Robert Streightley

“ Guyon's society--and of late he had been admitted into a great deal of Mr. Guyon's society--Robert Streightley seemed to feel himself a different being. There was nothing rough or unpleasant in his new friend and those to whom his new friend introduced him; he became for the first time in his life aware of the existence of another world, where well-bred ease, polished manners, and refined conversation were substituted for that eternal strife and fight and wrangle for money-getting in which his whole previous existence had been passed. ”

“ Guyon's drawing-room Robert Streightley was merely a stranger,--well-dressed, well-looking, and though deficient in the air of fashion, which more or less marked themselves, a gentleman in whom there was nothing to provoke any adverse or sneering criticism. To Robert they were all interesting. These were Katharine's friends,--the people she lived amongst, the people who could influence her by their tastes and opinions, the people whose manners, and dress, and conversation she liked. In every man in the room Robert saw a possible rival, in every woman a possible enemy. ”

“ His sin had found him out indeed, and nothing could save him now from the fullest retribution. It had come in its worst form, complicated with the death of his accomplice, as a double horror. Robert Streightley was not a man who could coldly contemplate such an event as Mr. Guyon's death. He had indeed retained but little personal regard for him; but that fact, the growing knowledge of the man which rendered such regard impossible, invested his death with additional horror to Robert. That such should have been the manner of the detection and the punishment, impressed him with awe. ”

“ Why is half the mischief that is done in the world done by the instrumentality of letters, which ought to have been read and destroyed, being treasured up instead by foolish women, or read and left about by men whom experience has not availed to teach? If Robert Streightley had quite understood Mr. Guyon's character, he would have known, in the first place, that that gentleman had never been in the habit of contemplating the contingency of his own death, or of making any preparation, temporal or spiritual, for that event ”

“ Guyon's death the inexorable pressure of business, increased by a commercial crisis long impending and now arrived in full severity, obliged Robert Streightley to put his sorrow as far as possible from his thoughts during business hours, and bring all his intellect to grapple with the conduct of his affairs. ”

“ A phase of torture very much allied to these described was being undergone by Robert Streightley. The "transaction" between him and Mr. Guyon, under which Katharine had become his wife, was constantly rising in his mind, and the heart-ache consequent thereon was only allayed by the thought that his possession of wealth enabled her to indulge in the extravagance which seemed to form a part and parcel of her life. ”

“ Guyon driving at?
"I will be perfectly plain with you, my dear Robert," said Mr. Guyon, "frank as the day, all open and aboveboard. I won't disguise from you, I don't attempt to disguise it from myself, that perhaps there never was a man less fitted than I am to have been blessed with what would be a crowning solace to many men--a daughter." Streightley involuntarily started as these words met his ear; and Mr. Guyon noticed the start, but he did not betray himself, and proceeded. "I'm not a domestic man, and not cut out for domestic happiness. ”

“ She went home rather early. As Robert Streightley saw her to the cab, and bade her good-night, she said to herself:
"Daniel Thacker knows this Mr. Guyon,--his sisters may know something about the girl. I'll go to Hampstead to-morrow; they don't mind Sunday visitors; and I may have a chance of seeing their brother. Really that girl Ellen grows sillier every day."
CHAPTER VIII. AMARYLLIS IN A MARQUEE.
The prettiest public fêtes in London are those given in the gardens of the Botanical Society in the Regent's Park. ”

“ Streightley's want of sense as from her want of heart. A woman who could see her husband suffering from the anxieties which beset Robert long before the crash came, and yet persist in a course of thoroughly reckless extravagance, is not very impressionable, you may depend upon it. ”

“ Guyon's conversations when loans were in question that Streightley had made up his mind that more money was required; he changed his opinion, however, as his host proceeded.
"Now, my dear Robert,--you'll forgive an old fellow's familiarity, won't you? I don't often indulge in a fancy, but when I do I'm like the--ivy, damme, I cling. You can see, you must have seen plainly enough long since, that I'm not a man of business. In three words, I hate it. If I had been a rich man, I'd have had a fellow to do all my business for me while I smoked my cigarette and looked on ”

“ Streightley's face looked very stern as he heard this. "Do I understand you to say that you have drawn a bill on me for a hundred pounds, Mr. Guyon?"
"Yes, my dear boy, at a month; it'll be due----"
"That is a liberty which I permit no one to take, and which must never be repeated."
"A liberty, Robert?"
"A liberty, Mr. Guyon. Any man who draws a bill on another without first asking his friend's permission, takes what we of the City think an unwarrantable liberty. I am sure you erred in ignorance ”

“ But all had turned out rightly for him; he was safe; the young man--"the biggest fool of the lot" Mr. Guyon called him, with coarse contempt for the pliability of his victim--had received his sentence in silence and without protest, and had left England; a circumstance beyond Mr. Guyon's hopes, which had extended only to his keeping out of Katharine's way until the scheme should have succeeded.
On his return from the dinner at Greenwich, which had been rather tedious, and during which Robert Streightley's abstracted look and dispirited manner had excited Mr. ”

“ He remembered some of it now: "Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery." Yes, full of misery; but not now, not now--that was over. "The sure and certain hope"--this was troubling him; he would read it all through, and try to steady his thoughts upon it.
Mrs. Streightley's "church-books" lay upon a shelf near one of the windows. She rarely used the Common Prayer-book, inclining rather to dissenting forms of worship; so Robert found the book without difficulty. ”

“ Streightley had a long interview with him after her father's death, but he declares she never gave him a hint of her intention, and was singularly quiet and composed. He wondered, indeed, at the composure with which she bore her father's death. I believe Mr. Streightley expects her to communicate with him, or you, or some one, by letter?"
"I suppose so. O, of course," said Ellen; "but the whole thing bewilders me. What fault can she have to find with Robert? Surely no woman ever had a better husband." ”

