“If you want the genuine thing you ought to come out on the plains,” Mr. Longstraw interposed with bright sincerity. “I guess that was your mother’s idea. Why don’t you all come out?” He had been looking intently at Lady Agatha while the remarks I have just repeated succeeded each other on herlips—looking at her with a fascinated approbation, for all the world as if he had been a slightly slow-witted English gentleman and the girl herself a flower of the West, a flower that knew the celebrated language of flowers. Susceptible even as Mrs. Lemon was he made no secret of the fact that Lady Agatha’s voice was music to him, his ear being much more accessible than his own inflexions would have indicated. To Lady Agatha those inflexions were not displeasing, partly because, like Mr. Herman himself in general, she had not a perception of shades; and partly because it never occurred to her to compare them with any other tones. He seemed to her to speak a foreign language altogether—a romantic dialect through which the most comical meanings gleamed here and there.
“I should like it above all things,” she said in answer to his last observation.
“The scenery’s ahead of anything round here,” Mr. Longstraw went on.
Mrs. Lemon, as we have gathered, was the mildest of women; but, as an old New Yorker, she had no patience with some of the new fashions. Chief among these was the perpetual reference, which had become common only within a few years, to the outlying parts of the country, the States and Territories of which children, in her time, used to learn the names, in their order, at school, but which no one ever thought of going to or talking about. Such places, in her opinion, belonged to the geography-books, or at most to the literature of newspapers, but neither to society nor to conversation; and the change—which, so far as it lay in people’s talk, she thought at bottom a mere affectation—threatened to make her native land appear vulgar and vague. For this amiable daughter of Manhattan the normal existence of man, and still more of women, had been“located,” as she would have said, between Trinity Church and the beautiful Reservoir at the top of the Fifth Avenue—monuments of which she was personally proud; and if we could look into the deeper parts of her mind I am afraid we should discover there an impression that both the countries of Europe and the remainder of her own continent were equally far from the centre and the light.
“Well, scenery isn’t everything,” she made soft answer to Mr. Longstraw; “and if Lady Agatha should wish to see anything of that kind all she has got to do is to take the boat up the Hudson.” Mrs. Lemon’s recognition of this river, I should say, was all it need have been; she held the Hudson existed for the purpose of supplying New Yorkers with poetical feelings, helping them to face comfortably occasions like the present and, in general, meet foreigners with confidence—part of the oddity of foreigners being their conceit about their own places.
“That’s a good idea, Lady Agatha; let’s take the boat,” said Mr. Longstraw. “I’ve had great times on the boats.”
Lady Agatha fixed on heramorosoher singular charming eyes, eyes of which it was impossible to say at any moment whether they were the shyest or the frankest in the world; and she was not aware while this contemplation lasted that her brother-in-law was observing her. He was thinking of certain things while he did so, of things he had heard about the English; who still, in spite of his having married into a family of that nation, appeared to him very much through the medium of hearsay. They were more passionate than the Americans, and they did things that would never have been expected; though they seemed steadier and less excitable there was much social evidence to prove them more wildly impulsive.
“It’s so very kind of you to propose that,” Lady Agatha said in a moment to Mrs. Lemon. “I think I’ve never been in a ship—except of course coming from England. I’m sure mamma would wish me to see the Hudson. We used to go in immensely for boating in England.”
“Did you boat in a ship?” Herman Longstraw asked, showing his teeth hilariously and pulling his moustaches.
“Lots of my mother’s people have been in the navy.” Lady Agatha perceived vaguely and good-naturedly that she had said something the odd Americans thought odd and that she must justify herself. Something most unnatural was happening to her standard of oddity.
“I really think you had better come back to us,” Jackson repeated: “your sister’s very lonely without you.”
“She’s much more lonelywithme. We’re perpetually having differences. Barb’s dreadfully vexed because I like America instead of—instead of—” And Lady Agatha paused a moment; for it just occurred to her that this might be treacherous.
“Instead of what?” Jackson inquired.
“Instead of perpetually wanting to go to England, as she does,” she went on, only giving her phrase a little softer turn; for she felt the next moment that Barb could have nothing to hide and must of course have the courage of her opinions. “Of course England’s best, but I daresay I like to be bad,” the girl said artlessly.
“Oh there’s no doubt you’re awfully bad,” Mr. Longstraw broke out, with joyous eagerness. Naturally he couldn’t know that what she had principally in mind was an exchange of opinions that had taken place between her sister and herself just before she came to stay with Mrs. Lemon. This incident, ofwhich he himself was the occasion, might indeed have been called a discussion, for it had carried them quite into the cold air of the abstract. Lady Barb had said she didn’t see how Agatha could look at such a creature as that—an odious familiar vulgar being who had not about him the rudiments of a gentleman. Lady Agatha had replied that Mr. Longstraw was familiar and rough and that he had a twang and thought it amusing to talk to her as “the Princess”; but that he was a gentleman for all that and was tremendous fun whatever one called him—it didn’t seem to matter what one called any one or anything there. Her sister had returned to this that if he was rough and familiar he couldn’t be a gentleman, inasmuch as that was just what a gentleman meant—a man who was civil and well-bred and well-born. Lady Agatha had argued that such a point was just where she differed; that a man might perfectly be a gentleman and yet be rough, and even ignorant, so long as he was really nice. The only thing was that he should be really nice, which was the case with Mr. Longstraw, who, moreover, was quite extraordinarily civil—as civil as a man could be. And then Lady Agatha herself made the strongest point she had ever made in her life (she had never been so inspired) in saying that Mr. Longstraw was rough perhaps, but not rude—a distinction altogether wasted on her sister, who declared that she hadn’t come to America, of all places, to learn what a gentleman was. The discussion in short had been a trifle grim. I know not whether it was the tonic effect on them too, alien organisms as they were, of the fine winter weather, or that of Lady Barb’s being bored and having nothing else to do; but Lord Canterville’s daughters went into the question with the moral earnestness of a pair of approved Bostonians. It was part of Lady Agatha’s view of her admirer that heafter all much resembled other tall people with smiling eyes and tawny moustaches who had ridden a good deal in rough countries and whom she had seen in other places. If he was more familiar he was also more alert; still, the difference was not in himself, but in the way she saw him—the way she saw everybody in America. If she should see the others in the same way no doubt they’d be quite the same; and Lady Agatha sighed a little over the possibilities of life; for this peculiar way, especially regarded in connexion with gentlemen, had become very pleasant to her.
She had betrayed her sister more than she thought, even though Jackson didn’t particularly show it in the tone in which he commented: “Of course she knows she’s going to see your mother in the summer.” His tone was rather that of irritation at so much harping on the very obvious.
“Oh it isn’t only mamma,” the girl said.
“I know she likes a cool house,” Mrs. Lemon contributed.
“When she goes you had better bid her good-bye,” Lady Agatha went on.
“Of course I shall bid her good-bye,” said Mrs. Lemon, to whom apparently this remark was addressed.
“I’ll never bidyougood-bye, Princess,” Herman Longstraw interposed. “You can bet your life on that.”
“Oh it doesn’t matter about me, for of course I shall come back; but if Barb once gets to England she never will.”
