‘Anything I can tell you – I shall be delighted!’ Waterville exclaimed.
She gave him a look, not imperious, almost appealing, which 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 went on. ‘When my son told me he should ask you to come down, I was very glad. I mean, of course, that we were delighted –’ And she paused a moment. Then she added, simply, ‘I want to ask you about Mrs Headway.’
‘Ah, here it is!’ cried Waterville within himself. More superficially, he smiled, as agreeably as possible, and said, ‘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.’ Waterville said this without an intention of malice, simply to escape from the difficulties of his situation; but after he had said it, he was almost frightened by its 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 is fascinating. She is fascinating,’ said her ladyship, with inimitable dryness.
‘So I think, myself. I like her very much,’ Waterville rejoined, cheerfully.
‘You are in all the better position to speak of her, then.’
‘To speak well of her,’ said Waterville, smiling.
‘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 would have remained but for Waterville to launch himself in a panegyric of his mysterious countrywoman; 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 is certainly very amusing.’
‘She is very good-natured; she has lots of good intentions.’
‘What do you call good intentions?’ asked Lady Demesne, very sweetly.
‘Well, I mean that she wants to be friendly and pleasant.’
‘Of course you have to defend her. She’s your countrywoman.’
‘To defend her – I must wait till she’s attacked,’ said Waterville, laughing.
‘That’s very true. I needn’t call your attention to the fact that I am not attacking her. 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. It’s very strange. I rather hoped you might explain it.’
Waterville was silent a moment. ‘I’m afraid I can’t explain Mrs Headway,’ he remarked at last.
‘I see you admit she is very peculiar.’
Waterville hesitated again. ‘It’s too great a responsibility to answer you.’ He felt that 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 Lady Demesne; and yet, with his active little 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 cultivation of duty and in extreme constancy to two or three objects of devotion chosen once for all. She must, indeed, have had a vision of things which would represent Mrs Headway as both displeasing and dangerous. But he presently became aware that 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 have 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 assist me.’ Her tone changed as she spoke these words; there was a quick tremor in it; he could see it was a confession of distress. Her distress was deep; he immediately felt that it must have been, 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 is very difficult.’
‘It’s not so difficult as mine!’ She was going all lengths; she was really appealing to him. ‘I don’t imagine that you are under any obligation to Mrs Headway – you seem to me very different,’ she added.
Waterville was not insensible to any discrimination that told in his favour; but these words gave him a slight shock, as if they had been an attempt at bribery. ‘I am surprised that you don’t like her,’ he ventured to observe.
Lady Demesne looked out of the window a little. ‘I don’t think you are 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 she appears to be very clever; but I don’t trust her. I don’t know what has taken possession of him; it is not usual in his family to marry people like that. I don’t think she’s a lady. The person I should wish for him would be so very different – perhaps you can see what I mean. There’s something in her history that we don’t understand. My son understands it no better than I. If you could only explain to us, that might be a help. I treat you with great confidence the first time I see you; it’s because I don’t know where to turn. I am exceedingly anxious.’
It was very plain that she was anxious; her manner had become more vehement; her eyes seemed to shine in the thickening dusk. ‘Are you very sure there is danger?’ Waterville asked. ‘Has he asked her to marry him, and has she consented?’
‘If I wait till they settle it all, it will be too late. I have reason to believe that my son is not engaged, but he is terribly entangled. At the same time he is very uneasy, and that may save him yet. He has a great sense of honour. He is not satisfied about her past life; he doesn’t know what to think of what we have 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 is different, and I daresay you have not our ideas; but really there is a limit to everything. There must have been some great irregularities – I am afraid some great scandals. It’s dreadful to have to accept such things. He has not told me all this; but it’s not necessary he should tell me; I know him well enough to guess.’
‘Does he know that you have spoken to me?’ Waterville asked.
‘Not in the least. But I must tell you that I shall repeat to him anything that you may say against her.’
‘I had better say nothing, then. It’s very delicate. Mrs Headway is quite undefended. One may like her or not, of course. I have seen nothing of her that is not perfectly correct.’
‘And you have heard nothing?’
Waterville remembered Littlemore’s assertion that there were cases in which a man was bound in honour to tell an untruth, and he wondered whether this were such a case. 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 make it incumbent on him to lie for her. He had not 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, as they said in New York; that stuck in his throat. ‘I am 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 has done wrong, he would give her up.’
