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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/37627-0.txt b/37627-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1a729b0 --- /dev/null +++ b/37627-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17069 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Lady Barbarina, by Henry James + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Lady Barbarina + The Siege of London, An International Episode and Other Tales + + +Author: Henry James + + + +Release Date: October 4, 2011 [eBook #37627] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADY BARBARINA*** + + +This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler. + + + + + + LADY BARBARINA + THE SIEGE OF LONDON + AN INTERNATIONAL EPISODE + AND OTHER TALES + + + * * * * * + + BY + HENRY JAMES + + * * * * * + + MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED + ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON + + 1922 + + COPYRIGHT. + + * * * * * + + PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN + + + + +PREFACE + + +I have gathered into this volume several short fictions of the type I +have already found it convenient to refer to as “international”—though I +freely recognise, before the array of my productions, of whatever length +and whatever brevity, the general applicability of that term. On the +interest of _contrasted_ things any painter of life and manners +inevitably much depends, and contrast, fortunately for him, is easy to +seek and to recognise; the only difficulty is in presenting it again with +effect, in extracting from it its sense and its lesson. The reader of +these volumes will certainly see it offered in no form so frequent or so +salient as that of the opposition of aspects from country to country. +Their author, I am quite aware, would seem struck with no possibility of +contrast in the human lot so great as that encountered as we turn back +and forth between the distinctively American and the distinctively +European outlook. He might even perhaps on such a showing be represented +as scarce aware, before the human scene, of any other sharp antithesis at +all. He is far from denying that this one has always been vivid for him; +yet there are cases in which, however obvious and however contributive, +its office for the particular demonstration has been quite secondary, and +in which the work is by no means merely addressed to the illustration of +it. These things have had in the latter case their proper subject: as, +for instance, the subject of “The Wings of the Dove,” or that of “The +Golden Bowl,” has not been the exhibited behaviour of certain Americans +as Americans, of certain English persons as English, of certain Romans as +Romans. Americans, Englishmen, Romans are, in the whole matter, agents +or victims; but this is in virtue of an association nowadays so +developed, so easily to be taken for granted, as to have created a new +scale of relations altogether, a state of things from which _emphasised_ +internationalism has either quite dropped or is well on its way to drop. +The dramatic side of human situations subsists of course on contrast; and +when we come to the two novels I have just named we shall see, for +example, just how they positively provide themselves with that source of +interest. We shall see nevertheless at the same time that the subject +could in each case have been perfectly expressed had _all_ the persons +concerned been only American or only English or only Roman or whatever. + +If it be asked then, in this light, why they deviate from that natural +harmony, why the author resorts to the greater extravagance when the less +would serve, the answer is simply that the course taken has been, on +reflexion, the course of the greater amusement. That is an explanation +adequate, I admit, only when itself a little explained—but I shall have +due occasion to explain it. Let me for the moment merely note that the +very condition I here glance at—that of the achieved social fusion, say, +without the sense and experience of which neither “The Wings of the +Dove,” nor “The Golden Bowl,” nor “The Portrait of a Lady,” nor even, +after all, I think, “The Ambassadors,” would have been written—represents +a series of facts of the highest interest and one that, at this time of +day, the late-coming observer and painter, the novelist sometimes +depressed by all the drawbacks of a literary form overworked and relaxed, +can only rejoice to meet in his path and to measure more and more as a +portent and an opportunity. In proportion as he intelligently meets it, +and more especially in proportion as he may happen to have “assisted” +from far back at so many of the odd and fresh phenomena involved, must he +see a vast new province, infinitely peopled and infinitely elastic—by +which I mean with incalculable power to grow—annexed to the kingdom of +the dramatist. On this point, however, much more is to be said than I +can touch on by the way—so that I return to my minor contention; which is +that in a whole group of tales I here collect the principle of +illustration has on the other hand quite definitely been that the idea +could _not_ have expressed itself without the narrower application of +international terms. The contrast in “Lady Barbarina” depends altogether +on the immitigable Anglicism of this young woman and that equally marked +projection of New York elements and objects which, surrounding and +framing her figure, throws it into eminent relief. She has her personal +qualities, but the very interest, the very curiosity of the matter is +that her imbroglio is able to attest itself with scarce so much as a +reference to them. It plays itself out quite consistently on the plane +of her general, her instinctive, her exasperatedly conscious ones. The +others, the more intimate, the subtler, the finer—so far as there may +have been such—virtually become, while the story is enacted, not +relevant, though their relevancy might have come up on some other basis. + +But that this is true, always in its degree, of each of the other +contributions to the class before us, we shall sufficiently make out, I +think, as we take them in their order. I am only struck, I may indeed +parenthesise, with the inveteracy of the general ground (not to say of +the extension I give it) over which my present remarks play. It does +thus in truth come home to me that, combining and comparing in whatever +proportions and by whatever lights, my “America” and its products would +doubtless, as a theme, have betrayed gaps and infirmities enough without +such a kicking-up of the dramatic dust (mainly in the foreground) as I +could set my “Europe” in motion for; just as my Europe would probably +have limped across our stage to no great effect of processional state +without an ingenuous young America (constantly seen as ingenuous and +young) to hold up its legendary train. At the same time I pretend not at +all to regret my having had from the very first to see my workable world +all and only as an unnatural mixture. No mixture, for that matter, is +quite unnatural unless quite sterile, and the particular range of +associations that betimes, to my eyes, blocked out everything else, +blocked out aspects and combinations more simply conditioned, was at +least not open to the reproach of not giving me results. These were but +what they could be, of course; but such as they were, at all events, here +am I at this time of day quite earnestly grouping, distinguishing, +discussing them. The great truth in the whole connexion, however, is, I +think, that one never really chooses one’s general range of vision—the +experience from which ideas and themes and suggestions spring: this +proves ever what it has had to be, this is one with the very turn one’s +life has taken; so that whenever it “gives,” whatever it makes us feel +and think of, we regard very much as imposed and inevitable. The subject +thus pressed upon the artist is the necessity of his case and the fruit +of his consciousness; which truth makes and has ever made of any quarrel +with his subject, and stupid attempt to go behind _that_, the true +stultification of criticism. The author of these remarks has in any case +felt it, from far back, quite his least stupid course to meet halfway, as +it were, the turn taken and the perceptions engendered by the tenor of +his days. Here it is that he has never pretended to “go behind”—which +would have been for him a deplorable waste of time. The thing of profit +is to have your experience—to recognise and understand it, and for this +almost any will do; there being surely no absolute ideal about it beyond +getting from it all it has to give. The artist—for it is of this strange +brood we speak—has but to have his honest sense of life to find it fed at +every pore even as the birds of the air are fed; with more and more to +give, in turn, as a consequence, and, quite by the same law that governs +the responsive affection of a kindly-used animal, in proportion as more +and more is confidently asked. + +All of which, however, doubtless wanders a little far from my mild +argument—that of my so grateful and above all so well-advised primary +acceptance of a _determined_ array of appearances. What I was clearly to +be treated to by fate—with the early-taken ply I have already elsewhere +glanced at—was (should I have the intelligence to embrace it) some +considerable occasion to appreciate the mixture of manners. So, as I +say, there would be a decent economy in cultivating the intelligence; +through the sincerity of which process I have plucked, I hold, every +little flower of a “subject” pressed between the leaves of these volumes. +I am tempted indeed to make for my original lucidity the claim of +something more than bare prudence—almost that of a happy instinctive +foresight. This is what I mean by having been “well-advised.” It was as +if I had, vulgarly speaking, received quite at first the “straight +tip”—to back the right horse or buy the right shares. The mixture of +manners was to become in other words not a less but a very much more +appreciable and interesting subject of study. The mixture of manners was +in fine to loom large and constantly larger all round; it was to be a +matter, plainly, about which the future would have much to say. Nothing +appeals to me more, I confess, as a “critic of life” in any sense worthy +of the name, than the finer—if indeed thereby the less easily +formulated—group of the conquests of civilisation, the multiplied +symptoms among educated people, from wherever drawn, of a common +intelligence and a social fusion tending to abridge old rigours of +separation. This too, I must admit, in spite of the many-coloured +sanctity of such rigours in general, which have hitherto made countries +smaller but kept the globe larger, and by which immediate strangeness, +immediate beauty, immediate curiosity were so much fostered. Half our +instincts work for the maintained differences; without them, for +instance, what would have been the point of the history of poor Lady +Barbarina? I have but to put that question, I must add, to feel it +beautifully large; for there looms before me at its touch the vision of a +Lady Barbarina reconciled, domesticated, developed, of possibly greater +vividness than the quite other vision expressed in these pages. It is a +question, however, of the tendency, perceptive as well as reflective too, +of the braver imagination—which faculty, in our future, strikes me as +likely to be appealed to much less by the fact, by the pity and the +misery and the greater or less grotesqueness, of the courageous, or even +of the timid, missing their lives beyond certain stiff barriers, than by +the picture of their more and more steadily making out their +opportunities and their possible communications. Behind all the small +comedies and tragedies of the international, in a word, has exquisitely +lurked for me the idea of some eventual sublime consensus of the +educated; the exquisite conceivabilities of which, intellectual, moral, +emotional, sensual, social, political—all, I mean, in the face of felt +difficulty and danger—constitute stuff for such “situations” as may +easily make many of those of a more familiar type turn pale. _There_, if +one will—in the dauntless fusions to come—is the personal drama of the +future. + +We are far from it certainly—as I have delayed much too long to remark—in +the chronicle of Lady Barb. I have placed this composition (1888) at the +top of my list, in the present cluster, despite the earlier date of some +of its companions; consistently giving it precedence by reason of its +greatest length. The idea at the root of it scarcely brooks indication, +so inevitable had it surely become, in all the conditions, that a young +Englishwoman in some such predicament should figure as the happy +pictorial thought. The whole thing rests, I need scarce point out, on +the most primitive logic. The international relation had begun to +present itself “socially,” after the liveliest fashion, a quarter of a +century ago and earlier, as a relation of intermarrying; but nothing was +meanwhile so striking as that these manifestations took always the same +turn. The European of “position” married the young American woman, or +the young American woman married the European of position—one scarce knew +how best to express the regularity of it; but the social field was +scanned in vain for a different pairing. No American citizen appeared to +offer his hand to the “European” girl, or if he did so offered it in +vain. The bridal migrations were eastward without exception—as rigidly +as if settled by statute. Custom clearly had acquired the force of law; +a fact remarkable, significant, interesting and even amusing. And yet, +withal, it seemed scarce to demand explanations. So far as they appeared +indeed they were confident on the American side. The representatives of +that interest had no call in life to go “outside” for their wives—having +obviously close at hand the largest and choicest assortment of such +conveniences; as was sufficiently proved by the European “run” on the +market. What American run on any foreign market had been noted?—save +indeed always on the part of the women! It all redounded to the honour +and glory of the young woman grown in American conditions—to cast +discredit on whose general peerlessness by attested preference for other +types could but strike the domestic aspirant as an act of disloyalty or +treachery. It was just the observed rarity of the case therefore that +prompted one to put it to the imaginative test. Any case so unlikely to +happen—taking it for at all conceivable—could only be worth attention +when it _should_, once in a blue moon, occur. There was nothing +meanwhile, in truth, to “go by”; we had seen the American girl “of +position” absorbed again and again into the European social system, but +we had only seen young foreign candidates for places as cooks and +housemaids absorbed into the American. The more one viewed the possible +instance, accordingly, the more it appealed to speculative study; so +that, failing all valid testimony, one had studiously, as it were, to +forge the very documents. + +I have only to add that I found mine, once I had produced them, +thoroughly convincing: the most one could do, in the conditions, was to +make one’s picture appear to hang together, and I should have broken +down, no doubt, had my own, after a superficial question or two, not +struck me as decently hanging. The essential, at the threshold, I seem +to recall, was to get my young man right—I somehow quite took for granted +the getting of my young woman. Was this because, for the portrait of +Lady Barb, I felt appealed to so little in the name of _shades_? Shades +would be decidedly neither of her general world nor of her particular +consciousness: the image I had in view was a maiden nature that, after a +fashion all its own, should show as fine and complete, show as neither +coarse nor poor, show above all as a resultant of many causes, quite +without them. I felt in short sure of Lady Barb, and I think there is no +question about her, or about the depth of root she might strike in +American soil, that I shouldn’t have been ready on the spot to answer. +Such is the luck of the conception that imposes itself _en bloc_—or such +at least the artist’s luck in face of it; such certainly, to begin with +and “subjectively” speaking, is the great advantage of a character all of +a piece: immediacy of representation, the best omens for felicity, then +so honourably await it. It was Jackson Lemon and _his_ shades, +comparatively, and his comparative sense for shades, that, in the tale, +most interested me. The one thing fine-drawn in his wife was that she +had been able to care for him as he was: to almost every one and every +thing else equally American, to almost every one and everything else so +sensibly stamped, toned and warranted, she was to find herself quite +otherwise affected. With her husband the law was reversed—he had, much +rather, imputed authority and dignity, imputed weight and charm, to the +antecedents of which she was so fine and so direct a consequence; his +estimate, his appreciation of her being founded thus on a vision of +innumerable close correspondences. It is that vision in him that is +racked, and at so many fine points, when he finds their experiment come +so near failure; all of which—at least as I seem to see it again so late +in the day—lights his inward drama as with the never-quenched lamp of a +sacred place. His wife’s, on the other hand, goes on in comparatively +close darkness. + +It is indeed late in the day that I thus project the ray of _my_ critical +lantern, however; for it comes over me even as I write that the general +air in which most of these particular flowers of fancy bloom is an air we +have pretty well ceased to breathe. “Lady Barbarina” is, as I have said, +scarce a quarter of a century old; but so many of the perceived +conditions in which it took birth have changed that the account of them +embodied in that tale and its associates will already pass for ancient +history. “Civilisation” and education move fast, after all, and too many +things have happened; too many _sorts_ of things, above all, seem more +and more likely to happen. This multiplication of kinds of occurrences, +I make no doubt, will promote the inspiration of observers and poets to +come; but it may meanwhile well make for an effect of superannuation in +any record of the leaner years. Jackson Lemon’s has become a more +frequent adventure, and Lady Barbarina is to-day as much at her ease in +New York, in Washington, at Newport, as in London or in Rome. If this is +her case, moreover, it is still more that of little Mrs. Headway, of “The +Siege of London” (1883), who suffers, I feel, by the sad circumstance +that her type of complication, or, more exactly speaking perhaps, that of +the gentlemen concerned with her, is no longer eminent, or at least +salient. Both she and her friends have had too many companions and +successors; so that to reinvest them with historic importance, with +individual dignity, I have to think of them rather as brave precursors, +as adventurous skirmishers and _éclaireurs_. This doesn’t diminish, I +recognise, any interest that may reside in the form either of “The Siege” +aforesaid or of its congeners “An International Episode,” “A Bundle of +Letters” and “The Pension Beaurepas.” Or rather indeed perhaps I should +distinguish among these things and, if presuming to claim for several +some hint of the distinction we may see exemplified in any first-class +art-museum, the distinction of the archaic subject treated by a +“primitive” master of high finish, yet notice duly that others are no +more “quaint” than need be. What has really happened, I think, is that +the _great_ international cases, those that bristle with fifty sorts of +social reference and overflow, and, by the same token, with a hundred +illustrations of social incoherence, are now equally taken for granted on +all sides of the sea, have simply become incidents and examples of the +mixture of manners, as I call it, and the thicker fusion: which may mean +nothing more, in truth, but that social incoherence (with the sense for +its opposite practically extinct among the nations) has at last got +itself accepted, right and left, as normal. + +So much, as I put it, for the great cases; but a certain freshness, I +make out, still hangs strangely enough about the smaller and the more +numerous; those to which we owe it that such anecdotes—in my general +array—as “Pandora,” as “Fordham Castle,” as “Flickerbridge,” as “Miss +Gunton of Poughkeepsie,” are by no means false even to present +appearances. “The Pension Beaurepas” is not alone, thanks to some of its +associations, in glowing for me with the tender grace of a day that is +dead; and yet, though the accidents and accessories, in such a picture, +may have been marked for change, why shall not the essence of the matter, +the situation of Mr. and Mrs. Ruck and their daughter at old Geneva—for +there is of course a new, a newer Geneva—freely recur? I am careful to +put it as a question, and all for a particular reason—the reason that, to +be frank, I find myself, before the vast diluvian occidental presence in +Europe, with its remorseless rising tide and its positive expression of +almost nothing but quantity and number, deprived, on definite and ample +grounds, of the precious faculty of confidence. This confidence was of +old all instinctive, in face of the “common run” of appearances, the even +then multitudinous, miscellaneous minor international phenomena, those of +which the “short story,” as contemporaneously practised, could effect a +fairly prompt and easy notation; but it is now unmistakable that to come +forth, from whatever privacy, to almost any one of the great European +highways, and more particularly perhaps to approach the ports of traffic +for the lately-developed and so flourishing “southern route” from New +York and Boston, is to encounter one of those big general questions that +sturdily brush away the multiplication of small answers. “Who are they, +what are they, whence and whither and why,” the “critic of life,” +international or other, still, or more and more, asks himself, as he of +course always asked, but with the actual difference that the reply that +used to come so conveniently straight, “Why, they’re just the American +vague variety of the dear old Anglo-Saxon race,” not only hangs fire and +leaves him to wait and wonder, but really affects him as having for this +act of deference (as to which he can’t choose, I admit) little more than +a conscious mocking, baffling, in fact a just all but sinister, grimace. +“Don’t you wish you knew, or even _could_ know?” the inscrutable grin +seems to convey; and with resources of cynicism behind it not in the +least to be disturbed by any such cheap retort as “Don’t you wish that, +on your side, _you_ could say—or even, for your own convenience, so much +as guess?” + +For there is no communicating to the diluvian presence, on such a scale, +any suspicion that convenience shall anywhere fail it: all its +consciousness, on that general head, is that of itself representing and +actively _being_ the biggest convenience of the world. Little need to +insist on the guarantee of subjective ease involved in such an +attitude—the immense noted growth of which casts its chill, as I +intimate, on the inquirer proceeding from settled premisses. He was +aware formerly, when it came to an analysis, of all his presumptions; he +had but to glance for an immemorial assurance at a dozen of the myriad +“registers” disposed in the vestibules of bankers, the reading-rooms of +hotels and “exchanges,” open on the most conspicuous table of visited +palace and castle, to see them bristle with names of a more or less +conceivable tradition. Queer enough often, whether in isolation or in +association, were these gages of identity: but their queerness, not +independent of some more or less traceable weird law, was exactly, after +all, their most familiar note. They had their way of not breaking, +through it all, the old sweet Anglo-Saxon spell; they had their way of +not failing, when all was said, to suggest more communities and +comprehensions than conundrums and “stunts.” He would be brave, however, +who should say that any such ghost of a quiet conformity presides in the +fulness of time over the interminable passenger-lists that proclaim the +prosperity of the great conveying companies. If little books have their +fates, little names—and long ones still more—have their eloquence; the +emphasis of nominal reference in the general roll-call falls so strongly +upon alien syllables and sounds, representative signs that fit into our +“English” legend (as we were mainly conscious up to a few years since of +having inherited that boon) scarcely more than if borrowed from the stony +slabs of Nineveh. I may not here attempt to weigh the question of what +these exotic symbols positively represent—a prodigious question, I cannot +but think; I content myself with noting the difference made for fond +fancy by the so rapidly established change, by the so considerable drop +of old associations. The point is of one’s having the heart to assume +that the Ninevites, as I may momentarily call them for convenience, are +to be constantly taken as feeling in the same way about fifty +associational matters as we used, in all satisfaction, to observe our +earlier generations feel. One can but speak for one’s self, and my +imagination, on the great highways, I find, doesn’t rise to such people, +who are obviously beyond my divination. They strike one, above all, as +giving no account of themselves in any terms already consecrated by human +use; to this inarticulate state they probably form, collectively, the +most unprecedented of monuments; abysmal the mystery of what they think, +what they feel, what they want, what they suppose themselves to be +saying. There would appear to be to-day no slim scrap even of a Daisy +Miller to bridge the chasm; no light-footed Francie Dosson or Pandora Day +to dance before one across the wavering plank. + +I plead a blank of memory as to the origin of “The Siege of London”; I +get no nearer to the birth of the idea than by recalling a certain +agitation of the spirit, a lively irritation of the temper, under which, +one evening early in the autumn of 1877, that is more than thirty years +ago, I walked away from the close of a performance at the Théâtre +Français. The play had been “Le Demi-Monde” of the younger Dumas, a +masterpiece which I had not heard for the first time, but a particular +feature of which on this occasion more than ever yet filled up the +measure of my impatience. I could less than ever swallow it, Olivier de +Jalin’s denunciation of Madame d’Ange; the play, from the beginning, +marches toward it—it is the main hinge of the action; but the very +perfection with which the part was rendered in those years by Delaunay +(just as Croizette was pure perfection as Suzanne) seemed to have made me +present at something inhuman and odious. It was the old story—that from +the positive, the prodigious _morality_ of such a painter of the +sophisticated life as Dumas, not from anything else or less edifying, one +must pray to be delivered. There are doubtless many possible views of +such a dilemma as Olivier’s, the conflict of propriety for him between +the man he likes and esteems and the woman he has loved but hasn’t +esteemed and doesn’t, and as to whom he sees his friend blind, and, as he +thinks, befooled; in consequence of which I am not re-judging his case. +But I recover with a pensive pleasure that is almost all a pang the +intensity with which I could then feel it; to the extent of wondering +whether the general situation of the three persons concerned, or +something like it, mightn’t be shown as taking quite another turn. Was +there not conceivable an Olivier of our race, a different Olivier +altogether, moved to ask himself how at such a juncture a “real +gentleman,” distressed and perplexed, would yet most naturally act? The +question would be interesting, it was easy to judge, if only by the light +it might throw on some of the other, the antecedent and concomitant, +phases of a real gentleman’s connexion “at all at all” with such a +business and such a world. It remained with me, at all events, and was +to prove in time the germ of “The Siege of London”; of the conception of +which the state of mind so reflected strikes me as making, I confess, +very ancient history. + +Far away and unspeakably regretted the days, alas, or, more exactly, the +nights, on which one could walk away from the Français under the spell of +such fond convictions and such deep and agitating problems. The emphasis +of the international proposition has indeed had time, as I say, to place +itself elsewhere—if, for that matter, there be any emphasis or any +proposition left at all—since the age when that particular pleasure +seemed the keenest in life. A few months ago, one evening, I found +myself withdrawing from the very temple and the supposedly sacred rites +before these latter were a third over: beneath that haunted dome itself +they seemed to have become at last so accessible, cynically making their +bargain with them, to the profanations long kept at bay. Only, with that +evolution of taste possible on the part of the old worshipper in +question, what world-convulsions mightn’t, in general, well have taken +place? Let me continue to speak of the rest of the matter here before us +as therefore of almost prehistoric reference. I was to make, in due +course, at any rate, my limited application of that glimmering image of a +M. de Jalin with whom we might have more fellow-feeling, and I sent “The +Siege of London” accordingly to my admirable friend the late Leslie +Stephen, then editor of _The Cornhill Magazine_, where it appeared during +the first two months of 1883. That is all I remember about it save +always the particular London light in which at that period I invoked the +muse and drove the pen and with which the compositions resulting strike +my fancy to-day as so closely interfused that in reading over those of +them I here preserve every aspect and element of my scene of application +lives again for me. This scene consisted of small chambers in a small +street that opened, at a very near corner, into Piccadilly and a view of +the Green Park; I had dropped into them almost instantaneously, under the +accepted heavy pressure of the autumnal London of 1876, and was to sit +scribbling in them for nearly ten years. The big human rumble of +Piccadilly (all human and equine then and long after) was close at hand; +I liked to think that Thackeray’s Curzon Street, in which Becky Sharp, or +rather Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, had lived, was not much further off: I +thought of it preponderantly, in my comings and goings, as Becky’s and +her creator’s; just as I was to find fifty other London neighbourhoods +speak to me almost only with the voice, the thousand voices, of Dickens. + +A “great house,” forming the south-west corner of Piccadilly and with its +long and practically featureless side, continued by the high wall of its +ample court, opposite my open-eyed windows, gloomed, in dusty brick, as +the extent of my view, but with a vast convenient neutrality which I +found, soon enough, protective and not inquisitive, so that whatever +there was of my sedentary life and regular habits took a sort of local +wealth of colour from the special greyish-brown tone of the surface +always before me. This surface hung there like the most voluminous of +curtains—it masked the very stage of the great theatre of the town. To +sit for certain hours at one’s desk before it was somehow to occupy in +the most suitable way in the world the proportionately ample interacts of +the mightiest of dramas. When I went out it was as if the curtain rose; +so that, to repeat, I think of my tolerably copious artistry of that time +as all the fruit of the interacts, with the curtain more or less quietly +down and with the tuning of fiddles and only the vague rumble of shifted +scenery playing round it and through it. There were absences of course: +“A Bundle of Letters,” here reproduced, took birth (1879) during certain +autumn weeks spent in Paris, where a friend of those years, a young +London journalist, the late Theodore Child (of Merton College, Oxford, +who was to die, prematurely and lamentedly, during a gallant professional +tour of exploration in Persia) was fondly carrying on, under +difficulties, an Anglo-American periodical called _The Parisian_. He +invited me to contribute to its pages, and, again, a small +sharply-resonant street off the Rue de la Paix, where all existence +somehow went on as a repercussion from well-brushed asphalt, lives for me +as the scene of my response. A snowstorm of a violence rare in Paris +raged, I recollect, for many hours, for the greater part of a couple of +days; muffling me noiselessly into the small shiny shabby salon of an +_hôtel garni_ with a droll combinational, almost cosmic sign, and +promoting (it comes back to me) a deep concentration, an unusual +straightness of labour. “A Bundle of Letters” was written in a single +long session and, the temperature apart, at a “heat.” Its +companion-piece, “The Point of View,” marks not less for memory, I find, +an excursion associated with diligence. I have no heart to “go into” +these mere ingenious and more or less effective pleasantries to any tune +beyond this of glancing at the _other_, the extinct, actualities they +hold up the glimmering taper to. They are still faintly scented, +doubtless, with something of that authenticity, and a living work of art, +however limited, pretends always, as for part of its grace, to some good +faith of community, however indirect, with its period and place. + +To read over “The Point of View” has opened up for me, I confess, no +contentious vista whatever, nothing but the faded iridescence of a +far-away Washington spring. This, in 1881, had been my first glimpse of +that interesting city, where I then spent a few weeks, a visit repeated +the following year; and I remember beginning on the first occasion a +short imaginary correspondence after the pattern of the then already +published “Bundle of Letters.” After an absence from America of some +five years I inevitably, on the spot again, had impressions; and not less +inevitably and promptly, I remember, recognised the truth that if one +really was subject to such, and to a good many, and they were at all +worth entertaining or imparting, one was likely to bristle with a quite +proportionately smaller number of neat and complacent conclusions. +Impressions could mutually conflict—which was exactly the interest of +them; whereas in ninety-nine connexions out of a hundred, conclusions +could but raise the wind for large groups of persons incapable, to all +appearance, of intelligently opening their eyes, though much occupied, to +make up for it, with opening, and all vociferously, their mouths. “The +Point of View,” in fine, I fear, was but to commemorate, punctually +enough, its author’s perverse and incurable disposition to interest +himself less in his own (always so quickly stale) experience, under +certain sorts of pressure, than in that of conceivable fellow mortals, +which might be mysteriously and refreshingly different. The thing indeed +may also serve, in its degree, as a punctual small monument to a +recognition that was never to fail; that of the nature of the burden +bequeathed by such rash multiplications of the candid consciousness. +They are splendid for experience, the multiplications, each in its way an +intensifier; but expression, liking things above all to be made +comfortable and easy for it, views them askance. The case remains, none +the less—alas for this faculty!—that no representation of life worth +speaking of can go forward without them. All of which will perhaps be +judged to have but a strained relevance, however, to the fact that, +though the design of the short imaginary correspondence I speak of was +interrupted during those first weeks in Washington, a second visit, the +following spring, served it better; I had kept the thread (through a +return to London and a return again thence) and, if I remember rightly, I +brought my small scheme to a climax on the spot. The finished thing +appeared in _The Century Magazine_ of December 1882. I recently had the +chance to “look up,” for old sake’s sake, that momentary seat of the +good-humoured satiric muse—the seats of the muses, even when the merest +flutter of one of their robes has been involved, losing no scrap of +sanctity for me, I profess, by the accident of my having myself had the +honour to offer the visitant the chair. The chair I had anciently been +able to push forward in Washington had not, I found, survived the ravage +of nearly thirty years; its place knew it no more, infirm and precarious +dependence as it had struck me even at the time as being. So, quite +exquisitely, as whenever that lapse occurs, the lost presence, the +obliterated scene, translated itself for me at last into terms of almost +more than earthly beauty and poetry. Fifty intimate figures and objects +flushed with life in the other time had passed away since then; a great +chapter of history had made itself, tremendous things had happened; the +ghosts of old cherished names, of old tragedies, of old comedies, even of +old mere mystifications, had marshalled their array. Only the little +rounded composition remained; which glowed, ever so strangely, like a +swinging playing lantern, with a light that brought out the past. The +past had been most concretely that vanished and slightly sordid tenement +of the current housing of the muse. I had had “rooms” in it, and I could +remember how the rooms, how the whole place, a nest of rickety tables and +chairs, lame and disqualified utensils of every sort, and of smiling +shuffling procrastinating persons of colour, had exhaled for me, to +pungency, the domestic spirit of the “old South.” I had nursed the +unmistakable scent; I had read history by its aid; I had learned more +than I could say of what had anciently been the matter under the reign of +the great problem of persons of colour—so badly the matter, by my vision, +that a deluge of blood and fire and tears had been needed to correct it. +These complacencies of perception swarmed for me again—while yet no brick +of the little old temple of the revelation stood on another. + +I could scarcely have said where the bricks _had_ stood; the other, the +superseded Washington of the exquisite springtime, of the earlier +initiation, of the hovering plaintive ghosts, reduced itself to a great +vague blur of warmth and colour and fragrance. It kept flushing through +the present—very much as if I had had my small secret for making it. I +could turn on my finger the magic ring—it was strange how slight a thing, +a mere handful of pages of light persistent prose, could act as that +talisman. So, at all events, I like to date, and essentially to +synchronise, these sincere little studies in general. Nothing perhaps +can vouch better for their having applied to conditions that +superficially at least have changed than the fact that to fond memory—I +speak of my own—there hangs about the last item on this list, the picture +of “The Pension Beaurepas,” the unearthly poetry, as I call it, of the +Paquis, and that I should yet have to plunge into gulfs of explanation as +to where and what the Paquis may have been. An old-world nook of one’s +youth was so named, a scrap of the lakeside fringe of ancient Geneva, now +practically quite reformed and improved away. The Pension Beaurepas, +across the years, looks to me prodigiously archaic and incredibly quaint; +I ask myself why, at the time, I so wasted the precious treasure of a +sense that absolutely primitive pre-revolutionary “Europe” had never +really been swept out of its cupboards, shaken out of its curtains, +thumped out of its mattresses. The echoes of the eighteenth century, to +go no further back, must have been thick on its rather greasy stone +staircase, up down which, unconscious of the character of the fine old +wrought-iron _rampe_, as of most other things in the world besides, Mr. +and Mrs. and Miss Ruck, to speak only of them, used mournfully to +straggle. But I mustn’t really so _much_ as speak only, as even speak, +of them. They would carry me too far back—which possibly outlived +verisimilitude in them is what I wish to acknowledge. + + HENRY JAMES. + +CONTENTS + PAGE +LADY BARBARINA 1 +THE SIEGE OF LONDON 127 +AN INTERNATIONAL EPISODE 243 +THE PENSION BEAUREPAS 347 +A BUNDLE OF LETTERS 423 +THE POINT OF VIEW 475 + + + + +LADY BARBARINA + + +I + + +It is well known that there are few sights in the world more brilliant +than the main avenues of Hyde Park of a fine afternoon in June. This was +quite the opinion of two persons who on a beautiful day at the beginning +of that month, four years ago, had established themselves under the great +trees in a couple of iron chairs—the big ones with arms, for which, if I +mistake not, you pay twopence—and sat there with the slow procession of +the Drive behind them while their faces were turned to the more vivid +agitation of the Row. Lost in the multitude of observers they belonged, +superficially at least, to that class of persons who, wherever they may +be, rank rather with the spectators than with the spectacle. They were +quiet simple elderly, of aspect somewhat neutral; you would have liked +them extremely but would scarcely have noticed them. It is to them, +obscure in all that shining host, that we must nevertheless give our +attention. On which the reader is begged to have confidence; he is not +asked to make vain concessions. It was indicated touchingly in the faces +of our friends that they were growing old together and were fond enough +of each other’s company not to object—since it was a condition—even to +that. The reader will have guessed that they were husband and wife; and +perhaps while he is about it will further have guessed that they were of +that nationality for which Hyde Park at the height of the season is most +completely illustrative. They were native aliens, so to speak, and +people at once so initiated and so detached could only be Americans. +This reflexion indeed you would have made only after some delay; for it +must be allowed that they bristled with none of those modern signs that +carry out the tradition of the old indigenous war-paint and feathers. +They had the American turn of mind, but that was very secret; and to your +eye—if your eye had cared about it—they might have been either intimately +British or more remotely foreign. It was as if they studied, for +convenience, to be superficially colourless; their colour was all in +their talk. They were not in the least verdant; they were grey rather, +of monotonous hue. If they were interested in the riders, the horses, +the walkers, the great exhibition of English wealth and health, beauty, +luxury and leisure, it was because all this referred itself to other +impressions, because they had the key to almost everything that needed an +answer—because, in a word, they were able to compare. They had not +arrived, they had only returned; and recognition much more than surprise +was expressed in their quiet eyes. Dexter Freer and his wife belonged in +fine to that great company of Americans who are constantly “passing +through” London. Enjoyers of a fortune of which, from any standpoint, +the limits were plainly visible, they were unable to treat themselves to +that commonest form of ease, the ease of living at home. They found it +much more possible to economise at Dresden or Florence than at Buffalo or +Minneapolis. The saving was greater and the strain was less. From +Dresden, from Florence, moreover, they constantly made excursions that +wouldn’t have been possible with an excess of territory; and it is even +to be feared they practised some eccentricities of thrift. They came to +London to buy their portmanteaus, their toothbrushes, their +writing-paper; they occasionally even recrossed the Atlantic westward to +assure themselves that westward prices were still the same. They were +eminently a social pair; their interests were mainly personal. Their +curiosity was so invidiously human that they were supposed to be too +addicted to gossip, and they certainly kept up their acquaintance with +the affairs of other people. They had friends in every country, in every +town; and it was not their fault if people told them their secrets. +Dexter Freer was a tall lean man, with an interested eye and a nose that +rather drooped than aspired, yet was salient withal. He brushed his +hair, which was streaked with white, forward over his ears and into those +locks represented in the portraits of clean-shaven gentlemen who +flourished fifty years ago and wore an old-fashioned neckcloth and +gaiters. His wife, a small plump person, rather polished than naturally +fresh, with a white face and hair still evenly black, smiled perpetually, +but had never laughed since the death of a son whom she had lost ten +years after her marriage. Her husband, on the other hand, who was +usually quite grave, indulged on great occasions in resounding mirth. +People confided in her less than in him, but that mattered little, as she +confided much in herself. Her dress, which was always black or dark +grey, was so harmoniously simple that you could see she was fond of it; +it was never smart by accident or by fear. She was full of intentions of +the most judicious sort and, though perpetually moving about the world, +had the air of waiting for every one else to pass. She was celebrated +for the promptitude with which she made her sitting-room at an inn, where +she might be spending a night or two, appear a real temple of memory. +With books, flowers, photographs, draperies, rapidly distributed—she had +even a way, for the most part, of not failing of a piano—the place seemed +almost hereditary. The pair were just back from America, where they had +spent three months, and now were able to face the world with something of +the elation of people who have been justified of a stiff conviction. +They had found their native land quite ruinous. + +“There he is again!” said Mr. Freer, following with his eyes a young man +who passed along the Row, riding slowly. “That’s a beautiful +thoroughbred!” + +Mrs. Freer asked idle questions only when she wanted time to think. At +present she had simply to look and see who it was her husband meant. +“The horse is too big,” she remarked in a moment. + +“You mean the rider’s too small,” her husband returned. “He’s mounted on +his millions.” + +“Is it really millions?” + +“Seven or eight, they tell me.” + +“How disgusting!” It was so that Mrs. Freer usually spoke of the large +fortunes of the day. “I wish he’d see us,” she added. + +“He does see us, but he doesn’t like to look at us. He’s too conscious. +He isn’t easy.” + +“Too conscious of his big horse?” + +“Yes and of his big fortune. He’s rather ashamed of that.” + +“This is an odd place to hang one’s head in,” said Mrs. Freer. + +“I’m not so sure. He’ll find people here richer than himself, and other +big horses in plenty, and that will cheer him up. Perhaps too he’s +looking for that girl.” + +“The one we heard about? He can’t be such a fool.” + +“He isn’t a fool,” said Dexter Freer. “If he’s thinking of her he has +some good reason.” + +“I wonder what Mary Lemon would say,” his wife pursued. + +“She’d say it was all right if he should do it. She thinks he can do no +wrong. He’s immensely fond of her.” + +“I shan’t be sure of that,” said Mrs. Freer, “if he takes home a wife +who’ll despise her.” + +“Why should the girl despise her? She’s a delightful woman.” + +“The girl will never know it—and if she should it would make no +difference: she’ll despise everything.” + +“I don’t believe it, my dear; she’ll like some things very much. Every +one will be very nice to her.” + +“She’ll despise them all the more. But we’re speaking as if it were all +arranged. I don’t believe in it at all,” said Mrs. Freer. + +“Well, something of the sort—in this case or in some other—is sure to +happen sooner or later,” her husband replied, turning round a little +toward the back-water, as it were, formed, near the entrance to the Park, +by the confluence of the two great vistas of the Drive and the Row. + +Our friends had turned their backs, as I have said, to the solemn +revolution of wheels and the densely-packed mass of spectators who had +chosen that aspect of the show. These spectators were now agitated by a +unanimous impulse: the pushing-back of chairs, the shuffle of feet, the +rustle of garments and the deepening murmur of voices sufficiently +expressed it. Royalty was approaching—royalty was passing—royalty had +passed. Mr. Freer turned his head and his ear a little, but failed to +alter his position further, and his wife took no notice of the flurry. +They had seen royalty pass, all over Europe, and they knew it passed very +quickly. Sometimes it came back; sometimes it didn’t; more than once +they had seen it pass for the last time. They were veteran tourists and +they knew as perfectly as regular attendants at complicated +church-services when to get up and when to remain seated. Mr. Freer went +on with his proposition. “Some young fellow’s certain to do it, and one +of these girls is certain to take the risk. They must take risks over +here more and more.” + +“The girls, I’ve no doubt, will be glad enough; they have had very little +chance as yet. But I don’t want Jackson to begin.” + +“Do you know I rather think I do,” said Dexter Freer. “It will be so +very amusing.” + +“For us perhaps, but not for him. He’ll repent of it and be wretched. +He’s too good for that.” + +“Wretched never! He has no capacity for wretchedness, and that’s why he +can afford to risk it.” + +“He’ll have to make great concessions,” Mrs. Freer persisted. + +“He won’t make one.” + +“I should like to see.” + +“You admit, then, that it will be amusing: all I contend for,” her +husband replied. “But, as you say, we’re talking as if it were settled, +whereas there’s probably nothing in it after all. The best stories +always turn out false. I shall be sorry in this case.” + +They relapsed into silence while people passed and repassed +them—continuous successive mechanical, with strange facial, strange +expressional, sequences and contrasts. They watched the procession, but +no one heeded them, though every one was there so admittedly to see what +was to be seen. It was all striking, all pictorial, and it made a great +composition. The wide long area of the Row, its red-brown surface dotted +with bounding figures, stretched away into the distance and became +suffused and misty in the bright thick air. The deep dark English +verdure that bordered and overhung it looked rich and old, revived and +refreshed though it was by the breath of June. The mild blue of the sky +was spotted with great silvery clouds, and the light drizzled down in +heavenly shafts over the quieter spaces of the Park, as one saw them +beyond the Row. All this, however, was only a background, for the scene +was before everything personal; quite splendidly so, and full of the +gloss and lustre, the contrasted tones, of a thousand polished surfaces. +Certain things were salient, pervasive—the shining flanks of the perfect +horses, the twinkle of bits and spurs, the smoothness of fine cloth +adjusted to shoulders and limbs, the sheen of hats and boots, the +freshness of complexions, the expression of smiling talking faces, the +flash and flutter of rapid gallops. Faces were everywhere, and they were +the great effect—above all the fair faces of women on tall horses, +flushed a little under their stiff black hats, with figures stiffened, in +spite of much definition of curve, by their tight-fitting habits. Their +well-secured helmets, their neat compact heads, their straight necks, +their firm tailor-made armour, their frequent hardy bloom, all made them +look singularly like amazons about to ride a charge. The men, with their +eyes before them, with hats of undulating brim, good profiles, high +collars, white flowers on their chests, long legs and long feet, had an +air more elaboratively decorative, as they jolted beside the ladies, +always out of step. These were the younger types; but it was not all +youth, for many a saddle sustained a richer rotundity, and ruddy faces +with short white whiskers or with matronly chins looked down comfortably +from an equilibrium that seemed moral as well as physical. The walkers +differed from the riders only in being on foot and in looking at the +riders more than these looked at them; for they would have done as well +in the saddle and ridden as the others ride. The women had tight little +bonnets and still tighter little knots of hair; their round chins rested +on a close swathing of lace or in some cases on throttling silver chains +and circlets. They had flat backs and small waists, they walked slowly, +with their elbows out, carrying vast parasols and turning their heads +very little to the right or the left. They were amazons unmounted, quite +ready to spring into the saddle. There was a great deal of beauty and a +diffused look of happy expansion, all limited and controlled, which came +from clear quiet eyes and well-cut lips, rims of stout vessels that +didn’t overflow and on which syllables were liquid and sentences brief. +Some of the young men, as well as the women, had the happiest proportions +and oval faces—faces in which line and colour were pure and fresh and the +idea of the moment far from intense. + +“They’re often very good-looking,” said Mr. Freer at the end of ten +minutes. “They’re on the whole the finest whites.” + +“So long as they remain white they do very well; but when they venture +upon colour!” his wife replied. She sat with her eyes at the level of +the skirts of the ladies who passed her, and she had been following the +progress of a green velvet robe enriched with ornaments of steel and much +gathered up in the hands of its wearer, who, herself apparently in her +teens, was accompanied by a young lady draped in scant pink muslin, a +tissue embroidered esthetically with flowers that simulated the iris. + +“All the same, in a crowd, they’re wonderfully well turned out,” Dexter +Freer went on—“lumping men and women and horses and dogs together. Look +at that big fellow on the light chestnut: what could be more perfect? By +the way, it’s Lord Canterville,” he added in a moment and as if the fact +were of some importance. + +Mrs. Freer recognised its importance to the degree of raising her glass +to look at Lord Canterville. “How do you know it’s he?” she asked with +that implement still up. + +“I heard him say something the night I went to the House of Lords. It +was very few words, but I remember him. A man near me mentioned who he +was.” + +“He’s not so handsome as you,” said Mrs. Freer, dropping her glass. + +“Ah, you’re too difficult!” her husband murmured. “What a pity the girl +isn’t with him,” he went on. “We might see something.” + +It appeared in a moment, however, that the girl was with him. The +nobleman designated had ridden slowly forward from the start, then just +opposite our friends had pulled up to look back as if waiting for some +one. At the same moment a gentleman in the Walk engaged his attention, +so that he advanced to the barrier which protects the pedestrians and +halted there, bending a little from his saddle and talking with his +friend, who leaned against the rail. Lord Canterville was indeed +perfect, as his American admirer had said. Upwards of sixty and of great +stature and great presence, he was a thoroughly splendid apparition. In +capital preservation he had the freshness of middle life—he would have +been young indeed to the eye if his large harmonious spread hadn’t spoken +of the lapse of years. He was clad from head to foot in garments of a +radiant grey, and his fine florid countenance was surmounted with a white +hat of which the majestic curves were a triumph of good form. Over his +mighty chest disposed itself a beard of the richest growth and of a +colour, in spite of a few streaks vaguely grizzled, to which the coat of +his admirable horse appeared to be a perfect match. It left no +opportunity in his uppermost button-hole for the customary orchid; but +this was of comparatively little consequence, since the vegetation of the +beard itself was tropical. Astride his great steed, with his big fist, +gloved in pearl-grey, on his swelling thigh, his face lighted up with +good-humoured indifference and all his magnificent surface reflecting the +mild sunshine, he was, strikingly, a founded and builded figure, such as +could only represent to the public gaze some Institution, some Exhibition +or some Industry, in a word some unquenchable Interest. People quite +lingered to look up at him as they passed. His halt was brief, however, +for he was almost immediately joined by two handsome girls, who were as +well turned-out, in Dexter Freer’s phrase, as himself. They had been +detained a moment at the entrance to the Row and now advanced side by +side, their groom close behind them. One was noticeably taller and older +than the other, and it was plain at a glance that they were sisters. +Between them, with their charming shoulders, their contracted waists and +their skirts that hung without a wrinkle, like plates of zinc, they +represented in a singularly complete form the pretty English girl in the +position in which she is prettiest. + +“Of course they’re his daughters,” said Dexter Freer as these young +ladies rode away with Lord Canterville; “and in that case one of them +must be Jackson Lemon’s sweetheart. Probably the bigger; they said it +was the eldest. She’s evidently a fine creature.” + +“She’d hate it over there,” Mrs. Freer returned for all answer to this +cluster of inductions. + +“You know I don’t admit that. But granting she should, it would do her +good to have to accommodate herself.” + +“She wouldn’t accommodate herself.” + +“She looks so confoundedly fortunate, perched up on that saddle,” he went +on without heed of his wife’s speech. + +“Aren’t they supposed to be very poor?” + +“Yes, they look it!” And his eyes followed the eminent trio while, with +the groom, as eminent in his way as any of them, they started on a +canter. + +The air was full of sound, was low and economised; and when, near our +friends, it became articulate the words were simple and few. “It’s as +good as the circus, isn’t it, Mrs. Freer?” These words correspond to +that description, but they pierced the dense medium more effectually than +any our friends had lately heard. They were uttered by a young man who +had stopped short in the path, absorbed by the sight of his compatriots. +He was short and stout, he had a round kind face and short stiff-looking +hair, which was reproduced in a small bristling beard. He wore a +double-breasted walking-coat, which was not, however, buttoned, and on +the summit of his round head was perched a hat of exceeding smallness and +of the so-called “pot” category. It evidently fitted him, but a hatter +himself wouldn’t have known why. His hands were encased in new gloves of +a dark-brown colour, and these masquerading members hung consciously, +quite ruefully, at his sides. He sported neither umbrella nor stick. He +offered one of his stuffed gloves almost with eagerness to Mrs. Freer, +blushing a little as he measured his precipitation. + +“Oh Doctor Feeder!”—she smiled at him. Then she repeated to her husband, +“Doctor Feeder, my dear!” and her husband said, “Oh Doctor, how d’ye do?” +I have spoken of the composition of the young man’s appearance, but the +items were not perceived by these two. They saw but one thing, his +delightful face, which was both simple and clever and, as if this weren’t +enough, showed a really tasteless overheaping of the cardinal virtues. +They had lately made the voyage from New York in his company, and he was +clearly a person who would shine at sea with an almost intolerable +blandness. After he had stood in front of them a moment a chair beside +Mrs. Freer became vacant; on which he took possession of it and sat there +telling her what he thought of the Park and how he liked London. As she +knew every one she had known many of his people at home, and while she +listened to him she remembered how large their contribution had been to +the moral worth of Cincinnati. Mrs. Freer’s social horizon included even +that city; she had had occasion to exercise an amused recognition of +several families from Ohio and was acquainted with the position of the +Feeders there. This family, very numerous, was interwoven into an +enormous cousinship. She stood off herself from any Western promiscuity, +but she could have told you whom Doctor Feeder’s great-grandfather had +married. Every one indeed had heard of the good deeds of the descendants +of this worthy, who were generally physicians, excellent ones, and whose +name expressed not inaptly their numerous acts of charity. Sidney +Feeder, who had several cousins of this name established in the same line +at Cincinnati, had transferred himself and his ambition to New York, +where his practice had at the end of three years begun to grow. He had +studied his profession at Vienna and was saturated with German science; +had he only worn spectacles he might indeed perfectly, while he watched +the performers in Rotten Row as if their proceedings were a successful +demonstration, have passed for some famously “materialistic” young +German. He had come over to London to attend a medical congress which +met this year in the British capital, for his interest in the healing art +was by no means limited to the cure of his patients. It embraced every +form of experiment, and the expression of his honest eyes would almost +have reconciled you to vivisection. This was his first time of looking +into the Park; for social experiments he had little leisure. Being +aware, however, that it was a very typical and, as might be, symptomatic +sight, he had conscientiously reserved an afternoon and dressed himself +carefully for the occasion. “It’s quite a brilliant show,” he said to +Mrs. Freer; “it makes me wish I had a mount.” Little as he resembled +Lord Canterville he rode, as he would have gaily said, first-rate. + +“Wait till Jackson Lemon passes again and you can stop him and make him +let you take a turn.” This was the jocular suggestion of Dexter Freer. + +“Why, is he here? I’ve been looking out for him and should like to see +him.” + +“Doesn’t he go to your medical congress?” asked Mrs. Freer. + +“Well yes, he attends—but isn’t very regular. I guess he goes out a good +deal.” + +“I guess he does,” said Mr. Freer; “and if he isn’t very regular I guess +he has a good reason. A beautiful reason, a charming reason,” he went +on, bending forward to look down toward the beginning of the Row. “Dear +me, what a lovely reason!” + +Doctor Feeder followed the direction of his eyes and after a moment +understood his allusion. Little Jackson Lemon passed, on his big horse, +along the avenue again, riding beside one of the bright creatures who had +come that way shortly before under escort of Lord Canterville. His +lordship followed in conversation with the other, his younger daughter. +As they advanced Jackson Lemon turned his eyes to the multitude under the +trees, and it so happened that they rested on the Dexter Freers. He +smiled, he raised his hat with all possible friendliness, and his three +companions turned to see whom he so frankly greeted. As he settled his +hat on his head he espied the young man from Cincinnati, whom he had at +first overlooked; whereupon he laughed for the luck of it and waved +Sidney Feeder an airy salutation with his hand, reining in a little at +the same time just for an instant, as if he half-expected this apparition +to come and speak to him. Seeing him with strangers, none the less, +Sidney Feeder hung back, staring a little as he rode away. + +It is open to us to know that at this moment the young lady by whose side +he was riding put him the free question: “Who are those people you bowed +to?” + +“Some old friends of mine—Americans,” said Jackson Lemon. + +“Of course they’re Americans; there’s nothing anywhere but Americans +now.” + +“Oh yes, our turn’s coming round!” laughed the young man. + +“But that doesn’t say who they are,” his companion continued. “It’s so +difficult to say who Americans are,” she added before he had time to +answer her. + +“Dexter Freer and his wife—there’s nothing difficult about that. Every +one knows them,” Jackson explained. + +“I never heard of them,” said the English girl. + +“Ah, that’s your fault and your misfortune. I assure you everybody knows +them.” + +“And does everybody know the little man with the fat face to whom you +kissed your hand?” + +“I didn’t kiss my hand, but I would if I had thought of it. He’s a great +chum of mine—a fellow-student at Vienna.” + +“And what’s _his_ name?” + +“Doctor Feeder.” + +Jackson Lemon’s companion had a dandling pause. “Are _all_ your friends +doctors?” + +“No—some of them are in other businesses.” + +“Are they all in some business?” + +“Most of them—save two or three like Dexter Freer.” + +“‘Dexter’ Freer? I thought you said Doctor Freer.” + +The young man gave a laugh. “You heard me wrong. You’ve got doctors on +the brain, Lady Barb.” + +“I’m rather glad,” said Lady Barb, giving the rein to her horse, who +bounded away. + +“Well yes, she’s very handsome, the reason,” Doctor Feeder remarked as he +sat under the trees. + +“Is he going to marry her?” Mrs. Freer inquired. + +“Marry her? I hope not.” + +“Why do you hope not?” + +“Because I know nothing about her. I want to know something about the +woman that man marries.” + +“I suppose you’d like him to marry in Cincinnati,” Mrs. Freer not +unadventurously threw out. + +“Well, I’m not particular where it is; but I want to know her first.” +Doctor Feeder was very sturdy. + +“We were in hopes you’d know all about it,” said his other entertainer. + +“No, I haven’t kept up with him there.” + +“We’ve heard from a dozen people that he has been always with her for the +last month—and that kind of thing, in England, is supposed to mean +something. Hasn’t he spoken of her when you’ve seen him?” + +“No, he has only talked about the new treatment of spinal meningitis. +He’s very much interested in spinal meningitis.” + +“I wonder if he talks about it to Lady Barb,” said Mrs. Freer. + +“Who is she anyway?” the young man wanted to know. + +Well, his companions both let him. “Lady Barb Clement.” + +“And who’s Lady Barb Clement?” + +“The daughter of Lord Canterville.” + +“And who’s Lord Canterville?” + +“Dexter must tell you that,” said Mrs. Freer. + +And Dexter accordingly told him that the Marquis of Canterville had been +in his day a great sporting nobleman and an ornament to English society, +and had held more than once a high post in her Majesty’s household. +Dexter Freer knew all these things—how his lordship had married a +daughter of Lord Treherne, a very serious intelligent and beautiful woman +who had redeemed him from the extravagance of his youth and presented him +in rapid succession with a dozen little tenants for the nurseries at +Pasterns—this being, as Mr. Freer also knew, the name of the principal +seat of the Cantervilles. The head of that house was a Tory, but not a +particular dunce for a Tory, and very popular in society at large; +good-natured, good-looking, knowing how to be rather remarkably free and +yet remain a _grand seigneur_, clever enough to make an occasional +telling speech and much associated with the fine old English pursuits as +well as with many of the new improvements—the purification of the Turf, +the opening of the museums on Sunday, the propagation of coffee-taverns, +the latest ideas on sanitary reform. He disapproved of the extension of +the suffrage but had positively drainage on the brain. It had been said +of him at least once—and, if this historian is not mistaken, in +print—that he was just the man to convey to the popular mind the +impression that the British aristocracy is still a living force. He was +unfortunately not very rich—for a man who had to exemplify such +truths—and of his twelve children no less than seven were daughters. +Lady Barb, Jackson Lemon’s friend, was the second; the eldest had married +Lord Beauchemin. Mr. Freer had caught quite the right pronunciation of +this name, which he successfully sounded as Bitumen. Lady Lucretia had +done very well, for her husband was rich and she had brought him nothing +to speak of; but it was hardly to be expected they would all achieve such +flights. Happily the younger girls were still in the schoolroom, and +before they had come up, Lady Canterville, who was a woman of bold +resource, would have worked off the two that were out. It was Lady +Agatha’s first season; she wasn’t so pretty as her sister, but was +thought to be cleverer. Half-a-dozen people had spoken to him of Jackson +Lemon’s being a great deal at the Cantervilles. He was supposed to be +enormously rich. + +“Well, so he is,” said Sidney Feeder, who had listened to Mr. Freer’s +report with attention, with eagerness even, but, for all its lucidity, +with an air of imperfect apprehension. + +“Yes, but not so rich as they probably think.” + +“Do they want his money? Is that what they’re after?” + +“You go straight to the point!” Mrs. Freer rang out. + +“I haven’t the least idea,” said her husband. “He’s a very good sort in +himself.” + +“Yes, but he’s a doctor,” Mrs. Freer observed. + +“What have they got against that?” asked Sidney Feeder. + +“Why, over here, you know, they only call them in to prescribe,” said his +other friend. “The profession isn’t—a—what you’d call aristocratic.” + +“Well, I don’t know it, and I don’t know that I want to know it. How do +you mean, aristocratic? What profession is? It would be rather a +curious one. Professions are meant to do the work of professions; and +what work’s done without your sleeves rolled up? Many of the gentlemen +at the congress there are quite charming.” + +“I like doctors very much,” said Mrs. Freer; “my father was a doctor. +But they don’t marry the daughters of marquises.” + +“I don’t believe Jackson wants to marry that one,” Sidney Feeder calmly +argued. + +“Very possibly not—people are such asses,” said Dexter Freer. “But he’ll +have to decide. I wish you’d find out, by the way. You can if you +will.” + +“I’ll ask him—up at the congress; I can do that. I suppose he has got to +marry some one.” The young man added in a moment: “And she may be a good +thing.” + +“She’s said to be charming.” + +“Very well then, it won’t hurt him. I must say, however, I’m not sure I +like all that about her family.” + +“What I told you? It’s all to their honour and glory,” said Mr. Freer. + +“Are they quite on the square? It’s like those people in Thackeray.” + +“Oh if Thackeray could have done _this_!” And Mrs. Freer yearned over +the lost hand. + +“You mean all this scene?” asked the young man. + +“No; the marriage of a British noblewoman and an American doctor. It +would have been a subject for a master of satire.” + +“You see you do want it, my dear,” said her husband quietly. + +“I want it as a story, but I don’t want it for Doctor Lemon.” + +“Does he call himself ‘Doctor’ still?” Mr. Freer asked of young Feeder. + +“I suppose he does—I call him so. Of course he doesn’t practise. But +once a doctor always a doctor.” + +“That’s doctrine for Lady Barb!” + +Sidney Feeder wondered. “Hasn’t _she_ got a title too? What would she +expect him to be? President of the United States? He’s a man of real +ability—he might have stood at the head of his profession. When I think +of that I want to swear. What did his father want to go and make all +that money for?” + +“It must certainly be odd to them to see a ‘medical man’ with six or +eight millions,” Mr. Freer conceded. + +“They use much the same term as the Choctaws,” said his wife. + +“Why, some of their own physicians make immense fortunes,” Sidney Feeder +remarked. + +“Couldn’t he,” she went on, “be made a baronet by the Queen?” + +“Yes, then he’d be aristocratic,” said the young man. “But I don’t see +why he should want to marry over here; it seems to me to be going out of +his way. However, if he’s happy I don’t care. I like him very much; he +has ‘A1’ ability. If it hadn’t been for his father he’d have made a +splendid doctor. But, as I say, he takes a great interest in medical +science and I guess he means to promote it all he can—with his big +fortune. He’ll be sure to keep up his interest in research. He thinks +we _do_ know something and is bound we shall know more. I hope she won’t +lower him, the young marchioness—is that her rank? And I hope they’re +really good people. He ought to be very useful. I should want to know a +good deal about the foreign family I was going to marry into.” + +“He looked to me, riding there, as if he knew a good deal about the +Clements,” Dexter Freer said, getting to his feet as his wife suggested +they ought to be going; “and he looked to me pleased with the knowledge. +There they come down the other side. Will you walk away with us or will +you stay?” + +“Stop him and ask him, and then come and tell us—in Jermyn Street.” This +was Mrs. Freer’s parting injunction to Sidney Feeder. + +“He ought to come himself—tell him that,” her husband added. + +“Well, I guess I’ll stay,” said the young man as his companions merged +themselves in the crowd that now was tending toward the gates. He went +and stood by the barrier and saw Doctor Lemon and his friends pull up at +the entrance to the Row, where they apparently prepared to separate. The +separation took some time and Jackson’s colleague became interested. +Lord Canterville and his younger daughter lingered to talk with two +gentlemen, also mounted, who looked a good deal at the legs of Lady +Agatha’s horse. Doctor Lemon and Lady Barb were face to face, very near +each other, and she, leaning forward a little, stroked the overlapping +neck of his glossy bay. At a distance he appeared to be talking and she +to be listening without response. “Oh yes, he’s making love to her,” +thought Sidney Feeder. Suddenly her father and sister turned away to +leave the Park, and she joined them and disappeared while Jackson came up +on the left again as for a final gallop. He hadn’t gone far before he +perceived his comrade, who awaited him at the rail; and he repeated the +gesture Lady Barb had described as a kiss of the hand, though it had not +to his friend’s eyes that full grace. When he came within hail he pulled +up. + +“If I had known you were coming here I’d have given you a mount,” he +immediately and bountifully cried. There was not in his person that +irradiation of wealth and distinction which made Lord Canterville glow +like a picture; but as he sat there with his neat little legs stuck out +he looked very bright and sharp and happy, wearing in his degree the +aspect of one of Fortune’s favourites. He had a thin keen delicate face, +a nose very carefully finished, a quick eye, a trifle hard in expression, +and a fine dark moustache, a good deal cultivated. He was not striking, +but he had his intensity, and it was easy to see that he had his +purposes. + +“How many horses have you got—about forty?” his compatriot inquired in +response to his greeting. + +“About five hundred,” said Jackson Lemon. + +“Did you mount your friends—the three you were riding with?” + +“Mount them? They’ve got the best horses in England.” + +“Did they sell you this one?” Sidney Feeder continued in the same +humorous strain. + +“What do you think of him?” said his friend without heed of this +question. + +“Well, he’s an awful old screw. I wonder he can carry you.” + +“Where did you get your hat?” Jackson asked both as a retort and as a +relevant criticism. + +“I got it in New York. What’s the matter with it?” + +“It’s very beautiful. I wish I had brought over one like it.” + +“The head’s the thing—not the hat. I don’t mean yours—I mean mine,” +Sidney Feeder laughed. “There’s something very deep in your question. I +must think it over.” + +“Don’t—don’t,” said Jackson Lemon; “you’ll never get to the bottom of it. +Are you having a good time?” + +“A glorious time. Have you been up to-day?” + +“Up among the doctors? No—I’ve had a lot of things to do,” Jackson was +obliged to plead. + +“Well”—and his friend richly recovered it—“we had a very interesting +discussion. I made a few remarks.” + +“You ought to have told me. What were they about?” + +“About the intermarriage of races from the point of view—” And Sidney +Feeder paused a moment, occupied with the attempt to scratch the nose of +the beautiful horse. + +“From the point of view of the progeny, I suppose?” + +“Not at all. From the point of view of the old friends.” + +“Damn the old friends!” Doctor Lemon exclaimed with jocular crudity. + +“Is it true that you’re going to marry a young marchioness?” + +The face of the speaker in the saddle became just a trifle rigid, and his +firm eyes penetrated the other. “Who has played that on you?” + +“Mr. and Mrs. Freer, whom I met just now.” + +“Mr. and Mrs. Freer be hanged too. And who told _them_?” + +“Ever so many fashionable people. I don’t know who.” + +“Gad, how things are tattled!” cried Jackson Lemon with asperity. + +“I can see it’s true by the way you say that,” his friend ingenuously +stated. + +“Do Freer and his wife believe it?” Jackson went on impatiently. + +“They want you to go and see them. You can judge for yourself.” + +“I’ll go and see them and tell them to mind their business.” + +“In Jermyn Street; but I forget the number. I’m sorry the marchioness +isn’t one of ours,” Doctor Feeder continued. + +“If I should marry her she _would_ be quick enough. But I don’t see what +difference it can make to you,” said Jackson. + +“Why, she’ll look down on the profession, and I don’t like that from your +wife.” + +“That will touch me more than you.” + +“Then it _is_ true?” Doctor Feeder cried with a finer appeal. + +“She won’t look down. I’ll answer for that.” + +“You won’t care. You’re out of it all now.” + +“No, I’m not. I mean to do no end of work.” + +“I’ll believe that when I see it,” said Sidney Feeder, who was by no +means perfectly incredulous, but who thought it salutary to take that +tone. “I’m not sure you’ve any right to work—you oughtn’t to have +everything; you ought to leave the field to us, not take the bread out of +our mouths and get the _kudos_. You must pay the penalty of being +bloated. You’d have been celebrated if you had continued to +practise—more celebrated than any one. But you won’t be now—you can’t be +any way you fix it. Some one else is going to be in your place.” + +Jackson Lemon listened to this, but without meeting the eyes of the +prophet; not, however, as if he were avoiding them, but as if the long +stretch of the Ride, now less and less obstructed, irresistibly drew him +off again and made his companion’s talk retarding. Nevertheless he +answered deliberately and kindly enough. “I hope it will be you, old +boy.” And he bowed to a lady who rode past. + +“Very likely it will. I hope I make you feel mean. That’s what I’m +trying to do.” + +“Oh awfully!” Jackson cried. “All the more that I’m not in the least +engaged.” + +“Well, that’s good. Won’t you come up to-morrow?” Doctor Feeder went on. + +“I’ll try, my dear fellow. I can’t be sure. By-bye!” + +“Oh you’re lost anyway!” sighed Sidney Feeder as the other started away. + + + +II + + +It was Lady Marmaduke, wife of Sir Henry of that clan, who had introduced +the amusing young American to Lady Beauchemin; after which Lady +Beauchemin had made him acquainted with her mother and sisters. Lady +Marmaduke too was of outland strain, remaining for her conjugal baronet +the most ponderable consequence of a tour in the United States. At +present, by the end of ten years, she knew her London as she had never +known her New York, so that it had been easy for her to be, as she called +herself, Jackson’s social godmother. She had views with regard to his +career, and these views fitted into a scheme of high policy which, if our +space permitted, I should be glad to lay before the reader in its +magnitude. She wished to add an arch or two to the bridge on which she +had effected her transit from America; and it was her belief that Doctor +Lemon might furnish the materials. This bridge, as yet a somewhat +sketchy and rickety structure, she saw—in the future—boldly stretch from +one solid pier to another. It could but serve both ways, for reciprocity +was the keynote of Lady Marmaduke’s plan. It was her belief that an +ultimate fusion was inevitable and that those who were the first to +understand the situation would enjoy the biggest returns from it. The +first time the young man had dined with her he met Lady Beauchemin, who +was her intimate friend. Lady Beauchemin was remarkably gracious, asking +him to come and see her as if she really meant it. He in fact presented +himself and in her drawing-room met her mother, who happened to be +calling at the same moment. Lady Canterville, not less friendly than her +daughter, invited him down to Pasterns for Eastertide, and before a month +had passed it struck him that, though he was not what he would have +called intimate at any house in London, the door of the house of Clement +opened to him pretty often. This seemed no small good fortune, for it +always opened upon a charming picture. The inmates were a blooming and +beautiful race, and their interior had an aspect of the ripest comfort. +It was not the splendour of New York—as New York had lately begun to +appear to the young man—but an appearance and a set of conditions, of +factors as he used to say, not to be set in motion in that city by any +power of purchase. He himself had a great deal of money, and money was +good even when it was new; but old money was somehow _more_ to the +shilling and the pound. Even after he learned that Lord Canterville’s +fortune was less present than past it was still the positive golden glow +that struck him. It was Lady Beauchemin who had told him her father +wasn’t rich; having told him furthermore many surprising things—things +both surprising in themselves and surprising on her lips. This was to +come home to him afresh that evening—the day he met Sidney Feeder in the +Park. He dined out in the company of Lady Beauchemin, and afterwards, as +she was alone—her husband had gone down to listen to a debate—she offered +to “take him on.” She was going to several places, at some of which he +must be due. They compared notes, and it was settled they should proceed +together to the Trumpingtons’, whither, it appeared at eleven o’clock, +all the world was proceeding, with the approach to the house choked for +half a mile with carriages. It was a close muggy night; Lady +Beauchemin’s chariot, in its place in the rank, stood still for long +periods. In his corner beside her, through the open window, Jackson +Lemon, rather hot, rather oppressed, looked out on the moist greasy +pavement, over which was flung, a considerable distance up and down, the +flare of a public-house. Lady Beauchemin, however, was not impatient, +for she had a purpose in her mind, and now she could say what she wished. + +“Do you really love her?” That was the first thing she said. + +“Well, I guess so,” Jackson Lemon answered as if he didn’t recognise the +obligation to be serious. + +She looked at him a moment in silence; he felt her gaze and, turning his +eyes, saw her face, partly shadowed, with the aid of a street-lamp. She +was not so pretty as Lady Barb; her features had a certain sharpness; her +hair, very light in colour and wonderfully frizzled, almost covered her +eyes, the expression of which, however, together with that of her pointed +nose and the glitter of several diamonds, emerged from the gloom. What +she next said seemed somehow to fall in with that. “You don’t seem to +know. I never saw a man in so vague a state.” + +“You push me a little too much; I must have time to think of it,” the +young man returned. “You know in my country they allow us plenty of +time.” He had several little oddities of expression, of which he was +perfectly conscious and which he found convenient, for they guarded him +in a society condemning a lonely New Yorker who proceeded by native +inspiration to much exposure; they ensured him the profit corresponding +with sundry sacrifices. He had no great assortment of vernacular +drolleries, conscious or unconscious, to draw upon; but the occasional +use of one, discreetly chosen, made him appear simpler than he really +was, and reasons determined his desiring this result. He was not simple; +he was subtle, circumspect, shrewd—perfectly aware that he might make +mistakes. There was a danger of his making one now—a mistake that might +gravely count. He was resolved only to succeed. It is true that for a +great success he would take a certain risk; but the risk was to be +considered, and he gained time while he multiplied his guesses and talked +about his country. + +“You may take ten years if you like,” said Lady Beauchemin. “I’m in no +hurry whatever to make you my brother-in-law. Only you must remember +that you spoke to me first.” + +“What did I say?” + +“You spoke to me of Barb as the finest girl you had seen in England.” + +“Oh I’m willing to stand by that.” And he had another try, which would +have been transparent to a compatriot. “I guess I like her type.” + +“I should think you might!” + +“I like her all round—with all her peculiarities.” + +“What do you mean by her peculiarities?” + +“Well, she has some peculiar ideas,” said Jackson Lemon in a tone of the +sweetest reasonableness, “and she has a peculiar way of speaking.” + +“Ah, you can’t expect us to speak so well as you!” cried Lady Beauchemin. + +“I don’t see why not.” He was perfectly candid. “You do some things +much better.” + +“We’ve our own ways at any rate, and we think them the best in the +world—as they mostly are!” laughed Lady Beauchemin. “One of them’s not +to let a gentleman devote himself to a girl for so long a time without +some sense of responsibility. If you don’t wish to marry my sister you +ought to go away.” + +“I ought never to have come,” said Jackson Lemon. + +“I can scarcely agree to that,” her ladyship good-naturedly replied, “as +in that case I should have lost the pleasure of knowing you.” + +“It would have spared you this duty, which you dislike very much.” + +“Asking you about your intentions? Oh I don’t dislike it at all!” she +cried. “It amuses me extremely.” + +“Should you like your sister to marry me?” asked Jackson with great +simplicity. + +If he expected to take her by surprise he was disappointed: she was +perfectly prepared to commit herself. “I should like it particularly. I +think English and American society ought to be but one. I mean the best +of each. A great whole.” + +“Will you allow me to ask whether Lady Marmaduke suggested that to you?” +he at once inquired. + +“We’ve often talked of it.” + +“Oh yes, that’s her aim.” + +“Well, it’s my aim too. I think there’s a lot to be done.” + +“And you’d like me to do it?” + +“To begin it, precisely. Don’t you think we ought to see more of each +other? I mean,” she took the precaution to explain, “just the best in +each country.” + +Jackson Lemon appeared to weigh it. “I’m afraid I haven’t any general +ideas. If I should marry an English girl it wouldn’t be for the good of +the species.” + +“Well, we want to be mixed a little. That I’m sure of,” Lady Beauchemin +said. + +“You certainly got that from Lady Marmaduke,” he commented. + +“It’s too tiresome, your not consenting to be serious! But my father +will make you so,” she went on with her pleasant assurance. “I may as +well let you know that he intends in a day or two to ask you your +intentions. That’s all I wished to say to you. I think you ought to be +prepared.” + +“I’m much obliged to you. Lord Canterville will do quite right,” the +young man allowed. + +There was to his companion something really unfathomable in this little +American doctor whom she had taken up on grounds of large policy and who, +though he was assumed to have sunk the medical character, was neither +handsome nor distinguished, but only immensely rich and quite +original—since he wasn’t strictly insignificant. It was unfathomable to +begin with that a medical man should be so rich, or that so rich a man +should be medical; it was even, to an eye always gratified by suitability +and, for that matter, almost everywhere recognising it, rather +irritating. Jackson Lemon himself could have explained the anomaly +better than any one else, but this was an explanation one could scarcely +ask for. There were other things: his cool acceptance of certain +situations; his general indisposition to make comprehension easy, let +alone to guess it, with all his guessing, so much hindered; his way of +taking refuge in jokes which at times had not even the merit of being +American; his way too of appearing to be a suitor without being an +aspirant. Lady Beauchemin, however, was, like her puzzling friend +himself, prepared to run a certain risk. His reserves made him slippery, +but that was only when one pressed. She flattered herself she could +handle people lightly. “My father will be sure to act with perfect +tact,” she said; “though of course if you shouldn’t care to be questioned +you can go out of town.” She had the air of really wishing to act with +the most natural delicacy. + +“I don’t want to go out of town; I’m enjoying it far too much here,” +Jackson cried. “And wouldn’t your father have a right to ask me what I +should mean by that?” + +Lady Beauchemin thought—she really wondered. But in a moment she +exclaimed: “He’s incapable of saying anything vulgar!” + +She hadn’t definitely answered his inquiry, and he was conscious of this; +but he was quite ready to say to her a little later, as he guided her +steps from the brougham to the strip of carpet which, beneath a rickety +border of striped cloth and between a double row of waiting footmen, +policemen and dingy amateurs of both sexes, stretched from the curbstone +to the portal of the Trumpingtons: “Of course I shan’t wait for Lord +Canterville to speak to me.” + +He had been expecting some such announcement as this from Lady Beauchemin +and really judged her father would do no more than his duty. He felt he +should be prepared with an answer to the high challenge so prefigured, +and he wondered at himself for still not having come to the point. +Sidney Feeder’s question in the Park had made him feel rather pointless; +it was the first direct allusion as yet made to his possible marriage by +any one but Lady Beauchemin. None of his own people were in London; he +was perfectly independent, and even if his mother had been within reach +he couldn’t quite have consulted her on the subject. He loved her +dearly, better than any one; but she wasn’t a woman to consult, for she +approved of whatever he did: the fact of his doing it settled the case +for it. He had been careful not to be too serious when he talked with +Lady Barb’s relative; but he was very serious indeed as he thought over +the matter within himself, which he did even among the diversions of the +next half-hour, while he squeezed, obliquely and with tight arrests, +through the crush in the Trumpingtons’ drawing-room. At the end of the +half-hour he came away, and at the door he found Lady Beauchemin, from +whom he had separated on entering the house and who, this time with a +companion of her own sex, was awaiting her carriage and still “going on.” +He gave her his arm to the street, and as she entered the vehicle she +repeated that she hoped he’d just go out of town. + +“Who then would tell me what to do?” he returned, looking at her through +the window. + +She might tell him what to do, but he felt free all the same; and he was +determined this should continue. To prove it to himself he jumped into a +hansom and drove back to Brook Street and to his hotel instead of +proceeding to a bright-windowed house in Portland Place where he knew he +should after midnight find Lady Canterville and her daughters. He +recalled a reference to that chance during his ride with Lady Barb, who +would probably expect him; but it made him taste his liberty not to go, +and he liked to taste his liberty. He was aware that to taste it in +perfection he ought to “turn in”; but he didn’t turn in, he didn’t even +take off his hat. He walked up and down his sitting-room with his head +surmounted by this ornament, a good deal tipped back, and with his hands +in his pockets. There were various cards stuck into the frame of the +mirror over his chimney-piece, and every time he passed the place he +seemed to see what was written on one of them—the name of the mistress of +the house in Portland Place, his own name and in the lower left-hand +corner “A small Dance.” Of course, now, he must make up his mind; he’d +make it up by the next day: that was what he said to himself as he walked +up and down; and according to his decision he’d speak to Lord Canterville +or would take the night-express to Paris. It was better meanwhile he +shouldn’t see Lady Barb. It was vivid to him, as he occasionally paused +with fevered eyes on the card in the chimney-glass, that he had come +pretty far; and he had come so far because he was under the spell—yes, he +was under the spell, or whatever it was, of Lady Barb. There was no +doubt whatever of this; he had a faculty for diagnosis and he knew +perfectly what was the matter with him. He wasted no time in musing on +the mystery of his state; in wondering if he mightn’t have escaped such a +seizure by a little vigilance at first, or if it would abate should he go +away. He accepted it frankly for the sake of the pleasure it gave +him—the girl was the delight of most of his senses—and confined himself +to considering how it would square with his general situation to marry +her. The squaring wouldn’t at all necessarily follow from the fact that +he was in love; too many other things would come in between. The most +important of these was the change not only of the geographical but of the +social standpoint for his wife, and a certain readjustment that it would +involve in his own relation to things. He wasn’t inclined to +readjustments, and there was no reason why he should be: his own position +was in most respects so advantageous. But the girl tempted him almost +irresistibly, satisfying his imagination both as a lover and as a student +of the human organism; she was so blooming, so complete, of a type so +rarely encountered in that degree of perfection. Jackson Lemon was no +Anglomaniac, but he took peculiar pleasure in certain physical facts of +the English—their complexion, their temperament, their tissue; and Lady +Barb had affected him from the first as in flexible virginal form a +wonderful compendium of these elements. There was something simple and +robust in her beauty; it had the quietness of an old Greek statue, +without the vulgarity of the modern simper or of contemporary prettiness. +Her head was antique, and though her conversation was quite of the +present period Jackson told himself that some primitive sincerity of soul +couldn’t but match with the cast of her brow, of her bosom, of the back +of her neck, and with the high carriage of her head, which was at once so +noble and so easy. He saw her as she might be in the future, the +beautiful mother of beautiful children in whom the appearance of “race” +should be conspicuous. He should like his children to have the +appearance of race as well as other signs of good stuff, and wasn’t +unaware that he must take his precautions accordingly. A great many +people in England had these indications, and it was a pleasure to him to +see them, especially as no one had them so unmistakably as the second +daughter of the Cantervilles. It would be a great luxury to call a +creature so constituted one’s own; nothing could be more evident than +that, because it made no difference that she wasn’t strikingly clever. +Striking cleverness wasn’t one of the signs, nor a mark of the English +complexion in general; it was associated with the modern simper, which +was a result of modern nerves. If Jackson had wanted a wife all +fiddlestrings of course he could have found her at home; but this tall +fair girl, whose character, like her figure, appeared mainly to have been +formed by riding across country, was differently put together. All the +same would it suit his book, as they said in London, to marry her and +transport her to New York? He came back to this question; came back to +it with a persistency which, had she been admitted to a view of it, would +have tried the patience of Lady Beauchemin. She had been irritated more +than once at his appearing to attach himself so exclusively to that horn +of the dilemma—as if it could possibly fail to be a good thing for a +little American doctor to marry the daughter of an English peer. It +would have been more becoming in her ladyship’s eyes that he should take +this for granted a little more and take the consent of her ladyship’s—of +their ladyships’—family a little less. They looked at the matter so +differently! Jackson Lemon was conscious that if he should propose for +the young woman who so strongly appealed to him it would be because it +suited him, and not because it suited his possible sisters-in-law. He +believed himself to act in all things by his own faculty of choice and +volition, a feature of his outfit in which he had the highest confidence. + +It would have seemed, indeed, that just now this part of his inward +machine was not working very regularly, since, though he had come home to +go to bed, the stroke of half-past twelve saw him jump not into his +sheets but into a hansom which the whistle of the porter had summoned to +the door of his hotel and in which he rattled off to Portland Place. +Here he found—in a very large house—an assembly of five hundred persons +and a band of music concealed in a bower of azaleas. Lady Canterville +had not arrived; he wandered through the rooms and assured himself of +that. He also discovered a very good conservatory, where there were +banks and pyramids of azaleas. He watched the top of the staircase, but +it was a long time before he saw what he was looking for, and his +impatience grew at last extreme. The reward, however, when it came, was +all he could have desired. It consisted of a clear smile from Lady Barb, +who stood behind her mother while the latter extended vague finger-tips +to the hostess. The entrance of this charming woman and her beautiful +daughters—always a noticeable incident—was effected with a certain spread +of commotion, and just now it was agreeable to Jackson to feel this +produced impression concern him probably more than any one else in the +house. Tall, dazzling, indifferent, looking about her as if she saw very +little, Lady Barb was certainly a figure round which a young man’s fancy +might revolve. Very rare, yet very quiet and very simple, she had little +manner and little movement; but her detachment was not a vulgar art. She +appeared to efface herself, to wait till, in the natural course, she +should be attended to; and in this there was evidently no exaggeration, +for she was too proud not to have perfect confidence. Her sister, quite +another affair, with a little surprised smile which seemed to say that in +her extreme innocence she was still prepared for anything, having heard, +indirectly, such extraordinary things about society, was much more +impatient and more expressive, and had always projected across a +threshold the pretty radiance of her eyes and teeth before her mother’s +name was announced. Lady Canterville was by many persons more admired +and more championed than her daughters; she had kept even more beauty +than she had given them, and it was a beauty which had been called +intellectual. She had extraordinary sweetness, without any definite +professions; her manner was mild almost to tenderness; there was even in +it a degree of thoughtful pity, of human comprehension. Moreover her +features were perfect, and nothing could be more gently gracious than a +way she had of speaking, or rather of listening, to people with her head +inclined a little to one side. Jackson liked her without trepidation, +and she had certainly been “awfully nice” to him. He approached Lady +Barb as soon as he could do so without an appearance of rushing up; he +remarked to her that he hoped very much she wouldn’t dance. He was a +master of the art which flourishes in New York above every other, and had +guided her through a dozen waltzes with a skill which, as she felt, left +absolutely nothing to be desired. But dancing was not his business +to-night. She smiled without scorn at the expression of his hope. + +“That’s what mamma has brought us here for,” she said; “she doesn’t like +it if we don’t dance.” + +“How does she know whether she likes it or not? You always have danced.” + +“Oh, once there was a place where I didn’t,” said Lady Barb. + +He told her he would at any rate settle it with her mother, and persuaded +her to wander with him into the conservatory, where coloured lights were +suspended among the plants and a vault of verdure arched above. In +comparison with the other rooms this retreat was far and strange. But +they were not alone; half a-dozen other couples appeared to have had +reasons as good as theirs. The gloom, none the less, was rosy with the +slopes of azalea and suffused with mitigated music, which made it +possible to talk without consideration of one’s neighbours. In spite of +this, though it was only in looking back on the scene later that Lady +Barb noted the fact, these dispersed couples were talking very softly. +She didn’t look at them; she seemed to take it that virtually she was +alone with the young American. She said something about the flowers, +about the fragrance of the air; for all answer to which he asked her, as +he stood there before her, a question that might have startled her by its +suddenness. + +“How do people who marry in England ever know each other before marriage? +They have no chance.” + +“I’m sure I don’t know,” she returned. “I never was married.” + +“It’s very different in my country. There a man may see much of a girl; +he may freely call on her, he may be constantly alone with her. I wish +you allowed that over here.” + +Lady Barb began to examine the less ornamental side of her fan as if it +had never invited her before. “It must be so very odd, America,” she +then concluded. + +“Well, I guess in that matter we’re right. Over here it’s a leap in the +dark.” + +“I’m sure I don’t know,” she again made answer. She had folded her fan; +she stretched out her arm mechanically and plucked a sprig of azalea. + +“I guess it doesn’t signify after all,” Jackson however proceeded. +“Don’t you know they say that love’s blind at the best?” His keen young +face was bent upon hers; his thumbs were in the pockets of his trousers; +he smiled with a slight strain, showing his fine teeth. She said +nothing, only pulling her azalea to pieces. She was usually so quiet +that this small movement was striking. + +“This is the first time I’ve seen you in the least without a lot of +people,” he went on. + +“Yes, it’s very tiresome.” + +“I’ve been sick of it. I didn’t want even to come here to-night.” + +She hadn’t met his eyes, though she knew they were seeking her own. But +now she looked at him straight. She had never objected to his +appearance, and in this respect had no repugnance to surmount. She liked +a man to be tall and handsome, and Jackson Lemon was neither; but when +she was sixteen, and as tall herself as she was to be at twenty, she had +been in love—for three weeks—with one of her cousins, a little fellow in +the Hussars, who was shorter even than the American, was of inches +markedly fewer than her own. This proved that distinction might be +independent of stature—not that she had ever reasoned it out. Doctor +Lemon’s facial spareness and his bright ocular attention, which had a +fine edge and a marked scale, unfolded and applied rule-fashion, affected +her as original, and she thought of them as rather formidable to a good +many people, which would do very well in a husband of hers. As she made +this reflexion it of course never occurred to her that she herself might +suffer true measurement, for she was not a sacrificial lamb. She felt +sure his features expressed a mind—a mind immensely useful, like a good +hack or whatever, and that he knew how to employ. She would never have +supposed him a doctor; though indeed when all was said this was very +negative and didn’t account for the way he imposed himself. + +“Why, then, did you come?” she asked in answer to his last speech. + +“Because it seems to me after all better to see you this way than not to +see you at all. I want to know you better.” + +“I don’t think I ought to stay here,” she said as she looked round her. + +“Don’t go till I’ve told you I love you,” the young man distinctly +replied. + +She made no exclamation, indulged in no start; he couldn’t see even that +she changed colour. She took his request with a noble simplicity, her +head erect and her eyes lowered. “I don’t think you’ve quite a right to +tell me that.” + +“Why not?” Jackson demanded. “I want to claim the right. I want you to +give it to me.” + +“I can’t—I don’t know you. You’ve said that yourself.” + +“Can’t you have a little faith?” he at once asked, speaking as fast as if +he were not even a little afraid to urge the pace. “That will help us to +know each other better. It’s disgusting, the want of opportunity; even +at Pasterns I could scarcely get a walk with you. But I’ve the most +absolute trust of you. I _know_ I love you, and I couldn’t do more than +that at the end of six months. I love your beauty, I love your nature, I +love you from head to foot. Don’t move, please don’t move.” He lowered +his tone now, but it went straight to her ear and we must believe +conveyed a certain eloquence. For himself, after he had heard himself +say these words, all his being was in a glow. It was a luxury to speak +to her of her beauty; it brought him nearer to her than he had ever been. +But the colour had come into her face and seemed to remind him that her +beauty wasn’t all. “Everything about you is true and sweet and grand,” +he went on; “everything’s dear to me. I’m sure you’re good. I don’t +know what you think of me; I asked Lady Beauchemin to tell me, and she +told me to judge for myself. Well, then, I judge you like me. Haven’t I +a right to assume that till the contrary’s proved? May I speak to your +father? That’s what I want to know. I’ve been waiting, but now what +should I wait for longer? I want to be able to tell him you’ve given me +hope. I suppose I ought to speak to him first. I meant to, to-morrow, +but meanwhile, to-night, I thought I’d just put this in. In my country +it wouldn’t matter particularly. You must see all that over there for +yourself. If you should tell me not to speak to your father I +wouldn’t—I’d wait. But I like better to ask your leave to speak to him +than ask his to speak to you.” + +His voice had sunk almost to a whisper, but, though it trembled, the fact +of his pleading gave it intensity. He had the same attitude, his thumbs +in his trousers, his neat attentive young head, his smile, which was a +matter of course; no one would have imagined what he was saying. She had +listened without moving and at the end she raised her eyes. They rested +on his own a moment, and he remembered for a long time the look, the +clear effluence of splendid maidenhood, as deep as a surrender, that +passed her lids. + +Disconcertingly, however, there was no surrender in what she answered. +“You may say anything you please to my father, but I don’t wish to hear +any more. You’ve said too much, considering how little idea you’ve given +me before.” + +“I was watching you,” said Jackson Lemon. + +She held her head higher, still looking straight at him. Then quite +seriously, “I don’t like to be watched,” she returned. + +“You shouldn’t be so beautiful then. Won’t you give me a word of hope?” + +“I’ve never supposed I should marry a foreigner,” said Lady Barb. + +“Do you call me a foreigner?” + +“I think your ideas are very different and your country different. +You’ve told me so yourself.” + +“I should like to show it to you. I would make you like it.” + +“I’m not sure what you’d make me do,” she went on very honestly. + +“Nothing you don’t want.” + +“I’m sure you’d try,” she smiled as for more accommodation. + +“Well,” said Jackson Lemon, “I’m after all trying now.” + +To this she returned that she must go to her mother, and he was obliged +to lead her out of the place. Lady Canterville was not immediately +found, so that he had time to keep it up a little as they went. “Now +that I’ve spoken I’m very happy.” + +“Perhaps you’re happy too soon.” + +“Ah, don’t say that, Lady Barb,” he tenderly groaned. + +“Of course I must think of it.” + +“Of course you must!” Jackson abundantly concurred. “I’ll speak to your +father to-morrow.” + +“I can’t fancy what he’ll say.” + +“How can he dislike me? But I guess he doesn’t!” the young man cried in +a tone which Lady Beauchemin, had she heard him, would have felt +connected with his general retreat upon the quaint. What Lady +Beauchemin’s sister thought of it is not recorded; but there is perhaps a +clue to her opinion in the answer she made him after a moment’s silence: +“Really, you know, you _are_ a foreigner!” With this she turned her +back, for she was already in her mother’s hands. Jackson Lemon said a +few words to Lady Canterville; they were chiefly about its being very +hot. She gave him her vague sweet attention, as if he were saying +something ingenious but of which she missed the point. He could see she +was thinking of the ways of her daughter Agatha, whose attitude toward +the contemporary young man was wanting in the perception of differences—a +madness too much without method; she was evidently not occupied with Lady +Barb, who was more to be depended on. This young woman never met her +suitor’s eyes again; she let her own rest rather ostentatiously on other +objects. At last he was going away without a glance from her. Her +mother had asked him to luncheon for the morrow, and he had said he would +come if she would promise him he should see his lordship. “I can’t pay +you another visit till I’ve had some talk with him.” + +“I don’t see why not, but if I speak to him I daresay he will be at +home,” she returned. + +“It will be worth his while!” At this he almost committed himself; and +he left the house reflecting that as he had never proposed to a girl +before he couldn’t be expected to know how women demean themselves in +this emergency. He had heard indeed that Lady Barb had had no end of +offers; and though he supposed the number probably overstated, as it +always is, he had to infer that her way of appearing suddenly to have +dropped him was but the usual behaviour for the occasion. + + + +III + + +At her mother’s the next day she was absent from luncheon, and Lady +Canterville mentioned to him—he didn’t ask—that she had gone to see a +dear old great-aunt who was also her godmother and who lived at +Roehampton. Lord Canterville was not present, but Jackson learned from +his hostess that he had promised her he would come in exactly at three +o’clock. Our young man lunched with her ladyship and the children, who +appeared in force at this repast, all the younger girls being present, +and two little boys, the juniors of the two sons who were in their teens. +Doctor Lemon, who was fond of children and thought these absolutely the +finest in the world—magnificent specimens of a magnificent brood, such as +it would be so satisfactory in future days to see about his own +knee—Doctor Lemon felt himself treated as one of the family, but was not +frightened by what he read into the privilege of his admission. Lady +Canterville showed no sense whatever of his having mooted the question of +becoming her son-in-law, and he believed the absent object of his +attentions hadn’t told her of their evening’s talk. This idea gave him +pleasure; he liked to think Lady Barb was judging him for herself. +Perhaps indeed she was taking counsel of the old lady at Roehampton: he +saw himself the sort of lover of whom a godmother would approve. +Godmothers, in his mind, were mainly associated with fairy-tales—he had +had no baptismal sponsors of his own; and that point of view would be +favourable to a young man with a great deal of gold who had suddenly +arrived from a foreign country—an apparition surely in a proper degree +elfish. He made up his mind he should like Lady Canterville as a +mother-in-law; she would be too well-bred to meddle. Her husband came in +at three o’clock, just after they had risen, and observed that it was +very good in him to have waited. + +“I haven’t waited,” Jackson replied with his watch in his hand; “you’re +punctual to the minute.” + +I know not how Lord Canterville may have judged his young friend, but +Jackson Lemon had been told more than once in his life that he would have +been all right if he hadn’t been so literal. After he had lighted a +cigarette in his lordship’s “den,” a large brown apartment on the +ground-floor, which partook at once of the nature of an office and of +that of a harness-room—it couldn’t have been called in any degree a +library or even a study—he went straight to the point in these terms: +“Well now, Lord Canterville, I feel I ought to let you know without more +delay that I’m in love with Lady Barb and that I should like to make her +my wife.” So he spoke, puffing his cigarette, with his conscious but +unextenuating eyes fixed on his host. + +No man, as I have intimated, bore better being looked at than this noble +personage; he seemed to bloom in the envious warmth of human +contemplation and never appeared so faultless as when most exposed. “My +dear fellow, my dear fellow,” he murmured almost in disparagement, +stroking his ambrosial beard from before the empty fireplace. He lifted +his eyebrows, but looked perfectly good-natured. + +“Are you surprised, sir?” Jackson asked. + +“Why I suppose a fellow’s surprised at any one’s wanting one of his +children. He sometimes feels the weight of that sort of thing so much, +you know. He wonders what use on earth another man can make of them.” +And Lord Canterville laughed pleasantly through the copious fringe of his +lips. + +“I only want one of them,” said his guest, laughing too, but with a +lighter organ. + +“Polygamy would be rather good for the parents. However, Luke told me +the other night she knew you to be looking the way you speak of.” + +“Yes, I mentioned to Lady Beauchemin that I love Lady Barb, and she +seemed to think it natural.” + +“Oh I suppose there’s no want of nature in it! But, my dear fellow, I +really don’t know what to say,” his lordship added. + +“Of course you’ll have to think of it.” In saying which Jackson felt +himself make the most liberal concession to the point of view of his +interlocutor; being perfectly aware that in his own country it wasn’t +left much to the parents to think of. + +“I shall have to talk it over with my wife.” + +“Well, Lady Canterville has been very kind to me; I hope she’ll +continue.” + +Lord Canterville passed a large fair hand, as for inspiration, over his +beard. “My dear fellow, we’re excellent friends. No one could +appreciate you more than Lady Canterville. Of course we can only +consider such a question on the—a—the highest grounds. You’d never want +to marry without knowing—as it were—exactly what you’re doing. I, on my +side, naturally, you know, am bound to do the best I can for my own poor +child. At the same time, of course, we don’t want to spend our time +in—a—walking round the horse. We want to get at the truth about him.” +It was settled between them after a little that the truth about Lemon’s +business was that he knew to a certainty the state of his affections and +was in a position to pretend to the hand of a young lady who, Lord +Canterville might say without undue swagger, had a right to expect to do +as well as any girl about the place. + +“I should think she had,” Doctor Lemon said. “She’s a very rare type.” + +His entertainer had a pleasant blank look. “She’s a clever well-grown +girl and she takes her fences like a grasshopper. Does she know all +this, by the way?” + +“Oh yes, I told her last night.” + +Again Lord Canterville had the air, unusual with him, of sounding, at +some expense of precious moments, the expression of face of a visitor so +unacquainted with shyness. “I’m not sure you ought to have done that, +you know.” + +“I couldn’t have spoken to you first—I couldn’t,” said Jackson Lemon. “I +meant to; but it stuck in my crop.” + +“They don’t in your country, I guess,” his lordship amicably laughed. + +“Well, not as a general thing. However, I find it very pleasant to have +the whole thing out with you now.” And in truth it was very pleasant. +Nothing could be easier, friendlier, more informal, than Lord +Canterville’s manner, which implied all sorts of equality, especially +that of age and fortune, and made our young man feel at the end of three +minutes almost as if he too were a beautifully-preserved and somewhat +straitened nobleman of sixty, with the views of a man of the world about +his own marriage. Jackson perceived that Lord Canterville waived the +point of his having spoken first to the girl herself, and saw in this +indulgence a just concession to the ardour of young affection. For his +lordship seemed perfectly to appreciate the sentimental side—at least so +far as it was embodied in his visitor—when he said without deprecation: +“Did she give you any encouragement?” + +“Well, she didn’t box my ears. She told me she’d think of it, but that I +must speak to you. Naturally, however, I shouldn’t have said what I did +if I hadn’t made up my mind during the last fortnight that I’m not +disagreeable to her.” + +“Ah, my dear young man, women are odd fish!” this parent exclaimed rather +unexpectedly. “But of course you know all that,” he added in an instant; +“you take the general risk.” + +“I’m perfectly willing to take the general risk. The particular risk +strikes me as small.” + +“Well, upon my honour I don’t really know my girls. You see a man’s time +in England is tremendously taken up; but I daresay it’s the same in your +country. Their mother knows them—I think I had better send for their +mother. If you don’t mind,” Lord Canterville wound up, “I’ll just +suggest that she join us here.” + +“I’m rather afraid of you both together, but if it will settle it any +quicker—!” Jackson said. His companion rang the bell and, when a servant +appeared, despatched him with a message to her ladyship. While they were +waiting the young man remembered how easily he could give a more definite +account of his pecuniary basis. He had simply stated before that he was +abundantly able to marry; he shrank from putting himself forward as a +monster of money. With his excellent taste he wished to appeal to Lord +Canterville primarily as a gentleman. But now that he had to make a +double impression he bethought himself of his millions, for millions were +always impressive. “It strikes me as only fair to let you know that my +fortune’s really considerable.” + +“Yes, I daresay you’re beastly rich,” said Lord Canterville with a +natural and visible faith. + +“Well, I represent, all told, some seven millions.” + +“Seven millions?” + +“I count in dollars. Upwards of a million and a half sterling.” + +Lord Canterville looked at him from head to foot, exhaling with great +promptitude an air of cheerful resignation to a form of grossness +threatening to become common. Then he said with a touch of that +inconsequence of which he had already given a glimpse: “What the deuce in +that case possessed you to turn doctor?” + +Jackson Lemon coloured a little and demurred, but bethought himself of +his best of reasons. “Why, my having simply the talent for it.” + +“Of course I don’t for a moment doubt your ability. But don’t you,” his +lordship candidly asked, “find it rather a bore?” + +“I don’t practise much. I’m rather ashamed to say that.” + +“Ah well, of course in your country it’s different. I daresay you’ve got +a door-plate, eh?” + +“Oh yes, and a tin sign tied to the balcony!” Jackson laughed. + +Here the joke was beyond his friend, who but went on: “What on earth did +your father say to it?” + +“To my going into medicine? He said he’d be hanged if he’d take any of +my doses. He didn’t think I should succeed; he wanted me to go into the +house.” + +“Into the House—a—?” Lord Canterville just wondered. “That would be into +your Congress?” + +“Ah no, not so bad as that. Into the store,” Jackson returned with that +refinement of the ingenuous which he reserved for extreme cases. + +His host stared, not venturing even for the moment to hazard an +interpretation; and before a solution had presented itself Lady +Canterville was on the scene. + +“My dear, I thought we had better see you. Do you know he wants to marry +our second girl?” It was in these simple and lucid terms that her +husband acquainted her with the question. + +She expressed neither surprise nor elation; she simply stood there +smiling, her head a little inclined to the side and her beautiful +benevolence well to the front. Her charming eyes rested on Doctor +Lemon’s; and, though they showed a shade of anxiety for a matter of such +importance, his own discovered in them none of the coldness of +calculation. “Are you talking about dear Barb?” she asked in a moment +and as if her thoughts had been far away. + +Of course they were talking about dear Barb, and Jackson repeated to her +what he had said to her noble spouse. He had thought it all over and his +mind was quite made up. Moreover, he had spoken to the young woman. + +“Did she tell you that, my dear?” his lordship asked while he lighted +another cigar. + +She gave no heed to this inquiry, which had been vague and accidental on +the speaker’s part; she simply remarked to their visitor that the thing +was very serious and that they had better sit down a moment. In an +instant he was near her on the sofa on which she had placed herself and +whence she still smiled up at her husband with her air of luxurious +patience. + +“Barb has told me nothing,” she dropped, however, after a little. + +“That proves how much she cares for me!” Jackson declared with instant +lucidity. + +Lady Canterville looked as if she thought this really too ingenious, +almost as professional as if their talk were a consultation; but her +husband went, all gaily, straighter to the point. “Ah well, if she cares +for you I don’t object.” + +This was a little ambiguous; but before the young man had time to look +into it his hostess put a bland question. “Should you expect her to live +in America?” + +“Oh yes. That’s my home, you know.” + +“Shouldn’t you be living sometimes in England?” + +“Oh yes—we’ll come over and see you.” He was in love, he wanted to +marry, he wanted to be genial and to commend himself to the family; yet +it was in his nature not to accept conditions save in so far as they met +his taste, not to tie himself or, as they said in New York, give himself +away. He preferred in any transaction his own terms to those of any one +else, so that the moment Lady Canterville gave signs of wishing to +extract a promise he was on his guard. + +“She’ll find it very different; perhaps she won’t like it,” her ladyship +suggested. + +“If she likes me she’ll like my country,” Jackson Lemon returned with +decision. + +“He tells me he has a plate on his door,” Lord Canterville put in for the +right pleasant tone. + +“We must talk to her of course; we must understand how she feels”—and his +wife looked, though still gracious, more nobly responsible. + +“Please don’t discourage her, Lady Canterville,” Jackson firmly said; +“and give me a chance to talk to her a little more myself. You haven’t +given me much chance, you know.” + +“We don’t offer our daughters to people, however amiable, Mr. Lemon.” +Her charming grand manner rather quickened. + +“She isn’t like some women in London, you know,” Lord Canterville +helpfully explained; “you see we rather stave off the evil day: we like +to be together.” And Jackson certainly, if the idea had been presented +to him, would have said that No, decidedly, Lady Barb hadn’t been thrown +at him. + +“Of course not,” he declared in answer to her mother’s remark. “But you +know you mustn’t decline overtures too much either; you mustn’t make a +poor fellow wait too long. I admire her, I love her, more than I can +say; I give you my word of honour for that.” + +“He seems to think that settles it,” said Lord Canterville, shining +richly down at the young American from his place before the cold +chimney-piece. + +“Certainly that’s what we desire, Philip,” her ladyship returned with an +equal grace. + +“Lady Barb believes it; I’m sure she does!” Jackson exclaimed with +spirit. “Why should I pretend to be in love with her if I’m not?” + +Lady Canterville received this appeal in silence, and her husband, with +just the least air in the world of repressed impatience, began to walk up +and down the room. He was a man of many engagements, and he had been +closeted for more than a quarter of an hour with the young American +doctor. “Do you imagine you should come often to England?” Lady +Canterville asked as if to think of everything. + +“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that; of course we shall do whatever seems +best.” He was prepared to suppose they should cross the Atlantic every +summer—that prospect was by no means displeasing to him; but he wasn’t +prepared to tie himself, as he would have said, up to it, nor up to +anything in particular. It was in his mind not as an overt pretension +but as a tacit implication that he should treat with the parents of his +presumed bride on a footing of perfect equality; and there would somehow +be nothing equal if he should begin to enter into engagements that didn’t +belong to the essence of the matter. They were to give their daughter +and he was to take her: in this arrangement there would be as much on one +side as on the other. But beyond it he had nothing to ask of them; there +was nothing he was calling on them to promise, and his own pledges +therefore would have no equivalent. Whenever his wife should wish it she +should come over and see her people. Her home was to be in New York; but +he was tacitly conscious that on the question of absences he should be +very liberal, and there was meanwhile something in the very grain of his +character that forbade he should be eagerly yielding about times and +dates. + +Lady Canterville looked at her spouse, but he was now not attentive; he +was taking a peep at his watch. In a moment, however, he threw out a +remark to the effect that he thought it a capital thing the two countries +should become more united, and there was nothing that would bring it +about better than a few of the best people on both sides pairing-off +together. The English indeed had begun it; a lot of fellows had brought +over a lot of pretty girls, and it was quite fair play that the Americans +should take their pick. They were all one race, after all; and why +shouldn’t they make one society—the best of both sides, of course? +Jackson Lemon smiled as he recognised Lady Marmaduke’s great doctrine, +and he was pleased to think Lady Beauchemin had some influence with her +father; for he was sure the great old boy, as he mentally designated his +host, had got all this from her, though he expressed himself less happily +than the cleverest of his daughters. Our hero had no objection to make +to it, especially if there were aught in it that would really help his +case. But it was not in the least on these high grounds he had sought +the hand of Lady Barb. He wanted her not in order that her people and +his—the best on both sides!—should make one society; he wanted her simply +because he wanted her. Lady Canterville smiled, but she seemed to have +another thought. + +“I quite appreciate what my husband says, but I don’t see why poor Barb +should be the one to begin.” + +“I daresay she’ll like it,” said his lordship as if he were attempting a +short cut. “They say you spoil your women awfully.” + +“She’s not one of their women yet,” Lady Canterville remarked in the +sweetest tone in the world; and then she added without Jackson Lemon’s +knowing exactly what she meant: “It seems so strange.” + +He was slightly irritated, and these vague words perhaps added to the +feeling. There had been no positive opposition to his suit, and both his +entertainers were most kind; but he felt them hold back a little, and +though he hadn’t expected them to throw themselves on his neck he was +rather disappointed—his pride was touched. Why should they hesitate? He +knew himself such a good _parti_. It was not so much his noble host—it +was Lady Canterville. As he saw her lord and master look covertly and a +second time at his watch he could have believed him glad to settle the +matter on the spot. Lady Canterville seemed to wish their aspirant to +come forward more, to give certain assurances and pledges. He felt he +was ready to say or do anything that was a matter of proper form, but he +couldn’t take the tone of trying to purchase her ladyship’s assent, +penetrated as he was with the conviction that such a man as he could be +trusted to care for his wife rather more than an impecunious British peer +and _his_ wife could be supposed—with the lights he had acquired on +English society—to care even for the handsomest of a dozen children. It +was a mistake on the old lady’s part not to recognise that. He humoured +this to the extent of saying just a little dryly: “My wife shall +certainly have everything she wants.” + +“He tells me he’s disgustingly rich,” Lord Canterville added, pausing +before their companion with his hands in his pockets. + +“I’m glad to hear it; but it isn’t so much that,” she made answer, +sinking back a little on her sofa. If it wasn’t that she didn’t say what +it was, though she had looked for a moment as if she were going to. She +only raised her eyes to her husband’s face, she asked for inspiration. I +know not whether she found it, but in a moment she said to Jackson Lemon, +seeming to imply that it was quite another point: “Do you expect to +continue your profession?” + +He had no such intention, so far as his profession meant getting up at +three o’clock in the morning to assuage the ills of humanity; but here, +as before, the touch of such a question instantly stiffened him. “Oh, my +profession! I rather wince at that grand old name. I’ve neglected my +work so scandalously that I scarce know on what terms with it I shall +be—though hoping for the best when once I’m right there again.” + +Lady Canterville received these remarks in silence, fixing her eyes once +more upon her husband’s. But his countenance really rather failed her; +still with his hands in his pockets, save when he needed to remove his +cigar from his lips, he went and looked out of the window. “Of course we +know you don’t practise, and when you’re a married man you’ll have less +time even than now. But I should really like to know if they call you +Doctor over there.” + +“Oh yes, universally. We’re almost as fond of titles as your people.” + +“I don’t call that a title,” her ladyship smiled. + +“It’s not so good as duke or marquis, I admit; but we have to take what +we’ve got.” + +“Oh bother, what does it signify?” his lordship demanded from his place +at the window. “I used to have a horse named Doctor, and a jolly good +one too.” + +“Don’t you call bishops Doctors? Well, then, call me Bishop!” Jackson +laughed. + +Lady Canterville visibly didn’t follow. “I don’t care for _any_ titles,” +she nevertheless observed. “I don’t see why a gentleman shouldn’t be +called Mr.” + +It suddenly appeared to her young friend that there was something +helpless, confused and even slightly comical in her state. The +impression was mollifying, and he too, like Lord Canterville, had begun +to long for a short cut. He relaxed a moment and, leaning toward his +hostess with a smile and his hands on his little knees, he said softly: +“It seems to me a question of no importance. All I desire is that you +should call me your son-in-law.” + +She gave him her hand and he pressed it almost affectionately. Then she +got up, remarking that before anything was decided she must see her +child, must learn from her own lips the state of her feelings. “I don’t +like at all her not having spoken to me already,” she added. + +“Where has she gone—to Roehampton? I daresay she has told it all to her +godmother,” said Lord Canterville. + +“She won’t have much to tell, poor girl!” Jackson freely commented. “I +must really insist on seeing with more freedom the person I wish to +marry.” + +“You shall have all the freedom you want in two or three days,” said Lady +Canterville. She irradiated all her charity; she appeared to have +accepted him and yet still to be making tacit assumptions. “Aren’t there +certain things to be talked of first?” + +“Certain things, dear lady?” + +She looked at her husband, and though he was still at his window he felt +it this time in her silence and had to come away and speak. “Oh she +means settlements and that kind of thing.” This was an allusion that +came with a much better grace from the father. + +Jackson turned from one of his companions to the other; he coloured a +little and his self-control was perhaps a trifle strained. “Settlements? +We don’t make them in my country. You may be sure I shall make a proper +provision for my wife.” + +“My dear fellow, over here—in our class, you know—it’s the custom,” said +Lord Canterville with a truer ease in his face at the thought that the +discussion was over. + +“I’ve my own ideas,” Jackson returned with even greater confidence. + +“It seems to me it’s a question for the solicitors to discuss,” Lady +Canterville suggested. + +“They may discuss it as much as they please”—the young man showed +amusement. He thought he saw his solicitors discussing it! He had +indeed his own ideas. He opened the door for his hostess and the three +passed out of the room together, walking into the hall in a silence that +expressed a considerable awkwardness. A note had been struck which +grated and scratched a little. A pair of shining footmen, at their +approach, rose from a bench to a great altitude and stood there like +sentinels presenting arms. Jackson stopped, looking for a moment into +the interior of his hat, which he had in his hand. Then raising his keen +eyes he fixed them a moment on those of Lady Canterville, addressing her +instinctively rather than his other critic. “I guess you and Lord +Canterville had better leave it to me!” + +“We have our traditions, Mr. Lemon,” said her ladyship with a firm grace. +“I imagine you don’t know—!” she gravely breathed. + +Lord Canterville laid his hand on their visitor’s shoulder. “My dear +boy, those fellows will settle it in three minutes.” + +“Very likely they will!” said Jackson Lemon. Then he asked of Lady +Canterville when he might see Lady Barb. + +She turned it spaciously over. “I’ll write you a note.” + +One of the tall footmen at the end of the impressive vista had opened +wide the portals, as if even he were aware of the dignity to which the +small strange gentleman had virtually been raised. But Jackson lingered; +he was visibly unsatisfied, though apparently so little conscious he was +unsatisfying. “I don’t think you understand me.” + +“Your ideas are certainly different,” said Lady Canterville. + +His lordship, however, made comparatively light of it. “If the girl +understands you that’s enough!” + +“Mayn’t _she_ write to me?” Jackson asked of her mother. “I certainly +must write to her, you know, if you won’t let me see her.”. + +“Oh yes, you may write to her, Mr. Lemon.” + +There was a point, for a moment, in the look he returned on this, while +he said to himself that if necessary he would transmit his appeal through +the old lady at Roehampton. “All right—good-bye. You know what I want +at any rate.” Then as he was going he turned and added: “You needn’t be +afraid I won’t always bring her over in the hot weather!” + +“In the hot weather?” Lady Canterville murmured with vague visions of the +torrid zone. Jackson however quitted the house with the sense he had +made great concessions. + +His host and hostess passed into a small morning-room and—Lord +Canterville having taken up his hat and stick to go out again—stood there +a moment, face to face. Then his lordship spoke in a summary manner. +“It’s clear enough he wants her.” + +“There’s something so odd about him,” Lady Canterville answered. “Fancy +his speaking so about settlements!” + +“You had better give him his head. He’ll go much quieter.” + +“He’s so obstinate—very obstinate; it’s easy to see that. And he seems +to think,” she went on, “that a girl in your daughter’s position can be +married from one day to the other—with a ring and a new frock—like a +housemaid.” + +“Well that, of course, over there is the kind of thing. But he seems +really to have a most extraordinary fortune, and every one does say they +give their women _carte blanche_.” + +“_Carte blanche_ is not what Barb wants; she wants a settlement. She +wants a definite income,” said Lady Canterville; “she wants to be safe.” + +He looked at her rather straight. “Has she told you so? I thought you +said—” And then he stopped. “I beg your pardon,” he added. + +She didn’t explain her inconsequence; she only remarked that American +fortunes were notoriously insecure; one heard of nothing else; they +melted away like smoke. It was their own duty to their child to demand +that something should be fixed. + +Well, he met this in his way. “He has a million and a half sterling. I +can’t make out what he does with it.” + +She rose to it without a flutter. “Our child should have, then, +something very handsome.” + +“I agree, my dear; but you must manage it; you must consider it; you must +send for Hardman. Only take care you don’t put him off; it may be a very +good opening, you know. There’s a great deal to be done out there; I +believe in all that,” Lord Canterville went on in the tone of a +conscientious parent. + +“There’s no doubt that he _is_ a doctor—in some awful place,” his wife +brooded. + +“He may be a pedlar for all I care.” + +“If they should go out I think Agatha might go with them,” her ladyship +continued in the same tone, but a little disconnectedly. + +“You may send them all out if you like. Goodbye!” + +The pair embraced, but her hand detained him a moment. “Don’t you think +he’s greatly in love?” + +“Oh yes, he’s very bad—but he’s a sharp little beggar.” + +“She certainly quite likes him,” Lady Canterville stated rather formally +as they separated. + + + +IV + + +Jackson Lemon had said to Dr. Feeder in the Park that he would call on +Mr. and Mrs. Freer; but three weeks were to elapse before he knocked at +their door in Jermyn Street. In the meantime he had met them at dinner +and Mrs. Freer had told him how much she hoped he would find time to come +and see her. She had not reproached him nor shaken her finger at him, +and her clemency, which was calculated and very characteristic of her, +touched him so much—for he was in fault, she was one of his mother’s +oldest and best friends—that he very soon presented himself. It was on a +fine Sunday afternoon, rather late, and the region of Jermyn Street +looked forsaken and inanimate; the native dulness of the brick scenery +reigned undisputed. Mrs. Freer, however, was at home, resting on a +lodging-house sofa—an angular couch draped in faded chintz—before she +went to dress for dinner. She made the young man very welcome; she told +him again how much she had been thinking of him; she had longed so for a +chance to talk with him. He immediately guessed what she had in her +mind, and he then remembered that Sidney Feeder had named to him what it +was this pair took upon themselves to say. This had provoked him at the +time, but he had forgotten it afterward; partly because he became aware +that same night of his wanting to make the “young marchioness” his own +and partly because since then he had suffered much greater annoyance. +Yes, the poor young man, so conscious of liberal intentions, of a large +way of looking at the future, had had much to irritate and disgust him. +He had seen the mistress of his affections but three or four times, and +had received a letter from Mr. Hardman, Lord Canterville’s solicitor, +asking him, in terms the most obsequious it was true, to designate some +gentleman of the law with whom the preliminaries of his marriage to Lady +Barbarina Clement might be arranged. He had given Mr. Hardman the name +of such a functionary, but he had written by the same post to his own +solicitor—for whose services in other matters he had had much occasion, +Jackson Lemon being distinctly contentious—instructing him that he was at +liberty to meet that gentleman, but not at liberty to entertain any +proposals as to the odious English idea of a settlement. If marrying +Jackson Lemon wasn’t settlement enough the house of Canterville had but +to alter their point of view. It was quite out of the question he should +alter his. It would perhaps be difficult to explain the strong dislike +he entertained to the introduction into his prospective union of this +harsh diplomatic element; it was as if they mistrusted him and suspected +him; as if his hands were to be tied so that he shouldn’t be able to +handle his own fortune as he thought best. It wasn’t the idea of parting +with his money that displeased him, for he flattered himself he had plans +of expenditure for his wife beyond even the imagination of her +distinguished parents. It struck him even that they were fools not to +have felt subtly sure they should make a much better thing of it by +leaving him perfectly free. This intervention of the solicitor was a +nasty little English tradition—totally at variance with the large spirit +of American habits—to which he wouldn’t submit. It wasn’t his way to +submit when he disapproved: why should he change his way on this occasion +when the matter lay so near him? + +These reflexions and a hundred more had flowed freely through his mind +for several days before his call in Jermyn Street, and they had +engendered a lively indignation and a bitter sense of wrong. They had +even introduced, as may be imagined, a certain awkwardness into his +relations with the house of Canterville, of which indeed it may be said +that these amenities were for the moment virtually suspended. His first +interview with Lady Barb after his conference with the old couple, as he +called her august elders, had been as frank, had been as sweet, as he +could have desired. Lady Canterville had at the end of three days sent +him an invitation—five words on a card—asking him to dine with them on +the morrow quite _en famille_. This had been the only formal intimation +that his engagement to her daughter was recognised; for even at the +family banquet, which included half a dozen guests of pleasant address +but vague affiliation, there had been no reference on the part either of +his host or his hostess to the subject of their converse in Lord +Canterville’s den. The only allusion was a wandering ray, once or twice, +in Lady Barb’s own fine eyes. When, however, after dinner, she strolled +away with him into the music-room, which was lighted and empty, to play +for him something out of “Carmen,” of which he had spoken at table, and +when the young couple were allowed to enjoy for upwards of an hour, +unmolested, the comparative privacy of that elegant refuge, he felt Lady +Canterville definitely to count on him. She didn’t believe in any +serious difficulties. Neither did he then; and that was why it was not +to be condoned that there should be a vain appearance of them. The +arrangements, he supposed her ladyship would have said, were pending, and +indeed they were; for he had already given orders in Bond Street for the +setting of an extraordinary number of diamonds. Lady Barb, at any rate, +during that hour he spent with her, had had nothing to say about +arrangements; and it had been an hour of pure satisfaction. She had +seated herself at the piano and had played perpetually, in a soft +incoherent manner, while he leaned over the instrument, very close to +her, and said everything that came into his head. She was braver and +handsomer than ever and looked at him as if she liked him out and out. + +This was all he expected of her, for it didn’t belong to the cast of her +beauty to betray a vulgar infatuation. That beauty was clearly all he +had believed it from the first, and with something now thrown in, +something ever so touching and stirring, which seemed to stamp her from +that moment as his precious possession. He felt more than ever her +intimate value and the great social outlay it had taken to produce such a +mixture. Simple and girlish as she was, and not particularly quick in +the give and take of conversation, she seemed to him to have a part of +the history of England in her blood; she was the fine flower of +generations of privileged people and of centuries of rich country-life. +Between these two of course was no glance at the question which had been +put into the hands of Mr. Hardman, and the last thing that occurred to +Jackson was that Lady Barb had views as to his settling a fortune upon +her before their marriage. It may appear odd, but he hadn’t asked +himself whether his money operated on her in any degree as a bribe; and +this was because, instinctively, he felt such a speculation idle—the +point was essentially not to be ascertained—and because he was quite +ready to take it for agreeable to her to continue to live in luxury. It +was eminently agreeable to him to have means to enable her to do so. He +was acquainted with the mingled character of human motives and glad he +was rich enough to pretend to the hand of a young woman who, for the best +of reasons, would be very expensive. After the good passage in the +music-room he had ridden with her twice, but hadn’t found her otherwise +accessible. She had let him know the second time they rode that Lady +Canterville had directed her to make, for the moment, no further +appointment with him; and on his presenting himself more than once at the +house he had been told that neither the mother nor the daughter was at +home: it had been added that Lady Barb was staying at Roehampton. In +touching on that restriction she had launched at him just a +distinguishable mute reproach—there was always a certain superior +dumbness in her eyes—as if he were exposing her to an annoyance she ought +to be spared, or taking an eccentric line on a question that all +well-bred people treated in the conventional way. + +His induction from this was not that she wished to be secure about his +money, but that, like a dutiful English daughter, she received her +opinions—on points that were indifferent to her—ready-made from a mamma +whose fallibility had never been exposed. He knew by this that his +solicitor had answered Mr. Hardman’s letter and that Lady Canterville’s +coolness was the fruit of the correspondence. The effect of it was not +in the least to make him come round, as he phrased it; he had not the +smallest intention of doing that. Lady Canterville had spoken of the +traditions of her family; but he had no need to go to his family for his +own. They resided within himself; anything he had once undiscussably +made up his mind to acquired in three minutes the force, and with that +the due dignity of a tradition. Meanwhile he was in the detestable +position of not knowing whether or no he were engaged. He wrote to Lady +Barb to clear it up, to smooth it down—it being so strange she shouldn’t +receive him; and she addressed him in return a very pretty little letter, +which had to his mind a fine by-gone quality, an old-fashioned, a +last-century freshness that might have flowed, a little thinly, from the +pen of Clarissa or Sophia. She professed that she didn’t in the least +understand the situation; that of course she would never give him up; +that her mother had said there were the best reasons for their not going +too fast; that, thank God, she was yet young and could wait as long as he +would; but that she begged he wouldn’t write her about money-matters: she +had never been able to count even on her fingers. He felt in no danger +whatever of making this last mistake; he only noted how Lady Barb thought +it natural there should be a discussion; and this made it vivid to him +afresh that he had got hold of a daughter of the Crusaders. His +ingenious mind could appreciate this hereditary assumption at the very +same time that, to light his own footsteps, it remained entirely modern. +He believed—or he thought he believed—that in the end he should marry his +gorgeous girl on his own terms; but in the interval there was a sensible +indignity in being challenged and checked. One effect of it indeed was +to make him desire the young woman more intensely. When she wasn’t +before his eyes in the flesh she hovered before him as an image, and this +image had reasons of its own for making him at hours fairly languid with +love. + +There were moments, however, when he wearied of the mere enshrined +memory—it was too impalpable and too thankless. Then it befell that +Jackson Lemon for the first time in his life dropped and gave way—gave +way, that is, to the sense of sadness. He felt alone in London, and very +much out of it, in spite of all the acquaintances he had made and the +bills he had paid; he felt the need of a greater intimacy than any he had +formed—save of course in the case of Lady Barb. He wanted to vent his +disgust, to relieve himself, from the New York point of view. He felt +that in engaging in a contest with the great house of Canterville he was +after all rather single. That singleness was of course in a great +measure an inspiration; but it pinched him hard at moments. Then it +would have pleased him could his mother have been near; he used to talk +of his affairs a great deal with this delightful parent, who had a +delicate way of advising him in the sense he liked best. He had even +gone so far as to wish he had never laid eyes on Lady Barb, but had +fallen in love instead with some one or other of the rarer home-products. +He presently came back of course to the knowledge that in the United +States there was—and there could be—nothing nearly so rare as the young +lady who had in fact appealed to him so straight, for was it not +precisely as a high resultant of the English climate and the British +constitution that he valued her? He had relieved himself, from his New +York point of view, by speaking his mind to Lady Beauchemin, who +confessed that she was infinitely vexed with her parents. She agreed +with him that they had made a great mistake; they ought to have left him +free; and she expressed her confidence that such freedom could only have +been, in him, for her family, like the silence of the sage, golden. He +must let them down easily, must remember that what was asked of him had +been their custom for centuries. She didn’t mention her authority as to +the origin of customs, but she promised him she would say three words to +her father and mother which would make it all right. Jackson answered +that customs were all very well, but that really intelligent people +recognised at sight, and then indeed quite enjoyed, the right occasion +for departing from them; and with this he awaited the result of Lady +Beauchemin’s remonstrance. It had not as yet been perceptible, and it +must be said that this charming woman was herself not quite at ease. + +When on her venturing to hint to her mother that she thought a wrong line +had been taken with regard to her sister’s _prétendant_, Lady Canterville +had replied that Mr. Lemon’s unwillingness to settle anything was in +itself a proof of what they had feared, the unstable nature of his +fortune—since it was useless to talk (this gracious lady could be very +decided) as if there could be any serious reason but that one—on meeting +this argument, as I say, Jackson’s protectress felt considerably baffled. +It was perhaps true, as her mother said, that if they didn’t insist upon +proper pledges Barbarina might be left in a few years with nothing but +the stars and stripes—this odd phrase was a quotation from Mr. Lemon—to +cover her withal. Lady Beauchemin tried to reason it out with Lady +Marmaduke; but these were complications unforeseen by Lady Marmaduke in +her project of an Anglo-American society. She was obliged to confess +that Mr. Lemon’s fortune couldn’t have the solidity of long-established +things; it was a very new fortune indeed. His father had made the +greater part of it all in a lump, a few years before his death, in the +extraordinary way in which people made money in America; that of course +was why the son had those singular professional attributes. He had begun +to study to be a doctor very young, before his expectations were so +great. Then he had found he was very clever and very fond of it, and had +kept on because after all, in America, where there were no country +gentlemen, a young man had to have something to do, don’t you know? And +Lady Marmaduke, like an enlightened woman, intimated that in such a case +she thought it in much better taste not to try to sink anything. +“Because in America, don’t you see?” she reasoned, “you can’t sink +it—nothing _will_ sink. Everything’s floating about—in the newspapers.” +And she tried to console her friend by remarking that if Mr. Lemon’s +fortune was precarious it was at all events so big. That was just the +trouble for Lady Beauchemin, it was so big and yet they were going to +lose it. He was as obstinate as a mule; she was sure he would never come +round. Lady Marmaduke declared he really _would_ come round; she even +offered to bet a dozen pair of _gants de Suède_ on it; and she added that +this consummation lay quite in the hands of Barbarina. Lady Beauchemin +promised herself to contend with her sister, as it was not for nothing +she had herself caught the glamour of her friend’s international scheme. + +Jackson Lemon, to dissipate his chagrin, had returned to the sessions of +the medical congress, where, inevitably, he had fallen into the hands of +Sidney Feeder, who enjoyed in this disinterested assembly the highest +esteem. It was Dr. Feeder’s earnest desire that his old friend should +share his credit—all the more easily that the medical congress was, as +the young physician observed, a perpetual symposium. Jackson entertained +the entire body at dinner—entertained it profusely and in a manner +befitting one of the patrons of science rather than the humbler votaries; +but these dissipations made him forget but for the hour the arrest of his +relations with the house of Canterville. It punctually came back to him +that he was disconcerted, and Dr. Feeder saw it stamped on his brow. +Jackson Lemon, with his acute inclination to open himself, was on the +point more than once of taking this sturdy friend into his confidence. +His colleague gave him easy occasion—asked him what it was he was +thinking of all the time and whether the young marchioness had concluded +she couldn’t swallow a doctor. These forms of speech were displeasing to +our baffled aspirant, whose fastidiousness was nothing new; but he had +even deeper reasons for saying to himself that in such complicated cases +as his there was no assistance in the Sidney Feeders. To understand his +situation one must know the world, and the children of Cincinnati, +prohibitively provincial, didn’t know the world—at least the world with +which this son of New York was now concerned. + +“Is there a hitch in your marriage? Just tell me that,” Sidney Feeder +had said, taking things for granted in a manner that of itself testified +to an innocence abysmal. It is true he had added that he supposed he had +no business to ask; but he had been anxious about it ever since hearing +from Mr. and Mrs. Freer that the British aristocracy was down on the +medical profession. “Do they want you to give it up? Is that what the +hitch is about? Don’t desert your colours, Jackson. The suppression of +pain, the mitigation of misery, constitute surely the noblest profession +in the world.” + +“My dear fellow, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jackson could +only observe in answer to this. “I haven’t told any one I was going to +be married—still less have I told any one that any one objects to my +profession. I should like to see any one do it. I’ve rather got out of +the swim, but I don’t regard myself as the sort of person that people +object to. And I do expect to do something yet.” + +“Come home, then, and do it. And don’t crush me with grandeur if I say +that the facilities for getting married are much greater over there.” + +“You don’t seem to have found them very great,” Jackson sniffed. + +“I’ve never had time really to go into them. But wait till my next +vacation and you’ll see.” + +“The facilities over there are too great. Nothing’s worth while but +what’s difficult,” said Jackson with a sententious ring that quite +distressed his mate. + +“Well, they’ve got their backs up, I can see that. I’m glad you like it. +Only if they despise your profession what will they say to that of your +friends? If they think you’re queer what would they think of me?” asked +Sidney Feeder, whose spirit was not as a general thing in the least +bitter, but who was pushed to this sharpness by a conviction that—in +spite of declarations which seemed half an admission and half a +denial—his friend was suffering worry, or really perhaps something almost +like humiliation, for the sake of a good that might be gathered at home +on every bush. + +“My dear fellow, all that’s ‘rot’!” This had been Jackson’s retort, +which expressed, however, not half his feeling. The other half was +inexpressible, or almost, springing as it did from his depth of +displeasure at its having struck even so genial a mind as Sidney Feeder’s +that in proposing to marry a daughter of the highest civilisation he was +going out of his way—departing from his natural line. Was he then so +ignoble, so pledged to inferior things, that when he saw a girl +who—putting aside the fact that she hadn’t genius, which was rare, and +which, though he prized rarity, he didn’t want—seemed to him the most +naturally and functionally founded and seated feminine subject he had +known, he was to think himself too different, too incongruous, to mate +with her? He would mate with whom he “damn pleased”; that was the upshot +of Jackson Lemon’s passion. Several days elapsed during which +everybody—even the pure-minded, like poor Sidney—seemed to him very +abject. + +All of which is recorded to show how he, in going to see Mrs. Freer, was +prepared much less to be angry with people who, like her husband and +herself a month before, had given it out that he was engaged to a peer’s +daughter, than to resent the insinuation that there were obstacles to +such a prospect. He sat with the lady of Jermyn Street alone for half an +hour in the sabbatical stillness. Her husband had gone for a walk in the +Park—he always walked in the Park of a Sunday. All the world might have +been there and Jackson and Mrs. Freer in sole possession of the district +of Saint James’s. This perhaps had something to do with making him at +last so confidential; they had such a margin for easy egotism and +spreading sympathy. Mrs. Freer was ready for anything—in the critical, +the “real” line; she treated him as a person she had known from the age +of ten; asked his leave to continue recumbent; talked a great deal about +his mother and seemed almost, for a while, to perform the earnest +functions of that lady. It had been wise of her from the first not to +allude, even indirectly, to his having neglected so long to call; her +silence on this point was in the best taste. Jackson had forgotten how +it was a habit with her, and indeed a high accomplishment, never to +reproach people with these omissions. You might have left her alone for +months or years, her greeting was always the same; she never was either +too delighted to see you or not delighted enough. After a while, +however, he felt her silence to be in some measure an allusion; she +appeared to take for granted his devoting all his hours to a certain +young lady. It came over him for a moment that his compatriots took a +great deal for granted; but when Mrs. Freer, rather abruptly sitting up +on her sofa, said to him half-simply, half-solemnly: “And now, my dear +Jackson, I want you to tell me something!”