“Oh my dear child!” Mrs. Lemon wailed, addressing her young visitor, but looking at her son, who on his side looked at the ceiling, at the floor, looked above all very conscious.
“I hope you don’t mind my saying that, Jacksondear,” Lady Agatha said to him, for she was very fond of her brother-in-law.
“Ah well then, she shan’t go there,” he threw off in a moment with a small strange dry laugh that attached his mother’s eyes in shy penetration to his face.
“But you promised mamma, you know,” said the girl with the confidence of her affection.
Jackson’s countenance expressed to her none even of his very moderate hilarity. “Your mother, then, must bring her back.”
“Get some of your navy people to supply an ironclad!” cried Mr. Longstraw.
“It would be very pleasant if the Marchioness could come over,” said Mrs. Lemon.
“Oh she’d hate it more than poor Barb,” Lady Agatha quickly replied. It didn’t at all suit her to find a marchioness inserted into her field of vision.
“Doesn’t she feel interested from what you’ve told her?” Lady Agatha’s admirer inquired. But Jackson didn’t heed his sister-in-law’s answer—he was thinking of something else. He said nothing more, however, about the subject of his thought, and before ten minutes were over took his departure, having meanwhile neglected also to revert to the question of Lady Agatha’s bringing her visit to his mother to a close. It wasn’t to speak to him of this—for, as we know, she wished to keep the girl and somehow couldn’t bring herself to be afraid of Herman Longstraw—that when her son took leave she went with him to the door of the house, detaining him a little while she stood on the steps, as people had always done in New York in her time, though it was another of the new fashions she didn’t like, the stiffness of not coming out of the parlour. She placed her hand on his arm to keep him on the “stoop” and looked up and down into the lucid afternoon and the beautiful city—its chocolate-coloured houses soextraordinarily smooth—in which it seemed to her that even the most fastidious people ought to be glad to live. It was useless to attempt to conceal it: his marriage had made a difference and a worry, had put a barrier that she was yet under the painful obligation of trying to seem not to notice. It had brought with it a problem much more difficult than his old problem of how to make his mother feel herself still, as she had been in his childhood, the dispenser of his rewards. The old problem had been easily solved, the new was a great tax. Mrs. Lemon was sure her daughter-in-law didn’t take her seriously, and that was a part of the barrier. Even if Barbarina liked her better than any one else this was mostly because she liked every one else so little. Mrs. Lemon had in her nature no grain of resentment, and it wasn’t to feed a sense of wrong that she permitted herself to criticise her son’s wife. She couldn’t help feeling that his marriage wasn’t altogether fortunate if his wife didn’t take his mother seriously. She knew she wasn’t otherwise remarkable than as being his mother; but that position, which was no merit of hers—the merit was all Jackson’s in being her son—affected her as one which, familiar as Lady Barb appeared to have been in England with positions of various kinds, would naturally strike the girl as very high and to be accepted as freely as a fine morning. If she didn’t think of his mother as an indivisible part of him perhaps she didn’t think of other things either; and Mrs. Lemon vaguely felt that, remarkable as Jackson was, he was made up of parts, and that it would never do that these should be rated lower one by one, since there was no knowing what that might end in. She feared that things were rather cold for him at home when he had to explain so much to his wife—explain to her, for instance, all the sources of happiness that were to be found in New York. This struck her as a new kind ofproblem altogether for a husband. She had never thought of matrimony without a community of feeling in regard to religion and country; one took those great conditions for granted just as one assumed that one’s food was to be cooked; and if Jackson should have to discuss them with his wife he might, in spite of his great abilities, be carried into regions where he would get entangled and embroiled—from which even possibly he wouldn’t come back at all. Mrs. Lemon had a horror of losing him in some way, and this fear was in her eyes as she stood by the doorway of her house and, after she had glanced up and down the street, eyed him a moment in silence. He simply kissed her again and said she would take cold.
“I’m not afraid of that—I’ve a shawl!” Mrs. Lemon, who was very small and very fair, with pointed features and an elaborate cap, passed her life in a shawl, and owed to this habit her reputation for being an invalid—an idea she scorned, naturally enough, inasmuch as it was precisely her shawl that, as she believed, kept every ill at bay. “Is it true Barbarina won’t come back?” she then asked.
“I don’t know that we shall ever find out; I don’t know that I shall take her to England,” Jackson distinctly returned.
She looked more anxious still. “Didn’t you promise, dear?”
“I don’t know that I promised—not absolutely.”
“But you wouldn’t keep her here against her will?” quavered Mrs. Lemon.
“I guess she’ll get used to it,” he returned with a levity that misrepresented the state of his nerves.
Mrs. Lemon looked up and down the street again and gave a little sigh. “What a pity she isn’t American!” She didn’t mean this as a reproach, a hint of what might have been; it was simply embarrassment resolved into speech.
“She couldn’t have been American,” said Jackson with decision.
“Couldn’t she, dear?” His mother spoke with conscientious respect; she felt there were imperceptible reasons in this.
“It was just as she is that I wanted her,” Jackson added.
“Even if she won’t come back?” Mrs. Lemon went on with wonder.
“Oh she has got to come back!” Jackson said as he went down the steps.
Lady Barb, after this, didn’t decline to see her New York acquaintances on Sunday afternoons, though she refused for the present to enter into a project of her husband’s, who thought it would be pleasant she should entertain his friends on the evening of that day. Like all good Americans, Doctor Lemon devoted much consideration to the great question of how, in his native land, society was to be brought into being. It seemed to him it would help on the good cause, for which so many Americans are ready to lay down their lives, if his wife should, as he jocularly called it, open a saloon. He believed, or tried to believe, thesalonnow possible in New York on condition of its being reserved entirely for adults; and in having taken a wife out of a country in which social traditions were rich and ancient he had done something toward qualifying his own house—so splendidly qualified in all strictly material respects—to be the scene of such an effort. A charming woman accustomed only to the best on each side, as Lady Beauchemin said, what mightn’t she achieve by being at home—always to adults only—in an easy early inspiring comprehensive way and on the evening of the seven when worldly engagements were least numerous? He laid this philosophy before Lady Barb in pursuance of a theory that if she disliked New York on a short acquaintance she couldn’tfail to like it on a long. Jackson believed in the New York mind—not so much indeed in its literary artistic philosophic or political achievements as in its general quickness and nascent adaptability. He clung to this belief, for it was an indispensable neat block in the structure he was attempting to rear. The New York mind would throw its glamour over Lady Barb if she would only give it a chance; for it was thoroughly bright responsive and sympathetic. If she would only set up by the turn of her hand a blest snug social centre, a temple of interesting talk in which this charming organ might expand and where she might inhale its fragrance in the most convenient and luxurious way, without, as it were, getting up from her chair; if she would only just try this graceful good-natured experiment—which would make every one likeherso much too—he was sure all the wrinkles in the gilded scroll of his fate would be smoothed out. But Lady Barb didn’t rise at all to his conception and hadn’t the least curiosity about the New York mind. She thought it would be extremely disagreeable to have a lot of people tumbling in on Sunday evening without being invited; and altogether her husband’s sketch of the Anglo-American saloon seemed to her to suggest crude familiarity, high vociferation—she had already made a remark to him about “screeching women”—and random extravagant laughter. She didn’t tell him—for this somehow it wasn’t in her power to express, and, strangely enough, he never completely guessed it—that she was singularly deficient in any natural or indeed acquired understanding of what a saloon might be. She had never seen or dreamed of one—and for the most part was incapable of imagining a thing she hadn’t seen. She had seen great dinners and balls and meets and runs and races; she had seen garden-parties and bunchesof people, mainly women—who, however, didn’t screech—at dull stuffy teas, and distinguished companies collected in splendid castles; but all this gave her no clue to a train of conversation, to any idea of a social agreement that the interest of talk, its continuity, its accumulations from season to season, shouldn’t be lost. Conversation, in Lady Barb’s experience, had never been continuous; in such a case it would surely have been a bore. It had been occasional and fragmentary, a trifle jerky, with allusions that were never explained; it had a dread of detail—it seldom pursued anything very far or kept hold of it very long.
