"We're sure enough not to want to have you sick too," she declared indeed with more cheer than apprehension; to which she added, however, to cover all the ground, "You just leave Mr. Betterman to us and take care of yourself. We never say die and we won't have you say it—either about him or anyone else, Mr. Gaw."
This gentleman, so addressed, straightened and cleared himself in such a manner as to show that he saw, for the moment, Miss Mumby's point; which he then, a wondrous small concentration of studied blankness—studied, that is, his companions were afterwards both to show they had felt—commemorated his appreciation of in a tiny, yet triumphant, "Well, that's all right!"
"It ain't so right but what I'm going to see you home," Miss Mumby returned with authority; adding, however, for Graham's benefit, that she had come down to tell him his uncle was now ready. "You just go right up—you'll find Miss Goodenough there. And you'll see for yourself," she said, "how fresh he is!"
"Thanks—that will be beautiful!" Gray brightly responded; but with his eyes on Mr. Gaw, whom of a sudden, somehow, he didn't like to leave.
It at any rate determined on the little man's part a surprised inquiry. "Then you haven't seen him yet—with your grand account of him?"
"No—but the account," Gray smiled, "has an authority beyond mine. Besides," he kept on after this gallant reference, "I feel what I shall do for him."
"Oh they'll have great times!"—Miss Mumby, with an arm at the old man's service, bravely guaranteed it. But she also admonished Graham: "Don't keep him waiting, and mind what Miss Goodenough tells you! So now, Mr. Gaw—you're to mind me!" she concluded; while this subject of her more extemporised attention so far complied as slowly to face with her in the direction of the other house. Gray wondered about him, but immensely trusted Miss Mumby, and only watched till he saw them step off together to the lawn, Mr. Gaw independent of support, with something in his consciously stiffened even if not painfully assumed little air, as noted thus from behind, that quite warranted his protectress. Seen that way, yes, he was a tremendous little person; and Gray, excited, immensely readvised and turning accordingly to his own business, felt the assault of impressions fairly shake him as he went—shake him though it apparently seemed most capable of doing but to the effect of hilarity.
II
Whether or no by its so different appearance from that of Mr. Gaw, the figure propped on pillows in the vast cool room and lighted in such a way that the clear deepening west seemed to flush toward it, through a wide high window, in the interest of its full effect, impressed our young man as massive and expansive, as of a beautiful bland dignity indeed—though emulating Rosanna's relative, he was at first to gather, by a perfect readiness to stare rather than speak. Miss Goodenough had hovered a little, for full assurance, but then had thrown off with a timbre of voice never yet used for Gray's own ear in any sick room, "Well, I guess you won't come to blows!" and had left them face to face—besides leaving the air quickened by the freedom of her humour. They were face to face for the time across an interval which, to do her justice, she had not taken upon herself to deal with directly; this in spite of Gray's apprehension at the end of a minute that she might, by the touch of her hand or the pitch of her spirit, push him further forward than he had immediately judged decent to advance. He had stopped at a certain distance from the great grave bed, stopped really for consideration and deference, or through the instinct of submitting himself first of all to approval, or at least to encouragement; the space, not great enough for reluctance and not small enough for presumption, showed him ready to obey any sign his uncle should make. Mr. Betterman struck him, in this high quietude of contemplation, much less as formidable than as mildly and touchingly august; he had not supposed him, he became suddenly aware, so great a person—a presence like that of some weary veteran of affairs, one of the admittedly eminent whose last words would be expected to figure in history. The large fair face, rather square than heavy, was neither clouded nor ravaged, but finely serene; the silver-coloured hair seemed to bind the broad high brow as with a band of splendid silk, while the eyes rested on Gray with an air of acceptance beyond attestation by the mere play of cheer or the comparative gloom of relief.
"Ah le beau type, le beau type!" was during these instants the visitor's inward comment breaking into one of the strange tongues that experience had appointed him privately to use, in many a case, for the appropriation of aspects and appearances. It was not till afterwards that he happened to learn how his uncle had been capable, two or three hours before seeing him, of offering cheek and chin to the deft ministration of a barber, a fact highly illuminating, though by that time the gathered lights were thick. What the patient owed on the spot to the sacrifice, he easily made out, was that look as of the last refinement of preparation, that positive splendour of the immaculate, which was really, on one's taking it all in, but part of an earnest recognition of his guest's own dignity. The grave beauty of the personal presence, the vague anticipation as of something that might go on to be commemorated for its example, the great pure fragrant room, bathed in the tempered glow of the afternoon's end, the general lucidity and tranquillity and security of the whole presented case, begot in fine, on our young friend's part, an extraordinary sense that as he himself was important enough to be on show, so these peculiar perfections that met him were but so many virtual honours rendered and signs of the high level to which he had mounted. On show, yes—that was it, and more wonderfully than could be said: Gray was sure after a little of how right he was to stand off as yet in any interest of his own significance that might be involved. There was clearly something his uncle so wanted him to be that he should run no possible danger of being it to excess, and that if he might only there and then grasp it he would ask but to proceed, for decency's sake, according to his lights: just as so short a time before a like force of suggestion had played upon him from Mr. Gaw—each of these appeals clothing him in its own way with such an oddity of pertinence, such a bristling set of attributes. This wait of the parties to the present one for articulate expression, on either side, of whatever it was that might most concern them together, promised also to last as the tension had lasted down on the verandah, and would perhaps indeed have drawn itself further out if Gray hadn't broken where he stood into a cry of admiration—since it could scarcely be called less—that blew to the winds every fear of overstepping.