Moreen, desperatefor sixty francs.

“I shall become an homme fait.”  And then asif he recognised all the bearings of Pemberton’s allusion:“I shall get on with them better when you’re nothere.”

“Ah don’t say that—it sounds as if I set youagainst them!”

“You do—the sight of you.  It’s allright; you know what I mean.  I shall be beautiful. I’ll take their affairs in hand; I’ll marry mysisters.”

“You’ll marry yourself!” joked Pemberton; ashigh, rather tense pleasantry would evidently be the right, orthe safest, tone for their separation.

It was, however, not purely in this strain that Morgansuddenly asked: “But I say—how will you get to yourjolly job?  You’ll have to telegraph to the opulentyouth for money to come on.”

Pemberton bethought himself.  “They won’tlike that, will they?”

“Oh look out for them!”

Then Pemberton brought out his remedy.  “I’llgo to the American Consul; I’ll borrow some money ofhim—just for the few days, on the strength of thetelegram.”

Morgan was hilarious.  “Show him thetelegram—then collar the money and stay!”

Pemberton entered into the joke sufficiently to reply that forMorgan he was really capable of that; but the boy, growing moreserious, and to prove he hadn’t meant what he said, notonly hurried him off to the Consulate—since he was to startthat evening, as he had wired to his friend—but made sureof their affair by going with him.  They splashed throughthe tortuous perforations and over the humpbacked bridges, andthey passed through the Piazza, where they saw Mr. Moreen andUlick go into a jeweller’s shop.  The Consul provedaccommodating—Pemberton said it wasn’t the letter,but Morgan’s grand air—and on their way back theywent into Saint Mark’s for a hushed ten minutes. Later they took up and kept up the fun of it to the very end; andit seemed to Pemberton a part of that fun that Mrs. Moreen, whowas very angry when he had announced her his intention, shouldcharge him, grotesquely and vulgarly and in reference to the loanshe had vainly endeavoured to effect, with bolting lest theyshould “get something out” of him.  On the otherhand he had to do Mr. Moreen and Ulick the justice to recognisethat when on coming in they heard the cruel news they took itlike perfect men of the world.

CHAPTER VIII

When he got at work with the opulent youth, who was to betaken in hand for Balliol, he found himself unable to say if thisaspirant had really such poor parts or if the appearance wereonly begotten of his own long association with an intenselyliving little mind.  From Morgan he heard half a dozentimes: the boy wrote charming young letters, a patchwork oftongues, with indulgent postscripts in the family Volapuk and, inlittle squares and rounds and crannies of the text, the drollestillustrations—letters that he was divided between theimpulse to show his present charge as a vain, a wasted incentive,and the sense of something in them that publicity wouldprofane.  The opulent youth went up in due course and failedto pass; but it seemed to add to the presumption that brilliancywas not expected of him all at once that his parents, condoningthe lapse, which they good-naturedly treated as little aspossible as if it were Pemberton’s, should have sounded therally again, begged the young coach to renew the siege.

The young coach was now in a position to lend Mrs. Moreenthree louis, and he sent her a post-office order even for alarger amount.  In return for this favour he received afrantic scribbled line from her: “Implore you to come backinstantly—Morgan dreadfully ill.”  They were onthere rebound, once more in Paris—often as Pemberton hadseen them depressed he had never seen them crushed—andcommunication was therefore rapid.  He wrote to the boy toascertain the state of his health, but awaited the answer invain.  He accordingly, after three days, took an abruptleave of the opulent youth and, crossing the Channel, alighted atthe small hotel, in the quarter of the Champs Elysées, ofwhich Mrs. Moreen had given him the address.  A deep if dumbdissatisfaction with this lady and her companions bore himcompany: they couldn’t be vulgarly honest, but they couldlive at hotels, in velvety entresols, amid a smell of burntpastilles, surrounded by the most expensive city in Europe. When he had left them in Venice it was with an irrepressiblesuspicion that something was going to happen; but the only thingthat could have taken place was again their masterlyretreat.  “How is he? where is he?” he asked ofMrs. Moreen; but before she could speak these questions wereanswered by the pressure round hid neck of a pair of arms, inshrunken sleeves, which still were perfectly capable of aneffusive young foreign squeeze.