There was something else she didn’t say to her husband in reference to his visions of hospitality, which was that if she should open a saloon—she had taken up the joke as well, for Lady Barb was eminently good-natured—Mrs. Vanderdecken would straightway open another, and Mrs. Vanderdecken’s would be the more successful of the two. This lady, for reasons Lady Barb had not yet explored, passed for the great personage of New York; there were legends of her husband’s family having behind them a fabulous antiquity. When this was alluded to it was spoken of as something incalculable and lost in the dimness of time. Mrs. Vanderdecken was young, pretty, clever, incredibly pretentious, Lady Barb thought, and had a wonderfully artistic house. Ambition was expressed, further, in every rustle of her garments; and if she was the first lady in America, “bar none”—this had an immense sound—it was plain she intended to retain the character. It was not till after she had been several months in New York that Lady Barb began to perceive this easy mistress of the field, crying out, gracious goodness, before she was hurt, to have flung down the glove; and when the idea presented itself, lighted up by an incident I have no space to report, she simplyblushed a little (for Mrs. Vanderdecken) and held her tongue. She hadn’t come to America to bandy words about “precedence” with such a woman as that. She had ceased to think of that convenience—of course one was obliged to think in England; though an instinct of self-preservation, old and deep-seated, led her not to expose herself to occasions on which her imputed claim might be tested. This had at bottom much to do with her having, very soon after the first flush of the honours paid her on her arrival and which seemed to her rather grossly overdone, taken the line of scarcely going out. “They can’t keepthatup!” she had said to herself; and in short she would stay, less boringly both for herself and for others, at home. She had a sense that whenever and wherever she might go forth she should meet Mrs. Vanderdecken, who would withhold or deny or contest or even magnanimously concede something—poor Lady Barb could never imagine what. She didn’t try to, and gave little thought to all this; for she wasn’t prone to confess to herself fears, especially fears from which terror was absent. What in the worldhadMrs. Vanderdecken that she, Barbarina Lemon (what a name!), could want? But, as I have said, it abode within her as a presentiment that if she should set up a drawing-room in the foreign style (based, that is, on the suppression of prattling chits and hobbledehoys) this sharp skirmisher would be beforehand with her. The continuity of conversation, oh that she would certainly go in for—there was no one so continuous as Mrs. Vanderdecken. Lady Barb, as I have related, didn’t give her husband the surprise of confiding to him these thoughts, though she had given him some other surprises. He would have been decidedly astonished, and perhaps after a bit a little encouraged, at finding her liable to any marked form of exasperation.
On the Sunday afternoon she was visible; and at one of these junctures, going into her drawing-room late, he found her entertaining two ladies and a gentleman. The gentleman was Sidney Feeder and one of the ladies none other than Mrs. Vanderdecken, whose ostensible relations with her were indeed of the most cordial nature. Intending utterly to crush her—as two or three persons, not perhaps conspicuous for a narrow accuracy, gave out that she privately declared—Mrs. Vanderdecken yet wished at least to study the weak points of the invader, to penetrate herself with the character of the English girl. Lady Barb verily appeared to have for the representative of the American patriciate a mysterious fascination. Mrs. Vanderdecken couldn’t take her eyes off her victim and, whatever might be her estimate of her importance, at least couldn’t let her alone. “Why does she come to see me?” poor Lady Barb asked herself. “I’m sure I don’t want to see her; she has done enough for civility long ago.” Mrs. Vanderdecken had her own reasons, one of which was simply the pleasure of looking at the Doctor’s wife, as she habitually called the daughter of the Cantervilles. She wasn’t guilty of the rashness of depreciating the appearance of so markedly fine a young woman, but professed a positive unbounded admiration for it, defending it on many occasions against those of the superficial and stupid who pronounced her “left nowhere” by the best of the home-grown specimens. Whatever might have been Lady Barb’s weak points, they included neither the curve of her cheek and chin, the setting of her head on her throat, nor the quietness of her deep eyes, which were as beautiful as if they had been blank, like those of antique busts. “The head’s enchanting—perfectly enchanting,” Mrs. Vanderdecken used to say irrelevantly and as if there were only one head in the place. She alwaysused to ask about the Doctor—which was precisely another reason why she came. She dragged in the Doctor at every turn, asking if he were often called up at night; found it the greatest of luxuries, in a word, to address Lady Barb as the wife of a medical man and as more or lessau courantof her husband’s patients. The other lady, on this Sunday afternoon, was a certain little Mrs. Chew, who had the appearance of a small but very expensive doll and was always asking Lady Barb about England, which Mrs. Vanderdecken never did. The latter discoursed on a purely American basis and with that continuity of which mention has already been made, while Mrs. Chew engaged Sidney Feeder on topics equally local. Lady Barb liked Sidney Feeder; she only hated his name, which was constantly in her ears during the half-hour the ladies sat with her, Mrs. Chew having, like so many persons in New York, the habit, which greatly annoyed her, of re-apostrophising and re-designating every one present.
