IV

Within six months again, none the less, his fear was on more occasions than one all before him.  Lance had returned to Paris for another trial; then had reappeared at home and had had, with his father, for the first time in his life, one of the scenes that strike sparks.  He described it with much expression to Peter, touching whom (since they had never done so before) it was the sign of a new reserve on the part of the pair at Carrara Lodge that they at present failed, on a matter of intimate interest, to open themselves—­if not in joy then in sorrow—­to their good friend.  This produced perhaps practically between the parties a shade of alienation and a slight intermission of commerce—­marked mainly indeed by the fact that to talk at his ease with his old playmate Lance had in general to come to see him.  The closest if not quite the gayest relation they had yet known together was thus ushered in.  The difficulty for poor Lance was a tension at home—­begotten by the fact that his father wished him to be at least the sort of success he himself had been.  He hadn’t ‘chucked’ Paris—­though nothing appeared more vivid to him than that Paris had chucked him:  he would go back again because of the fascination in trying, in seeing, in sounding the depths—­in learning one’s lesson, briefly, even if the lesson were simply that of one’s impotence in the presence of one’s larger vision.  But what did the Master, all aloft in his senseless fluency, know of impotence, and what vision—­to be called such—­had he in all his blind life ever had?  Lance, heated and indignant, frankly appealed to his godparent on this score.

His father, it appeared, had come down on him for having, after so long, nothing to show, and hoped that on his next return this deficiency would be repaired. The thing, the Master complacently set forth was—­for any artist, however inferior to himself—­at least to ‘do’ something.  ‘What can you do?  That’s all I ask!’ He had certainly done enough, and there was no mistake about what he had to show.  Lance had tears in his eyes when it came thus to letting his old friend know how great the strain might be on the ‘sacrifice’ asked of him.  It wasn’t so easy to continue humbugging—­as from son to parent—­after feeling one’s self despised for not grovelling in mediocrity.  Yet a noble duplicity was what, as they intimately faced the situation, Peter went on requiring; and it was still for a time what his young friend, bitter and sore, managed loyally to comfort him with.  Fifty pounds more than once again, it was true, rewarded both in London and in Paris the young friend’s loyalty; none the less sensibly, doubtless, at the moment, that the money was a direct advance on a decent sum for which Peter had long since privately prearranged an ultimate function.  Whether by these arts or others, at all events, Lance’s just resentment was kept for a season—­but only for a season—­at bay.  The day arrived when he warned his companion that he could hold out—­or hold in—­no longer.  Carrara Lodge had had to listen to another lecture delivered from a great height—­an infliction really heavier at last than, without striking back or in some way letting the Master have the truth, flesh and blood could bear.