IV

Rupert Waterville, in the midst of intercourse in which every one perhaps

had a good many mental reserves, never forgot that he was in a

representative position, that he was official and responsible; and he

asked himself more than once how far he was sure it was right, as they

said in Boston, to countenance Mrs. Headway’s claim to the character even

of the American lady thrown to the surface by the late inordinate spread

of excavation. In his own way as puzzled as poor Sir Arthur, he indeed

flattered himself he was as particular as any Englishman could be.

Suppose that after all this free association the well-known Texan belle

should come over to London and ask at the Legation to be presented to the

Queen? It would be so awkward to refuse her—of course they would have to

refuse her—that he was very careful to make no tacit promises. She might

construe anything as a tacit promise—he knew how the smallest gestures of

diplomatists were studied and interpreted. It was his effort, therefore,

to be really diplomatic in his relations with this attractive but

dangerous woman. The party of four used often to dine together—Sir

Arthur pushed his confidence so far—and on these occasions their fair

friend, availing herself of one of the privileges of a _femme du monde_

even at the most expensive restaurant, used to wipe her glasses with her

napkin. One evening when after polishing a goblet she held it up to the

light, giving it, with her head on one side, the least glimmer of a wink,

he noted as he watched her that she looked like a highly modern

bacchante. He observed at this moment that the Baronet was gazing at her

too, and wondered if the same idea had come to him. He often wondered

what the Baronet thought; he had devoted first and last a good deal of

attention to the psychology of the English “great land-owning”

consciousness. Littlemore, alone, at this moment, was characteristically

detached; he never appeared to watch Mrs. Headway, though she so often

watched him. Waterville asked himself among other things why Sir Arthur

hadn’t brought his own friends to see her, for Paris during the several

weeks that now elapsed abounded in English visitors. He guessed at her

having asked him and his having refused; he would have liked particularly

to know if she had asked him. He explained his curiosity to Littlemore,

who, however, took very little interest in it. Littlemore expressed

nevertheless the conviction that she _would_ have asked him; she never

would be deterred by false delicacy.

“She has been very delicate with _you_,” Waterville returned to this.

“She hasn’t been at all pressing of late.”

“It’s only because she has given me up. She thinks I’m a brute.”

“I wonder what she thinks of me,” Waterville pensively said.

“Oh, she counts upon you to introduce her to the American Minister at the

Court of Saint James’s,” Littlemore opined without mercy. “It’s lucky

for you our representative here’s absent.”

“Well, the Minister has settled two or three difficult questions and I

suppose can settle this one. I shall do nothing but by the orders of my

chief.” He was very fond of alluding to his chief.

“She does me injustice,” Littlemore added in a moment. “I’ve spoken to

several people about her.”

“Oh, but what have you told them?”

“That she lives at the Hôtel Meurice and wants to know nice people.”

“They’re flattered, I suppose, at your thinking them nice, but they don’t

go,” said Waterville.

“I spoke of her to Mrs. Bagshaw, and Mrs. Bagshaw has promised to go.”

“Ah,” Waterville murmured; “you don’t call Mrs. Bagshaw nice! Mrs.

Headway won’t take up with Mrs. Bagshaw.”

“Well, then, that’s exactly what she wants—to be able to cut some one!”

Waterville had a theory that Sir Arthur was keeping Mrs. Headway as a

surprise—he meant perhaps to produce her during the next London season.

He presently, however, learned as much about the matter as he could have

desired to know. He had once offered to accompany his beautiful

compatriot to the Museum of the Luxembourg and tell her a little about

the modern French school. She had not examined this collection, in spite

of her resolve to see everything remarkable—she carried her “Murray” in

her lap even when she went to see the great tailor in the Rue de la Paix,

to whom, as she said, she had given no end of points—for she usually went

to such places with Sir Arthur, who was indifferent to the modern

painters of France. “He says there are much better men in England. I

must wait for the Royal Academy next year. He seems to think one can

wait for anything, but I’m not so good at waiting as he. I can’t afford

to wait—I’ve waited long enough.” So much as this Mrs. Headway said on

the occasion of her arranging with Rupert Waterville that they should

some day visit the Luxembourg together. She alluded to the Englishman as

if he were her husband or her brother, her natural protector and

companion.

