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 Dean Rood
The Troubleshooting
and Maintenance Guide
for Gas Chromatographers

The Troubleshooting and Maintenance Guide for Gas Chromatographers, Fourth Edition. Dean Rood
Copyright © 2007 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
ISBN: 978-3-527-31373-0

1344vch00.indd I 04.05.2007 16:07:10

 1807–2007 Knowledge for Generations

Each generation has its unique needs and aspirations. When Charles Wiley first
opened his small printing shop in lower Manhattan in 1807, it was a generation
of boundless potential searching for an identity. And we were there, helping to
define a new American literary tradition. Over half a century later, in the midst
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For 200 years, Wiley has been an integral part of each generation’s journey,
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Generations come and go, but you can always count on Wiley to provide you
the knowledge you need, when and where you need it!

William J. Pesce Peter Booth Wiley

President and Chief Executive Officer Chairman of the Board

1344vch00.indd II 04.05.2007 16:07:10

 Dean Rood

The Troubleshooting
and Maintenance Guide
for Gas Chromatographers

Fourth, Revised and Updated Edition

1344vch00.indd III 04.05.2007 16:07:10

 The Author All books published by Wiley-VCH are carefully
produced. Nevertheless, authors, editors, and
Dean Rood publisher do not warrant the information contained
968 Glide Ferry Way Drive in these books, including this book, to be free of
Sacramento, CA 95831 errors. Readers are advised to keep in mind that
USA statements, data, illustrations, procedural details or
other items may inadvertently be inaccurate.

Library of Congress Card No.: applied for

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data:

A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library.

Bibliographic information published by

the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this
publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available in the
Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

© 2007 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA,

Weinheim

All rights reserved (including those of translation

into other languages). No part of this book may
be reproduced in any form – by photoprinting,
microfilm, or any other means – nor transmitted or
translated into a machine language without written
permission from the publishers. Registered names,
trademarks, etc. used in this book, even when not
specifically marked as such, are not to be considered
unprotected by law.

Typesetting Manuela Treindl, Laaber

Printing Strauss GmbH, Mörlenbach
Binding Litges & Dopf GmbH, Heppenheim
Wiley Bicentennial Logo Richard J. Pacifico

Printed in the Federal Republic of Germany

Printed on acid-free paper

ISBN 978-3-527-31373-0

1344vch00.indd IV 04.05.2007 16:07:10

 V

Preface

Even though gas chromatography (GC) is considered a very mature and highly
developed technology, advances continue to be made in the areas of hardware,
electronics, software and columns. In some cases, these advances have reduced
the occurrence of problems and made their detection easier and more certain. In
other cases, greater complexity has been introduced with its own set of problems
and solutions. Regardless of the age or complexity of the GC instrument, many
of the same problems occur and the underlying causes are often the same. In
addition, the guidelines and techniques used to care and maintain the instruments
and columns are the same.
With this thought in mind, much of the core information in this edition does
not differ significantly from the previous one; however, there are a number
of noteworthy additions and enhancements. The majority of the figures are
new and improved especially in the injector and detector chapters. A complete
section on pressure and flow programmable injectors has been added. Due to
its popularity and specific requirements, an Appendix on high speed GC using
small diameter columns is new to this edition. Column, hardware, carrier gas and
sample considerations and issues are presented in a concise and direct format to
ensure successful high speed GC applications. Finally, an extensive Appendix on
the basics of quantitative GC is new and relatively unique. This Appendix covers
important quantitation definitions, calibration curves, the selection and use of
quantitation techniques such as internal and external standards, and several
standard preparation techniques. Numerous examples are provided to aid in
understanding.
The information contained in this book encompasses nearly 25 years of in-depth
experience in the field of GC along with the wisdom passed along from 1000’s of
personal interactions with GC practitioners around the world. It is often practical
information mixed with a touch of theory such as presented and discussed within
these pages that most often proves to be the most useful and helpful.

Sacramento, CA, March 2007 Dean Rood

The Troubleshooting and Maintenance Guide for Gas Chromatographers, Fourth Edition. Dean Rood
Copyright © 2007 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
ISBN: 978-3-527-31373-0

1344vch00.indd V 04.05.2007 16:06:00

 VII

Contents

Preface V

Intentions and Introduction 1

1 Introduction to Capillary Gas Chromatography 3

1.1 What Is Gas Chromatography? 3
1.2 What Types of Compounds Are Suitable for GC Analysis? 3
1.3 The Basic Parts of a Gas Chromatograph 4
1.3.1 Gas Supply and Flow Controllers 4
1.3.2 Injector 5
1.3.3 Capillary Column and Oven 5
1.3.4 Detector 6
1.3.5 Data System 6
1.4 The Chromatogram 6
1.5 The Mechanism of Compound Separation 8
1.5.1 A Simple Description of the Chromatographic Process 8
1.5.2 A Detailed Description of the Chromatographic Process 9
1.6 Factors Affecting Separation 11
1.6.1 Stationary Phase 11
1.6.2 Compound Structure 12
1.6.3 Column Temperature 12

2 Basic Definitions and Equations 14

2.1 Why Bother? 14
2.2 Peak Shapes 14
2.2.1 Peak Width (W) 14
2.2.2 Peak Symmetry 14
2.3 Retention 16
2.3.1 Retention Time (tr) 16
2.3.2 Adjusted Retention Time (trc) 16
2.3.3 Retention Factor (k) 16
2.3.4 Retention Index (I) 18
2.4 Phase Ratio (E) 19
2.5 Distribution Constant (KC) 20

The Troubleshooting and Maintenance Guide for Gas Chromatographers, Fourth Edition. Dean Rood
Copyright © 2007 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
ISBN: 978-3-527-31373-0

1344vch00.indd VII 04.05.2007 16:06:19

 VIII Contents

2.5.1 KC and Column Dimensions 21

2.5.2 KC and Column Temperature 21
2.6 Column Efficiency 21
2.6.1 Number of Theoretical Plates (N) 22
2.6.2 Height Equivalent to a Theoretical Plate (H) 22
2.6.3 Effective Theoretical Plates (Neff) and Effective Plate Heights (Heff) 23
2.6.4 Precautions When Using Theoretical Plates 23
2.7 Utilization of Theoretical Efficiency (UTE%) 24
2.8 Separation Factor (D) 25
2.9 Resolution (R) 25
2.10 Trennzahl (TZ) 27
2.11 Column Capacity 28

3 Capillary GC Columns: Tubing 30

3.1 Fused Silica Capillary Columns 30
3.2 Fused Silica Tubing 30
3.3 Outer Coating 32
3.4 Other Tubing Materials 32
3.5 Polyimide Fused Silica Tubing Bending Stress 33

4 Capillary GC Columns: Stationary Phases 34

4.1 Stationary Phases 34
4.2 Types of Stationary Phases 35
4.2.1 Polysiloxanes or Silicones 35
4.2.2 Arylene-Modified Polysiloxanes 37
4.2.3 Polyethylene Glycols 37
4.2.4 Porous Layer Stationary Phases 38
4.3 Characteristics of Stationary Phases 39
4.3.1 Bonded and Cross-linked Stationary Phases 39
4.3.2 Stationary Phase Polarity 39
4.3.3 Stationary Phase Selectivity 40
4.4 Stationary Phase Interactions 41
4.4.1 Dispersion Interaction 41
4.4.2 Dipole Interaction 42
4.4.3 Hydrogen Bonding Interaction 43
4.4.4 When There are Multiple Interactions 44
4.5 Stationary Phase Equivalencies 45
4.6 Column Temperature Limits 46
4.7 Column Bleed 47
4.7.1 What is Column Bleed? 47
4.7.2 Measuring Column Bleed 48
4.7.3 Sensitivity Considerations 49
4.7.4 Detector Considerations 49
4.7.5 Minimizing Column Bleed 50
4.8 Selecting Stationary Phases 50

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 Contents IX

5 Capillary GC Columns: Dimensions 53

5.1 Introduction 53
5.2 Column Length 53
5.2.1 Column Length and Efficiency/Resolution 53
5.2.2 Column Length and Retention 57
5.2.3 Column Length and Pressure 57
5.2.4 Column Length and Bleed 58
5.2.5 Column Length and Cost 58
5.2.6 Selecting Column Length 58
5.3 Column Diameter 59
5.3.1 Column Diameter and Efficiency/Resolution 59
5.3.2 Column Diameter and Retention 62
5.3.3 Column Diameter and Pressure 62
5.3.4 Column Diameter and Bleed 63
5.3.5 Column Diameter and Capacity 63
5.3.6 Column Diameter and Carrier Gas Volume 64
5.3.7 Column Diameter and Injector Efficiency 64
5.3.8 Column Diameter and Breakage 65
5.3.9 Column Diameter and Cost 65
5.3.10 Selecting Column Diameter 65
5.4 Column Film Thickness 66
5.4.1 Column Film Thickness and Retention 66
5.4.2 Column Film Thickness and Efficiency/Resolution 69
5.4.3 Column Film Thickness and Capacity 70
5.4.4 Column Film Thickness and Bleed 71
5.4.5 Column Film Thickness and Inertness 71
5.4.6 Selecting Column Film Thickness 72
5.5 Manipulating Multiple Column Dimensions 72

6 Carrier Gas 74
6.1 Carrier Gas and Capillary Columns 74
6.2 Linear Velocity versus Flow Rate 74
6.3 Controlling the Linear Velocity and Flow Rate 74
6.4 Van Deemter Curves 75
6.5 Carrier Gas Measurements 76
6.5.1 Average Linear Velocity (u) 76
6.5.2 Column Flow Rate 79
6.6 Carrier Gas Selection 80
6.6.1 Nitrogen 80
6.6.2 Helium 80
6.6.3 Hydrogen 82
6.7 Recommended Average Linear Velocities 83
6.8 Gas Purities 86
6.9 Common Carrier Gas Problems 87