Lady Barb’s relations with Mrs. Vanderdecken consisted mainly in wondering, while she talked, what she wanted of her, and in looking, with her sculptured eyes, at her visitor’s clothes, in which there was always much to examine. “Oh Doctor Feeder!” “Now Doctor Feeder!” “Well Doctor Feeder”—these exclamations, on Mrs. Chew’s lips, were an undertone in Lady Barb’s consciousness. When we say she liked her husband’s confrère, as he never failed to describe himself, we understand that she smiled on his appearance and gave him her hand, and asked him if he would have tea. There was nothing nasty, as they so analytically said in London, about Lady Barb, and she would have been incapable of inflicting a deliberate snub on a man who had the air of standing up so squarely to any purpose he might have in hand. But she had nothing of herown at all to say to Sidney Feeder. He apparently had the art of making her shy, more shy than usual—since she was always a little so; she discouraged him, discouraged him completely and reduced him to naught. He wasn’t a man who wanted drawing out, there was nothing of that in him, he was remarkably copious; but she seemed unable to follow him in any direction and half the time evidently didn’t know what he was saying. He tried to adapt his conversation to her needs; but when he spoke of the world, of what was going on in society, she was more at sea even than when he spoke of hospitals and laboratories and the health of the city and the progress of science. She appeared indeed after her first smile when he came in, which was always charming, scarcely to see him—looking past him and above him and below him, everywhere but at him, till he rose to go again, when she gave him another smile, as expressive of pleasure and of casual acquaintance as that with which she had greeted his entry: it seemed to imply that they had been having delightful communion. He wondered what the deuce Jackson Lemon could find interesting in such a woman, and he believed his perverse, though gifted, colleague not destined to feel her in the long run enrich or illuminate his life. He pitied Jackson, he saw that Lady Barb, in New York, would neither assimilate nor be assimilated; and yet he was afraid, for very compassion, to betray to the poor man how the queer step he had taken—now so dreadfully irrevocable—might be going to strike most others. Sidney Feeder was a man of a strenuous conscience, who did loyal duty overmuch and from the very fear he mightn’t do it enough. In order not to appear to he called upon Lady Barb heroically, in spite of pressing engagements and week after week, enjoying his virtue himself as little as he made it fruitful for his hostess, whowondered at last what she had done to deserve this extremity of appreciation.
She spoke of it to her husband, who wondered also what poor Sidney had in his head and yet naturally shrank from damping too brutally his zeal. Between the latter’s wish not to let Jackson see his marriage had made a difference and Jackson’s hesitation to reveal to him that his standard of friendship was too high, Lady Barb passed a good many of those numerous hours during which she asked herself if they were the “sort of thing” she had come to America for. Very little had ever passed between her and her husband on the subject of the most regular of her bores, a clear instinct warning her that if they were ever to have scenes she must choose the occasion well, and this odd person not being an occasion. Jackson had tacitly admitted that his “confrère” was anything she chose to think him; he was not a man to be guilty in a discussion of the disloyalty of damning a real friend with praise that was faint. If Lady Agatha had been less of an absentee from her sister’s fireside, meanwhile, Doctor Feeder would have been better entertained; for the younger of the English pair prided herself, after several months of New York, on understanding everything that was said, on interpreting every sound, no matter from what lips the monstrous mystery fell. But Lady Agatha was never at home; she had learned to describe herself perfectly by the time she wrote her mother that she was always on the go. None of the innumerable victims of old-world tyranny welcomed to the land of freedom had yet offered more lavish incense to that goddess than this emancipated London debutante. She had enrolled herself in an amiable band known by the humorous name of “the Tearers”—a dozen young ladies of agreeable appearance, high spirits and good wind, whose most general characteristicwas that, when wanted, they were to be sought anywhere in the world but under the roof supposed to shelter them. They browsed far from the fold; and when Sidney Feeder, as sometimes happened, met Lady Agatha at other houses, she was in the hands of the irrepressible Longstraw. She had come back to her sister, but Mr. Longstraw had followed her to the door. As to passing it, he had received direct discouragement from her brother-in-law; but he could at least hang about and wait for her. It may be confided to the reader at the risk of discounting the effect of the only passage in this very level narrative formed to startle that he never had to wait very long.
When Jackson Lemon came in his wife’s visitors were on the point of leaving her; and he didn’t even ask his colleague to remain, for he had something particular to say to Lady Barb.
“I haven’t put to you half the questions I wanted—I’ve been talking so much to Doctor Feeder,” the dressy Mrs. Chew said, holding the hand of her hostess in one of her own and toying at one of Lady Barb’s ribbons with the other.
“I don’t think I’ve anything to tell you; I think I’ve told people everything,” Lady Barb answered rather wearily.
“You haven’t toldmemuch!” Mrs. Vanderdecken richly radiated.
“What could one tell you? You know everything,” Jackson impatiently laughed.
“Ah no—there are some things that are great mysteries for me!” this visitor promptly pronounced. “I hope you’re coming to me on the seventeenth,” she added to Lady Barb.
“On the seventeenth? I believe we go somewhere.”
“Do go to Mrs. Vanderdecken’s,” said Mrs. Chew; “you’ll see the cream of the cream.”
“Oh gracious!” Mrs. Vanderdecken vaguely cried.
“Well, I don’t care; she will, won’t she, Doctor Feeder?—the very pick of American society.” Mrs. Chew stuck to her point.
“Oh I’ve no doubt Lady Barb will have a good time,” said Sidney Feeder. “I’m afraid you miss the bran,” he went on with irrelevant jocosity to Jackson’s bride. He always tried the jocose when other elements had failed.
“The bran?” Jackson’s bride couldn’t think.
“Where you used to ride—in the Park.”
“My dear fellow, you speak as if we had met at the circus,” her husband interposed. “I haven’t married a mountebank!”
“Well, they put some stuff on the road,” Sidney Feeder explained, not holding much to his joke.
“You must miss a great many things,” said Mrs. Chew tenderly.
“I don’t see what,” Mrs. Vanderdecken tinkled, “except the fogs and the Queen. New York’s getting more and more like London. It’s a pity—you ought to have known us thirty years ago.”
“You’rethe queen here,” said Jackson Lemon, “but I don’t know what you know about thirty years ago.”
“Do you think she doesn’t go back?—she goes back to the last century!” cried Mrs. Chew.
“I daresay I should have liked that,” said Lady Barb; “but I can’t imagine.” And she looked at her husband—a look she often had—as if she vaguely wished him to do something.
He was not called upon, however, to take any violent steps, for Mrs. Chew presently said, “Well, Lady Barb, good-bye”; Mrs. Vanderdecken glared genially and as for excess of meaning at her hostess and addressed a farewell, accompanied very audiblywith his title, to her host; and Sidney Feeder made a joke about stepping on the trains of the ladies’ dresses as he accompanied them to the door. Mrs. Chew had always a great deal to say at the last; she talked till she was in the street and then she addressed that prospect. But at the end of five minutes Jackson Lemon was alone with his wife, to whom he then announced a piece of news. He prefaced it, however, by an inquiry as he came back from the hall.
“Where’s Agatha, my dear?”
“I haven’t the least idea. In the streets somewhere, I suppose.”
“I think you ought to know a little more.”
“How can I know about things here? I’ve given her up. I can do nothing with her. I don’t care what she does.”
“She ought to go back to England,” Jackson said after a pause.
“She ought never to have come.”
“It was not my proposal, God knows!” he sharply returned.
“Mamma could never know what it really is,” his wife more quietly noted.
“No, it hasn’t been as yet what your mother supposed! The man Longstraw wants to marry her and has made a formal proposal. I met him half an hour ago in Madison Avenue, and he asked me to come with him into the Columbia Club. There, in the billiard-room, which to-day is empty, he opened himself—thinking evidently that in laying the matter before me he was behaving with extraordinary propriety. He tells me he’s dying of love and that she’s perfectly willing to go and live in Arizona.”
“So she is,” said Lady Barb. “And what did you tell him?”
“I told him I was convinced it would never doand that at any rate I could have nothing to say to it. I told him explicitly in short what I had told him virtually before. I said we should send Aggie straight back to England, and that if they had the courage they must themselves broach the question over there.”