“I wonder if she knows how that sounds?” Waterville again throbbingly

brooded. “I don’t believe she would do it if she knew how it sounds.”

And he also drew the moral that when one was a well-known Texan belle

there was no end to the things one had to learn: so marked was the

difference between being well-known and being well-bred. Clever as she

was, Mrs. Headway was right in saying she couldn’t afford to wait. She

must learn, she must live quickly. She wrote to Waterville one day to

propose that they should go to the Museum on the morrow; Sir Arthur’s

mother was in Paris, on her way to Cannes, where she was to spend the

winter. She was only passing through, but she would be there three days,

and he would naturally give himself up to her. She appeared to have the

properest ideas as to what a gentleman would propose to do for his

mother. She herself, therefore, should be free, and she named the hour

at which she should expect him to call for her. He was punctual to the

appointment, and they drove across the river in a large high-hung

barouche in which she constantly rolled about Paris. With Mr. Max on the

box—the courier sported enormous whiskers—this vehicle had an appearance

of great respectability, though Sir Arthur assured her (what she repeated

to her other friends) that in London next year they would do the thing

much better for her. It struck her other friends, of course, that this

backer was prepared to go very far; which on the whole was what

Waterville would have expected of him. Littlemore simply remarked that

at San Pablo she drove herself about in a ramshackle buggy with muddy

wheels and a mule very often in the shafts. Waterville throbbed afresh

as he asked himself if the mother of a Tory M.P. would really consent to

know her. She must of course be aware that it was a woman who was

keeping her son in Paris at a season when English gentlemen were most

naturally employed in shooting partridges.

“She’s staying at the Hôtel du Rhin, and I’ve made him feel that he

mustn’t leave her while she’s here,” Mrs. Headway said as they drove up

the narrow Rue de Seine. “Her name’s Lady Demesne, but her full title’s

the Honourable Lady Demesne, as she’s a Baron’s daughter. Her father

used to be a banker, but he did something or other for the Government—the

Tories, you know they call them—and so he was raised to the peerage. So

you see one _can_ be raised! She has a lady with her as a companion.”

Waterville’s neighbour gave him this information with a seriousness that

made him smile; he tried to measure the degree to which it wouldn’t have

occurred to her that he didn’t know how a Baron’s daughter was addressed.

In that she was truly provincial; she had a way of exaggerating the value

of her intellectual acquisitions and of assuming that others had shared

her darkness. He noted, too, that she had ended by suppressing poor Sir

Arthur’s name altogether and designating him only by a sort of conjugal

pronoun. She had been so much and so easily married that she was full of

these misleading references to gentlemen.

V

They walked through the gallery of the Luxembourg, and, except that Mrs.