—he saw that, after all, she +kept within bounds and didn’t pretend to know more about his business +than he himself did. In the course of a quarter of an hour—so +appreciatively she listened—he had given her much information. It was +the first time he had said so much to any one, and the process relieved +him even more than he would have supposed. There were things it made +clear to him by bringing them to a point—above all, the fact that he had +been wronged. He made no mention whatever of its being out of the usual +way that, as an American doctor, he should sue for the hand of a +marquis’s daughter; and this reserve was not voluntary, it was quite +unconscious. His mind was too full of the sudden rudeness of the +Cantervilles and the sordid side of their want of confidence. + +He couldn’t imagine that while he talked to Mrs. Freer—and it amazed him +afterwards that he should have chattered so; he could account for it but +by the state of his nerves—she should be thinking only of the strangeness +of the situation he sketched for her. She thought Americans as good as +other people, but she didn’t see where, in American life, the daughter of +a marquis would, as she phrased it, work in. To take a simple +instance—they coursed through Mrs. Freer’s mind with extraordinary +speed—wouldn’t she always expect to go in to dinner first? As a novelty +and for a change, over there, they might like to see her do it—there +might be even a pressure for places at the show. But with the increase +of every kind of sophistication that was taking place in America the +humorous view to which she would owe her immediate ease mightn’t continue +to be taken; and then where would poor Lady Barb be? This was in truth a +scant instance; but Mrs. Freer’s vivid imagination—much as she had lived +in Europe she knew her native land so well—saw a host of others massing +themselves behind it. The consequence of all of which was that after +listening to her young friend in the most engaging silence she raised her +clasped hands, pressed them against her breast, lowered her voice to a +tone of entreaty and, with all the charming cheer of her wisdom, uttered +three words: “My dear Jackson, don’t—don’t—don’t.” + +“Don’t what?” He took it at first coldly. + +“Don’t neglect the chance you have of getting out of it. You see it +would never do.” + +He knew what she meant by his chance of getting out of it; he had in his +many meditations of course not overlooked that. The ground the old +couple had taken about settlements—and the fact that Lady Beauchemin +hadn’t come back to him to tell him, as she promised, that she had moved +them, proved how firmly they were rooted—would have offered an +all-sufficient pretext to a man who should have repented of his advances. +Jackson knew this, but knew at the same time that he had not repented. +The old couple’s want of imagination didn’t in the least alter the fact +that the girl was, in her perfection, as he had told her father, one of +the rarest of types. Therefore he simply said to Mrs. Freer that he +didn’t in the least wish to get out of it; he was as much in it as ever +and intended to remain in it. But what did she mean, he asked in a +moment, by her statement that it would never do? Why wouldn’t it do? +Mrs. Freer replied by another question—should he really like her to tell +him? It wouldn’t do because Lady Barb wouldn’t be satisfied with her +place at dinner. She wouldn’t be content—in a society of commoners—with +any but the best; and the best she couldn’t expect (and it was to be +supposed he didn’t expect her) always grossly to monopolise; as people of +her sort, for that matter, did so successfully grab it in England. + +“What do you mean by commoners?” Jackson rather grimly demanded. + +“I mean you and me and my poor husband and Dr. Feeder,” said Mrs. Freer. + +“I don’t see how there can be commoners where there aren’t lords. It’s +the lord that makes the commoner, and _vice versa_.” + +“Won’t a lady do as well? Our Lady Barb—a single English girl—can make a +million inferiors.” + +“She will be, before anything else, my wife; and she won’t on the whole +think it any less vulgar to talk about inferiors than I do myself.” + +“I don’t know what she’ll talk about, my dear Jackson, but she’ll think; +and her thoughts won’t be pleasant—I mean for others. Do you expect to +sink her to your own rank?” + +Dr. Lemon’s bright little eyes rested more sharply on his hostess. “I +don’t understand you and don’t think you understand yourself.” This was +not absolutely candid, for he did understand Mrs. Freer to a certain +extent; it has been related that before he asked Lady Barb’s hand of her +parents there had been moments when he himself doubted if a flower only +to be described as of the social hothouse, that is of aristocratic air, +would flourish in American earth. But an intimation from another person +that it was beyond his power to pass off his wife—whether she were the +daughter of a peer or of a shoemaker—set all his blood on fire. It +quenched on the instant his own perception of difficulties of detail and +made him feel only that he was dishonoured—he the heir of all the ages—by +such insinuations. It was his belief—though he had never before had +occasion to put it forward—that his position, one of the best in the +world, had about it the felicity that makes everything possible. He had +had the best education the age could offer, for if he had rather wasted +his time at Harvard, where he entered very young, he had, as he believed, +been tremendously serious at Heidelberg and at Vienna. He had devoted +himself to one of the noblest of professions—a profession recognised as +such everywhere but in England—and had inherited a fortune far beyond the +expectation of his earlier years, the years when he cultivated habits of +work which alone (or rather in combination with talents that he neither +exaggerated nor undervalued) would have conduced to distinction. He was +one of the most fortunate inhabitants of an immense fresh rich country, a +country whose future was admitted to be incalculable, and he moved with +perfect ease in a society in which he was not overshadowed by others. It +seemed to him, therefore, beneath his dignity to wonder whether he could +afford, socially speaking, to marry according to his taste. He pretended +to general strength, and what was the use of strength if you weren’t +prepared to undertake things timid people might find difficult? It was +his plan to marry the woman he desired and not be afraid of her +afterward. The effect of Mrs. Freer’s doubt of his success was to +represent to him that his own character wouldn’t cover his wife’s; she +couldn’t have made him feel worse if she had told him that he was +marrying beneath him and would have to ask for indulgence. “I don’t +believe you know how much I think that any woman who marries me will be +doing very well,” he promptly added. + +“I’m very sure of that; but it isn’t so simple—one’s being an American,” +Mrs. Freer rejoined with a small philosophic sigh. + +“It’s whatever one chooses to make it.” + +“Well, you’ll make it what no one has done yet if you take that young +lady to America and make her happy there.” + +“Do you think our country, then, such a very dreadful place?” + +His hostess had a pause. “It’s not a question of what I think, but of +what she will.” + +Jackson rose from his chair and took up his hat and stick. He had +actually turned a little pale with the force of his emotion; there was a +pang of wrath for him in this fact that his marriage to Lady Barbarina +might be looked at as too high a flight. He stood a moment leaning +against the mantelpiece and very much tempted to say to Mrs. Freer that +she was a vulgar-minded old woman. But he said something that was really +more to the point. “You forget that she’ll have her consolations.” + +“Don’t go away or I shall think I’ve offended you. You can’t console an +injured noblewoman.” + +“How will she be injured? People will be charming to her.” + +“They’ll be charming to her—charming to her!” These words fell from the +lips of Dexter Freer, who had opened the door of the room and stood with +the knob in his hand, putting himself into relation to his wife’s talk +with their visitor. This harmony was achieved in an instant. “Of course +I know whom you mean,” he said while he exchanged greetings with Jackson. +“My wife and I—naturally we’re great busybodies—have talked of your +affair and we differ about it completely. She sees only the dangers, +while I see all the advantages.” + +“By the advantages he means the fun for us,” Mrs. Freer explained, +settling her sofa-cushions. + +Jackson looked with a certain sharp blankness from one of these +disinterested judges to the other; even yet they scarce saw how their +misdirected freedom wrought on him. It was hardly more agreeable to him +to know that the husband wished to see Lady Barb in America than to know +that the wife waved away such a vision. There was that in Dexter Freer’s +face which seemed to forecast the affair as taking place somehow for the +benefit of the spectators. “I think you both see too much—a great deal +too much—in the whole thing,” he rather coldly returned. + +“My dear young man, at my age I may take certain liberties,” said Dexter +Freer. “_Do_ what you’ve planned—I beseech you to do it; it has never +been done before.” And then as if Jackson’s glance had challenged this +last assertion he went on: “Never, I assure you, this particular thing. +Young female members of the British aristocracy have married coachmen and +fishmongers and all that sort of thing; but they’ve never married you and +me.” + +“They certainly haven’t married the ‘likes’ of either of you!” said Mrs. +Freer. + +“I’m much obliged to you for your advice.” It may be thought that +Jackson Lemon took himself rather seriously, and indeed I’m afraid that +if he hadn’t done so there would have been no occasion even for this +summary report of him. But it made him almost sick to hear his +engagement spoken of as a curious and ambiguous phenomenon. He might +have his own ideas about it—one always had about one’s engagement; but +the ideas that appeared to have peopled the imagination of his friends +ended by kindling a small hot expanse in each of his cheeks. “I’d rather +not talk any more about my little plans,” he added to his host. “I’ve +been saying all sorts of absurd things to Mrs. Freer.” + +“They’ve been most interesting and most infuriating,” that lady declared. +“You’ve been very stupidly treated.” + +“May she tell me when you go?” her husband asked of the young man. + +“I’m going now—she may tell you whatever she likes.” + +“I’m afraid we’ve displeased you,” she went on; “I’ve said too much what +I think. You must pardon me—it’s all for your mother.” + +“It’s she whom I want Lady Barb to see!” Jackson exclaimed with the +inconsequence of filial affection. + +“Deary me!” Mrs. Freer gently wailed. + +“We shall go back to America to see how you get on,” her husband said; +“and if you succeed it will be a great precedent.” + +“Oh I shall succeed!” And with this he took his departure. He walked +away with the quick step of a man labouring under a certain excitement; +walked up to Piccadilly and down past Hyde Park Corner. It relieved him +to measure these distances, for he was thinking hard, under the influence +of irritation, and it was as if his movement phrased his passion. +Certain lights flashed on him in the last half-hour turned to fire in +him; the more that they had a representative value and were an echo of +the common voice. If his prospects wore that face to Mrs. Freer they +would probably wear it to others; so he felt a strong sharp need to show +such others that they took a mean measure of his position. He walked and +walked till he found himself on the highway of Hammersmith. I have +represented him as a young man with a stiff back, and I may appear to +undermine this plea when I note that he wrote that evening to his +solicitor that Mr. Hardman was to be informed he would agree to any +proposals for settlements that this worthy should make. Jackson’s stiff +back was shown in his deciding to marry Lady Barbarina on any terms. It +had come over him through the action of this desire to prove he wasn’t +afraid—so odious was the imputation—that terms of any kind were very +superficial things. What was fundamental and of the essence of the +matter would be to secure the grand girl and _then_ carry everything out. + + + +V + + +“On Sundays now you might be at home,” he said to his wife in the +following month of March—more than six months after his marriage. + +“Are the people any nicer on Sundays than they are on other days?” Lady +Barb asked from the depths of her chair and without looking up from a +stiff little book. + +He waited ever so briefly before answering. “I don’t know whether they +are, but I think you might be.” + +“I’m as nice as I know how to be. You must take me as I am. You knew +when you married me that I wasn’t American.” + +Jackson stood before the fire toward which his wife’s face was turned and +her feet extended; stood there some time with his hands behind him and +his eyes dropped a little obliquely on Lady Barb’s bent head and +richly-draped figure. It may be said without delay that he was sore of +soul, and it may be added that he had a double cause. He knew himself on +the verge of the first crisis that had occurred between himself and his +wife—the reader will note that it had occurred rather promptly—and he was +annoyed at his annoyance. A glimpse of his state of mind before his +marriage has been given the reader, who will remember that at that period +our young man had believed himself lifted above possibilities of +irritation. When one was strong one wasn’t fidgety, and a union with a +species of calm goddess would of course be a source of repose. Lady Barb +was a calm, was an even calmer goddess still, and he had a much more +intimate view of her divinity than on the day he had led her to the +altar; but I’m not sure he felt either as firm or as easy. + +“How do you know what people are?” he said in a moment. “You’ve seen so +few; you’re perpetually denying yourself. If you should leave New York +to-morrow you’d know wonderfully little about it.” + +“It’s all just the same,” she pleaded. “The people are all exactly +alike. There’s only one sort.” + +“How can you tell? You never see them.” + +“Didn’t I go out every night for the first two months we were here?” + +“It was only to about a dozen houses—those, I agree, always the same; +people, moreover, you had already met in London. You’ve got no general +impressions.” + +She raised her beautiful blank face. “That’s just what I _have_ got; I +had them before I came. I see no difference whatever. They’ve just the +same names—just the same manners.” + +Again for an instant Jackson hung fire; then he said with that practised +flat candour of which mention has already been made and which he +sometimes used in London during his courtship: “Don’t you like it over +here?” + +Lady Barb had returned to her book, but she looked up again. “Did you +expect me to like it?” + +“I hoped you would, of course. I think I told you so.” + +“I don’t remember. You said very little about it; you seemed to make a +kind of mystery. I knew of course you expected me to live here, but I +didn’t know you expected me to like it.” + +“You thought I asked of you the sacrifice, as it were.” + +“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Lady Barb. She got up from her chair and +tossed her unconsolatory volume into the empty seat. “I recommend you to +read that book,” she added. + +“Is it interesting?” + +“It’s an American novel.” + +“I never read novels.” + +“You had really better look at that one. It will show you the kind of +people you want me to know.” + +“I’ve no doubt it’s very vulgar,” Jackson said. “I don’t see why you +read it.” + +“What else can I do? I can’t always be riding in the Park. I hate the +Park,” she quite rang out. + +“It’s just as good as your own,” said her husband. + +She glanced at him with a certain quickness, her eyebrows slightly +lifted. “Do you mean the park at Pasterns?” + +“No; I mean the park in London.” + +“Oh I don’t care about London. One was only in London a few weeks.” She +had a horrible lovely ease. + +Yet he but wanted to help her to turn round. “I suppose you miss the +country,” he suggested. It was his idea of life that he shouldn’t be +afraid of anything, not be afraid, in any situation, of knowing the worst +that was to be known about it; and the demon of a courage with which +discretion was not properly commingled prompted him to take soundings +that were perhaps not absolutely necessary for safety and yet that +revealed unmistakable rocks. It was useless to know about rocks if he +couldn’t avoid them; the only thing was to trust to the wind. + +“I don’t know what I miss. I think I miss everything!” This was his +wife’s answer to his too-curious inquiry. It wasn’t peevish, for that +wasn’t the tone of a calm goddess; but it expressed a good deal—a good +deal more than Lady Barb, who was rarely eloquent, had expressed before. +Nevertheless, though his question had been precipitate, Jackson said to +himself that he might take his time to think over what her fewness of +words enclosed; he couldn’t help seeing that the future would give him +plenty of chance. He was in no hurry to ask himself whether poor Mrs. +Freer, in Jermyn Street, mightn’t after all have been right in saying +that when it came to marrying an English caste-product it wasn’t so +simple to be an American doctor—it might avail little even in such a case +to be the heir of all the ages. The transition was complicated, but in +his bright mind it was rapid, from the brush of a momentary contact with +such ideas to certain considerations which led him to go on after an +instant: “Should you like to go down into Connecticut?” + +“Into Connecticut?” + +“That’s one of our States. It’s about as large as Ireland. I’ll take +you there if you like.” + +“What does one do there?” + +“We can try and get some hunting.” + +“You and I alone?” + +“Perhaps we can get a party to join us.” + +“The people in the State?” + +“Yes—we might propose it to them.” + +“The tradespeople in the towns?” + +“Very true—they’ll have to mind their shops,” Jackson said. “But we +might hunt alone.” + +“Are there any foxes?” + +“No, but there are a few old cows.” + +Lady Barb had already noted that her husband sought the relief of a laugh +at her expense, and she was aware that this present opportunity was +neither worse nor better than some others. She didn’t mind that trick in +him particularly now, though in England it would have disgusted her; she +had the consciousness of virtue, an immense comfort, and flattered +herself she had learned the lesson of an altered standard of +fitness—besides which there were so many more disagreeable things in +America than being laughed at by one’s husband. But she pretended not to +like it because this made him stop, and above all checked discussion, +which with Jackson was habitually so facetious and consequently so +tiresome. “I only want to be left alone,” she said in answer—though +indeed it hadn’t the style of an answer—to his speech about the cows. +With this she wandered away to one of the windows that looked out on the +Fifth Avenue. She was very fond of these windows and had taken a great +fancy to the Fifth Avenue, which, in the high-pitched winter weather, +when everything sparkled, was bright and funny and foreign. It will be +seen that she was not wholly unjust to her adoptive country: she found it +delightful to look out of the window. This was a pleasure she had +enjoyed in London only in the most furtive manner; it wasn’t the kind of +thing that girls in England did. Besides, in London, in Hill Street, +there was nothing particular to see; whereas in the Fifth Avenue +everything and every one went by, and observation was made consistent +with dignity by the quantities of brocade and lace dressing the +embrasure, which somehow wouldn’t have been tidy in England and which +made an ambush without concealing the brilliant day. Hundreds of +women—the queer women of New York, who were unlike any that Lady Barb had +hitherto seen—passed the house every hour; and her ladyship was +infinitely entertained and mystified by the sight of their clothes. She +spent more time than she was aware of in this recreation, and had she +been addicted to returning upon herself, to asking herself for an account +of her conduct—an inquiry she didn’t indeed completely neglect, but made +no great form of—she must have had a wan smile for this proof of what she +appeared mainly to have come to America for, conscious though she was +that her tastes were very simple and that so long as she didn’t hunt it +didn’t much matter what she did. + +Her husband turned about to the fire, giving a push with his foot to a +log that had fallen out of its place. Then he said—and the connexion +with the words she had just uttered was direct enough—“You really must +manage to be at home on Sundays, you know. I used to like that so much +in London. All the best women here do it. You had better begin to-day. +I’m going to see my mother. If I meet any one I’ll tell them to come.” + +“Tell them not to talk so much,” said Lady Barb among her lace curtains. + +“Ah, my dear,” Jackson returned, “it isn’t every one who has your +concision.” And he went and stood behind her in the window, putting his +arm round her waist. It was as much of a satisfaction to him as it had +been six months before, at the time the solicitors were settling the +matter, that this flower of an ancient stem should be worn upon his own +breast; he still thought its fragrance a thing quite apart, and it was as +clear as day to him that his wife was the handsomest woman in New York. +He had begun, after their arrival, by telling her this very often; but +the assurance brought no colour to her cheek, no light to her eyes: to be +the handsomest woman in New York, now that she was acquainted with that +city, plainly failed to strike her as a position in life. The reader +may, moreover, be informed that, oddly enough, Lady Barb didn’t +particularly believe this assertion. There were some very pretty women +in New York, and without in the least wishing to be like them—she had +seen no woman in America whom she desired to resemble—she envied them +some of their peculiar little freshnesses. It’s probable that her own +finest points were those of which she was most unconscious. But Jackson +was intensely aware of all of them; nothing could exceed the minuteness +of his appreciation of his wife. It was a sign of this that after he had +stood behind her a moment he kissed her very tenderly. “Have you any +message for my mother?” he asked. + +“Please give her my love. And you might take her that book.” + +“What book?” + +“That nasty one I’ve been reading.” + +“Oh bother your books!” he cried with a certain irritation as he went out +of the room. + +There had been a good many things in her life in New York that cost her +an effort, but sending her love to her mother-in-law was not one of +these. She liked Mrs. Lemon better than any one she had seen in America; +she was the only person who seemed to Lady Barb really simple, as she +herself understood that quality. Many people had struck her as homely +and rustic and many others as pretentious and vulgar; but in Jackson’s +mother she had found the golden mean of a discretion, of a native +felicity and modesty and decency, which, as she would have said, were +really nice. Her sister, Lady Agatha, was even fonder of Mrs. Lemon; but +then Lady Agatha had taken the most extraordinary fancy to every one and +everything, and talked as if America were the most delightful country in +the world. She was having a lovely time—she already spoke the most +beautiful American—and had been, during the bright winter just drawing to +a close, the most prominent girl in New York. She had gone out at first +with her elder; but for some weeks past Lady Barb had let so many +occasions pass that Agatha threw herself into the arms of Mrs. Lemon, who +found her unsurpassably quaint and amusing and was delighted to take her +into society. Mrs. Lemon, as an old woman, had given up such vanities; +but she only wanted a motive, and in her good nature she ordered a dozen +new caps and sat smiling against the wall while her little English maid, +on polished floors, to the sound of music, cultivated the American step +as well as the American tone. There was no trouble in New York about +going out, and the winter wasn’t half over before the little English maid +found herself an accomplished diner, finding her way without any chaperon +at all to feasts where she could count on a bouquet at her plate. She +had had a great deal of correspondence with her own female parent on this +point, and Lady Canterville had at last withdrawn her protest, which in +the meantime had been perfectly useless. It was ultimately Lady +Canterville’s feeling that if she had married the handsomest of her +daughters to an American doctor she might let another become a +professional _raconteuse_—Agatha had written to her that she was expected +to talk so much—strange as such a destiny seemed for a girl of nineteen. +Mrs. Lemon had even a higher simplicity than Lady Barb imputed to her; +for she hadn’t noticed that Lady Agatha danced much oftener with Herman +Longstraw than with any one else. Jackson himself, though he went little +to balls, had discovered this truth, and he looked slightly preoccupied +when, after he had sat five minutes with his mother on the Sunday +afternoon through which I have invited the reader to trace so much more +than—I am afraid—is easily apparent of the progress of this simple story, +he learned that his sister-in-law was entertaining Mr. Longstraw in the +library. That young man had called half an hour before, and she had +taken him into the other room to show him the seal of the Cantervilles, +which she had fastened to one of her numerous trinkets—she was adorned +with a hundred bangles and chains—and the proper exhibition of which +required a taper and a stick of wax. Apparently he was examining it very +carefully, for they had been absent a good while. Mrs. Lemon’s +simplicity was further shown by the fact that she had not measured their +absence; it was only when Jackson questioned her that she remembered. + +Herman Longstraw was a young Californian who had turned up in New York +the winter before and who travelled on his moustache, as they were +understood to say in his native State. This moustache and some of its +accompanying features were greatly admired; several ladies in New York +had been known to declare that they were as beautiful as a dream. Taken +in connexion with his tall stature, his familiar good nature and his +remarkable Western vocabulary they constituted his only social capital; +for of the two great divisions, the rich Californians and the poor +Californians, it was well known to which he belonged. Doctor Lemon had +viewed him as but a slightly mitigated cowboy, and was somewhat vexed at +his own parent, though also aware that she could scarcely figure to +herself what an effect such a form of speech as this remarkably straight +echo of the prairie would produce in the halls of Canterville. He had no +desire whatever to play a trick on the house to which he was allied, and +knew perfectly that Lady Agatha hadn’t been sent to America to become +entangled with a Californian of the wrong denomination. He had been +perfectly willing to bring her; he thought, a little vindictively, that +this would operate as a hint to her progenitors on what he might have +imagined doing if they hadn’t been so stupidly bent on Mr. Hardman. +Herman Longstraw, according to the legend, had been a trapper, a +squatter, a miner, a pioneer—had been everything that one could be in the +desperate parts of America, and had accumulated masses of experience +before the age of thirty. He had shot bears in the Rockies and buffaloes +on the plains; and it was even believed that he had brought down animals +of a still more dangerous kind among the haunts of men. There had been a +story that he owned a cattle-ranch in Arizona; but a later and apparently +more authentic version of it, though representing him as looking after +the cattle, didn’t depict him as their proprietor. + +Many of the stories told about him were false; but there was no doubt his +moustache, his native ease and his native accent were the best of their +kind. He danced very badly; but Lady Agatha had frankly told several +persons that that was nothing new to her, and in short she +delighted—this, however, she didn’t tell—in Mr. Herman Longstraw. What +she enjoyed in America was the revelation of freedom, and there was no +such proof of freedom as absolutely unrestricted discourse with a +gentleman who dressed in crude skins when not in New York and who, in his +usual pursuits, carried his life—as well as that of other persons—in his +hand. A gentleman whom she had sat next to at dinner in the early part +of her visit had remarked to her that the United States were the paradise +of women and of mechanics; and this had seemed to her at the time very +abstract, for she wasn’t conscious as yet of belonging to either class. +In England she had been only a girl, and the principal idea connected +with that was simply that for one’s misfortune one wasn’t a boy. But she +presently herself found the odd American world a true sojourn of the +youthful blest; and this helped her to know that she must be one of the +people mentioned in the axiom of her neighbour—people who could do +whatever they wanted, had a voice in everything and made their taste and +their ideas felt. She saw what fun it was to be a woman in America, and +that this was the best way to enjoy the New York winter—the wonderful +brilliant New York winter, the queer long-shaped glittering city, the +heterogeneous hours among which you couldn’t tell the morning from the +afternoon or the night from either of them, the perpetual liberties and +walks, the rushings-out and the droppings-in, the intimacies, the +endearments, the comicalities, the sleigh-bells, the cutters, the sunsets +on the snow, the ice-parties in the frosty clearness, the bright hot +velvety houses, the bouquets, the bonbons, the little cakes, the big +cakes, the irrepressible inspirations of shopping, the innumerable +luncheons and dinners offered to youth and innocence, the quantities of +chatter of quantities of girls, the perpetual motion of the “German,” the +suppers at restaurants after the play, the way in which life was pervaded +by Delmonico and Delmonico by the sense that though one’s hunting was +lost, and this therefore so different, it was very nearly as good. In +all, through all, flowed a suffusion of loud unmodulated friendly sound +which reminded her of an endless tuning of rather bad fiddles. + +Lady Agatha was at present staying for a little change with Mrs. Lemon, +and such adventures as that were part of the pleasure of her American +season. The house was too close, but physically the girl could bear +anything, and it was all she had to complain of; for Mrs. Lemon, as we +know, thought her a weird little specimen, and had none of those +old-world scruples in regard to spoiling young people to which Lady +Agatha herself now knew she must in the past have been unduly sacrificed. +In her own way—it was not at all her sister’s way—she liked to be of +importance; and this was assuredly the case when she saw that Mrs. Lemon +had apparently nothing in the world to do, after spending a part of the +morning with her servants, but invent little distractions—many of them of +the edible sort—for her guest. She appeared to have several friends, but +she had no society to speak of, and the people who entered her house came +principally to see Lady Agatha. This, as we have noted, was strikingly +the case with Herman Longstraw. The whole situation gave the young +stranger a great feeling of success—success of a new and unexpected kind. +Of course in England she had been born successful, as it might be called, +through her so emerging in one of the most beautiful rooms at Pasterns; +but her present triumph was achieved more by her own effort—not that she +had tried very hard—and by her merit. It wasn’t so much what she +said—since she could never equal for quantity the girls of New York—as +the spirit of enjoyment that played in her fresh young face, with its +pointless curves, and shone in her grey English eyes. She enjoyed +everything, even the street-cars, of which she made liberal use; and more +than everything she enjoyed Mr. Longstraw and his talk about buffaloes +and bears. Mrs. Lemon promised to be very careful as soon as her son had +begun to warn her; and this time she had a certain understanding of what +she promised. She thought people ought to make the matches they liked; +she had given proof of this in her late behaviour to Jackson, whose own +union was, to her sense, marked with all the arbitrariness of pure love. +Nevertheless she could see that Herman Longstraw would probably be +thought rough in England; and it wasn’t simply that he was so inferior to +Jackson, for, after all, certain things were not to be expected. Jackson +was not oppressed with his mother-in-law, having taken his precautions +against such a danger; but he was certain he should give Lady Canterville +a permanent advantage over him if her third daughter should while in +America attach herself to a mere moustache. + +It was not always, as I have hinted, that Mrs. Lemon entered completely +into the views of her son, though in form she never failed to subscribe +to them devoutly. She had never yet, for instance, apprehended his +reason for marrying poor Lady Barb. This was a great secret, and she was +determined, in her gentleness, that no one should ever know it. For +herself, she was sure that to the end of time she shouldn’t discover +Jackson’s reason. She might never ask about it, for that of course would +betray her. From the first she had told him she was delighted, there +being no need of asking for explanations then, as the young lady herself, +when she should come to know her, would explain. But the young lady +hadn’t yet explained and after this evidently never would. She was very +tall, very handsome, she answered exactly to Mrs. Lemon’s prefigurement +of the daughter of a lord, and she wore her clothes, which were peculiar, +but to one of her shape remarkably becoming, very well. But she didn’t +elucidate; we know ourselves that there was very little that was +explanatory about Lady Barb. So Mrs. Lemon continued to wonder, to ask +herself, “Why that one, more than so many others who’d have been more +natural?” The choice struck her, as I have said, as quite arbitrary. +She found Lady Barb very different from other girls she had known, and +this led her almost immediately to feel sorry for her daughter-in-law. +She felt how the girl was to be pitied if she found her husband’s people +as peculiar as his mother found _her_, since the result of that would be +to make her very lonesome. Lady Agatha was different, because she seemed +to keep nothing back; you saw all there was of her, and she was evidently +not home-sick. Mrs. Lemon could see that Barbarina was ravaged by this +last ailment and was also too haughty to show it. She even had a glimpse +of the ultimate truth; namely, that Jackson’s wife had not the comfort of +crying, because that would have amounted to a confession that she had +been idiotic enough to believe in advance that, in an American town, in +the society of doctors, she should escape such pangs. Mrs. Lemon treated +her with studied consideration—all the indulgence that was due to a young +woman in the unfortunate position of having been married one couldn’t +tell why. + +The world, to the elder lady’s view, contained two great departments, +that of people and that of things; and she believed you must take an +interest either in one or the other. The true incomprehensible in Lady +Barb was that she cared for neither side of the show. Her house +apparently inspired her with no curiosity and no enthusiasm, though it +had been thought magnificent enough to be described in successive columns +of the native newspapers; and she never spoke of her furniture or her +domestics, though she had a prodigious show of such possessions. She was +the same with regard to her acquaintance, which was immense, inasmuch as +every one in the place had called on her. Mrs. Lemon was the least +critical woman in the world, but it had occasionally ruffled her just a +little that her daughter-in-law should receive every one in New York +quite in the same automatic manner. There were differences, Mrs. Lemon +knew, and some of them of the highest importance; but poor Lady Barb +appeared never to suspect them. She accepted every one and everything +and asked no questions. She had no curiosity about her fellow-citizens, +and as she never assumed it for a moment she gave Mrs. Lemon no +opportunity to enlighten her. Lady Barb was a person with whom you could +do nothing unless she left you an opening; and nothing would have been +more difficult than to “post” her, as her mother-in-law would have said, +against her will. Of course she picked up a little knowledge, but she +confounded and transposed American attributes in the most extraordinary +way. She had a way of calling every one Doctor; and Mrs. Lemon could +scarcely convince her that this distinction was too precious to be so +freely bestowed. She had once said to that supporter that in New York +there was nothing to know people by, their names were so very monotonous; +and Mrs. Lemon had entered into this enough to see that there was +something that stood out a good deal in Barbarina’s own prefix. It is +probable that during her short period of domestication complete justice +was not done Lady Barb; she never—as an instance—got credit for +repressing her annoyance at the poverty of the nominal signs and styles, +a deep desolation. That little speech to her husband’s mother was the +most reckless sign she gave of it; and there were few things that +contributed more to the good conscience she habitually enjoyed than her +self-control on this particular point. + +Doctor Lemon was engaged in professional researches just now, which took +up a great deal of his time; and for the rest he passed his hours +unreservedly with his wife. For the last three months, therefore, he had +seen his other nearest relative scarcely more than once a week. In spite +of researches, in spite of medical societies, where Jackson, to her +knowledge, read papers, Lady Barb had more of her husband’s company than +she had counted on at the time she married. She had never known a +married pair to be so much together as she and Jackson; he appeared to +expect her to sit with him in the library in the morning. He had none of +the occupations of gentlemen and noblemen in England, for the element of +politics appeared to be as absent as the element of the chase. There +were politics in Washington, she had been told, and even at Albany, and +Jackson had proposed to introduce her to these cities; but the proposal, +made to her once at dinner, before several people, had excited such cries +of horror that it fell dead on the spot. “We don’t want you to see +anything of that kind,” one of the ladies had said, and Jackson had +appeared to be discouraged—that is if in regard to Jackson she could +really tell. + +“Pray what is it you want me to see?” Lady Barb had asked on this +occasion. + +“Well, New York and Boston (Boston if you want to very much, but not +otherwise), and then Niagara. But more than anything Newport.” + +She was tired of their eternal Newport; she had heard of it a thousand +times and felt already as if she had lived there half her life; she was +sure, moreover, that she should hate the awful little place. This is +perhaps as near as she came to having a lively conviction on any American +subject. She asked herself whether she was then to spend her life in the +Fifth Avenue with alternations of a city of villas—she detested +villas—and wondered if that was all the great American country had to +offer her. There were times when she believed she should like the +backwoods and that the Far West might be a resource; for she had analysed +her feelings just deep enough to discover that when she had—hesitating a +good deal—turned over the question of marrying Jackson Lemon it was not +in the least of American barbarism she was afraid; her dread had been all +of American civilisation. She judged the little lady I have just quoted +a goose, but that didn’t make New York any more interesting. It would be +reckless to say that she suffered from an overdose of Jackson’s company, +since she quite felt him her most important social resource. She could +talk to him about England, about her own England, and he understood more +or less what she wished to say—when she wished to say anything, which was +not frequent. There were plenty of other people who talked about +England; but with them the range of allusion was always the hotels, of +which she knew nothing, and the shops and the opera and the photographs: +they had the hugest appetite for photographs. There were other people +who were always wanting her to tell them about Pasterns and the manner of +life there and the parties; but if there was one thing Lady Barb disliked +more than another it was describing Pasterns. She had always lived with +people who knew of themselves what such a place would be, without +demanding these pictorial efforts, proper only, as she vaguely felt, to +persons belonging to the classes whose trade was the arts of expression. +Lady Barb of course had never gone into it; but she knew that in her own +class the business was not to express but to enjoy, not to represent but +to be represented—though indeed this latter liability might involve +offence; for it may be noted that even for an aristocrat Jackson Lemon’s +wife was aristocratic. + +Lady Agatha and her visitor came back from the library in course of time, +and Jackson Lemon felt it his duty to be rather cold to Herman Longstraw. +It wasn’t clear to him what sort of a husband his sister-in-law would do +well to look for in America—if there were to be any question of husbands; +but as to that he wasn’t bound to be definite provided he should rule out +Mr. Longstraw. This gentleman, however, was not given to noticing shades +of manner; he had little observation, but very great confidence. + +“I think you had better come home with me,” Jackson said to Lady Agatha; +“I guess you’ve stayed here long enough.” + +“Don’t let him say that, Mrs. Lemon!” the girl cried. “I like being with +you so awfully.” + +“I try to make it pleasant,” said Mrs. Lemon. “I should really miss you +now; but perhaps it’s your mother’s wish.” If it was a question of +defending her guest from ineligible suitors Mrs. Lemon felt of course +that her son was more competent than she; though she had a lurking +kindness for Herman Longstraw and a vague idea that he was a gallant +genial specimen of unsophisticated young America. + +“Oh mamma wouldn’t see any difference!” Lady Agatha returned with +pleading blue eyes on her brother-in-law. “Mamma wants me to see every +one; you know she does. That’s what she sent me to America for; she +knows—for we’ve certainly told her enough—that it isn’t like England. +She wouldn’t like it if I didn’t sometimes stay with people; she always +wanted us to stay at other houses. And she knows all about you, Mrs. +Lemon, and she likes you immensely. She sent you a message the other day +and I’m afraid I forgot to give it you—to thank you for being so kind to +me and taking such a lot of trouble. Really she did, but I forgot it. +If she wants me to see as much as possible of America it’s much better I +should be here than always with Barb—it’s much less like one’s own +country. I mean it’s much nicer—for a girl,” said Lady Agatha +affectionately to Mrs. Lemon, who began also to look at Jackson under the +influence of this uttered sweetness which was like some quaint little old +air, she thought, played upon a faded spinet with two girlish fingers. + +“If you want the genuine thing you ought to come out on the plains,” Mr. +Longstraw interposed with bright sincerity. “I guess that was your +mother’s idea. Why don’t you all come out?” He had been looking +intently at Lady Agatha while the remarks I have just repeated succeeded +each other on her lips—looking at her with a fascinated approbation, for +all the world as if he had been a slightly slow-witted English gentleman +and the girl herself a flower of the West, a flower that knew the +celebrated language of flowers. Susceptible even as Mrs. Lemon was he +made no secret of the fact that Lady Agatha’s voice was music to him, his +ear being much more accessible than his own inflexions would have +indicated. To Lady Agatha those inflexions were not displeasing, partly +because, like Mr. Herman himself in general, she had not a perception of +shades; and partly because it never occurred to her to compare them with +any other tones. He seemed to her to speak a foreign language +altogether—a romantic dialect through which the most comical meanings +gleamed here and there. + +“I should like it above all things,” she said in answer to his last +observation. + +“The scenery’s ahead of anything round here,” Mr. Longstraw went on. + +Mrs. Lemon, as we have gathered, was the mildest of women; but, as an old +New Yorker, she had no patience with some of the new fashions. Chief +among these was the perpetual reference, which had become common only +within a few years, to the outlying parts of the country, the States and +Territories of which children, in her time, used to learn the names, in +their order, at school, but which no one ever thought of going to or +talking about. Such places, in her opinion, belonged to the +geography-books, or at most to the literature of newspapers, but neither +to society nor to conversation; and the change—which, so far as it lay in +people’s talk, she thought at bottom a mere affectation—threatened to +make her native land appear vulgar and vague. For this amiable daughter +of Manhattan the normal existence of man, and still more of women, had +been “located,” as she would have said, between Trinity Church and the +beautiful Reservoir at the top of the Fifth Avenue—monuments of which she +was personally proud; and if we could look into the deeper parts of her +mind I am afraid we should discover there an impression that both the +countries of Europe and the remainder of her own continent were equally +far from the centre and the light. + +“Well, scenery isn’t everything,” she made soft answer to Mr. Longstraw; +“and if Lady Agatha should wish to see anything of that kind all she has +got to do is to take the boat up the Hudson.” Mrs. Lemon’s recognition +of this river, I should say, was all it need have been; she held the +Hudson existed for the purpose of supplying New Yorkers with poetical +feelings, helping them to face comfortably occasions like the present +and, in general, meet foreigners with confidence—part of the oddity of +foreigners being their conceit about their own places. + +“That’s a good idea, Lady Agatha; let’s take the boat,” said Mr. +Longstraw. “I’ve had great times on the boats.” + +Lady Agatha fixed on her _amoroso_ her singular charming eyes, eyes of +which it was impossible to say at any moment whether they were the shyest +or the frankest in the world; and she was not aware while this +contemplation lasted that her brother-in-law was observing her. He was +thinking of certain things while he did so, of things he had heard about +the English; who still, in spite of his having married into a family of +that nation, appeared to him very much through the medium of hearsay. +They were more passionate than the Americans, and they did things that +would never have been expected; though they seemed steadier and less +excitable there was much social evidence to prove them more wildly +impulsive. + +“It’s so very kind of you to propose that,” Lady Agatha said in a moment +to Mrs. Lemon. “I think I’ve never been in a ship—except of course +coming from England. I’m sure mamma would wish me to see the Hudson. We +used to go in immensely for boating in England.” + +“Did you boat in a ship?” Herman Longstraw asked, showing his teeth +hilariously and pulling his moustaches. + +“Lots of my mother’s people have been in the navy.” Lady Agatha +perceived vaguely and good-naturedly that she had said something the odd +Americans thought odd and that she must justify herself. Something most +unnatural was happening to her standard of oddity. + +“I really think you had better come back to us,” Jackson repeated: “your +sister’s very lonely without you.” + +“She’s much more lonely _with_ me. We’re perpetually having differences. +Barb’s dreadfully vexed because I like America instead of—instead of—” +And Lady Agatha paused a moment; for it just occurred to her that this +might be treacherous. + +“Instead of what?” Jackson inquired. + +“Instead of perpetually wanting to go to England, as she does,” she went +on, only giving her phrase a little softer turn; for she felt the next +moment that Barb could have nothing to hide and must of course have the +courage of her opinions. “Of course England’s best, but I daresay I like +to be bad,” the girl said artlessly. + +“Oh there’s no doubt you’re awfully bad,” Mr. Longstraw broke out, with +joyous eagerness. Naturally he couldn’t know that what she had +principally in mind was an exchange of opinions that had taken place +between her sister and herself just before she came to stay with Mrs. +Lemon. This incident, of which he himself was the occasion, might indeed +have been called a discussion, for it had carried them quite into the +cold air of the abstract. Lady Barb had said she didn’t see how Agatha +could look at such a creature as that—an odious familiar vulgar being who +had not about him the rudiments of a gentleman. Lady Agatha had replied +that Mr. Longstraw was familiar and rough and that he had a twang and +thought it amusing to talk to her as “the Princess”; but that he was a +gentleman for all that and was tremendous fun whatever one called him—it +didn’t seem to matter what one called any one or anything there. Her +sister had returned to this that if he was rough and familiar he couldn’t +be a gentleman, inasmuch as that was just what a gentleman meant—a man +who was civil and well-bred and well-born. Lady Agatha had argued that +such a point was just where she differed; that a man might perfectly be a +gentleman and yet be rough, and even ignorant, so long as he was really +nice. The only thing was that he should be really nice, which was the +case with Mr. Longstraw, who, moreover, was quite extraordinarily +civil—as civil as a man could be. And then Lady Agatha herself made the +strongest point she had ever made in her life (she had never been so +inspired) in saying that Mr. Longstraw was rough perhaps, but not rude—a +distinction altogether wasted on her sister, who declared that she hadn’t +come to America, of all places, to learn what a gentleman was. The +discussion in short had been a trifle grim. I know not whether it was +the tonic effect on them too, alien organisms as they were, of the fine +winter weather, or that of Lady Barb’s being bored and having nothing +else to do; but Lord Canterville’s daughters went into the question with +the moral earnestness of a pair of approved Bostonians. It was part of +Lady Agatha’s view of her admirer that he after all much resembled other +tall people with smiling eyes and tawny moustaches who had ridden a good +deal in rough countries and whom she had seen in other places. If he was +more familiar he was also more alert; still, the difference was not in +himself, but in the way she saw him—the way she saw everybody in America. +If she should see the others in the same way no doubt they’d be quite the +same; and Lady Agatha sighed a little over the possibilities of life; for +this peculiar way, especially regarded in connexion with gentlemen, had +become very pleasant to her. + +She had betrayed her sister more than she thought, even though Jackson +didn’t particularly show it in the tone in which he commented: “Of course +she knows she’s going to see your mother in the summer.” His tone was +rather that of irritation at so much harping on the very obvious. + +“Oh it isn’t only mamma,” the girl said. + +“I know she likes a cool house,” Mrs. Lemon contributed. + +“When she goes you had better bid her good-bye,” Lady Agatha went on. + +“Of course I shall bid her good-bye,” said Mrs. Lemon, to whom apparently +this remark was addressed. + +“I’ll never bid _you_ good-bye, Princess,” Herman Longstraw interposed. +“You can bet your life on that.” + +“Oh it doesn’t matter about me, for of course I shall come back; but if +Barb once gets to England she never will.” + +“Oh my dear child!” Mrs. Lemon wailed, addressing her young visitor, but +looking at her son, who on his side looked at the ceiling, at the floor, +looked above all very conscious. + +“I hope you don’t mind my saying that, Jackson dear,” Lady Agatha said to +him, for she was very fond of her brother-in-law. + +“Ah well then, she shan’t go there,” he threw off in a moment with a +small strange dry laugh that attached his mother’s eyes in shy +penetration to his face. + +“But you promised mamma, you know,” said the girl with the confidence of +her affection. + +Jackson’s countenance expressed to her none even of his very moderate +hilarity. “Your mother, then, must bring her back.” + +“Get some of your navy people to supply an ironclad!” cried Mr. +Longstraw. + +“It would be very pleasant if the Marchioness could come over,” said Mrs. +Lemon. + +“Oh she’d hate it more than poor Barb,” Lady Agatha quickly replied. It +didn’t at all suit her to find a marchioness inserted into her field of +vision. + +“Doesn’t she feel interested from what you’ve told her?” Lady Agatha’s +admirer inquired. But Jackson didn’t heed his sister-in-law’s answer—he +was thinking of something else. He said nothing more, however, about the +subject of his thought, and before ten minutes were over took his +departure, having meanwhile neglected also to revert to the question of +Lady Agatha’s bringing her visit to his mother to a close. It wasn’t to +speak to him of this—for, as we know, she wished to keep the girl and +somehow couldn’t bring herself to be afraid of Herman Longstraw—that when +her son took leave she went with him to the door of the house, detaining +him a little while she stood on the steps, as people had always done in +New York in her time, though it was another of the new fashions she +didn’t like, the stiffness of not coming out of the parlour. She placed +her hand on his arm to keep him on the “stoop” and looked up and down +into the lucid afternoon and the beautiful city—its chocolate-coloured +houses so extraordinarily smooth—in which it seemed to her that even the +most fastidious people ought to be glad to live. It was useless to +attempt to conceal it: his marriage had made a difference and a worry, +had put a barrier that she was yet under the painful obligation of trying +to seem not to notice. It had brought with it a problem much more +difficult than his old problem of how to make his mother feel herself +still, as she had been in his childhood, the dispenser of his rewards. +The old problem had been easily solved, the new was a great tax. Mrs. +Lemon was sure her daughter-in-law didn’t take her seriously, and that +was a part of the barrier. Even if Barbarina liked her better than any +one else this was mostly because she liked every one else so little. +Mrs. Lemon had in her nature no grain of resentment, and it wasn’t to +feed a sense of wrong that she permitted herself to criticise her son’s +wife. She couldn’t help feeling that his marriage wasn’t altogether +fortunate if his wife didn’t take his mother seriously. She knew she +wasn’t otherwise remarkable than as being his mother; but that position, +which was no merit of hers—the merit was all Jackson’s in being her +son—affected her as one which, familiar as Lady Barb appeared to have +been in England with positions of various kinds, would naturally strike +the girl as very high and to be accepted as freely as a fine morning. If +she didn’t think of his mother as an indivisible part of him perhaps she +didn’t think of other things either; and Mrs. Lemon vaguely felt that, +remarkable as Jackson was, he was made up of parts, and that it would +never do that these should be rated lower one by one, since there was no +knowing what that might end in. She feared that things were rather cold +for him at home when he had to explain so much to his wife—explain to +her, for instance, all the sources of happiness that were to be found in +New York. This struck her as a new kind of problem altogether for a +husband. She had never thought of matrimony without a community of +feeling in regard to religion and country; one took those great +conditions for granted just as one assumed that one’s food was to be +cooked; and if Jackson should have to discuss them with his wife he +might, in spite of his great abilities, be carried into regions where he +would get entangled and embroiled—from which even possibly he wouldn’t +come back at all. Mrs. Lemon had a horror of losing him in some way, and +this fear was in her eyes as she stood by the doorway of her house and, +after she had glanced up and down the street, eyed him a moment in +silence. He simply kissed her again and said she would take cold. + +“I’m not afraid of that—I’ve a shawl!” Mrs. Lemon, who was very small +and very fair, with pointed features and an elaborate cap, passed her +life in a shawl, and owed to this habit her reputation for being an +invalid—an idea she scorned, naturally enough, inasmuch as it was +precisely her shawl that, as she believed, kept every ill at bay. “Is it +true Barbarina won’t come back?” she then asked. + +“I don’t know that we shall ever find out; I don’t know that I shall take +her to England,” Jackson distinctly returned. + +She looked more anxious still. “Didn’t you promise, dear?” + +“I don’t know that I promised—not absolutely.” + +“But you wouldn’t keep her here against her will?” quavered Mrs. Lemon. + +“I guess she’ll get used to it,” he returned with a levity that +misrepresented the state of his nerves. + +Mrs. Lemon looked up and down the street again and gave a little sigh. +“What a pity she isn’t American!” She didn’t mean this as a reproach, a +hint of what might have been; it was simply embarrassment resolved into +speech. + +“She couldn’t have been American,” said Jackson with decision. + +“Couldn’t she, dear?” His mother spoke with conscientious respect; she +felt there were imperceptible reasons in this. + +“It was just as she is that I wanted her,” Jackson added. + +“Even if she won’t come back?” Mrs. Lemon went on with wonder. + +“Oh she has got to come back!” Jackson said as he went down the steps. + + + +VI + + +Lady Barb, after this, didn’t decline to see her New York acquaintances +on Sunday afternoons, though she refused for the present to enter into a +project of her husband’s, who thought it would be pleasant she should +entertain his friends on the evening of that day. Like all good +Americans, Doctor Lemon devoted much consideration to the great question +of how, in his native land, society was to be brought into being. It +seemed to him it would help on the good cause, for which so many +Americans are ready to lay down their lives, if his wife should, as he +jocularly called it, open a saloon. He believed, or tried to believe, +the _salon_ now possible in New York on condition of its being reserved +entirely for adults; and in having taken a wife out of a country in which +social traditions were rich and ancient he had done something toward +qualifying his own house—so splendidly qualified in all strictly material +respects—to be the scene of such an effort. A charming woman accustomed +only to the best on each side, as Lady Beauchemin said, what mightn’t she +achieve by being at home—always to adults only—in an easy early inspiring +comprehensive way and on the evening of the seven when worldly +engagements were least numerous? He laid this philosophy before Lady +Barb in pursuance of a theory that if she disliked New York on a short +acquaintance she couldn’t fail to like it on a long. Jackson believed in +the New York mind—not so much indeed in its literary artistic philosophic +or political achievements as in its general quickness and nascent +adaptability. He clung to this belief, for it was an indispensable neat +block in the structure he was attempting to rear. The New York mind +would throw its glamour over Lady Barb if she would only give it a +chance; for it was thoroughly bright responsive and sympathetic. If she +would only set up by the turn of her hand a blest snug social centre, a +temple of interesting talk in which this charming organ might expand and +where she might inhale its fragrance in the most convenient and luxurious +way, without, as it were, getting up from her chair; if she would only +just try this graceful good-natured experiment—which would make every one +like _her_ so much too—he was sure all the wrinkles in the gilded scroll +of his fate would be smoothed out. But Lady Barb didn’t rise at all to +his conception and hadn’t the least curiosity about the New York mind. +She thought it would be extremely disagreeable to have a lot of people +tumbling in on Sunday evening without being invited; and altogether her +husband’s sketch of the Anglo-American saloon seemed to her to suggest +crude familiarity, high vociferation—she had already made a remark to him +about “screeching women”—and random extravagant laughter. She didn’t +tell him—for this somehow it wasn’t in her power to express, and, +strangely enough, he never completely guessed it—that she was singularly +deficient in any natural or indeed acquired understanding of what a +saloon might be. She had never seen or dreamed of one—and for the most +part was incapable of imagining a thing she hadn’t seen. She had seen +great dinners and balls and meets and runs and races; she had seen +garden-parties and bunches of people, mainly women—who, however, didn’t +screech—at dull stuffy teas, and distinguished companies collected in +splendid castles; but all this gave her no clue to a train of +conversation, to any idea of a social agreement that the interest of +talk, its continuity, its accumulations from season to season, shouldn’t +be lost. Conversation, in Lady Barb’s experience, had never been +continuous; in such a case it would surely have been a bore. It had been +occasional and fragmentary, a trifle jerky, with allusions that were +never explained; it had a dread of detail—it seldom pursued anything very +far or kept hold of it very long. + +There was something else she didn’t say to her husband in reference to +his visions of hospitality, which was that if she should open a +saloon—she had taken up the joke as well, for Lady Barb was eminently +good-natured—Mrs. Vanderdecken would straightway open another, and Mrs. +Vanderdecken’s would be the more successful of the two. This lady, for +reasons Lady Barb had not yet explored, passed for the great personage of +New York; there were legends of her husband’s family having behind them a +fabulous antiquity. When this was alluded to it was spoken of as +something incalculable and lost in the dimness of time. Mrs. +Vanderdecken was young, pretty, clever, incredibly pretentious, Lady Barb +thought, and had a wonderfully artistic house. Ambition was expressed, +further, in every rustle of her garments; and if she was the first lady +in America, “bar none”—this had an immense sound—it was plain she +intended to retain the character. It was not till after she had been +several months in New York that Lady Barb began to perceive this easy +mistress of the field, crying out, gracious goodness, before she was +hurt, to have flung down the glove; and when the idea presented itself, +lighted up by an incident I have no space to report, she simply blushed a +little (for Mrs. Vanderdecken) and held her tongue. She hadn’t come to +America to bandy words about “precedence” with such a woman as that. She +had ceased to think of that convenience—of course one was obliged to +think in England; though an instinct of self-preservation, old and +deep-seated, led her not to expose herself to occasions on which her +imputed claim might be tested. This had at bottom much to do with her +having, very soon after the first flush of the honours paid her on her +arrival and which seemed to her rather grossly overdone, taken the line +of scarcely going out. “They can’t keep _that_ up!” she had said to +herself; and in short she would stay, less boringly both for herself and +for others, at home. She had a sense that whenever and wherever she +might go forth she should meet Mrs. Vanderdecken, who would withhold or +deny or contest or even magnanimously concede something—poor Lady Barb +could never imagine what. She didn’t try to, and gave little thought to +all this; for she wasn’t prone to confess to herself fears, especially +fears from which terror was absent. What in the world _had_ Mrs. +Vanderdecken that she, Barbarina Lemon (what a name!), could want? But, +as I have said, it abode within her as a presentiment that if she should +set up a drawing-room in the foreign style (based, that is, on the +suppression of prattling chits and hobbledehoys) this sharp skirmisher +would be beforehand with her. The continuity of conversation, oh that +she would certainly go in for—there was no one so continuous as Mrs. +Vanderdecken. Lady Barb, as I have related, didn’t give her husband the +surprise of confiding to him these thoughts, though she had given him +some other surprises. He would have been decidedly astonished, and +perhaps after a bit a little encouraged, at finding her liable to any +marked form of exasperation. + +On the Sunday afternoon she was visible; and at one of these junctures, +going into her drawing-room late, he found her entertaining two ladies +and a gentleman. The gentleman was Sidney Feeder and one of the ladies +none other than Mrs. Vanderdecken, whose ostensible relations with her +were indeed of the most cordial nature. Intending utterly to crush +her—as two or three persons, not perhaps conspicuous for a narrow +accuracy, gave out that she privately declared—Mrs. Vanderdecken yet +wished at least to study the weak points of the invader, to penetrate +herself with the character of the English girl. Lady Barb verily +appeared to have for the representative of the American patriciate a +mysterious fascination. Mrs. Vanderdecken couldn’t take her eyes off her +victim and, whatever might be her estimate of her importance, at least +couldn’t let her alone. “Why does she come to see me?” poor Lady Barb +asked herself. “I’m sure I don’t want to see her; she has done enough +for civility long ago.” Mrs. Vanderdecken had her own reasons, one of +which was simply the pleasure of looking at the Doctor’s wife, as she +habitually called the daughter of the Cantervilles. She wasn’t guilty of +the rashness of depreciating the appearance of so markedly fine a young +woman, but professed a positive unbounded admiration for it, defending it +on many occasions against those of the superficial and stupid who +pronounced her “left nowhere” by the best of the home-grown specimens. +Whatever might have been Lady Barb’s weak points, they included neither +the curve of her cheek and chin, the setting of her head on her throat, +nor the quietness of her deep eyes, which were as beautiful as if they +had been blank, like those of antique busts. “The head’s +enchanting—perfectly enchanting,” Mrs. Vanderdecken used to say +irrelevantly and as if there were only one head in the place. She always +used to ask about the Doctor—which was precisely another reason why she +came. She dragged in the Doctor at every turn, asking if he were often +called up at night; found it the greatest of luxuries, in a word, to +address Lady Barb as the wife of a medical man and as more or less _au +courant_ of her husband’s patients. The other lady, on this Sunday +afternoon, was a certain little Mrs. Chew, who had the appearance of a +small but very expensive doll and was always asking Lady Barb about +England, which Mrs. Vanderdecken never did. The latter discoursed on a +purely American basis and with that continuity of which mention has +already been made, while Mrs. Chew engaged Sidney Feeder on topics +equally local. Lady Barb liked Sidney Feeder; she only hated his name, +which was constantly in her ears during the half-hour the ladies sat with +her, Mrs. Chew having, like so many persons in New York, the habit, which +greatly annoyed her, of re-apostrophising and re-designating every one +present. + +Lady Barb’s relations with Mrs. Vanderdecken consisted mainly in +wondering, while she talked, what she wanted of her, and in looking, with +her sculptured eyes, at her visitor’s clothes, in which there was always +much to examine. “Oh Doctor Feeder!” “Now Doctor Feeder!” “Well Doctor +Feeder”—these exclamations, on Mrs. Chew’s lips, were an undertone in +Lady Barb’s consciousness. When we say she liked her husband’s confrère, +as he never failed to describe himself, we understand that she smiled on +his appearance and gave him her hand, and asked him if he would have tea. +There was nothing nasty, as they so analytically said in London, about +Lady Barb, and she would have been incapable of inflicting a deliberate +snub on a man who had the air of standing up so squarely to any purpose +he might have in hand. But she had nothing of her own at all to say to +Sidney Feeder. He apparently had the art of making her shy, more shy +than usual—since she was always a little so; she discouraged him, +discouraged him completely and reduced him to naught. He wasn’t a man +who wanted drawing out, there was nothing of that in him, he was +remarkably copious; but she seemed unable to follow him in any direction +and half the time evidently didn’t know what he was saying. He tried to +adapt his conversation to her needs; but when he spoke of the world, of +what was going on in society, she was more at sea even than when he spoke +of hospitals and laboratories and the health of the city and the progress +of science. She appeared indeed after her first smile when he came in, +which was always charming, scarcely to see him—looking past him and above +him and below him, everywhere but at him, till he rose to go again, when +she gave him another smile, as expressive of pleasure and of casual +acquaintance as that with which she had greeted his entry: it seemed to +imply that they had been having delightful communion. He wondered what +the deuce Jackson Lemon could find interesting in such a woman, and he +believed his perverse, though gifted, colleague not destined to feel her +in the long run enrich or illuminate his life. He pitied Jackson, he saw +that Lady Barb, in New York, would neither assimilate nor be assimilated; +and yet he was afraid, for very compassion, to betray to the poor man how +the queer step he had taken—now so dreadfully irrevocable—might be going +to strike most others. Sidney Feeder was a man of a strenuous +conscience, who did loyal duty overmuch and from the very fear he +mightn’t do it enough. In order not to appear to he called upon Lady +Barb heroically, in spite of pressing engagements and week after week, +enjoying his virtue himself as little as he made it fruitful for his +hostess, who wondered at last what she had done to deserve this extremity +of appreciation. + +She spoke of it to her husband, who wondered also what poor Sidney had in +his head and yet naturally shrank from damping too brutally his zeal. +Between the latter’s wish not to let Jackson see his marriage had made a +difference and Jackson’s hesitation to reveal to him that his standard of +friendship was too high, Lady Barb passed a good many of those numerous +hours during which she asked herself if they were the “sort of thing” she +had come to America for. Very little had ever passed between her and her +husband on the subject of the most regular of her bores, a clear instinct +warning her that if they were ever to have scenes she must choose the +occasion well, and this odd person not being an occasion. Jackson had +tacitly admitted that his “confrère” was anything she chose to think him; +he was not a man to be guilty in a discussion of the disloyalty of +damning a real friend with praise that was faint. If Lady Agatha had +been less of an absentee from her sister’s fireside, meanwhile, Doctor +Feeder would have been better entertained; for the younger of the English +pair prided herself, after several months of New York, on understanding +everything that was said, on interpreting every sound, no matter from +what lips the monstrous mystery fell. But Lady Agatha was never at home; +she had learned to describe herself perfectly by the time she wrote her +mother that she was always on the go. None of the innumerable victims of +old-world tyranny welcomed to the land of freedom had yet offered more +lavish incense to that goddess than this emancipated London debutante. +She had enrolled herself in an amiable band known by the humorous name of +“the Tearers”—a dozen young ladies of agreeable appearance, high spirits +and good wind, whose most general characteristic was that, when wanted, +they were to be sought anywhere in the world but under the roof supposed +to shelter them. They browsed far from the fold; and when Sidney Feeder, +as sometimes happened, met Lady Agatha at other houses, she was in the +hands of the irrepressible Longstraw. She had come back to her sister, +but Mr. Longstraw had followed her to the door. As to passing it, he had +received direct discouragement from her brother-in-law; but he could at +least hang about and wait for her. It may be confided to the reader at +the risk of discounting the effect of the only passage in this very level +narrative formed to startle that he never had to wait very long. + +When Jackson Lemon came in his wife’s visitors were on the point of +leaving her; and he didn’t even ask his colleague to remain, for he had +something particular to say to Lady Barb. + +“I haven’t put to you half the questions I wanted—I’ve been talking so +much to Doctor Feeder,” the dressy Mrs. Chew said, holding the hand of +her hostess in one of her own and toying at one of Lady Barb’s ribbons +with the other. + +“I don’t think I’ve anything to tell you; I think I’ve told people +everything,” Lady Barb answered rather wearily. + +“You haven’t told _me_ much!” Mrs. Vanderdecken richly radiated. + +“What could one tell you? You know everything,” Jackson impatiently +laughed. + +“Ah no—there are some things that are great mysteries for me!” this +visitor promptly pronounced. “I hope you’re coming to me on the +seventeenth,” she added to Lady Barb. + +“On the seventeenth? I believe we go somewhere.” + +“Do go to Mrs. Vanderdecken’s,” said Mrs. Chew; “you’ll see the cream of +the cream.” + +“Oh gracious!” Mrs. Vanderdecken vaguely cried. + +“Well, I don’t care; she will, won’t she, Doctor Feeder?—the very pick of +American society.” Mrs. Chew stuck to her point. + +“Oh I’ve no doubt Lady Barb will have a good time,” said Sidney Feeder. +“I’m afraid you miss the bran,” he went on with irrelevant jocosity to +Jackson’s bride. He always tried the jocose when other elements had +failed. + +“The bran?” Jackson’s bride couldn’t think. + +“Where you used to ride—in the Park.” + +“My dear fellow, you speak as if we had met at the circus,” her husband +interposed. “I haven’t married a mountebank!” + +“Well, they put some stuff on the road,” Sidney Feeder explained, not +holding much to his joke. + +“You must miss a great many things,” said Mrs. Chew tenderly. + +“I don’t see what,” Mrs. Vanderdecken tinkled, “except the fogs and the +Queen. New York’s getting more and more like London. It’s a pity—you +ought to have known us thirty years ago.” + +“_You’re_ the queen here,” said Jackson Lemon, “but I don’t know what you +know about thirty years ago.” + +“Do you think she doesn’t go back?—she goes back to the last century!” +cried Mrs. Chew. + +“I daresay I should have liked that,” said Lady Barb; “but I can’t +imagine.” And she looked at her husband—a look she often had—as if she +vaguely wished him to do something. + +He was not called upon, however, to take any violent steps, for Mrs. Chew +presently said, “Well, Lady Barb, good-bye”; Mrs. Vanderdecken glared +genially and as for excess of meaning at her hostess and addressed a +farewell, accompanied very audibly with his title, to her host; and +Sidney Feeder made a joke about stepping on the trains of the ladies’ +dresses as he accompanied them to the door. Mrs. Chew had always a great +deal to say at the last; she talked till she was in the street and then +she addressed that prospect. But at the end of five minutes Jackson +Lemon was alone with his wife, to whom he then announced a piece of news. +He prefaced it, however, by an inquiry as he came back from the hall. + +“Where’s Agatha, my dear?” + +“I haven’t the least idea. In the streets somewhere, I suppose.” + +“I think you ought to know a little more.” + +“How can I know about things here? I’ve given her up. I can do nothing +with her. I don’t care what she does.” + +“She ought to go back to England,” Jackson said after a pause. + +“She ought never to have come.” + +“It was not my proposal, God knows!” he sharply returned. + +“Mamma could never know what it really is,” his wife more quietly noted. + +“No, it hasn’t been as yet what your mother supposed! The man Longstraw +wants to marry her and has made a formal proposal. I met him half an +hour ago in Madison Avenue, and he asked me to come with him into the +Columbia Club. There, in the billiard-room, which to-day is empty, he +opened himself—thinking evidently that in laying the matter before me he +was behaving with extraordinary propriety. He tells me he’s dying of +love and that she’s perfectly willing to go and live in Arizona.” + +“So she is,” said Lady Barb. “And what did you tell him?” + +“I told him I was convinced it would never do and that at any rate I +could have nothing to say to it. I told him explicitly in short what I +had told him virtually before. I said we should send Aggie straight back +to England, and that if they had the courage they must themselves broach +the question over there.” + +“When shall you send her back?” asked Lady Barb. + +“Immediately—by the very first steamer.” + +“Alone, like an American girl?” + +“Don’t be rough, Barb,” Jackson replied. “I shall easily find some +people—lots of them are sailing now.” + +“I must take her myself,” Lady Barb observed in a moment. “I brought her +out—so I must restore her to my mother’s hands.” + +He had expected this and believed he was prepared for it, but when it +came he found his preparation not complete. He had no answer to +make—none at least that seemed to him to go to the point. During these +last weeks it had come over him with a quiet irresistible unmerciful +force that Mrs. Dexter Freer had been right in saying to him that Sunday +afternoon in Jermyn Street, the summer before, that he would find it +wasn’t so simple to be an American. Such a character was complicated in +just the measure that she had foretold by the difficulty of domesticating +any wife at all liberally chosen. The difficulty wasn’t dissipated by +his having taken a high tone about it; it pinched him from morning till +night, it hurt him like a misfitting shoe. His high tone had given him +courage when he took the great step; but he began to perceive that the +highest tone in the world couldn’t change the nature of things. His ears +tingled as he inwardly noted that if the Dexter Freers, whom he had +thought alike abject in their hopes and their fears, had been by ill luck +spending the winter in New York, they would have found his predicament as +good fun as they could wish. Drop by drop the conviction had entered his +mind—the first drop had come in the form of a word from Lady Agatha—that +if his wife should return to England she would never again later recross +the Atlantic. That word from the competent source had been the touch +from the outside at which often a man’s fear crystallises. What she +would do, how she would resist—this he wasn’t yet prepared to tell +himself; but he felt every time he looked at her that the beautiful woman +he had adored was filled with a dumb insuperable ineradicable purpose. +He knew that if she should plant herself firm no power on earth would +move her; and her blooming antique beauty and the general loftiness of +her breeding came fast to seem to him but the magnificent expression of a +dense patient ponderous power to resist. She wasn’t light, she wasn’t +supple, and after six months of marriage he had made up his mind that she +wasn’t intelligent—in spite of all which she would elude him. She had +married him, she had come into his fortune and his consideration—for who +was she after all? he was on occasion so angry as to ask himself, +remembering that in England Lady Claras and Lady Florences were as thick +as blackberries—but she would have nothing to do, if she could help it, +with his country. She had gone in to dinner first in every house in the +place, but this hadn’t satisfied her. It _had_ been simple to be an +American in the good and easy sense that no one else in New York had made +any difficulties; the difficulties had sprung from the very, the +consummate, make of her, which were after all what he had married her +for, thinking they would be a fine temperamental heritage for his brood. +So they would, doubtless, in the coming years and after the brood should +have appeared; but meanwhile they interfered with the best heritage of +all—the nationality of his possible children. She would do indeed +nothing violent; he was tolerably certain of that. She wouldn’t return +to England without his consent; only when she should return it would be +once for all. His one possible line, then, was not to take her back—a +position replete with difficulties, since he had in a manner given his +word; she herself giving none at all beyond the formal promise murmured +at the altar. She had been general, but he had been specific; the +settlements he had made were a part of that. His difficulties were such +as he couldn’t directly face. He must tack in approaching so uncertain a +coast. He said to his wife presently that it would be very inconvenient +for him to leave New York at that moment: she must remember their plans +had been laid for a later move. He couldn’t think of letting her make +the voyage without him, and on the other hand they must pack her sister +off without delay. He would therefore make instant inquiry for a +chaperon, and he relieved his irritation by cursing the name and every +other attribute of Herman Longstraw. + +Lady Barb didn’t trouble herself to denounce this gentleman; her manner +was that of having for a long time expected the worst. She simply +remarked after having listened to her husband for some minutes in +silence: “I’d quite as lief she should marry Doctor Feeder!” + +The day after this he closeted himself for an hour with his +sister-in-law, taking great pains to set forth to her the reasons why she +shouldn’t marry her Californian. Jackson was kind, he was affectionate; +he kissed her and put his arm round her waist, he reminded her that he +and she were the best of friends and that she had always been awfully +nice to him: therefore he counted on her. She’d break her mother’s +heart, she’d deserve her father’s curse, and she’d get him, Jackson, into +a pickle from which no human power might ever disembroil him. Lady +Agatha listened and cried, she returned his kiss very affectionately and +admitted that her father and mother would never consent to such a +marriage; and when he told her that he had made arrangements that she +should sail for Liverpool, with some charming people, the next day but +one, she embraced him again and assured him she could never thank him +enough for all the trouble he had taken about her. He flattered himself +he had convinced and in some degree comforted her, and he reflected with +complacency that even should his wife take it into her head Barb would +never get ready to embark for her native land between a Monday and a +Wednesday. The next morning Lady Agatha failed to appear at breakfast, +though as she usually rose very late her absence excited no immediate +alarm. She hadn’t rung her bell and was supposed still to be sleeping. +But she had never yet slept later than mid-day; and as this hour +approached her sister went to her room. Lady Barb then discovered that +she had left the house at seven o’clock in the morning and had gone to +meet Mr. Longstraw at a neighbouring corner. A little note on the table +explained it very succinctly, and put beyond the power of the Jackson +Lemons to doubt that by the time this news reached them their wayward +sister had been united to the man of her preference as closely as the +laws of the State of New York could bind her. Her little note set forth +that as she knew she should never be permitted to marry him she had +resolved to marry him without permission, and that directly after the +ceremony, which would be of the simplest kind, they were to take a train +for the Far West. + +Our record is concerned only with the remote consequences of this affair, +which made of course a great deal of trouble for poor Jackson. He +pursued the fugitives to remote rocky fastnesses and finally overtook +them in California; but he hadn’t the boldness to propose to them to +separate, for he promptly made out that Herman Longstraw was at least as +well married as himself. Lady Agatha was already popular in the new +States, where the history of her elopement, emblazoned in enormous +capitals, was circulated in a thousand newspapers. This question of the +newspapers had been for our troubled friend one of the most definite +results of his sister-in-law’s _coup de tête_. His first thought had +been of the public prints and his first exclamation a prayer that they +shouldn’t get hold of the story. They had, however, got hold of it with +a myriad wildly-waved hands and were scattering it broadcast over the +world. Lady Barb never caught them in the act—she succeeded perfectly in +not seeing what she needn’t; but an affectionate friend of the family, +travelling at that time in the United States, made a parcel of some of +the leading journals, and sent them to Lord Canterville. This missive +elicited from her ladyship a letter, addressed to her son-in-law, which +shook the young man’s position to the base. The phials of a rank +vulgarity had been opened on the house of Canterville, and the noble +matron demanded that in compensation for the affronts and injuries heaped +upon her family, and bereaved and dishonoured as she was, she should at +least be allowed to look on the face of her second daughter. “I suppose +you’ll not, for very pity, be deaf to such a prayer as that,” said Lady +Barb; and though loth to record a second act of weakness on the part of a +man with pretensions to be strong, I may not disguise the fact that poor +Jackson, who blushed dreadfully over the newspapers and felt afresh as he +read them the force of Mrs. Freer’s terrible axiom, poor Jackson paid a +visit to the office of the Cunarders. He said to himself later on that +it was the newspapers that had done it; he couldn’t decently appear to be +on their side: they made it so hard to deny that the country was +impossible at a time when one was in need of all one’s arguments. Lady +Barb, before sailing, definitely refused to mention any week or month as +the date of their prearranged return to New York. Very many weeks and +months have elapsed since then, and she gives no sign of coming back. +She will never fix a date. She is much missed by Mrs. Vanderdecken, who +still alludes to her—still says the line of the shoulders was superb; +putting the statement pensively in the past tense. Lady Beauchemin and +Lady Marmaduke are much disconcerted; the international project has not, +in their view, received an impetus. + +Jackson Lemon has a house in London and he rides in the Park with his +wife, who is as beautiful as the day and who a year ago presented him +with a little girl exhibiting features that he already scans for the look +of race—whether in hope or in fear to-day is more than my muse has +revealed. He has occasional scenes with Lady Barb during which the look +of race is very clear in her own countenance; but they never terminate in +a visit to the Cunarders. He’s exceedingly restless and is constantly +crossing to the Continent; but he returns with a certain abruptness, for +he hates meeting the Dexter Freers, who seem to pervade the more +comfortable parts of Europe. He dodges them in every town. Sidney +Feeder feels very badly about him; it’s months since Jackson has sent him +any “results.” The excellent fellow goes very often, in a consolatory +spirit, to see Mrs. Lemon, but has not yet been able to answer her +standing question—“Why that girl more than another?” Lady Agatha +Longstraw and her husband arrived a year ago in England, and Mr. +Longstraw’s personality had immense success during the last London +season. It’s not exactly known what they live on, though perfectly known +that he’s looking for something to do. Meanwhile it’s as good as known +that their really quite responsible brother-in-law supports them. + + + + +THE SIEGE OF LONDON + + +I + + +That solemn piece of upholstery the curtain of the Comédie Française had +fallen upon the first act of the piece, and our two Americans had taken +advantage of the interval to pass out of the huge hot theatre in company +with the other occupants of the stalls. But they were among the first to +return, and they beguiled the rest of the intermission with looking at +the house, which had lately been cleansed of its historic cobwebs and +ornamented with frescoes illustrative of the classic drama. In the month +of September the audience at the Théâtre Français is comparatively thin, +and on this occasion the drama—_L’Aventurière_ of Emile Augier—had no +pretensions to novelty. Many of the boxes were empty, others were +occupied by persons of provincial or nomadic appearance. The boxes are +far from the stage, near which our spectators were placed; but even at a +distance Rupert Waterville was able to appreciate details. He was fond +of appreciating details, and when he went to the theatre he looked about +him a good deal, making use of a dainty but remarkably powerful glass. +He knew that such a course was wanting in true distinction and that it +was indelicate to level at a lady an instrument often only less injurious +in effect than a double-barrelled pistol; but he was always very curious, +and was sure, in any case, that at that moment, at that antiquated +play—so he was pleased to qualify the masterpiece of a contemporary—he +shouldn’t be observed by any one he knew. Standing up therefore with his +back to the stage he made the circuit of the boxes while several other +persons near him performed the operation with even greater coolness. + +“Not a single pretty woman,” he remarked at last to his friend; an +observation which Littlemore, sitting in his place and staring with a +bored expression at the new-looking curtain, received in perfect silence. +He rarely indulged in these optical excursions; he had been a great deal +in Paris and had ceased to vibrate more than a few times a day; he +believed the French capital could have no more surprises for him, though +it had had a good many in former days. Waterville was still in the stage +of surprise; he suddenly expressed this emotion. “By Jove, I beg your +pardon, I beg _her_ pardon! There _is_ after all a woman who may be +called”—he paused a little, inspecting her—“an approach to a beauty!” + +“How near an approach?” Littlemore responded. + +“An unusual kind—an indescribable kind.” Littlemore was not heeding his +answer, but presently heard himself appealed to. “I say, I wish very +much you’d do me a favour.” + +“I did you a favour in coming here,” said Littlemore. “It’s insufferably +hot, and the play’s like a dinner that has been dressed by the +kitchen-maid. The actors are all _doublures_.” + +“It’s simply to answer me this: is _she_ respectable now?” Waterville +demanded, inattentive to his friend’s epigram. + +Littlemore gave a groan, without turning his head. “You’re always +wanting to know if they’re respectable. What on earth can it matter?” + +“I’ve made such mistakes—I’ve lost all confidence,” said poor Waterville, +to whom European civilisation had not ceased to be a novelty and who +during the last six months had found himself confronted with problems for +which his training had little prepared him. Whenever he encountered a +very nice-looking woman he was sure to discover that she belonged to the +class represented by the heroine of M. Augier’s drama; and whenever his +attention rested upon a person of a florid style of attraction there was +the strongest probability that she would turn out a countess. The +countesses often looked so unnaturally cheap and the others unnaturally +expensive. Littlemore distinguished at a glance; he never made mistakes. + +“Simply for looking at them it doesn’t matter, I suppose,” Waterville +ingenuously sighed. + +“You stare at them all alike,” Littlemore went on, still without moving; +“except indeed when I tell you they _aren’t_ decent—then your eyes, my +dear man, grow as large as saucers.” + +“If your judgement’s against this lady I promise never to look at her +again. I mean the one in the third box from the passage, in white, with +the red flowers,” the younger man said as Littlemore slowly rose and +stood beside him. “The fellow with her is leaning forward. It’s he who +makes me doubt. Will you have the glass?” + +Littlemore looked about him without concentration. “No, thank you, I can +see without staring. The young man’s a very good young man,” he +presently reported. + +“Very indeed, but he’s several years younger than she. Wait till she +turns her head.” + +She turned it very soon—she apparently had been speaking to the +_ouvreuse_, at the door of the box—and presented her face to the public; +a fair harmonious face, with smiling eyes, smiling lips, a low brow +ornamented with delicate rings of black hair and ears marked by the +sparkle of diamonds sufficiently large to be seen across the Théâtre +Français. Littlemore looked at her, then started and held out his hand. +“The glass, please!” + +“Do you know her?” his friend asked as he directed the little instrument. + +He made no answer; he only looked in silence; then he gave the glass +back. “No, she’s not respectable.” And he dropped again into his seat. +As Waterville remained standing he added: “Please sit down; I think she +saw me.” + +“Don’t you want her to see you?” pursued the interrogator, promptly +complying. + +Littlemore hesitated. “I don’t want to spoil her game.” By this time +the _entr’acte_ was at an end and the curtain going up. + +It had been Waterville’s idea that they should go to the theatre. +Littlemore, who was always for not going anywhere, had recommended that, +the evening being lovely, they should simply sit and smoke at the door of +the Grand Café in comparatively pensive isolation. Nevertheless +Waterville enjoyed the second act even less than he had done the first, +which he thought heavy. He began to wonder whether his companion would +wish to stay to the end; a useless line of speculation, for now that he +had got to the theatre Littlemore’s aversion to change would certainly +keep him from moving. Waterville also wondered what he knew about the +lady in the box. Once or twice he glanced at his friend, and then was +sure the latter wasn’t following the play. He was thinking of something +else; he was thinking of that woman. When the curtain fell again he sat +in his place, making way for his neighbours, as usual, to edge past him, +grinding his knees—his legs were long—with their own protuberances. When +the two men were alone in the stalls he spoke. “I think I should like to +see her again, after all.” He spoke in fact as if Waterville might have +known all about her. Waterville was conscious of not doing so, but as +there was evidently a good deal to know he recognised he should lose +nothing by exerting some art. So for the moment he asked no question; he +only said: “Well, here’s the glass.” + +Littlemore gave him a glance of good-natured compassion. “I don’t mean I +want to keep letting _that_ off at her. I mean I should rather like to +see her as I used to.” + +“And how did you use to?” asked Waterville with no art now. + +“On the back piazza at San Pablo.” And as his comrade, in receipt of +this information, only stared he went on: “Come out where we can breathe +and I’ll tell you more.” + +They made their way to the low and narrow door, more worthy of a +rabbit-hutch than of a great theatre, by which you pass from the stalls +of the Comédie to the lobby, and as Littlemore went by first his +ingenuous friend behind him could see that he glanced up at the box in +the occupants of which they were interested. The more interesting of +these had her back to the house; she was apparently just leaving the box, +after her companion; but as she hadn’t put on her mantle it was evident +they weren’t quitting the theatre. Littlemore’s pursuit of fresh air +didn’t lead him to the street; he had passed his arm into Waterville’s +and when they reached the fine frigid staircase that ascends to the +public foyer he began silently to mount it. Littlemore was averse to +active pleasures, but his friend reflected that now at least he had +launched himself—he was going to look for the lady whom, with a +monosyllable, he appeared to have classified. The young man resigned +himself for the moment to asking no questions, and the two strolled +together into the shining saloon where Houdon’s admirable statue of +Voltaire, reflected in a dozen mirrors, is gaped at by visitors too +obviously less acute than the genius expressed in those living features. +Waterville knew that Voltaire was witty; he had read _Candide_ and had +already had several opportunities of appreciating the statue. The foyer +was not crowded; only a dozen groups were scattered over the polished +floor, several others having passed out to the balcony which overhangs +the square of the Palais Royal. The windows were open, the myriad lights +of Paris made the dull summer evening look like an anniversary or a +revolution; a murmur of voices seemed to come up, and even in the foyer +one heard the slow click of the horses and the rumble of the +crookedly-driven fiacres on the hard smooth street-surface. A lady and a +gentleman, their backs to our friends, stood before the image of the +_genius loci_; the lady was dressed in white, including a white bonnet. +Littlemore felt in the scene, as so many persons feel it just there, +something of the finest essence of France, and he gave a significant +laugh. + +“It seems comical to see her here! The last time was in New Mexico.” + +“In New Mexico?” + +“At San Pablo.” + +“Oh on the back piazza,” said Waterville, putting things together. He +had not been aware of the position of San Pablo, for if on the occasion +of his lately being appointed to a subordinate diplomatic post in London +he had been paying a good deal of attention to European geography he had +rather neglected that of his own country. + +They hadn’t spoken loud and weren’t standing near her, but suddenly, as +if she had heard them, the lady in white turned round. Her eye caught +Waterville’s first, and in that glance he saw that if she was aware of +something it wasn’t because they had exceeded but because she had +extraordinary quickness of ear. There was no prompt recognition in +it—none even when it rested lightly on George Littlemore. But +recognition flashed out a moment later, accompanied with a delicate +increase of colour and a quick extension of her settled smile. She had +turned completely round; she stood there in sudden friendliness, with +parted lips; with a hand, gloved to the elbow, almost imperiously +offered. She was even prettier than at a distance. “Well, I declare!” +she cried; so loud that every one in the room appeared to feel personally +addressed. Waterville was surprised; he hadn’t been prepared, even after +the mention of the back piazza, to find her of so unmistakable race. Her +companion turned round as she spoke; he was a fresh lean young man in +evening dress; he kept his hands in his pockets; Waterville was sure he +was of race quite other. He looked very grave—for such a fair festive +young man—and gave our two friends, though his height was not superior to +theirs, a narrow vertical glance. Then he turned back to the statue of +Voltaire as if it had been among his premonitions, after all, that the +lady he was attending would recognise people he didn’t know and didn’t +even perhaps care to know. This possibly confirmed slightly Littlemore’s +assertion that she wasn’t respectable. The young man was that at least; +consummately so. “Where in the world did you drop from?” the lady +inquired. + +“I’ve been here for some time,” Littlemore said, going forward rather +deliberately to shake hands with her. He took it alertly, yet was more +serious than she, keeping his eye on her own as if she had been just a +trifle dangerous. Such was the manner in which a duly discreet person +would have approached some glossy graceful animal which had an occasional +trick of biting. + +“Here in Paris, do you mean?” + +“No; here and there—in Europe generally.” + +“Well, it’s queer I haven’t met you.” + +“Better late than never!” said Littlemore. His smile was a little fixed. + +“Well, you look very natural,” the lady went on. + +“So do you—or very charming—it’s the same thing,” he answered, laughing +and evidently wishing to be easy. It was as if, face to face and after a +considerable lapse of time, he had found her more imposing than he +expected when, in the stalls below, he determined to come and meet her. +As he spoke the young man who was with her gave up his inspection of +Voltaire and faced about listlessly, without looking at his companion’s +acquaintances. + +“I want to introduce you to my friend,” she went on. “Sir Arthur +Demesne—Mr. Littlemore. Mr. Littlemore—Sir Arthur Demesne. Sir Arthur +Demesne’s an Englishman—Mr. Littlemore’s a countryman of mine, an old +friend. I haven’t seen him for years. For how long? Don’t let’s +count—I wonder you knew me,” she continued, addressing this recovered +property. “I’m fearfully changed.” All this was said in a clear gay +tone which was the more audible as she spoke with an odd sociable +slowness. The two men, to do honour to her introduction, silently +exchanged a glance; the Englishman perhaps coloured a little. He was +very conscious of his companion. “I haven’t introduced you to many +people yet,” she dropped. + +“Oh I don’t mind,” said Sir Arthur Demesne. + +“Well, it’s queer to see you!” she pursued, with her charming eyes still +on Littlemore. “You’ve changed, too—I can see that.” + +“Not where you’re concerned.” + +“That’s what I want to find out. Why don’t you introduce your friend? I +see he’s dying to know me!” And then when he had proceeded with this +ceremony, which he reduced to its simplest elements, merely glancing at +Rupert Waterville and murmuring his name, “Ah, you don’t tell him who _I_ +am!” the lady cried while the young secretary made her a formal +salutation. “I hope you haven’t forgotten!” + +Littlemore showed her a face intended to express more than what he had +hitherto permitted himself; if its meaning had been put into words these +would have been: “Ah, but by which name?” + +She answered the unspoken question, putting out her hand as she had done +to Littlemore. “Happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Waterville. I’m +Mrs. Headway—perhaps you’ve heard of me. If you’ve ever been in America +you must have heard of me. Not so much in New York, but in the Western +cities. You _are_ an American? Well then we’re all compatriots—except +Sir Arthur Demesne. Let me introduce you to Sir Arthur. Sir Arthur +Demesne, Mr. Waterville—Mr. Waterville, Sir Arthur Demesne. Sir Arthur +Demesne’s a member of Parliament: don’t he look young?” She waited for +no judgement on this appeal, but suddenly made another as she moved her +bracelets back over long loose gloves. “Well, Mr. Littlemore, what are +you thinking of?” + +He was thinking that he must indeed have forgotten her name, for the one +she had pronounced awakened no association. But he could hardly tell her +that. “I’m thinking of San Pablo.” + +“The back piazza at my sister’s? Oh don’t; it was too horrid. She has +left now. I believe every one has left.” The member of Parliament drew +out his watch with the air of a man who could take no part in these +domestic reminiscences; he appeared to combine a generic self-possession +with a degree of individual shyness. He said something about its being +time they should go back to their seats, but Mrs. Headway paid no +attention to the remark. Waterville wished her to linger and indeed felt +almost as free to examine her as he had to walk, in a different spirit, +round the statue of the author of _Candide_. Her low-growing hair, with +its fine dense undulations, was of a shade of blackness that has now +become rare; her complexion had the bloom of a white flower; her profile, +when she turned her head, was as pure and fine as the outline of a cameo. +“You know this is their first theatre,” she continued, as if to rise to +the occasion. “And this is Voltaire, the celebrated writer.” + +“I’m devoted to the Comédie Française”—Waterville rose as well. + +“Dreadfully bad house; we didn’t hear a word,” said Sir Arthur Demesne. + +“Ah, yes, the sad far boxes!” murmured Waterville. + +“I’m rather disappointed,” Mrs. Headway went on. “But I want to see what +becomes of that woman.” + +“Doña Clorinde? Oh I suppose they’ll shoot her. They generally shoot +the women in French plays,” Littlemore said. + +“It will remind me of San Pablo!” cried Mrs. Headway. + +“Ah, at San Pablo the women did the shooting.” + +“They don’t seem to have killed _you_!” she returned archly. + +“No, but I’m riddled with wounds.” + +“Well, this is very remarkable”—the lady reverted to Houdon’s statue. +“It’s beautifully modelled.” + +“You’re perhaps reading M. de Voltaire,” Littlemore suggested. + +“No; but I’ve purchased his works.” + +“They’re not proper reading for ladies,” said the young Englishman +severely, offering his arm to his charge. + +“Ah, you might have told me before I had bought them!” she exclaimed in +exaggerated dismay. + +“I couldn’t imagine you’d buy a hundred and fifty volumes.” + +“A hundred and fifty? I’ve only bought two.” + +“Perhaps two won’t hurt you!” Littlemore hopefully contributed. + +She darted him a reproachful ray. “I know what you mean—that I’m too bad +already! Well, bad as I am you must come and see me.” And she threw him +the name of her hotel as she walked away with her Englishman. Waterville +looked after the latter with a certain interest; he had heard of him in +London and had seen his portrait in _Vanity Fair_. + +It was not yet time to go down, in spite of this gentleman’s saying so, +and Littlemore and his friend passed out to the balcony of the foyer. +“Headway—Headway? Where the deuce did she get that name?” Littlemore +asked as they looked down into the flaring dusk. + +“From her husband I suppose,” his friend suggested. + +“From her husband? From which? The last was named Beck.” + +“How many has she had?” the younger man inquired, anxious to hear how it +was Mrs. Headway wasn’t respectable. + +“I haven’t the least idea. But it wouldn’t be difficult to find out, as +I believe they’re all living. She was Mrs. Beck—Nancy Beck—when I knew +her.” + +“Nancy Beck!” cried Waterville, aghast. He was thinking of her delicate +profile, like that of a pretty Roman empress. There was a great deal to +be explained. + +Littlemore explained it in a few words before they returned to their +places, admitting indeed that he wasn’t yet able to clear up her present +appearance. She was a memory of his Western days; he had seen her last +some six years before. He had known her very well and in several places; +the circle of her activity was chiefly the South-west. This activity had +been during that time of a vague character, except in the sense that it +was exclusively social. She was supposed to have a husband, one +Philadelphia Beck, the editor of a Democratic newspaper, the _Dakota +Sentinel_; but Littlemore had never seen him—the pair were living +apart—and it had been the impression at San Pablo that matrimony, for Mr. +and Mrs. Beck, was about played out. He remembered now to have heard +afterwards that she was getting a divorce. She got divorces very easily, +she was so taking in court. She had got one or two before from a man +whose name he couldn’t remember, and there was a legend that even these +were not the first. She had been enormously divorced! When he first met +her in California she called herself Mrs. Grenville, which he had been +given to understand was not an appellation acquired by matrimony, but her +parental name, resumed after the dissolution of an unfortunate union. +She had had these episodes—her unions were all unfortunate—and had borne +half-a-dozen names. She was a charming woman, especially for New Mexico; +but she had been divorced too often—it was a tax on one’s credulity: she +must have repudiated more husbands than she had married. + +At San Pablo she was staying with her sister, whose actual spouse—she too +had been divorced—the principal man of the place, kept a bank (with the +aid of a six-shooter), and who had never suffered Nancy to want for a +home during her unattached periods. Nancy had begun very young; she must +be about thirty-seven to-day. That was all he meant by her not being +respectable. Her chronology was rather mixed; her sister at least had +once told him that there was one winter when she didn’t know herself who +was Nancy’s husband. She had gone in mainly for editors—she esteemed the +journalistic profession. They must all have been dreadful ruffians, for +her own amiability was manifest. It was well known that whatever she had +done she had done in self-defence. In fine she had done things—that was +the main point now. She had been as pretty as could still be seen, and +as good-natured and as clever as could likewise be yet measured; she had +been quite the best company in those parts. She was a genuine product of +the wild West—a flower of the Pacific slope; ignorant, absurd, crude, but +full of pluck and spirit, of natural intelligence and of a certain +intermittent haphazard felicity of impulse. She used to sigh that she +only wanted a chance—apparently she had found that now. At one time, +without her, he didn’t see how he could have put up with the life. He +had started a cattle-ranch, to which San Pablo was the nearest town, and +he used to ride over to see her. Sometimes he stayed there a week; then +he went to see her every evening. It was infernally hot; they used to +sit on the back piazza. She was always as attractive and very nearly as +well-dressed as they had just beheld her. As far as appearance went she +might have been transplanted at an hour’s notice from that dusty old +settlement to the city by the Seine. + +“Some of those barbaric women are wonderful,” Littlemore said. “Like +her, they only want a chance.” + +He hadn’t been in love with her—there never was anything of that sort +between them. There might have been of course, but as happened there +wasn’t. Headway would have been then the successor of Beck; perhaps +there had been others between. She was in no sort of “society”; she only +had a local reputation (“the well-known Texan belle,” the newspapers +called her—the other editors, to whom she wasn’t married), though indeed +in that spacious civilisation the locality was large. She knew nothing +of the East and to the best of his belief at that period had never seen +New York. Various things might have happened in those six years, +however; no doubt she had “come up.” The West was sending us everything +(Littlemore spoke as a New Yorker); no doubt it would send us at last our +brilliant women. The well-known Texan belle used to look quite over the +head of New York; even in those days she thought and talked of Paris, +which there was no prospect of her knowing: that was the way she had got +on in New Mexico. She had had her ambition, her presentiments; she had +known she was meant for better things. Even at San Pablo she had +prefigured her member of Parliament; every now and then a wandering +Englishman came within her range. They weren’t all Sir Arthurs, like her +present acquisition, but they were usually a change from the editors. +What she was doing with her present acquisition Littlemore was curious to +see. She was certainly—if he had any capacity for that state of mind, +which was not too apparent—making the gentleman happy. She looked very +splendid; Headway had probably made a “pile,” an achievement not to be +imputed to any of the others. She didn’t accept money—he was sure she +didn’t accept money. With all of which, on their way back to their +seats, Littlemore, whose tone had been humorous, but with that strain of +the pensive which is inseparable from retrospect, suddenly burst into +audible laughter. “The modelling of statues and the works of Voltaire!” +he broke out, recurring to two or three things she had said. “It’s +touching to hear her attempt those flights, for in New Mexico she knew +nothing about modelling.” + +“She didn’t strike me as affected,” Waterville demurred, feeling a vague +impulse to view her in becoming lights. + +“Oh no; she’s only—as she says—fearfully changed.” + +They were in their places before the play went on again, and they both +gave another glance at Mrs. Headway’s box. She now was leaning back +behind the slow movements of her fan and evidently watching Littlemore as +if she had waited to see him come in. Sir Arthur Demesne sat beside her, +rather gloomily resting a round pink chin upon a high stiff collar; +neither of them seemed to speak. + +“Are you sure she makes him happy?” Waterville asked. + +“Yes—that’s the way those people show it.” + +“But does she go about alone with him at that rate? Where’s her +husband?” + +“I suppose she has divorced him.” + +“And does she want to marry the Baronet?” Waterville went on as if his +companion was omniscient. + +It amused Littlemore for the moment to appear so. “He wants to marry +_her_, I guess.” + +“And be divorced like the others?” + +“Oh no; this time she has got what she wants,” said Littlemore as the +curtain rose. + +He suffered three days to elapse before he called at the Hôtel Meurice, +which she had designated, and we may occupy this interval in adding a few +words to the story we have taken from his lips. George Littlemore’s +residence in the Far West had been of the usual tentative sort—he had +gone there to replenish a pocket depleted by youthful extravagance. His +first attempts had failed; the days had pretty well passed when a fortune +was to be picked up even by a young man who might be supposed to have +inherited from an honourable father, lately removed, some of those fine +abilities, mainly dedicated to the importation of tea, to which the elder +Mr. Littlemore was indebted for the power of leaving his son markedly at +ease. Littlemore had dissipated his patrimony and was not quick to +discover his talents, which, restricted chiefly to an unlimited faculty +for smoking and horse-breaking, appeared to lie in the direction of none +of the professions called liberal. He had been sent to Harvard to have +them cultivated, but here they had taken such a form that repression had +been found more necessary than stimulus—repression embodied in an +occasional sojourn in one of the lovely villages of the Connecticut +Valley. Rustication saved him perhaps in the sense that it detached him; +it undermined his ambitions, which had been foolish. At the age of +thirty he had mastered none of the useful arts, unless we include in the +number the great art of indifference. But he was roused from too +consistent an application of it by a stroke of good luck. To oblige a +luckless friend, even in more pressing need of cash than himself, he had +purchased for a moderate sum—the proceeds of a successful game of poker—a +share in a silver-mine which the disposer of it, with unusual candour, +admitted to be destitute of metal. Littlemore looked into his mine and +recognised the truth of the contention, which, however, was demolished +some two years later by a sudden revival of curiosity on the part of one +of the other shareholders. This gentleman, convinced that a silver-mine +without silver is as rare as an effect without a cause, discovered the +sparkle of the precious element deep down in the reasons of things. The +discovery was agreeable to Littlemore, and was the beginning of a fortune +which, through several dull years and in many rough places, he had +repeatedly despaired of, and which a man whose purpose had never been +very keen, nor his aim very high, didn’t perhaps altogether deserve. + +It was before he saw himself successful that he had made the acquaintance +of the lady now established at the Hôtel Meurice. To-day he owned the +largest share in his mine, which had remained perversely productive and +enabled him to buy, among other things, in Montana, a cattle-ranch of +higher type than the dry acres near San Pablo. Ranches and mines +encourage security, and the consciousness of not having to watch the +sources of his income too anxiously—a tax on ideal detachment which +spoils the idea—now added itself to his usual coolness. It was not that +this same coolness hadn’t been considerably tried. To take only one—the +principal—instance: he had lost his wife after only a twelvemonth of +marriage, some three years before the date at which we meet him. He had +been turned thirty-eight when he distinguished and wooed and won an +ardent girl of twenty-three, who, like himself, had consulted all the +probabilities in expecting a succession of happy years. She had left him +a small daughter, now entrusted to the care of his only sister, the wife +of an English squire and mistress of a dull park in Hampshire. This +lady, Mrs. Dolphin by name, had captivated her landowner during a journey +in which Mr. Dolphin had promised himself to examine the institutions of +the United States. The institution on which he had reported most +favourably was the pretty girls of the larger towns, and he had returned +to New York a year or two later to marry Miss Littlemore, who, unlike her +brother, had not wasted her patrimony. Her sister-in-law, married +several years later and coming to Europe on this occasion, had died in +London—where she had flattered herself the doctors were infallible—a week +after the birth of her little girl; and poor Littlemore, though +relinquishing his child for the moment, had lingered on the scene of his +deep disconcertment to be within call of the Hampshire nursery. He was a +presence to attract admiring attention, especially since his hair and +moustache had turned to so fine a silver. Tall and clean-limbed, with a +good figure and a bad carriage, he looked capable but indolent, and was +exposed to imputations of credit and renown, those attaching to John +Gilpin, of which he was far from being either conscious or desirous. His +eye was at once keen and quiet, his smile dim and dilatory, but perfectly +sincere. His principal occupation to-day was doing nothing, and he did +it with a beautiful consistency. This exercise excited real envy on the +part of Rupert Waterville, who was ten years younger and who had too many +ambitions and anxieties—none of them very important, but making +collectively a considerable incubus—to be able to wait for inspiration. +He thought of it as the last social grace, he hoped some day to arrive at +it; it made a man so independent—he had his resources within his own +breast. Littlemore could sit for a whole evening without utterance or +movement, smoking cigars and looking absently at his finger-nails. As +every one knew him for a good fellow who had made his fortune this free +and even surface offered by him to contact couldn’t be attributed to +stupidity or moroseness. It seemed to imply a fund of reminiscence, an +experience of life that had left him hundreds of things to think about. +Waterville felt that if he himself could make a good use of these present +years and keep a sharp lookout for experience he too at forty-four might +have time to look at his finger-nails. He cultivated the conceit that +such contemplations—not of course in their literal but in their symbolic +intensity—were a sign of a man of the world. Waterville, reckoning +possibly without an ungrateful Department of State, also nursed the fond +fancy that he had embraced the diplomatic career. He was the junior of +the two secretaries who render the _personnel_ of the United States +Legation in London exceptionally numerous, and was at present enjoying +his annual leave of absence. It became a diplomatist to be inscrutable, +and though he had by no means, as a whole, taken Littlemore for his +model—there were much better ones in the diplomatic body accredited to +the Court of Saint James’s—he thought the right effect of fine ease +suggested when of an evening, in Paris, after one had been asked what one +would like to do, one replied that one would like to do nothing, and +simply sat for an interminable time in front of the Grand Café on the +Boulevard de la Madeleine (one was very fond of cafés) ordering a +succession of _demi-tasses_. It was seldom Littlemore cared even to go +to the theatre, and the visit to the Comédie Française, which we have +described, had been undertaken at Waterville’s instance. He had seen _Le +Demi-Monde_ a few nights before and had been told that _L’Aventurière_ +would show him a particular treatment of the same subject—the justice to +be meted out to compromised women who attempt to thrust themselves into +honourable families. It seemed to him that in both of these cases the +ladies had deserved their fate, but he wished it might have been brought +about by a little less lying on the part of the representatives of +honour. Littlemore and he, without being intimate, were very good +friends and spent much of their time together. As it turned out +Littlemore was grateful for the chance that had led him to a view of this +new incarnation of Nancy Beck. + + + +II + + +His delay in going to see her was nevertheless calculated; there were +more reasons for it than we need at once go into. When he did go, +however, Mrs. Headway was at home and he was scarce surprised to find Sir +Arthur Demesne in her sitting-room. There was something in the air that +spoke of the already ample stretch of this gentleman’s visit. Littlemore +thought probable that, given the circumstances, he would now bring it to +a close; he must have learned from their hostess that this welcomed +compatriot was an old and familiar friend. He might of course have +definite rights—he had every appearance of it, but the more they were +rooted the more gracefully he could afford to waive them. Littlemore +made these reflexions while the friend in possession faced him without +sign of departure. Mrs. Headway was very gracious—she had ever the +manner of having known you a hundred years; she scolded Littlemore +extravagantly for not having been to see her sooner, but this was only a +form of the gracious. By daylight she looked a little faded, but there +was a spirit in her that rivalled the day. She had the best rooms in the +hotel and an air of extreme opulence and prosperity; her courier sat +outside, in the antechamber, and she evidently knew how to live. She +attempted to include Sir Arthur in the conversation, but though the young +man remained in his place he failed to grasp the offered perch. He +followed but as from the steep bank of the stream, where yet he was +evidently not at his ease. The conversation therefore remained +superficial—a quality that of old had by no means belonged to Mrs. +Headway’s interviews with her friends. The Englishman hovered with a +distant air which Littlemore at first, with a good deal of private +amusement, simply attributed to jealousy. + +But after a time Mrs. Headway spoke to the point. “My dear Sir Arthur, I +wish very much you’d go.” + +The member of Parliament got up and took his hat. “I thought I should +oblige you by staying.” + +“To defend me against Mr. Littlemore? I’ve known him since I was a +baby—I know the worst he can do.” She fixed her charming smile on her +retreating visitor and added with much unexpectedness: “I want to talk to +him about my past!” + +“That’s just what I want to hear,” said Sir Arthur, with his hand on the +door. + +“We’re going to talk American; you wouldn’t understand us! He speaks in +the English style,” she explained in her little sufficient way as the +Baronet, who announced that at all events he would come back in the +evening, let himself out. + +“He doesn’t know about your past?” Littlemore inquired, trying not to +make the question sound impertinent. + +“Oh yes; I’ve told him everything; but he doesn’t understand. One has to +hold an Englishman by the head, you know, and kind of force it down. He +has never heard of a woman being—” But here Mrs. Headway checked +herself, while Littlemore filled out the blank. “What are you laughing +at? It doesn’t matter,” she went on; “there are more things in the world +than those people have heard of. However, I like them very much; at +least I like _him_. He’s such a regular gentleman; do you know what I +mean? Only, as he stays too long and he ain’t amusing, I’m very glad to +see you for a change.” + +“Do you mean I’m not a regular gentleman?” Littlemore asked. + +“No indeed; you used to be out there. I think you were the only one—and +I hope you are still. That’s why I recognised you the other night—I +might have cut you, you know.” + +“You can still, if you like. It’s not too late.” + +“Oh no, that’s not what I want. I want you to help me.” + +“To help you?” + +Mrs. Headway fixed her eyes for a moment on the door. “Do you suppose +that man is there still?” + +“The member of Parliament?” + +“No, I mean Max. Max is my courier,” said Mrs. Headway with some +impressiveness. + +“I haven’t the least idea. I’ll see if you like.” + +“No—in that case I should have to give him an order, and I don’t know +what in the world to ask him to do. He sits there for hours; with my +simple habits I afford him no employment. I’m afraid I’ve no grand +imagination.” + +“The burden of grandeur!” said Littlemore. + +“Oh yes, I’m very grand for clothes and things. But on the whole I like +it. I’m only afraid he’ll hear. I talk so very loud. That’s another +thing I’m trying to get over.” + +“Why do you want to be different?” + +“Well, because everything else is so,” Mrs. Headway bravely pleaded. +“Did you hear that I had lost my husband?” she went on abruptly. + +“Do you mean—a—Mr.—?” and Littlemore paused with an effect that didn’t +seem to come home to her. + +“I mean Mr. Headway,” she said with dignity. “I’ve been through a good +deal since you saw me last: marriage and death and trouble and all sorts +of things.” + +“You had been through a good deal of marriage before that,” her old +friend ventured to observe. + +She rested her eyes on him with extravagant intensity and without a +change of colour. “Not so much, not so much!—” + +“Not so much as might have been thought?” + +“Not so much as was reported. I forget whether I was married when I saw +you last.” + +“It was one of the reports,” said Littlemore. “But I never saw Mr. +Beck.” + +“You didn’t lose much; he was too mean to live. I’ve done certain things +in my life that I’ve never understood; no wonder others can’t do much +with them. But that’s all over! Are you sure Max doesn’t hear?” she +asked quickly. + +“Not at all sure. But if you suspect him of listening at the keyhole I’d +send him away.” + +“I don’t think he does that. I’m always rushing to the door.” + +“Then he doesn’t hear. I had no idea you had so many secrets. When I +parted with you Mr. Headway was in the future.” + +“Well, now he’s in the past. He was a pleasant man—I can understand my +doing that. But he only lived a year. He had neuralgia of the heart; he +left me very well off.” She mentioned these various facts as if they +were quite of the same order. + +“I’m glad to hear _that_. You used to have expensive tastes.” + +“I’ve plenty of money,” said Mrs. Headway. “Mr. Headway had property at +Denver, which has increased immensely in value. After his death I tried +New York. But I don’t take much stock in New York.” Littlemore’s +hostess spoke these last words in a tone that reeked of some strong +experience. “I mean to live in Europe. I guess I can do with Europe,” +she stated; and the manner of it had the touch of prophecy, as the other +proposition had had the echo of history. + +Littlemore was much struck with all this; he was greatly enlivened by +Mrs. Headway. “Then you’re travelling with that young man?” he pursued, +with the coolness of a person who wishes to make his entertainment go as +far as possible. + +She folded her arms as she leaned back in her chair. “Look here, Mr. +Littlemore; I’m about as sweet-tempered as I used to be in America, but I +know a great deal more. Of course I ain’t travelling with that young +man. He’s only a good friend.” + +“He isn’t a good lover?” Littlemore ventured. + +“Do people travel—publicly—with their lovers? I don’t want you to laugh +at me—I want you to help me.” Her appeal might, in its almost childish +frankness, have penetrated; she recognised his wisdom. “As I tell you, +I’ve taken a great fancy to this grand old Europe; I feel as if I should +never go back. But I want to see something of the life. I think it +would suit me—if I could get started a little. George Littlemore,” she +added in a moment—“I may as well be _real_, for I ain’t at all ashamed. +I want to get into society. That’s what I’m after!” + +He settled himself in his chair with the feeling of a man who, knowing +that he will have to pull, seeks to obtain a certain leverage. It was in +a tone of light jocosity, almost of encouragement, however, that he +repeated: “Into society? It seems to me you’re in it already, with the +big people over here for your adorers.” + +“That’s just what I want to know—if they _are_ big,” she promptly said. +“Is a Baronet much?” + +“So they’re apt to think. But I know very little about it.” + +“Ain’t you in society yourself?” + +“I? Never in the world! Where did you get that idea? I care no more +about society than about Max’s buttons.” + +Mrs. Headway’s countenance assumed for a moment a look of extreme +disappointment, and Littlemore could see that, having heard of his +silver-mine and his cattle-ranch, and knowing that he was living in +Europe, she had hoped to find him eminent in the world of fashion. But +she speedily took heart. “I don’t believe a word of it. You know you’re +a real gentleman—you can’t help yourself.” + +“I may be a gentleman, but I’ve none of the habits of one.” Littlemore +had a pause and then added: “I guess I’ve sat too much on back piazzas.” + +She flushed quickly; she instantly understood—understood even more than +he had meant to say. But she wished to make use of him, and it was of +more importance that she should appear forgiving—especially as she had +the happy consciousness of being so—than that she should punish a cruel +speech. She would be wise, however, to recognise everything. “That +makes no difference—a gentleman’s always a gentleman.” + +“Ah, not the way a lady’s always a lady!” he laughed. + +“Well, talking of ladies, it’s unnatural that, through your sister, you +shouldn’t know something about European society,” said Mrs. Headway. + +At the mention of his sister, made with a studied lightness of reference +which he caught as it passed, Littlemore was unable to repress a start. +“What in the world have you to do with my sister?” he would have liked to +say. The introduction of this relative was disagreeable to him; she +belonged quite to another order of ideas, and it was out of the question +Mrs. Headway should ever make her acquaintance—if this was what, as the +latter would have said, she was “after.” But he took advantage of a side +issue. “What do you mean by European society? One can’t talk about +that. It’s an empty phrase.” + +“Well, I mean English society; I mean the society your sister lives in; +that’s what I mean,” said his hostess, who was quite prepared to be +definite. “I mean the people I saw in London last May—the people I saw +at the opera and in the park, the people who go to the Queen’s +drawing-rooms. When I was in London I stayed at that hotel on the corner +of Piccadilly—the one looking straight down Saint James’s Street—and I +spent hours together at the window there looking at the people in the +carriages. I had a carriage of my own, and when I wasn’t at my window I +was riding all around. I was all alone; I saw every one, but I knew no +one—I had no one to tell me. I didn’t know Sir Arthur then—I only met +him a month ago at Homburg. He followed me to Paris—that’s how he came +to be my guest.” Serenely, prosaically, without a breath of the +inflation of vanity, she made this last assertion: it was as if she were +used to being followed or as if a gentleman one met at Homburg would +inevitably follow. In the same tone she went on: “I attracted a good +deal of attention in London—I could easily see that.” + +“You’ll do that wherever you go,” Littlemore said—insufficiently enough, +as he felt. + +“I don’t want to attract so much; I think it’s vulgar.” She spoke as if +she liked to use the word. She was evidently open to new sources of +pleasure. + +“Every one was looking at you the other night at the theatre,” Littlemore +continued. “How can you hope to escape notice?” + +“I don’t want to escape notice. People have always looked at me and I +guess they always will. But there are different ways of being looked at, +and I know the way I want. I mean to have it too!” Mrs. Headway prettily +shrilled. Yes, she was full of purpose. + +He sat there face to face with her and for some time said nothing. He +had a mixture of feelings, and the memory of other places, other hours, +was stealing over him. There had been of old a very considerable absence +of interposing surfaces between these two—he had known her as one knew +people only amid the civilisation of big tornadoes and back piazzas. He +had liked her extremely in a place where it would have been ridiculous to +be difficult to please. But his sense of this fact was somehow connected +with other and such now alien facts; his liking for Nancy Beck was an +emotion of which the sole setting was a back piazza. She presented +herself here on a new basis—she appeared to want to be classified afresh. +Littlemore said to himself that this was too much trouble; he had taken +her at the great time in that way—he couldn’t begin at this late hour to +take her in another way. He asked himself if she were going to be a real +bore. It wasn’t easy to suppose her bent on ravage, but she might become +tiresome if she were too disposed to be different. It made him rather +afraid when she began to talk about European society, about his sister, +to pronounce things vulgar. Littlemore was naturally merciful and +decently just; but there was in his composition an element of the +indolent, the sceptical, perhaps even the brutal, which made him +decidedly prefer the simplicity of their former terms of intercourse. He +had no particular need to see a woman rise again, as the mystic process +was called; he didn’t believe in women’s rising again. He believed in +their not going down, thought it perfectly possible and eminently +desirable; but held it was much better for society that the divisions, +the categories, the differing values, should be kept clear. He didn’t +believe in bridging the chasms, in muddling the kinds. In general he +didn’t pretend to say what was good for society—society seemed to him +rather in a bad way; but he had a conviction on this particular point. +Nancy Beck going in for the great prizes, that spectacle might be +entertaining for a simple spectator; but it would be a nuisance, an +embarrassment, from the moment anything more than detached “fun” should +represent his share. He had no wish to be “mean,” but it might be well +to show her he wasn’t to be humbugged. + +“Oh if there’s anything you want you’ll have it,” he said in answer to +her last remark. “You’ve always had what you want.” + +“Well, I want something new this time. Does your sister reside in +London?” + +“My dear lady, what do you know about my sister?” Littlemore asked. +“She’s not a woman you’d care in the least for.” + +His old friend had a marked pause. “You don’t really respect me!” she +then abruptly and rather gaily cried. It had one of her “Texan” effects +of drollery; so that, yes, evidently, if he wished to preserve the +simplicity of their former intercourse she was willing to humour him. + +“Ah, my dear Mrs. Beck—!” he vaguely protested, using her former name +quite by accident. At San Pablo he—and apparently she—had never thought +whether he respected her or not. That never came up. + +“That’s a proof of it—calling me by that hateful name! Don’t you believe +I’m married? I haven’t been fortunate in my names,” she pensively added. + +“You make it very awkward when you say such mad things. My sister lives +most of the year in the country; she’s very simple, rather dull, perhaps +a trifle narrow-minded. You’re very clever, very lively, and as large +and loose and free as all creation. That’s why I think you wouldn’t like +her.” + +“You ought to be ashamed to run down your sister!” Mrs. Headway made +prompt answer. “You told me once—at San Pablo—that she was the nicest +woman you knew. I made a note of that, you see. And you told me she was +just my age. So that makes it rather inglorious for you if you won’t +introduce me!” With which she gave a laugh that perhaps a little +heralded danger. “I’m not in the least afraid of her being dull. It’s +all right, it’s just refined and nice, to be dull. I’m ever so much too +exciting.” + +“You are indeed, ever so much! But nothing is more easy than to know my +sister,” said Littlemore, who knew perfectly that what he said was +untrue. And then as a diversion from this delicate topic he brought out: +“Are you going to marry Sir Arthur?” + +“Don’t you think I’ve been married about enough?” + +“Possibly; but this is a new line, it would be different. An +Englishman—that’s a new sensation.” + +“If I _should_ marry it would be a European,” she said judiciously. + +“Your chance is very good—they’re all marrying Americans.” + +“He would have to be some one fine, the man I should marry now. I have a +good deal to make up, you know. That’s what I want to learn about Sir +Arthur. All this time you haven’t told me.” + +“I’ve nothing in the world to tell—I’ve never heard of him. Hasn’t he +told you himself?” + +“Nothing at all; he’s very modest. He doesn’t brag nor ‘blow’ nor make +himself out anything great. That’s what I like him for: I think it’s in +such good taste. I do love good taste!” said Mrs. Headway. “But all +this time,” she added, “you haven’t told me you’d help me.” + +“How can I help you? I’m no one here, you know—I’ve no power.” + +“You can help me by not preventing me. I want you to promise not to +prevent me.” She continued to give him her charming conscious eyes, +which seemed to look far into his own. + +“Good Lord, how could I prevent you?” + +“Well, I’m not quite sure of how. But you might try.” + +“Oh I’m too lazy and too stupid,” Littlemore said. + +“Yes,” she replied, musing as she still looked at him. “I think you’re +too stupid. But I think you’re also too kind,” she added more +graciously. She was almost irresistible when she said such a thing as +that. + +They talked for a quarter of an hour longer, and at last—as if she had +had scruples—she spoke to him of his own marriage, of the death of his +wife, matters to which she alluded more felicitously (as he thought) than +to some other points. “If you’ve a little girl you ought to be very +happy; that’s what I should like to have. Lord, I should make her a nice +woman! Not like me—in another style!” When he rose to leave her she +made a great point of his coming again—she was to be some weeks longer in +Paris. And he must bring Mr. Waterville. + +“Your English friend won’t like that—our coming very often,” Littlemore +reminded her as he stood with his hand on the door. + +But she met this without difficulty. “I don’t know what he has to do +with it.” + +“Neither do I. Only he must be in love with you.” + +“That doesn’t give him any right. Mercy, if I had had to put myself out +for all the men that have been in love with me!” + +“Of course you’d have had a terrible life. Even doing as you please +you’ve had rather an agitated one,” Littlemore pursued. “But your young +Englishman’s sentiments appear to give him the right to sit there, after +one comes in, looking blighted and bored. That might become very +tiresome.” + +“The moment he becomes tiresome I send him away. You can trust me for +that.” + +“Oh it doesn’t matter after all.” Our friend was perfectly conscious +that nothing would suit him less than to have undisturbed possession of +Mrs. Headway. + +She came out with him into the antechamber. Mr. Max, the courier, was +fortunately not there. She lingered a little; she appeared to have more +to say. “On the contrary he likes you to come,” she then continued; “he +wants to study my friends.” + +“To study them?” + +“He wants to find out about me, and he thinks they may tell him +something. Some day he’ll ask you right out ‘What sort of a woman is she +anyway?’” + +“Hasn’t he found out yet?” + +“He doesn’t understand me,” said Mrs. Headway, surveying the front of her +dress. “He has never seen any one like me.” + +“I should imagine not!” + +“So he’ll just try to find out from you.” + +“Well then he _shall_ find out,” Littlemore returned. “I’ll just tell +him you’re the most charming woman in Europe.” + +“That ain’t a description! Besides, he knows it. He wants to know if +I’m respectable.” + +“Why should he fuss about it?” Littlemore asked—not at once. + +She grew a little pale; she seemed to be watching his lips. “Well, mind +you tell him all right,” she went on, with her wonderful gay glare, the +strain of which yet brought none of her colour back. + +“Respectable? I’ll tell him you’re adorable!” + +She stood a moment longer. “Ah, you’re no use!” she rather harshly +wailed. And she suddenly turned away and passed back into her +sitting-room, with the heavy rustle of her far-trailing skirts. + + + +III + + +“Elle ne doute de rien!” Littlemore said to himself as he walked away +from the hotel; and he repeated the phrase in talking about her to +Waterville. “She wants to be right,” he added; “but she’ll never really +succeed. She has begun too late, she’ll never get on the true middle of +the note. However, she won’t know when she’s wrong, so it doesn’t +signify!” And he more or less explained what he meant by this +discrimination. She’d remain in certain essentials incurable. She had +no delicacy; no discretion; no shading; she was a woman who suddenly said +to you, “You don’t really respect me!” As if that were a thing for a +woman to say! + +“It depends upon what she meant by it.” Waterville could always imagine +alternatives. + +“The more she meant by it the less she ought to say it!” Littlemore +declared. + +But he returned to the Hôtel Meurice and on the next occasion took this +companion with him. The secretary of legation, who had not often been in +close quarters with pretty women whose respectability, or whose lack of +it, was so frankly discussable, was prepared to find the well-known Texan +belle a portentous type. He was afraid there might be danger in her, but +on the whole he felt armed. The object of his devotion at present was +his country, or at least the Department of State; he had no intention of +being diverted from that allegiance. Besides, he had his ideal of the +attractive woman—a person pitched in a very much lower key than this +shining, smiling, rustling, chattering daughter of the Territories. The +woman he should care for would have repose, a sense of the private in +life, and the implied, even the withheld, in talk; would sometimes let +one alone. Mrs. Headway was personal, familiar, intimate, perpetually +appealing or accusing, demanding explanations and pledges, saying things +one had to answer. All this was accompanied with a hundred smiles and +radiations and other natural graces, but the general effect was +distinctly fatiguing. She had certainly a great deal of charm, an +immense desire to please, and a wonderful collection of dresses and +trinkets; but she was eager and clamorous, and it was hard for other +people to be put to serve her appetite. If she wanted to get into +society there was no reason why those of her visitors who had the luck to +be themselves independent, to be themselves placed, and to be themselves +by the same token critical, should wish to see her there; for it was this +absence of common social encumbrances made her drawing-room attractive. +There was no doubt whatever that she was several women in one, and she +ought to content herself with that sort of numerical triumph. Littlemore +said to Waterville that it was stupid of her to wish to scale the +heights; she ought to know how much more she was in her element scouring +the plain. She appeared vaguely to irritate him; even her fluttering +attempts at self-culture—she had become a great judge of books and +pictures and plays, and pronounced off-hand—constituted a vague +invocation, an appeal for sympathy onerous to a man who disliked the +trouble of revising old decisions consecrated by a certain amount of +reminiscence that might be called tender. She exerted, however, +effectively enough one of the arts of solicitation—she often startled and +surprised. Even Waterville felt a touch of the unexpected, though not +indeed an excess of it, to belong to his conception of the woman who +should have an ideal repose. Of course there were two kinds of +surprises, and only one of them thoroughly pleasant, though Mrs. Headway +dealt impartially in both. She had the sudden delights, the odd +exclamations, the queer curiosities of a person who has grown up in a +country where everything is new and many things ugly, and who, with a +natural turn for the arts and amenities of life, makes a tardy +acquaintance with some of the finer usages, the higher pleasures. She +was provincial; it was easy to see how she embodied that term; it took no +great cleverness. But what was Parisian enough—if to be Parisian was the +measure of success—was the way she picked up ideas and took a hint from +every circumstance. “Only give me time and I guess I’ll come out all +right,” she said to Littlemore, who watched her progress with a mixture +of admiration and regret. She delighted to speak of herself as a poor +little barbarian grubbing up crumbs of knowledge, and this habit borrowed +beautiful relief from her delicate face, her so highly developed dress +and the free felicity of her manners. + +One of her surprises was, that after that first visit she said no more to +Littlemore about Mrs. Dolphin. He did her perhaps the grossest +injustice, but he had quite expected her to bring up this lady whenever +they met. “If she’ll only leave Agnes alone she may do what she will,” +he said to Waterville, expressing his satisfaction. “My sister would +never look at her, and it would be very awkward to have to tell her so.” +She counted on aid; she made him feel this simply by the way she looked +at him; but for the moment she demanded no definite service. She held +her tongue but waited, and her patience itself was a deeper admonition. +In the way of society, it had to be noted, her privileges were meagre, +Sir Arthur Demesne and her two compatriots being, so far as the latter +could discover, her only visitors. She might have had other friends, but +she held her head very high and liked better to see no one than not to +see the best company. She went in, clearly, for producing the effect of +being by no means so neglected as fastidious. There were plenty of +Americans in Paris, but in this direction she failed to extend her +acquaintance; the nice people wouldn’t come to her, and nothing would +have induced her to receive the others. She had a perfect and inexorable +view of those she wished to avoid. Littlemore expected her every day to +ask why he didn’t bring some of his friends—as to which he had his answer +ready. It was rather a poor one, for it consisted but of the “academic” +assurance that he wished to keep her for himself. She would be sure to +retort that this was “too thin,” as indeed it was; yet the days went by +without her calling him to account. The little American colony in Paris +abounded in amiable women, but there were none to whom Littlemore could +make up his mind to say that it would be a favour to him they should call +on Mrs. Headway. He shouldn’t like them the better for doing so, and he +wished to like those of whom he might ask a favour. Except, therefore, +that he occasionally spoke of her as a full-blown flower of the West, +still very pretty, but of not at all orthodox salon scent, who had +formerly been a great chum of his, she remained unknown in the circles of +the Avenue Gabriel and the streets that encircle the Arch of Triumph. To +ask the men to go see her without asking the ladies would only accentuate +the fact that he didn’t ask the ladies; so he asked no one at all. +Besides, it was true—just a little—that he wished to keep her to himself, +and he was fatuous enough to believe she really cared more for him than +for any outsider. Of course, however, he would never dream of marrying +her, whereas her Englishman apparently was capable of that quaintness. +She hated her old past; she often made that point, talking of this “dark +backward” as if it were an appendage of the same order as a thieving cook +or a noisy bedroom or even an inconvenient protrusion of drapery. +Therefore, as Littlemore was part of the very air of the previous it +might have been supposed she would hate him too and wish to banish him, +with all the images he recalled, from her sight. But she made an +exception in his favour, and if she disliked their early relations as a +chapter of her own history she seemed still to like them as a chapter of +his. He felt how she clung to him, how she believed he could make a +great and blest difference for her and in the long run would. It was to +the long run that she appeared little by little to have attuned herself. + +She succeeded perfectly in maintaining harmony between Sir Arthur Demesne +and her American visitors, who spent much less time in her drawing-room. +She had easily persuaded him that there were no grounds for jealousy and +that they had no wish, as she said, to crowd him out; for it was +ridiculous to be jealous of two persons at once, and Rupert Waterville, +after he had learned the way to her favour and her fireside, presented +himself as often as his original introducer. The two indeed usually came +together and they ended by relieving their competitor of a part of the +weight of his problem. This amiable and earnest but slightly fatuous +young man, who had not yet made up his mind, was sometimes rather +oppressed with the magnitude of the undertaking, and when alone with Mrs. +Headway occasionally found the tension of his thoughts quite painful. He +was very slim and straight and looked taller than his height; he had the +prettiest silkiest hair, which waved away from a large white forehead, +and he was endowed with a nose of the so-called Roman model. He looked, +in spite of these attributes, younger than his years, partly on account +of the delicacy of his complexion and the almost child-like candour of +his round blue eyes. He was diffident and self-conscious; there were +certain letters he couldn’t pronounce. At the same time he carried +himself as one brought up to fill a considerable place in the world, with +whom confidence had become a duty and correctness a habit, and who, +though he might occasionally be a little awkward about small things, +would be sure to acquit himself honourably in great ones. He was very +simple and believed himself very serious; he had the blood of a score of +Warwickshire squires in his veins, mingled in the last instance with the +somewhat paler fluid still animating the long-necked daughter of a banker +who, after promising himself high glories as a father-in-law, had by the +turn of events been reduced to looking for them in Sir Baldwin Demesne. +The boy who was the only fruit of that gentleman’s marriage had come into +his title at five years of age; his mother, who was somehow parentally +felt to have a second time broken faith with expectation by not having +better guarded the neck of her husband, broken in the hunting-field, +watched over him with a tenderness that burned as steadily as a candle +shaded by a transparent hand. She never admitted even to herself that he +was not the cleverest of men; but it took all her own cleverness, which +was much greater, to maintain this appearance. Fortunately he wasn’t +wild, so that he would never marry an actress or a governess, like two or +three of the young men who had been at Eton with him. With this ground +of nervousness the less Lady Demesne awaited with a proud patience his +appointment to some high office. He represented in Parliament the +Conservative instincts and vote of a red-roofed market town, and, sending +regularly to his bookseller for the new publications on economical +subjects, was determined his political development should have a massive +statistical basis. He was not conceited; he was only +misinformed—misinformed, I mean, about himself. He thought himself +essential to the propriety of things—not as an individual, but as an +institution. This conviction indeed was too sacred to betray itself by +vulgar assumptions. If he was a little man in a big place he never +strutted nor talked loud; he merely felt it as a luxury that he had a +large social circumference. It was like sleeping in a big bed; +practically one didn’t toss about the more, but one felt a greater +freshness. + +He had never seen anything like Mrs. Headway; he hardly knew by what +standard to measure her. She was not at all the English lady—not one of +those with whom he had been accustomed to converse; yet it was impossible +not to make out in her a temper and a tone. He might have been sure she +was provincial, but as he was much under her charm he compromised by +pronouncing her only foreign. It was of course provincial to be foreign; +but this was after all a peculiarity which she shared with a great many +nice people. He wasn’t wild, and his mother had flattered herself that +in this all-important matter he wouldn’t be perverse; yet it was far from +regular that he should have taken a fancy to an American widow, five +years older than himself, who knew no one and who sometimes didn’t appear +to understand exactly who he was. Though he believed in no alternative +to the dignity of the British consciousness, it was precisely her +foreignness that pleased him; she seemed as little as possible of his own +race and creed; there wasn’t a touch of Warwickshire in her composition. +She was like an Hungarian or a Pole, with the difference that he could +almost make out her speech. The unfortunate young man was engulfed even +while not admitting that he had done more than estimate his distance to +the brink. He would love wisely—one might even so love agreeably. He +had intelligently arranged his life; he had determined to marry at +thirty-two. A long line of ancestors was watching him; he hardly knew +what they would think of Mrs. Headway. He hardly knew what he thought +himself; the only thing he was absolutely sure of was that she made the +time pass as it passed in no other pursuit. That, indeed, rather worried +him; he was by no means sure anything so precious should be so little +accounted for. There was nothing so to account but the fragments of Mrs. +Headway’s conversation, the peculiarities of her accent, the sallies of +her wit, the audacities of her fancy, the odd echoes of her past. Of +course he knew she had had a past; she wasn’t a young girl, she was a +widow—and widows were essentially the expression of an accomplished fact. +He was not jealous of her antecedents, but he would have liked a little +to piece them together, and it was here the difficulty occurred. The +subject was illumined with fitful flashes, but never placed itself before +him as a general picture. He asked her various questions, but her +answers were so startling that, like sudden luminous points, they seemed +to intensify the darkness round their edges. She had apparently spent +her life in a remote province of a barbarous country, but it didn’t +follow from this that she herself had been low. She had been a lily +among thistles, and there was something romantic possibly in the interest +taken by a man of his position in a woman of hers. It pleased Sir Arthur +to believe he was romantic; that had been the case with several of his +ancestors, who supplied a precedent without which he would scarce perhaps +have ventured to trust himself. He was the victim of perplexities from +which a single spark of direct perception would have saved him. He took +everything in the literal sense; a grain of humour or of imagination +would have saved him, but such things were never so far from him as when +he had begun to stray helplessly in the realm of wonder. He sat there +vaguely waiting for something to happen and not committing himself by +rash declarations. If he was in love it was in his own way, +reflectively, inexpressibly, obstinately. He was waiting for the formula +which would justify his conduct and Mrs. Headway’s peculiarities. He +hardly knew where it would come from; you might have thought from his +manner that he would discover it in one of the elaborate _entreés_ that +were served to the pair when she consented to dine with him at Bignon’s +or the Café Anglais; or in one of the luxurious band-boxes that arrived +from the Rue de la Paix and from which she often lifted the lid in the +presence of her admirer. There were moments when he got weary of waiting +in vain, and at these moments the arrival of her American friends—he +often asked himself why she had so few—seemed to lift the mystery from +his shoulders and give him a chance to rest. This apology for a plan she +herself might yet scarce contribute to, since she couldn’t know how much +ground it was expected to cover. She talked about her past because she +thought it the best thing to do; she had a shrewd conviction that it was +somehow better made use of and confessed to, even in a manner presented +or paraded, than caused to stretch behind her as a mere nameless desert. +She could at least a little irrigate and plant the waste. She had to +have some geography, though the beautiful blank rose-coloured map-spaces +of unexplored countries were what she would have preferred. She had no +objection to telling fibs, but now that she was taking a new departure +wished to indulge only in such as were imperative. She would have been +delighted might she have squeezed through with none at all. A few, +verily, were indispensable, and we needn’t attempt to scan too critically +the more or less adventurous excursions into poetry and fable with which +she entertained and mystified Sir Arthur. She knew of course that as a +product of fashionable circles she was nowhere, but she might have great +success as a child of nature. + + + +IV + + +Rupert Waterville, in the midst of intercourse in which every one perhaps +had a good many mental reserves, never forgot that he was in a +representative position, that he was official and responsible; and he +asked himself more than once how far he was sure it was right, as they +said in Boston, to countenance Mrs. Headway’s claim to the character even +of the American lady thrown to the surface by the late inordinate spread +of excavation. In his own way as puzzled as poor Sir Arthur, he indeed +flattered himself he was as particular as any Englishman could be. +Suppose that after all this free association the well-known Texan belle +should come over to London and ask at the Legation to be presented to the +Queen? It would be so awkward to refuse her—of course they would have to +refuse her—that he was very careful to make no tacit promises. She might +construe anything as a tacit promise—he knew how the smallest gestures of +diplomatists were studied and interpreted. It was his effort, therefore, +to be really diplomatic in his relations with this attractive but +dangerous woman. The party of four used often to dine together—Sir +Arthur pushed his confidence so far—and on these occasions their fair +friend, availing herself of one of the privileges of a _femme du monde_ +even at the most expensive restaurant, used to wipe her glasses with her +napkin. One evening when after polishing a goblet she held it up to the +light, giving it, with her head on one side, the least glimmer of a wink, +he noted as he watched her that she looked like a highly modern +bacchante. He observed at this moment that the Baronet was gazing at her +too, and wondered if the same idea had come to him. He often wondered +what the Baronet thought; he had devoted first and last a good deal of +attention to the psychology of the English “great land-owning” +consciousness. Littlemore, alone, at this moment, was characteristically +detached; he never appeared to watch Mrs. Headway, though she so often +watched him. Waterville asked himself among other things why Sir Arthur +hadn’t brought his own friends to see her, for Paris during the several +weeks that now elapsed abounded in English visitors. He guessed at her +having asked him and his having refused; he would have liked particularly +to know if she had asked him. He explained his curiosity to Littlemore, +who, however, took very little interest in it. Littlemore expressed +nevertheless the conviction that she _would_ have asked him; she never +would be deterred by false delicacy. + +“She has been very delicate with _you_,” Waterville returned to this. +“She hasn’t been at all pressing of late.” + +“It’s only because she has given me up. She thinks I’m a brute.” + +“I wonder what she thinks of me,” Waterville pensively said. + +“Oh, she counts upon you to introduce her to the American Minister at the +Court of Saint James’s,” Littlemore opined without mercy. “It’s lucky +for you our representative here’s absent.” + +“Well, the Minister has settled two or three difficult questions and I +suppose can settle this one. I shall do nothing but by the orders of my +chief.” He was very fond of alluding to his chief. + +“She does me injustice,” Littlemore added in a moment. “I’ve spoken to +several people about her.” + +“Oh, but what have you told them?” + +“That she lives at the Hôtel Meurice and wants to know nice people.” + +“They’re flattered, I suppose, at your thinking them nice, but they don’t +go,” said Waterville. + +“I spoke of her to Mrs. Bagshaw, and Mrs. Bagshaw has promised to go.” + +“Ah,” Waterville murmured; “you don’t call Mrs. Bagshaw nice! Mrs. +Headway won’t take up with Mrs. Bagshaw.” + +“Well, then, that’s exactly what she wants—to be able to cut some one!” + +Waterville had a theory that Sir Arthur was keeping Mrs. Headway as a +surprise—he meant perhaps to produce her during the next London season. +He presently, however, learned as much about the matter as he could have +desired to know. He had once offered to accompany his beautiful +compatriot to the Museum of the Luxembourg and tell her a little about +the modern French school. She had not examined this collection, in spite +of her resolve to see everything remarkable—she carried her “Murray” in +her lap even when she went to see the great tailor in the Rue de la Paix, +to whom, as she said, she had given no end of points—for she usually went +to such places with Sir Arthur, who was indifferent to the modern +painters of France. “He says there are much better men in England. I +must wait for the Royal Academy next year. He seems to think one can +wait for anything, but I’m not so good at waiting as he. I can’t afford +to wait—I’ve waited long enough.” So much as this Mrs. Headway said on +the occasion of her arranging with Rupert Waterville that they should +some day visit the Luxembourg together. She alluded to the Englishman as +if he were her husband or her brother, her natural protector and +companion. + +“I wonder if she knows how that sounds?” Waterville again throbbingly +brooded. “I don’t believe she would do it if she knew how it sounds.” +And he also drew the moral that when one was a well-known Texan belle +there was no end to the things one had to learn: so marked was the +difference between being well-known and being well-bred. Clever as she +was, Mrs. Headway was right in saying she couldn’t afford to wait. She +must learn, she must live quickly. She wrote to Waterville one day to +propose that they should go to the Museum on the morrow; Sir Arthur’s +mother was in Paris, on her way to Cannes, where she was to spend the +winter. She was only passing through, but she would be there three days, +and he would naturally give himself up to her. She appeared to have the +properest ideas as to what a gentleman would propose to do for his +mother. She herself, therefore, should be free, and she named the hour +at which she should expect him to call for her. He was punctual to the +appointment, and they drove across the river in a large high-hung +barouche in which she constantly rolled about Paris. With Mr. Max on the +box—the courier sported enormous whiskers—this vehicle had an appearance +of great respectability, though Sir Arthur assured her (what she repeated +to her other friends) that in London next year they would do the thing +much better for her. It struck her other friends, of course, that this +backer was prepared to go very far; which on the whole was what +Waterville would have expected of him. Littlemore simply remarked that +at San Pablo she drove herself about in a ramshackle buggy with muddy +wheels and a mule very often in the shafts. Waterville throbbed afresh +as he asked himself if the mother of a Tory M.P. would really consent to +know her. She must of course be aware that it was a woman who was +keeping her son in Paris at a season when English gentlemen were most +naturally employed in shooting partridges. + +“She’s staying at the Hôtel du Rhin, and I’ve made him feel that he +mustn’t leave her while she’s here,” Mrs. Headway said as they drove up +the narrow Rue de Seine. “Her name’s Lady Demesne, but her full title’s +the Honourable Lady Demesne, as she’s a Baron’s daughter. Her father +used to be a banker, but he did something or other for the Government—the +Tories, you know they call them—and so he was raised to the peerage. So +you see one _can_ be raised! She has a lady with her as a companion.” +Waterville’s neighbour gave him this information with a seriousness that +made him smile; he tried to measure the degree to which it wouldn’t have +occurred to her that he didn’t know how a Baron’s daughter was addressed. +In that she was truly provincial; she had a way of exaggerating the value +of her intellectual acquisitions and of assuming that others had shared +her darkness. He noted, too, that she had ended by suppressing poor Sir +Arthur’s name altogether and designating him only by a sort of conjugal +pronoun. She had been so much and so easily married that she was full of +these misleading references to gentlemen. + + + +V + + +They walked through the gallery of the Luxembourg, and, except that Mrs. +Headway directed her beautiful gold _face-à-main_ to everything at once +and to nothing long enough, talked, as usual, rather too loud and +bestowed too much attention on the bad copies and strange copyists that +formed a circle round several indifferent pictures, she was an agreeable +companion and a grateful recipient of “tips.” She was quick to +understand, and Waterville was sure that before she left the gallery she +had made herself mistress of a new subject and was quite prepared to +compare the French school critically with the London exhibitions of the +following year. As he had remarked more than once with Littlemore, she +did alternate in the rummest stripes. Her conversation, her personality, +were full of little joints and seams, all of them very visible, where the +old and the new had been pieced and white-threaded together. When they +had passed through the different rooms of the palace Mrs. Headway +proposed that instead of returning directly they should take a stroll in +the adjoining gardens, which she wished very much to see and was sure she +should like. She had quite seized the difference between the old Paris +and the new, and felt the force of the romantic associations of the Latin +quarter as perfectly as if she had enjoyed all the benefits of modern +culture. The autumn sun was warm in the alleys and terraces of the +Luxembourg; the masses of foliage above them, clipped and squared, rusty +with ruddy patches, shed a thick lacework over the white sky, which was +streaked with the palest blue. The beds of flowers near the palace were +of the vividest yellow and red, and the sunlight rested on the smooth +grey walls of those parts of its basement that looked south; in front of +which, on the long green benches, a row of brown-cheeked nurses, in white +caps and white aprons, sat yielding sustenance to as many bundles of +white drapery. There were other white caps wandering in the broad paths, +attended by little brown French children; the small straw-seated chairs +were piled and stacked in some places and disseminated in others. An old +lady in black, with white hair fastened over each of her temples by a +large black comb, sat on the edge of a stone bench (too high for her +delicate length) motionless, staring straight before her and holding a +large door-key; under a tree a priest was reading—you could see his lips +move at a distance; a young soldier, dwarfish and red-legged, strolled +past with his hands in his pockets, which were very much distended. +Waterville sat down with Mrs. Headway on the straw-bottomed chairs and +she presently said: “I like this—it’s even better than the pictures in +the gallery. It’s more of a picture.” + +“Everything in France is a picture—even things that are ugly,” Waterville +replied. “Everything makes a subject.” + +“Well, I like France!” she summed up with a small incongruous sigh. Then +suddenly, from an impulse more conceivably allied to such a sound, she +added: “He asked me to go and see her, but I told him I wouldn’t. She +may come and see me if she likes.” This was so abrupt that Waterville +was slightly confounded; then he saw she had returned by a short cut to +Sir Arthur Demesne and his honourable mother. Waterville liked to know +about other people’s affairs, yet didn’t like this taste to be imputed to +him; and therefore, though much desiring to see how the old lady, as he +called her, would treat his companion, he was rather displeased with the +latter for being so confidential. He had never assumed he was so +intimate with her as that. Mrs. Headway, however, had a manner of taking +intimacy for granted—a manner Sir Arthur’s mother at least wouldn’t be +sure to like. He showed for a little no certainty of what she was +talking about, but she scarcely explained. She only went on through +untraceable transitions. “The least she can do is to come. I’ve been +very kind to her son. That’s not a reason for my going to her—it’s a +reason for her coming to me. Besides, if she doesn’t like what I’ve done +she can leave me alone. I want to get into European society, but I want +to do so in my own way. I don’t want to run after people; I want them to +run after me. I guess they will, some day!” Waterville listened to this +with his eyes on the ground; he felt himself turn very red. There was +something in such crudities on the part of the ostensibly refined that +shocked and mortified him, and Littlemore had been right in speaking of +her lack of the _nuance_. She was terribly distinct; her motives, her +impulses, her desires glared like the lighted signs of cafés-concerts. +She needed to keep on view, to hand about, like a woman with things to +sell on an hotel-terrace, her precious intellectual wares. Vehement +thought, with Mrs. Headway, was inevitably speech, though speech was not +always thought, and now she had suddenly become vehement. “If she does +once come—then, ah then, I shall be too perfect with her; I shan’t let +her go! But she must take the first step. I confess I hope she’ll be +nice.” + +“Perhaps she won’t,” said Waterville perversely. + +“Well, I don’t care if she ain’t. He has never told me anything about +her; never a word about any of his own belongings. If I wished I might +believe he’s ashamed of them.” + +“I don’t think it’s that.” + +“I know it ain’t. I know what it is. It’s just regular European +refinement. He doesn’t want to show off; he’s too much of a gentleman. +He doesn’t want to dazzle me—he wants me to like him for himself. Well, +I do like him,” she added in a moment. “But I shall like him still +better if he brings his mother. They shall know that in America.” + +“Do you think it will make an impression in America?” Waterville amusedly +asked. + +“It will show I’m visited by the British aristocracy. They won’t love +that.” + +“Surely they grudge you no innocent pleasure,” the young man laughed. + +“They grudged me common politeness—when I was in New York! Did you ever +hear how they treated me when I came on from my own section?” + +Waterville stared; this episode was quite new to him. His companion had +turned toward him; her pretty head was tossed back like a flower in the +wind; there was a flush in her cheek, a more questionable charm in her +eye. “Ah, my dear New Yorkers, they’re incapable of rudeness!” he cried. + +“You’re one of them, I see. But I don’t speak of the men. The men were +well enough—though they did allow it.” + +“Allow what, Mrs. Headway?” He was quite thrillingly in the dark. + +She wouldn’t answer at once; her eyes, glittering a little, were fixed on +memories still too vivid. “What did you hear about me over there? Don’t +pretend you heard nothing.” + +He had heard nothing at all; there had not been a word about Mrs. Headway +in New York. He couldn’t pretend and he was obliged to tell her this. +“But I’ve been away,” he added, “and in America I didn’t go out. There’s +nothing to go out for in New York—only insipid boys and girls.” + +“There are plenty of spicy old women, who settled I was a bad bold thing. +They found out I was in the ‘gay’ line. They discovered I was known to +the authorities. I _am_ very well known all out West—I’m known from +Chicago to San Francisco; if not personally, at least by reputation. I’m +known to all classes. People can tell you out there. In New York they +decided I wasn’t good enough. Not good enough for New York! What do you +say to that?”—it rang out for derision. Whether she had struggled with +her pride before making her avowal her confidant of this occasion never +knew. The strange want of dignity, as he felt, in her grievance seemed +to indicate that she had no pride, and yet there was a sore spot, really +a deep wound, in her heart which, touched again, renewed its ache. “I +took a house for the winter—one of the handsomest houses in the place—but +I sat there all alone. They thought me ‘gay,’ _me_ gay there on +Fifty-Eighth Street without so much as a cat!” + +Waterville was embarrassed; diplomatist as he was he hardly knew what +line to take. He couldn’t see the need or the propriety of her overflow; +though the incident appeared to have been most curious and he was glad to +know the facts on the best authority. It was the first he did know of +this remarkable woman’s having spent a winter in his native city—which +was virtually a proof of her having come and gone in complete obscurity. +It was vain for him to pretend he had been a good deal away, for he had +been appointed to his post in London only six months before, and Mrs. +Headway’s social failure ante-dated that event. In the midst of these +reflexions he had an inspiration. He attempted neither to question, to +explain nor to apologise; he ventured simply to lay his hand for an +instant on her own and to exclaim as gallantly as possible: “I wish _I_ +had known!” + +“I had plenty of men—but men don’t count. If they’re not a positive help +they’re a hindrance, so that the more you have the worse it looks. The +women simply turned their backs.” + +“They were afraid of you—they were jealous,” the young man produced. + +“It’s very good of you to try and patch it up; all I know is that not one +of them crossed my threshold. No, you needn’t try and tone it down; I +know perfectly how the case stands. In New York, if you please, I didn’t +go.” + +“So much the worse for New York!” cried Waterville, who, as he afterwards +said to Littlemore, had got quite worked up. + +“And now you know why I want to get into society over here?” She jumped +up and stood before him; with a dry hard smile she looked down at him. +Her smile itself was an answer to her question; it expressed a sharp +vindictive passion. There was an abruptness in her movements which left +her companion quite behind; but as he still sat there returning her +glance he felt he at last in the light of that smile, the flash of that +almost fierce demand, understood Mrs. Headway. + +She turned away to walk to the gate of the garden, and he went with her, +laughing vaguely and uneasily at her tragic tone. Of course she expected +him to serve, all obligingly, all effectively, her rancour; but his +female relations, his mother and his sisters, his innumerable cousins, +had been a party to the slight she had suffered, and he reflected as he +walked along that after all they had been right. They had been right in +not going to see a woman who could chatter that way about her social +wrongs; whether she were respectable or not they had had the true +assurance she’d be vulgar. European society might let her in, but +European society had its limpness. New York, Waterville said to himself +with a glow of civic pride, was quite capable of taking a higher stand in +such a matter than London. They went some distance without speaking; at +last he said, expressing honestly the thought at that moment uppermost in +his mind: “I hate that phrase, ‘getting into society.’ I don’t think one +ought to attribute to one’s self that sort of ambition. One ought to +assume that one’s _in_ the confounded thing—that one _is_ society—and to +hold that if one has good manners one has, from the social point of view, +achieved the great thing. ‘The best company’s where I am,’ any lady or +gentleman should feel. The rest can take care of itself.” + +For a moment she appeared not to understand, then she broke out: “Well, I +suppose I haven’t good manners; at any rate I’m not satisfied! Of course +I don’t talk right—I know that very well. But let me get where I want to +first—then I’ll look after the details. If I once get there I shall be +perfect!” she cried with a tremor of passion. They reached the gate of +the garden and stood a moment outside, opposite the low arcade of the +Odéon, lined with bookstalls, at which Waterville cast a slightly wistful +glance, waiting for Mrs. Headway’s carriage, which had drawn up at a +short distance. The whiskered Max had seated himself within and, on the +tense elastic cushions, had fallen into a doze. The carriage got into +motion without his waking; he came to his senses only as it stopped +again. He started up staring and then without confusion proceeded to +descend. + +“I’ve learned it in Italy—they call it the _siesta_,” he remarked with an +agreeable smile, holding the door open to Mrs. Headway. + +“Well, I should think you had and they might!” this lady replied, +laughing amicably as she got into the vehicle, where Waterville placed +himself beside her. It was not a surprise to him that she spoiled her +courier; she naturally would spoil her courier. But civilisation begins +at home, he brooded; and the incident threw an ironic light on her desire +to get into society. It failed, however, to divert her thoughts from the +subject she was discussing with her friend, for as Max ascended the box +and the carriage went on its way she threw out another note of defiance. +“If once I’m all right over here I guess I can make New York do +something! You’ll see the way those women will squirm.” + +Waterville was sure his mother and sisters wouldn’t squirm; but he felt +afresh, as the carriage rolled back to the Hôtel Meurice, that now he +understood Mrs. Headway. As they were about to enter the court of the +hotel a closed carriage passed before them, and while a few moments later +he helped his companion to alight he saw that Sir Arthur Demesne had +stepped from the other vehicle. Sir Arthur perceived Mrs. Headway and +instantly gave his hand to a lady seated in the coupé. This lady emerged +with a certain slow impressiveness, and as she stood before the door of +the hotel—a woman still young and fair, with a good deal of height, +gentle, tranquil, plainly dressed, yet distinctly imposing—it came over +our young friend that the Tory member had brought _his_ principal female +relative to call on Nancy Beck. Mrs. Headway’s triumph had begun; the +dowager Lady Demesne had taken the first step. Waterville wondered +whether the ladies in New York, notified by some magnetic wave, were +beginning to be convulsed. Mrs. Headway, quickly conscious of what had +happened, was neither too prompt to appropriate the visit nor too slow to +acknowledge it. She just paused, smiling at Sir Arthur. + +“I should like to introduce my mother—she wants very much to know you.” +He approached Mrs. Headway; the lady had taken his arm. She was at once +simple and circumspect; she had every resource of the English matron. + +Mrs. Headway, without advancing a step, put out a hand as if to draw her +quickly closer. “I declare you’re too sweet!” Waterville heard her say. + +He was turning away, as his own business was over; but the young +Englishman, who had surrendered his companion, not to say his victim, to +the embrace, as it might now almost be called, of their hostess, just +checked him with a friendly gesture. “I daresay I shan’t see you +again—I’m going away.” + +“Good-bye then,” said Waterville. “You return to England?” + +“No—I go to Cannes with my mother.” + +“You remain at Cannes?” + +“Till Christmas very likely.” + +The ladies, escorted by Mr. Max, had passed into the hotel, and +Waterville presently concluded this exchange. He smiled as he walked +away, making it analytically out that poor Sir Arthur had obtained a +concession, in the domestic sphere, only at the price of a concession. + +The next morning he looked up Littlemore, from whom he had a standing +invitation to breakfast, and who, as usual, was smoking a cigar and +turning over a dozen newspapers. Littlemore had a large apartment and an +accomplished cook; he got up late and wandered about his rooms all the +morning, stopping from time to time to look out of his windows, which +overhung the Place de la Madeleine. They had not been seated many +minutes at breakfast when the visitor mentioned that Mrs. Headway was +about to be abandoned by her friend, who was going to Cannes. + +But once more he was to feel how little he might ever enlighten this +comrade. “He came last night to bid me good-bye,” Littlemore said. + +Again Waterville wondered. “Very civil of him, then, all of a sudden.” + +“He didn’t come from civility—he came from curiosity. Having dined here +he had a pretext for calling.” + +“I hope his curiosity was satisfied,” our young man generously dropped. + +“Well, I suspect not. He sat here some time, but we talked only about +what he didn’t want to know.” + +“And what _did_ he want to know?” + +“Whether I know anything against Nancy Beck.” + +Waterville stared. “Did he call her Nancy Beck?” + +“We never mentioned her; but I saw what he was after and that he quite +yearned to lead up to her. I wouldn’t do it.” + +“Ah, poor man!” Waterville sighed. + +“I don’t see why you pity him,” said Littlemore. “Mrs. Beck’s admirers +were never pitied.” + +“Well, of course he wants to marry her.” + +“Let him do it then. I’ve nothing to say to it.” + +“He believes there’s something about her, somewhere in time or space, +that may make a pretty big mouthful.” + +“Let him leave it alone then.” + +“How can he if he’s really hit?”—Waterville spoke as from sad experience. + +“Ah, my dear fellow, he must settle it himself. He has no right at any +rate to put me such a question. There was a moment, just as he was +going, when he had it on his tongue’s end. He stood there in the +doorway, he couldn’t leave me—he was going to plump out with it. He +looked at me straight, and I looked straight at him; we remained that way +for almost a minute. Then he decided not, on the whole, to risk it and +took himself off.” + +Waterville assisted at this passage with intense interest. “And if he +had asked you, what would you have said?” + +“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 passed 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 nobly,” 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 +assisted 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 +assured him she knew half the Roman nobility. “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 cocktails—nobody 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 Hôtel 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, passed +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 +passage. + +“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 assigned befitted his diplomatic dignity. +On emerging from his room he found there was an ambassador in the house, +and this discovery was a check to unrest. He tacitly assumed that he +should have had a better room if it hadn’t been for the ambassador, 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 assembled for dinner in the principal 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 glass, 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 +lustre, 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 identity less definite. Poor Sir Arthur sat +between two ladies much older than himself, whose names, redolent of +history, Waterville had often heard and had associated 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 lustre, the +collective _scintillae_, that didn’t proceed from silver, porcelain, +glass 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 amusement 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. + +He turned from her as well. He didn’t know what he had done to deserve +such treatment. It was a complete surprise; he had never seen her like +that before. She was a very vulgar woman; that was the way people dealt +with each other, he supposed, on hideous back piazzas. He threw himself +almost passionately into contact with the others, who all seemed to him, +possibly a little by contrast, extraordinarily genial and friendly. He +had not, however, the consolation of seeing Mrs. Headway punished for her +rudeness—she wasn’t in the least neglected. On the contrary, in the part +of the room where she sat the group was denser and repeatedly broke into +gusts of unanimous laughter. Yes, if she should amuse them she might +doubtless get anywhere and do anything, and evidently she was amusing +them. + + + +VII + + +If she was strange, at any rate he hadn’t come to the end of her +strangeness. The next day was a Sunday and uncommonly fine; he was down +before breakfast and took a walk in the park, stopping to gaze at the +thin-legged deer on the remoter slopes, who reminded him of small +pin-cushions turned upside down, and wandering along the edge of a large +sheet of ornamental water which had a temple in imitation of that of +Vesta on an island in the middle. He thought at this time no more of +Mrs. Headway; he only reflected that these stately objects had for at +least a hundred years furnished a background to a great deal of heavy +history. Further reflexion would perhaps have suggested to him that she +might yet become a feature in the record that so spread itself. Two or +three ladies failed to appear at breakfast; the well-known Texan belle +was one of them. + +“She tells me she never leaves her room till noon,” he heard Lady Demesne +say to the General, her companion of the previous evening, who had asked +about her. “She takes three hours to dress.” + +“She’s a monstrous clever woman!” the General declared. + +“To do it in three hours?” + +“No, I mean the way she keeps her wits about her.” + +“Yes; I think she’s very clever,” said Lady Demesne on a system in which +our young man flattered himself he saw more meaning than the General +could. There was something in this tall straight deliberate woman, who +seemed at once to yearn and to retire, that Waterville admired. With her +delicate surface, her conventional mildness, he made out she was strong; +she had set her patience upon a height and carried it like a diadem. She +had the young American little visibly on her mind, but every now and then +she indulged in some vague demonstration that showed she had not +forgotten him. Sir Arthur himself was apparently in excellent spirits, +though he too never bustled nor overflowed; he only went about looking +very fresh and fair, as if he took a bath every hour or two, and very +secure against the unexpected. Waterville had exchanged even fewer +remarks with him than with his mother; but the master of the house had +found occasion to say the night before, in the smoking-room, that he was +delighted this friend had been able to come, and that if he was fond of +real English scenery there were several things about that he should like +very much to show him. + +“You must give me an hour or two before you go, you know; I really think +there are some things you’ll care for.” + +Sir Arthur spoke as if Waterville would be very fastidious; he seemed to +wish to do the right thing by him. On the Sunday morning after breakfast +he inquired if he should care to go to church; most of the ladies and +several of the men were going. “It’s just as you please, you know; but +there’s rather a pretty walk across the fields and a curious little +church—they say of King Stephen’s time.” + +Waterville knew what this meant; it was already a treasure. Besides, he +liked going to church, above all when he sat in the Squire’s pew, which +was sometimes as big as a boudoir and all fadedly upholstered to match. +So he replied that he should be delighted. Then he added without +explaining his reason: “Is Mrs. Headway going?” + +“I really don’t know,” said his host with an abrupt change of tone—as if +he inquired into the movements of the housekeeper. + +“The English are awfully queer!” Waterville consoled himself with +secretly exclaiming; to which wisdom, since his arrival among them, he +had had recourse whenever he encountered a gap in the consistency of +things. The church was even a rarer treasure than Sir Arthur’s +description of it, and Waterville felt Mrs. Headway had been a fool not +to come. He knew what she was after—she wished to study English life so +that she might take possession of it; and to pass in among a hedge of +bobbing rustics and sit among the monuments of the old Demesnes would +have told her a great deal about English life. If she wished to fortify +herself for the struggle she had better come to that old church. When he +returned to Longlands—he had walked back across the meadows with the +archdeacon’s lady, who was a vigorous pedestrian—it wanted half an hour +of luncheon and he was unwilling to go indoors. He remembered he had not +yet seen the gardens, and wandered away in search of them. They were on +a scale that enabled him to find them without difficulty, and they looked +as if they had been kept up unremittingly for a century or two. He +hadn’t advanced very far between their blooming borders when he heard a +voice that he recognised, and a moment after, at the turn of an alley, +came upon Mrs. Headway, who was attended by the master of the scene. She +was bareheaded beneath her parasol, which she flung back, stopping short +as she beheld her compatriot. + +“Oh it’s Mr. Waterville come to spy me out as usual!” It was with this +remark she greeted the slightly-embarrassed young man. + +“Hallo, you’ve come home from church?” Sir Arthur said, pulling out his +watch. + +Waterville was struck with his coolness. He admired it; for, after all, +he noted, it must have been disagreeable to him to be interrupted. He +felt rather an ass, and wished he had kept hold of Mrs. April, to give +him the air of having come for her sake. Mrs. Headway was looking +adorably fresh in attire that Waterville, who had his ideas on such +matters, felt sure wouldn’t be regarded as the proper thing for a Sunday +morning in an English country-house: a négligé of white flounces and +frills interspersed with yellow ribbons—a garment Madame de Pompadour +might have sported to receive Louis XV., but probably wouldn’t have worn +for a public airing. The sight of this costume gave the finishing touch +to his impression that she knew on the whole what she was about. She +would take a line of her own; she wouldn’t be too accommodating. She +wouldn’t come down to breakfast; she wouldn’t go to church; she would +wear on Sunday mornings little elaborately informal dresses and look +dreadfully un-British and un-Protestant. Perhaps after all this was +best. She began to talk with a certain volubility. + +“Isn’t this too lovely? I walked all the way from the house. I’m not +much at walking, but the grass in this place is like a parlour. The +whole thing’s driving me wild. Sir Arthur, you ought to go and look +after the Ambassador; it’s shameful the way I’ve kept you. You don’t +trouble about the Ambassador? You said just now you had scarcely spoken +to him, and you must make that right up. I never saw such a way of +neglecting your guests. Is it the usual style over here? Go and take +him out to ride or make him play a game of billiards. Mr. Waterville +will take me home; besides, I want to scold him for spying on me.” + +Our young man sharply resented her charge. “I had no idea whatever you +were here.” + +“We weren’t hiding,” said Sir Arthur quietly. “Perhaps you’ll see Mrs. +Headway back to the house. I think I ought to look after old Davidoff. +I believe luncheon’s at two.” + +He left them, and Waterville wandered through the gardens with Mrs. +Headway. She at once sought again to learn if he had come there to “dog” +her; but this inquiry wasn’t accompanied, to his surprise, with the +acrimony she had displayed the night before. He was determined not to +let that pass, however; when people had treated him in that way they +shouldn’t be allowed to forget it. + +“Do you suppose I’m always thinking of you?” he derisively demanded. +“You’re out of my mind _sometimes_. I came this way to look at the +gardens, and if you hadn’t spoken to me should have passed on.” + +Mrs. Headway was perfectly good-natured; she appeared not even to hear +his defence. “He has got two other places,” she simply rejoined. +“That’s just what I wanted to know.” + +He wouldn’t nevertheless be turned from his grievance. That mode of +reparation to a person whom you had insulted which consisted in +forgetting you had done so was doubtless largely in use on back piazzas; +but a creature of any spirit required a different form. “What did you +mean last night by accusing me of having come down here to watch you? +Pardon me if I tell you I think you grossly rude.” The sting of the +imputation lay in the fact that there was a certain amount of truth in +it; yet for a moment Mrs. Headway, looking very blank, failed to recover +it. “She’s a barbarian, after all,” thought Waterville. “She thinks a +woman may slap a man’s face and run away!” + +“Oh,” she cried suddenly, “I remember—I was angry with you! I didn’t +expect to see you. But I didn’t really mind about it at all. Every now +and then I get mad like that and work it off on any one that’s handy. +But it’s over in three minutes and I never think of it again. I confess +I was mad last night; I could have shot the old woman.” + +“‘The old woman’?” + +“Sir Arthur’s mother. She has no business here anyway. In this country +when the husband dies they’re expected to clear out. She has a house of +her own ten miles from here and another in Portman Square; so she ain’t +in want of good locations. But she sticks—she sticks to him like a +strong plaster. It came over me as I kind of analysed that she didn’t +invite me here because she liked me, but because she suspects me. She’s +afraid we’ll make a match and she thinks I ain’t good enough for her son. +She must think I’m in a great hurry to make him mine. I never went after +him, he came after me. I should never have thought of anything if it +hadn’t been for him. He began it last summer at Homburg; he wanted to +know why I didn’t come to England; he told me I should have great +success. He doesn’t know much about it anyway; he hasn’t got much +gumption. But he’s a very nice man all the same; it’s very pleasant to +see him surrounded by his—” And Mrs. Headway paused a moment, her +appreciation ranging: “Surrounded by all his old heirlooms. I like the +old place,” she went on; “it’s beautifully mounted; I’m quite satisfied +with what I’ve seen. I thought Lady Demesne well-impressed; she left a +card on me in London and very soon after wrote to me to ask me here. But +I’m very quick; I sometimes see things in a flash. I saw something +yesterday when she came to speak to me at dinner-time. She saw I looked +pretty and refined, and it made her blue with rage; she hoped I’d be some +sort of a horror. I’d like very much to oblige her, but what can one do? +Then I saw she had asked me only because he insisted. He didn’t come to +see me when I first arrived—he never came near me for ten days. She +managed to prevent him; she got him to make some promise. But he changed +his mind after a little, and then he had to do something really polite. +He called three days in succession, and he made her come. She’s one of +those women who holds out as long as she can and then seems to give in +while she’s really fussing more than ever. She hates me as if I knew +something about her—when I don’t even know what she thinks I’ve done +myself. She’s very underhand; she’s a regular old cat. When I saw you +last night at dinner I thought she had got you here to help her.” + +“To help her?” Waterville echoed. + +“To tell her about me. To give her information she can make use of +against me. You may give her all you like!” + +Waterville was almost breathless with the attention he had paid this +extraordinary burst of confidence, and now he really felt faint. He +stopped short; Mrs. Headway went on a few steps and then, stopping too, +turned and shone at him in the glow of her egotism. “You’re the most +unspeakable woman!” he wailed. She seemed to him indeed a barbarian. + +She laughed at him—he felt she was laughing at his expression of face—and +her laugh rang through the stately gardens. “What sort of a woman’s +that?” + +“You’ve got no delicacy”—he’d keep it up. + +She coloured quickly, though, strange to say, without further irritation. +“No delicacy?” + +“You ought to keep those things to yourself.” + +“Oh I know what you mean; I talk about everything. When I’m excited I’ve +got to talk. But I must do things in my own way. I’ve got plenty of +delicacy when people are nice to me. Ask Arthur Demesne if I ain’t +delicate—ask George Littlemore if I ain’t. Don’t stand there all day; +come on to lunch!” And Mrs. Headway resumed her walk while her +companion, having balanced, slowly overtook her. “Wait till I get +settled; then I’ll be delicate,” she pursued. “You can’t be delicate +when you’re trying to save your life. It’s very well for _you_ to talk, +with the whole State Department to back you. Of course I’m excited. +I’ve got right hold of this thing, and I don’t mean to let go!” Before +they reached the house she let him know why he had been invited to +Longlands at the same time as herself. Waterville would have liked to +believe his personal attractions sufficiently explained the fact, but she +took no account of this supposition. Mrs. Headway preferred to see +herself in an element of ingenious machination, where everything that +happened referred to her and was aimed at her. Waterville had been asked +then because he represented, however modestly, the American Legation, and +their host had a friendly desire to make it appear that his pretty +American visitor, of whom no one knew anything, was under the protection +of that establishment. “It would start me better,” the lady in question +complacently set forth. “You can’t help yourself—you’ve helped to start +me. If he had known the Minister he’d have asked him—or the first +secretary. But he don’t know them.” + +They reached the house by the time she had developed her idea, which gave +Waterville a pretext more than sufficient for detaining her in the +portico. “Do you mean to say Sir Arthur has told you this?” he inquired +almost sternly. + +“Told me? Of course not! Do you suppose I’d let him take the tone with +me that I need any favours? I’d like to hear him tell me I’m in want of +assistance!” + +“I don’t see why he shouldn’t—at the pace you go yourself. You say it to +every one.” + +“To every one? I say it to you and to George Littlemore—when I get +nervous. I say it to you because I like you, and to him because I’m +afraid of him. I’m not in the least afraid of you, by the way. I’m all +alone—I haven’t got any one. I must have some comfort, mustn’t I? Sir +Arthur scolded me for putting you off last night—he noticed it; and that +was what made me guess his idea.” + +“I’m much obliged to him,” said Waterville rather bewildered. + +“So mind you answer for me. Don’t you want me to take your arm to go +in?” + +“You’re a most extraordinary combination!” he gave to all the winds as +she stood smiling at him. + +“Oh come, don’t _you_ fall in love with me!” she cried with a laugh; and, +without taking his arm, she passed in before him. + +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 +noble 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 assist 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.” + +“Yes—Mr. Littlemore. He has a sister whom I’ve 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’d come?” + +“He’s in America at this moment, but I believe he soon comes back.” + +She took this in with interest. “I shall go to his sister; I shall ask +her to bring him to see me. She’s extremely nice; I think she’ll +understand. Unfortunately there’s very little time.” + +Waterville bethought himself. “Don’t count too much on George +Littlemore,” he said gravely. + +“You men have no pity,” she grimly sighed. + +“Why should we pity you? How can Mrs. Headway hurt such a person as +you?” he asked. + +Lady Demesne cast about. “It hurts me to hear her voice.” + +“Her voice is very liquid.” He liked his word. + +“Possibly. But she’s horrible!” + +This was too much, it seemed to Waterville; Nancy Beck was open to +criticism, and he himself had declared she was a barbarian. Yet she +wasn’t 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 his hostess moved to 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 woeful 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 mentioned 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’ll have +to entertain the Texan belle,” our young man said. + +Littlemore sat there with his hands crossed on his stick; he looked at +his friend with an eye that failed to kindle at the mention of this +lady’s name. “Has she got into European society?” he rather languidly +inquired. + +“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’s 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.” + +Her old friend rallied after a moment to the interest of this news, +marking his full appreciation of it by a burst of laughter. “To think of +Nancy Beck! The people here do beat the Dutch! There’s no one they +won’t go after. They wouldn’t touch her in New York.” + +“Oh New York’s quite old-fashioned and rococo,” said Waterville; and he +announced to Littlemore that Lady Demesne was very eager for his arrival +and wanted his aid to prevent her son’s bringing such a person into the +family. Littlemore was apparently 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,” the second secretary urged. + +“Why not if he loves her?” + +“Oh if that’s all you want!”—which seemed a degree of cynicism startling +to 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. However, since he’s +bitten—!” But Littlemore let the rest of his sentence too indifferently +drop. + +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. On this Waterville +pronounced him highly 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—they were sure to have enough of her later without such +impatience. + +Waterville would have been sorry to give a false idea of his interest in +the wonderful woman; he knew too well the feeling had definite limits. +He had been two or three times to see her, but it was a relief to be able +to believe her quite independent of him. There had been no revival of +those free retorts which had marked their stay at Longlands. She could +dispense with assistance now; she knew herself 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 such others of that +“standing” as had shown a desire for her acquaintance; professing to +measure perfectly the sources of a growing popularity. “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 a grand case of the American funny woman; if I make the least remark +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 really +care for me, you know—they don’t love me for myself and the way I want to +be loved; 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—the +poor little woman worked hard at the vernacular. 