“When shall you send her back?” asked Lady Barb.
“Immediately—by the very first steamer.”
“Alone, like an American girl?”
“Don’t be rough, Barb,” Jackson replied. “I shall easily find some people—lots of them are sailing now.”
“I must take her myself,” Lady Barb observed in a moment. “I brought her out—so I must restore her to my mother’s hands.”
He had expected this and believed he was prepared for it, but when it came he found his preparation not complete. He had no answer to make—none at least that seemed to him to go to the point. During these last weeks it had come over him with a quiet irresistible unmerciful force that Mrs. Dexter Freer had been right in saying to him that Sunday afternoon in Jermyn Street, the summer before, that he would find it wasn’t so simple to be an American. Such a character was complicated in just the measure that she had foretold by the difficulty of domesticating any wife at all liberally chosen. The difficulty wasn’t dissipated by his having taken a high tone about it; it pinched him from morning till night, it hurt him like a misfitting shoe. His high tone had given him courage when he took the great step; but he began to perceive that the highest tone in the world couldn’t change the nature of things. His ears tingled as he inwardly noted that if the Dexter Freers, whom he had thought alike abject in their hopes and their fears, had been by ill luck spending the winter inNew York, they would have found his predicament as good fun as they could wish. Drop by drop the conviction had entered his mind—the first drop had come in the form of a word from Lady Agatha—that if his wife should return to England she would never again later recross the Atlantic. That word from the competent source had been the touch from the outside at which often a man’s fear crystallises. What she would do, how she would resist—this he wasn’t yet prepared to tell himself; but he felt every time he looked at her that the beautiful woman he had adored was filled with a dumb insuperable ineradicable purpose. He knew that if she should plant herself firm no power on earth would move her; and her blooming antique beauty and the general loftiness of her breeding came fast to seem to him but the magnificent expression of a dense patient ponderous power to resist. She wasn’t light, she wasn’t supple, and after six months of marriage he had made up his mind that she wasn’t intelligent—in spite of all which she would elude him. She had married him, she had come into his fortune and his consideration—for who was she after all? he was on occasion so angry as to ask himself, remembering that in England Lady Claras and Lady Florences were as thick as blackberries—but she would have nothing to do, if she could help it, with his country. She had gone in to dinner first in every house in the place, but this hadn’t satisfied her. Ithadbeen simple to be an American in the good and easy sense that no one else in New York had made any difficulties; the difficulties had sprung from the very, the consummate, make of her, which were after all what he had married her for, thinking they would be a fine temperamental heritage for his brood. So they would, doubtless, in the coming years and after the brood should have appeared; but meanwhile they interfered with thebest heritage of all—the nationality of his possible children. She would do indeed nothing violent; he was tolerably certain of that. She wouldn’t return to England without his consent; only when she should return it would be once for all. His one possible line, then, was not to take her back—a position replete with difficulties, since he had in a manner given his word; she herself giving none at all beyond the formal promise murmured at the altar. She had been general, but he had been specific; the settlements he had made were a part of that. His difficulties were such as he couldn’t directly face. He must tack in approaching so uncertain a coast. He said to his wife presently that it would be very inconvenient for him to leave New York at that moment: she must remember their plans had been laid for a later move. He couldn’t think of letting her make the voyage without him, and on the other hand they must pack her sister off without delay. He would therefore make instant inquiry for a chaperon, and he relieved his irritation by cursing the name and every other attribute of Herman Longstraw.
Lady Barb didn’t trouble herself to denounce this gentleman; her manner was that of having for a long time expected the worst. She simply remarked after having listened to her husband for some minutes in silence: “I’d quite as lief she should marry Doctor Feeder!”
The day after this he closeted himself for an hour with his sister-in-law, taking great pains to set forth to her the reasons why she shouldn’t marry her Californian. Jackson was kind, he was affectionate; he kissed her and put his arm round her waist, he reminded her that he and she were the best of friends and that she had always been awfully nice to him: therefore he counted on her. She’d break her mother’s heart, she’d deserve her father’s curse, andshe’d get him, Jackson, into a pickle from which no human power might ever disembroil him. Lady Agatha listened and cried, she returned his kiss very affectionately and admitted that her father and mother would never consent to such a marriage; and when he told her that he had made arrangements that she should sail for Liverpool, with some charming people, the next day but one, she embraced him again and assured him she could never thank him enough for all the trouble he had taken about her. He flattered himself he had convinced and in some degree comforted her, and he reflected with complacency that even should his wife take it into her head Barb would never get ready to embark for her native land between a Monday and a Wednesday. The next morning Lady Agatha failed to appear at breakfast, though as she usually rose very late her absence excited no immediate alarm. She hadn’t rung her bell and was supposed still to be sleeping. But she had never yet slept later than mid-day; and as this hour approached her sister went to her room. Lady Barb then discovered that she had left the house at seven o’clock in the morning and had gone to meet Mr. Longstraw at a neighbouring corner. A little note on the table explained it very succinctly, and put beyond the power of the Jackson Lemons to doubt that by the time this news reached them their wayward sister had been united to the man of her preference as closely as the laws of the State of New York could bind her. Her little note set forth that as she knew she should never be permitted to marry him she had resolved to marry him without permission, and that directly after the ceremony, which would be of the simplest kind, they were to take a train for the Far West.
Our record is concerned only with the remote consequences of this affair, which made of course agreat deal of trouble for poor Jackson. He pursued the fugitives to remote rocky fastnesses and finally overtook them in California; but he hadn’t the boldness to propose to them to separate, for he promptly made out that Herman Longstraw was at least as well married as himself. Lady Agatha was already popular in the new States, where the history of her elopement, emblazoned in enormous capitals, was circulated in a thousand newspapers. This question of the newspapers had been for our troubled friend one of the most definite results of his sister-in-law’scoup de tête. His first thought had been of the public prints and his first exclamation a prayer that they shouldn’t get hold of the story. They had, however, got hold of it with a myriad wildly-waved hands and were scattering it broadcast over the world. Lady Barb never caught them in the act—she succeeded perfectly in not seeing what she needn’t; but an affectionate friend of the family, travelling at that time in the United States, made a parcel of some of the leading journals, and sent them to Lord Canterville. This missive elicited from her ladyship a letter, addressed to her son-in-law, which shook the young man’s position to the base. The phials of a rank vulgarity had been opened on the house of Canterville, and the noble matron demanded that in compensation for the affronts and injuries heaped upon her family, and bereaved and dishonoured as she was, she should at least be allowed to look on the face of her second daughter. “I suppose you’ll not, for very pity, be deaf to such a prayer as that,” said Lady Barb; and though loth to record a second act of weakness on the part of a man with pretensions to be strong, I may not disguise the fact that poor Jackson, who blushed dreadfully over the newspapers and felt afresh as he read them the force of Mrs. Freer’s terrible axiom, poor Jackson paid avisit to the office of the Cunarders. He said to himself later on that it was the newspapers that had done it; he couldn’t decently appear to be on their side: they made it so hard to deny that the country was impossible at a time when one was in need of all one’s arguments. Lady Barb, before sailing, definitely refused to mention any week or month as the date of their prearranged return to New York. Very many weeks and months have elapsed since then, and she gives no sign of coming back. She will never fix a date. She is much missed by Mrs. Vanderdecken, who still alludes to her—still says the line of the shoulders was superb; putting the statement pensively in the past tense. Lady Beauchemin and Lady Marmaduke are much disconcerted; the international project has not, in their view, received an impetus.
