"You heard that Pickle shot himself, didn't you?" Meredith asked. There
was no answer; John did not hear him.
"Do you know that poor Jeny Haines killed himself, last March?" Tom said
sharply.
There was only silence in the room. Meredith got up and rattled some tongs
in the empty fireplace, but the other did not move or notice him in any
way.
Meredith set the tongs down, and went quietly out of the room, leaving his
friend to that mysterious interview.
When he came back, after a remorseful cigarette in the yard, Harkless was
still sitting, motionless, looking up at the photograph above the mantel-
piece.
They drove abroad every day, at first in the victoria, and, as Harkless's
strength began to come back, in a knock-about cart of Tom's, a light trail
of blue smoke floating back wherever the two friends passed. And though
the country editor grew stronger in the pleasant, open city, Meredith felt
that his apathy and listlessness only deepened, and he suspected that, in
Harkless's own room, where the photograph reigned, the languor departed
for the time, making way for a destructive fire. Judge Briscoe, paying a
second visit to Rouen, told Tom, in an aside, that their friend did not
seem to be the same man. He was altered and aged beyond belief, the old
gentleman whispered sadly.
Meredith decided that his guest needed enlivening--something to take him
out of himself; he must be stirred up to rub against people once more. And
therefore, one night he made a little company for him: two or three
apparently betrothed very young couples, for whom it was rather dull,
after they had looked their fill of Harkless (it appeared that every one
was curious to see him); and three or four married young couples, for whom
the entertainment seemed rather diverting in an absent-minded way (they
had the air of remembering that they had forgotten the baby); and three or
four bachelors, who seemed contented in any place where they were allowed
to smoke; and one widower, whose manner indicated that any occasion
whatever was gay enough for him; and four or five young women, who
(Meredith explained to John) were of their host's age, and had been "left
over" out of the set he grew up with; and for these the modest party took
on a hilarious and chipper character. "It is these girls that have let the
men go by because they didn't see any good enough; they're the jolly
souls!" the one widower remarked, confidentially. "They've been at it a
long while, and they know how, and they're light-hearted as robins. They
have more fun than people who have responsibilities."
All of these lively demoiselles fluttered about Harkless with
commiserative pleasantries, and, in spite of his protestations, made him
recline in the biggest and deepest chair on the porch, where they
surfeited him with kindness and grouped about him with extra cushions and
tenderness for a man who had been injured. No one mentioned the fact that
he had been hurt; it was not spoken of, though they wished mightily he
would tell them the story they had read luridly in the public prints. They
were very good to him. One of them, in particular, a handsome, dark, kind-
eyed girl, constituted herself at once his cicerone in Rouen gossip and
his waiting-maid. She sat by him, and saw that his needs (and his not-
needs, too) were supplied and oversupplied; she could not let him move,
and anticipated his least wish, though he was now amply able to help
himself; and she fanned him as if he were a dying consumptive.