II

His delay in going to see her was nevertheless calculated; there were

more reasons for it than we need at once go into. When he did go,

however, Mrs. Headway was at home and he was scarce surprised to find Sir

Arthur Demesne in her sitting-room. There was something in the air that

spoke of the already ample stretch of this gentleman’s visit. Littlemore

thought probable that, given the circumstances, he would now bring it to

a close; he must have learned from their hostess that this welcomed

compatriot was an old and familiar friend. He might of course have

definite rights—he had every appearance of it, but the more they were

rooted the more gracefully he could afford to waive them. Littlemore

made these reflexions while the friend in possession faced him without

sign of departure. Mrs. Headway was very gracious—she had ever the

manner of having known you a hundred years; she scolded Littlemore

extravagantly for not having been to see her sooner, but this was only a

form of the gracious. By daylight she looked a little faded, but there

was a spirit in her that rivalled the day. She had the best rooms in the

hotel and an air of extreme opulence and prosperity; her courier sat

outside, in the antechamber, and she evidently knew how to live. She

attempted to include Sir Arthur in the conversation, but though the young

man remained in his place he failed to grasp the offered perch. He

followed but as from the steep bank of the stream, where yet he was

evidently not at his ease. The conversation therefore remained

superficial—a quality that of old had by no means belonged to Mrs.

Headway’s interviews with her friends. The Englishman hovered with a

distant air which Littlemore at first, with a good deal of private

amusement, simply attributed to jealousy.

But after a time Mrs. Headway spoke to the point. “My dear Sir Arthur, I

wish very much you’d go.”

The member of Parliament got up and took his hat. “I thought I should

oblige you by staying.”

“To defend me against Mr. Littlemore? I’ve known him since I was a

baby—I know the worst he can do.” She fixed her charming smile on her

retreating visitor and added with much unexpectedness: “I want to talk to

him about my past!”

“That’s just what I want to hear,” said Sir Arthur, with his hand on the

door.

“We’re going to talk American; you wouldn’t understand us! He speaks in

the English style,” she explained in her little sufficient way as the

Baronet, who announced that at all events he would come back in the

evening, let himself out.

“He doesn’t know about your past?” Littlemore inquired, trying not to

make the question sound impertinent.

“Oh yes; I’ve told him everything; but he doesn’t understand. One has to

hold an Englishman by the head, you know, and kind of force it down. He

has never heard of a woman being—” But here Mrs. Headway checked

herself, while Littlemore filled out the blank. “What are you laughing

at? It doesn’t matter,” she went on; “there are more things in the world

than those people have heard of. However, I like them very much; at

least I like _him_. He’s such a regular gentleman; do you know what I

mean? Only, as he stays too long and he ain’t amusing, I’m very glad to

see you for a change.”

“Do you mean I’m not a regular gentleman?” Littlemore asked.

“No indeed; you used to be out there. I think you were the only one—and

I hope you are still. That’s why I recognised you the other night—I

might have cut you, you know.”

“You can still, if you like. It’s not too late.”

“Oh no, that’s not what I want. I want you to help me.”

“To help you?”

Mrs. Headway fixed her eyes for a moment on the door. “Do you suppose

that man is there still?”

“The member of Parliament?”

“No, I mean Max. Max is my courier,” said Mrs. Headway with some

impressiveness.

“I haven’t the least idea. I’ll see if you like.”

“No—in that case I should have to give him an order, and I don’t know

what in the world to ask him to do. He sits there for hours; with my

simple habits I afford him no employment. I’m afraid I’ve no grand

imagination.”

“The burden of grandeur!” said Littlemore.

“Oh yes, I’m very grand for clothes and things. But on the whole I like

it. I’m only afraid he’ll hear. I talk so very loud. That’s another

thing I’m trying to get over.”

“Why do you want to be different?”

“Well, because everything else is so,” Mrs. Headway bravely pleaded.

“Did you hear that I had lost my husband?” she went on abruptly.

“Do you mean—a—Mr.—?” and Littlemore paused with an effect that didn’t

seem to come home to her.

“I mean Mr. Headway,” she said with dignity. “I’ve been through a good

deal since you saw me last: marriage and death and trouble and all sorts

of things.”

“You had been through a good deal of marriage before that,” her old

friend ventured to observe.

She rested her eyes on him with extravagant intensity and without a

change of colour. “Not so much, not so much!—”

“Not so much as might have been thought?”

“Not so much as was reported. I forget whether I was married when I saw

you last.”