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 before: she would have made more extensive preparations. +She had thought it a disadvantage of old to live in Arizona, in Dakotah, +in the newly-admitted States; but now she saw that, as she phrased it to +herself, this was the best thing that ever had happened to her. She +tried to recover the weird things she had heard out there, and keenly +regretted she hadn’t 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 argued that +this was success: she inferred that had she only come five years sooner +she might have married a Duke. That would have been even a greater +attraction 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 vivid than those by which he +was known—make up to a lady several years older than himself, whose fund +of Texan 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 had +also not lost her grasp of several old ones. The chief of these—it was +now a year old—was that Sir Arthur was the very most eligible and, +shrewdly considered, taking one thing with another, most valuable young +man in the world. There were of course a good many things he wasn’t. He +wasn’t amusing; he wasn’t insinuating; he wasn’t of an absolutely +irrepressible ardour. She believed he was constant, but he was certainly +not eager. With these things, however, she 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 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 tall compatriot. He stayed till they dispersed, in spite +of the manœuvres of a gentleman who evidently desired to outlinger him, +but who, whatever might have been his happy fortune on former visits, +received on this occasion no encouragement from their hostess. He looked +at Littlemore slowly, beginning with his boots and travelling up as if to +discover the reason of so unexpected a preference, and then, with no +salutation to him, left the pair face to face. + +“I’m curious to see what you’ll do for me now you’ve got your sister with +you,” Mrs. Headway presently remarked, having heard of this circumstance +from Rupert Waterville. “I realise you’ll have to do something, you +know. I’m sorry for you, but I don’t see how you can get off. You might +ask me to dine some day when she’s dining out. I’d come even then, I +think, because I want to keep on the right side of you.” + +“I call that the wrong side,” said Littlemore. + +“Yes, I see. It’s your sister that’s on the right side. You’re in +rather a bad fix, ain’t you? You’ve got to be ‘good’ and mean, or you’ve +got to be kind with a little courage. However, you take those things +very quietly. There’s something in you that exasperates me. What does +your sister think of me? Does she hate me?” Nancy persisted. + +“She knows nothing about you.” + +“Have you told her nothing?” + +“Never a word.” + +“Hasn’t she asked you? That shows how she hates me. She thinks I ain’t +creditable to America. I know _that_ way of doing it. She wants to show +people over here that, however they may be taken in by me, she knows much +better. But she’ll have to ask you about me; she can’t go on for ever. +Then what’ll you say?” + +“That you’re the biggest ‘draw’ in Europe.” + +“Oh shucks!” she cried, out of her repertory. + +“Haven’t you got into European society?” + +“Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t. It’s too soon to see. I can’t tell this +season. Every one says I’ve got to wait till next, to see if it’s the +same. Sometimes they take you right up for a few weeks and then just +drop you anywhere. You’ve got to make it a square thing somehow—to drive +in a nail.” + +“You speak as if it were your coffin,” said Littlemore. + +“Well, it _is_ a kind of coffin. I’m burying my past!” + +He winced at this—he was tired to death of her past. He changed the +subject and turned her on to London, a topic as to which her freshness of +view and now unpremeditated art of notation were really interesting, +displayed as they were at the expense of most of her new acquaintances +and of some of the most venerable features of the great city. He himself +looked at England from the outside as much as it was possible to do; but +in the midst of her familiar allusions to people and things known to her +only since yesterday he was struck with the truth that she would never +really be initiated. She buzzed over the surface of things like a fly on +a window-pane. This surface immensely pleased her; she was flattered, +encouraged, excited; she dropped her confident judgements as if she were +scattering flowers, talked about her intentions, her prospects, her +discoveries, her designs. But she had really learnt no more about +English life than about the molecular theory. The words in which he had +described her of old to Waterville came back to him: “_Elle ne doute de +rien_!” Suddenly she jumped up; she was going out to dine and it was +time to dress. “Before you leave I want you to promise me something,” +she said off-hand, but with a look he had seen before and that pressed on +the point—oh so intensely! “You’ll be sure to be questioned about me.” +And then she paused. + +“How do people know I know you?” + +“You haven’t ‘blown’ about it? Is that what you mean? You can be a +brute when you try. They do know it at any rate. Possibly I may have +told them. They’ll come to you to ask about me. I mean from Lady +Demesne. She’s in an awful state. She’s so afraid of it—of the way he +wants me.” + +In himself too, after all, she could still press the spring of careless +mirth. “_I’m_ not afraid, if you haven’t yet brought it off.” + +“Well, he can’t make up his mind. I appeal to him so, yet he can’t quite +place me where he’d have to have me.” Her lucidity and her detachment +were both grotesque and touching. + +“He must be a poor creature if he won’t take you as you are. I mean for +the sweet sake of what you are,” Littlemore added. + +This wasn’t a very gallant form, but she made the best of it. “Well—he +wants to be very careful, and so he ought!” + +“If he asks too many questions he’s not worth marrying,” Littlemore +rather cheaply opined. + +“I beg your pardon—he’s worth marrying whatever he does; he’s worth +marrying for _me_. And I want to marry him—that’s what I want to do.” + +Her old friend had a pause of some blankness. “Is he waiting for me to +settle it?” + +“He’s waiting for I don’t know what—for some one to come and tell him +that I’m the sweetest of the sweet. Then he’ll believe it. Some one who +has been out there and knows all about me. Of course you’re the man, +you’re created on purpose. Don’t you remember how I told you in Paris he +wanted to ask you? He was ashamed and gave it up; he tried to forget me. +But now it’s all on again—only meanwhile his mother has been at him. She +works night and day, like a weasel in a hole, to persuade him that I’m +too much beneath him. He’s very fond of her and very open to influence; +I mean from her—not from any one else. Except me of course. Oh I’ve +influenced him, I’ve explained everything fifty times over. But some +memories, you know, are like those lumpish or pointed things you can’t +get into your trunk—they won’t pack anyway; and he keeps coming back to +them. He wants every little speck explained. He won’t come to you +himself, but his mother will, or she’ll send some of her people. I guess +she’ll send the lawyer—the family solicitor they call him. She wanted to +send him out to America to make inquiries, only she didn’t know where to +send. Of course I couldn’t be expected to give the places—they’ve got to +find _them_ out the best way they can. She knows all about you and has +made up to your sister; a big proof, as she never makes up to any one. +So you see how much I know. She’s waiting for you; she means to hold you +with her glittering eye. She has an idea she _can_—can make you say +what’ll meet her views. Then she’ll lay it before Sir Arthur. So you’ll +be so good as to have none—not a view.” + +Littlemore had, however disguisedly, given her every attention; but the +conclusion left him all too consciously staring. “You don’t mean that +anything I can say will make a difference?” + +“Don’t be affected! You know it will as well as I.” + +“You make him out not only a laggard in love but almost a dastard in +war.” + +“Never mind what I make him out. I guess if I can understand him you can +accept him. And I appeal to you solemnly. You can save me or you can +lose me. If you lose me you’ll be a coward. And if you say a word +against me I’ll be lost.” + +“Go and dress for dinner—that’s your salvation,” Littlemore returned as +he quitted her at the head of the stairs. + + + +IX + + +It was very well for him to take that tone; but he felt as he walked home +that he should scarcely know what to say to people who were determined, +as she put it, to hold him with glittering eyes. She had worked a +certain spell; she had succeeded in making him feel responsible. The +sight of her success, however, rather hardened his heart; he might have +pitied her if she had “muffed” it, as they said, but he just sensibly +resented her heavy scoring. He dined alone that evening while his sister +and her husband, who had engagements every day for a month, partook of +their repast at the expense of friends. Mrs. Dolphin, however, came home +rather early and immediately sought admittance to the small apartment at +the foot of the staircase which was already spoken of as her brother’s +den. Reggie had gone on to a “squash” somewhere, and she had returned in +her eagerness to the third member of their party. She was too impatient +even to wait for morning. She looked impatient; she was very unlike +George Littlemore. “I want you to tell me about Mrs. Headway,” she at +once began, while he started slightly at the coincidence of this remark +with his own thoughts. He was just making up his mind at last to speak +to her. She unfastened her cloak and tossed it over a chair, then pulled +off her long tight black gloves, which were not so fine as those Mrs. +Headway wore; all this as if she were preparing herself for an important +interview. She was a fair neat woman, who had once been pretty, with a +small thin voice, a finished manner and a perfect knowledge of what it +was proper to do on every occasion in life. She always did it, and her +conception of it was so definite that failure would have left her without +excuse. She was usually not taken for an American, but she made a point +of being one, because she flattered herself that she was of a type which +under that banner borrowed distinction from rarity. She was by nature a +great conservative and had ended by figuring as a better Tory than her +husband; to the effect of being thought by some of her old friends to +have changed immensely since her marriage. She knew English society as +if she had compiled a red-covered handbook of the subject; had a way of +looking prepared for far-reaching social action; had also thin lips and +pretty teeth; and was as positive as she was amiable. She told her +brother that Mrs. Headway had given out that he was her most intimate +friend; whereby she thought it rather odd he had never spoken of her “at +home.” Littlemore admitted, on this, that he had known her a long time, +referred to the conditions in which the acquaintance had sprung up, and +added that he had seen her that afternoon. He sat there smoking his +cigar and looking up at the cornice while Mrs. Dolphin delivered herself +of a series of questions. Was it true that he liked her so much, was it +true he thought her a possible woman to marry, was it true that her +antecedents had not been most peculiar? + +“I may as well tell you I’ve a letter from Lady Demesne,” his visitor +went on. “It came to me just before I went out, and I have it in my +pocket.” + +She drew forth the missive, which she evidently wished to read him; but +he gave her no invitation to proceed. He knew she had come to him to +extract a declaration adverse to Mrs. Headway’s projects, and however +little edification he might find in this lady’s character he hated to be +arraigned or prodded. He had a great esteem for Mrs. Dolphin, who, among +other Hampshire notions, had picked up that of the major weight of the +male members of any family, so that she treated him with a consideration +which made his having an English sister rather a luxury. Nevertheless he +was not, on the subject of his old Texan friend, very accommodating. He +admitted once for all that she hadn’t behaved properly—it wasn’t worth +while to split hairs about that; but he couldn’t see that she was much +worse than lots of other women about the place—women at once less amusing +and less impugned; and he couldn’t get up much feeling about her marrying +or not marrying. Moreover, it was none of his business, and he intimated +that it was none of Mrs. Dolphin’s. + +“One surely can’t resist the claims of common humanity!” his sister +replied; and she added that he was very inconsistent. He didn’t respect +Mrs. Headway, he knew the most dreadful things about her, he didn’t think +her fit company for his own flesh and blood. And yet he was willing not +to save poor Arthur Demesne. + +“Perfectly willing!” Littlemore returned. “I’ve nothing to do with +saving others. All I’ve got to do is not to marry her myself.” + +“Don’t you think then we’ve any responsibilities, any duties to society?” + +“I don’t know what you mean. Society can look after itself. If she can +bring it off she’s welcome. It’s a splendid sight in its way.” + +“How do you mean splendid?” + +“Why she has run up the tree as if she were a squirrel!” + +“It’s very true she has an assurance _à toute épreuve_. But English +society has become scandalously easy. I never saw anything like the +people who are taken up. Mrs. Headway has had only to appear to succeed. +If they can only make out big _enough_ spots in you they’ll find you +attractive. It’s like the decadence of the Roman Empire. You can see to +look at this person that she’s not a lady. She’s pretty, very pretty, +but she might be a dissipated dressmaker. She wouldn’t go down for a +minute in New York. I’ve seen her three times—she apparently goes +everywhere. I didn’t speak of her—I was wanting to see what you’d do. I +judged you meant to do nothing, then this letter decided me. It’s +written on purpose to be shown you; it’s what the poor lady—_such_ a nice +woman herself—wants you to do. She wrote to me before I came to town, +and I went to see her as soon as I arrived. I think it very important. +I told her that if she’d draw up a little statement I’d put it before you +as soon as we should get settled. She’s in real distress. I think you +ought to feel for her. You ought to communicate the facts exactly as +they stand. A woman has no right to do such things as Mrs. Headway and +come and ask to be accepted. She may make it up with her conscience, but +she can’t make it up with society. Last night at Lady Dovedale’s I was +afraid she’d know who I was and get somehow at me. I believe she’d +really have been capable of it, and I got so frightened I went away. If +Sir Arthur wishes to marry her for what she is, of course he’s welcome. +But at least he ought to know.” + +Mrs. Dolphin was neither agitated nor voluble; she moved from point to +point with the temper and method of a person accustomed to preside at +committees and to direct them. She deeply desired, however, that Mrs. +Headway’s triumphant career should be checked; such a person had +sufficiently abused a tolerance already so overstrained. Herself a party +to an international marriage, Mrs. Dolphin naturally desired the class to +which she belonged to close its ranks and carry its standard high. + +“It seems to me she’s quite as good as the poor young man himself,” said +Littlemore, lighting another cigar. + +“As good? What do you mean by ‘good’? No one has ever breathed a word +against him.” + +“Very likely. But he’s a nonentity of the first water, and she at least +a positive quantity, not to say a positive force. She’s a person, and a +very clever one. Besides, she’s quite as good as the women lots of them +have married. It’s new to me that your alliances have been always so +august.” + +“I know nothing about other cases,” Mrs. Dolphin said, “I only know about +this one. It so happens that I’ve been brought near it, and that an +appeal has been made to me. The English are very romantic—the most +romantic people in the world, if that’s what you mean. They do the +strangest things from the force of passion—even those of whom you would +least expect it. They marry their cooks, they marry their coachmen, and +their romances always have the most miserable end. I’m sure this one +would be wretched. How can you pretend that such a flaming barbarian can +be worked into _any_ civilisation? What I see is a fine old race—one of +the oldest and most honourable in England, people with every tradition of +good conduct and high principle—and a dreadful disreputable vulgar little +woman, who hasn’t an idea of what such things are, trying to force her +way into it. I hate to see such things—I want to go to the rescue!” + +“Well, I don’t,” Littlemore returned at his leisure. “I don’t care a pin +for the fine old race.” + +“Not from interested motives, of course, any more than I. But surely on +artistic grounds, on grounds of decency?” + +“Mrs. Headway isn’t indecent—you go too far. You must remember that +she’s an old friend of mine.” He had become rather stern; Mrs. Dolphin +was forgetting the consideration due, from an English point of view, to +brothers. + +She forgot it even a little more. “Oh if you’re in love with her too!” +she quite wailed, turning away. + +He made no answer to this, and the words had no sting for him. But at +last, to finish the affair, he asked what in the world the old lady +wanted him to do. Did she want him to go out into Piccadilly and +announce to the passers-by that there had been one winter when even Mrs. +Headway’s sister didn’t know who was her husband? + +Mrs. Dolphin’s reply was to read out Lady Demesne’s letter, which her +brother, as she folded it up again, pronounced one of the most +extraordinary communications he had ever listened to. “It’s very +sad—it’s a cry of distress,” she declared. “The whole meaning of it is +that she wishes you’d come and see her. She doesn’t say it in so many +words, but I can read between the lines. Besides, she told me she’d give +anything to see you. Let me assure you it’s your duty to go.” + +“To go and abuse Nancy Beck?” + +“Go and rave about her if you like!” This was very clever of Mrs. +Dolphin, but her brother was not so easily beguiled. He didn’t take that +view of his duty, and he declined to cross her ladyship’s threshold. +“Then she’ll come and see you,” said his visitor with decision. + +“If she does I’ll tell her Nancy’s an angel.” + +“If you can say so conscientiously she’ll be delighted to hear it.” And +she gathered up her cloak and gloves. + +Meeting Rupert Waterville the next day, as he often did, at the Saint +George’s Club, which offers a much-appreciated hospitality to secretaries +of legation and to the natives of the countries they assist in +representing, Littlemore let him know that his prophecy had been +fulfilled and that Lady Demesne had been making proposals for an +interview. “My sister read me a desperate letter from her.” + +Our young man was all critical attention again. “‘Desperate’?” + +“The letter of a woman so scared that she’ll do anything. I may be a +great brute, but her scare amuses me.” + +“You’re in the position of Olivier de Jalin in _Le Demi-Monde_,” +Waterville remarked. + +“In _Le Demi-Monde_?” Littlemore was not quick at catching literary +allusions. + +“Don’t you remember the play we saw in Paris? Or like Don Fabrice in +_L’Aventurière_. A bad woman tries to marry an honourable man, who +doesn’t know how bad she is, and they who do know step in and push her +back.” + +“Yes, it comes to me. There was a good deal of lying,” Littlemore +recalled, “all round.” + +“They prevented the marriage, however—which is the great thing.” + +“The great thing if your heart’s set! One of the active parties was the +intimate friend of the man in love, the other was his son. Demesne’s +nothing at all to me.” + +“He’s a very good fellow,” said Waterville. + +“Then go and talk to him.” + +“Play the part of Olivier de Jalin? Oh I can’t. I’m not Olivier. But I +think I do wish he’d corner me of himself. Mrs. Headway oughtn’t really +to be allowed to pass.” + +“I wish to heaven they’d let me alone,” Littlemore murmured ruefully and +staring a while out of the window. + +“Do you still hold to that theory you propounded in Paris? Are you +willing to commit perjury?” Waterville asked. + +“Assuredly I can refuse to answer questions—even that one.” + +“As I told you before, that will amount to a condemnation.” + +Longmore frowningly debated. “It may amount to what it pleases. I guess +I’ll go back to Paris.” + +“That will be the same as not answering. But it’s quite the best thing +you can do. I’ve really been thinking it out,” Waterville continued, +“and I don’t hold that from the point of view of social good faith she’s +an article we ought to contribute—!” He looked at the matter clearly now +from a great elevation; his tone, the expression of his face, betrayed +this lofty flight; the effect of which, as he glanced down at his +didactic young friend, Littlemore found peculiarly irritating. + +He shifted about. “No, after all, hanged if they shall drive me away!” +he exclaimed abruptly; and he walked off while his companion wondered. + + + +X + + +The morning after this the elder man received a note from Mrs. Headway—a +short and simple note, consisting merely of the words: “I shall be at +home this afternoon; will you come and see me at five? I’ve something +particular to say to you.” He sent no answer to the question, but went +to the little house in Chesterfield Street at the hour its mistress had +proposed. + +“I don’t believe you know what sort of a woman I _am_!” she began as soon +as he stood before her. + +“Oh Lord!” Littlemore groaned as he dropped into a chair. Then he added: +“Please don’t strike up _that_ air!” + +“Ah, but it’s exactly what I’ve wanted to say. It’s very important. You +don’t know me—you don’t understand me. You think you do—but you don’t.” + +“It isn’t for the want of your having told me—many many times!” And +Littlemore had a hard critical smile, irritated as he was at so austere a +prospect. The last word of all was decidedly that Mrs. Headway was a +dreadful bore. It was always the last word about such women, who never +really deserved to be spared. + +She glared at him a little on this; her face was no longer the hospitable +inn-front with the showy sign of the Smile. The sign had come down; she +looked sharp and strained, almost old; the change was complete. It made +her serious as he had never seen her—having seen her always only either +too pleased or too disgusted. “Yes, I know; men are so stupid. They +know nothing about women but what women tell them. And women tell them +things on purpose to see how stupid they can be. I’ve told you things +like that just for amusement when it was dull. If you believed them it +was your own fault. But now I want you really to know.” + +“I don’t want to know. I know enough.” + +“How do you mean you know enough?” she cried with all her sincerity. +“What business have you to know anything?” The poor little woman, in her +passionate purpose, was not obliged to be consistent, and the loud laugh +with which Littlemore greeted this must have seemed to her unduly harsh. +“You shall know what I want you to know, however. You think me a bad +woman—you don’t respect me; I told you that in Paris. I’ve done things I +don’t understand, myself, to-day; that I admit as fully as you please. +But I’ve completely changed, and I want to change everything. You ought +to enter into that, you ought to see what I want. I hate everything that +has happened to me before this; I loathe it, I despise it. I went on +that way trying—trying one thing and another. But now I’ve got what I +want. Do you expect me to go down on my knees to you? I believe I will, +I’m so anxious. You can help me—no one else can do a thing; they’re only +waiting to see if _he’ll_ do it. I told you in Paris you could help me, +and it’s just as true now. Say a good word for me for Christ’s sake! +You haven’t lifted your little finger, or I should know it by this time. +It will just make the difference. Or if your sister would come and see +me I should be all right. Women are pitiless, pitiless, and you’re +pitiless too. It isn’t that Mrs. Dolphin’s anything so great, most of my +friends are better than that!—but she’s the one woman who _knows_, and +every one seems to know she knows. _He_ knows it, and he knows she +doesn’t come. So she kills me—she kills me! I understand perfectly what +he wants—I’ll do everything, be anything, I’ll be the most perfect wife. +The old woman will adore me when she knows me—it’s too stupid of her not +to see. Everything in the past’s over; it has all fallen away from me; +it’s the life of another woman. This was what I wanted; I knew I should +find it some day. I knew I should be at home in the best—and with the +highest. What could I do in those horrible places? I had to take what I +could. But now I’ve got nice surroundings. I want you to do me justice. +You’ve never done me justice. That’s what I sent for you for.” + +Littlemore had suddenly ceased to be bored, but a variety of feelings had +taken the place of that one. It was impossible not to be touched; she +really meant what she said. People don’t change their nature, but they +change their desires, their ideal, their effort. This incoherent +passionate plea was an assurance that she was literally panting to be +respectable. But the poor woman, whatever she did, was condemned, as he +had said of old, in Paris, to Waterville, to be only half right. The +colour rose to her visitor’s face as he listened to her outpouring of +anxiety and egotism; she hadn’t managed her early life very well, but +there was no need of her going down on her knees. “It’s very painful to +me to hear all this. You’re under no obligation to say such things to +me. You entirely misconceive my attitude—my influence.” + +“Oh yes, you shirk it—you only wish to shirk it!” she cried, flinging +away fiercely the sofa-cushion on which she had been resting. + +“Marry whom you damn please!” Littlemore quite shouted, springing to his +feet. + +He had hardly spoken when the door was thrown open and the servant +announced Sir Arthur Demesne. This shy adventurer entered with a certain +briskness, but stopped short on seeing Mrs. Headway engaged with another +guest. Recognising Littlemore, however, he gave a light exclamation +which might have passed for a greeting. Mrs. Headway, who had risen as +he came in, looked with wonderful eyes from one of the men to the other; +then, like a person who had a sudden inspiration, she clasped her hands +together and cried out: “I’m so glad you’ve met. If I had arranged it it +couldn’t be better!” + +“If you had arranged it?” said Sir Arthur, crinkling a little his high +white forehead, while the conviction rose before Littlemore that she had +indeed arranged it. + +“I’m going to do something very queer”—and her extravagant manner +confirmed her words. + +“You’re excited, I’m afraid you’re ill.” Sir Arthur stood there with his +hat and his stick; he was evidently much annoyed. + +“It’s an excellent opportunity; you must forgive me if I take advantage.” +And she flashed a tender touching ray at the Baronet. “I’ve wanted this +a long time—perhaps you’ve seen I wanted it. Mr. Littlemore has known me +from far back; he’s an old old friend. I told you that in Paris, don’t +you remember? Well he’s my only one, and I want him to speak for me.” +Her eyes had turned now to Littlemore; they rested upon him with a +sweetness that only made the whole proceeding more audacious. She had +begun to smile again, though she was visibly trembling. “He’s my only +one,” she continued; “it’s a great pity, you ought to have known others. +But I’m very much alone and must make the best of what I have. I want so +much that some one else than myself should speak for me. Women usually +can ask that service of a relative or of another woman. I can’t; it’s a +great pity, but it’s not my fault, it’s my misfortune. None of my people +are here—I’m terribly alone in the world. But Mr. Littlemore will tell +you; he’ll say he has known me for ever so long. He’ll tell you if he +knows any reason—if there’s anything against me. He has been wanting the +chance—he thought he couldn’t begin himself. You see I treat you as an +old friend, dear Mr. Littlemore. I’ll leave you with Sir Arthur. You’ll +both excuse me.” The expression of her face, turned towards Littlemore +as she delivered herself of this singular proposal, had the intentness of +a magician who wishes to work a spell. She darted at Sir Arthur another +pleading ray and then swept out of the room. + +The two men remained in the extraordinary position she had created for +them; neither of them moved even to open the door for her. She closed it +behind her, and for a moment there was a deep portentous silence. Sir +Arthur Demesne, very pale, stared hard at the carpet. + +“I’m placed in an impossible situation,” Littlemore said at last, “and I +don’t imagine you accept it any more than I do.” His fellow-visitor kept +the same attitude, neither looking up nor answering. Littlemore felt a +sudden gush of pity for him. Of course he couldn’t accept the situation, +but all the same he was half-sick with anxiety to see how this +nondescript American, who was both so precious and so superfluous, so +easy and so abysmal, would consider Mrs. Headway’s challenge. “Have you +any question to ask me?” Littlemore went on. At which Sir Arthur looked +up. The other had seen the look before; he had described it to +Waterville after Mrs. Headway’s admirer came to call on him in Paris. +There were other things mingled with it now—shame, annoyance, pride; but +the great thing, the intense desire to _know_, was paramount. “Good God, +how can I tell him?” seemed to hum in Littlemore’s ears. + +Sir Arthur’s hesitation would have been of the briefest; but his +companion heard the tick of the clock while it lasted. “Certainly I’ve +no question to ask,” the young man said in a voice of cool almost +insolent surprise. + +“Good-day then, confound you.” + +“The same to you!” + +But Littlemore left him in possession. He expected to find Mrs. Headway +at the foot of the staircase; but he quitted the house without +interruption. + +On the morrow, after luncheon, as he was leaving the vain retreat at +Queen Anne’s Gate, the postman handed him a letter. Littlemore opened +and read it on the steps, an operation which took but a moment. + + DEAR MR. LITTLEMORE—It will interest you to know that I’m engaged to + be married to Sir Arthur Demesne and that our marriage is to take + place as soon as their stupid old Parliament rises. But it’s not to + come out for some days, and I’m sure I can trust meanwhile to your + complete discretion. + + Yours very sincerely, + NANCY H. + + _P.S._—He made me a terrible scene for what I did yesterday, but he + came back in the evening and we fixed it all right. That’s how the + thing comes to be settled. He won’t tell me what passed between + you—he requested me never to allude to the subject. I don’t care—I + was bound you should speak! + +Littlemore thrust this epistle into his pocket and marched away with it. +He had come out on various errands, but he forgot his business for the +time and before he knew it had walked into Hyde Park. He left the +carriages and riders to one side and followed the Serpentine into +Kensington Gardens, of which he made the complete circuit. He felt +annoyed, and more disappointed than he understood—than he would have +understood if he had tried. Now that Nancy Beck had succeeded her +success was an irritation, and he was almost sorry he hadn’t said to Sir +Arthur: “Oh well, she was pretty bad, you know.” However, now they were +at one they would perhaps leave him alone. He walked the irritation off +and before he went about his original purposes had ceased to think of +Mrs. Headway. He went home at six o’clock, and the servant who admitted +him informed him in doing so that Mrs. Dolphin had requested he should be +told on his return that she wished to see him in the drawing-room. “It’s +another trap!” he said to himself instinctively; but in spite of this +reflexion he went upstairs. On entering his sister’s presence he found +she had a visitor. This visitor, to all appearance on the point of +departing, was a tall elderly woman, and the two ladies stood together in +the middle of the room. + +“I’m so glad you’ve come back,” said Mrs. Dolphin without meeting her +brother’s eye. “I want so much to introduce you to Lady Demesne that I +hoped you’d come in. Must you really go—won’t you stay a little?” she +added, turning to her companion; and without waiting for an answer went +on hastily: “I must leave you a moment—excuse me. I’ll come back!” +Before he knew it Littlemore found himself alone with her ladyship and +understood that since he hadn’t been willing to go and see her she had +taken upon herself to make an advance. It had the queerest effect, all +the same, to see his sister playing the same tricks as Nancy Beck! + +“Ah, she must be in a fidget!” he said to himself as he stood before Lady +Demesne. She looked modest and aloof, even timid, as far as a tall +serene woman who carried her head very well could look so; and she was +such a different type from Mrs. Headway that his present vision of +Nancy’s triumph gave her by contrast something of the dignity of the +vanquished. It made him feel as sorry for her as he had felt for her +son. She lost no time; she went straight to the point. She evidently +felt that in the situation in which she had placed herself her only +advantage could consist in being simple and business-like. + +“I’m so fortunate as to catch you. I wish so much to ask you if you can +give me any information about a person you know and about whom I have +been in correspondence with Mrs. Dolphin. I mean Mrs. Headway.” + +“Won’t you sit down?” asked Littlemore. + +“No, thank you. I’ve only a moment.” + +“May I ask you why you make this inquiry?” + +“Of course I must give you my reason. I’m afraid my son will marry her.” + +Littlemore was puzzled—then saw she wasn’t yet aware of the fact imparted +to him in Mrs. Headway’s note. “You don’t like her?” he asked, +exaggerating, in spite of himself, the interrogative inflexion. + +“Not at all,” said Lady Demesne, smiling and looking at him. Her smile +was gentle, without rancour; he thought it almost beautiful. + +“What would you like me to say?” he asked. + +“Whether you think her respectable.” + +“What good will that do you? How can it possibly affect the event?” + +“It will do me no good, of course, if your opinion’s favourable. But if +you tell me it’s not I shall be able to say to my son that the one person +in London who has known her more than six months thinks so and so of +her.” + +This speech, on Lady Demesne’s clear lips, evoked no protest from her +listener. He had suddenly become conscious of the need to utter the +simple truth with which he had answered Rupert Waterville’s first +question at the Théâtre Français. He brought it out. “I don’t think +Mrs. Headway respectable.” + +“I was sure you would say that.” She seemed to pant a little. + +“I can say nothing more—not a word. That’s my opinion. I don’t think it +will help you.” + +“I think it will. I wanted to have it from your own lips. That makes +all the difference,” said Lady Demesne. “I’m exceedingly obliged to +you.” And she offered him her hand; after which he accompanied her in +silence to the door. + +He felt no discomfort, no remorse, at what he had said; he only felt +relief—presumably because he believed it would make no difference. It +made a difference only in what was at the bottom of all things—his own +sense of fitness. He only wished he had driven it home that Mrs. Headway +would probably be for her son a capital wife. But that at least would +make no difference. He requested his sister, who had wondered greatly at +the brevity of his interview with her friend, to spare him all questions +on the subject; and Mrs. Dolphin went about for some days in the happy +faith that there were to be no dreadful Americans in English society +compromising her native land. + +Her faith, however, was short-lived. Nothing had made any difference; it +was perhaps too late. The London world heard in the first days of July, +not that Sir Arthur Demesne was to marry Mrs. Headway, but that the pair +had been privately and, it was to be hoped as regards Mrs. Headway on +this occasion, indissolubly united. His mother gave neither sign nor +sound; she only retired to the country. + +“I think you might have done differently,” said Mrs. Dolphin, very pale, +to her brother. “But of course everything will come out now.” + +“Yes, and make her more the fashion than ever!” Littlemore answered with +cynical laughter. After his little interview with the elder Lady Demesne +he didn’t feel at liberty to call again on the younger; and he never +learned—he never even wished to know—whether in the pride of her success +she forgave him. + +Waterville—it was very strange—was positively scandalised at this +success. He held that Mrs. Headway ought never to have been allowed to +marry a confiding gentleman, and he used in speaking to Littlemore the +same words as Mrs. Dolphin. He thought Littlemore might have done +differently. But he spoke with such vehemence that Littlemore looked at +him hard—hard enough to make him blush. “Did you want to marry her +yourself?” his friend inquired. “My dear fellow, you’re in love with +her! That’s what’s the matter with you.” + +This, however, blushing still more, Waterville indignantly denied. A +little later he heard from New York that people were beginning to ask who +in the world Lady Demesne “had been.” + + + + +AN INTERNATIONAL EPISODE + + +I + + +Four years ago—in 1874—two young Englishmen had occasion to go to the +United States. They crossed the ocean at midsummer and, arriving in New +York on the first day of August, were much struck with the high, the +torrid temperature. Disembarking upon the wharf they climbed into one of +the huge high-hung coaches that convey passengers to the hotels, and with +a great deal of bouncing and bumping they took their course through +Broadway. The midsummer aspect of New York is doubtless not the most +engaging, though nothing perhaps could well more solicit an alarmed +attention. Of quite other sense and sound from those of any typical +English street was the endless rude channel, rich in incongruities, +through which our two travellers advanced—looking out on either side at +the rough animation of the sidewalks, at the high-coloured heterogeneous +architecture, at the huge white marble façades that, bedizened with +gilded lettering, seemed to glare in the strong crude light, at the +multifarious awnings, banners and streamers, at the extraordinary number +of omnibuses, horse-cars and other democratic vehicles, at the vendors of +cooling fluids, the white trousers and big straw hats of the policemen, +the tripping gait of the modish young persons on the pavement, the +general brightness, newness, juvenility, both of people and things. The +young men had exchanged few observations, but in crossing Union Square, +in front of the monument to Washington—in the very shadow indeed +projected by the image of the _pater patriae_—one of them remarked to the +other: “Awfully rum place.” + +“Ah, very odd, very odd,” said the other, who was the clever man of the +two. + +“Pity it’s so beastly hot,” resumed the first speaker after a pause. + +“You know we’re in a low latitude,” said the clever man. + +“I daresay,” remarked his friend. + +“I wonder,” said the second speaker presently, “if they can give one a +bath.” + +“I daresay not,” the other returned. + +“Oh I say!” cried his comrade. + +This animated discussion dropped on their arrival at the hotel, +recommended to them by an American gentleman whose acquaintance they had +made—with whom, indeed, they had become very intimate—on the steamer and +who had proposed to accompany them to the inn and introduce them in a +friendly way to the proprietor. This plan, however, had been defeated by +their friend’s finding his “partner” in earnest attendance on the wharf, +with urgent claims on his immediate presence of mind. But the two +Englishmen, with nothing beyond their national prestige and personal +graces to recommend them, were very well received at the hotel, which had +an air of capacious hospitality. They found a bath not unattainable and +were indeed struck with the facilities for prolonged and reiterated +immersion with which their apartment was supplied. After bathing a good +deal—more indeed than they had ever done before on a single occasion—they +made their way to the dining-room of the hotel, which was a spacious +restaurant with a fountain in the middle, a great many tall plants in +ornamental tubs and an array of French waiters. The first dinner on +land, after a sea-voyage, is in any connexion a delightful hour, and +there was much that ministered to ease in the general situation of our +young men. They were formed for good spirits and addicted and appointed +to hilarity; they were more observant than they appeared; they were, in +an inarticulate accidentally dissimulative fashion, capable of high +appreciation. This was perhaps especially the case with the elder, who +was also, as I have said, the man of talent. They sat down at a little +table which was a very different affair from the great clattering see-saw +in the saloon of the steamer. The wide doors and windows of the +restaurant stood open, beneath large awnings, to a wide expanse studded +with other plants in tubs and rows of spreading trees—beyond which +appeared a large shady square without palings and with marble-paved +walks. And above the vivid verdure rose other façades of white marble +and of pale chocolate-coloured stone, squaring themselves against the +deep blue sky. Here, outside, in the light and the shade and the heat, +was a great tinkling of the bells of innumerable street-cars and a +constant strolling and shuffling and rustling of many pedestrians, +extremely frequent among whom were young women in Pompadour-looking +dresses. The place within was cool and vaguely lighted; with the plash +of water, the odour of flowers and the flitting of French waiters, as I +have said, on soundless carpets. + +“It’s rather like Paris, you know,” said the younger of our two +travellers. + +“It’s like Paris—only more so,” his companion returned. + +“I suppose it’s the French waiters,” said the first speaker. “Why don’t +they have French waiters in London?” + +“Ah, but fancy a French waiter at a London club!” said his friend. + +The elder man stared as if he couldn’t fancy it. “In Paris I’m very apt +to dine at a place where there’s an English waiter. Don’t you know, +what’s-his-name’s, close to the thingumbob? They always set an English +waiter at me. I suppose they think I can’t speak French.” + +“No more you can!” And this candid critic unfolded his napkin. + +The other paid no heed whatever to his candour. “I say,” the latter +resumed in a moment, “I suppose we must learn to speak American. I +suppose we must take lessons.” + +“I can’t make them out, you know,” said the clever man. + +“What the deuce is _he_ saying?” asked his comrade, appealing from the +French waiter. + +“He’s recommending some soft-shell crabs,” said the clever man. + +And so, in a desultory view of the mysteries of the new world bristling +about them, the young Englishmen proceeded to dine—going in largely, as +the phrase is, for cooling draughts and dishes, as to which their +attendant submitted to them a hundred alternatives. After dinner they +went out and slowly walked about the neighbouring streets. The early +dusk of waning summer was at hand, but the heat still very great. The +pavements were hot even to the stout boot-soles of the British +travellers, and the trees along the kerb-stone emitted strange exotic +odours. The young men wandered through the adjoining square—that queer +place without palings and with marble walks arranged in black and white +lozenges. There were a great many benches crowded with shabby-looking +people, and the visitors remarked very justly that it wasn’t much like +Grosvenor Square. On one side was an enormous hotel, lifting up into the +hot darkness an immense array of open and brightly-lighted windows. At +the base of this populous structure was an eternal jangle of horse-cars, +and all round it, in the upper dusk, a sinister hum of mosquitoes. The +ground-floor of the hotel, figuring a huge transparent cage, flung a wide +glare of gaslight into the street, of which it formed a public adjunct, +absorbing and emitting the passers-by promiscuously. The young +Englishmen went in with every one else, from curiosity, and saw a couple +of hundred men sitting on divans along a great marble-paved corridor, +their legs variously stretched out, together with several dozen more +standing in a queue, as at the ticket-office of a railway station, before +a vast marble altar of sacrifice, a thing shaped like the counter of a +huge shop. These latter persons, who carried portmanteaus in their +hands, had a dejected exhausted look; their garments were not fresh, as +if telling of some rush, or some fight, for life, and they seemed to +render mystic tribute to a magnificent young man with a waxed moustache +and a shirt front adorned with diamond buttons, who every now and then +dropped a cold glance over their multitudinous patience. They were +American citizens doing homage to an hotel-clerk. + +“I’m glad he didn’t tell us to go there,” said one of our Englishmen, +alluding to their friend on the steamer, who had told them so many +things. They walked up the Fifth Avenue, where he had, for instance, +told them all the first families lived. But the first families were out +of town, and our friends had but the satisfaction of seeing some of the +second—or perhaps even the third—taking the evening air on balconies and +high flights of doorsteps in streets at right angles to the main straight +channel. They went a little way down one of these side-streets and there +saw young ladies in white dresses—charming-looking persons—seated in +graceful attitudes on the chocolate-coloured steps. In one or two places +these young ladies were conversing across the street with other young +ladies seated in similar postures and costumes in front of the opposite +houses, and in the warm night air their colloquial tones sounded +strangely in the ears of the young Englishmen. One of the latter, +nevertheless—the younger—betrayed a disposition to intercept some stray +item of this interchange and see what it would lead to; but his companion +observed pertinently enough that he had better be careful. They mustn’t +begin by making mistakes. + +“But he told us, you know—he told us,” urged the young man, alluding +again to the friend on the steamer. + +“Never mind what he told us!” answered his elder, who, if he had more +years and a more developed wit, was also apparently more of a moralist. + +By bedtime—in their impatience to taste of a terrestrial couch again our +seafarers went to bed early—it was still insufferably hot, and the buzz +of the mosquitoes at the open windows might have passed for an audible +crepitation of the temperature. “We can’t stand this, you know,” the +young Englishmen said to each other; and they tossed about all night more +boisterously than they had been tossed by Atlantic billows. On the +morrow their first thought was that they would re-embark that day for +England, but it then occurred to them they might find an asylum nearer at +hand. The cave of Æolus became their ideal of comfort, and they wondered +where the Americans went when wishing to cool off. They hadn’t the least +idea, and resolved to apply for information to Mr. J. L. Westgate. This +was the name—inscribed in a bold hand on the back of a letter carefully +preserved in the pocket-book of our younger gentleman. Beneath the +address, in the left-hand corner of the envelope, were the words +“Introducing Lord Lambeth and Percy Beaumont Esq.” The letter had been +given to the two Englishmen by a good friend of theirs in London, who had +been in America two years previously and had singled out Mr. J. L. +Westgate from the many friends he had left there as the consignee, as it +were, of his compatriots. “He’s really very decent,” the Englishman in +London had said, “and he has an awfully pretty wife. He’s tremendously +hospitable—he’ll do everything in the world for you, and as he knows +every one over there it’s quite needless I should give you any other +introduction. He’ll make you see every one—trust him for the right +kick-off. He has a tremendously pretty wife.” It was natural that in +the hour of tribulation Lord Lambeth and Mr. Percy Beaumont should have +bethought themselves of so possible a benefactor; all the more so that he +lived in the Fifth Avenue and that the Fifth Avenue, as they had +ascertained the night before, was contiguous to their hotel. “Ten to one +he’ll be out of town,” said Percy Beaumont; “but we can at least find out +where he has gone and can at once give chase. He can’t possibly have +gone to a hotter place, you know.” + +“Oh there’s only one hotter place,” said Lord Lambeth, “and I hope he +hasn’t gone there.” + +They strolled along the shady side of the street to the number indicated +by the precious letter. The house presented an imposing +chocolate-coloured expanse, relieved by facings and window-cornices of +florid sculpture and by a couple of dusty rose-trees which clambered over +the balconies and the portico. This last-mentioned feature was +approached by a monumental flight of steps. + +“Rather better than a dirty London thing,” said Lord Lambeth, looking +down from this altitude after they had rung the bell. + +“It depends upon what London thing you mean,” replied his companion. +“You’ve a tremendous chance to get wet between the house-door and your +carriage.” + +“Well,” said Lord Lambeth, glancing at the blaze of the sky, “I ‘guess’ +it doesn’t rain so much here!” + +The door was opened by a long negro in a white jacket, who grinned +familiarly when Lord Lambeth asked for Mr. Westgate. “He ain’t at home, +sir; he’s down town at his office.” + +“Oh at his office?” said the visitors. “And when will he be at home?” + +“Well, when he goes out dis way in de mo’ning he ain’t liable to come +home all day.” + +This was discouraging; but the address of Mr. Westgate’s office was +freely imparted by the intelligent black and was taken down by Percy +Beaumont in his pocket-book. The comrades then returned, languidly +enough, to their hotel and sent for a hackney-coach; and in this +commodious vehicle they rolled comfortably down town. They measured the +whole length of Broadway again and found it a path of fire; and then, +deflecting to the left, were deposited by their conductor before a fresh +light ornamental structure, ten stories high, in a street crowded with +keen-faced light-limbed young men who were running about very nimbly and +stopping each other eagerly at corners and in doorways. Passing under +portals that were as the course of a twofold torrent, they were +introduced by one of the keen-faced young men—he was a charming fellow in +wonderful cream-coloured garments and a hat with a blue ribbon, who had +evidently recognised them as aliens and helpless—to a very snug hydraulic +elevator, in which they took their place with many other persons and +which, shooting upward in its vertical socket, presently projected them +into the seventh heaven, as it were, of the edifice. Here, after brief +delay, they found themselves face to face with the friend of their friend +in London. His office was composed of several conjoined rooms, and they +waited very silently in one of these after they had sent in their letter +and their cards. The letter was not one it would take Mr. Westgate very +long to read, but he came out to speak to them more instantly than they +could have expected; he had evidently jumped up from work. He was a tall +lean personage and was dressed all in fresh white linen; he had a thin +sharp familiar face, a face suggesting one of the ingenious modern +objects with alternative uses, good as a blade or as a hammer, good for +the deeps and for the shallows. His forehead was high but expressive, +his eyes sharp but amused, and a large brown moustache, which concealed +his mouth, made his chin, beneath it, look small. Relaxed though he was +at this moment Lord Lambeth judged him on the spot tremendously clever. + +“How do you do, Lord Lambeth, how do you do, sir?”—he held the open +letter in his hand. “I’m very glad to meet you—I hope you’re very well. +You had better come in here—I think it’s cooler”; and he led the way into +another room, where there were law-books and papers and where windows +opened wide under striped awnings. Just opposite one of the windows, on +a line with his eyes, Lord Lambeth observed the weather-vane of a +church-steeple. The uproar of the street sounded infinitely far below, +and his lordship felt high indeed in the air. “I say it’s cooler,” +pursued their host, “but everything’s relative. How do you stand the +heat?” + +“I can’t say we like it,” said Lord Lambeth; “but Beaumont likes it +better than I.” + +“Well, I guess it will break,” Mr. Westgate cheerfully declared; “there’s +never anything bad over here but it does break. It was very hot when +Captain Littledale was here; he did nothing but drink sherry-cobblers. +He expresses some doubt in his letter whether I shall remember him—as if +I don’t remember once mixing six sherry-cobblers for him in about fifteen +minutes. I hope you left him well. I’d be glad to mix him some more.” + +“Oh yes, he’s all right—and without _them_,” said Lord Lambeth. + +“I’m always very glad to see your countrymen,” Mr. Westgate pursued. “I +thought it would be time some of you should be coming along. A friend of +mine was saying to me only a day or two ago, ‘It’s time for the +water-melons and the Englishmen.’” + +“The Englishmen and the water-melons just now are about the same thing,” +Percy Beaumont observed with a wipe of his dripping forehead. + +“Ah well, we’ll put you on ice as we do the melons. You must go down to +Newport.” + +“We’ll go anywhere!” said Lord Lambeth. + +“Yes, you want to go to Newport; that’s what you want to do.” Mr. +Westgate was very positive. “But let’s see—when did you get here?” + +“Only yesterday,” said Percy Beaumont. + +“Ah yes, by the _Russia_. Where are you staying?” + +“At the Hanover, I think they call it.” + +“Pretty comfortable?” inquired Mr. Westgate. + +“It seems a capital place, but I can’t say we like the gnats,” said Lord +Lambeth. + +Mr. Westgate stared and laughed. “Oh no, of course you don’t like the +gnats. We shall expect you to like a good many things over here, but we +shan’t insist on your liking the gnats; though certainly you’ll admit +that, as gnats, they’re big things, eh? But you oughtn’t to remain in +the city.” + +“So we think,” said Lord Lambeth. “If you’d kindly suggest something—” + +“Suggest something, my dear sir?”—and Mr. Westgate looked him over with +narrowed eyelids. “Open your mouth and shut your eyes! Leave it to me +and I’ll fix you all right. It’s a matter of national pride with me that +all Englishmen should have a good time, and as I’ve been through a good +deal with them I’ve learned to minister to their wants. I find they +generally want the true thing. So just please consider yourselves my +property; and if any one should try to appropriate you please say, ‘Hands +off—too late for the market.’ But let’s see,” continued the American +with his face of toil, his voice of leisure and his general intention, +apparently, of everything; “let’s see: are you going to make something of +a stay, Lord Lambeth?” + +“Oh dear no,” said the young Englishman; “my cousin was to make this +little visit, so I just came with him, at an hour’s notice, for the +lark.” + +“Is it your first time over here?” + +“Oh dear yes.” + +“I was obliged to come on some business,” Percy Beaumont explained, “and +I brought Lambeth along for company.” + +“And _you_ have been here before, sir?” + +“Never, never!” + +“I thought from your referring to business—” Mr. Westgate threw off. + +“Oh you see I’m just acting for some English shareholders by way of legal +advice. Some of my friends—well, if the truth must be told,” Mr. +Beaumont laughed—“have a grievance against one of your confounded +railways, and they’ve asked me to come and judge, if possible, on the +spot, what they can hope.” + +Mr. Westgate’s amused eyes grew almost tender. “What’s your railroad?” +he asked. + +“The Tennessee Central.” + +The American tilted back his chair and poised it an instant. “Well, I’m +sorry you want to attack one of our institutions. But I guess you had +better enjoy yourself _first_!” + +“I’m certainly rather afraid I can’t work in this weather,” the young +emissary confessed. + +“Leave that to the natives,” said Mr. Westgate. “Leave the Tennessee +Central to me, Mr. Beaumont. I guess I can tell you more about it than +most any one. But I didn’t know you Englishmen ever did any work—in the +upper classes.” + +“Oh we do a lot of work, don’t we, Lambeth?” Percy Beaumont appealed. + +“I must certainly be back early for _my_ engagements,” said his companion +irrelevantly but gently. + +“For the shooting, eh? or is it the yachting or the hunting or the +fishing?” inquired his entertainer. + +“Oh I must be in Scotland,”—and Lord Lambeth just amiably blushed. + +“Well, then,” Mr. Westgate returned, “you had better amuse yourself first +also. You must go right down and see Mrs. Westgate.” + +“We should be so happy—if you’d kindly tell us the train,” said Percy +Beaumont. + +“You don’t take any train. You take a boat.” + +“Oh I see. And what is the name of—a—the—a—town?” + +“It’s a regular old city—don’t you let them hear you call it a village or +a hamlet or anything of that kind. They’d half-kill you. Only it’s a +city of pleasure—of lawns and gardens and verandahs and views and, above +all, of good Samaritans,” Mr. Westgate developed. “But you’ll see what +Newport is. It’s cool. That’s the principal thing. You’ll greatly +oblige me by going down there and putting yourself in the hands of Mrs. +Westgate. It isn’t perhaps for me to say it, but you couldn’t be in +better ones. Also in those of her sister, who’s staying with her. She’s +half-crazy about Englishmen. She thinks there’s nothing like them.” + +“Mrs. Westgate or—a—her sister?” asked Percy Beaumont modestly, yet in +the tone of a collector of characteristic facts. + +“Oh I mean my wife,” said Mr. Westgate. “I don’t suppose my +sister-in-law knows much about them yet. You’ll show her anyhow. She +has always led a very quiet life. She has lived in Boston.” + +Percy Beaumont listened with interest. “That, I believe, is the most +intellectual centre.” + +“Well, yes—Boston knows it’s central and feels it’s intellectual. I +don’t go there much—I stay round here,” Mr. Westgate more loosely +pursued. + +“I say, you know, _we_ ought to go there,” Lord Lambeth broke out to his +companion. + +“Oh Lord Lambeth, wait till the great heat’s over!” Mr. Westgate +interposed. “Boston in this weather would be very trying; it’s not the +temperature for intellectual exertion. At Boston, you know, you have to +pass an examination at the city limits, and when you come away they give +you a kind of degree.” + +Lord Lambeth flushed himself, in his charming way, with wonder, though +his friend glanced to make sure he wasn’t looking too credulous—they had +heard so much about American practices. He decided in time, at any rate, +to take a safe middle course. “I daresay it’s very jolly.” + +“I daresay it is,” Mr. Westgate returned. “Only I must impress on you +that at present—to-morrow morning at an early hour—you’ll be expected at +Newport. We have a house there—many of our most prominent citizens and +society leaders go there for the summer. I’m not sure that at this very +moment my wife can take you in—she has a lot of people staying with her. +I don’t know who they all are—only she may have no room. But you can +begin with the hotel and meanwhile you can live at my house. In that +way—simply sleeping at the hotel—you’ll find it tolerable. For the rest +you must make yourself at home at my place. You mustn’t be shy, you +know; if you’re only here for a month that will be a great waste of time. +Mrs. Westgate won’t neglect you, and you had better not undertake to +resist her. I know something about that. I guess you’ll find some +pretty girls on the premises. I shall write to my wife by this +afternoon’s mail, and to-morrow she and Miss Alden will look out for you. +Just walk right in and get into touch. Your steamer leaves from this +part of the city, and I’ll send right out and get you a cabin. Then at +half-past four o’clock just call for me here, and I’ll go with you and +put you on board. It’s a big boat; you might get lost. A few days +hence, at the end of the week, I don’t know but I’ll come down myself and +see how you are.” + +The two young Englishmen inaugurated the policy of not resisting Mrs. +Westgate by submitting, with great docility and thankfulness, to her +husband. He was evidently a clear thinker, and he made an impression on +his visitors; his hospitality seemed to recommend itself consciously—with +a friendly wink, as might be, hinting judicially that you couldn’t make a +better bargain. Lord Lambeth and his cousin left their entertainer to +his labours and returned to their hotel, where they spent three or four +hours in their respective shower-baths. Percy Beaumont had suggested +that they ought to see something of the town, but “Oh damn the town!” his +noble kinsman had rejoined. They returned to Mr. Westgate’s office in a +carriage, with their luggage, very punctually; but it must be reluctantly +recorded that this time he so kept them waiting that they felt themselves +miss their previous escape and were deterred only by an amiable modesty +from dispensing with his attendance and starting on a hasty scramble to +embark. But when at last he appeared and the carriage plunged into the +purlieus of Broadway they jolted and jostled to such good purpose that +they reached the huge white vessel while the bell for departure was still +ringing and the absorption of passengers still active. It was indeed, as +Mr. Westgate had said, a big boat, and his leadership in the innumerable +and interminable corridors and cabins, with which he seemed perfectly +acquainted and of which any one and every one appeared to have the +_entrée_, was very grateful to the slightly bewildered voyagers. He +showed them their state-room—a luxurious retreat embellished with +gas-lamps, mirrors _en pied_ and florid furniture—and then, long after +they had been intimately convinced that the steamer was in motion and +launched upon the unknown stream they were about to navigate, he bade +them a sociable farewell. + +“Well, good-bye, Lord Lambeth,” he said. “Goodbye, Mr. Percy Beaumont. +I hope you’ll have a good time. Just let them do what they want with +you. Take it as it’s meant. Renounce your own personality. I’ll come +down by and by and enjoy what’s left of you.” + + + +II + + +The young Englishmen emerged from their cabin and amused themselves with +wandering about the immense labyrinthine ship, which struck them as a +monstrous floating hotel or even as a semi-submerged kindergarten. It +was densely crowded with passengers, the larger number of whom appeared +to be ladies and very young children; and in the big saloons, ornamented +in white and gold, which followed each other in surprising succession, +beneath the swinging gas-lights and among the small side-passages where +the negro domestics of both sexes assembled with an air of amused +criticism, every one was moving to and fro and exchanging loud and +familiar observations. Eventually, at the instance of a blackamoor more +closely related to the scene than his companions, our friends went and +had “supper” in a wonderful place arranged like a theatre, where, from a +gilded gallery upon which little boxes appeared to open, a large +orchestra played operatic selections and, below, people handed about +bills of fare in the manner of programmes. All this was sufficiently +curious; but the agreeable thing, later, was to sit out on one of the +great white decks in the warm breezy darkness and, the vague starlight +aiding, make out the line of low mysterious coast. Our travellers tried +American cigars—those of Mr. Westgate—and conversed, as they usually +conversed, with many odd silences, lapses of logic and incongruities of +transition; like a pair who have grown old together and learned to guess +each other’s sense; or, more especially, like persons so conscious of a +common point of view that missing links and broken lights and loose ends, +the unexpressed and the understood, could do the office of talk. + +“We really seem to be going out to sea,” Percy Beaumont observed. “Upon +my honour we’re going back to England. He has shipped us off again. I +call that ‘real mean.’” + +“I daresay it’s all right,” said Lord Lambeth. “I want to see those +pretty girls at Newport. You know he told us the place was an island, +and aren’t all islands in the sea?” + +“Well,” resumed the elder traveller after a while, “if his house is as +good as his cigars I guess we shall muddle through.” + +“I fancy he’s awfully ‘prominent,’ you know, and I rather liked him,” +Lord Lambeth pursued as if this appreciation of Mr. Westgate had but just +glimmered on him. + +His comrade, however, engaged in another thought, didn’t so much as +appear to catch it. “I say, I guess we had better remain at the inn. I +don’t think I like the way he spoke of his house. I rather object to +turning in with such a tremendous lot of women.” + +“Oh I don’t mind,” said Lord Lambeth. And then they smoked a while in +silence. “Fancy his thinking we do no work in England!” the young man +resumed. + +But it didn’t rouse his friend, who only replied: “I daresay he didn’t +really a bit think so.” + +“Well, I guess they don’t know much about England over here!” his +lordship humorously sighed. After which there was another long pause. +“He _has_ got us out of a hole,” observed the young nobleman. + +Percy Beaumont genially assented. “Nobody certainly could have been more +civil.” + +“Littledale said his wife was great fun,” Lord Lambeth then contributed. + +“Whose wife—Littledale’s?” + +“Our benefactor’s. Mrs. Westgate. What’s his name? J. L. It ‘kind of’ +sounds like a number. But I guess it’s a high number,” he continued with +freshened gaiety. + +The same influences appeared, however, with Mr. Beaumont to make rather +for anxiety. “What was fun to Littledale,” he said at last a little +sententiously, “may be death to us.” + +“What do you mean by that?” his companion asked. “I’m as good a man as +Littledale.” + +“My dear boy, I hope you won’t begin to flirt,” said the elder man. + +His friend smoked acutely. “Well, I daresay I shan’t _begin_.” + +“With a married woman, if she’s bent upon it, it’s all very well,” Mr. +Beaumont allowed. “But our friend mentioned a young lady—a sister, a +sister-in-law. For God’s sake keep free of her.” + +“How do you mean, ‘free’?” + +“Depend upon it she’ll try to land you.” + +“Oh rot!” said Lord Lambeth. + +“American girls are very ‘cute,’” the other urged. + +“So much the better,” said the young man. + +“I fancy they’re always up to some wily game,” Mr. Beaumont developed. + +“They can’t be worse than they are in England,” said Lord Lambeth +judicially. + +“Ah, but in England you’ve got your natural protectors. You’ve got your +mother and sisters.” + +“My mother and sisters—!” the youth began with a certain energy. But he +stopped in time, puffing at his cigar. + +“Your mother spoke to me about it with tears in her eyes,” said his +monitor. “She said she felt very nervous. I promised to keep you out of +mischief.” + +“You had better take care of yourself!” cried Mr. Beaumont’s charge. + +“Ah,” the responsible party returned, “I haven’t the expectation +of—whatever it is you expect. Not to mention other attractions.” + +“Well,” said Lord Lambeth, “don’t cry out before you’re hurt!” + +It was certainly very much cooler at Newport, where the travellers found +themselves assigned to a couple of diminutive bedrooms in a far-away +angle of an immense hotel. They had gone ashore in the early summer +twilight and had very promptly put themselves to bed; thanks to which +circumstance and to their having, during the previous hours, in their +commodious cabin, slept the sleep of youth and health, they began to +feel, towards eleven o’clock, very alert and inquisitive. They looked +out of their windows across a row of small green fields, bordered with +low stone dykes of rude construction, and saw a deep blue ocean lying +beneath a deep blue sky and flecked now and then with scintillating +patches of foam. A strong fresh breeze came in through the curtainless +apertures and prompted our young men to observe generously that it didn’t +seem half a bad climate. They made other observations after they had +emerged from their rooms in pursuit of breakfast—a meal of which they +partook in a huge bare hall where a hundred negroes in white jackets +shuffled about on an uncarpeted floor; where the flies were superabundant +and the tables and dishes covered over with a strange voluminous +integument of coarse blue gauze; and where several little boys and girls, +who had risen late, were seated in fastidious solitude at the morning +repast. These young persons had not the morning paper before them, but +were engaged in languid perusal of the bill of fare. + +This latter document was a great puzzle to our friends, who, on +reflecting that its bewildering categories took account of breakfast +alone, had the uneasy prevision of an encyclopedic dinner-list. They +found copious diversion at their inn, an enormous wooden structure for +the erection of which it struck them the virgin forests of the West must +have been quite laid waste. It was perforated from end to end with +immense bare corridors, through which a strong draught freely blew, +bearing along wonderful figures of ladies in white morning-dresses and +clouds of Valenciennes lace, who floated down the endless vistas on +expanded furbelows very much as angels spread their wings. In front was +a gigantic verandah on which an army might have encamped—a vast wooden +terrace with a roof as high as the nave of a cathedral. Here our young +men enjoyed, as they supposed, a glimpse of American society, which was +distributed over the measureless expanse in a variety of sedentary +attitudes and appeared to consist largely of pretty young girls, dressed +as for a _fête champêtre_, swaying to and fro in rocking-chairs, fanning +themselves with large straw fans and enjoying an enviable exemption from +social cares. Lord Lambeth had a theory, which it might be interesting +to trace to its origin, that it would be not only agreeable, but easily +possible, to enter into relations with one of these young ladies; and his +companion found occasion to check his social yearning. + +“You had better take care—else you’ll have an offended father or brother +pulling out a bowie-knife.” + +“I assure you it’s all right,” Lord Lambeth replied. “You know the +Americans come to these big hotels to make acquaintances.” + +“I know nothing about it, and neither do you,” said his comrade, who, +like a clever man, had begun to see that the observation of American +society demanded a readjustment of their standard. + +“Hang it, then, let’s find out!” he cried with some impatience. “You +know I don’t want to miss anything.” + +“We _will_ find out,” said Percy Beaumont very reasonably. “We’ll go and +see Mrs. Westgate and make all the proper inquiries.” + +And so the inquiring pair, who had this lady’s address inscribed in her +husband’s hand on a card, descended from the verandah of the big hotel +and took their way, according to direction, along a large straight road, +past a series of fresh-looking villas, embosomed in shrubs and flowers +and enclosed in an ingenious variety of wooden palings. The morning +shone and fluttered, the villas stood up bravely in their smartness, and +the walk of the young travellers turned all to confidence. Everything +looked as if it had received a coat of fresh paint the day before—the red +roofs, the green shutters, the clean bright browns and buffs of the +house-fronts. The flower-beds on the little lawns sparkled in the +radiant air and the gravel in the short carriage-sweeps flashed and +twinkled. Along the road came a hundred little basket-phaetons in which, +almost always, a couple of ladies were sitting—ladies in white dresses +and long white gloves, holding the reins and looking at the two +Englishmen, whose nationality was not elusive, through fine blue veils, +tied tightly about their faces as if to guard their complexions. At last +the visitors came within sight of the sea again, and then, having +interrogated a gardener over the paling of a villa, turned into an open +gate. Here they found themselves face to face with the ocean and with a +many-pointed much-balconied structure, resembling a magnified chalet, +perched on a green embankment just above it. The house had a verandah of +extraordinary width all round, and a great many doors and windows +standing open to the verandah. These various apertures had, together, +such an accessible hospitable air, such a breezy flutter, within, of +light curtains, such expansive thresholds and reassuring interiors, that +our friends hardly knew which was the regular entrance and, after +hesitating a moment, presented themselves at one of the windows. The +room within was indistinct, but in a moment a graceful figure vaguely +shaped itself in the rich-looking gloom—a lady came to meet them. Then +they saw she had been seated at a table writing, and that, hearing them, +she had got up. She stepped out into the light; she wore a frank +charming smile, with which she held out her hand to Percy Beaumont. + +“Oh you must be Lord Lambeth and Mr. Beaumont. I’ve heard from my +husband that you were coming. I make you warmly welcome.” And she shook +hands with each of her guests. Her guests were a little shy, but they +made a gallant effort; they responded with smiles and exclamations, they +apologised for not knowing the front door. The lady returned with +vivacity that when she wanted to see people very much she didn’t insist +on those distinctions, and that Mr. Westgate had written to her of his +English friends in terms that made her really anxious. “He says you’re +so terribly prostrated,” she reported. + +“Oh you mean by the heat?”—Percy Beaumont rose to it. “We were rather +knocked up, but we feel wonderfully better. We had such a jolly—a—voyage +down here. It’s so very good of you to mind.” + +“Yes, it’s so very kind of you,” murmured Lord Lambeth. + +Mrs. Westgate stood smiling; Mrs. Westgate was pretty. “Well, I did +mind, and I thought of sending for you this morning to the Ocean House. +I’m very glad you’re better, and I’m charmed you’re really with us. You +must come round to the other side of the piazza.” And she led the way, +with a light smooth step, looking back at the young men and smiling. + +The other side of the piazza was, as Lord Lambeth presently remarked, a +very jolly place. It was of the most liberal proportions and, with its +awnings, its fanciful chairs, its cushions and rugs, its view of the +ocean close at hand and tumbling along the base of the low cliffs whose +level tops intervened in lawnlike smoothness, formed a charming +complement to the drawing-room. As such it was in course of employment +at the present hour; it was occupied by a social circle. There were +several ladies and two or three gentlemen, to whom Mrs. Westgate +proceeded to introduce the distinguished strangers. She mentioned a +great many names, very freely and distinctly; the young Englishmen, +shuffling about and bowing, were rather bewildered. But at last they +were provided with chairs—low wicker chairs, gilded and tied with a great +many ribbons—and one of the ladies (a very young person with a little +snub nose and several dimples) offered Percy Beaumont a fan. The fan was +also adorned with pink love-knots, but the more guarded of our couple +declined it, though he was very hot. Presently, however, everything +turned to ease; the breeze from the sea was delicious and the view +charming; the people sitting about looked fresh and fair. Several of the +younger ladies were clearly girls, and the gentlemen slim bright youths +such as our friends had seen the day before in New York. The ladies were +working on bands of tapestry, and one of the young men had an open book +in his lap. Percy afterwards learned from a lady that this young man had +been reading aloud—that he was from Boston and was very fond of reading +aloud. Percy pronounced it a great pity they had interrupted him; he +should like so much (from all he had heard) to listen to a Bostonian +read. Couldn’t the young man be induced to go on? + +“Oh no,” said this informant very freely; “he wouldn’t be able to get the +young ladies to attend to him now.” + +There was something very friendly, Beaumont saw, in the attitude of the +company; they looked at their new recruits with an air of animated +sympathy and interest; they smiled, brightly and unanimously, at +everything that dropped from either. Lord Lambeth and his companion felt +they were indeed made cordially welcome. Mrs. Westgate seated herself +between them, and while she talked continuously to each they had occasion +to observe that she came up to their friend Littledale’s promise. She +was thirty years old, with the eyes and the smile of a girl of seventeen, +and was light and graceful—elegant, exquisite. Mrs. Westgate was, +further, what she had occasion to describe some person, among her many +winged words, as being, all spontaneity. Frank and demonstrative, she +appeared always—while she looked at you delightedly with her beautiful +young eyes—to be making sudden confessions and concessions, breaking out +after momentary wonders. + +“We shall expect to see a great deal of you,” she said to Lord Lambeth +with her bland intensity. “We’re very fond of Englishmen here; that is, +there are a great many we’ve been fond of. After a day or two you must +come and stay with us; we hope you’ll stay a nice long while. Newport’s +quite attractive when you come really to know it, when you know plenty of +people. Of course you and Mr. Beaumont will have no difficulty about +that. Englishmen are very well received here; there are almost always +two or three of them about. I think they always like it, and I must say +I should think they would. They receive particular attention—I must say +I think they sometimes get spoiled; but I’m sure you and Mr. Beaumont are +proof against that. My husband tells me you’re friends of Captain +Littledale’s; he was such a charming man. He made himself so agreeable +here that I wonder he didn’t stay. That would have carried out his +system. It couldn’t have been pleasanter for him in his own country. +Though I suppose it’s very pleasant in England too—for English people. I +don’t know myself; I’ve been there very little. I’ve been a great deal +abroad, but I always cling to the Continent. I must say I’m extremely +fond of Paris; you know we Americans always are; we go there when we die. +Did you ever hear that before?—it was said by a great wit. I mean the +good Americans; but we’re all good—you’ll see that for yourself. All I +know of England is London, and all I know of London is that place—on that +little corner, you know—where you buy jackets, jackets with that coarse +braid and those big buttons. They make very good jackets in London, I’ll +do you the justice to say that. And some people like the hats. But +about the hats I was always a heretic; I always got my hats in Paris. +You can’t wear an English hat—at least, I never could—unless you dress +your hair à l’anglaise; and I must say that’s a talent I never possessed. +In Paris they’ll make things to suit your peculiarities; but in England I +think you like much more to have—how shall I say it?—one thing for +everybody. I mean as regards dress. I don’t know about other things; +but I’ve always supposed that in other things everything was different. +I mean according to the people—according to the classes and all that. +I’m afraid you’ll think I don’t take a very favourable view; but you know +you can’t take a very favourable view in Dover Street and the month of +November. That has always been my fate. Do you know Jones’s Hotel in +Dover Street? That’s all I know of England. Of course every one admits +that the English hotels are your weak point. There was always the most +frightful fog—I couldn’t see to try my things on. When I got over to +America—into the light—I usually found they were twice too big. The next +time I mean to go at the right season; I guess I’ll go next year. I want +very much to take my sister; she has never been to England. I don’t know +whether you know what I mean by saying that the Englishmen who come here +sometimes get spoiled. I mean they take things as a matter of +course—things that are done for them. Now naturally anything’s a matter +of course only when the Englishmen are very nice. But you’ll say—oh yes +you will, or you would if some of you ever did say much!—they’re almost +always very nice. You can’t expect this to be nearly such an interesting +country as England; there are not nearly so many things to see, and we +haven’t your country life. I’ve never seen anything of your country +life; when I’m in Europe I’m always on the Continent. But I’ve heard a +great deal about it; I know that when you’re among yourselves in the +country you have the most beautiful time. Of course we’ve nothing of +that sort, we’ve nothing on that scale. I don’t apologise, Lord Lambeth; +some Americans are always apologising; you must have noticed that. We’ve +the reputation of always boasting and ‘blowing’ and waving the American +flag; but I must say that what strikes me is that we’re perpetually +making excuses and trying to smooth things over. The American flag has +quite gone out of fashion; it’s very carefully folded up, like a +tablecloth the worse for wear. Why should we apologise? The English +never apologise—do they? No, I must say I never apologise. You must +take us as we come—with all our imperfections on our heads. Of course we +haven’t your country life and your old ruins and your great estates and +your leisure-class and all that—though I don’t really know anything about +them, because when I go over I always cling to the Continent. But if we +haven’t I should think you might find it a pleasant change—I think any +country’s pleasant where they have pleasant manners. Captain Littledale +told me he had never seen such pleasant manners as at Newport, and he had +been a great deal in European society. Hadn’t he been in the diplomatic +service? He told me the dream of his life was to get appointed to a +diplomatic post in Washington. But he doesn’t seem to have succeeded. +Perhaps that was only a part of his pleasant manners. I suppose at any +rate that in England promotion—and all that sort of thing—is fearfully +slow. With us, you know, it’s a great deal too quick. You see I admit +our drawbacks. But I must confess I think Newport an ideal place. I +don’t know anything like it anywhere. Captain Littledale told me he +didn’t know anything like it anywhere. It’s entirely different from most +watering-places; it’s a much more refined life. I must say I think that +when one goes to a foreign country one ought to enjoy the differences. +Of course there are differences; otherwise what did one come abroad for? +Look for your pleasure in the differences, Lord Lambeth; that’s the way +to do it; and then I am sure you’ll find American society—at least the +Newport phase quite unique. I wish very much Mr. Westgate were here; but +he’s dreadfully confined to New York. I suppose you think that’s very +strange—for a gentleman. Only you see we haven’t any leisure-class.” + +Mrs. Westgate’s discourse was delivered with a mild merciless monotony, a +paucity of intonation, an impartial flatness that suggested a flowery +mead scrupulously “done over” by a steam roller that had reduced its +texture to that of a drawing-room carpet. Lord Lambeth listened to her +with, it must be confessed, a rather ineffectual attention, though he +summoned to his aid such a show as he might of discriminating motions and +murmurs. He had no great faculty for apprehending generalisations. +There were some three or four indeed which, in the play of his own +intelligence, he had originated and which had sometimes appeared to meet +the case—any case; yet he felt he had never known such a case as Mrs. +Westgate or as her presentation of her cases. But at the present time he +could hardly have been said to follow this exponent as she darted +fish-like through the sea of speculation. Fortunately she asked for no +special rejoinder, since she looked about at the rest of the company as +well and smiled at Mr. Beaumont on the other side of her as if he too +must understand her and agree with her. He was measurably more +successful than his companion; for besides being, as we know, cleverer, +his attention was not vaguely distracted by close vicinity to a +remarkably interesting young person with dark hair and blue eyes. This +was the situation of Lord Lambeth, to whom it occurred after a while that +the young person with blue eyes and dark hair might be the pretty sister +of whom Mrs. Westgate had spoken. She presently turned to him with a +remark establishing her identity. + +“It’s a great pity you couldn’t have brought my brother-in-law with you. +It’s a great shame he should be in New York on such days as these.” + +“Oh yes—it’s very stuffy,” said Lord Lambeth. + +“It must be dreadful there,” said the pretty sister. + +“I daresay he’s immensely taken up,” the young man returned with a sense +of conscientiously yearning toward American realities. + +“The gentlemen in America work too much,” his friend went on. + +“Oh do they? Well, I daresay they like it,” he hopefully threw out. + +“I don’t like it. One never sees them.” + +“Don’t you really?” asked Lord Lambeth. “I shouldn’t have fancied that.” + +“Have you come to study American manners?” the blue eyes and dark hair +went on. + +“Oh I don’t know. I just came over for the joke of it. I haven’t got +long.” Then occurred a pause, after which he began again. “But he will +turn up here, won’t he?” + +“I certainly hope he will. He must help to entertain you and Mr. +Beaumont.” + +Lord Lambeth looked at her from handsome eyes that were brown. “Do you +suppose he’d have come down with us if we had pressed it?” + +The pretty girl treated this as rather an easy conundrum. “I daresay he +would,” she smiled. + +“Really!” said the young Englishman. “Well, he was no end civil.” + +His young woman seemed much amused; this at least was in her eyes, which +freely met Lord Lambeth’s. “He would be. He’s a perfect husband. But +all Americans are that,” she confidently continued. + +“Really!” Lord Lambeth exclaimed again; and wondered whether all American +ladies had such a passion for generalising as these two. + + + +III + + +He sat there a good while: there was a great deal of talk; it was all +pitched in a key of expression and emphasis rather new to him. Every one +present, the cool maidens not least, personally addressed him, and seemed +to make a particular point of doing so by the friendly repetition of his +name. Three or four other persons came in, and there was a shifting of +seats, a changing of places; the gentlemen took, individually, an +interest in the visitors, putting somehow more imagination and more “high +comedy” into this effort than the latter had ever seen displayed save in +a play or a story. These well-wishers feared the two Britons mightn’t be +comfortable at their hotel—it being, as one of them said, “not so private +as those dear little English inns of yours.” This last gentleman added +that as yet perhaps, alas, privacy wasn’t quite so easily obtained in +America as might be desired; still, he continued, you could generally get +it by paying for it; in fact you could get everything in America nowadays +by paying for it. The life was really growing more private; it was +growing greatly to resemble European—which wasn’t to be wondered at when +two-thirds of the people leading it were so awfully much at home in +Europe. Europe, in the course of this conversation, was indeed, as Lord +Lambeth afterwards remarked to his compatriot, rather bewilderingly +rubbed into them: did they pretend to be European, and when had they ever +been entered under that head? Everything at Newport, at all events, was +described to them as thoroughly private; they would probably find +themselves, when all was said, a good deal struck with that. It was also +represented to the strangers that it mattered very little whether their +hotel was agreeable, as every one would want them to “visit round,” as +somebody called it: they would stay with other people and in any case +would be constantly at Mrs. Westgate’s. They would find that charming; +it was the pleasantest house in Newport. It was only a pity Mr. Westgate +was never there—he being a tremendously fine man, one of the finest they +had. He worked like a horse and left his wife to play the social part. +Well, she played it all right, if that was all he wanted. He liked her +to enjoy herself, and she did know how. She was highly cultivated and a +splendid converser—the sort of converser people would come miles to hear. +But some preferred her sister, who was in a different style altogether. +Some even thought her prettier, but decidedly Miss Alden wasn’t so smart. +She was more in the Boston style—the quiet Boston; she had lived a great +deal there and was very highly educated. Boston girls, it was intimated, +were more on the English model. + +Lord Lambeth had presently a chance to test the truth of this last +proposition; for, the company rising in compliance with a suggestion from +their hostess that they should walk down to the rocks and look at the +sea, the young Englishman again found himself, as they strolled across +the grass, in proximity to Mrs. Westgate’s sister. Though Miss Alden was +but a girl of twenty she appeared conscious of the weight of +expectation—unless she quite wantonly took on duties she might have let +alone; and this was perhaps the more to be noticed as she seemed by habit +rather grave and backward, perhaps even proud, with little of the other’s +free fraternising. She might have been thought too deadly thin, not to +say also too deadly pale; but while she moved over the grass, her arms +hanging at her sides, and, seriously or absently, forgot expectations, +though again brightly to remember them and to look at the summer sea, as +if that was what she really cared for, her companion judged her at least +as pretty as Mrs. Westgate and reflected that if this was the Boston +style, “the quiet Boston,” it would do very well. He could fancy her +very clever, highly educated and all the rest of it; but clearly also +there were ways in which she could spare a fellow—could ease him; she +wouldn’t keep him so long on the stretch at once. For all her +cleverness, moreover, he felt she had to think a little what to say; she +didn’t say the first thing that came into her head: he had come from a +different part of the world, from a different society, and she was trying +to adapt her conversation. The others were scattered about the rocks; +Mrs. Westgate had charge of Percy Beaumont. + +“Very jolly place for this sort of thing,” Lord Lambeth said. “It must +do beautifully to sit.” + +“It does indeed; there are cosy nooks and there are breezy ones, which I +often try—as if they had been made on purpose.” + +“Ah I suppose you’ve had a lot made,” he fell in. + +She seemed to wonder. “Oh no, we’ve had nothing made. It’s all pure +nature.” + +“I should think you’d have a few little benches—rustic seats and that +sort of thing. It might really be so jolly to ‘develop’ the place,” he +suggested. + +It made her thoughtful—even a little rueful. “I’m afraid we haven’t so +many of those things as you.” + +“Ah well, if you go in for pure nature, as you were saying, there’s +nothing like that. Nature, over here, must be awfully grand.” And Lord +Lambeth looked about him. + +The little coast-line that contributed to the view melted away, but it +too much lacked presence and character—a fact Miss Alden appeared to rise +to a perception of. “I’m afraid it seems to you very rough. It’s not +like the coast-scenery in Kingsley’s novels.” + +He wouldn’t let her, however, undervalue it. “Ah, the novels always +overdo everything, you know. You mustn’t go by the novels.” + +They wandered a little on the rocks; they stopped to look into a narrow +chasm where the rising tide made a curious bellowing sound. It was loud +enough to prevent their hearing each other, and they stood for some +moments in silence. The girl’s eyes took in her companion, observing him +attentively but covertly, as those of women even in blinking youth know +how to do. Lord Lambeth repaid contemplation; tall straight and strong, +he was handsome as certain young Englishmen, and certain young Englishmen +almost alone, are handsome; with a perfect finish of feature and a +visible repose of mind, an inaccessibility to questions, somehow stamped +in by the same strong die and pressure that nature, designing a precious +medal, had selected and applied. It was not that he looked stupid; it +was only, we assume, that his perceptions didn’t show in his face for +restless or his imagination for irritable. He was not, as he would +himself have said, tremendously clever; but, though there was rather a +constant appeal for delay in his waiting, his perfectly patient eye, this +registered simplicity had its beauty as well and, whatever it might have +appeared to plead for, didn’t plead in the name of indifference or +inaction. This most searching of his new friends thought him the +handsomest young man she had ever seen; and Bessie Alden’s imagination, +unlike that of her companion, was irritable. He, however, had already +made up his mind, quite originally and without aid, that she had a grace +exceedingly her own. + +“I daresay it’s very gay here—that you’ve lots of balls and parties,” he +said; since, though not tremendously clever, he rather prided himself on +having with women a strict sufficiency of conversation. + +“Oh yes, there’s a great deal going on. There are not so many balls, but +there are a good many other pleasant things,” Bessie Alden explained. +“You’ll see for yourself; we live rather in the midst of it.” + +“It will be very kind of you to let us see. But I thought you Americans +were always dancing.” + +“I suppose we dance a good deal, though I’ve never seen much of it. We +don’t do it much, at any rate in summer. And I’m sure,” she said, “that +we haven’t as many balls as you in England.” + +He wondered—these so many prompt assumptions about his own country made +him gape a little. “Ah, in England it all depends, you know.” + +“You’ll not think much of our gaieties,” she said—though she seemed to +settle it for him with a quaver of interrogation. The interrogation +sounded earnest indeed and the decision arch; the mixture, at any rate, +was charming. “Those things with us are much less splendid than in +England.” + +“I fancy you don’t really mean that,” her companion laughed. + +“I assure you I really mean everything I say,” she returned. “Certainly +from what I’ve read about English society it is very different.” + +“Ah well, you know,” said Lord Lambeth, who appeared to cling to this +general theory, “those things are often described by fellows who know +nothing about them. You mustn’t mind what you read.” + +“Ah, what a blasphemous speech—I _must_ mind what I read!” our young +woman protested. “When I read Thackeray and George Eliot how can I help +minding?” + +“Oh well, Thackeray and George Eliot”—and her friend pleasantly bethought +himself. “I’m afraid I haven’t read much of them.” + +“Don’t you suppose they knew about society?” asked Bessie Alden. + +“Oh I daresay they knew; they must have got up their subject. Good +writers do, don’t they? But those fashionable novels are mostly awful +rot, you know.” + +His companion rested on him a moment her dark blue eyes; after which she +looked down into the chasm where the water was tumbling about. “Do you +mean Catherine Grace Gore, for instance?” she then more aspiringly asked. + +But at this he broke down—he coloured, laughed, gave up. “I’m afraid I +haven’t read that either. I’m afraid you’ll think I’m not very +intellectual.” + +“Reading Mrs. Gore is no proof of intellect. But I like reading +everything about English life—even poor books. I’m so curious about it,” +said Bessie Alden. + +“Aren’t ladies curious about everything?” he asked with continued +hilarity. + +“I don’t think so. I don’t think we’re enough so—that we care about many +things. So it’s all the more of a compliment,” she added, “that I should +want to know so much about England.” + +The logic here seemed a little close; but Lord Lambeth, advised of a +compliment, found his natural modesty close at hand. “I’m sure you know +a great deal more than I do.” + +“I really think I know a great deal—for a person who has never been +there.” + +“Have you really never been there?” cried he. “Fancy!” + +“Never—except in imagination. And I _have_ been to Paris,” she admitted. + +“Fancy,” he repeated with gaiety—“fancy taking those brutes first! But +you _will_ come soon?” + +“It’s the dream of my life!” Bessie Alden brightly professed. + +“Your sister at any rate seems to know a tremendous lot about us,” Lord +Lambeth went on. + +She appeared to take her view of this. “My sister and I are two very +different persons. She has been a great deal in Europe. She has been in +England a little—not intimately. But she has met English people in other +countries, and she arrives very quickly at conclusions.” + +“Ah, I guess she does,” he laughed. “But you must have known some too.” + +“No—I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to one before. You’re the first +Englishman that—to my knowledge—I’ve ever talked with.” + +Bessie Alden made this statement with a certain gravity—almost, as it +seemed to the young man, an impressiveness. The impressive always made +him feel awkward, and he now began to laugh and swing his stick. “Ah, +you’d have been sure to know!” And then he added after an instant: “I’m +sorry I’m not a better specimen.” + +The girl looked away, but taking it more gaily. “You must remember +you’re only a beginning.” Then she retraced her steps, leading the way +back to the lawn, where they saw Mrs. Westgate come toward them with +Percy Beaumont still at her side. “Perhaps I shall go to England next +year,” Miss Alden continued; “I want to immensely. My sister expects to +cross about then, and she has asked me to go with her. If I do I shall +make her stay as long as possible in London.” + +“Ah, you must come early in July,” said Lord Lambeth. “That’s the time +when there’s most going on.” + +“I don’t think I can wait even till early in July,” his friend returned. +“By the first of May I shall be very impatient.” They had gone further, +and Mrs. Westgate and her companion were near. “Kitty,” said the younger +sister, “I’ve given out that we go to London next May. So please to +conduct yourself accordingly.” + +Percy Beaumont wore a somewhat animated—even a slightly irritated—air. +He was by no means of so handsome an effect as his comrade, though in the +latter’s absence he might, with his manly stature and his fair dense +beard, his fresh clean skin and his quiet outlook, have pleased by a due +affirmation of the best British points. Just now Beaumont’s clear eyes +had a rather troubled light, which, after glancing at Bessie Alden while +she spoke, he turned with some intensity on Lord Lambeth. Mrs. +Westgate’s beautiful radiance of interest and dissent fell meanwhile +impartially everywhere. + +“You had better wait till the time comes,” she said to her sister. +“Perhaps next May you won’t care so much for London. Mr. Beaumont and +I,” she went on, smiling at her companion, “have had a tremendous +discussion. We don’t agree about anything. It’s perfectly delightful.” + +“Oh I say, Percy!” exclaimed Lord Lambeth. + +“I disagree,” said Beaumont, raising his eyebrows and stroking down his +back hair, “even to the point of thinking it _not_ delightful.” + +“Ah, you _must_ have been getting it!” cried his friend. + +“I don’t see anything delightful in my disagreeing with Mrs. Westgate,” +said Percy Beaumont. + +“Well, I do!” Mrs. Westgate declared as she turned again to her sister. +“You know you’ve to go to town. There must be something at the door for +you. You had better take Lord Lambeth.” + +Mr. Beaumont, at this point, looked straight at his comrade, trying to +catch his eye. But Lord Lambeth wouldn’t look at him; his own eyes were +better occupied. “I shall be very happy”—Bessie Alden rose straight to +their hostess’s suggestion. “I’m only going to some shops. But I’ll +drive you about and show you the place.” + +“An American woman who respects herself,” said Mrs. Westgate, turning to +the elder man with her bright expository air, “must buy something every +day of her life. If she can’t do it herself she must send out some +member of her family for the purpose. So Bessie goes forth to fulfil my +mission.” + +The girl had walked away with Lord Lambeth by her side, to whom she was +talking still; and Percy Beaumont watched them as they passed toward the +house. “She fulfils her own mission,” he presently said; “that of being +very attractive.” + +But even here Mrs. Westgate discriminated. “I don’t know that I should +precisely say attractive. She’s not so much that as she’s charming when +you really know her. She’s very shy.” + +“Oh indeed?” said Percy Beaumont with evident wonder. And then as if to +alternate with a certain grace the note of scepticism: “I guess your +shyness, in that case, is different from ours.” + +“Everything of ours is different from yours,” Mrs. Westgate instantly +returned. “But my poor sister’s given over, I hold, to a fine Boston +_gaucherie_ that has rubbed off on her by being there so much. She’s a +dear good girl, however; she’s a charming type of girl. She is not in +the least a flirt; that isn’t at all her line; she doesn’t know the +alphabet of any such vulgarity. She’s very simple, very serious, very +_true_. She has lived, however, rather too much in Boston with another +sister of mine, the eldest of us, who married a Bostonian. Bessie’s very +cultivated, not at all like me—I’m not in the least cultivated and am +called so only by those who don’t know what true culture is. But Bessie +does; she has studied Greek; she has read everything; she’s what they +call in Boston ‘thoughtful.’” + +“Ah well, it only depends on what one thinks _about_,” said Mr. Beaumont, +who appeared to find her zeal for distinctions catching. + +“I really believe,” Mrs. Westgate pursued, “that the most charming girl +in the world is a Boston superstructure on a New York _fond_, or perhaps +a New York superstructure on a Boston _fond_. At any rate it’s the +mixture,” she declared, continuing to supply her guest with information +and to do him the honours of the American world with a zeal that left +nothing to be desired. + +Lord Lambeth got into a light low pony-cart with Bessie Alden, and she +drove him down the long Avenue, whose extent he had measured on foot a +couple of hours before, into the ancient town, as it was called in that +part of the world, of Newport. The ancient town was a curious affair—a +collection of fresh-looking little wooden houses, painted white, +scattered over a hill-side and clustering about a long straight street +paved with huge old cobbles. There were plenty of shops, a large +allowance of which appeared those of fruit-vendors, with piles of huge +water-melons and pumpkins stacked in front of them; while, drawn up +before the shops or bumping about on the round stones, were innumerable +other like or different carts freighted with ladies of high fashion who +greeted each other from vehicle to vehicle and conversed on the edge of +the pavement in a manner that struck Lord Lambeth as of the last +effusiveness: with a great many “Oh my dears” and little quick sounds and +motions—obscure native words, shibboleths and signs. His companion went +into seventeen shops—he amused himself with counting them—and accumulated +at the bottom of the trap a pile of bundles that hardly left the young +Englishman a place for his feet. As she had no other attendant he sat in +the phaeton to hold the pony; where, though not a particularly acute +observer, he saw much harmlessly to divert him—especially the ladies just +mentioned, who wandered up and down with an aimless intentness, as if +looking for something to buy, and who, tripping in and out of their +vehicles, displayed remarkably pretty feet. It all seemed to Lord +Lambeth very odd and bright and gay. And he felt by the time they got +back to the villa that he had made a stride in intimacy with Miss Alden. + +The young Englishmen spent the whole of that day and the whole of many +successive days in the cultivation, right and left, far and near, of this +celerity of social progress. They agreed that it was all extremely +jolly—that they had never known anything more agreeable. It is not +proposed to report the detail of their sojourn on this charming shore; +though were it convenient I might present a record of impressions none +the less soothing that they were not exhaustively analysed. Many of them +still linger in the minds of our travellers, attended by a train of +harmonious images—images of early breezy shining hours on lawns and +piazzas that overlooked the sea; of innumerable pretty girls saying +innumerable quaint and familiar things; of infinite lounging and talking +and laughing and flirting and lunching and dining; of a confidence that +broke down, of a freedom that pulled up, nowhere; of an idyllic ease that +was somehow too ordered for a primitive social consciousness and too +innocent for a developed; of occasions on which they so knew every one +and everything that they almost ached with reciprocity; of drives and +rides in the late afternoon, over gleaming beaches, on long sea-roads, +beneath a sky lighted up by marvellous sunsets; of tea-tables, on the +return, informal, irregular, agreeable; of evenings at open windows or on +the perpetual verandahs, in the summer starlight, above the warm Atlantic +and amid irrelevant outbursts of clever minstrelsy. The young Englishmen +were introduced to everybody, entertained by everybody, intimate with +everybody, and it was all the book of life, of American life, at least; +with the chapter of “complications” bodily omitted. At the end of three +days they had removed their luggage from the hotel and had gone to stay +with Mrs. Westgate—a step as to which Percy Beaumont at first took up an +attitude of mistrust apparently founded on some odd and just a little +barbaric talk forced on him, he would have been tempted to say, and very +soon after their advent, by Miss Alden. He had indeed been aware of her +occasional approach or appeal, since she wasn’t literally always in +conversation with Lord Lambeth. He had meditated on Mrs. Westgate’s +account of her sister and discovered for himself that the young lady was +“sharp” (Percy’s critical categories remained few and simple) and +appeared to have read a great deal. She seemed perfectly well-bred, +though he couldn’t make out that, as Mrs. Westgate funnily insisted, she +was shy. If she was shy she carried it off with an ease—! + +“Mr. Beaumont,” she had said, “please tell me something about Lord +Lambeth’s family. How would you say it in England?—his position.” + +“His position?” Percy’s instinct was to speak as if he had never heard +of such a matter. + +“His rank—or whatever you call it. Unfortunately we haven’t got a +‘Peerage,’ like the people in Thackeray.” + +“That’s a great pity,” Percy pleaded. “You’d find the whole matter in +black and white, and upon my honour I know very little about it.” + +The girl seemed to wonder at this innocence. “You know at least whether +he’s what they call a great noble.” + +“Oh yes, he’s in that line.” + +“Is he a ‘peer of the realm’?” + +“Well, as yet—very nearly.” + +“And has he any other title than Lord Lambeth?” + +“His title’s the Marquis of Lambeth.” With which the fountain of +Bessie’s information appeared to run a little dry. She looked at him, +however, with such interest that he presently added: “He’s the son of the +Duke of Bayswater.” + +“The eldest—?” + +“The only one.” + +“And are his parents living?” + +“Naturally—as to his father. If _he_ weren’t living Lambeth would be a +duke.” + +“So that when ‘the old lord’ dies”—and the girl smiled with more +simplicity than might have been expected in one so “sharp”—“he’ll become +Duke of Bayswater?” + +“Of course,” said their common friend. “But his father’s in excellent +health.” + +“And his mother?” + +Percy seemed amused. “The Duchess is built to last!” + +“And has he any sisters?” + +“Yes, there are two.” + +“And what are they called?” + +“One of them’s married. She’s the Countess of Pimlico.” + +“And the other?” + +“The other’s unmarried—she’s plain Lady Julia.” + +Bessie entered into it all. “Is she very plain?” + +He began to laugh again. “You wouldn’t find her so handsome as her +brother,” he said; and it was after this that he attempted to dissuade +the heir of the Duke of Bayswater from accepting Mrs. Westgate’s +invitation. “Depend upon it,” he said, “that girl means to have a go at +you.” + +“It seems to me you’re doing your best to make a fool of me,” the modest +young nobleman answered. + +“She has been asking me,” his friend imperturbably pursued, “all about +your people and your possessions.” + +“I’m sure it’s very good of her!” Lord Lambeth returned. + +“Well, then,” said Percy, “if you go straight into it, if you hurl +yourself bang upon the spears, you do so with your eyes open.” + +“Damn my eyes!” the young man pronounced. “If one’s to be a dozen times +a day at the house it’s a great deal more convenient to sleep there. I’m +sick of travelling up and down this beastly Avenue.” + +Since he had determined to go Percy would of course have been very sorry +to allow him to go alone; he was a man of many scruples—in the direction +in which he had any at all—and he remembered his promise to the Duchess. +It was obviously the memory of this promise that made Mr. Beaumont say to +his companion a couple of days later that he rather wondered he should be +so fond of such a girl. + +“In the first place how do you know how fond I am?” asked Lord Lambeth. +“And in the second why shouldn’t I be fond of her?” + +“I shouldn’t think she’d be in your line.” + +“What do you call my ‘line’? You don’t set her down, I suppose, as +‘fast’?” + +“Exactly so. Mrs. Westgate tells me that there’s no such thing as the +fast girl in America; that it’s an English invention altogether and that +the term has no meaning here.” + +“All the better. It’s an animal I detest,” said Lord Lambeth. + +“You prefer, then, rather a priggish American _précieuse_?” + +Lord Lambeth took his time. “Do you call Miss Alden all that?” + +“Her sister tells me,” said Percy Beaumont, “that she’s tremendously +literary.” + +“Well, why shouldn’t she be? She’s certainly very clever and has every +appearance of a well-stored mind.” + +Percy for an instant watched his young friend, who had turned away. “I +should rather have supposed you’d find her stores oppressive.” + +The young man, after this, faced him again. “Why, do you think me such a +dunce?” And then as his friend but vaguely protested: “The girl’s all +right,” he said—and quite as if this judgement covered all the ground. +It wasn’t that there was no ground—but he knew what he was about. + +Percy, for a while further, and a little uncomfortably flushed with the +sense of his false position—that of presenting culture in a “mean” light, +as they said at Newport—Percy kept his peace; but on August 10th he wrote +to the Duchess of Bayswater. His conception of certain special duties +and decencies, as I have said, was strong, and this step wholly fell in +with it. His companion meanwhile was having much talk with Miss Alden—on +the red sea-rocks beyond the lawn; in the course of long island rides, +with a slow return in the glowing twilight; on the deep verandah, late in +the evening. Lord Lambeth, who had stayed at many houses, had never +stayed at one in which it was possible for a young man to converse so +freely and frequently with a young lady. This young lady no longer +applied to their other guest for information concerning his lordship. +She addressed herself directly to the young nobleman. She asked him a +great many questions, some of which did, according to Mr. Beaumont’s +term, a little oppress him; for he took no pleasure in talking about +himself. + +“Lord Lambeth”—this had been one of them—“are you an hereditary +legislator?” + +“Oh I say,” he returned, “don’t make me call myself such names as that.” + +“But you’re natural members of Parliament.” + +“I don’t like the sound of that either.” + +“Doesn’t your father sit in the House of Lords?” Bessie Alden went on. + +“Very seldom,” said Lord Lambeth. + +“Is it a very august position?” she asked. + +“Oh dear no,” Lord Lambeth smiled. + +“I should think it would be very grand”—she serenely kept it up, as the +female American, he judged, would always keep anything up—“to possess +simply by an accident of birth the right to make laws for a great +nation.” + +“Ah, but one doesn’t make laws. There’s a lot of humbug about it.” + +“I don’t believe that,” the girl unconfusedly declared. “It must be a +great privilege, and I should think that if one thought of it in the +right way—from a high point of view—it would be very inspiring.” + +“The less one thinks of it the better, I guess!” Lord Lambeth after a +moment returned. + +“I think it’s tremendous”—this at least she kept up; and on another +occasion she asked him if he had any tenantry. Hereupon it was that, as +I have said, he felt a little the burden of her earnestness. + +But he took it good-humouredly. “Do you want to buy up their leases?” + +“Well—have you got any ‘livings’?” she demanded as if the word were rich +and rare. + +“Oh I say!” he cried. “Have _you_ got a pet clergyman looking out?” But +she made him plead guilty to his having, in prospect, a castle; he +confessed to but one. It was the place in which he had been born and +brought up, and, as he had an old-time liking for it, he was beguiled +into a few pleasant facts about it and into pronouncing it really very +jolly. Bessie listened with great interest, declaring she would give the +world to see such a place. To which he charmingly made answer: “It would +be awfully kind of you to come and stay there, you know.” It was not +inconvenient to him meanwhile that Percy Beaumont hadn’t happened to hear +him make this genial remark. + +Mr. Westgate, all this time, hadn’t, as they said at Newport, “come on.” +His wife more than once announced that she expected him on the morrow; +but on the morrow she wandered about a little, with a telegram in her +jewelled fingers, pronouncing it too “fiendish” he should let his +business so dreadfully absorb him that he could but platonically hope, as +she expressed it, his two Englishmen were having a good time. “I must +say,” said Mrs. Westgate, “that it’s no thanks to him if you are!” And +she went on to explain, while she kept up that slow-paced circulation +which enabled her well-adjusted skirts to display themselves so +advantageously, that unfortunately in America there was no leisure-class +and that the universal passionate surrender of the men to +business-questions and business-questions only, as if they were the all +in all of life, was a tide that would have to be stemmed. It was Lord +Lambeth’s theory, freely propounded when the young men were together, +that Percy was having a very good time with Mrs. Westgate and that under +the pretext of meeting for the purpose of animated discussion they were +indulging in practices that imparted a shade of hypocrisy to the lady’s +regret for her husband’s absence. + +“I assure you we’re always discussing and differing,” Mr. Beaumont +however asseverated. “She’s awfully argumentative. American ladies +certainly don’t mind contradicting you flat. Upon my word I don’t think +I was ever treated so by a woman before. We have ours ever so much more +in hand. She’s so devilish positive.” + +The superlative degree so variously affirmed, however, was evidently a +source of attraction in Mrs. Westgate, for the elder man was constantly +at his hostess’s side. He detached himself one day to the extent of +going to New York to talk over the Tennessee Central with her husband; +but he was absent only forty-eight hours, during which, with that +gentleman’s assistance, he completely settled this piece of business. +“They know how to put things—and put people—‘through’ in New York,” he +subsequently and quite breathlessly observed to his comrade; and he added +that Mr. Westgate had seemed markedly to fear his wife might suffer for +loss of her guest—he had been in such an awful hurry to send him back to +her. “I’m afraid you’ll never come up to an American husband—if that’s +what the wives expect,” he said to Lord Lambeth. + +Mrs. Westgate, however, was not to enjoy much longer the entertainment +with which an indulgent husband had desired to keep her provided. August +had still a part of its course to run when his lordship received from his +mother the disconcerting news that his father had been taken ill and that +he had best at once come home. The young nobleman concealed his chagrin +with no great success. “I left the Duke but the other day absolutely all +right—so what the deuce does it mean?” he asked of his comrade. “What’s +a fellow to do?” + +Percy Beaumont was scarce less annoyed; he had deemed it his duty, as we +know, to report faithfully to the Duchess, but had not expected this +distinguished woman to act so promptly on his hint. “It means,” he said, +“that your father is somehow, and rather suddenly, laid up. I don’t +suppose it’s anything serious, but you’ve no option. Take the first +steamer, but take it without alarm.” + +This really struck Lord Lambeth as meaning that he essentially needn’t +take it, since alarm would have been his only good motive; yet he +nevertheless, after an hour of intenser irritation than he could quite +have explained to himself, made his farewells; in the course of which he +exchanged a few last words with Bessie Alden that are the only ones +making good their place in our record. “Of course I needn’t assure you +that if you should come to England next year I expect to be the very +first person notified of it.” + +She looked at him in that way she had which never quite struck him as +straight and clear, yet which always struck him as kind and true. “Oh, +if we come to London I should think you’d sufficiently hear of it.” + +Percy Beaumont felt it his duty also to embark, and this same rigour +compelled him, one windless afternoon, in mid-Atlantic, to say to his +friend that he suspected the Duchess’s telegram to have been in part the +result of something he himself had written her. “I wrote her—as I +distinctly warned you I had promised in general to do—that you were +extremely interested in a little American girl.” + +The young man, much upset by this avowal, indulged for some moments in +the strong and simple language of resentment. But if I have described +him as inclined to candour and to reason I can give no better proof of it +than the fact of his being ready to face the truth by the end of half an +hour. “You were quite right after all. I’m very much interested in her. +Only, to be fair,” he added, “you should have told my mother also that +she’s not—at all seriously—interested in poor me.” + +Mr. Beaumont gave the rein to mirth and mockery. “There’s nothing so +charming as modesty in a young man in the position of ‘poor’ you. That +speech settles for me the question of what’s the matter with you.” + +Lord Lambeth’s handsome eyes turned rueful and queer. “Is anything so +flagrantly the matter with me?” + +“Everything, my dear boy,” laughed his companion, passing a hand into his +arm for a walk. + +“Well, _she_ isn’t interested—she isn’t!” the young man insisted. + +“My poor friend,” said Percy Beaumont rather gravely, “you’re very far +gone!” + + + +IV + + +In point of fact, as the latter would have said, Mrs. Westgate +disembarked by the next mid-May on the British coast. She was +accompanied by her sister, but unattended by any other member of her +family. To the lost comfort of a husband respectably to produce, as she +phrased it, she was now habituated; she had made half a dozen journeys to +Europe under this drawback of looking ill-temperedly separated and yet of +being thanklessly enslaved, and she still decently accounted for her +spurious singleness to wondering friends on this side of the Atlantic by +formulating the grim truth—the only grimness indeed in all her view—that +in America there is no leisure-class. The two ladies came up to London +and alighted at Jones’s Hotel, where Mrs. Westgate, who had made on +former occasions the most agreeable impression at this establishment, +received an obsequious greeting. Bessie Alden had felt much excited +about coming to England; she had expected the “associations” would carry +her away and counted on the joy of treating her eyes and her imagination +to all the things she had read of in poets and historians. She was very +fond of the poets and historians, of the picturesque, of the past, of +associations, of relics and reverberations of greatness; so that on +coming into the great English world, where strangeness and familiarity +would go hand in hand, she was prepared for a swarm of fresh emotions. +They began very promptly—these tender fluttering sensations; they began +with the sight of the beautiful English landscape, whose dark richness +was quickened and brightened by the season; with the carpeted fields and +flowering hedge-rows, as she looked at them from the window of the train; +with the spires of the rural churches peeping above the rook-haunted +tree-tops; with the oak-studded, deer-peopled parks, the ancient homes, +the cloudy light, the speech, the manners, all the significant +differences. Mrs. Westgate’s response was of course less quick and less +extravagant, and she gave but a wandering attention to her sister’s +ejaculations and rhapsodies. + +“You know my enjoyment of England’s not so intellectual as Bessie’s,” she +said to several of her friends in the course of her visit to this +country. “And yet if it’s not intellectual I can’t say it’s in the least +sensual. I don’t think I can quite say what it is, my enjoyment of +England.” When once it was settled that the two ladies should come +abroad and should spend a few weeks in London and perhaps in other parts +of the celebrated island on their way to the Continent, they of course +exchanged a good many allusions to their English acquaintance. + +“It will certainly be much nicer having friends there,” was a remark that +had one day dropped from Bessie while she sat on the sunny deck of the +steamer, at her sister’s feet, from under which spread conveniently a +large soft rug. + +“Whom do you mean by friends?” Mrs. Westgate had then invited the girl to +say. + +“All those English gentlemen you’ve known and entertained. Captain +Littledale, for instance. And Lord Lambeth and Mr. Beaumont,” the girl +further mentioned. + +“Do you expect them to give us a very grand reception?” + +She reflected a moment; she was addicted, as we know, to fine reflexion. +“Well—to be nice.” + +“My poor sweet child!” murmured her sister. + +“What have I said that’s so silly?” Bessie asked. + +“You’re a little too simple; just a little. It’s very becoming, but it +pleases people at your expense.” + +“I’m certainly too simple to understand you,” said our young lady. + +Mrs. Westgate had an ominous pause. “Shall I tell you a story?” + +“If you’d be so good. That’s what’s frequently done to amuse simple +people.” + +Mrs. Westgate consulted her memory while her companion sat at gaze of the +shining sea. “Did you ever hear of the Duke of Green-Erin?” + +“I think not,” said Bessie. + +“Well, it’s no matter,” her sister went on. + +“It’s a proof of my simplicity.” + +“My story’s meant to illustrate that of some other people,” said Mrs. +Westgate. “The Duke of Green-Erin’s what they call in England a great +swell, and some five years ago he came to America. He spent most of his +time in New York, and in New York he spent his days and his nights at the +Butterworths’. You’ve heard at least of the Butterworths. _Bien_. They +did everything in the world for him—the poor Butterworths—they turned +themselves inside out. They gave him a dozen dinner-parties and balls, +and were the means of his being invited to fifty more. At first he used +to come into Mrs. Butterworth’s box at the opera in a tweed +travelling-suit, but some one stopped that. At any rate he had a +beautiful time and they parted the best friends in the world. Two years +elapse and the Butterworths come abroad and go to London. The first +thing they see in all the papers—in England those things are in the most +prominent place—is that the Duke of Green-Erin has arrived in town for +the season. They wait a little, and then Mr. Butterworth—as polite as +ever—goes and leaves a card. They wait a little more; the visit’s not +returned; they wait three weeks: _silence de mort_, the Duke gives no +sign. The Butterworths see a lot of other people, put down the Duke of +Green-Erin as a rude ungrateful man and forget all about him. One fine +day they go to Ascot Races—where they meet him face to face. He stares a +moment and then comes up to Mr. Butterworth, taking something from his +pocket-book—something which proves to be a banknote. ‘I’m glad to see +you, Mr. Butterworth,’ he says, ‘so that I can pay you that ten pounds I +lost to you in New York. I saw the other day you remembered our bet; +here are the ten pounds, Mr. Butterworth. Good-bye, Mr. Butterworth.’ +And off he goes, and that’s the last they see of the Duke of Green-Erin.” + +“Is that your story?” asked Bessie Alden. + +“Don’t tell me you don’t think it interesting!” her sister replied. + +“I don’t think I believe it,” said the girl. + +“Ah, then,” cried Mrs. Westgate, “mademoiselle isn’t of such an unspotted +_candeur_! Believe it or not as you like. There’s at any rate no smoke +without fire.” + +“Is that the way,” asked Bessie after a moment, “that you expect your +friends to treat you?” + +“I defy them to treat me very ill, for the simple reason that I shall +never give them the opportunity. With the best will in the world, in +that case, they can’t be very disobliging.” + +Our young lady for a time said nothing. “I don’t see what makes you talk +that way,” she then resumed. “The English are a great people.” + +“Exactly; and that’s just the way they’ve grown great—by dropping you +when you’ve ceased to be useful. People say they aren’t clever, but I +find them prodigiously clever.” + +“You know you’ve liked them—all the Englishmen you’ve seen,” Bessie +brought up. + +“They’ve liked _me_,” her sister returned; “so I think I’d rather put it. +And of course one likes that.” + +Bessie pursued for some moments her studies in sea-green. “Well,” she +said, “whether they like me or not, I mean to like them. And happily,” +she wound up, “Lord Lambeth doesn’t owe me ten pounds.” + +During the first few days after their arrival at Jones’s Hotel our +charming Americans were much occupied with what they would have called +looking about them. They found occasion to make numerous purchases, and +their opportunities for inquiry and comment were only those supplied by +the deferential London shopmen. Bessie Alden, even in driving from the +station, felt to intensity the many-voiced appeal of the capital of the +race from which she had sprung, and, at the risk of exhibiting her as a +person of vulgar tastes, it must be recorded that for many days she +desired no higher pleasure than to roll about the crowded streets in the +public conveyances. They presented to her attentive eyes strange +pictures and figures, and it’s at least beneath the dignity of our +historic muse to enumerate the trivial objects and incidents in which the +imagination of this simple young lady from Boston lost itself. It may be +freely mentioned, however, that whenever, after a round of visits in Bond +Street and Regent Street, she was about to return with her sister to +Jones’s Hotel, she desired they should, at whatever cost to convenience, +be driven home by way of Westminster Abbey. She had begun by asking if +it wouldn’t be possible to take the Tower _en route_ to their lodgings; +but it happened that at a more primitive stage of her culture Mrs. +Westgate had paid a visit to this venerable relic, which she spoke of +ever afterwards, vaguely, as a dreadful disappointment. She thus +expressed the liveliest disapproval of any attempt to combine historical +researches with the purchase of hair-brushes and notepaper. The most she +would consent to do in the line of backward brooding was to spend half an +hour at Madame Tussaud’s, where she saw several dusty wax effigies of +members of the Royal Family. It was made clear to Bessie that if she +wished to go to the Tower she must get some one else to take her. Bessie +expressed hereupon an earnest disposition to go alone; but in respect to +this proposal as well Mrs. Westgate had the cold sense of complications. + +“Remember,” she said, “that you’re not in your innocent little Boston. +It’s not a question of walking up and down Beacon Street.” With which +she went on to explain that there were two classes of American girls in +Europe—those who walked about alone and those who didn’t. “You happen to +belong, my dear,” she said to her sister, “to the class that doesn’t.” + +“It’s only,” laughed Bessie, though all yearningly, “because you happen +quite arbitrarily to place me.” And she devoted much private meditation +to this question of effecting a visit to the Tower of London. + +Suddenly it seemed as if the problem might be solved; the two ladies at +Jones’s Hotel received a visit from Willie Woodley. So was familiarly +designated a young American who had sailed from New York a few days after +their own departure and who, enjoying some freedom of acquaintance with +them in that city, had lost no time, on his arrival in London, in coming +to pay them his respects. He had in fact gone to see them directly after +going to see his tailor; than which there can be no greater exhibition of +promptitude on the part of a young American just installed at the Charing +Cross Hotel. He was a slight, mild youth, without high colour but with +many elegant forms, famous for the authority with which he led the +“German” in New York. He was indeed, by the young ladies who habitually +figured in such evolutions, reckoned “the best dancer in the world”; it +was in those terms he was always spoken of and his pleasant identity +indicated. He was the most convenient gentle young man, for almost any +casual light purpose, it was possible to meet; he was beautifully +dressed—“in the English style”—and knew an immense deal about London. He +had been at Newport during the previous summer, at the time of our young +Englishmen’s visit, and he took extreme pleasure in the society of Bessie +Alden, whom he never addressed but as “Miss Bessie.” She immediately +arranged with him, in the presence of her sister, that he should guide +her to the scene of Lady Jane Grey’s execution. + +“You may do as you please,” said Mrs. Westgate. “Only—if you desire the +information—it is not the custom here for young ladies to knock about +London with wild young men.” + +“Miss Bessie has waltzed with me so often—not to call it so wildly,” the +young man returned, “that she can surely go out with me in a jog-trot +cab.” + +“I consider public waltzing,” said Mrs. Westgate, “the most innocent, +because the most guarded and regulated, pleasure of our time.” + +“It’s a jolly compliment to our time!” Mr. Woodley cried with a laugh of +the most candid significance. + +“I don’t see why I should regard what’s done here,” Bessie pursued. “Why +should I suffer the restrictions of a society of which I enjoy none of +the privileges?” + +“That’s very good—very good,” her friend applauded. + +“Oh, go to the Tower and feel the axe if you like!” said Mrs. Westgate. +“I consent to your going with Mr. Woodley; but I wouldn’t let you go with +an Englishman.” + +“Miss Bessie wouldn’t care to go with an Englishman!” Mr. Woodley +declared with an asperity doubtless not unnatural in a young man who, +dressing in a manner that I have indicated and knowing a great deal, as I +have said, about London, saw no reason for drawing these sharp +distinctions. He agreed upon a day with Miss Bessie—a day of that same +week; while an ingenious mind might perhaps have traced a connexion +between the girl’s reference to her lack of social privilege or festal +initiation and a question she asked on the morrow as she sat with her +sister at luncheon. + +“Don’t you mean to write to—to any one?” + +“I wrote this morning to Captain Littledale,” Mrs. Westgate replied. + +“But Mr. Woodley believes Captain Littledale away in India.” + +“He said he thought he had heard so; he knows nothing about it.” + +For a moment Bessie said nothing more; then at last, “And don’t you +intend to write to—to Mr. Beaumont?” she inquired. + +Her sister waited with a look at her. “You mean to Lord Lambeth.” + +“I said Mr. Beaumont because he was—at Newport—so good a friend of +yours.” + +Mrs. Westgate prolonged the attitude of sisterly truth. “I don’t really +care two straws for Mr. Beaumont.” + +“You were certainly very nice to him.” + +“I’m very nice to every one,” said Mrs. Westgate simply. + +Nothing indeed could have been simpler save perhaps the way Bessie smiled +back: “To every one but me.” + +Her sister continued to look at her. “Are you in love with Lord +Lambeth?” + +Our young woman stared a moment, and the question was too unattended with +any train even to make her shy. “Not that I know of.” + +“Because if you are,” Mrs. Westgate went on, “I shall certainly not send +for him.” + +“That proves what I said,” Bessie gaily insisted—“that you’re not really +nice to me.” + +“It would be a poor service, my dear child,” said her sister. + +“In what sense? There’s nothing _against_ Lord Lambeth that I know of.” + +Mrs. Westgate seemed to cover much country in a few moments. “You _are_ +in love with him then?” + +Bessie stared again, but this time blushing a little. “Ah, if you’ll not +be serious we won’t mention him again.” + +For some minutes accordingly Lord Lambeth was shrouded in silence, and it +was Mrs. Westgate who, at the end of this period, removed the ban. “Of +course I shall let him know we’re here. I think he’d be hurt—justly +enough—if we should go away without seeing him. It’s fair to give him a +chance to come and thank me for the kindness we showed him. But I don’t +want to seem eager.” + +“Neither do I,” said Bessie very simply. + +“Though I confess,” her companion added, “that I’m curious to see how +he’ll behave.” + +“He behaved very well at Newport.” + +“Newport isn’t London. At Newport he could do as he liked; but here it’s +another affair. He has to have an eye to consequences.” + +“If he had more freedom then at Newport,” argued Bessie, “it’s the more +to his credit that he behaved well; and if he has to be so careful here +it’s possible he’ll behave even better.” + +“Better, better?” echoed her sister a little impatiently. “My dear +child, what do you mean by better and what’s your point of view?” + +Bessie wondered. “What do _you_ mean by my point of view?” + +“Don’t you care for Lord Lambeth—a tiny speck?” Mrs. Westgate demanded. + +This time Bessie Alden took it with still deeper reserve. She slowly got +up from table, turning her face away. “You’ll oblige me by not talking +so.” + +Mrs. Westgate sat watching her for some moments as she moved slowly about +the room and went and stood at the window. “I’ll write to him this +afternoon,” she said at last. + +“Do as you please!” Bessie answered; after which she turned round. “I’m +not afraid to say I like Lord Lambeth. I like him very much.” + +Mrs. Westgate bethought herself. “He’s not clever.” + +“Well, there have been clever people whom I’ve disliked,” the girl said; +“so I suppose I may like a stupid one. Besides, Lord Lambeth’s no +stupider than any one else.” + +“No stupider than he gives you warning of,” her sister smiled. + +“If I were in love with him as you said just now,” Bessie returned, “it +would be bad policy on your part to abuse him.” + +“My dear child, don’t give me lessons in policy!” cried Mrs. Westgate. +“The policy I mean to follow is very deep.” + +The girl began once more to walk about; then she stopped before her +companion. “I’ve never heard in the course of five minutes so many hints +and innuendoes. I wish you’d tell me in plain English what you mean.” + +“I mean you may be much annoyed.” + +“That’s still only a hint,” said Bessie. + +Her sister just hesitated. “It will be said of you that you’ve come +after him—that you followed him.” + +Bessie threw back her pretty head much as a startled hind, and a look +flashed into her face that made Mrs. Westgate get up. “Who says such +things as that?” + +“People here.” + +“I don’t believe it.” + +“You’ve a very convenient faculty of doubt. But my policy will be, as I +say, very deep. I shall leave you to find out as many things as possible +for yourself.” + +Bessie fixed her eyes on her sister, and Mrs. Westgate could have +believed there were tears in them. “Do they talk that way here?” + +“You’ll see. I shall let you alone.” + +“Don’t let me alone,” said Bessie Alden. “Take me away.” + +“No; I want to see what you make of it,” her sister continued. + +“I don’t understand.” + +“You’ll understand after Lord Lambeth has come,” said Mrs. Westgate with +a persistence of private amusement. + +The two ladies had arranged that on this afternoon Willie Woodley should +go with them to Hyde Park, where Bessie expected it would prove a rich +passage to have sat on a little green chair under the great trees and +beside Rotten Row. The want of a suitable escort had hitherto hampered +this adventure; but no escort, now, for such an expedition, could have +been more suitable than their devoted young countryman, whose mission in +life, it might almost be said, was to find chairs for ladies and who +appeared on the stroke of half-past five adorned with every superficial +grace that could qualify him for the scene. + +“I’ve written to Lord Lambeth, my dear,” Mrs. Westgate mentioned on +coming into the room where Bessie, drawing on long grey gloves, had given +their visitor the impression that she was particularly attuned. Bessie +said nothing, but Willie Woodley exclaimed that his lordship was in town; +he had seen his name in the _Morning Post_. “Do you read the _Morning +Post_?” Mrs. Westgate thereupon asked. + +“Oh yes; it’s great fun.” Mr. Woodley almost spoke as if the pleasure +were attended with physical risk. + +“I want so to see it,” said Bessie, “there’s so much about it in +Thackeray.” + +“I’ll send it to you every morning!” cried the young man with elation. + +He found them what Bessie thought excellent places under the great trees +and beside the famous avenue the humours of which had been made familiar +to the girl’s childhood by the pictures in _Punch_. The day was bright +and warm and the crowd of riders and spectators, as well as the great +procession of carriages, proportionately dense and many-coloured. The +scene bore the stamp of the London social pressure at its highest, and it +made our young woman think of more things than she could easily express +to her companions. She sat silent, under her parasol, while her +imagination, according to its wont, kept pace with the deep strong tide +of the exhibition. Old impressions and preconceptions became living +things before the show, and she found herself, amid the crowd of images, +fitting a history to this person and a theory to that, and making a place +for them all in her small private museum of types. But if she said +little her sister on one side and Willie Woodley on the other delivered +themselves in lively alternation. + +“Look at that green dress with blue flounces. Quelle toilette!” said +Mrs. Westgate. + +“That’s the Marquis of Blackborough,” the young man was able to +contribute—“the one in the queer white coat. I heard him speak the other +night in the House of Lords; it was something about ramrods; he called +them _wamwods_. He’s an awful swell.” + +“Did you ever see anything like the way they’re pinned back?” Mrs. +Westgate resumed. “They never know where to stop.” + +“They do nothing but stop,” said Willie Woodley. “It prevents them from +walking. Here comes a great celebrity—Lady Beatrice Bellevue. She’s +awfully fast; see what little steps she takes.” + +“Well, my dear,” Mrs. Westgate pursued to Bessie, “I hope you’re getting +some ideas for your couturière?” + +“I’m getting plenty of ideas,” said Bessie, “but I don’t know that my +couturière would particularly appreciate them.” + +Their companion presently perceived a mounted friend who drew up beside +the barrier of the Row and beckoned to him. He went forward and the +crowd of pedestrians closed about him, so that for some minutes he was +hidden from sight. At last he reappeared, bringing a gentleman with +him—a gentleman whom Bessie at first supposed to be his friend +dismounted. But at a second glance she found herself looking at Lord +Lambeth, who was shaking hands with her sister. + +“I found him over there,” said Willie Woodley, “and I told him you were +here.” + +And then Lord Lambeth, raising his hat afresh, shook hands with +Bessie—“Fancy your being here!” He was blushing and smiling; he looked +very handsome and he had a note of splendour he had not had in America. +The girl’s free fancy, as we know, was just then in marked exercise; so +that the tall young Englishman, as he stood there looking down at her, +had the benefit of it. “He’s handsomer and more splendid than anything +I’ve ever seen,” she said to herself. And then she remembered he was a +Marquis and she thought he somehow looked a Marquis. + +“Really, you know,” he cried, “you ought to have let a fellow know you’ve +come!” + +“I wrote to you an hour ago,” said Mrs. Westgate. + +“Doesn’t all the world know it?” smiled Bessie. + +“I assure you I didn’t know it!” he insisted. “Upon my honour I hadn’t +heard of it. Ask Woodley now; had I, Woodley?” + +“Well, I think you’re rather a humbug,” this gentleman brought forth. + +“You don’t believe that—do you, Miss Alden?” asked his lordship. “You +don’t believe I’m rather a humbug, eh?” + +“No,” said Bessie after an instant, but choosing and conferring a grace +on the literal—“I don’t.” + +“You’re too tall to stand up, Lord Lambeth,” Mrs. Westgate pronounced. +“You approach the normal only when you sit down. Be so good as to get a +chair.” + +He found one and placed it sidewise, close to the two ladies. “If I +hadn’t met Woodley I should never have found you,” he went on. “Should +I, Woodley?” + +“Well, I guess not,” said the young American. + +“Not even with my letter?” asked Mrs. Westgate. + +“Ah, well, I haven’t got your letter yet; I suppose I shall get it this +evening. It was awfully kind of you to write.” + +“So I said to Bessie,” the elder lady observed. + +“_Did_ she say so, Miss Alden?” Lord Lambeth a little pointlessly +inquired. “I daresay you’ve been here a month.” + +“We’ve been here three,” mocked Mrs. Westgate. + +“_Have_ you been here three months?” the young man asked again of Bessie. + +“It seems a long time,” Bessie answered. + +He had but a brief wonder—he found something. “I say, after that you had +better not call me a humbug! I’ve only been in town three weeks, but you +must have been hiding away. I haven’t seen you anywhere.” + +“Where should you have seen us—where should we have gone?” Mrs. Westgate +fairly put to him. + +It found Willie Woodley at least ready. “You should have gone to +Hurlingham.” + +“No, let Lord Lambeth tell us,” Mrs. Westgate insisted. + +“There are plenty of places to go to,” he said—“each one stupider than +the other. I mean people’s houses. They send you cards.” + +“No one has sent us a scrap of a card,” Bessie laughed. + +Mrs. Westgate attenuated. “We’re very quiet. We’re here as travellers.” + +“We’ve been to Madame Tussaud’s,” Bessie further mentioned. + +“Oh I say!” cried Lord Lambeth. + +“We thought we should find your image there,” said Mrs. Westgate—“yours +and Mr. Beaumont’s.” + +“In the Chamber of Horrors?” laughed the young man. + +“It did duty very well for a party,” said Mrs. Westgate. “All the women +were _décolletées_, and many of the figures looked as if they could +almost speak.” + +“Upon my word,” his lordship returned, “you see people at London parties +who look a long way from that!” + +“Do you think Mr. Woodley could find us Mr. Beaumont?” asked the elder of +the ladies. + +He stared and looked about. “I daresay he could. Percy sometimes comes +here. Don’t you think you could find him, Woodley? Make a dive or a +dash for it.” + +“Thank you; I’ve had enough of violent movement,” said Willie Woodley. +“I’ll wait till Mr. Beaumont comes to the surface.” + +“I’ll bring him to see you,” said Lord Lambeth. “Where are you staying?” + +“You’ll find the address in my letter—Jones’s Hotel.” + +“Oh, one of those places just out of Piccadilly? Beastly hole, isn’t +it?” Lord Lambeth inquired. + +“I believe it’s the best hotel in London,” said Mrs. Westgate. + +“But they give you awful rubbish to eat, don’t they?” his lordship went +on. + +Mrs. Westgate practised the same serenity. “Awful.” + +“I always feel so sorry for people who come up to town and go to live in +those dens,” continued the young man. “They eat nothing but filth.” + +“Oh I say!” cried Willie Woodley. + +“Well, and how do you like London, Miss Alden?” Lord Lambeth asked, +unperturbed by this ejaculation. + +The girl was prompt. “I think it grand.” + +“My sister likes it, in spite of the ‘filth’!” Mrs. Westgate recorded. + +“I hope then you’re going to stop a long time.” + +“As long as I can,” Bessie replied. + +“And where’s wonderful Mr. Westgate?” asked Lord Lambeth of this +gentleman’s wife. + +“He’s where he always is—in that tiresome New York.” + +“He must have staying power,” said the young man. + +She appeared to consider. “Well, he stays ahead of every one else.” + +Lord Lambeth sat nearly an hour with his American friends; but it is not +our purpose to relate their conversation in full. He addressed a great +many remarks to the younger lady and finally turned toward her +altogether, while Willie Woodley wasted a certain amount of effort to +regale Mrs. Westgate. Bessie herself was sparing of effusion; she +thought, on her guard, of what her sister had said to her at luncheon. +Little by little, however, she interested herself again in her English +friend very much as she had done at Newport; only it seemed to her he +might here become more interesting. He would be an unconscious part of +the antiquity, the impressiveness, the picturesqueness of England; of all +of which things poor Bessie Alden, like most familiars of the +overciphered _tabula rasa_, was terribly at the mercy. + +“I’ve often wished I were back at Newport,” the young man candidly +stated. “Those days I spent at your sister’s were awfully jolly.” + +“We enjoyed them very much; I hope your father’s better.” + +“Oh dear yes. When I got to England the old humbug was out +grouse-shooting. It was what you call in America a gigantic fraud. My +mother had got nervous. My three weeks at Newport seemed a happy dream.” + +“America certainly is very different from England,” said Bessie. + +“I hope you like England better, eh?” he returned almost persuasively. + +“No Englishman can ask that seriously of a person of another country.” + +He turned his cheerful brown eyes on her. “You mean it’s a matter of +course?” + +“If I were English,” said Bessie, “it would certainly seem to me a matter +of course that every one should be a good patriot.” + +“Oh dear, yes; patriotism’s everything.” He appeared not quite to +follow, but was clearly contented. “Now what are you going to do here?” + +“On Thursday I’m going to the Tower.” + +“The Tower?” + +“The Tower of London. Did you never hear of it?” + +“Oh yes, I’ve been there,” said Lord Lambeth. “I was taken there by my +governess when I was six years old. It’s a rum idea your going there.” + +“Do give me a few more rum ideas then. I want to see everything of that +sort. I’m going to Hampton Court and to Windsor and to the Dulwich +Gallery.” + +He seemed greatly amused. “I wonder you don’t go to Rosherville +Gardens.” + +Bessie yearned. “Are they interesting?” + +“Oh wonderful!” + +“Are they weirdly old? That’s all I care for,” she said. + +“They’re tremendously old; they’re all falling to ruins.” + +The girl rose to it. “I think there’s nothing so charming as an old +ruinous garden. We must certainly go there.” + +Her friend broke out into mirth. “I say, Woodley, here’s Miss Alden +wants to go down to Rosherville Gardens! Hang it, they _are_ ‘weird’!” + +Willie Woodley looked a little blank; he was caught in the fact of +ignorance of an apparently conspicuous feature of London life. But in a +moment he turned it off. “Very well,” he said, “I’ll write for a +permit.” + +Lord Lambeth’s exhilaration increased. “‘Gad, I believe that, to get +your money’s worth over here, you Americans would go anywhere!” + +“We wish to go to Parliament,” said Bessie. “That’s one of the first +things.” + +“Ah, it would bore you to death!” he returned. + +“We wish to hear you speak.” + +“I never speak—except to young ladies.” + +She looked at him from under the shade of her parasol. “You’re very +strange,” she then quietly concluded. “I don’t think I approve of you.” + +“Ah, now don’t be severe, Miss Alden!” he cried with the note of +sincerity. “Please don’t be severe. I want you to like me—awfully.” + +“To like you awfully? You mustn’t laugh at me then when I make mistakes. +I regard it as my right—as a free-born American—to make as many mistakes +as I choose.” + +“Upon my word I didn’t laugh at you,” the young man pleaded. + +“And not only that,” Bessie went on; “but I hold that all my mistakes +should be set down to my credit. You must think the better of me for +them.” + +“I can’t think better of you than I do,” he declared. + +Again, shadily, she took him in. “You certainly speak very well to young +ladies. But why don’t you address the House?—isn’t that what they call +it?” + +“Because I’ve nothing to say.” + +“Haven’t you a great position?” she demanded. + +He looked a moment at the back of his glove. “I’ll set that down as one +of your mistakes—to your credit.” And as if he disliked talking about +his position he changed the subject. “I wish you’d let me go with you to +the Tower and to Hampton Court and to all those other places.” + +“We shall be most happy,” said Bessie. + +“And of course I shall be delighted to show you the Houses of +Parliament—some day that suits you. There are a lot of things I want to +do for you. I want you to have a good time. And I should like very much +to present some of my friends to you if it wouldn’t bore you. Then it +would be awfully kind of you to come down to Branches.” + +“We’re much obliged to you, Lord Lambeth,” said Bessie. “And what may +Branches be?” + +“It’s a house in the country. I think you might like it.” + +Willie Woodley and Mrs. Westgate were at this moment sitting in silence, +and the young man’s ear caught these last words of the other pair. “He’s +inviting Miss Bessie to one of his castles,” he murmured to his +companion. + +Mrs. Westgate hereupon, foreseeing what she mentally called +“complications,” immediately got up; and the two ladies, taking leave of +their English friend, returned, under conduct of their American, to +Jones’s Hotel. + + + +V + + +Lord Lambeth came to see them on the morrow, bringing Percy Beaumont with +him—the latter having at once declared his intention of neglecting none +of the usual offices of civility. This declaration, however, on his +kinsman’s informing him of the advent of the two ladies, had been +preceded by another exchange. + +“Here they are then and you’re in for it.” + +“And what am I in for?” the younger man had inquired. + +“I’ll let your mother give it a name. With all respect to whom,” Percy +had added, “I must decline on this occasion to do any more police duty. +The Duchess must look after you herself.” + +“I’ll give her a chance,” the Duchess’s son had returned a trifle grimly. +“I shall make her go and see them.” + +“She won’t do it, my boy.” + +“We’ll see if she doesn’t,” said Lord Lambeth. + +But if Mr. Beaumont took a subtle view of the arrival of the fair +strangers at Jones’s Hotel he was sufficiently capable of a still deeper +refinement to offer them a smiling countenance. He fell into animated +conversation—conversation animated at least on _her_ side—with Mrs. +Westgate, while his companion appealed more confusedly to the younger +lady. Mrs. Westgate began confessing and protesting, declaring and +discriminating. + +“I must say London’s a great deal brighter and prettier just now than it +was when I was here last—in the month of November. There’s evidently a +great deal going on, and you seem to have a good many flowers. I’ve no +doubt it’s very charming for all you people and that you amuse yourselves +immensely. It’s very good of you to let Bessie and me come and sit and +look at you. I suppose you’ll think I’m very satirical, but I must +confess that that’s the feeling I have in London.” + +“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand to what feeling you allude,” said +Percy Beaumont. + +“The feeling that it’s all very well for you English people. +Everything’s beautifully arranged for you.” + +“It seems to me it’s very well arranged here for some Americans +sometimes,” Percy plucked up spirit to answer. + +“For some of them, yes—if they like to be patronised. But I must say I +don’t like to be patronised. I may be very eccentric and undisciplined +and unreasonable, but I confess I never was fond of patronage. I like to +associate with people on the same terms as I do in my own country; that’s +a peculiar taste that I have. But here people seem to expect something +else—really I can’t make out quite what. I’m afraid you’ll think I’m +very ungrateful, for I certainly have received in one way and another a +great deal of attention. The last time I was here a lady sent me a +message that I was at liberty to come and pay her my respects.” + +“Dear me, I hope you didn’t go,” Mr. Beaumont cried. + +“You’re deliciously naïf, I must say that for you!” Mrs. Westgate +promptly pursued. “It must be a great advantage to you here in London. +I suppose that if I myself had a little more naïveté—of your blessed +national lack of any approach to a sense for shades—I should enjoy it +more. I should be content to sit on a chair in the Park and see the +people pass, to be told that this is the Duchess of Suffolk and that the +Lord Chamberlain, and that I must be thankful for the privilege of +beholding them. I daresay it’s very peevish and critical of me to ask +for anything else. But I was always critical—it’s the joy of my life—and +I freely confess to the sin of being fastidious. I’m told there’s some +remarkably superior second-rate society provided here for strangers. +_Merci_! I don’t want any superior second-rate society. I want the +society I’ve been accustomed to.” + +Percy mustered a rueful gaiety. “I hope you don’t call Lambeth and me +second-rate!” + +“Oh I’m accustomed to you!” said Mrs. Westgate. “Do you know you English +sometimes make the most wonderful speeches? The first time I came to +London I went out to dine—as I told you, I’ve received a great deal of +attention. After dinner, in the drawing-room, I had some conversation +with an old lady—no, you mustn’t look that way: I assure you I had! I +forget what we talked about, but she presently said, in allusion to +something we were discussing: ‘Oh, you know, the aristocracy do +so-and-so, but in one’s own class of life it’s very different.’ In one’s +own class of life! What’s a poor unprotected American woman to do in a +country where she is liable to have that sort of thing said to her?” + +“I should say she’s not to mind, not a rap—though you seem to get hold of +some very queer old ladies. I compliment you on your acquaintance!” +Percy pursued. “If you’re trying to bring me to admit that London’s an +odious place you’ll not succeed. I’m extremely fond of it and think it +the jolliest place in the world.” + +“Pour vous autres—I never said the contrary,” Mrs. Westgate retorted—an +expression made use of, this last, because both interlocutors had begun +to raise their voices. Mr. Beaumont naturally didn’t like to hear the +seat of his existence abused, and Mrs. Westgate, no less naturally, +didn’t like a stubborn debater. + +“Hallo!” said Lord Lambeth; “what are they up to now?” And he came away +from the window, where he had been standing with Bessie. + +“I quite agree with a very clever countrywoman of mine,” the elder lady +continued with charming ardour even if with imperfect relevancy. She +smiled at the two gentlemen for a moment with terrible brightness, as if +to toss at their feet—upon their native heath—the gauntlet of defiance. +“For me there are only two social positions worth speaking of—that of an +American lady and that of the Emperor of Russia.” + +“And what do you do with the American gentlemen?” asked Lord Lambeth. + +“She leaves them in America!” said his comrade. + +On the departure of their visitors Bessie mentioned that Lord Lambeth +would come the next day, to go with them to the Tower, and that he had +kindly offered to bring his “trap” and drive them all through the city. +Mrs. Westgate listened in silence to this news and for some time +afterwards also said nothing. But at last, “If you hadn’t requested me +the other day not to speak of it,” she began, “there’s something I’d make +bold to ask you.” Bessie frowned a little; her dark blue eyes grew more +dark than blue. But her sister went on. “As it is I’ll take the risk. +You’re not in love with Lord Lambeth: I believe it perfectly. Very good. +But is there by chance any danger of your becoming so? It’s a very +simple question—don’t take offence. I’ve a particular reason,” said Mrs. +Westgate, “for wanting to know.” + +Bessie for some moments said nothing; she only looked displeased. “No; +there’s no danger,” she at last answered with a certain dryness. + +“Then I should like to frighten them!” cried her sister, clasping +jewelled hands. + +“To frighten whom?” + +“All these people. Lord Lambeth’s family and friends.” + +The girl wondered. “How should you frighten them?” + +“It wouldn’t be I—it would be you. It would frighten them to suppose you +holding in thrall his lordship’s young affections.” + +Our young lady, her clear eyes still overshadowed by her dark brows, +continued to examine it. “Why should that frighten them?” + +Mrs. Westgate winged her shaft with a smile before launching it. +“Because they think you’re not good enough. You’re a charming girl, +beautiful and amiable, intelligent and clever, and as _bien-élevée_ as it +is possible to be; but you’re not a fit match for Lord Lambeth.” + +Bessie showed again a coldness. “Where do you get such extraordinary +ideas? You’ve said some such odd things lately. My dear Kitty, where do +you collect them?” + +But Kitty, unabashed, held to her idea. “Yes, it would put them on pins +and needles, and it wouldn’t hurt you. Mr. Beaumont’s already most +uneasy. I could soon see that.” + +The girl turned it over. “Do you mean they spy on him, that they +interfere with him?” + +“I don’t know what power they have to interfere, but I know that a +British _materfamilias_—and when she’s a Duchess into the bargain—is +often a force to be reckoned with.” + +It has already been intimated that before certain appearances of strange +or sinister cast our young woman was apt to shy off into scepticism. She +abstained on the present occasion from expressing disbelief, for she +wished not to irritate her sister. But she said to herself that Kitty +had been misinformed—that this was a traveller’s tale. Though she was a +girl of quick imagination there could in the nature of things be no truth +for her in the attribution to her of a vulgar identity. Only the form +she gave her doubt was: “I must say that in that case I’m very sorry for +Lord Lambeth.” + +Mrs. Westgate, more and more exhilarated by her own scheme, irradiated +interest. “If I could only believe it was safe! But when you begin to +pity him I, on my side, am afraid.” + +“Afraid of what?” + +“Of your pitying him too much.” + +Bessie turned impatiently off—then at the end of a minute faced about. +“What if I _should_ pity him too much?” + +Mrs. Westgate hereupon averted herself, but after a moment’s reflexion +met the case. “It would come, after all, to the same thing.” + +Lord Lambeth came the next day with his trap, when the two ladies, +attended by Willie Woodley, placed themselves under his guidance and were +conveyed eastward, through some of the most fascinating, as Bessie called +them, even though the duskiest districts, to the great turreted donjon +that overlooks the London shipping. They alighted together to enter the +famous fortress, where they secured the services of a venerable +beef-eater, who, ignoring the presence of other dependants on his +leisure, made a fine exclusive party of them and marched them through +courts and corridors, through armouries and prisons. He delivered his +usual peripatetic discourse, and they stopped and stared and peeped and +stooped according as he marshalled and directed them. Bessie appealed to +this worthy—even on more heads than he seemed aware of; she overtaxed, in +her earnestness, his learnt lesson and found the place, as she more than +once mentioned to him, quite delirious. Lord Lambeth was in high +good-humour; his delirium at least was gay and he betrayed afresh that +aptitude for the simpler forms of ironic comment that the girl had noted +in him. Willie Woodley kept looking at the ceilings and tapping the +walls with the knuckle of a pearl-grey glove; and Mrs. Westgate, asking +at frequent intervals to be allowed to sit down and wait till they came +back, was as frequently informed that they would never do anything so +weak. When it befell that Bessie’s glowing appeals, chiefly on +collateral points of English history, but left the warder gaping she +resorted straight to Lord Lambeth. His lordship then pleaded gross +incompetence, declaring he knew nothing about that sort of thing and +greatly diverted, to all appearance, at being treated as an authority. + +“You can’t honestly expect people to know as awfully much as you,” he +said. + +“I should expect you to know a great deal more,” Bessie Alden returned. + +“Well, women always know more than men about names and dates and +historical characters,” he said. “There was Lady Jane Grey we’ve just +been hearing about, who went in for Latin and Greek and all the learning +of her age.” + +“_You_ have no right to be ignorant at all events,” Bessie argued with +all her freedom. + +“Why haven’t I as good a right as any one else?” + +“Because you’ve lived in the midst of all these things.” + +“What things do you mean? Axes and blocks and thumbscrews?” + +“All these historical things. You belong to an historical family.” + +“Bessie really harks back too much to the dead past—she makes too much of +it,” Mrs. Westgate opined, catching the sense of this colloquy. + +“Yes, you hark back,” the young man laughed, thankful for a formula. +“You do make too much of the dead past.” + +He went with the ladies a couple of days later to Hampton Court, Willie +Woodley being also of the party. The afternoon was charming, the famous +horse-chestnuts blossomed to admiration, and Lord Lambeth, who found in +Miss Alden the improving governess, he declared, of his later immaturity, +as Mademoiselle Boquet, dragging him by the hand to view all lions, had +been that of his earliest, pronounced the old red palace not half so +beastly as he had supposed. Bessie herself rose to raptures; she went +about murmuring and “raving.” “It’s too lovely; it’s too enchanting; +it’s too exactly what it ought to be!” + +At Hampton Court the tinkling flocks are not provided with an official +bellwether, but are left to browse at discretion on the tough herbage of +History. It happened in this manner that, in default of another +informant, our young woman, who on doubtful questions was able to suggest +a great many alternatives, found herself again apply for judicious +support to Lord Lambeth. He, however, could but once more declare +himself a broken reed and that his education, in such matters, had been +sadly neglected. + +“And I’m sorry it makes you so wretched,” he further professed. + +“You’re so disappointing, you know,” she returned; but more in pity—pity +for herself—than in anger. + +“Ah, now, don’t say that! That’s the worst thing you could possibly +say.” + +“No”—she spoke with a sad lucidity—“it’s not so bad as to say that I had +expected nothing of you.” + +“I don’t know”—and he seemed to rejoice in a chance to demur. “Give me a +notion of the sort of thing you expected.” + +“Well, that you’d be more what I should like to be—what I should try to +be—in your place.” + +“Ah, my place!” he groaned. “You’re always talking about my place.” + +The girl gave him a look; he might have thought she coloured; and for a +little she made no rejoinder. “Does it strike you that I’m always +talking about your place?” + +“I’m sure you do it a great honour,” he said as if fearing he had sounded +uncivil. + +“I’ve often thought about it,” she went on after a moment. “I’ve often +thought of your future as an hereditary legislator. An hereditary +legislator ought to know so many things, oughtn’t he?” + +“Not if he doesn’t legislate.” + +“But you _will_ legislate one of these days—you may have to at any time; +it’s absurd your saying you won’t. You’re very much looked up to +here—I’m assured of that.” + +“I don’t know that I ever noticed it.” + +“It’s because you’re used to it then. You ought to fill the place.” + +“How do you mean, fill it?” asked Lord Lambeth. + +“You ought to be very clever and brilliant—to be ‘up’ in almost +everything.” + +He turned on her his handsome young face of profane wonder. “Shall I +tell you something? A young man in my position, as you call it—” + +“I didn’t invent the term,” she interposed. “I’ve seen it in a great +many books.” + +“Hang it, you’re always at your books! A fellow in my position then does +well enough at the worst—he muddles along whatever he does. That’s about +what I mean to say.” + +“Well, if your own people are content with you,” Bessie laughed, “it’s +not for me to complain. But I shall always think that properly you +should have a great mind—a great character.” + +“Ah, that’s very theoretic!” the young man promptly brought out. “Depend +upon it, that’s a Yankee prejudice.” + +“Happy the country then,” she as eagerly declared, “where people’s +prejudices make so for light.” + +He stopped short, with his slightly strained gaiety, as for the +pleasantness of high argument. “What it comes to then is that we’re all +here a pack of fools and me the biggest of the lot?” + +“I said nothing so rude of a great people—and a great person. But I must +repeat that you personally are—in your representative capacity that’s to +be—disappointing.” + +“My dear Miss Alden,” he simply cried at this, “I’m the best fellow in +the world!” + +“Ah, if it were not for that!” she beautifully smiled. + +Mrs. Westgate had many more friends in London than she pretended, and +before long had renewed acquaintance with most of them. Their +hospitality was prompt, so that, one thing leading to another, she began, +as the phrase is, to go out. Bessie Alden, in this way, saw a good deal +of what she took great pleasure in calling to herself English society. +She went to balls and danced, she went to dinners and talked, she went to +concerts and listened—at concerts Bessie always listened—she went to +exhibitions and wondered. Her enjoyment was keen and her curiosity +insatiable, and, grateful in general for all her opportunities, she +especially prized the privilege of meeting certain celebrated persons, +authors and artists, philosophers and statesmen, of whose renown she had +been a humble and distant beholder and who now, as part of the frequent +furniture of London drawing-rooms, struck her as stars fallen from the +firmament and become palpable—revealing also sometimes on contact +qualities not to have been predicted of bodies sidereal. Bessie, who +knew so many of her contemporaries by reputation, lost in this way +certain fond illusions; but on the other hand she had innumerable +satisfactions and enthusiasms, and she laid bare the wealth of her +emotions to a dear friend of her own sex in Boston, with whom she was in +voluminous correspondence. Some of her sentiments indeed she sought +mildly to flash upon Lord Lambeth, who came almost every day to Jones’s +Hotel and whom Mrs. Westgate admitted to be really devoted. Captain +Littledale, it appeared, had gone to India; and of several others of this +lady’s ex-pensioners—gentlemen who, as she said, had made, in New York, a +club-house of her drawing-room—no tidings were to be obtained; but this +particular friend of other days was certainly attentive enough to make up +for the accidental absences, the short memories, the remarked lapses, of +every one else. He drove the sisters in the Park, took them to visit +private collections of pictures and, having a house of his own, invited +them to luncheon, to tea, to dinner, to supper even after the arduous +German opera. Mrs. Westgate, following the fashion of many of her +countrywomen, caused herself and her companion to be presented at the +English Court by her diplomatic representative—for it was in this manner +that she alluded to the American Minister to England, inquiring what on +earth he was put there for if not to make the proper arrangements for her +reception at Court. + +Lord Lambeth expressed a hatred of Courts, but he had social privileges +or exercised some court function—these undiscriminated attributes, dim +backgrounds where old gold seemed to shine through transparent +conventions, were romantically rich to our young heroine—that involved +his support of his sovereign on the day on which the two ladies at +Jones’s Hotel repaired to Buckingham Palace in a remarkable coach sent by +his lordship to fetch them. He appeared in a gorgeous uniform, and +Bessie Alden was particularly struck with his glory—especially when on +her asking him, rather foolishly as she felt, if he were a loyal subject, +he replied that he was a loyal subject to herself. This pronouncement +was emphasised by his dancing with her at a royal ball to which the two +ladies afterwards went, and was not impaired by the fact that she thought +he danced very ill. He struck her as wonderfully kind; she asked herself +with growing vivacity why he should be so kind. It was just his +character—that seemed the natural reply. She had told her relative how +much she liked him, and now that she liked him more she wondered at her +excess. She liked him for his clear nature; to this question as well +that seemed the natural answer. The truth was that when once the +impressions of London life began to crowd thickly upon her she completely +forgot her subtle sister’s warning on the cynicism of public opinion. It +had given her great pain at the moment; but there was no particular +reason why she should remember it: it corresponded too little with any +sensible reality. Besides which there was her habit, her beautiful +system, of consenting to know nothing of human baseness or of the vulgar +side. There were things, just as there were people, that were as nought +from the moment one ignored them. She was accordingly not haunted with +the sense of a low imputation. She wasn’t in love with Lord Lambeth—she +assured herself of that. It will immediately be observed that when such +assurances become necessary the state of a young lady’s affections is +already ambiguous; and indeed the girl made no attempt to dissimulate (to +her finer intelligence) that “appeal of type”—she had a ready name for +it—to which her gallant hovering gentleman caused her wonderingly to +respond. She was fully aware that she liked it, this so unalloyed image +of the simple candid manly healthy English temperament. She spoke to +herself of it as if she liked the man for it instead of her liking it for +the man. She cherished the thought of his bravery, which she had never +in the least seen tested, enjoyed a fond view in him of the free and +instinctive range of the “gentlemanly” character, and was as familiar +with his good looks as if she habitually handed him out his neckties. +She was perfectly conscious, moreover, of privately dilating on his more +adventitious merits—of the effect on her imagination of the large +opportunities of so splendid a person; opportunities she hardly knew for +what, but, as she supposed, for doing great things, for setting an +example, for exerting an influence, for conferring happiness, for +encouraging the arts. She had an ideal of conduct for a young man who +should find himself in this grand position, and she tried to adapt it to +her friend’s behaviour as you might attempt to fit a silhouette in cut +paper over a shadow projected on a wall. Bessie Alden’s silhouette, +however, refused to coincide at all points with his lordship’s figure; a +want of harmony that she sometimes deplored beyond discretion. It was +his own affair she at moments told herself—it wasn’t _her_ concern the +least in the world. When he was absent it was of course less +striking—then he might have seemed sufficiently to unite high +responsibilities with high braveries. But when he sat there within +sight, laughing and talking with his usual effect of natural salubrity +and mental mediocrity, she took the measure of his shortcoming and felt +acutely that if his position was, so to speak, heroic, there was little +of that large line in the young man himself. Then her imagination +wandered away from him—very far away; for it was an incontestable fact +that at these moments he lagged ever so much behind it. He affected her +as on occasion, dreadful to say, almost _actively_ stupid. It may have +been that while she so curiously inquired and so critically brooded _her_ +personal wit, her presence of mind, made no great show—though it is also +possible that she sometimes positively charmed, or at least interested, +her friend by this very betrayal of the frequent, the distant and +unreported, excursion. So it would have hung together that a part of her +unconscious appeal to him from the first had been in his feeling her +judge and appraise him more freely and irresponsibly—more at her ease and +her leisure, as it were—than several young ladies with whom he had passed +for adventurously intimate. To be convinced of her “cleverness” and yet +also to be aware of her appreciation—when the cleverness might have been +after all but dangerous and complicating—all made, to Lord Lambeth’s +sense, for convenience and cheer. Hadn’t he compassed the satisfaction, +that high aim of young men greatly placed and greatly moneyed, of being +liked for himself? It was true a cynical counsellor might have whispered +to him: “Liked for yourself? Ah, not so very awfully _much_!” He had at +any rate the constant hope of adding to that quantity. + +It may not seem to fit in—but the truth was strange—that Bessie Alden, +when he struck her as “deficient,” found herself aspiring by that very +reason to some finer way of liking him. This was fairly indeed on +grounds of conscience—because she felt he had been thoroughly “nice” to +her sister and so deemed it no more than fair that she should think as +well of him as he thought of her. The effort in question was possibly +sometimes not so successful as it might have been, the result being at +moments an irritation, which, though consciously vague, was yet, with +inconsequence, acute enough to express itself in hostile criticism of +several British institutions. Bessie went to entertainments at which she +met Lord Lambeth, but also to others at which he was neither actually nor +imaginably present; and it was chiefly at these latter that she +encountered those literary and artistic celebrities of whom mention has +been made. After a while she reduced the matter to a principle. If he +should appear anywhere she might take it for a flat sign that there would +be neither poets nor philosophers; and as a result—for it was almost a +direct result—she used to enumerate to the young man these objects of her +admiration. + +“You seem to be awfully fond of that sort of people,” he said one day as +if the idea had just occurred to him. + +“They’re the people in England I’m most curious to see,” she promptly +replied. + +“I suppose that’s because you’ve read so much,” Lord Lambeth gallantly +threw off. + +“I’ve _not_ read so much. It’s because we think so much of them at +home.” + +“Oh I see! In your so awfully clever Boston.” + +“Not only in our awfully clever Boston, but in our just commonly clever +everywhere. We hold them in great honour,” said Bessie. “It’s they who +go to the best dinner-parties.” + +“I daresay you’re right. I can’t say I know many of them.” + +“It’s a pity you don’t,” she returned. “It would do you some good.” + +“I daresay it would,” said the young man very humbly. “But I must say I +don’t like the looks of some of them.” + +“Neither do I—of some of them. But there are all kinds, and many of them +are charming.” + +“I’ve talked with two or three of them,” Lord Lambeth went on, “and I +thought they had a kind of fawning manner.” + +“Why should they fawn?” Bessie demanded. + +“I’m sure I don’t know. Why indeed?” + +“Perhaps you only thought so,” she suggested. + +“Well, of course,” her companion allowed, “that’s a kind of thing that +can’t be proved.” + +“In America they don’t fawn,” she went on. + +“Don’t they? Ah, well, then they must be better company.” + +She had a pause. “That’s one of the few things I don’t like about +England—your keeping the distinguished people apart.” + +“How do you mean, apart?” + +“Why, letting them come only to certain places. You never see them.” + +All his pleasant face wondered—he seemed to take it as another of her +rather stiff riddles. “What people do you mean?” + +“The eminent people; the authors and artists; the clever people.” + +“Oh there are other eminent people besides those!” said Lord Lambeth. + +“Well, you certainly keep them apart,” Bessie earnestly contended. + +“And there are plenty of other clever people.” + +It was spoken with a fine simple faith, yet the tone of it made her +laugh. “‘Plenty’? How many?” + +On another occasion—just after a dinner-party—she mentioned something +else in England she didn’t like. + +“Oh I say!” he cried; “haven’t you abused us enough?” + +“I’ve never abused you at all,” said Bessie; “but I don’t like your +‘precedence.’” + +She was to feel relieved at his not taking it solemnly. “It isn’t _my_ +precedence!” + +“Yes, it’s yours—just exactly yours; and I think it’s odious,” she +insisted. + +“I never saw such a young lady for discussing things! Has some one had +the impudence to go before you?” Lord Lambeth asked. + +“It’s not the going before me I object to,” said Bessie; “it’s their +pretending they’ve a right to do it—a right I should grovellingly +recognise.” + +“I never saw such a person, either, for not ‘recognising,’ let alone for +not ‘grovelling.’ Every one here has to grovel to somebody or to +something—and no doubt it’s all beastly. But one takes the thick with +the thin, and it saves a lot of trouble.” + +“It _makes_ a lot of trouble, by which I mean a lot of ugliness. It’s +horrid!” Bessie maintained. + +“But how would you have the first people go?” the young man asked. “They +can’t go last, you know.” + +“Whom do you mean by the first people?” + +“Ah, if you mean to question first principles!” said Lord Lambeth. + +“If those are your first principles no wonder some of your arrangements +are horrid!” she cried, with a charming but not wholly sincere ferocity. +“I’m a silly chit, no doubt, so of course I go last; but imagine what +Kitty must feel on being informed that she’s not at liberty to budge till +certain other ladies have passed out!” + +“Oh I say, she’s not ‘informed’!” he protested. “No one would do such a +thing as that.” + +“She’s made to feel it—as if they were afraid she’d make a rush for the +door. No, you’ve a lovely country”—she clung as for consistency to her +discrimination—“but your precedence is horrid.” + +“I certainly shouldn’t think your sister would like it,” Lord Lambeth +said, with even exaggerated gravity. But she couldn’t induce him—amused +as he almost always was at the effect of giving her, as he called it, her +head—to join her in more formal reprobation of this repulsive custom, +which he spoke of as a convenience she would destroy without offering a +better in its place. + + + +VI + + +Percy Beaumont had all this time been a very much less frequent visitor +at Jones’s Hotel than his former fellow traveller; he had in fact called +but twice on the two American ladies. Lord Lambeth, who often saw him, +reproached him with his neglect and declared that though Mrs. Westgate +had said nothing about it he made no doubt she was secretly wounded by +it. “She suffers too much to speak,” said his comrade. + +“That’s all gammon,” Percy returned; “there’s a limit to what people can +suffer!” And though sending no apologies to Jones’s Hotel he undertook +in a manner to explain his absence. “You’re always there yourself, +confound you, and that’s reason enough for my not going.” + +“I don’t see why. There’s enough for both of us.” + +“Well, I don’t care to be a witness of your reckless passion,” said Percy +Beaumont. + +His friend turned on him a cold eye and for a moment said nothing, +presently, however, speaking a little stiffly. “My passion doesn’t make +such a show as you might suppose, considering what a demonstrative beggar +I am.” + +“I don’t want to know anything about it—anything whatever,” said +Beaumont. “Your mother asks me every time she sees me whether I believe +you’re really lost—and Lady Pimlico does the same. I prefer to be able +to answer that I’m in complete ignorance, that I never go there. I stay +away for consistency’s sake. As I said the other day, they must look +after you themselves.” + +“Well, you’re wonderfully considerate,” the young man returned. “They +never question _me_.” + +“They’re afraid of you. They’re afraid of annoying you and making you +worse. So they go to work very cautiously, and, somewhere or other, they +get their information. They know a great deal about you. They know +you’ve been with those ladies to the dome of Saint Paul’s and—where was +the other place?—to the Thames Tunnel.” + +“If all their knowledge is as accurate as that it must be very valuable,” +said Lord Lambeth. + +“Well, at any rate, they know you’ve been visiting the ‘sights of the +metropolis.’ They think—very naturally, as it seems to me—that when you +take to visiting the sights of the metropolis with a little nobody of an +American girl something may be supposed to be ‘up.’” The young man met +this remark with scornful laughter, but his companion continued after a +pause: “I told you just now that I cultivate my ignorance, but I find I +can no longer stand my suspense. I confess I do want to know whether you +propose to marry Miss Alden.” + +On this point Lord Lambeth gave his questioner no prompt satisfaction; he +only mused—frowningly, portentously. “By Jove they go rather too far. +They _shall_ have cause to worry—I promise them.” + +Percy Beaumont, however, continued to aim at lucidity. “You don’t, it’s +true, quite redeem your threats. You said the other day you’d make your +mother call.” + +Lord Lambeth just hung fire. “Well, I asked her to.” + +“And she declined?” + +“Yes, but she shall do it yet.” + +“Upon my word,” said Percy, “if she gets much more scared I verily +believe she will.” His friend watched him on this, and he went on. +“She’ll go to the girl herself.” + +“How do you mean ‘go’ to her?” + +“She’ll try to get ‘at’ her—to square her. She won’t care what she +does.” + +Lord Lambeth turned away in silence; he took twenty steps and slowly +returned. “She had better take care what she does. I’ve invited Mrs. +Westgate and Miss Alden to Branches, and this evening I shall name a +day.” + +“And shall you invite your mother and your sisters to meet them?” + +Lord Lambeth indulged in one of his rare discriminations. “I shall give +them the opportunity.” + +“That will touch the Duchess up,” said Percy Beaumont. “I ‘guess’ she’ll +come.” + +“She may do as she pleases.” + +“Then do you really propose to marry the little sister?” + +“I like the way you talk about it!” the young man cried. “She won’t +gobble me down. Don’t be afraid.” + +“She won’t leave you on your knees,” Percy declared. “What the devil’s +the inducement?” + +“You talk about proposing—wait till I _have_ proposed,” Lord Lambeth went +on. + +His friend looked at him harder. “That’s right, my dear chap. Think of +_all_ the bearings.” + +“She’s a charming girl,” pursued his lordship. + +“Of course she’s a charming girl. I don’t know a girl more charming—in a +very quiet way. But there are other charming girls—charming in all sorts +of ways—nearer home.” + +“I particularly like her spirit,” said Bessie’s admirer—almost as on a +policy of aggravation. + +“What’s the peculiarity of her spirit?” + +“She’s not afraid, and she says things out and thinks herself as good as +any one. She’s the only girl I’ve ever seen,” Lord Lambeth explained, +“who hasn’t seemed to me dying to marry me.” + +Mr. Beaumont considered it. “How do you know she isn’t dying if you +haven’t felt her pulse? I mean if you haven’t asked her?” + +“I don’t know how; but I know it.” + +“I’m sure she asked _me_—over there—questions enough about your property +and your titles,” Percy declared. + +“She has done that to me too—again and again,” his friend returned. “But +she wants to know about everything.” + +“Everything? Ah, I’ll warrant she wants to know. Depend upon it she’s +dying to marry you just as much, and just by the same law, as all the +rest of them.” + +It appeared to give the young man, for a moment, something rather special +to think of. “I shouldn’t like her to refuse me—I shouldn’t like that.” + +“If the thing would be so disagreeable then, both to you and to her, in +heaven’s name leave it alone.” Such was the moral drawn by Mr. Beaumont; +which left him practically the last word in the discussion. + +Mrs. Westgate, on her side, had plenty to say to her sister about the +rarity of the latter’s visits and the non-appearance at their own door of +the Duchess of Bayswater. She confessed, however, to taking more +pleasure in this hush of symptoms than she could have taken in the most +lavish attentions on the part of that great lady. “It’s unmistakable,” +she said, “delightfully unmistakable; a most interesting sign that we’ve +made them wretched. The day we dined with him I was really sorry for the +poor boy.” It will have been gathered that the entertainment offered by +Lord Lambeth to his American friends had been graced by the presence of +no near relation. He had invited several choice spirits to meet them, +but the ladies of his immediate family were to Mrs. Westgate’s sense—a +sense perhaps morbidly acute—conspicuous by their hostile absence. + +“I don’t want to work you up any further,” Bessie at last ventured to +remark, “but I don’t know why you should have so many theories about Lord +Lambeth’s poor mother. You know a great many young men in New York +without knowing their mothers.” + +Mrs. Westgate rested deep eyes on her sister and then turned away. “My +dear Bessie, you’re superb!” + +“One thing’s certain”—the girl continued not to blench at her irony. “If +I believed I were a cause of annoyance, however unwitting, to Lord +Lambeth’s family I should insist—” + +“Insist on my leaving England?” Mrs. Westgate broke in. + +“No, not that. I want to go to the National Gallery again; I want to see +Stratford-on-Avon and Canterbury Cathedral. But I should insist on his +ceasing relations with us.” + +“That would be very modest and very pretty of you—but you wouldn’t do it +at this point.” + +“Why do you say ‘at this point’?” Bessie asked. “Have I ceased to be +modest?” + +“You care for him too much. A month ago, when you said you didn’t, I +believe it was quite true. But at present, my dear child,” said Mrs. +Westgate, “you wouldn’t find it quite so simple a matter never to see +Lord Lambeth again. I’ve watched it come on.” + +“You’re mistaken,” Bessie declared. “You don’t understand.” + +“Ah, you poor proud thing, don’t be perverse!” her companion returned. + +The girl gave the matter, thus admonished, some visible thought. “I know +him better certainly, if you mean that. And I like him very much. But I +don’t like him enough to make trouble for him with his family. However, +I don’t believe in that.” + +“I like the way you say ‘however’!” Mrs. Westgate commented. “Do you +pretend you wouldn’t be glad to marry him?” + +Again Bessie calmly considered. “It would take a great deal more than is +at all imaginable to make me marry him.” + +Her relative showed an impatience. “And what’s the great difficulty?” + +“The great difficulty is that I shouldn’t care to,” said Bessie Alden. + +The morning after Lord Lambeth had had with his own frankest critic that +exchange of ideas which has just been narrated, the ladies at Jones’s +Hotel received from him a written invitation to pay their projected visit +to Branches Castle on the following Tuesday. “I think I’ve made up a +very pleasant party,” his lordship went on. “Several people whom you +know, and my mother and sisters, who have been accidentally prevented +from making your acquaintance sooner.” Bessie at this lost no time in +calling her sister’s attention to the injustice she had done the Duchess +of Bayswater, whose hostility was now proved to be a vain illusion. + +“Wait till you see if she comes,” said Mrs. Westgate. “And if she’s to +meet us at her son’s house the obligation’s all the greater for her to +call on us.” + +Bessie hadn’t to wait long, for it appeared that her friend’s parent now +descried the direction in which, according to her companion’s +observation, courtesy pointed. On the morrow, early in the afternoon, +two cards were brought to the apartment of the American ladies—one of +them bearing the name of the Duchess of Bayswater and the other that of +the Countess of Pimlico. Mrs. Westgate glanced at the clock. “It isn’t +yet four,” she said; “they’ve come early; they want really to find us. +We’ll receive them.” And she gave orders that her visitors should be +admitted. A few moments later they were introduced and a solemn exchange +of amenities took place. The Duchess was a large lady with a fine fresh +colour; the Countess of Pimlico was very pretty and elegant. + +The Duchess looked about her as she sat down—looked not especially at +Mrs. Westgate. “I daresay my son has told you that I’ve been wanting to +come to see you,” she dropped—and from no towering nor inconvenient +height. + +“You’re very kind,” said Mrs. Westgate vaguely—her conscience not +allowing her to assent to this proposition, and indeed not permitting her +to enunciate her own with any appreciable emphasis. + +“He tells us you were so kind to him in America,” said the Duchess. + +“We’re very glad,” Mrs. Westgate replied, “to have been able to make him +feel a little more—a little less—a little at home.” + +“I think he stayed at your house,” the visitor more heavily breathed, but +as an overture, across to Bessie Alden. + +Mrs. Westgate intercepted the remark. “A very short time indeed.” + +“Oh!” said the Duchess; and she continued to address her interest to +Bessie, who was engaged in conversation with her daughter. + +“Do you like London?” Lady Pimlico had asked of Bessie, after looking at +her a good deal—at her face and her hands, her dress and her hair. + +The girl was prompt and clear. “Very much indeed.” + +“Do you like this hotel?” + +“It’s very comfortable.” + +“Do you like stopping at hotels?” Lady Pimlico asked after a pause. + +“I’m very fond of travelling, and I suppose hotels are a necessary part +of it. But they’re not the part I’m fondest of,” Bessie without +difficulty admitted. + +“Oh I hate travelling!” said Lord Lambeth’s sister, who transferred her +attention to Mrs. Westgate. + +“My son tells me you’re going to Branches,” the Duchess presently +resumed. + +“Lord Lambeth has been so good as to ask us,” said Mrs. Westgate, who +felt herself now under the eyes of both visitors and who had her +customary happy consciousness of a distinguished appearance. The only +mitigation of her felicity on this point was that, having taken in every +item of that of the Duchess, she said to herself: “She won’t know how +well I’m dressed!” + +“He has been so good as to tell me he expects me, but I’m not quite sure +of what I can do,” the noble lady exhaled. + +“He had offered us the p—the prospect of meeting you,” Mrs. Westgate +further contributed. + +“I hate the country at this season,” the Duchess went on. + +Her hostess melted to sweetness. “I delight in it at all seasons. And I +think it now above all pleasanter than London.” + +But the Duchess’s eyes were absent again; she was looking very fixedly at +Bessie. In a minute she slowly rose, passed across the room with a great +rustle and an effect of momentous displacement, reached a chair that +stood empty at the girl’s right hand and silently seated herself. As she +was a majestic voluminous woman this little transaction had inevitably an +air of somewhat impressive intention. It diffused a certain awkwardness, +which Lady Pimlico, as a sympathetic daughter, perhaps desired to rectify +in turning to Mrs. Westgate. “I suppose you go out immensely.” + +“No, very little. We’re strangers, and we didn’t come for the local +society.” + +“I see,” said Lady Pimlico. “It’s rather nice in town just now.” + +“I’ve known it of course duskier and dingier. But we only go to see a +few people,” Mrs. Westgate added—“old friends or persons we particularly +like.” + +“Of course one can’t like every one,” Lady Pimlico conceded. + +“It depends on one’s society,” Mrs. Westgate returned. + +The Duchess meanwhile had addressed herself to Bessie. “My son tells me +the young ladies in America are so clever.” + +“I’m glad they made so good an impression on him,” our heroine smiled. + +The Duchess took the case, clearly, as no matter for grimacing; there +reigned in her large pink face a meridian calm. “He’s very susceptible. +He thinks every one clever—and sometimes they are.” + +“Sometimes,” Bessie cheerfully assented. + +The Duchess continued all serenely and publicly to appraise her. +“Lambeth’s very susceptible, but he’s very volatile too.” + +“Volatile?” Bessie echoed. + +“He’s very inconstant. It won’t do to depend on him.” + +“Ah,” the girl returned, “I don’t recognise that description. We’ve +depended on him greatly, my sister and I, and have found him so faithful. +He has never disappointed us.” + +“He’ll disappoint you yet,” said her Grace with a certain rich force. + +Bessie gave a laugh of amusement as at such a contention from such a +quarter. “I suppose it will depend on what we expect of him.” + +“The less you expect the better,” said her massive monitress. + +“Well, we expect nothing unreasonable.” + +The Duchess had a fine contemplative pause—evidently with more to say. +She made, in the quantity, her next selection. “Lambeth says he has seen +so much of you.” + +“He has been with us very often—he has been a ministering angel,” Bessie +hastened to put on record. + +“I daresay you’re used to that. I’m told there’s a great deal of that in +America.” + +“A great deal of angelic ministering?” the girl laughed again. + +“Is that what you call it? I know you’ve different expressions.” + +“We certainly don’t always understand each other,” said Mrs. Westgate, +the termination of whose interview with Lady Pimlico had allowed her to +revert to their elder visitor. + +“I’m speaking of the young men calling so much on the young ladies,” the +Duchess explained. + +“But surely in England,” Mrs. Westgate appealed, “the young ladies don’t +call on the young men?” + +“Some of them do—almost!” Lady Pimlico declared. “When a young man’s a +great _parti_.” + +“Bessie, you must make a note of that,” said Mrs. Westgate. “My +sister”—she gave their friends the benefit of the knowledge—“is a model +traveller. She writes down all the curious facts she hears in a little +book she keeps for the purpose.” + +The Duchess took it, with a noble art of her own, as if she hadn’t heard +it; and while she was so occupied—for this involved a large +deliberation—her daughter turned to Bessie. “My brother has told us of +your being so clever.” + +“He should have said my sister,” Bessie returned—“when she treats you to +such flights as that.” + +“Shall you be long at Branches?” the Duchess abruptly asked of her. + +Bessie was to have afterwards a vivid remembrance of wondering what her +Grace (she was so glad Duchesses had that predicate) would mean by +“long.” But she might as well somehow have wondered what the occupants +of the planet Mars would. “He has invited us for three days.” + +“I think I must really manage it,” the Duchess declared—“and my daughter +too.” + +“That will be charming!” + +“Delightful!” cried Mrs. Westgate. + +“I shall expect to see a deal of you,” the Duchess continued. “When I go +to Branches I monopolise my son’s guests.” + +“They must give themselves up to you,” said Mrs. Westgate all graciously. + +“I quite yearn to see it—to see the Castle,” Bessie went on to the larger +lady. “I’ve never seen one—in England at least; and you know we’ve none +in America.” + +“Ah, you’re fond of castles?”—her Grace quite took it up. + +“Of the idea of them—which is all I know—immensely.” And the girl’s pale +light deepened for the assurance. “It has been the dream of my life to +live in one.” + +The Duchess looked at her as if hardly knowing how to take such words, +which, from the ducal point of view, had either to be very artless or +very aggressive. “Well,” she said, rising, “I’ll show you Branches +myself.” And upon this the noble ladies took their departure. + +“What did they mean by it?” Mrs. Westgate sought to know when they had +gone. + +“They meant to do the friendly thing,” Bessie surmised, “because we’re +going to meet them.” + +“It’s too late to do the friendly thing,” Mrs. Westgate replied almost +grimly. “They meant to overawe us by their fine manners and their +grandeur; they meant to make you _lâcher prise_.” + +“_Lâcher prise_? What strange things you say!” the girl sighed as fairly +for pain. + +“They meant to snub us so that we shouldn’t dare to go to Branches,” Mrs. +Westgate substituted with confidence. + +“On the contrary,” said Bessie, “the Duchess offered to show me the place +herself.” + +“Yes, you may depend upon it she won’t let you out of her sight. She’ll +show you the place from morning till night.” + +“You’ve a theory for everything,” our young woman a little more +helplessly allowed. + +“And you apparently have none for anything.” + +“I saw no attempt to ‘overawe’ us,” Bessie nevertheless persisted. +“Their manners weren’t fine.” + +“They were not even good!” Mrs. Westgate declared. + +Her sister had a pause, but in a few moments claimed the possession of an +excellent theory. “They just came to look at me!” she brought out as +with much ingenuity. Mrs. Westgate did the idea justice; she greeted it +with a smile and pronounced it a credit to a fresh young mind; while in +reality she felt that the girl’s scepticism, or her charity, or, as she +had sometimes called it appropriately, her idealism, was proof against +irony. Bessie, however, remained meditative all the rest of that day and +well on into the morrow. She privately ached—almost as under a +dishonour—with the aftersense of having been inspected in that particular +way. + +On the morrow before luncheon Mrs. Westgate, having occasion to go out +for an hour, left her sister writing a letter. When she came back she +met Lord Lambeth at the door of the hotel and in the act of leaving it. +She thought he looked considerably embarrassed; he certainly, she said to +herself, had no spring. “I’m sorry to have missed you. Won’t you come +back?” she asked. + +“No—I can’t. I’ve seen your sister. I can never come back.” Then he +looked at her a moment and took her hand. “Good-bye, Mrs. +Westgate—you’ve been very kind to me.” And with what she thought a +strange sad air on his handsome young face he turned away. + +She went in only to find Bessie still writing her letter; find her, that +is, seated at the table with the arrested pen in her hand. She put her +question after a moment. “Lord Lambeth has been here?” + +Then Bessie got up and showed her a pale serious face—bending it on her +for some time, confessing silently and, a little, pleading. “I told +him,” the girl said at last, “that we couldn’t go to Branches.” + +Mrs. Westgate gave a gasp of temporary disappointment. “He might have +waited,” she nevertheless smiled, “till one had seen the Castle.” An +hour afterwards she spoke again. “I do wish, you know, you might have +accepted him.” + +“I couldn’t,” said Bessie, with the slowest gravest gentlest of +headshakes. + +“He’s really such a dear,” Mrs. Westgate pursued. + +“I couldn’t,” Bessie repeated. + +“If it’s only,” her sister added, “because those women will think they +succeeded—that they paralysed us!” + +Our young lady turned away, but presently added: “They were interesting. +I should have liked to see them again.” + +“So should I!” cried Mrs. Westgate, with much point. + +“And I should have liked to see the Castle,” said Bessie. “But now we +must leave England.” + +Her sister’s eyes studied her. “You won’t wait to go to the National +Gallery?” + +“Not now.” + +“Nor to Canterbury Cathedral?” + +Bessie lost herself for a little in this. “We can stop there on our way +to Paris,” she then said. + +Lord Lambeth didn’t tell Percy Beaumont that the contingency he was not +prepared at all to like had occurred; but that gentleman, on hearing that +the two ladies had left London, wondered with some intensity what had +happened; wondered, that is, till the Duchess of Bayswater came a little +to his assistance. The two ladies went to Paris—when Mrs. Westgate +beguiled the journey by repeating several times: “That’s what I regret; +they’ll think they petrified us.” But Bessie Alden, strange and charming +girl, seemed to regret nothing. + + + + +THE PENSION BEAUREPAS + + +I + + +I was not rich—on the contrary; and I had been told the Pension Beaurepas +was cheap. I had further been told that a boarding-house is a capital +place for the study of human nature. I was inclined to a literary career +and a friend had said to me: “If you mean to write you ought to go and +live in a boarding-house: there’s no other such way to pick up material.” +I had read something of this kind in a letter addressed by the celebrated +Stendhal to his sister: “I have a passionate desire to know human nature, +and a great mind to live in a boarding-house, where people can’t conceal +their real characters.” I was an admirer of _La Chartreuse de Parme_, +and easily believed one couldn’t do better than follow in the footsteps +of its author. I remembered, too, the magnificent boarding-house in +Balzac’s _Père Goriot_—the “pension bourgeoise des deux sexes et autres,” +kept by Madame Vauquer, née de Conflans. Magnificent, I mean, as a piece +of portraiture; the establishment, as an establishment, was certainly +sordid enough, and I hoped for better things from the Pension Beaurepas. +This institution was one of the most esteemed in Geneva and, standing in +a little garden of its own not far from the lake, had a very homely +comfortable sociable aspect. The regular entrance was, as one might say, +at the back, which looked upon the street, or rather upon a little +_place_ adorned, like every _place_ in Geneva, great or small, with a +generous cool fountain. That approach was not prepossessing, for on +crossing the threshold you found yourself more or less in the +kitchen—amid the “offices” and struck with their assault on your nostril. +This, however, was no great matter, for at the Pension Beaurepas things +conformed frankly to their nature and the whole mechanism lay bare. It +was rather primitive, the mechanism, but it worked in a friendly homely +regular way. Madame Beaurepas was an honest little old woman—she was far +advanced in life and had been keeping a pension for more than forty +years—whose only faults were that she was slightly deaf, that she was +fond of a surreptitious pinch of snuff, and that, at the age of +seventy-four, she wore stacks of flowers in her cap. There was a legend +in the house that she wasn’t so deaf as she pretended and that she +feigned this infirmity in order to possess herself of the secrets of her +lodgers. I never indeed subscribed to this theory, convinced as I became +that Madame Beaurepas had outlived the period of indiscreet curiosity. +She dealt with the present and the future in the steady light of a long +experience; she had been having lodgers for nearly half a century and all +her concern with them was that they should pay their bills, fold their +napkins and make use of the doormat. She cared very little for their +secrets. “J’en ai vus de toutes les couleurs,” she said to me. She had +quite ceased to trouble about individuals; she cared only for types and +clear categories. Her large observation had made her acquainted with a +number of these and her mind become a complete collection of “heads.” +She flattered herself that she knew at a glance where to pigeonhole a +new-comer, and if she made mistakes her deportment never betrayed them. +I felt that as regards particular persons—once they conformed to the few +rules—she had neither likes nor dislikes; but she was capable of +expressing esteem or contempt for a species. She had her own ways, I +suppose, of manifesting her approval, but her manner of indicating the +reverse was simple and unvarying. “Je trouve que c’est déplacé!”—this +exhausted her view of the matter. If one of her inmates had put arsenic +into the _pot-au-feu_ I believe Madame Beaurepas would have been +satisfied to remark that this receptacle was not the place for arsenic. +She could have imagined it otherwise and suitably applied. The line of +misconduct to which she most objected was an undue assumption of +gentility; she had no patience with boarders who gave themselves airs. +“When people come chez moi it isn’t to cut a figure in the world; I’ve +never so flattered myself,” I remember hearing her say; “and when you pay +seven francs a day, tout compris, it comprises everything but the right +to look down on the others. Yet there are people who, the less they pay, +take themselves the more au sérieux. My most difficult boarders have +always been those who’ve fiercely bargained and had the cheapest rooms.” + +Madame Beaurepas had a niece, a young woman of some forty odd years; and +the two ladies, with the assistance of a couple of thick-waisted +red-armed peasant-women, kept the house going. If on your exits and +entrances you peeped into the kitchen it made very little difference; as +Célestine the cook shrouded herself in no mystery and announced the day’s +fare, amid her fumes, quite with the resonance of the priestess of the +tripod foretelling the future. She was always at your service with a +grateful grin: she blacked your boots; she trudged off to fetch a cab; +she would have carried your baggage, if you had allowed her, on her broad +little back. She was always tramping in and out between her kitchen and +the fountain in the _place_, where it often seemed to me that a large +part of the preparation for our meals went forward—the wringing-out of +towels and table-cloths, the washing of potatoes and cabbages, the +scouring of saucepans and cleansing of water-bottles. You enjoyed from +the door-step a perpetual back-view of Célestine and of her large loose +woollen ankles as she craned, from the waist, over into the fountain and +dabbled in her various utensils. This sounds as if life proceeded but in +a makeshift fashion at the Pension Beaurepas—as if we suffered from a +sordid tone. But such was not at all the case. We were simply very +bourgeois; we practised the good old Genevese principle of not +sacrificing to appearances. Nothing can be better than that principle +when the rich real underlies it. We had the rich real at the Pension +Beaurepas: we had it in the shape of soft short beds equipped with fluffy +_duvets_; of admirable coffee, served to us in the morning by Célestine +in person as we lay recumbent on these downy couches; of copious +wholesome succulent dinners, conformable to the best provincial +traditions. For myself, I thought the Pension Beaurepas local colour, +and this, with me, at that time, was a grand term. I was young and +ingenuous and had just come from America. I wished to perfect myself in +the French tongue and innocently believed it to flourish by Lake Leman. +I used to go to lectures at the Academy, the nursing mother of the +present University, and come home with a violent appetite. I always +enjoyed my morning walk across the long bridge—there was only one just +there in those days—which spans the deep blue out-gush of the lake, and +up the dark steep streets of the old Calvinistic city. The garden faced +this way, toward the lake and the old town, and gave properest access to +the house. There was a high wall with a double gate in the middle and +flanked by a couple of ancient massive posts; the big rusty grille +bristled with old-fashioned iron-work. The garden was rather mouldy and +weedy, tangled and untended; but it contained a small thin-flowing +fountain, several green benches, a rickety little table of the same +complexion, together with three orange-trees in tubs disposed as +effectively as possible in front of the windows of the salon. + + + +II + + +As commonly happens in boarding-houses the rustle of petticoats was at +the Pension Beaurepas the most familiar form of the human tread. We +enjoyed the usual allowance of economical widows and old maids and, to +maintain the balance of the sexes, could boast but of a finished old +Frenchman and an obscure young American. It hardly made the matter +easier that the old Frenchman came from Lausanne. He was a native of +that well-perched place, but had once spent six months in Paris, where he +had tasted of the tree of knowledge; he had got beyond Lausanne, whose +resources he pronounced inadequate. Lausanne, as he said, “_manquait +d’agrêments_.” When obliged, for reasons he never specified, to bring +his residence in Paris to a close, he had fallen back on Geneva; he had +broken his fall at the Pension Beaurepas. Geneva was after all more like +Paris, and at a Genevese boarding-house there was sure to be plenty of +Americans who might be more or less counted on to add to the resemblance. +M. Pigeonneau was a little lean man with a vast narrow nose, who sat a +great deal in the garden and bent his eyes, with the aid of a large +magnifying glass, on a volume from the _cabinet de lecture_. + +One day a fortnight after my adoption of the retreat I describe I came +back rather earlier than usual from my academic session; it wanted half +an hour of the midday breakfast. I entered the salon with the design of +possessing myself of the day’s _Galignani_ before one of the little +English old maids should have removed it to her virginal bower—a +privilege to which Madame Beaurepas frequently alluded as one of the +attractions of the establishment. In the salon I found a new-comer, a +tall gentleman in a high black hat, whom I immediately recognised as a +compatriot. I had often seen him, or his equivalent, in the +hotel-parlours of my native land. He apparently supposed himself to be +at the present moment in an hotel-parlour; his hat was on his head or +rather half off it—pushed back from his forehead and more suspended than +poised. He stood before a table on which old newspapers were scattered; +one of these he had taken up and, with his eye-glass on his nose, was +holding out at arm’s length. It was that honourable but extremely +diminutive sheet the _Journal de Genève_, a newspaper then of about the +size of a pocket-handkerchief. As I drew near, looking for my +_Galignani_, the tall gentleman gave me, over the top of his eyeglass, a +sad and solemn stare. Presently, however, before I had time to lay my +hand on the object of my search, he silently offered me the _Journal de +Genève_. + +“It appears,” he said, “to be the paper of the country.” + +“Yes,” I answered, “I believe it’s the best.” + +He gazed at it again, still holding it at arm’s-length as if it had been +a looking-glass. “Well,” he concluded, “I suppose it’s natural a small +country should have small papers. You could wrap this one up, mountains +and all, in one of our dailies!” + +I found my _Galignani_ and went off with it into the garden, where I +seated myself on a bench in the shade. Presently I saw the tall +gentleman in the hat appear at one of the open windows of the salon and +stand there with his hands in his pockets and his legs a little apart. +He looked infinitely bored, and—I don’t know why—I immediately felt sorry +for him. He hadn’t at all—as M. Pigeonneau, for instance, in his way, +had it—the romantic note; he looked just a jaded, faded, absolutely +voided man of business. But after a little he came into the garden and +began to stroll about; and then his restless helpless carriage and the +vague unacquainted manner in which his eyes wandered over the place +seemed to make it proper that, as an older resident, I should offer him a +certain hospitality. I addressed him some remark founded on our passage +of a moment before, and he came and sat down beside me on my bench, +clasping one of his long knees in his hands. + +“When is it this big breakfast of theirs comes off?” he inquired. +“That’s what I call it—the little breakfast and the big breakfast. I +never thought I should live to see the time when I’d want to eat two +breakfasts. But a man’s glad to do anything over here.” + +“For myself,” I dropped, “I find plenty to do.” + +He turned his head and glanced at me with an effect of bottomless wonder +and dry despair. “You’re getting used to the life, are you?” + +“I like the life very much,” I laughed. + +“How long have you tried it?” + +“Do you mean this place?” + +“Well, I mean anywhere. It seems to me pretty much the same all over.” + +“I’ve been in this house only a fortnight,” I said. + +“Well, what should you say, from what you’ve seen?” my companion asked. + +“Oh you can see all there is at once. It’s very simple.” + +“Sweet simplicity, eh? Well then I guess my two ladies will know right +off what’s the matter with it.” + +“Oh everything’s very good,” I hastened to explain. “And Madame +Beaurepas is a charming old woman. And then it’s very cheap.” + +“Cheap, is it?” my friend languidly echoed. + +“Doesn’t it strike you so?” I thought it possible he hadn’t inquired the +terms. But he appeared not to have heard me; he sat there, clasping his +knee and absently blinking at the sunshine. + +“Are you from the United States, sir?” he presently demanded, turning his +head again. + +“Well, I guess I am, sir,” I felt it indicated to reply; and I mentioned +the place of my nativity. + +“I presumed you were American or English. I’m from the United States +myself—from New York City. Many of our people here?” he went on. + +“Not so many as I believe there have sometimes been. There are two or +three ladies.” + +“Well,” my interlocutor observed, “I’m very fond of ladies’ society. I +think when it’s really nice there’s nothing comes up to it. I’ve got two +ladies here myself. I must make you acquainted with them.” And then +after I had rejoined that I should be delighted and had inquired of him +if he had been long in Europe: “Well, it seems precious long, but my +time’s not up yet. We’ve been here nineteen weeks and a half.” + +“Are you travelling for pleasure?” I hazarded. + +Once more he inclined his face to me—his face that was practically so odd +a comment on my question, and I so felt his unspoken irony that I soon +also turned and met his eyes. “No, sir. Not much, sir,” he added after +a considerable interval. + +“Pardon me,” I said; for his desolation had a little the effect of a +rebuke. + +He took no notice of my appeal; he simply continued to look at me. “I’m +travelling,” he said at last, “to please the doctors. They seemed to +think _they’d_ enjoy it.” + +“Ah, they sent you abroad for your health?” + +“They sent me abroad because they were so plaguey muddled they didn’t +know what else to do.” + +“That’s often the best thing,” I ventured to remark. + +“It was a confession of medical bankruptcy; they wanted to stop my run on +them. They didn’t know enough to cure me, as they had originally +pretended they did, and that’s the way they thought they’d get round it. +I wanted to be cured—I didn’t want to be transported. I hadn’t done any +harm.” I could but assent to the general proposition of the inefficiency +of doctors, and put to my companion that I hoped he hadn’t been seriously +ill. He only shook his foot at first, for some time, by way of answer; +but at last, “I didn’t get natural rest,” he wearily observed. + +“Ah, that’s very annoying. I suppose you were overworked.” + +“I didn’t have a natural appetite—nor even an unnatural, when they fixed +up things for me. I took no interest in my food.” + +“Well, I guess you’ll both eat and sleep here,” I felt justified in +remarking. + +“I couldn’t hold a pen,” my neighbour went on. “I couldn’t sit still. I +couldn’t walk from my house to the cars—and it’s only a little way. I +lost my interest in business.” + +“You needed a good holiday,” I concluded. + +“That’s what the doctors said. It wasn’t so very smart of them. I had +been paying strict attention to business for twenty-three years.” + +“And in all that time you had never let up?” I cried in horror. + +My companion waited a little. “I kind o’ let up Sundays.” + +“Oh that’s nothing—because our Sundays themselves never let up.” + +“I guess they do over here,” said my friend. + +“Yes, but you weren’t over here.” + +“No, I wasn’t over here. I shouldn’t have been where I was three years +ago if I had spent my time travelling round Europe. I was in a very +advantageous position. I did a very large business. I was considerably +interested in lumber.” He paused, bending, though a little hopelessly, +about to me again. “Have you any business interests yourself?” I +answered that I had none, and he proceeded slowly, mildly and +deliberately. “Well, sir, perhaps you’re not aware that business in the +United States is not what it was a short time since. Business interests +are very insecure. There seems to be a general falling-off. Different +parties offer different explanations of the fact, but so far as I’m aware +none of their fine talk has set things going again.” I ingeniously +intimated that if business was dull the time was good for coming away; +whereupon my compatriot threw back his head and stretched his legs a +while. “Well, sir, that’s one view of the matter certainly. There’s +something to be said for that. These things should be looked at all +round. That’s the ground my wife took. That’s the ground,” he added in +a moment, “that a lady would naturally take.” To which he added a laugh +as ghostly as a dried flower. + +“You think there’s a flaw in the reasoning?” I asked. + +“Well, sir, the ground I took was that the worse a man’s business is the +more it requires looking after. I shouldn’t want to go out to +recreation—not even to go to church—if my house was on fire. My firm’s +not doing the business it was; it’s like a sick child—it requires +nursing. What I wanted the doctors to do was to fix me up so that I +could go on at home. I’d have taken anything they’d have given me, and +as many times a day. I wanted to be right there; I had my reasons; I +have them still. But I came off all the same,” said my friend with a +melancholy smile. + +I was a great deal younger than he, but there was something so simple and +communicative in his tone, so expressive of a desire to fraternise and so +exempt from any theory of human differences, that I quite forgot his +seniority and found myself offering him paternal advice. “Don’t think +about all that. Simply enjoy yourself, amuse yourself, get well. Travel +about and see Europe. At the end of a year, by the time you’re ready to +go home, things will have improved over there, and you’ll be quite well +and happy.” + +He laid his hand on my knee; his wan kind eyes considered me, and I +thought he was going to say “You’re very young!” But he only brought +out: “_You’ve_ got used to Europe anyway!” + + + +III + + +At breakfast I encountered his ladies—his wife and daughter. They were +placed, however, at a distance from me, and it was not until the +pensionnaires had dispersed and some of them, according to custom, had +come out into the garden, that he had an opportunity of carrying out his +offer. + +“Will you allow me to introduce you to my daughter?” he said, moved +apparently by a paternal inclination to provide this young lady with +social diversion. She was standing with her mother in one of the paths, +where she looked about with no great complacency, I inferred, at the +homely characteristics of the place. Old M. Pigeonneau meanwhile hovered +near, hesitating apparently between the desire to be urbane and the +absence of a pretext. “Mrs. Ruck, Miss Sophy Ruck”—my friend led me up. + +Mrs. Ruck was a ponderous light-coloured person with a smooth fair face, +a somnolent eye and an arrangement of hair, with forehead-tendrils, +water-waves and other complications, that reminded me of those framed +“capillary” tributes to the dead which used long ago to hang over artless +mantel-shelves between the pair of glass domes protecting wax flowers. +Miss Sophy was a girl of one-and-twenty, tiny and pretty and lively, with +no more maiden shyness than a feminine terrier in a tinkling collar. +Both of these ladies were arrayed in black silk dresses, much ruffled and +flounced, and if elegance were _all_ a matter of trimming they would have +been elegant. + +“Do you think highly of this pension?” asked Mrs. Ruck after a few +preliminaries. + +“It’s a little rough,” I made answer, “but it seems to me comfortable.” + +“Does it take a high rank in Geneva?” + +“I imagine it enjoys a very fair fame.” + +“I should never dream of comparing it to a New York boarding-house,” Mrs. +Ruck pursued. + +“It’s quite in a different style,” her daughter observed. Miss Ruck had +folded her arms; she held her elbows with a pair of small white hands and +tapped the ground with a pretty little foot. + +“We hardly expected to come to a pension,” said Mrs. Ruck, who looked +considerably over my head and seemed to confide the truth in question, as +with an odd austerity or chastity, a marked remoteness, to the general +air. “But we thought we’d try; we had heard so much about Swiss +pensions. I was saying to Mr. Ruck that I wondered if this is a +favourable specimen. I was afraid we might have made a mistake.” + +“Well, we know some people who have been here; they think everything of +Madame Beaurepas,” said Miss Sophy. “They say she’s a real friend.” + +Mrs. Ruck, at this, drew down a little. “Mr. and Mrs. Parker—perhaps +you’ve heard her speak of them.” + +“Madame Beaurepas has had a great many Americans; she’s very fond of +Americans,” I replied. + +“Well, I must say I should think she would be if she compares them with +some others.” + +“Mother’s death on comparing,” remarked Miss Ruck. + +“Of course I like to study things and to see for myself,” the elder lady +returned. “I never had a chance till now; I never knew my privileges. +Give me an American!” And, recovering her distance again, she seemed to +impose this tax on the universe. + +“Well, I must say there are some things I like over here,” said Miss +Sophy with courage. And indeed I could see that she was a young woman of +sharp affirmations. + +Her father gave one of his ghostly grunts. “You like the stores—that’s +what you like most, I guess.” + +The young lady addressed herself to me without heeding this charge. “I +suppose you feel quite at home here.” + +“Oh he likes it—he has got used to the life. He says you _can_!” Mr. +Ruck proclaimed. + +“I wish you’d teach Mr. Ruck then,” said his wife. “It seems as if he +couldn’t get used to anything.” + +“I’m used to you, my dear,” he retorted, but with his melancholy eyes on +me. + +“He’s intensely restless,” continued Mrs. Ruck. “That’s what made me +want to come to a pension. I thought he’d settle down more.” + +“Well, lovey,” he sighed, “I’ve had hitherto mainly to settle up!” + +In view of a possible clash between her parents I took refuge in +conversation with Miss Ruck, who struck me as well out in the open—as +leaning, subject to any swing, so to speak, on the easy gate of the house +of life. I learned from her that with her companions, after a visit to +the British islands, she had been spending a month in Paris and that she +thought she should have died on quitting that city. “I hung out of the +carriage, when we left the hotel—I assure you I did. And I guess mother +did, too.” + +“Out of the other window, I hope,” said I. + +“Yes, one out of each window”—her promptitude was perfect. “Father had +hard work, I can tell you. We hadn’t half-finished—there were ever so +many other places we wanted to go to.” + +“Your father insisted on coming away?” + +“Yes—after we had been there about a month he claimed he had had enough. +He’s fearfully restless; he’s very much out of health. Mother and I took +the ground that if he was restless in Paris he needn’t hope for peace +anywhere. We don’t mean to let up on him till he takes us back.” There +was an air of keen resolution in Miss Ruck’s pretty face, of the lucid +apprehension of desirable ends, which made me, as she pronounced these +words, direct a glance of covert compassion toward her poor recalcitrant +sire. He had walked away a little with his wife, and I saw only his back +and his stooping patient-looking shoulders, whose air of acute +resignation was thrown into relief by the cold serenity of his companion. +“He’ll have to take us back in September anyway,” the girl pursued; +“he’ll have to take us back to get some things we’ve ordered.” + +I had an idea it was my duty to draw her out. “Have you ordered a great +many things?” + +“Well, I guess we’ve ordered _some_. Of course we wanted to take +advantage of being in Paris—ladies always do. We’ve left the most +important ones till we go back. Of course that’s the principal interest +for ladies. Mother said she’d feel so shabby if she just passed through. +We’ve promised all the people to be right there in September, and I never +broke a promise yet. So Mr. Ruck has got to make his plans accordingly.” + +“And what are his plans?” I continued, true to my high conception. + +“I don’t know; he doesn’t seem able to make any. His great idea was to +get to Geneva, but now that he has got here he doesn’t seem to see the +point. It’s the effect of bad health. He used to be so bright and +natural, but now he’s quite subdued. It’s about time he should improve, +anyway. We went out last night to look at the jewellers’ windows—in that +street behind the hotel. I had always heard of those jewellers’ windows. +We saw some lovely things, but it didn’t seem to rouse father. He’ll get +tired of Geneva sooner than he did of Paris.” + +“Ah,” said I, “there are finer things here than the jewellers’ windows. +We’re very near some of the most beautiful scenery in Europe.” + +“I suppose you mean the mountains. Well, I guess we’ve seen plenty of +mountains at home. We used to go to the mountains every summer. We’re +familiar enough with the mountains. Aren’t we, mother?” my young woman +demanded, appealing to Mrs. Ruck, who, with her husband, had drawn near +again. + +“Aren’t we what?” inquired the elder lady. + +“Aren’t we familiar with the mountains?” + +“Well, I hope so,” said Mrs. Ruck. + +Mr. Ruck, with his hands in his pockets, gave me a sociable wink. +“There’s nothing much you can _tell_ them!” + +The two ladies stood face to face a few moments, surveying each other’s +garments. Then the girl put her mother a question. “Don’t you want to +go out?” + +“Well, I think we’d better. We’ve got to go up to that place.” + +“To what place?” asked Mr. Ruck. + +“To that jeweller’s—to that big one.” + +“They all seemed big enough—they were _too_ big!” And he gave me another +dry wink. + +“That one where we saw the blue cross,” said his daughter. + +“Oh come, what do you want of that blue cross?” poor Mr. Ruck demanded. + +“She wants to hang it on a black velvet ribbon and tie it round her +neck,” said his wife. + +“A black velvet ribbon? Not much!” cried the young lady. “Do you +suppose I’d wear that cross on a black velvet ribbon? On a nice little +gold chain, if you please—a little narrow gold chain like an +old-fashioned watch-chain. That’s the proper thing for that blue cross. +I know the sort of chain I mean; I’m going to look for one. When I want +a thing,” said Miss Ruck with decision, “I can generally find it.” + +“Look here, Sophy,” her father urged, “you don’t want that blue cross.” + +“I do want it—I happen to want it.” And her light laugh, with which she +glanced at me, was like the flutter of some gage of battle. + +The grace of this demonstration, in itself marked, suggested that there +were various relations in which one might stand to Miss Ruck; but I felt +that the sharpest of the strain would come on the paternal. “Don’t worry +the poor child,” said her mother. + +She took it sharply up. “Come on, mother.” + +“We’re going to look round a little,” the elder lady explained to me by +way of taking leave. + +“I know what that means,” their companion dropped as they moved away. He +stood looking at them while he raised his hand to his head, behind, and +rubbed it with a movement that displaced his hat. (I may remark in +parenthesis that I never saw a hat more easily displaced than Mr. +Ruck’s.) I supposed him about to exhale some plaint, but I was mistaken. +Mr. Ruck was unhappy, but he was a touching fatalist. “Well, they want +to pick up something,” he contented himself with recognising. “That’s +the principal interest for ladies.” + + + +IV + + +He distinguished me, as the French say; he honoured me with his esteem +and, as the days elapsed, with no small share of his confidence. +Sometimes he bored me a little, for the tone of his conversation was not +cheerful, tending as it did almost exclusively to a melancholy dirge over +the financial prostration of our common country. “No, sir, business in +the United States is not what it once was,” he found occasion to remark +several times a day. “There’s not the same spring—there’s not the same +hopeful feeling. You can see it in all departments.” He used to sit by +the hour in the little garden of the pension with a roll of American +newspapers in his lap and his high hat pushed back, swinging one of his +long legs and reading the _New York Herald_. He paid a daily visit to +the American banker’s on the other side of the Rhône and remained there a +long time, turning over the old papers on the green velvet table in the +centre of the Salon des Etrangers and fraternising with chance +compatriots. But in spite of these diversions the time was heavy on his +hands. I used at times to propose him a walk, but he had a mortal horror +of any use of his legs other than endlessly dangling or crossing them, +and regarded my direct employment of my own as a morbid form of activity. +“You’ll kill yourself if you don’t look out,” he said, “walking all over +the country. I don’t want to stump round that way—I ain’t a postman!” +Briefly speaking, Mr. Ruck had few resources. His wife and daughter, on +the other hand, it was to be supposed, were possessed of a good many that +couldn’t be apparent to an unobtrusive young man. They also sat a great +deal in the garden or in the salon, side by side, with folded hands, +taking in, to vague ends, material objects, and were remarkably +independent of most of the usual feminine aids to idleness—light +literature, tapestry, the use of the piano. They lent themselves to +complete displacement, however, much more than their companion, and I +often met them, in the Rue du Rhône and on the quays, loitering in front +of the jewellers’ windows. They might have had a cavalier in the person +of old M. Pigeonneau, who professed a high appreciation of their charms, +but who, owing to the absence of a common idiom, was deprived, in the +connexion, of the pleasures of intimacy. He knew no English, and Mrs. +Ruck and her daughter had, as it seemed, an incurable mistrust of the +beautiful tongue which, as the old man endeavoured to impress upon them, +was pre-eminently the language of conversation. + +“They have a tournure de princesse—a distinction suprême,” he said to me. +“One’s surprised to find them in a little pension bourgeoise at seven +francs a day.” + +“Oh they don’t come for economy. They must be rich.” + +“They don’t come for my beaux yeux—for mine,” said M. Pigeonneau sadly. +“Perhaps it’s for yours, young man. Je vous recommande la maman!” + +I considered the case. “They came on account of Mr. Ruck because at +hotels he’s so restless.” + +M. Pigeonneau gave me a knowing nod. “Of course he is, with such a wife +as that!—a femme superbe. She’s preserved in perfection—a miraculous +fraîcheur. I like those large, fair, quiet women; they’re often, dans +l’intimité, the most agreeable. I’ll warrant you that at heart Madame +Roque is a finished coquette.” And then as I demurred: “You suppose her +cold? Ne vous y fiez pas!” + +“It’s a matter in which I’ve nothing at stake.” + +“You young Americans are droll,” said M. Pigeonneau; “you never have +anything at stake! But the little one, for example; I’ll warrant you +she’s not cold. Toute menue as she is she’s admirably made.” + +“She’s very pretty.” + +“‘She’s very pretty’! Vous dites cela d’un ton! When you pay +compliments to Mees Roque I hope that’s not the way you do it.” + +“I don’t pay compliments to Miss Ruck.” + +“Ah, decidedly,” said M. Pigeonneau, “you young Americans are droll!” + +I should have suspected that these two ladies wouldn’t especially commend +themselves to Madame Beaurepas; that as a maîtresse de salon, which she +in some degree aspired to be, she would have found them wanting in a +certain colloquial ease. But I should have gone quite wrong: Madame +Beaurepas had no fault at all to find with her new pensionnaires. “I’ve +no observation whatever to make about them,” she said to me one evening. +“I see nothing in those ladies at all déplacé. They don’t complain of +anything; they don’t meddle; they take what’s given them; they leave me +tranquil. The Americans are often like that. Often, but not always,” +Madame Beaurepas pursued. “We’re to have a specimen to-morrow of a very +different sort.” + +“An American?” I was duly interested. + +“Two Américaines—a mother and a daughter. There are Americans and +Americans: when you’re difficiles you’re more so than any one, and when +you’ve pretensions—ah, par exemple, it’s serious. I foresee that with +this little lady everything will be serious, beginning with her café au +lait. She has been staying at the Pension Chamousset—my concurrente, you +know, further up the street; but she’s coming away because the coffee’s +bad. She holds to her coffee, it appears. I don’t know what liquid +Madame Chamousset may dispense under that name, but we’ll do the best we +can for her. Only I know she’ll make me des histoires about something +else. She’ll demand a new lamp for the salon; vous allez voir cela. She +wishes to pay but eleven francs a day for herself and her daughter, tout +compris; and for their eleven francs they expect to be lodged like +princesses. But she’s very ‘ladylike’—isn’t that what you call it in +English? Oh, pour cela, she’s ladylike!” + +I caught a glimpse on the morrow of the source of these portents, who had +presented herself at our door as I came in from a walk. She had come in +a cab, with her daughter and her luggage; and with an air of perfect +softness and serenity she now disputed the fare as she stood on the steps +and among her boxes. She addressed her cabman in a very English accent, +but with extreme precision and correctness. “I wish to be perfectly +reasonable, but don’t wish to encourage you in exorbitant demands. With +a franc and a half you’re sufficiently paid. It’s not the custom at +Geneva to give a pourboire for so short a drive. I’ve made inquiries and +find it’s not the custom even in the best families. I’m a stranger, yes, +but I always adopt the custom of the native families. I think it my duty +to the natives.” + +“But I’m a native too, moi!” cried the cabman in high derision. + +“You seem to me to speak with a German accent,” continued the lady. +“You’re probably from Basel. A franc and a half are sufficient. I see +you’ve left behind the little red bag I asked you to hold between your +knees; you’ll please to go back to the other house and get it. Very +well, si vous me manquez I’ll make a complaint of you to-morrow at the +administration. Aurora, you’ll find a pencil in the outer pocket of my +embroidered satchel; please write down his number—87; do you see it +distinctly?—in case we should forget it.” + +The young lady so addressed—a slight fair girl holding a large parcel of +umbrellas—stood at hand while this allocution went forward, but +apparently gave no heed to it. She stood looking about her in a listless +manner—looking at the front of the house, at the corridor, at Célestine +tucking back her apron in the doorway, at me as I passed in amid the +disseminated luggage; her mother’s parsimonious attitude seeming to +produce in Miss Aurora neither sympathy nor embarrassment. At dinner the +two ladies were placed on the same side of the table as myself and below +Mrs. Ruck and her daughter—my own position being on the right of Mr. +Ruck. I had therefore little observation of Mrs. Church—such I learned +to be her name—but I occasionally heard her soft distinct voice. + +“White wine, if you please; we prefer white wine. There’s none on the +table? Then you’ll please get some and remember to place a bottle of it +always here between my daughter and myself.” + +“That lady seems to know what she wants,” said Mr. Ruck, “and she speaks +so I can understand her. I can’t understand every one over here. I’d +like to make that lady’s acquaintance. Perhaps she knows what _I_ want, +too: it seems so hard to find out! But I don’t want any of their sour +white wine; that’s one of the things I don’t want. I guess she’ll be an +addition to the pension.” + +Mr. Ruck made the acquaintance of Mrs. Church that evening in the +parlour, being presented to her by his wife, who presumed on the rights +conferred upon herself by the mutual proximity, at table, of the two +ladies. I seemed to make out that in Mrs. Church’s view Mrs. Ruck +presumed too far. The fugitive from the Pension Chamousset, as M. +Pigeonneau called her, was a little fresh plump comely woman, looking +less than her age, with a round bright serious face. She was very simply +and frugally dressed, not at all in the manner of Mr. Ruck’s companions, +and had an air of quiet distinction which was an excellent defensive +weapon. She exhibited a polite disposition to listen to what Mr. Ruck +might have to say, but her manner was equivalent to an intimation that +what she valued least in boarding-house life was its social +opportunities. She had placed herself near a lamp, after carefully +screwing it and turning it up, and she had opened in her lap, with the +assistance of a large embroidered marker, an octavo volume which I +perceived to be in German. To Mrs. Ruck and her daughter she was +evidently a puzzle; they were mystified beyond appeal by her frugal +attire and expensive culture. The two younger ladies, however, had begun +to fraternise freely, and Miss Ruck presently went wandering out of the +room with her arm round the waist of Miss Church. It was a warm evening; +the long windows of the salon stood wide open to the garden, and, +inspired by the balmy darkness, M. Pigeonneau and Mademoiselle Beaurepas, +a most obliging little woman who lisped and always wore a huge cravat, +declared they would organise a fête de nuit. They engaged in this +enterprise, and the fête developed itself on the lines of half a dozen +red paper lanterns hung about in the trees, and of several glasses of +_sirop_ carried on a tray by the stout-armed Célestine. As the occasion +deepened to its climax I went out into the garden, where M. Pigeonneau +was master of ceremonies. + +“But where are those charming young ladies,” he cried, “Mees Roque and +the new-comer, l’aimable transfuge? Their absence has been remarked and +they’re wanting to the brilliancy of the scene. Voyez, I have selected a +glass of syrup—a generous glass—for Mees Roque, and I advise you, my +young friend, if you wish to make a good impression, to put aside one +which you may offer to the other young lady. What’s her name? Mees +Cheurche? I see; it’s a singular name. Ca veut dire ‘église,’ +n’est-ce-pas? Voilà, a church where I’d willingly worship!” + +Mr. Ruck presently came out of the salon, having concluded his interview +with the elder of the pair. Through the open window I saw that +accomplished woman seated under the lamp with her German octavo, while +Mrs. Ruck, established empty-handed in an armchair near her, fairly +glowered at her for fascination. + +“Well, I told you she’d know what I want,” he promptly observed to me. +“She says I want to go right up to Appenzell, wherever that is; that I +want to drink whey and live in a high latitude—what did she call it?—a +high altitude. She seemed to think we ought to leave for Appenzell +to-morrow; she’d got it all fixed. She says this ain’t a high enough +lat—a high enough altitude. And she says I mustn’t go too high either; +that would be just as bad; she seems to know just the right figure. She +says she’ll give me a list of the hotels where we must stop on the way to +Appenzell. I asked her if she didn’t want to go with us, but she says +she’d rather sit still and read. I guess she’s a big reader.” + +The daughter of this devotee now reappeared, in company with Miss Ruck, +with whom she had been strolling through the outlying parts of the +garden; and that young lady noted with interest the red paper lanterns. +“Good gracious,” she inquired, “are they trying to stick the flower-pots +into the trees?” + +“It’s an illumination in honour of our arrival,” her companion returned. +“It’s a triumph over Madame Chamousset.” + +“Meanwhile, at the Pension Chamousset,” I ventured to suggest, “they’ve +put out their lights—they’re sitting in darkness and lamenting your +departure.” + +She smiled at me—she was standing in the light that came from the house. +M. Pigeonneau meanwhile, who had awaited his chance, advanced to Miss +Ruck with his glass of syrup. “I’ve kept it for you, mademoiselle,” he +said; “I’ve jealously guarded it. It’s very delicious!” + +Miss Ruck looked at him and his syrup without making any motion to take +the glass. “Well, I guess it’s sour,” she dropped with a small shake of +her head. + +M. Pigeonneau stood staring, his syrup in his hand; then he slowly turned +away. He looked about at the rest of us as to appeal from Miss Ruck’s +insensibility, and went to deposit his rejected tribute on a bench. +“Won’t you give it to me?” asked Miss Church in faultless French. +“J’adore le sirop, moi.” + +M. Pigeonneau came back with alacrity and presented the glass with a very +low bow. “I adore good manners.” + +This incident caused me to look at Miss Church with quickened interest. +She was not strikingly pretty, but in her charming irregular face was a +light of ardour. Like her mother, though in a less degree, she was +simply dressed. + +“She wants to go to America, and her mother won’t let her”—Miss Sophy +explained to me her friend’s situation. + +“I’m very sorry—for America,” I responsively laughed. + +“Well, I don’t want to say anything against your mother, but I think it’s +shameful,” Miss Ruck pursued. + +“Mamma has very good reasons. She’ll tell you them all.” + +“Well, I’m sure I don’t want to hear them,” said Miss Ruck. “You’ve got +a right to your own country; every one has a right to their own country.” + +“Mamma’s not very patriotic,” Aurora was at any rate not too spiritless +to mention. + +“Well, I call that dreadful,” her companion declared. “I’ve heard there +are some Americans like that, but I never believed it.” + +“Oh there are all sorts of Americans.” + +“Aurora’s one of the right sort,” cried Miss Ruck, ready, it seemed, for +the closest comradeship. + +“Are you very patriotic,” I asked of the attractive exile. + +Miss Ruck, however, promptly answered for her. “She’s right down +homesick—she’s dying to go. If you were me,” she went on to her friend, +“I guess your mother would _have_ to take me.” + +“Mamma’s going to take me to Dresden.” + +“Well, I never heard of anything so cold-blooded!” said Miss Ruck. “It’s +like something in a weird story.” + +“I never heard Dresden was so awful a fate,” I ventured to interpose. + +Miss Ruck’s eyes made light of me. “Well, I don’t believe _you_’re a +good American,” she smartly said, “and I never supposed you were. You’d +better go right in there and talk to Mrs. Church.” + +“Dresden’s really very nice, isn’t it?” I asked of her companion. + +“It isn’t nice if you happen to prefer New York,” Miss Ruck at once +returned. “Miss Church prefers New York. Tell him you’re dying to see +New York; it will make him mad,” she went on. + +“I’ve no desire to make him mad,” Aurora smiled. + +“It’s only Miss Ruck who can do that,” I hastened to state. “Have you +been a long time in Europe?” I added. + +“As long as I can remember.” + +“I call that wicked!” Miss Ruck declared. + +“You might be in a worse place,” I continued. “I find Europe very +interesting.” + +Miss Ruck fairly snorted. “I was just _saying_ that you wanted to pass +for a European.” + +Well, I saw my way to admit it. “Yes, I want to pass for a Dalmatian.” + +Miss Ruck pounced straight. “Then you had better not come home. We know +how to treat your sort.” + +“Were you born in these countries?” I asked of Aurora Church. + +“Oh no—I came to Europe a small child. But I remember America a little, +and it seems delightful.” + +“Wait till you see it again. It’s just too lovely,” said Miss Ruck. + +“The grandest country in all the world,” I added. + +Miss Ruck began to toss her head. “Come away, my dear. If there’s a +creature I despise it’s a man who tries to say funny things about his own +country.” + +But Aurora lingered while she all appealingly put it to me. “Don’t you +think one can be tired of Europe?” + +“Well—as one may be tired of life.” + +“Tired of the life?” cried Miss Ruck. “Father was tired of it after +three weeks.” + +“I’ve been here sixteen years,” her friend went on, looking at me as for +some charming intelligence. “It used to be for my education. I don’t +know what it’s for now.” + +“She’s beautifully educated,” Miss Ruck guaranteed. “She knows four +languages.” + +“I’m not very sure I know English!” + +“You should go to Boston!” said our companion. “They speak splendidly in +Boston.” + +“C’est mon rêve,” said Aurora, still looking at me. “Have you been all +over Europe,” I asked—“in all the different countries?” + +She consulted her reminiscences. “Everywhere you can find a pension. +Mamma’s devoted to pensions. We’ve lived at one time or another in every +pension in Europe—say at some five or six hundred.” + +“Well, I should think you had seen about enough!” Miss Ruck exhaled. + +“It’s a delightful way of seeing Europe”—our friend rose to a bright high +irony. “You may imagine how it has attached me to the different +countries. I have such charming souvenirs! There’s a pension awaiting +us now at Dresden—eight francs a day, without wine. That’s so much +beyond our mark that mamma means to make them give us wine. Mamma’s a +great authority on pensions; she’s known, that way, all over Europe. +Last winter we were in Italy, and she discovered one at Piacenza—four +francs a day. We made economies.” + +“Your mother doesn’t seem to mingle much,” observed Miss Ruck, who had +glanced through the window at Mrs. Church’s concentration. + +“No, she doesn’t mingle, except in the native society. Though she lives +in pensions she detests our vulgar life.” + +“‘Vulgar’?” cried Miss Ruck. “Why then does she skimp so?” This young +woman had clearly no other notion of vulgarity. + +“Oh because we’re so poor; it’s the cheapest way to live. We’ve tried +having a cook, but the cook always steals. Mamma used to set me to watch +her; that’s the way I passed my jeunesse—my belle jeunesse. We’re +frightfully poor,” she went on with the same strange frankness—a curious +mixture of girlish grace and conscious cynicism. “Nous n’avons pas le +sou. That’s one of the reasons we don’t go back to America. Mamma says +we could never afford to live there.” + +“Well, any one can see that you’re an American girl,” Miss Ruck remarked +in a consolatory manner. “I can tell an American girl a mile off. +You’ve got the natural American style.” + +“I’m afraid I haven’t the natural American clothes,” said Aurora in +tribute to the other’s splendour. + +“Well, your dress was cut in France; any one can see that.” + +“Yes,” our young lady laughed, “my dress was cut in France—at Avranches.” + +“Well, you’ve got a lovely figure anyway,” pursued her companion. + +“Ah,” she said for the pleasantry of it, “at Avranches, too, my figure +was admired.” And she looked at me askance and with no clear poverty of +intention. But I was an innocent youth and I only looked back at her and +wondered. She was a great deal nicer than Miss Ruck, and yet Miss Ruck +wouldn’t have said that in that way. “I try to be the American girl,” +she continued; “I do my best, though mamma doesn’t at all encourage it. +I’m very patriotic. I try to strike for freedom, though mamma has +brought me up à la française; that is as much as one can in pensions. +For instance I’ve never been out of the house without mamma—oh never +never! But sometimes I despair; American girls do come out so with +things. I can’t come out, I can’t rush in, like that. I’m awfully +pinched, I’m always afraid. But I do what I can, as you see. Excusez du +peu!” + +I thought this young lady of an inspiration at least as untrammelled as +her unexpatriated sisters, and her despondency in the true note of much +of their predominant prattle. At the same time she had by no means +caught, as it seemed to me, what Miss Ruck called the natural American +style. Whatever her style was, however, it had a fascination—I knew not +what (as I called it) distinction, and yet I knew not what odd freedom. + +The young ladies began to stroll about the garden again, and I enjoyed +their society until M. Pigeonneau’s conception of a “high time” began to +languish. + + + +V + + +Mr. Ruck failed to take his departure for Appenzell on the morrow, in +spite of the eagerness to see him off quaintly attributed by him to Mrs. +Church. He continued on the contrary for many days after to hang about +the garden, to wander up to the banker’s and back again, to engage in +desultory conversation with his fellow boarders, and to endeavour to +assuage his constitutional restlessness by perusal of the American +journals. But it was at least on the morrow that I had the honour of +making Mrs. Church’s acquaintance. She came into the salon after the +midday breakfast, her German octavo under her arm, and appealed to me for +assistance in selecting a quiet corner. + +“Would you very kindly,” she said, “move that large fauteuil a little +more this way? Not the largest; the one with the little cushion. The +fauteuils here are very insufficient; I must ask Madame Beaurepas for +another. Thank you; a little more to the left, please; that will do. +Are you particularly engaged?” she inquired after she had seated herself. +“If not I should like briefly to converse with you. It’s some time since +I’ve met a young American of your—what shall I call it?—affiliations. +I’ve learned your name from Madame Beaurepas; I must have known in other +days some of your people. I ask myself what has become of all my +friends. I used to have a charming little circle at home, but now I meet +no one I either know or desire to know. Don’t you think there’s a great +difference between the people one meets and the people one would like to +meet? Fortunately, sometimes,” my patroness graciously added, “there’s +no great difference. I suppose you’re a specimen—and I take you for a +good one,” she imperturbably went on—“of modern young America. Tell me, +then, what modern young America is thinking of in these strange days of +ours. What are its feelings, its opinions, its aspirations? What is its +_ideal_?” I had seated myself and she had pointed this interrogation +with the gaze of her curiously bright and impersonal little eyes. I felt +it embarrassing to be taken for a superior specimen of modern young +America and to be expected to answer for looming millions. Observing my +hesitation Mrs. Church clasped her hands on the open page of her book and +gave a dismal, a desperate smile. “_Has_ it an ideal?” she softly asked. +“Well, we must talk of this,” she proceeded without insisting. “Speak +just now for yourself simply. Have you come to Europe to any intelligent +conscious end?” + +“No great end to boast of,” I said. “But I seem to feel myself study a +little.” + +“Ah, I’m glad to hear that. You’re gathering up a little European +culture; that’s what we lack, you know, at home. No individual can do +much, of course; but one mustn’t be discouraged—every little so counts.” + +“I see that you at least are doing your part,” I bravely answered, +dropping my eyes on my companion’s learned volume. + +“Ah yes, I go as straight as possible to the sources. There’s no one +after all like the Germans. That is for digging up the facts and the +evidence. For conclusions I frequently diverge. I form my opinions +myself. I’m sorry to say, however,” Mrs. Church continued, “that I don’t +do much to spread the light. I’m afraid I’m sadly selfish; I do little +to irrigate the soil. I belong—I frankly confess it—to the class of +impenitent absentees.” + +“I had the pleasure, last evening,” I said, “of making the acquaintance +of your daughter. She tells me you’ve been a long time in Europe.” + +She took it blandly. “Can one ever be _too_ long? You see it’s _our_ +world, that of us few real fugitives from the rule of the mob. We shall +never go back to that.” + +“Your daughter nevertheless fancies she yearns!” I replied. + +“Has she been taking you into her confidence? She’s a more sensible +young lady than she sometimes appears. I’ve taken great pains with her; +she’s really—I may be permitted to say it—superbly educated.” + +“She seemed to me to do you honour,” I made answer. “And I hear she +speaks fluently four languages.” + +“It’s not only that,” said Mrs. Church in the tone of one sated with +fluencies and disillusioned of diplomas. “She has made what we call _de +fortes études_—such as I suppose you’re making now. She’s familiar with +the results of modern science; she keeps pace with the new historical +school.” + +“Ah,” said I, “she has gone much further than I!” + +She seemed to look at me a moment as for the tip of the ear of irony. +“You doubtless think I exaggerate, and you force me therefore to mention +the fact that I speak of such matters with a certain intelligence.” + +“I should never dream of doubting it,” I returned, “but your daughter +nevertheless strongly holds that you ought to take her home.” I might +have feared that these words would practically represent treachery to the +young lady, but I was reassured by seeing them produce in her mother’s +placid surface no symptom whatever of irritation. + +“My daughter has her little theories,” that lady observed; “she has, I +may say, her small fond illusions and rebellions. And what wonder! What +would youth be without its Sturm and Drang? Aurora says to herself—all +at her ease—that she would be happier in their dreadful New York, in +their dreary Boston, in their desperate Philadelphia, than in one of the +charming old cities in which our lot is cast. But she knows not what she +babbles of—that’s all. We must allow our children their yearning to make +mistakes, mustn’t we? But we must keep the mistakes down to as few as +possible.” + +Her soft sweet positiveness, beneath which I recognised all sorts of +really hard rigours of resistance and aggression, somehow breathed a +chill on me. “American cities,” I none the less threw off, “are the +paradise of the female young.” + +“Do you mean,” she inquired, “that the generations reared in those places +are angels?” + +“Well,” I said resolutely, “they’re the nicest of all girls.” + +“This young lady—what’s her odd name?—with whom my daughter has formed a +somewhat precipitate acquaintance: is Miss Ruck an angel and one of the +nicest of all? But I won’t,” she amusedly added, “force you to describe +her as she deserves. It would be too cruel to make a single exception.” + +“Well,” I at any rate pleaded, “in America they’ve the easiest lot and +the best time. They’ve the most innocent liberty.” + +My companion laid her hand an instant on my arm. “My dear young friend, +I know America, I know the conditions of life there down to the ground. +There’s perhaps no subject on which I’ve reflected more than on our +national idiosyncrasies.” + +“To the effect, I see, of your holding them in horror,” I said a little +roughly. + +Rude indeed as was my young presumption Mrs. Church had still her +cultivated patience, even her pity, for it. “We’re very crude,” she +blandly remarked, “and we’re proportionately indigestible.” And lest her +own refined strictures should seem to savour of the vice she deprecated +she went on to explain. “There are two classes of minds, you know—those +that hold back and those that push forward. My daughter and I are not +pushers; we move with the slow considerate steps to which a little +dignity may still cling. We like the old trodden paths; we like the old +old world.” + +“Ah,” said I, “you know what you like. There’s a great virtue in that.” + +“Yes, we like Europe; we prefer it. We like the opportunities of Europe; +we like the _rest_. There’s so much in that, you know. The world seems +to me to be hurrying, pressing forward so fiercely, without knowing in +the least where it’s going. ‘Whither?’ I often ask in my little quiet +way. But I’ve yet to learn that any one can tell me.” + +“You’re a grand old conservative,” I returned while I wondered whether I +myself might have been able to meet her question. + +Mrs. Church gave me a smile that was equivalent to a confession. “I wish +to retain a wee bit—just a wee bit. Surely we’ve done so much we might +rest a while; we might pause. That’s all my feeling—just to stop a +little, to wait, to take breath. I’ve seen so many changes. I want to +draw in, to draw in—to hold back, to hold back.” + +“You shouldn’t hold your daughter back!” I laughed as I got up. I rose +not by way of closing our small discussion, for I felt my friend’s +exposition of her views to be by no means complete, but in order to offer +a chair to Miss Aurora, who at this moment drew near. She thanked me and +remained standing, but without at first, as I noticed, really facing her +parent. + +“You’ve been engaged with your new acquaintance, my dear?” this lady +inquired. + +“Yes, mamma,” said the girl with a sort of prompt sweet dryness. + +“Do you find her very edifying?” + +Aurora had a silence; then she met her mother’s eyes. “I don’t know, +mamma. She’s very fresh.” + +I ventured a respectful laugh. “Your mother has another word for that. +But I must not,” I added, “be indigestibly raw.” + +“Ah, vous m’en voulez?” Mrs. Church serenely sighed. “And yet I can’t +pretend I said it in jest. I feel it too much. We’ve been having a +little social discussion,” she said to her daughter. “There’s still so +much to be said. And I wish,” she continued, turning to me, “that I +could give you our point of view. Don’t you wish, Aurora, that we could +give him our point of view?” + +“Yes, mamma,” said Aurora. + +“We consider ourselves very fortunate in our point of view, don’t we, +dearest?” mamma demanded. + +“Very fortunate indeed, mamma.” + +“You see we’ve acquired an insight into European life,” the elder lady +pursued. “We’ve our place at many a European fireside. We find so much +to esteem—so much to enjoy. Don’t we find delightful things, my +daughter?” + +“So very delightful, mamma,” the girl went on with her colourless calm. +I wondered at it; it offered so strange a contrast to the mocking freedom +of her tone the night before; but while I wondered I desired to testify +to the interest at least with which she inspired me. + +“I don’t know what impression you ladies may have found at European +firesides,” I again ventured, “but there can be very little doubt of the +impression you must have made there.” + +Mrs. Church got in motion to acknowledge my compliment. “We’ve spent +some charming hours. And that reminds me that we’ve just now such an +occasion in prospect. We’re to call upon some Genevese friends—the +family of the Pasteur Galopin. They’re to go with us to the old library +at the Hôtel de Ville, where there are some very interesting documents of +the period of the Reformation: we’re promised a glimpse of some +manuscripts of poor Servetus, the antagonist and victim, you know, of the +dire Calvin. Here of course one can only speak of ce monsieur under +one’s breath, but some day when we’re more private”—Mrs. Church looked +round the room—“I’ll give you my view of him. I think it has a force of +its own. Aurora’s familiar with it—aren’t you, my daughter, familiar +with my view of the evil genius of the Reformation?” + +“Yes, mamma—_very_,” said Aurora with docility—and also, as I thought, +with subtlety—while the two ladies went to prepare for their visit to the +Pasteur Galopin. + + + +VI + + +“She has demanded a new lamp: I told you she would!” This communication +was made me by Madame Beaurepas a couple of days later. “And she has +asked for a new tapis de lit, and she has requested me to provide +Célestine with a pair of light shoes. I remarked to her that, as a +general thing, domestic drudges aren’t shod with satin. That brave +Célestine!” + +“Mrs. Church may be exacting,” I said, “but she’s a clever little woman.” + +“A lady who pays but five francs and a half shouldn’t be too clever. +C’est déplacé. I don’t like the type.” + +“What type then,” I asked, “do you pronounce Mrs. Church’s?” + +“Mon Dieu,” said Madame Beaurepas, “c’est une de ces mamans, comme vous +en avez, qui promènent leur fille.” + +“She’s trying to marry her daughter? I don’t think she’s of that sort.” + +But Madame Beaurepas shrewdly held to her idea. “She’s trying it in her +own way; she does it very quietly. She doesn’t want an American; she +wants a foreigner. And she wants a mari sérieux. But she’s travelling +over Europe in search of one. She would like a magistrate.” + +“A magistrate?” + +“A gros bonnet of some kind; a professor or a deputy.” + +“I’m awfully sorry for the poor girl,” I found myself moved to declare. + +“You needn’t pity her too much; she’s a _fine mouche_—a sly thing.” + +“Ah, for that, no!” I protested. “She’s no fool, but she’s an honest +creature.” + +My hostess gave an ancient grin. “She has hooked you, eh? But the +mother won’t have you.” + +I developed my idea without heeding this insinuation. “She’s a charming +girl, but she’s a shrewd politician. It’s a necessity of her case. +She’s less submissive to her mother than she has to pretend to be. +That’s in self-defence. It’s to make her life possible.” + +“She wants to get away from her mother”—Madame Beaurepas so far confirmed +me. “She wants to _courir les champs_.” + +“She wants to go to America, her native country.” + +“Precisely. And she’ll certainly manage it.” + +“I hope so!” I laughed. + +“Some fine morning—or evening—she’ll go off with a young man; probably +with a young American.” + +“Allons donc!” I cried with disgust. + +“That will be quite America enough,” pursued my cynical hostess. “I’ve +kept a boarding-house for nearly half a century. I’ve seen that type.” + +“Have such things as that happened chez vous?” I asked. + +“Everything has happened chez moi. But nothing has happened more than +once. Therefore this won’t happen here. It will be at the next place +they go to, or the next. Besides, there’s here no young American pour la +partie—none except you, monsieur. You’re susceptible but you’re too +reasonable.” + +“It’s lucky for you I’m reasonable,” I answered. “It’s thanks to my cold +blood you escape a scolding!” + +One morning about this time, instead of coming back to breakfast at the +pension after my lectures at the Academy, I went to partake of this meal +with a fellow student at an ancient eating-house in the collegiate +quarter. On separating from my friend I took my way along that charming +public walk known in Geneva as the Treille, a shady terrace, of immense +elevation, overhanging a stretch of the lower town. Here are spreading +trees and well-worn benches, and over the tiles and chimneys of the +_ville basse_ a view of the snow-crested Alps. On the other side, as you +turn your back to the view, the high level is overlooked by a row of tall +sober-faced _hôtels_, the dwellings of the local aristocracy. I was fond +of the place, resorting to it for stimulation of my sense of the social +scene at large. Presently, as I lingered there on this occasion, I +became aware of a gentleman seated not far from where I stood, his back +to the Alpine chain, which this morning was all radiant, and a newspaper +unfolded in his lap. He wasn’t reading, however; he only stared before +him in gloomy contemplation. I don’t know whether I recognised first the +newspaper or its detainer; one, in either case, would have helped me to +identify the other. One was the _New York Herald_—the other of course +was Mr. Ruck. As I drew nearer he moved his eyes from the stony +succession, the grey old high-featured house-masks, on the other side of +the terrace, and I knew by the expression of his face just how he had +been feeling about these distinguished abodes. He had made up his mind +that their proprietors were a “mean” narrow-minded unsociable company +that plunged its knotted roots into a superfluous past. I endeavoured +therefore, as I sat down beside him, to strike a pleasanter note. + +“The Alps, from here, do make a wondrous show!” + +“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Ruck without a stir, “I’ve examined the Alps. Fine +thing in its way, the view—fine thing. Beauties of nature—that sort of +thing. We came up on purpose to look at it.” + +“Your ladies then have been with you?” + +“Yes—I guess they’re fooling round. They’re awfully restless. They keep +saying _I’m_ restless, but I’m as quiet as a sleeping child to _them_. +It takes,” he added in a moment dryly, “the form of an interest in the +stores.” + +“And are the stores what they’re after now?” + +“Yes—unless this is one of the days the stores don’t keep. They regret +them, but I wish there were more of them! They told me to sit here a +while and they’d just have a look. I generally know what that means—it’s +_their_ form of scenery. But that’s the principal interest for ladies,” +he added, retracting his irony. “We thought we’d come up here and see +the cathedral; Mrs. Church seemed to think it a dead loss we shouldn’t +see the cathedral, especially as we hadn’t seen many yet. And I had to +come up to the banker’s anyway. Well, we certainly saw the cathedral. I +don’t know as we’re any the better for it, and I don’t know as I should +know it again. But we saw it anyway, stone by stone—and heard about it +century by century. I don’t know as I should want to go there regularly, +but I suppose it will give us in conversation a kind of hold on Mrs. +Church, hey? I guess we want something of that kind. Well,” Mr. Ruck +continued, “I stepped in at the banker’s to see if there wasn’t +something, and they handed me out an old _Herald_.” + +“Well, I hope the _Herald’s_ full of good news,” I returned. + +“Can’t say it is. Damned bad news.” + +“Political,” I inquired, “or commercial?” + +“Oh hang politics! It’s business, sir. There _ain’t_ any business. +It’s all gone to—” and Mr. Ruck became profane. “Nine failures in one +day, and two of them in our locality. What do you say to that?” + +“I greatly hope they haven’t inconvenienced you,” was all I could gratify +him with. + +“Well, I guess they haven’t affected me quite desirably. So many houses +on fire, that’s all. If they happen to take place right where you live +they don’t increase the value of your own property. When mine catches I +suppose they’ll write and tell me—one of these days when they get round +to me. I didn’t get a blamed letter this morning; I suppose they think +I’m having such a good time over here it’s a pity to break in. If I +could attend to business for about half an hour I’d find out something. +But I can’t, and it’s no use talking. The state of my health was never +so unsatisfactory as it was about five o’clock this morning.” + +“I’m very sorry to hear that,” I said, “and I recommend you strongly not +to think of business.” + +“I don’t,” Mr. Ruck replied. “You can’t _make_ me. I’m thinking of +cathedrals. I’m thinking of the way they used to chain you up under them +or burn you up in front of them—in those high old times. I’m thinking of +the beauties of nature too,” he went on, turning round on the bench and +leaning his elbow on the parapet. “You can get killed over there I +suppose also”—and he nodded at the shining crests. “I’m thinking of +going over—because, whatever the danger, I seem more afraid not to. +That’s why I do most things. How do you get over?” he sighed. + +“Over to Chamouni?” + +“Over to those hills. Don’t they run a train right up?” + +“You can go to Chamouni,” I said. “You can go to Grindelwald and Zermatt +and fifty other places. You can’t go by rail, but you can drive.” + +“All right, we’ll drive—you can’t tell the difference in these cars. +Yes,” Mr. Ruck proceeded, “Chamouni’s one of the places we put down. I +hope there are good stores in Chamouni.” He spoke with a quickened ring +and with an irony more pointed than commonly served him. It was as if he +had been wrought upon, and yet his general submission to fate was still +there. I judged he had simply taken, in the face of disaster, a sudden +sublime resolution not to worry. He presently twisted himself about on +his bench again and began to look out for his companions. “Well, they +_are_ taking a look,” he resumed; “I guess they’ve struck something +somewhere. And they’ve got a carriage waiting outside of that archway +too. They seem to do a big business in archways here, don’t they? They +like to have a carriage to carry home the things—those ladies of mine. +Then they’re sure they’ve got ’em.” The ladies, after this, to do them +justice, were not very long in appearing. They came toward us from under +the archway to which Mr. Ruck had somewhat invidiously alluded, slowly +and with a jaded air. My companion watched them as they advanced. +“They’re right down tired. When they look like that it kind o’ foots +up.” + +“Well,” said Mrs. Ruck, “I’m glad you’ve had some company.” Her husband +looked at her, in silence, through narrowed eyelids, and I suspected that +her unusually gracious observation was prompted by the less innocent +aftertaste of her own late pastime. + +Her daughter glanced at me with the habit of straighter defiance. “It +would have been more proper if _we_ had had the company. Why didn’t you +come after us instead of sneaking there?” she asked of Mr. Ruck’s +companion. + +“I was told by your father,” I explained, “that you were engaged in +sacred rites.” If Miss Ruck was less conciliatory it would be scarcely, +I felt sure, because she had been more frugal. It was rather because her +conception of social intercourse appeared to consist of the imputation to +as many persons as possible—that is to as many subject males—of some +scandalous neglect of her charms and her claims. “Well, for a gentleman +there’s nothing so sacred as ladies’ society,” she replied in the manner +of a person accustomed to giving neat retorts. + +“I suppose you refer to the cathedral,” said her mother. “Well, I must +say we didn’t go back there. I don’t know what it may be for regular +attendants, but it doesn’t meet my idea of a really pleasant place of +worship. Few of these old buildings do,” Mrs. Ruck further mentioned. + +“Well, we discovered a little lace-shop, where I guess I could regularly +attend!” her daughter took occasion to announce without weak delay. + +Mr. Ruck looked at his child; then he turned about again, leaning on the +parapet and gazing away at the “hills.” + +“Well, the place was certainly not expensive,” his wife said with her +eyes also on the Alps. + +“We’re going up to Chamouni,” he pursued. “You haven’t any call for lace +up there.” + +“Well, I’m glad to hear you’ve decided to go somewhere,” Mrs. Ruck +returned. “I don’t want to be a fixture at an old pension.” + +“You can wear lace anywhere,” her daughter reminded us, “if you put it on +right. That’s the great thing with lace. I don’t think they know how to +wear lace in Europe. I know how I mean to wear mine; but I mean to keep +it till I get home.” + +Mr. Ruck transferred his melancholy gaze to her elaborately-appointed +little person; there was a great deal of very new-looking detail in Miss +Ruck’s appearance. Then in a tone of voice quite out of consonance with +his facial despondency, “Have you purchased a great deal?” he inquired. + +“I’ve purchased enough for you to make a fuss about.” + +“He can’t make a fuss about _that_,” said Mrs. Ruck. + +“Well, you’ll see!”—the girl had unshaken confidence. + +The subject of this serenity, however, went on in the same tone: “Have +you got it in your pocket? Why don’t you put it on—why don’t you hang it +round you?” + +“I’ll hang it round _you_ if you don’t look out!” cried Miss Ruck. + +“Don’t you want to show it off to this gentleman?” he sociably continued. + +“Mercy, how you do carry on!” his wife sighed. + +“Well, I want to be lively. There’s every reason for it. We’re going up +to Chamouni.” + +“You’re real restless—that’s what’s the matter with you.” And Mrs. Ruck +roused herself from her own repose. + +“No, I ain’t,” said her husband. “I never felt so quiet. I feel as +peaceful as a little child.” + +Mrs. Ruck, who had no play of mind, looked at her daughter and at me. +“Well, I hope you’ll improve,” she stated with a certain flatness. + +“Send in the bills,” he went on, rising to match. “Don’t let yourself +suffer from want, Sophy. I don’t care what you do now. We can’t be more +than gay, and we can’t be worse than broke.” + +Sophy joined her mother with a little toss of her head, and we followed +the ladies to the carriage, where the younger addressed her father. “In +your place, Mr. Ruck, I wouldn’t want to flaunt my meanness quite so much +before strangers.” + +He appeared to feel the force of this rebuke, surely deserved by a man on +whom the humiliation of seeing the main ornaments of his hearth betray +the ascendency of that character had never yet been laid. He flushed and +was silent; his companions got into their vehicle, the front seat of +which was adorned with a large parcel. Mr. Ruck gave the parcel a poke +with his umbrella and turned to me with a grimly penitent smile. “After +all, for the ladies, that’s the principal interest.” + + + +VII + + +Old M. Pigeonneau had more than once offered me the privilege of a walk +in his company, but his invitation had hitherto, for one reason or +another, always found me hampered. It befell, however, one afternoon +that I saw him go forth for a vague airing with an unattended patience +that attracted my sympathy. I hastily overtook him and passed my hand +into his venerable arm, an overture that produced in the good old man so +rejoicing a response that he at once proposed we should direct our steps +to the English Garden: no scene less consecrated to social ease was +worthy of our union. To the English Garden accordingly we went; it lay +beyond the bridge and beside the lake. It was always pretty and now was +really recreative; a band played furiously in the centre and a number of +discreet listeners sat under the small trees on benches and little chairs +or strolled beside the blue water. We joined the strollers, we observed +our companions and conversed on obvious topics. Some of these last, of +course, were the pretty women who graced the prospect and who, in the +light of M. Pigeonneau’s comprehensive criticism, appeared surprisingly +numerous. He seemed bent upon our making up our minds as to which might +be prettiest, and this was an innocent game in which I consented to take +a hand. + +Suddenly my companion stopped, pressing my arm with the liveliest +emotion. “La voilà, la voilà, the prettiest!” he quickly murmured; +“coming toward us in a blue dress with the other.” It was at the other I +was looking, for the other, to my surprise, was our interesting fellow +pensioner, the daughter of the most systematic of mothers. M. Pigeonneau +meanwhile had redoubled his transports—he had recognised Miss Ruck. “Oh +la belle rencontre, nos aimables convives—the prettiest girl in the world +in effect!” And then after we had greeted and joined the young ladies, +who, like ourselves, were walking arm in arm and enjoying the scene, he +addressed himself to the special object of his admiration, Mees Roque. +“I was citing you with enthusiasm to my young friend here even before I +had recognised you, mademoiselle.” + +“I don’t believe in French compliments,” remarked Miss Sophy, who +presented her back to the smiling old man. + +“Are you and Miss Ruck walking alone?” I asked of her companion. “You +had better accept M. Pigeonneau’s gallant protection, to say nothing of +mine.” + +Aurora Church had taken her hand from Miss Ruck’s arm; she inclined her +head to the side and shone at me while her open parasol revolved on her +shoulder. “Which is most improper—to walk alone or to walk with +gentlemen that one picks up? I want to do what’s most improper.” + +“What perversity,” I asked, “are you, with an ingenuity worthy of a +better cause, trying to work out?” + +“He thinks you can’t understand him when he talks like that,” said Miss +Ruck. “But I _do_ understand you,” she flirted at me—“always!” + +“So I’ve always ventured to hope, my dear Miss Ruck.” + +“Well, if I didn’t it wouldn’t be much loss!” cried this young lady. + +“Allons, en marche!” trumpeted M. Pigeonneau, all gallant urbanity and +undiscouraged by her impertinence. “Let us make together the tour of the +garden.” And he attached himself to Miss Ruck with a respectful elderly +grace which treated her own lack even of the juvenile form of that +attraction as some flower of alien modesty, and was ever sublimely +conscious of a mission to place modesty at its ease. This ill-assorted +couple walked in front, while Aurora Church and I strolled along +together. + +“I’m sure this is more improper,” said my companion; “this is +delightfully improper. I don’t say that as a compliment to you,” she +added. “I’d say it to any clinging man, no matter how stupid.” + +“Oh I’m clinging enough,” I answered; “but I’m as stupid as you could +wish, and this doesn’t seem to me wrong.” + +“Not for you, no; only for me. There’s nothing that a man can do that’s +wrong, is there? _En morale_, you know, I mean. Ah, yes, he can kill +and steal; but I think there’s nothing else, is there?” + +“Well, it’s a nice question. One doesn’t know how those things are taken +till after one has done them. Then one’s enlightened.” + +“And you mean you’ve never been enlightened? You make yourself out very +good.” + +“That’s better than making one’s self out very bad, as you do.” + +“Ah,” she explained, “you don’t know the consequences of a false +position.” + +I was amused at her great formula. “What do you mean by yours being +one?” + +“Oh I mean everything. For instance, I’ve to pretend to be a jeune +fille. I’m not a jeune fille; no American girl’s a jeune fille; an +American girl’s an intelligent responsible creature. I’ve to pretend to +be idiotically innocent, but I’m not in the least innocent.” + +This, however, was easy to meet. “You don’t in the least pretend to be +innocent; you pretend to be—what shall I call it?—uncannily wise.” + +“That’s no pretence. I _am_ uncannily wise. You could call it nothing +more true.” + +I went along with her a little, rather thrilled by this finer freedom. +“You’re essentially not an American girl.” + +She almost stopped, looking at me; there came a flush to her cheek. +“Voilà!” she said. “There’s my false position. I want to be an American +girl, and I’ve been hideously deprived of that immense convenience, that +beautiful resource.” + +“Do you want me to tell you?” I pursued with interest. “It would be +utterly impossible to an American girl—I mean unperverted, and that’s the +whole point—to talk as you’re talking to me now.” + +The expressive eagerness she showed for this was charming. “Please tell +me then! How would she talk?” + +“I can’t tell you all the things she’d say, but I think I can tell you +most of the things she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t reason out her conduct as +you seem to me to do.” + +Aurora gave me the most flattering attention. “I see. She would be +simpler. To do very simply things not at all simple—that’s the American +girl!” + +I greatly enjoyed our intellectual relation. “I don’t know whether +you’re a French girl, or what you are, but, you know, I find you witty.” + +“Ah, you mean I strike false notes!” she quite comically wailed. “See +how my whole sense for such things has been ruined. False notes are just +what I want to avoid. I wish you’d always tell me.” + +The conversational union between Miss Ruck and her neighbour, in front of +us, had evidently not borne fruit. Miss Ruck suddenly turned round to us +with a question. “Don’t you want some ice-cream?” + +“_She_ doesn’t strike false notes,” I declared. + +We had come into view of a manner of pavilion or large kiosk, which +served as a café and at which the delicacies generally procurable at such +an establishment were dispensed. Miss Ruck pointed to the little green +tables and chairs set out on the gravel; M. Pigeonneau, fluttering with a +sense of dissipation, seconded the proposal, and we presently sat down +and gave our order to a nimble attendant. I managed again to place +myself next Aurora; our companions were on the other side of the table. + +My neighbour rejoiced to extravagance in our situation. “This is best of +all—I never believed I should come to a café with two strange and +possibly depraved men! Now you can’t persuade me this isn’t wrong.” + +“To make it wrong,” I returned, “we ought to see your mother coming down +that path.” + +“Ah, my mother makes everything wrong,” she cried, attacking with a +little spoon in the shape of a spade the apex of a pink ice. And then +she returned to her idea of a moment before. “You must promise to tell +me—to warn me in some way—whenever I strike a false note. You must give +a little cough, like that—ahem!” + +“You’ll keep me very busy and people will think I’m in a consumption.” + +“Voyons,” she continued, “why have you never talked to me more? Is that +a false note? Why haven’t you been ‘attentive’? That’s what American +girls call it; that’s what Miss Ruck calls it.” + +I assured myself that our companions were out of ear-shot and that Miss +Ruck was much occupied with a large vanilla cream. “Because you’re +always interlaced with that young lady. There’s no getting near you.” + +Aurora watched her friend while the latter devoted herself to her ice. +“You wonder, no doubt, why I should care for her at all. So does mamma; +elle s’y perd. I don’t like her particularly; je n’en suis pas folle. +But she gives me information; she tells me about her—your—everything but +_my_—extraordinary country. Mamma has always tried to prevent my knowing +anything about it, and I’m all the more devoured with curiosity. And +then Miss Ruck’s so very fresh.” + +“I may not be so fresh as Miss Ruck,” I said, “but in future, when you +want information, I recommend you to come to me for it.” + +“Ah, but our friend offers to take me there; she invites me to go back +with her, to stay with her. You couldn’t do that, could you?” And my +companion beautifully faced me on it. “Bon, a false note! I can see it +by your face; you remind me of an outraged maître de piano.” + +“You overdo the character—the poor American girl,” I said. “Are you +going to stay with that delightful family?” + +“I’ll go and stay with any one who will take me or ask me. It’s a real +nostalgie. She says that in New York—in Thirty-Seventh Street near +Fourth Avenue—I should have the most lovely time.” + +“I’ve no doubt you’d enjoy it.” + +“Absolute liberty to begin with.” + +“It seems to me you’ve a certain liberty here,” I returned. + +“Ah, _this_? Oh I shall pay for this. I shall be punished by mamma and +lectured by Madame Galopin.” + +“The wife of the pasteur?” + +“His digne épouse. Madame Galopin, for mamma, is the incarnation of +European opinion. That’s what vexes me with mamma, her thinking so much +of people like Madame Galopin. Going to see Madame Galopin—mamma calls +that being in European society. European society! I’m so sick of that +expression; I’ve heard it since I was six years old. Who’s Madame +Galopin—who the devil thinks anything of her here? She’s nobody; she’s +the dreariest of frumps; she’s perfectly third-rate. If I like your +America better than mamma I also know my Europe better.” + +“But your mother, certainly,” I objected a trifle timidly—for my young +lady was excited and had a charming little passion in her eye—“your +mother has a great many social relations all over the continent.” + +“She thinks so, but half the people don’t care for us. They’re not so +good as we and they know it—I’ll do them that justice—so that they wonder +why we should care for them. When we’re polite to them they think the +less of us; there are plenty of people like that. Mamma thinks so much +of them simply because they’re foreigners. If I could tell you all the +ugly stupid tenth-rate people I’ve had to talk to for no better reason +than that they were _de leur pays_!—Germans, French, Italians, Turks, +everything. When I complain mamma always says that at any rate it’s +practice in the language. And she makes so much of the most impossible +English too; I don’t know what _that’s_ practice in.” + +Before I had time to suggest an hypothesis as regards this latter point I +saw something that made me rise—I fear with an undissimulated start—from +my chair. This was nothing less than the neat little figure of Mrs. +Church—a perfect model of the femme comme il faut—approaching our table +with an impatient step and followed most unexpectedly in her advance by +the pre-eminent form of Mr. Ruck, whose high hat had never looked so +high. She had evidently come in search of her daughter, and if she had +commanded this gentleman’s attendance it had been on no more intimate +ground than that of his unenvied paternity to her guilty child’s +accomplice. My movement had given the alarm and my young friend and M. +Pigeonneau got up; Miss Ruck alone didn’t, in the local phrase, derange +herself. Mrs. Church, beneath her modest little bonnet, looked +thoroughly resolute though not at all agitated; she came straight to her +daughter, who received her with a smile, and then she took the rest of us +in very fixedly and tranquilly and without bowing. I must do both these +ladies the justice that neither of them made the least little “scene.” + +“I’ve come for you, dearest,” said the mother. + +“Yes, dear mamma.” + +“Come for you—come for you,” Mrs. Church repeated, looking down at the +relics of our little feast, on which she seemed somehow to shed at once +the lurid light of the disreputable. “I was obliged to appeal to Mr. +Ruck’s assistance. I was much perplexed. I thought a long time.” + +“Well, Mrs. Church, I was glad to see you perplexed once in your life!” +cried Mr. Ruck with friendly jocosity. “But you came pretty straight for +all that. I had hard work to keep up with you.” + +“We’ll take a cab, Aurora,” Mrs. Church went on without heeding this +pleasantry—“a closed one; we’ll enter it at once. Come, ma fille.” + +“Yes, dear mamma.” The girl had flushed for humiliation, but she carried +it bravely off; and her grimace as she looked round at us all and her +eyes met mine didn’t keep her, I thought, from being beautiful. +“Good-bye. I’ve had a ripping time.” + +“We mustn’t linger,” said her mother; “it’s five o’clock. We’re to dine, +you know, with Madame Galopin.” + +“I had quite forgotten,” Aurora declared. “That will be even more +charming.” + +“Do you want me to assist you to carry her back, ma’am?” asked Mr. Ruck. + +Mrs. Church covered him for a little with her coldest contemplation. “Do +you prefer then to leave your daughter to finish the evening with these +gentlemen?” + +Mr. Ruck pushed back his hat and scratched the top of his head. “Well, I +don’t know. How’d you like that, Sophy?” + +“Well, I never!” gasped Sophy as Mrs. Church marched off with her +daughter. + + + +VIII + + +I had half-expected a person of so much decision, and above all of so +much consistency, would make me feel the weight of her disapproval of my +own share in that little act of revelry by the most raffish part of the +lakeside. But she maintained her claim to being a highly reasonable +woman—I couldn’t but admire the justice of this pretension—by recognising +my practical detachment. I had taken her daughter as I found her, which +was, according to Mrs. Church’s view, in a very equivocal position. The +natural instinct of a young man in such a situation is not to protest but +to profit; and it was clear to Mrs. Church that I had had nothing to do +with Miss Aurora’s appearing in public under the compromising +countenance, as she regarded the matter, of Miss Ruck. Besides, she +liked to converse, and she apparently did me the honour to consider that +of all the inmates of the Pension Beaurepas I was the best prepared for +that exercise. I found her in the salon a couple of evenings after the +incident I have just narrated, and I approached her with a view to making +my peace with her if this should prove necessary. But Mrs. Church was as +gracious as I could have desired; she put her marker into her inveterate +volume and folded her plump little hands on the cover. She made no +specific allusion to the English Garden; she embarked rather on those +general considerations in which her cultivated mind was so much at home. + +“Always at your deep studies, Mrs. Church,” I didn’t hesitate freely to +observe. + +“Que voulez-vous, monsieur? To say studies is to say too much; one +doesn’t study in the parlour of a boarding-house of this character. But +I do what I can; I’ve always done what I can. That’s all I’ve ever +claimed.” + +“No one can do more, and you appear to have done a great deal.” + +“Do you know my secret?” she asked with an air of brightening confidence. +And this treasure hung there a little temptingly before she revealed it. +“To care only for the _best_! To do the best, to know the best—to have, +to desire, to recognise, only the best. That’s what I’ve always done in +my little quiet persistent way. I’ve gone through Europe on my devoted +little errand, seeking, seeing, heeding, only the best. And it hasn’t +been for myself alone—it has been for my daughter. My daughter has had +the best. We’re not rich, but I can say that.” + +“She has had _you_, madam,” I pronounced finely. + +“Certainly, such as I am, I’ve been devoted. We’ve got something +everywhere; a little here, a little there. That’s the real secret—to get +something everywhere; you always can if you _are_ devoted. Sometimes it +has been a little music, sometimes a little deeper insight into the +history of art; sometimes into that of literature, politics, economics: +every little counts, you know. Sometimes it has been just a glimpse, a +view, a lovely landscape, a mere impression. We’ve always been on the +look-out. Sometimes it has been a valued friendship, a delightful social +tie.” + +“Here comes the ‘European society,’ the poor daughter’s bugbear,” I said +to myself. “Certainly,” I remarked aloud—I admit rather +hypocritically—“if you’ve lived a great deal in pensions you must have +got acquainted with lots of people.” + +Mrs. Church dropped her eyes an instant; taking it up, however, as one +for whom discrimination was always at hand. “I think the European +pension system in many respects remarkable and in some satisfactory. But +of the friendships that we’ve formed few have been contracted in +establishments of this stamp.” + +“I’m sorry to hear that!” I ruefully laughed. + +“I don’t say it for you, though I might say it for some others. We’ve +been interested in European _homes_.” + +“Ah there you’re beyond me!” + +“Naturally”—she quietly assented. “We have the entrée of the old +Genevese society. I like its tone. I prefer it to that of Mr. Ruck,” +added Mrs. Church calmly; “to that of Mrs. Ruck and Miss Ruck. To that +of Miss Ruck in particular.” + +“Ah the poor Rucks _have_ no tone,” I pleaded. “That’s just the point of +them. Don’t take them more seriously than they take themselves.” + +Well, she would see what she could do. But she bent grave eyes on me. +“Are they really fair examples?” + +“Examples of what?” + +“Of our American tendencies.” + +“‘Tendencies’ is a big word, dear lady; tendencies are difficult to +calculate.” I used even a greater freedom. “And you shouldn’t abuse +those good Rucks, who have been so kind to your daughter. They’ve +invited her to come and stay with them in Thirty-Seventh Street near +Fourth Avenue.” + +“Aurora has told me. It might be very serious.” + +“It might be very droll,” I said. + +“To me,” she declared, “it’s all too terrible. I think we shall have to +leave the Pension Beaurepas. I shall go back to Madame Chamousset.” + +“On account of the Rucks?” I asked. + +“Pray why don’t they go themselves? I’ve given them some excellent +addresses—written down the very hours of the trains. They were going to +Appenzell; I thought it was arranged.” + +“They talk of Chamouni now,” I said; “but they’re very helpless and +undecided.” + +“I’ll give them some Chamouni addresses. Mrs. Ruck will send for a +_chaise à porteurs_; I’ll give her the name of a man who lets them lower +than you get them at the hotels. After that they _must_ go.” + +She had thoroughly fixed it, as we said; but her large assumptions +ruffled me. “I nevertheless doubt,” I returned, “if Mr. Ruck will ever +really be seen on the Mer de Glace—great as might be the effect there of +that high hat. He’s not like you; he doesn’t value his European +privileges. He takes no interest. He misses Wall Street all the time. +As his wife says, he’s deplorably restless, but I guess Chamouni won’t +quiet him. So you mustn’t depend too much on the effect of your +addresses.” + +“Is it, in its strange mixture of the barbaric and the effete, a frequent +type?” asked Mrs. Church with all the force of her noble appetite for +knowledge. + +“I’m afraid so. Mr. Ruck’s a broken-down man of business. He’s +broken-down in health and I think he must be broken-down in fortune. He +has spent his whole life in buying and selling and watching prices, so +that he knows how to do nothing else. His wife and daughter have spent +their lives, not in selling, but in buying—with a considerable +indifference to prices—and they on their side know how to do nothing +else. To get something in a ‘store’ that they can put on their +backs—that’s their one idea; they haven’t another in their heads. Of +course they spend no end of money, and they do it with an implacable +persistence, with a mixture of audacity and of cunning. They do it in +his teeth and they do it behind his back; the mother protects the +daughter, while the daughter eggs on the mother. Between them they’re +bleeding him to death.” + +“Ah what a picture!” my friend calmly sighed. “I’m afraid they’re +grossly illiterate.” + +“I share your fears. We make a great talk at home about education, but +see how little that ideal has ever breathed on them. The vision of fine +clothes rides them like a fury. They haven’t an idea of any sort—not +even a worse one—to compete with it. Poor Mr. Ruck, who’s a mush of +personal and private concession—I don’t know what he may have been in the +business world—strikes me as a really tragic figure. He’s getting bad +news every day from home; his affairs may be going to the dogs. He’s +unable, with his lost nerve, to apply himself; so he has to stand and +watch his fortunes ebb. He has been used to doing things in a big way +and he feels ‘mean’ if he makes a fuss about bills. So the ladies keep +sending them in.” + +“But haven’t they common sense? Don’t they know they’re marching to +ruin?” + +“They don’t believe it. The duty of an American husband and father is to +keep them going. If he asks them how, that’s his own affair. So by way +of not being mean, of being a good American husband and father, poor Ruck +stands staring at bankruptcy.” + +Mrs. Church, with her cold competence, picked my story over. “Why, if +Aurora were to go to stay with them she mightn’t even have a good +_nourriture_.” + +“I don’t on the whole recommend,” I smiled, “that your daughter should +pay a visit to Thirty-Seventh Street.” + +She took it in—with its various bearings—and had after all, I think, to +renounce the shrewd view of a contingency. “Why should I be subjected to +such trials—so sadly éprouveé?” From the moment nothing at all was to be +got from the Rucks—not even eventual gratuitous board—she washed her +hands of them altogether. “Why should a daughter of mine like that +dreadful girl?” + +“_Does_ she like her?” + +She challenged me nobly. “Pray do you mean that Aurora’s such a +hypocrite?” + +I saw no reason to hesitate. “A little, since you inquire. I think +you’ve forced her to be.” + +“I?”—she was shocked. “I _never_ force my daughter!” + +“She’s nevertheless in a false position,” I returned. “She hungers and +thirsts for her own great country; she wants to ‘come out’ in New York, +which is certainly, socially speaking, the El Dorado of young ladies. +She likes any one, for the moment, who will talk to her of that and serve +as a connecting-link with the paradise she imagines there. Miss Ruck +performs this agreeable office.” + +“Your idea is, then, that if she were to go with such a person to America +she could drop her afterwards?” + +I complimented Mrs. Church on her quickly-working mind, but I explained +that I prescribed no such course. “I can’t imagine her—when it should +come to the point—embarking with the famille Roque. But I wish she might +go nevertheless.” + +Mrs. Church shook her head lucidly—she found amusement in my +inappropriate zeal. “I trust my poor child may never be guilty of so +fatal a mistake. She’s completely in error; she’s wholly unadapted to +the peculiar conditions of American life. It wouldn’t please her. She +wouldn’t sympathise. My daughter’s ideal’s not the ideal of the class of +young women to which Miss Ruck belongs. I fear they’re very numerous; +they pervade the place, they give the tone.” + +“It’s you who are mistaken,” I said. “There are plenty of Miss Rucks, +and she has a terrible significance—though largely as the product of her +weak-kneed sire and his ‘absorption in business.’ But there are other +forms. Go home for six months and see.” + +“I’ve not, unfortunately, the means to make costly experiments. My +daughter,” Mrs. Church pursued, “has had great advantages—rare +advantages—and I should be very sorry to believe that _au fond_ she +doesn’t appreciate them. One thing’s certain: I must remove her from +this pernicious influence. We must part company with this deplorable +family. If Mr. Ruck and his ladies can’t be induced to proceed to +Chamouni—a journey from which no traveller with the smallest self-respect +can dispense himself—my daughter and I shall be obliged to retire from +the field. _We_ shall go to Dresden.” + +“To Dresden?” I submissively echoed. + +“The capital of Saxony. I had arranged to go there for the autumn, but +it will be simpler to go immediately. There are several works in the +gallery with which Aurora has not, I think, sufficiently familiarised +herself. It’s especially strong in the seventeenth-century schools.” + +As my companion offered me this information I caught sight of Mr. Ruck, +who lounged in with his hands in his pockets and his elbows making acute +angles. He had his usual anomalous appearance of both seeking and +avoiding society, and he wandered obliquely toward Mrs. Church, whose +last words he had overheard. “The seventeenth-century schools,” he said +as if he were slowly weighing some very small object in a very large pair +of scales. “Now do you suppose they _had_ schools at that period?” + +Mrs. Church rose with a good deal of majesty, making no answer to this +incongruous jest. She clasped her large volume to her neat little bosom +and looked at our luckless friend more in pity than in anger, though more +in edification than in either. “I had a letter this morning from +Chamouni.” + +“Well,” he made answer, “I suppose you’ve got friends all round.” + +“I’ve friends at Chamouni, but they’re called away. To their great +regret.” I had got up too; I listened to this statement and wondered. +I’m almost ashamed to mention my wanton thought. I asked myself whether +this mightn’t be a mere extemporised and unestablished truth—a truth +begotten of a deep desire; but the point has never been cleared. +“They’re giving up some charming rooms; perhaps you’d like them. I would +suggest your telegraphing. The weather’s glorious,” continued Mrs. +Church, “and the highest peaks are now perceived with extraordinary +distinctness.” + +Mr. Ruck listened, as he always listened, respectfully. “Well,” he said, +“I don’t know as I want to go up Mount Blank. That’s the principal +attraction, ain’t it?” + +“There are many others. I thought I would offer you an exceptional +opportunity.” + +“Well,” he returned, “I guess you know, and if I could _let_ you fix me +we’d probably have some big times. But I seem to strike +opportunities—well, in excess of my powers. I don’t seem able to +respond.” + +“It only needs a little decision,” remarked Mrs. Church with an air that +was a perfect example of this virtue. “I wish you good-night, sir.” And +she moved noiselessly away. + +Mr. Ruck, with his long legs apart, stood staring after her; then he +transferred his perfectly quiet eyes to me. “Does she own a hotel over +there? Has she got any stock in Mount Blank?” Indeed in view of the way +he had answered her I thought the dear man—to whom I found myself +becoming hourly more attached—had beautiful manners. + + + +IX + + +The next day Madame Beaurepas held out to me with her own venerable +fingers a missive which proved to be a telegram. After glancing at it I +let her know that it appeared to call me away. My brother had arrived in +England and he proposed I should meet him there; he had come on business +and was to spend but three weeks in Europe. “But my house empties +itself!” the old woman cried on this. “The famille Roque talks of +leaving me and Madame Cheurche nous fait la réverénce.” + +“Mrs. Church is going away?” + +“She’s packing her trunk; she’s a very extraordinary person. Do you know +what she asked me this morning? To invent some combination by which the +famille Roque should take itself off. I assured her I was no such +inventor. That poor famille Roque! ‘Oblige me by getting rid of them,’ +said Madame Cheurche—quite as she would have asked Célestine to remove a +strong cheese. She speaks as if the world were made for Madame Cheurche. +I hinted that if she objected to the company there was a very simple +remedy—and at present elle fait ses paquets.” + +“She really asked you to get the Rucks out of the house?” + +“She asked me to tell them that their rooms had been let three months ago +to another family. She has an aplomb!” + +Mrs. Church’s aplomb caused me considerable diversion; I’m not sure that +it wasn’t in some degree to laugh at my leisure that I went out into the +garden that evening to smoke a cigar. The night was dark and not +particularly balmy, and most of my fellow pensioners, after dinner, had +remained indoors. A long straight walk conducted from the door of the +house to the ancient grille I’ve described, and I stood here for some +time looking through the iron bars at the silent empty street. The +prospect was not enlivening and I presently turned away. At this moment +I saw in the distance the door of the house open and throw a shaft of +lamplight into the darkness. Into the lamplight stepped the figure of an +apparently circumspect female, as they say in the old stories, who +presently closed the door behind her. She disappeared in the dusk of the +garden and I had seen her but an instant; yet I remained under the +impression that Aurora Church, on the eve of departure, had come out to +commune, like myself, with isolation. + +I lingered near the gate, keeping the red tip of my cigar turned toward +the house, and before long a slight but interesting figure emerged from +among the shadows of the trees and encountered the rays of a lamp that +stood just outside the gate. My fellow solitary was in fact Aurora +Church, who acknowledged my presence with an impatience not wholly +convincing. + +“Ought I to retire—to return to the house?” + +“If you ought,” I replied, “I should be very sorry to tell you so.” + +“But we’re all alone. There’s no one else in the garden.” + +“It’s not the first time, then, that I’ve been alone with a young lady. +I’m not at all terrified.” + +“Ah, but I?” she wailed to extravagance. “I’ve _never_ been alone—!” +Quickly, however, she interrupted herself. “Bon, there’s another false +note!” + +“Yes, I’m obliged to admit that one’s very false.” + +She stood looking at me. “I’m going away to-morrow; after that there +will be no one to tell me.” + +“That will matter little,” I presently returned. “Telling you will do no +good.” + +“Ah, why do you say that?” she all ruefully asked. + +I said it partly because it was true, but I said it for other reasons, as +well, which I found hard to define. Standing there bareheaded in the +night air, in the vague light, this young lady took on an extreme +interest, which was moreover not diminished by a suspicion on my own part +that she had come into the garden knowing me to be there. I thought her +charming, I thought her remarkable and felt very sorry for her; but as I +looked at her the terms in which Madame Beaurepas had ventured to +characterise her recurred to me with a certain force. I had professed a +contempt for them at the time, but it now came into my head that perhaps +this unfortunately situated, this insidiously mutinous young creature was +in quest of an effective preserver. She was certainly not a girl to +throw herself at a man’s head, but it was possible that in her +intense—her almost morbid—desire to render operative an ideal charged +perhaps after all with as many fallacies as her mother affirmed, she +might do something reckless and irregular—something in which a +sympathetic compatriot, as yet unknown, would find his profit. The +image, unshaped though it was, of this sympathetic compatriot filled me +with a semblance of envy. For some moments I was silent, conscious of +these things; after which I answered her question. “Because some +things—some differences—are felt, not learned. To you liberty’s not +natural; you’re like a person who has bought a repeating watch and is, in +his satisfaction, constantly taking it out of his pocket to hear it +sound. To a real American girl her liberty’s a very vulgarly-ticking old +clock.” + +“Ah, you mean then,” said my young friend, “that my mother has ruined +me?” + +“Ruined you?” + +“She has so perverted my mind that when I try to be natural I’m +necessarily indecent.” + +I threw up hopeless arms. “That again’s a false note!” + +She turned away. “I think you’re cruel.” + +“By no means,” I declared; “because, for my own taste, I prefer you +as—as—” + +On my hesitating she turned back. “As what?” + +“As you are!” + +She looked at me a while again, and then she said in a little reasoning +tone that reminded me of her mother’s, only that it was conscious and +studied, “I wasn’t aware that I’m under any particular obligation to +please you!” But she also gave a clear laugh, quite at variance with +this stiffness. Suddenly I thought her adorable. + +“Oh there’s no obligation,” I said, “but people sometimes have +preferences. I’m very sorry you’re going away.” + +“What does it matter to you? You are going yourself.” + +“As I’m going in a different direction, that makes all the greater +separation.” + +She answered nothing; she stood looking through the bars of the tall gate +at the empty dusky street. “This grille is like a cage,” she said at +last. + +“Fortunately it’s a cage that will open.” And I laid my hand on the +lock. + +“Don’t open it”; and she pressed the gate close. “If you should open it +I’d go out. There you’d be, monsieur—for I should never return.” + +I treated it as wholly thrilling, and indeed I quite found it so. “Where +should you go?” + +“To America.” + +“Straight away?” + +“Somehow or other. I’d go to the American consul. I’d beg him to give +me money—to help me.” + +I received this assertion without a smile; I was not in a smiling humour. +On the contrary I felt singularly excited and kept my hand on the lock of +the gate. I believed, or I thought I believed, what my companion said, +and I had—absurd as it may appear—an irritated vision of her throwing +herself on consular tenderness. It struck me for a moment that to pass +out of that gate with this yearning straining young creature would be to +pass to some mysterious felicity. If I were only a hero of romance I +would myself offer to take her to America. + +In a moment more perhaps I should have persuaded myself that I was one, +but at this juncture I heard a sound hostile to the romantic note. It +was nothing less than the substantial tread of Célestine, the cook, who +stood grinning at us as we turned about from our colloquy. + +“I ask bien pardon,” said Célestine. “The mother of mademoiselle desires +that mademoiselle should come in immediately. M. le Pasteur Galopin has +come to make his adieux to ces dames.” + +Aurora gave me but one glance, the memory of which I treasure. Then she +surrendered to Célestine, with whom she returned to the house. + +The next morning, on coming into the garden, I learned that Mrs. Church +and her daughter had effectively quitted us. I was informed of this fact +by old M. Pigeonneau, who sat there under a tree drinking his +café-au-lait at a little green table. + +“I’ve nothing to envy you,” he said; “I had the last glimpse of that +charming Mees Aurore.” + +“I had a very late glimpse,” I answered, “and it was all I could possibly +desire.” + +“I’ve always noticed,” rejoined M. Pigeonneau, “that your desires are +more under control than mine. Que voulez-vous? I’m of the old school. +Je crois que cette race se perd. I regret the departure of that +attractive young person; she has an enchanting smile. Ce sera une femme +d’esprit. For the mother, I can console myself. I’m not sure _she_ was +a femme d’esprit, though she wished so prodigiously to pass for one. +Round, rosy, potelée, she yet had not the temperament of her appearance; +she was a femme austère—I made up my mind to that. I’ve often noticed +that contradiction in American ladies. You see a plump little woman with +a speaking eye and the contour and complexion of a ripe peach, and if you +venture to conduct yourself in the smallest degree in accordance with +these _indices_, you discover a species of Methodist—of what do you call +it?—of Quakeress. On the other hand, you encounter a tall lean angular +form without colour, without grace, all elbows and knees, and you find +it’s a nature of the tropics! The women of duty look like coquettes, and +the others look like alpenstocks! However, we’ve still la belle Madame +Roque—a real femme de Rubens, celle-là. It’s very true that to talk to +her one must know the Flemish tongue!” + +I had determined in accordance with my brother’s telegram to go away in +the afternoon; so that, having various duties to perform, I left M. +Pigeonneau to his ethnic studies. Among other things I went in the +course of the morning to the banker’s, to draw money for my journey, and +there I found Mr. Ruck with a pile of crumpled letters in his lap, his +chair tipped back and his eyes gloomily fixed on the fringe of the green +plush table-cloth. I timidly expressed the hope that he had got better +news from home; whereupon he gave me a look in which, considering his +provocation, the habit of forlorn patience was conspicuous. + +He took up his letters in his large hand and, crushing them together, +held it out to me. “That stack of postal matter,” he said, “is worth +about five cents. But I guess,” he added, rising, “that I know where I +am by this time.” When I had drawn my money I asked him to come and +breakfast with me at the little brasserie, much favoured by students, to +which I used to resort in the old town. “I couldn’t eat, sir,” he +frankly pleaded, “I couldn’t eat. Bad disappointments strike at the seat +of the appetite. But I guess I’ll go with you, so as not to be on show +down there at the pension. The old woman down there accuses me of +turning up my nose at her food. Well, I guess I shan’t turn up my nose +at anything now.” + +We went to the little brasserie, where poor Mr. Ruck made the lightest +possible dejeuner. But if he ate very little he still moved his lean +jaws—he mumbled over his spoilt repast of apprehended facts; strange +tough financial fare into which I was unable to bite. I was very sorry +for him, I wanted to ease him off; but the only thing I could do when we +had breakfasted was to see him safely back to the Pension Beaurepas. We +went across the Treille and down the Corraterie, out of which we turned +into the Rue du Rhône. In this latter street, as all the world knows, +prevail those shining shop-fronts of the watchmakers and jewellers for +its long list of whom Geneva is famous. I had always admired these +elegant exhibitions and never passed them without a lingering look. Even +on this occasion, preoccupied as I was with my impending departure and +with my companion’s troubles, I attached my eyes to the precious tiers +that flashed and twinkled behind the huge clear plates of glass. Thanks +to this inveterate habit I recorded a fresh observation. In the largest +and most irresistible of these repositories I distinguished two ladies, +seated before the counter with an air of absorption which sufficiently +proclaimed their identity. I hoped my companion wouldn’t see them, but +as we came abreast of the door, a little beyond, we found it open to the +warm summer air. Mr. Ruck happened to glance in, and he immediately +recognised his wife and daughter. He slowly stopped, his eyes fixed on +them; I wondered what he would do. A salesman was in the act of holding +up a bracelet before them on its velvet cushion and flashing it about in +a winsome manner. + +Mr. Ruck said nothing, but he presently went in; whereupon, feeling that +I mustn’t lose him, I did the same. “It will be an opportunity,” I +remarked as cheerfully as possible, “for me to bid good-bye to the +ladies.” + +They turned round on the approach of their relative, opposing an +indomitable front. “Well, you’d better get home to breakfast—that’s what +_you’d_ better do,” his wife at once remarked. Miss Sophy resisted in +silence; she only took the bracelet from the attendant and gazed at it +all fixedly. My friend seated himself on an empty stool and looked round +the shop. “Well, we’ve been here before, and you ought to know it,” Mrs. +Ruck a trifle guiltily contended. “We were here the first day we came.” + +The younger lady held out to me the precious object in her hand. “Don’t +you think that’s sweet?” + +I looked at it a moment. “No, I think it’s ugly.” + +She tossed her head as at a challenge to a romp. “Well, I don’t believe +you’ve any taste.” + +“Why, sir, it’s just too lovely,” said her mother. + +“You’ll see it some day _on_ me, anyway,” piped Miss Ruck. + +“Not very much,” said Mr. Ruck quietly. + +“It will be his own fault, then,” Miss Sophy returned. + +“Well, if we’re going up to Chamouni we want to get something here,” said +Mrs. Ruck. “We mayn’t have another chance.” + +Her husband still turned his eyes over the shop, whistling half under his +breath. “We ain’t going up to Chamouni. We’re going back to New York +City straight.” + +“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” she made answer. “Don’t you suppose we +want to take something home?” + +“If we’re going straight back I must have that bracelet,” her daughter +declared. “Only I don’t want a velvet case; I want a satin case.” + +“I must bid you good-bye,” I observed all irrelevantly to the ladies. +“I’m leaving Geneva in an hour or two.” + +“Take a good look at that bracelet, so you’ll know it when you see it,” +was hereupon Miss Sophy’s form of farewell to me. + +“She’s bound to have something!” her mother almost proudly attested. + +Mr. Ruck still vaguely examined the shop; he still just audibly whistled. +“I’m afraid he’s not at all well,” I took occasion to intimate to his +wife. + +She twisted her head a little and glanced at him; she had a brief but +pregnant pause. “Well, I must say I wish he’d improve!” + +“A satin case, and a nice one!” cried Miss Ruck to the shopman. + +I bade her other parent good-bye. “Don’t wait for me,” he said, sitting +there on his stool and not meeting my eye. “I’ve got to see this thing +through.” + +I went back to the Pension Beaurepas, and when an hour later I left it +with my luggage these interesting friends had not returned. + + + + +A BUNDLE OF LETTERS + + +I +FROM MISS MIRANDA HOPE IN PARIS TO MRS. ABRAHAM C. HOPE AT BANGOR MAINE + + + _September_ 5, 1879. + +MY DEAR MOTHER, + +I’ve kept you posted as far as Tuesday week last, and though my letter +won’t have reached you yet I’ll begin another before my news accumulates +too much. I’m glad you show my letters round in the family, for I like +them all to know what I’m doing, and I can’t write to every one, even if +I do try to answer all reasonable expectations. There are a great many +unreasonable ones, as I suppose you know—not yours, dear mother, for I’m +bound to say that you never required of me more than was natural. You +see you’re reaping your reward: I write to you before I write to any one +else. + +There’s one thing I hope—that you don’t show any of my letters to William +Platt. If he wants to see any of my letters he knows the right way to go +to work. I wouldn’t have him see one of these letters, written for +circulation in the family, for anything in the world. If he wants one +for himself he has got to write to me first. Let him write to me first +and then I’ll see about answering him. You can show him this if you +like; but if you show him anything more I’ll never write to you again. + +I told you in my last about my farewell to England, my crossing the +Channel and my first impressions of Paris. I’ve thought a great deal +about that lovely England since I left it, and all the famous historic +scenes I visited; but I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not a country +in which I should care to reside. The position of woman doesn’t seem to +me at all satisfactory, and that’s a point, you know, on which I feel +very strongly. It seems to me that in England they play a very faded-out +part, and those with whom I conversed had a kind of downtrodden tone, a +spiritless and even benighted air, as if they were used to being snubbed +and bullied _and as if they liked it_, which made me want to give them a +good shaking. There are a great many people—and a great many things +too—over here that I should like to get at for that purpose. I should +like to shake the starch out of some of them and the dust out of the +others. I know fifty girls in Bangor that come much more up to my notion +of the stand a truly noble woman should take than those young ladies in +England. But they had the sweetest way of speaking, as if it were a +second nature, and the men are _remarkably handsome_. (You can show +_that_ to William Platt if you like.) + +I gave you my first impressions of Paris, which quite came up to my +expectations, much as I had heard and read about it. The objects of +interest are extremely numerous, and the climate remarkably cheerful and +sunny. I should say the position of woman here was considerably higher, +though by no means up to the American standard. The manners of the +people are in some respects extremely peculiar, and I feel at last that +I’m indeed in _foreign parts_. It is, however, a truly elegant city +(much more majestic than New York) and I’ve spent a great deal of time in +visiting the various monuments and palaces. I won’t give you an account +of all my wanderings, though I’ve been most indefatigable; for I’m +keeping, as I told you before, a most _exhaustive_ journal, which I’ll +allow you the _privilege_ of reading on my return to Bangor. I’m getting +on remarkably well, and I must say I’m sometimes surprised at my +universal good fortune. It only shows what a little Bangor energy and +gumption will accomplish wherever applied. I’ve discovered none of those +objections to a young lady travelling in Europe by herself of which we +heard so much before I left, and I don’t expect I ever shall, for I +certainly don’t mean to look for them. I know what I want and I always +go straight for it. + +I’ve received a great deal of politeness—some of it really most pressing, +and have experienced no drawbacks whatever. I’ve made a great many +pleasant acquaintances in travelling round—both ladies and gentlemen—and +had a great many interesting and open-hearted, if quite informal, talks. +I’ve collected a great many remarkable facts—I guess we don’t know quite +_everything_ at Bangor—for which I refer you to my journal. I assure you +my journal’s going to be a splendid picture of an earnest young life. I +do just exactly as I do in Bangor, and I find I do perfectly right. At +any rate I don’t care if I don’t. I didn’t come to Europe to lead a +merely conventional society life: I could do that at Bangor. You know I +never _would_ do it at Bangor, so it isn’t likely I’m going to worship +false gods over here. So long as I accomplish what I desire and make my +money hold out I shall regard the thing as a success. Sometimes I feel +rather lonely, especially evenings; but I generally manage to interest +myself in something or in some one. I mostly read up, evenings, on the +objects of interest I’ve visited during the day, or put in time on my +journal. Sometimes I go to the theatre or else play the piano in the +public parlour. The public parlour at the hotel isn’t much; but the +piano’s better than that fearful old thing at the Sebago House. +Sometimes I go downstairs and talk to the lady who keeps the books—a real +French lady, who’s remarkably polite. She’s very handsome, though in the +peculiar French way, and always wears a black dress of the most beautiful +fit. She speaks a little English; she tells me she had to learn it in +order to converse with the Americans who come in such numbers to this +hotel. She has given me lots of points on the position of woman in +France, and seems to think that on the whole there’s hope. But she has +told me at the same time some things I shouldn’t like to write to you—I’m +hesitating even about putting them into my journal—especially if my +letters are to be handed round in the family. I assure you they appear +to talk about things here that we never think of mentioning at Bangor, +even to ourselves or to our very closest; and it has struck me that +people are closer—to each other—down in Maine than seems mostly to be +expected here. This bright-minded lady appears at any rate to think she +can tell me everything because I’ve told her I’m travelling for general +culture. Well, I _do_ want to know so much that it seems sometimes as if +I wanted to know most everything; and yet I guess there are some things +that don’t count for improvement. But as a general thing everything’s +intensely interesting; I don’t mean only everything this charming woman +tells me, but everything I see and hear for myself. I guess I’ll come +out where I want. + +I meet a great many Americans who, as a general thing, I must say, are +not so polite to me as the people over here. The people over +here—especially the gentlemen—are much more what I should call almost +oppressively attentive. I don’t know whether Americans are more truly +sincere; I haven’t yet made up my mind about that. The only drawback I +experience is when Americans sometimes express surprise that I should be +travelling round alone; so you see it doesn’t come from Europeans. I +always have my answer ready: “For general culture, to acquire the +languages and to see Europe for myself”; and that generally seems to calm +them. Dear mother, my money holds out very well, and it is real +interesting. + + + +II +FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME + + + _September_ 16. + +Since I last wrote to you I’ve left that nice hotel and come to live in a +French family—which, however, is nice too. This place is a kind of +boarding-house that’s at the same time a kind of school; only it’s not +like an American boarding-house, nor like an American school either. +There are four or five people here that have come to learn the +language—not to take lessons, but to have an opportunity for +conversation. I was very glad to come to such a place, for I had begun +to realise that I wasn’t pressing onward quite as I had dreamed with the +French. Wasn’t I going to feel ashamed to have spent two months in Paris +and not to have acquired more insight into the language? I had always +heard so much of French conversation, and I found I wasn’t having much +more opportunity to practise it than if I had remained at Bangor. In +fact I used to hear a great deal more at Bangor from those +French-Canadians who came down to cut the ice than I saw I should ever +hear at that nice hotel where was no struggle—_some_ fond struggle being +my real atmosphere. The lady who kept the books seemed to want so much +to talk to me in English (for the sake of practice, too, I suppose)—she +kind of yearned to struggle too: we don’t yearn _only_ down in Maine—that +I couldn’t bear to show her I didn’t like it. The chambermaid was Irish +and all the waiters German, so I never heard a word of French spoken. I +suppose you might hear a great deal in the shops; but as I don’t buy +anything—I prefer to spend my money for purposes of culture—I don’t have +that advantage. + +I’ve been thinking some of taking a teacher, but am well acquainted with +the grammar already, and over here in Europe teachers don’t seem to think +it’s _really_ in their interest to let you press forward. The more you +strike out and realise your power the less they’ve got to teach you. I +was a good deal troubled anyhow, for I felt as if I didn’t want to go +away without having at least got a general idea of French conversation. +The theatre gives you a good deal of insight, and as I told you in my +last I go a good deal to the brightest places of amusement. I find no +difficulty whatever in going to such places alone, and am always treated +with the politeness which, as I’ve mentioned—for I want you to feel happy +about that—I encounter everywhere from the best people. I see plenty of +other ladies alone (mostly French) and they generally seem to be enjoying +themselves as much as I. Only on the stage every one talks so fast that +I can scarcely make out what they say; and, besides, there are a great +many vulgar expressions which it’s unnecessary to learn. But it was this +experience nevertheless that put me on the track. The very next day +after I wrote to you last I went to the Palais Royal, which is one of the +principal theatres in Paris. It’s very small but very celebrated, and in +my guide-book it’s marked with _two stars_, which is a sign of importance +attached only to _first-class_ objects of interest. But after I had been +there half an hour I found I couldn’t understand a single word of the +play, they gabbled it off so fast and made use of such peculiar +expressions. I felt a good deal disappointed and checked—I saw I wasn’t +going to come out where I had dreamed. But while I was thinking it +over—thinking what I _would_ do—I heard two gentlemen talking behind me. +It was between the acts, and I couldn’t help listening to what they said. +They were talking English, but I guess they were Americans. + +“Well,” said one of them, “it all depends on what you’re after. I’m +after French; that’s what I’m after.” + +“Well,” said the other, “I’m after Art.” + +“Well,” said the first, “I’m after Art too; but I’m after French most.” + +Then, dear mother, I’m sorry to say the second one swore a little. He +said “Oh damn French!” + +“No, I won’t damn French,” said his friend. “I’ll acquire it—that’s what +I’ll do with it. I’ll go right into a family.” + +“What family’ll you go into?” + +“Into some nice French family. That’s the only way to do—to go to some +place where you can talk. If you’re after Art you want to stick to the +galleries; you want to go right through the Louvre, room by room; you +want to take a room a day, or something of that sort. But if you want to +acquire French the thing is to look out for some family that has got—and +they mostly have—more of it than they’ve use for themselves. How _can_ +they have use for so much as they seem to _have_ to have? They’ve got to +work it off. Well, they work it off on _you_. There are lots of them +that take you to board and teach you. My second cousin—that young lady I +told you about—she got in with a crowd like that, and they posted her +right up in three months. They just took her right in and let her have +it—the full force. That’s what they do to you; they set you right down +and they talk _at_ you. You’ve got to understand them or perish—so you +strike out in self-defence; you can’t help yourself. That family my +cousin was with has moved away somewhere, or I should try and get in with +them. They were real live people, that family; after she left my cousin +corresponded with them in French. You’ve got to do _that_ too, to make +much real head. But I mean to find some other crowd, if it takes a lot +of trouble!” + +I listened to all this with great interest, and when he spoke about his +cousin I was on the point of turning around to ask him the address of the +family she was with; but the next moment he said they had moved away, so +I sat still. The other gentleman, however, didn’t seem to be affected in +the same way as I was. + +“Well,” he said, “you may follow up that if you like; I mean to follow up +the pictures. I don’t believe there’s ever going to be any considerable +demand in the United States for French; but I can promise you that in +about ten years there’ll be a big demand for Art! And it won’t be +temporary either.” + +That remark may be very true, but I don’t care anything about the demand; +I want to know French for its own sake. “Art for art,” they say; but I +say French for French. I don’t want to think I’ve been all this while +without having gained an insight. . . . The very next day, I asked the +lady who kept the books at the hotel whether she knew of any family that +could take me to board and give me the benefit of their conversation. +She instantly threw up her hands with little shrill cries—in their +wonderful French way, you know—and told me that her dearest friend kept a +regular place of that kind. If she had known I was looking out for such +a place she would have told me before; she hadn’t spoken of it herself +because she didn’t wish to injure the hotel by working me off on another +house. She told me this was a charming family who had often received +American ladies—and others, including three Tahitans—who wished to follow +up the language, and she was sure I’d fall in love with them. So she +gave me their address and offered to go with me to introduce me. But I +was in such a hurry that I went off by myself and soon found them all +right. They were sitting there as if they kind of expected me, and +wouldn’t scarcely let me come round again for my baggage. They seemed to +have right there on hand, as those gentlemen of the theatre said, plenty +of what I was after, and I now feel there’ll be no trouble about _that_. + +I came here to stay about three days ago, and by this time I’ve quite +worked in. The price of board struck me as rather high, but I must +remember what a chance to press onward it includes. I’ve a very pretty +little room—without any carpet, but with seven mirrors, two clocks and +five curtains. I was rather disappointed, however, after I arrived, to +find that there are several other Americans here—all also bent on +pressing onward. At least there are three American and two English +pensioners, as they call them, as well as a German gentleman—and there +seems nothing backward about _him_. I shouldn’t wonder if we’d make a +regular class, with “moving up” and moving down; anyhow I guess I won’t +be at the foot, but I’ve not yet time to judge. I try to talk with +Madame de Maisonrouge all I can—she’s the lady of the house, and the +_real_ family consists only of herself and her two daughters. They’re +bright enough to give points to our own brightest, and I guess we’ll +become quite intimate. I’ll write you more about everything in my next. +Tell William Platt I don’t care a speck _what_ he does. + + + +III +FROM MISS VIOLET RAY IN PARIS TO MISS AGNES RICH IN NEW YORK + + + _September_ 21. + +We had hardly got here when father received a telegram saying he would +have to come right back to New York. It was for something about his +business—I don’t know exactly what; you know I never understand those +things and never want to. We had just got settled at the hotel, in some +charming rooms, and mother and I, as you may imagine, were greatly +annoyed. Father’s extremely fussy, as you know, and his first idea, as +soon as he found he should have to go back, was that we should go back +with him. He declared he’d never leave us in Paris alone and that we +must return and come out again. I don’t know what he thought would +happen to us; I suppose he thought we should be too extravagant. It’s +father’s theory that we’re always running-up bills, whereas a little +observation would show him that we wear the same old _rags_ FOR MONTHS. +But father has no observation; he has nothing but blind theories. Mother +and I, however, have fortunately a great deal of _practice_, and we +succeeded in making him understand that we wouldn’t budge from Paris and +that we’d rather be chopped into small pieces than cross that squalid sea +again. So at last he decided to go back alone and to leave us here for +three months. Only, to show you how fussy he is, he refused to let us +stay at the hotel and insisted that we should go into a _family_. I +don’t know what put such an idea into his head unless it was some +advertisement that he saw in one of the American papers that are +published here. Don’t think you can escape from them anywhere. + +There are families here who receive American and English people to live +with them under the pretence of teaching them French. You may imagine +what people they are—I mean the families themselves. But the Americans +who choose this peculiar manner of seeing Paris must be actually just as +bad. Mother and I were horrified—we declared that _main force_ shouldn’t +remove us from the hotel. But father has a way of arriving at his ends +which is more effective than violence. He worries and goes on; he +“nags,” as we used to say at school; and when mother and I are quite worn +to the bone his triumph is assured. Mother’s more quickly ground down +than I, and she ends by siding with father; so that at last when they +combine their forces against poor little me I’ve naturally to succumb. +You should have heard the way father went on about this “family” plan; he +talked to every one he saw about it; he used to go round to the banker’s +and talk to the people there—the people in the post-office; he used to +try and exchange ideas about it with the waiters at the hotel. He said +it would be more safe, more respectable, more economical; that I should +pick up more French; that mother would learn how a French household’s +conducted; that he should feel more easy, and that we ourselves should +enjoy it when we came to see. All this meant nothing, but that made no +difference. It’s positively cruel his harping on our pinching and saving +when every one knows that business in America has completely recovered, +that the prostration’s all over and that _immense fortunes_ are being +made. We’ve been depriving ourselves of the commonest necessities for +the last five years, and I supposed we came abroad to reap the benefits +of it. + +As for my French it’s already much better than that of most of our +helpless compatriots, who are all unblushingly destitute of the very +rudiments. (I assure you I’m often surprised at my own fluency, and when +I get a little more practice in the circumflex accents and the genders +and the idioms I shall quite hold my own.) To make a long story short, +however, father carried his point as usual; mother basely deserted me at +the last moment, and after holding out alone for three days I told them +to do with me what they would. Father lost three steamers in succession +by remaining in Paris to argue with me. You know he’s like the +schoolmaster in Goldsmith’s _Deserted Village_—“e’en though vanquished” +he always argues still. He and mother went to look at some seventeen +families—they had got the addresses somewhere—while I retired to my sofa +and would have nothing to do with it. At last they made arrangements and +I was transported, as in chains, to the establishment from which I now +write you. I address you from the bosom of a Parisian ménage—from the +depths of a second-rate boarding-house. + +Father only left Paris after he had seen us what he calls comfortably +settled here and had informed Madame de Maisonrouge—the mistress of the +establishment, the head of the “family”—that he wished my French +pronunciation especially attended to. The pronunciation, as it happens, +is just what I’m most at home in; if he had said my genders or my +subjunctives or my idioms there would have been some sense. But poor +father has no native tact, and this deficiency has become flagrant since +we’ve been in Europe. He’ll be absent, however, for three months, and +mother and I shall breathe more freely; the situation will be less tense. +I must confess that we breathe more freely than I expected in this place, +where we’ve been about a week. I was sure before we came that it would +prove to be an establishment of the _lowest description_; but I must say +that in this respect I’m agreeably disappointed. The French spirit is +able to throw a sort of grace even over a swindle of this general order. +Of course it’s very disagreeable to live with strangers, but as, after +all, if I weren’t staying with Madame de Maisonrouge I shouldn’t be +_vautrée_ in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, I don’t know that from the point +of view of exclusiveness I’m much the loser. + +Our rooms are very prettily arranged and the table’s remarkably good. +Mamma thinks the whole thing—the place and the people, the manners and +customs—very amusing; but mamma can be put off with any imposture. As +for me, you know, all that I ask is to be let alone and not to have +people’s society _forced upon me_. I’ve never wanted for society of my +own choosing, and, so long as I retain possession of my faculties, I +don’t suppose I ever shall. As I said, however, the place seems to +scramble along, and I succeed in doing as I please, which, you know, is +my most cherished pursuit. Madame de Maisonrouge has a great deal of +tact—much more than poor floundering father. She’s what they call here a +_grande belle femme_, which means that she’s high-shouldered and +short-necked and literally hideous, but with a certain quantity of false +type. She has a good many clothes, some rather bad; but a very good +manner—only one, and worked to death, but intended to be of the best. +Though she’s a very good imitation of a _femme du monde_ I never see her +behind the dinner-table in the evening, never see her smile and bow and +duck as the people come in, really glaring all the while at the dishes +and the servants, without thinking of a _dame de comptoir_ blooming in a +corner of a shop or a restaurant. I’m sure that in spite of her _beau +nom_ she was once a paid book-keeper. I’m also sure that in spite of her +smiles and the pretty things she says to every one, she hates us all and +would like to murder us. She is a hard clever Frenchwoman who would like +to amuse herself and enjoy her Paris, and she must be furious at having +to pass her time grinning at specimens of the stupid races who mumble +broken French at her. Some day she’ll poison the soup or the _vin +rouge_, but I hope that won’t be until after mother and I shall have left +her. She has two daughters who, except that one’s decidedly pretty, are +meagre imitations of herself. + +The “family,” for the rest, consists altogether of our beloved +compatriots and of still more beloved Englanders. There’s an Englander +with his sister, and they seem rather decent. He’s remarkably handsome, +but excessively affected and patronising, especially to us Americans; and +I hope to have a chance of biting his head off before long. The sister’s +very pretty and apparently very nice, but in costume Britannia incarnate. +There’s a very pleasant little Frenchman—when they’re nice they’re +charming—and a German doctor, a big blond man who looks like a great +white bull; and two Americans besides mother and me. One of them’s a +young man from Boston—an esthetic young man who talks about its being “a +real Corot day,” and a young woman—a girl, a female, I don’t know what to +call her—from Vermont or Minnesota or some such place. This young +woman’s the most extraordinary specimen of self-complacent provinciality +that I’ve ever encountered; she’s really too horrible and too +humiliating. I’ve been three times to Clémentine about your underskirt, +etc. + + + +IV +FROM LOUIS LEVERETT IN PARIS TO HARVARD TREMONT IN BOSTON + + + _September_ 25. + +MY DEAR HARVARD, + +I’ve carried out my plan, of which I gave you a hint in my last, and I +only regret I shouldn’t have done it before. It’s human nature, after +all, that’s the most interesting thing in the world, and it only reveals +itself to the truly earnest seeker. There’s a want of earnestness in +that life of hotels and railroad-trains which so many of our countrymen +are content to lead in this strange rich elder world, and I was +distressed to find how far I myself had been led along the dusty beaten +track. I had, however, constantly wanted to turn aside into more +unfrequented ways—to plunge beneath the surface and see what I should +discover. But the opportunity had always been missing; somehow I seem +never to meet those opportunities that we hear about and read about—the +things that happen to people in novels and biographies. And yet I’m +always on the watch to take advantage of any opening that may present +itself; I’m always looking out for experiences, for sensations—I might +almost say for adventures. + +The great thing is to _live_, you know—to feel, to be conscious of one’s +possibilities; not to pass through life mechanically and insensibly, even +as a letter through the post-office. There are times, my dear Harvard, +when I feel as if I were really capable of everything—_capable de tout_, +as they say here—of the greatest excesses as well as the greatest +heroism. Oh to be able to say that one has lived—_qu’on a vécu_, as they +say here—that idea exercises an indefinable attraction for me. You’ll +perhaps reply that nothing’s easier than to say it! Only the thing’s to +make people believe you—to make above all one’s self. And then I don’t +want any second-hand spurious sensations; I want the knowledge that +leaves a trace—that leaves strange scars and stains, ineffable reveries +and aftertastes, behind it! But I’m afraid I shock you, perhaps even +frighten you. + +If you repeat my remarks to any of the West Cedar Street circle be sure +you tone them down as your discretion will suggest. For yourself you’ll +know that I have always had an intense desire to see something of _real +French life_. You’re acquainted with my great sympathy with the French; +with my natural tendency to enter into their so supremely fine +exploitation of the whole personal consciousness. I sympathise with the +artistic temperament; I remember you used sometimes to hint to me that +you thought my own temperament _too_ artistic. I don’t consider that in +Boston there’s any real sympathy with the artistic temperament; we tend +to make everything a matter of right and wrong. And in Boston one can’t +_live_—_on ne peut pas vivre_, as they say here. I don’t mean one can’t +reside—for a great many people manage that; but one can’t live +esthetically—I almost venture to say one can’t live sensuously. This is +why I’ve always been so much drawn to the French, who are so esthetic, so +sensuous, so _entirely_ living. I’m so sorry dear Théophile Gautier has +passed away; I should have liked so much to go and see him and tell him +all I owe him. He was living when I was here before; but, you know, at +that time I was travelling with the Johnsons, who are not esthetic and +who used to make me feel rather ashamed of my love and my need of beauty. +If I had gone to see the great apostle of that religion I should have had +to go clandestinely—_en cachette_, as they say here; and that’s not my +nature; I like to do everything frankly, freely, _naïvement, au grand +jour_. That’s the great thing—to be free, to be frank, to be naïf. +Doesn’t Matthew Arnold say that somewhere—or is it Swinburne or Pater? + +When I was with the Johnsons everything was superficial, and, as regards +life, everything was brought down to the question of right and wrong. +They were eternally didactic; art should never be didactic; and what’s +life but the finest of arts? Pater has said that so well somewhere. +With the Johnsons I’m afraid I lost many opportunities; the whole outlook +or at least the whole medium—of feeling, of appreciation—was grey and +cottony, I might almost say woolly. Now, however, as I tell you, I’ve +determined to take right hold for myself; to look right into European +life and judge it without Johnsonian prejudices. I’ve taken up my +residence in a French family, in a real Parisian house. You see I’ve the +courage of my opinions; I don’t shrink from carrying out my theory that +the great thing is to _live_. + +You know I’ve always been intensely interested in Balzac, who never +shrank from the reality and whose almost _lurid_ pictures of Parisian +life have often haunted me in my wanderings through the old +wicked-looking streets on the other side of the river. I’m only sorry +that my new friends—my French family—don’t live in the old city, _au cour +de vieux Paris_, as they say here. They live only on the Boulevard +Haussmann, which is a compromise, but in spite of this they have a great +deal of the Balzac tone. Madame de Maisonrouge belongs to one of the +oldest and proudest families in France, but has had reverses which have +compelled her to open an establishment in which a limited number of +travellers, who are weary of the beaten track, who shun the great +caravanseries, who cherish the tradition of the old French +sociability—she explains it herself, she expresses it so well—in short to +open a “select” boarding-house. I don’t see why I shouldn’t after all +use that expression, for it’s the correlative of the term pension +bourgeoise, employed by Balzac in _Le Père Goriot_. Do you remember the +pension bourgeoise of Madame Vauquer née de Conflans? But this +establishment isn’t at all like that, and indeed isn’t bourgeois at all; +I don’t quite know how the machinery of selection operates, but we +unmistakably feel we’re select. The Pension Vauquer was dark, brown, +sordid, graisseuse; but this is in quite a different tone, with high +clear lightly-draped windows and several rather good Louis Seize +pieces—family heirlooms, Madame de Maisonrouge explains. She recalls to +me Madame Hulot—do you remember “la belle Madame Hulot”?—in _Les Parents +Pauvres_. She has a great charm—though a little artificial, a little +jaded and faded, with a suggestion of hidden things in her life. But +I’ve always been sensitive to the seduction of an ambiguous fatigue. + +I’m rather disappointed, I confess, in the society I find here; it isn’t +so richly native, of so indigenous a note, as I could have desired. +Indeed, to tell the truth, it’s not native at all; though on the other +hand it _is_ furiously cosmopolite, and that speaks to me too at my +hours. We’re French _and_ we’re English; we’re American _and_ we’re +German; I believe too there are some Spaniards and some Hungarians +expected. I’m much interested in the study of racial types; in +comparing, contrasting, seizing the strong points, the weak points, in +identifying, however muffled by social hypocrisy, the sharp keynote of +each. It’s interesting to shift one’s point of view, to despoil one’s +self of one’s idiotic prejudices, to enter into strange exotic ways of +looking at life. + +The American types don’t, I much regret to say, make a strong or rich +affirmation, and, excepting my own (and what _is_ my own, dear Harvard, I +ask you?), are wholly negative and feminine. We’re _thin_—that I should +have to say it! we’re pale, we’re poor, we’re flat. There’s something +meagre about us; our line is wanting in roundness, our composition in +richness. We lack temperament; we don’t know how to live; _nous ne +savons pas vivre_, as they say here. The American temperament is +represented—putting myself aside, and I often think that my temperament +isn’t at all American—by a young girl and her mother and by another young +girl without her mother, without either parent or any attendant or +appendage whatever. These inevitable creatures are more or less in the +picture; they have a certain interest, they have a certain stamp, but +they’re disappointing too: they don’t go far; they don’t keep all they +promise; they don’t satisfy the imagination. They are cold slim sexless; +the physique’s not generous, not abundant; it’s only the drapery, the +skirts and furbelows—that is, I mean in the young lady who has her +mother—that are abundant. They’re rather different—we _have_ our little +differences, thank God: one of them all elegance, all “paid bills” and +extra-fresh _gants de Suède_, from New York; the other a plain pure +clear-eyed narrow-chested straight-stepping maiden from the heart of New +England. And yet they’re very much alike too—more alike than they would +care to think themselves; for they face each other with scarcely +disguised opposition and disavowal. They’re both specimens of the +practical positive passionless young thing as we let her loose on the +world—and yet with a certain fineness and knowing, as you please, either +too much or too little. With all of which, as I say, they have their +spontaneity and even their oddity; though no more mystery, either of +them, than the printed circular thrust into your hand on the +street-corner. + +The little New Yorker’s sometimes very amusing; she asks me if every one +in Boston talks like me—if every one’s as “intellectual” as your poor +correspondent. She’s for ever throwing Boston up at me; I can’t get rid +of poor dear little Boston. The other one rubs it into me too, but in a +different way; she seems to feel about it as a good Mahommedan feels +toward Mecca, and regards it as a focus of light for the whole human +race. Yes, poor little Boston, what nonsense is talked in thy name! But +this New England maiden is in her way a rare white flower; she’s +travelling all over Europe alone—“to see it,” she says, “for herself.” +For herself! What can that strangely serene self of hers do with such +sights, such depths! She looks at everything, goes everywhere, passes +her way with her clear quiet eyes wide open; skirting the edge of obscene +abysses without suspecting them; pushing through brambles without tearing +her robe; exciting, without knowing it, the most injurious suspicions; +and always holding her course—without a stain, without a sense, without a +fear, without a charm! + +Then by way of contrast there’s a lovely English girl with eyes as shy as +violets and a voice as sweet!—the difference between the printed, the +distributed, the gratuitous hand-bill and the shy scrap of a +_billet-doux_ dropped where you may pick it up. She has a sweet +Gainsborough head and a great Gainsborough hat with a mighty plume in +front of it that makes a shadow over her quiet English eyes. Then she +has a sage-green robe, “mystic wonderful,” all embroidered with subtle +devices and flowers, with birds and beasts of tender tint; very straight +and tight in front and adorned behind, along the spine, with large +strange iridescent buttons. The revival of taste, of the sense of +beauty, in England, interests me deeply; what is there in a simple row of +spinal buttons to make one dream—to _donner à rêver_, as they say here? +I believe a grand esthetic renascence to be at hand and that a great +light will be kindled in England for all the world to see. There are +spirits there I should like to commune with; I think they’d understand +me. + +This gracious English maiden, with her clinging robes, her amulets and +girdles, with something quaint and angular in her step, her carriage, +something medieval and Gothic in the details of her person and dress, +this lovely Evelyn Vane (isn’t it a beautiful name?) exhales association +and implication. She’s so much a woman—_elle est bien femme_, as they +say here; simpler softer rounder richer than the easy products I spoke of +just now. Not much talk—a great sweet silence. Then the violet eye—the +very eye itself seems to blush; the great shadowy hat making the brow so +quiet; the strange clinging clutched pictured raiment! As I say, it’s a +very gracious tender type. She has her brother with her, who’s a +beautiful fair-haired grey-eyed young Englishman. He’s purely objective, +but he too is very plastic. + + + +V +FROM MIRANDA HOPE TO HER MOTHER + + + _September_ 26. + +You mustn’t be frightened at not hearing from me oftener; it isn’t +because I’m in any trouble, but because I’m getting on so well. If I +were in any trouble I don’t think I’d write to you; I’d just keep quiet +and see it through myself. But that’s not the case at present; and if I +don’t write to you it’s because I’m so deeply interested over here that I +don’t seem to find time. It was a real providence that brought me to +this house, where, in spite of all obstacles, I _am_ able to press +onward. I wonder how I find time for all I do, but when I realise I’ve +only got about a year left, all told, I feel as if I wouldn’t sacrifice a +single hour. + +The obstacles I refer to are the disadvantages I have in acquiring the +language, there being so many persons round me speaking English, and +that, as you may say, in the very bosom of a regular French family. It +seems as if you heard English everywhere; but I certainly didn’t expect +to find it in a place like this. I’m not discouraged, however, and I +exercise all I can, even with the other English boarders. Then I’ve a +lesson every day from Mademoiselle—the elder daughter of the lady of the +house and the intellectual one; she has a wonderful fearless mind, almost +like my friend at the hotel—and French give-and-take every evening in the +salon, from eight to eleven, with Madame herself and some friends of hers +who often come in. Her cousin, Mr. Verdier, a young French gentleman, is +fortunately staying with her, and I make a point of talking with him as +much as possible. I have _extra-private lessons_ from him, and I often +ramble round with him. Some night soon he’s to accompany me to the comic +opera. We’ve also a most interesting plan of visiting the galleries +successively together and taking the schools in their order—for they mean +by “the schools” here something quite different from what we do. Like +most of the French Mr. Verdier converses with great fluency, and I feel I +may really gain from him. He’s remarkably handsome, in the French style, +and extremely polite—making a great many speeches which I’m afraid it +wouldn’t always do to pin one’s faith on. When I get down in Maine again +I guess I’ll tell you some of the things he has said to me. I think +you’ll consider them extremely curious—very beautiful _in their French +way_. + +The conversation in the parlour (from eight to eleven) ranges over many +subjects—I sometimes feel as if it really avoided _none_; and I often +wish you or some of the Bangor folks could be there to enjoy it. Even +though you couldn’t understand it I think you’d like to hear the way they +go on; they seem to express so much. I sometimes think that at Bangor +they don’t express enough—except that it seems as if over there they’ve +less _to_ express. It seems as if at Bangor there were things that folks +never _tried_ to say; but I seem to have learned here from studying +French that you’ve no idea what you _can_ say before you try. At Bangor +they kind of give it up beforehand; they don’t make any effort. (I don’t +say this in the least for William Platt _in particular_.) + +I’m sure I don’t know what they’ll think of me when I get back anyway. +It seems as if over here I had learned to come out with everything. I +suppose they’ll think I’m not sincere; but isn’t it more sincere to come +right out with things than just to keep feeling of them in your +mind—without giving any one the benefit? I’ve become very good friends +with every one in the house—that is (you see I _am_ sincere) with +_almost_ every one. It’s the most interesting circle I ever was in. +There’s a girl here, an American, that I don’t like so much as the rest; +but that’s only because she won’t let me. I should like to like her, +ever so much, because she’s most lovely and most attractive; but she +doesn’t seem to want to know me or to take to me. She comes from New +York and she’s remarkably pretty, with beautiful eyes and the most +delicate features; she’s also splendidly stylish—in this respect would +bear comparison with any one I’ve seen over here. But it seems as if she +didn’t want to recognise me or associate with me, as if she wanted to +make a difference between us. It is like people they call “haughty” in +books. I’ve never seen any one like that before—any one that wanted to +make a difference; and at first I was right down interested, she seemed +to me so like a proud young lady in a novel. I kept saying to myself all +day “haughty, haughty,” and I wished she’d keep on so. But she did keep +on—she kept on too long; and then I began to feel it in a different way, +to feel as if it kind of wronged me. I couldn’t think what I’ve done, +and I can’t think yet. It’s as if she had got some idea about me or had +heard some one say something. If some girls should behave like that I +wouldn’t make any account of it; but this one’s so refined, and looks as +if she might be so fascinating if I once got to know her, that I think +about it a good deal. I’m bound to find out what her reason is—for of +course she has got some reason; I’m right down curious to know. + +I went up to her to ask her the day before yesterday; I thought that the +best way. I told her I wanted to know her better and would like to come +and see her in her room—they tell me she has got a lovely one—and that if +she had heard anything against me perhaps she’d tell me when I came. But +she was more distant than ever and just turned it off; said she had never +heard me mentioned and that her room was too small to receive visitors. +I suppose she spoke the truth, but I’m sure she has some peculiar ground, +all the same. She has got some idea; which I’ll die if I don’t find out +soon—if I have to ask every one in the house. I never _could_ be happy +under an appearance of wrong. I wonder if she doesn’t think me +refined—or if she had ever heard anything against Bangor? I can’t think +it’s that. Don’t you remember when Clara Barnard went to visit in New +York, three years ago, how much attention she received? And you know +Clara _is_ Bangor, to the soles of her shoes. Ask William Platt—so long +as he isn’t native—if he doesn’t consider Clara Barnard refined. + +Apropos, as they say here, of refinement, there’s another American in the +house—a gentleman from Boston—who’s just crammed with it. His name’s Mr. +Louis Leverett (such a beautiful name I think) and he’s about thirty +years old. He’s rather small and he looks pretty sick; he suffers from +some affection of the liver. But his conversation leads you right +on—they _do_ go so far over here: even our people seem to strain ahead in +Europe, and perhaps when I get back it may strike you I’ve learned to +keep up with them. I delight to listen to him anyhow—he has such +beautiful ideas. I feel as if these moments were hardly right, not being +in French; but fortunately he uses a great many French expressions. It’s +in a different style from the dazzle of Mr. Verdier—not so personal, but +much more earnest: he says the only earnestness left in the world now is +French. He’s intensely fond of pictures and has given me a great many +ideas about them that I’d never have gained without him; I shouldn’t have +known how to go to work to strike them. He thinks everything of +pictures; he thinks we don’t make near enough of them. They seem to make +a good deal of them here, but I couldn’t help telling him the other day +that in Bangor I really don’t think we do. + +If I had any money to spend I’d buy some and take them back to hang right +up. Mr. Leverett says it would do them good—not the pictures, but the +Bangor folks (though sometimes he seems to want to hang _them_ up too). +He thinks everything of the French, anyhow, and says we don’t make nearly +enough of them. I couldn’t help telling him the other day that they +certainly make enough of _themselves_. But it’s very interesting to hear +him go on about the French, and it’s so much gain to me, since it’s about +the same as what I came for. I talk to him as much as I dare about +Boston, but I do feel as if this were right down wrong—a stolen pleasure. + +I can get all the Boston culture I want when I go back, if I carry out my +plan, my heart’s secret, of going there to reside. I ought to direct all +my efforts to European culture now, so as to keep Boston to finish off. +But it seems as if I couldn’t help taking a peep now and then in +advance—with a real Bostonian. I don’t know when I may meet one again; +but if there are many others like Mr. Leverett there I shall be certain +not to lack when I carry out my dream. He’s just as full of culture as +he can live. But it seems strange how many different sorts there are. + +There are two of the English who I suppose are very cultivated too; but +it doesn’t seem as if I could enter into theirs so easily, though I try +all I can. I do love their way of speaking, and sometimes I feel almost +as if it would be right to give up going for French and just try to get +the hang of English as these people have got it. It doesn’t come out in +the things they say so much, though these are often rather curious, but +in the sweet way they say them and in their kind of making so much, such +an easy lovely effect, of saying almost anything. It seems as if they +must try a good deal to sound like that; but these English who are here +don’t seem to try at all, either to speak or do anything else. They’re a +young lady and her brother, who belong, I believe, to some noble family. +I’ve had a good deal of intercourse with them, because I’ve felt more +free to talk to them than to the Americans—on account of the language. +They often don’t understand mine, and then it’s as if I had to learn +theirs to explain. + +I never supposed when I left Bangor that I was coming to Europe to +improve in _our_ old language—and yet I feel I can. If I do get where I +_may_ in it I guess you’ll scarcely understand me when I get back, and I +don’t think you’ll particularly see the point. I’d be a good deal +criticised if I spoke like that at Bangor. However, I verily believe +Bangor’s the most critical place on earth; I’ve seen nothing like it over +here. Well, tell them I’ll give them about all they can do. But I was +speaking about this English young lady and her brother; I wish I could +put them before you. She’s lovely just to see; she seems so modest and +retiring. In spite of this, however, she dresses in a way that attracts +great attention, as I couldn’t help noticing when one day I went out to +walk with her. She was ever so much more looked at than what I’d have +thought she’d like; but she didn’t seem to care, till at last I couldn’t +help calling attention to it. Mr. Leverett thinks everything of it; he +calls it the “costume of the future.” I’d call it rather the costume of +the past—you know the English have such an attachment to the past. I +said this the other day to Madame de Maisonrouge—that Miss Vane dressed +in the costume of the past. De l’an passé, vous voulez dire? she asked +in her gay French way. (You can get William Platt to translate this; he +used to tell me he knows so much French.) + +You know I told you, in writing some time ago, that I had tried to get +some insight into the position of woman in England, and, being here with +Miss Vane, it has seemed to me to be a good opportunity to get a little +more. I’ve asked her a great deal about it, but she doesn’t seem able to +tell me much. The first time I asked her she said the position of a lady +depended on the rank of her father, her eldest brother, her husband—all +on somebody else; and they, as to their position, on something quite else +(than themselves) as well. She told me her own position was very good +because her father was some relation—I forget what—to a lord. She thinks +everything of this; and that proves to me their standing can’t be +_really_ good, because if it were it wouldn’t be involved in that of your +relations, even your nearest. I don’t know much about lords, and it does +try my patience—though she’s just as sweet as she can live—to hear her +talk as if it were a matter of course I should. + +I feel as if it were right to ask her as often as I can if she doesn’t +consider every one equal; but she always says she doesn’t, and she +confesses that she doesn’t think _she’s_ equal to Lady +Something-or-Other, who’s the wife of that relation of her father. I try +and persuade her all I can that she _is_; but it seems as if she didn’t +want to be persuaded, and when I ask her if that superior being is of the +same opinion—that Miss Vane isn’t her equal—she looks so soft and pretty +with her eyes and says “How can she not be?” When I tell her that this +is right down bad for the other person it seems as if she wouldn’t +believe me, and the only answer she’ll make is that the other person’s +“awfully nice.” I don’t believe she’s nice at all; if she were nice she +wouldn’t have such ideas as that. I tell Miss Vane that at Bangor we +think such ideas vulgar, but then she looks as though she had never heard +of Bangor. I often want to shake her, though she _is_ so sweet. If she +isn’t angry with the people who make her feel that way at least I’m angry +_for_ her. I’m angry with her brother too, for she’s evidently very much +afraid of him, and this gives me some further insight into the subject. +She thinks everything of her brother; she thinks it natural she should be +afraid of him not only physically—for that is natural, as he’s enormously +tall and strong, and has very big fists—but morally and intellectually. +She seems unable, however, to take in any argument, and she makes me +realise what I’ve often heard—that if you’re timid nothing will reason +you out of it. + +Mr. Vane also, the brother, seems to have the same prejudices, and when I +tell him, as I often think it right to do, that his sister’s not his +subordinate, even if she does think so, but his equal, and perhaps in +some respects his superior, and that if my brother in Bangor were to +treat me as he treats this charming but abject creature, who has not +spirit enough to see the question in its true light, there would be an +indignation-meeting of the citizens to protest against such an outrage to +the sanctity of womanhood—when I tell him all this, at breakfast or +dinner, he only bursts out laughing so loud that all the plates clatter +on the table. + +But at such a time as this there’s always one person who seems interested +in what I say—a German gentleman, a professor, who sits next to me at +dinner and whom I must tell you more about another time. He’s very +learned, but wants to push further and further all the time; he +appreciates a great many of my remarks, and after dinner, in the salon, +he often comes to me to ask me questions about them. I have to think a +little sometimes to know what I did say or what I do think. He takes you +right up where you left off, and he’s most as fond of discussing things +as William Platt ever was. He’s splendidly educated, in the German +style, and he told me the other day that he was an “intellectual broom.” +Well, if he is he sweeps clean; I told him that. After he has been +talking to me I feel as if I hadn’t got a speck of dust left in my mind +anywhere. It’s a most delightful feeling. He says he’s a remorseless +observer, and though I don’t know about remorse—for a bright mind isn’t a +crime, is it?