Jackson Lemon has a house in London and he rides in the Park with his wife, who is as beautiful as the day and who a year ago presented him with a little girl exhibiting features that he already scans for the look of race—whether in hope or in fear to-day is more than my muse has revealed. He has occasional scenes with Lady Barb during which the look of race is very clear in her own countenance; but they never terminate in a visit to the Cunarders. He’s exceedingly restless and is constantly crossing to the Continent; but he returns with a certain abruptness, for he hates meeting the Dexter Freers, who seem to pervade the more comfortable parts of Europe. He dodges them in every town. Sidney Feeder feels very badly about him; it’s months since Jackson has sent him any “results.” The excellent fellow goes very often, in a consolatory spirit, to see Mrs. Lemon, but has not yet been able to answer her standing question—“Why that girl more than another?” Lady Agatha Longstraw and her husband arrived ayear ago in England, and Mr. Longstraw’s personality had immense success during the last London season. It’s not exactly known what they live on, though perfectly known that he’s looking for something to do. Meanwhile it’s as good as known that their really quite responsible brother-in-law supports them.
That solemn piece of upholstery the curtain of the Comédie Française had fallen upon the first act of the piece, and our two Americans had taken advantage of the interval to pass out of the huge hot theatre in company with the other occupants of the stalls. But they were among the first to return, and they beguiled the rest of the intermission with looking at the house, which had lately been cleansed of its historic cobwebs and ornamented with frescoes illustrative of the classic drama. In the month of September the audience at the Théâtre Français is comparatively thin, and on this occasion the drama—L’Aventurièreof Emile Augier—had no pretensions to novelty. Many of the boxes were empty, others were occupied by persons of provincial or nomadic appearance. The boxes are far from the stage, near which our spectators were placed; but even at a distance Rupert Waterville was able to appreciate details. He was fond of appreciating details, and when he went to the theatre he looked about him a good deal, making use of a dainty but remarkably powerful glass. He knew that such a course was wanting in true distinction and that it was indelicate to level at a lady an instrument often only less injurious in effect than a double-barrelled pistol; but he was always very curious, and was sure, in any case, that at that moment, at that antiquated play—so he was pleased to qualify the masterpiece of acontemporary—he shouldn’t be observed by any one he knew. Standing up therefore with his back to the stage he made the circuit of the boxes while several other persons near him performed the operation with even greater coolness.
“Not a single pretty woman,” he remarked at last to his friend; an observation which Littlemore, sitting in his place and staring with a bored expression at the new-looking curtain, received in perfect silence. He rarely indulged in these optical excursions; he had been a great deal in Paris and had ceased to vibrate more than a few times a day; he believed the French capital could have no more surprises for him, though it had had a good many in former days. Waterville was still in the stage of surprise; he suddenly expressed this emotion. “By Jove, I beg your pardon, I begherpardon! Thereisafter all a woman who may be called”—he paused a little, inspecting her—“an approach to a beauty!”
“How near an approach?” Littlemore responded.
“An unusual kind—an indescribable kind.” Littlemore was not heeding his answer, but presently heard himself appealed to. “I say, I wish very much you’d do me a favour.”
“I did you a favour in coming here,” said Littlemore. “It’s insufferably hot, and the play’s like a dinner that has been dressed by the kitchen-maid. The actors are alldoublures.”
“It’s simply to answer me this: issherespectable now?” Waterville demanded, inattentive to his friend’s epigram.
Littlemore gave a groan, without turning his head. “You’re always wanting to know if they’re respectable. What on earth can it matter?”
“I’ve made such mistakes—I’ve lost all confidence,” said poor Waterville, to whom European civilisation had not ceased to be a novelty and whoduring the last six months had found himself confronted with problems for which his training had little prepared him. Whenever he encountered a very nice-looking woman he was sure to discover that she belonged to the class represented by the heroine of M. Augier’s drama; and whenever his attention rested upon a person of a florid style of attraction there was the strongest probability that she would turn out a countess. The countesses often looked so unnaturally cheap and the others unnaturally expensive. Littlemore distinguished at a glance; he never made mistakes.
“Simply for looking at them it doesn’t matter, I suppose,” Waterville ingenuously sighed.
“You stare at them all alike,” Littlemore went on, still without moving; “except indeed when I tell you theyaren’tdecent—then your eyes, my dear man, grow as large as saucers.”
“If your judgement’s against this lady I promise never to look at her again. I mean the one in the third box from the passage, in white, with the red flowers,” the younger man said as Littlemore slowly rose and stood beside him. “The fellow with her is leaning forward. It’s he who makes me doubt. Will you have the glass?”
Littlemore looked about him without concentration. “No, thank you, I can see without staring. The young man’s a very good young man,” he presently reported.
“Very indeed, but he’s several years younger than she. Wait till she turns her head.”
She turned it very soon—she apparently had been speaking to theouvreuse, at the door of the box—and presented her face to the public; a fair harmonious face, with smiling eyes, smiling lips, a low brow ornamented with delicate rings of black hair and ears marked by the sparkle of diamonds sufficiently largeto be seen across the Théâtre Français. Littlemore looked at her, then started and held out his hand. “The glass, please!”
“Do you know her?” his friend asked as he directed the little instrument.
He made no answer; he only looked in silence; then he gave the glass back. “No, she’s not respectable.” And he dropped again into his seat. As Waterville remained standing he added: “Please sit down; I think she saw me.”
“Don’t you want her to see you?” pursued the interrogator, promptly complying.
Littlemore hesitated. “I don’t want to spoil her game.” By this time theentr’actewas at an end and the curtain going up.
It had been Waterville’s idea that they should go to the theatre. Littlemore, who was always for not going anywhere, had recommended that, the evening being lovely, they should simply sit and smoke at the door of the Grand Café in comparatively pensive isolation. Nevertheless Waterville enjoyed the second act even less than he had done the first, which he thought heavy. He began to wonder whether his companion would wish to stay to the end; a useless line of speculation, for now that he had got to the theatre Littlemore’s aversion to change would certainly keep him from moving. Waterville also wondered what he knew about the lady in the box. Once or twice he glanced at his friend, and then was sure the latter wasn’t following the play. He was thinking of something else; he was thinking of that woman. When the curtain fell again he sat in his place, making way for his neighbours, as usual, to edge past him, grinding his knees—his legs were long—with their own protuberances. When the two men were alone in the stalls he spoke. “I think I should like to see her again, after all.” He spoke in fact as ifWaterville might have known all about her. Waterville was conscious of not doing so, but as there was evidently a good deal to know he recognised he should lose nothing by exerting some art. So for the moment he asked no question; he only said: “Well, here’s the glass.”
