It had all gone so fast after this that Milly uttered but the truth
nearest to hand in saying to the gentleman on her right--who was, by
the same token, the gentleman on her hostess's left--that she scarce
even then knew where she was: the words marking her first full sense of
a situation really romantic. They were already dining, she and her
friend, at Lancaster Gate, and surrounded, as it seemed to her, with
every English accessory; though her consciousness of Mrs. Lowder's
existence, and still more of her remarkable identity, had been of so
recent and so sudden a birth. Susie, as she was apt to call her
companion for a lighter change, had only had to wave a neat little wand
for the fairy-tale to begin at once; in consequence of which Susie now
glittered--for, with Mrs. Stringham's new sense of success, it came to
that--in the character of a fairy godmother. Milly had almost insisted
on dressing her, for the present occasion, as one; and it was no fault
of the girl's if the good lady had not now appeared in a peaked hat, a
short petticoat and diamond shoe-buckles, brandishing the magic crutch.
The good lady, in truth, bore herself not less contentedly than if
these insignia had marked her work; and Milly's observation to Lord
Mark had just been, doubtless, the result of such a light exchange of
looks with her as even the great length of the table had not baffled.
There were twenty persons between them, but this sustained passage was
the sharpest sequel yet to that other comparison of views during the
pause on the Swiss pass. It almost appeared to Milly that their fortune
had been unduly precipitated--as if, properly, they were in the
position of having ventured on a small joke and found the answer out of
proportion grave. She could not at this moment, for instance, have said
whether, with her quickened perceptions, she were more enlivened or
oppressed; and the case might in fact have been serious had she not, by
good fortune, from the moment the picture loomed, quickly made up her
mind that what finally most concerned her was neither to seek nor to
shirk, was not even to wonder too much, but was to let things come as
they would, since there was little enough doubt of how they would go.
Lord Mark had been brought to her before dinner--not by Mrs. Lowder,
but by the handsome girl, that lady's niece, who was now at the other
end and on the same side as Susie; he had taken her in, and she meant
presently to ask him about Miss Croy, the handsome girl, actually
offered to her sight--though now in a splendid way--but for the second
time. The first time had been the occasion--only three days before--of
her calling at their hotel with her aunt and then making, for our other
two heroines, a great impression of beauty and eminence. This
impression had remained so with Milly that, at present, and although
her attention was aware at the same time of everything else, her eyes
were mainly engaged with Kate Croy when not engaged with Susie. That
wonderful creature's eyes moreover readily met them--she ranked now as
a wonderful creature; and it seemed a part of the swift prosperity of
the American visitors that, so little in the original reckoning, she
should yet appear conscious, charmingly, frankly conscious, of
possibilities of friendship for them. Milly had easily and, as a guest,
gracefully generalised: English girls had a special, strong beauty, and
it particularly showed in evening dress--above all when, as was
strikingly the case with this one, the dress itself was what it should
be. That observation she had all ready for Lord Mark when they should,
after a little, get round to it. She seemed even now to see that there
might be a good deal they would get round to; the indication being
that, taken up once for all with her other neighbour, their hostess
would leave them much to themselves. Mrs. Lowder's other neighbour was
the Bishop of Murrum--a real bishop, such as Milly had never seen, with
a complicated costume, a voice like an old-fashioned wind instrument,
and a face all the portrait of a prelate; while the gentleman on our
young lady's left, a gentleman thick-necked, large and literal, who
looked straight before him and as if he were not to be diverted by vain
words from that pursuit, clearly counted as an offset to the possession
of Lord Mark. As Milly made out these things--with a shade of
exhilaration at the way she already fell in--she saw how she was
justified of her plea for people and her love of life. It wasn't then,
as the prospect seemed to show, so difficult to get into the current,
or to stand, at any rate, on the bank. It was easy to get near--if they
_were_ near; and yet the elements were different enough from any of her
old elements, and positively rich and strange.
