Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/116

90 fingers quick and fine, they are prohibited from toil : they must do nothing that will interrupt their special task of apprehension: they are all artists, writers, convalescents—consumptives (like Touchett)—dilettanti (like Gabriel Nash)—quivering creatures who are either observers by profession or else in a state of starved susceptibility. Even when virility has to be admitted, for the sake of dramatic contrast, it is always in the shape of workers whose work is done: men like Newman, Caspar Goodwood, Mr. Vervey—all compelled to qualify for admission to these salons, to justify their presence in these studios, by devoting the results of the work that made them strong to the feminine task of making themselves fine. But mainly it is a world of women. Already enfranchised, already fastidious, supremely self-aware—specialists already in the arts of observation and the subtler sorts of calculation—they offered Mr. James exactly the material he required, and their figures are the most active in his scene. Yet even they had to suffer, to be specialized still further, and the process left a poison in their blood. They are all strangely sterile. They bear no children. The very penalty that punishes too close breeding in real life has visited this imaginary race. Each of them, like Milly Theale, is "the last exquisite flower of a dying stock." They are "finished" in both senses of the word : final as well as fine.

And this effect of finality is not only physical. It is involved in the very tissues of their attitude towards life—is indeed the conditioning quality of their characters. For posterity is but a kind of postponement: the idea of a future makes procrastination proper; and the essence of Mr. James's contract with these people is that they shall extort the very utmost from the present—pack To-day to bursting with "pulsations." The hushed room in which they dwell is therefore the last