Lover or Friend

by Rosa Nouchette Carey

These eyes were not always pleasant to meet. Certain people felt disagreeably in their inner consciousness that Captain Burnett could read them too accurately—'No fellow has a right to look you through and through,' as one young staff officer observed; 'it is taking a liberty with a man. Burnett always seems as though he is trying to turn a fellow inside out, to get at the other side of him'—not a very eloquent description of a would-be philosopher who loved to dabble a little in human foibles.

'I have been listening to the Blake discussion,' he said coolly, as he took the offered cup. 'What a wonderful woman you are, Gage! you have a splendid talent for organisation; and even a thorough-paced scandal has to be organised.'

'Scandal!—what are you talking about, Michael?'

'Your talent for organisation, even in trifles,' he returned promptly. 'I am using the word advisedly. I have just been reading De Quincey's definition of talent and genius. He says—now pray listen, Gage—that "talent is intellectual power of every kind which acts and manifests itself by and through the will and the active forces. Genius, as the verbal origin implies, is that much rarer species of intellectual power which is derived from the genial nature, from the spirit of suffering and enjoying, from the spirit of pleasure and pain, as organised more or less perfectly; and this is independent of the will. It is a function of the passive nature. Talent is conversant with the adaptation of means to ends; but genius is conversant only with ends."'

'My dear Michael, I have no doubt that all this is exceedingly clever, and that your memory is excellent, but why are we to be crushed beneath all this analysis?'

'I was only drawing a comparison between you and Audrey,' he replied tranquilly. 'I have been much struck by the idea involved in the word "genial"; I had no conception we could evolve "genius" out of it. Audrey is a very genial person; she also, in De Quincey's words, "moves in headlong sympathy and concurrence with spontaneous power." This is his definition, mark you; I lay no claim to it: "Genius works under a rapture of necessity and spontaneity." I do love that expression, "headlong sympathy"; it so well expresses the way Audrey works.'

Mrs. Harcourt gave a little assenting shrug. She was not quite pleased with the turn the conversation had taken; abstract ideas were not to her taste; the play of words in which Captain Burnett delighted bored her excessively. She detected, too, a spice of irony. The comparison between her and Audrey was not a flattering one: she was far cleverer than Audrey; her masters and governesses would have acknowledged that fact. And yet her cousin Michael was giving the divine gift of genius to her more scantily endowed sister; genius! but, of course, it was only Michael's nonsense: he would say anything when he was in the humour for disputation. Even her own Percival had these contentious moods. The masculine mind liked to play with moral ninepins, to send all kinds of exploded theories rolling with their little ball of wit; it sharpened their argumentative faculties, and kept them bright and ready for use.

'Mother and I were talking about these tiresome Blakes—not of Audrey,' she said in a calm, matter-of-fact tone. 'If you were listening, Michael, you must have heard the whole account of my conversation with Mrs. Bryce.'

'Oh, you mean Harcourt's sister, with whom you have been staying. Did I not tell you that I had heard every word, and was admiring your admirable tactics? The way in which you marshalled your forces of half-truths and implied verities and small mounted theories was grand—absolutely grand!'

Mrs. Harcourt was silent for a moment. Michael was very trying; he often exercised her patience most severely. But there was a threefold reason for her forbearance; first, he was her father's cousin, and beloved by him as his own son would have been if he had ever had one; secondly, his ill-health entitled him to a good deal of consideration from any kind-hearted woman; and thirdly, and perhaps principally, he had the reputation for saying and doing odd, out-of-the-way things; and a man who moves in an eccentric circle of his own is never on other people's plane, and therefore some allowance must be made for him.