AN apparition almost as startling had come to Garnett himself in the
shape of the mauve note received from his _concierge_ as he was leaving
the hotel for luncheon.
Not that, on the face of it, a missive announcing Mrs. Sam Newell's
arrival at Ritz's, and her need of his presence there that afternoon at
five, carried any special mark of the portentous. It was not her being
at Ritz's that surprised him. The fact that she was chronically hard
up, and had once or twice lately been so brutally confronted with the
consequences as to accept--indeed solicit--a loan of five pounds from
him: this circumstance, as Garnett knew, would never be allowed to
affect the general tenor of her existence. If one came to Paris, where
could one go but to Ritz's? Did he see her in some grubby hole across
the river? Or in a family _pension_ near the Place de l'Etoile? There
was no affectation in her tendency to gravitate toward what was
costliest and most conspicuous. In doing so she obeyed one of the
profoundest instincts of her nature, and it was another instinct which
taught her to gratify the first at any cost, even to that of dipping
into the pocket of an impecunious newspaper correspondent. It was a
part of her strength--and of her charm too--that she did such things
naturally, openly, without any of the ugly grimaces of dissimulation or
compunction.
Her recourse to Garnett had of course marked a specially low ebb in her
fortunes. Save in moments of exceptional dearth she had richer sources
of supply; and he was nearly sure that, by running over the "society
column" of the Paris _Herald_, he should find an explanation, not
perhaps of her presence at Ritz's, but of her means of subsistence
there. What really perplexed him was not the financial but the social
aspect of the case. When Mrs. Newell had left London in July she had
told him that, between Cowes and Scotland, she and Hermy were provided
for till the middle of October: after that, as she put it, they would
have to look about. Why, then, when she had in her hand the opportunity
of living for three months at the expense of the British aristocracy,
did she rush off to Paris at heaven knew whose expense in the beginning
of September? She was not a woman to act incoherently; if she made
mistakes they were not of that kind. Garnett felt sure she would never
willingly relax her hold on her distinguished friends--was it possible
that it was they who had somewhat violently let go of her?
As Garnett reviewed the situation he began to see that this possibility
had for some time been latent in it. He had felt that something might
happen at any moment--and was not this the something he had obscurely
foreseen? Mrs. Newell really moved too fast: her position was as
perilous as that of an invading army without a base of supplies. She
used up everything too quickly--friends, credit, influence,
forbearance. It was so easy for her to acquire all these--what a pity
she had never learned to keep them! He himself, for instance--the most
insignificant of her acquisitions--was beginning to feel like a
squeezed sponge at the mere thought of her; and it was this sense of
exhaustion, of the inability to provide more, either materially or
morally, which had provoked his exclamation on opening her note. From
the first days of their acquaintance her prodigality had amazed him,
but he had believed it to be surpassed by the infinity of her
resources. If she exhausted old supplies she always found new ones to
replace them. When one set of people began to find her impossible,
another was always beginning to find her indispensable. Yes--but there
were limits--there were only so many sets of people, at least in her
social classification, and when she came to an end of them, what then?
Was this flight to Paris a sign that she had come to an end--was she
going to try Paris because London had failed her? The time of year
precluded such a conjecture. Mrs. Newell's Paris was non-existent in
September. The town was a desert of gaping trippers--he could as soon
think of her seeking social restoration at Margate.
For a moment it occurred to him that she might have to come over to
replenish her wardrobe; but he knew her dates too well to dwell long on
this hope. It was in April and December that she visited the
dress-makers: before December, he had heard her explain, one got
nothing but "the American fashions." Mrs. Newell's scorn of all things
American was somewhat illogically coupled with the determination to use
her own Americanism to the utmost as a means of social advance. She had
found out long ago that, on certain lines, it paid in London to be
American, and she had manufactured for herself a personality
independent of geographical or social demarcations, and presenting that
remarkable blend of plantation dialect, Bowery slang and hyperbolic
statement, which is the British nobility's favorite idea of an
unadulterated Americanism. Mrs. Newell, for all her talents, was not
naturally either humorous or hyperbolic, and there were times when it
would doubtless have been a relief to her to be as monumentally stolid
as some of the persons whose dulness it was her fate to enliven. It was
perhaps the need of relaxing which had drawn her into her odd intimacy
with Garnett, with whom she did not have to be either scrupulously
English or artificially American, since the impression she made on him
was of no more consequence than that which she produced on her footman.
