VI

The Easter holidays that year were unusually genial; mild watery sunshine

assisted the progress of the spring. The high dense hedges, in

Warwickshire, were like walls of hawthorn embedded in banks of primrose,

and the finest trees in England, springing out of them with a regularity

which suggested conservative principles, began more densely and downily

to bristle. Rupert Waterville, devoted to his duties and faithful in

attendance at the Legation, had had little time to enjoy the rural

hospitality that shows the English, as he had promptly learned to say, at

their best. Freshly yet not wildly exotic he had repeatedly been invited

to grace such scenes, but had had hitherto to practise with reserve the

great native art of “staying.” He cultivated method and kept the

country-houses in reserve; he would take them up in their order, after he

should have got a little more used to London. Without hesitation,

however, he had accepted the appeal from Longlands; it had come to him in

a simple and familiar note from Lady Demesne, with whom he had no

acquaintance. He knew of her return from Cannes, where she had spent the

whole winter, for he had seen it related in a Sunday newspaper; yet it

was with a certain surprise that he heard from her in these informal

terms. “Dear Mr. Waterville, my son tells me you will perhaps be able to

come down here on the seventeenth to spend two or three days. If you can

it will give us much pleasure. We can promise you the society of your

charming countrywoman Mrs. Headway.”

He had seen Mrs. Headway; she had written him, a fortnight before from an

hotel in Cork Street, to say she had arrived in London for the season and

should be happy to see him. He had called on her, trembling with the

fear that she would break ground about her presentation at Court; but he

was agreeably surprised by her overlooking for the hour this topic. She

had spent the winter in Rome, travelling directly from that city to

England, with just a little stop in Paris to buy a few clothes. She had

taken much satisfaction in Rome, where she had made many friends; she

assured him she knew half the Roman nobility. “They’re charming people;

they’ve only one fault, they stay too long,” she said. And in answer to

his always slower process, “I mean when they come to see you,” she

explained. “They used to come every evening and then wanted to stay till

the next day. They were all princes and counts. I used to give them

cigars and cocktails—nobody else did. I knew as many people as I

wanted,” she added in a moment, feeling perhaps again in her visitor the

intimate intelligence with which six months before he had listened to her

account of her discomfiture in New York. “There were lots of English; I

knew all the English and I mean to visit them here. The Americans waited

to see what the English would do, so as to do the opposite. Thanks to

that I was spared some precious specimens. There are, you know, some

fearful ones. Besides, in Rome society doesn’t matter if you’ve a

feeling for the ruins and the Campagna; I found I had an immense feeling

for the Campagna. I was always mooning round in some damp old temple.

It reminded me a good deal of the country round San Pablo—if it hadn’t

been for the temples. I liked to think it all over when I was riding

round; I was always brooding over the past.” At this moment,

nevertheless, Mrs. Headway had dismissed the past; she was prepared to

give herself up wholly to the actual. She wished Waterville to advise

her as to how she should live—what she should do. Should she stay at an

hotel or should she take a house? She guessed she had better take a

house if she could find a nice one. Max wanted to look for one, and she

didn’t know but what she’d let him; he got her such a nice one in Rome.

She said nothing about Sir Arthur Demesne, who, it seemed to Waterville,

would have been her natural guide and sponsor; he wondered whether her

relations with the Tory member had come to an end. Waterville had met

him a couple of times since the opening of Parliament, and they had

exchanged twenty words, none of which, however, had had reference to Mrs.

Headway. Our young man, the previous autumn, had been recalled to London

just after the incident of which he found himself witness in the court of

the Hôtel Meurice; and all he knew of its consequence was what he had

learned from Littlemore, who, proceeding to America, where he had

suddenly been advised of reasons for his spending the winter, passed

through the British capital. Littlemore had then reported that Mrs.

Headway was enchanted with Lady Demesne and had no words to speak of her

kindness and sweetness. “She told me she liked to know her son’s

friends, and I told her I liked to know my friends’ mothers,” dear Nancy

had reported. “I should be willing to be old if I could be like that,”

she had added, forgetting for the moment that the crown of the maturer

charm dangled before her at a diminishing distance. The mother and son,

at any rate, had retired to Cannes together, and at this moment

Littlemore had received letters from home which caused him to start for

Arizona. Mrs. Headway had accordingly been left to her own devices, and

he was afraid she had bored herself, though Mrs. Bagshaw had called upon

her. In November she had travelled to Italy, not by way of Cannes.

“What do you suppose she’s up to in Rome?” Waterville had asked; his

imagination failing him here, as he was not yet in possession of that

passage.

“I haven’t the least idea. And I don’t care!” Littlemore had added in a

moment. Before leaving London he had further mentioned that Mrs.

Headway, on his going to take leave of her in Paris, had made another and

rather an unexpected attack. “About the society business—she said I must

really do something: she couldn’t go on that way. And she appealed to me

in the name—I don’t think I quite know how to say it.”

“I should be ever so glad if you’d try,” Waterville had earnestly said,

constantly reminding himself that Americans in Europe were after all, in

a degree, to a man in his position, as the sheep to the shepherd.

