In Grosvenor Place, on Sunday afternoon, during the first weeks of the
season, Mrs. Berrington was usually at home: this indeed was the only
time when a visitor who had not made an appointment could hope to be
admitted to her presence. Very few hours in the twenty-four did she
spend in her own house. Gentlemen calling on these occasions rarely
found her sister: Mrs. Berrington had the field to herself. It was
understood between the pair that Laura should take this time for going
to see her old women: it was in that manner that Selina qualified the
girl's independent social resources. The old women however were not a
dozen in number; they consisted mainly of Lady Davenant and the elder
Mrs. Berrington, who had a house in Portman Street. Lady Davenant lived
at Queen's Gate and also was usually at home of a Sunday afternoon: her
visitors were not all men, like Selina Berrington's, and Laura's
maidenly bonnet was not a false note in her drawing-room. Selina liked
her sister, naturally enough, to make herself useful, but of late,
somehow, they had grown rarer, the occasions that depended in any degree
upon her aid, and she had never been much appealed to--though it would
have seemed natural she should be--on behalf of the weekly chorus of
gentlemen. It came to be recognised on Selina's part that nature had
dedicated her more to the relief of old women than to that of young men.
Laura had a distinct sense of interfering with the free interchange of
anecdote and pleasantry that went on at her sister's fireside: the
anecdotes were mostly such an immense secret that they could not be told
fairly if she were there, and she had their privacy on her conscience.
There was an exception however; when Selina expected Americans she
naturally asked her to stay at home: not apparently so much because
their conversation would be good for her as because hers would be good
for them.
One Sunday, about the middle of May, Laura Wing prepared herself to go
and see Lady Davenant, who had made a long absence from town at Easter
but would now have returned. The weather was charming, she had from the
first established her right to tread the London streets alone (if she
was a poor girl she could have the detachment as well as the
helplessness of it) and she promised herself the pleasure of a walk
along the park, where the new grass was bright. A moment before she
quitted the house her sister sent for her to the drawing-room; the
servant gave her a note scrawled in pencil: 'That man from New York is
here--Mr. Wendover, who brought me the introduction the other day from
the Schoolings. He's rather a dose--you must positively come down and
talk to him. Take him out with you if you can.' The description was not
alluring, but Selina had never made a request of her to which the girl
had not instantly responded: it seemed to her she was there for that.
She joined the circle in the drawing-room and found that it consisted
of five persons, one of whom was Lady Ringrose. Lady Ringrose was at all
times and in all places a fitful apparition; she had described herself
to Laura during her visit at Mellows as 'a bird on the branch.' She had
no fixed habit of receiving on Sunday, she was in and out as she liked,
and she was one of the few specimens of her sex who, in Grosvenor Place,
ever turned up, as she said, on the occasions to which I allude. Of the
three gentlemen two were known to Laura; she could have told you at
least that the big one with the red hair was in the Guards and the other
in the Rifles; the latter looked like a rosy child and as if he ought to
be sent up to play with Geordie and Ferdy: his social nickname indeed
was the Baby. Selina's admirers were of all ages--they ranged from
infants to octogenarians.
She introduced the third gentleman to her sister; a tall, fair, slender
young man who suggested that he had made a mistake in the shade of his
tight, perpendicular coat, ordering it of too heavenly a blue. This
added however to the candour of his appearance, and if he was a dose, as
Selina had described him, he could only operate beneficently. There were
moments when Laura's heart rather yearned towards her countrymen, and
now, though she was preoccupied and a little disappointed at having been
detained, she tried to like Mr. Wendover, whom her sister had compared
invidiously, as it seemed to her, with her other companions. It struck
her that his surface at least was as glossy as theirs. The Baby, whom
she remembered to have heard spoken of as a dangerous flirt, was in
conversation with Lady Ringrose and the guardsman with Mrs. Berrington;
so she did her best to entertain the American visitor, as to whom any
one could easily see (she thought) that he had brought a letter of
introduction--he wished so to maintain the credit of those who had given
it to him. Laura scarcely knew these people, American friends of her
sister who had spent a period of festivity in London and gone back
across the sea before her own advent; but Mr. Wendover gave her all
possible information about them. He lingered upon them, returned to
them, corrected statements he had made at first, discoursed upon them
earnestly and exhaustively. He seemed to fear to leave them, lest he
should find nothing again so good, and he indulged in a parallel that
was almost elaborate between Miss Fanny and Miss Katie. Selina told her
sister afterwards that she had overheard him--that he talked of them as
if he had been a nursemaid; upon which Laura defended the young man even
to extravagance. She reminded her sister that people in London were
always saying Lady Mary and Lady Susan: why then shouldn't Americans use
the Christian name, with the humbler prefix with which they had to
content themselves? There had been a time when Mrs. Berrington had been
happy enough to be Miss Lina, even though she was the elder sister; and
the girl liked to think there were still old friends--friends of the
family, at home, for whom, even should she live to sixty years of
spinsterhood, she would never be anything but Miss Laura. This was as
good as Donna Anna or Donna Elvira: English people could never call
people as other people did, for fear of resembling the servants.
