FullReads

The poor woman wondered. “Suspects?”

“Well, I drew it, in writing to her, on reflexion, as mild as I could–having been visited in the watches of the night by the instinct of what might happen. Something told me to keep back my first letter–in which, under the first impression, I myself rashly ‘raved’; and I concocted instead of it an insincere and guarded report. But guarded as I was I clearly didn’t keep you ‘down,’ as we say, enough. The wonder of your colour–daub you over with grey as I might–must have come through and told the tale. She scents battle from afar–by which I mean she scents ‘quaintness.’ But keep her off. It’s hideous, what I’m saying–but I owe it to you. I owe it to the world. She’ll kill you.”

“You mean I shan’t get on with her?”

“Oh fatally! See how I have. And see how you have with ME. She’s intelligent, moreover, remarkably pretty, remarkably good. And she’ll adore you.”

“Well then?”

“Why that will be just how she’ll do for you.”

“Oh I can hold my own!” said Miss Wenham with the headshake of a horse making his sleigh-bells rattle in frosty air.

“Ah but you can’t hold hers! She’ll rave about you. She’ll write about you. You’re Niagara before the first white traveller–and you know, or rather you can’t know, what Niagara became AFTER that gentleman. Addie will have discovered Niagara. She’ll understand you in perfection; she’ll feel you down to the ground; not a delicate shade of you will she lose or let any one else lose. You’ll be too weird for words, but the words will nevertheless come. You’ll be too exactly the real thing and be left too utterly just as you are, and all Addie’s friends and all Addie’s editors and contributors and readers will cross the Atlantic and flock to Flickerbridge just in order so–unanimously, universally, vociferously–to leave you. You’ll be in the magazines with illustrations; you’ll be in the papers with headings; you’ll be everywhere with everything. You don’t understand–you think you do, but you don’t. Heaven forbid you SHOULD understand! That’s just your beauty–your ‘sleeping’ beauty. But you needn’t. You can take me on trust. Don’t have her. Give as a pretext, as a reason, anything in the world you like. Lie to her–scare her away. I’ll go away and give you up–I’ll sacrifice everything myself.” Granger pursued his exhortation, convincing himself more and more. “If I saw my way out, my way completely through, I’D pile up some fabric of fiction for her–I should only want to be sure of its not tumbling down. One would have, you see, to keep the thing up. But I’d throw dust in her eyes. I’d tell her you don’t do at all–that you’re not in fact a desirable acquaintance. I’d tell her you’re vulgar, improper, scandalous; I’d tell her you’re mercenary, designing, dangerous; I’d tell her the only safe course is immediately to let you drop. I’d thus surround you with an impenetrable legend of conscientious misrepresentation, a circle of pious fraud, and all the while privately keep you for myself.”

She had listened to him as if he were a band of music and she herself a small shy garden-party. “I shouldn’t like you to go away. I shouldn’t in the least like you not to come again.”

“Ah there it is!” he replied. “How can I come again if Addie ruins you?”

“But how will she ruin me–even if she does what you say? I know I’m too old to change and really much too queer to please in any of the extraordinary ways you speak of. If it’s a question of quizzing me I don’t think my cousin, or any one else, will have quite the hand for it that YOU seem to have. So that if YOU haven’t ruined me–!”

“But I HAVE–that’s just the point!” Granger insisted. “I’ve undermined you at least. I’ve left after all terribly little for Addie to do.”

She laughed in clear tones. “Well then, we’ll admit that you’ve done everything but frighten me.”