“Dreadfully ill—I don’t see it!” theyoung man cried.  And then to Morgan: “Why on earthdidn’t you relieve me?  Why didn’t you answer myletter?”

Mrs. Moreen declared that when she wrote he was very bad, andPemberton learned at the same time from the boy that he hadanswered every letter he had received.  This led to theclear inference that Pemberton’s note had been kept fromhim so that the game practised should not be interferedwith.  Mrs. Moreen was prepared to see the fact exposed, asPemberton saw the moment he faced her that she was prepared for agood many other things.  She was prepared above all tomaintain that she had acted from a sense of duty, that she wasenchanted she had got him over, whatever they might say, and thatit was useless of him to pretend he didn’t know in all hisbones that his place at such a time was with Morgan.  He hadtaken the boy away from them and now had no right to abandonhim.  He had created for himself the gravestresponsibilities and must at least abide by what he had done.

“Taken him away from you?” Pemberton exclaimedindignantly.

“Do it—do it for pity’s sake; that’sjust what I want.  I can’t stand this—andsuch scenes.  They’re awful frauds—poordears!”  These words broke from Morgan, who hadintermitted his embrace, in a key which made Pemberton turnquickly to him and see that he had suddenly seated himself, wasbreathing in great pain, and was very pale.

“Nowdo you say he’s not in a state, myprecious pet?” shouted his mother, dropping on her kneesbefore him with clasped hands, but touching him no more than ifhe had been a gilded idol.  “It willpass—it’s only for an instant; but don’t saysuch dreadful things!”

“I’m all right—all right,” Morganpanted to Pemberton, whom he sat looking up at with a strangesmile, his hands resting on either side of the sofa.

“Now do you pretend I’ve been dishonest, thatI’ve deceived?” Mrs. Moreen flashed at Pemberton asshe got up.

“It isn’t hesays it, it’s I!”the boy returned, apparently easier, but sinking back against thewall; while his restored friend, who had sat down beside him,took his hand and bent over him.

“Darling child, one does what one can; there are so manythings to consider,” urged Mrs. Moreen. “It’s his place—his only place. You see youthink it is now.”

“Take me away—take me away,” Morgan went on,smiling to Pemberton with his white face.

“Where shall I take you, and how—oh how, myboy?” the young man stammered, thinking of the rude way inwhich his friends in London held that, for his convenience, withno assurance of prompt return, he had thrown them over; of thejust resentment with which they would already have called in asuccessor, and of the scant help to finding fresh employment thatresided for him in the grossness of his having failed to pass hispupil.

“Oh we’ll settle that.  You used to talkabout it,” said Morgan.  “If we can only go allthe rest’s a detail.”

“Talk about it as much as you like, but don’tthink you can attempt it.  Mr. Moreen would neverconsent—it would be so veryhand-to-mouth,”Pemberton’s hostess beautifully explained to him. Then to Morgan she made it clearer: “It would destroy ourpeace, it would break our hearts.  Now that he’s backit will be all the same again.  You’ll have your life,your work and your freedom, and we’ll all be happy as weused to be.  You’ll bloom and grow perfectly well, andwe won’t have any more silly experiments, will we? They’re too absurd.  It’s Mr. Pemberton’splace—every one in his place.  You in yours, your papain his, me in mine—n’est-ce pas, chéri? We’ll all forget how foolish we’ve been and havelovely times.”

She continued to talk and to surge vaguely about the littledraped stuffy salon while Pemberton sat with the boy, whosecolour gradually came back; and she mixed up her reasons, hintingthat there were going to be changes, that the other childrenmight scatter (who knew?—Paula had her ideas) and that thenit might be fancied how much the poor old parent-birds would wantthe little nestling.  Morgan looked at Pemberton, whowouldn’t let him move; and Pemberton knew exactly how hefelt at hearing himself called a little nestling.  Headmitted that he had had one or two bad days, but he protestedafresh against the wrong of his mother’s having made themthe ground of an appeal to poor Pemberton.  Poor Pembertoncould laugh now, apart from the comicality of Mrs. Moreen’smustering so much philosophy for her defence—she seemed toshake it out of her agitated petticoats, which knocked over thelight gilt chairs—so little did their young companion,marked, unmistakeably marked at the best, strike him asqualified to repudiate any advantage.