Headway directed her beautiful gold _face-à-main_ to everything at once

and to nothing long enough, talked, as usual, rather too loud and

bestowed too much attention on the bad copies and strange copyists that

formed a circle round several indifferent pictures, she was an agreeable

companion and a grateful recipient of “tips.” She was quick to

understand, and Waterville was sure that before she left the gallery she

had made herself mistress of a new subject and was quite prepared to

compare the French school critically with the London exhibitions of the

following year. As he had remarked more than once with Littlemore, she

did alternate in the rummest stripes. Her conversation, her personality,

were full of little joints and seams, all of them very visible, where the

old and the new had been pieced and white-threaded together. When they

had passed through the different rooms of the palace Mrs. Headway

proposed that instead of returning directly they should take a stroll in

the adjoining gardens, which she wished very much to see and was sure she

should like. She had quite seized the difference between the old Paris

and the new, and felt the force of the romantic associations of the Latin

quarter as perfectly as if she had enjoyed all the benefits of modern

culture. The autumn sun was warm in the alleys and terraces of the

Luxembourg; the masses of foliage above them, clipped and squared, rusty

with ruddy patches, shed a thick lacework over the white sky, which was

streaked with the palest blue. The beds of flowers near the palace were

of the vividest yellow and red, and the sunlight rested on the smooth

grey walls of those parts of its basement that looked south; in front of

which, on the long green benches, a row of brown-cheeked nurses, in white

caps and white aprons, sat yielding sustenance to as many bundles of

white drapery. There were other white caps wandering in the broad paths,

attended by little brown French children; the small straw-seated chairs

were piled and stacked in some places and disseminated in others. An old

lady in black, with white hair fastened over each of her temples by a

large black comb, sat on the edge of a stone bench (too high for her

delicate length) motionless, staring straight before her and holding a

large door-key; under a tree a priest was reading—you could see his lips

move at a distance; a young soldier, dwarfish and red-legged, strolled

past with his hands in his pockets, which were very much distended.

Waterville sat down with Mrs. Headway on the straw-bottomed chairs and

she presently said: “I like this—it’s even better than the pictures in

the gallery. It’s more of a picture.”

“Everything in France is a picture—even things that are ugly,” Waterville

replied. “Everything makes a subject.”

“Well, I like France!” she summed up with a small incongruous sigh. Then

suddenly, from an impulse more conceivably allied to such a sound, she

added: “He asked me to go and see her, but I told him I wouldn’t. She

may come and see me if she likes.” This was so abrupt that Waterville

was slightly confounded; then he saw she had returned by a short cut to

Sir Arthur Demesne and his honourable mother. Waterville liked to know

about other people’s affairs, yet didn’t like this taste to be imputed to

him; and therefore, though much desiring to see how the old lady, as he

called her, would treat his companion, he was rather displeased with the

latter for being so confidential. He had never assumed he was so

intimate with her as that. Mrs. Headway, however, had a manner of taking

intimacy for granted—a manner Sir Arthur’s mother at least wouldn’t be

sure to like. He showed for a little no certainty of what she was

talking about, but she scarcely explained. She only went on through

untraceable transitions. “The least she can do is to come. I’ve been

very kind to her son. That’s not a reason for my going to her—it’s a

reason for her coming to me. Besides, if she doesn’t like what I’ve done

she can leave me alone. I want to get into European society, but I want

to do so in my own way. I don’t want to run after people; I want them to

run after me. I guess they will, some day!” Waterville listened to this

with his eyes on the ground; he felt himself turn very red. There was

something in such crudities on the part of the ostensibly refined that

shocked and mortified him, and Littlemore had been right in speaking of

her lack of the _nuance_. She was terribly distinct; her motives, her

impulses, her desires glared like the lighted signs of cafés-concerts.

She needed to keep on view, to hand about, like a woman with things to

sell on an hotel-terrace, her precious intellectual wares. Vehement

thought, with Mrs. Headway, was inevitably speech, though speech was not

always thought, and now she had suddenly become vehement. “If she does

once come—then, ah then, I shall be too perfect with her; I shan’t let

her go! But she must take the first step. I confess I hope she’ll be

nice.”

“Perhaps she won’t,” said Waterville perversely.

“Well, I don’t care if she ain’t. He has never told me anything about

her; never a word about any of his own belongings. If I wished I might

believe he’s ashamed of them.”

“I don’t think it’s that.”

“I know it ain’t. I know what it is. It’s just regular European

refinement. He doesn’t want to show off; he’s too much of a gentleman.

He doesn’t want to dazzle me—he wants me to like him for himself. Well,

I do like him,” she added in a moment. “But I shall like him still

better if he brings his mother. They shall know that in America.”

“Do you think it will make an impression in America?” Waterville amusedly

asked.

“It will show I’m visited by the British aristocracy. They won’t love

that.”