Mr. Wendover was very attentive, as well as communicative; however his
letter might be regarded in Grosvenor Place he evidently took it very
seriously himself; but his eyes wandered considerably, none the less, to
the other side of the room, and Laura felt that though he had often seen
persons like her before (not that he betrayed this too crudely) he had
never seen any one like Lady Ringrose. His glance rested also on Mrs.
Berrington, who, to do her justice, abstained from showing, by the way
she returned it, that she wished her sister to get him out of the room.
Her smile was particularly pretty on Sunday afternoons and he was
welcome to enjoy it as a part of the decoration of the place. Whether or
no the young man should prove interesting he was at any rate interested;
indeed she afterwards learned that what Selina deprecated in him was the
fact that he would eventually display a fatiguing intensity of
observation. He would be one of the sort who noticed all kinds of little
things--things she never saw or heard of--in the newspapers or in
society, and would call upon her (a dreadful prospect) to explain or
even to defend them. She had not come there to explain England to the
Americans; the more particularly as her life had been a burden to her
during the first years of her marriage through her having to explain
America to the English. As for defending England to her countrymen she
had much rather defend it _from_ them: there were too many--too many for
those who were already there. This was the class she wished to
spare--she didn't care about the English. They could obtain an eye for
an eye and a cutlet for a cutlet by going over there; which she had no
desire to do--not for all the cutlets in Christendom!
When Mr. Wendover and Laura had at last cut loose from the Schoolings
he let her know confidentially that he had come over really to see
London; he had time, that year; he didn't know when he should have it
again (if ever, as he said) and he had made up his mind that this was
about the best use he could make of four months and a half. He had heard
so much of it; it was talked of so much to-day; a man felt as if he
ought to know something about it. Laura wished the others could hear
this--that England was coming up, was making her way at last to a place
among the topics of societies more universal. She thought Mr. Wendover
after all remarkably like an Englishman, in spite of his saying that he
believed she had resided in London quite a time. He talked a great deal
about things being characteristic, and wanted to know, lowering his
voice to make the inquiry, whether Lady Ringrose were not particularly
so. He had heard of her very often, he said; and he observed that it was
very interesting to see her: he could not have used a different tone if
he had been speaking of the prime minister or the laureate. Laura was
ignorant of what he had heard of Lady Ringrose; she doubted whether it
could be the same as what she had heard from her brother-in-law: if this
had been the case he never would have mentioned it. She foresaw that his
friends in London would have a good deal to do in the way of telling him
whether this or that were characteristic or not; he would go about in
much the same way that English travellers did in America, fixing his
attention mainly on society (he let Laura know that this was especially
what he wished to go into) and neglecting the antiquities and sights,
quite as if he failed to believe in their importance. He would ask
questions it was impossible to answer; as to whether for instance
society were very different in the two countries. If you said yes you
gave a wrong impression and if you said no you didn't give a right one:
that was the kind of thing that Selina had suffered from. Laura found
her new acquaintance, on the present occasion and later, more
philosophically analytic of his impressions than those of her countrymen
she had hitherto encountered in her new home: the latter, in regard to
such impressions, usually exhibited either a profane levity or a
tendency to mawkish idealism.