‘Well, I have no right to say so,’ said Waterville.
Lady Demesne turned away; she was much disappointed in him. He was afraid she was going to break out – ‘Why, then
, do you suppose I asked you here?’ She quitted her place near the window and was apparently about to leave the room. But she stopped short. ‘You know something against her, but you won’t say it.’
Waterville hugged his folio and looked awkward. ‘You attribute things to me. I shall never say anything.’
‘Of course you are perfectly free. There is some one else who knows, I think – another American – a gentleman who was in Paris when my son was there. I have forgotten his name.’
‘A friend of Mrs Headway’s? I suppose you mean George Littlemore.’
‘Yes – Mr Littlemore. He has a sister, whom I have met; I didn’t know she was his sister till to-day. Mrs Headway spoke of her, but I find she doesn’t know her. That itself is a proof, I think. Do you think he would help me?’ Lady Demesne asked, very simply.
‘I doubt it, but you can try.’
‘I wish he had come with you. Do you think he would come?’
‘He is in America at this moment, but I believe he soon comes back.’
‘I shall go to his sister; I will ask her to bring him to see me. She is extremely nice; I think she will understand. Unfortunately there is very little time.’
‘Don’t count too much on Littlemore,’ said Waterville, gravely.
‘You men have no pity.’
‘Why should we pity you? How can Mrs Headway hurt such a person as you?’
Lady Demesne hesitated a moment. ‘It hurts me to hear her voice.’
‘Her voice is very sweet.’
‘Possibly. But she’s horrible!’
This was too much, it seemed to Waterville; poor Mrs Headway was extremely open to criticism, and he himself had declared she was a barbarian. Yet she was not horrible. ‘It’s for your son to pity you. If he doesn’t, how can you expect it of others?’
‘Oh, but he does!’ And with a majesty that was more striking even than her logic, Lady Demesne moved towards the door.
Waterville advanced to open it for her, and as she passed out he said, ‘There’s one thing you can do – try to like her!’
She shot him a terrible glance. ‘That would be worst of all!’
VIII
GEORGE LITTLEMORE arrived in London on the twentieth of May, and one of the first things he did was to go and see Waterville at the Legation, where he made known to him that he had taken for the rest of the season a house at Queen Anne’s Gate, so that his sister and her husband, who, under the pressure of diminished rents, had let their own town-residence, might come up and spend a couple of months with him.
‘One of the consequences of your having a house will be that you will have to entertain Mrs Headway,’ Waterville said.
Littlemore sat there with his hands crossed upon his stick; he looked at Waterville with an eye that failed to kindle at the mention of this lady’s name. ‘Has she got into European society?’ he asked, rather languidly.
‘Very much, I should say. She has a house, and a carriage, and diamonds, and everything handsome. She seems already to know a lot of people; they put her name in the Morning Post. She has come up very quickly; she’s almost famous. Every one is asking about her – you’ll be plied with questions.’
Littlemore listened gravely. ‘How did she get in?’
‘She met a large party at Longlands, and made them all think her great fun. They must have taken her up; she only wanted a start.’
Littlemore seemed suddenly to be struck with the grotesqueness of this news, to which his first response was a burst of quick laughter. ‘To think of Nancy Beck! The people here are queer people. There’s no one they won’t go after. They wouldn’t touch her in New York.’
‘Oh, New York’s old-fashioned,’ said Waterville; and he announced to his friend that Lady Demesne was very eager for his arrival, and wanted to make him help her prevent her son’s bringing such a person into the family. Littlemore apparently was not alarmed at her ladyship’s projects, and intimated, in the manner of a man who thought them rather impertinent, that he could trust himself to keep out of her way. ‘It isn’t a proper marriage, at any rate,’ Waterville declared.
‘Why not, if he loves her?’
‘Oh, if that’s all you want!’ cried Waterville, with a degree of cynicism that rather surprised his companion. ‘Would you marry her yourself?’
‘Certainly, if I were in love with her.’
‘You took care not to be that.’
‘Yes, I did – and so Demesne had better have done. But since he’s bitten –!’ and Littlemore terminated his sentence in a suppressed yawn.
