As I turned uneasily about my neighbour more comfortably snuggled. “Well, I’m glad then I haven’t read him and have nothing unpleasant to say!” We had come back to Limbert’s door, and I made the coachman stop short of it. “But he’ll try again, with that determination of his: he’ll build his hopes on the next time.”
“On what else has he built them from the very first? It’s never the present for him that bears the fruit; that’s always postponed and for somebody else: there has always to be another try. I admit that his idea of a ‘new line’ has made him try harder than ever. It makes no difference,” I brooded, still timorously lingering; “his achievement of his necessity, his hope of a market will continue to attach themselves to the future. But the next time will disappoint him as each last time has done--and then the next and the next and the next!”
I found myself seeing it all with a clearness almost inspired: it evidently cast a chill on Mrs. Highmore. “Then what on earth will become of him?” she plaintively asked.
“I don’t think I particularly care what may become of _him_,” I returned with a conscious, reckless increase of my exaltation; “I feel it almost enough to be concerned with what may become of one’s enjoyment of him. I don’t know in short what will become of his circulation; I am only quite at my ease as to what will become of his work. It will simply keep all its quality. He’ll try again for the common with what he’ll believe to be a still more infernal cunning, and again the common will fatally elude him, for his infernal cunning will have been only his genius in an ineffectual disguise.” We sat drawn up by the pavement, facing poor Limbert’s future as I saw it. It relieved me in a manner to know the worst, and I prophesied with an assurance which as I look back upon it strikes me as rather remarkable. “_Que voulez-vous?_” I went on; “you can’t make a sow’s ear of a silk purse! It’s grievous indeed if you like--there are people who can’t be vulgar for trying. _He_ can’t--it wouldn’t come off, I promise you, even once. It takes more than trying--it comes by grace. It happens not to be given to Limbert to fall. He belongs to the heights--he breathes there, he lives there, and it’s accordingly to the heights I must ascend,” I said as I took leave of my conductress, “to carry him this wretched news from where _we_ move!”