Mrs. Berrington called out at last to Laura that she must not stay if
she had prepared herself to go out: whereupon the girl, having nodded
and smiled good-bye at the other members of the circle, took a more
formal leave of Mr. Wendover--expressed the hope, as an American girl
does in such a case, that they should see him again. Selina asked him to
come and dine three days later; which was as much as to say that
relations might be suspended till then. Mr. Wendover took it so, and
having accepted the invitation he departed at the same time as Laura. He
passed out of the house with her and in the street she asked him which
way he was going. He was too tender, but she liked him; he appeared not
to deal in chaff and that was a change that relieved her--she had so
often had to pay out that coin when she felt wretchedly poor. She hoped
he would ask her leave to go with her the way she was going--and this
not on particular but on general grounds. It would be American, it
would remind her of old times; she should like him to be as American as
that. There was no reason for her taking so quick an interest in his
nature, inasmuch as she had not fallen under his spell; but there were
moments when she felt a whimsical desire to be reminded of the way
people felt and acted at home. Mr. Wendover did not disappoint her, and
the bright chocolate-coloured vista of the Fifth Avenue seemed to surge
before her as he said, 'May I have the pleasure of making my direction
the same as yours?' and moved round, systematically, to take his place
between her and the curbstone. She had never walked much with young men
in America (she had been brought up in the new school, the school of
attendant maids and the avoidance of certain streets) and she had very
often done so in England, in the country; yet, as at the top of
Grosvenor Place she crossed over to the park, proposing they should take
that way, the breath of her native land was in her nostrils. It was
certainly only an American who could have the tension of Mr. Wendover;
his solemnity almost made her laugh, just as her eyes grew dull when
people 'slanged' each other hilariously in her sister's house; but at
the same time he gave her a feeling of high respectability. It would be
respectable still if she were to go on with him indefinitely--if she
never were to come home at all. He asked her after a while, as they
went, whether he had violated the custom of the English in offering her
his company; whether in that country a gentleman might walk with a young
lady--the first time he saw her--not because their roads lay together
but for the sake of the walk.
'Why should it matter to me whether it is the custom of the English? I
am not English,' said Laura Wing. Then her companion explained that he
only wanted a general guidance--that with her (she was so kind) he had
not the sense of having taken a liberty. The point was simply--and
rather comprehensively and strenuously he began to set forth the point.
Laura interrupted him; she said she didn't care about it and he almost
irritated her by telling her she was kind. She was, but she was not
pleased at its being recognised so soon; and he was still too
importunate when he asked her whether she continued to go by American
usage, didn't find that if one lived there one had to conform in a great
many ways to the English. She was weary of the perpetual comparison, for
she not only heard it from others--she heard it a great deal from
herself. She held that there were certain differences you felt, if you
belonged to one or the other nation, and that was the end of it: there
was no use trying to express them. Those you _could_ express were not
real or not important ones and were not worth talking about. Mr.
Wendover asked her if she liked English society and if it were superior
to American; also if the tone were very high in London. She thought his
questions 'academic'--the term she used to see applied in the _Times_ to
certain speeches in Parliament. Bending his long leanness over her (she
had never seen a man whose material presence was so insubstantial, so
unoppressive) and walking almost sidewise, to give her a proper
attention, he struck her as innocent, as incapable of guessing that she
had had a certain observation of life. They were talking about totally
different things: English society, as he asked her judgment upon it and
she had happened to see it, was an affair that he didn't suspect. If
she were to give him that judgment it would be more than he doubtless
bargained for; but she would do it not to make him open his eyes--only
to relieve herself. She had thought of that before in regard to two or
three persons she had met--of the satisfaction of breaking out with some
of her feelings. It would make little difference whether the person
understood her or not; the one who should do so best would be far from
understanding everything. 'I want to get out of it, please--out of the
set I live in, the one I have tumbled into through my sister, the people
you saw just now. There are thousands of people in London who are
different from that and ever so much nicer; but I don't see them, I
don't know how to get at them; and after all, poor dear man, what power
have you to help me?' That was in the last analysis the gist of what she
had to say.
Mr. Wendover asked her about Selina in the tone of a person who thought
Mrs. Berrington a very important phenomenon, and that by itself was
irritating to Laura Wing. Important--gracious goodness, no! She might
have to live with her, to hold her tongue about her; but at least she
was not bound to exaggerate her significance. The young man forbore
decorously to make use of the expression, but she could see that he
supposed Selina to be a professional beauty and she guessed that as this
product had not yet been domesticated in the western world the desire to
behold it, after having read so much about it, had been one of the
motives of Mr. Wendover's pilgrimage. Mrs. Schooling, who must have been
a goose, had told him that Mrs. Berrington, though transplanted, was
the finest flower of a rich, ripe society and as clever and virtuous as
she was beautiful. Meanwhile Laura knew what Selina thought of Fanny
Schooling and her incurable provinciality. 'Now was that a good example
of London talk--what I heard (I only heard a little of it, but the
conversation was more general before you came in) in your sister's
drawing-room? I don't mean literary, intellectual talk--I suppose there
are special places to hear that; I mean--I mean----' Mr. Wendover went
on with a deliberation which gave his companion an opportunity to
interrupt him. They had arrived at Lady Davenant's door and she cut his
meaning short. A fancy had taken her, on the spot, and the fact that it
was whimsical seemed only to recommend it.
'If you want to hear London talk there will be some very good going on
in here,' she said. 'If you would like to come in with me----?'