Garnett was perfectly aware that he owed his success to his
insignificance, but the fact affected him only as adding one more
element to his knowledge of Mrs. Newell's character. He was as ready to
sacrifice his personal vanity in such a cause as he had been, at the
outset of their acquaintance, to sacrifice his professional pride to
the opportunity of knowing her.
When he had accepted the position of "London correspondent" (with an
occasional side-glance at Paris) to the New York _Searchlight_, he had
not understood that his work was to include the obligation of
"interviewing"; indeed, had the possibility presented itself in
advance, he would have met it by unpacking his valise and returning to
the drudgery of his assistant-editorship in New York. But when, after
three months in Europe, he received a letter from his chief, suggesting
that he should enliven the Sunday _Searchlight_ by a series of "Talks
with Smart Americans in London" (beginning, say, with Mrs. Sam Newell),
the change of focus already enabled him to view the proposal without
passion. For his life on the edge of the great world-caldron of art,
politics and pleasure--of that high-spiced brew which is nowhere else
so subtly and variously compounded--had bred in him an eager appetite
to taste of the heady mixture. He knew he should never have the full
spoon at his lips, but he recalled the peasant-girl in one of
Browning's plays, who has once eaten polenta cut with a knife which has
carved an ortolan. Might not Mrs. Newell, who had so successfully cut a
way into the dense and succulent mass of English society, serve as the
knife to season his polenta?
He had expected, as the result of the interview, to which she promptly,
almost eagerly, assented, no more than the glimpse of brightly lit
vistas which a waiting messenger may catch through open doors; but
instead he had found himself drawn at once into the inner sanctuary,
not of London society, but of Mrs. Newell's relation to it. She had
been candidly charmed by the idea of the interview: it struck him that
she was conscious of the need of being freshened up. Her appearance was
brilliantly fresh, with the inveterate freshness of the toilet-table;
her paint was as impenetrable as armor. But her personality was a
little tarnished: she was in want of social renovation. She had been
doing and saying the same things for too long a time. London, Cowes,
Homburg, Scotland, Monte Carlo--that had been the round since Hermy was
a baby. Hermy was her daughter, Miss Hermione Newell, who was called in
presently to be shown off to the interviewer and add a paragraph to the
celebration of her mother's charms.
Miss Newell's appearance was so full of an unassisted freshness that
for a moment Garnett made the mistake of fancying that she could fill a
paragraph of her own. But he soon found that her vague personality was
merely tributary to her parent's; that her youth and grace were, in
some mysterious way, her mother's rather than her own. She smiled
obediently on Garnett, but could contribute little beyond her smile and
the general sweetness of her presence, to the picture of Mrs. Newell's
existence which it was the young man's business to draw. And presently
he found that she had left the room without his noticing it.
He learned in time that this unnoticeableness was the most conspicuous
thing about her. Burning at best with a mild light, she became
invisible in the glare of her mother's personality. It was in fact only
as a product of her environment that poor Hermione struck the
imagination. With the smartest woman in London as her guide and example
she had never developed a taste for dress, and with opportunities for
enlightenment from which Garnett's fancy recoiled she remained simple,
unsuspicious and tender, with an inclination to good works and
afternoon church, a taste for the society of dull girls, and a clinging
fidelity to old governesses and retired nurse-maids. Mrs. Newell, whose
boast it was that she looked facts in the face, frankly owned that she
had not been able to make anything of Hermione. "If she has a role I
haven't discovered it," she confessed to Garnett. "I've tried
everything, but she doesn't fit in anywhere."
Mrs. Newell spoke as if her daughter were a piece of furniture acquired
without due reflection, and for which no suitable place could be found.
She got, of course, what she could out of Hermione, who wrote her
notes, ran her errands, saw tiresome people for her, and occupied an
intermediate office between that of lady's maid and secretary; but such
small returns on her investment were not what Mrs. Newell had counted
on. What was the use of producing and educating a handsome daughter if
she did not, in some more positive way, contribute to her parent's
advancement?