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 X Contents

7 Injectors 89
7.1 Introduction 89
7.2 The Basics of Vaporization Injectors 89
7.2.1 Injector Temperature 91
7.2.2 Speed of Sample Transfer 91
7.2.3 Injector Backflash 91
7.2.4 Injector Discrimination 94
7.3 Split Injectors 95
7.3.1 Description of a Split Injector 95
7.3.2 Split Ratio 96
7.3.3 Septum Purge for Split Injectors 99
7.3.4 Split Injector Liners 99
7.3.5 Column Position in Split Injectors 101
7.3.6 Common Problems with Split Injectors 102
7.4 Splitless Injectors 102
7.4.1 Description of a Splitless Injector 102
7.4.2 Selecting Purge Activation Times 105
7.4.3 Solvent Effect for Splitless Injectors 106
7.4.4 Cold Trapping for Splitless Injectors 108
7.4.5 Septum Purge for Splitless Injectors 108
7.4.6 Splitless Injection Liners 109
7.4.7 Column Position in Splitless Injectors 109
7.4.8 Other Aspects of Splitless Injectors 110
7.4.9 Common Problems with Splitless Injectors 111
7.5 Direct Injectors 112
7.5.1 Description of a Direct Injector 112
7.5.2 Direct Injection Liners 113
7.5.3 Septum Purge for Direct Injectors 115
7.5.4 Column Position in Direct Injectors 115
7.5.5 Other Aspects of Direct Injectors 115
7.5.6 Common Problems with Direct Injectors 116
7.6 Cool On-Column Injectors 117
7.6.1 Description of an On-Column Injector 117
7.6.2 Solvent Effect and Cold Trapping for Cool On-Column Injectors 118
7.6.3 Secondary Cooling 119
7.6.4 Retention Gaps and Cool On-Column Injectors 119
7.6.5 Other Aspects of Cool On-Column Injectors 120
7.6.6 Common Problems With On-Column Injectors 120
7.7 Pressure and Flow Programmable Injectors 121
7.7.1 Description of Programmable Injectors 121
7.7.2 Constant Pressure Mode 122
7.7.3 Constant Flow or Velocity Mode 122
7.7.4 Pressure Program Mode 123
7.7.5 Pulsed Pressure Mode 124
7.7.6 Gas Saver Mode 125

1344vch00.indd X 04.05.2007 16:06:19

 Contents XI

7.7.7 Other Aspects of Programmable Injectors 125

7.8 Injection Techniques 126
7.8.1 Syringe Filling Techniques 126
7.8.2 Injection Speed 128
7.9 Autosamplers 129
7.10 Injector Septa 131
7.10.1 Introduction 131
7.10.2 Septa Hardness 131
7.10.3 Septa Bleed 131
7.10.4 Handling Septa 133
7.11 Injector Maintenance 134
7.11.1 Cleaning Injectors 134
7.11.2 Injector Traps 135
7.11.3 Cleaning Injector Liners 135
7.11.4 Silylating Injector Liners 136

8 Detectors 139
8.1 Introduction 139
8.2 Detector Characteristics 139
8.2.1 Detector Dead Volume 139
8.2.2 Detector Makeup or Auxiliary Gas 140
8.2.3 Detector Temperature 141
8.2.4 Detector Sensitivity 142
8.2.5 Detector Selectivity 143
8.2.6 Detector Linear Range 144
8.3 Flame Ionization Detector (FID) 145
8.3.1 FID Principle of Operation 145
8.3.2 FID Gases 146
8.3.3 Column Position in a FID 147
8.3.4 FID Temperature 147
8.3.5 FID Selectivity 147
8.3.6 FID Sensitivity and Linear Range 147
8.3.7 Verifying Flame Ignition of a FID 148
8.3.8 FID Maintenance 148
8.3.9 Common Problems with a FID 149
8.3.9.1 Change in FID Sensitivity 149
8.3.9.2 Difficulty in Lighting the FID Flame 149
8.3.9.3 Peak Shape Problems Attributed to the FID 150
8.3.9.4 Miscellaneous Problems with a FID 150
8.4 Nitrogen-Phosphorus Detector (NPD) 151
8.4.1 NPD Principle of Operation 151
8.4.2 NPD Gases 152
8.4.3 Column Position in a NPD 152
8.4.4 NPD Temperature 153
8.4.5 NPD Selectivity 153

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 XII Contents

8.4.6 NPD Sensitivity and Linear Range 153

8.4.7 NPD Maintenance 154
8.4.8 Common Problems with a NPD 155
8.4.8.1 Change in NPD Sensitivity 155
8.4.8.2 Peak Shape Problems Attributed to the NPD 155
8.4.8.3 NPD Baseline Problems 156
8.5 Electron Capture Detector (ECD) 157
8.5.1 ECD Principle of Operation 157
8.5.2 ECD Gases 158
8.5.3 Column Position in an ECD 158
8.5.4 ECD Temperature 159
8.5.5 ECD Selectivity 159
8.5.6 ECD Sensitivity and Linear Range 160
8.5.7 ECD Maintenance 160
8.5.8 Common Problems with an ECD 161
8.5.8.1 Change in ECD Sensitivity 161
8.5.8.2 Peak Shape Problems Attributed to the ECD 162
8.5.8.3 ECD Baseline Problems 162
8.5.8.4 Negative Peaks with an ECD 163
8.5.8.5 ECD Linear Range Problems 163
8.5.8.6 Miscellaneous Problems with an ECD 163
8.6 Thermal Conductivity Detector (TCD) 164
8.6.1 TCD Principle of Operation 164
8.6.2 TCD Gases 165
8.6.3 Column Position in a TCD 166
8.6.4 TCD Temperature 166
8.6.5 TCD Selectivity 166
8.6.6 TCD Sensitivity and Linear Range 166
8.6.7 TCD Maintenance 167
8.6.8 Common Problems with a TCD 168
8.6.8.1 Change in TCD Sensitivity 168
8.6.8.2 Peak Shape Problems Attributed to the TCD 169
8.6.8.3 TCD Baseline Problems 169
8.6.8.4 Negative Peaks with a TCD 170
8.6.8.5 Short TCD Filament Lifetimes 170
8.7 Flame Photometric Detector (FPD) 170
8.7.1 FPD Principle of Operation 170
8.7.2 FPD Gases 171
8.7.3 Column Position in a FPD 172
8.7.4 FPD Temperature 172
8.7.5 FPD Selectivity 172
8.7.6 FPD Sensitivity and Linear Range 172
8.7.7 Verifying Flame Ignition of a FPD 173
8.7.8 FPD Maintenance 173
8.7.9 Common Problems with a FPD 174

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 Contents XIII

8.7.9.1 Change in FPD Sensitivity 174

8.7.9.2 Peak Shape Problems Attributed to the FPD 174
8.7.9.3 Loss of FPD Linear Range 175
8.7.9.4 FPD Flame Frequently Goes Out 175
8.7.9.5 Miscellaneous Problems with a FPD 175
8.8 Mass Spectrometers (MS) 175
8.8.1 MS Principle of Operation 175
8.8.2 Mass Spectral Data 177
8.8.3 Other Ionization, Detection and Mass Filtering Modes 178
8.8.4 MS Selectivity 179
8.8.5 MS Sensitivity and Linear Range 179
8.8.6 MS Temperatures 180
8.8.7 Column Position in a MS 181
8.8.8 Carrier Gas Flow Rate Considerations for MS Detectors 181
8.8.9 MS Maintenance 182
8.8.10 Common Problems with a MS 183
8.8.10.1 Change in MS Sensitivity 183
8.8.10.2 Excessive Noise or High Background in a MS 184
8.8.10.3 Leaks in the MS 185

9 Column Installation 186

9.1 Importance of a Properly Installed Column 186
9.2 Installing Fused Silica Capillary Columns 186
9.2.1 Column Installation Steps 186
9.2.2 Cutting Fused Silica Capillary Columns 187
9.2.3 Column Placement in the GC Oven 187
9.2.4 Column Installation in the Injector 188
9.2.5 Turning On and Verifying the Carrier Gas Flow 189
9.2.6 Column Installation in the Detector 189
9.2.7 Verifying Proper Column Installation and Detector Operation 190
9.2.8 Column Conditioning 192
9.2.8.1 What is Column Conditioning? 192
9.2.8.2 Conditioning Temperatures 192
9.2.8.3 Conditioning the Column While Connected to the Detector 192
9.2.8.4 Conditioning the Column While Disconnected from the Detector 194
9.2.9 Setting the Carrier Gas Average Linear Velocity 195
9.2.10 Bleed Test 195
9.2.11 Injecting Column Test Sample 196
9.3 Column Ferrules 198
9.4 Tightening Fittings 199
9.5 Techniques for Measuring Column Insertion Distances 200
9.6 Leak Detection 201

10 Column Test Mixtures 202

10.1 Column Performance Testing 202

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 XIV Contents

10.2 Column Test Mixture Compounds 203

10.2.1 Hydrocarbons 203
10.2.2 Alcohols 203
10.2.3 Acids and Bases 204
10.2.4 FAMEs 204
10.2.5 Other Compounds 205
10.3 Column Testing Conditions 205
10.3.1 Injectors 205
10.3.2 Detectors 205
10.3.3 Column Temperature 206
10.3.4 Test Sample Concentration 206
10.4 Grob Test 207
10.5 Own Test Mixture 208
10.6 When to Test a Column 209

11 Causes and Prevention of Column Damage 210

11.1 Causes of Column Damage and Performance Degradation 210
11.2 Column Breakage 210
11.2.1 Causes of Column Breakage 210
11.2.2 Symptoms of Column Breakage 211
11.2.3 Prevention of Column Breakage 211
11.2.4 Recovery from Column Breakage 211
11.3 Thermal Damage 212
11.3.1 Causes of Thermal Damage 212
11.3.2 Symptoms of Thermal Damage 212
11.3.3 Prevention of Thermal Damage 213
11.3.4 Recovery from Thermal Damage 213
11.4 Oxygen Damage 213
11.4.1 Causes of Oxygen Damage 213
11.4.2 Symptoms of Oxygen Damage 214
11.4.3 Prevention of Oxygen Damage 214
11.4.4 Recovery from Oxygen Damage 214
11.5 Chemical Damage 214
11.5.1 Causes of Chemical Damage 214
11.5.1.1 Bases 215
11.5.1.2 Acids 215
11.5.1.3 HCl and NH4OH 216
11.5.1.4 Organic Solvents and Water 216
11.5.2 Symptoms of Chemical Damage 217
11.5.3 Prevention of Chemical Damage 217
11.5.4 Recovery from Chemical Damage 218
11.6 Column Contamination 218
11.6.1 Causes of Column Contamination 218
11.6.2 Symptoms of Column Contamination 220
11.6.3 Prevention of Column Contamination 221