—I’m sure there’s plenty over here to observe. But I’ve +told you enough for to-day. I don’t know how much longer I shall stay +here; I’m getting on now so fast that it has come to seem sometimes as if +I shouldn’t need all the time I’ve laid out. I suppose your cold weather +has promptly begun, as usual; it sometimes makes me envy you. The fall +weather here is very dull and damp, and I often suffer from the want of +bracing. + + + +VI +FROM MISS EVELYN VANE IN PARIS TO THE LADY AUGUSTA FLEMING AT BRIGHTON + + + PARIS, _September_ 30. + +DEAR LADY AUGUSTA, + +I’m afraid I shall not be able to come to you on January 7th, as you +kindly proposed at Homburg. I’m so very very sorry; it’s an immense +disappointment. But I’ve just heard that it has been settled that mamma +and the children come abroad for a part of the winter, and mamma wishes +me to go with them to Hyères, where Georgina has been ordered for her +lungs. She has not been at all well these three months, and now that the +damp weather has begun she’s very poorly indeed; so that last week papa +decided to have a consultation, and he and mamma went with her up to town +and saw some three or four doctors. They all of them ordered the south +of France, but they didn’t agree about the place; so that mamma herself +decided for Hyères, because it’s the most economical. I believe it’s +very dull, but I hope it will do Georgina good. I’m afraid, however, +that nothing will do her good until she consents to take more care of +herself; I’m afraid she’s very wild and wilful, and mamma tells me that +all this month it has taken papa’s positive orders to make her stop +indoors. She’s very cross (mamma writes me) about coming abroad, and +doesn’t seem at all to mind the expense papa has been put to—talks very +ill-naturedly about her loss of the hunting and even perhaps of the early +spring meetings. She expected to begin to hunt in December and wants to +know whether anybody keeps hounds at Hyères. Fancy that rot when she’s +too ill to sit a horse or to go anywhere. But I daresay that when she +gets there she’ll be glad enough to keep quiet, as they say the heat’s +intense. It may cure Georgina, but I’m sure it will make the rest of us +very ill. + +Mamma, however, is only going to bring Mary and Gus and Fred and Adelaide +abroad with her: the others will remain at Kingscote till February (about +the 3rd) when they’ll go to Eastbourne for a month with Miss Turnover, +the new governess, who has proved such a very nice person. She’s going +to take Miss Travers, who has been with us so long, but is only qualified +for the younger children, to Hyères, and I believe some of the Kingscote +servants. She has perfect confidence in Miss T.; it’s only a pity the +poor woman has such an odd name. Mamma thought of asking her if she +would mind taking another when she came; but papa thought she might +object. Lady Battledown makes all her governesses take the same name; +she gives £5 more a year for the purpose. I forget what it is she calls +them; I think it’s Johnson (which to me always suggests a lady’s maid). +Governesses shouldn’t have too pretty a name—they shouldn’t have a nicer +name than the family. + +I suppose you heard from the Desmonds that I didn’t go back to England +with them. When it began to be talked about that Georgina should be +taken abroad mamma wrote to me that I had better stop in Paris for a +month with Harold, so that she could pick me up on their way to Hyères. +It saves the expense of my journey to Kingscote and back, and gives me +the opportunity to “finish” a little in French. + +You know Harold came here six weeks ago to get up his French for those +dreadful exams that he has to pass so soon. He came to live with some +French people that take in young men (and others) for this purpose; it’s +a kind of coaching-place, only kept by women. Mamma had heard it was +very nice, so she wrote to me that I was to come and stop here with +Harold. The Desmonds brought me and made the arrangement or the bargain +or whatever you call it. Poor Harold was naturally not at all pleased, +but he has been very kind and has treated me like an angel. He’s getting +on beautifully with his French, for though I don’t think the place is so +good as papa supposed, yet Harold is so immensely clever that he can +scarcely help learning. I’m afraid I learn much less, but fortunately I +haven’t to go up for anything—unless perhaps to mamma if she takes it +into her head to examine me. But she’ll have so much to think of with +Georgina that I hope this won’t occur to her. If it does I shall be, as +Harold says, in a dreadful funk. + +This isn’t such a nice place for a girl as for a gentleman, and the +Desmonds thought it _exceedingly odd_ that mamma should wish me to come +here. As Mrs. Desmond said, it’s because she’s so very unconventional. +But you know Paris is so very amusing, and if only Harold remains +good-natured about it I shall be content to wait for the caravan—which is +what he calls mamma and the children. The person who keeps the +establishment, or whatever they call it, is rather odd and _exceedingly +foreign_; but she’s wonderfully civil and is perpetually sending to my +door to see if I want anything. She’s tremendously pretentious and of +course isn’t a lady. The servants are not at all like English ones and +come bursting in, the footman—they’ve only one—and the maids alike, at +all sorts of hours, in the _most sudden way_. Then when one rings it +takes ages. Some of the food too is rather nasty. All of which is very +uncomfortable, and I daresay will be worse at Hyères. There, however, +fortunately, we shall have our own people. + +There are some very odd Americans here who keep throwing Harold into fits +of laughter. One’s a dreadful little man whom indeed he also wants to +kick and who’s always sitting over the fire and talking about the colour +of the sky. I don’t believe he ever saw the sky except through the +window-pane. The other day he took hold of my frock—that green one you +thought so nice at Homburg—and told me that it reminded him of the +texture of the Devonshire turf. And then he talked for half an hour +about the Devonshire turf, which I thought such a very extraordinary +subject. Harold firmly believes him mad. It’s rather horrid to be +living in this way with people one doesn’t know—I mean doesn’t know as +one knows them in England. + +The other Americans, beside the madman, are two girls about my own age, +one of whom is rather nice. She has a mother; but the mother always sits +in her bedroom, which seems so very odd. I should like mamma to ask them +to Kingscote, but I’m afraid mamma wouldn’t like the mother, who’s +awfully vulgar. The other girl is awfully vulgar herself—she’s +travelling about quite alone. I think she’s a middle-class +schoolmistress—sacked perhaps for some irregularity; but the other girl +(I mean the nicer one, with the objectionable mother) tells me she’s more +respectable than she seems. She has, however, the most extraordinary +opinions—wishes to do away with the aristocracy, thinks it wrong that +Arthur should have Kingscote when papa dies, etc. I don’t see what it +signifies to her that poor Arthur should come into the property, which +will be so delightful—except for papa dying. But Harold says she’s mad +too. He chaffs her tremendously about her radicalism, and he’s so +immensely clever that she can’t answer him, though she has a supply of +the most extraordinary big words. + +There’s also a Frenchman, a nephew or cousin or something of the person +of the house, who’s a horrid low cad; and a German professor or doctor +who eats with his knife and is a great bore. I’m so very sorry about +giving up my visit. I’m afraid you’ll never ask me again. + + + +VII +FROM LÉON VERDIER IN PARIS TO PROSPER GOBAIN AT LILLE + + + _September_ 28. + +MON GROS VIEUX, + +It’s a long time since I’ve given you of my news, and I don’t know what +puts it into my head to-night to recall myself to your affectionate +memory. I suppose it is that when we’re happy the mind reverts +instinctively to those with whom formerly we shared our vicissitudes, and +_je t’en ai trop dit dans le bon temps_, _cher vieux_, and you always +listened to me too imperturbably, with your pipe in your mouth and your +waistcoat unbuttoned, for me not to feel that I can count on your +sympathy to-day. _Nous en sommes-nous flanqués_, _des confidences_?—in +those happy days when my first thought in seeing an adventure _poindre à +l’horizon_ was of the pleasure I should have in relating it to the great +Prosper. As I tell thee, I’m happy; decidedly _j’ai de la chance_, and +from that avowal I trust thee to construct the rest. Shall I help thee a +little? Take three adorable girls—three, my good Prosper, the mystic +number, neither more nor less. Take them and place in the midst of them +thy insatiable little Léon. Is the situation sufficiently indicated, or +does the scene take more doing? + +You expected perhaps I was going to tell thee I had made my fortune, or +that the Uncle Blondeau had at last decided to recommit himself to the +breast of nature after having constituted me his universal legatee. But +I needn’t remind you for how much women have always been in any happiness +of him who thus overflows to you—for how much in any happiness and for +how much more in any misery. But don’t let me talk of misery now; time +enough when it comes, when _ces demoiselles_ shall have joined the +serried ranks of their amiable predecessors. Ah, I comprehend your +impatience. I must tell you of whom _ces demoiselles_ consist. + +You’ve heard me speak of my _cousine_ de Maisonrouge, that _grande belle +femme_ who, after having married, _en secondes noces_—there had been, to +tell the truth, some irregularity about her first union—a venerable relic +of the old noblesse of Poitou, was left, by the death of her husband, +complicated by the crash of expensive tastes against an income of 17,000 +francs, on the pavement of Paris with two little demons of daughters to +bring up in the path of virtue. She managed to bring them up; my little +cousins are ferociously _sages_. If you ask me how she managed it I +can’t tell you; it’s no business of mine, and _a fortiori_ none of yours. +She’s now fifty years old—she confesses to thirty-eight—and her +daughters, whom she has never been able to place, are respectively +twenty-seven and twenty-three (they confess to twenty and to seventeen). +Three years ago she had the thrice-blest idea of opening a +well-upholstered and otherwise attractive _asile_ for the blundering +barbarians who come to Paris in the hope of picking up a few stray pearls +from the _écrin_ of Voltaire—or of Zola. The idea has brought her luck; +the house does an excellent business. Until within a few months ago it +was carried on by my cousins alone; but lately the need of a few +extensions and improvements has caused itself to be felt. My cousin has +undertaken them, regardless of expense; in other words she has asked me +to come and stay with her—board and lodging gratis—and correct the +conversational exercises of her _pensionnaire_-pupils. I’m the +extension, my good Prosper; I’m the improvement. She has enlarged the +_personnel_—I’m the enlargement. I form the exemplary sounds that the +prettiest English lips are invited to imitate. The English lips are not +all pretty, heaven knows, but enough of them are so to make it a good +bargain for me. + +Just now, as I told you, I’m in daily relation with three separate pairs. +The owner of one of them has private lessons; she pays extra. My cousin +doesn’t give me a sou of the money, but I consider nevertheless that I’m +not a loser by the arrangement. Also I’m well, very very well, with the +proprietors of the two other pairs. One of these is a little Anglaise of +twenty—a _figure de keepsake_; the most adorable miss you ever, or at +least I ever, beheld. She’s hung all over with beads and bracelets and +amulets, she’s embroidered all over like a sampler or a vestment; but her +principal decoration consists of the softest and almost the hugest grey +eyes in the world, which rest upon you with a profundity of confidence—a +confidence I really feel some compunction in betraying. She has a tint +as white as this sheet of paper, except just in the middle of each cheek, +where it passes into the purest and most transparent, most liquid, +carmine. Occasionally this rosy fluid overflows into the rest of her +face—by which I mean that she blushes—as softly as the mark of your +breath on the window-pane. + +Like every Anglaise she’s rather pinched and prim in public; but it’s +easy to see that when no one’s looking _elle ne demande qu’à se laisser +aller_! Whenever she wants it I’m always there, and I’ve given her to +understand she can count upon me. I’ve reason to believe she appreciates +the assurance, though I’m bound in honesty to confess that with her the +situation’s a little less advanced than with the others. _Que +voulez-vous_? The English are heavy and the Anglaises move slowly, +that’s all. The movement, however, is perceptible, and once this fact’s +established I can let the soup simmer, I can give her time to arrive, for +I’m beautifully occupied with her competitors. _They_ don’t keep me +waiting, please believe. + +These young ladies are Americans, and it belongs to that national +character to move fast. “All right—go ahead!” (I’m learning a great +deal of English, or rather a great deal of American.) They go ahead at a +rate that sometimes makes it difficult for me to keep up. One of them’s +prettier than the other; but this latter—the one that takes the +extra-private lessons—is really _une fille étonnante_. _Ah par exemple_, +_elle brûle ses vaisseaux_, _celle-là_! She threw herself into my arms +the very first day, and I almost owed her a grudge for having deprived me +of that pleasure of gradation, of carrying the defences one by one, which +is almost as great as that of entering the place. For would you believe +that at the end of exactly twelve minutes she gave me a rendezvous? In +the Galerie d’Apollon at the Louvre I admit; but that was respectable for +a beginning, and since then we’ve had them by the dozen; I’ve ceased to +keep the account. _Non_, _c’est une fille qui me dépasse_. + +The other, the slighter but “smarter” little person—she has a mother +somewhere out of sight, shut up in a closet or a trunk—is a good deal +prettier, and perhaps on that account _elle y met plus de façons_. She +doesn’t knock about Paris with me by the hour; she contents herself with +long interviews in the _petit salon_, with the blinds half-drawn, +beginning at about three o’clock, when every one is _à la promenade_. +She’s admirable, _cette petite_, a little too immaterial, with the bones +rather over-accentuated, yet of a detail, on the whole, most +satisfactory. And you can say anything to her. She takes the trouble to +appear not to understand, but her conduct, half an hour afterwards, +reassures you completely—oh completely! + +However, it’s the big bouncer of the extra-private lessons who’s the most +remarkable. These private lessons, my good Prosper, are the most +brilliant invention of the age, and a real stroke of genius on the part +of Miss Miranda! They also take place in the _petit salon_, but with the +doors tightly closed and with explicit directions to every one in the +house that we are not to be disturbed. And we’re not, _mon gros_, we’re +not! Not a sound, not a shadow, interrupts our felicity. My cousins are +on the right track—such a house must make its fortune. Miss Miranda’s +too tall and too flat, with a certain want of coloration; she hasn’t the +transparent _rougeurs_ of the little Anglaise. But she has wonderful +far-gazing eyes, superb teeth, a nose modelled by a sculptor, and a way +of holding up her head and looking every one in the face, which combines +apparent innocence with complete assurance in a way I’ve never seen +equalled. She’s making the _tour du monde_, entirely alone, without even +a soubrette to carry the ensign, for the purpose of seeing for herself, +seeing _à quoi s’en tenir sur les hommes et les choses_—on _les hommes_ +particularly. _Dis donc_, _mon vieux_, it must be a _drôle de pays_ over +there, where such a view of the right thing for the aspiring young +bourgeoises is taken. If we should turn the tables some day, thou and I, +and go over and see it for ourselves? Why isn’t it as well we should go +and find them _chez elles_, as that they should come out here after us? +_Dis donc_, _mon gros Prosper_ . . . ! + + + +VIII +FROM DR. RUDOLPH STAUB IN PARIS TO DR. JULIUS HIRSCH AT GÖTTINGEN + + +MY DEAR BROTHER IN SCIENCE, + +I resume my hasty notes, of which I sent you the first instalment some +weeks ago. I mentioned that I intended to leave my hotel, not finding in +it real matter. It was kept by a Pomeranian and the waiters without +exception were from the Fatherland. I might as well have sat down with +my note-book Unter den Linden, and I felt that, having come here for +documentation, or to put my finger straight upon the social pulse, I +should project myself as much as possible into the circumstances which +are in part the consequence and in part the cause of its activities and +intermittences. I saw there could be no well-grounded knowledge without +this preliminary operation of my getting a near view, as slightly as +possible modified by elements proceeding from a different combination of +forces, of the spontaneous home-life of the nation. + +I accordingly engaged a room in the house of a lady of pure French +extraction and education, who supplements the shortcomings of an income +insufficient to the ever-growing demands of the Parisian system of +sense-gratification by providing food and lodging for a limited number of +distinguished strangers. I should have preferred to have my room here +only, and to take my meals in a brewery, of very good appearance, which I +speedily discovered in the same street; but this arrangement, though very +clearly set out by myself, was not acceptable to the mistress of the +establishment—a woman with a mathematical head—and I have consoled myself +for the extra expense by fixing my thoughts upon the great chance that +conformity to the customs of the house gives me of studying the +table-manners of my companions, and of observing the French nature at a +peculiarly physiological moment, the moment when the satisfaction of the +_taste_, which is the governing quality in its composition, produces a +kind of exhalation, an intellectual transpiration, which, though light +and perhaps invisible to a superficial spectator, is nevertheless +appreciable by a properly adjusted instrument. I’ve adjusted my +instrument very satisfactorily—I mean the one I carry in my good square +German head—and I’m not afraid of losing a single drop of this valuable +fluid as it condenses itself upon the plate of my observation. A +prepared surface is what I need, and I’ve prepared my surface. + +Unfortunately here also I find the individual native in the minority. +There are only four French persons in the house—the individuals concerned +in its management, three of whom are women, and one a man. Such a +preponderance of the Weibliche is, however, in itself characteristic, as +I needn’t remind you what an abnormally-developed part this sex has +played in French history. The remaining figure is ostensibly that of a +biped, and apparently that of a man, but I hesitate to allow him the +whole benefit of the higher classification. He strikes me as less human +than simian, and whenever I hear him talk I seem to myself to have paused +in the street to listen to the shrill clatter of a hand-organ, to which +the gambols of a hairy _homunculus_ form an accompaniment. + +I mentioned to you before that my expectation of rough usage in +consequence of my unattenuated, even if not frivolously aggressive, +Teutonism was to prove completely unfounded. No one seems either unduly +conscious or affectedly unperceiving of my so rich Berlin background; I’m +treated on the contrary with the positive civility which is the portion +of every traveller who pays the bill without scanning the items too +narrowly. This, I confess, has been something of a surprise to me, and +I’ve not yet made up my mind as to the fundamental cause of the anomaly. +My determination to take up my abode in a French interior was largely +dictated by the supposition that I should be substantially disagreeable +to its inmates. I wished to catch in the fact the different forms taken +by the irritation I should naturally produce; for it is under the +influence of irritation that the French character most completely +expresses itself. My presence, however, operates, as I say, less than +could have been hoped as a stimulus, and in this respect I’m materially +disappointed. They treat me as they treat every one else; whereas, in +order to be treated differently, I was resigned in advance to being +treated worse. A further proof, if any were needed, of that vast and, as +it were, fluid _waste_ (I have so often dwelt on to you) which attends +the process of philosophic secretion. I’ve not, I repeat, fully +explained to myself this logical contradiction; but this is the +explanation to which I tend. The French are so exclusively occupied with +the idea of themselves that in spite of the very definite image the +German personality presented to them by the war of 1870 they have at +present no distinct apprehension of its existence. They are not very +sure that there _are_, concretely, any Germans; they have already +forgotten the convincing proofs presented to them nine years ago. A +German was something disagreeable and disconcerting, an irreducible mass, +which they determined to keep out of their conception of things. I +therefore hold we’re wrong to govern ourselves upon the hypothesis of the +_revanche_; the French nature is too shallow for that large and powerful +plant to bloom in it. + +The English-speaking specimens, too, I’ve not been willing to neglect the +opportunity to examine; and among these I’ve paid special attention to +the American varieties, of which I find here several singular examples. +The two most remarkable are a young man who presents all the +characteristics of a period of national decadence; reminding me strongly +of some diminutive Hellenised Roman of the third century. He’s an +illustration of the period of culture in which the faculty of +appreciation has obtained such a preponderance over that of production +that the latter sinks into a kind of rank sterility, and the mental +condition becomes analogous to that of a malarious bog. I hear from him +of the existence of an immense number of Americans exactly resembling +him, and that the city of Boston indeed is almost exclusively composed of +them. (He communicated this fact very proudly, as if it were greatly to +the credit of his native country; little perceiving the truly sinister +impression it made on me.) + +What strikes one in it is that it is a phenomenon to the best of my +knowledge—and you know what my knowledge is—unprecedented and unique in +the history of mankind; the arrival of a nation at an ultimate stage of +evolution without having passed through the mediate one; the passage of +the fruit, in other words, from crudity to rottenness, without the +interposition of a period of useful (and ornamental) ripeness. With the +Americans indeed the crudity and the rottenness are identical and +simultaneous; it is impossible to say, as in the conversation of this +deplorable young man, which is the one and which the other: they’re +inextricably confused. Homunculus for homunculus I prefer that of the +Frenchman; he’s at least more amusing. + +It’s interesting in this manner to perceive, so largely developed, the +germs of extinction in the so-called powerful Anglo-Saxon family. I find +them in almost as recognisable a form in a young woman from the State of +Maine, in the province of New England, with whom I have had a good deal +of conversation. She differs somewhat from the young man I just +mentioned in that the state of affirmation, faculty of production and +capacity for action are things, in her, less inanimate; she has more of +the freshness and vigour that we suppose to belong to a young +civilisation. But unfortunately she produces nothing but evil, and her +tastes and habits are similarly those of a Roman lady of the lower +Empire. She makes no secret of them and has in fact worked out a +complete scheme of experimental adventure, that is of personal licence, +which she is now engaged in carrying out. As the opportunities she finds +in her own country fail to satisfy her she has come to Europe “to try,” +as she says, “for herself.” It’s the doctrine of universal +“unprejudiced” experience professed with a cynicism that is really most +extraordinary, and which, presenting itself in a young woman of +considerable education, appears to me to be the judgement of a society. + +Another observation which pushes me to the same induction—that of the +premature vitiation of the American population—is the attitude of the +Americans whom I have before me with regard to each other. I have before +me a second flower of the same huge so-called democratic garden, who is +less abnormally developed than the one I have just described, but who yet +bears the stamp of this peculiar combination of the barbarous and, to +apply to them one of their own favourite terms, the _ausgespielt_, the +“played-out.” These three little persons look with the greatest mistrust +and aversion upon each other; and each has repeatedly taken me apart and +assured me secretly, that he or she only is the real, the genuine, the +typical American. A type that has lost itself before it has been +fixed—what can you look for from this? + +Add to this that there are two young Englanders in the house who hate all +the Americans in a lump, making between them none of the distinctions and +favourable comparisons which they insist upon, and for which, as +involving the recognition of shades and a certain play of the critical +sense, the still quite primitive insular understanding is wholly inapt, +and you will, I think, hold me warranted in believing that, between +precipitate decay and internecine enmities, the English-speaking family +is destined to consume itself, and that with its decline the prospect of +successfully-organised conquest and unarrested incalculable expansion, to +which I alluded above, will brighten for the deep-lunged children of the +Fatherland! + + + +IX +MIRANDA HOPE TO HER MOTHER + + + _October_ 22. + +DEAR MOTHER, + +I’m off in a day or two to visit some new country; I haven’t yet decided +which. I’ve satisfied myself with regard to France, and obtained a good +knowledge of the language. I’ve enjoyed my visit to Madame de +Maisonrouge deeply, and feel as if I were leaving a circle of real +friends. Everything has gone on beautifully up to the end, and every one +has been as kind and attentive as if I were their own sister, especially +Mr. Verdier, the French gentleman, from whom I have gained more than I +ever expected (in six weeks) and with whom I have promised to +_correspond_. So you can imagine me dashing off the liveliest and yet +the most elegant French letters; and if you don’t believe in them I’ll +keep the rough drafts to show you when I go back. + +The German gentleman is also more interesting the more you know him; it +seems sometimes as if I could fairly drink in his ideas. I’ve found out +why the young lady from New York doesn’t like me! It’s because I said +one day at dinner that I _admired_ to go to the Louvre. Well, when I +first came it seemed as if I _did_ admire everything! Tell William Platt +his letter has come. I knew he’d have to write, and I was bound I’d make +him! I haven’t decided what country I’ll visit next; it seems as if +there were so many to choose from. But I must take care to pick out a +good one and to meet plenty of fresh experiences. Dearest mother, my +money holds out, and it is most interesting! + + + + +THE POINT OF VIEW + + +I +FROM MISS AURORA CHURCH AT SEA TO MISS WHITESIDE IN PARIS + + + _September_ 1880. + +. . . My dear child, the bromide of sodium (if that’s what you call it) +proved perfectly useless. I don’t mean that it did me no good, but that +I never had occasion to take the bottle out of my bag. It might have +done wonders for me if I had needed it; but I didn’t, simply because I’ve +been a wonder myself. Will you believe that I’ve spent the whole voyage +on deck, in the most animated conversation and exercise? Twelve times +round the deck make a mile, I believe; and by this measurement I’ve been +walking twenty miles a day. And down to every meal, if you please, where +I’ve displayed the appetite of a fishwife. Of course the weather has +been lovely; so there’s no great merit. The wicked old Atlantic has been +as blue as the sapphire in my only ring—rather a good one—and as smooth +as the slippery floor of Madame Galopin’s dining-room. We’ve been for +the last three hours in sight of land, and are soon to enter the Bay of +New York which is said to be exquisitely beautiful. But of course you +recall it, though they say everything changes so fast over here. I find +I don’t remember anything, for my recollections of our voyage to Europe +so many years ago are exceedingly dim; I’ve only a painful impression +that mamma shut me up for an hour every day in the stateroom and made me +learn by heart some religious poem. I was only five years old and I +believe that as a child I was extremely timid; on the other hand mamma, +as you know, had what she called a method with me. She has it to this +day; only I’ve become indifferent; I’ve been so pinched and +pushed—morally speaking, _bien entendu_. It’s true, however, that there +are children of five on the vessel to-day who have been extremely +conspicuous—ranging all over the ship and always under one’s feet. Of +course they’re little compatriots, which means that they’re little +barbarians. I don’t mean to pronounce _all_ our compatriots barbarous; +they seem to improve somehow after their first communion. I don’t know +whether it’s that ceremony that improves them, especially as so few of +them go in for it; but the women are certainly nicer than the little +girls; I mean of course in proportion, you know. You warned me not to +generalise, and you see I’ve already begun, before we’ve arrived. But I +suppose there’s no harm in it so long as it’s favourable. + +Isn’t it favourable when I say I’ve had the most lovely time? I’ve never +had so much liberty in my life, and I’ve been out alone, as you may say, +every day of the voyage. If it’s a foretaste of what’s to come I shall +take very kindly to that. When I say I’ve been out alone I mean we’ve +always been two. But we two were alone, so to speak, and it wasn’t like +always having mamma or Madame Galopin, or some lady in the pension or the +temporary cook. Mamma has been very poorly; she’s so very well on land +that it’s a wonder to see her at all taken down. She says, however, that +it isn’t the being at sea; it’s on the contrary approaching the land. +She’s not in a hurry to arrive; she keeps well before her that great +disillusions await us. I didn’t know she _had_ any illusions—she has too +many opinions, I should think, for that: she discriminates, as she’s +always saying, from morning till night. Where would the poor illusions +find room? She’s meanwhile very serious; she sits for hours in perfect +silence, her eyes fixed on the horizon. I heard her say yesterday to an +English gentleman—a very odd Mr. Antrobus, the only person with whom she +converses—that she was afraid she shouldn’t like her native land, and +that she shouldn’t like not liking it. But this is a mistake; she’ll +like that immensely—I mean the not liking it. If it should prove at all +agreeable she’ll be furious, for that will go against her system. You +know all about mamma’s system; I’ve explained it so often. It goes +against her system that we should come back at all; that was _my_ +system—I’ve had at last to invent one! She consented to come only +because she saw that, having no _dot_, I should never marry in Europe; +and I pretended to be immensely preoccupied with this idea in order to +make her start. In reality _cela m’est parfaitement égal_. I’m only +afraid I shall like it too much—I don’t mean marriage, of course, but the +sense of a native land. Say what you will, it’s a charming thing to go +out alone, and I’ve given notice that I mean to be always _en course_. +When I tell mamma this she looks at me in the same silence; her eyes +dilate and then she slowly closes them. It’s as if the sea were +affecting her a little, though it’s so beautifully calm. I ask her if +she’ll try my bromide, which is there in my bag; but she motions me off +and I begin to walk again, tapping my little boot-soles on the smooth +clean deck. This allusion to my boot-soles, by the way, isn’t prompted +by vanity; but it’s a fact that at sea one’s feet and one’s shoes assume +the most extraordinary importance, so that one should take the precaution +to have nice ones. They’re all you seem to see as the people walk about +the deck; you get to know them intimately and to dislike some of them so +much. I’m afraid you’ll think that I’ve already broken loose; and for +aught I know I’m writing as a demoiselle bien-élévee shouldn’t write. I +don’t know whether it’s the American air; if it is, all I can say is that +the American air’s very charming. It makes me impatient and restless, +and I sit scribbling here because I’m so eager to arrive and the time +passes better if I occupy myself. + +I’m in the saloon, where we have our meals, and opposite me is a big +round porthole, wide open to let in the smell of the land. Every now and +then I rise a little and look through it to see if we’re arriving. I +mean in the Bay, you know, for we shall not come up to the city till +dark. I don’t want to lose the Bay; it appears it’s so wonderful. I +don’t exactly understand what it contains except some beautiful islands; +but I suppose you’ll know all about that. It’s easy to see that these +are the last hours, for all the people about me are writing letters to +put into the post as soon as we come up to the dock. I believe they’re +dreadful at the custom-house, and you’ll remember how many new things you +persuaded mamma that—with my preoccupation of marriage—I should take to +this country, where even the prettiest girls are expected not to go +unadorned. We ruined ourselves in Paris—that’s partly accountable for +mamma’s solemnity—_mais au moins je serai belle_! Moreover I believe +that mamma’s prepared to say or to do anything that may be necessary for +escaping from their odious duties; as she very justly remarks she can’t +afford to be ruined twice. I don’t know how one approaches these +terrible _douaniers_, but I mean to invent something very charming. I +mean to say “Voyons, Messieurs, a young girl like me, brought up in the +strictest foreign traditions, kept always in the background by a very +superior mother—_la voilà_; you can see for yourself!—what is it possible +that she should attempt to smuggle in? Nothing but a few simple relics +of her convent!” I won’t tell them my convent was called the Magasin du +Bon Marché. Mamma began to scold me three days ago for insisting on so +many trunks, and the truth is that between us we’ve not fewer than seven. +For relics, that’s a good many! We’re all writing very long letters—or +at least we’re writing a great number. There’s no news of the Bay as +yet. Mr. Antrobus, mamma’s friend, opposite to me, is beginning on his +ninth. He’s a Right Honourable and a Member of Parliament; he has +written during the voyage about a hundred letters and seems greatly +alarmed at the number of stamps he’ll have to buy when he arrives. He’s +full of information, but he hasn’t enough, for he asks as many questions +as mamma when she goes to hire apartments. He’s going to “look into” +various things; he speaks as if they had a little hole for the purpose. +He walks almost as much as I, and has enormous shoes. He asks questions +even of me, and I tell him again and again that I know nothing about +America. But it makes no difference; he always begins again, and indeed +it’s not strange he should find my ignorance incredible. “Now how would +it be in one of your South-western States?”—that’s his favourite way of +opening conversation. Fancy me giving an account of one of “my” +South-western States! I tell him he had better ask mamma—a little to +tease that lady, who knows no more about such places than I. Mr. +Antrobus is very big and black; he speaks with a sort of brogue; he has a +wife and ten children; he doesn’t say—apart from his talking—anything at +all to me. But he has lots of letters to people _là-bas_—I forget that +we’re just arriving—and mamma, who takes an interest in him in spite of +his views (which are dreadfully advanced, and not at all like mamma’s +own) has promised to give him the entrée to the best society. I don’t +know what she knows about the best society over here to-day, for we’ve +not kept up our connexions at all, and no one will know—or, I am afraid, +care—anything about us. She has an idea we shall be immensely +recognised; but really, except the poor little Rucks, who are bankrupt +and, I’m told, in no society at all, I don’t know on whom we can count. +C’est égal, mamma has an idea that, whether or no we appreciate America +ourselves, we shall at least be universally appreciated. It’s true we +have begun to be, a little; you would see that from the way Mr. Cockerel +and Mr. Louis Leverett are always inviting me to walk. Both of these +gentlemen, who are Americans, have asked leave to call on me in New York, +and I’ve said _Mon Dieu oui_, if it’s the custom of the country. Of +course I’ve not dared to tell this to mamma, who flatters herself that +we’ve brought with us in our trunks a complete set of customs of our own +and that we shall only have to shake them out a little and put them on +when we arrive. If only the two gentlemen I just spoke of don’t call at +the same time I don’t think I shall be too much frightened. If they do, +on the other hand, I won’t answer for it. They’ve a particular aversion +to each other and are ready to fight about poor little me. I’m only the +pretext, however; for, as Mr. Leverett says, it’s really the opposition +of temperaments. I hope they won’t cut each other’s throats, for I’m not +crazy about either of them. They’re very well for the deck of a ship, +but I shouldn’t care about them in a salon; they’re not at all +distinguished. They think they are, but they’re not; at least Mr. Louis +Leverett does; Mr. Cockerel doesn’t appear to care so much. They’re +extremely different—with their opposed temperaments—and each very amusing +for a while; but I should get dreadfully tired of passing my life with +either. Neither has proposed that as yet; but it’s evidently what +they’re coming to. It will be in a great measure to spite each other, +for I think that au fond they don’t quite believe in me. If they don’t, +it’s the only point on which they agree. They hate each other awfully; +they take such different views. That is Mr. Cockerel hates Mr. +Leverett—he calls him a sickly little ass; he pronounces his opinions +half affectation and the other half dyspepsia. Mr. Leverett speaks of +Mr. Cockerel as a “strident savage,” but he allows he finds him most +diverting. He says there’s nothing in which we can’t find a certain +entertainment if we only look at it in the right way, and that we have no +business with either hating or loving: we ought only to strive to +understand. He “claims”—he’s always claiming—that to understand is to +forgive. Which is very pretty, but I don’t like the suppression of our +affections, though I’ve no desire to fix mine upon Mr. Leverett. He’s +very artistic and talks like an article in some review. He has lived a +great deal in Paris, and Mr. Cockerel, who doesn’t believe in Paris, says +it’s what has made him such an idiot. + +That’s not complimentary to you, dear Louisa, and still less to your +brilliant brother; for Mr. Cockerel explains that he means it (the bad +effect of Paris) chiefly of men. In fact he means the bad effect of +Europe altogether. This, however, is compromising to mamma; and I’m +afraid there’s no doubt that, from what I’ve told him, he thinks mamma +also an idiot. (I’m not responsible, you know—I’ve always wanted to go +home.) If mamma knew him, which she doesn’t, for she always closes her +eyes when I pass on his arm, she would think him disgusting. Mr. +Leverett meanwhile assures me he’s nothing to what we shall see yet. +He’s from Philadelphia (Mr. Cockerel); he insists that we shall go and +see Philadelphia, but mamma says she saw it in 1855 and it was then +_affreux_. Mr. Cockerel says that mamma’s evidently not familiar with +the rush of improvement in this country; he speaks of 1855 as if it were +a hundred years ago. Mamma says she knows it goes only too fast, the +rush—it goes so fast that it has time to do nothing well; and then Mr. +Cockerel, who, to do him justice, is perfectly good-natured, remarks that +she had better wait till she has been ashore and seen the improvements. +Mamma retorts that she sees them from here, the awful things, and that +they give her a sinking of the heart. (This little exchange of ideas is +carried on through me; they’ve never spoken to each other.) Mr. +Cockerel, as I say, is extremely good-natured, and he bears out what I’ve +heard said about the men in America being very considerate of the women. +They evidently listen to them a great deal; they don’t contradict them, +but it seems to me this is rather negative. There’s very little +gallantry in not contradicting one; and it strikes me that there are some +things the men don’t express. There are others on the ship whom I’ve +noticed. It’s as if they were all one’s brothers or one’s cousins. The +extent to which one isn’t in danger from them—my dear, my dear! But I +promised you not to generalise, and perhaps there will be more expression +when we arrive. Mr. Cockerel returns to America, after a general tour, +with a renewed conviction that this is the only country. I left him on +deck an hour ago looking at the coast-line with an opera-glass and saying +it was the prettiest thing he had seen in all his travels. When I +remarked that the coast seemed rather low he said it would be all the +easier to get ashore. Mr. Leverett at any rate doesn’t seem in a hurry +to get ashore, he’s sitting within sight of me in a corner of the +saloon—writing letters, I suppose, but looking, from the way he bites his +pen and rolls his eyes about, as if he were composing a sonnet and +waiting for a rhyme. Perhaps the sonnet’s addressed to me; but I forget +that he suppresses the affections! The only person in whom mamma takes +much interest is the great French critic, M. Lejaune, whom we have the +honour to carry with us. We’ve read a few of his works, though mamma +disapproves of his tendencies and thinks him a dreadful materialist. +We’ve read them for the style; you know he’s one of the new Academicians. +He’s a Frenchman like any other, except that he’s rather more quiet; he +has a grey moustache and the ribbon of the Legion of Honour. He’s the +first French writer of distinction who has been to America since De +Tocqueville; the French, in such matters, are not very enterprising. +Also he has the air of wondering what he’s doing _dans cette galère_. He +has come with his beau-frère, who’s an engineer and is looking after some +mines, and he talks with scarcely any one else, as he speaks no English +and appears to take for granted that no one speaks French. Mamma would +be delighted to convince him of the contrary; she has never conversed +with an Academician. She always makes a little vague inclination, with a +smile, when he passes her, and he answers with a most respectful bow; but +it goes no further, to mamma’s disappointment. He’s always with the +beau-frère, a rather untidy fat bearded man—decorated too, always smoking +and looking at the feet of the ladies, whom mamma (though she has very +good feet) has not the courage to _aborder_. I believe M. Lejaune is +going to write a book about America, and Mr. Leverett says it will be +terrible. Mr. Leverett has made his acquaintance and says M. Lejaune +will put him into his book; he says the movement of the French intellect +is superb. As a general thing he doesn’t care for Academicians, but M. +Lejaune’s an exception—he’s so living, so remorseless, so personal. + +I’ve asked Mr. Cockerel meanwhile what he thinks of M. Lejaune’s plan of +writing a book, and he answers that he doesn’t see what it matters to him +that a Frenchman the more should make the motions of a monkey—on that +side poor Mr. Cockerel is _de cette force_. I asked him why he hadn’t +written a book about Europe, and he says that in the first place Europe +isn’t worth writing about, and that in the second if he said what he +thought people would call it a joke. He says they’re very superstitious +about Europe over here; he wants people in America to behave as if Europe +didn’t exist. I told this to Mr. Leverett, and he answered that if +Europe didn’t exist America wouldn’t, for Europe keeps us alive by buying +our corn. He said also that the trouble with America in the future will +be that she’ll produce things in such enormous quantities that there +won’t be enough people in the rest of the world to buy them, and that we +shall be left with our productions—most of them very hideous—on our +hands. I asked him if he thought corn a hideous production, and he +replied that there’s nothing more unbeautiful than too much food. I +think that to feed the world too well, however, will be after all a _beau +rôle_. Of course I don’t understand these things, and I don’t believe +Mr. Leverett does; but Mr. Cockerel seems to know what he’s talking +about, and he describes America as complete in herself. I don’t know +exactly what he means, but he speaks as if human affairs had somehow +moved over to this side of the world. It may be a very good place for +them, and heaven knows I’m extremely tired of Europe, which mamma has +always insisted so on my appreciating; but I don’t think I like the idea +of our being so completely cut off. Mr. Cockerel says it is not we that +are cut off, but Europe, and he seems to think Europe has somehow +deserved it. That may be; our life over there was sometimes extremely +tiresome, though mamma says it’s now that our real fatigues will begin. +I like to abuse those dreadful old countries myself, but I’m not sure I’m +pleased when others do the same. We had some rather pretty moments there +after all, and at Piacenza we certainly lived for four francs a day. +Mamma’s already in a terrible state of mind about the expenses here; +she’s frightened by what people on the ship (the few she has spoken to) +have told her. There’s one comfort at any rate—we’ve spent so much money +in coming that we shall have none left to get away. I’m scribbling +along, as you see, to occupy me till we get news of the islands. Here +comes Mr. Cockerel to bring it. Yes, they’re in sight; he tells me +they’re lovelier than ever and that I must come right up right away. I +suppose you’ll think I’m already beginning to use the language of the +country. It’s certain that at the end of the month I shall speak nothing +else. I’ve picked up every dialect, wherever we’ve travelled; you’ve +heard my Platt-Deutsch and my Neapolitan. But, _voyons un peu_ the Bay! +I’ve just called to Mr. Leverett to remind him of the islands. “The +islands—the islands? Ah my dear young lady, I’ve seen Capri, I’ve seen +Ischia!” Well, so have I, but that doesn’t prevent . . . (_A little +later_.) I’ve seen the islands—they’re rather queer. + + + +II +MRS. CHURCH IN NEW YORK TO MADAME GALOPIN AT GENEVA + + + _October_ 1880. + +If I felt far way from you in the middle of that deplorable Atlantic, +chère Madame, how do I feel now, in the heart of this extraordinary city? +We’ve arrived—we’ve arrived, dear friend; but I don’t know whether to +tell you that I consider that an advantage. If we had been given our +choice of coming safely to land or going down to the bottom of the sea I +should doubtless have chosen the former course; for I hold, with your +noble husband and in opposition to the general tendency of modern +thought, that our lives are not our own to dispose of, but a sacred trust +from a higher power by whom we shall be held responsible. Nevertheless +if I had foreseen more vividly some of the impressions that awaited me +here I’m not sure that, for my daughter at least, I shouldn’t have +preferred on the spot to hand in our account. Should I not have been +less (rather than more) guilty in presuming to dispose of _her_ destiny +than of my own? There’s a nice point for dear M. Galopin to settle—one +of those points I’ve heard him discuss in the pulpit with such elevation. +We’re safe, however, as I say; by which I mean we’re physically safe. +We’ve taken up the thread of our familiar pension-life, but under +strikingly different conditions. We’ve found a refuge in a +boarding-house which has been highly recommended to me and where the +arrangements partake of the barbarous magnificence that in this country +is the only alternative from primitive rudeness. The terms per week are +as magnificent as all the rest. The landlady wears diamond ear-rings and +the drawing-rooms are decorated with marble statues. I should indeed be +sorry to let you know how I’ve allowed myself to be rançonnée; and I +should be still more sorry that it should come to the ears of any of my +good friends in Geneva, who know me less well than you and might judge me +more harshly. There’s no wine given for dinner, and I’ve vainly +requested the person who conducts the establishment to garnish her table +more liberally. She says I may have all the wine I want if I will order +it at the merchant’s and settle the matter with himself. But I’ve never, +as you know, consented to regard our modest allowance of eau rougie as an +extra; indeed, I remember that it’s largely to your excellent advice that +I’ve owed my habit of being firm on this point. + +There are, however, greater difficulties than the question of what we +shall drink for dinner, chère Madame. Still, I’ve never lost courage and +I shall not lose it now. At the worst we can re-embark again and seek +repose and refreshment on the shores of your beautiful lake. (There’s +absolutely no scenery here!) We shall not perhaps in that case have +achieved what we desired, but we shall at least have made an honourable +retreat. What we desire—I know it’s just this that puzzles you, dear +friend; I don’t think you ever really comprehended my motives in taking +this formidable step, though you were good enough, and your magnanimous +husband was good enough, to press my hand at parting in a way that seemed +to tell me you’d still be with me even were I wrong. To be very brief, I +wished to put an end to the ceaseless reclamations of my daughter. Many +Americans had assured her that she was wasting her belle jeunesse in +those historic lands which it was her privilege to see so intimately, and +this unfortunate conviction had taken possession of her. “Let me at +least see for myself,” she used to say; “if I should dislike it over +there as much as you promise me, so much the better for you. In that +case we’ll come back and make a new arrangement at Stuttgart.” The +experiment’s a terribly expensive one, but you know how my devotion never +has shrunk from an ordeal. There’s another point moreover which, from a +mother to a mother, it would be affectation not to touch upon. I +remember the just satisfaction with which you announced to me the +fiançailles of your charming Cécile. You know with what earnest care my +Aurora has been educated—how thoroughly she’s acquainted with the +principal results of modern research. We’ve always studied together, +we’ve always enjoyed together. It will perhaps surprise you to hear that +she makes these very advantages a reproach to me—represents them as an +injury to herself. “In this country,” she says, “the gentlemen have not +those accomplishments; they care nothing for the results of modern +research. Therefore it won’t help a young person to be sought in +marriage that she can give an account of the latest German presentation +of Pessimism.” That’s possible, and I’ve never concealed from her that +it wasn’t for this country I had educated her. If she marries in the +United States it’s of course my intention that my son-in-law shall +accompany us to Europe. But when she calls my attention more and more to +these facts I feel that we’re moving in a different world. This is more +and more the country of the many; the few find less and less place for +them; and the individual—well, the individual has quite ceased to be +recognised. He’s recognised as a voter, but he’s not recognised as a +gentleman—still less as a lady. My daughter and I of course can only +pretend to constitute a _few_! + +You know that I’ve never for a moment remitted my pretensions as an +individual, though among the agitations of pension-life I’ve sometimes +needed all my energy to uphold them. “Oh yes, I may be poor,” I’ve had +occasion to say, “I may be unprotected, I may be reserved, I may occupy a +small apartment au quatrième and be unable to scatter unscrupulous bribes +among the domestics; but at least I’m a _person_ and have personal +rights.” In this country the people have rights, but the person has +none. You’d have perceived that if you had come with me to make +arrangements at this establishment. The very fine lady who condescends +to preside over it kept me waiting twenty minutes, and then came sailing +in without a word of apology. I had sat very silent, with my eyes on the +clock; Aurora amused herself with a false admiration of the room, a +wonderful drawing-room with magenta curtains, frescoed walls and +photographs of the landlady’s friends—as if one cares for her friends! +When this exalted personage came in she simply remarked that she had just +been trying on a dress—that it took so long to get a skirt to hang. “It +seems to take very long indeed!” I answered; “but I hope the skirt’s +right at last. You might have sent for us to come up and look at it!” +She evidently didn’t understand, and when I asked her to show us her +rooms she handed us over to a negro as dégingandé as herself. While we +looked at them I heard her sit down to the piano in the drawing-room; she +began to sing an air from a comic opera. I felt certain we had gone +quite astray; I didn’t know in what house we could be, and was only +reassured by seeing a Bible in every room. When we came down our musical +hostess expressed no hope the rooms had pleased us, she seemed grossly +indifferent to our taking them. She wouldn’t consent moreover to the +least diminution and was inflexible, as I told you, on the article of our +common beverage. When I pushed this point she was so good as to observe +that she didn’t keep a cabaret. One’s not in the least considered; +there’s no respect for one’s privacy, for one’s preferences, for one’s +reserves. The familiarity’s without limits, and I’ve already made a +dozen acquaintances, of whom I know, and wish to know, nothing. Aurora +tells me she’s the “belle of the boarding-house.” It appears that this +is a great distinction. + +It brings me back to my poor child and her prospects. She takes a very +critical view of them herself—she tells me I’ve given her a false +education and that no one will marry her to-day. No American will marry +her because she’s too much of a foreigner, and no foreigner will marry +her because she’s too much of an American. I remind her how scarcely a +day passes that a foreigner, usually of distinction, doesn’t—as +perversely as you will indeed—select an American bride, and she answers +me that in these cases the young lady isn’t married for her fine eyes. +Not always, I reply; and then she declares that she’ll marry no foreigner +who shall not be one of the first of the first. You’ll say doubtless +that she should content herself with advantages that haven’t been deemed +insufficient for Cécile; but I’ll not repeat to you the remark she made +when I once employed this argument. You’ll doubtless be surprised to +hear that I’ve ceased to argue; but it’s time I should confess that I’ve +at last agreed to let her act for herself. She’s to live for three +months à l’Américaine and I’m to be a mere passive spectator. You’ll +feel with me that this is a cruel position for a cœur de mère. I count +the days till our three months are over, and I know you’ll join with me +in my prayers. Aurora walks the streets alone; she goes out in the +tramway: a voiture de place costs five francs for the least little +_course_. (I beseech you not to let it be known that I’ve sometimes had +the weakness.) My daughter’s frequently accompanied by a gentleman—by a +dozen gentlemen; she remains out for hours and her conduct excites no +surprise in this establishment. I know but too well the emotions it will +excite in your quiet home. If you betray us, chère Madame, we’re lost; +and why, after all, should any one know of these things in Geneva? +Aurora pretends she has been able to persuade herself that she doesn’t +care who knows them; but there’s a strange expression in her face which +proves that her conscience isn’t at rest. I watch her, I let her go, but +I sit with my hands clasped. There’s a peculiar custom in this country—I +shouldn’t know how to express it in Genevese: it’s called “being +attentive,” and young girls are the object of the futile process. It +hasn’t necessarily anything to do with projects of marriage—though it’s +the privilege only of the unmarried and though at the same time +(fortunately, and this may surprise you) it has no relation to other +projects. It’s simply an invention by which young persons of the two +sexes pass large parts of their time together with no questions asked. +How shall I muster courage to tell you that Aurora now constitutes the +main apparent recreation of several gentlemen? Though it has no relation +to marriage the practice happily doesn’t exclude it, and marriages have +been known to take place in consequence (or in spite) of it. It’s true +that even in this country a young lady may marry but one husband at a +time, whereas she may receive at once the attentions of several +gentlemen, who are equally entitled “admirers.” My daughter then has +admirers to an indefinite number. You’ll think I’m joking perhaps when I +tell you that I’m unable to be exact—I who was formerly l’exactitude +même. + +Two of these gentlemen are to a certain extent old friends, having been +passengers on the steamer which carried us so far from you. One of them, +still young, is typical of the American character, but a respectable +person and a lawyer considerably launched. Every one in this country +follows a profession, but it must be admitted that the professions are +more highly remunerated than chez vous. Mr. Cockerel, even while I write +you, is in not undisputed, but temporarily triumphant, possession of my +child. He called for her an hour ago in a “boghey”—a strange unsafe +rickety vehicle, mounted on enormous wheels, which holds two persons very +near together; and I watched her from the window take her place at his +side. Then he whirled her away behind two little horses with terribly +thin legs; the whole equipage—and most of all her being in it—was in the +most questionable taste. But she’ll return—return positively very much +as she went. It’s the same when she goes down to Mr. Louis Leverett, who +has no vehicle and who merely comes and sits with her in the front salon. +He has lived a great deal in Europe and is very fond of the arts, and +though I’m not sure I agree with him in his views of the relation of art +to life and life to art, and in his interpretation of some of the great +works that Aurora and I have studied together, he seems to me a +sufficiently serious and intelligent young man. I don’t regard him as +intrinsically dangerous, but on the other hand he offers absolutely no +guarantees. I’ve no means whatever of ascertaining his pecuniary +situation. There’s a vagueness on these points which is extremely +embarrassing, and it never occurs to young men to offer you a reference. +In Geneva I shouldn’t be at a loss; I should come to you, chère Madame, +with my little inquiry, and what you shouldn’t be able to tell me +wouldn’t be worth my knowing. But no one in New York can give me the +smallest information about the état de fortune of Mr. Louis Leverett. +It’s true that he’s a native of Boston, where most of his friends reside; +I can’t, however, go to the expense of a journey to Boston simply to +learn perhaps that Mr. Leverett (the young Louis) has an income of five +thousand francs. As I say indeed, he doesn’t strike me as dangerous. +When Aurora comes back to me after having passed an hour with him she +says he has described to her his emotions on visiting the home of Shelley +or discussed some of the differences between the Boston temperament and +that of the Italians of the Renaissance. You’ll not enter into these +rapprochements, and I can’t blame you. But you won’t betray me, chère +Madame? + + + +III +FROM MISS STURDY AT NEWPORT TO MRS. DRAPER AT OUCHY + + + _September_ 1880. + +I promised to tell you how I like it, but the truth is I’ve gone to and +fro so often that I’ve ceased to like and dislike. Nothing strikes me as +unexpected; I expect everything in its order. Then too, you know, I’m +not a critic; I’ve no talent for keen analysis, as the magazines say; I +don’t go into the reasons of things. It’s true I’ve been for a longer +time than usual on the wrong side of the water, and I admit that I feel a +little out of training for American life. They’re breaking me in very +fast, however. I don’t mean that they bully me—I absolutely decline to +be bullied. I say what I think, because I believe I’ve on the whole the +advantage of knowing what I think—when I think anything; which is half +the battle. Sometimes indeed I think nothing at all. They don’t like +that over here; they like you to have impressions. That they like these +impressions to be favourable appears to me perfectly natural; I don’t +make a crime to them of this; it seems to me on the contrary a very +amiable point. When individuals betray it we call them sympathetic; I +don’t see why we shouldn’t give nations the same benefit. But there are +things I haven’t the least desire to have an opinion about. The +privilege of indifference is the dearest we possess, and I hold that +intelligent people are known by the way they exercise it. Life is full +of rubbish, and we have at least our share of it over here. When you +wake up in the morning you find that during the night a cartload has been +deposited in your front garden. I decline, however, to have any of it in +my premises; there are thousands of things I want to know nothing about. +I’ve outlived the necessity of being hypocritical; I’ve nothing to gain +and everything to lose. When one’s fifty years old—single stout and red +in the face—one has outlived a good many necessities. They tell me over +here that my increase of weight’s extremely marked, and though they don’t +tell me I’m coarse I feel they think me so. There’s very little +coarseness here—not quite enough, I think—though there’s plenty of +vulgarity, which is a very different thing. On the whole the country +becomes much more agreeable. It isn’t that the people are charming, for +that they always were (the best of them, I mean—it isn’t true of the +others), but that places and things as well recognise the possibility of +pleasing. The houses are extremely good and look extraordinarily fresh +and clean. Many European interiors seem in comparison musty and gritty. +We have a great deal of taste; I shouldn’t wonder if we should end by +inventing something pretty; we only need a little time. Of course as yet +it’s all imitation, except, by the way, these delicious piazzas. I’m +sitting on one now; I’m writing to you with my portfolio on my knees. +This broad light _loggia_ surrounds the house with a movement as free as +the expanded wings of a bird, and the wandering airs come up from the +deep sea, which murmurs on the rocks at the end of the lawn. + +Newport’s more charming even than you remember it; like everything else +over here it has improved. It’s very exquisite to-day; it’s indeed, I +think, in all the world the only exquisite watering-place, for I detest +the whole genus. The crowd has left it now, which makes it all the +better, though plenty of talkers remain in these large light luxurious +houses which are planted with a kind of Dutch definiteness all over the +green carpet of the cliff. This carpet’s very neatly laid and +wonderfully well swept, and the sea, just at hand, is capable of +prodigies of blue. Here and there a pretty woman strolls over one of the +lawns, which all touch each other, you know, without hedges or fences; +the light looks intense as it plays on her brilliant dress; her large +parasol shines like a silver dome. The long lines of the far shores are +soft and pure, though they are places one hasn’t the least desire to +visit. Altogether the effect’s very delicate, and anything that’s +delicate counts immensely over here; for delicacy, I think, is as rare as +coarseness. I’m talking to you of the sea, however, without having told +you a word of my voyage. It was very comfortable and amusing; I should +like to take another next month. You know I’m almost offensively well at +sea—I breast the weather and brave the storm. We had no storm +fortunately, and I had brought with me a supply of light literature; so I +passed nine days on deck in my sea-chair with my heels up—passed them +reading Tauchnitz novels. There was a great lot of people, but no one in +particular save some fifty American girls. You know all about the +American girl, however, having been one yourself. They’re on the whole +very nice, but fifty’s too many; there are always too many. There was an +inquiring Briton, a radical M.P., by name Mr. Antrobus, who entertained +me as much as any one else. He’s an excellent man; I even asked him to +come down here and spend a couple of days. He looked rather frightened +till I told him he shouldn’t be alone with me, that the house was my +brother’s and that I gave the invitation in his name. He came a week +ago; he goes everywhere; we’ve heard of him in a dozen places. The +English are strangely simple, or at least they seem so over here. Their +old measurements and comparisons desert them; they don’t know whether +it’s all a joke or whether it’s too serious by half. We’re quicker than +they, though we talk so much more slowly. We think fast, and yet we talk +as deliberately as if we were speaking a foreign language. They toss off +their sentences with an air of easy familiarity with the tongue, and yet +they misunderstand two-thirds of what people say to them. Perhaps after +all it is only _our_ thoughts they think slowly; they think their own +often to a lively tune enough. + +Mr. Antrobus arrived here in any case at eight o’clock in the morning; I +don’t know how he managed it; it appears to be his favourite hour; +wherever we’ve heard of him he has come in with the dawn. In England he +would arrive at 5.30 P.M. He asks innumerable questions, but they’re +easy to answer, for he has a sweet credulity. He made me rather ashamed; +he’s a better American than so many of us; he takes us more seriously +than we take ourselves. He seems to think we’ve an oligarchy of wealth +growing up which he advised me to be on my guard against. I don’t know +exactly what I can do, but I promised him to look out. He’s fearfully +energetic; the energy of the people here is nothing to that of the +inquiring Briton. If we should devote half the zeal to building up our +institutions that they devote to obtaining information about them we +should have a very satisfactory country. Mr. Antrobus seemed to think +very well of us—which surprised me on the whole, since, say what one +will, it’s far from being so agreeable as England. It’s very horrid that +this should be; and it’s delightful, when one thinks of it, that some +things in England are after all so hateful. At the same time Mr. +Antrobus appeared to be a good deal preoccupied with our dangers. I +don’t understand quite what they are; they seem to me so few on a Newport +piazza this bright still day. Yet alas what one sees on a Newport piazza +isn’t America; it’s only the back of Europe. I don’t mean to say I +haven’t noticed any dangers since my return; there are two or three that +seem to me very serious, but they aren’t those Mr. Antrobus apprehends. +One, for instance, is that we shall cease to speak the English language, +which I prefer so to any other. It’s less and less spoken; American’s +crowding it out. All the children speak American, which as a child’s +language is dreadfully rough. It’s exclusively in use in the schools; +all the magazines and newspapers are in American. Of course a people of +fifty millions who have invented a new civilisation have a right to a +language of their own; that’s what they tell me, and I can’t quarrel with +it. But I wish they had made it as pretty as the mother-tongue, from +which, when all’s said, it’s more or less derived. We ought to have +invented something as noble as our country. They tell me it’s more +expressive, and yet some admirable things have been said in the Queen’s +English. There can be no question of the Queen over here of course, and +American no doubt is the music of the future. Poor dear future, how +“expressive” you’ll be! For women and children, as I say, it strikes one +as very rough; and, moreover, they don’t speak it well, their own though +it be. My small nephews, when I first came home, hadn’t gone back to +school, and it distressed me to see that, though they’re charming +children, they had the vocal inflexions of little news-boys. My niece is +sixteen years old; she has the sweetest nature possible; she’s extremely +well-bred and is dressed to perfection. She chatters from morning till +night; but its helplessness breaks my heart. These little persons are in +the opposite case from so many English girls who know how to speak but +don’t know how to talk. My niece knows how to talk but doesn’t know how +to speak. + +If I allude to the young people, that’s our other danger; the young +people are eating us up—there’s nothing in America but the young people. +The country’s made for the rising generation; life’s arranged for them; +they’re the destruction of society. People talk of them, consider them, +defer to them, bow down to them. They’re always present, and whenever +they’re present nothing else of the smallest interest is. They’re often +very pretty, and physically are wonderfully looked after; they’re scoured +and brushed, they wear hygienic clothes, they go every week to the +dentist’s. But the little boys kick your shins and the little girls +offer to slap your face. There’s an immense literature entirely +addressed to them in which the kicking of shins and the slapping of faces +carries the day. As a woman of fifty I protest, I insist on being judged +by my peers. It’s too late, however, for several millions of little feet +are actively engaged in stamping out conversation, and I don’t see how +they can long fail to keep it under. The future’s theirs; adult forms +will evidently be at an increasing discount. Longfellow wrote a charming +little poem called “The Children’s Hour,” but he ought to have called it +“The Children’s Century.” And by children I naturally don’t mean simple +infants; I mean everything of less than twenty. The social importance of +the young American increases steadily up to that age and then suddenly +stops. The little girls of course are more important than the lads, but +the lads are very important too. I’m struck with the way they’re known +and talked about; they’re small celebrities; they have reputations and +pretensions; they’re taken very seriously. As for the little girls, as I +just said, they’re ever so much too many. You’ll say perhaps that my +fifty years and my red face are jealous of them. I don’t think so, +because I don’t suffer; my red face doesn’t frighten people away, and I +always find plenty of talkers. The young things themselves, I believe, +like me very much, and I delight in the young things. They’re often very +pretty; not so pretty as people say in the magazines, but pretty enough. +The magazines rather overdo that; they make a mistake. I’ve seen no +great beauties, but the level of prettiness is high, and occasionally one +sees a woman completely handsome. (As a general thing, a pretty person +here means a person with a pretty face. The figure’s rarely mentioned, +though there are several good ones.) The level of prettiness is high, +but the level of conversation is low; that’s one of the signs of its +being a young ladies’ country. There are a good many things young ladies +can’t talk about, but think of all the things they can when they are as +clever as most of these. Perhaps one ought to content one’s self with +that measure, but it’s difficult if one has lived long by a larger one. +This one’s decidedly narrow—I stretch it sometimes till it cracks. Then +it is they call me coarse, which I undoubtedly am, thank goodness. + +What it comes to, obviously, is that people’s talk is much less +conveniently free than in Europe; I’m struck with that wherever I go. +There are certain things that are never said at all, certain allusions +that are never made. There are no light stories, no propos risqués. I +don’t know exactly what people find to bite into, for the supply of +scandal’s small and it’s little more than twaddle at that. They don’t +seem, however, to lack topics. The little girls are always there; they +keep the gates of conversation; very little passes that’s not innocent. +I find we do very well without wickedness, and for myself, as I take my +ease, I don’t miss my liberties. You remember what I thought of the tone +of your table in Florence last year, and how surprised you were when I +asked you why you allowed such things. You said they were like the +courses of the seasons; one couldn’t prevent them; also that to change +the tone of your table you’d have to change so many other things. Of +course in your house one never saw a little girl; I was the only spinster +and no one was afraid of me. Likewise if talk’s more innocent in this +country manners are so to begin with. The liberty of the young people is +the strongest proof of it. The little girls are let loose in the world, +and the world gets more good of it than ces demoiselles get harm. In +your world—pardon me, but you know what I mean—this wouldn’t do at all. +Your world’s a sad affair—the young ladies would encounter all sorts of +horrors. Over here, considering the way they knock about, they remain +wonderfully simple, and the reason is that society protects them instead +of setting them traps. There’s almost no gallantry as you understand it; +the flirtations are child’s play. People have no time for making love; +the men in particular are extremely busy. I’m told that sort of thing +consumes hours; I’ve never had any time for it myself. If the leisure +class should increase here considerably there may possibly be a change; +but I doubt it, for the women seem to me in all essentials exceedingly +reserved. Great superficial frankness, but an extreme dread of +complications. The men strike me as very good fellows. I find them at +bottom better than the women, who if not inveterately hard haven’t at +least the European, the (as I heard some one once call it) chemical +softness. They’re not so nice to the men as the men are to them; I mean +of course in proportion, you know. But women aren’t so nice as men +“anyway,” as they say here. + +The men at any rate are professional, commercial; there are very few +gentlemen pure and simple. This personage needs to be very well done, +however, to be of great utility; and I suppose you won’t pretend he’s +always well done in your countries. When he’s not, the less of him the +better. It’s very much the same indeed with the system on which the +female young are brought up. (You see I have to come back to the female +young.) When it succeeds they’re the most charming creatures possible; +when it doesn’t the failure’s disastrous. If a girl’s a very nice girl +the American method brings her to great completeness—makes all her graces +flower; but if she isn’t nice it plays the devil with any possible +compromise or _biais_ in the interest of social convenience. In a word +the American girl’s rarely negative, and when she isn’t a great success +she’s a great warning. In nineteen cases out of twenty, among the people +who know how to live—I won’t say what _their_ proportion is—the results +are highly satisfactory. The girls aren’t shy, but I don’t know why they +should be, for there’s really nothing here to be afraid of. Manners are +very gentle, very humane; the democratic system deprives people of +weapons that every one doesn’t equally possess. No one’s formidable; no +one’s on stilts; no one has great pretensions or any recognised right to +be arrogant. I think there’s not much wickedness, and there’s certainly +less human or social cruelty—less than in “good” (that is in more +amusing) society. Every one can sit—no one’s kept standing. One’s much +less liable to be snubbed, which you will say is a pity. I think it +is—to a certain extent; but on the other hand folly’s less fatuous in +form than in your countries; and as people generally have fewer revenges +to take there’s less need of their being squashed in advance. The +general good nature, the social equality, deprive them of triumphs on the +one hand and of grievances on the other. There’s extremely little +impertinence, there’s almost none. You’ll say I’m describing a terrible +world, a world without great figures or great social prizes. You’ve hit +it, my dear—there are no great figures. (The great prize of course in +Europe is the opportunity to _be_ a great figure.) You’d miss these +things a good deal—you who delight to recognise greatness; and my advice +to you therefore is never to come back. You’d miss the small people even +more than the great; every one’s middle-sized, and you can never have +that momentary sense of profiting by the elevation of your class which is +so agreeable in Europe. I needn’t add that you don’t, either, languish +with its depression. There are at all events no brilliant types—the most +important people seem to lack dignity. They’re very bourgeois; they make +little jokes; on occasion they make puns; they’ve no form; they’re too +good-natured. The men have no style; the women, who are fidgety and talk +too much, have it only in their tournures, where they have it +superabundantly. + +Well, I console myself—since consolation is needed—with the greater +bonhomie. Have you ever arrived at an English country-house in the dusk +of a winter’s day? Have you ever made a call in London when you knew +nobody but the hostess? People here are more expressive, more +demonstrative; and it’s a pleasure, when one comes back—if one happens, +like me, to be no one in particular—to feel one’s merely personal and +unclassified value rise. They attend to you more; they have you on their +mind; they talk to you; they listen to you. That is the men do; the +women listen very little—not enough. They interrupt, they prattle, one +feels their presence too much as importunate and untrained sound. I +imagine this is partly because their wits are quick and they think of a +good many things to say; not indeed that they always say such wonders! +Perfect repose, after all, is not _all_ self-control; it’s also partly +stupidity. American women, however, make too many vague exclamations—say +too many indefinite things, have in short still a great deal of nature. +The American order or climate or whatever gives them a nature they _can_ +let loose. Europe has to protect itself with more art. On the whole I +find very little affectation, though we shall probably have more as we +improve. As yet people haven’t the assurance that carries those things +off; they know too much about each other. The trouble is that over here +we’ve all been brought up together. You’ll think this a picture of a +dreadfully insipid society; but I hasten to add that it’s not all so tame +as that. I’ve been speaking of the people that one meets socially, and +these’re the smallest part of American life. The others—those one meets +on a basis of mere convenience—are much more exciting; they keep one’s +temper in healthy exercise. I mean the people in the shops and on the +railroads; the servants, the hack-men, the labourers, the conductors; +every one of whom you buy anything or have occasion to make an inquiry. +With them you need all your best manners, for you must always have enough +for two. If you think we’re _too_ democratic taste a little of American +life in these walks and you’ll be reassured. This is the region of +inequality, and you’ll find plenty of people to make your curtsey to. +You see it from below—the weight of inequality’s on your own back. You +asked me to tell you about prices. They’re unspeakable. + + + +IV +FROM THE RIGHT HON. EDWARD ANTROBUS, M.P., IN BOSTON TO THE HONOURABLE +MRS. ANTROBUS + + + _November_ 1880. + +MY DEAR SUSAN, + +I sent you a post-card on the 13th and a native newspaper yesterday; I +really have had no time to write. I sent you the newspaper partly +because it contained a report—extremely incorrect—of some remarks I made +at the meeting of the Association of the Teachers of New England; partly +because it’s so curious that I thought it would interest you and the +children. I cut out some portions I didn’t think it well the children +should go into—the passages remaining contain the most striking features. +Please point out to the children the peculiar orthography, which probably +will be adopted in England by the time they are grown up; the amusing +oddities of expression and the like. Some of them are intentional; +you’ll have heard of the celebrated American humour—remind me, by the +way, on my return to Thistleton, to give you a few of the examples of it +that my own experience supplies. Certain other of the journalistic +eccentricities I speak of are unconscious and are perhaps on that account +the more diverting. Point out to the children the difference—in so far +as you’re sure that you yourself perceive it. You must excuse me if +these lines are not very legible; I’m writing them by the light of a +railway lamp which rattles above my left ear; it being only at odd +moments that I can find time to extend my personal researches. You’ll +say this is a very odd moment indeed when I tell you I’m in bed in a +sleeping-car. I occupy the upper berth (I will explain to you the +arrangement when I return) while the lower forms the couch—the jolts are +fearful—of an unknown female. You’ll be very anxious for my explanation, +but I assure you that the circumstance I mention is the custom of the +country. I myself am assured that a lady may travel in this manner all +over the Union (the Union of States) without a loss of consideration. In +case of her occupying the upper berth I presume it would be different, +but I must make inquiries on this point. Whether it be the fact that a +mysterious being of another sex has retired to rest behind the same +curtains, or whether it be the swing of the train, which rushes through +the air with very much the same movement as the tail of a kite, the +situation is at the best so anomalous that I’m unable to sleep. A +ventilator’s open just over my head, and a lively draught, mingled with a +drizzle of cinders, pours in through this dubious advantage. (I will +describe to you its mechanism on my return.) If I had occupied the lower +berth I should have had a whole window to myself, and by drawing back the +blind—a safe proceeding at the dead of night—I should have been able, by +the light of an extraordinary brilliant moon, to see a little better what +I write. The question occurs to me, however, would the lady below me in +that case have ascended to the upper berth? (You know my old taste for +hypothetic questions.) I incline to think (from what I have seen) that +she would simply have requested me to evacuate my own couch. (The ladies +in this country ask for anything they want.) In this case, I suppose, I +should have had an extensive view of the country, which, from what I saw +of it before I turned in (while the sharer of my privacy was going to +bed) offered a rather ragged expanse dotted with little white wooden +houses that resembled in the moonshine large pasteboard boxes. I’ve been +unable to ascertain as precisely as I should wish by whom these modest +residences are occupied; for they are too small to be the homes of +country gentlemen, there’s no peasantry here, and (in New England, for +all the corn comes from the far West) there are no yeomen nor farmers. +The information one receives in this country is apt to be rather +conflicting, but I’m determined to sift the mystery to the bottom. + +I’ve already noted down a multitude of facts bearing on the points that +interest me most—the operation of the school-boards, the co-education of +the sexes, the elevation of the tone of the lower classes, the +participation of the latter in political life. Political life indeed is +almost wholly confined to the lower middle class and the upper section of +the lower class. In fact in some of the large towns the lowest order of +all participates considerably—a very interesting phase, to which I shall +give more attention. It’s very gratifying to see the taste for public +affairs pervading so many social strata, but the indifference of the +gentry is a fact not to be lightly considered. It may be objected +perhaps that there are no gentry; and it’s very true that I’ve not yet +encountered a character of the type of Lord Bottomley—a type which I’m +free to confess I should be sorry to see disappear from our English +system, if system it may be called where so much is the growth of blind +and incoherent forces. It’s nevertheless obvious that an idle and +luxurious class exists in this country and that it’s less exempt than in +our own from the reproach of preferring inglorious ease to the +furtherance of liberal ideas. It’s rapidly increasing, and I’m not sure +that the indefinite growth of the dilettante spirit, in connexion with +large and lavishly-expended wealth, is an unmixed good even in a society +in which freedom of development has obtained so many interesting +triumphs. The fact that this body is not represented in the governing +class is perhaps as much the result of the jealousy with which it is +viewed by the more earnest workers as of its own (I dare not perhaps +apply a harsher term than) levity. Such at least is the impression made +on me in the Middle States and in New England; in the South-west, the +North-west and the far West it will doubtless be liable to correction. +These divisions are probably new to you; but they are the general +denomination of large and flourishing communities, with which I hope to +make myself at least superficially acquainted. The fatigue of +traversing, as I habitually do, three or four hundred miles at a bound, +is of course considerable; but there is usually much to feed the mind by +the way. The conductors of the trains, with whom I freely converse, are +often men of vigorous and original views and even of some social +eminence. One of them a few days ago gave me a letter of introduction to +his brother-in-law, who’s president of a Western University. Don’t have +any fear therefore that I’m not in the best society! + +The arrangements for travelling are as a general thing extremely +ingenious, as you will probably have inferred from what I told you above; +but it must at the same time be conceded that some of them are more +ingenious than happy. Some of the facilities with regard to luggage, the +transmission of parcels and the like are doubtless very useful when +thoroughly mastered, but I’ve not yet succeeded in availing myself of +them without disaster. There are on the other hand no cabs and no +porters, and I’ve calculated that I’ve myself carried my +_impedimenta_—which, you know, are somewhat numerous, and from which I +can’t bear to be separated—some seventy or eighty miles. I have +sometimes thought it was a great mistake not to bring Plummeridge—he +would have been useful on such occasions. On the other hand the +startling question would have presented itself of who would have carried +Plummeridge’s portmanteau? He would have been useful indeed for brushing +and packing my clothes and getting me my tub; I travel with a large tin +one—there are none to be obtained at the inns—and the transport of this +receptacle often presents the most insoluble difficulties. It is often +too an object of considerable embarrassment in arriving at private +houses, where the servants have less reserve of manner than in England; +and to tell you the truth I’m by no means certain at the present moment +that the tub has been placed in the train with me. “On board” the train +is the consecrated phrase here; it’s an allusion to the tossing and +pitching of the concatenation of cars, so similar to that of a vessel in +a storm. As I was about to inquire, however, Who would get Plummeridge +_his_ tub and attend to his little comforts? We couldn’t very well make +our appearance, on arriving for a visit, with _two_ of the utensils I’ve +named; even if as regards a single one I have had the courage, as I may +say, of a lifelong habit. It would hardly be expected that we should +both use the same; though there have been occasions in my travels as to +which I see no way of blinking the fact that Plummeridge would have had +to sit down to dinner with me. Such a contingency would completely have +unnerved him, so that on the whole it was doubtless the wiser part to +leave him respectfully touching his hat on the tender in the Mersey. No +one touches his hat over here, and, deem this who will the sign of a more +advanced social order, I confess that when I see poor Plummeridge again +that familiar little gesture—familiar I mean only in the sense of one’s +immemorial acquaintance with it—will give me a measurable satisfaction. +You’ll see from what I tell you that democracy is not a mere word in this +country, and I could give you many more instances of its universal reign. +This, however, is what we come here to look at and, in so far as there +appears proper occasion, to admire; though I’m by no means sure that we +can hope to establish within an appreciable time a corresponding change +in the somewhat rigid fabric of English manners. I’m not even inclined +to believe such a change desirable; you know this is one of the points on +which I don’t as yet see my way to going so far as Lord B. I’ve always +held that there’s a certain social ideal of inequality as well as of +equality, and if I’ve found the people of this country, as a general +thing, quite equal to each other, I’m not quite ready to go so far as to +say that, as a whole, they’re equal to—pardon that dreadful blot! The +movement of the train and the precarious nature of the light—it is close +to my nose and most offensive—would, I flatter myself, long since have +got the better of a less resolute diarist! + +What I was distinctly _not_ prepared for is the very considerable body of +aristocratic feeling that lurks beneath this republican simplicity. I’ve +on several occasions been made the confidant of these romantic but +delusive vagaries, of which the stronghold appears to be the Empire +City—a slang name for the rich and predominant, but unprecedentedly +maladministered and disillusioned New York. I was assured in many +quarters that this great desperate eternally-swindled city at least is +ripe, everything else failing, for the monarchical experiment or +revolution, and that if one of the Queen’s sons would come over to sound +the possibilities he would meet with the highest encouragement. This +information was given me in strict confidence, with closed doors, as it +were; it reminded me a good deal of the dreams of the old Jacobites when +they whispered their messages to the king across the water. I doubt, +however, whether these less excusable visionaries will be able to secure +the services of a Pretender, for I fear that in such a case he would +encounter a still more fatal Culloden. I have given a good deal of time, +as I told you, to the educational system, and have visited no fewer than +one hundred and forty-three schools and colleges. It’s extraordinary the +number of persons who are being educated in this country; and yet at the +same time the tone of the people is less scholarly than one might expect. +A lady a few days since described to me her daughter as being always “on +the go,” which I take to be a jocular way of saying that the young lady +was very fond of paying visits. Another person, the wife of a United +States Senator, informed me that if I should go to Washington in January +I should be quite “in the swim.” I don’t regard myself as slow to grasp +new meanings, however whimsical; but in this case the lady’s explanation +made her phrase rather more than less ambiguous. To say that I’m on the +go describes very accurately my own situation. I went yesterday to the +Poganuc High School, to hear fifty-seven boys and girls recite in unison +a most remarkable ode to the American flag, and shortly afterward +attended a ladies’ luncheon at which some eighty or ninety of the sex +were present. There was only one individual in trousers—his trousers, by +the way, though he brought several pair, begin to testify to the fury of +his movements! The men in America absent themselves systematically from +this meal, at which ladies assemble in large numbers to discuss +religious, political and social topics. + +Immense female symposia at which every delicacy is provided are one of +the most striking features of American life, and would seem to prove that +our sex is scarcely so indispensable in the scheme of creation as it +sometimes supposes. I’ve been admitted on the footing of an +Englishman—“just to show you some of our bright women,” the hostess +yesterday remarked. (“Bright” here has the meaning of _intellectually +remarkable_.) I noted indeed the frequency of the predominantly +cerebral—as they call it here “brainy”—type. These rather oddly +invidious banquets are organised according to age, for I’ve also been +present as an inquiring stranger at several “girls’ lunches,” from which +married ladies are rigidly excluded, but here the fair revellers were +equally numerous and equally “bright.” There’s a good deal I should like +to tell you about my study of the educational question, but my position’s +now somewhat cramped, and I must dismiss the subject briefly. My leading +impression is that the children are better educated (in proportion of +course) than the adults. The position of a child is on the whole one of +great distinction. There’s a popular ballad of which the refrain, if I’m +not mistaken, is “Make me a child again just for to-night!” and which +seems to express the sentiment of regret for lost privileges. At all +events they are a powerful and independent class, and have organs, of +immense circulation, in the press. They are often extremely “bright.” +I’ve talked with a great many teachers, most of them lady-teachers, as +they are here called. The phrase doesn’t mean teachers of ladies, as you +might suppose, but applies to the sex of the instructress, who often has +large classes of young men under her control. I was lately introduced to +a young woman of twenty-three who occupies the chair of Moral Philosophy +and Belles-Lettres in a Western University and who told me with the +utmost frankness that she’s “just adored” by the undergraduates. This +young woman was the daughter of a petty trader in one of the +South-western States and had studied at Amanda College in Missourah, an +institution at which young people of the two sexes pursue their education +together. She was very pretty and modest, and expressed a great desire +to see something of English country life, in consequence of which I made +her promise to come down to Thistleton in the event of her crossing the +Atlantic. She’s not the least like Gwendolen or Charlotte, and I’m not +prepared to say how they would get on with her; the boys would probably +do better. Still, I think her acquaintance would be of value to dear +Miss Gulp, and the two might pass their time very pleasantly in the +school-room. I grant you freely that those I have seen here are much +less comfortable than the school-room at Thistleton. Has Charlotte, by +the way, designed any more texts for the walls? I’ve been extremely +interested in my visit to Philadelphia, where I saw several thousand +little red houses with white steps, occupied by intelligent artisans and +arranged (in streets) on the rectangular system. Improved +cooking-stoves, rosewood pianos, gas and hot water, esthetic furniture +and complete sets of the British Essayists. A tramway through every +street; every block of exactly equal length; blocks and houses +economically lettered and numbered. There’s absolutely no loss of time +and no need of looking for, or indeed _at_, anything. The mind always on +one’s object; it’s very delightful. + + + +V +FROM LOUIS LEVERETT IN BOSTON TO HARVARD TREMONT IN PARIS + + + _November_ 1880. + +The scales have turned, my sympathetic Harvard, and the beam that has +lifted you up has dropped me again on this terribly hard spot. I’m +extremely sorry to have missed you in London, but I received your little +note and took due heed of your injunction to let you know how I got on. +I don’t get on at all, my dear Harvard—I’m consumed with the love of the +further shore. I’ve been so long away that I’ve dropped out of my place +in this little Boston world and the shallow tides of New England life +have closed over it. I’m a stranger here and find it hard to believe I +ever was a native. It’s very hard, very cold, very vacant. I think of +your warm rich Paris; I think of the Boulevard Saint-Michel on the mild +spring evenings; I see the little corner by the window (of the Café de la +Jeunesse) where I used to sit: the doors are open, the soft deep breath +of the great city comes in. The sense is of a supreme splendour and an +incomparable arrangement, yet there’s a kind of tone, of body, in the +radiance; the mighty murmur of the ripest civilisation in the world comes +in; the dear old _peuple de Paris_, the most interesting people in the +world, pass by. I’ve a little book in my pocket; it’s exquisitely +printed, a modern Elzevir. It consists of a lyric cry from the heart of +young France and is full of the sentiment of form. There’s no form here, +dear Harvard; I had no idea how little form there is. I don’t know what +I shall do; I feel so undraped, so uncurtained, so uncushioned; I feel as +if I were sitting in the centre of a mighty “reflector.” A terrible +crude glare is over everything; the earth looks peeled and excoriated; +the raw heavens seem to bleed with the quick hard light. + +I’ve not got back my rooms in West Cedar Street; they’re occupied by a +mesmeric healer. I’m staying at an hotel and it’s all very dreadful. +Nothing for one’s self, nothing for one’s preferences and habits. No one +to receive you when you arrive; you push in through a crowd, you edge up +to a counter, you write your name in a horrible book where every one may +come and stare at it and finger it. A man behind the counter stares at +you in silence; his stare seems to say “What the devil do _you_ want?” +But after this stare he never looks at you again. He tosses down a key +at you; he presses a bell; a savage Irishman arrives. “Take him away,” +he seems to say to the Irishman; but it’s all done in silence; there’s no +answer to your own wild wail—“What’s to be done with me, please?” “Wait +and you’ll see” the awful silence seems to say. There’s a great crowd +round you, but there’s also a great stillness; every now and then you +hear some one expectorate. There are a thousand people in this huge and +hideous structure; they feed together in a big white-walled room. It’s +lighted by a thousand gas-jets and heated by cast-iron screens which +vomit forth torrents of scorching air. The temperature’s terrible; the +atmosphere’s more so; the furious light and heat seem to intensify the +dreadful definiteness. When things are so ugly they shouldn’t be so +definite, and they’re terribly ugly here. There’s no mystery in the +corners, there’s no light and shade in the types. The people are haggard +and joyless; they look as if they had no passions, no tastes, no senses. +They sit feeding in silence under the dry hard light; occasionally I hear +the high firm note of a child. The servants are black and familiar; +their faces shine as they shuffle about; there are blue tones in their +dark masks. They’ve no manners; they address but don’t answer you; they +plant themselves at your elbow (it rubs their clothes as you eat) and +watch you as if your proceedings were strange. They deluge you with iced +water; it’s the only thing they’ll bring you; if you look round to summon +them they’ve gone for more. If you read the newspaper—which I don’t, +gracious heaven, I can’t!—they hang over your shoulder and peruse it +also. I always fold it up and present it to them; the newspapers here +are indeed for an African taste. + +Then there are long corridors defended by gusts of hot air; down the +middle swoops a pale little girl on parlour skates. “Get out of my way!” +she shrieks as she passes; she has ribbons in her hair and frills on her +dress; she makes the tour of the immense hotel. I think of Puck, who put +a girdle round the earth in forty minutes, and wonder what _he_ said as +he flitted by. A black waiter marches past me bearing a tray that he +thrusts into my spine as he goes. It’s laden with large white jugs; they +tinkle as he moves, and I recognise the unconsoling fluid. We’re dying +of iced water, of hot air, of flaring gas. I sit in my room thinking of +these things—this room of mine which is a chamber of pain. The walls are +white and bare, they shine in the rays of a horrible chandelier of +imitation bronze which depends from the middle of the ceiling. It flings +a patch of shadow on a small table covered with white marble, of which +the genial surface supports at the present moment the sheet of paper I +thus employ for you; and when I go to bed (I like to read in bed, +Harvard) it becomes an object of mockery and torment. It dangles at +inaccessible heights; it stares me in the face; it flings the light on +the covers of my book but not upon the page—the little French Elzevir I +love so well. I rise and put out the gas—when my room becomes even +lighter than before. Then a crude illumination from the hall, from the +neighbouring room, pours through the glass openings that surmount the two +doors of my apartment. It covers my bed, where I toss and groan; it +beats in through my closed lids; it’s accompanied by the most vulgar, +though the most human, sounds. I spring up to call for some help, some +remedy; but there’s no bell and I feel desolate and weak. There’s only a +strange orifice in the wall, through which the traveller in distress may +transmit his appeal. I fill it with incoherent sounds, and sounds more +incoherent yet come back to me. I gather at last their meaning; they +appear to constitute an awful inquiry. A hollow impersonal voice wishes +to know what I want, and the very question paralyses me. I want +everything—yet I want nothing, nothing this hard impersonality can give! +I want my little corner of Paris; I want the rich, the deep, the dark Old +World; I want to be out of this horrible place. Yet I can’t confide all +this to that mechanical tube; it would be of no use; a barbarous laugh +would come up from the office. Fancy appealing in these sacred, these +intimate moments to an “office”; fancy calling out into indifferent space +for a candle, for a curtain! I pay incalculable sums in this dreadful +house, and yet haven’t a creature to assist me. I fling myself back on +my couch and for a long time afterwards the orifice in the wall emits +strange murmurs and rumblings. It seems unsatisfied and indignant and is +evidently scolding me for my vagueness. My vagueness indeed, dear +Harvard! I loathe their horrible arrangements—isn’t that definite +enough? + +You asked me to tell you whom I see and what I think of my friends. I +haven’t very many; I don’t feel at all _en rapport_. The people are very +good, very serious, very devoted to their work; but there’s a terrible +absence of variety of type. Every one’s Mr. Jones, Mr. Brown, and every +one looks like Mr. Jones and Mr. Brown. They’re thin, they’re diluted in +the great tepid bath of Democracy! They lack completeness of identity; +they’re quite without modelling. No, they’re not beautiful, my poor +Harvard; it must be whispered that they’re not beautiful. You may say +that they’re as beautiful as the French, as the Germans; but I can’t +agree with you there. The French, the Germans, have the greatest beauty +of all, the beauty of their ugliness—the beauty of the strange, the +grotesque. These people are not even ugly—they’re only plain. Many of +the girls are pretty, but to be only pretty is (to my sense) to be plain. +Yet I’ve had some talk. I’ve seen a young woman. She was on the +steamer, and I afterwards saw her in New York—a mere maiden thing, yet a +peculiar type, a real personality: a great deal of modelling, a great +deal of colour, and withal something elusive and ambiguous. She was not, +however, of this country; she was a compound of far-off things. But she +was looking for something here—like me. We found each other, and for a +moment that was enough. I’ve lost her now; I’m sorry, because she liked +to listen to me. She has passed away; I shall not see her again. She +liked to listen to me; she almost understood. + + + +VI +FROM M. GUSTAVE LEJAUNE OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY IN WASHINGTON TO M. ADOLPHE +BOUCHE IN PARIS + + + _December_ 1880. + +I give you my little notes; you must make allowances for haste, for bad +inns, for the perpetual scramble, for ill-humour. Everywhere the same +impression—the platitude of unbalanced democracy intensified by the +platitude of the spirit of commerce. Everything on an immense +scale—everything illustrated by millions of examples. My brother-in-law +is always busy; he has appointments, inspections, interviews, disputes. +The people, it appears, are incredibly sharp in conversation, in +argument; they wait for you in silence at the corner of the road and then +suddenly discharge their revolver. If you fall they empty your pockets; +the only chance is to shoot them first. With this no amenities, no +preliminaries, no manners, no care for the appearance. I wander about +while my brother’s occupied; I lounge along the streets; I stop at the +corners; I look into the shops; _je regarde passer les femmes_. It’s an +easy country to see; one sees everything there is; the civilisation’s +skin deep; you don’t have to dig. This positive practical pushing +bourgeoisie is always about its business; it lives in the street, in the +hotel, in the train; one’s always in a crowd—there are seventy-five +people in the tramway. They sit in your lap; they stand on your toes; +when they wish to pass they simply push you. Everything in silence; they +know that silence is golden and they’ve the worship of gold. When the +conductor wishes your fare he gives you a poke, very serious, without a +word. As for the types—but there’s only one, they’re all variations of +the same—the commis-voyageur _minus_ the gaiety. The women are often +pretty; you meet the young ones in the streets, in the trains, in search +of a husband. They look at you frankly, coldly, judicially, to see if +you’ll serve; but they don’t want what you might think (_du moines on me +l’assure_); they only want the husband. A Frenchman may mistake; he +needs to be sure he’s right, and I always make sure. They begin at +fifteen; the mother sends them out; it lasts all day (with an interval +for dinner at a pastry-cook’s); sometimes it goes on for ten years. If +they haven’t by that time found him they give it up; they make place for +the _cadettes_, as the number of women is enormous. No salons, no +society, no conversation; people don’t receive at home; the young girls +have to look for the husband where they can. It’s no disgrace not to +find him—several have never done so. They continue to go about +unmarried—from the force of habit, from the love of movement, without +hopes, without regrets. There’s no imagination, no sensibility, no +desire for the convent. + +We’ve made several journeys—few of less than three hundred miles. +Enormous trains, enormous _wagons_, with beds and lavatories, with +negroes who brush you with a big broom, as if they were grooming a horse. +A bounding movement, a roaring noise, a crowd of people who look horribly +tired, a boy who passes up and down hurling pamphlets and sweetmeats into +your face: that’s an American journey. There are windows in the +_wagons_—enormous like everything else; but there’s nothing to see. The +country’s a void—no features, no objects, no details, nothing to show you +that you’re in one place more than another. _Aussi_ you’re not in one +place, you’re everywhere, anywhere; the train goes a hundred miles an +hour. The cities are all the same; little houses ten feet high or else +big ones two hundred; tramways, telegraph-poles, enormous signs, holes in +the pavement, oceans of mud, commis-voyageurs, young ladies looking for +the husband. On the other hand no beggars and no _cocottes_—none at +least that you see. A colossal mediocrity, except (my brother-in-law +tells me) in the machinery, which is magnificent. Naturally no +architecture (they make houses of wood and of iron), no art, no +literature, no theatre. I’ve opened some of the books—_ils ne se +laissent pas lire_. No form, no matter, no style, no general ideas: they +seem written for children and young ladies. The most successful (those +that they praise most) are the facetious; they sell in thousands of +editions. I’ve looked into some of the most _vantés_; but you need to be +forewarned to know they’re amusing; grins through a horse-collar, +burlesques of the Bible, _des plaisanteries de croquemort_. They’ve a +novelist with pretensions to literature who writes about the chase for +the husband and the adventures of the rich Americans in our corrupt old +Europe, where their primeval candour puts the Europeans to shame. _C’est +proprement écrit_, but it’s terribly pale. What isn’t pale is the +newspapers—enormous, like everything else (fifty columns of +advertisements), and full of the _commérages_ of a continent. And such a +tone, _grand Dieu_! The amenities, the personalities, the +recriminations, are like so many _coups de revolver_. Headings six +inches tall; correspondences from places one never heard of; telegrams +from Europe about Sarah Bernhardt; little paragraphs about nothing at +all—the _menu_ of the neighbour’s dinner; articles on the European +situation _à pouffer de rire_; all the _tripotage_ of local politics. +The _reportage_ is incredible; I’m chased up and down by the +interviewers. The matrimonial infelicities of M. and Madame X. (they +give the name) _tout au long_, with every detail—not in six lines, +discreetly veiled, with an art of insinuation, as with us; but with all +the facts (or the fictions), the letters, the dates, the places, the +hours. I open a paper at hazard and find _au beau milieu_, apropos of +nothing, the announcement: “Miss Susan Green has the longest nose in +Western New York.” Miss Susan Green (_je me renseigne_) is a celebrated +authoress, and the Americans have the reputation of spoiling their women. +They spoil them _à coups de poing_. + +We’ve seen few interiors (no one speaks French); but if the newspapers +give an idea of the domestic _mœurs_, the _mœurs_ must be curious. The +passport’s abolished, but they’ve printed my _signalement_ in these +sheets—perhaps for the young ladies who look for the husband. We went +one night to the theatre; the piece was French (they are the only ones) +but the acting American—too American; we came out in the middle. The +want of taste is incredible. An Englishman whom I met tells me that even +the language corrupts itself from day to day; the Englishman ceases to +understand. It encourages me to find I’m not the only one. There are +things every day that one can’t describe. Such is Washington, where we +arrived this morning, coming from Philadelphia. My brother-in-law wishes +to see the Bureau of Patents, and on our arrival he went to look at his +machines while I walked about the streets and visited the Capitol! The +human machine is what interests me most. I don’t even care for the +political—for that’s what they call their Government here, “the machine.” +It operates very roughly, and some day evidently will explode. It is +true that you’d never suspect they _have_ a government; this is the +principal seat, but, save for three or four big buildings, most of them +_affreux_, it looks like a settlement of negroes. No movement, no +officials, no authority, no embodiment of the State. Enormous streets, +_comme toujours_, lined with little red houses where nothing ever passes +but the tramway. The Capitol—a vast structure, false classic, white +marble, iron and stucco, which has _assez grand air_—must be seen to be +appreciated. The goddess of liberty on the top, dressed in a bear’s +skin; their liberty over here is the liberty of bears. You go into the +Capitol as you would into a railway station; you walk about as you would +in the Palais Royal. No functionaries, no door-keepers, no officers, no +uniforms, no badges, no reservations, no authority—nothing but a crowd of +shabby people circulating in a labyrinth of spittoons. We’re too much +governed perhaps in France; but at least we have a certain incarnation of +the national conscience, of the national dignity. The dignity’s absent +here, and I’m told the public conscience is an abyss. “_L’état c’est +moi_” even—I like that better than the spittoons. These implements are +architectural, monumental; they’re the only monuments. _En somme_ the +country’s interesting, now that we too have the Republic; it is the +biggest illustration, the biggest warning. It’s the last word of +democracy, and that word is—platitude. It’s very big, very rich, and +perfectly ugly. A Frenchman couldn’t live here; for life with us, after +all, at the worst, is a sort of appreciation. Here one has nothing to +appreciate. As for the people, they’re the English _minus_ the +conventions. You can fancy what remains. The women, _pourtant_, are +sometimes rather well turned. There was one at Philadelphia—I made her +acquaintance by accident—whom it’s probable I shall see again. She’s not +looking for the husband; she has already got one. It was at the hotel; I +think the husband doesn’t matter. A Frenchman, as I’ve said, may +mistake, and he needs to be sure he’s right. _Aussi_ I always make sure! + + + +VII +FROM MARCELLUS COCKEREL IN WASHINGTON TO MRS. COOLER, NÉE COCKEREL, AT +OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA + + + _October_ 1880. + +I ought to have written you long before this, for I’ve had your last +excellent letter these four months in my hands. The first half of that +time I was still in Europe, the last I’ve spent on my native soil. I +think accordingly my silence is owing to the fact that over there I was +too miserable to write and that here I’ve been too happy. I got back the +1st of September—you’ll have seen it in the papers. Delightful country +where one sees everything in the papers—the big familiar vulgar +good-natured delightful papers, none of which has any reputation to keep +up for anything but getting the news! I really think that has had as +much to do as anything else with my satisfaction at getting home—the +difference in what they call the “tone of the press.” In Europe it’s too +dreary—the sapience, the solemnity, the false respectability, the +verbosity, the long disquisitions on superannuated subjects. Here the +newspapers are like the railroad-trains which carry everything that comes +to the station and have only the religion of punctuality. As a woman, +however, you probably detest them; you think they’re (the great word) +vulgar. I admitted it just now, and I’m very happy to have an early +opportunity to announce to you that that idea has quite ceased to have +any terrors for me. There are some conceptions to which the female mind +can never rise. Vulgarity’s a stupid superficial question-begging +accusation, which has become to-day the easiest refuge of mediocrity. +Better than anything else it saves people the trouble of thinking, and +anything which does that succeeds. You must know that in these last +three years in Europe I’ve become terribly vulgar myself; that’s one +service my travels have rendered me. By three years in Europe I mean +three years in foreign parts altogether, for I spent several months of +that time in Japan, India and the rest of the East. Do you remember when +you bade me good-bye in San Francisco the night before I embarked for +Yokohama? You foretold that I’d take such a fancy to foreign life that +America would never see me more, and that if you should wish to see me +(an event you were good enough to regard as possible) you’d have to make +a rendezvous in Paris or in Rome. I think we made one—which you never +kept; but I shall never make another for those cities. It was in Paris, +however, that I got your letter; I remember the moment as well as if it +were (to my honour) much more recent. You must know that among many +places I dislike Paris carries the palm. I’m bored to death there; it’s +the home of every humbug. The life is full of that false comfort which +is worse than discomfort, and the small fat irritable people give me the +shivers. + +I had been making these reflexions even more devoutly than usual one very +tiresome evening toward the beginning of last summer when, as I +re-entered my hotel at ten o’clock, the little reptile of a portress +handed me your gracious lines. I was in a villainous humour. I had been +having an overdressed dinner in a stuffy restaurant and had gone from +there to a suffocating theatre, where, by way of amusement, I saw a play +in which blood and lies were the least of the horrors. The theatres over +there are insupportable; the atmosphere’s pestilential. People sit with +their elbows in your sides; they squeeze past you every half hour. It +was one of my bad moments—I have a great many in Europe. The +conventional mechanical play, all in falsetto, which I seemed to have +seen a thousand times; the horrible faces of the people, the pushing +bullying _ouvreuse_ with her false politeness and her real rapacity, +drove me out of the place at the end of an hour; and as it was too early +to go home, I sat down before a café on the Boulevard, where they served +me a glass of sour watery beer. There on the Boulevard, in the summer +night, life itself was even uglier than the play, and it wouldn’t do for +me to tell you what I saw. Besides, I was sick of the Boulevard, with +its eternal grimace and the deadly sameness of the _article de Paris_, +which pretends to be so various—the shop-windows a wilderness of rubbish +and the passers-by a procession of manikins. Suddenly it came over me +that I was supposed to be amusing myself—my face was a yard long—and that +you probably at that moment were saying to your husband: “He stays away +so long! What a good time he must be having!” The idea was the first +thing that had made me smile for a month; I got up and walked home, +reflecting as I went that I was “seeing Europe” and that after all one +_must_ see Europe. It was because I had been convinced of this that I +had come out, and it’s because the operation has been brought to a close +that I’ve been so happy for the last eight weeks. I was very +conscientious about it, and, though your letter that night made me +abominably homesick, I held out to the end, knowing it to be once for +all. I shan’t trouble Europe again; I shall see America for the rest of +my days. My long delay has had the advantage that now at least I can +give you my impressions—I don’t mean of Europe; impressions of Europe are +easy to get—but of this country as it strikes the reinstated exile. Very +likely you’ll think them queer; but keep my letter and twenty years hence +they’ll be quite commonplace. They won’t even be vulgar. It was very +deliberate, my going round the world. I knew that one ought to see for +one’s self and that I should have eternity, so to speak, to rest. I +travelled energetically; I went everywhere and saw everything; took as +many letters as possible and made as many acquaintances. In short I held +my nose to the grindstone and here I am back. + +Well, the upshot of it all is that I’ve got rid of a superstition. We +have so many that one the less—perhaps the biggest of all—makes a real +difference in one’s comfort. The one in question—of course you have +it—is that there’s no salvation but through Europe. Our salvation is +here, if we have eyes to see it, and the salvation of Europe into the +bargain; that is if Europe’s to be saved, which I rather doubt. Of +course you’ll call me a bird of freedom, a vulgar patriot, a waver of the +stars and stripes; but I’m in the delightful position of not minding in +the least what any one calls me. I haven’t a mission; I don’t want to +preach; I’ve simply arrived at a state of mind. I’ve got Europe off my +back. You’ve no idea how it simplifies things and how jolly it makes me +feel. Now I can live, now I can talk. If we wretched Americans could +only say once for all “Oh Europe be hanged!” we should attend much better +to our proper business. We’ve simply to mind that business and the rest +will look after itself. You’ll probably inquire what it is I like better +over here, and I’ll answer that it’s simply—life. Disagreeables for +disagreeables I prefer our own. The way I’ve been bored and bullied in +foreign parts, and the way I’ve had to say I found it pleasant! For a +good while this appeared to be a sort of congenital obligation, but one +fine day it occurred to me that there was no obligation at all and that +it would ease me immensely to admit to myself that (for me at least) all +those things had no importance. I mean the things they rub into you over +there; the tiresome international topics, the petty politics, the stupid +social customs, the baby-house scenery. The vastness and freshness of +this American world, the great scale and great pace of our development, +the good sense and good nature of the people, console me for there being +no cathedrals and no Titians. I hear nothing about Prince Bismarck and +Gambetta, about the Emperor William and the Czar of Russia, about Lord +Beaconsfield and the Prince of Wales. I used to get so tired of their +Mumbo-Jumbo of a Bismarck, of his secrets and surprises, his mysterious +intentions and oracular words. They revile us for our party politics; +but what are all the European jealousies and rivalries, their armaments +and their wars, their rapacities and their mutual lies, but the intensity +of the spirit of party? What question, what interest, what idea, what +need of mankind, is involved in any of these things? Their big pompous +armies drawn up in great silly rows, their gold lace, their salaams, +their hierarchies, seem a pastime for children: there’s a sense of humour +and of reality over here that laughs at all that. + +Yes, we’re nearer the reality, nearer what they’ll all have to come to. +The questions of the future are social questions, which the Bismarcks and +Beaconsfields are very much afraid to see settled; and the sight of a row +of supercilious potentates holding their peoples like their personal +property and bristling all over, to make a mutual impression, with +feathers and sabres, strikes us as a mixture of the grotesque and the +abominable. What do we care for the mutual impressions of potentates who +amuse themselves with sitting on people? Those things are their own +affair, and they ought to be shut up in a dark room to have it out +together. Once one feels, over here, that the great questions of the +future are social questions, that a mighty tide is sweeping the world to +democracy, and that this country is the biggest stage on which the drama +can be enacted, the fashionable European topics seem petty and parochial. +They talk about things that we’ve settled ages ago, and the solemnity +with which they propound to you their little domestic embarrassments +makes a heavy draft on one’s good nature. In England they were talking +about the Hares and Rabbits Bill, about the extension of the County +Franchise, about the Dissenters’ Burials, about the Deceased Wife’s +Sister, about the abolition of the House of Lords, about heaven knows +what ridiculous little measure for the propping-up of their ridiculous +little country. And they call _us_ provincial! It’s hard to sit and +look respectable while people discuss the utility of the House of Lords +and the beauty of a State Church, and it’s only in a dowdy musty +civilisation that you’ll find them doing such things. The lightness and +clearness of the social air—_that’s_ the great relief in these parts. +The gentility of bishops, the propriety of parsons, even the +impressiveness of a restored cathedral, give less of a charm to life than +that. I used to be furious with the bishops and beadles, with the +humbuggery of the whole affair, which every one was conscious of but +which people agreed not to expose because they’d be compromised all +round. The convenience of life in our conditions, the quick and simple +arrangements, the absence of the spirit of routine, are a blessed change +from the stupid stiffness with which I struggled for two long years. +There were people with swords and cockades who used to order me about; +for the simplest operation of life I had to kootoo to some bloated +official. When it was a question of my doing a little differently from +others the bloated official gasped as if I had given him a blow on the +stomach; he needed to take a week to think of it. + +On the other hand it’s impossible to take an American by surprise; he’s +ashamed to confess he hasn’t the wit to do a thing another man has had +the wit to think of. Besides being as good as his neighbour he must +therefore be as clever—which is an affliction only to people who are +afraid he may be cleverer. If this general efficiency and spontaneity of +the people—the union of the sense of freedom with the love of +knowledge—isn’t the very essence of a high civilisation I don’t know what +a high civilisation is. I felt this greater ease on my first railroad +journey—felt the blessing of sitting in a train where I could move about, +where I could stretch my legs and come and go, where I had a seat and a +window to myself, where there were chairs and tables and food and drink. +The villainous little boxes on the European trains, in which you’re stuck +down in a corner with doubled-up knees, opposite to a row of people, +often most offensive types, who stare at you for ten hours on end—these +were part of my two years’ ordeal. The large free way of doing things +here is everywhere a pleasure. In London, at my hotel, they used to come +to me on Saturday to make me order my Sunday’s dinner, and when I asked +for a sheet of paper they put it into the bill. The meagreness, the +stinginess, the perpetual expectation of a sixpence, used to exasperate +me. Of course I saw a great many people who were pleasant; but as I’m +writing to you and not to one of them I may say that they were dreadfully +apt to be dull. The imagination among the people I see here is more +flexible, and then they have the advantage of a larger horizon. It’s not +bounded on the north by the British aristocracy and on the south by the +_scrutin de liste_. (I mix up the countries a little, but they’re not +worth the keeping apart.) The absence of little conventional +measurements, of little cut-and-dried judgements, is an immense +refreshment. We’re more analytic, more discriminating, more familiar +with realities. As for manners, there are bad manners everywhere, but an +aristocracy is bad manners organised. (I don’t mean that they mayn’t be +polite among themselves, but they’re rude to every one else.) The sight +of all these growing millions simply minding their business is impressive +to me—more so than all the gilt buttons and padded chests of the Old +World; and there’s a certain powerful type of “practical” American +(you’ll find him chiefly in the West) who doesn’t “blow” as I do (I’m not +practical) but who quietly feels that he has the Future in his vitals—a +type that strikes me more than any I met in your favourite countries. + +Of course you’ll come back to the cathedrals and Titians, but there’s a +thought that helps one to do without them—the thought that, though we’ve +an immense deal of pie-eating plainness, we’ve little misery, little +squalor, little degradation. There’s no regular wife-beating class, and +there are none of the stultified peasants of whom it takes so many to +make a European noble. The people here are more conscious of things; +they invent, they act, they answer for themselves; they’re not (I speak +of social matters) tied up by authority and precedent. We shall have all +the Titians by and by, and we shall move over a few cathedrals. You had +better stay here if you want to have the best. Of course I’m a roaring +Yankee; but you’ll call me that if I say the least, so I may as well take +my ease and say the most. Washington’s a most entertaining place; and +here at least, at the seat of government, one isn’t overgoverned. In +fact there’s no government at all to speak of; it seems too good to be +true. The first day I was here I went to the Capitol, and it took me +ever so long to figure to myself that I had as good a right there as any +one else—that the whole magnificent pile (it _is_ magnificent, by the +way) was in fact my own. In Europe one doesn’t rise to such conceptions, +and my spirit had been broken in Europe. The doors were gaping wide—I +walked all about; there were no door-keepers, no officers nor flunkeys, +there wasn’t even a policeman to be seen. It seemed strange not to see a +uniform, if only as a patch of colour. But this isn’t government by +livery. The absence of these things is odd at first; you seem to miss +something, to fancy the machine has stopped. It hasn’t, though; it only +works without fire and smoke. At the end of three days this simple +negative impression, the fact that there are no soldiers nor spies, +nothing but plain black coats, begins to affect the imagination, becomes +vivid, majestic, symbolic. It ends by being more impressive than the +biggest review I saw in Germany. Of course I’m a roaring Yankee; but one +has to take a big brush to copy a big model. The future’s here of +course, but it isn’t only that—the present’s here as well. You’ll +complain that I don’t give you any personal news, but I’m more modest for +myself than for my country. I spent a month in New York and while there +saw a good deal of a rather interesting girl who came over with me in the +steamer and whom for a day or two I thought I should like to marry. But +I shouldn’t. She has been spoiled by Europe—and yet the prime stuff +struck me as so right. + + + +VIII +FROM MISS AURORA CHURCH IN NEW YORK TO MISS WHITESIDE IN PARIS + + + _January_ 1881. + +I told you (after we landed) about my agreement with mamma—that I was to +have my liberty for three months and that if at the end of this time I +shouldn’t have made a good use of it I was to give it back to her. Well, +the time’s up to-day, and I’m very much afraid I haven’t made a good use +of it. In fact I haven’t made any use of it at all—I haven’t got +married, for that’s what mamma meant by our little bargain. She has been +trying to marry me in Europe for years, without a _dot_, and as she has +never (to the best of my knowledge) even come near it, she thought at +last that if she were to leave it to me I might possibly do better. I +couldn’t certainly do worse. Well, my dear, I’ve done very badly—that is +I haven’t done at all. I haven’t even tried. I had an idea that the +_coup_ in question came of itself over here; but it hasn’t come to _me_. +I won’t say I’m disappointed, for I haven’t on the whole seen any one I +should like to marry. When you marry people in these parts they expect +you to love them, and I haven’t seen any one I should like to love. I +don’t know what the reason is, but they’re none of them what I’ve thought +of. It may be that I’ve thought of the impossible; and yet I’ve seen +people in Europe whom I should have liked to marry. It’s true they were +almost always married to some one else. What I _am_ disappointed in is +simply having to give back my liberty. I don’t wish particularly to be +married, and I do wish to do as I like—as I’ve been doing for the last +month. All the same I’m sorry for poor mamma, since nothing has happened +that she wished to happen. To begin with, we’re not appreciated, not +even by the Rucks, who have disappeared in the strange way in which +people over here seem to vanish from the world. We’ve made no sensation; +my new dresses count for nothing (they all have better ones); our +philological and historical studies don’t show. We’ve been told we might +do better in Boston; but on the other hand mamma hears that in Boston the +people only marry their cousins. Then mamma’s out of sorts because the +country’s exceedingly dear and we’ve spent all our money. Moreover, I’ve +neither eloped, nor been insulted, nor been talked about, nor—so far as I +know—deteriorated in manners or character; so that she’s wrong in all her +previsions. I think she would have rather liked me to be insulted. But +I’ve been insulted as little as I’ve been adored. They don’t adore you +over here; they only make you think they’re going to. + +Do you remember the two gentlemen who were on the ship, and who, after we +arrived, came to see me _à tour de rôle_? At first I never dreamed they +were making love to me, though mamma was sure it must be that; then, as +it went on a good while, I thought perhaps it _was_ that—after which I +ended by seeing it wasn’t anything! It was simply conversation—and +conversation a precocious child might have listened to at that. Mr. +Leverett and Mr. Cockerel disappeared one fine day without the smallest +pretension to having broken my heart, I’m sure—though it only depended on +me to think they must have tried to. All the gentlemen are like that; +you can’t tell what they mean; the “passions” don’t rage, the appearances +don’t matter—nobody believes them. Society seems oddly to consist of a +sort of innocent jilting. I think on the whole I _am_ a little +disappointed—I don’t mean about one’s not marrying; I mean about the life +generally. It looks so different at first that you expect it will be +very exciting; and then you find that after all, when you’ve walked out +for a week or two by yourself and driven out with a gentleman in a buggy, +that’s about all there is to it, as they say here. Mamma’s very angry at +not finding more to dislike; she admitted yesterday that, once one has +got a little settled, the country hasn’t even the merit of being hateful. +This has evidently something to do with her suddenly proposing three days +ago that we should “go West.” Imagine my surprise at such an idea coming +from mamma! The people in the pension—who, as usual, wish immensely to +get rid of her—have talked to her about the West, and she has taken it up +with a kind of desperation. You see we must do something; we can’t +simply remain here. We’re rapidly being ruined and we’re not—so to +speak—getting married. Perhaps it will be easier in the West; at any +rate it will be cheaper and the country will have the advantage of being +more hateful. It’s a question between that and returning to Europe, and +for the moment mamma’s balancing. I say nothing: I’m really indifferent; +perhaps I shall marry a pioneer. I’m just thinking how I shall give back +my liberty. It really won’t be possible; I haven’t got it any more; I’ve +given it away to others. Mamma may get it back if she can from _them_! +She comes in at this moment to announce that we must push further—she has +decided for the West. Wonderful mamma! It appears that my real chance +is for a pioneer—they’ve sometimes millions. But fancy us at Oshkosh! + + * * * * * + + _Printed in Great Britain by_ R. & R. CLARKE, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADY BARBARINA*** + + +******* This file should be named 37627-0.txt or 37627-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/7/6/2/37627 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Lady Barbarina + The Siege of London, An International Episode and Other Tales + + +Author: Henry James + + + +Release Date: October 4, 2011 [eBook #37627] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADY BARBARINA*** +</pre> +<p>This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler.</p> +<h1>LADY BARBARINA<br /> +THE SIEGE OF LONDON<br /> +AN INTERNATIONAL EPISODE<br /> +AND OTHER TALES</h1> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br +/> +HENRY JAMES</p> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">MACMILLAN +AND CO., LIMITED</span><br /> +<span class="GutSmall">ST. MARTIN’S STREET, +LONDON</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center">1922</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="pageiv"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. iv</span><span +class="GutSmall">COPYRIGHT.</span></p> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">PRINTED IN +GREAT BRITAIN</span></p> +<h2><a name="pagev"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +v</span>PREFACE</h2> +<p>I have gathered into this volume several short fictions of the +type I have already found it convenient to refer to as +“international”—though I freely recognise, +before the array of my productions, of whatever length and +whatever brevity, the general applicability of that term. +On the interest of <i>contrasted</i> things any painter of life +and manners inevitably much depends, and contrast, fortunately +for him, is easy to seek and to recognise; the only difficulty is +in presenting it again with effect, in extracting from it its +sense and its lesson. The reader of these volumes will +certainly see it offered in no form so frequent or so salient as +that of the opposition of aspects from country to country. +Their author, I am quite aware, would seem struck with no +possibility of contrast in the human lot so great as that +encountered as we turn back and forth between the distinctively +American and the distinctively European outlook. He might +even perhaps on such a showing be represented as scarce aware, +before the human scene, of any other sharp antithesis at +all. He is far from denying that this one has always been +vivid for him; yet there are cases in which, however obvious and +however contributive, its office for the particular demonstration +has been quite secondary, and in which the work is by no means +merely addressed to the illustration of it. These things +have <a name="pagevi"></a><span class="pagenum">p. vi</span>had +in the latter case their proper subject: as, for instance, the +subject of “The Wings of the Dove,” or that of +“The Golden Bowl,” has not been the exhibited +behaviour of certain Americans as Americans, of certain English +persons as English, of certain Romans as Romans. Americans, +Englishmen, Romans are, in the whole matter, agents or victims; +but this is in virtue of an association nowadays so developed, so +easily to be taken for granted, as to have created a new scale of +relations altogether, a state of things from which +<i>emphasised</i> internationalism has either quite dropped or is +well on its way to drop. The dramatic side of human +situations subsists of course on contrast; and when we come to +the two novels I have just named we shall see, for example, just +how they positively provide themselves with that source of +interest. We shall see nevertheless at the same time that +the subject could in each case have been perfectly expressed had +<i>all</i> the persons concerned been only American or only +English or only Roman or whatever.</p> +<p>If it be asked then, in this light, why they deviate from that +natural harmony, why the author resorts to the greater +extravagance when the less would serve, the answer is simply that +the course taken has been, on reflexion, the course of the +greater amusement. That is an explanation adequate, I +admit, only when itself a little explained—but I shall have +due occasion to explain it. Let me for the moment merely +note that the very condition I here glance at—that of the +achieved social fusion, say, without the sense and experience of +which neither “The Wings of the Dove,” nor “The +Golden Bowl,” nor “The Portrait of a Lady,” nor +even, after all, I think, “The Ambassadors,” would +have been written—represents a series of facts of the +highest interest and one that, at this time of day, the +late-coming <a name="pagevii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +vii</span>observer and painter, the novelist sometimes depressed +by all the drawbacks of a literary form overworked and relaxed, +can only rejoice to meet in his path and to measure more and more +as a portent and an opportunity. In proportion as he +intelligently meets it, and more especially in proportion as he +may happen to have “assisted” from far back at so +many of the odd and fresh phenomena involved, must he see a vast +new province, infinitely peopled and infinitely elastic—by +which I mean with incalculable power to grow—annexed to the +kingdom of the dramatist. On this point, however, much more +is to be said than I can touch on by the way—so that I +return to my minor contention; which is that in a whole group of +tales I here collect the principle of illustration has on the +other hand quite definitely been that the idea could <i>not</i> +have expressed itself without the narrower application of +international terms. The contrast in “Lady +Barbarina” depends altogether on the immitigable Anglicism +of this young woman and that equally marked projection of New +York elements and objects which, surrounding and framing her +figure, throws it into eminent relief. She has her personal +qualities, but the very interest, the very curiosity of the +matter is that her imbroglio is able to attest itself with scarce +so much as a reference to them. It plays itself out quite +consistently on the plane of her general, her instinctive, her +exasperatedly conscious ones. The others, the more +intimate, the subtler, the finer—so far as there may have +been such—virtually become, while the story is enacted, not +relevant, though their relevancy might have come up on some other +basis.</p> +<p>But that this is true, always in its degree, of each of the +other contributions to the class before us, we shall sufficiently +make out, I think, as we take them in their order. I am +only struck, I may indeed <a name="pageviii"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. viii</span>parenthesise, with the inveteracy +of the general ground (not to say of the extension I give it) +over which my present remarks play. It does thus in truth +come home to me that, combining and comparing in whatever +proportions and by whatever lights, my “America” and +its products would doubtless, as a theme, have betrayed gaps and +infirmities enough without such a kicking-up of the dramatic dust +(mainly in the foreground) as I could set my “Europe” +in motion for; just as my Europe would probably have limped +across our stage to no great effect of processional state without +an ingenuous young America (constantly seen as ingenuous and +young) to hold up its legendary train. At the same time I +pretend not at all to regret my having had from the very first to +see my workable world all and only as an unnatural mixture. +No mixture, for that matter, is quite unnatural unless quite +sterile, and the particular range of associations that betimes, +to my eyes, blocked out everything else, blocked out aspects and +combinations more simply conditioned, was at least not open to +the reproach of not giving me results. These were but what +they could be, of course; but such as they were, at all events, +here am I at this time of day quite earnestly grouping, +distinguishing, discussing them. The great truth in the +whole connexion, however, is, I think, that one never really +chooses one’s general range of vision—the experience +from which ideas and themes and suggestions spring: this proves +ever what it has had to be, this is one with the very turn +one’s life has taken; so that whenever it +“gives,” whatever it makes us feel and think of, we +regard very much as imposed and inevitable. The subject +thus pressed upon the artist is the necessity of his case and the +fruit of his consciousness; which truth makes and has ever made +of any quarrel with his subject, and <a name="pageix"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. ix</span>stupid attempt to go behind +<i>that</i>, the true stultification of criticism. The +author of these remarks has in any case felt it, from far back, +quite his least stupid course to meet halfway, as it were, the +turn taken and the perceptions engendered by the tenor of his +days. Here it is that he has never pretended to “go +behind”—which would have been for him a deplorable +waste of time. The thing of profit is to have your +experience—to recognise and understand it, and for this +almost any will do; there being surely no absolute ideal about it +beyond getting from it all it has to give. The +artist—for it is of this strange brood we speak—has +but to have his honest sense of life to find it fed at every pore +even as the birds of the air are fed; with more and more to give, +in turn, as a consequence, and, quite by the same law that +governs the responsive affection of a kindly-used animal, in +proportion as more and more is confidently asked.</p> +<p>All of which, however, doubtless wanders a little far from my +mild argument—that of my so grateful and above all so +well-advised primary acceptance of a <i>determined</i> array of +appearances. What I was clearly to be treated to by +fate—with the early-taken ply I have already elsewhere +glanced at—was (should I have the intelligence to embrace +it) some considerable occasion to appreciate the mixture of +manners. So, as I say, there would be a decent economy in +cultivating the intelligence; through the sincerity of which +process I have plucked, I hold, every little flower of a +“subject” pressed between the leaves of these +volumes. I am tempted indeed to make for my original +lucidity the claim of something more than bare +prudence—almost that of a happy instinctive +foresight. This is what I mean by having been +“well-advised.” It was as if I had, vulgarly +speaking, received quite at first the “straight +tip”—to <a name="pagex"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +x</span>back the right horse or buy the right shares. The +mixture of manners was to become in other words not a less but a +very much more appreciable and interesting subject of +study. The mixture of manners was in fine to loom large and +constantly larger all round; it was to be a matter, plainly, +about which the future would have much to say. Nothing +appeals to me more, I confess, as a “critic of life” +in any sense worthy of the name, than the finer—if indeed +thereby the less easily formulated—group of the conquests +of civilisation, the multiplied symptoms among educated people, +from wherever drawn, of a common intelligence and a social fusion +tending to abridge old rigours of separation. This too, I +must admit, in spite of the many-coloured sanctity of such +rigours in general, which have hitherto made countries smaller +but kept the globe larger, and by which immediate strangeness, +immediate beauty, immediate curiosity were so much +fostered. Half our instincts work for the maintained +differences; without them, for instance, what would have been the +point of the history of poor Lady Barbarina? I have but to +put that question, I must add, to feel it beautifully large; for +there looms before me at its touch the vision of a Lady Barbarina +reconciled, domesticated, developed, of possibly greater +vividness than the quite other vision expressed in these +pages. It is a question, however, of the tendency, +perceptive as well as reflective too, of the braver +imagination—which faculty, in our future, strikes me as +likely to be appealed to much less by the fact, by the pity and +the misery and the greater or less grotesqueness, of the +courageous, or even of the timid, missing their lives beyond +certain stiff barriers, than by the picture of their more and +more steadily making out their opportunities and their possible +communications. Behind all the small comedies and tragedies +of the <a name="pagexi"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +xi</span>international, in a word, has exquisitely lurked for me +the idea of some eventual sublime consensus of the educated; the +exquisite conceivabilities of which, intellectual, moral, +emotional, sensual, social, political—all, I mean, in the +face of felt difficulty and danger—constitute stuff for +such “situations” as may easily make many of those of +a more familiar type turn pale. <i>There</i>, if one +will—in the dauntless fusions to come—is the personal +drama of the future.</p> +<p>We are far from it certainly—as I have delayed much too +long to remark—in the chronicle of Lady Barb. I have +placed this composition (1888) at the top of my list, in the +present cluster, despite the earlier date of some of its +companions; consistently giving it precedence by reason of its +greatest length. The idea at the root of it scarcely brooks +indication, so inevitable had it surely become, in all the +conditions, that a young Englishwoman in some such predicament +should figure as the happy pictorial thought. The whole +thing rests, I need scarce point out, on the most primitive +logic. The international relation had begun to present +itself “socially,” after the liveliest fashion, a +quarter of a century ago and earlier, as a relation of +intermarrying; but nothing was meanwhile so striking as that +these manifestations took always the same turn. The +European of “position” married the young American +woman, or the young American woman married the European of +position—one scarce knew how best to express the regularity +of it; but the social field was scanned in vain for a different +pairing. No American citizen appeared to offer his hand to +the “European” girl, or if he did so offered it in +vain. The bridal migrations were eastward without +exception—as rigidly as if settled by statute. Custom +clearly had acquired the force of law; a fact remarkable, +significant, interesting and even amusing. And yet, withal, +<a name="pagexii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xii</span>it +seemed scarce to demand explanations. So far as they +appeared indeed they were confident on the American side. +The representatives of that interest had no call in life to go +“outside” for their wives—having obviously +close at hand the largest and choicest assortment of such +conveniences; as was sufficiently proved by the European +“run” on the market. What American run on any +foreign market had been noted?—save indeed always on the +part of the women! It all redounded to the honour and glory +of the young woman grown in American conditions—to cast +discredit on whose general peerlessness by attested preference +for other types could but strike the domestic aspirant as an act +of disloyalty or treachery. It was just the observed rarity +of the case therefore that prompted one to put it to the +imaginative test. Any case so unlikely to +happen—taking it for at all conceivable—could only be +worth attention when it <i>should</i>, once in a blue moon, +occur. There was nothing meanwhile, in truth, to “go +by”; we had seen the American girl “of +position” absorbed again and again into the European social +system, but we had only seen young foreign candidates for places +as cooks and housemaids absorbed into the American. The +more one viewed the possible instance, accordingly, the more it +appealed to speculative study; so that, failing all valid +testimony, one had studiously, as it were, to forge the very +documents.</p> +<p>I have only to add that I found mine, once I had produced +them, thoroughly convincing: the most one could do, in the +conditions, was to make one’s picture appear to hang +together, and I should have broken down, no doubt, had my own, +after a superficial question or two, not struck me as decently +hanging. The essential, at the threshold, I seem to recall, +was to get my young man right—I somehow <a +name="pagexiii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xiii</span>quite +took for granted the getting of my young woman. Was this +because, for the portrait of Lady Barb, I felt appealed to so +little in the name of <i>shades</i>? Shades would be +decidedly neither of her general world nor of her particular +consciousness: the image I had in view was a maiden nature that, +after a fashion all its own, should show as fine and complete, +show as neither coarse nor poor, show above all as a resultant of +many causes, quite without them. I felt in short sure of +Lady Barb, and I think there is no question about her, or about +the depth of root she might strike in American soil, that I +shouldn’t have been ready on the spot to answer. Such +is the luck of the conception that imposes itself <i>en +bloc</i>—or such at least the artist’s luck in face +of it; such certainly, to begin with and +“subjectively” speaking, is the great advantage of a +character all of a piece: immediacy of representation, the best +omens for felicity, then so honourably await it. It was +Jackson Lemon and <i>his</i> shades, comparatively, and his +comparative sense for shades, that, in the tale, most interested +me. The one thing fine-drawn in his wife was that she had +been able to care for him as he was: to almost every one and +every thing else equally American, to almost every one and +everything else so sensibly stamped, toned and warranted, she was +to find herself quite otherwise affected. With her husband +the law was reversed—he had, much rather, imputed authority +and dignity, imputed weight and charm, to the antecedents of +which she was so fine and so direct a consequence; his estimate, +his appreciation of her being founded thus on a vision of +innumerable close correspondences. It is that vision in him +that is racked, and at so many fine points, when he finds their +experiment come so near failure; all of which—at least as I +seem to see it again so late in the day—lights his inward +drama as with the never-quenched <a name="pagexiv"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. xiv</span>lamp of a sacred place. His +wife’s, on the other hand, goes on in comparatively close +darkness.</p> +<p>It is indeed late in the day that I thus project the ray of +<i>my</i> critical lantern, however; for it comes over me even as +I write that the general air in which most of these particular +flowers of fancy bloom is an air we have pretty well ceased to +breathe. “Lady Barbarina” is, as I have said, +scarce a quarter of a century old; but so many of the perceived +conditions in which it took birth have changed that the account +of them embodied in that tale and its associates will already +pass for ancient history. “Civilisation” and +education move fast, after all, and too many things have +happened; too many <i>sorts</i> of things, above all, seem more +and more likely to happen. This multiplication of kinds of +occurrences, I make no doubt, will promote the inspiration of +observers and poets to come; but it may meanwhile well make for +an effect of superannuation in any record of the leaner +years. Jackson Lemon’s has become a more frequent +adventure, and Lady Barbarina is to-day as much at her ease in +New York, in Washington, at Newport, as in London or in +Rome. If this is her case, moreover, it is still more that +of little Mrs. Headway, of “The Siege of London” +(1883), who suffers, I feel, by the sad circumstance that her +type of complication, or, more exactly speaking perhaps, that of +the gentlemen concerned with her, is no longer eminent, or at +least salient. Both she and her friends have had too many +companions and successors; so that to reinvest them with historic +importance, with individual dignity, I have to think of them +rather as brave precursors, as adventurous skirmishers and +<i>éclaireurs</i>. This doesn’t diminish, I +recognise, any interest that may reside in the form either of +“The Siege” aforesaid or of its congeners “An +International Episode,” “A Bundle <a +name="pagexv"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xv</span>of +Letters” and “The Pension Beaurepas.” Or +rather indeed perhaps I should distinguish among these things +and, if presuming to claim for several some hint of the +distinction we may see exemplified in any first-class art-museum, +the distinction of the archaic subject treated by a +“primitive” master of high finish, yet notice duly +that others are no more “quaint” than need be. +What has really happened, I think, is that the <i>great</i> +international cases, those that bristle with fifty sorts of +social reference and overflow, and, by the same token, with a +hundred illustrations of social incoherence, are now equally +taken for granted on all sides of the sea, have simply become +incidents and examples of the mixture of manners, as I call it, +and the thicker fusion: which may mean nothing more, in truth, +but that social incoherence (with the sense for its opposite +practically extinct among the nations) has at last got itself +accepted, right and left, as normal.</p> +<p>So much, as I put it, for the great cases; but a certain +freshness, I make out, still hangs strangely enough about the +smaller and the more numerous; those to which we owe it that such +anecdotes—in my general array—as +“Pandora,” as “Fordham Castle,” as +“Flickerbridge,” as “Miss Gunton of +Poughkeepsie,” are by no means false even to present +appearances. “The Pension Beaurepas” is not +alone, thanks to some of its associations, in glowing for me with +the tender grace of a day that is dead; and yet, though the +accidents and accessories, in such a picture, may have been +marked for change, why shall not the essence of the matter, the +situation of Mr. and Mrs. Ruck and their daughter at old +Geneva—for there is of course a new, a newer +Geneva—freely recur? I am careful to put it as a +question, and all for a particular reason—the reason that, +to be frank, I find myself, before the vast diluvian <a +name="pagexvi"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xvi</span>occidental +presence in Europe, with its remorseless rising tide and its +positive expression of almost nothing but quantity and number, +deprived, on definite and ample grounds, of the precious faculty +of confidence. This confidence was of old all instinctive, +in face of the “common run” of appearances, the even +then multitudinous, miscellaneous minor international phenomena, +those of which the “short story,” as +contemporaneously practised, could effect a fairly prompt and +easy notation; but it is now unmistakable that to come forth, +from whatever privacy, to almost any one of the great European +highways, and more particularly perhaps to approach the ports of +traffic for the lately-developed and so flourishing +“southern route” from New York and Boston, is to +encounter one of those big general questions that sturdily brush +away the multiplication of small answers. “Who are +they, what are they, whence and whither and why,” the +“critic of life,” international or other, still, or +more and more, asks himself, as he of course always asked, but +with the actual difference that the reply that used to come so +conveniently straight, “Why, they’re just the +American vague variety of the dear old Anglo-Saxon race,” +not only hangs fire and leaves him to wait and wonder, but really +affects him as having for this act of deference (as to which he +can’t choose, I admit) little more than a conscious +mocking, baffling, in fact a just all but sinister, +grimace. “Don’t you wish you knew, or even +<i>could</i> know?” the inscrutable grin seems to convey; +and with resources of cynicism behind it not in the least to be +disturbed by any such cheap retort as “Don’t you wish +that, on your side, <i>you</i> could say—or even, for your +own convenience, so much as guess?”</p> +<p>For there is no communicating to the diluvian presence, on +such a scale, any suspicion that convenience <a +name="pagexvii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xvii</span>shall +anywhere fail it: all its consciousness, on that general head, is +that of itself representing and actively <i>being</i> the biggest +convenience of the world. Little need to insist on the +guarantee of subjective ease involved in such an +attitude—the immense noted growth of which casts its chill, +as I intimate, on the inquirer proceeding from settled +premisses. He was aware formerly, when it came to an +analysis, of all his presumptions; he had but to glance for an +immemorial assurance at a dozen of the myriad +“registers” disposed in the vestibules of bankers, +the reading-rooms of hotels and “exchanges,” open on +the most conspicuous table of visited palace and castle, to see +them bristle with names of a more or less conceivable +tradition. Queer enough often, whether in isolation or in +association, were these gages of identity: but their queerness, +not independent of some more or less traceable weird law, was +exactly, after all, their most familiar note. They had +their way of not breaking, through it all, the old sweet +Anglo-Saxon spell; they had their way of not failing, when all +was said, to suggest more communities and comprehensions than +conundrums and “stunts.” He would be brave, +however, who should say that any such ghost of a quiet conformity +presides in the fulness of time over the interminable +passenger-lists that proclaim the prosperity of the great +conveying companies. If little books have their fates, +little names—and long ones still more—have their +eloquence; the emphasis of nominal reference in the general +roll-call falls so strongly upon alien syllables and sounds, +representative signs that fit into our “English” +legend (as we were mainly conscious up to a few years since of +having inherited that boon) scarcely more than if borrowed from +the stony slabs of Nineveh. I may not here attempt to weigh +the question of what these exotic symbols <a +name="pagexviii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +xviii</span>positively represent—a prodigious question, I +cannot but think; I content myself with noting the difference +made for fond fancy by the so rapidly established change, by the +so considerable drop of old associations. The point is of +one’s having the heart to assume that the Ninevites, as I +may momentarily call them for convenience, are to be constantly +taken as feeling in the same way about fifty associational +matters as we used, in all satisfaction, to observe our earlier +generations feel. One can but speak for one’s self, +and my imagination, on the great highways, I find, doesn’t +rise to such people, who are obviously beyond my +divination. They strike one, above all, as giving no +account of themselves in any terms already consecrated by human +use; to this inarticulate state they probably form, collectively, +the most unprecedented of monuments; abysmal the mystery of what +they think, what they feel, what they want, what they suppose +themselves to be saying. There would appear to be to-day no +slim scrap even of a Daisy Miller to bridge the chasm; no +light-footed Francie Dosson or Pandora Day to dance before one +across the wavering plank.</p> +<p>I plead a blank of memory as to the origin of “The Siege +of London”; I get no nearer to the birth of the idea than +by recalling a certain agitation of the spirit, a lively +irritation of the temper, under which, one evening early in the +autumn of 1877, that is more than thirty years ago, I walked away +from the close of a performance at the Théâtre +Français. The play had been “Le +Demi-Monde” of the younger Dumas, a masterpiece which I had +not heard for the first time, but a particular feature of which +on this occasion more than ever yet filled up the measure of my +impatience. I could less than ever swallow it, Olivier de +Jalin’s denunciation of Madame d’Ange; the play, from +the beginning, marches toward it—it is the <a +name="pagexix"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xix</span>main hinge +of the action; but the very perfection with which the part was +rendered in those years by Delaunay (just as Croizette was pure +perfection as Suzanne) seemed to have made me present at +something inhuman and odious. It was the old +story—that from the positive, the prodigious +<i>morality</i> of such a painter of the sophisticated life as +Dumas, not from anything else or less edifying, one must pray to +be delivered. There are doubtless many possible views of +such a dilemma as Olivier’s, the conflict of propriety for +him between the man he likes and esteems and the woman he has +loved but hasn’t esteemed and doesn’t, and as to whom +he sees his friend blind, and, as he thinks, befooled; in +consequence of which I am not re-judging his case. But I +recover with a pensive pleasure that is almost all a pang the +intensity with which I could then feel it; to the extent of +wondering whether the general situation of the three persons +concerned, or something like it, mightn’t be shown as +taking quite another turn. Was there not conceivable an +Olivier of our race, a different Olivier altogether, moved to ask +himself how at such a juncture a “real gentleman,” +distressed and perplexed, would yet most naturally act? The +question would be interesting, it was easy to judge, if only by +the light it might throw on some of the other, the antecedent and +concomitant, phases of a real gentleman’s connexion +“at all at all” with such a business and such a +world. It remained with me, at all events, and was to prove +in time the germ of “The Siege of London”; of the +conception of which the state of mind so reflected strikes me as +making, I confess, very ancient history.</p> +<p>Far away and unspeakably regretted the days, alas, or, more +exactly, the nights, on which one could walk away from the +Français under the spell of such fond convictions and such +deep and agitating <a name="pagexx"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +xx</span>problems. The emphasis of the international +proposition has indeed had time, as I say, to place itself +elsewhere—if, for that matter, there be any emphasis or any +proposition left at all—since the age when that particular +pleasure seemed the keenest in life. A few months ago, one +evening, I found myself withdrawing from the very temple and the +supposedly sacred rites before these latter were a third over: +beneath that haunted dome itself they seemed to have become at +last so accessible, cynically making their bargain with them, to +the profanations long kept at bay. Only, with that +evolution of taste possible on the part of the old worshipper in +question, what world-convulsions mightn’t, in general, well +have taken place? Let me continue to speak of the rest of +the matter here before us as therefore of almost prehistoric +reference. I was to make, in due course, at any rate, my +limited application of that glimmering image of a M. de Jalin +with whom we might have more fellow-feeling, and I sent +“The Siege of London” accordingly to my admirable +friend the late Leslie Stephen, then editor of <i>The Cornhill +Magazine</i>, where it appeared during the first two months of +1883. That is all I remember about it save always the +particular London light in which at that period I invoked the +muse and drove the pen and with which the compositions resulting +strike my fancy to-day as so closely interfused that in reading +over those of them I here preserve every aspect and element of my +scene of application lives again for me. This scene +consisted of small chambers in a small street that opened, at a +very near corner, into Piccadilly and a view of the Green Park; I +had dropped into them almost instantaneously, under the accepted +heavy pressure of the autumnal London of 1876, and was to sit +scribbling in them for nearly ten years. The big human +rumble of Piccadilly (all human <a name="pagexxi"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. xxi</span>and equine then and long after) was +close at hand; I liked to think that Thackeray’s Curzon +Street, in which Becky Sharp, or rather Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, had +lived, was not much further off: I thought of it preponderantly, +in my comings and goings, as Becky’s and her +creator’s; just as I was to find fifty other London +neighbourhoods speak to me almost only with the voice, the +thousand voices, of Dickens.</p> +<p>A “great house,” forming the south-west corner of +Piccadilly and with its long and practically featureless side, +continued by the high wall of its ample court, opposite my +open-eyed windows, gloomed, in dusty brick, as the extent of my +view, but with a vast convenient neutrality which I found, soon +enough, protective and not inquisitive, so that whatever there +was of my sedentary life and regular habits took a sort of local +wealth of colour from the special greyish-brown tone of the +surface always before me. This surface hung there like the +most voluminous of curtains—it masked the very stage of the +great theatre of the town. To sit for certain hours at +one’s desk before it was somehow to occupy in the most +suitable way in the world the proportionately ample interacts of +the mightiest of dramas. When I went out it was as if the +curtain rose; so that, to repeat, I think of my tolerably copious +artistry of that time as all the fruit of the interacts, with the +curtain more or less quietly down and with the tuning of fiddles +and only the vague rumble of shifted scenery playing round it and +through it. There were absences of course: “A Bundle +of Letters,” here reproduced, took birth (1879) during +certain autumn weeks spent in Paris, where a friend of those +years, a young London journalist, the late Theodore Child (of +Merton College, Oxford, who was to die, prematurely and +lamentedly, during a gallant professional tour of exploration in +Persia) <a name="pagexxii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +xxii</span>was fondly carrying on, under difficulties, an +Anglo-American periodical called <i>The Parisian</i>. He +invited me to contribute to its pages, and, again, a small +sharply-resonant street off the Rue de la Paix, where all +existence somehow went on as a repercussion from well-brushed +asphalt, lives for me as the scene of my response. A +snowstorm of a violence rare in Paris raged, I recollect, for +many hours, for the greater part of a couple of days; muffling me +noiselessly into the small shiny shabby salon of an +<i>hôtel garni</i> with a droll combinational, almost +cosmic sign, and promoting (it comes back to me) a deep +concentration, an unusual straightness of labour. “A +Bundle of Letters” was written in a single long session +and, the temperature apart, at a “heat.” Its +companion-piece, “The Point of View,” marks not less +for memory, I find, an excursion associated with diligence. +I have no heart to “go into” these mere ingenious and +more or less effective pleasantries to any tune beyond this of +glancing at the <i>other</i>, the extinct, actualities they hold +up the glimmering taper to. They are still faintly scented, +doubtless, with something of that authenticity, and a living work +of art, however limited, pretends always, as for part of its +grace, to some good faith of community, however indirect, with +its period and place.</p> +<p>To read over “The Point of View” has opened up for +me, I confess, no contentious vista whatever, nothing but the +faded iridescence of a far-away Washington spring. This, in +1881, had been my first glimpse of that interesting city, where I +then spent a few weeks, a visit repeated the following year; and +I remember beginning on the first occasion a short imaginary +correspondence after the pattern of the then already published +“Bundle of Letters.” After an absence from +America of some five years I inevitably, on the spot again, had +impressions; <a name="pagexxiii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +xxiii</span>and not less inevitably and promptly, I remember, +recognised the truth that if one really was subject to such, and +to a good many, and they were at all worth entertaining or +imparting, one was likely to bristle with a quite proportionately +smaller number of neat and complacent conclusions. +Impressions could mutually conflict—which was exactly the +interest of them; whereas in ninety-nine connexions out of a +hundred, conclusions could but raise the wind for large groups of +persons incapable, to all appearance, of intelligently opening +their eyes, though much occupied, to make up for it, with +opening, and all vociferously, their mouths. “The +Point of View,” in fine, I fear, was but to commemorate, +punctually enough, its author’s perverse and incurable +disposition to interest himself less in his own (always so +quickly stale) experience, under certain sorts of pressure, than +in that of conceivable fellow mortals, which might be +mysteriously and refreshingly different. The thing indeed +may also serve, in its degree, as a punctual small monument to a +recognition that was never to fail; that of the nature of the +burden bequeathed by such rash multiplications of the candid +consciousness. They are splendid for experience, the +multiplications, each in its way an intensifier; but expression, +liking things above all to be made comfortable and easy for it, +views them askance. The case remains, none the +less—alas for this faculty!—that no representation of +life worth speaking of can go forward without them. All of +which will perhaps be judged to have but a strained relevance, +however, to the fact that, though the design of the short +imaginary correspondence I speak of was interrupted during those +first weeks in Washington, a second visit, the following spring, +served it better; I had kept the thread (through a return to +London and a return again thence) and, if I remember <a +name="pagexxiv"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xxiv</span>rightly, +I brought my small scheme to a climax on the spot. The +finished thing appeared in <i>The Century Magazine</i> of +December 1882. I recently had the chance to “look +up,” for old sake’s sake, that momentary seat of the +good-humoured satiric muse—the seats of the muses, even +when the merest flutter of one of their robes has been involved, +losing no scrap of sanctity for me, I profess, by the accident of +my having myself had the honour to offer the visitant the +chair. The chair I had anciently been able to push forward +in Washington had not, I found, survived the ravage of nearly +thirty years; its place knew it no more, infirm and precarious +dependence as it had struck me even at the time as being. +So, quite exquisitely, as whenever that lapse occurs, the lost +presence, the obliterated scene, translated itself for me at last +into terms of almost more than earthly beauty and poetry. +Fifty intimate figures and objects flushed with life in the other +time had passed away since then; a great chapter of history had +made itself, tremendous things had happened; the ghosts of old +cherished names, of old tragedies, of old comedies, even of old +mere mystifications, had marshalled their array. Only the +little rounded composition remained; which glowed, ever so +strangely, like a swinging playing lantern, with a light that +brought out the past. The past had been most concretely +that vanished and slightly sordid tenement of the current housing +of the muse. I had had “rooms” in it, and I +could remember how the rooms, how the whole place, a nest of +rickety tables and chairs, lame and disqualified utensils of +every sort, and of smiling shuffling procrastinating persons of +colour, had exhaled for me, to pungency, the domestic spirit of +the “old South.” I had nursed the unmistakable +scent; I had read history by its aid; I had learned more than I +could say of what had anciently <a name="pagexxv"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. xxv</span>been the matter under the reign of +the great problem of persons of colour—so badly the matter, +by my vision, that a deluge of blood and fire and tears had been +needed to correct it. These complacencies of perception +swarmed for me again—while yet no brick of the little old +temple of the revelation stood on another.</p> +<p>I could scarcely have said where the bricks <i>had</i> stood; +the other, the superseded Washington of the exquisite springtime, +of the earlier initiation, of the hovering plaintive ghosts, +reduced itself to a great vague blur of warmth and colour and +fragrance. It kept flushing through the present—very +much as if I had had my small secret for making it. I could +turn on my finger the magic ring—it was strange how slight +a thing, a mere handful of pages of light persistent prose, could +act as that talisman. So, at all events, I like to date, +and essentially to synchronise, these sincere little studies in +general. Nothing perhaps can vouch better for their having +applied to conditions that superficially at least have changed +than the fact that to fond memory—I speak of my +own—there hangs about the last item on this list, the +picture of “The Pension Beaurepas,” the unearthly +poetry, as I call it, of the Paquis, and that I should yet have +to plunge into gulfs of explanation as to where and what the +Paquis may have been. An old-world nook of one’s +youth was so named, a scrap of the lakeside fringe of ancient +Geneva, now practically quite reformed and improved away. +The Pension Beaurepas, across the years, looks to me prodigiously +archaic and incredibly quaint; I ask myself why, at the time, I +so wasted the precious treasure of a sense that absolutely +primitive pre-revolutionary “Europe” had never really +been swept out of its cupboards, shaken out of its curtains, +thumped out of its mattresses. The echoes of the <a +name="pagexxvi"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +xxvi</span>eighteenth century, to go no further back, must have +been thick on its rather greasy stone staircase, up down which, +unconscious of the character of the fine old wrought-iron +<i>rampe</i>, as of most other things in the world besides, Mr. +and Mrs. and Miss Ruck, to speak only of them, used mournfully to +straggle. But I mustn’t really so <i>much</i> as +speak only, as even speak, of them. They would carry me too +far back—which possibly outlived verisimilitude in them is +what I wish to acknowledge.</p> +<p style="text-align: right">HENRY JAMES.