He himself was in for it at any rate.  He should haveMorgan on his hands again indefinitely; though indeed he saw thelad had a private theory to produce which would be intended tosmooth this down.  He was obliged to him for it in advance;but the suggested amendment didn’t keep his heart ratherfrom sinking, any more than it prevented him from accepting theprospect on the spot, with some confidence moreover that heshould do so even better if he could have a little supper. Mrs. Moreen threw out more hints about the changes that were tobe looked for, but she was such a mixture of smiles andshudders—she confessed she was very nervous—that hecouldn’t tell if she were in high feather or only inhysterics.  If the family was really at last going to pieceswhy shouldn’t she recognise the necessity of pitchingMorgan into some sort of lifeboat?  This presumption wasfostered by the fact that they were established in luxuriousquarters in the capital of pleasure; that was exactly where theynaturally wouldbe established in view of going topieces.  Moreover didn’t she mention that Mr. Moreenand the others were enjoying themselves at the opera with Mr.Granger, and wasn’t thatalso precisely where onewould look for them on the eve of a smash?  Pembertongathered that Mr. Granger was a rich vacant American—a bigbill with a flourishy heading and no items; so that one ofPaula’s “ideas” was probably that this time shehadn’t missed fire—by which straight shot indeed shewould have shattered the general cohesion.  And if thecohesion was to crumble what would become of poorPemberton?  He felt quite enough bound up with them tofigure to his alarm as a dislodged block in the edifice.

It was Morgan who eventually asked if no supper had beenordered for him; sitting with him below, later, at the dimdelayed meal, in the presence of a great deal of corded greenplush, a plate of ornamental biscuit and an aloofness marked onthe part of the waiter.  Mrs. Moreen had explained that theyhad been obliged to secure a room for the visitor out of thehouse; and Morgan’s consolation—he offered it whilePemberton reflected on the nastiness of lukewarmsauces—proved to be, largely, that his circumstance wouldfacilitate their escape.  He talked of theirescape—recurring to it often afterwards—as if theywere making up a “boy’s book” together. But he likewise expressed his sense that there was something inthe air, that the Moreens couldn’t keep it up muchlonger.  In point of fact, as Pemberton was to see, theykept it up for five or six months.  All the while, however,Morgan’s contention was designed to cheer him.  Mr.Moreen and Ulick, whom he had met the day after his return,accepted that return like perfect men of the world.  IfPaula and Amy treated it even with less formality an allowancewas to be made for them, inasmuch as Mr. Granger hadn’tcome to the opera after all.  He had only placed his box attheir service, with a bouquet for each of the party; there waseven one apiece, embittering the thought of his profusion, forMr. Moreen and Ulick.  “They’re all likethat,” was Morgan’s comment; “at the very last,just when we think we’ve landed them they’re back inthe deep sea!”

Morgan’s comments in these days were more and more free;they even included a large recognition of the extraordinarytenderness with which he had been treated while Pemberton wasaway.  Oh yes, they couldn’t do enough to be nice tohim, to show him they had him on their mind and make up for hisloss.  That was just what made the whole thing so sad andcaused him to rejoice after all in Pemberton’sreturn—he had to keep thinking of their affection less, hadless sense of obligation.  Pemberton laughed out at thislast reason, and Morgan blushed and said: “Well, dash it,you know what I mean.”  Pemberton knew perfectly whathe meant; but there were a good many things that—dash ittoo!—it didn’t make any clearer.  This episodeof his second sojourn in Paris stretched itself out wearily, withtheir resumed readings and wanderings and maunderings, theirpotterings on the quays, their hauntings of the museums, theiroccasional lingerings in the Palais Royal when the first sharpweather came on and there was a comfort in warm emanations,before Chevet’s wonderful succulent window.  Morganwanted to hear all about the opulent youth—he took animmense interest in him.  Some of the details of hisopulence—Pemberton could spare him none ofthem—evidently fed the boy’s appreciation of all hisfriend had given up to come back to him; but in addition to thegreater reciprocity established by that heroism he had always hislittle brooding theory, in which there was a frivolous gaietytoo, that their long probation was drawing to a close. Morgan’s conviction that the Moreens couldn’t go onmuch longer kept pace with the unexpended impetus with which,from month to month, they did go on.  Three weeks afterPemberton had rejoined them they went on to another hotel, adingier one than the first; but Morgan rejoiced that his tutorhad at least still not sacrificed the advantage of a roomoutside.  He clung to the romantic utility of this when theday, or rather the night, should arrive for their escape.

