Lady Barbarina Part 22

That evening, before he went to dress for dinner, he wandered into the library, where he felt certain he should find some superior bindings.

There was no one in the room and he spent a happy half-hour among treasures of old reading and triumphs of old morocco. He had a great esteem for good literature, he held that it should have handsome covers.

The daylight had begun to wane, but whenever, in the rich-looking dimness, he made out the glimmer of a well-gilded back, he took down the volume and carried it to one of the deep-set windows. He had just finished the inspection of a delightfully fragrant folio, and was about to carry it back to its niche, when he found himself face to face with Lady Demesne. He was sharply startled, for her tall slim figure, her preserved fairness, which looked white in the high brown room, and the air of serious intention with which she presented herself, all gave something spectral to her presence. He saw her countenance dimly light, however, and heard her say with the vague despair of her neutrality: "Are you looking at our books? I'm afraid they're rather dull."

"Dull? Why they're as bright as the day they were bound." And he turned on her the glittering panels of his folio.

"I'm afraid I haven't looked at them for a long time," she murmured, going nearer to the window, where she stood looking out. Beyond the clear pane the park stretched away, the menace of night already mantling the great limbs of the oaks. The place appeared cold and empty, and the trees had an air of conscious importance, as if Nature herself had been bribed somehow to take the side of county families. Her ladyship was no easy person for talk; spontaneity had never come to her, and to express herself might have been for her modesty like some act of undressing in public. Her very simplicity was conventional, though it was rather a n.o.ble convention. You might have pitied her for the sense of her living tied so tight, with consequent moral cramps, to certain rigid ideals.

This made her at times seem tired, like a person who had undertaken too much. She said nothing for a moment, and there was an appearance of design in her silence, as if she wished to let him know she had appealed to him without the trouble of announcing it. She had been accustomed to expect people would suppose things, to save her questions and explanations. Waterville made some haphazard remark about the beauty of the evening-in point of fact the weather had changed for the worse-to which she vouchsafed no reply. But she presently said with her usual gentleness: "I hoped I should find you here-I should like to ask you something."

"Anything I can tell you-I shall be delighted!" the young man declared.

She gave him a pleading look that seemed to say: "Please be very simple-very simple indeed." Then she glanced about her as if there had been other people in the room; she didn't wish to appear closeted with him or to have come on purpose. There she was at any rate, and she proceeded. "When my son told me he should ask you to come down I was very glad. I mean of course we were delighted-" And she paused a moment. But she next went on: "I want to ask you about Mrs. Headway."

"Ah, here it is!" cried Waterville within himself. But he could show no wincing. "Ah yes, I see!"

"Do you mind my asking you? I hope you don't mind. I haven't any one else to ask."

"Your son knows her much better than I do." He said this without intention of malice, simply to escape from the difficulties of the situation, but after he had spoken was almost frightened by his mocking sound.

"I don't think he knows her. She knows _him_-which is very different.

When I ask him about her he merely tells me she's fascinating. She _is_ fascinating," said her ladyship with inimitable dryness.

"So I think, myself. I like her very much," Waterville returned cheerfully.

"You're in all the better position to speak of her then."

"To speak well of her," the young man smiled.

"Of course-if you can. I should be delighted to hear you do that.

That's what I wish-to hear some good of her."

It might have seemed after this that nothing could have remained but for our friend to break out in categoric praise of his fellow guest; but he was no more to be tempted into that danger than into another. "I can only say I like her," he repeated. "She has been very kind to me."

"Every one seems to like her," said Lady Demesne with an unstudied effect of pathos. "She's certainly very amusing."

"She's very good-natured. I think she has no end of good intentions."

"What do you mean by good intentions?" asked Lady Demesne very sweetly.

"Well, it strikes me she wants to be friendly and pleasant."

"Indeed she does! But of course you have to defend her. She's your countrywoman."

"To defend her I must wait till she's attacked," Waterville laughed.

"That's very true. I needn't call your attention to the fact that I'm not attacking her," his hostess observed. "I should never attack a person staying in this house. I only want to know something about her, and if you can't tell me perhaps at least you can mention some one who will."

"She'll tell you herself. Tell you by the hour!"

"What she has told my son? I shouldn't understand it. My son doesn't understand it." She had a full pause, a profusion of patience; then she resumed disappointedly: "It's very strange. I rather hoped you might explain it."

He turned the case over. "I'm afraid I can't explain Mrs. Headway," he concluded.