</p> +<table> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><h2><a name="pagexxvii"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. xxvii</span>CONTENTS</h2> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>LADY BARBARINA</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page1">1</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE SIEGE OF LONDON</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page127">127</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>AN INTERNATIONAL EPISODE</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page243">243</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE PENSION BEAUREPAS</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page347">347</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>A BUNDLE OF LETTERS</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page423">423</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>THE POINT OF VIEW</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page475">475</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>LADY +BARBARINA</h2> +<h3><a name="page3"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 3</span>I</h3> +<p>It is well known that there are few sights in the world more +brilliant than the main avenues of Hyde Park of a fine afternoon +in June. This was quite the opinion of two persons who on a +beautiful day at the beginning of that month, four years ago, had +established themselves under the great trees in a couple of iron +chairs—the big ones with arms, for which, if I mistake not, +you pay twopence—and sat there with the slow procession of +the Drive behind them while their faces were turned to the more +vivid agitation of the Row. Lost in the multitude of +observers they belonged, superficially at least, to that class of +persons who, wherever they may be, rank rather with the +spectators than with the spectacle. They were quiet simple +elderly, of aspect somewhat neutral; you would have liked them +extremely but would scarcely have noticed them. It is to +them, obscure in all that shining host, that we must nevertheless +give our attention. On which the reader is begged to have +confidence; he is not asked to make vain concessions. It +was indicated touchingly in the faces of our friends that they +were growing old together and were fond enough of each +other’s company not to object—since it was a +condition—even to that. The reader will have guessed +that they were husband and wife; and perhaps while he is about it +will further have guessed that they were of that nationality for +which <a name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 4</span>Hyde +Park at the height of the season is most completely +illustrative. They were native aliens, so to speak, and +people at once so initiated and so detached could only be +Americans. This reflexion indeed you would have made only +after some delay; for it must be allowed that they bristled with +none of those modern signs that carry out the tradition of the +old indigenous war-paint and feathers. They had the +American turn of mind, but that was very secret; and to your +eye—if your eye had cared about it—they might have +been either intimately British or more remotely foreign. It +was as if they studied, for convenience, to be superficially +colourless; their colour was all in their talk. They were +not in the least verdant; they were grey rather, of monotonous +hue. If they were interested in the riders, the horses, the +walkers, the great exhibition of English wealth and health, +beauty, luxury and leisure, it was because all this referred +itself to other impressions, because they had the key to almost +everything that needed an answer—because, in a word, they +were able to compare. They had not arrived, they had only +returned; and recognition much more than surprise was expressed +in their quiet eyes. Dexter Freer and his wife belonged in +fine to that great company of Americans who are constantly +“passing through” London. Enjoyers of a fortune +of which, from any standpoint, the limits were plainly visible, +they were unable to treat themselves to that commonest form of +ease, the ease of living at home. They found it much more +possible to economise at Dresden or Florence than at Buffalo or +Minneapolis. The saving was greater and the strain was +less. From Dresden, from Florence, moreover, they +constantly made excursions that wouldn’t have been possible +with an excess of territory; and it is even to be feared they +practised some eccentricities of thrift. They <a +name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 5</span>came to London +to buy their portmanteaus, their toothbrushes, their +writing-paper; they occasionally even recrossed the Atlantic +westward to assure themselves that westward prices were still the +same. They were eminently a social pair; their interests +were mainly personal. Their curiosity was so invidiously +human that they were supposed to be too addicted to gossip, and +they certainly kept up their acquaintance with the affairs of +other people. They had friends in every country, in every +town; and it was not their fault if people told them their +secrets. Dexter Freer was a tall lean man, with an +interested eye and a nose that rather drooped than aspired, yet +was salient withal. He brushed his hair, which was streaked +with white, forward over his ears and into those locks +represented in the portraits of clean-shaven gentlemen who +flourished fifty years ago and wore an old-fashioned neckcloth +and gaiters. His wife, a small plump person, rather +polished than naturally fresh, with a white face and hair still +evenly black, smiled perpetually, but had never laughed since the +death of a son whom she had lost ten years after her +marriage. Her husband, on the other hand, who was usually +quite grave, indulged on great occasions in resounding +mirth. People confided in her less than in him, but that +mattered little, as she confided much in herself. Her +dress, which was always black or dark grey, was so harmoniously +simple that you could see she was fond of it; it was never smart +by accident or by fear. She was full of intentions of the +most judicious sort and, though perpetually moving about the +world, had the air of waiting for every one else to pass. +She was celebrated for the promptitude with which she made her +sitting-room at an inn, where she might be spending a night or +two, appear a real temple of memory. With books, flowers, +photographs, draperies, rapidly <a name="page6"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 6</span>distributed—she had even a way, +for the most part, of not failing of a piano—the place +seemed almost hereditary. The pair were just back from +America, where they had spent three months, and now were able to +face the world with something of the elation of people who have +been justified of a stiff conviction. They had found their +native land quite ruinous.</p> +<p>“There he is again!” said Mr. Freer, following +with his eyes a young man who passed along the Row, riding +slowly. “That’s a beautiful +thoroughbred!”</p> +<p>Mrs. Freer asked idle questions only when she wanted time to +think. At present she had simply to look and see who it was +her husband meant. “The horse is too big,” she +remarked in a moment.</p> +<p>“You mean the rider’s too small,” her +husband returned. “He’s mounted on his +millions.”</p> +<p>“Is it really millions?”</p> +<p>“Seven or eight, they tell me.”</p> +<p>“How disgusting!” It was so that Mrs. Freer +usually spoke of the large fortunes of the day. “I +wish he’d see us,” she added.</p> +<p>“He does see us, but he doesn’t like to look at +us. He’s too conscious. He isn’t +easy.”</p> +<p>“Too conscious of his big horse?”</p> +<p>“Yes and of his big fortune. He’s rather +ashamed of that.”</p> +<p>“This is an odd place to hang one’s head +in,” said Mrs. Freer.</p> +<p>“I’m not so sure. He’ll find people +here richer than himself, and other big horses in plenty, and +that will cheer him up. Perhaps too he’s looking for +that girl.”</p> +<p>“The one we heard about? He can’t be such a +fool.”</p> +<p>“He isn’t a fool,” said Dexter Freer. +“If he’s thinking of her he has some good +reason.”</p> +<p><a name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 7</span>“I +wonder what Mary Lemon would say,” his wife pursued.</p> +<p>“She’d say it was all right if he should do +it. She thinks he can do no wrong. He’s +immensely fond of her.”</p> +<p>“I shan’t be sure of that,” said Mrs. Freer, +“if he takes home a wife who’ll despise +her.”</p> +<p>“Why should the girl despise her? She’s a +delightful woman.”</p> +<p>“The girl will never know it—and if she should it +would make no difference: she’ll despise +everything.”</p> +<p>“I don’t believe it, my dear; she’ll like +some things very much. Every one will be very nice to +her.”</p> +<p>“She’ll despise them all the more. But +we’re speaking as if it were all arranged. I +don’t believe in it at all,” said Mrs. Freer.</p> +<p>“Well, something of the sort—in this case or in +some other—is sure to happen sooner or later,” her +husband replied, turning round a little toward the back-water, as +it were, formed, near the entrance to the Park, by the confluence +of the two great vistas of the Drive and the Row.</p> +<p>Our friends had turned their backs, as I have said, to the +solemn revolution of wheels and the densely-packed mass of +spectators who had chosen that aspect of the show. These +spectators were now agitated by a unanimous impulse: the +pushing-back of chairs, the shuffle of feet, the rustle of +garments and the deepening murmur of voices sufficiently +expressed it. Royalty was approaching—royalty was +passing—royalty had passed. Mr. Freer turned his head +and his ear a little, but failed to alter his position further, +and his wife took no notice of the flurry. They had seen +royalty pass, all over Europe, and they knew it passed very +quickly. Sometimes it came back; sometimes it didn’t; +more than <a name="page8"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +8</span>once they had seen it pass for the last time. They +were veteran tourists and they knew as perfectly as regular +attendants at complicated church-services when to get up and when +to remain seated. Mr. Freer went on with his +proposition. “Some young fellow’s certain to do +it, and one of these girls is certain to take the risk. +They must take risks over here more and more.”</p> +<p>“The girls, I’ve no doubt, will be glad enough; +they have had very little chance as yet. But I don’t +want Jackson to begin.”</p> +<p>“Do you know I rather think I do,” said Dexter +Freer. “It will be so very amusing.”</p> +<p>“For us perhaps, but not for him. He’ll +repent of it and be wretched. He’s too good for +that.”</p> +<p>“Wretched never! He has no capacity for +wretchedness, and that’s why he can afford to risk +it.”</p> +<p>“He’ll have to make great concessions,” Mrs. +Freer persisted.</p> +<p>“He won’t make one.”</p> +<p>“I should like to see.”</p> +<p>“You admit, then, that it will be amusing: all I contend +for,” her husband replied. “But, as you say, +we’re talking as if it were settled, whereas there’s +probably nothing in it after all. The best stories always +turn out false. I shall be sorry in this case.”</p> +<p>They relapsed into silence while people passed and repassed +them—continuous successive mechanical, with strange facial, +strange expressional, sequences and contrasts. They watched +the procession, but no one heeded them, though every one was +there so admittedly to see what was to be seen. It was all +striking, all pictorial, and it made a great composition. +The wide long area of the Row, its red-brown surface dotted with +bounding figures, stretched away into the distance and became +suffused and misty <a name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +9</span>in the bright thick air. The deep dark English +verdure that bordered and overhung it looked rich and old, +revived and refreshed though it was by the breath of June. +The mild blue of the sky was spotted with great silvery clouds, +and the light drizzled down in heavenly shafts over the quieter +spaces of the Park, as one saw them beyond the Row. All +this, however, was only a background, for the scene was before +everything personal; quite splendidly so, and full of the gloss +and lustre, the contrasted tones, of a thousand polished +surfaces. Certain things were salient, pervasive—the +shining flanks of the perfect horses, the twinkle of bits and +spurs, the smoothness of fine cloth adjusted to shoulders and +limbs, the sheen of hats and boots, the freshness of complexions, +the expression of smiling talking faces, the flash and flutter of +rapid gallops. Faces were everywhere, and they were the +great effect—above all the fair faces of women on tall +horses, flushed a little under their stiff black hats, with +figures stiffened, in spite of much definition of curve, by their +tight-fitting habits. Their well-secured helmets, their +neat compact heads, their straight necks, their firm tailor-made +armour, their frequent hardy bloom, all made them look singularly +like amazons about to ride a charge. The men, with their +eyes before them, with hats of undulating brim, good profiles, +high collars, white flowers on their chests, long legs and long +feet, had an air more elaboratively decorative, as they jolted +beside the ladies, always out of step. These were the +younger types; but it was not all youth, for many a saddle +sustained a richer rotundity, and ruddy faces with short white +whiskers or with matronly chins looked down comfortably from an +equilibrium that seemed moral as well as physical. The +walkers differed from the riders only in being on foot and in +looking at the riders <a name="page10"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 10</span>more than these looked at them; for +they would have done as well in the saddle and ridden as the +others ride. The women had tight little bonnets and still +tighter little knots of hair; their round chins rested on a close +swathing of lace or in some cases on throttling silver chains and +circlets. They had flat backs and small waists, they walked +slowly, with their elbows out, carrying vast parasols and turning +their heads very little to the right or the left. They were +amazons unmounted, quite ready to spring into the saddle. +There was a great deal of beauty and a diffused look of happy +expansion, all limited and controlled, which came from clear +quiet eyes and well-cut lips, rims of stout vessels that +didn’t overflow and on which syllables were liquid and +sentences brief. Some of the young men, as well as the +women, had the happiest proportions and oval faces—faces in +which line and colour were pure and fresh and the idea of the +moment far from intense.</p> +<p>“They’re often very good-looking,” said Mr. +Freer at the end of ten minutes. “They’re on +the whole the finest whites.”</p> +<p>“So long as they remain white they do very well; but +when they venture upon colour!” his wife replied. She +sat with her eyes at the level of the skirts of the ladies who +passed her, and she had been following the progress of a green +velvet robe enriched with ornaments of steel and much gathered up +in the hands of its wearer, who, herself apparently in her teens, +was accompanied by a young lady draped in scant pink muslin, a +tissue embroidered esthetically with flowers that simulated the +iris.</p> +<p>“All the same, in a crowd, they’re wonderfully +well turned out,” Dexter Freer went on—“lumping +men and women and horses and dogs together. Look at that +big fellow on the light chestnut: what could be more +perfect? By the way, it’s Lord <a +name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +11</span>Canterville,” he added in a moment and as if the +fact were of some importance.</p> +<p>Mrs. Freer recognised its importance to the degree of raising +her glass to look at Lord Canterville. “How do you +know it’s he?” she asked with that implement still +up.</p> +<p>“I heard him say something the night I went to the House +of Lords. It was very few words, but I remember him. +A man near me mentioned who he was.”</p> +<p>“He’s not so handsome as you,” said Mrs. +Freer, dropping her glass.</p> +<p>“Ah, you’re too difficult!” her husband +murmured. “What a pity the girl isn’t with +him,” he went on. “We might see +something.”</p> +<p>It appeared in a moment, however, that the girl was with +him. The nobleman designated had ridden slowly forward from +the start, then just opposite our friends had pulled up to look +back as if waiting for some one. At the same moment a +gentleman in the Walk engaged his attention, so that he advanced +to the barrier which protects the pedestrians and halted there, +bending a little from his saddle and talking with his friend, who +leaned against the rail. Lord Canterville was indeed +perfect, as his American admirer had said. Upwards of sixty +and of great stature and great presence, he was a thoroughly +splendid apparition. In capital preservation he had the +freshness of middle life—he would have been young indeed to +the eye if his large harmonious spread hadn’t spoken of the +lapse of years. He was clad from head to foot in garments +of a radiant grey, and his fine florid countenance was surmounted +with a white hat of which the majestic curves were a triumph of +good form. Over his mighty chest disposed itself a beard of +the richest growth and of a colour, in spite of a few streaks +vaguely grizzled, <a name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +12</span>to which the coat of his admirable horse appeared to be +a perfect match. It left no opportunity in his uppermost +button-hole for the customary orchid; but this was of +comparatively little consequence, since the vegetation of the +beard itself was tropical. Astride his great steed, with +his big fist, gloved in pearl-grey, on his swelling thigh, his +face lighted up with good-humoured indifference and all his +magnificent surface reflecting the mild sunshine, he was, +strikingly, a founded and builded figure, such as could only +represent to the public gaze some Institution, some Exhibition or +some Industry, in a word some unquenchable Interest. People +quite lingered to look up at him as they passed. His halt +was brief, however, for he was almost immediately joined by two +handsome girls, who were as well turned-out, in Dexter +Freer’s phrase, as himself. They had been detained a +moment at the entrance to the Row and now advanced side by side, +their groom close behind them. One was noticeably taller +and older than the other, and it was plain at a glance that they +were sisters. Between them, with their charming shoulders, +their contracted waists and their skirts that hung without a +wrinkle, like plates of zinc, they represented in a singularly +complete form the pretty English girl in the position in which +she is prettiest.</p> +<p>“Of course they’re his daughters,” said +Dexter Freer as these young ladies rode away with Lord +Canterville; “and in that case one of them must be Jackson +Lemon’s sweetheart. Probably the bigger; they said it +was the eldest. She’s evidently a fine +creature.”</p> +<p>“She’d hate it over there,” Mrs. Freer +returned for all answer to this cluster of inductions.</p> +<p>“You know I don’t admit that. But granting +she should, it would do her good to have to accommodate +herself.”</p> +<p><a name="page13"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +13</span>“She wouldn’t accommodate +herself.”</p> +<p>“She looks so confoundedly fortunate, perched up on that +saddle,” he went on without heed of his wife’s +speech.</p> +<p>“Aren’t they supposed to be very poor?”</p> +<p>“Yes, they look it!” And his eyes followed +the eminent trio while, with the groom, as eminent in his way as +any of them, they started on a canter.</p> +<p>The air was full of sound, was low and economised; and when, +near our friends, it became articulate the words were simple and +few. “It’s as good as the circus, isn’t +it, Mrs. Freer?” These words correspond to that +description, but they pierced the dense medium more effectually +than any our friends had lately heard. They were uttered by +a young man who had stopped short in the path, absorbed by the +sight of his compatriots. He was short and stout, he had a +round kind face and short stiff-looking hair, which was +reproduced in a small bristling beard. He wore a +double-breasted walking-coat, which was not, however, buttoned, +and on the summit of his round head was perched a hat of +exceeding smallness and of the so-called “pot” +category. It evidently fitted him, but a hatter himself +wouldn’t have known why. His hands were encased in +new gloves of a dark-brown colour, and these masquerading members +hung consciously, quite ruefully, at his sides. He sported +neither umbrella nor stick. He offered one of his stuffed +gloves almost with eagerness to Mrs. Freer, blushing a little as +he measured his precipitation.</p> +<p>“Oh Doctor Feeder!”—she smiled at him. +Then she repeated to her husband, “Doctor Feeder, my +dear!” and her husband said, “Oh Doctor, how +d’ye do?” I have spoken of the composition of +the young man’s appearance, but the items were not +perceived by these two. They saw but one thing, his +delightful <a name="page14"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +14</span>face, which was both simple and clever and, as if this +weren’t enough, showed a really tasteless overheaping of +the cardinal virtues. They had lately made the voyage from +New York in his company, and he was clearly a person who would +shine at sea with an almost intolerable blandness. After he +had stood in front of them a moment a chair beside Mrs. Freer +became vacant; on which he took possession of it and sat there +telling her what he thought of the Park and how he liked +London. As she knew every one she had known many of his +people at home, and while she listened to him she remembered how +large their contribution had been to the moral worth of +Cincinnati. Mrs. Freer’s social horizon included even +that city; she had had occasion to exercise an amused recognition +of several families from Ohio and was acquainted with the +position of the Feeders there. This family, very numerous, +was interwoven into an enormous cousinship. She stood off +herself from any Western promiscuity, but she could have told you +whom Doctor Feeder’s great-grandfather had married. +Every one indeed had heard of the good deeds of the descendants +of this worthy, who were generally physicians, excellent ones, +and whose name expressed not inaptly their numerous acts of +charity. Sidney Feeder, who had several cousins of this +name established in the same line at Cincinnati, had transferred +himself and his ambition to New York, where his practice had at +the end of three years begun to grow. He had studied his +profession at Vienna and was saturated with German science; had +he only worn spectacles he might indeed perfectly, while he +watched the performers in Rotten Row as if their proceedings were +a successful demonstration, have passed for some famously +“materialistic” young German. He had come over +to London to attend a medical congress which met this year in the +<a name="page15"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 15</span>British +capital, for his interest in the healing art was by no means +limited to the cure of his patients. It embraced every form +of experiment, and the expression of his honest eyes would almost +have reconciled you to vivisection. This was his first time +of looking into the Park; for social experiments he had little +leisure. Being aware, however, that it was a very typical +and, as might be, symptomatic sight, he had conscientiously +reserved an afternoon and dressed himself carefully for the +occasion. “It’s quite a brilliant show,” +he said to Mrs. Freer; “it makes me wish I had a +mount.” Little as he resembled Lord Canterville he +rode, as he would have gaily said, first-rate.</p> +<p>“Wait till Jackson Lemon passes again and you can stop +him and make him let you take a turn.” This was the +jocular suggestion of Dexter Freer.</p> +<p>“Why, is he here? I’ve been looking out for +him and should like to see him.”</p> +<p>“Doesn’t he go to your medical congress?” +asked Mrs. Freer.</p> +<p>“Well yes, he attends—but isn’t very +regular. I guess he goes out a good deal.”</p> +<p>“I guess he does,” said Mr. Freer; “and if +he isn’t very regular I guess he has a good reason. A +beautiful reason, a charming reason,” he went on, bending +forward to look down toward the beginning of the Row. +“Dear me, what a lovely reason!”</p> +<p>Doctor Feeder followed the direction of his eyes and after a +moment understood his allusion. Little Jackson Lemon +passed, on his big horse, along the avenue again, riding beside +one of the bright creatures who had come that way shortly before +under escort of Lord Canterville. His lordship followed in +conversation with the other, his younger daughter. As they +advanced Jackson Lemon turned his eyes to the multitude under the +trees, and it so happened that <a name="page16"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 16</span>they rested on the Dexter +Freers. He smiled, he raised his hat with all possible +friendliness, and his three companions turned to see whom he so +frankly greeted. As he settled his hat on his head he +espied the young man from Cincinnati, whom he had at first +overlooked; whereupon he laughed for the luck of it and waved +Sidney Feeder an airy salutation with his hand, reining in a +little at the same time just for an instant, as if he +half-expected this apparition to come and speak to him. +Seeing him with strangers, none the less, Sidney Feeder hung +back, staring a little as he rode away.</p> +<p>It is open to us to know that at this moment the young lady by +whose side he was riding put him the free question: “Who +are those people you bowed to?”</p> +<p>“Some old friends of mine—Americans,” said +Jackson Lemon.</p> +<p>“Of course they’re Americans; there’s +nothing anywhere but Americans now.”</p> +<p>“Oh yes, our turn’s coming round!” laughed +the young man.</p> +<p>“But that doesn’t say who they are,” his +companion continued. “It’s so difficult to say +who Americans are,” she added before he had time to answer +her.</p> +<p>“Dexter Freer and his wife—there’s nothing +difficult about that. Every one knows them,” Jackson +explained.</p> +<p>“I never heard of them,” said the English +girl.</p> +<p>“Ah, that’s your fault and your misfortune. +I assure you everybody knows them.”</p> +<p>“And does everybody know the little man with the fat +face to whom you kissed your hand?”</p> +<p>“I didn’t kiss my hand, but I would if I had +thought of it. He’s a great chum of mine—a +fellow-student at Vienna.”</p> +<p><a name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +17</span>“And what’s <i>his</i> name?”</p> +<p>“Doctor Feeder.”</p> +<p>Jackson Lemon’s companion had a dandling pause. +“Are <i>all</i> your friends doctors?”</p> +<p>“No—some of them are in other +businesses.”</p> +<p>“Are they all in some business?”</p> +<p>“Most of them—save two or three like Dexter +Freer.”</p> +<p>“‘Dexter’ Freer? I thought you said +Doctor Freer.”</p> +<p>The young man gave a laugh. “You heard me +wrong. You’ve got doctors on the brain, Lady +Barb.”</p> +<p>“I’m rather glad,” said Lady Barb, giving +the rein to her horse, who bounded away.</p> +<p>“Well yes, she’s very handsome, the reason,” +Doctor Feeder remarked as he sat under the trees.</p> +<p>“Is he going to marry her?” Mrs. Freer +inquired.</p> +<p>“Marry her? I hope not.”</p> +<p>“Why do you hope not?”</p> +<p>“Because I know nothing about her. I want to know +something about the woman that man marries.”</p> +<p>“I suppose you’d like him to marry in +Cincinnati,” Mrs. Freer not unadventurously threw out.</p> +<p>“Well, I’m not particular where it is; but I want +to know her first.” Doctor Feeder was very +sturdy.</p> +<p>“We were in hopes you’d know all about it,” +said his other entertainer.</p> +<p>“No, I haven’t kept up with him there.”</p> +<p>“We’ve heard from a dozen people that he has been +always with her for the last month—and that kind of thing, +in England, is supposed to mean something. Hasn’t he +spoken of her when you’ve seen him?”</p> +<p>“No, he has only talked about the new treatment of +spinal meningitis. He’s very much interested in +spinal meningitis.”</p> +<p><a name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +18</span>“I wonder if he talks about it to Lady +Barb,” said Mrs. Freer.</p> +<p>“Who is she anyway?” the young man wanted to +know.</p> +<p>Well, his companions both let him. “Lady Barb +Clement.”</p> +<p>“And who’s Lady Barb Clement?”</p> +<p>“The daughter of Lord Canterville.”</p> +<p>“And who’s Lord Canterville?”</p> +<p>“Dexter must tell you that,” said Mrs. Freer.</p> +<p>And Dexter accordingly told him that the Marquis of +Canterville had been in his day a great sporting nobleman and an +ornament to English society, and had held more than once a high +post in her Majesty’s household. Dexter Freer knew +all these things—how his lordship had married a daughter of +Lord Treherne, a very serious intelligent and beautiful woman who +had redeemed him from the extravagance of his youth and presented +him in rapid succession with a dozen little tenants for the +nurseries at Pasterns—this being, as Mr. Freer also knew, +the name of the principal seat of the Cantervilles. The +head of that house was a Tory, but not a particular dunce for a +Tory, and very popular in society at large; good-natured, +good-looking, knowing how to be rather remarkably free and yet +remain a <i>grand seigneur</i>, clever enough to make an +occasional telling speech and much associated with the fine old +English pursuits as well as with many of the new +improvements—the purification of the Turf, the opening of +the museums on Sunday, the propagation of coffee-taverns, the +latest ideas on sanitary reform. He disapproved of the +extension of the suffrage but had positively drainage on the +brain. It had been said of him at least once—and, if +this historian is not mistaken, in print—that he was just +the man to convey to the popular mind the impression that the <a +name="page19"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 19</span>British +aristocracy is still a living force. He was unfortunately +not very rich—for a man who had to exemplify such +truths—and of his twelve children no less than seven were +daughters. Lady Barb, Jackson Lemon’s friend, was the +second; the eldest had married Lord Beauchemin. Mr. Freer +had caught quite the right pronunciation of this name, which he +successfully sounded as Bitumen. Lady Lucretia had done +very well, for her husband was rich and she had brought him +nothing to speak of; but it was hardly to be expected they would +all achieve such flights. Happily the younger girls were +still in the schoolroom, and before they had come up, Lady +Canterville, who was a woman of bold resource, would have worked +off the two that were out. It was Lady Agatha’s first +season; she wasn’t so pretty as her sister, but was thought +to be cleverer. Half-a-dozen people had spoken to him of +Jackson Lemon’s being a great deal at the +Cantervilles. He was supposed to be enormously rich.</p> +<p>“Well, so he is,” said Sidney Feeder, who had +listened to Mr. Freer’s report with attention, with +eagerness even, but, for all its lucidity, with an air of +imperfect apprehension.</p> +<p>“Yes, but not so rich as they probably think.”</p> +<p>“Do they want his money? Is that what +they’re after?”</p> +<p>“You go straight to the point!” Mrs. Freer rang +out.</p> +<p>“I haven’t the least idea,” said her +husband. “He’s a very good sort in +himself.”</p> +<p>“Yes, but he’s a doctor,” Mrs. Freer +observed.</p> +<p>“What have they got against that?” asked Sidney +Feeder.</p> +<p>“Why, over here, you know, they only call them in to +prescribe,” said his other friend. “The +profession isn’t—a—what you’d call +aristocratic.”</p> +<p><a name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +20</span>“Well, I don’t know it, and I don’t +know that I want to know it. How do you mean, +aristocratic? What profession is? It would be rather +a curious one. Professions are meant to do the work of +professions; and what work’s done without your sleeves +rolled up? Many of the gentlemen at the congress there are +quite charming.”</p> +<p>“I like doctors very much,” said Mrs. Freer; +“my father was a doctor. But they don’t marry +the daughters of marquises.”</p> +<p>“I don’t believe Jackson wants to marry that +one,” Sidney Feeder calmly argued.</p> +<p>“Very possibly not—people are such asses,” +said Dexter Freer. “But he’ll have to +decide. I wish you’d find out, by the way. You +can if you will.”</p> +<p>“I’ll ask him—up at the congress; I can do +that. I suppose he has got to marry some one.” +The young man added in a moment: “And she may be a good +thing.”</p> +<p>“She’s said to be charming.”</p> +<p>“Very well then, it won’t hurt him. I must +say, however, I’m not sure I like all that about her +family.”</p> +<p>“What I told you? It’s all to their honour +and glory,” said Mr. Freer.</p> +<p>“Are they quite on the square? It’s like +those people in Thackeray.”</p> +<p>“Oh if Thackeray could have done +<i>this</i>!” And Mrs. Freer yearned over the lost +hand.</p> +<p>“You mean all this scene?” asked the young +man.</p> +<p>“No; the marriage of a British noblewoman and an +American doctor. It would have been a subject for a master +of satire.”</p> +<p>“You see you do want it, my dear,” said her +husband quietly.</p> +<p>“I want it as a story, but I don’t want it for +Doctor Lemon.”</p> +<p><a name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +21</span>“Does he call himself ‘Doctor’ +still?” Mr. Freer asked of young Feeder.</p> +<p>“I suppose he does—I call him so. Of course +he doesn’t practise. But once a doctor always a +doctor.”</p> +<p>“That’s doctrine for Lady Barb!”</p> +<p>Sidney Feeder wondered. “Hasn’t <i>she</i> +got a title too? What would she expect him to be? +President of the United States? He’s a man of real +ability—he might have stood at the head of his +profession. When I think of that I want to swear. +What did his father want to go and make all that money +for?”</p> +<p>“It must certainly be odd to them to see a +‘medical man’ with six or eight millions,” Mr. +Freer conceded.</p> +<p>“They use much the same term as the Choctaws,” +said his wife.</p> +<p>“Why, some of their own physicians make immense +fortunes,” Sidney Feeder remarked.</p> +<p>“Couldn’t he,” she went on, “be made a +baronet by the Queen?”</p> +<p>“Yes, then he’d be aristocratic,” said the +young man. “But I don’t see why he should want +to marry over here; it seems to me to be going out of his +way. However, if he’s happy I don’t care. +I like him very much; he has ‘A1’ ability. If +it hadn’t been for his father he’d have made a +splendid doctor. But, as I say, he takes a great interest +in medical science and I guess he means to promote it all he +can—with his big fortune. He’ll be sure to keep +up his interest in research. He thinks we <i>do</i> know +something and is bound we shall know more. I hope she +won’t lower him, the young marchioness—is that her +rank? And I hope they’re really good people. He +ought to be very useful. I should want to know a good deal +about the foreign family I was going to marry into.”</p> +<p>“He looked to me, riding there, as if he knew a <a +name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 22</span>good deal +about the Clements,” Dexter Freer said, getting to his feet +as his wife suggested they ought to be going; “and he +looked to me pleased with the knowledge. There they come +down the other side. Will you walk away with us or will you +stay?”</p> +<p>“Stop him and ask him, and then come and tell +us—in Jermyn Street.” This was Mrs. +Freer’s parting injunction to Sidney Feeder.</p> +<p>“He ought to come himself—tell him that,” +her husband added.</p> +<p>“Well, I guess I’ll stay,” said the young +man as his companions merged themselves in the crowd that now was +tending toward the gates. He went and stood by the barrier +and saw Doctor Lemon and his friends pull up at the entrance to +the Row, where they apparently prepared to separate. The +separation took some time and Jackson’s colleague became +interested. Lord Canterville and his younger daughter +lingered to talk with two gentlemen, also mounted, who looked a +good deal at the legs of Lady Agatha’s horse. Doctor +Lemon and Lady Barb were face to face, very near each other, and +she, leaning forward a little, stroked the overlapping neck of +his glossy bay. At a distance he appeared to be talking and +she to be listening without response. “Oh yes, +he’s making love to her,” thought Sidney +Feeder. Suddenly her father and sister turned away to leave +the Park, and she joined them and disappeared while Jackson came +up on the left again as for a final gallop. He hadn’t +gone far before he perceived his comrade, who awaited him at the +rail; and he repeated the gesture Lady Barb had described as a +kiss of the hand, though it had not to his friend’s eyes +that full grace. When he came within hail he pulled up.</p> +<p>“If I had known you were coming here I’d have +given you a mount,” he immediately and bountifully <a +name="page23"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 23</span>cried. +There was not in his person that irradiation of wealth and +distinction which made Lord Canterville glow like a picture; but +as he sat there with his neat little legs stuck out he looked +very bright and sharp and happy, wearing in his degree the aspect +of one of Fortune’s favourites. He had a thin keen +delicate face, a nose very carefully finished, a quick eye, a +trifle hard in expression, and a fine dark moustache, a good deal +cultivated. He was not striking, but he had his intensity, +and it was easy to see that he had his purposes.</p> +<p>“How many horses have you got—about forty?” +his compatriot inquired in response to his greeting.</p> +<p>“About five hundred,” said Jackson Lemon.</p> +<p>“Did you mount your friends—the three you were +riding with?”</p> +<p>“Mount them? They’ve got the best horses in +England.”</p> +<p>“Did they sell you this one?” Sidney Feeder +continued in the same humorous strain.</p> +<p>“What do you think of him?” said his friend +without heed of this question.</p> +<p>“Well, he’s an awful old screw. I wonder he +can carry you.”</p> +<p>“Where did you get your hat?” Jackson asked both +as a retort and as a relevant criticism.</p> +<p>“I got it in New York. What’s the matter +with it?”</p> +<p>“It’s very beautiful. I wish I had brought +over one like it.”</p> +<p>“The head’s the thing—not the hat. I +don’t mean yours—I mean mine,” Sidney Feeder +laughed. “There’s something very deep in your +question. I must think it over.”</p> +<p>“Don’t—don’t,” said Jackson +Lemon; “you’ll never get to the bottom of it. +Are you having a good time?”</p> +<p>“A glorious time. Have you been up +to-day?”</p> +<p><a name="page24"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +24</span>“Up among the doctors? No—I’ve +had a lot of things to do,” Jackson was obliged to +plead.</p> +<p>“Well”—and his friend richly recovered +it—“we had a very interesting discussion. I +made a few remarks.”</p> +<p>“You ought to have told me. What were they +about?”</p> +<p>“About the intermarriage of races from the point of +view—” And Sidney Feeder paused a moment, +occupied with the attempt to scratch the nose of the beautiful +horse.</p> +<p>“From the point of view of the progeny, I +suppose?”</p> +<p>“Not at all. From the point of view of the old +friends.”</p> +<p>“Damn the old friends!” Doctor Lemon exclaimed +with jocular crudity.</p> +<p>“Is it true that you’re going to marry a young +marchioness?”</p> +<p>The face of the speaker in the saddle became just a trifle +rigid, and his firm eyes penetrated the other. “Who +has played that on you?”</p> +<p>“Mr. and Mrs. Freer, whom I met just now.”</p> +<p>“Mr. and Mrs. Freer be hanged too. And who told +<i>them</i>?”</p> +<p>“Ever so many fashionable people. I don’t +know who.”</p> +<p>“Gad, how things are tattled!” cried Jackson Lemon +with asperity.</p> +<p>“I can see it’s true by the way you say +that,” his friend ingenuously stated.</p> +<p>“Do Freer and his wife believe it?” Jackson went +on impatiently.</p> +<p>“They want you to go and see them. You can judge +for yourself.”</p> +<p>“I’ll go and see them and tell them to mind their +business.”</p> +<p><a name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +25</span>“In Jermyn Street; but I forget the number. +I’m sorry the marchioness isn’t one of ours,” +Doctor Feeder continued.</p> +<p>“If I should marry her she <i>would</i> be quick +enough. But I don’t see what difference it can make +to you,” said Jackson.</p> +<p>“Why, she’ll look down on the profession, and I +don’t like that from your wife.”</p> +<p>“That will touch me more than you.”</p> +<p>“Then it <i>is</i> true?” Doctor Feeder cried with +a finer appeal.</p> +<p>“She won’t look down. I’ll answer for +that.”</p> +<p>“You won’t care. You’re out of it all +now.”</p> +<p>“No, I’m not. I mean to do no end of +work.”</p> +<p>“I’ll believe that when I see it,” said +Sidney Feeder, who was by no means perfectly incredulous, but who +thought it salutary to take that tone. “I’m not +sure you’ve any right to work—you oughtn’t to +have everything; you ought to leave the field to us, not take the +bread out of our mouths and get the <i>kudos</i>. You must +pay the penalty of being bloated. You’d have been +celebrated if you had continued to practise—more celebrated +than any one. But you won’t be now—you +can’t be any way you fix it. Some one else is going +to be in your place.”</p> +<p>Jackson Lemon listened to this, but without meeting the eyes +of the prophet; not, however, as if he were avoiding them, but as +if the long stretch of the Ride, now less and less obstructed, +irresistibly drew him off again and made his companion’s +talk retarding. Nevertheless he answered deliberately and +kindly enough. “I hope it will be you, old +boy.” And he bowed to a lady who rode past.</p> +<p>“Very likely it will. I hope I make you feel +mean. That’s what I’m trying to do.”</p> +<p>“Oh awfully!” Jackson cried. “All the +more that I’m not in the least engaged.”</p> +<p><a name="page26"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +26</span>“Well, that’s good. Won’t you +come up to-morrow?” Doctor Feeder went on.</p> +<p>“I’ll try, my dear fellow. I can’t be +sure. By-bye!”</p> +<p>“Oh you’re lost anyway!” sighed Sidney +Feeder as the other started away.</p> +<h3><a name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +27</span>II</h3> +<p>It was Lady Marmaduke, wife of Sir Henry of that clan, who had +introduced the amusing young American to Lady Beauchemin; after +which Lady Beauchemin had made him acquainted with her mother and +sisters. Lady Marmaduke too was of outland strain, +remaining for her conjugal baronet the most ponderable +consequence of a tour in the United States. At present, by +the end of ten years, she knew her London as she had never known +her New York, so that it had been easy for her to be, as she +called herself, Jackson’s social godmother. She had +views with regard to his career, and these views fitted into a +scheme of high policy which, if our space permitted, I should be +glad to lay before the reader in its magnitude. She wished +to add an arch or two to the bridge on which she had effected her +transit from America; and it was her belief that Doctor Lemon +might furnish the materials. This bridge, as yet a somewhat +sketchy and rickety structure, she saw—in the +future—boldly stretch from one solid pier to another. +It could but serve both ways, for reciprocity was the keynote of +Lady Marmaduke’s plan. It was her belief that an +ultimate fusion was inevitable and that those who were the first +to understand the situation would enjoy the biggest returns from +it. The first time the young man had dined with her he met +Lady Beauchemin, who was her intimate friend. <a +name="page28"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 28</span>Lady +Beauchemin was remarkably gracious, asking him to come and see +her as if she really meant it. He in fact presented himself +and in her drawing-room met her mother, who happened to be +calling at the same moment. Lady Canterville, not less +friendly than her daughter, invited him down to Pasterns for +Eastertide, and before a month had passed it struck him that, +though he was not what he would have called intimate at any house +in London, the door of the house of Clement opened to him pretty +often. This seemed no small good fortune, for it always +opened upon a charming picture. The inmates were a blooming +and beautiful race, and their interior had an aspect of the +ripest comfort. It was not the splendour of New +York—as New York had lately begun to appear to the young +man—but an appearance and a set of conditions, of factors +as he used to say, not to be set in motion in that city by any +power of purchase. He himself had a great deal of money, +and money was good even when it was new; but old money was +somehow <i>more</i> to the shilling and the pound. Even +after he learned that Lord Canterville’s fortune was less +present than past it was still the positive golden glow that +struck him. It was Lady Beauchemin who had told him her +father wasn’t rich; having told him furthermore many +surprising things—things both surprising in themselves and +surprising on her lips. This was to come home to him afresh +that evening—the day he met Sidney Feeder in the +Park. He dined out in the company of Lady Beauchemin, and +afterwards, as she was alone—her husband had gone down to +listen to a debate—she offered to “take him +on.” She was going to several places, at some of +which he must be due. They compared notes, and it was +settled they should proceed together to the Trumpingtons’, +whither, it appeared at eleven o’clock, <a +name="page29"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 29</span>all the world +was proceeding, with the approach to the house choked for half a +mile with carriages. It was a close muggy night; Lady +Beauchemin’s chariot, in its place in the rank, stood still +for long periods. In his corner beside her, through the +open window, Jackson Lemon, rather hot, rather oppressed, looked +out on the moist greasy pavement, over which was flung, a +considerable distance up and down, the flare of a +public-house. Lady Beauchemin, however, was not impatient, +for she had a purpose in her mind, and now she could say what she +wished.</p> +<p>“Do you really love her?” That was the first +thing she said.</p> +<p>“Well, I guess so,” Jackson Lemon answered as if +he didn’t recognise the obligation to be serious.</p> +<p>She looked at him a moment in silence; he felt her gaze and, +turning his eyes, saw her face, partly shadowed, with the aid of +a street-lamp. She was not so pretty as Lady Barb; her +features had a certain sharpness; her hair, very light in colour +and wonderfully frizzled, almost covered her eyes, the expression +of which, however, together with that of her pointed nose and the +glitter of several diamonds, emerged from the gloom. What +she next said seemed somehow to fall in with that. +“You don’t seem to know. I never saw a man in +so vague a state.”</p> +<p>“You push me a little too much; I must have time to +think of it,” the young man returned. “You know +in my country they allow us plenty of time.” He had +several little oddities of expression, of which he was perfectly +conscious and which he found convenient, for they guarded him in +a society condemning a lonely New Yorker who proceeded by native +inspiration to much exposure; they ensured him the profit +corresponding with sundry sacrifices. <a +name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 30</span>He had no +great assortment of vernacular drolleries, conscious or +unconscious, to draw upon; but the occasional use of one, +discreetly chosen, made him appear simpler than he really was, +and reasons determined his desiring this result. He was not +simple; he was subtle, circumspect, shrewd—perfectly aware +that he might make mistakes. There was a danger of his +making one now—a mistake that might gravely count. He +was resolved only to succeed. It is true that for a great +success he would take a certain risk; but the risk was to be +considered, and he gained time while he multiplied his guesses +and talked about his country.</p> +<p>“You may take ten years if you like,” said Lady +Beauchemin. “I’m in no hurry whatever to make +you my brother-in-law. Only you must remember that you +spoke to me first.”</p> +<p>“What did I say?”</p> +<p>“You spoke to me of Barb as the finest girl you had seen +in England.”</p> +<p>“Oh I’m willing to stand by that.” And +he had another try, which would have been transparent to a +compatriot. “I guess I like her type.”</p> +<p>“I should think you might!”</p> +<p>“I like her all round—with all her +peculiarities.”</p> +<p>“What do you mean by her peculiarities?”</p> +<p>“Well, she has some peculiar ideas,” said Jackson +Lemon in a tone of the sweetest reasonableness, “and she +has a peculiar way of speaking.”</p> +<p>“Ah, you can’t expect us to speak so well as +you!” cried Lady Beauchemin.</p> +<p>“I don’t see why not.” He was +perfectly candid. “You do some things much +better.”</p> +<p>“We’ve our own ways at any rate, and we think them +the best in the world—as they mostly are!” laughed +Lady Beauchemin. “One of them’s not to let a +gentleman devote himself to a girl for so <a +name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 31</span>long a time +without some sense of responsibility. If you don’t +wish to marry my sister you ought to go away.”</p> +<p>“I ought never to have come,” said Jackson +Lemon.</p> +<p>“I can scarcely agree to that,” her ladyship +good-naturedly replied, “as in that case I should have lost +the pleasure of knowing you.”</p> +<p>“It would have spared you this duty, which you dislike +very much.”</p> +<p>“Asking you about your intentions? Oh I +don’t dislike it at all!” she cried. “It +amuses me extremely.”</p> +<p>“Should you like your sister to marry me?” asked +Jackson with great simplicity.</p> +<p>If he expected to take her by surprise he was disappointed: +she was perfectly prepared to commit herself. “I +should like it particularly. I think English and American +society ought to be but one. I mean the best of each. +A great whole.”</p> +<p>“Will you allow me to ask whether Lady Marmaduke +suggested that to you?” he at once inquired.</p> +<p>“We’ve often talked of it.”</p> +<p>“Oh yes, that’s her aim.”</p> +<p>“Well, it’s my aim too. I think +there’s a lot to be done.”</p> +<p>“And you’d like me to do it?”</p> +<p>“To begin it, precisely. Don’t you think we +ought to see more of each other? I mean,” she took +the precaution to explain, “just the best in each +country.”</p> +<p>Jackson Lemon appeared to weigh it. “I’m +afraid I haven’t any general ideas. If I should marry +an English girl it wouldn’t be for the good of the +species.”</p> +<p>“Well, we want to be mixed a little. That +I’m sure of,” Lady Beauchemin said.</p> +<p><a name="page32"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +32</span>“You certainly got that from Lady +Marmaduke,” he commented.</p> +<p>“It’s too tiresome, your not consenting to be +serious! But my father will make you so,” she went on +with her pleasant assurance. “I may as well let you +know that he intends in a day or two to ask you your +intentions. That’s all I wished to say to you. +I think you ought to be prepared.”</p> +<p>“I’m much obliged to you. Lord Canterville +will do quite right,” the young man allowed.</p> +<p>There was to his companion something really unfathomable in +this little American doctor whom she had taken up on grounds of +large policy and who, though he was assumed to have sunk the +medical character, was neither handsome nor distinguished, but +only immensely rich and quite original—since he +wasn’t strictly insignificant. It was unfathomable to +begin with that a medical man should be so rich, or that so rich +a man should be medical; it was even, to an eye always gratified +by suitability and, for that matter, almost everywhere +recognising it, rather irritating. Jackson Lemon himself +could have explained the anomaly better than any one else, but +this was an explanation one could scarcely ask for. There +were other things: his cool acceptance of certain situations; his +general indisposition to make comprehension easy, let alone to +guess it, with all his guessing, so much hindered; his way of +taking refuge in jokes which at times had not even the merit of +being American; his way too of appearing to be a suitor without +being an aspirant. Lady Beauchemin, however, was, like her +puzzling friend himself, prepared to run a certain risk. +His reserves made him slippery, but that was only when one +pressed. She flattered herself she could handle people +lightly. “My father will be sure to act with perfect +tact,” she said; “though of course if you <a +name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +33</span>shouldn’t care to be questioned you can go out of +town.” She had the air of really wishing to act with +the most natural delicacy.</p> +<p>“I don’t want to go out of town; I’m +enjoying it far too much here,” Jackson cried. +“And wouldn’t your father have a right to ask me what +I should mean by that?”</p> +<p>Lady Beauchemin thought—she really wondered. But +in a moment she exclaimed: “He’s incapable of saying +anything vulgar!”</p> +<p>She hadn’t definitely answered his inquiry, and he was +conscious of this; but he was quite ready to say to her a little +later, as he guided her steps from the brougham to the strip of +carpet which, beneath a rickety border of striped cloth and +between a double row of waiting footmen, policemen and dingy +amateurs of both sexes, stretched from the curbstone to the +portal of the Trumpingtons: “Of course I shan’t wait +for Lord Canterville to speak to me.”</p> +<p>He had been expecting some such announcement as this from Lady +Beauchemin and really judged her father would do no more than his +duty. He felt he should be prepared with an answer to the +high challenge so prefigured, and he wondered at himself for +still not having come to the point. Sidney Feeder’s +question in the Park had made him feel rather pointless; it was +the first direct allusion as yet made to his possible marriage by +any one but Lady Beauchemin. None of his own people were in +London; he was perfectly independent, and even if his mother had +been within reach he couldn’t quite have consulted her on +the subject. He loved her dearly, better than any one; but +she wasn’t a woman to consult, for she approved of whatever +he did: the fact of his doing it settled the case for it. +He had been careful not to be too serious when he talked with +Lady Barb’s relative; but he was very serious <a +name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 34</span>indeed as he +thought over the matter within himself, which he did even among +the diversions of the next half-hour, while he squeezed, +obliquely and with tight arrests, through the crush in the +Trumpingtons’ drawing-room. At the end of the +half-hour he came away, and at the door he found Lady Beauchemin, +from whom he had separated on entering the house and who, this +time with a companion of her own sex, was awaiting her carriage +and still “going on.” He gave her his arm to +the street, and as she entered the vehicle she repeated that she +hoped he’d just go out of town.</p> +<p>“Who then would tell me what to do?” he returned, +looking at her through the window.</p> +<p>She might tell him what to do, but he felt free all the same; +and he was determined this should continue. To prove it to +himself he jumped into a hansom and drove back to Brook Street +and to his hotel instead of proceeding to a bright-windowed house +in Portland Place where he knew he should after midnight find +Lady Canterville and her daughters. He recalled a reference +to that chance during his ride with Lady Barb, who would probably +expect him; but it made him taste his liberty not to go, and he +liked to taste his liberty. He was aware that to taste it +in perfection he ought to “turn in”; but he +didn’t turn in, he didn’t even take off his +hat. He walked up and down his sitting-room with his head +surmounted by this ornament, a good deal tipped back, and with +his hands in his pockets. There were various cards stuck +into the frame of the mirror over his chimney-piece, and every +time he passed the place he seemed to see what was written on one +of them—the name of the mistress of the house in Portland +Place, his own name and in the lower left-hand corner “A +small Dance.” Of course, now, he must make up his +mind; he’d make it up by the <a name="page35"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 35</span>next day: that was what he said to +himself as he walked up and down; and according to his decision +he’d speak to Lord Canterville or would take the +night-express to Paris. It was better meanwhile he +shouldn’t see Lady Barb. It was vivid to him, as he +occasionally paused with fevered eyes on the card in the +chimney-glass, that he had come pretty far; and he had come so +far because he was under the spell—yes, he was under the +spell, or whatever it was, of Lady Barb. There was no doubt +whatever of this; he had a faculty for diagnosis and he knew +perfectly what was the matter with him. He wasted no time +in musing on the mystery of his state; in wondering if he +mightn’t have escaped such a seizure by a little vigilance +at first, or if it would abate should he go away. He +accepted it frankly for the sake of the pleasure it gave +him—the girl was the delight of most of his +senses—and confined himself to considering how it would +square with his general situation to marry her. The +squaring wouldn’t at all necessarily follow from the fact +that he was in love; too many other things would come in +between. The most important of these was the change not +only of the geographical but of the social standpoint for his +wife, and a certain readjustment that it would involve in his own +relation to things. He wasn’t inclined to +readjustments, and there was no reason why he should be: his own +position was in most respects so advantageous. But the girl +tempted him almost irresistibly, satisfying his imagination both +as a lover and as a student of the human organism; she was so +blooming, so complete, of a type so rarely encountered in that +degree of perfection. Jackson Lemon was no Anglomaniac, but +he took peculiar pleasure in certain physical facts of the +English—their complexion, their temperament, their tissue; +and Lady Barb had affected him from the <a +name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 36</span>first as in +flexible virginal form a wonderful compendium of these +elements. There was something simple and robust in her +beauty; it had the quietness of an old Greek statue, without the +vulgarity of the modern simper or of contemporary +prettiness. Her head was antique, and though her +conversation was quite of the present period Jackson told himself +that some primitive sincerity of soul couldn’t but match +with the cast of her brow, of her bosom, of the back of her neck, +and with the high carriage of her head, which was at once so +noble and so easy. He saw her as she might be in the +future, the beautiful mother of beautiful children in whom the +appearance of “race” should be conspicuous. He +should like his children to have the appearance of race as well +as other signs of good stuff, and wasn’t unaware that he +must take his precautions accordingly. A great many people +in England had these indications, and it was a pleasure to him to +see them, especially as no one had them so unmistakably as the +second daughter of the Cantervilles. It would be a great +luxury to call a creature so constituted one’s own; nothing +could be more evident than that, because it made no difference +that she wasn’t strikingly clever. Striking +cleverness wasn’t one of the signs, nor a mark of the +English complexion in general; it was associated with the modern +simper, which was a result of modern nerves. If Jackson had +wanted a wife all fiddlestrings of course he could have found her +at home; but this tall fair girl, whose character, like her +figure, appeared mainly to have been formed by riding across +country, was differently put together. All the same would +it suit his book, as they said in London, to marry her and +transport her to New York? He came back to this question; +came back to it with a persistency which, had she been admitted +to a view of it, would have tried the patience of Lady <a +name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +37</span>Beauchemin. She had been irritated more than once +at his appearing to attach himself so exclusively to that horn of +the dilemma—as if it could possibly fail to be a good thing +for a little American doctor to marry the daughter of an English +peer. It would have been more becoming in her +ladyship’s eyes that he should take this for granted a +little more and take the consent of her ladyship’s—of +their ladyships’—family a little less. They +looked at the matter so differently! Jackson Lemon was +conscious that if he should propose for the young woman who so +strongly appealed to him it would be because it suited him, and +not because it suited his possible sisters-in-law. He +believed himself to act in all things by his own faculty of +choice and volition, a feature of his outfit in which he had the +highest confidence.</p> +<p>It would have seemed, indeed, that just now this part of his +inward machine was not working very regularly, since, though he +had come home to go to bed, the stroke of half-past twelve saw +him jump not into his sheets but into a hansom which the whistle +of the porter had summoned to the door of his hotel and in which +he rattled off to Portland Place. Here he found—in a +very large house—an assembly of five hundred persons and a +band of music concealed in a bower of azaleas. Lady +Canterville had not arrived; he wandered through the rooms and +assured himself of that. He also discovered a very good +conservatory, where there were banks and pyramids of +azaleas. He watched the top of the staircase, but it was a +long time before he saw what he was looking for, and his +impatience grew at last extreme. The reward, however, when +it came, was all he could have desired. It consisted of a +clear smile from Lady Barb, who stood behind her mother while the +latter extended vague finger-tips to the hostess. The +entrance of <a name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +38</span>this charming woman and her beautiful +daughters—always a noticeable incident—was effected +with a certain spread of commotion, and just now it was agreeable +to Jackson to feel this produced impression concern him probably +more than any one else in the house. Tall, dazzling, +indifferent, looking about her as if she saw very little, Lady +Barb was certainly a figure round which a young man’s fancy +might revolve. Very rare, yet very quiet and very simple, +she had little manner and little movement; but her detachment was +not a vulgar art. She appeared to efface herself, to wait +till, in the natural course, she should be attended to; and in +this there was evidently no exaggeration, for she was too proud +not to have perfect confidence. Her sister, quite another +affair, with a little surprised smile which seemed to say that in +her extreme innocence she was still prepared for anything, having +heard, indirectly, such extraordinary things about society, was +much more impatient and more expressive, and had always projected +across a threshold the pretty radiance of her eyes and teeth +before her mother’s name was announced. Lady +Canterville was by many persons more admired and more championed +than her daughters; she had kept even more beauty than she had +given them, and it was a beauty which had been called +intellectual. She had extraordinary sweetness, without any +definite professions; her manner was mild almost to tenderness; +there was even in it a degree of thoughtful pity, of human +comprehension. Moreover her features were perfect, and +nothing could be more gently gracious than a way she had of +speaking, or rather of listening, to people with her head +inclined a little to one side. Jackson liked her without +trepidation, and she had certainly been “awfully +nice” to him. He approached Lady Barb as soon as he +could do so without an <a name="page39"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 39</span>appearance of rushing up; he remarked +to her that he hoped very much she wouldn’t dance. He +was a master of the art which flourishes in New York above every +other, and had guided her through a dozen waltzes with a skill +which, as she felt, left absolutely nothing to be desired. +But dancing was not his business to-night. She smiled +without scorn at the expression of his hope.</p> +<p>“That’s what mamma has brought us here for,” +she said; “she doesn’t like it if we don’t +dance.”</p> +<p>“How does she know whether she likes it or not? +You always have danced.”</p> +<p>“Oh, once there was a place where I didn’t,” +said Lady Barb.</p> +<p>He told her he would at any rate settle it with her mother, +and persuaded her to wander with him into the conservatory, where +coloured lights were suspended among the plants and a vault of +verdure arched above. In comparison with the other rooms +this retreat was far and strange. But they were not alone; +half a-dozen other couples appeared to have had reasons as good +as theirs. The gloom, none the less, was rosy with the +slopes of azalea and suffused with mitigated music, which made it +possible to talk without consideration of one’s +neighbours. In spite of this, though it was only in looking +back on the scene later that Lady Barb noted the fact, these +dispersed couples were talking very softly. She +didn’t look at them; she seemed to take it that virtually +she was alone with the young American. She said something +about the flowers, about the fragrance of the air; for all answer +to which he asked her, as he stood there before her, a question +that might have startled her by its suddenness.</p> +<p>“How do people who marry in England ever know each other +before marriage? They have no chance.”</p> +<p><a name="page40"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +40</span>“I’m sure I don’t know,” she +returned. “I never was married.”</p> +<p>“It’s very different in my country. There a +man may see much of a girl; he may freely call on her, he may be +constantly alone with her. I wish you allowed that over +here.”</p> +<p>Lady Barb began to examine the less ornamental side of her fan +as if it had never invited her before. “It must be so +very odd, America,” she then concluded.</p> +<p>“Well, I guess in that matter we’re right. +Over here it’s a leap in the dark.”</p> +<p>“I’m sure I don’t know,” she again +made answer. She had folded her fan; she stretched out her +arm mechanically and plucked a sprig of azalea.</p> +<p>“I guess it doesn’t signify after all,” +Jackson however proceeded. “Don’t you know they +say that love’s blind at the best?” His keen +young face was bent upon hers; his thumbs were in the pockets of +his trousers; he smiled with a slight strain, showing his fine +teeth. She said nothing, only pulling her azalea to +pieces. She was usually so quiet that this small movement +was striking.</p> +<p>“This is the first time I’ve seen you in the least +without a lot of people,” he went on.</p> +<p>“Yes, it’s very tiresome.”</p> +<p>“I’ve been sick of it. I didn’t want +even to come here to-night.”</p> +<p>She hadn’t met his eyes, though she knew they were +seeking her own. But now she looked at him straight. +She had never objected to his appearance, and in this respect had +no repugnance to surmount. She liked a man to be tall and +handsome, and Jackson Lemon was neither; but when she was +sixteen, and as tall herself as she was to be at twenty, she had +been in love—for three weeks—with one of her cousins, +a little fellow in the Hussars, who was shorter even <a +name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 41</span>than the +American, was of inches markedly fewer than her own. This +proved that distinction might be independent of stature—not +that she had ever reasoned it out. Doctor Lemon’s +facial spareness and his bright ocular attention, which had a +fine edge and a marked scale, unfolded and applied rule-fashion, +affected her as original, and she thought of them as rather +formidable to a good many people, which would do very well in a +husband of hers. As she made this reflexion it of course +never occurred to her that she herself might suffer true +measurement, for she was not a sacrificial lamb. She felt +sure his features expressed a mind—a mind immensely useful, +like a good hack or whatever, and that he knew how to +employ. She would never have supposed him a doctor; though +indeed when all was said this was very negative and didn’t +account for the way he imposed himself.</p> +<p>“Why, then, did you come?” she asked in answer to +his last speech.</p> +<p>“Because it seems to me after all better to see you this +way than not to see you at all. I want to know you +better.”</p> +<p>“I don’t think I ought to stay here,” she +said as she looked round her.</p> +<p>“Don’t go till I’ve told you I love +you,” the young man distinctly replied.</p> +<p>She made no exclamation, indulged in no start; he +couldn’t see even that she changed colour. She took +his request with a noble simplicity, her head erect and her eyes +lowered. “I don’t think you’ve quite a +right to tell me that.”</p> +<p>“Why not?” Jackson demanded. “I want +to claim the right. I want you to give it to me.”</p> +<p>“I can’t—I don’t know you. +You’ve said that yourself.”</p> +<p>“Can’t you have a little faith?” he at once +asked, <a name="page42"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +42</span>speaking as fast as if he were not even a little afraid +to urge the pace. “That will help us to know each +other better. It’s disgusting, the want of +opportunity; even at Pasterns I could scarcely get a walk with +you. But I’ve the most absolute trust of you. I +<i>know</i> I love you, and I couldn’t do more than that at +the end of six months. I love your beauty, I love your +nature, I love you from head to foot. Don’t move, +please don’t move.” He lowered his tone now, +but it went straight to her ear and we must believe conveyed a +certain eloquence. For himself, after he had heard himself +say these words, all his being was in a glow. It was a +luxury to speak to her of her beauty; it brought him nearer to +her than he had ever been. But the colour had come into her +face and seemed to remind him that her beauty wasn’t +all. “Everything about you is true and sweet and +grand,” he went on; “everything’s dear to +me. I’m sure you’re good. I don’t +know what you think of me; I asked Lady Beauchemin to tell me, +and she told me to judge for myself. Well, then, I judge +you like me. Haven’t I a right to assume that till +the contrary’s proved? May I speak to your +father? That’s what I want to know. I’ve +been waiting, but now what should I wait for longer? I want +to be able to tell him you’ve given me hope. I +suppose I ought to speak to him first. I meant to, +to-morrow, but meanwhile, to-night, I thought I’d just put +this in. In my country it wouldn’t matter +particularly. You must see all that over there for +yourself. If you should tell me not to speak to your father +I wouldn’t—I’d wait. But I like better to +ask your leave to speak to him than ask his to speak to +you.”</p> +<p>His voice had sunk almost to a whisper, but, though it +trembled, the fact of his pleading gave it intensity. He +had the same attitude, his thumbs in his trousers, his neat +attentive young head, his smile, <a name="page43"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 43</span>which was a matter of course; no one +would have imagined what he was saying. She had listened +without moving and at the end she raised her eyes. They +rested on his own a moment, and he remembered for a long time the +look, the clear effluence of splendid maidenhood, as deep as a +surrender, that passed her lids.</p> +<p>Disconcertingly, however, there was no surrender in what she +answered. “You may say anything you please to my +father, but I don’t wish to hear any more. +You’ve said too much, considering how little idea +you’ve given me before.”</p> +<p>“I was watching you,” said Jackson Lemon.</p> +<p>She held her head higher, still looking straight at him. +Then quite seriously, “I don’t like to be +watched,” she returned.</p> +<p>“You shouldn’t be so beautiful then. +Won’t you give me a word of hope?”</p> +<p>“I’ve never supposed I should marry a +foreigner,” said Lady Barb.</p> +<p>“Do you call me a foreigner?”</p> +<p>“I think your ideas are very different and your country +different. You’ve told me so yourself.”</p> +<p>“I should like to show it to you. I would make you +like it.”</p> +<p>“I’m not sure what you’d make me do,” +she went on very honestly.</p> +<p>“Nothing you don’t want.”</p> +<p>“I’m sure you’d try,” she smiled as +for more accommodation.</p> +<p>“Well,” said Jackson Lemon, “I’m after +all trying now.”</p> +<p>To this she returned that she must go to her mother, and he +was obliged to lead her out of the place. Lady Canterville +was not immediately found, so that he had time to keep it up a +little as they went. “Now that I’ve spoken +I’m very happy.”</p> +<p><a name="page44"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +44</span>“Perhaps you’re happy too soon.”</p> +<p>“Ah, don’t say that, Lady Barb,” he tenderly +groaned.</p> +<p>“Of course I must think of it.”</p> +<p>“Of course you must!” Jackson abundantly +concurred. “I’ll speak to your father +to-morrow.”</p> +<p>“I can’t fancy what he’ll say.”</p> +<p>“How can he dislike me? But I guess he +doesn’t!” the young man cried in a tone which Lady +Beauchemin, had she heard him, would have felt connected with his +general retreat upon the quaint. What Lady +Beauchemin’s sister thought of it is not recorded; but +there is perhaps a clue to her opinion in the answer she made him +after a moment’s silence: “Really, you know, you +<i>are</i> a foreigner!” With this she turned her +back, for she was already in her mother’s hands. +Jackson Lemon said a few words to Lady Canterville; they were +chiefly about its being very hot. She gave him her vague +sweet attention, as if he were saying something ingenious but of +which she missed the point. He could see she was thinking +of the ways of her daughter Agatha, whose attitude toward the +contemporary young man was wanting in the perception of +differences—a madness too much without method; she was +evidently not occupied with Lady Barb, who was more to be +depended on. This young woman never met her suitor’s +eyes again; she let her own rest rather ostentatiously on other +objects. At last he was going away without a glance from +her. Her mother had asked him to luncheon for the morrow, +and he had said he would come if she would promise him he should +see his lordship. “I can’t pay you another +visit till I’ve had some talk with him.”</p> +<p>“I don’t see why not, but if I speak to him I +daresay he will be at home,” she returned.</p> +<p>“It will be worth his while!” At this he +almost <a name="page45"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +45</span>committed himself; and he left the house reflecting that +as he had never proposed to a girl before he couldn’t be +expected to know how women demean themselves in this +emergency. He had heard indeed that Lady Barb had had no +end of offers; and though he supposed the number probably +overstated, as it always is, he had to infer that her way of +appearing suddenly to have dropped him was but the usual +behaviour for the occasion.</p> +<h3><a name="page46"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +46</span>III</h3> +<p>At her mother’s the next day she was absent from +luncheon, and Lady Canterville mentioned to him—he +didn’t ask—that she had gone to see a dear old +great-aunt who was also her godmother and who lived at +Roehampton. Lord Canterville was not present, but Jackson +learned from his hostess that he had promised her he would come +in exactly at three o’clock. Our young man lunched +with her ladyship and the children, who appeared in force at this +repast, all the younger girls being present, and two little boys, +the juniors of the two sons who were in their teens. Doctor +Lemon, who was fond of children and thought these absolutely the +finest in the world—magnificent specimens of a magnificent +brood, such as it would be so satisfactory in future days to see +about his own knee—Doctor Lemon felt himself treated as one +of the family, but was not frightened by what he read into the +privilege of his admission. Lady Canterville showed no +sense whatever of his having mooted the question of becoming her +son-in-law, and he believed the absent object of his attentions +hadn’t told her of their evening’s talk. This +idea gave him pleasure; he liked to think Lady Barb was judging +him for herself. Perhaps indeed she was taking counsel of +the old lady at Roehampton: he saw himself the sort of lover of +whom a godmother would approve. Godmothers, in <a +name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 47</span>his mind, +were mainly associated with fairy-tales—he had had no +baptismal sponsors of his own; and that point of view would be +favourable to a young man with a great deal of gold who had +suddenly arrived from a foreign country—an apparition +surely in a proper degree elfish. He made up his mind he +should like Lady Canterville as a mother-in-law; she would be too +well-bred to meddle. Her husband came in at three +o’clock, just after they had risen, and observed that it +was very good in him to have waited.</p> +<p>“I haven’t waited,” Jackson replied with his +watch in his hand; “you’re punctual to the +minute.”</p> +<p>I know not how Lord Canterville may have judged his young +friend, but Jackson Lemon had been told more than once in his +life that he would have been all right if he hadn’t been so +literal. After he had lighted a cigarette in his +lordship’s “den,” a large brown apartment on +the ground-floor, which partook at once of the nature of an +office and of that of a harness-room—it couldn’t have +been called in any degree a library or even a study—he went +straight to the point in these terms: “Well now, Lord +Canterville, I feel I ought to let you know without more delay +that I’m in love with Lady Barb and that I should like to +make her my wife.” So he spoke, puffing his +cigarette, with his conscious but unextenuating eyes fixed on his +host.</p> +<p>No man, as I have intimated, bore better being looked at than +this noble personage; he seemed to bloom in the envious warmth of +human contemplation and never appeared so faultless as when most +exposed. “My dear fellow, my dear fellow,” he +murmured almost in disparagement, stroking his ambrosial beard +from before the empty fireplace. He lifted his eyebrows, +but looked perfectly good-natured.</p> +<p>“Are you surprised, sir?” Jackson asked.</p> +<p><a name="page48"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +48</span>“Why I suppose a fellow’s surprised at any +one’s wanting one of his children. He sometimes feels +the weight of that sort of thing so much, you know. He +wonders what use on earth another man can make of +them.” And Lord Canterville laughed pleasantly +through the copious fringe of his lips.</p> +<p>“I only want one of them,” said his guest, +laughing too, but with a lighter organ.</p> +<p>“Polygamy would be rather good for the parents. +However, Luke told me the other night she knew you to be looking +the way you speak of.”</p> +<p>“Yes, I mentioned to Lady Beauchemin that I love Lady +Barb, and she seemed to think it natural.”</p> +<p>“Oh I suppose there’s no want of nature in +it! But, my dear fellow, I really don’t know what to +say,” his lordship added.</p> +<p>“Of course you’ll have to think of +it.” In saying which Jackson felt himself make the +most liberal concession to the point of view of his interlocutor; +being perfectly aware that in his own country it wasn’t +left much to the parents to think of.</p> +<p>“I shall have to talk it over with my wife.”</p> +<p>“Well, Lady Canterville has been very kind to me; I hope +she’ll continue.”</p> +<p>Lord Canterville passed a large fair hand, as for inspiration, +over his beard. “My dear fellow, we’re +excellent friends. No one could appreciate you more than +Lady Canterville. Of course we can only consider such a +question on the—a—the highest grounds. +You’d never want to marry without knowing—as it +were—exactly what you’re doing. I, on my side, +naturally, you know, am bound to do the best I can for my own +poor child. At the same time, of course, we don’t +want to spend our time in—a—walking round the +horse. We want to get at the truth about him.” +It was settled between them after a little that the truth about +Lemon’s business <a name="page49"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 49</span>was that he knew to a certainty the +state of his affections and was in a position to pretend to the +hand of a young lady who, Lord Canterville might say without +undue swagger, had a right to expect to do as well as any girl +about the place.</p> +<p>“I should think she had,” Doctor Lemon said. +“She’s a very rare type.”</p> +<p>His entertainer had a pleasant blank look. +“She’s a clever well-grown girl and she takes her +fences like a grasshopper. Does she know all this, by the +way?”</p> +<p>“Oh yes, I told her last night.”</p> +<p>Again Lord Canterville had the air, unusual with him, of +sounding, at some expense of precious moments, the expression of +face of a visitor so unacquainted with shyness. +“I’m not sure you ought to have done that, you +know.”</p> +<p>“I couldn’t have spoken to you first—I +couldn’t,” said Jackson Lemon. “I meant +to; but it stuck in my crop.”</p> +<p>“They don’t in your country, I guess,” his +lordship amicably laughed.</p> +<p>“Well, not as a general thing. However, I find it +very pleasant to have the whole thing out with you +now.” And in truth it was very pleasant. +Nothing could be easier, friendlier, more informal, than Lord +Canterville’s manner, which implied all sorts of equality, +especially that of age and fortune, and made our young man feel +at the end of three minutes almost as if he too were a +beautifully-preserved and somewhat straitened nobleman of sixty, +with the views of a man of the world about his own +marriage. Jackson perceived that Lord Canterville waived +the point of his having spoken first to the girl herself, and saw +in this indulgence a just concession to the ardour of young +affection. For his lordship seemed perfectly to appreciate +the sentimental side—at least so far as it was embodied in +his visitor—when he said <a name="page50"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 50</span>without deprecation: “Did she +give you any encouragement?”</p> +<p>“Well, she didn’t box my ears. She told me +she’d think of it, but that I must speak to you. +Naturally, however, I shouldn’t have said what I did if I +hadn’t made up my mind during the last fortnight that +I’m not disagreeable to her.”</p> +<p>“Ah, my dear young man, women are odd fish!” this +parent exclaimed rather unexpectedly. “But of course +you know all that,” he added in an instant; “you take +the general risk.”</p> +<p>“I’m perfectly willing to take the general +risk. The particular risk strikes me as small.”</p> +<p>“Well, upon my honour I don’t really know my +girls. You see a man’s time in England is +tremendously taken up; but I daresay it’s the same in your +country. Their mother knows them—I think I had better +send for their mother. If you don’t mind,” Lord +Canterville wound up, “I’ll just suggest that she +join us here.”</p> +<p>“I’m rather afraid of you both together, but if it +will settle it any quicker—!” Jackson said. His +companion rang the bell and, when a servant appeared, despatched +him with a message to her ladyship. While they were waiting +the young man remembered how easily he could give a more definite +account of his pecuniary basis. He had simply stated before +that he was abundantly able to marry; he shrank from putting +himself forward as a monster of money. With his excellent +taste he wished to appeal to Lord Canterville primarily as a +gentleman. But now that he had to make a double impression +he bethought himself of his millions, for millions were always +impressive. “It strikes me as only fair to let you +know that my fortune’s really considerable.”</p> +<p>“Yes, I daresay you’re beastly rich,” said +Lord Canterville with a natural and visible faith.</p> +<p><a name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +51</span>“Well, I represent, all told, some seven +millions.”</p> +<p>“Seven millions?”</p> +<p>“I count in dollars. Upwards of a million and a +half sterling.”</p> +<p>Lord Canterville looked at him from head to foot, exhaling +with great promptitude an air of cheerful resignation to a form +of grossness threatening to become common. Then he said +with a touch of that inconsequence of which he had already given +a glimpse: “What the deuce in that case possessed you to +turn doctor?”</p> +<p>Jackson Lemon coloured a little and demurred, but bethought +himself of his best of reasons. “Why, my having +simply the talent for it.”</p> +<p>“Of course I don’t for a moment doubt your +ability. But don’t you,” his lordship candidly +asked, “find it rather a bore?”</p> +<p>“I don’t practise much. I’m rather +ashamed to say that.”</p> +<p>“Ah well, of course in your country it’s +different. I daresay you’ve got a door-plate, +eh?”</p> +<p>“Oh yes, and a tin sign tied to the balcony!” +Jackson laughed.</p> +<p>Here the joke was beyond his friend, who but went on: +“What on earth did your father say to it?”</p> +<p>“To my going into medicine? He said he’d be +hanged if he’d take any of my doses. He didn’t +think I should succeed; he wanted me to go into the +house.”</p> +<p>“Into the House—a—?” Lord Canterville +just wondered. “That would be into your +Congress?”</p> +<p>“Ah no, not so bad as that. Into the store,” +Jackson returned with that refinement of the ingenuous which he +reserved for extreme cases.</p> +<p>His host stared, not venturing even for the moment to hazard +an interpretation; and before a solution <a +name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 52</span>had presented +itself Lady Canterville was on the scene.</p> +<p>“My dear, I thought we had better see you. Do you +know he wants to marry our second girl?” It was in +these simple and lucid terms that her husband acquainted her with +the question.</p> +<p>She expressed neither surprise nor elation; she simply stood +there smiling, her head a little inclined to the side and her +beautiful benevolence well to the front. Her charming eyes +rested on Doctor Lemon’s; and, though they showed a shade +of anxiety for a matter of such importance, his own discovered in +them none of the coldness of calculation. “Are you +talking about dear Barb?” she asked in a moment and as if +her thoughts had been far away.</p> +<p>Of course they were talking about dear Barb, and Jackson +repeated to her what he had said to her noble spouse. He +had thought it all over and his mind was quite made up. +Moreover, he had spoken to the young woman.</p> +<p>“Did she tell you that, my dear?” his lordship +asked while he lighted another cigar.</p> +<p>She gave no heed to this inquiry, which had been vague and +accidental on the speaker’s part; she simply remarked to +their visitor that the thing was very serious and that they had +better sit down a moment. In an instant he was near her on +the sofa on which she had placed herself and whence she still +smiled up at her husband with her air of luxurious patience.</p> +<p>“Barb has told me nothing,” she dropped, however, +after a little.</p> +<p>“That proves how much she cares for me!” Jackson +declared with instant lucidity.</p> +<p>Lady Canterville looked as if she thought this really too +ingenious, almost as professional as if their talk were a +consultation; but her husband went, all <a +name="page53"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 53</span>gaily, +straighter to the point. “Ah well, if she cares for +you I don’t object.”</p> +<p>This was a little ambiguous; but before the young man had time +to look into it his hostess put a bland question. +“Should you expect her to live in America?”</p> +<p>“Oh yes. That’s my home, you +know.”</p> +<p>“Shouldn’t you be living sometimes in +England?”</p> +<p>“Oh yes—we’ll come over and see +you.” He was in love, he wanted to marry, he wanted +to be genial and to commend himself to the family; yet it was in +his nature not to accept conditions save in so far as they met +his taste, not to tie himself or, as they said in New York, give +himself away. He preferred in any transaction his own terms +to those of any one else, so that the moment Lady Canterville +gave signs of wishing to extract a promise he was on his +guard.</p> +<p>“She’ll find it very different; perhaps she +won’t like it,” her ladyship suggested.</p> +<p>“If she likes me she’ll like my country,” +Jackson Lemon returned with decision.</p> +<p>“He tells me he has a plate on his door,” Lord +Canterville put in for the right pleasant tone.</p> +<p>“We must talk to her of course; we must understand how +she feels”—and his wife looked, though still +gracious, more nobly responsible.</p> +<p>“Please don’t discourage her, Lady +Canterville,” Jackson firmly said; “and give me a +chance to talk to her a little more myself. You +haven’t given me much chance, you know.”</p> +<p>“We don’t offer our daughters to people, however +amiable, Mr. Lemon.” Her charming grand manner rather +quickened.</p> +<p>“She isn’t like some women in London, you +know,” Lord Canterville helpfully explained; “you see +we rather stave off the evil day: we like to be <a +name="page54"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +54</span>together.” And Jackson certainly, if the +idea had been presented to him, would have said that No, +decidedly, Lady Barb hadn’t been thrown at him.</p> +<p>“Of course not,” he declared in answer to her +mother’s remark. “But you know you +mustn’t decline overtures too much either; you +mustn’t make a poor fellow wait too long. I admire +her, I love her, more than I can say; I give you my word of +honour for that.”</p> +<p>“He seems to think that settles it,” said Lord +Canterville, shining richly down at the young American from his +place before the cold chimney-piece.</p> +<p>“Certainly that’s what we desire, Philip,” +her ladyship returned with an equal grace.</p> +<p>“Lady Barb believes it; I’m sure she does!” +Jackson exclaimed with spirit. “Why should I pretend +to be in love with her if I’m not?”</p> +<p>Lady Canterville received this appeal in silence, and her +husband, with just the least air in the world of repressed +impatience, began to walk up and down the room. He was a +man of many engagements, and he had been closeted for more than a +quarter of an hour with the young American doctor. +“Do you imagine you should come often to England?” +Lady Canterville asked as if to think of everything.</p> +<p>“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that; of course +we shall do whatever seems best.” He was prepared to +suppose they should cross the Atlantic every summer—that +prospect was by no means displeasing to him; but he wasn’t +prepared to tie himself, as he would have said, up to it, nor up +to anything in particular. It was in his mind not as an +overt pretension but as a tacit implication that he should treat +with the parents of his presumed bride on a footing of perfect +equality; and there would somehow be nothing equal if he should +begin to enter into engagements that didn’t belong to the +essence of the matter. They were to <a +name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 55</span>give their +daughter and he was to take her: in this arrangement there would +be as much on one side as on the other. But beyond it he +had nothing to ask of them; there was nothing he was calling on +them to promise, and his own pledges therefore would have no +equivalent. Whenever his wife should wish it she should +come over and see her people. Her home was to be in New +York; but he was tacitly conscious that on the question of +absences he should be very liberal, and there was meanwhile +something in the very grain of his character that forbade he +should be eagerly yielding about times and dates.</p> +<p>Lady Canterville looked at her spouse, but he was now not +attentive; he was taking a peep at his watch. In a moment, +however, he threw out a remark to the effect that he thought it a +capital thing the two countries should become more united, and +there was nothing that would bring it about better than a few of +the best people on both sides pairing-off together. The +English indeed had begun it; a lot of fellows had brought over a +lot of pretty girls, and it was quite fair play that the +Americans should take their pick. They were all one race, +after all; and why shouldn’t they make one +society—the best of both sides, of course? Jackson +Lemon smiled as he recognised Lady Marmaduke’s great +doctrine, and he was pleased to think Lady Beauchemin had some +influence with her father; for he was sure the great old boy, as +he mentally designated his host, had got all this from her, +though he expressed himself less happily than the cleverest of +his daughters. Our hero had no objection to make to it, +especially if there were aught in it that would really help his +case. But it was not in the least on these high grounds he +had sought the hand of Lady Barb. He wanted her not in +order that her people and his—the best on both +sides!—should make one society; he wanted her <a +name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 56</span>simply +because he wanted her. Lady Canterville smiled, but she +seemed to have another thought.</p> +<p>“I quite appreciate what my husband says, but I +don’t see why poor Barb should be the one to +begin.”</p> +<p>“I daresay she’ll like it,” said his +lordship as if he were attempting a short cut. “They +say you spoil your women awfully.”</p> +<p>“She’s not one of their women yet,” Lady +Canterville remarked in the sweetest tone in the world; and then +she added without Jackson Lemon’s knowing exactly what she +meant: “It seems so strange.”</p> +<p>He was slightly irritated, and these vague words perhaps added +to the feeling. There had been no positive opposition to +his suit, and both his entertainers were most kind; but he felt +them hold back a little, and though he hadn’t expected them +to throw themselves on his neck he was rather +disappointed—his pride was touched. Why should they +hesitate? He knew himself such a good <i>parti</i>. +It was not so much his noble host—it was Lady +Canterville. As he saw her lord and master look covertly +and a second time at his watch he could have believed him glad to +settle the matter on the spot. Lady Canterville seemed to +wish their aspirant to come forward more, to give certain +assurances and pledges. He felt he was ready to say or do +anything that was a matter of proper form, but he couldn’t +take the tone of trying to purchase her ladyship’s assent, +penetrated as he was with the conviction that such a man as he +could be trusted to care for his wife rather more than an +impecunious British peer and <i>his</i> wife could be +supposed—with the lights he had acquired on English +society—to care even for the handsomest of a dozen +children. It was a mistake on the old lady’s part not +to recognise that. He humoured this to the extent of saying +just a little dryly: “My wife shall certainly have +everything she wants.”</p> +<p><a name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +57</span>“He tells me he’s disgustingly rich,” +Lord Canterville added, pausing before their companion with his +hands in his pockets.</p> +<p>“I’m glad to hear it; but it isn’t so much +that,” she made answer, sinking back a little on her +sofa. If it wasn’t that she didn’t say what it +was, though she had looked for a moment as if she were going +to. She only raised her eyes to her husband’s face, +she asked for inspiration. I know not whether she found it, +but in a moment she said to Jackson Lemon, seeming to imply that +it was quite another point: “Do you expect to continue your +profession?”</p> +<p>He had no such intention, so far as his profession meant +getting up at three o’clock in the morning to assuage the +ills of humanity; but here, as before, the touch of such a +question instantly stiffened him. “Oh, my +profession! I rather wince at that grand old name. +I’ve neglected my work so scandalously that I scarce know +on what terms with it I shall be—though hoping for the best +when once I’m right there again.”</p> +<p>Lady Canterville received these remarks in silence, fixing her +eyes once more upon her husband’s. But his +countenance really rather failed her; still with his hands in his +pockets, save when he needed to remove his cigar from his lips, +he went and looked out of the window. “Of course we +know you don’t practise, and when you’re a married +man you’ll have less time even than now. But I should +really like to know if they call you Doctor over +there.”</p> +<p>“Oh yes, universally. We’re almost as fond +of titles as your people.”</p> +<p>“I don’t call that a title,” her ladyship +smiled.</p> +<p>“It’s not so good as duke or marquis, I admit; but +we have to take what we’ve got.”</p> +<p>“Oh bother, what does it signify?” his lordship +demanded from his place at the window. “I used <a +name="page58"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 58</span>to have a +horse named Doctor, and a jolly good one too.”</p> +<p>“Don’t you call bishops Doctors? Well, then, +call me Bishop!” Jackson laughed.</p> +<p>Lady Canterville visibly didn’t follow. “I +don’t care for <i>any</i> titles,” she nevertheless +observed. “I don’t see why a gentleman +shouldn’t be called Mr.”</p> +<p>It suddenly appeared to her young friend that there was +something helpless, confused and even slightly comical in her +state. The impression was mollifying, and he too, like Lord +Canterville, had begun to long for a short cut. He relaxed +a moment and, leaning toward his hostess with a smile and his +hands on his little knees, he said softly: “It seems to me +a question of no importance. All I desire is that you +should call me your son-in-law.”</p> +<p>She gave him her hand and he pressed it almost +affectionately. Then she got up, remarking that before +anything was decided she must see her child, must learn from her +own lips the state of her feelings. “I don’t +like at all her not having spoken to me already,” she +added.</p> +<p>“Where has she gone—to Roehampton? I daresay +she has told it all to her godmother,” said Lord +Canterville.</p> +<p>“She won’t have much to tell, poor girl!” +Jackson freely commented. “I must really insist on +seeing with more freedom the person I wish to marry.”</p> +<p>“You shall have all the freedom you want in two or three +days,” said Lady Canterville. She irradiated all her +charity; she appeared to have accepted him and yet still to be +making tacit assumptions. “Aren’t there certain +things to be talked of first?”</p> +<p>“Certain things, dear lady?”</p> +<p>She looked at her husband, and though he was still at his +window he felt it this time in her silence and <a +name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 59</span>had to come +away and speak. “Oh she means settlements and that +kind of thing.” This was an allusion that came with a +much better grace from the father.</p> +<p>Jackson turned from one of his companions to the other; he +coloured a little and his self-control was perhaps a trifle +strained. “Settlements? We don’t make +them in my country. You may be sure I shall make a proper +provision for my wife.”</p> +<p>“My dear fellow, over here—in our class, you +know—it’s the custom,” said Lord Canterville +with a truer ease in his face at the thought that the discussion +was over.</p> +<p>“I’ve my own ideas,” Jackson returned with +even greater confidence.</p> +<p>“It seems to me it’s a question for the solicitors +to discuss,” Lady Canterville suggested.</p> +<p>“They may discuss it as much as they +please”—the young man showed amusement. He +thought he saw his solicitors discussing it! He had indeed +his own ideas. He opened the door for his hostess and the +three passed out of the room together, walking into the hall in a +silence that expressed a considerable awkwardness. A note +had been struck which grated and scratched a little. A pair +of shining footmen, at their approach, rose from a bench to a +great altitude and stood there like sentinels presenting +arms. Jackson stopped, looking for a moment into the +interior of his hat, which he had in his hand. Then raising +his keen eyes he fixed them a moment on those of Lady +Canterville, addressing her instinctively rather than his other +critic. “I guess you and Lord Canterville had better +leave it to me!”</p> +<p>“We have our traditions, Mr. Lemon,” said her +ladyship with a firm grace. “I imagine you +don’t know—!” she gravely breathed.</p> +<p>Lord Canterville laid his hand on their visitor’s <a +name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +60</span>shoulder. “My dear boy, those fellows will +settle it in three minutes.”</p> +<p>“Very likely they will!” said Jackson Lemon. +Then he asked of Lady Canterville when he might see Lady +Barb.</p> +<p>She turned it spaciously over. “I’ll write +you a note.”</p> +<p>One of the tall footmen at the end of the impressive vista had +opened wide the portals, as if even he were aware of the dignity +to which the small strange gentleman had virtually been +raised. But Jackson lingered; he was visibly unsatisfied, +though apparently so little conscious he was unsatisfying. +“I don’t think you understand me.”</p> +<p>“Your ideas are certainly different,” said Lady +Canterville.</p> +<p>His lordship, however, made comparatively light of it. +“If the girl understands you that’s +enough!”</p> +<p>“Mayn’t <i>she</i> write to me?” Jackson +asked of her mother. “I certainly must write to her, +you know, if you won’t let me see her.”.</p> +<p>“Oh yes, you may write to her, Mr. Lemon.”</p> +<p>There was a point, for a moment, in the look he returned on +this, while he said to himself that if necessary he would +transmit his appeal through the old lady at Roehampton. +“All right—good-bye. You know what I want at +any rate.” Then as he was going he turned and added: +“You needn’t be afraid I won’t always bring her +over in the hot weather!”</p> +<p>“In the hot weather?” Lady Canterville murmured +with vague visions of the torrid zone. Jackson however +quitted the house with the sense he had made great +concessions.</p> +<p>His host and hostess passed into a small morning-room +and—Lord Canterville having taken up his hat and stick to +go out again—stood there a moment, <a +name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 61</span>face to +face. Then his lordship spoke in a summary manner. +“It’s clear enough he wants her.”</p> +<p>“There’s something so odd about him,” Lady +Canterville answered. “Fancy his speaking so about +settlements!”</p> +<p>“You had better give him his head. He’ll go +much quieter.”</p> +<p>“He’s so obstinate—very obstinate; +it’s easy to see that. And he seems to think,” +she went on, “that a girl in your daughter’s position +can be married from one day to the other—with a ring and a +new frock—like a housemaid.”</p> +<p>“Well that, of course, over there is the kind of +thing. But he seems really to have a most extraordinary +fortune, and every one does say they give their women <i>carte +blanche</i>.”</p> +<p>“<i>Carte blanche</i> is not what Barb wants; she wants +a settlement. She wants a definite income,” said Lady +Canterville; “she wants to be safe.”</p> +<p>He looked at her rather straight. “Has she told +you so? I thought you said—” And then he +stopped. “I beg your pardon,” he added.</p> +<p>She didn’t explain her inconsequence; she only remarked +that American fortunes were notoriously insecure; one heard of +nothing else; they melted away like smoke. It was their own +duty to their child to demand that something should be fixed.</p> +<p>Well, he met this in his way. “He has a million +and a half sterling. I can’t make out what he does +with it.”</p> +<p>She rose to it without a flutter. “Our child +should have, then, something very handsome.”</p> +<p>“I agree, my dear; but you must manage it; you must +consider it; you must send for Hardman. Only take care you +don’t put him off; it may be a very good opening, you +know. There’s a great deal to be done out there; I +believe in all that,” Lord <a name="page62"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 62</span>Canterville went on in the tone of a +conscientious parent.</p> +<p>“There’s no doubt that he <i>is</i> a +doctor—in some awful place,” his wife brooded.</p> +<p>“He may be a pedlar for all I care.”</p> +<p>“If they should go out I think Agatha might go with +them,” her ladyship continued in the same tone, but a +little disconnectedly.</p> +<p>“You may send them all out if you like. +Goodbye!”</p> +<p>The pair embraced, but her hand detained him a moment. +“Don’t you think he’s greatly in +love?”</p> +<p>“Oh yes, he’s very bad—but he’s a +sharp little beggar.”</p> +<p>“She certainly quite likes him,” Lady Canterville +stated rather formally as they separated.</p> +<h3><a name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +63</span>IV</h3> +<p>Jackson Lemon had said to Dr. Feeder in the Park that he would +call on Mr. and Mrs. Freer; but three weeks were to elapse before +he knocked at their door in Jermyn Street. In the meantime +he had met them at dinner and Mrs. Freer had told him how much +she hoped he would find time to come and see her. She had +not reproached him nor shaken her finger at him, and her +clemency, which was calculated and very characteristic of her, +touched him so much—for he was in fault, she was one of his +mother’s oldest and best friends—that he very soon +presented himself. It was on a fine Sunday afternoon, +rather late, and the region of Jermyn Street looked forsaken and +inanimate; the native dulness of the brick scenery reigned +undisputed. Mrs. Freer, however, was at home, resting on a +lodging-house sofa—an angular couch draped in faded +chintz—before she went to dress for dinner. She made +the young man very welcome; she told him again how much she had +been thinking of him; she had longed so for a chance to talk with +him. He immediately guessed what she had in her mind, and +he then remembered that Sidney Feeder had named to him what it +was this pair took upon themselves to say. This had +provoked him at the time, but he had forgotten it afterward; +partly because he became aware that same night of his wanting to +make the “young marchioness” his own <a +name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 64</span>and partly +because since then he had suffered much greater annoyance. +Yes, the poor young man, so conscious of liberal intentions, of a +large way of looking at the future, had had much to irritate and +disgust him. He had seen the mistress of his affections but +three or four times, and had received a letter from Mr. Hardman, +Lord Canterville’s solicitor, asking him, in terms the most +obsequious it was true, to designate some gentleman of the law +with whom the preliminaries of his marriage to Lady Barbarina +Clement might be arranged. He had given Mr. Hardman the +name of such a functionary, but he had written by the same post +to his own solicitor—for whose services in other matters he +had had much occasion, Jackson Lemon being distinctly +contentious—instructing him that he was at liberty to meet +that gentleman, but not at liberty to entertain any proposals as +to the odious English idea of a settlement. If marrying +Jackson Lemon wasn’t settlement enough the house of +Canterville had but to alter their point of view. It was +quite out of the question he should alter his. It would +perhaps be difficult to explain the strong dislike he entertained +to the introduction into his prospective union of this harsh +diplomatic element; it was as if they mistrusted him and +suspected him; as if his hands were to be tied so that he +shouldn’t be able to handle his own fortune as he thought +best. It wasn’t the idea of parting with his money +that displeased him, for he flattered himself he had plans of +expenditure for his wife beyond even the imagination of her +distinguished parents. It struck him even that they were +fools not to have felt subtly sure they should make a much better +thing of it by leaving him perfectly free. This +intervention of the solicitor was a nasty little English +tradition—totally at variance with the large spirit of +American habits—to which he wouldn’t submit. <a +name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 65</span>It +wasn’t his way to submit when he disapproved: why should he +change his way on this occasion when the matter lay so near +him?</p> +<p>These reflexions and a hundred more had flowed freely through +his mind for several days before his call in Jermyn Street, and +they had engendered a lively indignation and a bitter sense of +wrong. They had even introduced, as may be imagined, a +certain awkwardness into his relations with the house of +Canterville, of which indeed it may be said that these amenities +were for the moment virtually suspended. His first +interview with Lady Barb after his conference with the old +couple, as he called her august elders, had been as frank, had +been as sweet, as he could have desired. Lady Canterville +had at the end of three days sent him an invitation—five +words on a card—asking him to dine with them on the morrow +quite <i>en famille</i>. This had been the only formal +intimation that his engagement to her daughter was recognised; +for even at the family banquet, which included half a dozen +guests of pleasant address but vague affiliation, there had been +no reference on the part either of his host or his hostess to the +subject of their converse in Lord Canterville’s den. +The only allusion was a wandering ray, once or twice, in Lady +Barb’s own fine eyes. When, however, after dinner, +she strolled away with him into the music-room, which was lighted +and empty, to play for him something out of “Carmen,” +of which he had spoken at table, and when the young couple were +allowed to enjoy for upwards of an hour, unmolested, the +comparative privacy of that elegant refuge, he felt Lady +Canterville definitely to count on him. She didn’t +believe in any serious difficulties. Neither did he then; +and that was why it was not to be condoned that there should be a +vain appearance of them. The arrangements, he supposed her +ladyship would have <a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +66</span>said, were pending, and indeed they were; for he had +already given orders in Bond Street for the setting of an +extraordinary number of diamonds. Lady Barb, at any rate, +during that hour he spent with her, had had nothing to say about +arrangements; and it had been an hour of pure satisfaction. +She had seated herself at the piano and had played perpetually, +in a soft incoherent manner, while he leaned over the instrument, +very close to her, and said everything that came into his +head. She was braver and handsomer than ever and looked at +him as if she liked him out and out.</p> +<p>This was all he expected of her, for it didn’t belong to +the cast of her beauty to betray a vulgar infatuation. That +beauty was clearly all he had believed it from the first, and +with something now thrown in, something ever so touching and +stirring, which seemed to stamp her from that moment as his +precious possession. He felt more than ever her intimate +value and the great social outlay it had taken to produce such a +mixture. Simple and girlish as she was, and not +particularly quick in the give and take of conversation, she +seemed to him to have a part of the history of England in her +blood; she was the fine flower of generations of privileged +people and of centuries of rich country-life. Between these +two of course was no glance at the question which had been put +into the hands of Mr. Hardman, and the last thing that occurred +to Jackson was that Lady Barb had views as to his settling a +fortune upon her before their marriage. It may appear odd, +but he hadn’t asked himself whether his money operated on +her in any degree as a bribe; and this was because, +instinctively, he felt such a speculation idle—the point +was essentially not to be ascertained—and because he was +quite ready to take it for agreeable to her to continue to live +in luxury. It was eminently <a name="page67"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 67</span>agreeable to him to have means to +enable her to do so. He was acquainted with the mingled +character of human motives and glad he was rich enough to pretend +to the hand of a young woman who, for the best of reasons, would +be very expensive. After the good passage in the music-room +he had ridden with her twice, but hadn’t found her +otherwise accessible. She had let him know the second time +they rode that Lady Canterville had directed her to make, for the +moment, no further appointment with him; and on his presenting +himself more than once at the house he had been told that neither +the mother nor the daughter was at home: it had been added that +Lady Barb was staying at Roehampton. In touching on that +restriction she had launched at him just a distinguishable mute +reproach—there was always a certain superior dumbness in +her eyes—as if he were exposing her to an annoyance she +ought to be spared, or taking an eccentric line on a question +that all well-bred people treated in the conventional way.</p> +<p>His induction from this was not that she wished to be secure +about his money, but that, like a dutiful English daughter, she +received her opinions—on points that were indifferent to +her—ready-made from a mamma whose fallibility had never +been exposed. He knew by this that his solicitor had +answered Mr. Hardman’s letter and that Lady +Canterville’s coolness was the fruit of the +correspondence. The effect of it was not in the least to +make him come round, as he phrased it; he had not the smallest +intention of doing that. Lady Canterville had spoken of the +traditions of her family; but he had no need to go to his family +for his own. They resided within himself; anything he had +once undiscussably made up his mind to acquired in three minutes +the force, and with that the due dignity of a tradition. +Meanwhile he was in the detestable position of not knowing <a +name="page68"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 68</span>whether or no +he were engaged. He wrote to Lady Barb to clear it up, to +smooth it down—it being so strange she shouldn’t +receive him; and she addressed him in return a very pretty little +letter, which had to his mind a fine by-gone quality, an +old-fashioned, a last-century freshness that might have flowed, a +little thinly, from the pen of Clarissa or Sophia. She +professed that she didn’t in the least understand the +situation; that of course she would never give him up; that her +mother had said there were the best reasons for their not going +too fast; that, thank God, she was yet young and could wait as +long as he would; but that she begged he wouldn’t write her +about money-matters: she had never been able to count even on her +fingers. He felt in no danger whatever of making this last +mistake; he only noted how Lady Barb thought it natural there +should be a discussion; and this made it vivid to him afresh that +he had got hold of a daughter of the Crusaders. His +ingenious mind could appreciate this hereditary assumption at the +very same time that, to light his own footsteps, it remained +entirely modern. He believed—or he thought he +believed—that in the end he should marry his gorgeous girl +on his own terms; but in the interval there was a sensible +indignity in being challenged and checked. One effect of it +indeed was to make him desire the young woman more +intensely. When she wasn’t before his eyes in the +flesh she hovered before him as an image, and this image had +reasons of its own for making him at hours fairly languid with +love.</p> +<p>There were moments, however, when he wearied of the mere +enshrined memory—it was too impalpable and too +thankless. Then it befell that Jackson Lemon for the first +time in his life dropped and gave way—gave way, that is, to +the sense of sadness. He felt alone in London, and very +much out of it, <a name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +69</span>in spite of all the acquaintances he had made and the +bills he had paid; he felt the need of a greater intimacy than +any he had formed—save of course in the case of Lady +Barb. He wanted to vent his disgust, to relieve himself, +from the New York point of view. He felt that in engaging +in a contest with the great house of Canterville he was after all +rather single. That singleness was of course in a great +measure an inspiration; but it pinched him hard at moments. +Then it would have pleased him could his mother have been near; +he used to talk of his affairs a great deal with this delightful +parent, who had a delicate way of advising him in the sense he +liked best. He had even gone so far as to wish he had never +laid eyes on Lady Barb, but had fallen in love instead with some +one or other of the rarer home-products. He presently came +back of course to the knowledge that in the United States there +was—and there could be—nothing nearly so rare as the +young lady who had in fact appealed to him so straight, for was +it not precisely as a high resultant of the English climate and +the British constitution that he valued her? He had +relieved himself, from his New York point of view, by speaking +his mind to Lady Beauchemin, who confessed that she was +infinitely vexed with her parents. She agreed with him that +they had made a great mistake; they ought to have left him free; +and she expressed her confidence that such freedom could only +have been, in him, for her family, like the silence of the sage, +golden. He must let them down easily, must remember that +what was asked of him had been their custom for centuries. +She didn’t mention her authority as to the origin of +customs, but she promised him she would say three words to her +father and mother which would make it all right. Jackson +answered that customs were all very well, but that really +intelligent people recognised <a name="page70"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 70</span>at sight, and then indeed quite +enjoyed, the right occasion for departing from them; and with +this he awaited the result of Lady Beauchemin’s +remonstrance. It had not as yet been perceptible, and it +must be said that this charming woman was herself not quite at +ease.</p> +<p>When on her venturing to hint to her mother that she thought a +wrong line had been taken with regard to her sister’s +<i>prétendant</i>, Lady Canterville had replied that Mr. +Lemon’s unwillingness to settle anything was in itself a +proof of what they had feared, the unstable nature of his +fortune—since it was useless to talk (this gracious lady +could be very decided) as if there could be any serious reason +but that one—on meeting this argument, as I say, +Jackson’s protectress felt considerably baffled. It +was perhaps true, as her mother said, that if they didn’t +insist upon proper pledges Barbarina might be left in a few years +with nothing but the stars and stripes—this odd phrase was +a quotation from Mr. Lemon—to cover her withal. Lady +Beauchemin tried to reason it out with Lady Marmaduke; but these +were complications unforeseen by Lady Marmaduke in her project of +an Anglo-American society. She was obliged to confess that +Mr. Lemon’s fortune couldn’t have the solidity of +long-established things; it was a very new fortune indeed. +His father had made the greater part of it all in a lump, a few +years before his death, in the extraordinary way in which people +made money in America; that of course was why the son had those +singular professional attributes. He had begun to study to +be a doctor very young, before his expectations were so +great. Then he had found he was very clever and very fond +of it, and had kept on because after all, in America, where there +were no country gentlemen, a young man had to have something to +do, don’t you know? And Lady <a +name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 71</span>Marmaduke, +like an enlightened woman, intimated that in such a case she +thought it in much better taste not to try to sink +anything. “Because in America, don’t you +see?” she reasoned, “you can’t sink +it—nothing <i>will</i> sink. Everything’s +floating about—in the newspapers.” And she +tried to console her friend by remarking that if Mr. +Lemon’s fortune was precarious it was at all events so +big. That was just the trouble for Lady Beauchemin, it was +so big and yet they were going to lose it. He was as +obstinate as a mule; she was sure he would never come +round. Lady Marmaduke declared he really <i>would</i> come +round; she even offered to bet a dozen pair of <i>gants de +Suède</i> on it; and she added that this consummation lay +quite in the hands of Barbarina. Lady Beauchemin promised +herself to contend with her sister, as it was not for nothing she +had herself caught the glamour of her friend’s +international scheme.</p> +<p>Jackson Lemon, to dissipate his chagrin, had returned to the +sessions of the medical congress, where, inevitably, he had +fallen into the hands of Sidney Feeder, who enjoyed in this +disinterested assembly the highest esteem. It was Dr. +Feeder’s earnest desire that his old friend should share +his credit—all the more easily that the medical congress +was, as the young physician observed, a perpetual +symposium. Jackson entertained the entire body at +dinner—entertained it profusely and in a manner befitting +one of the patrons of science rather than the humbler votaries; +but these dissipations made him forget but for the hour the +arrest of his relations with the house of Canterville. It +punctually came back to him that he was disconcerted, and Dr. +Feeder saw it stamped on his brow. Jackson Lemon, with his +acute inclination to open himself, was on the point more than +once of taking this sturdy friend into his confidence. His +colleague gave him easy <a name="page72"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 72</span>occasion—asked him what it was +he was thinking of all the time and whether the young marchioness +had concluded she couldn’t swallow a doctor. These +forms of speech were displeasing to our baffled aspirant, whose +fastidiousness was nothing new; but he had even deeper reasons +for saying to himself that in such complicated cases as his there +was no assistance in the Sidney Feeders. To understand his +situation one must know the world, and the children of +Cincinnati, prohibitively provincial, didn’t know the +world—at least the world with which this son of New York +was now concerned.</p> +<p>“Is there a hitch in your marriage? Just tell me +that,” Sidney Feeder had said, taking things for granted in +a manner that of itself testified to an innocence abysmal. +It is true he had added that he supposed he had no business to +ask; but he had been anxious about it ever since hearing from Mr. +and Mrs. Freer that the British aristocracy was down on the +medical profession. “Do they want you to give it +up? Is that what the hitch is about? Don’t +desert your colours, Jackson. The suppression of pain, the +mitigation of misery, constitute surely the noblest profession in +the world.”</p> +<p>“My dear fellow, you don’t know what you’re +talking about,” Jackson could only observe in answer to +this. “I haven’t told any one I was going to be +married—still less have I told any one that any one objects +to my profession. I should like to see any one do it. +I’ve rather got out of the swim, but I don’t regard +myself as the sort of person that people object to. And I +do expect to do something yet.”</p> +<p>“Come home, then, and do it. And don’t crush +me with grandeur if I say that the facilities for getting married +are much greater over there.”</p> +<p>“You don’t seem to have found them very +great,” Jackson sniffed.</p> +<p><a name="page73"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +73</span>“I’ve never had time really to go into +them. But wait till my next vacation and you’ll +see.”</p> +<p>“The facilities over there are too great. +Nothing’s worth while but what’s difficult,” +said Jackson with a sententious ring that quite distressed his +mate.</p> +<p>“Well, they’ve got their backs up, I can see +that. I’m glad you like it. Only if they +despise your profession what will they say to that of your +friends? If they think you’re queer what would they +think of me?” asked Sidney Feeder, whose spirit was not as +a general thing in the least bitter, but who was pushed to this +sharpness by a conviction that—in spite of declarations +which seemed half an admission and half a denial—his friend +was suffering worry, or really perhaps something almost like +humiliation, for the sake of a good that might be gathered at +home on every bush.</p> +<p>“My dear fellow, all that’s +‘rot’!” This had been Jackson’s +retort, which expressed, however, not half his feeling. The +other half was inexpressible, or almost, springing as it did from +his depth of displeasure at its having struck even so genial a +mind as Sidney Feeder’s that in proposing to marry a +daughter of the highest civilisation he was going out of his +way—departing from his natural line. Was he then so +ignoble, so pledged to inferior things, that when he saw a girl +who—putting aside the fact that she hadn’t genius, +which was rare, and which, though he prized rarity, he +didn’t want—seemed to him the most naturally and +functionally founded and seated feminine subject he had known, he +was to think himself too different, too incongruous, to mate with +her? He would mate with whom he “damn pleased”; +that was the upshot of Jackson Lemon’s passion. +Several days elapsed during which everybody—even the +pure-minded, like poor Sidney—seemed to him very +abject.</p> +<p><a name="page74"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 74</span>All of +which is recorded to show how he, in going to see Mrs. Freer, was +prepared much less to be angry with people who, like her husband +and herself a month before, had given it out that he was engaged +to a peer’s daughter, than to resent the insinuation that +there were obstacles to such a prospect. He sat with the +lady of Jermyn Street alone for half an hour in the sabbatical +stillness. Her husband had gone for a walk in the +Park—he always walked in the Park of a Sunday. All +the world might have been there and Jackson and Mrs. Freer in +sole possession of the district of Saint James’s. +This perhaps had something to do with making him at last so +confidential; they had such a margin for easy egotism and +spreading sympathy. Mrs. Freer was ready for +anything—in the critical, the “real” line; she +treated him as a person she had known from the age of ten; asked +his leave to continue recumbent; talked a great deal about his +mother and seemed almost, for a while, to perform the earnest +functions of that lady. It had been wise of her from the +first not to allude, even indirectly, to his having neglected so +long to call; her silence on this point was in the best +taste. Jackson had forgotten how it was a habit with her, +and indeed a high accomplishment, never to reproach people with +these omissions. You might have left her alone for months +or years, her greeting was always the same; she never was either +too delighted to see you or not delighted enough. After a +while, however, he felt her silence to be in some measure an +allusion; she appeared to take for granted his devoting all his +hours to a certain young lady. It came over him for a +moment that his compatriots took a great deal for granted; but +when Mrs. Freer, rather abruptly sitting up on her sofa, said to +him half-simply, half-solemnly: “And now, my dear Jackson, +I want you to tell me something!”—he saw <a +name="page75"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 75</span>that, after +all, she kept within bounds and didn’t pretend to know more +about his business than he himself did. In the course of a +quarter of an hour—so appreciatively she listened—he +had given her much information. It was the first time he +had said so much to any one, and the process relieved him even +more than he would have supposed. There were things it made +clear to him by bringing them to a point—above all, the +fact that he had been wronged. He made no mention whatever +of its being out of the usual way that, as an American doctor, he +should sue for the hand of a marquis’s daughter; and this +reserve was not voluntary, it was quite unconscious. His +mind was too full of the sudden rudeness of the Cantervilles and +the sordid side of their want of confidence.</p> +<p>He couldn’t imagine that while he talked to Mrs. +Freer—and it amazed him afterwards that he should have +chattered so; he could account for it but by the state of his +nerves—she should be thinking only of the strangeness of +the situation he sketched for her. She thought Americans as +good as other people, but she didn’t see where, in American +life, the daughter of a marquis would, as she phrased it, work +in. To take a simple instance—they coursed through +Mrs. Freer’s mind with extraordinary +speed—wouldn’t she always expect to go in to dinner +first? As a novelty and for a change, over there, they +might like to see her do it—there might be even a pressure +for places at the show. But with the increase of every kind +of sophistication that was taking place in America the humorous +view to which she would owe her immediate ease mightn’t +continue to be taken; and then where would poor Lady Barb +be? This was in truth a scant instance; but Mrs. +Freer’s vivid imagination—much as she had lived in +Europe she knew her native land so well—saw a host <a +name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 76</span>of others +massing themselves behind it. The consequence of all of +which was that after listening to her young friend in the most +engaging silence she raised her clasped hands, pressed them +against her breast, lowered her voice to a tone of entreaty and, +with all the charming cheer of her wisdom, uttered three words: +“My dear Jackson, +don’t—don’t—don’t.”</p> +<p>“Don’t what?” He took it at first +coldly.</p> +<p>“Don’t neglect the chance you have of getting out +of it. You see it would never do.”</p> +<p>He knew what she meant by his chance of getting out of it; he +had in his many meditations of course not overlooked that. +The ground the old couple had taken about settlements—and +the fact that Lady Beauchemin hadn’t come back to him to +tell him, as she promised, that she had moved them, proved how +firmly they were rooted—would have offered an +all-sufficient pretext to a man who should have repented of his +advances. Jackson knew this, but knew at the same time that +he had not repented. The old couple’s want of +imagination didn’t in the least alter the fact that the +girl was, in her perfection, as he had told her father, one of +the rarest of types. Therefore he simply said to Mrs. Freer +that he didn’t in the least wish to get out of it; he was +as much in it as ever and intended to remain in it. But +what did she mean, he asked in a moment, by her statement that it +would never do? Why wouldn’t it do? Mrs. Freer +replied by another question—should he really like her to +tell him? It wouldn’t do because Lady Barb +wouldn’t be satisfied with her place at dinner. She +wouldn’t be content—in a society of +commoners—with any but the best; and the best she +couldn’t expect (and it was to be supposed he didn’t +expect her) always grossly to monopolise; as people of her sort, +for that matter, did so successfully grab it in England.</p> +<p><a name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +77</span>“What do you mean by commoners?” Jackson +rather grimly demanded.</p> +<p>“I mean you and me and my poor husband and Dr. +Feeder,” said Mrs. Freer.</p> +<p>“I don’t see how there can be commoners where +there aren’t lords. It’s the lord that makes +the commoner, and <i>vice versa</i>.”</p> +<p>“Won’t a lady do as well? Our Lady +Barb—a single English girl—can make a million +inferiors.”</p> +<p>“She will be, before anything else, my wife; and she +won’t on the whole think it any less vulgar to talk about +inferiors than I do myself.”</p> +<p>“I don’t know what she’ll talk about, my +dear Jackson, but she’ll think; and her thoughts +won’t be pleasant—I mean for others. Do you +expect to sink her to your own rank?”</p> +<p>Dr. Lemon’s bright little eyes rested more sharply on +his hostess. “I don’t understand you and +don’t think you understand yourself.” This was +not absolutely candid, for he did understand Mrs. Freer to a +certain extent; it has been related that before he asked Lady +Barb’s hand of her parents there had been moments when he +himself doubted if a flower only to be described as of the social +hothouse, that is of aristocratic air, would flourish in American +earth. But an intimation from another person that it was +beyond his power to pass off his wife—whether she were the +daughter of a peer or of a shoemaker—set all his blood on +fire. It quenched on the instant his own perception of +difficulties of detail and made him feel only that he was +dishonoured—he the heir of all the ages—by such +insinuations. It was his belief—though he had never +before had occasion to put it forward—that his position, +one of the best in the world, had about it the felicity that +makes everything possible. He had had the best education +the age could offer, for if he had rather wasted his time <a +name="page78"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 78</span>at Harvard, +where he entered very young, he had, as he believed, been +tremendously serious at Heidelberg and at Vienna. He had +devoted himself to one of the noblest of professions—a +profession recognised as such everywhere but in England—and +had inherited a fortune far beyond the expectation of his earlier +years, the years when he cultivated habits of work which alone +(or rather in combination with talents that he neither +exaggerated nor undervalued) would have conduced to +distinction. He was one of the most fortunate inhabitants +of an immense fresh rich country, a country whose future was +admitted to be incalculable, and he moved with perfect ease in a +society in which he was not overshadowed by others. It +seemed to him, therefore, beneath his dignity to wonder whether +he could afford, socially speaking, to marry according to his +taste. He pretended to general strength, and what was the +use of strength if you weren’t prepared to undertake things +timid people might find difficult? It was his plan to marry +the woman he desired and not be afraid of her afterward. +The effect of Mrs. Freer’s doubt of his success was to +represent to him that his own character wouldn’t cover his +wife’s; she couldn’t have made him feel worse if she +had told him that he was marrying beneath him and would have to +ask for indulgence. “I don’t believe you know +how much I think that any woman who marries me will be doing very +well,” he promptly added.</p> +<p>“I’m very sure of that; but it isn’t so +simple—one’s being an American,” Mrs. Freer +rejoined with a small philosophic sigh.</p> +<p>“It’s whatever one chooses to make it.”</p> +<p>“Well, you’ll make it what no one has done yet if +you take that young lady to America and make her happy +there.”</p> +<p><a name="page79"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +79</span>“Do you think our country, then, such a very +dreadful place?”</p> +<p>His hostess had a pause. “It’s not a +question of what I think, but of what she will.”</p> +<p>Jackson rose from his chair and took up his hat and +stick. He had actually turned a little pale with the force +of his emotion; there was a pang of wrath for him in this fact +that his marriage to Lady Barbarina might be looked at as too +high a flight. He stood a moment leaning against the +mantelpiece and very much tempted to say to Mrs. Freer that she +was a vulgar-minded old woman. But he said something that +was really more to the point. “You forget that +she’ll have her consolations.”</p> +<p>“Don’t go away or I shall think I’ve +offended you. You can’t console an injured +noblewoman.”</p> +<p>“How will she be injured? People will be charming +to her.”</p> +<p>“They’ll be charming to her—charming to +her!” These words fell from the lips of Dexter Freer, +who had opened the door of the room and stood with the knob in +his hand, putting himself into relation to his wife’s talk +with their visitor. This harmony was achieved in an +instant. “Of course I know whom you mean,” he +said while he exchanged greetings with Jackson. “My +wife and I—naturally we’re great +busybodies—have talked of your affair and we differ about +it completely. She sees only the dangers, while I see all +the advantages.”</p> +<p>“By the advantages he means the fun for us,” Mrs. +Freer explained, settling her sofa-cushions.</p> +<p>Jackson looked with a certain sharp blankness from one of +these disinterested judges to the other; even yet they scarce saw +how their misdirected freedom wrought on him. It was hardly +more agreeable to him to know that the husband wished to see Lady +Barb in America than to know that the wife waved <a +name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 80</span>away such a +vision. There was that in Dexter Freer’s face which +seemed to forecast the affair as taking place somehow for the +benefit of the spectators. “I think you both see too +much—a great deal too much—in the whole thing,” +he rather coldly returned.</p> +<p>“My dear young man, at my age I may take certain +liberties,” said Dexter Freer. “<i>Do</i> what +you’ve planned—I beseech you to do it; it has never +been done before.” And then as if Jackson’s +glance had challenged this last assertion he went on: +“Never, I assure you, this particular thing. Young +female members of the British aristocracy have married coachmen +and fishmongers and all that sort of thing; but they’ve +never married you and me.”</p> +<p>“They certainly haven’t married the +‘likes’ of either of you!” said Mrs. Freer.</p> +<p>“I’m much obliged to you for your +advice.” It may be thought that Jackson Lemon took +himself rather seriously, and indeed I’m afraid that if he +hadn’t done so there would have been no occasion even for +this summary report of him. But it made him almost sick to +hear his engagement spoken of as a curious and ambiguous +phenomenon. He might have his own ideas about it—one +always had about one’s engagement; but the ideas that +appeared to have peopled the imagination of his friends ended by +kindling a small hot expanse in each of his cheeks. +“I’d rather not talk any more about my little +plans,” he added to his host. “I’ve been +saying all sorts of absurd things to Mrs. Freer.”</p> +<p>“They’ve been most interesting and most +infuriating,” that lady declared. “You’ve +been very stupidly treated.”</p> +<p>“May she tell me when you go?” her husband asked +of the young man.</p> +<p>“I’m going now—she may tell you whatever she +likes.”</p> +<p><a name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +81</span>“I’m afraid we’ve displeased +you,” she went on; “I’ve said too much what I +think. You must pardon me—it’s all for your +mother.”</p> +<p>“It’s she whom I want Lady Barb to see!” +Jackson exclaimed with the inconsequence of filial affection.</p> +<p>“Deary me!” Mrs. Freer gently wailed.</p> +<p>“We shall go back to America to see how you get +on,” her husband said; “and if you succeed it will be +a great precedent.”</p> +<p>“Oh I shall succeed!” And with this he took +his departure. He walked away with the quick step of a man +labouring under a certain excitement; walked up to Piccadilly and +down past Hyde Park Corner. It relieved him to measure +these distances, for he was thinking hard, under the influence of +irritation, and it was as if his movement phrased his +passion. Certain lights flashed on him in the last +half-hour turned to fire in him; the more that they had a +representative value and were an echo of the common voice. +If his prospects wore that face to Mrs. Freer they would probably +wear it to others; so he felt a strong sharp need to show such +others that they took a mean measure of his position. He +walked and walked till he found himself on the highway of +Hammersmith. I have represented him as a young man with a +stiff back, and I may appear to undermine this plea when I note +that he wrote that evening to his solicitor that Mr. Hardman was +to be informed he would agree to any proposals for settlements +that this worthy should make. Jackson’s stiff back +was shown in his deciding to marry Lady Barbarina on any +terms. It had come over him through the action of this +desire to prove he wasn’t afraid—so odious was the +imputation—that terms of any kind were very superficial +things. What was fundamental and of the essence of the +matter would be to secure the grand girl and <i>then</i> carry +everything out.</p> +<h3><a name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 82</span>V</h3> +<p>“On Sundays now you might be at home,” he said to +his wife in the following month of March—more than six +months after his marriage.</p> +<p>“Are the people any nicer on Sundays than they are on +other days?” Lady Barb asked from the depths of her chair +and without looking up from a stiff little book.</p> +<p>He waited ever so briefly before answering. “I +don’t know whether they are, but I think you might +be.”</p> +<p>“I’m as nice as I know how to be. You must +take me as I am. You knew when you married me that I +wasn’t American.”</p> +<p>Jackson stood before the fire toward which his wife’s +face was turned and her feet extended; stood there some time with +his hands behind him and his eyes dropped a little obliquely on +Lady Barb’s bent head and richly-draped figure. It +may be said without delay that he was sore of soul, and it may be +added that he had a double cause. He knew himself on the +verge of the first crisis that had occurred between himself and +his wife—the reader will note that it had occurred rather +promptly—and he was annoyed at his annoyance. A +glimpse of his state of mind before his marriage has been given +the reader, who will remember that at that period our young man +had believed himself lifted above possibilities of <a +name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +83</span>irritation. When one was strong one wasn’t +fidgety, and a union with a species of calm goddess would of +course be a source of repose. Lady Barb was a calm, was an +even calmer goddess still, and he had a much more intimate view +of her divinity than on the day he had led her to the altar; but +I’m not sure he felt either as firm or as easy.</p> +<p>“How do you know what people are?” he said in a +moment. “You’ve seen so few; you’re +perpetually denying yourself. If you should leave New York +to-morrow you’d know wonderfully little about +it.”</p> +<p>“It’s all just the same,” she pleaded. +“The people are all exactly alike. There’s only +one sort.”</p> +<p>“How can you tell? You never see them.”</p> +<p>“Didn’t I go out every night for the first two +months we were here?”</p> +<p>“It was only to about a dozen houses—those, I +agree, always the same; people, moreover, you had already met in +London. You’ve got no general impressions.”</p> +<p>She raised her beautiful blank face. “That’s +just what I <i>have</i> got; I had them before I came. I +see no difference whatever. They’ve just the same +names—just the same manners.”</p> +<p>Again for an instant Jackson hung fire; then he said with that +practised flat candour of which mention has already been made and +which he sometimes used in London during his courtship: +“Don’t you like it over here?”</p> +<p>Lady Barb had returned to her book, but she looked up +again. “Did you expect me to like it?”</p> +<p>“I hoped you would, of course. I think I told you +so.”</p> +<p>“I don’t remember. You said very little +about it; you seemed to make a kind of mystery. I knew of +course you expected me to live here, but I didn’t know you +expected me to like it.”</p> +<p><a name="page84"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +84</span>“You thought I asked of you the sacrifice, as it +were.”</p> +<p>“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Lady +Barb. She got up from her chair and tossed her +unconsolatory volume into the empty seat. “I +recommend you to read that book,” she added.</p> +<p>“Is it interesting?”</p> +<p>“It’s an American novel.”</p> +<p>“I never read novels.”</p> +<p>“You had really better look at that one. It will +show you the kind of people you want me to know.”</p> +<p>“I’ve no doubt it’s very vulgar,” +Jackson said. “I don’t see why you read +it.”</p> +<p>“What else can I do? I can’t always be +riding in the Park. I hate the Park,” she quite rang +out.</p> +<p>“It’s just as good as your own,” said her +husband.</p> +<p>She glanced at him with a certain quickness, her eyebrows +slightly lifted. “Do you mean the park at +Pasterns?”</p> +<p>“No; I mean the park in London.”</p> +<p>“Oh I don’t care about London. One was only +in London a few weeks.” She had a horrible lovely +ease.</p> +<p>Yet he but wanted to help her to turn round. “I +suppose you miss the country,” he suggested. It was +his idea of life that he shouldn’t be afraid of anything, +not be afraid, in any situation, of knowing the worst that was to +be known about it; and the demon of a courage with which +discretion was not properly commingled prompted him to take +soundings that were perhaps not absolutely necessary for safety +and yet that revealed unmistakable rocks. It was useless to +know about rocks if he couldn’t avoid them; the only thing +was to trust to the wind.</p> +<p>“I don’t know what I miss. I think I miss +everything!” This was his wife’s answer to his +too-curious inquiry. It wasn’t peevish, for that +wasn’t the <a name="page85"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +85</span>tone of a calm goddess; but it expressed a good +deal—a good deal more than Lady Barb, who was rarely +eloquent, had expressed before. Nevertheless, though his +question had been precipitate, Jackson said to himself that he +might take his time to think over what her fewness of words +enclosed; he couldn’t help seeing that the future would +give him plenty of chance. He was in no hurry to ask +himself whether poor Mrs. Freer, in Jermyn Street, mightn’t +after all have been right in saying that when it came to marrying +an English caste-product it wasn’t so simple to be an +American doctor—it might avail little even in such a case +to be the heir of all the ages. The transition was +complicated, but in his bright mind it was rapid, from the brush +of a momentary contact with such ideas to certain considerations +which led him to go on after an instant: “Should you like +to go down into Connecticut?”</p> +<p>“Into Connecticut?”</p> +<p>“That’s one of our States. It’s about +as large as Ireland. I’ll take you there if you +like.”</p> +<p>“What does one do there?”</p> +<p>“We can try and get some hunting.”</p> +<p>“You and I alone?”</p> +<p>“Perhaps we can get a party to join us.”</p> +<p>“The people in the State?”</p> +<p>“Yes—we might propose it to them.”</p> +<p>“The tradespeople in the towns?”</p> +<p>“Very true—they’ll have to mind their +shops,” Jackson said. “But we might hunt +alone.”</p> +<p>“Are there any foxes?”</p> +<p>“No, but there are a few old cows.”</p> +<p>Lady Barb had already noted that her husband sought the relief +of a laugh at her expense, and she was aware that this present +opportunity was neither worse nor better than some others. +She didn’t mind that trick in him particularly now, though +in England <a name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +86</span>it would have disgusted her; she had the consciousness +of virtue, an immense comfort, and flattered herself she had +learned the lesson of an altered standard of +fitness—besides which there were so many more disagreeable +things in America than being laughed at by one’s +husband. But she pretended not to like it because this made +him stop, and above all checked discussion, which with Jackson +was habitually so facetious and consequently so tiresome. +“I only want to be left alone,” she said in +answer—though indeed it hadn’t the style of an +answer—to his speech about the cows. With this she +wandered away to one of the windows that looked out on the Fifth +Avenue. She was very fond of these windows and had taken a +great fancy to the Fifth Avenue, which, in the high-pitched +winter weather, when everything sparkled, was bright and funny +and foreign. It will be seen that she was not wholly unjust +to her adoptive country: she found it delightful to look out of +the window. This was a pleasure she had enjoyed in London +only in the most furtive manner; it wasn’t the kind of +thing that girls in England did. Besides, in London, in +Hill Street, there was nothing particular to see; whereas in the +Fifth Avenue everything and every one went by, and observation +was made consistent with dignity by the quantities of brocade and +lace dressing the embrasure, which somehow wouldn’t have +been tidy in England and which made an ambush without concealing +the brilliant day. Hundreds of women—the queer women +of New York, who were unlike any that Lady Barb had hitherto +seen—passed the house every hour; and her ladyship was +infinitely entertained and mystified by the sight of their +clothes. She spent more time than she was aware of in this +recreation, and had she been addicted to returning upon herself, +to asking herself for an account of her conduct—an <a +name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 87</span>inquiry she +didn’t indeed completely neglect, but made no great form +of—she must have had a wan smile for this proof of what she +appeared mainly to have come to America for, conscious though she +was that her tastes were very simple and that so long as she +didn’t hunt it didn’t much matter what she did.</p> +<p>Her husband turned about to the fire, giving a push with his +foot to a log that had fallen out of its place. Then he +said—and the connexion with the words she had just uttered +was direct enough—“You really must manage to be at +home on Sundays, you know. I used to like that so much in +London. All the best women here do it. You had better +begin to-day. I’m going to see my mother. If I +meet any one I’ll tell them to come.”</p> +<p>“Tell them not to talk so much,” said Lady Barb +among her lace curtains.</p> +<p>“Ah, my dear,” Jackson returned, “it +isn’t every one who has your concision.” And he +went and stood behind her in the window, putting his arm round +her waist. It was as much of a satisfaction to him as it +had been six months before, at the time the solicitors were +settling the matter, that this flower of an ancient stem should +be worn upon his own breast; he still thought its fragrance a +thing quite apart, and it was as clear as day to him that his +wife was the handsomest woman in New York. He had begun, +after their arrival, by telling her this very often; but the +assurance brought no colour to her cheek, no light to her eyes: +to be the handsomest woman in New York, now that she was +acquainted with that city, plainly failed to strike her as a +position in life. The reader may, moreover, be informed +that, oddly enough, Lady Barb didn’t particularly believe +this assertion. There were some very pretty women in New +York, and without in the least wishing to be like them—she +had seen no woman in America whom she <a name="page88"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 88</span>desired to resemble—she envied +them some of their peculiar little freshnesses. It’s +probable that her own finest points were those of which she was +most unconscious. But Jackson was intensely aware of all of +them; nothing could exceed the minuteness of his appreciation of +his wife. It was a sign of this that after he had stood +behind her a moment he kissed her very tenderly. +“Have you any message for my mother?” he asked.</p> +<p>“Please give her my love. And you might take her +that book.”</p> +<p>“What book?”</p> +<p>“That nasty one I’ve been reading.”</p> +<p>“Oh bother your books!” he cried with a certain +irritation as he went out of the room.</p> +<p>There had been a good many things in her life in New York that +cost her an effort, but sending her love to her mother-in-law was +not one of these. She liked Mrs. Lemon better than any one +she had seen in America; she was the only person who seemed to +Lady Barb really simple, as she herself understood that +quality. Many people had struck her as homely and rustic +and many others as pretentious and vulgar; but in Jackson’s +mother she had found the golden mean of a discretion, of a native +felicity and modesty and decency, which, as she would have said, +were really nice. Her sister, Lady Agatha, was even fonder +of Mrs. Lemon; but then Lady Agatha had taken the most +extraordinary fancy to every one and everything, and talked as if +America were the most delightful country in the world. She +was having a lovely time—she already spoke the most +beautiful American—and had been, during the bright winter +just drawing to a close, the most prominent girl in New +York. She had gone out at first with her elder; but for +some weeks past Lady Barb had let so many occasions pass that +Agatha threw herself into the <a name="page89"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 89</span>arms of Mrs. Lemon, who found her +unsurpassably quaint and amusing and was delighted to take her +into society. Mrs. Lemon, as an old woman, had given up +such vanities; but she only wanted a motive, and in her good +nature she ordered a dozen new caps and sat smiling against the +wall while her little English maid, on polished floors, to the +sound of music, cultivated the American step as well as the +American tone. There was no trouble in New York about going +out, and the winter wasn’t half over before the little +English maid found herself an accomplished diner, finding her way +without any chaperon at all to feasts where she could count on a +bouquet at her plate. She had had a great deal of +correspondence with her own female parent on this point, and Lady +Canterville had at last withdrawn her protest, which in the +meantime had been perfectly useless. It was ultimately Lady +Canterville’s feeling that if she had married the +handsomest of her daughters to an American doctor she might let +another become a professional <i>raconteuse</i>—Agatha had +written to her that she was expected to talk so +much—strange as such a destiny seemed for a girl of +nineteen. Mrs. Lemon had even a higher simplicity than Lady +Barb imputed to her; for she hadn’t noticed that Lady +Agatha danced much oftener with Herman Longstraw than with any +one else. Jackson himself, though he went little to balls, +had discovered this truth, and he looked slightly preoccupied +when, after he had sat five minutes with his mother on the Sunday +afternoon through which I have invited the reader to trace so +much more than—I am afraid—is easily apparent of the +progress of this simple story, he learned that his sister-in-law +was entertaining Mr. Longstraw in the library. That young +man had called half an hour before, and she had taken him into +the other room to show him the seal of the <a +name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 90</span>Cantervilles, +which she had fastened to one of her numerous trinkets—she +was adorned with a hundred bangles and chains—and the +proper exhibition of which required a taper and a stick of +wax. Apparently he was examining it very carefully, for +they had been absent a good while. Mrs. Lemon’s +simplicity was further shown by the fact that she had not +measured their absence; it was only when Jackson questioned her +that she remembered.</p> +<p>Herman Longstraw was a young Californian who had turned up in +New York the winter before and who travelled on his moustache, as +they were understood to say in his native State. This +moustache and some of its accompanying features were greatly +admired; several ladies in New York had been known to declare +that they were as beautiful as a dream. Taken in connexion +with his tall stature, his familiar good nature and his +remarkable Western vocabulary they constituted his only social +capital; for of the two great divisions, the rich Californians +and the poor Californians, it was well known to which he +belonged. Doctor Lemon had viewed him as but a slightly +mitigated cowboy, and was somewhat vexed at his own parent, +though also aware that she could scarcely figure to herself what +an effect such a form of speech as this remarkably straight echo +of the prairie would produce in the halls of Canterville. +He had no desire whatever to play a trick on the house to which +he was allied, and knew perfectly that Lady Agatha hadn’t +been sent to America to become entangled with a Californian of +the wrong denomination. He had been perfectly willing to +bring her; he thought, a little vindictively, that this would +operate as a hint to her progenitors on what he might have +imagined doing if they hadn’t been so stupidly bent on Mr. +Hardman. Herman Longstraw, according to the legend, had +been a trapper, a squatter, a <a name="page91"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 91</span>miner, a pioneer—had been +everything that one could be in the desperate parts of America, +and had accumulated masses of experience before the age of +thirty. He had shot bears in the Rockies and buffaloes on +the plains; and it was even believed that he had brought down +animals of a still more dangerous kind among the haunts of +men. There had been a story that he owned a cattle-ranch in +Arizona; but a later and apparently more authentic version of it, +though representing him as looking after the cattle, didn’t +depict him as their proprietor.</p> +<p>Many of the stories told about him were false; but there was +no doubt his moustache, his native ease and his native accent +were the best of their kind. He danced very badly; but Lady +Agatha had frankly told several persons that that was nothing new +to her, and in short she delighted—this, however, she +didn’t tell—in Mr. Herman Longstraw. What she +enjoyed in America was the revelation of freedom, and there was +no such proof of freedom as absolutely unrestricted discourse +with a gentleman who dressed in crude skins when not in New York +and who, in his usual pursuits, carried his life—as well as +that of other persons—in his hand. A gentleman whom +she had sat next to at dinner in the early part of her visit had +remarked to her that the United States were the paradise of women +and of mechanics; and this had seemed to her at the time very +abstract, for she wasn’t conscious as yet of belonging to +either class. In England she had been only a girl, and the +principal idea connected with that was simply that for +one’s misfortune one wasn’t a boy. But she +presently herself found the odd American world a true sojourn of +the youthful blest; and this helped her to know that she must be +one of the people mentioned in the axiom of her +neighbour—people who could do whatever they wanted, had a +voice in everything <a name="page92"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +92</span>and made their taste and their ideas felt. She saw +what fun it was to be a woman in America, and that this was the +best way to enjoy the New York winter—the wonderful +brilliant New York winter, the queer long-shaped glittering city, +the heterogeneous hours among which you couldn’t tell the +morning from the afternoon or the night from either of them, the +perpetual liberties and walks, the rushings-out and the +droppings-in, the intimacies, the endearments, the comicalities, +the sleigh-bells, the cutters, the sunsets on the snow, the +ice-parties in the frosty clearness, the bright hot velvety +houses, the bouquets, the bonbons, the little cakes, the big +cakes, the irrepressible inspirations of shopping, the +innumerable luncheons and dinners offered to youth and innocence, +the quantities of chatter of quantities of girls, the perpetual +motion of the “German,” the suppers at restaurants +after the play, the way in which life was pervaded by Delmonico +and Delmonico by the sense that though one’s hunting was +lost, and this therefore so different, it was very nearly as +good. In all, through all, flowed a suffusion of loud +unmodulated friendly sound which reminded her of an endless +tuning of rather bad fiddles.</p> +<p>Lady Agatha was at present staying for a little change with +Mrs. Lemon, and such adventures as that were part of the pleasure +of her American season. The house was too close, but +physically the girl could bear anything, and it was all she had +to complain of; for Mrs. Lemon, as we know, thought her a weird +little specimen, and had none of those old-world scruples in +regard to spoiling young people to which Lady Agatha herself now +knew she must in the past have been unduly sacrificed. In +her own way—it was not at all her sister’s +way—she liked to be of importance; and this was assuredly +the case when she saw that Mrs. Lemon had apparently nothing in +<a name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 93</span>the world +to do, after spending a part of the morning with her servants, +but invent little distractions—many of them of the edible +sort—for her guest. She appeared to have several +friends, but she had no society to speak of, and the people who +entered her house came principally to see Lady Agatha. +This, as we have noted, was strikingly the case with Herman +Longstraw. The whole situation gave the young stranger a +great feeling of success—success of a new and unexpected +kind. Of course in England she had been born successful, as +it might be called, through her so emerging in one of the most +beautiful rooms at Pasterns; but her present triumph was achieved +more by her own effort—not that she had tried very +hard—and by her merit. It wasn’t so much what +she said—since she could never equal for quantity the girls +of New York—as the spirit of enjoyment that played in her +fresh young face, with its pointless curves, and shone in her +grey English eyes. She enjoyed everything, even the +street-cars, of which she made liberal use; and more than +everything she enjoyed Mr. Longstraw and his talk about buffaloes +and bears. Mrs. Lemon promised to be very careful as soon +as her son had begun to warn her; and this time she had a certain +understanding of what she promised. She thought people +ought to make the matches they liked; she had given proof of this +in her late behaviour to Jackson, whose own union was, to her +sense, marked with all the arbitrariness of pure love. +Nevertheless she could see that Herman Longstraw would probably +be thought rough in England; and it wasn’t simply that he +was so inferior to Jackson, for, after all, certain things were +not to be expected. Jackson was not oppressed with his +mother-in-law, having taken his precautions against such a +danger; but he was certain he should give Lady Canterville a <a +name="page94"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 94</span>permanent +advantage over him if her third daughter should while in America +attach herself to a mere moustache.</p> +<p>It was not always, as I have hinted, that Mrs. Lemon entered +completely into the views of her son, though in form she never +failed to subscribe to them devoutly. She had never yet, +for instance, apprehended his reason for marrying poor Lady +Barb. This was a great secret, and she was determined, in +her gentleness, that no one should ever know it. For +herself, she was sure that to the end of time she shouldn’t +discover Jackson’s reason. She might never ask about +it, for that of course would betray her. From the first she +had told him she was delighted, there being no need of asking for +explanations then, as the young lady herself, when she should +come to know her, would explain. But the young lady +hadn’t yet explained and after this evidently never +would. She was very tall, very handsome, she answered +exactly to Mrs. Lemon’s prefigurement of the daughter of a +lord, and she wore her clothes, which were peculiar, but to one +of her shape remarkably becoming, very well. But she +didn’t elucidate; we know ourselves that there was very +little that was explanatory about Lady Barb. So Mrs. Lemon +continued to wonder, to ask herself, “Why that one, more +than so many others who’d have been more +natural?” The choice struck her, as I have said, as +quite arbitrary. She found Lady Barb very different from +other girls she had known, and this led her almost immediately to +feel sorry for her daughter-in-law. She felt how the girl +was to be pitied if she found her husband’s people as +peculiar as his mother found <i>her</i>, since the result of that +would be to make her very lonesome. Lady Agatha was +different, because she seemed to keep nothing back; you saw all +there was of her, and she was evidently not <a +name="page95"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +95</span>home-sick. Mrs. Lemon could see that Barbarina was +ravaged by this last ailment and was also too haughty to show +it. She even had a glimpse of the ultimate truth; namely, +that Jackson’s wife had not the comfort of crying, because +that would have amounted to a confession that she had been +idiotic enough to believe in advance that, in an American town, +in the society of doctors, she should escape such pangs. +Mrs. Lemon treated her with studied consideration—all the +indulgence that was due to a young woman in the unfortunate +position of having been married one couldn’t tell why.</p> +<p>The world, to the elder lady’s view, contained two great +departments, that of people and that of things; and she believed +you must take an interest either in one or the other. The +true incomprehensible in Lady Barb was that she cared for neither +side of the show. Her house apparently inspired her with no +curiosity and no enthusiasm, though it had been thought +magnificent enough to be described in successive columns of the +native newspapers; and she never spoke of her furniture or her +domestics, though she had a prodigious show of such +possessions. She was the same with regard to her +acquaintance, which was immense, inasmuch as every one in the +place had called on her. Mrs. Lemon was the least critical +woman in the world, but it had occasionally ruffled her just a +little that her daughter-in-law should receive every one in New +York quite in the same automatic manner. There were +differences, Mrs. Lemon knew, and some of them of the highest +importance; but poor Lady Barb appeared never to suspect +them. She accepted every one and everything and asked no +questions. She had no curiosity about her fellow-citizens, +and as she never assumed it for a moment she gave Mrs. Lemon no +opportunity to enlighten her. Lady Barb was a person with +whom you could do nothing unless she <a name="page96"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 96</span>left you an opening; and nothing +would have been more difficult than to “post” her, as +her mother-in-law would have said, against her will. Of +course she picked up a little knowledge, but she confounded and +transposed American attributes in the most extraordinary +way. She had a way of calling every one Doctor; and Mrs. +Lemon could scarcely convince her that this distinction was too +precious to be so freely bestowed. She had once said to +that supporter that in New York there was nothing to know people +by, their names were so very monotonous; and Mrs. Lemon had +entered into this enough to see that there was something that +stood out a good deal in Barbarina’s own prefix. It +is probable that during her short period of domestication +complete justice was not done Lady Barb; she never—as an +instance—got credit for repressing her annoyance at the +poverty of the nominal signs and styles, a deep desolation. +That little speech to her husband’s mother was the most +reckless sign she gave of it; and there were few things that +contributed more to the good conscience she habitually enjoyed +than her self-control on this particular point.</p> +<p>Doctor Lemon was engaged in professional researches just now, +which took up a great deal of his time; and for the rest he +passed his hours unreservedly with his wife. For the last +three months, therefore, he had seen his other nearest relative +scarcely more than once a week. In spite of researches, in +spite of medical societies, where Jackson, to her knowledge, read +papers, Lady Barb had more of her husband’s company than +she had counted on at the time she married. She had never +known a married pair to be so much together as she and Jackson; +he appeared to expect her to sit with him in the library in the +morning. He had none of the occupations of gentlemen and +noblemen in England, for the element of <a +name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 97</span>politics +appeared to be as absent as the element of the chase. There +were politics in Washington, she had been told, and even at +Albany, and Jackson had proposed to introduce her to these +cities; but the proposal, made to her once at dinner, before +several people, had excited such cries of horror that it fell +dead on the spot. “We don’t want you to see +anything of that kind,” one of the ladies had said, and +Jackson had appeared to be discouraged—that is if in regard +to Jackson she could really tell.</p> +<p>“Pray what is it you want me to see?” Lady Barb +had asked on this occasion.</p> +<p>“Well, New York and Boston (Boston if you want to very +much, but not otherwise), and then Niagara. But more than +anything Newport.”</p> +<p>She was tired of their eternal Newport; she had heard of it a +thousand times and felt already as if she had lived there half +her life; she was sure, moreover, that she should hate the awful +little place. This is perhaps as near as she came to having +a lively conviction on any American subject. She asked +herself whether she was then to spend her life in the Fifth +Avenue with alternations of a city of villas—she detested +villas—and wondered if that was all the great American +country had to offer her. There were times when she +believed she should like the backwoods and that the Far West +might be a resource; for she had analysed her feelings just deep +enough to discover that when she had—hesitating a good +deal—turned over the question of marrying Jackson Lemon it +was not in the least of American barbarism she was afraid; her +dread had been all of American civilisation. She judged the +little lady I have just quoted a goose, but that didn’t +make New York any more interesting. It would be reckless to +say that she suffered from an overdose of Jackson’s +company, since she quite felt him her most important social <a +name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +98</span>resource. She could talk to him about England, +about her own England, and he understood more or less what she +wished to say—when she wished to say anything, which was +not frequent. There were plenty of other people who talked +about England; but with them the range of allusion was always the +hotels, of which she knew nothing, and the shops and the opera +and the photographs: they had the hugest appetite for +photographs. There were other people who were always +wanting her to tell them about Pasterns and the manner of life +there and the parties; but if there was one thing Lady Barb +disliked more than another it was describing Pasterns. She +had always lived with people who knew of themselves what such a +place would be, without demanding these pictorial efforts, proper +only, as she vaguely felt, to persons belonging to the classes +whose trade was the arts of expression. Lady Barb of course +had never gone into it; but she knew that in her own class the +business was not to express but to enjoy, not to represent but to +be represented—though indeed this latter liability might +involve offence; for it may be noted that even for an aristocrat +Jackson Lemon’s wife was aristocratic.</p> +<p>Lady Agatha and her visitor came back from the library in +course of time, and Jackson Lemon felt it his duty to be rather +cold to Herman Longstraw. It wasn’t clear to him what +sort of a husband his sister-in-law would do well to look for in +America—if there were to be any question of husbands; but +as to that he wasn’t bound to be definite provided he +should rule out Mr. Longstraw. This gentleman, however, was +not given to noticing shades of manner; he had little +observation, but very great confidence.</p> +<p>“I think you had better come home with me,” +Jackson said to Lady Agatha; “I guess you’ve stayed +here long enough.”</p> +<p><a name="page99"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +99</span>“Don’t let him say that, Mrs. Lemon!” +the girl cried. “I like being with you so +awfully.”</p> +<p>“I try to make it pleasant,” said Mrs. +Lemon. “I should really miss you now; but perhaps +it’s your mother’s wish.” If it was a +question of defending her guest from ineligible suitors Mrs. +Lemon felt of course that her son was more competent than she; +though she had a lurking kindness for Herman Longstraw and a +vague idea that he was a gallant genial specimen of +unsophisticated young America.</p> +<p>“Oh mamma wouldn’t see any difference!” Lady +Agatha returned with pleading blue eyes on her +brother-in-law. “Mamma wants me to see every one; you +know she does. That’s what she sent me to America +for; she knows—for we’ve certainly told her +enough—that it isn’t like England. She +wouldn’t like it if I didn’t sometimes stay with +people; she always wanted us to stay at other houses. And +she knows all about you, Mrs. Lemon, and she likes you +immensely. She sent you a message the other day and +I’m afraid I forgot to give it you—to thank you for +being so kind to me and taking such a lot of trouble. +Really she did, but I forgot it. If she wants me to see as +much as possible of America it’s much better I should be +here than always with Barb—it’s much less like +one’s own country. I mean it’s much +nicer—for a girl,” said Lady Agatha affectionately to +Mrs. Lemon, who began also to look at Jackson under the influence +of this uttered sweetness which was like some quaint little old +air, she thought, played upon a faded spinet with two girlish +fingers.</p> +<p>“If you want the genuine thing you ought to come out on +the plains,” Mr. Longstraw interposed with bright +sincerity. “I guess that was your mother’s +idea. Why don’t you all come out?” He had +been looking intently at Lady Agatha while the remarks I have +just repeated succeeded each other on her <a +name="page100"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +100</span>lips—looking at her with a fascinated +approbation, for all the world as if he had been a slightly +slow-witted English gentleman and the girl herself a flower of +the West, a flower that knew the celebrated language of +flowers. Susceptible even as Mrs. Lemon was he made no +secret of the fact that Lady Agatha’s voice was music to +him, his ear being much more accessible than his own inflexions +would have indicated. To Lady Agatha those inflexions were +not displeasing, partly because, like Mr. Herman himself in +general, she had not a perception of shades; and partly because +it never occurred to her to compare them with any other +tones. He seemed to her to speak a foreign language +altogether—a romantic dialect through which the most +comical meanings gleamed here and there.</p> +<p>“I should like it above all things,” she said in +answer to his last observation.</p> +<p>“The scenery’s ahead of anything round +here,” Mr. Longstraw went on.</p> +<p>Mrs. Lemon, as we have gathered, was the mildest of women; +but, as an old New Yorker, she had no patience with some of the +new fashions. Chief among these was the perpetual +reference, which had become common only within a few years, to +the outlying parts of the country, the States and Territories of +which children, in her time, used to learn the names, in their +order, at school, but which no one ever thought of going to or +talking about. Such places, in her opinion, belonged to the +geography-books, or at most to the literature of newspapers, but +neither to society nor to conversation; and the +change—which, so far as it lay in people’s talk, she +thought at bottom a mere affectation—threatened to make her +native land appear vulgar and vague. For this amiable +daughter of Manhattan the normal existence of man, and still more +of women, had been <a name="page101"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +101</span>“located,” as she would have said, between +Trinity Church and the beautiful Reservoir at the top of the +Fifth Avenue—monuments of which she was personally proud; +and if we could look into the deeper parts of her mind I am +afraid we should discover there an impression that both the +countries of Europe and the remainder of her own continent were +equally far from the centre and the light.</p> +<p>“Well, scenery isn’t everything,” she made +soft answer to Mr. Longstraw; “and if Lady Agatha should +wish to see anything of that kind all she has got to do is to +take the boat up the Hudson.” Mrs. Lemon’s +recognition of this river, I should say, was all it need have +been; she held the Hudson existed for the purpose of supplying +New Yorkers with poetical feelings, helping them to face +comfortably occasions like the present and, in general, meet +foreigners with confidence—part of the oddity of foreigners +being their conceit about their own places.</p> +<p>“That’s a good idea, Lady Agatha; let’s take +the boat,” said Mr. Longstraw. “I’ve had +great times on the boats.”</p> +<p>Lady Agatha fixed on her <i>amoroso</i> her singular charming +eyes, eyes of which it was impossible to say at any moment +whether they were the shyest or the frankest in the world; and +she was not aware while this contemplation lasted that her +brother-in-law was observing her. He was thinking of +certain things while he did so, of things he had heard about the +English; who still, in spite of his having married into a family +of that nation, appeared to him very much through the medium of +hearsay. They were more passionate than the Americans, and +they did things that would never have been expected; though they +seemed steadier and less excitable there was much social evidence +to prove them more wildly impulsive.</p> +<p><a name="page102"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +102</span>“It’s so very kind of you to propose +that,” Lady Agatha said in a moment to Mrs. Lemon. +“I think I’ve never been in a ship—except of +course coming from England. I’m sure mamma would wish +me to see the Hudson. We used to go in immensely for +boating in England.”</p> +<p>“Did you boat in a ship?” Herman Longstraw asked, +showing his teeth hilariously and pulling his moustaches.</p> +<p>“Lots of my mother’s people have been in the +navy.” Lady Agatha perceived vaguely and +good-naturedly that she had said something the odd Americans +thought odd and that she must justify herself. Something +most unnatural was happening to her standard of oddity.</p> +<p>“I really think you had better come back to us,” +Jackson repeated: “your sister’s very lonely without +you.”</p> +<p>“She’s much more lonely <i>with</i> me. +We’re perpetually having differences. Barb’s +dreadfully vexed because I like America instead of—instead +of—” And Lady Agatha paused a moment; for it +just occurred to her that this might be treacherous.</p> +<p>“Instead of what?” Jackson inquired.</p> +<p>“Instead of perpetually wanting to go to England, as she +does,” she went on, only giving her phrase a little softer +turn; for she felt the next moment that Barb could have nothing +to hide and must of course have the courage of her +opinions. “Of course England’s best, but I +daresay I like to be bad,” the girl said artlessly.</p> +<p>“Oh there’s no doubt you’re awfully +bad,” Mr. Longstraw broke out, with joyous eagerness. +Naturally he couldn’t know that what she had principally in +mind was an exchange of opinions that had taken place between her +sister and herself just before she came to stay with Mrs. +Lemon. This incident, of <a name="page103"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 103</span>which he himself was the occasion, +might indeed have been called a discussion, for it had carried +them quite into the cold air of the abstract. Lady Barb had +said she didn’t see how Agatha could look at such a +creature as that—an odious familiar vulgar being who had +not about him the rudiments of a gentleman. Lady Agatha had +replied that Mr. Longstraw was familiar and rough and that he had +a twang and thought it amusing to talk to her as “the +Princess”; but that he was a gentleman for all that and was +tremendous fun whatever one called him—it didn’t seem +to matter what one called any one or anything there. Her +sister had returned to this that if he was rough and familiar he +couldn’t be a gentleman, inasmuch as that was just what a +gentleman meant—a man who was civil and well-bred and +well-born. Lady Agatha had argued that such a point was +just where she differed; that a man might perfectly be a +gentleman and yet be rough, and even ignorant, so long as he was +really nice. The only thing was that he should be really +nice, which was the case with Mr. Longstraw, who, moreover, was +quite extraordinarily civil—as civil as a man could +be. And then Lady Agatha herself made the strongest point +she had ever made in her life (she had never been so inspired) in +saying that Mr. Longstraw was rough perhaps, but not rude—a +distinction altogether wasted on her sister, who declared that +she hadn’t come to America, of all places, to learn what a +gentleman was. The discussion in short had been a trifle +grim. I know not whether it was the tonic effect on them +too, alien organisms as they were, of the fine winter weather, or +that of Lady Barb’s being bored and having nothing else to +do; but Lord Canterville’s daughters went into the question +with the moral earnestness of a pair of approved +Bostonians. It was part of Lady Agatha’s view of her +admirer that he <a name="page104"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +104</span>after all much resembled other tall people with smiling +eyes and tawny moustaches who had ridden a good deal in rough +countries and whom she had seen in other places. If he was +more familiar he was also more alert; still, the difference was +not in himself, but in the way she saw him—the way she saw +everybody in America. If she should see the others in the +same way no doubt they’d be quite the same; and Lady Agatha +sighed a little over the possibilities of life; for this peculiar +way, especially regarded in connexion with gentlemen, had become +very pleasant to her.