“It was one of the reports,” said Littlemore. “But I never saw Mr.

Beck.”

“You didn’t lose much; he was too mean to live. I’ve done certain things

in my life that I’ve never understood; no wonder others can’t do much

with them. But that’s all over! Are you sure Max doesn’t hear?” she

asked quickly.

“Not at all sure. But if you suspect him of listening at the keyhole I’d

send him away.”

“I don’t think he does that. I’m always rushing to the door.”

“Then he doesn’t hear. I had no idea you had so many secrets. When I

parted with you Mr. Headway was in the future.”

“Well, now he’s in the past. He was a pleasant man—I can understand my

doing that. But he only lived a year. He had neuralgia of the heart; he

left me very well off.” She mentioned these various facts as if they

were quite of the same order.

“I’m glad to hear _that_. You used to have expensive tastes.”

“I’ve plenty of money,” said Mrs. Headway. “Mr. Headway had property at

Denver, which has increased immensely in value. After his death I tried

New York. But I don’t take much stock in New York.” Littlemore’s

hostess spoke these last words in a tone that reeked of some strong

experience. “I mean to live in Europe. I guess I can do with Europe,”

she stated; and the manner of it had the touch of prophecy, as the other

proposition had had the echo of history.

Littlemore was much struck with all this; he was greatly enlivened by

Mrs. Headway. “Then you’re travelling with that young man?” he pursued,

with the coolness of a person who wishes to make his entertainment go as

far as possible.

She folded her arms as she leaned back in her chair. “Look here, Mr.

Littlemore; I’m about as sweet-tempered as I used to be in America, but I

know a great deal more. Of course I ain’t travelling with that young

man. He’s only a good friend.”

“He isn’t a good lover?” Littlemore ventured.

“Do people travel—publicly—with their lovers? I don’t want you to laugh

at me—I want you to help me.” Her appeal might, in its almost childish

frankness, have penetrated; she recognised his wisdom. “As I tell you,

I’ve taken a great fancy to this grand old Europe; I feel as if I should

never go back. But I want to see something of the life. I think it

would suit me—if I could get started a little. George Littlemore,” she

added in a moment—“I may as well be _real_, for I ain’t at all ashamed.

I want to get into society. That’s what I’m after!”

He settled himself in his chair with the feeling of a man who, knowing

that he will have to pull, seeks to obtain a certain leverage. It was in

a tone of light jocosity, almost of encouragement, however, that he

repeated: “Into society? It seems to me you’re in it already, with the

big people over here for your adorers.”

“That’s just what I want to know—if they _are_ big,” she promptly said.

“Is a Baronet much?”

“So they’re apt to think. But I know very little about it.”

“Ain’t you in society yourself?”

“I? Never in the world! Where did you get that idea? I care no more

about society than about Max’s buttons.”

Mrs. Headway’s countenance assumed for a moment a look of extreme

disappointment, and Littlemore could see that, having heard of his

silver-mine and his cattle-ranch, and knowing that he was living in

Europe, she had hoped to find him eminent in the world of fashion. But

she speedily took heart. “I don’t believe a word of it. You know you’re

a real gentleman—you can’t help yourself.”

“I may be a gentleman, but I’ve none of the habits of one.” Littlemore

had a pause and then added: “I guess I’ve sat too much on back piazzas.”

She flushed quickly; she instantly understood—understood even more than

he had meant to say. But she wished to make use of him, and it was of

more importance that she should appear forgiving—especially as she had

the happy consciousness of being so—than that she should punish a cruel

speech. She would be wise, however, to recognise everything. “That

makes no difference—a gentleman’s always a gentleman.”

“Ah, not the way a lady’s always a lady!” he laughed.

“Well, talking of ladies, it’s unnatural that, through your sister, you

shouldn’t know something about European society,” said Mrs. Headway.

At the mention of his sister, made with a studied lightness of reference

which he caught as it passed, Littlemore was unable to repress a start.

“What in the world have you to do with my sister?” he would have liked to

say. The introduction of this relative was disagreeable to him; she

belonged quite to another order of ideas, and it was out of the question

Mrs. Headway should ever make her acquaintance—if this was what, as the

latter would have said, she was “after.” But he took advantage of a side

issue. “What do you mean by European society? One can’t talk about

that. It’s an empty phrase.”