"I see you admit she's very peculiar."

Even to this, however, he hesitated to commit himself. "It's too great a responsibility to answer you." He allowed he was very disobliging; he knew exactly what Lady Demesne wished him to say. He was unprepared to blight the reputation of Mrs. Headway to accommodate her; and yet, with his cultivated imagination, he could enter perfectly into the feelings of this tender formal serious woman who-it was easy to see-had looked for her own happiness in the observance of duty and in extreme constancy to two or three objects of devotion chosen once for all. She must indeed have had a conception of life in the light of which Nancy Beck would show both for displeasing and for dangerous. But he presently became aware she had taken his last words as a concession in which she might find help.

"You know why I ask you these things then?"

"I think I've an idea," said Waterville, persisting in irrelevant laughter. His laugh sounded foolish in his own ears.

"If you know that, I think you ought to a.s.sist me." Her tone changed now; there was a quick tremor in it; he could feel the confession of distress. The distress verily was deep; it had pressed her hard before she made up her mind to speak to him. He was sorry for her and determined to be very serious.

"If I could help you I would. But my position's very difficult."

"It's not so difficult as mine!" She was going all lengths; she was really appealing to him. "I don't imagine you under obligations to Mrs.

Headway. You seem to me so different," she added.

He was not insensible to any discrimination that told in his favour; but these words shocked him as if they had been an attempt at bribery. "I'm surprised you don't like her," he ventured to bring out.

She turned her eyes through the window. "I don't think you're really surprised, though possibly you try to be. I don't like her at any rate, and I can't fancy why my son should. She's very pretty and appears very clever; but I don't trust her. I don't know what has taken possession of him; it's not usual in his family to marry people like that. Surely she's of _no_ breeding. The person I should propose would be so very different-perhaps you can see what I mean. There's something in her history we don't understand. My son understands it no better than I. If you could throw any light on it, that might be a help. If I treat you with such confidence the first time I see you it's because I don't know where to turn. I'm exceedingly anxious."

It was plain enough she was anxious; her manner had become more vehement; her eyes seemed to shine in the thickening dusk. "Are you very sure there's danger?" Waterville asked. "Has he proposed to her and has she jumped at him?"

"If I wait till they settle it all it will be too late. I've reason to believe that my son's not engaged, but I fear he's terribly entangled.

At the same time he's very uneasy, and that may save him yet. He has a great sense of honour. He's not satisfied about her past life; he doesn't know what to think of what we've been told. Even what she admits is so strange. She has been married four or five times. She has been divorced again and again. It seems so extraordinary. She tells him that in America it's different, and I dare say you haven't our ideas; but really there's a limit to everything. There must have been great irregularities-I'm afraid great scandals. It's dreadful to have to accept such things. He hasn't told me all this, but it's not necessary he should tell me. I know him well enough to guess."

"Does he know you're speaking to me?" Waterville asked.

"Not in the least. But I must tell you I shall repeat to him anything you may say against her."

"I had better say nothing then. It's very delicate. Mrs. Headway's quite undefended. One may like her or not, of course. I've seen nothing of her that isn't perfectly correct," our young man wound up.

"And you've heard nothing?"

He remembered Littlemore's view that there were cases in which a man was bound in honour to tell an untruth, and he wondered if this were such a one. Lady Demesne imposed herself, she made him believe in the reality of her grievance, and he saw the gulf that divided her from a pushing little woman who had lived with Western editors. She was right to wish not to be connected with Mrs. Headway. After all, there had been nothing in his relations with that lady to hold him down to lying for her. He hadn't sought her acquaintance, she had sought his; she had sent for him to come and see her. And yet he couldn't give her away-that stuck in his throat. "I'm afraid I really can't say anything. And it wouldn't matter. Your son won't give her up because I happen not to like her."

"If he were to believe she had done wrong he'd give her up."

"Well, I've no right to say so," said Waterville.

Lady Demesne turned away; he indeed disappointed her and he feared she was going to break out: "Why then do you suppose I asked you here?" She quitted her place near the window and prepared apparently to leave the room. But she stopped short. "You know something against her, but you won't say it."

He hugged his folio and looked awkward. "You attribute things to me. I shall never say anything."

"Of course you're perfectly free. There's some one else who knows, I think-another American-a gentleman who was in Paris when my son was there. I've forgotten his name."

"A friend of Mrs. Headway's? I suppose you mean George Littlemore."