“Well, in the name of the affection we had formerly entertained for each

other.”

“The affection?”

“So she was good enough to call it. But I deny it all. If one had to

have an affection for every woman one used to sit up ‘evenings’ with—!”

And Littlemore had paused, not defining the result of such an obligation.

Waterville had tried to imagine what it would be; while his friend had

embarked for New York without telling him how, in the event, he had

resisted Mrs. Headway’s attack.

At Christmas Waterville knew of Sir Arthur’s return to England and

believed he also knew that the Baronet hadn’t gone down to Rome. He had

a theory that Lady Demesne was a very clever woman—clever enough to make

her son do what she preferred and yet also make him think it his own

choice. She had been politic, accommodating, on the article of the one

civility rendered the American lady; but, having seen and judged that

heroine, had determined to stop short and to make her son, if possible,

stop. She had been sweet and kind, as Mrs. Headway said, because for the

moment this was easiest; but she had paid her last visit on the same

occasion as her first. She had been sweet and kind, but she had set her

face as a stone, and if poor Nancy, camping on this new field, expected

to find any vague promises redeemed, she would taste of the bitterness of

shattered hopes. He had made up his mind that, shepherd as he was, and

Mrs. Headway one of his sheep, it was none of his present duty to run

about after her, especially as she could be trusted not to stray too far.

He saw her a second time, and she still said nothing about Sir Arthur.

Waterville, who always had a theory, made sure she was watching the

clock, that this proved admirer was behind the hour. She was also

getting into a house; her courier had found her in Chesterfield Street a

little gem, which was to cost her only what jewels cost. After all this

our young man caught his breath at Lady Demesne’s note, and he went down

to Longlands with much the same impatience with which, in Paris, he would

have gone, had he been able, to the first night of a new comedy. It

seemed to him that through a sudden stroke of good fortune he had

received a _billet d’auteur_.

It was agreeable to him to arrive at an English country-house at the

close of the day. He liked the drive from the station in the twilight,

the sight of the fields and copses and cottages, vague and lonely in

contrast to his definite lighted goal; the sound of the wheels on the

long avenue, which turned and wound repeatedly without bringing him to

what he reached however at last—the wide grey front with a glow in its

scattered windows and a sweep of still firmer gravel up to the door. The

front at Longlands, which was of this sober complexion, had a grand

pompous air; it was attributed to the genius of Sir Christopher Wren.

There were wings curving forward in a semi-circle, with statues placed at

intervals on the cornice; so that in the flattering dusk it suggested a

great Italian villa dropped by some monstrous hand in an English park.

He had taken a late train, which left him but twenty minutes to dress for

dinner. He prided himself considerably on the art of dressing both

quickly and well; but this process left him no time to wonder if the

apartment to which he had been assigned befitted his diplomatic dignity.

On emerging from his room he found there was an ambassador in the house,

and this discovery was a check to unrest. He tacitly assumed that he

should have had a better room if it hadn’t been for the ambassador, who

was of course counted first. The large brilliant house gave an

impression of the last century and of foreign taste, of light colours,

high vaulted ceilings with pale mythological frescoes, gilded doors

surmounted by old French panels, faded tapestries and delicate damasks,

stores of ancient china among which great jars of pink roses were

conspicuous. The company had assembled for dinner in the principal hall,

which was animated by a fire of great logs, and the muster was so large

that Waterville feared he was last. Lady Demesne gave him a smile and a

touch of her hand; she lacked effusiveness and, saying nothing in

particular, treated him as if he had been a common guest. He wasn’t sure

whether he liked or hated that; but these alternatives mattered equally

little to his hostess, who looked at her friends as if to verify a

catalogue. The master of the house was talking to a lady before the

fire; when he caught sight of Waterville across the room he waved “How

d’ye do” with an air of being delighted to see him. He had never had

that air in Paris, and Waterville had a chance to observe, what he had

often heard, to how much greater advantage the English appear in their

country-houses. Lady Demesne turned to him again with the sweet vague

smile that could somehow present a view without making a point.

“We’re waiting for Mrs. Headway.”

“Ah, she has arrived?” Waterville had quite forgotten this attraction.

“She came at half-past five. At six she went to dress. She has had two

hours.”

“Let us hope the results will be proportionate,” the young man laughed.

“Oh the results—I don’t know!” Lady Demesne murmured without looking at

him; and in these simple words he found the confirmation of his theory

that she was playing a deep game. He weighed the question of whom he

should sit next to at dinner, and hoped, with due deference to Mrs.

Headway’s charms, that he might abut on a less explored province. The

results of a toilet she had protracted through two hours were presently

visible. She appeared on the staircase which descended to the hall and

which, for three minutes, as she came down rather slowly, facing the

people beneath, placed her in considerable relief. Waterville, as he

watched her, felt the great importance of the moment for her: it

represented her entrance into English society. Well, she entered English

society in good shape, as Nancy Beck would have said; with a brave free

smile, suggestive of no flutter, on her lips, and with the trophies of

the Rue de la Paix trailing behind her. She made a portentous rumour as

she moved. People turned their eyes to her; there was soon a perceptible

diminution of talk; though talk hadn’t been particularly audible. She

looked very much alone, and it seemed rather studied of her to come down

last, though possibly, before her glass, she had but been unable to

please herself. For she evidently felt the importance of the occasion,

and Waterville was sure her heart beat fast. She showed immense pluck,

however; she smiled more intensely and advanced like a woman acquainted

with every social drawback of beauty. She had at any rate the support of

these inconveniences; for nothing on this occasion was wanting to her

lustre, and the determination to succeed, which might have made her hard,

was veiled in the virtuous consciousness that she had neglected nothing.