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 Contents XV

11.6.4 Recovery from Contamination 221

11.7 Solvent Rinsing Columns 222
11.7.1 Solvent Rinse Kits 222
11.7.2 Solvent Selection, Volumes and Flow Rates 224
11.7.3 Conditioning the Column After Solvent Rinsing 225
11.7.4 Some Solvent Rinsing Considerations 226
11.8 Guard Columns and Retention Gaps 226
11.8.1 Deactivated Fused Silica Tubing 226
11.8.2 Guard Columns 227
11.8.3 Retention Gaps 227
11.8.4 Unions 228
11.9 Packed Injector Liners 230
11.10 Gas Impurity Traps 230
11.11 Column Storage 232
11.12 Column Repair 232

12 Troubleshooting Guidelines, Approaches and Tests 233

12.1 Introduction 233
12.2 Approaches to Solving GC Problems 234
12.2.1 Systematic Approach 234
12.2.2 Checking the Obvious 234
12.2.3 Looking for Changes 235
12.2.4 Looking for Trends, Patterns and Common Characteristics 235
12.2.5 Asking “If … Then …” Questions 236
12.2.6 One Thing at a Time 236
12.2.7 Moving from the General to the Specific 236
12.2.8 Eliminating the Possibilities 237
12.2.9 Divide and Conquer 237
12.3 Troubleshooting Tools 238
12.4 Troubleshooting Tests 239
12.4.1 Jumper Tube Test 239
12.4.2 Condensation Test 240
12.4.3 Check Out Column 240
12.4.4 Column Exchange 241
12.4.5 Static Pressure Check 241
12.4.6 Column Test Samples 242

13 Common Capillary GC Problems and Probable Causes 243

13.1 Using This Troubleshooting Guide 243
13.2 Troubleshooting Checklist and Pre-Work 243
13.3 Baseline Problems 245
13.3.1 Baseline Drift or Wander 245
13.3.2 Noisy Baseline 246
13.3.3 Spikes in the Baseline 246
13.4 Peak Shape Problems 247

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 XVI Contents

13.4.1 Tailing Peaks 247

13.4.2 Fronting Peaks 249
13.4.3 Extremely Broad or Rounded Peaks 250
13.4.4 Flat Top Peaks 250
13.5 Split Peaks 251
13.6 Negative Peaks 252
13.7 Excessively Broad Solvent Front 253
13.8 Loss of Resolution 254
13.9 Retention Changes 254
13.9.1 Retention Time (tr) Change Only 254
13.9.2 Retention Factor (k) Change 255
13.10 Peak Size Problems 256
13.10.1 No Peaks 256
13.10.2 All Peaks Change in Size 256
13.10.3 Some Peaks Change in Size or Missing Peaks 257
13.11 Extra or Ghost Peaks (Carryover) 258
13.12 Rapid Column Deterioration 259
13.13 Quantitation Problems 260

Appendix A Terms 261

Appendix B Equations 263

Appendix C Mass, Volume and Length Unit Conversions 266

Appendix D Column Bleed Mass Spectra 267

Appendix E The Basics of High Speed GC Using Small Diameter Columns273

E.1 Introduction 273
E.2 Column Considerations 273
E.3 Carrier Gas Considerations 274
E.4 Injector Considerations 275
E.5 Detector and Data System Considerations 276
E.6 GC Oven Considerations 276
E.7 Sample Considerations 277
E.8 An Example of High Speed GC Using a Small Diameter Column 277
E.9 High Speed GC Summary 279

Appendix F Basic Quantitative Capillary GC 280

F.1 Intentions 280
F.2 Definitions 280
F.3 Concentration 282
F.3.1 Weight-to-Weight (w/w) and Weight-to-Volume (w/v) 282
F.3.2 Parts per Million (ppm) and Parts per Billion (ppb) 283
F.3.3 Percent (%) 284

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 Contents XVII

F.3.4 Molarity (M or mM) 284

F.4 Density (U) 285
F.5 Calibration for Quantitative Purposes 286
F.5.1 Single and Multiple Point Calibration 286
F.5.2 Calibration Curves 287
F.6 Quantitation Calculations 289
F.6.1 External Standard 289
F.6.2 Internal Standard 291
F.6.3 Modified Standard Addition 295
F.6.4 Relative Percent 296
F.7 Techniques for Preparation of Analytical Standards for GC 297
F.7.1 Standard Composition Considerations 297
F.7.2 Preparing One Component Standards 299
F.7.2.1 Using a Volumetric Flask 299
F.7.2.2 Using Vials and an Exact Measurement Technique 302
F.7.3 Preparing Multi-Component Standards 304
F.7.3.1 Equal Volume Method 304
F.7.3.2 Equal Concentration Method 306
F.7.3.3 Unequal Volume and Unequal Concentration Method 309
F.7.4 Serial Dilution 311

References 317

Subject Index 319

1344vch00.indd XVII 04.05.2007 16:06:19

 1

Intentions and Introduction

There already seems to be a number of excellent references on gas chromatography

(GC), so why this book? Well, there are several reasons. There is a large number
of gas chromatographs in use. If is often stated that gas chromatography is the
most common instrumental analytical technique in routine use. The availability of
easy to operate, affordable and feature laden instruments has made GC a powerful
analytical technique accessible to nearly every laboratory.
Commercially available capillary columns of high quality have existed for
about 25 years. For a number of reasons, many GC users are not extremely
experienced in the practice of capillary gas chromatography. Many of these
users do not possess a level of comprehension of the technique that allows
them to prevent and solve many of the problems that commonly occur. Much
of this comprehension comes from years of experience and the problems that
accompany that experience. The combination of accessible instruments and
capillary columns along with inexperienced users has created the need for
practical information on the care, maintenance and troubleshooting of capillary
columns and instruments.
One of the goals of this book is to provide practical information that will maxi-
mize both capillary column lifetime and the performance of the gas chromato-
graphic system. The other goal is to provide an efficient and logical troubleshooting
guide with the real intention to reduce or prevent performance breakdown prob-
lems from occurring. An in-depth knowledge of chemistry and chromatography
(and other foreign languages) is not required. This book, in no shape or form,
attempts to thoroughly explain every detail about capillary gas chromatography;
it is intended as a practical guide so that the urge to hit the GC with a hammer as
a last resort does not occur. In-depth technical information about GC techniques,
instrumentation, specific applications and other gory details can be found in the
books listed in the reference section.
Many generalizations and simplifications have been exercised to keep the information
in a basic and widely digestible form. Again, this book is intended for the average GC
user and not those whose entire life revolves around capillary gas chromatography.
The topics covered within these pages are based on the most common problems,
questions and misconceptions about capillary gas chromatography. These topics
have been assembled and presented in an unique, practical and concise format
suitable even for the most inexperienced GC user.

The Troubleshooting and Maintenance Guide for Gas Chromatographers, Fourth Edition. Dean Rood
Copyright © 2007 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
ISBN: 978-3-527-31373-0

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 2 Intentions and Introduction

References to specific models of GCs and columns from specific manufacturers

have been avoided where possible. Any differences are usually minor and often
inconsequential in nature. The operating principles, proper techniques and
practices, and underlying theory are the same regardless of the instrument or
column manufacturer.

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 3

1
Introduction to Capillary Gas Chromatography

1.1
What Is Gas Chromatography?

In a broad sense, gas chromatography is a very powerful and one of the most
common instrumental analysis techniques in use. When properly utilized, it
provides both qualitative (i.e., what is it?) and quantitative (i.e., how much?)
information about individual components in a sample. Gas chromatography
involves separating the different compounds in a sample from each other. This
allows the easy identification and measurement of the individual compounds
in a sample. The compounds are separated primarily by the differences in their
volatilities and structures. Many compounds and samples are not suitable for gas
chromatographic analysis due to their physical and chemical properties.

1.2
What Types of Compounds Are Suitable for GC Analysis?

For a compound to be suitable for GC analysis, it must possess appreciable volatility

at temperatures below 350–400 °C. In other words, all or a portion of the compound
molecules have to be in the gaseous or vapor state below 350–400 °C. Another
characteristic is the compound must be able to withstand high temperatures and
be rapidly transformed into a vapor without degradation or reacting with other
compounds. Unfortunately, this type of information about a compound is not
readily available in references or other sources; however, some estimates and
generalizations can be made from the structure of the compounds.
Compound structure and molecular weight can be used as indicators of potential
GC analysis suitability. Compounds with very low volatilities are not suited for
GC analysis since they do not readily vaporize. Compound boiling points are not
always good indicators of volatility. There are many high boiling compounds that
can be analyzed by GC. As a general rule, the greater the molecular weight or
polarity of a compound, the lower its volatility. Both factors have to be considered.
For example, a large, non-polar compound may be more volatile than a small, polar
compound. Also, one polar group on a large molecule has less of an influence
than one polar group on a small molecule.

The Troubleshooting and Maintenance Guide for Gas Chromatographers, Fourth Edition. Dean Rood
Copyright © 2007 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
ISBN: 978-3-527-31373-0

1344vch01.indd 3 04.05.2007 16:05:21

 4 1 Introduction to Capillary Gas Chromatography

Hydrocarbons with molecular weights over 500 are routinely analyzed using
standard GC systems, and hydrocarbons with molecular weights over 1400 have
been easily analyzed using the properly equipped GC and type of column. The
presence of polar functionalities such as hydroxyl and amine groups severely
decrease compound volatility. Some small molecules such as sugars and amino
acids can not be easily analyzed by GC due to the large number of polar groups.
As a rule, inorganic compounds are not suitable for GC analysis. Metals and
salts do not possess the required volatility. Many organo-metallics have sufficient
volatility for analysis due to the high organic content of these molecules. Most
organic compounds are suitable for GC analysis; however, there are many
exceptions. Many biomolecules and pharmaceuticals are thermally sensitive and
degrade at the temperatures used in gas chromatography. Some compounds
react with the materials used in gas chromatographs and columns and can not
successfully analyzed by GC. There are no realistic, absolute guidelines that can
be used to determine whether a compound can be analyzed by GC. Overall, it has
been estimated that only about 10% of all compounds can be analyzed by GC.