“Surely they grudge you no innocent pleasure,” the young man laughed.

“They grudged me common politeness—when I was in New York! Did you ever

hear how they treated me when I came on from my own section?”

Waterville stared; this episode was quite new to him. His companion had

turned toward him; her pretty head was tossed back like a flower in the

wind; there was a flush in her cheek, a more questionable charm in her

eye. “Ah, my dear New Yorkers, they’re incapable of rudeness!” he cried.

“You’re one of them, I see. But I don’t speak of the men. The men were

well enough—though they did allow it.”

“Allow what, Mrs. Headway?” He was quite thrillingly in the dark.

She wouldn’t answer at once; her eyes, glittering a little, were fixed on

memories still too vivid. “What did you hear about me over there? Don’t

pretend you heard nothing.”

He had heard nothing at all; there had not been a word about Mrs. Headway

in New York. He couldn’t pretend and he was obliged to tell her this.

“But I’ve been away,” he added, “and in America I didn’t go out. There’s

nothing to go out for in New York—only insipid boys and girls.”

“There are plenty of spicy old women, who settled I was a bad bold thing.

They found out I was in the ‘gay’ line. They discovered I was known to

the authorities. I _am_ very well known all out West—I’m known from

Chicago to San Francisco; if not personally, at least by reputation. I’m

known to all classes. People can tell you out there. In New York they

decided I wasn’t good enough. Not good enough for New York! What do you

say to that?”—it rang out for derision. Whether she had struggled with

her pride before making her avowal her confidant of this occasion never

knew. The strange want of dignity, as he felt, in her grievance seemed

to indicate that she had no pride, and yet there was a sore spot, really

a deep wound, in her heart which, touched again, renewed its ache. “I

took a house for the winter—one of the handsomest houses in the place—but

I sat there all alone. They thought me ‘gay,’ _me_ gay there on

Fifty-Eighth Street without so much as a cat!”

Waterville was embarrassed; diplomatist as he was he hardly knew what

line to take. He couldn’t see the need or the propriety of her overflow;

though the incident appeared to have been most curious and he was glad to

know the facts on the best authority. It was the first he did know of

this remarkable woman’s having spent a winter in his native city—which

was virtually a proof of her having come and gone in complete obscurity.

It was vain for him to pretend he had been a good deal away, for he had

been appointed to his post in London only six months before, and Mrs.

Headway’s social failure ante-dated that event. In the midst of these

reflexions he had an inspiration. He attempted neither to question, to

explain nor to apologise; he ventured simply to lay his hand for an

instant on her own and to exclaim as gallantly as possible: “I wish _I_

had known!”

“I had plenty of men—but men don’t count. If they’re not a positive help

they’re a hindrance, so that the more you have the worse it looks. The

women simply turned their backs.”

“They were afraid of you—they were jealous,” the young man produced.

“It’s very good of you to try and patch it up; all I know is that not one

of them crossed my threshold. No, you needn’t try and tone it down; I

know perfectly how the case stands. In New York, if you please, I didn’t

go.”

“So much the worse for New York!” cried Waterville, who, as he afterwards

said to Littlemore, had got quite worked up.

“And now you know why I want to get into society over here?” She jumped

up and stood before him; with a dry hard smile she looked down at him.

Her smile itself was an answer to her question; it expressed a sharp

vindictive passion. There was an abruptness in her movements which left

her companion quite behind; but as he still sat there returning her

glance he felt he at last in the light of that smile, the flash of that

almost fierce demand, understood Mrs. Headway.