</p> +<p>She had betrayed her sister more than she thought, even though +Jackson didn’t particularly show it in the tone in which he +commented: “Of course she knows she’s going to see +your mother in the summer.” His tone was rather that +of irritation at so much harping on the very obvious.</p> +<p>“Oh it isn’t only mamma,” the girl said.</p> +<p>“I know she likes a cool house,” Mrs. Lemon +contributed.</p> +<p>“When she goes you had better bid her good-bye,” +Lady Agatha went on.</p> +<p>“Of course I shall bid her good-bye,” said Mrs. +Lemon, to whom apparently this remark was addressed.</p> +<p>“I’ll never bid <i>you</i> good-bye, +Princess,” Herman Longstraw interposed. “You +can bet your life on that.”</p> +<p>“Oh it doesn’t matter about me, for of course I +shall come back; but if Barb once gets to England she never +will.”</p> +<p>“Oh my dear child!” Mrs. Lemon wailed, addressing +her young visitor, but looking at her son, who on his side looked +at the ceiling, at the floor, looked above all very +conscious.</p> +<p>“I hope you don’t mind my saying that, Jackson <a +name="page105"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +105</span>dear,” Lady Agatha said to him, for she was very +fond of her brother-in-law.</p> +<p>“Ah well then, she shan’t go there,” he +threw off in a moment with a small strange dry laugh that +attached his mother’s eyes in shy penetration to his +face.</p> +<p>“But you promised mamma, you know,” said the girl +with the confidence of her affection.</p> +<p>Jackson’s countenance expressed to her none even of his +very moderate hilarity. “Your mother, then, must +bring her back.”</p> +<p>“Get some of your navy people to supply an +ironclad!” cried Mr. Longstraw.</p> +<p>“It would be very pleasant if the Marchioness could come +over,” said Mrs. Lemon.</p> +<p>“Oh she’d hate it more than poor Barb,” Lady +Agatha quickly replied. It didn’t at all suit her to +find a marchioness inserted into her field of vision.</p> +<p>“Doesn’t she feel interested from what +you’ve told her?” Lady Agatha’s admirer +inquired. But Jackson didn’t heed his +sister-in-law’s answer—he was thinking of something +else. He said nothing more, however, about the subject of +his thought, and before ten minutes were over took his departure, +having meanwhile neglected also to revert to the question of Lady +Agatha’s bringing her visit to his mother to a close. +It wasn’t to speak to him of this—for, as we know, +she wished to keep the girl and somehow couldn’t bring +herself to be afraid of Herman Longstraw—that when her son +took leave she went with him to the door of the house, detaining +him a little while she stood on the steps, as people had always +done in New York in her time, though it was another of the new +fashions she didn’t like, the stiffness of not coming out +of the parlour. She placed her hand on his arm to keep him +on the “stoop” and looked up and down into the lucid +afternoon and the beautiful city—its chocolate-coloured +houses so <a name="page106"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +106</span>extraordinarily smooth—in which it seemed to her +that even the most fastidious people ought to be glad to +live. It was useless to attempt to conceal it: his marriage +had made a difference and a worry, had put a barrier that she was +yet under the painful obligation of trying to seem not to +notice. It had brought with it a problem much more +difficult than his old problem of how to make his mother feel +herself still, as she had been in his childhood, the dispenser of +his rewards. The old problem had been easily solved, the +new was a great tax. Mrs. Lemon was sure her +daughter-in-law didn’t take her seriously, and that was a +part of the barrier. Even if Barbarina liked her better +than any one else this was mostly because she liked every one +else so little. Mrs. Lemon had in her nature no grain of +resentment, and it wasn’t to feed a sense of wrong that she +permitted herself to criticise her son’s wife. She +couldn’t help feeling that his marriage wasn’t +altogether fortunate if his wife didn’t take his mother +seriously. She knew she wasn’t otherwise remarkable +than as being his mother; but that position, which was no merit +of hers—the merit was all Jackson’s in being her +son—affected her as one which, familiar as Lady Barb +appeared to have been in England with positions of various kinds, +would naturally strike the girl as very high and to be accepted +as freely as a fine morning. If she didn’t think of +his mother as an indivisible part of him perhaps she didn’t +think of other things either; and Mrs. Lemon vaguely felt that, +remarkable as Jackson was, he was made up of parts, and that it +would never do that these should be rated lower one by one, since +there was no knowing what that might end in. She feared +that things were rather cold for him at home when he had to +explain so much to his wife—explain to her, for instance, +all the sources of happiness that were to be found in New +York. This struck her as a new kind of <a +name="page107"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 107</span>problem +altogether for a husband. She had never thought of +matrimony without a community of feeling in regard to religion +and country; one took those great conditions for granted just as +one assumed that one’s food was to be cooked; and if +Jackson should have to discuss them with his wife he might, in +spite of his great abilities, be carried into regions where he +would get entangled and embroiled—from which even possibly +he wouldn’t come back at all. Mrs. Lemon had a horror +of losing him in some way, and this fear was in her eyes as she +stood by the doorway of her house and, after she had glanced up +and down the street, eyed him a moment in silence. He +simply kissed her again and said she would take cold.</p> +<p>“I’m not afraid of that—I’ve a +shawl!” Mrs. Lemon, who was very small and very fair, +with pointed features and an elaborate cap, passed her life in a +shawl, and owed to this habit her reputation for being an +invalid—an idea she scorned, naturally enough, inasmuch as +it was precisely her shawl that, as she believed, kept every ill +at bay. “Is it true Barbarina won’t come +back?” she then asked.</p> +<p>“I don’t know that we shall ever find out; I +don’t know that I shall take her to England,” Jackson +distinctly returned.</p> +<p>She looked more anxious still. “Didn’t you +promise, dear?”</p> +<p>“I don’t know that I promised—not +absolutely.”</p> +<p>“But you wouldn’t keep her here against her +will?” quavered Mrs. Lemon.</p> +<p>“I guess she’ll get used to it,” he returned +with a levity that misrepresented the state of his nerves.</p> +<p>Mrs. Lemon looked up and down the street again and gave a +little sigh. “What a pity she isn’t +American!” She didn’t mean this as a reproach, +a hint of what might have been; it was simply embarrassment +resolved into speech.</p> +<p><a name="page108"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +108</span>“She couldn’t have been American,” +said Jackson with decision.</p> +<p>“Couldn’t she, dear?” His mother spoke +with conscientious respect; she felt there were imperceptible +reasons in this.</p> +<p>“It was just as she is that I wanted her,” Jackson +added.</p> +<p>“Even if she won’t come back?” Mrs. Lemon +went on with wonder.</p> +<p>“Oh she has got to come back!” Jackson said as he +went down the steps.</p> +<h3><a name="page109"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +109</span>VI</h3> +<p>Lady Barb, after this, didn’t decline to see her New +York acquaintances on Sunday afternoons, though she refused for +the present to enter into a project of her husband’s, who +thought it would be pleasant she should entertain his friends on +the evening of that day. Like all good Americans, Doctor +Lemon devoted much consideration to the great question of how, in +his native land, society was to be brought into being. It +seemed to him it would help on the good cause, for which so many +Americans are ready to lay down their lives, if his wife should, +as he jocularly called it, open a saloon. He believed, or +tried to believe, the <i>salon</i> now possible in New York on +condition of its being reserved entirely for adults; and in +having taken a wife out of a country in which social traditions +were rich and ancient he had done something toward qualifying his +own house—so splendidly qualified in all strictly material +respects—to be the scene of such an effort. A +charming woman accustomed only to the best on each side, as Lady +Beauchemin said, what mightn’t she achieve by being at +home—always to adults only—in an easy early inspiring +comprehensive way and on the evening of the seven when worldly +engagements were least numerous? He laid this philosophy +before Lady Barb in pursuance of a theory that if she disliked +New York on a short acquaintance she couldn’t <a +name="page110"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 110</span>fail to +like it on a long. Jackson believed in the New York +mind—not so much indeed in its literary artistic +philosophic or political achievements as in its general quickness +and nascent adaptability. He clung to this belief, for it +was an indispensable neat block in the structure he was +attempting to rear. The New York mind would throw its +glamour over Lady Barb if she would only give it a chance; for it +was thoroughly bright responsive and sympathetic. If she +would only set up by the turn of her hand a blest snug social +centre, a temple of interesting talk in which this charming organ +might expand and where she might inhale its fragrance in the most +convenient and luxurious way, without, as it were, getting up +from her chair; if she would only just try this graceful +good-natured experiment—which would make every one like +<i>her</i> so much too—he was sure all the wrinkles in the +gilded scroll of his fate would be smoothed out. But Lady +Barb didn’t rise at all to his conception and hadn’t +the least curiosity about the New York mind. She thought it +would be extremely disagreeable to have a lot of people tumbling +in on Sunday evening without being invited; and altogether her +husband’s sketch of the Anglo-American saloon seemed to her +to suggest crude familiarity, high vociferation—she had +already made a remark to him about “screeching +women”—and random extravagant laughter. She +didn’t tell him—for this somehow it wasn’t in +her power to express, and, strangely enough, he never completely +guessed it—that she was singularly deficient in any natural +or indeed acquired understanding of what a saloon might be. +She had never seen or dreamed of one—and for the most part +was incapable of imagining a thing she hadn’t seen. +She had seen great dinners and balls and meets and runs and +races; she had seen garden-parties and bunches <a +name="page111"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 111</span>of people, +mainly women—who, however, didn’t screech—at +dull stuffy teas, and distinguished companies collected in +splendid castles; but all this gave her no clue to a train of +conversation, to any idea of a social agreement that the interest +of talk, its continuity, its accumulations from season to season, +shouldn’t be lost. Conversation, in Lady Barb’s +experience, had never been continuous; in such a case it would +surely have been a bore. It had been occasional and +fragmentary, a trifle jerky, with allusions that were never +explained; it had a dread of detail—it seldom pursued +anything very far or kept hold of it very long.</p> +<p>There was something else she didn’t say to her husband +in reference to his visions of hospitality, which was that if she +should open a saloon—she had taken up the joke as well, for +Lady Barb was eminently good-natured—Mrs. Vanderdecken +would straightway open another, and Mrs. Vanderdecken’s +would be the more successful of the two. This lady, for +reasons Lady Barb had not yet explored, passed for the great +personage of New York; there were legends of her husband’s +family having behind them a fabulous antiquity. When this +was alluded to it was spoken of as something incalculable and +lost in the dimness of time. Mrs. Vanderdecken was young, +pretty, clever, incredibly pretentious, Lady Barb thought, and +had a wonderfully artistic house. Ambition was expressed, +further, in every rustle of her garments; and if she was the +first lady in America, “bar none”—this had an +immense sound—it was plain she intended to retain the +character. It was not till after she had been several +months in New York that Lady Barb began to perceive this easy +mistress of the field, crying out, gracious goodness, before she +was hurt, to have flung down the glove; and when the idea +presented itself, lighted up by an incident I have no space to +report, she simply <a name="page112"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +112</span>blushed a little (for Mrs. Vanderdecken) and held her +tongue. She hadn’t come to America to bandy words +about “precedence” with such a woman as that. +She had ceased to think of that convenience—of course one +was obliged to think in England; though an instinct of +self-preservation, old and deep-seated, led her not to expose +herself to occasions on which her imputed claim might be +tested. This had at bottom much to do with her having, very +soon after the first flush of the honours paid her on her arrival +and which seemed to her rather grossly overdone, taken the line +of scarcely going out. “They can’t keep +<i>that</i> up!” she had said to herself; and in short she +would stay, less boringly both for herself and for others, at +home. She had a sense that whenever and wherever she might +go forth she should meet Mrs. Vanderdecken, who would withhold or +deny or contest or even magnanimously concede +something—poor Lady Barb could never imagine what. +She didn’t try to, and gave little thought to all this; for +she wasn’t prone to confess to herself fears, especially +fears from which terror was absent. What in the world +<i>had</i> Mrs. Vanderdecken that she, Barbarina Lemon (what a +name!), could want? But, as I have said, it abode within +her as a presentiment that if she should set up a drawing-room in +the foreign style (based, that is, on the suppression of +prattling chits and hobbledehoys) this sharp skirmisher would be +beforehand with her. The continuity of conversation, oh +that she would certainly go in for—there was no one so +continuous as Mrs. Vanderdecken. Lady Barb, as I have +related, didn’t give her husband the surprise of confiding +to him these thoughts, though she had given him some other +surprises. He would have been decidedly astonished, and +perhaps after a bit a little encouraged, at finding her liable to +any marked form of exasperation.</p> +<p><a name="page113"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 113</span>On +the Sunday afternoon she was visible; and at one of these +junctures, going into her drawing-room late, he found her +entertaining two ladies and a gentleman. The gentleman was +Sidney Feeder and one of the ladies none other than Mrs. +Vanderdecken, whose ostensible relations with her were indeed of +the most cordial nature. Intending utterly to crush +her—as two or three persons, not perhaps conspicuous for a +narrow accuracy, gave out that she privately declared—Mrs. +Vanderdecken yet wished at least to study the weak points of the +invader, to penetrate herself with the character of the English +girl. Lady Barb verily appeared to have for the +representative of the American patriciate a mysterious +fascination. Mrs. Vanderdecken couldn’t take her eyes +off her victim and, whatever might be her estimate of her +importance, at least couldn’t let her alone. +“Why does she come to see me?” poor Lady Barb asked +herself. “I’m sure I don’t want to see +her; she has done enough for civility long ago.” Mrs. +Vanderdecken had her own reasons, one of which was simply the +pleasure of looking at the Doctor’s wife, as she habitually +called the daughter of the Cantervilles. She wasn’t +guilty of the rashness of depreciating the appearance of so +markedly fine a young woman, but professed a positive unbounded +admiration for it, defending it on many occasions against those +of the superficial and stupid who pronounced her “left +nowhere” by the best of the home-grown specimens. +Whatever might have been Lady Barb’s weak points, they +included neither the curve of her cheek and chin, the setting of +her head on her throat, nor the quietness of her deep eyes, which +were as beautiful as if they had been blank, like those of +antique busts. “The head’s +enchanting—perfectly enchanting,” Mrs. Vanderdecken +used to say irrelevantly and as if there were only one head in +the place. She always <a name="page114"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 114</span>used to ask about the +Doctor—which was precisely another reason why she +came. She dragged in the Doctor at every turn, asking if he +were often called up at night; found it the greatest of luxuries, +in a word, to address Lady Barb as the wife of a medical man and +as more or less <i>au courant</i> of her husband’s +patients. The other lady, on this Sunday afternoon, was a +certain little Mrs. Chew, who had the appearance of a small but +very expensive doll and was always asking Lady Barb about +England, which Mrs. Vanderdecken never did. The latter +discoursed on a purely American basis and with that continuity of +which mention has already been made, while Mrs. Chew engaged +Sidney Feeder on topics equally local. Lady Barb liked +Sidney Feeder; she only hated his name, which was constantly in +her ears during the half-hour the ladies sat with her, Mrs. Chew +having, like so many persons in New York, the habit, which +greatly annoyed her, of re-apostrophising and re-designating +every one present.</p> +<p>Lady Barb’s relations with Mrs. Vanderdecken consisted +mainly in wondering, while she talked, what she wanted of her, +and in looking, with her sculptured eyes, at her visitor’s +clothes, in which there was always much to examine. +“Oh Doctor Feeder!” “Now Doctor Feeder!” +“Well Doctor Feeder”—these exclamations, on +Mrs. Chew’s lips, were an undertone in Lady Barb’s +consciousness. When we say she liked her husband’s +confrère, as he never failed to describe himself, we +understand that she smiled on his appearance and gave him her +hand, and asked him if he would have tea. There was nothing +nasty, as they so analytically said in London, about Lady Barb, +and she would have been incapable of inflicting a deliberate snub +on a man who had the air of standing up so squarely to any +purpose he might have in hand. But she had nothing of her +<a name="page115"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 115</span>own at +all to say to Sidney Feeder. He apparently had the art of +making her shy, more shy than usual—since she was always a +little so; she discouraged him, discouraged him completely and +reduced him to naught. He wasn’t a man who wanted +drawing out, there was nothing of that in him, he was remarkably +copious; but she seemed unable to follow him in any direction and +half the time evidently didn’t know what he was +saying. He tried to adapt his conversation to her needs; +but when he spoke of the world, of what was going on in society, +she was more at sea even than when he spoke of hospitals and +laboratories and the health of the city and the progress of +science. She appeared indeed after her first smile when he +came in, which was always charming, scarcely to see +him—looking past him and above him and below him, +everywhere but at him, till he rose to go again, when she gave +him another smile, as expressive of pleasure and of casual +acquaintance as that with which she had greeted his entry: it +seemed to imply that they had been having delightful +communion. He wondered what the deuce Jackson Lemon could +find interesting in such a woman, and he believed his perverse, +though gifted, colleague not destined to feel her in the long run +enrich or illuminate his life. He pitied Jackson, he saw +that Lady Barb, in New York, would neither assimilate nor be +assimilated; and yet he was afraid, for very compassion, to +betray to the poor man how the queer step he had taken—now +so dreadfully irrevocable—might be going to strike most +others. Sidney Feeder was a man of a strenuous conscience, +who did loyal duty overmuch and from the very fear he +mightn’t do it enough. In order not to appear to he +called upon Lady Barb heroically, in spite of pressing +engagements and week after week, enjoying his virtue himself as +little as he made it fruitful for his hostess, who <a +name="page116"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 116</span>wondered at +last what she had done to deserve this extremity of +appreciation.</p> +<p>She spoke of it to her husband, who wondered also what poor +Sidney had in his head and yet naturally shrank from damping too +brutally his zeal. Between the latter’s wish not to +let Jackson see his marriage had made a difference and +Jackson’s hesitation to reveal to him that his standard of +friendship was too high, Lady Barb passed a good many of those +numerous hours during which she asked herself if they were the +“sort of thing” she had come to America for. +Very little had ever passed between her and her husband on the +subject of the most regular of her bores, a clear instinct +warning her that if they were ever to have scenes she must choose +the occasion well, and this odd person not being an +occasion. Jackson had tacitly admitted that his +“confrère” was anything she chose to think +him; he was not a man to be guilty in a discussion of the +disloyalty of damning a real friend with praise that was +faint. If Lady Agatha had been less of an absentee from her +sister’s fireside, meanwhile, Doctor Feeder would have been +better entertained; for the younger of the English pair prided +herself, after several months of New York, on understanding +everything that was said, on interpreting every sound, no matter +from what lips the monstrous mystery fell. But Lady Agatha +was never at home; she had learned to describe herself perfectly +by the time she wrote her mother that she was always on the +go. None of the innumerable victims of old-world tyranny +welcomed to the land of freedom had yet offered more lavish +incense to that goddess than this emancipated London +debutante. She had enrolled herself in an amiable band +known by the humorous name of “the Tearers”—a +dozen young ladies of agreeable appearance, high spirits and good +wind, whose most general characteristic <a +name="page117"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 117</span>was that, +when wanted, they were to be sought anywhere in the world but +under the roof supposed to shelter them. They browsed far +from the fold; and when Sidney Feeder, as sometimes happened, met +Lady Agatha at other houses, she was in the hands of the +irrepressible Longstraw. She had come back to her sister, +but Mr. Longstraw had followed her to the door. As to +passing it, he had received direct discouragement from her +brother-in-law; but he could at least hang about and wait for +her. It may be confided to the reader at the risk of +discounting the effect of the only passage in this very level +narrative formed to startle that he never had to wait very +long.</p> +<p>When Jackson Lemon came in his wife’s visitors were on +the point of leaving her; and he didn’t even ask his +colleague to remain, for he had something particular to say to +Lady Barb.</p> +<p>“I haven’t put to you half the questions I +wanted—I’ve been talking so much to Doctor +Feeder,” the dressy Mrs. Chew said, holding the hand of her +hostess in one of her own and toying at one of Lady Barb’s +ribbons with the other.</p> +<p>“I don’t think I’ve anything to tell you; I +think I’ve told people everything,” Lady Barb +answered rather wearily.</p> +<p>“You haven’t told <i>me</i> much!” Mrs. +Vanderdecken richly radiated.</p> +<p>“What could one tell you? You know +everything,” Jackson impatiently laughed.</p> +<p>“Ah no—there are some things that are great +mysteries for me!” this visitor promptly pronounced. +“I hope you’re coming to me on the +seventeenth,” she added to Lady Barb.</p> +<p>“On the seventeenth? I believe we go +somewhere.”</p> +<p>“Do go to Mrs. Vanderdecken’s,” said Mrs. +Chew; “you’ll see the cream of the cream.”</p> +<p><a name="page118"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +118</span>“Oh gracious!” Mrs. Vanderdecken vaguely +cried.</p> +<p>“Well, I don’t care; she will, won’t she, +Doctor Feeder?—the very pick of American +society.” Mrs. Chew stuck to her point.</p> +<p>“Oh I’ve no doubt Lady Barb will have a good +time,” said Sidney Feeder. “I’m afraid +you miss the bran,” he went on with irrelevant jocosity to +Jackson’s bride. He always tried the jocose when +other elements had failed.</p> +<p>“The bran?” Jackson’s bride +couldn’t think.</p> +<p>“Where you used to ride—in the Park.”</p> +<p>“My dear fellow, you speak as if we had met at the +circus,” her husband interposed. “I +haven’t married a mountebank!”</p> +<p>“Well, they put some stuff on the road,” Sidney +Feeder explained, not holding much to his joke.</p> +<p>“You must miss a great many things,” said Mrs. +Chew tenderly.</p> +<p>“I don’t see what,” Mrs. Vanderdecken +tinkled, “except the fogs and the Queen. New +York’s getting more and more like London. It’s +a pity—you ought to have known us thirty years +ago.”</p> +<p>“<i>You’re</i> the queen here,” said Jackson +Lemon, “but I don’t know what you know about thirty +years ago.”</p> +<p>“Do you think she doesn’t go back?—she goes +back to the last century!” cried Mrs. Chew.</p> +<p>“I daresay I should have liked that,” said Lady +Barb; “but I can’t imagine.” And she +looked at her husband—a look she often had—as if she +vaguely wished him to do something.</p> +<p>He was not called upon, however, to take any violent steps, +for Mrs. Chew presently said, “Well, Lady Barb, +good-bye”; Mrs. Vanderdecken glared genially and as for +excess of meaning at her hostess and addressed a farewell, +accompanied very audibly <a name="page119"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 119</span>with his title, to her host; and +Sidney Feeder made a joke about stepping on the trains of the +ladies’ dresses as he accompanied them to the door. +Mrs. Chew had always a great deal to say at the last; she talked +till she was in the street and then she addressed that +prospect. But at the end of five minutes Jackson Lemon was +alone with his wife, to whom he then announced a piece of +news. He prefaced it, however, by an inquiry as he came +back from the hall.</p> +<p>“Where’s Agatha, my dear?”</p> +<p>“I haven’t the least idea. In the streets +somewhere, I suppose.”</p> +<p>“I think you ought to know a little more.”</p> +<p>“How can I know about things here? I’ve +given her up. I can do nothing with her. I +don’t care what she does.”</p> +<p>“She ought to go back to England,” Jackson said +after a pause.</p> +<p>“She ought never to have come.”</p> +<p>“It was not my proposal, God knows!” he sharply +returned.</p> +<p>“Mamma could never know what it really is,” his +wife more quietly noted.</p> +<p>“No, it hasn’t been as yet what your mother +supposed! The man Longstraw wants to marry her and has made +a formal proposal. I met him half an hour ago in Madison +Avenue, and he asked me to come with him into the Columbia +Club. There, in the billiard-room, which to-day is empty, +he opened himself—thinking evidently that in laying the +matter before me he was behaving with extraordinary +propriety. He tells me he’s dying of love and that +she’s perfectly willing to go and live in +Arizona.”</p> +<p>“So she is,” said Lady Barb. “And what +did you tell him?”</p> +<p>“I told him I was convinced it would never do <a +name="page120"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 120</span>and that at +any rate I could have nothing to say to it. I told him +explicitly in short what I had told him virtually before. I +said we should send Aggie straight back to England, and that if +they had the courage they must themselves broach the question +over there.”</p> +<p>“When shall you send her back?” asked Lady +Barb.</p> +<p>“Immediately—by the very first steamer.”</p> +<p>“Alone, like an American girl?”</p> +<p>“Don’t be rough, Barb,” Jackson +replied. “I shall easily find some people—lots +of them are sailing now.”</p> +<p>“I must take her myself,” Lady Barb observed in a +moment. “I brought her out—so I must restore +her to my mother’s hands.”</p> +<p>He had expected this and believed he was prepared for it, but +when it came he found his preparation not complete. He had +no answer to make—none at least that seemed to him to go to +the point. During these last weeks it had come over him +with a quiet irresistible unmerciful force that Mrs. Dexter Freer +had been right in saying to him that Sunday afternoon in Jermyn +Street, the summer before, that he would find it wasn’t so +simple to be an American. Such a character was complicated +in just the measure that she had foretold by the difficulty of +domesticating any wife at all liberally chosen. The +difficulty wasn’t dissipated by his having taken a high +tone about it; it pinched him from morning till night, it hurt +him like a misfitting shoe. His high tone had given him +courage when he took the great step; but he began to perceive +that the highest tone in the world couldn’t change the +nature of things. His ears tingled as he inwardly noted +that if the Dexter Freers, whom he had thought alike abject in +their hopes and their fears, had been by ill luck spending the +winter in <a name="page121"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +121</span>New York, they would have found his predicament as good +fun as they could wish. Drop by drop the conviction had +entered his mind—the first drop had come in the form of a +word from Lady Agatha—that if his wife should return to +England she would never again later recross the Atlantic. +That word from the competent source had been the touch from the +outside at which often a man’s fear crystallises. +What she would do, how she would resist—this he +wasn’t yet prepared to tell himself; but he felt every time +he looked at her that the beautiful woman he had adored was +filled with a dumb insuperable ineradicable purpose. He +knew that if she should plant herself firm no power on earth +would move her; and her blooming antique beauty and the general +loftiness of her breeding came fast to seem to him but the +magnificent expression of a dense patient ponderous power to +resist. She wasn’t light, she wasn’t supple, +and after six months of marriage he had made up his mind that she +wasn’t intelligent—in spite of all which she would +elude him. She had married him, she had come into his +fortune and his consideration—for who was she after all? he +was on occasion so angry as to ask himself, remembering that in +England Lady Claras and Lady Florences were as thick as +blackberries—but she would have nothing to do, if she could +help it, with his country. She had gone in to dinner first +in every house in the place, but this hadn’t satisfied +her. It <i>had</i> been simple to be an American in the +good and easy sense that no one else in New York had made any +difficulties; the difficulties had sprung from the very, the +consummate, make of her, which were after all what he had married +her for, thinking they would be a fine temperamental heritage for +his brood. So they would, doubtless, in the coming years +and after the brood should have appeared; but meanwhile they +interfered with the <a name="page122"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 122</span>best heritage of all—the +nationality of his possible children. She would do indeed +nothing violent; he was tolerably certain of that. She +wouldn’t return to England without his consent; only when +she should return it would be once for all. His one +possible line, then, was not to take her back—a position +replete with difficulties, since he had in a manner given his +word; she herself giving none at all beyond the formal promise +murmured at the altar. She had been general, but he had +been specific; the settlements he had made were a part of +that. His difficulties were such as he couldn’t +directly face. He must tack in approaching so uncertain a +coast. He said to his wife presently that it would be very +inconvenient for him to leave New York at that moment: she must +remember their plans had been laid for a later move. He +couldn’t think of letting her make the voyage without him, +and on the other hand they must pack her sister off without +delay. He would therefore make instant inquiry for a +chaperon, and he relieved his irritation by cursing the name and +every other attribute of Herman Longstraw.</p> +<p>Lady Barb didn’t trouble herself to denounce this +gentleman; her manner was that of having for a long time expected +the worst. She simply remarked after having listened to her +husband for some minutes in silence: “I’d quite as +lief she should marry Doctor Feeder!”</p> +<p>The day after this he closeted himself for an hour with his +sister-in-law, taking great pains to set forth to her the reasons +why she shouldn’t marry her Californian. Jackson was +kind, he was affectionate; he kissed her and put his arm round +her waist, he reminded her that he and she were the best of +friends and that she had always been awfully nice to him: +therefore he counted on her. She’d break her +mother’s heart, she’d deserve her father’s +curse, and <a name="page123"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +123</span>she’d get him, Jackson, into a pickle from which +no human power might ever disembroil him. Lady Agatha +listened and cried, she returned his kiss very affectionately and +admitted that her father and mother would never consent to such a +marriage; and when he told her that he had made arrangements that +she should sail for Liverpool, with some charming people, the +next day but one, she embraced him again and assured him she +could never thank him enough for all the trouble he had taken +about her. He flattered himself he had convinced and in +some degree comforted her, and he reflected with complacency that +even should his wife take it into her head Barb would never get +ready to embark for her native land between a Monday and a +Wednesday. The next morning Lady Agatha failed to appear at +breakfast, though as she usually rose very late her absence +excited no immediate alarm. She hadn’t rung her bell +and was supposed still to be sleeping. But she had never +yet slept later than mid-day; and as this hour approached her +sister went to her room. Lady Barb then discovered that she +had left the house at seven o’clock in the morning and had +gone to meet Mr. Longstraw at a neighbouring corner. A +little note on the table explained it very succinctly, and put +beyond the power of the Jackson Lemons to doubt that by the time +this news reached them their wayward sister had been united to +the man of her preference as closely as the laws of the State of +New York could bind her. Her little note set forth that as +she knew she should never be permitted to marry him she had +resolved to marry him without permission, and that directly after +the ceremony, which would be of the simplest kind, they were to +take a train for the Far West.</p> +<p>Our record is concerned only with the remote consequences of +this affair, which made of course a <a name="page124"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 124</span>great deal of trouble for poor +Jackson. He pursued the fugitives to remote rocky +fastnesses and finally overtook them in California; but he +hadn’t the boldness to propose to them to separate, for he +promptly made out that Herman Longstraw was at least as well +married as himself. Lady Agatha was already popular in the +new States, where the history of her elopement, emblazoned in +enormous capitals, was circulated in a thousand newspapers. +This question of the newspapers had been for our troubled friend +one of the most definite results of his sister-in-law’s +<i>coup de tête</i>. His first thought had been of +the public prints and his first exclamation a prayer that they +shouldn’t get hold of the story. They had, however, +got hold of it with a myriad wildly-waved hands and were +scattering it broadcast over the world. Lady Barb never +caught them in the act—she succeeded perfectly in not +seeing what she needn’t; but an affectionate friend of the +family, travelling at that time in the United States, made a +parcel of some of the leading journals, and sent them to Lord +Canterville. This missive elicited from her ladyship a +letter, addressed to her son-in-law, which shook the young +man’s position to the base. The phials of a rank +vulgarity had been opened on the house of Canterville, and the +noble matron demanded that in compensation for the affronts and +injuries heaped upon her family, and bereaved and dishonoured as +she was, she should at least be allowed to look on the face of +her second daughter. “I suppose you’ll not, for +very pity, be deaf to such a prayer as that,” said Lady +Barb; and though loth to record a second act of weakness on the +part of a man with pretensions to be strong, I may not disguise +the fact that poor Jackson, who blushed dreadfully over the +newspapers and felt afresh as he read them the force of Mrs. +Freer’s terrible axiom, poor Jackson paid a <a +name="page125"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 125</span>visit to +the office of the Cunarders. He said to himself later on +that it was the newspapers that had done it; he couldn’t +decently appear to be on their side: they made it so hard to deny +that the country was impossible at a time when one was in need of +all one’s arguments. Lady Barb, before sailing, +definitely refused to mention any week or month as the date of +their prearranged return to New York. Very many weeks and +months have elapsed since then, and she gives no sign of coming +back. She will never fix a date. She is much missed +by Mrs. Vanderdecken, who still alludes to her—still says +the line of the shoulders was superb; putting the statement +pensively in the past tense. Lady Beauchemin and Lady +Marmaduke are much disconcerted; the international project has +not, in their view, received an impetus.</p> +<p>Jackson Lemon has a house in London and he rides in the Park +with his wife, who is as beautiful as the day and who a year ago +presented him with a little girl exhibiting features that he +already scans for the look of race—whether in hope or in +fear to-day is more than my muse has revealed. He has +occasional scenes with Lady Barb during which the look of race is +very clear in her own countenance; but they never terminate in a +visit to the Cunarders. He’s exceedingly restless and +is constantly crossing to the Continent; but he returns with a +certain abruptness, for he hates meeting the Dexter Freers, who +seem to pervade the more comfortable parts of Europe. He +dodges them in every town. Sidney Feeder feels very badly +about him; it’s months since Jackson has sent him any +“results.” The excellent fellow goes very +often, in a consolatory spirit, to see Mrs. Lemon, but has not +yet been able to answer her standing question—“Why +that girl more than another?” Lady Agatha Longstraw +and her husband arrived a <a name="page126"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 126</span>year ago in England, and Mr. +Longstraw’s personality had immense success during the last +London season. It’s not exactly known what they live +on, though perfectly known that he’s looking for something +to do. Meanwhile it’s as good as known that their +really quite responsible brother-in-law supports them.</p> +<h2><a name="page127"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 127</span>THE +SIEGE OF LONDON</h2> +<h3><a name="page129"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +129</span>I</h3> +<p>That solemn piece of upholstery the curtain of the +Comédie Française had fallen upon the first act of +the piece, and our two Americans had taken advantage of the +interval to pass out of the huge hot theatre in company with the +other occupants of the stalls. But they were among the +first to return, and they beguiled the rest of the intermission +with looking at the house, which had lately been cleansed of its +historic cobwebs and ornamented with frescoes illustrative of the +classic drama. In the month of September the audience at +the Théâtre Français is comparatively thin, +and on this occasion the +drama—<i>L’Aventurière</i> of Emile +Augier—had no pretensions to novelty. Many of the +boxes were empty, others were occupied by persons of provincial +or nomadic appearance. The boxes are far from the stage, +near which our spectators were placed; but even at a distance +Rupert Waterville was able to appreciate details. He was +fond of appreciating details, and when he went to the theatre he +looked about him a good deal, making use of a dainty but +remarkably powerful glass. He knew that such a course was +wanting in true distinction and that it was indelicate to level +at a lady an instrument often only less injurious in effect than +a double-barrelled pistol; but he was always very curious, and +was sure, in any case, that at that moment, at that antiquated +play—so he was pleased to qualify the masterpiece of a <a +name="page130"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +130</span>contemporary—he shouldn’t be observed by +any one he knew. Standing up therefore with his back to the +stage he made the circuit of the boxes while several other +persons near him performed the operation with even greater +coolness.</p> +<p>“Not a single pretty woman,” he remarked at last +to his friend; an observation which Littlemore, sitting in his +place and staring with a bored expression at the new-looking +curtain, received in perfect silence. He rarely indulged in +these optical excursions; he had been a great deal in Paris and +had ceased to vibrate more than a few times a day; he believed +the French capital could have no more surprises for him, though +it had had a good many in former days. Waterville was still +in the stage of surprise; he suddenly expressed this +emotion. “By Jove, I beg your pardon, I beg +<i>her</i> pardon! There <i>is</i> after all a woman who +may be called”—he paused a little, inspecting +her—“an approach to a beauty!”</p> +<p>“How near an approach?” Littlemore responded.</p> +<p>“An unusual kind—an indescribable +kind.” Littlemore was not heeding his answer, but +presently heard himself appealed to. “I say, I wish +very much you’d do me a favour.”</p> +<p>“I did you a favour in coming here,” said +Littlemore. “It’s insufferably hot, and the +play’s like a dinner that has been dressed by the +kitchen-maid. The actors are all +<i>doublures</i>.”</p> +<p>“It’s simply to answer me this: is <i>she</i> +respectable now?” Waterville demanded, inattentive to his +friend’s epigram.</p> +<p>Littlemore gave a groan, without turning his head. +“You’re always wanting to know if they’re +respectable. What on earth can it matter?”</p> +<p>“I’ve made such mistakes—I’ve lost all +confidence,” said poor Waterville, to whom European +civilisation had not ceased to be a novelty and who <a +name="page131"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 131</span>during the +last six months had found himself confronted with problems for +which his training had little prepared him. Whenever he +encountered a very nice-looking woman he was sure to discover +that she belonged to the class represented by the heroine of M. +Augier’s drama; and whenever his attention rested upon a +person of a florid style of attraction there was the strongest +probability that she would turn out a countess. The +countesses often looked so unnaturally cheap and the others +unnaturally expensive. Littlemore distinguished at a +glance; he never made mistakes.</p> +<p>“Simply for looking at them it doesn’t matter, I +suppose,” Waterville ingenuously sighed.</p> +<p>“You stare at them all alike,” Littlemore went on, +still without moving; “except indeed when I tell you they +<i>aren’t</i> decent—then your eyes, my dear man, +grow as large as saucers.”</p> +<p>“If your judgement’s against this lady I promise +never to look at her again. I mean the one in the third box +from the passage, in white, with the red flowers,” the +younger man said as Littlemore slowly rose and stood beside +him. “The fellow with her is leaning forward. +It’s he who makes me doubt. Will you have the +glass?”</p> +<p>Littlemore looked about him without concentration. +“No, thank you, I can see without staring. The young +man’s a very good young man,” he presently +reported.</p> +<p>“Very indeed, but he’s several years younger than +she. Wait till she turns her head.”</p> +<p>She turned it very soon—she apparently had been speaking +to the <i>ouvreuse</i>, at the door of the box—and +presented her face to the public; a fair harmonious face, with +smiling eyes, smiling lips, a low brow ornamented with delicate +rings of black hair and ears marked by the sparkle of diamonds +sufficiently large <a name="page132"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +132</span>to be seen across the Théâtre +Français. Littlemore looked at her, then started and +held out his hand. “The glass, please!”</p> +<p>“Do you know her?” his friend asked as he directed +the little instrument.</p> +<p>He made no answer; he only looked in silence; then he gave the +glass back. “No, she’s not +respectable.” And he dropped again into his +seat. As Waterville remained standing he added: +“Please sit down; I think she saw me.”</p> +<p>“Don’t you want her to see you?” pursued the +interrogator, promptly complying.</p> +<p>Littlemore hesitated. “I don’t want to spoil +her game.” By this time the <i>entr’acte</i> +was at an end and the curtain going up.</p> +<p>It had been Waterville’s idea that they should go to the +theatre. Littlemore, who was always for not going anywhere, +had recommended that, the evening being lovely, they should +simply sit and smoke at the door of the Grand Café in +comparatively pensive isolation. Nevertheless Waterville +enjoyed the second act even less than he had done the first, +which he thought heavy. He began to wonder whether his +companion would wish to stay to the end; a useless line of +speculation, for now that he had got to the theatre +Littlemore’s aversion to change would certainly keep him +from moving. Waterville also wondered what he knew about +the lady in the box. Once or twice he glanced at his +friend, and then was sure the latter wasn’t following the +play. He was thinking of something else; he was thinking of +that woman. When the curtain fell again he sat in his +place, making way for his neighbours, as usual, to edge past him, +grinding his knees—his legs were long—with their own +protuberances. When the two men were alone in the stalls he +spoke. “I think I should like to see her again, after +all.” He spoke in fact as if <a +name="page133"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 133</span>Waterville +might have known all about her. Waterville was conscious of +not doing so, but as there was evidently a good deal to know he +recognised he should lose nothing by exerting some art. So +for the moment he asked no question; he only said: “Well, +here’s the glass.”</p> +<p>Littlemore gave him a glance of good-natured compassion. +“I don’t mean I want to keep letting <i>that</i> off +at her. I mean I should rather like to see her as I used +to.”</p> +<p>“And how did you use to?” asked Waterville with no +art now.</p> +<p>“On the back piazza at San Pablo.” And as +his comrade, in receipt of this information, only stared he went +on: “Come out where we can breathe and I’ll tell you +more.”</p> +<p>They made their way to the low and narrow door, more worthy of +a rabbit-hutch than of a great theatre, by which you pass from +the stalls of the Comédie to the lobby, and as Littlemore +went by first his ingenuous friend behind him could see that he +glanced up at the box in the occupants of which they were +interested. The more interesting of these had her back to +the house; she was apparently just leaving the box, after her +companion; but as she hadn’t put on her mantle it was +evident they weren’t quitting the theatre. +Littlemore’s pursuit of fresh air didn’t lead him to +the street; he had passed his arm into Waterville’s and +when they reached the fine frigid staircase that ascends to the +public foyer he began silently to mount it. Littlemore was +averse to active pleasures, but his friend reflected that now at +least he had launched himself—he was going to look for the +lady whom, with a monosyllable, he appeared to have +classified. The young man resigned himself for the moment +to asking no questions, and the two strolled together into the +shining saloon where Houdon’s admirable statue of <a +name="page134"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 134</span>Voltaire, +reflected in a dozen mirrors, is gaped at by visitors too +obviously less acute than the genius expressed in those living +features. Waterville knew that Voltaire was witty; he had +read <i>Candide</i> and had already had several opportunities of +appreciating the statue. The foyer was not crowded; only a +dozen groups were scattered over the polished floor, several +others having passed out to the balcony which overhangs the +square of the Palais Royal. The windows were open, the +myriad lights of Paris made the dull summer evening look like an +anniversary or a revolution; a murmur of voices seemed to come +up, and even in the foyer one heard the slow click of the horses +and the rumble of the crookedly-driven fiacres on the hard smooth +street-surface. A lady and a gentleman, their backs to our +friends, stood before the image of the <i>genius loci</i>; the +lady was dressed in white, including a white bonnet. +Littlemore felt in the scene, as so many persons feel it just +there, something of the finest essence of France, and he gave a +significant laugh.</p> +<p>“It seems comical to see her here! The last time +was in New Mexico.”</p> +<p>“In New Mexico?”</p> +<p>“At San Pablo.”</p> +<p>“Oh on the back piazza,” said Waterville, putting +things together. He had not been aware of the position of +San Pablo, for if on the occasion of his lately being appointed +to a subordinate diplomatic post in London he had been paying a +good deal of attention to European geography he had rather +neglected that of his own country.</p> +<p>They hadn’t spoken loud and weren’t standing near +her, but suddenly, as if she had heard them, the lady in white +turned round. Her eye caught Waterville’s first, and +in that glance he saw that if she was aware of something it +wasn’t because they had <a name="page135"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 135</span>exceeded but because she had +extraordinary quickness of ear. There was no prompt +recognition in it—none even when it rested lightly on +George Littlemore. But recognition flashed out a moment +later, accompanied with a delicate increase of colour and a quick +extension of her settled smile. She had turned completely +round; she stood there in sudden friendliness, with parted lips; +with a hand, gloved to the elbow, almost imperiously +offered. She was even prettier than at a distance. +“Well, I declare!” she cried; so loud that every one +in the room appeared to feel personally addressed. +Waterville was surprised; he hadn’t been prepared, even +after the mention of the back piazza, to find her of so +unmistakable race. Her companion turned round as she spoke; +he was a fresh lean young man in evening dress; he kept his hands +in his pockets; Waterville was sure he was of race quite +other. He looked very grave—for such a fair festive +young man—and gave our two friends, though his height was +not superior to theirs, a narrow vertical glance. Then he +turned back to the statue of Voltaire as if it had been among his +premonitions, after all, that the lady he was attending would +recognise people he didn’t know and didn’t even +perhaps care to know. This possibly confirmed slightly +Littlemore’s assertion that she wasn’t +respectable. The young man was that at least; consummately +so. “Where in the world did you drop from?” the +lady inquired.</p> +<p>“I’ve been here for some time,” Littlemore +said, going forward rather deliberately to shake hands with +her. He took it alertly, yet was more serious than she, +keeping his eye on her own as if she had been just a trifle +dangerous. Such was the manner in which a duly discreet +person would have approached some glossy graceful animal which +had an occasional trick of biting.</p> +<p><a name="page136"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +136</span>“Here in Paris, do you mean?”</p> +<p>“No; here and there—in Europe +generally.”</p> +<p>“Well, it’s queer I haven’t met +you.”</p> +<p>“Better late than never!” said Littlemore. +His smile was a little fixed.</p> +<p>“Well, you look very natural,” the lady went +on.</p> +<p>“So do you—or very charming—it’s the +same thing,” he answered, laughing and evidently wishing to +be easy. It was as if, face to face and after a +considerable lapse of time, he had found her more imposing than +he expected when, in the stalls below, he determined to come and +meet her. As he spoke the young man who was with her gave +up his inspection of Voltaire and faced about listlessly, without +looking at his companion’s acquaintances.</p> +<p>“I want to introduce you to my friend,” she went +on. “Sir Arthur Demesne—Mr. Littlemore. +Mr. Littlemore—Sir Arthur Demesne. Sir Arthur +Demesne’s an Englishman—Mr. Littlemore’s a +countryman of mine, an old friend. I haven’t seen him +for years. For how long? Don’t let’s +count—I wonder you knew me,” she continued, +addressing this recovered property. “I’m +fearfully changed.” All this was said in a clear gay +tone which was the more audible as she spoke with an odd sociable +slowness. The two men, to do honour to her introduction, +silently exchanged a glance; the Englishman perhaps coloured a +little. He was very conscious of his companion. +“I haven’t introduced you to many people yet,” +she dropped.</p> +<p>“Oh I don’t mind,” said Sir Arthur +Demesne.</p> +<p>“Well, it’s queer to see you!” she pursued, +with her charming eyes still on Littlemore. +“You’ve changed, too—I can see that.”</p> +<p>“Not where you’re concerned.”</p> +<p>“That’s what I want to find out. Why +don’t you introduce your friend? I see he’s +dying to know me!” And then when he had proceeded +with this ceremony, <a name="page137"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 137</span>which he reduced to its simplest +elements, merely glancing at Rupert Waterville and murmuring his +name, “Ah, you don’t tell him who <i>I</i> am!” +the lady cried while the young secretary made her a formal +salutation. “I hope you haven’t +forgotten!”</p> +<p>Littlemore showed her a face intended to express more than +what he had hitherto permitted himself; if its meaning had been +put into words these would have been: “Ah, but by which +name?”</p> +<p>She answered the unspoken question, putting out her hand as +she had done to Littlemore. “Happy to make your +acquaintance, Mr. Waterville. I’m Mrs. +Headway—perhaps you’ve heard of me. If +you’ve ever been in America you must have heard of +me. Not so much in New York, but in the Western +cities. You <i>are</i> an American? Well then +we’re all compatriots—except Sir Arthur +Demesne. Let me introduce you to Sir Arthur. Sir +Arthur Demesne, Mr. Waterville—Mr. Waterville, Sir Arthur +Demesne. Sir Arthur Demesne’s a member of Parliament: +don’t he look young?” She waited for no +judgement on this appeal, but suddenly made another as she moved +her bracelets back over long loose gloves. “Well, Mr. +Littlemore, what are you thinking of?”</p> +<p>He was thinking that he must indeed have forgotten her name, +for the one she had pronounced awakened no association. But +he could hardly tell her that. “I’m thinking of +San Pablo.”</p> +<p>“The back piazza at my sister’s? Oh +don’t; it was too horrid. She has left now. I +believe every one has left.” The member of Parliament +drew out his watch with the air of a man who could take no part +in these domestic reminiscences; he appeared to combine a generic +self-possession with a degree of individual shyness. He +said something about its being time they should go back to their +seats, but Mrs. Headway paid no attention to the remark. +Waterville wished <a name="page138"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +138</span>her to linger and indeed felt almost as free to examine +her as he had to walk, in a different spirit, round the statue of +the author of <i>Candide</i>. Her low-growing hair, with +its fine dense undulations, was of a shade of blackness that has +now become rare; her complexion had the bloom of a white flower; +her profile, when she turned her head, was as pure and fine as +the outline of a cameo. “You know this is their first +theatre,” she continued, as if to rise to the +occasion. “And this is Voltaire, the celebrated +writer.”</p> +<p>“I’m devoted to the Comédie +Française”—Waterville rose as well.</p> +<p>“Dreadfully bad house; we didn’t hear a +word,” said Sir Arthur Demesne.</p> +<p>“Ah, yes, the sad far boxes!” murmured +Waterville.</p> +<p>“I’m rather disappointed,” Mrs. Headway went +on. “But I want to see what becomes of that +woman.”</p> +<p>“Doña Clorinde? Oh I suppose they’ll +shoot her. They generally shoot the women in French +plays,” Littlemore said.</p> +<p>“It will remind me of San Pablo!” cried Mrs. +Headway.</p> +<p>“Ah, at San Pablo the women did the shooting.”</p> +<p>“They don’t seem to have killed <i>you</i>!” +she returned archly.</p> +<p>“No, but I’m riddled with wounds.”</p> +<p>“Well, this is very remarkable”—the lady +reverted to Houdon’s statue. “It’s +beautifully modelled.”</p> +<p>“You’re perhaps reading M. de Voltaire,” +Littlemore suggested.</p> +<p>“No; but I’ve purchased his works.”</p> +<p>“They’re not proper reading for ladies,” +said the young Englishman severely, offering his arm to his +charge.</p> +<p>“Ah, you might have told me before I had bought +them!” she exclaimed in exaggerated dismay.</p> +<p><a name="page139"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +139</span>“I couldn’t imagine you’d buy a +hundred and fifty volumes.”</p> +<p>“A hundred and fifty? I’ve only bought +two.”</p> +<p>“Perhaps two won’t hurt you!” Littlemore +hopefully contributed.</p> +<p>She darted him a reproachful ray. “I know what you +mean—that I’m too bad already! Well, bad as I +am you must come and see me.” And she threw him the +name of her hotel as she walked away with her Englishman. +Waterville looked after the latter with a certain interest; he +had heard of him in London and had seen his portrait in <i>Vanity +Fair</i>.</p> +<p>It was not yet time to go down, in spite of this +gentleman’s saying so, and Littlemore and his friend passed +out to the balcony of the foyer. +“Headway—Headway? Where the deuce did she get +that name?” Littlemore asked as they looked down into the +flaring dusk.</p> +<p>“From her husband I suppose,” his friend +suggested.</p> +<p>“From her husband? From which? The last was +named Beck.”</p> +<p>“How many has she had?” the younger man inquired, +anxious to hear how it was Mrs. Headway wasn’t +respectable.</p> +<p>“I haven’t the least idea. But it +wouldn’t be difficult to find out, as I believe +they’re all living. She was Mrs. Beck—Nancy +Beck—when I knew her.”</p> +<p>“Nancy Beck!” cried Waterville, aghast. He +was thinking of her delicate profile, like that of a pretty Roman +empress. There was a great deal to be explained.</p> +<p>Littlemore explained it in a few words before they returned to +their places, admitting indeed that he wasn’t yet able to +clear up her present appearance. She was a memory of his +Western days; he had seen her last some six years before. +He had known her very <a name="page140"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 140</span>well and in several places; the +circle of her activity was chiefly the South-west. This +activity had been during that time of a vague character, except +in the sense that it was exclusively social. She was +supposed to have a husband, one Philadelphia Beck, the editor of +a Democratic newspaper, the <i>Dakota Sentinel</i>; but +Littlemore had never seen him—the pair were living +apart—and it had been the impression at San Pablo that +matrimony, for Mr. and Mrs. Beck, was about played out. He +remembered now to have heard afterwards that she was getting a +divorce. She got divorces very easily, she was so taking in +court. She had got one or two before from a man whose name +he couldn’t remember, and there was a legend that even +these were not the first. She had been enormously +divorced! When he first met her in California she called +herself Mrs. Grenville, which he had been given to understand was +not an appellation acquired by matrimony, but her parental name, +resumed after the dissolution of an unfortunate union. She +had had these episodes—her unions were all +unfortunate—and had borne half-a-dozen names. She was +a charming woman, especially for New Mexico; but she had been +divorced too often—it was a tax on one’s credulity: +she must have repudiated more husbands than she had married.</p> +<p>At San Pablo she was staying with her sister, whose actual +spouse—she too had been divorced—the principal man of +the place, kept a bank (with the aid of a six-shooter), and who +had never suffered Nancy to want for a home during her unattached +periods. Nancy had begun very young; she must be about +thirty-seven to-day. That was all he meant by her not being +respectable. Her chronology was rather mixed; her sister at +least had once told him that there was one winter when she +didn’t know herself who was Nancy’s husband. +She had gone in <a name="page141"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +141</span>mainly for editors—she esteemed the journalistic +profession. They must all have been dreadful ruffians, for +her own amiability was manifest. It was well known that +whatever she had done she had done in self-defence. In fine +she had done things—that was the main point now. She +had been as pretty as could still be seen, and as good-natured +and as clever as could likewise be yet measured; she had been +quite the best company in those parts. She was a genuine +product of the wild West—a flower of the Pacific slope; +ignorant, absurd, crude, but full of pluck and spirit, of natural +intelligence and of a certain intermittent haphazard felicity of +impulse. She used to sigh that she only wanted a +chance—apparently she had found that now. At one +time, without her, he didn’t see how he could have put up +with the life. He had started a cattle-ranch, to which San +Pablo was the nearest town, and he used to ride over to see +her. Sometimes he stayed there a week; then he went to see +her every evening. It was infernally hot; they used to sit +on the back piazza. She was always as attractive and very +nearly as well-dressed as they had just beheld her. As far +as appearance went she might have been transplanted at an +hour’s notice from that dusty old settlement to the city by +the Seine.</p> +<p>“Some of those barbaric women are wonderful,” +Littlemore said. “Like her, they only want a +chance.”</p> +<p>He hadn’t been in love with her—there never was +anything of that sort between them. There might have been +of course, but as happened there wasn’t. Headway +would have been then the successor of Beck; perhaps there had +been others between. She was in no sort of +“society”; she only had a local reputation +(“the well-known Texan belle,” the newspapers called +her—the other editors, to whom she wasn’t married), +though indeed in that spacious <a name="page142"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 142</span>civilisation the locality was +large. She knew nothing of the East and to the best of his +belief at that period had never seen New York. Various +things might have happened in those six years, however; no doubt +she had “come up.” The West was sending us +everything (Littlemore spoke as a New Yorker); no doubt it would +send us at last our brilliant women. The well-known Texan +belle used to look quite over the head of New York; even in those +days she thought and talked of Paris, which there was no prospect +of her knowing: that was the way she had got on in New +Mexico. She had had her ambition, her presentiments; she +had known she was meant for better things. Even at San +Pablo she had prefigured her member of Parliament; every now and +then a wandering Englishman came within her range. They +weren’t all Sir Arthurs, like her present acquisition, but +they were usually a change from the editors. What she was +doing with her present acquisition Littlemore was curious to +see. She was certainly—if he had any capacity for +that state of mind, which was not too apparent—making the +gentleman happy. She looked very splendid; Headway had +probably made a “pile,” an achievement not to be +imputed to any of the others. She didn’t accept +money—he was sure she didn’t accept money. With +all of which, on their way back to their seats, Littlemore, whose +tone had been humorous, but with that strain of the pensive which +is inseparable from retrospect, suddenly burst into audible +laughter. “The modelling of statues and the works of +Voltaire!” he broke out, recurring to two or three things +she had said. “It’s touching to hear her +attempt those flights, for in New Mexico she knew nothing about +modelling.”</p> +<p>“She didn’t strike me as affected,” +Waterville demurred, feeling a vague impulse to view her in +becoming lights.</p> +<p><a name="page143"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +143</span>“Oh no; she’s only—as she +says—fearfully changed.”</p> +<p>They were in their places before the play went on again, and +they both gave another glance at Mrs. Headway’s box. +She now was leaning back behind the slow movements of her fan and +evidently watching Littlemore as if she had waited to see him +come in. Sir Arthur Demesne sat beside her, rather gloomily +resting a round pink chin upon a high stiff collar; neither of +them seemed to speak.</p> +<p>“Are you sure she makes him happy?” Waterville +asked.</p> +<p>“Yes—that’s the way those people show +it.”</p> +<p>“But does she go about alone with him at that +rate? Where’s her husband?”</p> +<p>“I suppose she has divorced him.”</p> +<p>“And does she want to marry the Baronet?” +Waterville went on as if his companion was omniscient.</p> +<p>It amused Littlemore for the moment to appear so. +“He wants to marry <i>her</i>, I guess.”</p> +<p>“And be divorced like the others?”</p> +<p>“Oh no; this time she has got what she wants,” +said Littlemore as the curtain rose.</p> +<p>He suffered three days to elapse before he called at the +Hôtel Meurice, which she had designated, and we may occupy +this interval in adding a few words to the story we have taken +from his lips. George Littlemore’s residence in the +Far West had been of the usual tentative sort—he had gone +there to replenish a pocket depleted by youthful +extravagance. His first attempts had failed; the days had +pretty well passed when a fortune was to be picked up even by a +young man who might be supposed to have inherited from an +honourable father, lately removed, some of those fine abilities, +mainly dedicated to the importation of tea, to which the elder +Mr. Littlemore was <a name="page144"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +144</span>indebted for the power of leaving his son markedly at +ease. Littlemore had dissipated his patrimony and was not +quick to discover his talents, which, restricted chiefly to an +unlimited faculty for smoking and horse-breaking, appeared to lie +in the direction of none of the professions called liberal. +He had been sent to Harvard to have them cultivated, but here +they had taken such a form that repression had been found more +necessary than stimulus—repression embodied in an +occasional sojourn in one of the lovely villages of the +Connecticut Valley. Rustication saved him perhaps in the +sense that it detached him; it undermined his ambitions, which +had been foolish. At the age of thirty he had mastered none +of the useful arts, unless we include in the number the great art +of indifference. But he was roused from too consistent an +application of it by a stroke of good luck. To oblige a +luckless friend, even in more pressing need of cash than himself, +he had purchased for a moderate sum—the proceeds of a +successful game of poker—a share in a silver-mine which the +disposer of it, with unusual candour, admitted to be destitute of +metal. Littlemore looked into his mine and recognised the +truth of the contention, which, however, was demolished some two +years later by a sudden revival of curiosity on the part of one +of the other shareholders. This gentleman, convinced that a +silver-mine without silver is as rare as an effect without a +cause, discovered the sparkle of the precious element deep down +in the reasons of things. The discovery was agreeable to +Littlemore, and was the beginning of a fortune which, through +several dull years and in many rough places, he had repeatedly +despaired of, and which a man whose purpose had never been very +keen, nor his aim very high, didn’t perhaps altogether +deserve.</p> +<p>It was before he saw himself successful that he <a +name="page145"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 145</span>had made +the acquaintance of the lady now established at the Hôtel +Meurice. To-day he owned the largest share in his mine, +which had remained perversely productive and enabled him to buy, +among other things, in Montana, a cattle-ranch of higher type +than the dry acres near San Pablo. Ranches and mines +encourage security, and the consciousness of not having to watch +the sources of his income too anxiously—a tax on ideal +detachment which spoils the idea—now added itself to his +usual coolness. It was not that this same coolness +hadn’t been considerably tried. To take only +one—the principal—instance: he had lost his wife +after only a twelvemonth of marriage, some three years before the +date at which we meet him. He had been turned thirty-eight +when he distinguished and wooed and won an ardent girl of +twenty-three, who, like himself, had consulted all the +probabilities in expecting a succession of happy years. She +had left him a small daughter, now entrusted to the care of his +only sister, the wife of an English squire and mistress of a dull +park in Hampshire. This lady, Mrs. Dolphin by name, had +captivated her landowner during a journey in which Mr. Dolphin +had promised himself to examine the institutions of the United +States. The institution on which he had reported most +favourably was the pretty girls of the larger towns, and he had +returned to New York a year or two later to marry Miss +Littlemore, who, unlike her brother, had not wasted her +patrimony. Her sister-in-law, married several years later +and coming to Europe on this occasion, had died in +London—where she had flattered herself the doctors were +infallible—a week after the birth of her little girl; and +poor Littlemore, though relinquishing his child for the moment, +had lingered on the scene of his deep disconcertment to be within +call of the Hampshire nursery. He was a presence to <a +name="page146"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 146</span>attract +admiring attention, especially since his hair and moustache had +turned to so fine a silver. Tall and clean-limbed, with a +good figure and a bad carriage, he looked capable but indolent, +and was exposed to imputations of credit and renown, those +attaching to John Gilpin, of which he was far from being either +conscious or desirous. His eye was at once keen and quiet, +his smile dim and dilatory, but perfectly sincere. His +principal occupation to-day was doing nothing, and he did it with +a beautiful consistency. This exercise excited real envy on +the part of Rupert Waterville, who was ten years younger and who +had too many ambitions and anxieties—none of them very +important, but making collectively a considerable +incubus—to be able to wait for inspiration. He +thought of it as the last social grace, he hoped some day to +arrive at it; it made a man so independent—he had his +resources within his own breast. Littlemore could sit for a +whole evening without utterance or movement, smoking cigars and +looking absently at his finger-nails. As every one knew him +for a good fellow who had made his fortune this free and even +surface offered by him to contact couldn’t be attributed to +stupidity or moroseness. It seemed to imply a fund of +reminiscence, an experience of life that had left him hundreds of +things to think about. Waterville felt that if he himself +could make a good use of these present years and keep a sharp +lookout for experience he too at forty-four might have time to +look at his finger-nails. He cultivated the conceit that +such contemplations—not of course in their literal but in +their symbolic intensity—were a sign of a man of the +world. Waterville, reckoning possibly without an ungrateful +Department of State, also nursed the fond fancy that he had +embraced the diplomatic career. He was the junior of the +two secretaries who render the <i>personnel</i> <a +name="page147"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 147</span>of the +United States Legation in London exceptionally numerous, and was +at present enjoying his annual leave of absence. It became +a diplomatist to be inscrutable, and though he had by no means, +as a whole, taken Littlemore for his model—there were much +better ones in the diplomatic body accredited to the Court of +Saint James’s—he thought the right effect of fine +ease suggested when of an evening, in Paris, after one had been +asked what one would like to do, one replied that one would like +to do nothing, and simply sat for an interminable time in front +of the Grand Café on the Boulevard de la Madeleine (one +was very fond of cafés) ordering a succession of +<i>demi-tasses</i>. It was seldom Littlemore cared even to +go to the theatre, and the visit to the Comédie +Française, which we have described, had been undertaken at +Waterville’s instance. He had seen <i>Le +Demi-Monde</i> a few nights before and had been told that +<i>L’Aventurière</i> would show him a particular +treatment of the same subject—the justice to be meted out +to compromised women who attempt to thrust themselves into +honourable families. It seemed to him that in both of these +cases the ladies had deserved their fate, but he wished it might +have been brought about by a little less lying on the part of the +representatives of honour. Littlemore and he, without being +intimate, were very good friends and spent much of their time +together. As it turned out Littlemore was grateful for the +chance that had led him to a view of this new incarnation of +Nancy Beck.</p> +<h3><a name="page148"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +148</span>II</h3> +<p>His delay in going to see her was nevertheless calculated; +there were more reasons for it than we need at once go +into. When he did go, however, Mrs. Headway was at home and +he was scarce surprised to find Sir Arthur Demesne in her +sitting-room. There was something in the air that spoke of +the already ample stretch of this gentleman’s visit. +Littlemore thought probable that, given the circumstances, he +would now bring it to a close; he must have learned from their +hostess that this welcomed compatriot was an old and familiar +friend. He might of course have definite rights—he +had every appearance of it, but the more they were rooted the +more gracefully he could afford to waive them. Littlemore +made these reflexions while the friend in possession faced him +without sign of departure. Mrs. Headway was very +gracious—she had ever the manner of having known you a +hundred years; she scolded Littlemore extravagantly for not +having been to see her sooner, but this was only a form of the +gracious. By daylight she looked a little faded, but there +was a spirit in her that rivalled the day. She had the best +rooms in the hotel and an air of extreme opulence and prosperity; +her courier sat outside, in the antechamber, and she evidently +knew how to live. She attempted to include Sir Arthur in +the conversation, but though the young man remained in his place +he failed to <a name="page149"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +149</span>grasp the offered perch. He followed but as from +the steep bank of the stream, where yet he was evidently not at +his ease. The conversation therefore remained +superficial—a quality that of old had by no means belonged +to Mrs. Headway’s interviews with her friends. The +Englishman hovered with a distant air which Littlemore at first, +with a good deal of private amusement, simply attributed to +jealousy.</p> +<p>But after a time Mrs. Headway spoke to the point. +“My dear Sir Arthur, I wish very much you’d +go.”</p> +<p>The member of Parliament got up and took his hat. +“I thought I should oblige you by staying.”</p> +<p>“To defend me against Mr. Littlemore? I’ve +known him since I was a baby—I know the worst he can +do.” She fixed her charming smile on her retreating +visitor and added with much unexpectedness: “I want to talk +to him about my past!”</p> +<p>“That’s just what I want to hear,” said Sir +Arthur, with his hand on the door.</p> +<p>“We’re going to talk American; you wouldn’t +understand us! He speaks in the English style,” she +explained in her little sufficient way as the Baronet, who +announced that at all events he would come back in the evening, +let himself out.</p> +<p>“He doesn’t know about your past?” +Littlemore inquired, trying not to make the question sound +impertinent.</p> +<p>“Oh yes; I’ve told him everything; but he +doesn’t understand. One has to hold an Englishman by +the head, you know, and kind of force it down. He has never +heard of a woman being—” But here Mrs. Headway +checked herself, while Littlemore filled out the blank. +“What are you laughing at? It doesn’t +matter,” she went on; “there are more things in the +world than those people have heard of. However, I like them +very much; at least I like <i>him</i>. He’s such a +regular gentleman; do you know what I <a name="page150"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 150</span>mean? Only, as he stays too +long and he ain’t amusing, I’m very glad to see you +for a change.”</p> +<p>“Do you mean I’m not a regular gentleman?” +Littlemore asked.</p> +<p>“No indeed; you used to be out there. I think you +were the only one—and I hope you are still. +That’s why I recognised you the other night—I might +have cut you, you know.”</p> +<p>“You can still, if you like. It’s not too +late.”</p> +<p>“Oh no, that’s not what I want. I want you +to help me.”</p> +<p>“To help you?”</p> +<p>Mrs. Headway fixed her eyes for a moment on the door. +“Do you suppose that man is there still?”</p> +<p>“The member of Parliament?”</p> +<p>“No, I mean Max. Max is my courier,” said +Mrs. Headway with some impressiveness.</p> +<p>“I haven’t the least idea. I’ll see if +you like.”</p> +<p>“No—in that case I should have to give him an +order, and I don’t know what in the world to ask him to +do. He sits there for hours; with my simple habits I afford +him no employment. I’m afraid I’ve no grand +imagination.”</p> +<p>“The burden of grandeur!” said Littlemore.</p> +<p>“Oh yes, I’m very grand for clothes and +things. But on the whole I like it. I’m only +afraid he’ll hear. I talk so very loud. +That’s another thing I’m trying to get +over.”</p> +<p>“Why do you want to be different?”</p> +<p>“Well, because everything else is so,” Mrs. +Headway bravely pleaded. “Did you hear that I had +lost my husband?” she went on abruptly.</p> +<p>“Do you mean—a—Mr.—?” and +Littlemore paused with an effect that didn’t seem to come +home to her.</p> +<p>“I mean Mr. Headway,” she said with dignity. +<a name="page151"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +151</span>“I’ve been through a good deal since you +saw me last: marriage and death and trouble and all sorts of +things.”</p> +<p>“You had been through a good deal of marriage before +that,” her old friend ventured to observe.</p> +<p>She rested her eyes on him with extravagant intensity and +without a change of colour. “Not so much, not so +much!—”</p> +<p>“Not so much as might have been thought?”</p> +<p>“Not so much as was reported. I forget whether I +was married when I saw you last.”</p> +<p>“It was one of the reports,” said +Littlemore. “But I never saw Mr. Beck.”</p> +<p>“You didn’t lose much; he was too mean to +live. I’ve done certain things in my life that +I’ve never understood; no wonder others can’t do much +with them. But that’s all over! Are you sure +Max doesn’t hear?” she asked quickly.</p> +<p>“Not at all sure. But if you suspect him of +listening at the keyhole I’d send him away.”</p> +<p>“I don’t think he does that. I’m +always rushing to the door.”</p> +<p>“Then he doesn’t hear. I had no idea you had +so many secrets. When I parted with you Mr. Headway was in +the future.”</p> +<p>“Well, now he’s in the past. He was a +pleasant man—I can understand my doing that. But he +only lived a year. He had neuralgia of the heart; he left +me very well off.” She mentioned these various facts +as if they were quite of the same order.</p> +<p>“I’m glad to hear <i>that</i>. You used to +have expensive tastes.”</p> +<p>“I’ve plenty of money,” said Mrs. +Headway. “Mr. Headway had property at Denver, which +has increased immensely in value. After his death I tried +New York. But I don’t take much stock in New +York.” Littlemore’s hostess spoke these last +words in a tone that reeked of some strong experience. +“I <a name="page152"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +152</span>mean to live in Europe. I guess I can do with +Europe,” she stated; and the manner of it had the touch of +prophecy, as the other proposition had had the echo of +history.</p> +<p>Littlemore was much struck with all this; he was greatly +enlivened by Mrs. Headway. “Then you’re +travelling with that young man?” he pursued, with the +coolness of a person who wishes to make his entertainment go as +far as possible.</p> +<p>She folded her arms as she leaned back in her chair. +“Look here, Mr. Littlemore; I’m about as +sweet-tempered as I used to be in America, but I know a great +deal more. Of course I ain’t travelling with that +young man. He’s only a good friend.”</p> +<p>“He isn’t a good lover?” Littlemore +ventured.</p> +<p>“Do people travel—publicly—with their +lovers? I don’t want you to laugh at me—I want +you to help me.” Her appeal might, in its almost +childish frankness, have penetrated; she recognised his +wisdom. “As I tell you, I’ve taken a great +fancy to this grand old Europe; I feel as if I should never go +back. But I want to see something of the life. I +think it would suit me—if I could get started a +little. George Littlemore,” she added in a +moment—“I may as well be <i>real</i>, for I +ain’t at all ashamed. I want to get into +society. That’s what I’m after!”</p> +<p>He settled himself in his chair with the feeling of a man who, +knowing that he will have to pull, seeks to obtain a certain +leverage. It was in a tone of light jocosity, almost of +encouragement, however, that he repeated: “Into +society? It seems to me you’re in it already, with +the big people over here for your adorers.”</p> +<p>“That’s just what I want to know—if they +<i>are</i> big,” she promptly said. “Is a +Baronet much?”</p> +<p>“So they’re apt to think. But I know very +little about it.”</p> +<p><a name="page153"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +153</span>“Ain’t you in society yourself?”</p> +<p>“I? Never in the world! Where did you get +that idea? I care no more about society than about +Max’s buttons.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Headway’s countenance assumed for a moment a look +of extreme disappointment, and Littlemore could see that, having +heard of his silver-mine and his cattle-ranch, and knowing that +he was living in Europe, she had hoped to find him eminent in the +world of fashion. But she speedily took heart. +“I don’t believe a word of it. You know +you’re a real gentleman—you can’t help +yourself.”</p> +<p>“I may be a gentleman, but I’ve none of the habits +of one.” Littlemore had a pause and then added: +“I guess I’ve sat too much on back +piazzas.”</p> +<p>She flushed quickly; she instantly understood—understood +even more than he had meant to say. But she wished to make +use of him, and it was of more importance that she should appear +forgiving—especially as she had the happy consciousness of +being so—than that she should punish a cruel speech. +She would be wise, however, to recognise everything. +“That makes no difference—a gentleman’s always +a gentleman.”</p> +<p>“Ah, not the way a lady’s always a lady!” he +laughed.</p> +<p>“Well, talking of ladies, it’s unnatural that, +through your sister, you shouldn’t know something about +European society,” said Mrs. Headway.</p> +<p>At the mention of his sister, made with a studied lightness of +reference which he caught as it passed, Littlemore was unable to +repress a start. “What in the world have you to do +with my sister?” he would have liked to say. The +introduction of this relative was disagreeable to him; she +belonged quite to another order of ideas, and it was out of the +question Mrs. Headway should ever make her <a +name="page154"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +154</span>acquaintance—if this was what, as the latter +would have said, she was “after.” But he took +advantage of a side issue. “What do you mean by +European society? One can’t talk about that. +It’s an empty phrase.”</p> +<p>“Well, I mean English society; I mean the society your +sister lives in; that’s what I mean,” said his +hostess, who was quite prepared to be definite. “I +mean the people I saw in London last May—the people I saw +at the opera and in the park, the people who go to the +Queen’s drawing-rooms. When I was in London I stayed +at that hotel on the corner of Piccadilly—the one looking +straight down Saint James’s Street—and I spent hours +together at the window there looking at the people in the +carriages. I had a carriage of my own, and when I +wasn’t at my window I was riding all around. I was +all alone; I saw every one, but I knew no one—I had no one +to tell me. I didn’t know Sir Arthur then—I +only met him a month ago at Homburg. He followed me to +Paris—that’s how he came to be my guest.” +Serenely, prosaically, without a breath of the inflation of +vanity, she made this last assertion: it was as if she were used +to being followed or as if a gentleman one met at Homburg would +inevitably follow. In the same tone she went on: “I +attracted a good deal of attention in London—I could easily +see that.”</p> +<p>“You’ll do that wherever you go,” Littlemore +said—insufficiently enough, as he felt.</p> +<p>“I don’t want to attract so much; I think +it’s vulgar.” She spoke as if she liked to use +the word. She was evidently open to new sources of +pleasure.</p> +<p>“Every one was looking at you the other night at the +theatre,” Littlemore continued. “How can you +hope to escape notice?”</p> +<p>“I don’t want to escape notice. People have +always looked at me and I guess they always will. But there +are different ways of being looked at, and I <a +name="page155"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 155</span>know the +way I want. I mean to have it too!” Mrs. Headway +prettily shrilled. Yes, she was full of purpose.</p> +<p>He sat there face to face with her and for some time said +nothing. He had a mixture of feelings, and the memory of +other places, other hours, was stealing over him. There had +been of old a very considerable absence of interposing surfaces +between these two—he had known her as one knew people only +amid the civilisation of big tornadoes and back piazzas. He +had liked her extremely in a place where it would have been +ridiculous to be difficult to please. But his sense of this +fact was somehow connected with other and such now alien facts; +his liking for Nancy Beck was an emotion of which the sole +setting was a back piazza. She presented herself here on a +new basis—she appeared to want to be classified +afresh. Littlemore said to himself that this was too much +trouble; he had taken her at the great time in that way—he +couldn’t begin at this late hour to take her in another +way. He asked himself if she were going to be a real +bore. It wasn’t easy to suppose her bent on ravage, +but she might become tiresome if she were too disposed to be +different. It made him rather afraid when she began to talk +about European society, about his sister, to pronounce things +vulgar. Littlemore was naturally merciful and decently +just; but there was in his composition an element of the +indolent, the sceptical, perhaps even the brutal, which made him +decidedly prefer the simplicity of their former terms of +intercourse. He had no particular need to see a woman rise +again, as the mystic process was called; he didn’t believe +in women’s rising again. He believed in their not +going down, thought it perfectly possible and eminently +desirable; but held it was much better for society that the +divisions, the categories, the differing <a +name="page156"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 156</span>values, +should be kept clear. He didn’t believe in bridging +the chasms, in muddling the kinds. In general he +didn’t pretend to say what was good for +society—society seemed to him rather in a bad way; but he +had a conviction on this particular point. Nancy Beck going +in for the great prizes, that spectacle might be entertaining for +a simple spectator; but it would be a nuisance, an embarrassment, +from the moment anything more than detached “fun” +should represent his share. He had no wish to be +“mean,” but it might be well to show her he +wasn’t to be humbugged.</p> +<p>“Oh if there’s anything you want you’ll have +it,” he said in answer to her last remark. +“You’ve always had what you want.”</p> +<p>“Well, I want something new this time. Does your +sister reside in London?”</p> +<p>“My dear lady, what do you know about my sister?” +Littlemore asked. “She’s not a woman +you’d care in the least for.”</p> +<p>His old friend had a marked pause. “You +don’t really respect me!” she then abruptly and +rather gaily cried. It had one of her “Texan” +effects of drollery; so that, yes, evidently, if he wished to +preserve the simplicity of their former intercourse she was +willing to humour him.</p> +<p>“Ah, my dear Mrs. Beck—!” he vaguely +protested, using her former name quite by accident. At San +Pablo he—and apparently she—had never thought whether +he respected her or not. That never came up.</p> +<p>“That’s a proof of it—calling me by that +hateful name! Don’t you believe I’m +married? I haven’t been fortunate in my names,” +she pensively added.</p> +<p>“You make it very awkward when you say such mad +things. My sister lives most of the year in the country; +she’s very simple, rather dull, perhaps <a +name="page157"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 157</span>a trifle +narrow-minded. You’re very clever, very lively, and +as large and loose and free as all creation. That’s +why I think you wouldn’t like her.”</p> +<p>“You ought to be ashamed to run down your sister!” +Mrs. Headway made prompt answer. “You told me +once—at San Pablo—that she was the nicest woman you +knew. I made a note of that, you see. And you told me +she was just my age. So that makes it rather inglorious for +you if you won’t introduce me!” With which she +gave a laugh that perhaps a little heralded danger. +“I’m not in the least afraid of her being dull. +It’s all right, it’s just refined and nice, to be +dull. I’m ever so much too exciting.”</p> +<p>“You are indeed, ever so much! But nothing is more +easy than to know my sister,” said Littlemore, who knew +perfectly that what he said was untrue. And then as a +diversion from this delicate topic he brought out: “Are you +going to marry Sir Arthur?”</p> +<p>“Don’t you think I’ve been married about +enough?”</p> +<p>“Possibly; but this is a new line, it would be +different. An Englishman—that’s a new +sensation.”</p> +<p>“If I <i>should</i> marry it would be a European,” +she said judiciously.</p> +<p>“Your chance is very good—they’re all +marrying Americans.”</p> +<p>“He would have to be some one fine, the man I should +marry now. I have a good deal to make up, you know. +That’s what I want to learn about Sir Arthur. All +this time you haven’t told me.”</p> +<p>“I’ve nothing in the world to +tell—I’ve never heard of him. Hasn’t he +told you himself?”</p> +<p>“Nothing at all; he’s very modest. He +doesn’t brag nor ‘blow’ nor make himself out +anything great. That’s what I like him for: I think +it’s in such good taste. I do love good taste!” +said Mrs. <a name="page158"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +158</span>Headway. “But all this time,” she +added, “you haven’t told me you’d help +me.”</p> +<p>“How can I help you? I’m no one here, you +know—I’ve no power.”</p> +<p>“You can help me by not preventing me. I want you +to promise not to prevent me.” She continued to give +him her charming conscious eyes, which seemed to look far into +his own.</p> +<p>“Good Lord, how could I prevent you?”</p> +<p>“Well, I’m not quite sure of how. But you +might try.”</p> +<p>“Oh I’m too lazy and too stupid,” Littlemore +said.</p> +<p>“Yes,” she replied, musing as she still looked at +him. “I think you’re too stupid. But I +think you’re also too kind,” she added more +graciously. She was almost irresistible when she said such +a thing as that.</p> +<p>They talked for a quarter of an hour longer, and at +last—as if she had had scruples—she spoke to him of +his own marriage, of the death of his wife, matters to which she +alluded more felicitously (as he thought) than to some other +points. “If you’ve a little girl you ought to +be very happy; that’s what I should like to have. +Lord, I should make her a nice woman! Not like me—in +another style!” When he rose to leave her she made a +great point of his coming again—she was to be some weeks +longer in Paris. And he must bring Mr. Waterville.</p> +<p>“Your English friend won’t like that—our +coming very often,” Littlemore reminded her as he stood +with his hand on the door.</p> +<p>But she met this without difficulty. “I +don’t know what he has to do with it.”</p> +<p>“Neither do I. Only he must be in love with +you.”</p> +<p>“That doesn’t give him any right. Mercy, if +I had <a name="page159"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +159</span>had to put myself out for all the men that have been in +love with me!”</p> +<p>“Of course you’d have had a terrible life. +Even doing as you please you’ve had rather an agitated +one,” Littlemore pursued. “But your young +Englishman’s sentiments appear to give him the right to sit +there, after one comes in, looking blighted and bored. That +might become very tiresome.”</p> +<p>“The moment he becomes tiresome I send him away. +You can trust me for that.”</p> +<p>“Oh it doesn’t matter after all.” Our +friend was perfectly conscious that nothing would suit him less +than to have undisturbed possession of Mrs. Headway.</p> +<p>She came out with him into the antechamber. Mr. Max, the +courier, was fortunately not there. She lingered a little; +she appeared to have more to say. “On the contrary he +likes you to come,” she then continued; “he wants to +study my friends.”</p> +<p>“To study them?”</p> +<p>“He wants to find out about me, and he thinks they may +tell him something. Some day he’ll ask you right out +‘What sort of a woman is she anyway?’”</p> +<p>“Hasn’t he found out yet?”</p> +<p>“He doesn’t understand me,” said Mrs. +Headway, surveying the front of her dress. “He has +never seen any one like me.”</p> +<p>“I should imagine not!”</p> +<p>“So he’ll just try to find out from +you.”</p> +<p>“Well then he <i>shall</i> find out,” Littlemore +returned. “I’ll just tell him you’re the +most charming woman in Europe.”</p> +<p>“That ain’t a description! Besides, he knows +it. He wants to know if I’m respectable.”</p> +<p>“Why should he fuss about it?” Littlemore +asked—not at once.</p> +<p><a name="page160"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 160</span>She +grew a little pale; she seemed to be watching his lips. +“Well, mind you tell him all right,” she went on, +with her wonderful gay glare, the strain of which yet brought +none of her colour back.</p> +<p>“Respectable? I’ll tell him you’re +adorable!”</p> +<p>She stood a moment longer. “Ah, you’re no +use!” she rather harshly wailed. And she suddenly +turned away and passed back into her sitting-room, with the heavy +rustle of her far-trailing skirts.</p> +<h3><a name="page161"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +161</span>III</h3> +<p>“Elle ne doute de rien!” Littlemore said to +himself as he walked away from the hotel; and he repeated the +phrase in talking about her to Waterville. “She wants +to be right,” he added; “but she’ll never +really succeed. She has begun too late, she’ll never +get on the true middle of the note. However, she +won’t know when she’s wrong, so it doesn’t +signify!” And he more or less explained what he meant +by this discrimination. She’d remain in certain +essentials incurable. She had no delicacy; no discretion; +no shading; she was a woman who suddenly said to you, “You +don’t really respect me!” As if that were a +thing for a woman to say!</p> +<p>“It depends upon what she meant by it.” +Waterville could always imagine alternatives.</p> +<p>“The more she meant by it the less she ought to say +it!” Littlemore declared.</p> +<p>But he returned to the Hôtel Meurice and on the next +occasion took this companion with him. The secretary of +legation, who had not often been in close quarters with pretty +women whose respectability, or whose lack of it, was so frankly +discussable, was prepared to find the well-known Texan belle a +portentous type. He was afraid there might be danger in +her, but on the whole he felt armed. The object of his +devotion at present was his country, or at least the Department +of State; he had no intention of <a name="page162"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 162</span>being diverted from that +allegiance. Besides, he had his ideal of the attractive +woman—a person pitched in a very much lower key than this +shining, smiling, rustling, chattering daughter of the +Territories. The woman he should care for would have +repose, a sense of the private in life, and the implied, even the +withheld, in talk; would sometimes let one alone. Mrs. +Headway was personal, familiar, intimate, perpetually appealing +or accusing, demanding explanations and pledges, saying things +one had to answer. All this was accompanied with a hundred +smiles and radiations and other natural graces, but the general +effect was distinctly fatiguing. She had certainly a great +deal of charm, an immense desire to please, and a wonderful +collection of dresses and trinkets; but she was eager and +clamorous, and it was hard for other people to be put to serve +her appetite. If she wanted to get into society there was +no reason why those of her visitors who had the luck to be +themselves independent, to be themselves placed, and to be +themselves by the same token critical, should wish to see her +there; for it was this absence of common social encumbrances made +her drawing-room attractive. There was no doubt whatever +that she was several women in one, and she ought to content +herself with that sort of numerical triumph. Littlemore +said to Waterville that it was stupid of her to wish to scale the +heights; she ought to know how much more she was in her element +scouring the plain. She appeared vaguely to irritate him; +even her fluttering attempts at self-culture—she had become +a great judge of books and pictures and plays, and pronounced +off-hand—constituted a vague invocation, an appeal for +sympathy onerous to a man who disliked the trouble of revising +old decisions consecrated by a certain amount of reminiscence +that might be called tender. She exerted, however, +effectively enough one of the <a name="page163"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 163</span>arts of solicitation—she often +startled and surprised. Even Waterville felt a touch of the +unexpected, though not indeed an excess of it, to belong to his +conception of the woman who should have an ideal repose. Of +course there were two kinds of surprises, and only one of them +thoroughly pleasant, though Mrs. Headway dealt impartially in +both. She had the sudden delights, the odd exclamations, +the queer curiosities of a person who has grown up in a country +where everything is new and many things ugly, and who, with a +natural turn for the arts and amenities of life, makes a tardy +acquaintance with some of the finer usages, the higher +pleasures. She was provincial; it was easy to see how she +embodied that term; it took no great cleverness. But what +was Parisian enough—if to be Parisian was the measure of +success—was the way she picked up ideas and took a hint +from every circumstance. “Only give me time and I +guess I’ll come out all right,” she said to +Littlemore, who watched her progress with a mixture of admiration +and regret. She delighted to speak of herself as a poor +little barbarian grubbing up crumbs of knowledge, and this habit +borrowed beautiful relief from her delicate face, her so highly +developed dress and the free felicity of her manners.</p> +<p>One of her surprises was, that after that first visit she said +no more to Littlemore about Mrs. Dolphin. He did her +perhaps the grossest injustice, but he had quite expected her to +bring up this lady whenever they met. “If +she’ll only leave Agnes alone she may do what she +will,” he said to Waterville, expressing his +satisfaction. “My sister would never look at her, and +it would be very awkward to have to tell her so.” She +counted on aid; she made him feel this simply by the way she +looked at him; but for the moment she demanded no definite +service. She held her tongue but waited, and her patience +itself was a deeper <a name="page164"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 164</span>admonition. In the way of +society, it had to be noted, her privileges were meagre, Sir +Arthur Demesne and her two compatriots being, so far as the +latter could discover, her only visitors. She might have +had other friends, but she held her head very high and liked +better to see no one than not to see the best company. She +went in, clearly, for producing the effect of being by no means +so neglected as fastidious. There were plenty of Americans +in Paris, but in this direction she failed to extend her +acquaintance; the nice people wouldn’t come to her, and +nothing would have induced her to receive the others. She +had a perfect and inexorable view of those she wished to +avoid. Littlemore expected her every day to ask why he +didn’t bring some of his friends—as to which he had +his answer ready. It was rather a poor one, for it +consisted but of the “academic” assurance that he +wished to keep her for himself. She would be sure to retort +that this was “too thin,” as indeed it was; yet the +days went by without her calling him to account. The little +American colony in Paris abounded in amiable women, but there +were none to whom Littlemore could make up his mind to say that +it would be a favour to him they should call on Mrs. +Headway. He shouldn’t like them the better for doing +so, and he wished to like those of whom he might ask a +favour. Except, therefore, that he occasionally spoke of +her as a full-blown flower of the West, still very pretty, but of +not at all orthodox salon scent, who had formerly been a great +chum of his, she remained unknown in the circles of the Avenue +Gabriel and the streets that encircle the Arch of Triumph. +To ask the men to go see her without asking the ladies would only +accentuate the fact that he didn’t ask the ladies; so he +asked no one at all. Besides, it was true—just a +little—that he wished to keep her to himself, and he was +fatuous enough <a name="page165"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +165</span>to believe she really cared more for him than for any +outsider. Of course, however, he would never dream of +marrying her, whereas her Englishman apparently was capable of +that quaintness. She hated her old past; she often made +that point, talking of this “dark backward” as if it +were an appendage of the same order as a thieving cook or a noisy +bedroom or even an inconvenient protrusion of drapery. +Therefore, as Littlemore was part of the very air of the previous +it might have been supposed she would hate him too and wish to +banish him, with all the images he recalled, from her +sight. But she made an exception in his favour, and if she +disliked their early relations as a chapter of her own history +she seemed still to like them as a chapter of his. He felt +how she clung to him, how she believed he could make a great and +blest difference for her and in the long run would. It was +to the long run that she appeared little by little to have +attuned herself.</p> +<p>She succeeded perfectly in maintaining harmony between Sir +Arthur Demesne and her American visitors, who spent much less +time in her drawing-room. She had easily persuaded him that +there were no grounds for jealousy and that they had no wish, as +she said, to crowd him out; for it was ridiculous to be jealous +of two persons at once, and Rupert Waterville, after he had +learned the way to her favour and her fireside, presented himself +as often as his original introducer. The two indeed usually +came together and they ended by relieving their competitor of a +part of the weight of his problem. This amiable and earnest +but slightly fatuous young man, who had not yet made up his mind, +was sometimes rather oppressed with the magnitude of the +undertaking, and when alone with Mrs. Headway occasionally found +the tension of his thoughts quite painful. He was very slim +and straight and looked taller than his height; <a +name="page166"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 166</span>he had the +prettiest silkiest hair, which waved away from a large white +forehead, and he was endowed with a nose of the so-called Roman +model. He looked, in spite of these attributes, younger +than his years, partly on account of the delicacy of his +complexion and the almost child-like candour of his round blue +eyes. He was diffident and self-conscious; there were +certain letters he couldn’t pronounce. At the same +time he carried himself as one brought up to fill a considerable +place in the world, with whom confidence had become a duty and +correctness a habit, and who, though he might occasionally be a +little awkward about small things, would be sure to acquit +himself honourably in great ones. He was very simple and +believed himself very serious; he had the blood of a score of +Warwickshire squires in his veins, mingled in the last instance +with the somewhat paler fluid still animating the long-necked +daughter of a banker who, after promising himself high glories as +a father-in-law, had by the turn of events been reduced to +looking for them in Sir Baldwin Demesne. The boy who was +the only fruit of that gentleman’s marriage had come into +his title at five years of age; his mother, who was somehow +parentally felt to have a second time broken faith with +expectation by not having better guarded the neck of her husband, +broken in the hunting-field, watched over him with a tenderness +that burned as steadily as a candle shaded by a transparent +hand. She never admitted even to herself that he was not +the cleverest of men; but it took all her own cleverness, which +was much greater, to maintain this appearance. Fortunately +he wasn’t wild, so that he would never marry an actress or +a governess, like two or three of the young men who had been at +Eton with him. With this ground of nervousness the less +Lady Demesne awaited with a proud patience his appointment to +some high office. <a name="page167"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 167</span>He represented in Parliament the +Conservative instincts and vote of a red-roofed market town, and, +sending regularly to his bookseller for the new publications on +economical subjects, was determined his political development +should have a massive statistical basis. He was not +conceited; he was only misinformed—misinformed, I mean, +about himself. He thought himself essential to the +propriety of things—not as an individual, but as an +institution. This conviction indeed was too sacred to +betray itself by vulgar assumptions. If he was a little man +in a big place he never strutted nor talked loud; he merely felt +it as a luxury that he had a large social circumference. It +was like sleeping in a big bed; practically one didn’t toss +about the more, but one felt a greater freshness.</p> +<p>He had never seen anything like Mrs. Headway; he hardly knew +by what standard to measure her. She was not at all the +English lady—not one of those with whom he had been +accustomed to converse; yet it was impossible not to make out in +her a temper and a tone. He might have been sure she was +provincial, but as he was much under her charm he compromised by +pronouncing her only foreign. It was of course provincial +to be foreign; but this was after all a peculiarity which she +shared with a great many nice people. He wasn’t wild, +and his mother had flattered herself that in this all-important +matter he wouldn’t be perverse; yet it was far from regular +that he should have taken a fancy to an American widow, five +years older than himself, who knew no one and who sometimes +didn’t appear to understand exactly who he was. +Though he believed in no alternative to the dignity of the +British consciousness, it was precisely her foreignness that +pleased him; she seemed as little as possible of his own race and +creed; there wasn’t a touch of Warwickshire in her +composition. She was <a name="page168"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 168</span>like an Hungarian or a Pole, with +the difference that he could almost make out her speech. +The unfortunate young man was engulfed even while not admitting +that he had done more than estimate his distance to the +brink. He would love wisely—one might even so love +agreeably. He had intelligently arranged his life; he had +determined to marry at thirty-two. A long line of ancestors +was watching him; he hardly knew what they would think of Mrs. +Headway. He hardly knew what he thought himself; the only +thing he was absolutely sure of was that she made the time pass +as it passed in no other pursuit. That, indeed, rather +worried him; he was by no means sure anything so precious should +be so little accounted for. There was nothing so to account +but the fragments of Mrs. Headway’s conversation, the +peculiarities of her accent, the sallies of her wit, the +audacities of her fancy, the odd echoes of her past. Of +course he knew she had had a past; she wasn’t a young girl, +she was a widow—and widows were essentially the expression +of an accomplished fact. He was not jealous of her +antecedents, but he would have liked a little to piece them +together, and it was here the difficulty occurred. The +subject was illumined with fitful flashes, but never placed +itself before him as a general picture. He asked her +various questions, but her answers were so startling that, like +sudden luminous points, they seemed to intensify the darkness +round their edges. She had apparently spent her life in a +remote province of a barbarous country, but it didn’t +follow from this that she herself had been low. She had +been a lily among thistles, and there was something romantic +possibly in the interest taken by a man of his position in a +woman of hers. It pleased Sir Arthur to believe he was +romantic; that had been the case with several of his ancestors, +who supplied a precedent without which <a +name="page169"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 169</span>he would +scarce perhaps have ventured to trust himself. He was the +victim of perplexities from which a single spark of direct +perception would have saved him. He took everything in the +literal sense; a grain of humour or of imagination would have +saved him, but such things were never so far from him as when he +had begun to stray helplessly in the realm of wonder. He +sat there vaguely waiting for something to happen and not +committing himself by rash declarations. If he was in love +it was in his own way, reflectively, inexpressibly, +obstinately. He was waiting for the formula which would +justify his conduct and Mrs. Headway’s peculiarities. +He hardly knew where it would come from; you might have thought +from his manner that he would discover it in one of the elaborate +<i>entreés</i> that were served to the pair when she +consented to dine with him at Bignon’s or the Café +Anglais; or in one of the luxurious band-boxes that arrived from +the Rue de la Paix and from which she often lifted the lid in the +presence of her admirer. There were moments when he got +weary of waiting in vain, and at these moments the arrival of her +American friends—he often asked himself why she had so +few—seemed to lift the mystery from his shoulders and give +him a chance to rest. This apology for a plan she herself +might yet scarce contribute to, since she couldn’t know how +much ground it was expected to cover. She talked about her +past because she thought it the best thing to do; she had a +shrewd conviction that it was somehow better made use of and +confessed to, even in a manner presented or paraded, than caused +to stretch behind her as a mere nameless desert. She could +at least a little irrigate and plant the waste. She had to +have some geography, though the beautiful blank rose-coloured +map-spaces of unexplored countries were what she would have +preferred. She had no <a name="page170"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 170</span>objection to telling fibs, but now +that she was taking a new departure wished to indulge only in +such as were imperative. She would have been delighted +might she have squeezed through with none at all. A few, +verily, were indispensable, and we needn’t attempt to scan +too critically the more or less adventurous excursions into +poetry and fable with which she entertained and mystified Sir +Arthur. She knew of course that as a product of fashionable +circles she was nowhere, but she might have great success as a +child of nature.</p> +<h3><a name="page171"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +171</span>IV</h3> +<p>Rupert Waterville, in the midst of intercourse in which every +one perhaps had a good many mental reserves, never forgot that he +was in a representative position, that he was official and +responsible; and he asked himself more than once how far he was +sure it was right, as they said in Boston, to countenance Mrs. +Headway’s claim to the character even of the American lady +thrown to the surface by the late inordinate spread of +excavation. In his own way as puzzled as poor Sir Arthur, +he indeed flattered himself he was as particular as any +Englishman could be. Suppose that after all this free +association the well-known Texan belle should come over to London +and ask at the Legation to be presented to the Queen? It +would be so awkward to refuse her—of course they would have +to refuse her—that he was very careful to make no tacit +promises. She might construe anything as a tacit +promise—he knew how the smallest gestures of diplomatists +were studied and interpreted. It was his effort, therefore, +to be really diplomatic in his relations with this attractive but +dangerous woman. The party of four used often to dine +together—Sir Arthur pushed his confidence so far—and +on these occasions their fair friend, availing herself of one of +the privileges of a <i>femme du monde</i> even at the most +expensive restaurant, used to wipe her glasses with her +napkin. One evening when after polishing a <a +name="page172"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 172</span>goblet she +held it up to the light, giving it, with her head on one side, +the least glimmer of a wink, he noted as he watched her that she +looked like a highly modern bacchante. He observed at this +moment that the Baronet was gazing at her too, and wondered if +the same idea had come to him. He often wondered what the +Baronet thought; he had devoted first and last a good deal of +attention to the psychology of the English “great +land-owning” consciousness. Littlemore, alone, at +this moment, was characteristically detached; he never appeared +to watch Mrs. Headway, though she so often watched him. +Waterville asked himself among other things why Sir Arthur +hadn’t brought his own friends to see her, for Paris during +the several weeks that now elapsed abounded in English +visitors. He guessed at her having asked him and his having +refused; he would have liked particularly to know if she had +asked him. He explained his curiosity to Littlemore, who, +however, took very little interest in it. Littlemore +expressed nevertheless the conviction that she <i>would</i> have +asked him; she never would be deterred by false delicacy.</p> +<p>“She has been very delicate with <i>you</i>,” +Waterville returned to this. “She hasn’t been +at all pressing of late.”</p> +<p>“It’s only because she has given me up. She +thinks I’m a brute.”</p> +<p>“I wonder what she thinks of me,” Waterville +pensively said.</p> +<p>“Oh, she counts upon you to introduce her to the +American Minister at the Court of Saint James’s,” +Littlemore opined without mercy. “It’s lucky +for you our representative here’s absent.”</p> +<p>“Well, the Minister has settled two or three difficult +questions and I suppose can settle this one. I shall do +nothing but by the orders of my chief.” He was very +fond of alluding to his chief.</p> +<p><a name="page173"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +173</span>“She does me injustice,” Littlemore added +in a moment. “I’ve spoken to several people +about her.”</p> +<p>“Oh, but what have you told them?”</p> +<p>“That she lives at the Hôtel Meurice and wants to +know nice people.”</p> +<p>“They’re flattered, I suppose, at your thinking +them nice, but they don’t go,” said Waterville.</p> +<p>“I spoke of her to Mrs. Bagshaw, and Mrs. Bagshaw has +promised to go.”</p> +<p>“Ah,” Waterville murmured; “you don’t +call Mrs. Bagshaw nice! Mrs. Headway won’t take up +with Mrs. Bagshaw.”</p> +<p>“Well, then, that’s exactly what she +wants—to be able to cut some one!”</p> +<p>Waterville had a theory that Sir Arthur was keeping Mrs. +Headway as a surprise—he meant perhaps to produce her +during the next London season. He presently, however, +learned as much about the matter as he could have desired to +know. He had once offered to accompany his beautiful +compatriot to the Museum of the Luxembourg and tell her a little +about the modern French school. She had not examined this +collection, in spite of her resolve to see everything +remarkable—she carried her “Murray” in her lap +even when she went to see the great tailor in the Rue de la Paix, +to whom, as she said, she had given no end of points—for +she usually went to such places with Sir Arthur, who was +indifferent to the modern painters of France. “He +says there are much better men in England. I must wait for +the Royal Academy next year. He seems to think one can wait +for anything, but I’m not so good at waiting as he. I +can’t afford to wait—I’ve waited long +enough.” So much as this Mrs. Headway said on the +occasion of her arranging with Rupert Waterville that they should +some day visit the Luxembourg together. She <a +name="page174"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 174</span>alluded to +the Englishman as if he were her husband or her brother, her +natural protector and companion.</p> +<p>“I wonder if she knows how that sounds?” +Waterville again throbbingly brooded. “I don’t +believe she would do it if she knew how it sounds.” +And he also drew the moral that when one was a well-known Texan +belle there was no end to the things one had to learn: so marked +was the difference between being well-known and being +well-bred. Clever as she was, Mrs. Headway was right in +saying she couldn’t afford to wait. She must learn, +she must live quickly. She wrote to Waterville one day to +propose that they should go to the Museum on the morrow; Sir +Arthur’s mother was in Paris, on her way to Cannes, where +she was to spend the winter. She was only passing through, +but she would be there three days, and he would naturally give +himself up to her. She appeared to have the properest ideas +as to what a gentleman would propose to do for his mother. +She herself, therefore, should be free, and she named the hour at +which she should expect him to call for her. He was +punctual to the appointment, and they drove across the river in a +large high-hung barouche in which she constantly rolled about +Paris. With Mr. Max on the box—the courier sported +enormous whiskers—this vehicle had an appearance of great +respectability, though Sir Arthur assured her (what she repeated +to her other friends) that in London next year they would do the +thing much better for her. It struck her other friends, of +course, that this backer was prepared to go very far; which on +the whole was what Waterville would have expected of him. +Littlemore simply remarked that at San Pablo she drove herself +about in a ramshackle buggy with muddy wheels and a mule very +often in the shafts. Waterville throbbed afresh as he asked +himself if the mother of a Tory M.P. would really consent to know +her. She <a name="page175"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +175</span>must of course be aware that it was a woman who was +keeping her son in Paris at a season when English gentlemen were +most naturally employed in shooting partridges.</p> +<p>“She’s staying at the Hôtel du Rhin, and +I’ve made him feel that he mustn’t leave her while +she’s here,” Mrs. Headway said as they drove up the +narrow Rue de Seine. “Her name’s Lady Demesne, +but her full title’s the Honourable Lady Demesne, as +she’s a Baron’s daughter. Her father used to be +a banker, but he did something or other for the +Government—the Tories, you know they call them—and so +he was raised to the peerage. So you see one <i>can</i> be +raised! She has a lady with her as a +companion.” Waterville’s neighbour gave him +this information with a seriousness that made him smile; he tried +to measure the degree to which it wouldn’t have occurred to +her that he didn’t know how a Baron’s daughter was +addressed. In that she was truly provincial; she had a way +of exaggerating the value of her intellectual acquisitions and of +assuming that others had shared her darkness. He noted, +too, that she had ended by suppressing poor Sir Arthur’s +name altogether and designating him only by a sort of conjugal +pronoun. She had been so much and so easily married that +she was full of these misleading references to gentlemen.</p> +<h3><a name="page176"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +176</span>V</h3> +<p>They walked through the gallery of the Luxembourg, and, except +that Mrs. Headway directed her beautiful gold +<i>face-à-main</i> to everything at once and to nothing +long enough, talked, as usual, rather too loud and bestowed too +much attention on the bad copies and strange copyists that formed +a circle round several indifferent pictures, she was an agreeable +companion and a grateful recipient of “tips.” +She was quick to understand, and Waterville was sure that before +she left the gallery she had made herself mistress of a new +subject and was quite prepared to compare the French school +critically with the London exhibitions of the following +year. As he had remarked more than once with Littlemore, +she did alternate in the rummest stripes. Her conversation, +her personality, were full of little joints and seams, all of +them very visible, where the old and the new had been pieced and +white-threaded together. When they had passed through the +different rooms of the palace Mrs. Headway proposed that instead +of returning directly they should take a stroll in the adjoining +gardens, which she wished very much to see and was sure she +should like. She had quite seized the difference between +the old Paris and the new, and felt the force of the romantic +associations of the Latin quarter as perfectly as if she had +enjoyed all the benefits of modern culture. The autumn sun +was warm in the alleys and terraces <a name="page177"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 177</span>of the Luxembourg; the masses of +foliage above them, clipped and squared, rusty with ruddy +patches, shed a thick lacework over the white sky, which was +streaked with the palest blue. The beds of flowers near the +palace were of the vividest yellow and red, and the sunlight +rested on the smooth grey walls of those parts of its basement +that looked south; in front of which, on the long green benches, +a row of brown-cheeked nurses, in white caps and white aprons, +sat yielding sustenance to as many bundles of white +drapery. There were other white caps wandering in the broad +paths, attended by little brown French children; the small +straw-seated chairs were piled and stacked in some places and +disseminated in others. An old lady in black, with white +hair fastened over each of her temples by a large black comb, sat +on the edge of a stone bench (too high for her delicate length) +motionless, staring straight before her and holding a large +door-key; under a tree a priest was reading—you could see +his lips move at a distance; a young soldier, dwarfish and +red-legged, strolled past with his hands in his pockets, which +were very much distended. Waterville sat down with Mrs. +Headway on the straw-bottomed chairs and she presently said: +“I like this—it’s even better than the pictures +in the gallery. It’s more of a picture.”</p> +<p>“Everything in France is a picture—even things +that are ugly,” Waterville replied. “Everything +makes a subject.”</p> +<p>“Well, I like France!” she summed up with a small +incongruous sigh. Then suddenly, from an impulse more +conceivably allied to such a sound, she added: “He asked me +to go and see her, but I told him I wouldn’t. She may +come and see me if she likes.” This was so abrupt +that Waterville was slightly confounded; then he saw she had +returned by a short cut to Sir Arthur Demesne and his <a +name="page178"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 178</span>honourable +mother. Waterville liked to know about other people’s +affairs, yet didn’t like this taste to be imputed to him; +and therefore, though much desiring to see how the old lady, as +he called her, would treat his companion, he was rather +displeased with the latter for being so confidential. He +had never assumed he was so intimate with her as that. Mrs. +Headway, however, had a manner of taking intimacy for +granted—a manner Sir Arthur’s mother at least +wouldn’t be sure to like. He showed for a little no +certainty of what she was talking about, but she scarcely +explained. She only went on through untraceable +transitions. “The least she can do is to come. +I’ve been very kind to her son. That’s not a +reason for my going to her—it’s a reason for her +coming to me. Besides, if she doesn’t like what +I’ve done she can leave me alone. I want to get into +European society, but I want to do so in my own way. I +don’t want to run after people; I want them to run after +me. I guess they will, some day!” Waterville +listened to this with his eyes on the ground; he felt himself +turn very red. There was something in such crudities on the +part of the ostensibly refined that shocked and mortified him, +and Littlemore had been right in speaking of her lack of the +<i>nuance</i>. She was terribly distinct; her motives, her +impulses, her desires glared like the lighted signs of +cafés-concerts. She needed to keep on view, to hand +about, like a woman with things to sell on an hotel-terrace, her +precious intellectual wares. Vehement thought, with Mrs. +Headway, was inevitably speech, though speech was not always +thought, and now she had suddenly become vehement. +“If she does once come—then, ah then, I shall be too +perfect with her; I shan’t let her go! But she must +take the first step. I confess I hope she’ll be +nice.”</p> +<p>“Perhaps she won’t,” said Waterville +perversely.</p> +<p><a name="page179"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +179</span>“Well, I don’t care if she +ain’t. He has never told me anything about her; never +a word about any of his own belongings. If I wished I might +believe he’s ashamed of them.”</p> +<p>“I don’t think it’s that.”</p> +<p>“I know it ain’t. I know what it is. +It’s just regular European refinement. He +doesn’t want to show off; he’s too much of a +gentleman. He doesn’t want to dazzle me—he +wants me to like him for himself. Well, I do like +him,” she added in a moment. “But I shall like +him still better if he brings his mother. They shall know +that in America.”</p> +<p>“Do you think it will make an impression in +America?” Waterville amusedly asked.</p> +<p>“It will show I’m visited by the British +aristocracy. They won’t love that.”</p> +<p>“Surely they grudge you no innocent pleasure,” the +young man laughed.</p> +<p>“They grudged me common politeness—when I was in +New York! Did you ever hear how they treated me when I came +on from my own section?”</p> +<p>Waterville stared; this episode was quite new to him. +His companion had turned toward him; her pretty head was tossed +back like a flower in the wind; there was a flush in her cheek, a +more questionable charm in her eye. “Ah, my dear New +Yorkers, they’re incapable of rudeness!” he +cried.</p> +<p>“You’re one of them, I see. But I +don’t speak of the men. The men were well +enough—though they did allow it.”</p> +<p>“Allow what, Mrs. Headway?” He was quite +thrillingly in the dark.</p> +<p>She wouldn’t answer at once; her eyes, glittering a +little, were fixed on memories still too vivid. “What +did you hear about me over there? Don’t pretend you +heard nothing.”</p> +<p>He had heard nothing at all; there had not been a <a +name="page180"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 180</span>word about +Mrs. Headway in New York. He couldn’t pretend and he +was obliged to tell her this. “But I’ve been +away,” he added, “and in America I didn’t go +out. There’s nothing to go out for in New +York—only insipid boys and girls.”</p> +<p>“There are plenty of spicy old women, who settled I was +a bad bold thing. They found out I was in the +‘gay’ line. They discovered I was known to the +authorities. I <i>am</i> very well known all out +West—I’m known from Chicago to San Francisco; if not +personally, at least by reputation. I’m known to all +classes. People can tell you out there. In New York +they decided I wasn’t good enough. Not good enough +for New York! What do you say to that?”—it rang +out for derision. Whether she had struggled with her pride +before making her avowal her confidant of this occasion never +knew. The strange want of dignity, as he felt, in her +grievance seemed to indicate that she had no pride, and yet there +was a sore spot, really a deep wound, in her heart which, touched +again, renewed its ache. “I took a house for the +winter—one of the handsomest houses in the place—but +I sat there all alone. They thought me ‘gay,’ +<i>me</i> gay there on Fifty-Eighth Street without so much as a +cat!”</p> +<p>Waterville was embarrassed; diplomatist as he was he hardly +knew what line to take. He couldn’t see the need or +the propriety of her overflow; though the incident appeared to +have been most curious and he was glad to know the facts on the +best authority. It was the first he did know of this +remarkable woman’s having spent a winter in his native +city—which was virtually a proof of her having come and +gone in complete obscurity. It was vain for him to pretend +he had been a good deal away, for he had been appointed to his +post in London only six months before, and Mrs. Headway’s +social failure ante-dated <a name="page181"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 181</span>that event. In the midst of +these reflexions he had an inspiration. He attempted +neither to question, to explain nor to apologise; he ventured +simply to lay his hand for an instant on her own and to exclaim +as gallantly as possible: “I wish <i>I</i> had +known!”</p> +<p>“I had plenty of men—but men don’t +count. If they’re not a positive help they’re a +hindrance, so that the more you have the worse it looks. +The women simply turned their backs.”</p> +<p>“They were afraid of you—they were jealous,” +the young man produced.</p> +<p>“It’s very good of you to try and patch it up; all +I know is that not one of them crossed my threshold. No, +you needn’t try and tone it down; I know perfectly how the +case stands. In New York, if you please, I didn’t +go.”</p> +<p>“So much the worse for New York!” cried +Waterville, who, as he afterwards said to Littlemore, had got +quite worked up.</p> +<p>“And now you know why I want to get into society over +here?” She jumped up and stood before him; with a dry +hard smile she looked down at him. Her smile itself was an +answer to her question; it expressed a sharp vindictive +passion. There was an abruptness in her movements which +left her companion quite behind; but as he still sat there +returning her glance he felt he at last in the light of that +smile, the flash of that almost fierce demand, understood Mrs. +Headway.</p> +<p>She turned away to walk to the gate of the garden, and he went +with her, laughing vaguely and uneasily at her tragic tone. +Of course she expected him to serve, all obligingly, all +effectively, her rancour; but his female relations, his mother +and his sisters, his innumerable cousins, had been a party to the +slight she had suffered, and he reflected as he walked along that +after all they had been right. They had been <a +name="page182"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 182</span>right in +not going to see a woman who could chatter that way about her +social wrongs; whether she were respectable or not they had had +the true assurance she’d be vulgar. European society +might let her in, but European society had its limpness. +New York, Waterville said to himself with a glow of civic pride, +was quite capable of taking a higher stand in such a matter than +London. They went some distance without speaking; at last +he said, expressing honestly the thought at that moment uppermost +in his mind: “I hate that phrase, ‘getting into +society.’ I don’t think one ought to attribute +to one’s self that sort of ambition. One ought to +assume that one’s <i>in</i> the confounded thing—that +one <i>is</i> society—and to hold that if one has good +manners one has, from the social point of view, achieved the +great thing. ‘The best company’s where I +am,’ any lady or gentleman should feel. The rest can +take care of itself.”</p> +<p>For a moment she appeared not to understand, then she broke +out: “Well, I suppose I haven’t good manners; at any +rate I’m not satisfied! Of course I don’t talk +right—I know that very well. But let me get where I +want to first—then I’ll look after the details. +If I once get there I shall be perfect!” she cried with a +tremor of passion. They reached the gate of the garden and +stood a moment outside, opposite the low arcade of the +Odéon, lined with bookstalls, at which Waterville cast a +slightly wistful glance, waiting for Mrs. Headway’s +carriage, which had drawn up at a short distance. The +whiskered Max had seated himself within and, on the tense elastic +cushions, had fallen into a doze. The carriage got into +motion without his waking; he came to his senses only as it +stopped again. He started up staring and then without +confusion proceeded to descend.</p> +<p>“I’ve learned it in Italy—they call it the +<i>siesta</i>,” <a name="page183"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 183</span>he remarked with an agreeable smile, +holding the door open to Mrs. Headway.</p> +<p>“Well, I should think you had and they might!” +this lady replied, laughing amicably as she got into the vehicle, +where Waterville placed himself beside her. It was not a +surprise to him that she spoiled her courier; she naturally would +spoil her courier. But civilisation begins at home, he +brooded; and the incident threw an ironic light on her desire to +get into society. It failed, however, to divert her +thoughts from the subject she was discussing with her friend, for +as Max ascended the box and the carriage went on its way she +threw out another note of defiance. “If once +I’m all right over here I guess I can make New York do +something! You’ll see the way those women will +squirm.”</p> +<p>Waterville was sure his mother and sisters wouldn’t +squirm; but he felt afresh, as the carriage rolled back to the +Hôtel Meurice, that now he understood Mrs. Headway. +As they were about to enter the court of the hotel a closed +carriage passed before them, and while a few moments later he +helped his companion to alight he saw that Sir Arthur Demesne had +stepped from the other vehicle. Sir Arthur perceived Mrs. +Headway and instantly gave his hand to a lady seated in the +coupé. This lady emerged with a certain slow +impressiveness, and as she stood before the door of the +hotel—a woman still young and fair, with a good deal of +height, gentle, tranquil, plainly dressed, yet distinctly +imposing—it came over our young friend that the Tory member +had brought <i>his</i> principal female relative to call on Nancy +Beck. Mrs. Headway’s triumph had begun; the dowager +Lady Demesne had taken the first step. Waterville wondered +whether the ladies in New York, notified by some magnetic wave, +were beginning to be convulsed. Mrs. Headway, quickly +conscious of what <a name="page184"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +184</span>had happened, was neither too prompt to appropriate the +visit nor too slow to acknowledge it. She just paused, +smiling at Sir Arthur.</p> +<p>“I should like to introduce my mother—she wants +very much to know you.” He approached Mrs. Headway; +the lady had taken his arm. She was at once simple and +circumspect; she had every resource of the English matron.</p> +<p>Mrs. Headway, without advancing a step, put out a hand as if +to draw her quickly closer. “I declare you’re +too sweet!” Waterville heard her say.</p> +<p>He was turning away, as his own business was over; but the +young Englishman, who had surrendered his companion, not to say +his victim, to the embrace, as it might now almost be called, of +their hostess, just checked him with a friendly gesture. +“I daresay I shan’t see you again—I’m +going away.”</p> +<p>“Good-bye then,” said Waterville. “You +return to England?”</p> +<p>“No—I go to Cannes with my mother.”</p> +<p>“You remain at Cannes?”</p> +<p>“Till Christmas very likely.”</p> +<p>The ladies, escorted by Mr. Max, had passed into the hotel, +and Waterville presently concluded this exchange. He smiled +as he walked away, making it analytically out that poor Sir +Arthur had obtained a concession, in the domestic sphere, only at +the price of a concession.</p> +<p>The next morning he looked up Littlemore, from whom he had a +standing invitation to breakfast, and who, as usual, was smoking +a cigar and turning over a dozen newspapers. Littlemore had +a large apartment and an accomplished cook; he got up late and +wandered about his rooms all the morning, stopping from time to +time to look out of his windows, which overhung the Place de la +Madeleine. They had not been seated many minutes at +breakfast when the <a name="page185"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +185</span>visitor mentioned that Mrs. Headway was about to be +abandoned by her friend, who was going to Cannes.</p> +<p>But once more he was to feel how little he might ever +enlighten this comrade. “He came last night to bid me +good-bye,” Littlemore said.</p> +<p>Again Waterville wondered. “Very civil of him, +then, all of a sudden.”</p> +<p>“He didn’t come from civility—he came from +curiosity. Having dined here he had a pretext for +calling.”</p> +<p>“I hope his curiosity was satisfied,” our young +man generously dropped.</p> +<p>“Well, I suspect not. He sat here some time, but +we talked only about what he didn’t want to +know.”</p> +<p>“And what <i>did</i> he want to know?”</p> +<p>“Whether I know anything against Nancy Beck.”</p> +<p>Waterville stared. “Did he call her Nancy +Beck?”</p> +<p>“We never mentioned her; but I saw what he was after and +that he quite yearned to lead up to her. I wouldn’t +do it.”</p> +<p>“Ah, poor man!” Waterville sighed.</p> +<p>“I don’t see why you pity him,” said +Littlemore. “Mrs. Beck’s admirers were never +pitied.”</p> +<p>“Well, of course he wants to marry her.”</p> +<p>“Let him do it then. I’ve nothing to say to +it.”</p> +<p>“He believes there’s something about her, +somewhere in time or space, that may make a pretty big +mouthful.”</p> +<p>“Let him leave it alone then.”</p> +<p>“How can he if he’s really +hit?”—Waterville spoke as from sad experience.</p> +<p>“Ah, my dear fellow, he must settle it himself. He +has no right at any rate to put me such a question. There +was a moment, just as he was going, when he had it on his +tongue’s end. He stood there in the doorway, he +couldn’t leave me—he was going to <a +name="page186"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 186</span>plump out +with it. He looked at me straight, and I looked straight at +him; we remained that way for almost a minute. Then he +decided not, on the whole, to risk it and took himself +off.”</p> +<p>Waterville assisted at this passage with intense +interest. “And if he had asked you, what would you +have said?”</p> +<p>“What do you think?”</p> +<p>“Well, I suppose you’d have said that his question +wasn’t fair.”</p> +<p>“That would have been tantamount to admitting the +worst.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Awkward enough. Luckily he has no business to put +things to me on my honour. Moreover, nothing has passed +between us to give him the right to ask me <i>any</i> questions +about Mrs. Headway. As she’s a great friend of mine +he can’t pretend to expect me to give confidential +information.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“It would have to serve,” said Littlemore. +“There are cases where a man must lie nobly,” he +added.</p> +<p>Waterville looked grave. “What cases?”</p> +<p>“Well, where a woman’s honour’s at +stake.”</p> +<p>“I see what you mean. That’s of course if he +has been himself concerned with her.”</p> +<p>“Himself or another. It doesn’t +matter.”</p> +<p>“I think it does matter. I don’t like false +swearing,” said Waterville. “It’s a +delicate question.”</p> +<p>They were interrupted by the arrival of the servant <a +name="page187"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 187</span>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!”</p> +<p>“It would be a great responsibility.”</p> +<p>“Responsibility or not, it would be very +amusing.”</p> +<p>“Do you mean, then, to give her a leg up?”</p> +<p>“Heaven forbid! But I mean to bet on her.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h3><a name="page188"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +188</span>VI</h3> +<p>The Easter holidays that year were unusually genial; mild +watery sunshine assisted 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 <a name="page189"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 189</span>or three days. If you can it +will give us much pleasure. We can promise you the society +of your charming countrywoman Mrs. Headway.”</p> +<p>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 assured him she knew half the Roman +nobility. “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 cocktails—nobody 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 <a name="page190"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +190</span>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 Hôtel 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, passed 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 <a name="page191"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +191</span>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.</p> +<p>“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 passage.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“Well, in the name of the affection we had formerly +entertained for each other.”</p> +<p>“The affection?”</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>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 +<a name="page192"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +192</span>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 <i>billet d’auteur</i>.</p> +<p>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 <a +name="page193"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 193</span>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 assigned befitted +his diplomatic dignity. On emerging from his room he found +there was an ambassador in the house, and this discovery was a +check to unrest. He tacitly assumed that he should have had +a better room if it hadn’t been for the ambassador, 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 +assembled for dinner in the principal 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 <a name="page194"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +194</span>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.</p> +<p>“We’re waiting for Mrs. Headway.”</p> +<p>“Ah, she has arrived?” Waterville had quite +forgotten this attraction.</p> +<p>“She came at half-past five. At six she went to +dress. She has had two hours.”</p> +<p>“Let us hope the results will be proportionate,” +the young man laughed.</p> +<p>“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 <a +name="page195"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 195</span>looked very +much alone, and it seemed rather studied of her to come down +last, though possibly, before her glass, 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 +lustre, 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.</p> +<p>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 identity <a +name="page196"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 196</span>less +definite. Poor Sir Arthur sat between two ladies much older +than himself, whose names, redolent of history, Waterville had +often heard and had associated 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 lustre, the collective +<i>scintillae</i>, that didn’t proceed from silver, +porcelain, glass 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 <a +name="page197"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 197</span>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 amusement 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.</p> +<p>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?”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>“Who asked you?”</p> +<p>“The same person who asked you, I suppose—Lady +Demesne.”</p> +<p>“She’s an old cat!” And Nancy Beck +turned away from him.</p> +<p>He turned from her as well. He didn’t know what he +had done to deserve such treatment. It was a complete +surprise; he had never seen her like that before. She was a +very vulgar woman; that was the way people dealt with each other, +he supposed, on <a name="page198"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +198</span>hideous back piazzas. He threw himself almost +passionately into contact with the others, who all seemed to him, +possibly a little by contrast, extraordinarily genial and +friendly. He had not, however, the consolation of seeing +Mrs. Headway punished for her rudeness—she wasn’t in +the least neglected. On the contrary, in the part of the +room where she sat the group was denser and repeatedly broke into +gusts of unanimous laughter. Yes, if she should amuse them +she might doubtless get anywhere and do anything, and evidently +she was amusing them.</p> +<h3><a name="page199"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +199</span>VII</h3> +<p>If she was strange, at any rate he hadn’t come to the +end of her strangeness. The next day was a Sunday and +uncommonly fine; he was down before breakfast and took a walk in +the park, stopping to gaze at the thin-legged deer on the remoter +slopes, who reminded him of small pin-cushions turned upside +down, and wandering along the edge of a large sheet of ornamental +water which had a temple in imitation of that of Vesta on an +island in the middle. He thought at this time no more of +Mrs. Headway; he only reflected that these stately objects had +for at least a hundred years furnished a background to a great +deal of heavy history. Further reflexion would perhaps have +suggested to him that she might yet become a feature in the +record that so spread itself. Two or three ladies failed to +appear at breakfast; the well-known Texan belle was one of +them.</p> +<p>“She tells me she never leaves her room till +noon,” he heard Lady Demesne say to the General, her +companion of the previous evening, who had asked about her. +“She takes three hours to dress.”</p> +<p>“She’s a monstrous clever woman!” the +General declared.</p> +<p>“To do it in three hours?”</p> +<p>“No, I mean the way she keeps her wits about +her.”</p> +<p>“Yes; I think she’s very clever,” said Lady +Demesne on a system in which our young man <a +name="page200"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 200</span>flattered +himself he saw more meaning than the General could. There +was something in this tall straight deliberate woman, who seemed +at once to yearn and to retire, that Waterville admired. +With her delicate surface, her conventional mildness, he made out +she was strong; she had set her patience upon a height and +carried it like a diadem. She had the young American little +visibly on her mind, but every now and then she indulged in some +vague demonstration that showed she had not forgotten him. +Sir Arthur himself was apparently in excellent spirits, though he +too never bustled nor overflowed; he only went about looking very +fresh and fair, as if he took a bath every hour or two, and very +secure against the unexpected. Waterville had exchanged +even fewer remarks with him than with his mother; but the master +of the house had found occasion to say the night before, in the +smoking-room, that he was delighted this friend had been able to +come, and that if he was fond of real English scenery there were +several things about that he should like very much to show +him.</p> +<p>“You must give me an hour or two before you go, you +know; I really think there are some things you’ll care +for.”</p> +<p>Sir Arthur spoke as if Waterville would be very fastidious; he +seemed to wish to do the right thing by him. On the Sunday +morning after breakfast he inquired if he should care to go to +church; most of the ladies and several of the men were +going. “It’s just as you please, you know; but +there’s rather a pretty walk across the fields and a +curious little church—they say of King Stephen’s +time.”</p> +<p>Waterville knew what this meant; it was already a +treasure. Besides, he liked going to church, above all when +he sat in the Squire’s pew, which was sometimes as big as a +boudoir and all fadedly upholstered <a name="page201"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 201</span>to match. So he replied that +he should be delighted. Then he added without explaining +his reason: “Is Mrs. Headway going?”</p> +<p>“I really don’t know,” said his host with an +abrupt change of tone—as if he inquired into the movements +of the housekeeper.</p> +<p>“The English are awfully queer!” Waterville +consoled himself with secretly exclaiming; to which wisdom, since +his arrival among them, he had had recourse whenever he +encountered a gap in the consistency of things. The church +was even a rarer treasure than Sir Arthur’s description of +it, and Waterville felt Mrs. Headway had been a fool not to +come. He knew what she was after—she wished to study +English life so that she might take possession of it; and to pass +in among a hedge of bobbing rustics and sit among the monuments +of the old Demesnes would have told her a great deal about +English life. If she wished to fortify herself for the +struggle she had better come to that old church. When he +returned to Longlands—he had walked back across the meadows +with the archdeacon’s lady, who was a vigorous +pedestrian—it wanted half an hour of luncheon and he was +unwilling to go indoors. He remembered he had not yet seen +the gardens, and wandered away in search of them. They were +on a scale that enabled him to find them without difficulty, and +they looked as if they had been kept up unremittingly for a +century or two. He hadn’t advanced very far between +their blooming borders when he heard a voice that he recognised, +and a moment after, at the turn of an alley, came upon Mrs. +Headway, who was attended by the master of the scene. She +was bareheaded beneath her parasol, which she flung back, +stopping short as she beheld her compatriot.</p> +<p>“Oh it’s Mr. Waterville come to spy me out as <a +name="page202"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +202</span>usual!” It was with this remark she greeted +the slightly-embarrassed young man.</p> +<p>“Hallo, you’ve come home from church?” Sir +Arthur said, pulling out his watch.</p> +<p>Waterville was struck with his coolness. He admired it; +for, after all, he noted, it must have been disagreeable to him +to be interrupted. He felt rather an ass, and wished he had +kept hold of Mrs. April, to give him the air of having come for +her sake. Mrs. Headway was looking adorably fresh in attire +that Waterville, who had his ideas on such matters, felt sure +wouldn’t be regarded as the proper thing for a Sunday +morning in an English country-house: a négligé of +white flounces and frills interspersed with yellow +ribbons—a garment Madame de Pompadour might have sported to +receive Louis XV., but probably wouldn’t have worn for a +public airing. The sight of this costume gave the finishing +touch to his impression that she knew on the whole what she was +about. She would take a line of her own; she wouldn’t +be too accommodating. She wouldn’t come down to +breakfast; she wouldn’t go to church; she would wear on +Sunday mornings little elaborately informal dresses and look +dreadfully un-British and un-Protestant. Perhaps after all +this was best. She began to talk with a certain +volubility.</p> +<p>“Isn’t this too lovely? I walked all the way +from the house. I’m not much at walking, but the +grass in this place is like a parlour. The whole +thing’s driving me wild. Sir Arthur, you ought to go +and look after the Ambassador; it’s shameful the way +I’ve kept you. You don’t trouble about the +Ambassador? You said just now you had scarcely spoken to +him, and you must make that right up. I never saw such a +way of neglecting your guests. Is it the usual style over +here? Go and take him out to ride or make him play a game +of billiards. Mr. Waterville will <a +name="page203"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 203</span>take me +home; besides, I want to scold him for spying on me.”</p> +<p>Our young man sharply resented her charge. “I had +no idea whatever you were here.”</p> +<p>“We weren’t hiding,” said Sir Arthur +quietly. “Perhaps you’ll see Mrs. Headway back +to the house. I think I ought to look after old +Davidoff. I believe luncheon’s at two.”</p> +<p>He left them, and Waterville wandered through the gardens with +Mrs. Headway. She at once sought again to learn if he had +come there to “dog” her; but this inquiry +wasn’t accompanied, to his surprise, with the acrimony she +had displayed the night before. He was determined not to +let that pass, however; when people had treated him in that way +they shouldn’t be allowed to forget it.</p> +<p>“Do you suppose I’m always thinking of you?” +he derisively demanded. “You’re out of my mind +<i>sometimes</i>. I came this way to look at the gardens, +and if you hadn’t spoken to me should have passed +on.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Headway was perfectly good-natured; she appeared not even +to hear his defence. “He has got two other +places,” she simply rejoined. “That’s +just what I wanted to know.”</p> +<p>He wouldn’t nevertheless be turned from his +grievance. That mode of reparation to a person whom you had +insulted which consisted in forgetting you had done so was +doubtless largely in use on back piazzas; but a creature of any +spirit required a different form. “What did you mean +last night by accusing me of having come down here to watch +you? Pardon me if I tell you I think you grossly +rude.” The sting of the imputation lay in the fact +that there was a certain amount of truth in it; yet for a moment +Mrs. Headway, looking very blank, failed to recover it. +“She’s a barbarian, after all,” thought <a +name="page204"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +204</span>Waterville. “She thinks a woman may slap a +man’s face and run away!”</p> +<p>“Oh,” she cried suddenly, “I +remember—I was angry with you! I didn’t expect +to see you. But I didn’t really mind about it at +all. Every now and then I get mad like that and work it off +on any one that’s handy. But it’s over in three +minutes and I never think of it again. I confess I was mad +last night; I could have shot the old woman.”</p> +<p>“‘The old woman’?”</p> +<p>“Sir Arthur’s mother. She has no business +here anyway. In this country when the husband dies +they’re expected to clear out. She has a house of her +own ten miles from here and another in Portman Square; so she +ain’t in want of good locations. But she +sticks—she sticks to him like a strong plaster. It +came over me as I kind of analysed that she didn’t invite +me here because she liked me, but because she suspects me. +She’s afraid we’ll make a match and she thinks I +ain’t good enough for her son. She must think +I’m in a great hurry to make him mine. I never went +after him, he came after me. I should never have thought of +anything if it hadn’t been for him. He began it last +summer at Homburg; he wanted to know why I didn’t come to +England; he told me I should have great success. He +doesn’t know much about it anyway; he hasn’t got much +gumption. But he’s a very nice man all the same; +it’s very pleasant to see him surrounded by +his—” And Mrs. Headway paused a moment, her +appreciation ranging: “Surrounded by all his old +heirlooms. I like the old place,” she went on; +“it’s beautifully mounted; I’m quite satisfied +with what I’ve seen. I thought Lady Demesne +well-impressed; she left a card on me in London and very soon +after wrote to me to ask me here. But I’m very quick; +I sometimes see things in a flash. I saw something <a +name="page205"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 205</span>yesterday +when she came to speak to me at dinner-time. She saw I +looked pretty and refined, and it made her blue with rage; she +hoped I’d be some sort of a horror. I’d like +very much to oblige her, but what can one do? Then I saw +she had asked me only because he insisted. He didn’t +come to see me when I first arrived—he never came near me +for ten days. She managed to prevent him; she got him to +make some promise. But he changed his mind after a little, +and then he had to do something really polite. He called +three days in succession, and he made her come. She’s +one of those women who holds out as long as she can and then +seems to give in while she’s really fussing more than +ever. She hates me as if I knew something about +her—when I don’t even know what she thinks I’ve +done myself. She’s very underhand; she’s a +regular old cat. When I saw you last night at dinner I +thought she had got you here to help her.”</p> +<p>“To help her?” Waterville echoed.</p> +<p>“To tell her about me. To give her information she +can make use of against me. You may give her all you +like!”</p> +<p>Waterville was almost breathless with the attention he had +paid this extraordinary burst of confidence, and now he really +felt faint. He stopped short; Mrs. Headway went on a few +steps and then, stopping too, turned and shone at him in the glow +of her egotism. “You’re the most unspeakable +woman!” he wailed. She seemed to him indeed a +barbarian.</p> +<p>She laughed at him—he felt she was laughing at his +expression of face—and her laugh rang through the stately +gardens. “What sort of a woman’s +that?”</p> +<p>“You’ve got no delicacy”—he’d +keep it up.</p> +<p>She coloured quickly, though, strange to say, without further +irritation. “No delicacy?”</p> +<p>“You ought to keep those things to yourself.”</p> +<p><a name="page206"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +206</span>“Oh I know what you mean; I talk about +everything. When I’m excited I’ve got to +talk. But I must do things in my own way. I’ve +got plenty of delicacy when people are nice to me. Ask +Arthur Demesne if I ain’t delicate—ask George +Littlemore if I ain’t. Don’t stand there all +day; come on to lunch!” And Mrs. Headway resumed her +walk while her companion, having balanced, slowly overtook +her. “Wait till I get settled; then I’ll be +delicate,” she pursued. “You can’t be +delicate when you’re trying to save your life. +It’s very well for <i>you</i> to talk, with the whole State +Department to back you. Of course I’m excited. +I’ve got right hold of this thing, and I don’t mean +to let go!” Before they reached the house she let him +know why he had been invited to Longlands at the same time as +herself. Waterville would have liked to believe his +personal attractions sufficiently explained the fact, but she +took no account of this supposition. Mrs. Headway preferred +to see herself in an element of ingenious machination, where +everything that happened referred to her and was aimed at +her. Waterville had been asked then because he represented, +however modestly, the American Legation, and their host had a +friendly desire to make it appear that his pretty American +visitor, of whom no one knew anything, was under the protection +of that establishment. “It would start me +better,” the lady in question complacently set forth. +“You can’t help yourself—you’ve helped to +start me. If he had known the Minister he’d have +asked him—or the first secretary. But he don’t +know them.”</p> +<p>They reached the house by the time she had developed her idea, +which gave Waterville a pretext more than sufficient for +detaining her in the portico. “Do you mean to say Sir +Arthur has told you this?” he inquired almost sternly.</p> +<p><a name="page207"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +207</span>“Told me? Of course not! Do you +suppose I’d let him take the tone with me that I need any +favours? I’d like to hear him tell me I’m in +want of assistance!”</p> +<p>“I don’t see why he shouldn’t—at the +pace you go yourself. You say it to every one.”</p> +<p>“To every one? I say it to you and to George +Littlemore—when I get nervous. I say it to you +because I like you, and to him because I’m afraid of +him. I’m not in the least afraid of you, by the +way. I’m all alone—I haven’t got any +one. I must have some comfort, mustn’t I? Sir +Arthur scolded me for putting you off last night—he noticed +it; and that was what made me guess his idea.”</p> +<p>“I’m much obliged to him,” said Waterville +rather bewildered.</p> +<p>“So mind you answer for me. Don’t you want +me to take your arm to go in?”</p> +<p>“You’re a most extraordinary combination!” +he gave to all the winds as she stood smiling at him.</p> +<p>“Oh come, don’t <i>you</i> fall in love with +me!” she cried with a laugh; and, without taking his arm, +she passed in before him.</p> +<p>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 <a +name="page208"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +208</span>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.”</p> +<p>“Dull? Why they’re as bright as the day they +were bound.” And he turned on her the glittering +panels of his folio.</p> +<p>“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 noble 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 <a +name="page209"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 209</span>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.”</p> +<p>“Anything I can tell you—I shall be +delighted!” the young man declared.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>“Ah, here it is!” cried Waterville within +himself. But he could show no wincing. “Ah yes, +I see!”</p> +<p>“Do you mind my asking you? I hope you don’t +mind. I haven’t any one else to ask.”</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“I don’t think he knows her. She knows +<i>him</i>—which is very different. When I ask him +about her he merely tells me she’s fascinating. She +<i>is</i> fascinating,” said her ladyship with inimitable +dryness.</p> +<p>“So I think, myself. I like her very much,” +Waterville returned cheerfully.</p> +<p>“You’re in all the better position to speak of her +then.”</p> +<p>“To speak well of her,” the young man smiled.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>It might have seemed after this that nothing could <a +name="page210"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 210</span>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.”</p> +<p>“Every one seems to like her,” said Lady Demesne +with an unstudied effect of pathos. “She’s +certainly very amusing.”</p> +<p>“She’s very good-natured. I think she has no +end of good intentions.”</p> +<p>“What do you mean by good intentions?” asked Lady +Demesne very sweetly.</p> +<p>“Well, it strikes me she wants to be friendly and +pleasant.”</p> +<p>“Indeed she does! But of course you have to defend +her. She’s your countrywoman.”</p> +<p>“To defend her I must wait till she’s +attacked,” Waterville laughed.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“She’ll tell you herself. Tell you by the +hour!”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>He turned the case over. “I’m afraid I +can’t explain Mrs. Headway,” he concluded.</p> +<p>“I see you admit she’s very peculiar.”</p> +<p>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. <a +name="page211"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 211</span>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.</p> +<p>“You know why I ask you these things then?”</p> +<p>“I think I’ve an idea,” said Waterville, +persisting in irrelevant laughter. His laugh sounded +foolish in his own ears.</p> +<p>“If you know that, I think you ought to assist +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.</p> +<p>“If I could help you I would. But my +position’s very difficult.”</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <a name="page212"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +212</span>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 <i>no</i> 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.”</p> +<p>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?”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Does he know you’re speaking to me?” +Waterville asked.</p> +<p>“Not in the least. But I must tell you I shall +repeat to him anything you may say against her.”</p> +<p>“I had better say nothing then. It’s very +delicate. Mrs. Headway’s quite undefended. One +may like <a name="page213"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +213</span>her or not, of course. I’ve seen nothing of +her that isn’t perfectly correct,” our young man +wound up.</p> +<p>“And you’ve heard nothing?”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>“If he were to believe she had done wrong he’d +give her up.”</p> +<p>“Well, I’ve no right to say so,” said +Waterville.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>He hugged his folio and looked awkward. “You +attribute things to me. I shall never say +anything.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“A friend of Mrs. Headway’s? I suppose you +mean George Littlemore.”</p> +<p><a name="page214"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +214</span>“Yes—Mr. Littlemore. He has a sister +whom I’ve 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 <i>he</i> would help me?” Lady +Demesne asked very simply.</p> +<p>“I doubt it, but you can try.”</p> +<p>“I wish he had come with you. Do you think +he’d come?”</p> +<p>“He’s in America at this moment, but I believe he +soon comes back.”</p> +<p>She took this in with interest. “I shall go to his +sister; I shall ask her to bring him to see me. She’s +extremely nice; I think she’ll understand. +Unfortunately there’s very little time.”</p> +<p>Waterville bethought himself. “Don’t count +too much on George Littlemore,” he said gravely.</p> +<p>“You men have no pity,” she grimly sighed.</p> +<p>“Why should we pity you? How can Mrs. Headway hurt +such a person as you?” he asked.</p> +<p>Lady Demesne cast about. “It hurts me to hear her +voice.”</p> +<p>“Her voice is very liquid.” He liked his +word.</p> +<p>“Possibly. But she’s horrible!”</p> +<p>This was too much, it seemed to Waterville; Nancy Beck was +open to criticism, and he himself had declared she was a +barbarian. Yet she wasn’t horrible. +“It’s for your son to pity you. If he +doesn’t how can you expect it of others?”</p> +<p>“Oh but he does!” And with a majesty that +was more striking even than her logic his hostess moved to the +door.</p> +<p>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!”</p> +<p>She shot him a woeful glance. “That would +be—worst of all!”</p> +<h3><a name="page215"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +215</span>VIII</h3> +<p>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 mentioned 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.</p> +<p>“One of the consequences of your having a house will be +that you’ll have to entertain the Texan belle,” our +young man said.</p> +<p>Littlemore sat there with his hands crossed on his stick; he +looked at his friend with an eye that failed to kindle at the +mention of this lady’s name. “Has she got into +European society?” he rather languidly inquired.</p> +<p>“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 +<i>Morning Post</i>. She has come up very quickly; +she’s almost famous. Every one’s asking about +her—you’ll be plied with questions.”</p> +<p>Littlemore listened gravely. “How did she get +in?”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p><a name="page216"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 216</span>Her +old friend rallied after a moment to the interest of this news, +marking his full appreciation of it by a burst of laughter. +“To think of Nancy Beck! The people here do beat the +Dutch! There’s no one they won’t go +after. They wouldn’t touch her in New +York.”</p> +<p>“Oh New York’s quite old-fashioned and +rococo,” said Waterville; and he announced to Littlemore +that Lady Demesne was very eager for his arrival and wanted his +aid to prevent her son’s bringing such a person into the +family. Littlemore was apparently 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,” the second secretary urged.</p> +<p>“Why not if he loves her?”</p> +<p>“Oh if that’s all you want!”—which +seemed a degree of cynicism startling to his companion.</p> +<p>“Would you marry her yourself?”</p> +<p>“Certainly if I were in love with her.”</p> +<p>“You took care not to be that.”</p> +<p>“Yes, I did—and so Demesne had better have +done. However, since he’s bitten—!” +But Littlemore let the rest of his sentence too indifferently +drop.</p> +<p>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. On this Waterville pronounced him highly 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—they were sure to have enough +of her later without such impatience.</p> +<p><a name="page217"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +217</span>Waterville would have been sorry to give a false idea +of his interest in the wonderful woman; he knew too well the +feeling had definite limits. He had been two or three times +to see her, but it was a relief to be able to believe her quite +independent of him. There had been no revival of those free +retorts which had marked their stay at Longlands. She could +dispense with assistance now; she knew herself 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 such others of +that “standing” as had shown a desire for her +acquaintance; professing to measure perfectly the sources of a +growing popularity. “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 a grand case of the +American funny woman; if I make the least remark 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 really care for me, you +know—they don’t love me for myself and the way I want +to be loved; 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 +<a name="page218"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +218</span>abundance—the poor little woman worked hard at +the vernacular. 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 before: she would have made more extensive +preparations. She had thought it a disadvantage of old to +live in Arizona, in Dakotah, in the newly-admitted States; but +now she saw that, as she phrased it to herself, this was the best +thing that ever had happened to her. She tried to recover +the weird things she had heard out there, and keenly regretted +she hadn’t 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 argued that this was success: she inferred that had she only +come five years sooner she might have married a Duke. That +would have been even a greater attraction 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 vivid than those by which he was +known—make up to a lady several years older than himself, +whose fund of Texan 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 had also not lost her grasp of +several old ones. The chief of these—it was now a +year old—was that Sir Arthur was the very most eligible +and, shrewdly considered, taking one thing with another, most +valuable young man in the world. There were of course a +good many things he wasn’t. He wasn’t amusing; +he wasn’t insinuating; he wasn’t of an absolutely +irrepressible ardour. She believed <a +name="page219"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 219</span>he was +constant, but he was certainly not eager. With these +things, however, she 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 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.</p> +<p>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 tall compatriot. He stayed till +they dispersed, in spite of the manœuvres of a gentleman +who evidently desired to outlinger him, but who, whatever might +have been his happy fortune on former visits, received on this +occasion no encouragement from their hostess. He looked at +Littlemore slowly, beginning with his boots and travelling up as +if to discover the reason of so unexpected a preference, and +then, with no salutation to him, left the pair face to face.</p> +<p>“I’m curious to see what you’ll do for me +now you’ve got your sister with you,” Mrs. Headway +presently remarked, having heard of this circumstance from Rupert +Waterville. “I realise you’ll have to do +something, you know. I’m sorry for you, but I +don’t see how you can get off. You might ask me to +dine some day when she’s dining out. I’d come +even then, I think, because I want to keep on the right side of +you.”</p> +<p>“I call that the wrong side,” said Littlemore.</p> +<p><a name="page220"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +220</span>“Yes, I see. It’s your sister +that’s on the right side. You’re in rather a +bad fix, ain’t you? You’ve got to be +‘good’ and mean, or you’ve got to be kind with +a little courage. However, you take those things very +quietly. There’s something in you that exasperates +me. What does your sister think of me? Does she hate +me?” Nancy persisted.</p> +<p>“She knows nothing about you.”</p> +<p>“Have you told her nothing?”</p> +<p>“Never a word.”</p> +<p>“Hasn’t she asked you? That shows how she +hates me. She thinks I ain’t creditable to +America. I know <i>that</i> way of doing it. She +wants to show people over here that, however they may be taken in +by me, she knows much better. But she’ll have to ask +you about me; she can’t go on for ever. Then +what’ll you say?”</p> +<p>“That you’re the biggest ‘draw’ in +Europe.”</p> +<p>“Oh shucks!” she cried, out of her repertory.</p> +<p>“Haven’t you got into European society?”</p> +<p>“Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t. It’s +too soon to see. I can’t tell this season. +Every one says I’ve got to wait till next, to see if +it’s the same. Sometimes they take you right up for a +few weeks and then just drop you anywhere. You’ve got +to make it a square thing somehow—to drive in a +nail.”</p> +<p>“You speak as if it were your coffin,” said +Littlemore.</p> +<p>“Well, it <i>is</i> a kind of coffin. I’m +burying my past!”</p> +<p>He winced at this—he was tired to death of her +past. He changed the subject and turned her on to London, a +topic as to which her freshness of view and now unpremeditated +art of notation were really interesting, displayed as they were +at the expense of most of her new acquaintances and of some of +the most venerable features of the great city. He himself +<a name="page221"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 221</span>looked +at England from the outside as much as it was possible to do; but +in the midst of her familiar allusions to people and things known +to her only since yesterday he was struck with the truth that she +would never really be initiated. She buzzed over the +surface of things like a fly on a window-pane. This surface +immensely pleased her; she was flattered, encouraged, excited; +she dropped her confident judgements as if she were scattering +flowers, talked about her intentions, her prospects, her +discoveries, her designs. But she had really learnt no more +about English life than about the molecular theory. The +words in which he had described her of old to Waterville came +back to him: “<i>Elle ne doute de rien</i>!” +Suddenly she jumped up; she was going out to dine and it was time +to dress. “Before you leave I want you to promise me +something,” she said off-hand, but with a look he had seen +before and that pressed on the point—oh so intensely! +“You’ll be sure to be questioned about +me.” And then she paused.</p> +<p>“How do people know I know you?”</p> +<p>“You haven’t ‘blown’ about it? +Is that what you mean? You can be a brute when you +try. They do know it at any rate. Possibly I may have +told them. They’ll come to you to ask about me. +I mean from Lady Demesne. She’s in an awful +state. She’s so afraid of it—of the way he +wants me.”</p> +<p>In himself too, after all, she could still press the spring of +careless mirth. “<i>I’m</i> not afraid, if you +haven’t yet brought it off.”</p> +<p>“Well, he can’t make up his mind. I appeal +to him so, yet he can’t quite place me where he’d +have to have me.” Her lucidity and her detachment +were both grotesque and touching.</p> +<p>“He must be a poor creature if he won’t take you +as you are. I mean for the sweet sake of what you +are,” Littlemore added.</p> +<p><a name="page222"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 222</span>This +wasn’t a very gallant form, but she made the best of +it. “Well—he wants to be very careful, and so +he ought!”</p> +<p>“If he asks too many questions he’s not worth +marrying,” Littlemore rather cheaply opined.</p> +<p>“I beg your pardon—he’s worth marrying +whatever he does; he’s worth marrying for <i>me</i>. +And I want to marry him—that’s what I want to +do.”</p> +<p>Her old friend had a pause of some blankness. “Is +he waiting for me to settle it?”</p> +<p>“He’s waiting for I don’t know +what—for some one to come and tell him that I’m the +sweetest of the sweet. Then he’ll believe it. +Some one who has been out there and knows all about me. Of +course you’re the man, you’re created on +purpose. Don’t you remember how I told you in Paris +he wanted to ask you? He was ashamed and gave it up; he +tried to forget me. But now it’s all on +again—only meanwhile his mother has been at him. She +works night and day, like a weasel in a hole, to persuade him +that I’m too much beneath him. He’s very fond +of her and very open to influence; I mean from her—not from +any one else. Except me of course. Oh I’ve +influenced him, I’ve explained everything fifty times +over. But some memories, you know, are like those lumpish +or pointed things you can’t get into your trunk—they +won’t pack anyway; and he keeps coming back to them. +He wants every little speck explained. He won’t come +to you himself, but his mother will, or she’ll send some of +her people. I guess she’ll send the lawyer—the +family solicitor they call him. She wanted to send him out +to America to make inquiries, only she didn’t know where to +send. Of course I couldn’t be expected to give the +places—they’ve got to find <i>them</i> out the best +way they can. She knows all about you and has made up to +your sister; a big proof, as she never <a +name="page223"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 223</span>makes up to +any one. So you see how much I know. She’s +waiting for you; she means to hold you with her glittering +eye. She has an idea she <i>can</i>—can make you say +what’ll meet her views. Then she’ll lay it +before Sir Arthur. So you’ll be so good as to have +none—not a view.”</p> +<p>Littlemore had, however disguisedly, given her every +attention; but the conclusion left him all too consciously +staring. “You don’t mean that anything I can +say will make a difference?”</p> +<p>“Don’t be affected! You know it will as well +as I.”</p> +<p>“You make him out not only a laggard in love but almost +a dastard in war.”</p> +<p>“Never mind what I make him out. I guess if I can +understand him you can accept him. And I appeal to you +solemnly. You can save me or you can lose me. If you +lose me you’ll be a coward. And if you say a word +against me I’ll be lost.”</p> +<p>“Go and dress for dinner—that’s your +salvation,” Littlemore returned as he quitted her at the +head of the stairs.