Lady Demesne went forward to meet her; Sir Arthur took no notice of her;

and presently Waterville found himself proceeding to dinner with the wife

of an ecclesiastic, to whom his hostess had presented him in the

desolation of the almost empty hall, when the other couples had

flourished away. The rank of this ecclesiastic in the hierarchy he

learned early on the morrow; but in the meantime it seemed to him somehow

strange that in England ecclesiastics should have wives. English life

even at the end of a year was full of those surprises. The lady,

however, was very easily accounted for; she was in no sense a violent

exception, and there had been no need of the Reformation and the

destruction of a hundred abbeys to produce her. Her name was Mrs. April;

she was wrapped in a large lace shawl; to eat her dinner she removed but

one glove, and the other gave Waterville an odd impression that the whole

repast, in spite of its great completeness, was something of the picnic

order.

Mrs. Headway was opposite, at a little distance; she had been taken in,

as Waterville learned from his neighbour, by a General, a gentleman with

a lean aquiline face and a cultivated whisker, and she had on the other

side a smart young man of an identity less definite. Poor Sir Arthur sat

between two ladies much older than himself, whose names, redolent of

history, Waterville had often heard and had associated with figures more

romantic. Mrs. Headway gave her countryman no greeting; she evidently

hadn’t seen him till they were seated at table, when she stared at him

with a violence of surprise that was like the interruption of a lively

tune. It was a copious and well-ordered banquet, but as he looked up and

down the table he sought to appraise the contributed lustre, the

collective _scintillae_, that didn’t proceed from silver, porcelain,

glass or shining damask. Presently renouncing the effort, however, he

became conscious he was judging the affair much more from Mrs. Headway’s

point of view than from his own. He knew no one but Mrs. April, who,

displaying an almost motherly desire to give him information, told him

the names of many of their companions; in return for which he explained

to her that he was not in that set. Mrs. Headway got on in perfection

with her warrior; Waterville noticed her more than he showed; he saw how

that officer, evidently a cool hand, was drawing her out. Waterville

hoped she would be careful. He was capable, in his way, of frolic

thought, and as he compared her with the rest of the company said to

himself that she was a very plucky little woman and that her present

undertaking had a touch of the heroic. She was alone against many, and

her opponents were a serried phalanx; those who were there represented a

thousand others. Her type so violated every presumption blooming there

that to the eye of the imagination she stood very much on her merits.

Such people seemed so completely made up, so unconscious of effort, so

surrounded with things to rest upon; the men with their clean

complexions, their well-hung chins, their cold pleasant eyes, their

shoulders set back, their absence of gesture; the women, several very

handsome, half-strangled in strings of pearls, with smooth plain tresses,

seeming to look at nothing in particular, supporting silence as if it

were as becoming as candle-light, yet talking a little sometimes in fresh

rich voices. They were all wrapped in a community of ideas, of

traditions; they understood each other’s accent, even each other’s

deviations. Mrs. Headway, with all her prettiness, exceeded these

licences. She was foreign, exaggerated, she had too much expression; she

might have been engaged for the evening. Waterville remarked, moreover,

that English society was always clutching at amusement and that the

business was transacted on a cash basis. If Mrs. Headway should

sufficiently amuse she would succeed, and her fortune—if fortune there

was—would be no hindrance.

In the drawing-room, after dinner, he went up to her, but she gave him no

greeting. She only faced him with an expression he had never seen

before—a strange bold expression of displeasure. It made her fearfully

common. “Why have you come down here?” she asked. “Have you come to

watch me?”

Waterville coloured to the roots of his hair. He knew it was terribly

little like a diplomatist, but he was unable to control his heat. He was

justly shocked, he was angry and in addition he was mystified. “I came

because I was asked.”

“Who asked you?”

“The same person who asked you, I suppose—Lady Demesne.”

“She’s an old cat!” And Nancy Beck turned away from him.

He turned from her as well. He didn’t know what he had done to deserve

such treatment. It was a complete surprise; he had never seen her like

that before. She was a very vulgar woman; that was the way people dealt

with each other, he supposed, on hideous back piazzas. He threw himself

almost passionately into contact with the others, who all seemed to him,

possibly a little by contrast, extraordinarily genial and friendly. He

had not, however, the consolation of seeing Mrs. Headway punished for her

rudeness—she wasn’t in the least neglected. On the contrary, in the part

of the room where she sat the group was denser and repeatedly broke into

gusts of unanimous laughter. Yes, if she should amuse them she might

doubtless get anywhere and do anything, and evidently she was amusing

them.