For the first time, in this complicated connexion, our friendfelt his collar gall him.  It was, as he had said to Mrs.Moreen in Venice, trop fort—everything was trop fort. He could neither really throw off his blighting burden nor findin it the benefit of a pacified conscience or of a rewardedaffection.  He had spent all the money accruing to him inEngland, and he saw his youth going and that he was gettingnothing back for it.  It was all very well of Morgan tocount it for reparation that he should now settle on himpermanently—there was an irritating flaw in such aview.  He saw what the boy had in his mind; the conceptionthat as his friend had had the generosity to come back he mustshow his gratitude by giving him his life.  But the poorfriend didn’t desire the gift—what could he do withMorgan’s dreadful little life?  Of course at the sametime that Pemberton was irritated he remembered the reason, whichwas very honourable to Morgan and which dwelt simply in hismaking one so forget that he was no more than a patchedurchin.  If one dealt with him on a different basisone’s misadventures were one’s own fault.  SoPemberton waited in a queer confusion of yearning and alarm forthe catastrophe which was held to hang over the house of Moreen,of which he certainly at moments felt the symptoms brush hischeek and as to which he wondered much in what form it would findits liveliest effect.

Perhaps it would take the form of sudden dispersal—afrightened sauve qui peut, a scuttling into selfishcorners.  Certainly they were less elastic than of yore;they were evidently looking for something they didn’tfind.  The Dorringtons hadn’t re-appeared, the princeshad scattered; wasn’t that the beginning of the end? Mrs. Moreen had lost her reckoning of the famous“days”; her social calendar was blurred—it hadturned its face to the wall.  Pemberton suspected that thegreat, the cruel discomfiture had been the unspeakable behaviourof Mr. Granger, who seemed not to know what he wanted, or, whatwas much worse, what they wanted.  He kept sending flowers,as if to bestrew the path of his retreat, which was never thepath of a return.  Flowers were all very well,but—Pemberton could complete the proposition.  It wasnow positively conspicuous that in the long run the Moreens werea social failure; so that the young man was almost grateful therun had not been short.  Mr. Moreen indeed was stilloccasionally able to get away on business and, what was moresurprising, was likewise able to get back.  Ulick had noclub but you couldn’t have discovered it from hisappearance, which was as much as ever that of a person looking atlife from the window of such an institution; therefore Pembertonwas doubly surprised at an answer he once heard him make hismother in the desperate tone of a man familiar with the worstprivations.  Her question Pemberton had not quite caught; itappeared to be an appeal for a suggestion as to whom they mightget to take Amy.  “Let the Devil take her!”Ulick snapped; so that Pemberton could see that they had not onlylost their amiability but had ceased to believe inthemselves.  He could also see that if Mrs. Moreen wastrying to get people to take her children she might be regardedas closing the hatches for the storm.  But Morgan would bethe last she would part with.