“ Streightley to dine with us, and I believe he wants to talk business to him afterwards."
"Mr. Streightley going to dine with you! By the way, who is Mr. Streightley?"
"Mr. Streightley? he's a horror--I didn't mean that. He's a City friend of papa's, and, as I'm told, a very rich man."
"Very rich, and in the City, eh!" said Gordon Frere, looking over his shoulder at the object of their remark. "He's better got up than most of his genus. I think I could swear to Poole in his coat. Very rich, and you've been told so, Miss Guyon! He's a lucky man." ”

“ There's no man with a clearer head for business: what will be more explanatory, I will say there's no man better able to put a friend on to 'a good thing' than Streightley; and I fancy Mr. Guyon would not be above a little stagging if he could act on Streightley's information. ”

“ She has only to know what you've done to him never again to raise a finger."
"I've done," said Strether, "what I could—one can't do more. He protests his devotion and his horror. But I'm not sure I've saved him. He protests too much. He asks how one can dream of his being tired. But he has all life before him." ”

“ Streightley must not take fright at any aspect of poverty, or want of means rather; he must not for an instant imagine that I am in any way hampered" (the thought of the 180l. bill flashed across him, but he never changed countenance) ; "and he must be properly entertained; and Katharine must have a proper trousseau. He's not the man to speak about settlements," added Mr. Guyon ”

“ The boarding-school at Peckham was not altogether such an establishment as Miss Streightley should have been kept at beyond the period of primary instruction; but her mother was a shy, gentle, unworldly woman, who did not understand any thing about social ambition, and provided she found her daughter brought up in sound morals and good manners would not have considered for a moment whether her associates were of a higher class than her own, or came of richer or poorer people. Mrs. Streightley had never changed her mode of life in accordance with her increased means ”

“ She knew only too well how Stretchley's would feel towards the Sky-high. And George was Stretchley's, and she was the Sky-high! One sometimes reads of mésalliances in the papers or meets them among one's acquaintance. Never have I met one like this. The very fact of the occupation being in essence the same intensified the discrepancy and the contrast. Which, gentlemen, would surprise and, I may say, shock you more—that a duke should marry oil or soap, or that a really first-class purveyor should take his bride from a fried-fish shop? No man of perception can hesitate. ”

“ Strelsa, a little pale, started to pass her—then halted, astounded: for the old lady had burst into a passion of choking gasps. Whether the terrible sounds she made were due to impotent rage or asthma, Strelsa, confused, shocked, embarrassed, but still angry, had no notion; and while Mrs. Sprowl coughed fatly, she stood still, catching muffled fragments of reproaches directed at people who flouted friendship; who had no consideration for age, and no gratitude, no tenderness, no pity. ”

“ And I needn't tell you that Stretchley's have few equals—and no superiors. When you say Stretchley's, you say everything. I have never gone to them myself: partly because I couldn't afford it, more perhaps from motives of delicacy—from consideration for poor George Langhorn's feelings. He has always preferred not to act professionally for his personal friends, even though he lost money in consequence. ”

“ It is enough to say that any connection between Stretchley's and the Sky-high was to George's mind almost unthinkable. Observe, then, the curious and distressing psychological situation. As a man, he hated Stretchley's; as Stretchley's, he loathed and despised the Sky-high. His love—his most unfortunate love—was in conflict at once with his personal feelings and with his professional pride. And what of her? When he grew calmer, George entered on that subject with some fulness. ”

“ Stretton was a man of no more than average ability, neither a deep thinker, nor a person of ingenuity and resource; but the mere stubbornness of his character gave to him at times a certain grandeur. In Warrisden's eyes he had that grandeur now. He had come quickly to his determination to desert, but he had come calmly to it. There had been no excitement in his manner, no suggestion of hysteria. He had counted up the cost, he had read his letter, he had held the balance between his sacrifice and Millie's necessity ”

“ Strelsa coloured: "Everything worthy is founded on Truth," she said.
"That sounds like Tupper or a copy-book," said [Pg 349] Molly, laughing. "For surely those profound reflections never emanated originally from you or Rix—did they?"
Strelsa, much annoyed, picked up the field glasses and levelled them on the river.
Sir Charles was out there in a launch with Chrysos Lacy. Chrysos fished and Sir Charles baited her hook. ”

“ I can tell you, general, no man can say of Ben Stretcher that he ever betrayed his trust; no man can say of Ben Stretcher that he cannot twist the government round his thumbs; and no man can say of Ben Stretcher that he artfully connived at doing wrong; for he knows his thread of life has not long to run. Truly, sir, though many a man has tried hard enough to bring me down to his own level, not one has yet been found to raise his finger against my honor ”

“ This little effect was sudden and rapid, so rapid that Strether's sense of it was separate only for an instant from a sharp start of his own. He too had, within the minute, taken in something, taken in that he knew the lady whose parasol, shifting as if to hide her face, made so fine a pink point in the shining scene. It was too prodigious, a chance in a million; but, if he knew the lady, the gentleman, who still showed his back and kept his distance, the gentleman, the coatless hero of the idyl, who had responded to her start, was, to match the marvel, none other than Chad. ”

“ Anyway," she added naïvely, "old lady Sprowl has fixed her status and now we all know how to behave toward her."
Strelsa, arms clasped behind her back, came slowly forward from the window:
"What a sorry civilisation," she said thoughtfully, "and what sorry codes we frame to govern it."
"What?" sharply.
Strelsa looked at her, absently.
"Nobody seems to be ashamed of anything any more," she said, half to herself. "The only thing that embarrasses us is what the outside world may think of us. We don't seem to care what we think of each other."
Molly, a trifle red, asked her warmly what she meant. ”