The Finer Grain | Page 3

without being able to supply chapter and verse for the felt, the huge
difference. His Seigneurie was tall and straight, but so, thank goodness,
was the author of "The Heart of Gold," who had no such vulgar "mug"
either; and there was no intrinsic inferiority in being a bit inordinately,
and so it might have seemed a bit strikingly, black-browed instead of
being fair as the morning. Again while his new friend delivered himself
our own tried in vain to place him; he indulged in plenty of pleasant, if
rather restlessly headlong sound, the confessed incoherence of a happy
mortal who had always many things "on," and who, while waiting at
any moment for connections and consummations, had fallen into the
way of talking, as they said, all artlessly, and a trifle more betrayingly,
against time. He would always be having appointments, and somehow
of a high "romantic" order, to keep, and the imperfect punctualities of
others to wait for--though who would be of a quality to make such a
pampered personage wait very much our young analyst could only
enjoy asking himself. There were women who might be of a
quality--half a dozen of those perhaps, of those alone, about the world;
our friend was as sure of this, by the end of four minutes, as if he knew
all about it.
After saying he would send him the book the young Lord indeed
dropped that subject; he had asked where he might send it, and had had
an "Oh, I shall remember!" on John's mention of an hotel; but he had
made no further dash into literature, and it was ten to one that this
would be the last the distinguished author might hear of the volume.
Such again was a note of these high existences--that made one content
to ask of them no whit of other consistency than that of carrying off the
particular occasion, whatever it might be, in a dazzle of amiability and
felicity and leaving that as a sufficient trace of their passage. Sought
and achieved consistency was but an angular, a secondary motion;
compared with the air of complete freedom it might have an effect of
deformity. There was no placing this figure of radiant ease, for
Berridge, in any relation that didn't appear not good enough--that is
among the relations that hadn't been too good for Berridge himself. He
was all right where he was; the great Gloriani somehow made that law;

his house, with his supreme artistic position, was good enough for any
one, and to-night in especial there were charming people, more
charming than our friend could recall from any other scene, as the
natural train or circle, as he might say, of such a presence. For an
instant he thought he had got the face as a specimen of imperturbability
watched, with wonder, across the hushed rattle of roulette at
Monte-Carlo; but this quickly became as improbable as any question of
a vulgar table d'hote, or a steam-boat deck, or a herd of fellow-pilgrims
cicerone-led, or even an opera-box serving, during a performance, for
frame of a type observed from the stalls. One placed young gods and
goddesses only when one placed them on Olympus, and it met the case,
always, that they were of Olympian race, and that they glimmered for
one, at the best, through their silver cloud, like the visiting apparitions
in an epic.
This was brief and beautiful indeed till something happened that gave it,
for Berridge, on the spot, a prodigious extension--an extension really as
prodigious, after a little, as if he had suddenly seen the silver clouds
multiply and then the whole of Olympus presently open. Music,
breaking upon the large air, enjoined immediate attention, and in a
moment he was listening, with the rest of the company, to an eminent
tenor, who stood by the piano; and was aware, with it, that his
Englishman had turned away and that in the vast, rich, tapestried room
where, in spite of figures and objects so numerous, clear spaces, wide
vistas, and, as they might be called, becoming situations abounded,
there had been from elsewhere, at the signal of unmistakable song, a
rapid accession of guests. At first he but took this in, and the way that
several young women, for whom seats had been found, looked
charming in the rapt attitude; while even the men, mostly standing and
grouped, "composed," in their stillness, scarce less impressively, under
the sway of the divine voice. It ruled the scene, to the last intensity, and
yet our young man's fine sense found still a resource in the range of the
eyes, without sound or motion, while all the rest of consciousness was
held down as by a hand mailed in silver. It was better, in this way, than