Lady Barbarina Part 20

"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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.bly," 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.

VI

The Easter holidays that year were unusually genial; mild watery sunshine a.s.sisted 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 a.s.sured him she knew half the Roman n.o.bility. "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 c.o.c.ktails-n.o.body 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 Hotel 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, pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sage.

"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 a.s.signed befitted his diplomatic dignity.

On emerging from his room he found there was an amba.s.sador in the house, and this discovery was a check to unrest. He tacitly a.s.sumed that he should have had a better room if it hadn't been for the amba.s.sador, 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 a.s.sembled for dinner in the princ.i.p.al 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 gla.s.s, 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 l.u.s.tre, 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 ident.i.ty less definite. Poor Sir Arthur sat between two ladies much older than himself, whose names, redolent of history, Waterville had often heard and had a.s.sociated 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 l.u.s.tre, the collective _scintillae_, that didn't proceed from silver, porcelain, gla.s.s 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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.