“Well, I mean English society; I mean the society your sister lives in;

that’s what I mean,” said his hostess, who was quite prepared to be

definite. “I mean the people I saw in London last May—the people I saw

at the opera and in the park, the people who go to the Queen’s

drawing-rooms. When I was in London I stayed at that hotel on the corner

of Piccadilly—the one looking straight down Saint James’s Street—and I

spent hours together at the window there looking at the people in the

carriages. I had a carriage of my own, and when I wasn’t at my window I

was riding all around. I was all alone; I saw every one, but I knew no

one—I had no one to tell me. I didn’t know Sir Arthur then—I only met

him a month ago at Homburg. He followed me to Paris—that’s how he came

to be my guest.” Serenely, prosaically, without a breath of the

inflation of vanity, she made this last assertion: it was as if she were

used to being followed or as if a gentleman one met at Homburg would

inevitably follow. In the same tone she went on: “I attracted a good

deal of attention in London—I could easily see that.”

“You’ll do that wherever you go,” Littlemore said—insufficiently enough,

as he felt.

“I don’t want to attract so much; I think it’s vulgar.” She spoke as if

she liked to use the word. She was evidently open to new sources of

pleasure.

“Every one was looking at you the other night at the theatre,” Littlemore

continued. “How can you hope to escape notice?”

“I don’t want to escape notice. People have always looked at me and I

guess they always will. But there are different ways of being looked at,

and I know the way I want. I mean to have it too!” Mrs. Headway prettily

shrilled. Yes, she was full of purpose.

He sat there face to face with her and for some time said nothing. He

had a mixture of feelings, and the memory of other places, other hours,

was stealing over him. There had been of old a very considerable absence

of interposing surfaces between these two—he had known her as one knew

people only amid the civilisation of big tornadoes and back piazzas. He

had liked her extremely in a place where it would have been ridiculous to

be difficult to please. But his sense of this fact was somehow connected

with other and such now alien facts; his liking for Nancy Beck was an

emotion of which the sole setting was a back piazza. She presented

herself here on a new basis—she appeared to want to be classified afresh.

Littlemore said to himself that this was too much trouble; he had taken

her at the great time in that way—he couldn’t begin at this late hour to

take her in another way. He asked himself if she were going to be a real

bore. It wasn’t easy to suppose her bent on ravage, but she might become

tiresome if she were too disposed to be different. It made him rather

afraid when she began to talk about European society, about his sister,

to pronounce things vulgar. Littlemore was naturally merciful and

decently just; but there was in his composition an element of the

indolent, the sceptical, perhaps even the brutal, which made him

decidedly prefer the simplicity of their former terms of intercourse. He

had no particular need to see a woman rise again, as the mystic process

was called; he didn’t believe in women’s rising again. He believed in

their not going down, thought it perfectly possible and eminently

desirable; but held it was much better for society that the divisions,

the categories, the differing values, should be kept clear. He didn’t

believe in bridging the chasms, in muddling the kinds. In general he

didn’t pretend to say what was good for society—society seemed to him

rather in a bad way; but he had a conviction on this particular point.

Nancy Beck going in for the great prizes, that spectacle might be

entertaining for a simple spectator; but it would be a nuisance, an

embarrassment, from the moment anything more than detached “fun” should

represent his share. He had no wish to be “mean,” but it might be well

to show her he wasn’t to be humbugged.

“Oh if there’s anything you want you’ll have it,” he said in answer to

her last remark. “You’ve always had what you want.”

“Well, I want something new this time. Does your sister reside in

London?”

“My dear lady, what do you know about my sister?” Littlemore asked.

“She’s not a woman you’d care in the least for.”

His old friend had a marked pause. “You don’t really respect me!” she

then abruptly and rather gaily cried. It had one of her “Texan” effects

of drollery; so that, yes, evidently, if he wished to preserve the

simplicity of their former intercourse she was willing to humour him.

“Ah, my dear Mrs. Beck—!” he vaguely protested, using her former name

quite by accident. At San Pablo he—and apparently she—had never thought

whether he respected her or not. That never came up.

“That’s a proof of it—calling me by that hateful name! Don’t you believe

I’m married? I haven’t been fortunate in my names,” she pensively added.

“You make it very awkward when you say such mad things. My sister lives

most of the year in the country; she’s very simple, rather dull, perhaps

a trifle narrow-minded. You’re very clever, very lively, and as large

and loose and free as all creation. That’s why I think you wouldn’t like

her.”