1.3
The Basic Parts of a Gas Chromatograph

A gas chromatographic system is comprised of six major components: gas

supply and flow controllers, injector, detector, oven, column, and a data system
(Figure 1-1). In most cases, the injector, detector and oven are integral parts of
the gas chromatograph; the column, gases and recording device are separate
items and are often supplied by a different manufacturer. All of the components
are further described in individual sections or chapters with the exception of the
oven and recording devices.

1.3.1
Gas Supply and Flow Controllers

High purity gases are supplied from a pressurized cylinder or gas generator.
Pressure regulators on the cylinders or generators control the amount of gas
delivered to the gas chromatograph. Flow controllers or pressure regulators in
the gas chromatograph control the flow of the various gases once they enter the
instrument.
The column is installed between the injector and detector. Gas at a precisely
controlled flow is supplied to the injector; this gas is called the carrier gas. The
carrier gas flows through the injector and into the open tubular column. The
gas travels the length of the column and exits through a detector. To function as
desired, most detectors require specific gases at the proper flow rates.

1344vch01.indd 4 04.05.2007 16:05:21

Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
to Cissy, as the girl easily recognised, to leave herself at least ten
minutes to dress decently—in spite of the importance of which she
so challenged Davey on another score that, as a consequence, the
good gorgeous man, who shone with every effect of the bath and
every resource of the toilet, had within the pair of minutes picked
out such easiest patent-leather steps as would enable him to convict
the companions of a shameless dawdle. She had had time to
articulate for Horton's benefit, with no more than due distinctness,
that he must have seen them, and Horton had as quickly found the
right note and the right wit for the simple reassurance "Oh Davey
——!" As occupants of a place of procrastination that they only were
not such fools as to leave unhaunted they frankly received their
visitor, any impulse in whom to sprinkle stale banter on their search
for solitude would have been forestalled, even had it been
supposable of so perfect a man of the world, by the instant action of
his younger guest's strategic curiosity.
"Has he, please, just has he or no, got a moustache?"—she
appealed as if the fate of empires depended on it.
"I've been telling her," Horton explained, "whatever I can remember
of Gray Fielder, but she won't listen to anything if I can't first be sure
as to that. So as I want her enormously to like him, we both hang,
you see, on your lips; unless you call it, more correctly, on his."
Davey's evening bloom opened to them a dense but perfectly
pathless garden of possibilities; out of which, while he faced them,
he left them to pluck by their own act any bright flower they
sufficiently desired to reach. Wonderful during the few instants,
between these flagrant world-lings, the exchange of fine
recognitions. It would have been hard perhaps to say of them
whether it was most discernible that Haughty and Cissy trusted most
his intelligence or his indifference, and whether he most applauded
or ignored the high perfection of their assurance. What was testified
to all round, at all events—[1]
"Ah then he is as 'odd' as I was sure—in spite of Haughty's perverse
theory that we shall find him the flattest of the flat!"
It might have been at Haughty's perverse theory that Davey was
most moved to stare—had he not quickly betrayed, instead of this, a
marked attention to the girl herself. "Oh you little wonder and joy!"
"She is a little wonder and joy," Horton said—that at any rate came
out clear.
"What you are, my boy, I'm not pretending to say," Davey returned
in answer to this; "for I don't accept her account of your vision of
Gray as throwing any light on it at all."
"On his judgment of Mr. Fielder, do you mean," Cissy earnestly
asked, "or on your evidently awful opinion of his own dark nature?"
"Haughty knows that I lose myself in his dark nature, at my spare
moments, and with wind enough on to whistle in that dark, very
much as if I had the fine excitement of the Forêt de Bondy to deal
with. He's well aware that I know no greater pleasure of the
imagination than that sort of interest in him—when I happen also to
have the time and the nerve. Let these things serve me now,
however, only to hurry you up," Davey went on; "and to say that I of
course had with our fortunate friend an impressive quarter of an
hour—which everyone will want to know about, so that I must keep
it till we sit down. But the great thing is after all for yourself,
Haughty," he added—"and you had better know at once that he
particularly wants to see you. He'll be glad of you at the very first
moment——"
But Horton had already taken him easily up. "Of course I know, my
dear man, that he particularly wants to see me. He has written me
nothing else from the moment he arrived."
"He has written you, you wretch," Cissy at once extravagantly
echoed—"he has written you all sorts of things and you haven't so
much as told me?"
"He hasn't written me all sorts of things"—Horton directed this
answer to Davey alone—"but has written me in such straight
confidence and friendship that Eve been wondering if I mayn't go
round to him this evening."
"Gussy will no doubt excuse you for that purpose with the utmost
joy," Davey rejoined—"though I don't think I advise you to ask her
leave if you don't want her at once to insist on going with you. Go to
him alone, very quietly—and with the happy confidence of doing him
good."
It had been on Cissy that, for his part, Davey had, in speaking,
rested his eyes; and it might by the same token have been for the
benefit of universal nature, suspended to listen over the bosom of
the deep, that Horton's lips phrased his frank reaction upon their
entertainer's words. "Well then, ye powers, the amount of good that
I shall undertake——!"
Davey Bradham and Cissy Foy exchanged on the whole ground for a
moment a considerable smile; his share in which, however, it might
exactly have been that prompted the young woman's further
expression of their intelligence. "It's too charming that he yearns so
for Haughty—and too sweet that Haughty can now rush to him at
once." To which she then appended in another tone: "One takes for
granted of course that Rosanna was with him."
Davey at this but continued to bloom and beam; which gave Horton,
even with a moment's delay, time to assist his better understanding.
"She doesn't even yet embrace the fact, tremendously as I've driven
it into her, that if Rosanna had been there he couldn't have breathed
my name."
This made Davey, however, but throw up derisive hands; though as
with an impatient turn now for their regaining the lawn. "My dear
man, Rosanna breathes your name with all the force of her lungs!"
Horton, jerking back his head for the bright reassurance, laughed
out with amusement. "What a jolly cue then for my breathing of
hers! I'll roar it to all the echoes, and everything will be well. But
what one's talking about," he said, "is the question of Gray's naming
me." He looked from one of his friends to the other, and then, as
gathering them into the interest of it: "I'll bet you a fiver that he
doesn't at any rate speak to me of Miss Gaw."
"Well, what will that prove?" Davey asked, quite easy about it and
leading the way up the rocks.
"In the first place how much he thinks of her," said Cissy, who
followed close behind. "And in the second that it's ten to one
Haughty will find her there."
"I don't care if I do—not a scrap!" Horton also took his way. "I don't
care for anything now but the jolly fun, the jolly fun——!" He had
committed it all again, by the time they reached the cliff's edge, to
the bland participating elements.
"Oh the treat the poor boy is evidently going to stand us all!"—well,
was something that Davey, rather out of breath as they reached the
lawn again and came in sight of the villa, had just yet no more than
those light words for. He was more definite in remarking immediately
after to Cissy that Rosanna would be as little at the other house that
evening as she had been at the moment of his own visit, and that,
since the nurses and other outsiders appeared to have dispersed,
there would be no one to interfere with Gray's free welcome of his
friend. The girl was so attentive for this that it made them pause
again while she brought out in surprise: "There's nobody else there,
you mean then, to watch with the dead——?"
It made Mr. Bradham for an instant wonder, Horton, a little apart
from them now and with his back turned, seeming at the same
moment, and whether or no her inquiry reached his ear, struck with
something that had pulled him up as well and that made him stand
and look down in thought. "Why, I suppose the nephew' must be
himself a sort of watcher," Davey found himself not other than
decently vague to suggest.
But it scarce more contented Cissy than if the point had really
concerned her. She appeared indeed to question the more, though
her eyes were on Haughty's rather brooding back while she did so.
"Then if he does stay in the room, when he comes out of it to see
people——?"
Her very drop seemed to present the state of things to which the
poor deceased was in that case left; for which, however, her good
host declined to be responsible. "I don't suppose he comes out for
so many."
"He came out at any rate for you." The sense of it all rather
remarkably held her, and it might have been some communication of
this that, overtaking Horton at his slight distance, determined in him
the impulse to leave them, without more words, and walk by himself
to the house. "We don't surround such occasions with any form or
state of imagination—scarcely with any decency, do we?" Cissy
adventured while observing Haughty's retreat. "I should like to think
for him of a catafalque and great draped hangings—I should like to
think for him of tall flambeaux in the darkened room, and of relays
of watchers, sisters of charity or suchlike, surrounding the grand
affair and counting their beads."
Davey's rich patience had a shrug. "The grand affair, my dear child,
is their affair, over there, and not mine; though when you indulge in
such fancies 'for him,' I can't but wonder who it is you mean."
"Who it is——?" She mightn't have understood his difficulty.
"Why the dead man or the living!"
They had gone on again; Horton had, with a quickened pace,
disappeared; and she had before answering cast about over the fair
face of the great house, paler now in the ebb of day, yet with
dressing-time glimmers from upper windows flushing it here and
there like touches of pink paint in an elegant evening complexion.
"Oh I care for the dead man, I'm afraid, only because it's the living
who appeals. I don't want him to like it."
"To like——?" Davey was again at a loss. "What on earth?"
"Why all that ugliness and bareness, that poverty of form."
He had nothing but derision for her here. "It didn't occur to me at all
to associate him with the idea of poverty."
"The place must all the same be hideous," she said, "and the
conditions mean—for him to prowl about in alone. It comes to me,"
she further risked, "that if Rosanna isn't there, as you say, she quite
ought to be—and that in her place I should feel it no more than
decent to go over and sit with him."
This appeared to strike Davey in a splendid number of lights—which,
however, though collectively dazzling, allowed discriminations. "It
perhaps bears a little on the point that she has herself just sustained
a grave bereavement—with her offices to her own dead to think of
first. That was present to me in your talk a moment since of
Haughty's finding her."
"Very true"—it was Cissy's practice, once struck, ever amusedly to
play with the missile: "it is of course extraordinary that those bloated
old richards, at one time so associated, should have flickered out
almost at the same hour. What it comes to then," she went on, "is
that Mr. Gray might be, or perhaps even ought to be, condoling over
at the other house with her. However, it's their own business, and all
I really care for is that he should be so keen as you say about seeing
Haughty. I just delight," she said, "in his being keen about Haughty."
"I'm glad it satisfies you then," Davey returned—"for I was on the
point of suggesting that with the sense of his desolation you just
expressed you might judge your own place to be at once at his
side."
"That would have been helpful of you—but I'm content, dear Davey,"
she smiled. "We're all devoted to Haughty—but," she added after an
instant, "there's just this. Did Mr. Graham while you were there say
by chance a word about the likes of me?"
"Well, really, no—our short talk didn't take your direction. That
would have been for me, I confess," Davey frankly made bold to
add, "a trifle unexpected."
"I see"—Cissy did him the justice. "But that's a little, I think, because
you don't know——!" It was more, however, than with her sigh she
could tell him.
"Don't know by this time, my dear, and after all I've been through,"
he nevertheless supplied, "what the American girl always so
sublimely takes for granted?"
She looked at him on this with intensity—but that of compassion
rather than of the conscious wound. "Dear old Davey, il n'y a que
vous for not knowing, by this time, as you say, that I've notoriously
nothing in common with the creature you mention. I loathe," she
said with her purest gentleness, "the American girl."
He faced her an instant more as for a view of the whole incongruity;
then he fetched, on his side, a sigh which might have signified, at
her choice, either that he was wrong or that he was finally bored.
"Well, you do of course brilliantly misrepresent her. But we're all"—
he hastened to patch it up—"unspeakably corrupt."
"That would be a fine lookout for Mr. Fielder if it were true," she
judiciously threw off.
"But as you're a judge you know it isn't?"
"It's not as a judge I know it, but as a victim. I don't say we don't do
our best," she added; "but we're still of an innocence, an innocence
——!
"Then perhaps," Davey offered, "Mr. Fielder will help us; unless he
proves, by your measure, worse than ourselves!"
"The worse he may be the better; for it's not possible, as I see him,"
she said, "that he doesn't know."
"Know, you mean," Davey blandly wondered, "how wrong we are—
to be so right?"
"Know more on every subject than all of us put together!" she called
back at him as she now hurried off to dress.
 [1]There is a gap here in the MS., with the following note by the
author: "It is the security of the two others with him that is
testified to; but I mustn't make any sort of spread about it or
about anything else here now, and only put Davey on some non-
committal reply to the question addressed him, such as keeps up
the mystery or ambiguity or suspense about Gray, his moustache
and everything else, so as to connect properly with what follows.
The real point is—that comes back to me, and it is in essence
enough—that he pleads he doesn't remember, didn't notice, at all;
and thereby oddly enough can't say. It will come to me right once
I get into it. One sees that Davey plays with them."