Littlemore gave him a glance of good-natured compassion. “I don’t mean I want to keep lettingthatoff at her. I mean I should rather like to see her as I used to.”
“And how did you use to?” asked Waterville with no art now.
“On the back piazza at San Pablo.” And as his comrade, in receipt of this information, only stared he went on: “Come out where we can breathe and I’ll tell you more.”
They made their way to the low and narrow door, more worthy of a rabbit-hutch than of a great theatre, by which you pass from the stalls of the Comédie to the lobby, and as Littlemore went by first his ingenuous friend behind him could see that he glanced up at the box in the occupants of which they were interested. The more interesting of these had her back to the house; she was apparently just leaving the box, after her companion; but as she hadn’t put on her mantle it was evident they weren’t quitting the theatre. Littlemore’s pursuit of fresh air didn’t lead him to the street; he had passed his arm into Waterville’s and when they reached the fine frigid staircase that ascends to the public foyer he began silently to mount it. Littlemore was averse to active pleasures, but his friend reflected that now at least he had launched himself—he was going to look for the lady whom, with a monosyllable, he appeared to have classified. The young man resigned himself for the moment to asking no questions, and the two strolled together into the shining saloon where Houdon’s admirable statue ofVoltaire, reflected in a dozen mirrors, is gaped at by visitors too obviously less acute than the genius expressed in those living features. Waterville knew that Voltaire was witty; he had readCandideand had already had several opportunities of appreciating the statue. The foyer was not crowded; only a dozen groups were scattered over the polished floor, several others having passed out to the balcony which overhangs the square of the Palais Royal. The windows were open, the myriad lights of Paris made the dull summer evening look like an anniversary or a revolution; a murmur of voices seemed to come up, and even in the foyer one heard the slow click of the horses and the rumble of the crookedly-driven fiacres on the hard smooth street-surface. A lady and a gentleman, their backs to our friends, stood before the image of thegenius loci; the lady was dressed in white, including a white bonnet. Littlemore felt in the scene, as so many persons feel it just there, something of the finest essence of France, and he gave a significant laugh.
“It seems comical to see her here! The last time was in New Mexico.”
“In New Mexico?”
“At San Pablo.”
“Oh on the back piazza,” said Waterville, putting things together. He had not been aware of the position of San Pablo, for if on the occasion of his lately being appointed to a subordinate diplomatic post in London he had been paying a good deal of attention to European geography he had rather neglected that of his own country.
They hadn’t spoken loud and weren’t standing near her, but suddenly, as if she had heard them, the lady in white turned round. Her eye caught Waterville’s first, and in that glance he saw that if she was aware of something it wasn’t because they hadexceeded but because she had extraordinary quickness of ear. There was no prompt recognition in it—none even when it rested lightly on George Littlemore. But recognition flashed out a moment later, accompanied with a delicate increase of colour and a quick extension of her settled smile. She had turned completely round; she stood there in sudden friendliness, with parted lips; with a hand, gloved to the elbow, almost imperiously offered. She was even prettier than at a distance. “Well, I declare!” she cried; so loud that every one in the room appeared to feel personally addressed. Waterville was surprised; he hadn’t been prepared, even after the mention of the back piazza, to find her of so unmistakable race. Her companion turned round as she spoke; he was a fresh lean young man in evening dress; he kept his hands in his pockets; Waterville was sure he was of race quite other. He looked very grave—for such a fair festive young man—and gave our two friends, though his height was not superior to theirs, a narrow vertical glance. Then he turned back to the statue of Voltaire as if it had been among his premonitions, after all, that the lady he was attending would recognise people he didn’t know and didn’t even perhaps care to know. This possibly confirmed slightly Littlemore’s assertion that she wasn’t respectable. The young man was that at least; consummately so. “Where in the world did you drop from?” the lady inquired.
“I’ve been here for some time,” Littlemore said, going forward rather deliberately to shake hands with her. He took it alertly, yet was more serious than she, keeping his eye on her own as if she had been just a trifle dangerous. Such was the manner in which a duly discreet person would have approached some glossy graceful animal which had an occasional trick of biting.
“Here in Paris, do you mean?”
“No; here and there—in Europe generally.”
“Well, it’s queer I haven’t met you.”
“Better late than never!” said Littlemore. His smile was a little fixed.
“Well, you look very natural,” the lady went on.
“So do you—or very charming—it’s the same thing,” he answered, laughing and evidently wishing to be easy. It was as if, face to face and after a considerable lapse of time, he had found her more imposing than he expected when, in the stalls below, he determined to come and meet her. As he spoke the young man who was with her gave up his inspection of Voltaire and faced about listlessly, without looking at his companion’s acquaintances.
“I want to introduce you to my friend,” she went on. “Sir Arthur Demesne—Mr. Littlemore. Mr. Littlemore—Sir Arthur Demesne. Sir Arthur Demesne’s an Englishman—Mr. Littlemore’s a countryman of mine, an old friend. I haven’t seen him for years. For how long? Don’t let’s count—I wonder you knew me,” she continued, addressing this recovered property. “I’m fearfully changed.” All this was said in a clear gay tone which was the more audible as she spoke with an odd sociable slowness. The two men, to do honour to her introduction, silently exchanged a glance; the Englishman perhaps coloured a little. He was very conscious of his companion. “I haven’t introduced you to many people yet,” she dropped.
“Oh I don’t mind,” said Sir Arthur Demesne.
“Well, it’s queer to see you!” she pursued, with her charming eyes still on Littlemore. “You’ve changed, too—I can see that.”
“Not where you’re concerned.”
“That’s what I want to find out. Why don’t you introduce your friend? I see he’s dying to know me!” And then when he had proceeded with this ceremony,which he reduced to its simplest elements, merely glancing at Rupert Waterville and murmuring his name, “Ah, you don’t tell him whoIam!” the lady cried while the young secretary made her a formal salutation. “I hope you haven’t forgotten!”
Littlemore showed her a face intended to express more than what he had hitherto permitted himself; if its meaning had been put into words these would have been: “Ah, but by which name?”
She answered the unspoken question, putting out her hand as she had done to Littlemore. “Happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Waterville. I’m Mrs. Headway—perhaps you’ve heard of me. If you’ve ever been in America you must have heard of me. Not so much in New York, but in the Western cities. Youarean American? Well then we’re all compatriots—except Sir Arthur Demesne. Let me introduce you to Sir Arthur. Sir Arthur Demesne, Mr. Waterville—Mr. Waterville, Sir Arthur Demesne. Sir Arthur Demesne’s a member of Parliament: don’t he look young?” She waited for no judgement on this appeal, but suddenly made another as she moved her bracelets back over long loose gloves. “Well, Mr. Littlemore, what are you thinking of?”
He was thinking that he must indeed have forgotten her name, for the one she had pronounced awakened no association. But he could hardly tell her that. “I’m thinking of San Pablo.”
