The Death of the Lion | Page 9

everybody knows, on occasions when the crush is great, the animals
rub shoulders freely with the spectators and the lions sit down for

whole evenings with the lambs.
It had been ominously clear to me from the first that in Neil Paraday
this lady, who, as all the world agreed, was tremendous fun, considered
that she had secured a prime attraction, a creature of almost heraldic
oddity. Nothing could exceed her enthusiasm over her capture, and
nothing could exceed the confused apprehensions it excited in me. I
had an instinctive fear of her which I tried without effect to conceal
from her victim, but which I let her notice with perfect impunity.
Paraday heeded it, but she never did, for her conscience was that of a
romping child. She was a blind violent force to which I could attach no
more idea of responsibility than to the creaking of a sign in the wind. It
was difficult to say what she conduced to but circulation. She was
constructed of steel and leather, and all I asked of her for our tractable
friend was not to do him to death. He had consented for a time to be of
india-rubber, but my thoughts were fixed on the day he should resume
his shape or at least get back into his box. It was evidently all right, but
I should be glad when it was well over. I had a special fear--the
impression was ineffaceable of the hour when, after Mr. Morrow's
departure, I had found him on the sofa in his study. That pretext of
indisposition had not in the least been meant as a snub to the envoy of
The Tatler--he had gone to lie down in very truth. He had felt a pang of
his old pain, the result of the agitation wrought in him by this forcing
open of a new period. His old programme, his old ideal even had to be
changed. Say what one would, success was a complication and
recognition had to be reciprocal. The monastic life, the pious
illumination of the missal in the convent cell were things of the
gathered past. It didn't engender despair, but at least it required
adjustment. Before I left him on that occasion we had passed a bargain,
my part of which was that I should make it my business to take care of
him. Let whoever would represent the interest in his presence (I must
have had a mystical prevision of Mrs. Weeks Wimbush) I should
represent the interest in his work--or otherwise expressed in his absence.
These two interests were in their essence opposed; and I doubt, as
youth is fleeting, if I shall ever again know the intensity of joy with
which I felt that in so good a cause I was willing to make myself
odious.
One day in Sloane Street I found myself questioning Paraday's landlord,

who had come to the door in answer to my knock. Two vehicles, a
barouche and a smart hansom, were drawn up before the house.
"In the drawing-room, sir? Mrs. Weeks Wimbush."
"And in the dining-room?"
"A young lady, sir--waiting: I think a foreigner."
It was three o'clock, and on days when Paraday didn't lunch out he
attached a value to these appropriated hours. On which days, however,
didn't the dear man lunch out? Mrs. Wimbush, at such a crisis, would
have rushed round immediately after her own repast. I went into the
dining-room first, postponing the pleasure of seeing how, upstairs, the
lady of the barouche would, on my arrival, point the moral of my sweet
solicitude. No one took such an interest as herself in his doing only
what was good for him, and she was always on the spot to see that he
did it. She made appointments with him to discuss the best means of
economising his time and protecting his privacy. She further made his
health her special business, and had so much sympathy with my own
zeal for it that she was the author of pleasing fictions on the subject of
what my devotion had led me to give up. I gave up nothing (I don't
count Mr. Pinhorn) because I had nothing, and all I had as yet achieved
was to find myself also in the menagerie. I had dashed in to save my
friend, but I had only got domesticated and wedged; so that I could do
little more for him than exchange with him over people's heads looks of
intense but futile intelligence.

CHAPTER VII.

The young lady in the dining-room had a brave face, black hair, blue
eyes, and in her lap a big volume. "I've come for his autograph," she
said when I had explained to her that I was under bonds to see people
for