IV

Horton Vint, on being admitted that evening at the late Mr.

Betterman's, walked about the room to which he had been directed
and awaited there the friend of his younger time very much as we
have seen that friend himself wait under stress of an extraordinary
crisis. Horton's sense of a crisis might have been almost equally
sharp; he was alone for some minutes during which he shifted his
place and circled, indulged in wide vague movements and vacuous
stares at incongruous objects—the place being at once so spacious
and so thickly provided—quite after the fashion in which Gray
Fielder's nerves and imagination had on the same general scene
sought and found relief at the hour of the finest suspense up to that
moment possessing him. Haughty too, it would thus have appeared
for the furtherance of our interest, had imagination and nerves—had
in his way as much to reflect upon as we have allowed ourselves to
impute to the dying Mr. Betterman's nephew. No one was dying now,
all that was ended, or would be after the funeral, and the nephew
himself was surely to be supposed alive, in face of great sequels,
including preparations for those obsequies, with an intensity beyond
all former experience. This in fact Horton had all the air of
recognising under proof as soon as Gray advanced upon him with
both hands out; he couldn't not have taken in the highly quickened
state of the young black-clad figure so presented, even though soon
and unmistakably invited to note that his own visit and his own
presence had much to do with the quickening. Gray was in complete
mourning, which had the effect of making his face show pale, as
compared with old aspects of it remembered by his friend—who
was, it may be mentioned, afterwards to describe him to Cissy Foy
as looking, in the conditions, these including the air of the big
bedimmed palace room, for all the world like a sort of "happy
Hamlet." For so happy indeed our young man at once proclaimed
himself at sight of his visitor, for so much the most interesting thing
that had befallen or been offered him within the week did he take,
by his immediate testimony, his reunion with this character and
every element of the latter's aspect and tone, that the pitch of his
acclamation clearly had, with no small delay, to drop a little under
some unavoidable reminder that they met almost in the nearest
presence of death. Was the reminder Horton's own, some pull, for
decorum, of a longer face, some expression of his having feared to
act in undue haste on the message brought him by Davey?—which
might have been, we may say, in view of the appearance after a
little that it was Horton rather than Gray who began to suggest a
shyness, momentary, without doubt, and determined by the very
plenitude of his friend's welcome, yet so far incongruous as that it
was not his adoption of a manner and betrayal of a cheer that ran
the risk of seeming a trifle gross, but quite these indications on the
part of the fortunate heir of the old person awaiting interment
somewhere above. He could only have seen with the lapse of the
moments that Gray was going to be simple—admirably, splendidly
simple, one would probably have pronounced it, in estimating and
comparing the various possible dangers; but the simplicity of
subjects tremendously educated, tremendously "cultivated" and
cosmopolitised, as Horton would have called it, especially when such
persons were naturally rather extra-refined and ultra-perceptive, was
a different affair from the crude candour of the common sort; the
consequence of which apprehensions and reflections must have
been, in fine, that he presently recognised in the product of
"exceptional advantages" now already more and more revealed to
him such a pliability of accent as would easily keep judgment, or at
least observation, suspended. Gray wasn't going to be at a loss for
any shade of decency that didn't depend, to its inconvenience, on
some uncertainty about a guest's prejudice; so that once the air was
cleared of awkwardness by that perception, exactly, in Horton's
ready mind that he and his traditions, his susceptibilities, in fact (of
all the queer things!) his own very simplicities and, practically,
stupidities were being superfluously allowed for and deferred to, and
that this, only this, was the matter, he should have been able to
surrender without a reserve to the proposed measure of their
common rejoicing. Beautiful might it have been to him to find his
friend so considerately glad of him that the spirit of it could consort
to the last point with any, with every, other felt weight in the
consciousness so attested; in accordance with which we may remark
that continued embarrassment for our gallant caller would have
implied on his own side, or in other words deep within his own spirit,
some obscure source of confusion.
What distinguishably happened was thus that he first took Graham
for exuberant and then for repentant, with the reflection
accompanying this that he mustn't, to increase of subsequent
shame, have been too open an accomplice in mere jubilation. Then
the simple sense of his restored comrade's holding at his disposal a
general confidence in which they might absolutely breathe together
would have superseded everything else hadn't his individual self-
consciousness been perhaps a trifle worried by the very pitch of so
much openness. Open, not less generously so, was what he could
himself have but wanted to be—in proof of which we may conceive
him insist to the happy utmost, for promotion of his comfort, on
those sides of their relation the working of which would cast no
shadow. They had within five minutes got over much ground—all of
which, however, must be said to have represented, and only in part,
the extent of Gray's requisition of what he called just elementary
human help. He was in a situation at which, as he assured his friend,
he had found himself able, those several days, but blankly and
inanely to stare. He didn't suppose it had been his uncle's definite
design to make an idiot of him, but that seemed to threaten as the
practical effect of the dear man's extraordinary course. "You see," he
explained, bringing it almost pitifully out, "he appears to have left
me a most monstrous fortune. I mean"—for under his appeal
Haughty had still waited a little—"a really tremendous lot of money."
The effect of the tone of it was to determine in Haughty a peal of
laughter quickly repressed—or reduced at least to the intention of
decent cheer. "He 'appears,' my dear man? Do you mean there's an
ambiguity about his will?"
Gray justified his claim of vagueness by having, with his animated
eyes on his visitor's, to take an instant or two to grasp so technical
an expression. "No—not an ambiguity. Mr. Crick tells me that he has
never in all his experience seen such an amount of property
disposed of in terms so few and simple and clear. It would seem a
kind of masterpiece of a will."
"Then what's the matter with it?" Horton smiled. "Or at least what's
the matter with you?—who are so remarkably intelligent and clever?"
"Oh no, I'm not the least little bit clever!" Gray in his earnestness
quite excitedly protested. "I haven't a single ray of the intelligence
that among you all here clearly passes for rudimentary. But the
luxury of you, Haughty," he broke out on a still higher note, "the
luxury, the pure luxury of you!"
Something of beauty in the very tone of which, some confounding
force in the very clearness, might it have been that made Horton
himself gape for a moment even as Gray had just described his own
wit as gaping. They had first sat down, for hospitality offered and
accepted—though with no production of the smokable or the
drinkable to profane the general reference; but the agitation of all
that was latent in this itself had presently broken through, and by
the end of a few moments we might perhaps scarce have been able
to say whether the host had more set the guest or the guest more
the host in motion. Horton Vint had everywhere so the air of a prime
social element that it took in any case, and above all in any case of
the spacious provision or the sumptuous setting, a good deal of
practically combative proof to reduce the implications of his presence
to the minor right. He might inveterately have been master or, in
quantitative terms, owner—so could he have been taken for the
most part as offering you the enjoyment of anything fine that
surrounded him: this in proportion to the scale of such matters and
to any glimpse of that sense of them in you which was what came
nearest to putting you on his level. All of which sprang doubtless but
from the fact that his relation to things of expensive interest was so
much at the mercy of his appearance; representing as it might be
said to do a contradiction of the law under which it is mostly to be
observed, in our modernest conditions, that the figure least
congruous with scenic splendour is the figure awaiting the reference.
More references than may here be detailed, at any rate, would
Horton have seemed ready to gather up during the turns he had
resumed his indulgence in after the original arrest and the
measurements of the whole place practically determined for him by
Gray's own so suggestive revolutions. It was positively now as if
these last had all met, in their imperfect expression, what that young
man's emotion was in the act of more sharply attaining to—the plain
conveyance that if Horton had in his friendliness, not to say his
fidelity, presumed to care to know, this disposition was as naught
beside the knowledge apparently about to drench him. They were
there, the companions, in their second brief arrest, with everything
good in the world that he might have conceived or coveted just
taking for him the radiant form of precious knowledges that he must
be so obliging as to submit to. Let it be fairly inspiring to us to
imagine the acuteness of his perception during these minutes of the
possibilities of good involved; the refinement of pleasure in his
seeing how the advantage thrust upon him would wear the dignity
and grace of his consenting unselfishly to learn—inasmuch as, quite
evidently, the more he learnt, and though it should be ostensibly and
exclusively about Mr. Betterman's heir, the more vividly it all would
stare at him as a marked course of his own. Wonderful thus the little
space of his feeling the great wave set in motion by that quiet
worthy break upon him out of Gray's face, Gray's voice, Gray's
contact of hands laid all appealingly and affirmingly on his shoulders,
and then as it retreated, washing him warmly down, expose to him,
off in the intenser light and the uncovered prospect, something like
his entire personal future. Something extraordinarily like, yes, could
he but keep steady to recognise it through a deepening
consciousness, at the same time, of how he was more than
matching the growth of his friend's need of him by growing there at
once, and to rankness, under the friend's nose, all the values to
which this need supplied a soil.
"Well, I won't pretend I'm not glad you don't adopt me as pure
ornament—glad you see, I mean, a few connections in which one
may perhaps be able, as well as certainly desirous, to be of service
to you. Only one should honestly tell you," Horton went on, "that
people wanting to help you will spring up round you like mushrooms,
and that you'll be able to pick and choose as even a king on his
throne can't. Therefore, my boy," Haughty said, "don't exaggerate
my modest worth."
Gray, though releasing him, still looked at him hard—so hard
perhaps that, having imagination, he might in an instant more have
felt it go down too deep. It hadn't done that, however, when "What I
want of you above all is exactly that you shall pick and choose" was
merely what at first came of it. And the case was still all of the
rightest as Graham at once added: "You see 'people' are exactly my
difficulty—I'm so mortally afraid of them, and so equally sure that it's
the last thing you are. If I want you for myself I want you still more
for others—by which you may judge," said Gray, "that I've cut you
out work."
"That you're mortally afraid of people is, I confess," Haughty
answered, "news to me. I seem to remember you, on the contrary,
as so remarkably and—what was it we used to call it?—so critico-
analytically interested in 'em."
"That's just it—I am so beastly interested! Don't you therefore see,"
Gray asked, "how I may dread the complication?"
"Dread it so that you seek to work it off on another?"—and Haughty
looked about as if he would after all have rather relished a cigarette.
Clearly, none the less, this awkwardness was lost on his friend. "I
want to work off on you, Vinty, every blest thing that you'll let me;
and when you've seen into my case a little further my reasons will so
jump at your eyes that I'm convinced you'll have patience with
them."
"I'm not then, you think, too beastly interested myself——? I've got
such a free mind, you mean, and such a hard heart, and such a
record of failure to have been any use at all to myself, that I must be
just the person, it strikes you, to save you all the trouble and secure
you all the enjoyment?" That inquiry Horton presently made, but
with an addition ere Gray could answer. "My difficulty for myself, you
see, has always been that I also am by my nature too beastly
interested."
"Yes"—Gray promptly met it—"but you like it, take that easily,
immensely enjoy it and are not a bit afraid of it. You carry it off and
you don't pay for it."
"Don't you make anything," Horton simply went on, "of my being for
instance so uncannily interested in yourself?"
Gray's eyes again sounded him. "Are you really and truly?—to the
extent of its not boring you?" But with all he had even at the worst
to take for granted he waited for no reassurance. "You'll be so sorry
for me that I shall wring your heart and you'll assist me for common
pity."
"Well," Horton returned, a natural gaiety of response not wholly kept
under, "how can I absurdly make believe that pitying you, if it comes
to that, won't be enough against nature to have some fascination?
Endowed with every advantage, personal, physical, material, moral,