'Oh, you are very kind--I should be delighted,' replied Mr. Wendover,
endeavouring to emulate her own more rapid processes. They stepped into
the porch and the young man, anticipating his companion, lifted the
knocker and gave a postman's rap. She laughed at him for this and he
looked bewildered; the idea of taking him in with her had become
agreeably exhilarating. Their acquaintance, in that moment, took a long
jump. She explained to him who Lady Davenant was and that if he was in
search of the characteristic it would be a pity he shouldn't know her;
and then she added, before he could put the question:
'And what I am doing is _not_ in the least usual. No, it is not the
custom for young ladies here to take strange gentlemen off to call on
their friends the first time they see them.'
'So that Lady Davenant will think it rather extraordinary?' Mr. Wendover
eagerly inquired; not as if that idea frightened him, but so that his
observation on this point should also be well founded. He had entered
into Laura's proposal with complete serenity.
'Oh, most extraordinary!' said Laura, as they went in. The old lady
however concealed such surprise as she may have felt, and greeted Mr.
Wendover as if he were any one of fifty familiars. She took him
altogether for granted and asked him no questions about his arrival, his
departure, his hotel or his business in England. He noticed, as he
afterwards confided to Laura, her omission of these forms; but he was
not wounded by it--he only made a mark against it as an illustration of
the difference between English and American manners: in New York people
always asked the arriving stranger the first thing about the steamer and
the hotel. Mr. Wendover appeared greatly impressed with Lady Davenant's
antiquity, though he confessed to his companion on a subsequent occasion
that he thought her a little flippant, a little frivolous even for her
years. 'Oh yes,' said the girl, on that occasion, 'I have no doubt that
you considered she talked too much, for one so old. In America old
ladies sit silent and listen to the young.' Mr. Wendover stared a little
and replied to this that with her--with Laura Wing--it was impossible to
tell which side she was on, the American or the English: sometimes she
seemed to take one, sometimes the other. At any rate, he added, smiling,
with regard to the other great division it was easy to see--she was on
the side of the old. 'Of course I am,' she said; 'when one _is_ old!'
And then he inquired, according to his wont, if she were thought so in
England; to which she answered that it was England that had made her so.
Lady Davenant's bright drawing-room was filled with mementoes and
especially with a collection of portraits of distinguished people,
mainly fine old prints with signatures, an array of precious autographs.
'Oh, it's a cemetery,' she said, when the young man asked her some
question about one of the pictures; 'they are my contemporaries, they
are all dead and those things are the tombstones, with the inscriptions.
I'm the grave-digger, I look after the place and try to keep it a little
tidy. I have dug my own little hole,' she went on, to Laura, 'and when
you are sent for you must come and put me in.' This evocation of
mortality led Mr. Wendover to ask her if she had known Charles Lamb; at
which she stared for an instant, replying: 'Dear me, no--one didn't meet
him.'
'Oh, I meant to say Lord Byron,' said Mr. Wendover.
'Bless me, yes; I was in love with him. But he didn't notice me,
fortunately--we were so many. He was very nice-looking but he was very
vulgar.' Lady Davenant talked to Laura as if Mr. Wendover had not been
there; or rather as if his interests and knowledge were identical with
hers. Before they went away the young man asked her if she had known
Garrick and she replied: 'Oh, dear, no, we didn't have them in our
houses, in those days.'
'He must have been dead long before you were born!' Laura exclaimed.
'I daresay; but one used to hear of him.'
'I think I meant Edmund Kean,' said Mr. Wendover.
'You make little mistakes of a century or two,' Laura Wing remarked,
laughing. She felt now as if she had known Mr. Wendover a long time.
'Oh, he was very clever,' said Lady Davenant.
'Very magnetic, I suppose,' Mr. Wendover went on.
'What's that? I believe he used to get tipsy.'
'Perhaps you don't use that expression in England?' Laura's companion
inquired.
'Oh, I daresay we do, if it's American; we talk American now. You seem
very good-natured people, but such a jargon as you _do_ speak!'
'I like _your_ way, Lady Davenant,' said Mr. Wendover, benevolently,
smiling.
'You might do worse,' cried the old woman; and then she added: 'Please
go out!' They were taking leave of her but she kept Laura's hand and,
for the young man, nodded with decision at the open door. 'Now, wouldn't
_he_ do?' she asked, after Mr. Wendover had passed into the hall.
'Do for what?'
'For a husband, of course.'
'For a husband--for whom?'
'Why--for me,' said Lady Davenant.
'I don't know--I think he might tire you.'
'Oh--if he's tiresome!' the old lady continued, smiling at the girl.
'I think he is very good,' said Laura.
'Well then, he'll do.'
'Ah, perhaps _you_ won't!' Laura exclaimed, smiling back at her and
turning away.