第50章 VII(7)

Notwithstanding the fact that I am nominally the head personage of the circle of Teacups, I do not pretend or wish to deny that we all look to Number Five as our chief adviser in all the literary questions that come before us. She reads more and better than any of us. She is always ready to welcome the first sign of genius, or of talent which approaches genius. She makes short work with all the pretenders whose only excuse for appealing to the public is that they "want to be famous." She is one of the very few persons to whom I am willing to read any one of my own productions while it is yet in manuscript, unpublished. I know she is disposed to make more of it than it deserves; but, on the other hand, there are degrees in her scale of judgment, and I can distinguish very easily what delights her from what pleases only, or is, except for her kindly feeling to the writer, indifferent, or open to severe comment. What is curious is that she seems to have no literary aspirations, no desire to be known as a writer. Yet Number Five has more esprit, more sparkle, more sense in her talk, than many a famous authoress from whom we should expect brilliant conversation.

There are mysteries about Number Five. I am not going to describe her personally. Whether she belongs naturally among the bright young people, or in the company of the maturer persons, who have had a good deal of experience of the world, and have reached the wisdom of the riper decades without losing the graces of the earlier ones, it would be hard to say. The men and women, young and old, who throng about her forget their own ages. "There is no such thing as time in her presence," said the Professor, the other day, in speaking of her.

Whether the Professor is in love with her or not is more than I can say, but I am sure that he goes to her for literary sympathy and counsel, just as I do. The reader may remember what Number Five said about the possibility of her getting a sprained ankle, and her asking the young Doctor whether he felt equal to taking charge of her if she did. I would not for the world insinuate that he wishes she would slip and twist her foot a little,--just a little, you know, but so that it would have to be laid on a pillow in a chair, and inspected, and bandaged, and delicately manipulated. There was a banana-skin which she might naturally have trodden on, in her way to the tea-table. Nobody can suppose that it was there except by the most innocent of accidents. There are people who will suspect everybody.

The idea of the Doctor's putting that banana-skin there! People love to talk in that silly way about doctors.

Number Five had promised to read us a narrative which she thought would interest some of the company. Who wrote it she did not tell us, but I inferred from various circumstances that she had known the writer. She read the story most effectively in her rich, musical voice. I noticed that when it came to the sounds of the striking clock, the ringing of the notes was so like that which reaches us from some far-off cathedral tower that we wanted to bow our heads, as if we had just heard a summons to the Angelus. This was the short story that Number Five read to The Teacups:--

I have somewhere read this anecdote. Louis the Fourteenth was looking out, one day, from, a window of his palace of Saint-Germain.

It was a beautiful landscape which spread out before him, and the monarch, exulting in health, strength, and the splendors of his exalted position, felt his bosom swell with emotions of pride and happiness: Presently he noticed the towers of a church in the distance, above the treetops. "What building is that?" he asked.

"May it please your Majesty, that is the Church of St. Denis, where your royal ancestors have been buried for many generations." The answer did not "please his Royal Majesty." There, then, was the place where he too was to lie and moulder in the dust. He turned, sick at heart, from the window, and was uneasy until he had built him another palace, from which he could never be appalled by that fatal prospect.

Something like the experience of Louis the Fourteenth was that of the owner of THE TERRIBLE CLOCK.