in other words, brilliantly clever, inordinately rich, strikingly
handsome and incredibly good, your state yet insists on being such
as to nip in the bud the hardy flower of envy. What's the matter with
you to bring that about would seem, I quite agree, well worth one's
looking into—even if it proves, by its perversity or its folly, something
of a trial to one's practical philosophy. When I pressed you some
minutes ago for the reason of your not facing the future with a
certain ease you gave as that reason your want of education and
wit. But please understand," Horton added, "that I've no time to
waste with you on sophistry that isn't so much as plausible." He
stopped a moment, his hands in his pockets, his head thrown all but
extravagantly back, so that his considering look might have seemed
for the time to descend from a height designed a little to emphasise
Gray's comparative want of stature. That young man's own eyes
remained the while, none the less, unresentfully raised; to such an
effect indeed that, after some duration of this exchange, the bigger
man's fine irony quite visibly shaded into a still finer, and withal
frankly kinder, curiosity. Poor Gray, with a strained face and an
agitation but half controlled, breathed quick and hard, as from
inward pressure, and then, renouncing choice—there were so many
things to say—shook his head, slowly and repeatedly, after a fashion
that discouraged levity. "My dear boy," said his friend under this
sharper impression, "you do take it hard." Which made Graham turn
away, move about in vagueness of impatience and, still panting and
still hesitating for other expression, approach again, as from a blind
impulse, the big chimneypiece, reach for a box that raised a
presumption of cigarettes and, the next instant, thrust it out in
silence at his visitor. The latter's welcome of the motion, his prompt
appropriation of relief, was also mute; with which he found matches
in advance of Gray's own notice of them and had a light ready, of
which our young man himself partook, before the box went back to
its shelf. Odd again might have been for a protected witness of this
scene—which of course is exactly what you are invited to be—the
lapse of speech that marked it for the several minutes. Horton, truly
touched now, and to the finer issue we have glanced at, waited
unmistakably for the sign of something more important than his
imagination, even at its best, could give him, and which, not less
conceivably, would be the sort of thing he himself hadn't signs,
either actual or possible, for. He waited while they did the place at
last the inevitable small violence—this being long enough to make
him finally say: "Do you mean, on your honour, that you don't like
what has happened to you?"
This unloosed then for Gray the gate of possible expression. "Of
course I like it—that is of course I try to. I've been trying here, day
after day, as hard as ever a decent man can have tried for anything;
and yet I remain, don't you see? a wretched little worm."
"Deary, deary me," stared Horton, "that you should have to bring up
your appreciation of it from such depths! You go in for it as you
would for the electric light or the telephone, and then find half-way
that you can't stand the expense and want the next-door man
somehow to combine with you?"
"That's exactly it, Vinty, and you're the next-door man!"—Gray
embraced the analogy with glee. "I can't stand the expense, and yet
I don't for a moment deny I should immensely enjoy the
convenience. I want," he asseverated, "to like my luck. I want to go
in for it, as you say, with every inch of any such capacity as I have.
And I want to believe in my capacity; I want to work it up and
develop it—I assure you on my honour I do. I've lashed myself up
into feeling that if I don't I shall be a base creature, a worm of
worms, as I say, and fit only to be utterly ashamed. But that's where
you come in. You'll help me to develop. To develop my capacity I
mean," he explained with a wondrous candour.
Horton was now, small marvel, all clear faith; even, the cigarettes
helping, to the verge again of hilarity. "Your capacity—I see. Not so
much your property itself."
"Well"—Gray considered of it—"what will my property be except my
capacity?" He spoke really as for the pleasure of seeing very finely
and very far. "It won't if I don't like it, that is if I don't understand it,
don't you see? enough to make it count. Yes, yes, don't revile me,"
he almost feverishly insisted: "I do want it to count for all it's worth,
and to get everything out of it, to the very last drop of interest,
pleasure, experience, whatever you may call it, that such a
possession can yield. And I'm going to keep myself up to it, to the
top of the pitch, by every art and prop, by every helpful dodge, that
I can put my hand on. You see if I don't. I breathe defiance," he
continued, with his rare radiance, "at any suspicion or doubt. But I
come back," he had to add, "to my point that it's you that I
essentially most depend on."
Horton again looked at him long and frankly; this subject of appeal
might indeed for the moment have been as embarrassed between
the various requisitions of response as Gray had just before shown
himself. But as the tide could surge for one of the pair so it could
surge for the other, and the large truth of what Horton most grasped
appeared as soon as he had spoken. "The name of your complaint,
you poor dear delightful person, or the name at least of your
necessity, your predicament and your solution, is marriage to a wife
at short order. I mean of course to an amiable one. There, so
obviously, is your aid and your prop, there are the sources of
success for interest in your fortune, and for the whole experience
and enjoyment of it, as you can't find them elsewhere. What are you
but just 'fixed' to marry, and what is the sense of your remarks but a
more or less intelligent clamour for it?"
Triumphant indeed, as we have said, for lucidity and ease, was this
question, and yet it had filled the air, for its moment, but to drop at
once by the practical puncture of Gray's perfect recognition. "Oh of
course I've thought of that—but it doesn't meet my case at all." Had
he been capable of disappointment in his friend he might almost
have been showing it now.
Horton had, however, no heat about it. "You mean you absolutely
don't want a wife—in connection, so to speak, with your difficulties;
or with the idea, that is, of their being resolved into blessings?"
"Well"—Gray was here at least all prompt and clear—"I keep down,
in that matter, so much as I can any a priori or mere theoretic want.
I see my possibly marrying as an effect, I mean—I somehow don't
see it at all as a cause. A cause, that is"—he easily worked it out
—"of my getting other things right. It may be, in conditions, the
greatest rightness of all; but I want to be sure of the conditions."
"The first of which is, I understand then"—for this at least had been
too logical for Haughty not to have to match it—"that you should fall
so tremendously in love that you won't be able to help yourself."
Graham just debated; he was all intelligence here. "Falling
tremendously in love—the way you grands amoureux talk of such
things!"
"Where do you find, my boy," Horton asked, "that I'm a grand
amoureux?"
Well, Gray had but to consult his memory of their young days
together; there was the admission, under pressure, that he might
have confused the appearances. "They were at any rate always up
and at you—which seems to have left me with the impression that
your life is full of them."
"Every man's life is full of them that has a door or a window they
can come in by. But the question's of yourself," said Haughty, "and
just exactly of the number of such that you'll have to keep open or
shut in the immense façade you'll now present."
Our young man might well have struck him as before all else
inconsequent. "I shall present an immense façade?"—Gray, from his
tone of surprise, to call it nothing more, would have thought of this
for the first time.
But Horton just hesitated. "You've great ideas if you see it yourself
as a small one."
"I don't see it as any. I decline," Gray remarked, "to have a façade.
And if I don't I shan't have the windows and doors."
"You've got 'em already, fifty in a row"—Haughty was remorseless
—"and it isn't a question of 'having': you are a façade; stretching a
mile right and left. How can you not be when I'm walking up and
down in front of you?"
"Oh you walk up and down, you make the things you pass, and you
can behave of course if you want like one of the giants in uniform,
outside the big shops, who attend the ladies in and out. In fact,"
Gray went on, "I don't in the least judge that I am, or can be at all
advertised as, one of the really big. You seem all here so hideously
rich that I needn't fear to count as extraordinary; indeed I'm very
competently assured I'm by all your standards a very moderate
affair. And even if I were a much greater one"—he gathered force
—"my appearance of it would depend only on myself. You can have
means and not be blatant; you can take up, by the very fact itself, if
you happen to be decent, no more room than may suit your taste.
I'll be hanged if I consent to take up an inch more than suits mine.
Even though not of the truly bloated I've at least means to be quiet.
Every one among us—I mean among the moneyed—isn't a monster
on exhibition." In proof of which he abounded. "I know people
myself who aren't."
Horton considered him with amusement, as well apparently as the
people that he knew! "Of course you may dig the biggest hole in the
ground that ever was dug—spade-work comes high, but you'll have
the means—and get down into it and sit at the very bottom. Only
your hole will become then the feature of the scene, and we shall
crowd a thousand deep all round the edge of it."
Gray stood for a moment looking down, then faced his guest as with
a slight effort. "Do you know about Rosanna Gaw?" And then while
Horton, for reasons of his own, failed at once to answer: "She has
come in or millions——"
"Twenty-two and a fraction," Haughty said at once. "Do you mean
that she sits, like Truth, at the bottom of a well?" he asked still more
divertedly.
Gray had a sharp gesture. "If there's a person in the world whom I
don't call a façade——!"
"You don't call her one?"—Haughty took it right up. And he added as
for very compassion: "My poor man, my poor man——!"
"She loathes self-exhibition; she loathes being noticed; she loathes
every form of publicity." Gray quite flushed for it.
Horton went to the mantel for another cigarette, and there was that
in the calm way of it that made his friend, even though helping him
this time to a light, wait in silence for his word. "She does more than
that"—it was brought quite dryly out. "She loathes every separate
dollar she possesses."
Gray's sense of the matter, strenuous though it was, could just stare
at this extravagance of assent; seeing however, on second thoughts,
what there might be in it. "Well then if what I have is a molehill
beside her mountain, I can the more easily emulate her in standing
back."
"What you have is a molehill?" Horton was concerned to inquire.
Gray showed a shade of guilt, but faced his judge. "Well—so I
gather."
The judge at this lost patience. "Am I to understand that you
positively cultivate vagueness and water it with your tears?"
"Yes"—the culprit was at least honest—"I should rather say I do. And
I want you to let me. Do let me."
"It's apparently more then than Miss Gaw does!"
"Yes"—Gray again considered; "she seems to know more or less
what she's worth, and she tells me that I can't even begin to
approach it."
"Very crushing of her!" his friend laughed. "You 'make the pair', as
they say, and you must help each other much. Her 'loathing' it
exactly is—since we know all about it!—that gives her a frontage as
wide as the Capitol at Washington. Therefore your comparison
proves little—though I confess it would rather help us," Horton
pursued, "if you could seem, as you say, to have asked one or two of
the questions that I should suppose would have been open to you.
"Asked them of Mr. Crick, you mean?"
"Well, yes—if you've nobody else, and as you appear not to have
been able to have cared to look at the will yourself."
Something like a light of hope, at this, kindled in Gray's face. "Would
you care to look at it, Vinty?"
The inquiry gave Horton pause. "Look at it now, you mean?"
"Well—whenever you like. I think," said Gray, "it must be in the
house."
"You're not sure even of that?" his companion wailed.
"Oh I know there are two"—our young man had coloured. "I don't
mean different ones, but copies of the same," he explained; "one of
which Mr. Crick must have."
"And the other of which"—Horton pieced it together—"is the one you
offer to show me?"
"Unless, unless——!" and Gray, casting about, bethought himself.
"Unless that one——!" With his eyes on his friend's he still
shamelessly wondered.
"Unless that one has happened to get lost," Horton tenderly
suggested, "so that you can't after all produce it?"
"No, but it may be upstairs, upstairs——" Gray continued to turn this
over. "I think it is," he then recognised, "where I had perhaps better
not just now disturb it."
His recognition was nothing, apparently, however, to the clear
quickness of Horton's. "It's in your uncle's own room?"
"The room," Gray assented, "where he lies in death while we talk
here." This, his tone suggested, sufficiently enjoined delay.
Horton's concurrence was immediately such that, once more turning
off, he measured, for the intensity of it, half the room. "I can't advise
you without the facts that you're unable to give," he said as he came
back, "but I don't indeed invite you to go and rummage in that
presence." He might have exhaled the faintest irony, save that verily
by this time, between these friends—by which I mean of course as
from one of them only, the more generally assured, to the other—
irony would, to an at all exhaustive analysis, have been felt to flicker
in their medium. Gray might in fact, on the evidence of his next
words, have found it just distinguishable.
 V