Waterville presently asked him how he would manage, in view of his sister’s advent, about asking Mrs Headway to his house; and he replied that he would manage by simply not asking her. Upon this, Waterville declared that he was very inconsistent; to which Littlemore rejoined that it was very possible. But he asked whether they couldn’t talk about something else than Mrs Headway. He couldn’t enter into the young man’s interest in her, and was sure to have enough of her later.
Waterville would have been sorry to give a false idea of his interest in Mrs Headway; for he flattered himself the feeling had definite limits. He had been two or three times to see her; but it was a relief to think that she was now quite independent of him. There had been no revival of that intimate intercourse which occurred during the visit to Longlands. She could dispense with assistance now; she knew herself that she was in the current of success. She pretended to be surprised at her good fortune, especially at its rapidity; but she was really surprised at nothing. She took things as they came, and, being essentially a woman of action, wasted almost as little time in elation as she would have done in despondence. She talked a great deal about Lord Edward and Lady Margaret, and about such other members of the nobility as had shown a desire to cultivate her acquaintance; professing to understand perfectly the sources of a popularity which apparently was destined to increase. ‘They come to laugh at me,’ she said; ‘they come simply to get things to repeat. I can’t open my mouth but they burst into fits. It’s a settled thing that I’m an American humorist; if I say the simplest things, they begin to roar. I must express myself somehow; and indeed when I hold my tongue they think me funnier than ever. They repeat what I say to a great person, and a great person told some of them the other night that he wanted to hear me for himself. I’ll do for him what I do for the others; no better and no worse. I don’t know how I do it; I talk the only way I can. They tell me it isn’t so much the things I say as the way I say them. Well, they’re very easy to please. They don’t care for me; it’s only to be able to repeat Mrs Headway’s “last”. Every one wants to have it first; it’s a regular race.’ When she found what was expected of her, she undertook to supply the article in abundance; and the poor little woman really worked hard at her Americanisms. If the taste of London lay that way, she would do her best to gratify it; it was only a pity she hadn’t known it before; she would have made more extensive preparations. She thought it a disadvantage, of old, to live in Arizona, in Dakotah, in the newly admitted States; but now she perceived that, as she phrased it to herself, this was the best thing that ever had happened to her. She tried to remember all the queer stories she had heard out there, and keenly regretted that she had not taken them down in writing; she drummed up the echoes of the Rocky Mountains and practised the intonations of the Pacific slope. When she saw her audience in convulsions, she said to herself that this was success, and believed that, if she had only come to London five years sooner, she might have married a duke. That would have been even a more absorbing spectacle for the London world than the actual proceedings of Sir Arthur Demesne, who, however, lived sufficiently in the eye of society to justify the rumour that there were bets about town as to the issue of his already protracted courtship. It was food for curiosity to see a young man of his pattern – one of the few ‘earnest’ young men of the Tory side, with an income sufficient for tastes more marked than those by which he was known – make up to a lady several years older than hi
mself, whose fund of Californian slang was even larger than her stock of dollars. Mrs Headway had got a good many new ideas since her arrival in London, but she also retained several old ones. The chief of these – it was now a year old – was that Sir Arthur Demesne was the most irreproachable young man in the world. There were, of course, a good many things that he was not. He was not amusing; he was not insinuating; he was not of an absolutely irrepressible ardour. She believed he was constant; but he was certainly not eager. With these things, however, Mrs Headway could perfectly dispense; she had, in particular, quite outlived the need of being amused. She had had a very exciting life, and her vision of happiness at present was to be magnificently bored. The idea of complete and uncriticised respectability filled her soul with satisfaction; her imagination prostrated itself in the presence of this virtue. She was aware that she had achieved it but ill in her own person; but she could now, at least, connect herself with it by sacred ties. She could prove in that way what was her deepest feeling. This was a religious appreciation of Sir Arthur’s great quality – his smooth and rounded, his blooming, lily-like exemption from social flaws.
She was at home when Littlemore went to see her, and surrounded by several visitors, to whom she was giving a late cup of tea and to whom she introduced her compatriot. He stayed till they dispersed, in spite of the manoeuvres of a gentleman who evidently desired to outstay him, but who, whatever might have been his happy fortune on former visits, received on this occasion no encouragement from Mrs Headway. He looked at Littlemore slowly, beginning with his boots and travelling upwards, as if to discover the reason of so unexpected a preference, and then, without a salutation, left him face to face with their hostess.