One winter afternoon—it was a Sunday—he and theboy walked far together in the Bois de Boulogne.  Theevening was so splendid, the cold lemon-coloured sunset so clear,the stream of carriages and pedestrians so amusing and thefascination of Paris so great, that they stayed out later thanusual and became aware that they should have to hurry home toarrive in time for dinner.  They hurried accordingly,arm-in-arm, good-humoured and hungry, agreeing that there wasnothing like Paris after all and that after everything too thathad come and gone they were not yet sated with innocentpleasures.  When they reached the hotel they found that,though scandalously late, they were in time for all the dinnerthey were likely to sit down to.  Confusion reigned in theapartments of the Moreens—very shabby ones this time, butthe best in the house—and before the interrupted service ofthe table, with objects displaced almost as if there had been ascuffle and a great wine-stain from an overturned bottle,Pemberton couldn’t blink the fact that there had been ascene of the last proprietary firmness.  The storm hadcome—they were all seeking refuge.  The hatches weredown, Paula and Amy were invisible—they had never tried themost casual art upon Pemberton, but he felt they had enough of aneye to him not to wish to meet him as young ladies whose frockshad been confiscated—and Ulick appeared to have jumpedoverboard.  The host and his staff, in a word, had ceased to“go on” at the pace of their guests, and the air ofembarrassed detention, thanks to a pile of gaping trunks in thepassage, was strangely commingled with the air of indignantwithdrawal.  When Morgan took all this in—and he tookit in very quickly—he coloured to the roots of hishair.  He had walked from his infancy among difficulties anddangers, but he had never seen a public exposure.  Pembertonnoticed in a second glance at him that the tears had rushed intohis eyes and that they were tears of a new and untastedbitterness.  He wondered an instant, for the boy’ssake, whether he might successfully pretend not tounderstand.  Not successfully, he felt, as Mr. and Mrs.Moreen, dinnerless by their extinguished hearth, rose before himin their little dishonoured salon, casting about with glassy eyesfor the nearest port in such a storm.  They were notprostrate but were horribly white, and Mrs. Moreen had evidentlybeen crying.  Pemberton quickly learned however that hergrief was not for the loss of her dinner, much as she usuallyenjoyed it, but the fruit of a blow that struck even deeper, asshe made all haste to explain.  He would see for himself, sofar as that went, how the great change had come, the dreadfulbolt had fallen, and how they would now all have to turnthemselves about.  Therefore cruel as it was to them to partwith their darling she must look to him to carry a little furtherthe influence he had so fortunately acquired with theboy—to induce his young charge to follow him into somemodest retreat.  They depended on him—that was thefact—to take their delightful child temporarily under hisprotection; it would leave Mr. Moreen and herself so much morefree to give the proper attention (too little, alas! had beengiven) to the readjustment of their affairs.

“We trust you—we feel we can,” saidMrs. Moreen, slowly rubbing her plump white hands and lookingwith compunction hard at Morgan, whose chin, not to takeliberties, her husband stroked with a paternal forefinger.

“Oh yes—we feel that we can.  We trustMr. Pemberton fully, Morgan,” Mr. Moreen pursued.

Pemberton wondered again if he might pretend not tounderstand; but everything good gave way to the intensity ofMorgan’s understanding.  “Do you mean he maytake me to live with him for ever and ever?” cried theboy.  “May take me away, away, anywhere helikes?”

“For ever and ever?  Comme vous-y-allez!” Mr.Moreen laughed indulgently.  “For as long as Mr.Pemberton may be so good.”

“We’ve struggled, we’ve suffered,” hiswife went on; “but you’ve made him so your own thatwe’ve already been through the worst of thesacrifice.”

Morgan had turned away from his father—he stood lookingat Pemberton with a light in his face.  His sense of shamefor their common humiliated state had dropped; the case hadanother side—the thing was to clutch at that. He had a moment of boyish joy, scarcely mitigated by thereflexion that with this unexpected consecration of hishope—too sudden and too violent; the turn taken was awayfrom a goodboy’s book—the“escape” was left on their hands.  The boyishjoy was there an instant, and Pemberton was almost scared at therush of gratitude and affection that broke through his firstabasement.  When he stammered “My dear fellow, what doyou say to that?” how could one not say somethingenthusiastic?  But there was more need for courage atsomething else that immediately followed and that made the ladsit down quietly on the nearest chair.  He had turned quitelivid and had raised his hand to his left side.  They wereall three looking at him, but Mrs. Moreen suddenly boundedforward.  “Ah his darling little heart!” shebroke out; and this time, on her knees before him and withoutrespect for the idol, she caught him ardently in her arms. “You walked him too far, you hurried him too fast!”she hurled over her shoulder at Pemberton.  Her son made noprotest, and the next instant, still holding him, she sprang upwith her face convulsed and with the terrified cry “Help,help! he’s going, he’s gone!”  Pembertonsaw with equal horror, by Morgan’s own stricken face, thathe was beyond their wildest recall.  He pulled him half outof his mother’s hands, and for a moment, while they heldhim together, they looked all their dismay into eachother’s eyes, “He couldn’t stand it with hisweak organ,” said Pemberton—“the shock, thewhole scene, the violent emotion.”

“But I thought he wantedto go to you!”,wailed Mrs. Moreen.

“I toldyou he didn’t, my dear,” herhusband made answer.  Mr. Moreen was trembling all over andwas in his way as deeply affected as his wife.  But afterthe very first he took his bereavement as a man of the world.

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