"We do talk here while he lies in death"—they had in fine all serenity
for it. "But the extraordinary thing is that my putting myself this way
at my ease—and for that matter putting you at yours—is exactly
what the dear man made to me the greatest point of. I haven't the
shade of a sense, and don't think I ever shall have, of not doing
what he wanted of me; for what he wanted of me," our particular
friend continued, "is—well, so utterly unconventional. He would like
my being the right sort of well-meaning idiot that you catch me in
the very fact of. I warned him, I sincerely, passionately warned him,
that I'm not fit, in the smallest degree, for the use, for the care, for
even the most rudimentary comprehension, of a fortune; and that
exactly it was which seemed most to settle him. He wanted me clear,
to the last degree, not only of the financial brain, but of any sort of
faint germ of the money-sense whatever—down to the very lack of
power, if he might be so happy (or if I might!) to count up to ten on
my fingers. Satisfied of the limits of my arithmetic he passed away in
bliss."
To this, as fairly lucid, Horton had applied his understanding. "You
can't count up to ten?"
"Not all the way. Still," our young man smiled, "the greater
inspiration may now give me the lift."
His guest looked as if one might by that time almost have doubted.
But it was indeed an extraordinary matter. "How comes it then that
your want of arithmetic hasn't given you a want of order?—unless
indeed I'm mistaken and you were perhaps at sixes and sevens?"
"Well, I think I was at sixes—though I never got up to sevens! I've
never had the least rule or method; but that has been a sort of thing
I could more or less cover up—from others, I mean, not from myself,
who have always been helplessly ashamed of it. It hasn't been the
disorder of extravagance," Gray explained, "but the much more
ignoble kind, the wasteful thrift that doesn't really save, that simply
misses, and that neither enjoys things themselves nor enjoys their
horrid little equivalent of hoarded pence. I haven't needed to count
far, the fingers of one hand serving for my four or five possessions;
and also I've kept straight not by taking no liberties with my means,
but by taking none with my understanding of them. From fear of
counting wrong, and from loathing of the act of numerical
calculation, and of the humiliation of having to give it up after so few
steps from the start, I've never counted at all—and that, you see, is
what has saved me. That has been my sort of disorder—which you'll
agree is the most pitiful of all."
Horton once more turned away from him, but slowly this time, not in
impatience, rather with something of the preoccupation of a cup-
bearer whose bowl has been filled to the brim and who must carry it
a distance with a steady hand. So for a minute or two might he have
been taking this care; at the end of which, however, Gray saw him
stop in apparent admiration before a tall inlaid and brass-bound
French bahut; with the effect, after a further moment, of a sharp
break of their thread of talk. "You've got some things here at least to
enjoy and that you ought to know how to keep hold of; though I
don't so much mean," he explained, "this expensive piece of
furniture as the object of interest perched on top."
"Oh the ivory tower!—yes, isn't that, Vinty, a prize piece and worthy
of the lovely name?"
Vinty remained for the time all admiration, having, as you would
easily have seen, lights enough to judge by. "It appears to have
been your uncle's only treasure—as everything else about you here
is of a newness! And it isn't so much too small, Gray," he laughed,
"for you to get into it yourself, when you want to get rid of us, and
draw the doors to. If it's a symbol of any retreat you really have an
eye on I much congratulate you; I don't know what I wouldn't give
myself for the 'run' of an ivory tower."
"Well, I can't ask you to share mine," Gray returned; "for the
situation to have a sense, I take it, one must sit in one's tower
alone. And I should properly say," he added after an hesitation, "that
mine is the one object, all round me here, that I don't owe my
uncle: it has been placed at my disposition, in the handsomest way
in the world, by Rosanna Gaw."
"Ah that does increase the interest—even if susceptible of seeming
to mean, to one's bewilderment, that it's the sort of thing she would
like to thrust you away into; which I hope, however, is far from the
case. Does she then keep ivory towers, a choice assortment?"
Horton quite gaily continued; "in the sense of having a row of them
ready for occupation, and with tenants to match perchable in each
and signalling along the line from summit to summit? Because"—
and, facing about from his contemplation, he piled up his image
even as the type of object represented by it might have risen in the
air—"you give me exactly, you see, the formula of that young lady
herself: perched aloft in an ivory tower is what she is, and I'll be
hanged if this isn't a hint to you to mount, yourself, into just such
another; under the same provocation, I fancy her pleading, as she
has in her own case taken for sufficient." Thus it was that, suddenly
more brilliant than ever yet, to Graham's apprehension, you might
well have guessed, his friend stood nearer again—stood verily quite
irradiating responsive ingenuity. Markedly would it have struck you
that at such instants as this, most of all, the general hush that was
so thick about them pushed upward and still further upward the fine
flower of the inferential. Following the pair closely from the first, and
beginning perhaps with your idea that this life of the intelligence had
its greatest fineness in Gray Fielder, you would by now, I dare say,
have been brought to a more or less apprehensive foretaste of its
possibilities in our other odd agent. For how couldn't it have been to
the full stretch of his elastic imagination that Haughty was drawn out
by the time of his putting a certain matter beautifully to his
companion? "Don't I, 'gad, take the thing straight over from you—all
of it you've been trying to convey to me here!—when I see you, up
in the blue, behind your parapet, just gracefully lean over and call
down to where I mount guard at your door in the dust and
comparative darkness? It's well to understand"—his thumbs now in
his waistcoat-holes he measured his idea as if Gray's own face fairly
reflected it: "you want me to take all the trouble for you simply, in
order that you may have all the fun. And you want me at the same
time, in order that things shall be for you at their ideal of the
easiest, to make you believe, as a salve to your conscience, that the
fun isn't so mixed with the trouble as that you can't have it, on the
right arrangement made with me, quite by itself. This is most
ingenious of you," Horton added, "but it doesn't in the least show
me, don't you see? where my fun comes in."
"I wonder if I can do that," Gray returned, "without making you
understand first something of the nature of mine—or for that matter
without my first understanding myself perhaps what my queer kind
of it is most likely to be."
His companion showed withal for more and more ready to risk
amused recognitions. "You are 'rum' with your queer kinds, and
might make my flesh creep, in these conditions, if it weren't for
something in me of rude pluck." Gray, in speaking, had moved
towards the great French meuble with some design upon it or upon
the charge it carried; which Horton's eyes just wonderingly noted—
and to the effect of an exaggeration of tone in his next remark.
"However, there are assurances one doesn't keep repeating: it's so
little in me, I feel, to refuse you any service I'm capable of, no
matter how clumsily, that if you take me but confidently enough for
the agent even of your unholiest pleasures, you'll find me still
putting them through for you when you've broken down in horror
yourself."
"Of course it's my idea that whatever I ask you shall be of interest to
you, and of the liveliest, in itself—quite apart from any virtue of my
connection with it. If it speaks to you that way so much the better,"
Gray went on, standing now before the big bahut with both hands
raised and resting on the marble top. This lifted his face almost to
the level of the base of his perched treasure—so that he stared at
the ivory tower without as yet touching it. He only continued to talk,
though with his thought, as he brought out the rest of it, almost
superseded by the new preoccupation. "I shall absolutely decline any
good of anything that isn't attended by some equivalent or—what do
you call it?—proportionate good for you. I shall propose to you a
percentage, if that's the right expression, on every blest benefit I get
from you in the way of the sense of safety." Gray now moved his
hands, laying them as in finer fondness to either smoothly-plated