She asked herself if her right-hand neighbour would understand what she
meant by such a description of them, should she throw it off; but
another of the things to which, precisely, her sense was awakened was
that no, decidedly, he wouldn't. It was nevertheless by this time open
to her that his line would be to be clever; and indeed, evidently, no
little of the interest was going to be in the fresh reference and fresh
effect both of people's cleverness and of their simplicity. She
thrilled, she consciously flushed, and turned pale with the
certitude--it had never been so present--that she should find herself
completely involved: the very air of the place, the pitch of the
occasion, had for her so positive a taste and so deep an undertone. The
smallest things, the faces, the hands, the jewels of the women, the
sound of words, especially of names, across the table, the shape of the
forks, the arrangement of the flowers, the attitude of the servants,
the walls of the room, were all touches in a picture and denotements in
a play; and they marked for her, moreover, her alertness of vision. She
had never, she might well believe, been in such a state of vibration;
her sensibility was almost too sharp for her comfort: there were, for
example, more indications than she could reduce to order in the manner
of the friendly niece, who struck her as distinguished and interesting,
as in fact surprisingly genial. This young woman's type had, visibly,
other possibilities; yet here, of its own free movement, it had already
sketched a relation. Were they, Miss Croy and she, to take up the tale
where their two elders had left it off so many years before?--were they
to find they liked each other and to try for themselves if a scheme of
constancy on more modern lines could be worked? She had doubted, as
they came to England, of Maud Manningham, had believed her a broken
reed and a vague resource, had seen their dependence on her as a state
of mind that would have been shamefully silly--so far as it _was_
dependence--had they wished to do any thing so inane as "get into
society." To have made their pilgrimage all for the sake of such
society as Mrs. Lowder might have in reserve for them--that didn't bear
thinking of at all, and she herself had quite chosen her course for
curiosity about other matters. She would have described this curiosity
as a desire to see the places she had read about, and _that_
description of her motive she was prepared to give her neighbour--even
though, as a consequence of it, he should find how little she had read.
It was almost at present as if her poor prevision had been rebuked by
the majesty--she could scarcely call it less--of the event, or at all
events by the commanding character of the two figures--she could
scarcely call _that_ less either--mainly presented. Mrs. Lowder and her
niece, however dissimilar, had at least in common that each was a great
reality. That was true, primarily, of the aunt--so true that Milly
wondered how her own companion had arrived, in other days, at so odd an
alliance; yet she none the less felt Mrs. Lowder as a person of whom
the mind might in two or three days roughly make the circuit. She would
sit there massive, at least, while one attempted it; whereas Miss Croy,
the handsome girl, would indulge in incalculable movements that might
interfere with one's tour. She was real, none the less, and everything
and everybody were real; and it served them right, no doubt, the pair
of them, for having rushed into their adventure.
Lord Mark's intelligence meanwhile, however, had met her own quite
sufficiently to enable him to tell her how little he could clear up her
situation. He explained, for that matter--or at least he hinted--that
there was no such thing, to-day in London, as saying where any one was.
Every one was everywhere--nobody was anywhere. He should be put to
it--yes, frankly--to give a name of any sort or kind to their hostess's
"set." _Was_ it a set at all, or wasn't it, and were there not really
no such things as sets, in the place, any more?--was there any thing
but the senseless shifting tumble, like that of some great greasy sea
in mid-Channel, of an overwhelming melted mixture? He threw out the
question, which seemed large; Milly felt that at the end of five
minutes he had thrown out a great many, though he followed none more
than a step or two; perhaps he would prove suggestive, but he helped
her as yet to no discriminations: he spoke as if he had given them up
from too much knowledge. He was thus at the opposite extreme from
herself, but, as a consequence of it, also wandering and lost; and he
was furthermore, for all his temporary incoherence, to which she
guessed there would be some key, as great a reality as either Mrs.
Lowder or Kate. The only light in which he placed the former of these
ladies was that of an extraordinary woman--a most extraordinary woman,
and "the more extraordinary the more one knows her," while of the
latter he said nothing, for the moment, but that she was tremendously,
yes, quite tremendously, good-looking. It was some time, she thought,
before his talk showed his cleverness, and yet each minute she believed
in it more, quite apart from what her hostess had told her on first
naming him. Perhaps he was one of the cases she had heard of at
home--those characteristic cases of people in England who concealed
their play of mind so much more than they showed it. Even Mr. Densher a
little did that. And what made Lord Mark, at any rate, so real either,
when this was a thing he so definitely insisted on? His type some how,
as by a life, a need, an intention of its own, insisted _for_ him; but
that was all. It was difficult to guess his age--whether he were a
young man who looked old or an old man who looked young; it seemed to
prove nothing, as against other things, that he was bald and, as might
have been said, slightly stale, or, more delicately perhaps, dry: there
was such a fine little fidget of preoccupied life in him, and his eyes,
at moments--though it was an appearance they could suddenly lose--were
as candid and clear as those of a pleasant boy. Very neat, very light,
and so fair that there was little other indication of his moustache
than his constantly feeling it--which was again boyish--he would have
affected her as the most intellectual person present if he had not
affected her as the most frivolous. The latter quality was rather in
his look than in anything else, though he constantly wore his double
eyeglass, which was, much more, Bostonian and thoughtful.