She turned away to walk to the gate of the garden, and he went with her,

laughing vaguely and uneasily at her tragic tone. Of course she expected

him to serve, all obligingly, all effectively, her rancour; but his

female relations, his mother and his sisters, his innumerable cousins,

had been a party to the slight she had suffered, and he reflected as he

walked along that after all they had been right. They had been right in

not going to see a woman who could chatter that way about her social

wrongs; whether she were respectable or not they had had the true

assurance she’d be vulgar. European society might let her in, but

European society had its limpness. New York, Waterville said to himself

with a glow of civic pride, was quite capable of taking a higher stand in

such a matter than London. They went some distance without speaking; at

last he said, expressing honestly the thought at that moment uppermost in

his mind: “I hate that phrase, ‘getting into society.’ I don’t think one

ought to attribute to one’s self that sort of ambition. One ought to

assume that one’s _in_ the confounded thing—that one _is_ society—and to

hold that if one has good manners one has, from the social point of view,

achieved the great thing. ‘The best company’s where I am,’ any lady or

gentleman should feel. The rest can take care of itself.”

For a moment she appeared not to understand, then she broke out: “Well, I

suppose I haven’t good manners; at any rate I’m not satisfied! Of course

I don’t talk right—I know that very well. But let me get where I want to

first—then I’ll look after the details. If I once get there I shall be

perfect!” she cried with a tremor of passion. They reached the gate of

the garden and stood a moment outside, opposite the low arcade of the

Odéon, lined with bookstalls, at which Waterville cast a slightly wistful

glance, waiting for Mrs. Headway’s carriage, which had drawn up at a

short distance. The whiskered Max had seated himself within and, on the

tense elastic cushions, had fallen into a doze. The carriage got into

motion without his waking; he came to his senses only as it stopped

again. He started up staring and then without confusion proceeded to

descend.

“I’ve learned it in Italy—they call it the _siesta_,” he remarked with an

agreeable smile, holding the door open to Mrs. Headway.

“Well, I should think you had and they might!” this lady replied,

laughing amicably as she got into the vehicle, where Waterville placed

himself beside her. It was not a surprise to him that she spoiled her

courier; she naturally would spoil her courier. But civilisation begins

at home, he brooded; and the incident threw an ironic light on her desire

to get into society. It failed, however, to divert her thoughts from the

subject she was discussing with her friend, for as Max ascended the box

and the carriage went on its way she threw out another note of defiance.

“If once I’m all right over here I guess I can make New York do

something! You’ll see the way those women will squirm.”

Waterville was sure his mother and sisters wouldn’t squirm; but he felt

afresh, as the carriage rolled back to the Hôtel Meurice, that now he

understood Mrs. Headway. As they were about to enter the court of the

hotel a closed carriage passed before them, and while a few moments later

he helped his companion to alight he saw that Sir Arthur Demesne had

stepped from the other vehicle. Sir Arthur perceived Mrs. Headway and

instantly gave his hand to a lady seated in the coupé. This lady emerged

with a certain slow impressiveness, and as she stood before the door of

the hotel—a woman still young and fair, with a good deal of height,

gentle, tranquil, plainly dressed, yet distinctly imposing—it came over

our young friend that the Tory member had brought _his_ principal female

relative to call on Nancy Beck. Mrs. Headway’s triumph had begun; the

dowager Lady Demesne had taken the first step. Waterville wondered

whether the ladies in New York, notified by some magnetic wave, were

beginning to be convulsed. Mrs. Headway, quickly conscious of what had

happened, was neither too prompt to appropriate the visit nor too slow to

acknowledge it. She just paused, smiling at Sir Arthur.

“I should like to introduce my mother—she wants very much to know you.”

He approached Mrs. Headway; the lady had taken his arm. She was at once

simple and circumspect; she had every resource of the English matron.

Mrs. Headway, without advancing a step, put out a hand as if to draw her

quickly closer. “I declare you’re too sweet!” Waterville heard her say.

He was turning away, as his own business was over; but the young

Englishman, who had surrendered his companion, not to say his victim, to

the embrace, as it might now almost be called, of their hostess, just

checked him with a friendly gesture. “I daresay I shan’t see you

again—I’m going away.”

“Good-bye then,” said Waterville. “You return to England?”

“No—I go to Cannes with my mother.”

“You remain at Cannes?”

“Till Christmas very likely.”