side of the tall repository, against which a finger or two caressingly
rubbed. His back turned therefore to Horton, he was divided
between the growth of his response to him and that of this more
sensible beauty. "Don't I kind of insure my life, my moral
consciousness, I mean, for your advantage?—or with you, as it
were, taking you for the officeman or actuary, if I'm not muddling: to
whom I pay a handsome premium for the certainty of there being to
my credit, on my demise, a sufficient sum to clear off my debts and
bury me."
"You propose to me a handsome premium? Catch me," Horton
laughed, "not jumping at that!"
"Yes, and you'll of course fix the premium yourself." But Gray was
now quite detached, occupied only in opening his ivory doors with
light fingers and then playing these a little, whether for hesitation or
for the intenser pointing of inquiry, up and down the row of drawers
so exposed. Against the topmost they then rested a moment—
drawing out this one, however, with scant further delay and enabling
themselves to feel within and so become possessed of an article
contained. It was with this article in his hand that he presently faced
about again, turning it over, resting his eyes on it and then raising
them to his visitor, who perceived in it a heavy letter, duly
addressed, to all appearance, but not stamped and as yet unopened.
"The distinguished retreat, you see, has its tenant."
"Do you mean by its tenant the author of those evidently numerous
pages?—unless you rather mean," Horton asked, "that you seal up in
packets the love-letters addressed to you and find that charming
receptacle a congruous place to keep them? Is there a packet in
every drawer, and do you take them out this way to remind yourself
fondly that you have them and that it mayn't be amiss for me to feel
your conquests and their fine old fragrance dangled under my
nose?"
Our young man, at these words, had but returned to the
consideration of his odd property, attaching it first again to the
superscription and then to the large firm seal. "I haven't the least
idea what this is; and I'm divided in respect of it, I don't mind telling
you, between curiosity and repulsion."
Horton then also eyed the ambiguity, but at his discreet distance and
reaching out for it as little as his friend surrendered it. "Do you
appeal to me by chance to help you to decide either way?"
Poor Gray, still wondering and fingering, had a long demur. "No—I
don't think I want to decide." With which he again faced criticism.
"The extent, Vinty, to which I think I must just like to drift——!"
Vinty seemed for a moment to give this indicated quantity the
attention invited to it, but without more action for the case than was
represented by his next saying: "Why then do you produce your
question—apparently so much for my benefit?"
"Because in the first place you noticed the place it lurks in, and
because in the second I like to tell you things."
This might have struck us as making the strained note in Vinty's
smile more marked. "But that's exactly, confound you, what you
don't do! Here have I been with you half an hour without your
practically telling me anything!"
Graham, very serious, stood a minute looking at him hard;
succeeding also quite it would seem in taking his words not in the
least for a reproach but for a piece of information of the greatest
relevance, and thus at once dismissing any minor importance. He
turned back with his minor importance to his small open drawer, laid
it within again and, pushing the drawer to, closed the doors of the
cabinet. The act disposed of the letter, but had the air of introducing
as definite a statement as Horton could have dreamt of. "It's a
bequest from Mr. Gaw."
"A bequest"—Horton wondered—"of banknotes?"
"No—it's a letter addressed to me just before his death, handed me
by his daughter, to whom he intrusted it, and not likely, I think, to
contain money. He was then sure, apparently, of my coming in for
money; and even if he hadn't been would have had no ground on
earth for leaving me anything."
Horton's visible interest was yet consonant with its waiting a little for
expression. "He leaves you the great Rosanna."
Graham, at this, had a stare, followed by a flush as the largest
possible sense of it came out. "You suppose it perhaps the
expression of a wish——?" And then as Horton forbore at first as to
what he supposed: "A wish that I may find confidence to apply to his
daughter for her hand?"
"That hasn't occurred to you before?" Horton asked—"nor the
measure of the confidence suggested been given you by the fact of
your receiving the document from Rosanna herself? You do give me,
you extraordinary person," he gaily proceeded, "as good
opportunities as I could possibly desire to 'help' you!"
Graham, for all the felicity of this, needed but an instant to think. "I
have it from Miss Gaw herself that she hasn't an idea of what the
letter contains—any more than she has the least desire that I shall
for the present open it."
"Well, mayn't that very attitude in her rather point to a suspicion?"
was his guest's ingenious reply. "Nothing could be less like her
certainly than to appear in such a case to want to force your hand.
It makes her position—with exquisite filial piety, you see—
extraordinarily delicate."
Prompt as that might be, Gray appeared to show, no sportive
sophistry, however charming, could work upon him. "Why should Mr.
Gaw want me to marry his daughter?"
Horton again hung about a little. "Why should you be so afraid of
ascertaining his idea that you don't so much as peep into what he
writes on the subject?"
"Afraid? Am I afraid?" Gray fairly spoke with a shade of the hopeful,
as if even that would be richer somehow than drifting.
"Well, you looked at your affair just now as you might at some small
dangerous, some biting or scratching, animal whom you're not at all
sure of."
"And yet you see I keep him about."
"Yes—you keep him in his cage, for which I suppose you have a
key."
"I have indeed a key, a charming little golden key." With which Gray
took another turn; once more facing criticism, however, to say with
force: "He hated him most awfully!"
Horton appeared to wonder. "Your uncle hated old Gaw?"
"No—I don't think he cared. I speak of Mr. Gaw's own animus. He
disliked so mortally his old associate, the man who lies dead upstairs
—and in spite of my consideration for him I still preserve his record."
"How do you know about his hate," Horton asked, "or if your letter,
since you haven't read it, is a record?"
"Well, I don't trust it—I mean not to be. I don't see what else he
could have written me about. Besides," Gray added, "I've my
personal impression."
"Of old Gaw? You have seen him then?"
"I saw him out there on this verandah, where he was hovering in the
most extraordinary fashion, a few hours before his death. It was
only for a few minutes," Gray said—"but they were minutes I shall
never forget."
Horton's interest, though so deeply engaged, was not unattended
with perplexity. "You mean he expressed to you such a feeling at
such an hour?"
"He expressed to me in about three minutes, without speech, to
which it seemed he couldn't trust himself, as much as it might have
taken him, or taken anyone else, to express in three months at
another time and on another subject. If you ever yourself saw him,"
Gray went on, "perhaps you'll understand."
"Oh I often saw him—and should indeed in your place perhaps have
understood. I never heard him accused of not making people do so.
But you hold," said Horton, "that he must have backed up for you
further the mystic revelation?"
"He had written before he saw me—written on the chance of my
being a person to be affected by it; and after seeing me he didn't
destroy or keep back his message, but emphasised his wish for a
punctual delivery."
"By which it is evident," Horton concluded, "that you struck him
exactly as such a person."
"He saw me, by my idea, as giving my attention to what he had
there ready for me." Gray clearly had talked himself into possession
of his case. "That's the sort of person I succeeded in seeming to him
—though I can assure you without my the least wanting to."
"What you feel is then that he thought he might attack with some
sort of shock for you the character of your uncle?" Vinty's question
had a special straightness.
"What I feel is that he has so attacked it, shock or no shock, and
that that thing in my cabinet, which I haven't examined, can only be
the proof."
It gave Horton much to turn over. "But your conviction has an
extraordinary bearing. Do I understand that the thing was handed
you by your friend with a knowledge of its contents?"
"Don't, please," Gray said at once, "understand anything either so
hideous or so impossible. She but carried out a wish uttered on her
father's deathbed, and hasn't so much as suggested that I break the