The Author of Beltraffio | Page 8

walked off with his son,
accompanied by re-echoing but inarticulate comments from my
fellow-visitor.
His wife had seated herself again, and her fixed eyes, bent on the
ground, expressed for a few moments so much mute agitation that
anything I could think of to say would be but a false note. Yet she none
the less quickly recovered herself, to express the sufficiently civil hope
that I didn't mind having had to walk from the station. I reassured her
on this point, and she went on: "We've got a thing that might have gone
for you, but my husband wouldn't order it." After which and another
longish pause, broken only by my plea that the pleasure of a walk with
our friend would have been quite what I would have chosen, she found
for reply: "I believe the Americans walk very little."
"Yes, we always run," I laughingly allowed.
She looked at me seriously, yet with an absence in her pretty eyes. "I
suppose your distances are so great."
"Yes, but we break our marches! I can't tell you the pleasure to me of
finding myself here," I added. "I've the greatest admiration for Mr.
Ambient."
"He'll like that. He likes being admired."
"He must have a very happy life, then. He has many worshippers."
"Oh yes, I've seen some of them," she dropped, looking away, very far
from me, rather as if such a vision were before her at the moment. It
seemed to indicate, her tone, that the sight was scarcely edifying, and I
guessed her quickly enough to be in no great intellectual sympathy with
the author of "Beltraffio." I thought the fact strange, but somehow, in
the glow of my own enthusiasm, didn't think it important it only made

me wish rather to emphasise that homage.
"For me, you know," I returned--doubtless with a due suffisance-- "he's
quite the greatest of living writers."
"Of course I can't judge. Of course he's very clever," she said with a
patient cheer.
"He's nothing less than supreme, Mrs. Ambient! There are pages in
each of his books of a perfection classing them with the greatest things.
Accordingly for me to see him in this familiar way, in his habit as he
lives, and apparently to find the man as delightful as the artist--well, I
can't tell you how much too good to be true it seems and how great a
privilege I think it." I knew I was gushing, but I couldn't help it, and
what I said was a good deal less than what I felt. I was by no means
sure I should dare to say even so much as this to the master himself,
and there was a kind of rapture in speaking it out to his wife which was
not affected by the fact that, as a wife, she appeared peculiar. She
listened to me with her face grave again and her lips a little compressed,
listened as if in no doubt, of course, that her husband was remarkable,
but as if at the same time she had heard it frequently enough and
couldn't treat it as stirring news. There was even in her manner a
suggestion that I was so young as to expose myself to being called
forward--an imputation and a word I had always loathed; as well as a
hinted reminder that people usually got over their early extravagance.
"I assure you that for me this is a red-letter day," I added.
She didn't take this up, but after a pause, looking round her, said
abruptly and a trifle dryly: "We're very much afraid about the fruit this
year."
My eyes wandered to the mossy mottled garden-walls, where
plum-trees and pears, flattened and fastened upon the rusty bricks,
looked like crucified figures with many arms. "Doesn't it promise
well?"
"No, the trees look very dull. We had such late frosts."

Then there was another pause. She addressed her attention to the
opposite end of the grounds, kept it for her husband's return with the
child. "Is Mr. Ambient fond of gardening?" it occurred to me to ask,
irresistibly impelled as I felt myself, moreover, to bring the
conversation constantly back to him.
"He's very fond of plums," said his wife.
"Ah well, then, I hope your crop will be better than you fear. It's a
lovely old place," I continued. "The whole impression's that of certain
places he has described. Your house is like one of his pictures."
She seemed a bit frigidly amused at my glow. "It's a pleasant little
place. There are hundreds like it."
"Oh it has his TONE," I laughed, but sounding my epithet and insisting
on my point the more sharply that my companion appeared to see in my
appreciation of her simple establishment a mark of mean experience.