Mrs. Fitz Part 29

"I don't think it would surprise me, although, of course, she is rather odd. But then in all ways she is so different from us."

"Did you observe whether she ate with her knife and drank out of the finger-bowls?"

"Her manners are just like those of anybody else. I am asking Mary to dine here on Friday, so that she can see for herself. It is her ideas that are un-English; yet, judged by her own standard she might be considered quite nice."

"Mrs. Arbuthnot, surely a very generous admission!"

"Let us be fair to everybody. I'm not sure that one couldn't get almost to like her. There is something about her that seems to take right hold of you. Personal magnetism, I suppose."

"Or some uncomfortable Bohemian attribute? Can it be, do you suppose, that the standard the English gentlewoman likes the whole world to conform to would be none the worse for a little wider basis?"

"Don't be a goose! A person is either a lady or she isn't, but she may be frightfully entertaining and fascinating all the same."

"Yes, that has the hall-mark of truth. There are cases in history.

Miss Dolly Daydream, for example, of the Frivolity Theatre."

Mrs. Arbuthnot reproved me for the levity with which I treated a grave issue. Upon the receipt of my apology she regaled me with the astounding fact that Mrs. Fitz looked down on the English.

"Is it conceivable?" said I, the picture of incredulity.

"Really and truly she does. Quite laughs at us. Says we are so stupid--so _bete_, that's her word. And she says we are so conceited.

She seems to think we have very little education in the things that really matter."

"Is she old-fashioned enough to believe that there is anything that really matters?"

"In a way she does."

"How antediluvian! What does she believe it is that really matters?"

"She seems to think it's the soul."

"Dear me! I hope you made it clear to her that that part of the Englishman's anatomy is never mentioned in good society?"

"She knows that, I think. She says why the Romans are ashamed of it is what she can't fathom."

"She pays us the compliment of comparing us to the Romans?"

"She says we are the Romans."

"In a re-incarnation, I presume?"

"I suppose she means that--she is so awfully odd. And for the Romans to give themselves airs is too ridiculous."

"Has she no opinion of the Caesars?"

"The Caesars don't amount to much, in her opinion. We are going to have another lesson before long, she says, and it will be a very good thing for the world."

"If by that she means that materialism leads to a _cul-de-sac_, and that it takes a better creed than that to raise a reptile out of the mud, perhaps we might do worse than agree with her."

"She certainly never said anything about any 'isms.' But I don't understand you anyway."

"It seems to me, _mon enfant_, she has had a good deal to say about the 'isms.' But then, as you say, she's so foreign. Was there anything else about her that engaged your attention?"

"Heaps of things. She is terribly superst.i.tious, a tremendous believer in fate. She thinks everything is fore-ordained, and that the same things keep happening over again."

"Doesn't her oddness strike you as rather out of date?"

"Absurdly. But it is not so much her ideas as the way she lives up to them that makes her so different from other people. There was one thing she told me really made me laugh. She said that Nevil was her twin-soul, and that they lived in Babylon together about three thousand years ago."

"I should think that is not unlikely."

"Be serious, Odo."

"There are more things in earth and heaven, Horatia, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Go to bed like a wise child, and dream of hunting the fox, and see that this Viennese horsewoman doesn't addle that brain too much."

Mrs. Arbuthnot confessed namely that she didn't feel in the least like sleep.

"I think I'll have another cigarette," she said.

"Sitting up late and smoking to excess will destroy that magnificent De Vere Vane-Anstruther nerve."

"Goose! Yet I am not sure that this circus woman hasn't destroyed it already. Do you know, I've never been in the least afraid of anybody before, but I rather think I'm a bit afraid of her. She really is wonderfully odd."

A slight tremor seemed to invade the voice of Mrs. Arbuthnot. I was fain to believe that such a display of sensibility was extremely honourable to her. For, even judged as a mere human ent.i.ty, our guest was quite apart from the ordinary, and it would have implied a measure of obtuseness not to recognise that fact.

Taking one consideration with another, I felt the hour was ripe to let Mrs. Arbuthnot into the secret. As things were going so well, it was perhaps not strictly necessary; yet at the same time I had a premonition that I should not be forgiven if the wife of my bosom was kept too long in innocence of our visitor's romantic lineage.

"That cigarette of yours," said I, "means another pipe for me, although you know quite well that it makes me so bad-tempered in the morning.

But I think I ought to tell you something--that is if you will swear by all your G.o.ds not to breathe a word to a living soul, not even to Mary Catesby."

Mrs. Arbuthnot p.r.i.c.ked up her ears properly.

"Why, of course. You mean it is something about this Mrs. Fitz? I know it."

"What do you know?"

"I can't explain it, but as soon as I spoke to her it came upon me that she was something quite deep and mysterious."

"Well, it happens that she is. Things are not always what they seem.

I am going to give you a guess."

"There is something Grand-d.u.c.h.essy about her. You remember that woman we met at Baden-Baden? In some ways she is rather like her."

"And do you remember your old friend the King of Illyria?--'the old johnny with the white hair,' to quote Joseph Jocelyn De Vere."

"The dear old man in the Jubilee procession?"

"The Victor of Rodova; the representative of the oldest reigning monarchy in Europe."