The ladies, escorted by Mr. Max, had passed into the hotel, and

Waterville presently concluded this exchange. He smiled as he walked

away, making it analytically out that poor Sir Arthur had obtained a

concession, in the domestic sphere, only at the price of a concession.

The next morning he looked up Littlemore, from whom he had a standing

invitation to breakfast, and who, as usual, was smoking a cigar and

turning over a dozen newspapers. Littlemore had a large apartment and an

accomplished cook; he got up late and wandered about his rooms all the

morning, stopping from time to time to look out of his windows, which

overhung the Place de la Madeleine. They had not been seated many

minutes at breakfast when the visitor mentioned that Mrs. Headway was

about to be abandoned by her friend, who was going to Cannes.

But once more he was to feel how little he might ever enlighten this

comrade. “He came last night to bid me good-bye,” Littlemore said.

Again Waterville wondered. “Very civil of him, then, all of a sudden.”

“He didn’t come from civility—he came from curiosity. Having dined here

he had a pretext for calling.”

“I hope his curiosity was satisfied,” our young man generously dropped.

“Well, I suspect not. He sat here some time, but we talked only about

what he didn’t want to know.”

“And what _did_ he want to know?”

“Whether I know anything against Nancy Beck.”

Waterville stared. “Did he call her Nancy Beck?”

“We never mentioned her; but I saw what he was after and that he quite

yearned to lead up to her. I wouldn’t do it.”

“Ah, poor man!” Waterville sighed.

“I don’t see why you pity him,” said Littlemore. “Mrs. Beck’s admirers

were never pitied.”

“Well, of course he wants to marry her.”

“Let him do it then. I’ve nothing to say to it.”

“He believes there’s something about her, somewhere in time or space,

that may make a pretty big mouthful.”

“Let him leave it alone then.”

“How can he if he’s really hit?”—Waterville spoke as from sad experience.

“Ah, my dear fellow, he must settle it himself. He has no right at any

rate to put me such a question. There was a moment, just as he was

going, when he had it on his tongue’s end. He stood there in the

doorway, he couldn’t leave me—he was going to plump out with it. He

looked at me straight, and I looked straight at him; we remained that way

for almost a minute. Then he decided not, on the whole, to risk it and

took himself off.”

Waterville assisted at this passage with intense interest. “And if he

had asked you, what would you have said?”

“What do you think?”

“Well, I suppose you’d have said that his question wasn’t fair.”

“That would have been tantamount to admitting the worst.”

“Yes,” Waterville brooded again, “you couldn’t do that. On the other

hand if he had put it to you on your honour whether she’s a woman to

marry it would have been very awkward.”

“Awkward enough. Luckily he has no business to put things to me on my

honour. Moreover, nothing has passed between us to give him the right to

ask me _any_ questions about Mrs. Headway. As she’s a great friend of

mine he can’t pretend to expect me to give confidential information.”

“You don’t think she’s a woman to marry, all the same,” Waterville

returned. “And if a man were to try to corner you on it you might knock

him down, but it wouldn’t be an answer.”

“It would have to serve,” said Littlemore. “There are cases where a man

must lie nobly,” he added.

Waterville looked grave. “What cases?”

“Well, where a woman’s honour’s at stake.”

“I see what you mean. That’s of course if he has been himself concerned

with her.”

“Himself or another. It doesn’t matter.”

“I think it does matter. I don’t like false swearing,” said Waterville.

“It’s a delicate question.”

They were interrupted by the arrival of the servant with a second course,

and Littlemore gave a laugh as he helped himself. “It would be a lark to

see her married to that superior being!”

“It would be a great responsibility.”

“Responsibility or not, it would be very amusing.”

“Do you mean, then, to give her a leg up?”

“Heaven forbid! But I mean to bet on her.”

Waterville gave his companion a serious glance; he thought him strangely

superficial. The alternatives looked all formidable, however, and he

sighed as he laid down his fork.