The Finer Grain | Page 5

with an immense stride,
when, scarce more than ten minutes later, he was aware that the
distinguished stranger had brought the Princess straight across the room

to speak to him. He had failed in the interval of any glimpse of their
closer meeting; for the great tenor had sung another song and then
stopped, immediately on which Madame Gloriani had made his pulse
quicken to a different, if not to a finer, throb by hovering before him
once more with the man in the world he most admired, as it were,
looking at him over her shoulder. The man in the world he most
admired, the greatest then of contemporary Dramatists--and bearing,
independently, the name inscribed if not in deepest incision at least in
thickest gilding on the rich recreative roll--this prodigious personage
was actually to suffer "presentation" to him at the good lady's generous
but ineffectual hands, and had in fact the next instant, left alone with
him, bowed, in formal salutation, the massive, curly, witty head, so
"romantic" yet so modern, so "artistic" and ironic yet somehow so civic,
so Gallic yet somehow so cosmic, his personal vision of which had not
hitherto transcended that of the possessor of a signed and framed
photograph in a consecrated quarter of a writing-table.
It was positive, however, that poor John was afterward to remember of
this conjunction nothing whatever but the fact of the great man's
looking at him very hard, straight in the eyes, and of his not having
himself scrupled to do as much, and with a confessed intensity of
appetite. It was improbable, he was to recognise, that they had, for the
few minutes, only stared and grimaced, like pitted boxers or wrestlers;
but what had abode with him later on, none the less, was just the
cherished memory of his not having so lost presence of mind as to fail
of feeding on his impression. It was precious and precarious, that was
perhaps all there would be of it; and his subsequent consciousness was
quite to cherish this queer view of the silence, neither awkward nor
empty nor harsh, but on the contrary quite charged and brimming, that
represented for him his use, his unforgettable enjoyment in fact, of his
opportunity. Had nothing passed in words? Well, no misery of
murmured "homage," thank goodness; though something must have
been said, certainly, to lead up, as they put it at the theatre, to John's
having asked the head of the profession, before they separated, if he by
chance knew who the so radiantly handsome young woman might be,
the one who had so lately come in and who wore the pale yellow dress,
of the strange tone, and the magnificent pearls. They must have

separated soon, it was further to have been noted; since it was before
the advance of the pair, their wonderful dazzling charge upon him, that
he had distinctly seen the great man, at a distance again, block out from
his sight the harmony of the faded gold and the pearls--to speak only of
that--and plant himself there (the mere high Atlas-back of renown to
Berridge now) as for communion with them. He had blocked
everything out, to this tune, effectually; with nothing of the matter left
for our friend meanwhile but that, as he had said, the beautiful lady was
the Princess. What Princess, or the Princess of what?--our young man
had afterward wondered; his companion's reply having lost itself in the
prelude of an outburst by another vocalist who had approached the
piano.
It was after these things that she so incredibly came to him, attended by
her adorer--since he took it for absolute that the young Lord was her
adorer, as who indeed mightn't be?--and scarce waiting, in her bright
simplicity, for any form of introduction. It may thus be said in a word
that this was the manner in which she made our hero's acquaintance, a
satisfaction that she on the spot described to him as really wanting of
late to her felicity. "I've read everything, you know, and 'The Heart of
Gold' three times": she put it all immediately on that ground, while the
young Lord now smiled, beside her, as if it were quite the sort of thing
he had done too; and while, further, the author of the work yielded to
the consciousness that whereas in general he had come at last scarce to
be able to bear the iteration of those words, which affected him as a
mere vain vocal convulsion, so not a breath of this association now
attended them, so such a person as the Princess could make of them
what she would.
Unless it was to be really what he would!--this occurred to him in the
very thick of the prodigy, no single shade of