“You ought to be ashamed to run down your sister!” Mrs. Headway made

prompt answer. “You told me once—at San Pablo—that she was the nicest

woman you knew. I made a note of that, you see. And you told me she was

just my age. So that makes it rather inglorious for you if you won’t

introduce me!” With which she gave a laugh that perhaps a little

heralded danger. “I’m not in the least afraid of her being dull. It’s

all right, it’s just refined and nice, to be dull. I’m ever so much too

exciting.”

“You are indeed, ever so much! But nothing is more easy than to know my

sister,” said Littlemore, who knew perfectly that what he said was

untrue. And then as a diversion from this delicate topic he brought out:

“Are you going to marry Sir Arthur?”

“Don’t you think I’ve been married about enough?”

“Possibly; but this is a new line, it would be different. An

Englishman—that’s a new sensation.”

“If I _should_ marry it would be a European,” she said judiciously.

“Your chance is very good—they’re all marrying Americans.”

“He would have to be some one fine, the man I should marry now. I have a

good deal to make up, you know. That’s what I want to learn about Sir

Arthur. All this time you haven’t told me.”

“I’ve nothing in the world to tell—I’ve never heard of him. Hasn’t he

told you himself?”

“Nothing at all; he’s very modest. He doesn’t brag nor ‘blow’ nor make

himself out anything great. That’s what I like him for: I think it’s in

such good taste. I do love good taste!” said Mrs. Headway. “But all

this time,” she added, “you haven’t told me you’d help me.”

“How can I help you? I’m no one here, you know—I’ve no power.”

“You can help me by not preventing me. I want you to promise not to

prevent me.” She continued to give him her charming conscious eyes,

which seemed to look far into his own.

“Good Lord, how could I prevent you?”

“Well, I’m not quite sure of how. But you might try.”

“Oh I’m too lazy and too stupid,” Littlemore said.

“Yes,” she replied, musing as she still looked at him. “I think you’re

too stupid. But I think you’re also too kind,” she added more

graciously. She was almost irresistible when she said such a thing as

that.

They talked for a quarter of an hour longer, and at last—as if she had

had scruples—she spoke to him of his own marriage, of the death of his

wife, matters to which she alluded more felicitously (as he thought) than

to some other points. “If you’ve a little girl you ought to be very

happy; that’s what I should like to have. Lord, I should make her a nice

woman! Not like me—in another style!” When he rose to leave her she

made a great point of his coming again—she was to be some weeks longer in

Paris. And he must bring Mr. Waterville.

“Your English friend won’t like that—our coming very often,” Littlemore

reminded her as he stood with his hand on the door.

But she met this without difficulty. “I don’t know what he has to do

with it.”

“Neither do I. Only he must be in love with you.”

“That doesn’t give him any right. Mercy, if I had had to put myself out

for all the men that have been in love with me!”

“Of course you’d have had a terrible life. Even doing as you please

you’ve had rather an agitated one,” Littlemore pursued. “But your young

Englishman’s sentiments appear to give him the right to sit there, after

one comes in, looking blighted and bored. That might become very

tiresome.”

“The moment he becomes tiresome I send him away. You can trust me for

that.”

“Oh it doesn’t matter after all.” Our friend was perfectly conscious

that nothing would suit him less than to have undisturbed possession of

Mrs. Headway.

She came out with him into the antechamber. Mr. Max, the courier, was

fortunately not there. She lingered a little; she appeared to have more

to say. “On the contrary he likes you to come,” she then continued; “he

wants to study my friends.”

“To study them?”

“He wants to find out about me, and he thinks they may tell him

something. Some day he’ll ask you right out ‘What sort of a woman is she

anyway?’”

“Hasn’t he found out yet?”

“He doesn’t understand me,” said Mrs. Headway, surveying the front of her

dress. “He has never seen any one like me.”

“I should imagine not!”

“So he’ll just try to find out from you.”

“Well then he _shall_ find out,” Littlemore returned. “I’ll just tell

him you’re the most charming woman in Europe.”

“That ain’t a description! Besides, he knows it. He wants to know if

I’m respectable.”

“Why should he fuss about it?” Littlemore asked—not at once.

She grew a little pale; she seemed to be watching his lips. “Well, mind

you tell him all right,” she went on, with her wonderful gay glare, the

strain of which yet brought none of her colour back.

“Respectable? I’ll tell him you’re adorable!”

She stood a moment longer. “Ah, you’re no use!” she rather harshly

wailed. And she suddenly turned away and passed back into her

sitting-room, with the heavy rustle of her far-trailing skirts.