The idea of his frivolity had, no doubt, to do with his personal
designation, which represented--as yet, for our young woman, a little
confusedly--a connection with an historic patriciate, a class that, in
turn, also confusedly, represented an affinity with a social element
that she had never heard otherwise described than as "fashion." The
supreme social element in New York had never known itself but as
reduced to that category, and though Milly was aware that, as applied
to a territorial and political aristocracy, the label was probably too
simple, she had for the time none other at hand. She presently, it is
true, enriched her idea with the perception that her interlocutor was
indifferent; yet this, indifferent as aristocracies notoriously were,
saw her but little further, inasmuch as she felt that, in the first
place, he would much rather get on with her than not, and in the second
was only thinking of too many matters of his own. If he kept her in
view on the one hand and kept so much else on the other--the way he
crumbed up his bread was a proof--why did he hover before her as a
potentially insolent noble? She couldn't have answered the question,
and it was precisely one of those that swarmed. They were complicated,
she might fairly have said, by his visibly knowing, having known from
afar off, that she was a stranger and an American, and by his none the
less making no more of it than if she and her like were the chief of
his diet. He took her, kindly enough, but imperturbably, irreclaimably,
for granted, and it wouldn't in the least help that she herself knew
him, as quickly, for having been in her country and threshed it out.
There would be nothing for her to explain or attenuate or brag about;
she could neither escape nor prevail by her strangeness; he would have,
for that matter, on such a subject, more to tell her than to learn from
her. She might learn from _him_ why she was so different from the
handsome girl--which she didn't know, being merely able to feel it; or
at any rate might learn from him why the handsome girl was so different
from her.
On these lines, however, they would move later; the lines immediately
laid down were, in spite of his vagueness for his own convenience,
definite enough. She was already, he observed to her, thinking what she
should say on her other side--which was what Americans were always
doing. She needn't in conscience say anything at all; but Americans
never knew that, nor ever, poor creatures, yes (_she_ had interposed
the "poor creatures!") what not to do. The burdens they took on--the
things, positively, they made an affair of! This easy and, after all,
friendly jibe at her race was really for her, on her new friend's part,
the note of personal recognition so far as she required it; and she
gave him a prompt and conscious example of morbid anxiety by insisting
that her desire to be, herself, "lovely" all round was justly founded
on the lovely way Mrs. Lowder had met her. He was directly interested
in that, and it was not till afterwards that she fully knew how much
more information about their friend he had taken than given. Here
again, for instance, was a pertinent note for her: she had, on the
spot, with her first plunge into the obscure depths of a society
constituted from far back, encountered the interesting phenomenon of
complicated, of possibly sinister motive. However, Maud Manningham (her
name, even in her presence, somehow still fed the fancy) _had,_ all the
same, been lovely, and one was going to meet her now quite as far on as
one had one's self been met. She had been with them at their
hotel--they were a pair--before even they had supposed she could have
got their letter. Of course indeed they had written in advance, but
they had followed that up very fast. She had thus engaged them to dine
but two days later, and on the morrow again, without waiting for a
return visit, waiting for anything, she had called with her niece. It
was as if she really cared for them, and it was magnificent
fidelity--fidelity to Mrs. Stringham, her own companion and Mrs.
Lowder's former schoolmate, the lady with the charming face and the
rather high dress down there at the end.
Lord Mark took in through his nippers these balanced attributes of
Susie. "But isn't Mrs. Stringham's fidelity then equally magnificent?"
"Well, it's a beautiful sentiment; but it isn't as if she had anything
to _give."_
"Hasn't she got you?" Lord Mark presently asked.
"Me--to give Mrs. Lowder?" Milly had clearly not yet seen herself in
the light of such an offering. "Oh, I'm rather a poor present; and I
don't feel as if, even at that, I've as yet quite been given."
"You've been shown, and if our friend has jumped at you it comes to the
same thing." He made his jokes, Lord Mark, without amusement for
himself; yet it wasn't that he was grim. "To be seen you must
recognise, _is,_ for you, to be jumped at; and, if it's a question of
being shown, here you are again. Only it has now been taken out of your
friend's hands; it's Mrs. Lowder, already, who's getting the benefit.
Look round the table and you'll make out, I think, that you're being,
from top to bottom, jumped at."
"Well, then," said Milly, "I seem also to feel that I like it better
than being made fun of."
It was one of the things she afterwards saw--Milly was for ever seeing
things afterwards--that her companion had here had some way of his own,
quite unlike any one's else, of assuring her of his consideration. She
wondered how he had done it, for he had neither apologised nor
protested. She said to herself, at any rate, that he had led her on;
and what was most odd was the question by which he had done so. "Does
she know much about you?"
"No, she just likes us."
Even for this his travelled lordship, seasoned and saturated, had no
laugh. "I mean _you_ particularly. Has that lady with the charming
face, which _is_ charming, told her?"