“The back piazza at my sister’s? Oh don’t; it was too horrid. She has left now. I believe every one has left.” The member of Parliament drew out his watch with the air of a man who could take no part in these domestic reminiscences; he appeared to combine a generic self-possession with a degree of individual shyness. He said something about its being time they should go back to their seats, but Mrs. Headway paid no attention to the remark. Waterville wishedher to linger and indeed felt almost as free to examine her as he had to walk, in a different spirit, round the statue of the author ofCandide. Her low-growing hair, with its fine dense undulations, was of a shade of blackness that has now become rare; her complexion had the bloom of a white flower; her profile, when she turned her head, was as pure and fine as the outline of a cameo. “You know this is their first theatre,” she continued, as if to rise to the occasion. “And this is Voltaire, the celebrated writer.”
“I’m devoted to the Comédie Française”—Waterville rose as well.
“Dreadfully bad house; we didn’t hear a word,” said Sir Arthur Demesne.
“Ah, yes, the sad far boxes!” murmured Waterville.
“I’m rather disappointed,” Mrs. Headway went on. “But I want to see what becomes of that woman.”
“Doña Clorinde? Oh I suppose they’ll shoot her. They generally shoot the women in French plays,” Littlemore said.
“It will remind me of San Pablo!” cried Mrs. Headway.
“Ah, at San Pablo the women did the shooting.”
“They don’t seem to have killedyou!” she returned archly.
“No, but I’m riddled with wounds.”
“Well, this is very remarkable”—the lady reverted to Houdon’s statue. “It’s beautifully modelled.”
“You’re perhaps reading M. de Voltaire,” Littlemore suggested.
“No; but I’ve purchased his works.”
“They’re not proper reading for ladies,” said the young Englishman severely, offering his arm to his charge.
“Ah, you might have told me before I had bought them!” she exclaimed in exaggerated dismay.
“I couldn’t imagine you’d buy a hundred and fifty volumes.”
“A hundred and fifty? I’ve only bought two.”
“Perhaps two won’t hurt you!” Littlemore hopefully contributed.
She darted him a reproachful ray. “I know what you mean—that I’m too bad already! Well, bad as I am you must come and see me.” And she threw him the name of her hotel as she walked away with her Englishman. Waterville looked after the latter with a certain interest; he had heard of him in London and had seen his portrait inVanity Fair.
It was not yet time to go down, in spite of this gentleman’s saying so, and Littlemore and his friend passed out to the balcony of the foyer. “Headway—Headway? Where the deuce did she get that name?” Littlemore asked as they looked down into the flaring dusk.
“From her husband I suppose,” his friend suggested.
“From her husband? From which? The last was named Beck.”
“How many has she had?” the younger man inquired, anxious to hear how it was Mrs. Headway wasn’t respectable.
“I haven’t the least idea. But it wouldn’t be difficult to find out, as I believe they’re all living. She was Mrs. Beck—Nancy Beck—when I knew her.”
“Nancy Beck!” cried Waterville, aghast. He was thinking of her delicate profile, like that of a pretty Roman empress. There was a great deal to be explained.
Littlemore explained it in a few words before they returned to their places, admitting indeed that he wasn’t yet able to clear up her present appearance. She was a memory of his Western days; he had seen her last some six years before. He had known her verywell and in several places; the circle of her activity was chiefly the South-west. This activity had been during that time of a vague character, except in the sense that it was exclusively social. She was supposed to have a husband, one Philadelphia Beck, the editor of a Democratic newspaper, theDakota Sentinel; but Littlemore had never seen him—the pair were living apart—and it had been the impression at San Pablo that matrimony, for Mr. and Mrs. Beck, was about played out. He remembered now to have heard afterwards that she was getting a divorce. She got divorces very easily, she was so taking in court. She had got one or two before from a man whose name he couldn’t remember, and there was a legend that even these were not the first. She had been enormously divorced! When he first met her in California she called herself Mrs. Grenville, which he had been given to understand was not an appellation acquired by matrimony, but her parental name, resumed after the dissolution of an unfortunate union. She had had these episodes—her unions were all unfortunate—and had borne half-a-dozen names. She was a charming woman, especially for New Mexico; but she had been divorced too often—it was a tax on one’s credulity: she must have repudiated more husbands than she had married.
At San Pablo she was staying with her sister, whose actual spouse—she too had been divorced—the principal man of the place, kept a bank (with the aid of a six-shooter), and who had never suffered Nancy to want for a home during her unattached periods. Nancy had begun very young; she must be about thirty-seven to-day. That was all he meant by her not being respectable. Her chronology was rather mixed; her sister at least had once told him that there was one winter when she didn’t know herself who was Nancy’s husband. She had gone inmainly for editors—she esteemed the journalistic profession. They must all have been dreadful ruffians, for her own amiability was manifest. It was well known that whatever she had done she had done in self-defence. In fine she had done things—that was the main point now. She had been as pretty as could still be seen, and as good-natured and as clever as could likewise be yet measured; she had been quite the best company in those parts. She was a genuine product of the wild West—a flower of the Pacific slope; ignorant, absurd, crude, but full of pluck and spirit, of natural intelligence and of a certain intermittent haphazard felicity of impulse. She used to sigh that she only wanted a chance—apparently she had found that now. At one time, without her, he didn’t see how he could have put up with the life. He had started a cattle-ranch, to which San Pablo was the nearest town, and he used to ride over to see her. Sometimes he stayed there a week; then he went to see her every evening. It was infernally hot; they used to sit on the back piazza. She was always as attractive and very nearly as well-dressed as they had just beheld her. As far as appearance went she might have been transplanted at an hour’s notice from that dusty old settlement to the city by the Seine.
“Some of those barbaric women are wonderful,” Littlemore said. “Like her, they only want a chance.”
He hadn’t been in love with her—there never was anything of that sort between them. There might have been of course, but as happened there wasn’t. Headway would have been then the successor of Beck; perhaps there had been others between. She was in no sort of “society”; she only had a local reputation (“the well-known Texan belle,” the newspapers called her—the other editors, to whom she wasn’t married), though indeed in that spaciouscivilisation the locality was large. She knew nothing of the East and to the best of his belief at that period had never seen New York. Various things might have happened in those six years, however; no doubt she had “come up.” The West was sending us everything (Littlemore spoke as a New Yorker); no doubt it would send us at last our brilliant women. The well-known Texan belle used to look quite over the head of New York; even in those days she thought and talked of Paris, which there was no prospect of her knowing: that was the way she had got on in New Mexico. She had had her ambition, her presentiments; she had known she was meant for better things. Even at San Pablo she had prefigured her member of Parliament; every now and then a wandering Englishman came within her range. They weren’t all Sir Arthurs, like her present acquisition, but they were usually a change from the editors. What she was doing with her present acquisition Littlemore was curious to see. She was certainly—if he had any capacity for that state of mind, which was not too apparent—making the gentleman happy. She looked very splendid; Headway had probably made a “pile,” an achievement not to be imputed to any of the others. She didn’t accept money—he was sure she didn’t accept money. With all of which, on their way back to their seats, Littlemore, whose tone had been humorous, but with that strain of the pensive which is inseparable from retrospect, suddenly burst into audible laughter. “The modelling of statues and the works of Voltaire!” he broke out, recurring to two or three things she had said. “It’s touching to hear her attempt those flights, for in New Mexico she knew nothing about modelling.”