</p> +<h3><a name="page224"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +224</span>IX</h3> +<p>It was very well for him to take that tone; but he felt as he +walked home that he should scarcely know what to say to people +who were determined, as she put it, to hold him with glittering +eyes. She had worked a certain spell; she had succeeded in +making him feel responsible. The sight of her success, +however, rather hardened his heart; he might have pitied her if +she had “muffed” it, as they said, but he just +sensibly resented her heavy scoring. He dined alone that +evening while his sister and her husband, who had engagements +every day for a month, partook of their repast at the expense of +friends. Mrs. Dolphin, however, came home rather early and +immediately sought admittance to the small apartment at the foot +of the staircase which was already spoken of as her +brother’s den. Reggie had gone on to a +“squash” somewhere, and she had returned in her +eagerness to the third member of their party. She was too +impatient even to wait for morning. She looked impatient; +she was very unlike George Littlemore. “I want you to +tell me about Mrs. Headway,” she at once began, while he +started slightly at the coincidence of this remark with his own +thoughts. He was just making up his mind at last to speak +to her. She unfastened her cloak and tossed it over a +chair, then pulled off her long tight black gloves, which were +not so fine as those Mrs. Headway wore; all this as if she were +preparing <a name="page225"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +225</span>herself for an important interview. She was a +fair neat woman, who had once been pretty, with a small thin +voice, a finished manner and a perfect knowledge of what it was +proper to do on every occasion in life. She always did it, +and her conception of it was so definite that failure would have +left her without excuse. She was usually not taken for an +American, but she made a point of being one, because she +flattered herself that she was of a type which under that banner +borrowed distinction from rarity. She was by nature a great +conservative and had ended by figuring as a better Tory than her +husband; to the effect of being thought by some of her old +friends to have changed immensely since her marriage. She +knew English society as if she had compiled a red-covered +handbook of the subject; had a way of looking prepared for +far-reaching social action; had also thin lips and pretty teeth; +and was as positive as she was amiable. She told her +brother that Mrs. Headway had given out that he was her most +intimate friend; whereby she thought it rather odd he had never +spoken of her “at home.” Littlemore admitted, +on this, that he had known her a long time, referred to the +conditions in which the acquaintance had sprung up, and added +that he had seen her that afternoon. He sat there smoking +his cigar and looking up at the cornice while Mrs. Dolphin +delivered herself of a series of questions. Was it true +that he liked her so much, was it true he thought her a possible +woman to marry, was it true that her antecedents had not been +most peculiar?</p> +<p>“I may as well tell you I’ve a letter from Lady +Demesne,” his visitor went on. “It came to me +just before I went out, and I have it in my pocket.”</p> +<p>She drew forth the missive, which she evidently wished to read +him; but he gave her no invitation to proceed. He knew she +had come to him to extract a <a name="page226"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 226</span>declaration adverse to Mrs. +Headway’s projects, and however little edification he might +find in this lady’s character he hated to be arraigned or +prodded. He had a great esteem for Mrs. Dolphin, who, among +other Hampshire notions, had picked up that of the major weight +of the male members of any family, so that she treated him with a +consideration which made his having an English sister rather a +luxury. Nevertheless he was not, on the subject of his old +Texan friend, very accommodating. He admitted once for all +that she hadn’t behaved properly—it wasn’t +worth while to split hairs about that; but he couldn’t see +that she was much worse than lots of other women about the +place—women at once less amusing and less impugned; and he +couldn’t get up much feeling about her marrying or not +marrying. Moreover, it was none of his business, and he +intimated that it was none of Mrs. Dolphin’s.</p> +<p>“One surely can’t resist the claims of common +humanity!” his sister replied; and she added that he was +very inconsistent. He didn’t respect Mrs. Headway, he +knew the most dreadful things about her, he didn’t think +her fit company for his own flesh and blood. And yet he was +willing not to save poor Arthur Demesne.</p> +<p>“Perfectly willing!” Littlemore returned. +“I’ve nothing to do with saving others. All +I’ve got to do is not to marry her myself.”</p> +<p>“Don’t you think then we’ve any +responsibilities, any duties to society?”</p> +<p>“I don’t know what you mean. Society can +look after itself. If she can bring it off she’s +welcome. It’s a splendid sight in its way.”</p> +<p>“How do you mean splendid?”</p> +<p>“Why she has run up the tree as if she were a +squirrel!”</p> +<p>“It’s very true she has an assurance <i>à +toute épreuve</i>. <a name="page227"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 227</span>But English society has become +scandalously easy. I never saw anything like the people who +are taken up. Mrs. Headway has had only to appear to +succeed. If they can only make out big <i>enough</i> spots +in you they’ll find you attractive. It’s like +the decadence of the Roman Empire. You can see to look at +this person that she’s not a lady. She’s +pretty, very pretty, but she might be a dissipated +dressmaker. She wouldn’t go down for a minute in New +York. I’ve seen her three times—she apparently +goes everywhere. I didn’t speak of her—I was +wanting to see what you’d do. I judged you meant to +do nothing, then this letter decided me. It’s written +on purpose to be shown you; it’s what the poor +lady—<i>such</i> a nice woman herself—wants you to +do. She wrote to me before I came to town, and I went to +see her as soon as I arrived. I think it very +important. I told her that if she’d draw up a little +statement I’d put it before you as soon as we should get +settled. She’s in real distress. I think you +ought to feel for her. You ought to communicate the facts +exactly as they stand. A woman has no right to do such +things as Mrs. Headway and come and ask to be accepted. She +may make it up with her conscience, but she can’t make it +up with society. Last night at Lady Dovedale’s I was +afraid she’d know who I was and get somehow at me. I +believe she’d really have been capable of it, and I got so +frightened I went away. If Sir Arthur wishes to marry her +for what she is, of course he’s welcome. But at least +he ought to know.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Dolphin was neither agitated nor voluble; she moved from +point to point with the temper and method of a person accustomed +to preside at committees and to direct them. She deeply +desired, however, that Mrs. Headway’s triumphant career +should be checked; such a person had sufficiently abused <a +name="page228"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 228</span>a tolerance +already so overstrained. Herself a party to an +international marriage, Mrs. Dolphin naturally desired the class +to which she belonged to close its ranks and carry its standard +high.</p> +<p>“It seems to me she’s quite as good as the poor +young man himself,” said Littlemore, lighting another +cigar.</p> +<p>“As good? What do you mean by +‘good’? No one has ever breathed a word against +him.”</p> +<p>“Very likely. But he’s a nonentity of the +first water, and she at least a positive quantity, not to say a +positive force. She’s a person, and a very clever +one. Besides, she’s quite as good as the women lots +of them have married. It’s new to me that your +alliances have been always so august.”</p> +<p>“I know nothing about other cases,” Mrs. Dolphin +said, “I only know about this one. It so happens that +I’ve been brought near it, and that an appeal has been made +to me. The English are very romantic—the most +romantic people in the world, if that’s what you +mean. They do the strangest things from the force of +passion—even those of whom you would least expect it. +They marry their cooks, they marry their coachmen, and their +romances always have the most miserable end. I’m sure +this one would be wretched. How can you pretend that such a +flaming barbarian can be worked into <i>any</i> +civilisation? What I see is a fine old race—one of +the oldest and most honourable in England, people with every +tradition of good conduct and high principle—and a dreadful +disreputable vulgar little woman, who hasn’t an idea of +what such things are, trying to force her way into it. I +hate to see such things—I want to go to the +rescue!”</p> +<p>“Well, I don’t,” Littlemore returned at his +leisure. “I don’t care a pin for the fine old +race.”</p> +<p>“Not from interested motives, of course, any more <a +name="page229"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 229</span>than +I. But surely on artistic grounds, on grounds of +decency?”</p> +<p>“Mrs. Headway isn’t indecent—you go too +far. You must remember that she’s an old friend of +mine.” He had become rather stern; Mrs. Dolphin was +forgetting the consideration due, from an English point of view, +to brothers.</p> +<p>She forgot it even a little more. “Oh if +you’re in love with her too!” she quite wailed, +turning away.</p> +<p>He made no answer to this, and the words had no sting for +him. But at last, to finish the affair, he asked what in +the world the old lady wanted him to do. Did she want him +to go out into Piccadilly and announce to the passers-by that +there had been one winter when even Mrs. Headway’s sister +didn’t know who was her husband?</p> +<p>Mrs. Dolphin’s reply was to read out Lady +Demesne’s letter, which her brother, as she folded it up +again, pronounced one of the most extraordinary communications he +had ever listened to. “It’s very +sad—it’s a cry of distress,” she +declared. “The whole meaning of it is that she wishes +you’d come and see her. She doesn’t say it in +so many words, but I can read between the lines. Besides, +she told me she’d give anything to see you. Let me +assure you it’s your duty to go.”</p> +<p>“To go and abuse Nancy Beck?”</p> +<p>“Go and rave about her if you like!” This +was very clever of Mrs. Dolphin, but her brother was not so +easily beguiled. He didn’t take that view of his +duty, and he declined to cross her ladyship’s +threshold. “Then she’ll come and see +you,” said his visitor with decision.</p> +<p>“If she does I’ll tell her Nancy’s an +angel.”</p> +<p>“If you can say so conscientiously she’ll be +delighted to hear it.” And she gathered up her cloak +and gloves.</p> +<p><a name="page230"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +230</span>Meeting Rupert Waterville the next day, as he often +did, at the Saint George’s Club, which offers a +much-appreciated hospitality to secretaries of legation and to +the natives of the countries they assist in representing, +Littlemore let him know that his prophecy had been fulfilled and +that Lady Demesne had been making proposals for an +interview. “My sister read me a desperate letter from +her.”</p> +<p>Our young man was all critical attention again. +“‘Desperate’?”</p> +<p>“The letter of a woman so scared that she’ll do +anything. I may be a great brute, but her scare amuses +me.”</p> +<p>“You’re in the position of Olivier de Jalin in +<i>Le Demi-Monde</i>,” Waterville remarked.</p> +<p>“In <i>Le Demi-Monde</i>?” Littlemore was +not quick at catching literary allusions.</p> +<p>“Don’t you remember the play we saw in +Paris? Or like Don Fabrice in +<i>L’Aventurière</i>. A bad woman tries to +marry an honourable man, who doesn’t know how bad she is, +and they who do know step in and push her back.”</p> +<p>“Yes, it comes to me. There was a good deal of +lying,” Littlemore recalled, “all round.”</p> +<p>“They prevented the marriage, however—which is the +great thing.”</p> +<p>“The great thing if your heart’s set! One of +the active parties was the intimate friend of the man in love, +the other was his son. Demesne’s nothing at all to +me.”</p> +<p>“He’s a very good fellow,” said +Waterville.</p> +<p>“Then go and talk to him.”</p> +<p>“Play the part of Olivier de Jalin? Oh I +can’t. I’m not Olivier. But I think I do +wish he’d corner me of himself. Mrs. Headway +oughtn’t really to be allowed to pass.”</p> +<p>“I wish to heaven they’d let me alone,” +Littlemore <a name="page231"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +231</span>murmured ruefully and staring a while out of the +window.</p> +<p>“Do you still hold to that theory you propounded in +Paris? Are you willing to commit perjury?” Waterville +asked.</p> +<p>“Assuredly I can refuse to answer questions—even +that one.”</p> +<p>“As I told you before, that will amount to a +condemnation.”</p> +<p>Longmore frowningly debated. “It may amount to +what it pleases. I guess I’ll go back to +Paris.”</p> +<p>“That will be the same as not answering. But +it’s quite the best thing you can do. I’ve +really been thinking it out,” Waterville continued, +“and I don’t hold that from the point of view of +social good faith she’s an article we ought to +contribute—!” He looked at the matter clearly +now from a great elevation; his tone, the expression of his face, +betrayed this lofty flight; the effect of which, as he glanced +down at his didactic young friend, Littlemore found peculiarly +irritating.</p> +<p>He shifted about. “No, after all, hanged if they +shall drive me away!” he exclaimed abruptly; and he walked +off while his companion wondered.</p> +<h3><a name="page232"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +232</span>X</h3> +<p>The morning after this the elder man received a note from Mrs. +Headway—a short and simple note, consisting merely of the +words: “I shall be at home this afternoon; will you come +and see me at five? I’ve something particular to say +to you.” He sent no answer to the question, but went +to the little house in Chesterfield Street at the hour its +mistress had proposed.</p> +<p>“I don’t believe you know what sort of a woman I +<i>am</i>!” she began as soon as he stood before her.</p> +<p>“Oh Lord!” Littlemore groaned as he dropped into a +chair. Then he added: “Please don’t strike up +<i>that</i> air!”</p> +<p>“Ah, but it’s exactly what I’ve wanted to +say. It’s very important. You don’t know +me—you don’t understand me. You think you +do—but you don’t.”</p> +<p>“It isn’t for the want of your having told +me—many many times!” And Littlemore had a hard +critical smile, irritated as he was at so austere a +prospect. The last word of all was decidedly that Mrs. +Headway was a dreadful bore. It was always the last word +about such women, who never really deserved to be spared.</p> +<p>She glared at him a little on this; her face was no longer the +hospitable inn-front with the showy sign of the Smile. The +sign had come down; she looked <a name="page233"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 233</span>sharp and strained, almost old; the +change was complete. It made her serious as he had never +seen her—having seen her always only either too pleased or +too disgusted. “Yes, I know; men are so stupid. +They know nothing about women but what women tell them. And +women tell them things on purpose to see how stupid they can +be. I’ve told you things like that just for amusement +when it was dull. If you believed them it was your own +fault. But now I want you really to know.”</p> +<p>“I don’t want to know. I know +enough.”</p> +<p>“How do you mean you know enough?” she cried with +all her sincerity. “What business have you to know +anything?” The poor little woman, in her passionate +purpose, was not obliged to be consistent, and the loud laugh +with which Littlemore greeted this must have seemed to her unduly +harsh. “You shall know what I want you to know, +however. You think me a bad woman—you don’t +respect me; I told you that in Paris. I’ve done +things I don’t understand, myself, to-day; that I admit as +fully as you please. But I’ve completely changed, and +I want to change everything. You ought to enter into that, +you ought to see what I want. I hate everything that has +happened to me before this; I loathe it, I despise it. I +went on that way trying—trying one thing and another. +But now I’ve got what I want. Do you expect me to go +down on my knees to you? I believe I will, I’m so +anxious. You can help me—no one else can do a thing; +they’re only waiting to see if <i>he’ll</i> do +it. I told you in Paris you could help me, and it’s +just as true now. Say a good word for me for Christ’s +sake! You haven’t lifted your little finger, or I +should know it by this time. It will just make the +difference. Or if your sister would come and see me I +should be all right. Women are pitiless, pitiless, and +you’re pitiless too. It isn’t that Mrs. +Dolphin’s <a name="page234"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +234</span>anything so great, most of my friends are better than +that!—but she’s the one woman who <i>knows</i>, and +every one seems to know she knows. <i>He</i> knows it, and +he knows she doesn’t come. So she kills me—she +kills me! I understand perfectly what he +wants—I’ll do everything, be anything, I’ll be +the most perfect wife. The old woman will adore me when she +knows me—it’s too stupid of her not to see. +Everything in the past’s over; it has all fallen away from +me; it’s the life of another woman. This was what I +wanted; I knew I should find it some day. I knew I should +be at home in the best—and with the highest. What +could I do in those horrible places? I had to take what I +could. But now I’ve got nice surroundings. I +want you to do me justice. You’ve never done me +justice. That’s what I sent for you for.”</p> +<p>Littlemore had suddenly ceased to be bored, but a variety of +feelings had taken the place of that one. It was impossible +not to be touched; she really meant what she said. People +don’t change their nature, but they change their desires, +their ideal, their effort. This incoherent passionate plea +was an assurance that she was literally panting to be +respectable. But the poor woman, whatever she did, was +condemned, as he had said of old, in Paris, to Waterville, to be +only half right. The colour rose to her visitor’s +face as he listened to her outpouring of anxiety and egotism; she +hadn’t managed her early life very well, but there was no +need of her going down on her knees. “It’s very +painful to me to hear all this. You’re under no +obligation to say such things to me. You entirely +misconceive my attitude—my influence.”</p> +<p>“Oh yes, you shirk it—you only wish to shirk +it!” she cried, flinging away fiercely the sofa-cushion on +which she had been resting.</p> +<p><a name="page235"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +235</span>“Marry whom you damn please!” Littlemore +quite shouted, springing to his feet.</p> +<p>He had hardly spoken when the door was thrown open and the +servant announced Sir Arthur Demesne. This shy adventurer +entered with a certain briskness, but stopped short on seeing +Mrs. Headway engaged with another guest. Recognising +Littlemore, however, he gave a light exclamation which might have +passed for a greeting. Mrs. Headway, who had risen as he +came in, looked with wonderful eyes from one of the men to the +other; then, like a person who had a sudden inspiration, she +clasped her hands together and cried out: “I’m so +glad you’ve met. If I had arranged it it +couldn’t be better!”</p> +<p>“If you had arranged it?” said Sir Arthur, +crinkling a little his high white forehead, while the conviction +rose before Littlemore that she had indeed arranged it.</p> +<p>“I’m going to do something very +queer”—and her extravagant manner confirmed her +words.</p> +<p>“You’re excited, I’m afraid you’re +ill.” Sir Arthur stood there with his hat and his +stick; he was evidently much annoyed.</p> +<p>“It’s an excellent opportunity; you must forgive +me if I take advantage.” And she flashed a tender +touching ray at the Baronet. “I’ve wanted this +a long time—perhaps you’ve seen I wanted it. +Mr. Littlemore has known me from far back; he’s an old old +friend. I told you that in Paris, don’t you +remember? Well he’s my only one, and I want him to +speak for me.” Her eyes had turned now to Littlemore; +they rested upon him with a sweetness that only made the whole +proceeding more audacious. She had begun to smile again, +though she was visibly trembling. “He’s my only +one,” she continued; “it’s a great pity, you +ought to have known others. But I’m very much alone +and must make the best of <a name="page236"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 236</span>what I have. I want so much +that some one else than myself should speak for me. Women +usually can ask that service of a relative or of another +woman. I can’t; it’s a great pity, but +it’s not my fault, it’s my misfortune. None of +my people are here—I’m terribly alone in the +world. But Mr. Littlemore will tell you; he’ll say he +has known me for ever so long. He’ll tell you if he +knows any reason—if there’s anything against +me. He has been wanting the chance—he thought he +couldn’t begin himself. You see I treat you as an old +friend, dear Mr. Littlemore. I’ll leave you with Sir +Arthur. You’ll both excuse me.” The +expression of her face, turned towards Littlemore as she +delivered herself of this singular proposal, had the intentness +of a magician who wishes to work a spell. She darted at Sir +Arthur another pleading ray and then swept out of the room.</p> +<p>The two men remained in the extraordinary position she had +created for them; neither of them moved even to open the door for +her. She closed it behind her, and for a moment there was a +deep portentous silence. Sir Arthur Demesne, very pale, +stared hard at the carpet.</p> +<p>“I’m placed in an impossible situation,” +Littlemore said at last, “and I don’t imagine you +accept it any more than I do.” His fellow-visitor +kept the same attitude, neither looking up nor answering. +Littlemore felt a sudden gush of pity for him. Of course he +couldn’t accept the situation, but all the same he was +half-sick with anxiety to see how this nondescript American, who +was both so precious and so superfluous, so easy and so abysmal, +would consider Mrs. Headway’s challenge. “Have +you any question to ask me?” Littlemore went on. At +which Sir Arthur looked up. The other had seen the look +before; he had described it to Waterville after Mrs. +Headway’s admirer came to call on him in Paris. There +were <a name="page237"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +237</span>other things mingled with it now—shame, +annoyance, pride; but the great thing, the intense desire to +<i>know</i>, was paramount. “Good God, how can I tell +him?” seemed to hum in Littlemore’s ears.</p> +<p>Sir Arthur’s hesitation would have been of the briefest; +but his companion heard the tick of the clock while it +lasted. “Certainly I’ve no question to +ask,” the young man said in a voice of cool almost insolent +surprise.</p> +<p>“Good-day then, confound you.”</p> +<p>“The same to you!”</p> +<p>But Littlemore left him in possession. He expected to +find Mrs. Headway at the foot of the staircase; but he quitted +the house without interruption.</p> +<p>On the morrow, after luncheon, as he was leaving the vain +retreat at Queen Anne’s Gate, the postman handed him a +letter. Littlemore opened and read it on the steps, an +operation which took but a moment.</p> +<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Dear Mr. +Littlemore</span>—It will interest you to know that +I’m engaged to be married to Sir Arthur Demesne and that +our marriage is to take place as soon as their stupid old +Parliament rises. But it’s not to come out for some +days, and I’m sure I can trust meanwhile to your complete +discretion.</p> +<p style="text-align: right">Yours very sincerely,<br /> +<span class="smcap">Nancy H.</span></p> +<p><i>P.S.</i>—He made me a terrible scene for what I did +yesterday, but he came back in the evening and we fixed it all +right. That’s how the thing comes to be +settled. He won’t tell me what passed between +you—he requested me never to allude to the subject. I +don’t care—I was bound you should speak!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Littlemore thrust this epistle into his pocket and marched +away with it. He had come out on various errands, but he +forgot his business for the time and <a name="page238"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 238</span>before he knew it had walked into +Hyde Park. He left the carriages and riders to one side and +followed the Serpentine into Kensington Gardens, of which he made +the complete circuit. He felt annoyed, and more +disappointed than he understood—than he would have +understood if he had tried. Now that Nancy Beck had +succeeded her success was an irritation, and he was almost sorry +he hadn’t said to Sir Arthur: “Oh well, she was +pretty bad, you know.” However, now they were at one +they would perhaps leave him alone. He walked the +irritation off and before he went about his original purposes had +ceased to think of Mrs. Headway. He went home at six +o’clock, and the servant who admitted him informed him in +doing so that Mrs. Dolphin had requested he should be told on his +return that she wished to see him in the drawing-room. +“It’s another trap!” he said to himself +instinctively; but in spite of this reflexion he went +upstairs. On entering his sister’s presence he found +she had a visitor. This visitor, to all appearance on the +point of departing, was a tall elderly woman, and the two ladies +stood together in the middle of the room.</p> +<p>“I’m so glad you’ve come back,” said +Mrs. Dolphin without meeting her brother’s eye. +“I want so much to introduce you to Lady Demesne that I +hoped you’d come in. Must you really +go—won’t you stay a little?” she added, turning +to her companion; and without waiting for an answer went on +hastily: “I must leave you a moment—excuse me. +I’ll come back!” Before he knew it Littlemore +found himself alone with her ladyship and understood that since +he hadn’t been willing to go and see her she had taken upon +herself to make an advance. It had the queerest effect, all +the same, to see his sister playing the same tricks as Nancy +Beck!</p> +<p>“Ah, she must be in a fidget!” he said to himself +as he stood before Lady Demesne. She looked modest <a +name="page239"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 239</span>and aloof, +even timid, as far as a tall serene woman who carried her head +very well could look so; and she was such a different type from +Mrs. Headway that his present vision of Nancy’s triumph +gave her by contrast something of the dignity of the +vanquished. It made him feel as sorry for her as he had +felt for her son. She lost no time; she went straight to +the point. She evidently felt that in the situation in +which she had placed herself her only advantage could consist in +being simple and business-like.</p> +<p>“I’m so fortunate as to catch you. I wish so +much to ask you if you can give me any information about a person +you know and about whom I have been in correspondence with Mrs. +Dolphin. I mean Mrs. Headway.”</p> +<p>“Won’t you sit down?” asked Littlemore.</p> +<p>“No, thank you. I’ve only a +moment.”</p> +<p>“May I ask you why you make this inquiry?”</p> +<p>“Of course I must give you my reason. I’m +afraid my son will marry her.”</p> +<p>Littlemore was puzzled—then saw she wasn’t yet +aware of the fact imparted to him in Mrs. Headway’s +note. “You don’t like her?” he asked, +exaggerating, in spite of himself, the interrogative +inflexion.</p> +<p>“Not at all,” said Lady Demesne, smiling and +looking at him. Her smile was gentle, without rancour; he +thought it almost beautiful.</p> +<p>“What would you like me to say?” he asked.</p> +<p>“Whether you think her respectable.”</p> +<p>“What good will that do you? How can it possibly +affect the event?”</p> +<p>“It will do me no good, of course, if your +opinion’s favourable. But if you tell me it’s +not I shall be able to say to my son that the one person in +London who has known her more than six months thinks so and so of +her.”</p> +<p><a name="page240"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 240</span>This +speech, on Lady Demesne’s clear lips, evoked no protest +from her listener. He had suddenly become conscious of the +need to utter the simple truth with which he had answered Rupert +Waterville’s first question at the Théâtre +Français. He brought it out. “I +don’t think Mrs. Headway respectable.”</p> +<p>“I was sure you would say that.” She seemed +to pant a little.</p> +<p>“I can say nothing more—not a word. +That’s my opinion. I don’t think it will help +you.”</p> +<p>“I think it will. I wanted to have it from your +own lips. That makes all the difference,” said Lady +Demesne. “I’m exceedingly obliged to +you.” And she offered him her hand; after which he +accompanied her in silence to the door.</p> +<p>He felt no discomfort, no remorse, at what he had said; he +only felt relief—presumably because he believed it would +make no difference. It made a difference only in what was +at the bottom of all things—his own sense of fitness. +He only wished he had driven it home that Mrs. Headway would +probably be for her son a capital wife. But that at least +would make no difference. He requested his sister, who had +wondered greatly at the brevity of his interview with her friend, +to spare him all questions on the subject; and Mrs. Dolphin went +about for some days in the happy faith that there were to be no +dreadful Americans in English society compromising her native +land.</p> +<p>Her faith, however, was short-lived. Nothing had made +any difference; it was perhaps too late. The London world +heard in the first days of July, not that Sir Arthur Demesne was +to marry Mrs. Headway, but that the pair had been privately and, +it was to be hoped as regards Mrs. Headway on this occasion, +indissolubly united. His mother gave neither sign nor +sound; she only retired to the country.</p> +<p><a name="page241"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +241</span>“I think you might have done differently,” +said Mrs. Dolphin, very pale, to her brother. “But of +course everything will come out now.”</p> +<p>“Yes, and make her more the fashion than ever!” +Littlemore answered with cynical laughter. After his little +interview with the elder Lady Demesne he didn’t feel at +liberty to call again on the younger; and he never +learned—he never even wished to know—whether in the +pride of her success she forgave him.</p> +<p>Waterville—it was very strange—was positively +scandalised at this success. He held that Mrs. Headway +ought never to have been allowed to marry a confiding gentleman, +and he used in speaking to Littlemore the same words as Mrs. +Dolphin. He thought Littlemore might have done +differently. But he spoke with such vehemence that +Littlemore looked at him hard—hard enough to make him +blush. “Did you want to marry her yourself?” +his friend inquired. “My dear fellow, you’re in +love with her! That’s what’s the matter with +you.”</p> +<p>This, however, blushing still more, Waterville indignantly +denied. A little later he heard from New York that people +were beginning to ask who in the world Lady Demesne “had +been.”</p> +<h2><a name="page243"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 243</span>AN +INTERNATIONAL EPISODE</h2> +<h3><a name="page245"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +245</span>I</h3> +<p>Four years ago—in 1874—two young Englishmen had +occasion to go to the United States. They crossed the ocean +at midsummer and, arriving in New York on the first day of +August, were much struck with the high, the torrid +temperature. Disembarking upon the wharf they climbed into +one of the huge high-hung coaches that convey passengers to the +hotels, and with a great deal of bouncing and bumping they took +their course through Broadway. The midsummer aspect of New +York is doubtless not the most engaging, though nothing perhaps +could well more solicit an alarmed attention. Of quite +other sense and sound from those of any typical English street +was the endless rude channel, rich in incongruities, through +which our two travellers advanced—looking out on either +side at the rough animation of the sidewalks, at the +high-coloured heterogeneous architecture, at the huge white +marble façades that, bedizened with gilded lettering, +seemed to glare in the strong crude light, at the multifarious +awnings, banners and streamers, at the extraordinary number of +omnibuses, horse-cars and other democratic vehicles, at the +vendors of cooling fluids, the white trousers and big straw hats +of the policemen, the tripping gait of the modish young persons +on the pavement, the general brightness, newness, juvenility, +both of people and things. The young men had <a +name="page246"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 246</span>exchanged +few observations, but in crossing Union Square, in front of the +monument to Washington—in the very shadow indeed projected +by the image of the <i>pater patriae</i>—one of them +remarked to the other: “Awfully rum place.”</p> +<p>“Ah, very odd, very odd,” said the other, who was +the clever man of the two.</p> +<p>“Pity it’s so beastly hot,” resumed the +first speaker after a pause.</p> +<p>“You know we’re in a low latitude,” said the +clever man.</p> +<p>“I daresay,” remarked his friend.</p> +<p>“I wonder,” said the second speaker presently, +“if they can give one a bath.”</p> +<p>“I daresay not,” the other returned.</p> +<p>“Oh I say!” cried his comrade.</p> +<p>This animated discussion dropped on their arrival at the +hotel, recommended to them by an American gentleman whose +acquaintance they had made—with whom, indeed, they had +become very intimate—on the steamer and who had proposed to +accompany them to the inn and introduce them in a friendly way to +the proprietor. This plan, however, had been defeated by +their friend’s finding his “partner” in earnest +attendance on the wharf, with urgent claims on his immediate +presence of mind. But the two Englishmen, with nothing +beyond their national prestige and personal graces to recommend +them, were very well received at the hotel, which had an air of +capacious hospitality. They found a bath not unattainable +and were indeed struck with the facilities for prolonged and +reiterated immersion with which their apartment was +supplied. After bathing a good deal—more indeed than +they had ever done before on a single occasion—they made +their way to the dining-room of the hotel, which was a spacious +restaurant with a fountain in the middle, a great many <a +name="page247"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 247</span>tall plants +in ornamental tubs and an array of French waiters. The +first dinner on land, after a sea-voyage, is in any connexion a +delightful hour, and there was much that ministered to ease in +the general situation of our young men. They were formed +for good spirits and addicted and appointed to hilarity; they +were more observant than they appeared; they were, in an +inarticulate accidentally dissimulative fashion, capable of high +appreciation. This was perhaps especially the case with the +elder, who was also, as I have said, the man of talent. +They sat down at a little table which was a very different affair +from the great clattering see-saw in the saloon of the +steamer. The wide doors and windows of the restaurant stood +open, beneath large awnings, to a wide expanse studded with other +plants in tubs and rows of spreading trees—beyond which +appeared a large shady square without palings and with +marble-paved walks. And above the vivid verdure rose other +façades of white marble and of pale chocolate-coloured +stone, squaring themselves against the deep blue sky. Here, +outside, in the light and the shade and the heat, was a great +tinkling of the bells of innumerable street-cars and a constant +strolling and shuffling and rustling of many pedestrians, +extremely frequent among whom were young women in +Pompadour-looking dresses. The place within was cool and +vaguely lighted; with the plash of water, the odour of flowers +and the flitting of French waiters, as I have said, on soundless +carpets.</p> +<p>“It’s rather like Paris, you know,” said the +younger of our two travellers.</p> +<p>“It’s like Paris—only more so,” his +companion returned.</p> +<p>“I suppose it’s the French waiters,” said +the first speaker. “Why don’t they have French +waiters in London?”</p> +<p><a name="page248"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +248</span>“Ah, but fancy a French waiter at a London +club!” said his friend.</p> +<p>The elder man stared as if he couldn’t fancy it. +“In Paris I’m very apt to dine at a place where +there’s an English waiter. Don’t you know, +what’s-his-name’s, close to the thingumbob? +They always set an English waiter at me. I suppose they +think I can’t speak French.”</p> +<p>“No more you can!” And this candid critic +unfolded his napkin.</p> +<p>The other paid no heed whatever to his candour. “I +say,” the latter resumed in a moment, “I suppose we +must learn to speak American. I suppose we must take +lessons.”</p> +<p>“I can’t make them out, you know,” said the +clever man.</p> +<p>“What the deuce is <i>he</i> saying?” asked his +comrade, appealing from the French waiter.</p> +<p>“He’s recommending some soft-shell crabs,” +said the clever man.</p> +<p>And so, in a desultory view of the mysteries of the new world +bristling about them, the young Englishmen proceeded to +dine—going in largely, as the phrase is, for cooling +draughts and dishes, as to which their attendant submitted to +them a hundred alternatives. After dinner they went out and +slowly walked about the neighbouring streets. The early +dusk of waning summer was at hand, but the heat still very +great. The pavements were hot even to the stout boot-soles +of the British travellers, and the trees along the kerb-stone +emitted strange exotic odours. The young men wandered +through the adjoining square—that queer place without +palings and with marble walks arranged in black and white +lozenges. There were a great many benches crowded with +shabby-looking people, and the visitors remarked very justly that +it wasn’t much like Grosvenor Square. <a +name="page249"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 249</span>On one side +was an enormous hotel, lifting up into the hot darkness an +immense array of open and brightly-lighted windows. At the +base of this populous structure was an eternal jangle of +horse-cars, and all round it, in the upper dusk, a sinister hum +of mosquitoes. The ground-floor of the hotel, figuring a +huge transparent cage, flung a wide glare of gaslight into the +street, of which it formed a public adjunct, absorbing and +emitting the passers-by promiscuously. The young Englishmen +went in with every one else, from curiosity, and saw a couple of +hundred men sitting on divans along a great marble-paved +corridor, their legs variously stretched out, together with +several dozen more standing in a queue, as at the ticket-office +of a railway station, before a vast marble altar of sacrifice, a +thing shaped like the counter of a huge shop. These latter +persons, who carried portmanteaus in their hands, had a dejected +exhausted look; their garments were not fresh, as if telling of +some rush, or some fight, for life, and they seemed to render +mystic tribute to a magnificent young man with a waxed moustache +and a shirt front adorned with diamond buttons, who every now and +then dropped a cold glance over their multitudinous +patience. They were American citizens doing homage to an +hotel-clerk.</p> +<p>“I’m glad he didn’t tell us to go +there,” said one of our Englishmen, alluding to their +friend on the steamer, who had told them so many things. +They walked up the Fifth Avenue, where he had, for instance, told +them all the first families lived. But the first families +were out of town, and our friends had but the satisfaction of +seeing some of the second—or perhaps even the +third—taking the evening air on balconies and high flights +of doorsteps in streets at right angles to the main straight +channel. They went a little way down one of these +side-streets and there <a name="page250"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 250</span>saw young ladies in white +dresses—charming-looking persons—seated in graceful +attitudes on the chocolate-coloured steps. In one or two +places these young ladies were conversing across the street with +other young ladies seated in similar postures and costumes in +front of the opposite houses, and in the warm night air their +colloquial tones sounded strangely in the ears of the young +Englishmen. One of the latter, nevertheless—the +younger—betrayed a disposition to intercept some stray item +of this interchange and see what it would lead to; but his +companion observed pertinently enough that he had better be +careful. They mustn’t begin by making mistakes.</p> +<p>“But he told us, you know—he told us,” urged +the young man, alluding again to the friend on the steamer.</p> +<p>“Never mind what he told us!” answered his elder, +who, if he had more years and a more developed wit, was also +apparently more of a moralist.</p> +<p>By bedtime—in their impatience to taste of a terrestrial +couch again our seafarers went to bed early—it was still +insufferably hot, and the buzz of the mosquitoes at the open +windows might have passed for an audible crepitation of the +temperature. “We can’t stand this, you +know,” the young Englishmen said to each other; and they +tossed about all night more boisterously than they had been +tossed by Atlantic billows. On the morrow their first +thought was that they would re-embark that day for England, but +it then occurred to them they might find an asylum nearer at +hand. The cave of Æolus became their ideal of +comfort, and they wondered where the Americans went when wishing +to cool off. They hadn’t the least idea, and resolved +to apply for information to Mr. J. L. Westgate. This was +the name—inscribed in a bold hand on the back of a letter +<a name="page251"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +251</span>carefully preserved in the pocket-book of our younger +gentleman. Beneath the address, in the left-hand corner of +the envelope, were the words “Introducing Lord Lambeth and +Percy Beaumont Esq.” The letter had been given to the +two Englishmen by a good friend of theirs in London, who had been +in America two years previously and had singled out Mr. J. L. +Westgate from the many friends he had left there as the +consignee, as it were, of his compatriots. +“He’s really very decent,” the Englishman in +London had said, “and he has an awfully pretty wife. +He’s tremendously hospitable—he’ll do +everything in the world for you, and as he knows every one over +there it’s quite needless I should give you any other +introduction. He’ll make you see every +one—trust him for the right kick-off. He has a +tremendously pretty wife.” It was natural that in the +hour of tribulation Lord Lambeth and Mr. Percy Beaumont should +have bethought themselves of so possible a benefactor; all the +more so that he lived in the Fifth Avenue and that the Fifth +Avenue, as they had ascertained the night before, was contiguous +to their hotel. “Ten to one he’ll be out of +town,” said Percy Beaumont; “but we can at least find +out where he has gone and can at once give chase. He +can’t possibly have gone to a hotter place, you +know.”</p> +<p>“Oh there’s only one hotter place,” said +Lord Lambeth, “and I hope he hasn’t gone +there.”</p> +<p>They strolled along the shady side of the street to the number +indicated by the precious letter. The house presented an +imposing chocolate-coloured expanse, relieved by facings and +window-cornices of florid sculpture and by a couple of dusty +rose-trees which clambered over the balconies and the +portico. This last-mentioned feature was approached by a +monumental flight of steps.</p> +<p>“Rather better than a dirty London thing,” said <a +name="page252"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 252</span>Lord +Lambeth, looking down from this altitude after they had rung the +bell.</p> +<p>“It depends upon what London thing you mean,” +replied his companion. “You’ve a tremendous +chance to get wet between the house-door and your +carriage.”</p> +<p>“Well,” said Lord Lambeth, glancing at the blaze +of the sky, “I ‘guess’ it doesn’t rain so +much here!”</p> +<p>The door was opened by a long negro in a white jacket, who +grinned familiarly when Lord Lambeth asked for Mr. +Westgate. “He ain’t at home, sir; he’s +down town at his office.”</p> +<p>“Oh at his office?” said the visitors. +“And when will he be at home?”</p> +<p>“Well, when he goes out dis way in de mo’ning he +ain’t liable to come home all day.”</p> +<p>This was discouraging; but the address of Mr. Westgate’s +office was freely imparted by the intelligent black and was taken +down by Percy Beaumont in his pocket-book. The comrades +then returned, languidly enough, to their hotel and sent for a +hackney-coach; and in this commodious vehicle they rolled +comfortably down town. They measured the whole length of +Broadway again and found it a path of fire; and then, deflecting +to the left, were deposited by their conductor before a fresh +light ornamental structure, ten stories high, in a street crowded +with keen-faced light-limbed young men who were running about +very nimbly and stopping each other eagerly at corners and in +doorways. Passing under portals that were as the course of +a twofold torrent, they were introduced by one of the keen-faced +young men—he was a charming fellow in wonderful +cream-coloured garments and a hat with a blue ribbon, who had +evidently recognised them as aliens and helpless—to a very +snug hydraulic elevator, in which they took their place with many +other persons and which, <a name="page253"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 253</span>shooting upward in its vertical +socket, presently projected them into the seventh heaven, as it +were, of the edifice. Here, after brief delay, they found +themselves face to face with the friend of their friend in +London. His office was composed of several conjoined rooms, +and they waited very silently in one of these after they had sent +in their letter and their cards. The letter was not one it +would take Mr. Westgate very long to read, but he came out to +speak to them more instantly than they could have expected; he +had evidently jumped up from work. He was a tall lean +personage and was dressed all in fresh white linen; he had a thin +sharp familiar face, a face suggesting one of the ingenious +modern objects with alternative uses, good as a blade or as a +hammer, good for the deeps and for the shallows. His +forehead was high but expressive, his eyes sharp but amused, and +a large brown moustache, which concealed his mouth, made his +chin, beneath it, look small. Relaxed though he was at this +moment Lord Lambeth judged him on the spot tremendously +clever.</p> +<p>“How do you do, Lord Lambeth, how do you do, +sir?”—he held the open letter in his hand. +“I’m very glad to meet you—I hope you’re +very well. You had better come in here—I think +it’s cooler”; and he led the way into another room, +where there were law-books and papers and where windows opened +wide under striped awnings. Just opposite one of the +windows, on a line with his eyes, Lord Lambeth observed the +weather-vane of a church-steeple. The uproar of the street +sounded infinitely far below, and his lordship felt high indeed +in the air. “I say it’s cooler,” pursued +their host, “but everything’s relative. How do +you stand the heat?”</p> +<p>“I can’t say we like it,” said Lord Lambeth; +“but Beaumont likes it better than I.”</p> +<p>“Well, I guess it will break,” Mr. Westgate <a +name="page254"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 254</span>cheerfully +declared; “there’s never anything bad over here but +it does break. It was very hot when Captain Littledale was +here; he did nothing but drink sherry-cobblers. He +expresses some doubt in his letter whether I shall remember +him—as if I don’t remember once mixing six +sherry-cobblers for him in about fifteen minutes. I hope +you left him well. I’d be glad to mix him some +more.”</p> +<p>“Oh yes, he’s all right—and without +<i>them</i>,” said Lord Lambeth.</p> +<p>“I’m always very glad to see your +countrymen,” Mr. Westgate pursued. “I thought +it would be time some of you should be coming along. A +friend of mine was saying to me only a day or two ago, +‘It’s time for the water-melons and the +Englishmen.’”</p> +<p>“The Englishmen and the water-melons just now are about +the same thing,” Percy Beaumont observed with a wipe of his +dripping forehead.</p> +<p>“Ah well, we’ll put you on ice as we do the +melons. You must go down to Newport.”</p> +<p>“We’ll go anywhere!” said Lord Lambeth.</p> +<p>“Yes, you want to go to Newport; that’s what you +want to do.” Mr. Westgate was very positive. +“But let’s see—when did you get +here?”</p> +<p>“Only yesterday,” said Percy Beaumont.</p> +<p>“Ah yes, by the <i>Russia</i>. Where are you +staying?”</p> +<p>“At the Hanover, I think they call it.”</p> +<p>“Pretty comfortable?” inquired Mr. Westgate.</p> +<p>“It seems a capital place, but I can’t say we like +the gnats,” said Lord Lambeth.</p> +<p>Mr. Westgate stared and laughed. “Oh no, of course +you don’t like the gnats. We shall expect you to like +a good many things over here, but we shan’t insist on your +liking the gnats; though certainly you’ll admit that, as +gnats, they’re big things, eh? But you oughtn’t +to remain in the city.”</p> +<p><a name="page255"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +255</span>“So we think,” said Lord Lambeth. +“If you’d kindly suggest something—”</p> +<p>“Suggest something, my dear sir?”—and Mr. +Westgate looked him over with narrowed eyelids. “Open +your mouth and shut your eyes! Leave it to me and +I’ll fix you all right. It’s a matter of +national pride with me that all Englishmen should have a good +time, and as I’ve been through a good deal with them +I’ve learned to minister to their wants. I find they +generally want the true thing. So just please consider +yourselves my property; and if any one should try to appropriate +you please say, ‘Hands off—too late for the +market.’ But let’s see,” continued the +American with his face of toil, his voice of leisure and his +general intention, apparently, of everything; “let’s +see: are you going to make something of a stay, Lord +Lambeth?”</p> +<p>“Oh dear no,” said the young Englishman; “my +cousin was to make this little visit, so I just came with him, at +an hour’s notice, for the lark.”</p> +<p>“Is it your first time over here?”</p> +<p>“Oh dear yes.”</p> +<p>“I was obliged to come on some business,” Percy +Beaumont explained, “and I brought Lambeth along for +company.”</p> +<p>“And <i>you</i> have been here before, sir?”</p> +<p>“Never, never!”</p> +<p>“I thought from your referring to business—” +Mr. Westgate threw off.</p> +<p>“Oh you see I’m just acting for some English +shareholders by way of legal advice. Some of my +friends—well, if the truth must be told,” Mr. +Beaumont laughed—“have a grievance against one of +your confounded railways, and they’ve asked me to come and +judge, if possible, on the spot, what they can hope.”</p> +<p>Mr. Westgate’s amused eyes grew almost tender. +“What’s your railroad?” he asked.</p> +<p><a name="page256"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +256</span>“The Tennessee Central.”</p> +<p>The American tilted back his chair and poised it an +instant. “Well, I’m sorry you want to attack +one of our institutions. But I guess you had better enjoy +yourself <i>first</i>!”</p> +<p>“I’m certainly rather afraid I can’t work in +this weather,” the young emissary confessed.</p> +<p>“Leave that to the natives,” said Mr. +Westgate. “Leave the Tennessee Central to me, Mr. +Beaumont. I guess I can tell you more about it than most +any one. But I didn’t know you Englishmen ever did +any work—in the upper classes.”</p> +<p>“Oh we do a lot of work, don’t we, Lambeth?” +Percy Beaumont appealed.</p> +<p>“I must certainly be back early for <i>my</i> +engagements,” said his companion irrelevantly but +gently.</p> +<p>“For the shooting, eh? or is it the yachting or the +hunting or the fishing?” inquired his entertainer.</p> +<p>“Oh I must be in Scotland,”—and Lord Lambeth +just amiably blushed.</p> +<p>“Well, then,” Mr. Westgate returned, “you +had better amuse yourself first also. You must go right +down and see Mrs. Westgate.”</p> +<p>“We should be so happy—if you’d kindly tell +us the train,” said Percy Beaumont.</p> +<p>“You don’t take any train. You take a +boat.”</p> +<p>“Oh I see. And what is the name +of—a—the—a—town?”</p> +<p>“It’s a regular old city—don’t you let +them hear you call it a village or a hamlet or anything of that +kind. They’d half-kill you. Only it’s a +city of pleasure—of lawns and gardens and verandahs and +views and, above all, of good Samaritans,” Mr. Westgate +developed. “But you’ll see what Newport +is. It’s cool. That’s the principal +thing. You’ll greatly oblige me by going down there +and putting yourself in the hands of Mrs. Westgate. It +isn’t <a name="page257"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +257</span>perhaps for me to say it, but you couldn’t be in +better ones. Also in those of her sister, who’s +staying with her. She’s half-crazy about +Englishmen. She thinks there’s nothing like +them.”</p> +<p>“Mrs. Westgate or—a—her sister?” asked +Percy Beaumont modestly, yet in the tone of a collector of +characteristic facts.</p> +<p>“Oh I mean my wife,” said Mr. Westgate. +“I don’t suppose my sister-in-law knows much about +them yet. You’ll show her anyhow. She has +always led a very quiet life. She has lived in +Boston.”</p> +<p>Percy Beaumont listened with interest. “That, I +believe, is the most intellectual centre.”</p> +<p>“Well, yes—Boston knows it’s central and +feels it’s intellectual. I don’t go there +much—I stay round here,” Mr. Westgate more loosely +pursued.</p> +<p>“I say, you know, <i>we</i> ought to go there,” +Lord Lambeth broke out to his companion.</p> +<p>“Oh Lord Lambeth, wait till the great heat’s +over!” Mr. Westgate interposed. “Boston in this +weather would be very trying; it’s not the temperature for +intellectual exertion. At Boston, you know, you have to +pass an examination at the city limits, and when you come away +they give you a kind of degree.”</p> +<p>Lord Lambeth flushed himself, in his charming way, with +wonder, though his friend glanced to make sure he wasn’t +looking too credulous—they had heard so much about American +practices. He decided in time, at any rate, to take a safe +middle course. “I daresay it’s very +jolly.”</p> +<p>“I daresay it is,” Mr. Westgate returned. +“Only I must impress on you that at present—to-morrow +morning at an early hour—you’ll be expected at +Newport. We have a house there—many of our most +prominent citizens and society leaders go there for the +summer. I’m not sure that at this very moment my <a +name="page258"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 258</span>wife can +take you in—she has a lot of people staying with her. +I don’t know who they all are—only she may have no +room. But you can begin with the hotel and meanwhile you +can live at my house. In that way—simply sleeping at +the hotel—you’ll find it tolerable. For the +rest you must make yourself at home at my place. You +mustn’t be shy, you know; if you’re only here for a +month that will be a great waste of time. Mrs. Westgate +won’t neglect you, and you had better not undertake to +resist her. I know something about that. I guess +you’ll find some pretty girls on the premises. I +shall write to my wife by this afternoon’s mail, and +to-morrow she and Miss Alden will look out for you. Just +walk right in and get into touch. Your steamer leaves from +this part of the city, and I’ll send right out and get you +a cabin. Then at half-past four o’clock just call for +me here, and I’ll go with you and put you on board. +It’s a big boat; you might get lost. A few days +hence, at the end of the week, I don’t know but I’ll +come down myself and see how you are.”</p> +<p>The two young Englishmen inaugurated the policy of not +resisting Mrs. Westgate by submitting, with great docility and +thankfulness, to her husband. He was evidently a clear +thinker, and he made an impression on his visitors; his +hospitality seemed to recommend itself consciously—with a +friendly wink, as might be, hinting judicially that you +couldn’t make a better bargain. Lord Lambeth and his +cousin left their entertainer to his labours and returned to +their hotel, where they spent three or four hours in their +respective shower-baths. Percy Beaumont had suggested that +they ought to see something of the town, but “Oh damn the +town!” his noble kinsman had rejoined. They returned +to Mr. Westgate’s office in a carriage, with their luggage, +very punctually; but it must be reluctantly recorded that this +time <a name="page259"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 259</span>he +so kept them waiting that they felt themselves miss their +previous escape and were deterred only by an amiable modesty from +dispensing with his attendance and starting on a hasty scramble +to embark. But when at last he appeared and the carriage +plunged into the purlieus of Broadway they jolted and jostled to +such good purpose that they reached the huge white vessel while +the bell for departure was still ringing and the absorption of +passengers still active. It was indeed, as Mr. Westgate had +said, a big boat, and his leadership in the innumerable and +interminable corridors and cabins, with which he seemed perfectly +acquainted and of which any one and every one appeared to have +the <i>entrée</i>, was very grateful to the slightly +bewildered voyagers. He showed them their +state-room—a luxurious retreat embellished with gas-lamps, +mirrors <i>en pied</i> and florid furniture—and then, long +after they had been intimately convinced that the steamer was in +motion and launched upon the unknown stream they were about to +navigate, he bade them a sociable farewell.</p> +<p>“Well, good-bye, Lord Lambeth,” he said. +“Goodbye, Mr. Percy Beaumont. I hope you’ll +have a good time. Just let them do what they want with +you. Take it as it’s meant. Renounce your own +personality. I’ll come down by and by and enjoy +what’s left of you.”</p> +<h3><a name="page260"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +260</span>II</h3> +<p>The young Englishmen emerged from their cabin and amused +themselves with wandering about the immense labyrinthine ship, +which struck them as a monstrous floating hotel or even as a +semi-submerged kindergarten. It was densely crowded with +passengers, the larger number of whom appeared to be ladies and +very young children; and in the big saloons, ornamented in white +and gold, which followed each other in surprising succession, +beneath the swinging gas-lights and among the small side-passages +where the negro domestics of both sexes assembled with an air of +amused criticism, every one was moving to and fro and exchanging +loud and familiar observations. Eventually, at the instance +of a blackamoor more closely related to the scene than his +companions, our friends went and had “supper” in a +wonderful place arranged like a theatre, where, from a gilded +gallery upon which little boxes appeared to open, a large +orchestra played operatic selections and, below, people handed +about bills of fare in the manner of programmes. All this +was sufficiently curious; but the agreeable thing, later, was to +sit out on one of the great white decks in the warm breezy +darkness and, the vague starlight aiding, make out the line of +low mysterious coast. Our travellers tried American +cigars—those of Mr. Westgate—and conversed, as they +usually conversed, with many odd silences, lapses <a +name="page261"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 261</span>of logic +and incongruities of transition; like a pair who have grown old +together and learned to guess each other’s sense; or, more +especially, like persons so conscious of a common point of view +that missing links and broken lights and loose ends, the +unexpressed and the understood, could do the office of talk.</p> +<p>“We really seem to be going out to sea,” Percy +Beaumont observed. “Upon my honour we’re going +back to England. He has shipped us off again. I call +that ‘real mean.’”</p> +<p>“I daresay it’s all right,” said Lord +Lambeth. “I want to see those pretty girls at +Newport. You know he told us the place was an island, and +aren’t all islands in the sea?”</p> +<p>“Well,” resumed the elder traveller after a while, +“if his house is as good as his cigars I guess we shall +muddle through.”</p> +<p>“I fancy he’s awfully ‘prominent,’ you +know, and I rather liked him,” Lord Lambeth pursued as if +this appreciation of Mr. Westgate had but just glimmered on +him.</p> +<p>His comrade, however, engaged in another thought, didn’t +so much as appear to catch it. “I say, I guess we had +better remain at the inn. I don’t think I like the +way he spoke of his house. I rather object to turning in +with such a tremendous lot of women.”</p> +<p>“Oh I don’t mind,” said Lord Lambeth. +And then they smoked a while in silence. “Fancy his +thinking we do no work in England!” the young man +resumed.</p> +<p>But it didn’t rouse his friend, who only replied: +“I daresay he didn’t really a bit think +so.”</p> +<p>“Well, I guess they don’t know much about England +over here!” his lordship humorously sighed. After +which there was another long pause. “He <i>has</i> +got us out of a hole,” observed the young nobleman.</p> +<p><a name="page262"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 262</span>Percy +Beaumont genially assented. “Nobody certainly could +have been more civil.”</p> +<p>“Littledale said his wife was great fun,” Lord +Lambeth then contributed.</p> +<p>“Whose wife—Littledale’s?”</p> +<p>“Our benefactor’s. Mrs. Westgate. +What’s his name? J. L. It ‘kind of’ +sounds like a number. But I guess it’s a high +number,” he continued with freshened gaiety.</p> +<p>The same influences appeared, however, with Mr. Beaumont to +make rather for anxiety. “What was fun to +Littledale,” he said at last a little sententiously, +“may be death to us.”</p> +<p>“What do you mean by that?” his companion +asked. “I’m as good a man as +Littledale.”</p> +<p>“My dear boy, I hope you won’t begin to +flirt,” said the elder man.</p> +<p>His friend smoked acutely. “Well, I daresay I +shan’t <i>begin</i>.”</p> +<p>“With a married woman, if she’s bent upon it, +it’s all very well,” Mr. Beaumont allowed. +“But our friend mentioned a young lady—a sister, a +sister-in-law. For God’s sake keep free of +her.”</p> +<p>“How do you mean, ‘free’?”</p> +<p>“Depend upon it she’ll try to land you.”</p> +<p>“Oh rot!” said Lord Lambeth.</p> +<p>“American girls are very ‘cute,’” the +other urged.</p> +<p>“So much the better,” said the young man.</p> +<p>“I fancy they’re always up to some wily +game,” Mr. Beaumont developed.</p> +<p>“They can’t be worse than they are in +England,” said Lord Lambeth judicially.</p> +<p>“Ah, but in England you’ve got your natural +protectors. You’ve got your mother and +sisters.”</p> +<p>“My mother and sisters—!” the youth began +with a certain energy. But he stopped in time, puffing at +his cigar.</p> +<p><a name="page263"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +263</span>“Your mother spoke to me about it with tears in +her eyes,” said his monitor. “She said she felt +very nervous. I promised to keep you out of +mischief.”</p> +<p>“You had better take care of yourself!” cried Mr. +Beaumont’s charge.</p> +<p>“Ah,” the responsible party returned, “I +haven’t the expectation of—whatever it is you +expect. Not to mention other attractions.”</p> +<p>“Well,” said Lord Lambeth, “don’t cry +out before you’re hurt!”</p> +<p>It was certainly very much cooler at Newport, where the +travellers found themselves assigned to a couple of diminutive +bedrooms in a far-away angle of an immense hotel. They had +gone ashore in the early summer twilight and had very promptly +put themselves to bed; thanks to which circumstance and to their +having, during the previous hours, in their commodious cabin, +slept the sleep of youth and health, they began to feel, towards +eleven o’clock, very alert and inquisitive. They +looked out of their windows across a row of small green fields, +bordered with low stone dykes of rude construction, and saw a +deep blue ocean lying beneath a deep blue sky and flecked now and +then with scintillating patches of foam. A strong fresh +breeze came in through the curtainless apertures and prompted our +young men to observe generously that it didn’t seem half a +bad climate. They made other observations after they had +emerged from their rooms in pursuit of breakfast—a meal of +which they partook in a huge bare hall where a hundred negroes in +white jackets shuffled about on an uncarpeted floor; where the +flies were superabundant and the tables and dishes covered over +with a strange voluminous integument of coarse blue gauze; and +where several little boys and girls, who had risen late, were +seated in fastidious solitude at the morning repast. These +young persons had not the morning <a name="page264"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 264</span>paper before them, but were engaged +in languid perusal of the bill of fare.</p> +<p>This latter document was a great puzzle to our friends, who, +on reflecting that its bewildering categories took account of +breakfast alone, had the uneasy prevision of an encyclopedic +dinner-list. They found copious diversion at their inn, an +enormous wooden structure for the erection of which it struck +them the virgin forests of the West must have been quite laid +waste. It was perforated from end to end with immense bare +corridors, through which a strong draught freely blew, bearing +along wonderful figures of ladies in white morning-dresses and +clouds of Valenciennes lace, who floated down the endless vistas +on expanded furbelows very much as angels spread their +wings. In front was a gigantic verandah on which an army +might have encamped—a vast wooden terrace with a roof as +high as the nave of a cathedral. Here our young men +enjoyed, as they supposed, a glimpse of American society, which +was distributed over the measureless expanse in a variety of +sedentary attitudes and appeared to consist largely of pretty +young girls, dressed as for a <i>fête champêtre</i>, +swaying to and fro in rocking-chairs, fanning themselves with +large straw fans and enjoying an enviable exemption from social +cares. Lord Lambeth had a theory, which it might be +interesting to trace to its origin, that it would be not only +agreeable, but easily possible, to enter into relations with one +of these young ladies; and his companion found occasion to check +his social yearning.</p> +<p>“You had better take care—else you’ll have +an offended father or brother pulling out a +bowie-knife.”</p> +<p>“I assure you it’s all right,” Lord Lambeth +replied. “You know the Americans come to these big +hotels to make acquaintances.”</p> +<p>“I know nothing about it, and neither do you,” <a +name="page265"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 265</span>said his +comrade, who, like a clever man, had begun to see that the +observation of American society demanded a readjustment of their +standard.</p> +<p>“Hang it, then, let’s find out!” he cried +with some impatience. “You know I don’t want to +miss anything.”</p> +<p>“We <i>will</i> find out,” said Percy Beaumont +very reasonably. “We’ll go and see Mrs. +Westgate and make all the proper inquiries.”</p> +<p>And so the inquiring pair, who had this lady’s address +inscribed in her husband’s hand on a card, descended from +the verandah of the big hotel and took their way, according to +direction, along a large straight road, past a series of +fresh-looking villas, embosomed in shrubs and flowers and +enclosed in an ingenious variety of wooden palings. The +morning shone and fluttered, the villas stood up bravely in their +smartness, and the walk of the young travellers turned all to +confidence. Everything looked as if it had received a coat +of fresh paint the day before—the red roofs, the green +shutters, the clean bright browns and buffs of the +house-fronts. The flower-beds on the little lawns sparkled +in the radiant air and the gravel in the short carriage-sweeps +flashed and twinkled. Along the road came a hundred little +basket-phaetons in which, almost always, a couple of ladies were +sitting—ladies in white dresses and long white gloves, +holding the reins and looking at the two Englishmen, whose +nationality was not elusive, through fine blue veils, tied +tightly about their faces as if to guard their complexions. +At last the visitors came within sight of the sea again, and +then, having interrogated a gardener over the paling of a villa, +turned into an open gate. Here they found themselves face +to face with the ocean and with a many-pointed much-balconied +structure, resembling a magnified chalet, perched on a green +embankment <a name="page266"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +266</span>just above it. The house had a verandah of +extraordinary width all round, and a great many doors and windows +standing open to the verandah. These various apertures had, +together, such an accessible hospitable air, such a breezy +flutter, within, of light curtains, such expansive thresholds and +reassuring interiors, that our friends hardly knew which was the +regular entrance and, after hesitating a moment, presented +themselves at one of the windows. The room within was +indistinct, but in a moment a graceful figure vaguely shaped +itself in the rich-looking gloom—a lady came to meet +them. Then they saw she had been seated at a table writing, +and that, hearing them, she had got up. She stepped out +into the light; she wore a frank charming smile, with which she +held out her hand to Percy Beaumont.</p> +<p>“Oh you must be Lord Lambeth and Mr. Beaumont. +I’ve heard from my husband that you were coming. I +make you warmly welcome.” And she shook hands with +each of her guests. Her guests were a little shy, but they +made a gallant effort; they responded with smiles and +exclamations, they apologised for not knowing the front +door. The lady returned with vivacity that when she wanted +to see people very much she didn’t insist on those +distinctions, and that Mr. Westgate had written to her of his +English friends in terms that made her really anxious. +“He says you’re so terribly prostrated,” she +reported.</p> +<p>“Oh you mean by the heat?”—Percy Beaumont +rose to it. “We were rather knocked up, but we feel +wonderfully better. We had such a +jolly—a—voyage down here. It’s so very +good of you to mind.”</p> +<p>“Yes, it’s so very kind of you,” murmured +Lord Lambeth.</p> +<p>Mrs. Westgate stood smiling; Mrs. Westgate was pretty. +“Well, I did mind, and I thought of sending <a +name="page267"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 267</span>for you +this morning to the Ocean House. I’m very glad +you’re better, and I’m charmed you’re really +with us. You must come round to the other side of the +piazza.” And she led the way, with a light smooth +step, looking back at the young men and smiling.</p> +<p>The other side of the piazza was, as Lord Lambeth presently +remarked, a very jolly place. It was of the most liberal +proportions and, with its awnings, its fanciful chairs, its +cushions and rugs, its view of the ocean close at hand and +tumbling along the base of the low cliffs whose level tops +intervened in lawnlike smoothness, formed a charming complement +to the drawing-room. As such it was in course of employment +at the present hour; it was occupied by a social circle. +There were several ladies and two or three gentlemen, to whom +Mrs. Westgate proceeded to introduce the distinguished +strangers. She mentioned a great many names, very freely +and distinctly; the young Englishmen, shuffling about and bowing, +were rather bewildered. But at last they were provided with +chairs—low wicker chairs, gilded and tied with a great many +ribbons—and one of the ladies (a very young person with a +little snub nose and several dimples) offered Percy Beaumont a +fan. The fan was also adorned with pink love-knots, but the +more guarded of our couple declined it, though he was very +hot. Presently, however, everything turned to ease; the +breeze from the sea was delicious and the view charming; the +people sitting about looked fresh and fair. Several of the +younger ladies were clearly girls, and the gentlemen slim bright +youths such as our friends had seen the day before in New +York. The ladies were working on bands of tapestry, and one +of the young men had an open book in his lap. Percy +afterwards learned from a lady that this young man had been +reading aloud—that he was from Boston and was very fond of +reading aloud. <a name="page268"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 268</span>Percy pronounced it a great pity +they had interrupted him; he should like so much (from all he had +heard) to listen to a Bostonian read. Couldn’t the +young man be induced to go on?</p> +<p>“Oh no,” said this informant very freely; +“he wouldn’t be able to get the young ladies to +attend to him now.”</p> +<p>There was something very friendly, Beaumont saw, in the +attitude of the company; they looked at their new recruits with +an air of animated sympathy and interest; they smiled, brightly +and unanimously, at everything that dropped from either. +Lord Lambeth and his companion felt they were indeed made +cordially welcome. Mrs. Westgate seated herself between +them, and while she talked continuously to each they had occasion +to observe that she came up to their friend Littledale’s +promise. She was thirty years old, with the eyes and the +smile of a girl of seventeen, and was light and +graceful—elegant, exquisite. Mrs. Westgate was, +further, what she had occasion to describe some person, among her +many winged words, as being, all spontaneity. Frank and +demonstrative, she appeared always—while she looked at you +delightedly with her beautiful young eyes—to be making +sudden confessions and concessions, breaking out after momentary +wonders.</p> +<p>“We shall expect to see a great deal of you,” she +said to Lord Lambeth with her bland intensity. +“We’re very fond of Englishmen here; that is, there +are a great many we’ve been fond of. After a day or +two you must come and stay with us; we hope you’ll stay a +nice long while. Newport’s quite attractive when you +come really to know it, when you know plenty of people. Of +course you and Mr. Beaumont will have no difficulty about +that. Englishmen are very well received here; there are +almost always two or three of them about. I think they <a +name="page269"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 269</span>always like +it, and I must say I should think they would. They receive +particular attention—I must say I think they sometimes get +spoiled; but I’m sure you and Mr. Beaumont are proof +against that. My husband tells me you’re friends of +Captain Littledale’s; he was such a charming man. He +made himself so agreeable here that I wonder he didn’t +stay. That would have carried out his system. It +couldn’t have been pleasanter for him in his own +country. Though I suppose it’s very pleasant in +England too—for English people. I don’t know +myself; I’ve been there very little. I’ve been +a great deal abroad, but I always cling to the Continent. I +must say I’m extremely fond of Paris; you know we Americans +always are; we go there when we die. Did you ever hear that +before?—it was said by a great wit. I mean the good +Americans; but we’re all good—you’ll see that +for yourself. All I know of England is London, and all I +know of London is that place—on that little corner, you +know—where you buy jackets, jackets with that coarse braid +and those big buttons. They make very good jackets in +London, I’ll do you the justice to say that. And some +people like the hats. But about the hats I was always a +heretic; I always got my hats in Paris. You can’t +wear an English hat—at least, I never could—unless +you dress your hair à l’anglaise; and I must say +that’s a talent I never possessed. In Paris +they’ll make things to suit your peculiarities; but in +England I think you like much more to have—how shall I say +it?—one thing for everybody. I mean as regards +dress. I don’t know about other things; but +I’ve always supposed that in other things everything was +different. I mean according to the people—according +to the classes and all that. I’m afraid you’ll +think I don’t take a very favourable view; but you know you +can’t take a very favourable view in Dover Street and the +<a name="page270"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 270</span>month of +November. That has always been my fate. Do you know +Jones’s Hotel in Dover Street? That’s all I +know of England. Of course every one admits that the +English hotels are your weak point. There was always the +most frightful fog—I couldn’t see to try my things +on. When I got over to America—into the light—I +usually found they were twice too big. The next time I mean +to go at the right season; I guess I’ll go next year. +I want very much to take my sister; she has never been to +England. I don’t know whether you know what I mean by +saying that the Englishmen who come here sometimes get +spoiled. I mean they take things as a matter of +course—things that are done for them. Now naturally +anything’s a matter of course only when the Englishmen are +very nice. But you’ll say—oh yes you will, or +you would if some of you ever did say much!—they’re +almost always very nice. You can’t expect this to be +nearly such an interesting country as England; there are not +nearly so many things to see, and we haven’t your country +life. I’ve never seen anything of your country life; +when I’m in Europe I’m always on the Continent. +But I’ve heard a great deal about it; I know that when +you’re among yourselves in the country you have the most +beautiful time. Of course we’ve nothing of that sort, +we’ve nothing on that scale. I don’t apologise, +Lord Lambeth; some Americans are always apologising; you must +have noticed that. We’ve the reputation of always +boasting and ‘blowing’ and waving the American flag; +but I must say that what strikes me is that we’re +perpetually making excuses and trying to smooth things +over. The American flag has quite gone out of fashion; +it’s very carefully folded up, like a tablecloth the worse +for wear. Why should we apologise? The English never +apologise—do they? No, I must say I never +apologise. You must take us as we come—with <a +name="page271"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 271</span>all our +imperfections on our heads. Of course we haven’t your +country life and your old ruins and your great estates and your +leisure-class and all that—though I don’t really know +anything about them, because when I go over I always cling to the +Continent. But if we haven’t I should think you might +find it a pleasant change—I think any country’s +pleasant where they have pleasant manners. Captain +Littledale told me he had never seen such pleasant manners as at +Newport, and he had been a great deal in European society. +Hadn’t he been in the diplomatic service? He told me +the dream of his life was to get appointed to a diplomatic post +in Washington. But he doesn’t seem to have +succeeded. Perhaps that was only a part of his pleasant +manners. I suppose at any rate that in England +promotion—and all that sort of thing—is fearfully +slow. With us, you know, it’s a great deal too +quick. You see I admit our drawbacks. But I must +confess I think Newport an ideal place. I don’t know +anything like it anywhere. Captain Littledale told me he +didn’t know anything like it anywhere. It’s +entirely different from most watering-places; it’s a much +more refined life. I must say I think that when one goes to +a foreign country one ought to enjoy the differences. Of +course there are differences; otherwise what did one come abroad +for? Look for your pleasure in the differences, Lord +Lambeth; that’s the way to do it; and then I am sure +you’ll find American society—at least the Newport +phase quite unique. I wish very much Mr. Westgate were +here; but he’s dreadfully confined to New York. I +suppose you think that’s very strange—for a +gentleman. Only you see we haven’t any +leisure-class.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Westgate’s discourse was delivered with a mild +merciless monotony, a paucity of intonation, an impartial +flatness that suggested a flowery mead <a +name="page272"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +272</span>scrupulously “done over” by a steam roller +that had reduced its texture to that of a drawing-room +carpet. Lord Lambeth listened to her with, it must be +confessed, a rather ineffectual attention, though he summoned to +his aid such a show as he might of discriminating motions and +murmurs. He had no great faculty for apprehending +generalisations. There were some three or four indeed +which, in the play of his own intelligence, he had originated and +which had sometimes appeared to meet the case—any case; yet +he felt he had never known such a case as Mrs. Westgate or as her +presentation of her cases. But at the present time he could +hardly have been said to follow this exponent as she darted +fish-like through the sea of speculation. Fortunately she +asked for no special rejoinder, since she looked about at the +rest of the company as well and smiled at Mr. Beaumont on the +other side of her as if he too must understand her and agree with +her. He was measurably more successful than his companion; +for besides being, as we know, cleverer, his attention was not +vaguely distracted by close vicinity to a remarkably interesting +young person with dark hair and blue eyes. This was the +situation of Lord Lambeth, to whom it occurred after a while that +the young person with blue eyes and dark hair might be the pretty +sister of whom Mrs. Westgate had spoken. She presently +turned to him with a remark establishing her identity.</p> +<p>“It’s a great pity you couldn’t have brought +my brother-in-law with you. It’s a great shame he +should be in New York on such days as these.”</p> +<p>“Oh yes—it’s very stuffy,” said Lord +Lambeth.</p> +<p>“It must be dreadful there,” said the pretty +sister.</p> +<p>“I daresay he’s immensely taken up,” the +young man returned with a sense of conscientiously yearning +toward American realities.</p> +<p><a name="page273"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +273</span>“The gentlemen in America work too much,” +his friend went on.</p> +<p>“Oh do they? Well, I daresay they like it,” +he hopefully threw out.</p> +<p>“I don’t like it. One never sees +them.”</p> +<p>“Don’t you really?” asked Lord +Lambeth. “I shouldn’t have fancied +that.”</p> +<p>“Have you come to study American manners?” the +blue eyes and dark hair went on.</p> +<p>“Oh I don’t know. I just came over for the +joke of it. I haven’t got long.” Then +occurred a pause, after which he began again. “But he +will turn up here, won’t he?”</p> +<p>“I certainly hope he will. He must help to +entertain you and Mr. Beaumont.”</p> +<p>Lord Lambeth looked at her from handsome eyes that were +brown. “Do you suppose he’d have come down with +us if we had pressed it?”</p> +<p>The pretty girl treated this as rather an easy +conundrum. “I daresay he would,” she +smiled.</p> +<p>“Really!” said the young Englishman. +“Well, he was no end civil.”</p> +<p>His young woman seemed much amused; this at least was in her +eyes, which freely met Lord Lambeth’s. “He +would be. He’s a perfect husband. But all +Americans are that,” she confidently continued.</p> +<p>“Really!” Lord Lambeth exclaimed again; and +wondered whether all American ladies had such a passion for +generalising as these two.</p> +<h3><a name="page274"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +274</span>III</h3> +<p>He sat there a good while: there was a great deal of talk; it +was all pitched in a key of expression and emphasis rather new to +him. Every one present, the cool maidens not least, +personally addressed him, and seemed to make a particular point +of doing so by the friendly repetition of his name. Three +or four other persons came in, and there was a shifting of seats, +a changing of places; the gentlemen took, individually, an +interest in the visitors, putting somehow more imagination and +more “high comedy” into this effort than the latter +had ever seen displayed save in a play or a story. These +well-wishers feared the two Britons mightn’t be comfortable +at their hotel—it being, as one of them said, “not so +private as those dear little English inns of yours.” +This last gentleman added that as yet perhaps, alas, privacy +wasn’t quite so easily obtained in America as might be +desired; still, he continued, you could generally get it by +paying for it; in fact you could get everything in America +nowadays by paying for it. The life was really growing more +private; it was growing greatly to resemble European—which +wasn’t to be wondered at when two-thirds of the people +leading it were so awfully much at home in Europe. Europe, +in the course of this conversation, was indeed, as Lord Lambeth +afterwards remarked to his compatriot, rather bewilderingly +rubbed into them: did they <a name="page275"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 275</span>pretend to be European, and when had +they ever been entered under that head? Everything at +Newport, at all events, was described to them as thoroughly +private; they would probably find themselves, when all was said, +a good deal struck with that. It was also represented to +the strangers that it mattered very little whether their hotel +was agreeable, as every one would want them to “visit +round,” as somebody called it: they would stay with other +people and in any case would be constantly at Mrs. +Westgate’s. They would find that charming; it was the +pleasantest house in Newport. It was only a pity Mr. +Westgate was never there—he being a tremendously fine man, +one of the finest they had. He worked like a horse and left +his wife to play the social part. Well, she played it all +right, if that was all he wanted. He liked her to enjoy +herself, and she did know how. She was highly cultivated +and a splendid converser—the sort of converser people would +come miles to hear. But some preferred her sister, who was +in a different style altogether. Some even thought her +prettier, but decidedly Miss Alden wasn’t so smart. +She was more in the Boston style—the quiet Boston; she had +lived a great deal there and was very highly educated. +Boston girls, it was intimated, were more on the English +model.</p> +<p>Lord Lambeth had presently a chance to test the truth of this +last proposition; for, the company rising in compliance with a +suggestion from their hostess that they should walk down to the +rocks and look at the sea, the young Englishman again found +himself, as they strolled across the grass, in proximity to Mrs. +Westgate’s sister. Though Miss Alden was but a girl +of twenty she appeared conscious of the weight of +expectation—unless she quite wantonly took on duties she +might have let alone; and this was perhaps the more to be noticed +as she seemed by habit rather <a name="page276"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 276</span>grave and backward, perhaps even +proud, with little of the other’s free fraternising. +She might have been thought too deadly thin, not to say also too +deadly pale; but while she moved over the grass, her arms hanging +at her sides, and, seriously or absently, forgot expectations, +though again brightly to remember them and to look at the summer +sea, as if that was what she really cared for, her companion +judged her at least as pretty as Mrs. Westgate and reflected that +if this was the Boston style, “the quiet Boston,” it +would do very well. He could fancy her very clever, highly +educated and all the rest of it; but clearly also there were ways +in which she could spare a fellow—could ease him; she +wouldn’t keep him so long on the stretch at once. For +all her cleverness, moreover, he felt she had to think a little +what to say; she didn’t say the first thing that came into +her head: he had come from a different part of the world, from a +different society, and she was trying to adapt her +conversation. The others were scattered about the rocks; +Mrs. Westgate had charge of Percy Beaumont.</p> +<p>“Very jolly place for this sort of thing,” Lord +Lambeth said. “It must do beautifully to +sit.”</p> +<p>“It does indeed; there are cosy nooks and there are +breezy ones, which I often try—as if they had been made on +purpose.”</p> +<p>“Ah I suppose you’ve had a lot made,” he +fell in.</p> +<p>She seemed to wonder. “Oh no, we’ve had +nothing made. It’s all pure nature.”</p> +<p>“I should think you’d have a few little +benches—rustic seats and that sort of thing. It might +really be so jolly to ‘develop’ the place,” he +suggested.</p> +<p>It made her thoughtful—even a little rueful. +“I’m afraid we haven’t so many of those things +as you.”</p> +<p>“Ah well, if you go in for pure nature, as you were +saying, there’s nothing like that. Nature, over here, +<a name="page277"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 277</span>must be +awfully grand.” And Lord Lambeth looked about +him.</p> +<p>The little coast-line that contributed to the view melted +away, but it too much lacked presence and character—a fact +Miss Alden appeared to rise to a perception of. +“I’m afraid it seems to you very rough. +It’s not like the coast-scenery in Kingsley’s +novels.”</p> +<p>He wouldn’t let her, however, undervalue it. +“Ah, the novels always overdo everything, you know. +You mustn’t go by the novels.”</p> +<p>They wandered a little on the rocks; they stopped to look into +a narrow chasm where the rising tide made a curious bellowing +sound. It was loud enough to prevent their hearing each +other, and they stood for some moments in silence. The +girl’s eyes took in her companion, observing him +attentively but covertly, as those of women even in blinking +youth know how to do. Lord Lambeth repaid contemplation; +tall straight and strong, he was handsome as certain young +Englishmen, and certain young Englishmen almost alone, are +handsome; with a perfect finish of feature and a visible repose +of mind, an inaccessibility to questions, somehow stamped in by +the same strong die and pressure that nature, designing a +precious medal, had selected and applied. It was not that +he looked stupid; it was only, we assume, that his perceptions +didn’t show in his face for restless or his imagination for +irritable. He was not, as he would himself have said, +tremendously clever; but, though there was rather a constant +appeal for delay in his waiting, his perfectly patient eye, this +registered simplicity had its beauty as well and, whatever it +might have appeared to plead for, didn’t plead in the name +of indifference or inaction. This most searching of his new +friends thought him the handsomest young man she had ever seen; +and Bessie Alden’s <a name="page278"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 278</span>imagination, unlike that of her +companion, was irritable. He, however, had already made up +his mind, quite originally and without aid, that she had a grace +exceedingly her own.</p> +<p>“I daresay it’s very gay here—that +you’ve lots of balls and parties,” he said; since, +though not tremendously clever, he rather prided himself on +having with women a strict sufficiency of conversation.</p> +<p>“Oh yes, there’s a great deal going on. +There are not so many balls, but there are a good many other +pleasant things,” Bessie Alden explained. +“You’ll see for yourself; we live rather in the midst +of it.”</p> +<p>“It will be very kind of you to let us see. But I +thought you Americans were always dancing.”</p> +<p>“I suppose we dance a good deal, though I’ve never +seen much of it. We don’t do it much, at any rate in +summer. And I’m sure,” she said, “that we +haven’t as many balls as you in England.”</p> +<p>He wondered—these so many prompt assumptions about his +own country made him gape a little. “Ah, in England +it all depends, you know.”</p> +<p>“You’ll not think much of our gaieties,” she +said—though she seemed to settle it for him with a quaver +of interrogation. The interrogation sounded earnest indeed +and the decision arch; the mixture, at any rate, was +charming. “Those things with us are much less +splendid than in England.”</p> +<p>“I fancy you don’t really mean that,” her +companion laughed.</p> +<p>“I assure you I really mean everything I say,” she +returned. “Certainly from what I’ve read about +English society it is very different.”</p> +<p>“Ah well, you know,” said Lord Lambeth, who +appeared to cling to this general theory, “those things are +often described by fellows who know nothing about them. You +mustn’t mind what you read.”</p> +<p>“Ah, what a blasphemous speech—I <i>must</i> mind +<a name="page279"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 279</span>what I +read!” our young woman protested. “When I read +Thackeray and George Eliot how can I help minding?”</p> +<p>“Oh well, Thackeray and George Eliot”—and +her friend pleasantly bethought himself. “I’m +afraid I haven’t read much of them.”</p> +<p>“Don’t you suppose they knew about society?” +asked Bessie Alden.</p> +<p>“Oh I daresay they knew; they must have got up their +subject. Good writers do, don’t they? But those +fashionable novels are mostly awful rot, you know.”</p> +<p>His companion rested on him a moment her dark blue eyes; after +which she looked down into the chasm where the water was tumbling +about. “Do you mean Catherine Grace Gore, for +instance?” she then more aspiringly asked.</p> +<p>But at this he broke down—he coloured, laughed, gave +up. “I’m afraid I haven’t read that +either. I’m afraid you’ll think I’m not +very intellectual.”</p> +<p>“Reading Mrs. Gore is no proof of intellect. But I +like reading everything about English life—even poor +books. I’m so curious about it,” said Bessie +Alden.</p> +<p>“Aren’t ladies curious about everything?” he +asked with continued hilarity.</p> +<p>“I don’t think so. I don’t think +we’re enough so—that we care about many things. +So it’s all the more of a compliment,” she added, +“that I should want to know so much about +England.”</p> +<p>The logic here seemed a little close; but Lord Lambeth, +advised of a compliment, found his natural modesty close at +hand. “I’m sure you know a great deal more than +I do.”</p> +<p>“I really think I know a great deal—for a person +who has never been there.”</p> +<p>“Have you really never been there?” cried +he. “Fancy!”</p> +<p><a name="page280"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +280</span>“Never—except in imagination. And I +<i>have</i> been to Paris,” she admitted.</p> +<p>“Fancy,” he repeated with +gaiety—“fancy taking those brutes first! But +you <i>will</i> come soon?”</p> +<p>“It’s the dream of my life!” Bessie Alden +brightly professed.</p> +<p>“Your sister at any rate seems to know a tremendous lot +about us,” Lord Lambeth went on.</p> +<p>She appeared to take her view of this. “My sister +and I are two very different persons. She has been a great +deal in Europe. She has been in England a little—not +intimately. But she has met English people in other +countries, and she arrives very quickly at +conclusions.”</p> +<p>“Ah, I guess she does,” he laughed. +“But you must have known some too.”</p> +<p>“No—I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to +one before. You’re the first Englishman that—to +my knowledge—I’ve ever talked with.”</p> +<p>Bessie Alden made this statement with a certain +gravity—almost, as it seemed to the young man, an +impressiveness. The impressive always made him feel +awkward, and he now began to laugh and swing his stick. +“Ah, you’d have been sure to know!” And +then he added after an instant: “I’m sorry I’m +not a better specimen.”</p> +<p>The girl looked away, but taking it more gaily. +“You must remember you’re only a +beginning.” Then she retraced her steps, leading the +way back to the lawn, where they saw Mrs. Westgate come toward +them with Percy Beaumont still at her side. “Perhaps +I shall go to England next year,” Miss Alden continued; +“I want to immensely. My sister expects to cross +about then, and she has asked me to go with her. If I do I +shall make her stay as long as possible in London.”</p> +<p>“Ah, you must come early in July,” said Lord <a +name="page281"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +281</span>Lambeth. “That’s the time when +there’s most going on.”</p> +<p>“I don’t think I can wait even till early in +July,” his friend returned. “By the first of +May I shall be very impatient.” They had gone +further, and Mrs. Westgate and her companion were near. +“Kitty,” said the younger sister, “I’ve +given out that we go to London next May. So please to +conduct yourself accordingly.”</p> +<p>Percy Beaumont wore a somewhat animated—even a slightly +irritated—air. He was by no means of so handsome an +effect as his comrade, though in the latter’s absence he +might, with his manly stature and his fair dense beard, his fresh +clean skin and his quiet outlook, have pleased by a due +affirmation of the best British points. Just now +Beaumont’s clear eyes had a rather troubled light, which, +after glancing at Bessie Alden while she spoke, he turned with +some intensity on Lord Lambeth. Mrs. Westgate’s +beautiful radiance of interest and dissent fell meanwhile +impartially everywhere.</p> +<p>“You had better wait till the time comes,” she +said to her sister. “Perhaps next May you won’t +care so much for London. Mr. Beaumont and I,” she +went on, smiling at her companion, “have had a tremendous +discussion. We don’t agree about anything. +It’s perfectly delightful.”</p> +<p>“Oh I say, Percy!” exclaimed Lord Lambeth.</p> +<p>“I disagree,” said Beaumont, raising his eyebrows +and stroking down his back hair, “even to the point of +thinking it <i>not</i> delightful.”</p> +<p>“Ah, you <i>must</i> have been getting it!” cried +his friend.</p> +<p>“I don’t see anything delightful in my disagreeing +with Mrs. Westgate,” said Percy Beaumont.</p> +<p>“Well, I do!” Mrs. Westgate declared as she turned +again to her sister. “You know you’ve to go <a +name="page282"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 282</span>to +town. There must be something at the door for you. +You had better take Lord Lambeth.”</p> +<p>Mr. Beaumont, at this point, looked straight at his comrade, +trying to catch his eye. But Lord Lambeth wouldn’t +look at him; his own eyes were better occupied. “I +shall be very happy”—Bessie Alden rose straight to +their hostess’s suggestion. “I’m only +going to some shops. But I’ll drive you about and +show you the place.”</p> +<p>“An American woman who respects herself,” said +Mrs. Westgate, turning to the elder man with her bright +expository air, “must buy something every day of her +life. If she can’t do it herself she must send out +some member of her family for the purpose. So Bessie goes +forth to fulfil my mission.”</p> +<p>The girl had walked away with Lord Lambeth by her side, to +whom she was talking still; and Percy Beaumont watched them as +they passed toward the house. “She fulfils her own +mission,” he presently said; “that of being very +attractive.”</p> +<p>But even here Mrs. Westgate discriminated. “I +don’t know that I should precisely say attractive. +She’s not so much that as she’s charming when you +really know her. She’s very shy.”</p> +<p>“Oh indeed?” said Percy Beaumont with evident +wonder. And then as if to alternate with a certain grace +the note of scepticism: “I guess your shyness, in that +case, is different from ours.”</p> +<p>“Everything of ours is different from yours,” Mrs. +Westgate instantly returned. “But my poor +sister’s given over, I hold, to a fine Boston +<i>gaucherie</i> that has rubbed off on her by being there so +much. She’s a dear good girl, however; she’s a +charming type of girl. She is not in the least a flirt; +that isn’t at all her line; she doesn’t know the +alphabet of any such vulgarity. She’s very simple, +very serious, very <i>true</i>. She has lived, however, +rather too much in Boston <a name="page283"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 283</span>with another sister of mine, the +eldest of us, who married a Bostonian. Bessie’s very +cultivated, not at all like me—I’m not in the least +cultivated and am called so only by those who don’t know +what true culture is. But Bessie does; she has studied +Greek; she has read everything; she’s what they call in +Boston ‘thoughtful.’”</p> +<p>“Ah well, it only depends on what one thinks +<i>about</i>,” said Mr. Beaumont, who appeared to find her +zeal for distinctions catching.</p> +<p>“I really believe,” Mrs. Westgate pursued, +“that the most charming girl in the world is a Boston +superstructure on a New York <i>fond</i>, or perhaps a New York +superstructure on a Boston <i>fond</i>. At any rate +it’s the mixture,” she declared, continuing to supply +her guest with information and to do him the honours of the +American world with a zeal that left nothing to be desired.</p> +<p>Lord Lambeth got into a light low pony-cart with Bessie Alden, +and she drove him down the long Avenue, whose extent he had +measured on foot a couple of hours before, into the ancient town, +as it was called in that part of the world, of Newport. The +ancient town was a curious affair—a collection of +fresh-looking little wooden houses, painted white, scattered over +a hill-side and clustering about a long straight street paved +with huge old cobbles. There were plenty of shops, a large +allowance of which appeared those of fruit-vendors, with piles of +huge water-melons and pumpkins stacked in front of them; while, +drawn up before the shops or bumping about on the round stones, +were innumerable other like or different carts freighted with +ladies of high fashion who greeted each other from vehicle to +vehicle and conversed on the edge of the pavement in a manner +that struck Lord Lambeth as of the last effusiveness: with a +great many “Oh my dears” and little quick sounds and +<a name="page284"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +284</span>motions—obscure native words, shibboleths and +signs. His companion went into seventeen shops—he +amused himself with counting them—and accumulated at the +bottom of the trap a pile of bundles that hardly left the young +Englishman a place for his feet. As she had no other +attendant he sat in the phaeton to hold the pony; where, though +not a particularly acute observer, he saw much harmlessly to +divert him—especially the ladies just mentioned, who +wandered up and down with an aimless intentness, as if looking +for something to buy, and who, tripping in and out of their +vehicles, displayed remarkably pretty feet. It all seemed +to Lord Lambeth very odd and bright and gay. And he felt by +the time they got back to the villa that he had made a stride in +intimacy with Miss Alden.</p> +<p>The young Englishmen spent the whole of that day and the whole +of many successive days in the cultivation, right and left, far +and near, of this celerity of social progress. They agreed +that it was all extremely jolly—that they had never known +anything more agreeable. It is not proposed to report the +detail of their sojourn on this charming shore; though were it +convenient I might present a record of impressions none the less +soothing that they were not exhaustively analysed. Many of +them still linger in the minds of our travellers, attended by a +train of harmonious images—images of early breezy shining +hours on lawns and piazzas that overlooked the sea; of +innumerable pretty girls saying innumerable quaint and familiar +things; of infinite lounging and talking and laughing and +flirting and lunching and dining; of a confidence that broke +down, of a freedom that pulled up, nowhere; of an idyllic ease +that was somehow too ordered for a primitive social consciousness +and too innocent for a developed; of occasions on which they so +knew every one and everything that they almost <a +name="page285"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 285</span>ached with +reciprocity; of drives and rides in the late afternoon, over +gleaming beaches, on long sea-roads, beneath a sky lighted up by +marvellous sunsets; of tea-tables, on the return, informal, +irregular, agreeable; of evenings at open windows or on the +perpetual verandahs, in the summer starlight, above the warm +Atlantic and amid irrelevant outbursts of clever +minstrelsy. The young Englishmen were introduced to +everybody, entertained by everybody, intimate with everybody, and +it was all the book of life, of American life, at least; with the +chapter of “complications” bodily omitted. At +the end of three days they had removed their luggage from the +hotel and had gone to stay with Mrs. Westgate—a step as to +which Percy Beaumont at first took up an attitude of mistrust +apparently founded on some odd and just a little barbaric talk +forced on him, he would have been tempted to say, and very soon +after their advent, by Miss Alden. He had indeed been aware +of her occasional approach or appeal, since she wasn’t +literally always in conversation with Lord Lambeth. He had +meditated on Mrs. Westgate’s account of her sister and +discovered for himself that the young lady was +“sharp” (Percy’s critical categories remained +few and simple) and appeared to have read a great deal. She +seemed perfectly well-bred, though he couldn’t make out +that, as Mrs. Westgate funnily insisted, she was shy. If +she was shy she carried it off with an ease—!</p> +<p>“Mr. Beaumont,” she had said, “please tell +me something about Lord Lambeth’s family. How would +you say it in England?—his position.”</p> +<p>“His position?” Percy’s instinct was +to speak as if he had never heard of such a matter.</p> +<p>“His rank—or whatever you call it. +Unfortunately we haven’t got a ‘Peerage,’ like +the people in Thackeray.”</p> +<p><a name="page286"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +286</span>“That’s a great pity,” Percy +pleaded. “You’d find the whole matter in black +and white, and upon my honour I know very little about +it.”</p> +<p>The girl seemed to wonder at this innocence. “You +know at least whether he’s what they call a great +noble.”</p> +<p>“Oh yes, he’s in that line.”</p> +<p>“Is he a ‘peer of the realm’?”</p> +<p>“Well, as yet—very nearly.”</p> +<p>“And has he any other title than Lord +Lambeth?”</p> +<p>“His title’s the Marquis of Lambeth.” +With which the fountain of Bessie’s information appeared to +run a little dry. She looked at him, however, with such +interest that he presently added: “He’s the son of +the Duke of Bayswater.”</p> +<p>“The eldest—?”</p> +<p>“The only one.”</p> +<p>“And are his parents living?”</p> +<p>“Naturally—as to his father. If <i>he</i> +weren’t living Lambeth would be a duke.”</p> +<p>“So that when ‘the old lord’ +dies”—and the girl smiled with more simplicity than +might have been expected in one so +“sharp”—“he’ll become Duke of +Bayswater?”</p> +<p>“Of course,” said their common friend. +“But his father’s in excellent health.”</p> +<p>“And his mother?”</p> +<p>Percy seemed amused. “The Duchess is built to +last!”</p> +<p>“And has he any sisters?”</p> +<p>“Yes, there are two.”</p> +<p>“And what are they called?”</p> +<p>“One of them’s married. She’s the +Countess of Pimlico.”</p> +<p>“And the other?”</p> +<p>“The other’s unmarried—she’s plain +Lady Julia.”</p> +<p><a name="page287"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +287</span>Bessie entered into it all. “Is she very +plain?”</p> +<p>He began to laugh again. “You wouldn’t find +her so handsome as her brother,” he said; and it was after +this that he attempted to dissuade the heir of the Duke of +Bayswater from accepting Mrs. Westgate’s invitation. +“Depend upon it,” he said, “that girl means to +have a go at you.”</p> +<p>“It seems to me you’re doing your best to make a +fool of me,” the modest young nobleman answered.</p> +<p>“She has been asking me,” his friend imperturbably +pursued, “all about your people and your +possessions.”</p> +<p>“I’m sure it’s very good of her!” Lord +Lambeth returned.</p> +<p>“Well, then,” said Percy, “if you go +straight into it, if you hurl yourself bang upon the spears, you +do so with your eyes open.”</p> +<p>“Damn my eyes!” the young man pronounced. +“If one’s to be a dozen times a day at the house +it’s a great deal more convenient to sleep there. +I’m sick of travelling up and down this beastly +Avenue.”</p> +<p>Since he had determined to go Percy would of course have been +very sorry to allow him to go alone; he was a man of many +scruples—in the direction in which he had any at +all—and he remembered his promise to the Duchess. It +was obviously the memory of this promise that made Mr. Beaumont +say to his companion a couple of days later that he rather +wondered he should be so fond of such a girl.</p> +<p>“In the first place how do you know how fond I +am?” asked Lord Lambeth. “And in the second why +shouldn’t I be fond of her?”</p> +<p>“I shouldn’t think she’d be in your +line.”</p> +<p>“What do you call my ‘line’? You +don’t set her down, I suppose, as +‘fast’?”</p> +<p>“Exactly so. Mrs. Westgate tells me that +there’s no such thing as the fast girl in America; that +it’s <a name="page288"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +288</span>an English invention altogether and that the term has +no meaning here.”</p> +<p>“All the better. It’s an animal I +detest,” said Lord Lambeth.</p> +<p>“You prefer, then, rather a priggish American +<i>précieuse</i>?”</p> +<p>Lord Lambeth took his time. “Do you call Miss +Alden all that?”</p> +<p>“Her sister tells me,” said Percy Beaumont, +“that she’s tremendously literary.”</p> +<p>“Well, why shouldn’t she be? She’s +certainly very clever and has every appearance of a well-stored +mind.”</p> +<p>Percy for an instant watched his young friend, who had turned +away. “I should rather have supposed you’d find +her stores oppressive.”</p> +<p>The young man, after this, faced him again. “Why, +do you think me such a dunce?” And then as his friend +but vaguely protested: “The girl’s all right,” +he said—and quite as if this judgement covered all the +ground. It wasn’t that there was no ground—but +he knew what he was about.</p> +<p>Percy, for a while further, and a little uncomfortably flushed +with the sense of his false position—that of presenting +culture in a “mean” light, as they said at +Newport—Percy kept his peace; but on August 10th he wrote +to the Duchess of Bayswater. His conception of certain +special duties and decencies, as I have said, was strong, and +this step wholly fell in with it. His companion meanwhile +was having much talk with Miss Alden—on the red sea-rocks +beyond the lawn; in the course of long island rides, with a slow +return in the glowing twilight; on the deep verandah, late in the +evening. Lord Lambeth, who had stayed at many houses, had +never stayed at one in which it was possible for a young man to +converse so freely and frequently with a young lady. This +<a name="page289"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 289</span>young +lady no longer applied to their other guest for information +concerning his lordship. She addressed herself directly to +the young nobleman. She asked him a great many questions, +some of which did, according to Mr. Beaumont’s term, a +little oppress him; for he took no pleasure in talking about +himself.</p> +<p>“Lord Lambeth”—this had been one of +them—“are you an hereditary legislator?”</p> +<p>“Oh I say,” he returned, “don’t make +me call myself such names as that.”</p> +<p>“But you’re natural members of +Parliament.”</p> +<p>“I don’t like the sound of that either.”</p> +<p>“Doesn’t your father sit in the House of +Lords?” Bessie Alden went on.</p> +<p>“Very seldom,” said Lord Lambeth.</p> +<p>“Is it a very august position?” she asked.</p> +<p>“Oh dear no,” Lord Lambeth smiled.</p> +<p>“I should think it would be very grand”—she +serenely kept it up, as the female American, he judged, would +always keep anything up—“to possess simply by an +accident of birth the right to make laws for a great +nation.”</p> +<p>“Ah, but one doesn’t make laws. +There’s a lot of humbug about it.”</p> +<p>“I don’t believe that,” the girl +unconfusedly declared. “It must be a great privilege, +and I should think that if one thought of it in the right +way—from a high point of view—it would be very +inspiring.”</p> +<p>“The less one thinks of it the better, I guess!” +Lord Lambeth after a moment returned.</p> +<p>“I think it’s tremendous”—this at +least she kept up; and on another occasion she asked him if he +had any tenantry. Hereupon it was that, as I have said, he +felt a little the burden of her earnestness.</p> +<p>But he took it good-humouredly. “Do you want to +buy up their leases?”</p> +<p><a name="page290"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +290</span>“Well—have you got any +‘livings’?” she demanded as if the word were +rich and rare.</p> +<p>“Oh I say!” he cried. “Have <i>you</i> +got a pet clergyman looking out?” But she made him +plead guilty to his having, in prospect, a castle; he confessed +to but one. It was the place in which he had been born and +brought up, and, as he had an old-time liking for it, he was +beguiled into a few pleasant facts about it and into pronouncing +it really very jolly. Bessie listened with great interest, +declaring she would give the world to see such a place. To +which he charmingly made answer: “It would be awfully kind +of you to come and stay there, you know.” It was not +inconvenient to him meanwhile that Percy Beaumont hadn’t +happened to hear him make this genial remark.</p> +<p>Mr. Westgate, all this time, hadn’t, as they said at +Newport, “come on.” His wife more than once +announced that she expected him on the morrow; but on the morrow +she wandered about a little, with a telegram in her jewelled +fingers, pronouncing it too “fiendish” he should let +his business so dreadfully absorb him that he could but +platonically hope, as she expressed it, his two Englishmen were +having a good time. “I must say,” said Mrs. +Westgate, “that it’s no thanks to him if you +are!” And she went on to explain, while she kept up +that slow-paced circulation which enabled her well-adjusted +skirts to display themselves so advantageously, that +unfortunately in America there was no leisure-class and that the +universal passionate surrender of the men to business-questions +and business-questions only, as if they were the all in all of +life, was a tide that would have to be stemmed. It was Lord +Lambeth’s theory, freely propounded when the young men were +together, that Percy was having a very good time with Mrs. +Westgate and that under the pretext of meeting for the purpose of +animated discussion they were <a name="page291"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 291</span>indulging in practices that imparted +a shade of hypocrisy to the lady’s regret for her +husband’s absence.</p> +<p>“I assure you we’re always discussing and +differing,” Mr. Beaumont however asseverated. +“She’s awfully argumentative. American ladies +certainly don’t mind contradicting you flat. Upon my +word I don’t think I was ever treated so by a woman +before. We have ours ever so much more in hand. +She’s so devilish positive.”</p> +<p>The superlative degree so variously affirmed, however, was +evidently a source of attraction in Mrs. Westgate, for the elder +man was constantly at his hostess’s side. He detached +himself one day to the extent of going to New York to talk over +the Tennessee Central with her husband; but he was absent only +forty-eight hours, during which, with that gentleman’s +assistance, he completely settled this piece of business. +“They know how to put things—and put +people—‘through’ in New York,” he +subsequently and quite breathlessly observed to his comrade; and +he added that Mr. Westgate had seemed markedly to fear his wife +might suffer for loss of her guest—he had been in such an +awful hurry to send him back to her. “I’m +afraid you’ll never come up to an American husband—if +that’s what the wives expect,” he said to Lord +Lambeth.</p> +<p>Mrs. Westgate, however, was not to enjoy much longer the +entertainment with which an indulgent husband had desired to keep +her provided. August had still a part of its course to run +when his lordship received from his mother the disconcerting news +that his father had been taken ill and that he had best at once +come home. The young nobleman concealed his chagrin with no +great success. “I left the Duke but the other day +absolutely all right—so what the deuce does it mean?” +he asked of his comrade. “What’s a fellow to +do?”</p> +<p><a name="page292"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 292</span>Percy +Beaumont was scarce less annoyed; he had deemed it his duty, as +we know, to report faithfully to the Duchess, but had not +expected this distinguished woman to act so promptly on his +hint. “It means,” he said, “that your +father is somehow, and rather suddenly, laid up. I +don’t suppose it’s anything serious, but you’ve +no option. Take the first steamer, but take it without +alarm.”</p> +<p>This really struck Lord Lambeth as meaning that he essentially +needn’t take it, since alarm would have been his only good +motive; yet he nevertheless, after an hour of intenser irritation +than he could quite have explained to himself, made his +farewells; in the course of which he exchanged a few last words +with Bessie Alden that are the only ones making good their place +in our record. “Of course I needn’t assure you +that if you should come to England next year I expect to be the +very first person notified of it.”</p> +<p>She looked at him in that way she had which never quite struck +him as straight and clear, yet which always struck him as kind +and true. “Oh, if we come to London I should think +you’d sufficiently hear of it.”</p> +<p>Percy Beaumont felt it his duty also to embark, and this same +rigour compelled him, one windless afternoon, in mid-Atlantic, to +say to his friend that he suspected the Duchess’s telegram +to have been in part the result of something he himself had +written her. “I wrote her—as I distinctly +warned you I had promised in general to do—that you were +extremely interested in a little American girl.”</p> +<p>The young man, much upset by this avowal, indulged for some +moments in the strong and simple language of resentment. +But if I have described him as inclined to candour and to reason +I can give no better proof of it than the fact of his being ready +to face the truth by the end of half an hour. “You +were <a name="page293"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +293</span>quite right after all. I’m very much +interested in her. Only, to be fair,” he added, +“you should have told my mother also that she’s +not—at all seriously—interested in poor +me.”</p> +<p>Mr. Beaumont gave the rein to mirth and mockery. +“There’s nothing so charming as modesty in a young +man in the position of ‘poor’ you. That speech +settles for me the question of what’s the matter with +you.”</p> +<p>Lord Lambeth’s handsome eyes turned rueful and +queer. “Is anything so flagrantly the matter with +me?”</p> +<p>“Everything, my dear boy,” laughed his companion, +passing a hand into his arm for a walk.</p> +<p>“Well, <i>she</i> isn’t interested—she +isn’t!” the young man insisted.</p> +<p>“My poor friend,” said Percy Beaumont rather +gravely, “you’re very far gone!”</p> +<h3><a name="page294"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +294</span>IV</h3> +<p>In point of fact, as the latter would have said, Mrs. Westgate +disembarked by the next mid-May on the British coast. She +was accompanied by her sister, but unattended by any other member +of her family. To the lost comfort of a husband respectably +to produce, as she phrased it, she was now habituated; she had +made half a dozen journeys to Europe under this drawback of +looking ill-temperedly separated and yet of being thanklessly +enslaved, and she still decently accounted for her spurious +singleness to wondering friends on this side of the Atlantic by +formulating the grim truth—the only grimness indeed in all +her view—that in America there is no leisure-class. +The two ladies came up to London and alighted at Jones’s +Hotel, where Mrs. Westgate, who had made on former occasions the +most agreeable impression at this establishment, received an +obsequious greeting. Bessie Alden had felt much excited +about coming to England; she had expected the +“associations” would carry her away and counted on +the joy of treating her eyes and her imagination to all the +things she had read of in poets and historians. She was +very fond of the poets and historians, of the picturesque, of the +past, of associations, of relics and reverberations of greatness; +so that on coming into the great English world, where strangeness +and familiarity would go hand in hand, she was prepared for a +swarm of fresh emotions. They began very <a +name="page295"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +295</span>promptly—these tender fluttering sensations; they +began with the sight of the beautiful English landscape, whose +dark richness was quickened and brightened by the season; with +the carpeted fields and flowering hedge-rows, as she looked at +them from the window of the train; with the spires of the rural +churches peeping above the rook-haunted tree-tops; with the +oak-studded, deer-peopled parks, the ancient homes, the cloudy +light, the speech, the manners, all the significant +differences. Mrs. Westgate’s response was of course +less quick and less extravagant, and she gave but a wandering +attention to her sister’s ejaculations and rhapsodies.</p> +<p>“You know my enjoyment of England’s not so +intellectual as Bessie’s,” she said to several of her +friends in the course of her visit to this country. +“And yet if it’s not intellectual I can’t say +it’s in the least sensual. I don’t think I can +quite say what it is, my enjoyment of England.” When +once it was settled that the two ladies should come abroad and +should spend a few weeks in London and perhaps in other parts of +the celebrated island on their way to the Continent, they of +course exchanged a good many allusions to their English +acquaintance.</p> +<p>“It will certainly be much nicer having friends +there,” was a remark that had one day dropped from Bessie +while she sat on the sunny deck of the steamer, at her +sister’s feet, from under which spread conveniently a large +soft rug.</p> +<p>“Whom do you mean by friends?” Mrs. Westgate had +then invited the girl to say.</p> +<p>“All those English gentlemen you’ve known and +entertained. Captain Littledale, for instance. And +Lord Lambeth and Mr. Beaumont,” the girl further +mentioned.</p> +<p>“Do you expect them to give us a very grand +reception?”</p> +<p><a name="page296"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 296</span>She +reflected a moment; she was addicted, as we know, to fine +reflexion. “Well—to be nice.”</p> +<p>“My poor sweet child!” murmured her sister.</p> +<p>“What have I said that’s so silly?” Bessie +asked.</p> +<p>“You’re a little too simple; just a little. +It’s very becoming, but it pleases people at your +expense.”</p> +<p>“I’m certainly too simple to understand +you,” said our young lady.</p> +<p>Mrs. Westgate had an ominous pause. “Shall I tell +you a story?”</p> +<p>“If you’d be so good. That’s +what’s frequently done to amuse simple people.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Westgate consulted her memory while her companion sat at +gaze of the shining sea. “Did you ever hear of the +Duke of Green-Erin?”</p> +<p>“I think not,” said Bessie.</p> +<p>“Well, it’s no matter,” her sister went +on.</p> +<p>“It’s a proof of my simplicity.”</p> +<p>“My story’s meant to illustrate that of some other +people,” said Mrs. Westgate. “The Duke of +Green-Erin’s what they call in England a great swell, and +some five years ago he came to America. He spent most of +his time in New York, and in New York he spent his days and his +nights at the Butterworths’. You’ve heard at +least of the Butterworths. <i>Bien</i>. They did +everything in the world for him—the poor +Butterworths—they turned themselves inside out. They +gave him a dozen dinner-parties and balls, and were the means of +his being invited to fifty more. At first he used to come +into Mrs. Butterworth’s box at the opera in a tweed +travelling-suit, but some one stopped that. At any rate he +had a beautiful time and they parted the best friends in the +world. Two years elapse and the Butterworths come abroad +and go to London. The first thing they see in all the +papers—in England those things are in the most prominent +place—is that the Duke of Green-Erin has arrived in <a +name="page297"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 297</span>town for +the season. They wait a little, and then Mr. +Butterworth—as polite as ever—goes and leaves a +card. They wait a little more; the visit’s not +returned; they wait three weeks: <i>silence de mort</i>, the Duke +gives no sign. The Butterworths see a lot of other people, +put down the Duke of Green-Erin as a rude ungrateful man and +forget all about him. One fine day they go to Ascot +Races—where they meet him face to face. He stares a +moment and then comes up to Mr. Butterworth, taking something +from his pocket-book—something which proves to be a +banknote. ‘I’m glad to see you, Mr. +Butterworth,’ he says, ‘so that I can pay you that +ten pounds I lost to you in New York. I saw the other day +you remembered our bet; here are the ten pounds, Mr. +Butterworth. Good-bye, Mr. Butterworth.’ And +off he goes, and that’s the last they see of the Duke of +Green-Erin.”</p> +<p>“Is that your story?” asked Bessie Alden.</p> +<p>“Don’t tell me you don’t think it +interesting!” her sister replied.</p> +<p>“I don’t think I believe it,” said the +girl.</p> +<p>“Ah, then,” cried Mrs. Westgate, +“mademoiselle isn’t of such an unspotted +<i>candeur</i>! Believe it or not as you like. +There’s at any rate no smoke without fire.”</p> +<p>“Is that the way,” asked Bessie after a moment, +“that you expect your friends to treat you?”</p> +<p>“I defy them to treat me very ill, for the simple reason +that I shall never give them the opportunity. With the best +will in the world, in that case, they can’t be very +disobliging.”</p> +<p>Our young lady for a time said nothing. “I +don’t see what makes you talk that way,” she then +resumed. “The English are a great people.”</p> +<p>“Exactly; and that’s just the way they’ve +grown great—by dropping you when you’ve ceased to be +<a name="page298"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +298</span>useful. People say they aren’t clever, but +I find them prodigiously clever.”</p> +<p>“You know you’ve liked them—all the +Englishmen you’ve seen,” Bessie brought up.</p> +<p>“They’ve liked <i>me</i>,” her sister +returned; “so I think I’d rather put it. And of +course one likes that.”</p> +<p>Bessie pursued for some moments her studies in +sea-green. “Well,” she said, “whether +they like me or not, I mean to like them. And +happily,” she wound up, “Lord Lambeth doesn’t +owe me ten pounds.”</p> +<p>During the first few days after their arrival at Jones’s +Hotel our charming Americans were much occupied with what they +would have called looking about them. They found occasion +to make numerous purchases, and their opportunities for inquiry +and comment were only those supplied by the deferential London +shopmen. Bessie Alden, even in driving from the station, +felt to intensity the many-voiced appeal of the capital of the +race from which she had sprung, and, at the risk of exhibiting +her as a person of vulgar tastes, it must be recorded that for +many days she desired no higher pleasure than to roll about the +crowded streets in the public conveyances. They presented +to her attentive eyes strange pictures and figures, and +it’s at least beneath the dignity of our historic muse to +enumerate the trivial objects and incidents in which the +imagination of this simple young lady from Boston lost +itself. It may be freely mentioned, however, that whenever, +after a round of visits in Bond Street and Regent Street, she was +about to return with her sister to Jones’s Hotel, she +desired they should, at whatever cost to convenience, be driven +home by way of Westminster Abbey. She had begun by asking +if it wouldn’t be possible to take the Tower <i>en +route</i> to their lodgings; but it happened that at a more +primitive stage of her culture Mrs. Westgate <a +name="page299"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 299</span>had paid a +visit to this venerable relic, which she spoke of ever +afterwards, vaguely, as a dreadful disappointment. She thus +expressed the liveliest disapproval of any attempt to combine +historical researches with the purchase of hair-brushes and +notepaper. The most she would consent to do in the line of +backward brooding was to spend half an hour at Madame +Tussaud’s, where she saw several dusty wax effigies of +members of the Royal Family. It was made clear to Bessie +that if she wished to go to the Tower she must get some one else +to take her. Bessie expressed hereupon an earnest +disposition to go alone; but in respect to this proposal as well +Mrs. Westgate had the cold sense of complications.</p> +<p>“Remember,” she said, “that you’re not +in your innocent little Boston. It’s not a question +of walking up and down Beacon Street.” With which she +went on to explain that there were two classes of American girls +in Europe—those who walked about alone and those who +didn’t. “You happen to belong, my dear,” +she said to her sister, “to the class that +doesn’t.”</p> +<p>“It’s only,” laughed Bessie, though all +yearningly, “because you happen quite arbitrarily to place +me.” And she devoted much private meditation to this +question of effecting a visit to the Tower of London.</p> +<p>Suddenly it seemed as if the problem might be solved; the two +ladies at Jones’s Hotel received a visit from Willie +Woodley. So was familiarly designated a young American who +had sailed from New York a few days after their own departure and +who, enjoying some freedom of acquaintance with them in that +city, had lost no time, on his arrival in London, in coming to +pay them his respects. He had in fact gone to see them +directly after going to see his tailor; than which there can be +no greater exhibition of promptitude on the part of a young +American just <a name="page300"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +300</span>installed at the Charing Cross Hotel. He was a +slight, mild youth, without high colour but with many elegant +forms, famous for the authority with which he led the +“German” in New York. He was indeed, by the +young ladies who habitually figured in such evolutions, reckoned +“the best dancer in the world”; it was in those terms +he was always spoken of and his pleasant identity +indicated. He was the most convenient gentle young man, for +almost any casual light purpose, it was possible to meet; he was +beautifully dressed—“in the English +style”—and knew an immense deal about London. +He had been at Newport during the previous summer, at the time of +our young Englishmen’s visit, and he took extreme pleasure +in the society of Bessie Alden, whom he never addressed but as +“Miss Bessie.” She immediately arranged with +him, in the presence of her sister, that he should guide her to +the scene of Lady Jane Grey’s execution.</p> +<p>“You may do as you please,” said Mrs. +Westgate. “Only—if you desire the +information—it is not the custom here for young ladies to +knock about London with wild young men.”</p> +<p>“Miss Bessie has waltzed with me so often—not to +call it so wildly,” the young man returned, “that she +can surely go out with me in a jog-trot cab.”</p> +<p>“I consider public waltzing,” said Mrs. Westgate, +“the most innocent, because the most guarded and regulated, +pleasure of our time.”</p> +<p>“It’s a jolly compliment to our time!” Mr. +Woodley cried with a laugh of the most candid significance.</p> +<p>“I don’t see why I should regard what’s done +here,” Bessie pursued. “Why should I suffer the +restrictions of a society of which I enjoy none of the +privileges?”</p> +<p>“That’s very good—very good,” her +friend applauded.</p> +<p>“Oh, go to the Tower and feel the axe if you +like!” <a name="page301"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +301</span>said Mrs. Westgate. “I consent to your +going with Mr. Woodley; but I wouldn’t let you go with an +Englishman.”</p> +<p>“Miss Bessie wouldn’t care to go with an +Englishman!” Mr. Woodley declared with an asperity +doubtless not unnatural in a young man who, dressing in a manner +that I have indicated and knowing a great deal, as I have said, +about London, saw no reason for drawing these sharp +distinctions. He agreed upon a day with Miss Bessie—a +day of that same week; while an ingenious mind might perhaps have +traced a connexion between the girl’s reference to her lack +of social privilege or festal initiation and a question she asked +on the morrow as she sat with her sister at luncheon.</p> +<p>“Don’t you mean to write to—to any +one?”</p> +<p>“I wrote this morning to Captain Littledale,” Mrs. +Westgate replied.</p> +<p>“But Mr. Woodley believes Captain Littledale away in +India.”</p> +<p>“He said he thought he had heard so; he knows nothing +about it.”</p> +<p>For a moment Bessie said nothing more; then at last, +“And don’t you intend to write to—to Mr. +Beaumont?” she inquired.</p> +<p>Her sister waited with a look at her. “You mean to +Lord Lambeth.”</p> +<p>“I said Mr. Beaumont because he was—at +Newport—so good a friend of yours.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Westgate prolonged the attitude of sisterly truth. +“I don’t really care two straws for Mr. +Beaumont.”</p> +<p>“You were certainly very nice to him.”</p> +<p>“I’m very nice to every one,” said Mrs. +Westgate simply.</p> +<p>Nothing indeed could have been simpler save perhaps the way +Bessie smiled back: “To every one but me.”</p> +<p><a name="page302"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 302</span>Her +sister continued to look at her. “Are you in love +with Lord Lambeth?”</p> +<p>Our young woman stared a moment, and the question was too +unattended with any train even to make her shy. “Not +that I know of.”</p> +<p>“Because if you are,” Mrs. Westgate went on, +“I shall certainly not send for him.”</p> +<p>“That proves what I said,” Bessie gaily +insisted—“that you’re not really nice to +me.”</p> +<p>“It would be a poor service, my dear child,” said +her sister.</p> +<p>“In what sense? There’s nothing +<i>against</i> Lord Lambeth that I know of.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Westgate seemed to cover much country in a few +moments. “You <i>are</i> in love with him +then?”</p> +<p>Bessie stared again, but this time blushing a little. +“Ah, if you’ll not be serious we won’t mention +him again.”</p> +<p>For some minutes accordingly Lord Lambeth was shrouded in +silence, and it was Mrs. Westgate who, at the end of this period, +removed the ban. “Of course I shall let him know +we’re here. I think he’d be hurt—justly +enough—if we should go away without seeing him. +It’s fair to give him a chance to come and thank me for the +kindness we showed him. But I don’t want to seem +eager.”</p> +<p>“Neither do I,” said Bessie very simply.</p> +<p>“Though I confess,” her companion added, +“that I’m curious to see how he’ll +behave.”</p> +<p>“He behaved very well at Newport.”</p> +<p>“Newport isn’t London. At Newport he could +do as he liked; but here it’s another affair. He has +to have an eye to consequences.”</p> +<p>“If he had more freedom then at Newport,” argued +Bessie, “it’s the more to his credit that he behaved +well; and if he has to be so careful here it’s possible +he’ll behave even better.”</p> +<p><a name="page303"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +303</span>“Better, better?” echoed her sister a +little impatiently. “My dear child, what do you mean +by better and what’s your point of view?”</p> +<p>Bessie wondered. “What do <i>you</i> mean by my +point of view?”</p> +<p>“Don’t you care for Lord Lambeth—a tiny +speck?” Mrs. Westgate demanded.</p> +<p>This time Bessie Alden took it with still deeper +reserve. She slowly got up from table, turning her face +away. “You’ll oblige me by not talking +so.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Westgate sat watching her for some moments as she moved +slowly about the room and went and stood at the window. +“I’ll write to him this afternoon,” she said at +last.</p> +<p>“Do as you please!” Bessie answered; after which +she turned round. “I’m not afraid to say I like +Lord Lambeth. I like him very much.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Westgate bethought herself. “He’s not +clever.”</p> +<p>“Well, there have been clever people whom I’ve +disliked,” the girl said; “so I suppose I may like a +stupid one. Besides, Lord Lambeth’s no stupider than +any one else.”</p> +<p>“No stupider than he gives you warning of,” her +sister smiled.</p> +<p>“If I were in love with him as you said just now,” +Bessie returned, “it would be bad policy on your part to +abuse him.”</p> +<p>“My dear child, don’t give me lessons in +policy!” cried Mrs. Westgate. “The policy I +mean to follow is very deep.”</p> +<p>The girl began once more to walk about; then she stopped +before her companion. “I’ve never heard in the +course of five minutes so many hints and innuendoes. I wish +you’d tell me in plain English what you mean.”</p> +<p>“I mean you may be much annoyed.”</p> +<p><a name="page304"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +304</span>“That’s still only a hint,” said +Bessie.</p> +<p>Her sister just hesitated. “It will be said of you +that you’ve come after him—that you followed +him.”</p> +<p>Bessie threw back her pretty head much as a startled hind, and +a look flashed into her face that made Mrs. Westgate get +up. “Who says such things as that?”</p> +<p>“People here.”</p> +<p>“I don’t believe it.”</p> +<p>“You’ve a very convenient faculty of doubt. +But my policy will be, as I say, very deep. I shall leave +you to find out as many things as possible for +yourself.”</p> +<p>Bessie fixed her eyes on her sister, and Mrs. Westgate could +have believed there were tears in them. “Do they talk +that way here?”</p> +<p>“You’ll see. I shall let you +alone.”</p> +<p>“Don’t let me alone,” said Bessie +Alden. “Take me away.”</p> +<p>“No; I want to see what you make of it,” her +sister continued.</p> +<p>“I don’t understand.”</p> +<p>“You’ll understand after Lord Lambeth has +come,” said Mrs. Westgate with a persistence of private +amusement.</p> +<p>The two ladies had arranged that on this afternoon Willie +Woodley should go with them to Hyde Park, where Bessie expected +it would prove a rich passage to have sat on a little green chair +under the great trees and beside Rotten Row. The want of a +suitable escort had hitherto hampered this adventure; but no +escort, now, for such an expedition, could have been more +suitable than their devoted young countryman, whose mission in +life, it might almost be said, was to find chairs for ladies and +who appeared on the stroke of half-past five adorned with every +superficial grace that could qualify him for the scene.</p> +<p><a name="page305"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +305</span>“I’ve written to Lord Lambeth, my +dear,” Mrs. Westgate mentioned on coming into the room +where Bessie, drawing on long grey gloves, had given their +visitor the impression that she was particularly attuned. +Bessie said nothing, but Willie Woodley exclaimed that his +lordship was in town; he had seen his name in the <i>Morning +Post</i>. “Do you read the <i>Morning +Post</i>?” Mrs. Westgate thereupon asked.</p> +<p>“Oh yes; it’s great fun.” Mr. Woodley +almost spoke as if the pleasure were attended with physical +risk.</p> +<p>“I want so to see it,” said Bessie, +“there’s so much about it in Thackeray.”</p> +<p>“I’ll send it to you every morning!” cried +the young man with elation.</p> +<p>He found them what Bessie thought excellent places under the +great trees and beside the famous avenue the humours of which had +been made familiar to the girl’s childhood by the pictures +in <i>Punch</i>. The day was bright and warm and the crowd +of riders and spectators, as well as the great procession of +carriages, proportionately dense and many-coloured. The +scene bore the stamp of the London social pressure at its +highest, and it made our young woman think of more things than +she could easily express to her companions. She sat silent, +under her parasol, while her imagination, according to its wont, +kept pace with the deep strong tide of the exhibition. Old +impressions and preconceptions became living things before the +show, and she found herself, amid the crowd of images, fitting a +history to this person and a theory to that, and making a place +for them all in her small private museum of types. But if +she said little her sister on one side and Willie Woodley on the +other delivered themselves in lively alternation.</p> +<p>“Look at that green dress with blue flounces. +Quelle toilette!” said Mrs. Westgate.</p> +<p><a name="page306"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +306</span>“That’s the Marquis of Blackborough,” +the young man was able to contribute—“the one in the +queer white coat. I heard him speak the other night in the +House of Lords; it was something about ramrods; he called them +<i>wamwods</i>. He’s an awful swell.”</p> +<p>“Did you ever see anything like the way they’re +pinned back?” Mrs. Westgate resumed. “They +never know where to stop.”</p> +<p>“They do nothing but stop,” said Willie +Woodley. “It prevents them from walking. Here +comes a great celebrity—Lady Beatrice Bellevue. +She’s awfully fast; see what little steps she +takes.”</p> +<p>“Well, my dear,” Mrs. Westgate pursued to Bessie, +“I hope you’re getting some ideas for your +couturière?”</p> +<p>“I’m getting plenty of ideas,” said Bessie, +“but I don’t know that my couturière would +particularly appreciate them.”</p> +<p>Their companion presently perceived a mounted friend who drew +up beside the barrier of the Row and beckoned to him. He +went forward and the crowd of pedestrians closed about him, so +that for some minutes he was hidden from sight. At last he +reappeared, bringing a gentleman with him—a gentleman whom +Bessie at first supposed to be his friend dismounted. But +at a second glance she found herself looking at Lord Lambeth, who +was shaking hands with her sister.</p> +<p>“I found him over there,” said Willie Woodley, +“and I told him you were here.”</p> +<p>And then Lord Lambeth, raising his hat afresh, shook hands +with Bessie—“Fancy your being here!” He +was blushing and smiling; he looked very handsome and he had a +note of splendour he had not had in America. The +girl’s free fancy, as we know, was just then in marked +exercise; so that the tall young Englishman, as he stood there +looking down at her, <a name="page307"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 307</span>had the benefit of it. +“He’s handsomer and more splendid than anything +I’ve ever seen,” she said to herself. And then +she remembered he was a Marquis and she thought he somehow looked +a Marquis.</p> +<p>“Really, you know,” he cried, “you ought to +have let a fellow know you’ve come!”</p> +<p>“I wrote to you an hour ago,” said Mrs. +Westgate.</p> +<p>“Doesn’t all the world know it?” smiled +Bessie.</p> +<p>“I assure you I didn’t know it!” he +insisted. “Upon my honour I hadn’t heard of +it. Ask Woodley now; had I, Woodley?”</p> +<p>“Well, I think you’re rather a humbug,” this +gentleman brought forth.</p> +<p>“You don’t believe that—do you, Miss +Alden?” asked his lordship. “You don’t +believe I’m rather a humbug, eh?”</p> +<p>“No,” said Bessie after an instant, but choosing +and conferring a grace on the literal—“I +don’t.”</p> +<p>“You’re too tall to stand up, Lord Lambeth,” +Mrs. Westgate pronounced. “You approach the normal +only when you sit down. Be so good as to get a +chair.”</p> +<p>He found one and placed it sidewise, close to the two +ladies. “If I hadn’t met Woodley I should never +have found you,” he went on. “Should I, +Woodley?”</p> +<p>“Well, I guess not,” said the young American.</p> +<p>“Not even with my letter?” asked Mrs. +Westgate.</p> +<p>“Ah, well, I haven’t got your letter yet; I +suppose I shall get it this evening. It was awfully kind of +you to write.”</p> +<p>“So I said to Bessie,” the elder lady +observed.</p> +<p>“<i>Did</i> she say so, Miss Alden?” Lord Lambeth +a little pointlessly inquired. “I daresay +you’ve been here a month.”</p> +<p>“We’ve been here three,” mocked Mrs. +Westgate.</p> +<p><a name="page308"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +308</span>“<i>Have</i> you been here three months?” +the young man asked again of Bessie.</p> +<p>“It seems a long time,” Bessie answered.</p> +<p>He had but a brief wonder—he found something. +“I say, after that you had better not call me a +humbug! I’ve only been in town three weeks, but you +must have been hiding away. I haven’t seen you +anywhere.”</p> +<p>“Where should you have seen us—where should we +have gone?” Mrs. Westgate fairly put to him.</p> +<p>It found Willie Woodley at least ready. “You +should have gone to Hurlingham.”</p> +<p>“No, let Lord Lambeth tell us,” Mrs. Westgate +insisted.</p> +<p>“There are plenty of places to go to,” he +said—“each one stupider than the other. I mean +people’s houses. They send you cards.”</p> +<p>“No one has sent us a scrap of a card,” Bessie +laughed.</p> +<p>Mrs. Westgate attenuated. “We’re very +quiet. We’re here as travellers.”</p> +<p>“We’ve been to Madame Tussaud’s,” +Bessie further mentioned.</p> +<p>“Oh I say!” cried Lord Lambeth.</p> +<p>“We thought we should find your image there,” said +Mrs. Westgate—“yours and Mr. +Beaumont’s.”</p> +<p>“In the Chamber of Horrors?” laughed the young +man.</p> +<p>“It did duty very well for a party,” said Mrs. +Westgate. “All the women were +<i>décolletées</i>, and many of the figures looked +as if they could almost speak.”</p> +<p>“Upon my word,” his lordship returned, “you +see people at London parties who look a long way from +that!”</p> +<p>“Do you think Mr. Woodley could find us Mr. +Beaumont?” asked the elder of the ladies.</p> +<p>He stared and looked about. “I daresay he +could. <a name="page309"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +309</span>Percy sometimes comes here. Don’t you think +you could find him, Woodley? Make a dive or a dash for +it.”</p> +<p>“Thank you; I’ve had enough of violent +movement,” said Willie Woodley. “I’ll +wait till Mr. Beaumont comes to the surface.”</p> +<p>“I’ll bring him to see you,” said Lord +Lambeth. “Where are you staying?”</p> +<p>“You’ll find the address in my +letter—Jones’s Hotel.”</p> +<p>“Oh, one of those places just out of Piccadilly? +Beastly hole, isn’t it?” Lord Lambeth inquired.</p> +<p>“I believe it’s the best hotel in London,” +said Mrs. Westgate.</p> +<p>“But they give you awful rubbish to eat, don’t +they?” his lordship went on.</p> +<p>Mrs. Westgate practised the same serenity. +“Awful.”</p> +<p>“I always feel so sorry for people who come up to town +and go to live in those dens,” continued the young +man. “They eat nothing but filth.”</p> +<p>“Oh I say!” cried Willie Woodley.</p> +<p>“Well, and how do you like London, Miss Alden?” +Lord Lambeth asked, unperturbed by this ejaculation.</p> +<p>The girl was prompt. “I think it grand.”</p> +<p>“My sister likes it, in spite of the +‘filth’!” Mrs. Westgate recorded.</p> +<p>“I hope then you’re going to stop a long +time.”</p> +<p>“As long as I can,” Bessie replied.</p> +<p>“And where’s wonderful Mr. Westgate?” asked +Lord Lambeth of this gentleman’s wife.</p> +<p>“He’s where he always is—in that tiresome +New York.”</p> +<p>“He must have staying power,” said the young +man.</p> +<p>She appeared to consider. “Well, he stays ahead of +every one else.”</p> +<p><a name="page310"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 310</span>Lord +Lambeth sat nearly an hour with his American friends; but it is +not our purpose to relate their conversation in full. He +addressed a great many remarks to the younger lady and finally +turned toward her altogether, while Willie Woodley wasted a +certain amount of effort to regale Mrs. Westgate. Bessie +herself was sparing of effusion; she thought, on her guard, of +what her sister had said to her at luncheon. Little by +little, however, she interested herself again in her English +friend very much as she had done at Newport; only it seemed to +her he might here become more interesting. He would be an +unconscious part of the antiquity, the impressiveness, the +picturesqueness of England; of all of which things poor Bessie +Alden, like most familiars of the overciphered <i>tabula +rasa</i>, was terribly at the mercy.</p> +<p>“I’ve often wished I were back at Newport,” +the young man candidly stated. “Those days I spent at +your sister’s were awfully jolly.”</p> +<p>“We enjoyed them very much; I hope your father’s +better.”</p> +<p>“Oh dear yes. When I got to England the old humbug +was out grouse-shooting. It was what you call in America a +gigantic fraud. My mother had got nervous. My three +weeks at Newport seemed a happy dream.”</p> +<p>“America certainly is very different from +England,” said Bessie.</p> +<p>“I hope you like England better, eh?” he returned +almost persuasively.</p> +<p>“No Englishman can ask that seriously of a person of +another country.”</p> +<p>He turned his cheerful brown eyes on her. “You +mean it’s a matter of course?”</p> +<p>“If I were English,” said Bessie, “it would +certainly seem to me a matter of course that every one should be +a good patriot.”</p> +<p><a name="page311"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +311</span>“Oh dear, yes; patriotism’s +everything.” He appeared not quite to follow, but was +clearly contented. “Now what are you going to do +here?”</p> +<p>“On Thursday I’m going to the Tower.”</p> +<p>“The Tower?”</p> +<p>“The Tower of London. Did you never hear of +it?”</p> +<p>“Oh yes, I’ve been there,” said Lord +Lambeth. “I was taken there by my governess when I +was six years old. It’s a rum idea your going +there.”</p> +<p>“Do give me a few more rum ideas then. I want to +see everything of that sort. I’m going to Hampton +Court and to Windsor and to the Dulwich Gallery.”</p> +<p>He seemed greatly amused. “I wonder you +don’t go to Rosherville Gardens.”</p> +<p>Bessie yearned. “Are they interesting?”</p> +<p>“Oh wonderful!”</p> +<p>“Are they weirdly old? That’s all I care +for,” she said.</p> +<p>“They’re tremendously old; they’re all +falling to ruins.”</p> +<p>The girl rose to it. “I think there’s +nothing so charming as an old ruinous garden. We must +certainly go there.”</p> +<p>Her friend broke out into mirth. “I say, Woodley, +here’s Miss Alden wants to go down to Rosherville +Gardens! Hang it, they <i>are</i> +‘weird’!”</p> +<p>Willie Woodley looked a little blank; he was caught in the +fact of ignorance of an apparently conspicuous feature of London +life. But in a moment he turned it off. “Very +well,” he said, “I’ll write for a +permit.”</p> +<p>Lord Lambeth’s exhilaration increased. +“‘Gad, I believe that, to get your money’s +worth over here, you Americans would go anywhere!”</p> +<p>“We wish to go to Parliament,” said Bessie. +“That’s one of the first things.”</p> +<p><a name="page312"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +312</span>“Ah, it would bore you to death!” he +returned.</p> +<p>“We wish to hear you speak.”</p> +<p>“I never speak—except to young ladies.”</p> +<p>She looked at him from under the shade of her parasol. +“You’re very strange,” she then quietly +concluded. “I don’t think I approve of +you.”</p> +<p>“Ah, now don’t be severe, Miss Alden!” he +cried with the note of sincerity. “Please don’t +be severe. I want you to like me—awfully.”</p> +<p>“To like you awfully? You mustn’t laugh at +me then when I make mistakes. I regard it as my +right—as a free-born American—to make as many +mistakes as I choose.”</p> +<p>“Upon my word I didn’t laugh at you,” the +young man pleaded.</p> +<p>“And not only that,” Bessie went on; “but I +hold that all my mistakes should be set down to my credit. +You must think the better of me for them.”</p> +<p>“I can’t think better of you than I do,” he +declared.</p> +<p>Again, shadily, she took him in. “You certainly +speak very well to young ladies. But why don’t you +address the House?—isn’t that what they call +it?”</p> +<p>“Because I’ve nothing to say.”</p> +<p>“Haven’t you a great position?” she +demanded.</p> +<p>He looked a moment at the back of his glove. +“I’ll set that down as one of your mistakes—to +your credit.” And as if he disliked talking about his +position he changed the subject. “I wish you’d +let me go with you to the Tower and to Hampton Court and to all +those other places.”</p> +<p>“We shall be most happy,” said Bessie.</p> +<p>“And of course I shall be delighted to show you the +Houses of Parliament—some day that suits you. There +are a lot of things I want to do for you. I want you to +have a good time. And I should like very much to present +some of my friends to you if it wouldn’t <a +name="page313"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 313</span>bore +you. Then it would be awfully kind of you to come down to +Branches.”</p> +<p>“We’re much obliged to you, Lord Lambeth,” +said Bessie. “And what may Branches be?”</p> +<p>“It’s a house in the country. I think you +might like it.”</p> +<p>Willie Woodley and Mrs. Westgate were at this moment sitting +in silence, and the young man’s ear caught these last words +of the other pair. “He’s inviting Miss Bessie +to one of his castles,” he murmured to his companion.</p> +<p>Mrs. Westgate hereupon, foreseeing what she mentally called +“complications,” immediately got up; and the two +ladies, taking leave of their English friend, returned, under +conduct of their American, to Jones’s Hotel.</p> +<h3><a name="page314"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +314</span>V</h3> +<p>Lord Lambeth came to see them on the morrow, bringing Percy +Beaumont with him—the latter having at once declared his +intention of neglecting none of the usual offices of +civility. This declaration, however, on his kinsman’s +informing him of the advent of the two ladies, had been preceded +by another exchange.</p> +<p>“Here they are then and you’re in for +it.”</p> +<p>“And what am I in for?” the younger man had +inquired.</p> +<p>“I’ll let your mother give it a name. With +all respect to whom,” Percy had added, “I must +decline on this occasion to do any more police duty. The +Duchess must look after you herself.”</p> +<p>“I’ll give her a chance,” the +Duchess’s son had returned a trifle grimly. “I +shall make her go and see them.”</p> +<p>“She won’t do it, my boy.”</p> +<p>“We’ll see if she doesn’t,” said Lord +Lambeth.</p> +<p>But if Mr. Beaumont took a subtle view of the arrival of the +fair strangers at Jones’s Hotel he was sufficiently capable +of a still deeper refinement to offer them a smiling +countenance. He fell into animated +conversation—conversation animated at least on <i>her</i> +side—with Mrs. Westgate, while his companion appealed more +confusedly to the younger lady. Mrs. Westgate began +confessing and protesting, declaring and discriminating.</p> +<p><a name="page315"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +315</span>“I must say London’s a great deal brighter +and prettier just now than it was when I was here last—in +the month of November. There’s evidently a great deal +going on, and you seem to have a good many flowers. +I’ve no doubt it’s very charming for all you people +and that you amuse yourselves immensely. It’s very +good of you to let Bessie and me come and sit and look at +you. I suppose you’ll think I’m very satirical, +but I must confess that that’s the feeling I have in +London.”</p> +<p>“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand to what +feeling you allude,” said Percy Beaumont.</p> +<p>“The feeling that it’s all very well for you +English people. Everything’s beautifully arranged for +you.”</p> +<p>“It seems to me it’s very well arranged here for +some Americans sometimes,” Percy plucked up spirit to +answer.</p> +<p>“For some of them, yes—if they like to be +patronised. But I must say I don’t like to be +patronised. I may be very eccentric and undisciplined and +unreasonable, but I confess I never was fond of patronage. +I like to associate with people on the same terms as I do in my +own country; that’s a peculiar taste that I have. But +here people seem to expect something else—really I +can’t make out quite what. I’m afraid +you’ll think I’m very ungrateful, for I certainly +have received in one way and another a great deal of +attention. The last time I was here a lady sent me a +message that I was at liberty to come and pay her my +respects.”</p> +<p>“Dear me, I hope you didn’t go,” Mr. +Beaumont cried.</p> +<p>“You’re deliciously naïf, I must say that for +you!” Mrs. Westgate promptly pursued. “It must +be a great advantage to you here in London. I suppose that +if I myself had a little more naïveté—of your +blessed national lack of any approach to a sense for <a +name="page316"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +316</span>shades—I should enjoy it more. I should be +content to sit on a chair in the Park and see the people pass, to +be told that this is the Duchess of Suffolk and that the Lord +Chamberlain, and that I must be thankful for the privilege of +beholding them. I daresay it’s very peevish and +critical of me to ask for anything else. But I was always +critical—it’s the joy of my life—and I freely +confess to the sin of being fastidious. I’m told +there’s some remarkably superior second-rate society +provided here for strangers. <i>Merci</i>! I +don’t want any superior second-rate society. I want +the society I’ve been accustomed to.”</p> +<p>Percy mustered a rueful gaiety. “I hope you +don’t call Lambeth and me second-rate!”</p> +<p>“Oh I’m accustomed to you!” said Mrs. +Westgate. “Do you know you English sometimes make the +most wonderful speeches? The first time I came to London I +went out to dine—as I told you, I’ve received a great +deal of attention. After dinner, in the drawing-room, I had +some conversation with an old lady—no, you mustn’t +look that way: I assure you I had! I forget what we talked +about, but she presently said, in allusion to something we were +discussing: ‘Oh, you know, the aristocracy do so-and-so, +but in one’s own class of life it’s very +different.’ In one’s own class of life! +What’s a poor unprotected American woman to do in a country +where she is liable to have that sort of thing said to +her?”</p> +<p>“I should say she’s not to mind, not a +rap—though you seem to get hold of some very queer old +ladies. I compliment you on your acquaintance!” Percy +pursued. “If you’re trying to bring me to admit +that London’s an odious place you’ll not +succeed. I’m extremely fond of it and think it the +jolliest place in the world.”</p> +<p>“Pour vous autres—I never said the +contrary,” <a name="page317"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +317</span>Mrs. Westgate retorted—an expression made use of, +this last, because both interlocutors had begun to raise their +voices. Mr. Beaumont naturally didn’t like to hear +the seat of his existence abused, and Mrs. Westgate, no less +naturally, didn’t like a stubborn debater.</p> +<p>“Hallo!” said Lord Lambeth; “what are they +up to now?” And he came away from the window, where +he had been standing with Bessie.</p> +<p>“I quite agree with a very clever countrywoman of +mine,” the elder lady continued with charming ardour even +if with imperfect relevancy. She smiled at the two +gentlemen for a moment with terrible brightness, as if to toss at +their feet—upon their native heath—the gauntlet of +defiance. “For me there are only two social positions +worth speaking of—that of an American lady and that of the +Emperor of Russia.”</p> +<p>“And what do you do with the American gentlemen?” +asked Lord Lambeth.</p> +<p>“She leaves them in America!” said his +comrade.</p> +<p>On the departure of their visitors Bessie mentioned that Lord +Lambeth would come the next day, to go with them to the Tower, +and that he had kindly offered to bring his “trap” +and drive them all through the city. Mrs. Westgate listened +in silence to this news and for some time afterwards also said +nothing. But at last, “If you hadn’t requested +me the other day not to speak of it,” she began, +“there’s something I’d make bold to ask +you.” Bessie frowned a little; her dark blue eyes +grew more dark than blue. But her sister went on. +“As it is I’ll take the risk. You’re not +in love with Lord Lambeth: I believe it perfectly. Very +good. But is there by chance any danger of your becoming +so? It’s a very simple question—don’t +take offence. I’ve a particular reason,” said +Mrs. Westgate, “for wanting to know.”</p> +<p><a name="page318"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +318</span>Bessie for some moments said nothing; she only looked +displeased. “No; there’s no danger,” she +at last answered with a certain dryness.</p> +<p>“Then I should like to frighten them!” cried her +sister, clasping jewelled hands.</p> +<p>“To frighten whom?”</p> +<p>“All these people. Lord Lambeth’s family and +friends.”</p> +<p>The girl wondered. “How should you frighten +them?”</p> +<p>“It wouldn’t be I—it would be you. It +would frighten them to suppose you holding in thrall his +lordship’s young affections.”</p> +<p>Our young lady, her clear eyes still overshadowed by her dark +brows, continued to examine it. “Why should that +frighten them?”</p> +<p>Mrs. Westgate winged her shaft with a smile before launching +it. “Because they think you’re not good +enough. You’re a charming girl, beautiful and +amiable, intelligent and clever, and as +<i>bien-élevée</i> as it is possible to be; but +you’re not a fit match for Lord Lambeth.”</p> +<p>Bessie showed again a coldness. “Where do you get +such extraordinary ideas? You’ve said some such odd +things lately. My dear Kitty, where do you collect +them?”</p> +<p>But Kitty, unabashed, held to her idea. “Yes, it +would put them on pins and needles, and it wouldn’t hurt +you. Mr. Beaumont’s already most uneasy. I +could soon see that.”</p> +<p>The girl turned it over. “Do you mean they spy on +him, that they interfere with him?”</p> +<p>“I don’t know what power they have to interfere, +but I know that a British <i>materfamilias</i>—and when +she’s a Duchess into the bargain—is often a force to +be reckoned with.”</p> +<p>It has already been intimated that before certain <a +name="page319"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 319</span>appearances +of strange or sinister cast our young woman was apt to shy off +into scepticism. She abstained on the present occasion from +expressing disbelief, for she wished not to irritate her +sister. But she said to herself that Kitty had been +misinformed—that this was a traveller’s tale. +Though she was a girl of quick imagination there could in the +nature of things be no truth for her in the attribution to her of +a vulgar identity. Only the form she gave her doubt was: +“I must say that in that case I’m very sorry for Lord +Lambeth.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Westgate, more and more exhilarated by her own scheme, +irradiated interest. “If I could only believe it was +safe! But when you begin to pity him I, on my side, am +afraid.”</p> +<p>“Afraid of what?”</p> +<p>“Of your pitying him too much.”</p> +<p>Bessie turned impatiently off—then at the end of a +minute faced about. “What if I <i>should</i> pity him +too much?”</p> +<p>Mrs. Westgate hereupon averted herself, but after a +moment’s reflexion met the case. “It would +come, after all, to the same thing.”</p> +<p>Lord Lambeth came the next day with his trap, when the two +ladies, attended by Willie Woodley, placed themselves under his +guidance and were conveyed eastward, through some of the most +fascinating, as Bessie called them, even though the duskiest +districts, to the great turreted donjon that overlooks the London +shipping. They alighted together to enter the famous +fortress, where they secured the services of a venerable +beef-eater, who, ignoring the presence of other dependants on his +leisure, made a fine exclusive party of them and marched them +through courts and corridors, through armouries and +prisons. He delivered his usual peripatetic discourse, and +they stopped and stared and peeped and stooped according as he <a +name="page320"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 320</span>marshalled +and directed them. Bessie appealed to this +worthy—even on more heads than he seemed aware of; she +overtaxed, in her earnestness, his learnt lesson and found the +place, as she more than once mentioned to him, quite +delirious. Lord Lambeth was in high good-humour; his +delirium at least was gay and he betrayed afresh that aptitude +for the simpler forms of ironic comment that the girl had noted +in him. Willie Woodley kept looking at the ceilings and +tapping the walls with the knuckle of a pearl-grey glove; and +Mrs. Westgate, asking at frequent intervals to be allowed to sit +down and wait till they came back, was as frequently informed +that they would never do anything so weak. When it befell +that Bessie’s glowing appeals, chiefly on collateral points +of English history, but left the warder gaping she resorted +straight to Lord Lambeth. His lordship then pleaded gross +incompetence, declaring he knew nothing about that sort of thing +and greatly diverted, to all appearance, at being treated as an +authority.</p> +<p>“You can’t honestly expect people to know as +awfully much as you,” he said.</p> +<p>“I should expect you to know a great deal more,” +Bessie Alden returned.</p> +<p>“Well, women always know more than men about names and +dates and historical characters,” he said. +“There was Lady Jane Grey we’ve just been hearing +about, who went in for Latin and Greek and all the learning of +her age.”</p> +<p>“<i>You</i> have no right to be ignorant at all +events,” Bessie argued with all her freedom.</p> +<p>“Why haven’t I as good a right as any one +else?”</p> +<p>“Because you’ve lived in the midst of all these +things.”</p> +<p>“What things do you mean? Axes and blocks and +thumbscrews?”</p> +<p><a name="page321"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +321</span>“All these historical things. You belong to +an historical family.”</p> +<p>“Bessie really harks back too much to the dead +past—she makes too much of it,” Mrs. Westgate opined, +catching the sense of this colloquy.</p> +<p>“Yes, you hark back,” the young man laughed, +thankful for a formula. “You do make too much of the +dead past.”</p> +<p>He went with the ladies a couple of days later to Hampton +Court, Willie Woodley being also of the party. The +afternoon was charming, the famous horse-chestnuts blossomed to +admiration, and Lord Lambeth, who found in Miss Alden the +improving governess, he declared, of his later immaturity, as +Mademoiselle Boquet, dragging him by the hand to view all lions, +had been that of his earliest, pronounced the old red palace not +half so beastly as he had supposed. Bessie herself rose to +raptures; she went about murmuring and +“raving.” “It’s too lovely; +it’s too enchanting; it’s too exactly what it ought +to be!”</p> +<p>At Hampton Court the tinkling flocks are not provided with an +official bellwether, but are left to browse at discretion on the +tough herbage of History. It happened in this manner that, +in default of another informant, our young woman, who on doubtful +questions was able to suggest a great many alternatives, found +herself again apply for judicious support to Lord Lambeth. +He, however, could but once more declare himself a broken reed +and that his education, in such matters, had been sadly +neglected.</p> +<p>“And I’m sorry it makes you so wretched,” he +further professed.</p> +<p>“You’re so disappointing, you know,” she +returned; but more in pity—pity for herself—than in +anger.</p> +<p><a name="page322"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +322</span>“Ah, now, don’t say that! +That’s the worst thing you could possibly say.”</p> +<p>“No”—she spoke with a sad +lucidity—“it’s not so bad as to say that I had +expected nothing of you.”</p> +<p>“I don’t know”—and he seemed to +rejoice in a chance to demur. “Give me a notion of +the sort of thing you expected.”</p> +<p>“Well, that you’d be more what I should like to +be—what I should try to be—in your place.”</p> +<p>“Ah, my place!” he groaned. +“You’re always talking about my place.”</p> +<p>The girl gave him a look; he might have thought she coloured; +and for a little she made no rejoinder. “Does it +strike you that I’m always talking about your +place?”</p> +<p>“I’m sure you do it a great honour,” he said +as if fearing he had sounded uncivil.</p> +<p>“I’ve often thought about it,” she went on +after a moment. “I’ve often thought of your +future as an hereditary legislator. An hereditary +legislator ought to know so many things, oughtn’t +he?”</p> +<p>“Not if he doesn’t legislate.”</p> +<p>“But you <i>will</i> legislate one of these +days—you may have to at any time; it’s absurd your +saying you won’t. You’re very much looked up to +here—I’m assured of that.”</p> +<p>“I don’t know that I ever noticed it.”</p> +<p>“It’s because you’re used to it then. +You ought to fill the place.”</p> +<p>“How do you mean, fill it?” asked Lord +Lambeth.</p> +<p>“You ought to be very clever and brilliant—to be +‘up’ in almost everything.”</p> +<p>He turned on her his handsome young face of profane +wonder. “Shall I tell you something? A young +man in my position, as you call it—”</p> +<p><a name="page323"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +323</span>“I didn’t invent the term,” she +interposed. “I’ve seen it in a great many +books.”</p> +<p>“Hang it, you’re always at your books! A +fellow in my position then does well enough at the worst—he +muddles along whatever he does. That’s about what I +mean to say.”</p> +<p>“Well, if your own people are content with you,” +Bessie laughed, “it’s not for me to complain. +But I shall always think that properly you should have a great +mind—a great character.”</p> +<p>“Ah, that’s very theoretic!” the young man +promptly brought out. “Depend upon it, that’s a +Yankee prejudice.”</p> +<p>“Happy the country then,” she as eagerly declared, +“where people’s prejudices make so for +light.”</p> +<p>He stopped short, with his slightly strained gaiety, as for +the pleasantness of high argument. “What it comes to +then is that we’re all here a pack of fools and me the +biggest of the lot?”</p> +<p>“I said nothing so rude of a great people—and a +great person. But I must repeat that you personally +are—in your representative capacity that’s to +be—disappointing.”</p> +<p>“My dear Miss Alden,” he simply cried at this, +“I’m the best fellow in the world!”</p> +<p>“Ah, if it were not for that!” she beautifully +smiled.</p> +<p>Mrs. Westgate had many more friends in London than she +pretended, and before long had renewed acquaintance with most of +them. Their hospitality was prompt, so that, one thing +leading to another, she began, as the phrase is, to go out. +Bessie Alden, in this way, saw a good deal of what she took great +pleasure in calling to herself English society. She went to +balls and danced, she went to dinners and talked, she went to +concerts and listened—at concerts Bessie always +listened—she went to exhibitions and <a +name="page324"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +324</span>wondered. Her enjoyment was keen and her +curiosity insatiable, and, grateful in general for all her +opportunities, she especially prized the privilege of meeting +certain celebrated persons, authors and artists, philosophers and +statesmen, of whose renown she had been a humble and distant +beholder and who now, as part of the frequent furniture of London +drawing-rooms, struck her as stars fallen from the firmament and +become palpable—revealing also sometimes on contact +qualities not to have been predicted of bodies sidereal. +Bessie, who knew so many of her contemporaries by reputation, +lost in this way certain fond illusions; but on the other hand +she had innumerable satisfactions and enthusiasms, and she laid +bare the wealth of her emotions to a dear friend of her own sex +in Boston, with whom she was in voluminous correspondence. +Some of her sentiments indeed she sought mildly to flash upon +Lord Lambeth, who came almost every day to Jones’s Hotel +and whom Mrs. Westgate admitted to be really devoted. +Captain Littledale, it appeared, had gone to India; and of +several others of this lady’s ex-pensioners—gentlemen +who, as she said, had made, in New York, a club-house of her +drawing-room—no tidings were to be obtained; but this +particular friend of other days was certainly attentive enough to +make up for the accidental absences, the short memories, the +remarked lapses, of every one else. He drove the sisters in +the Park, took them to visit private collections of pictures and, +having a house of his own, invited them to luncheon, to tea, to +dinner, to supper even after the arduous German opera. Mrs. +Westgate, following the fashion of many of her countrywomen, +caused herself and her companion to be presented at the English +Court by her diplomatic representative—for it was in this +manner that she alluded to the American Minister to England, +inquiring what on earth he <a name="page325"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 325</span>was put there for if not to make the +proper arrangements for her reception at Court.</p> +<p>Lord Lambeth expressed a hatred of Courts, but he had social +privileges or exercised some court function—these +undiscriminated attributes, dim backgrounds where old gold seemed +to shine through transparent conventions, were romantically rich +to our young heroine—that involved his support of his +sovereign on the day on which the two ladies at Jones’s +Hotel repaired to Buckingham Palace in a remarkable coach sent by +his lordship to fetch them. He appeared in a gorgeous +uniform, and Bessie Alden was particularly struck with his +glory—especially when on her asking him, rather foolishly +as she felt, if he were a loyal subject, he replied that he was a +loyal subject to herself. This pronouncement was emphasised +by his dancing with her at a royal ball to which the two ladies +afterwards went, and was not impaired by the fact that she +thought he danced very ill. He struck her as wonderfully +kind; she asked herself with growing vivacity why he should be so +kind. It was just his character—that seemed the +natural reply. She had told her relative how much she liked +him, and now that she liked him more she wondered at her +excess. She liked him for his clear nature; to this +question as well that seemed the natural answer. The truth +was that when once the impressions of London life began to crowd +thickly upon her she completely forgot her subtle sister’s +warning on the cynicism of public opinion. It had given her +great pain at the moment; but there was no particular reason why +she should remember it: it corresponded too little with any +sensible reality. Besides which there was her habit, her +beautiful system, of consenting to know nothing of human baseness +or of the vulgar side. There were things, just as there +were people, that were as nought from the moment one ignored <a +name="page326"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 326</span>them. +She was accordingly not haunted with the sense of a low +imputation. She wasn’t in love with Lord +Lambeth—she assured herself of that. It will +immediately be observed that when such assurances become +necessary the state of a young lady’s affections is already +ambiguous; and indeed the girl made no attempt to dissimulate (to +her finer intelligence) that “appeal of +type”—she had a ready name for it—to which her +gallant hovering gentleman caused her wonderingly to +respond. She was fully aware that she liked it, this so +unalloyed image of the simple candid manly healthy English +temperament. She spoke to herself of it as if she liked the +man for it instead of her liking it for the man. She +cherished the thought of his bravery, which she had never in the +least seen tested, enjoyed a fond view in him of the free and +instinctive range of the “gentlemanly” character, and +was as familiar with his good looks as if she habitually handed +him out his neckties. She was perfectly conscious, +moreover, of privately dilating on his more adventitious +merits—of the effect on her imagination of the large +opportunities of so splendid a person; opportunities she hardly +knew for what, but, as she supposed, for doing great things, for +setting an example, for exerting an influence, for conferring +happiness, for encouraging the arts. She had an ideal of +conduct for a young man who should find himself in this grand +position, and she tried to adapt it to her friend’s +behaviour as you might attempt to fit a silhouette in cut paper +over a shadow projected on a wall. Bessie Alden’s +silhouette, however, refused to coincide at all points with his +lordship’s figure; a want of harmony that she sometimes +deplored beyond discretion. It was his own affair she at +moments told herself—it wasn’t <i>her</i> concern the +least in the world. When he was absent it was of course +less striking—then he might have seemed sufficiently to <a +name="page327"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 327</span>unite high +responsibilities with high braveries. But when he sat there +within sight, laughing and talking with his usual effect of +natural salubrity and mental mediocrity, she took the measure of +his shortcoming and felt acutely that if his position was, so to +speak, heroic, there was little of that large line in the young +man himself. Then her imagination wandered away from +him—very far away; for it was an incontestable fact that at +these moments he lagged ever so much behind it. He affected +her as on occasion, dreadful to say, almost <i>actively</i> +stupid. It may have been that while she so curiously +inquired and so critically brooded <i>her</i> personal wit, her +presence of mind, made no great show—though it is also +possible that she sometimes positively charmed, or at least +interested, her friend by this very betrayal of the frequent, the +distant and unreported, excursion. So it would have hung +together that a part of her unconscious appeal to him from the +first had been in his feeling her judge and appraise him more +freely and irresponsibly—more at her ease and her leisure, +as it were—than several young ladies with whom he had +passed for adventurously intimate. To be convinced of her +“cleverness” and yet also to be aware of her +appreciation—when the cleverness might have been after all +but dangerous and complicating—all made, to Lord +Lambeth’s sense, for convenience and cheer. +Hadn’t he compassed the satisfaction, that high aim of +young men greatly placed and greatly moneyed, of being liked for +himself? It was true a cynical counsellor might have +whispered to him: “Liked for yourself? Ah, not so +very awfully <i>much</i>!” He had at any rate the +constant hope of adding to that quantity.</p> +<p>It may not seem to fit in—but the truth was +strange—that Bessie Alden, when he struck her as +“deficient,” found herself aspiring by that very <a +name="page328"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 328</span>reason to +some finer way of liking him. This was fairly indeed on +grounds of conscience—because she felt he had been +thoroughly “nice” to her sister and so deemed it no +more than fair that she should think as well of him as he thought +of her. The effort in question was possibly sometimes not +so successful as it might have been, the result being at moments +an irritation, which, though consciously vague, was yet, with +inconsequence, acute enough to express itself in hostile +criticism of several British institutions. Bessie went to +entertainments at which she met Lord Lambeth, but also to others +at which he was neither actually nor imaginably present; and it +was chiefly at these latter that she encountered those literary +and artistic celebrities of whom mention has been made. +After a while she reduced the matter to a principle. If he +should appear anywhere she might take it for a flat sign that +there would be neither poets nor philosophers; and as a +result—for it was almost a direct result—she used to +enumerate to the young man these objects of her admiration.</p> +<p>“You seem to be awfully fond of that sort of +people,” he said one day as if the idea had just occurred +to him.</p> +<p>“They’re the people in England I’m most +curious to see,” she promptly replied.</p> +<p>“I suppose that’s because you’ve read so +much,” Lord Lambeth gallantly threw off.</p> +<p>“I’ve <i>not</i> read so much. It’s +because we think so much of them at home.”</p> +<p>“Oh I see! In your so awfully clever +Boston.”</p> +<p>“Not only in our awfully clever Boston, but in our just +commonly clever everywhere. We hold them in great +honour,” said Bessie. “It’s they who go +to the best dinner-parties.”</p> +<p>“I daresay you’re right. I can’t say I +know many of them.”</p> +<p><a name="page329"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +329</span>“It’s a pity you don’t,” she +returned. “It would do you some good.”</p> +<p>“I daresay it would,” said the young man very +humbly. “But I must say I don’t like the looks +of some of them.”</p> +<p>“Neither do I—of some of them. But there are +all kinds, and many of them are charming.”</p> +<p>“I’ve talked with two or three of them,” +Lord Lambeth went on, “and I thought they had a kind of +fawning manner.”</p> +<p>“Why should they fawn?” Bessie demanded.</p> +<p>“I’m sure I don’t know. Why +indeed?”</p> +<p>“Perhaps you only thought so,” she suggested.</p> +<p>“Well, of course,” her companion allowed, +“that’s a kind of thing that can’t be +proved.”</p> +<p>“In America they don’t fawn,” she went +on.</p> +<p>“Don’t they? Ah, well, then they must be +better company.”</p> +<p>She had a pause. “That’s one of the few +things I don’t like about England—your keeping the +distinguished people apart.”</p> +<p>“How do you mean, apart?”</p> +<p>“Why, letting them come only to certain places. +You never see them.”</p> +<p>All his pleasant face wondered—he seemed to take it as +another of her rather stiff riddles. “What people do +you mean?”</p> +<p>“The eminent people; the authors and artists; the clever +people.”</p> +<p>“Oh there are other eminent people besides those!” +said Lord Lambeth.</p> +<p>“Well, you certainly keep them apart,” Bessie +earnestly contended.</p> +<p>“And there are plenty of other clever people.”</p> +<p>It was spoken with a fine simple faith, yet the tone of it +made her laugh. “‘Plenty’? How +many?”</p> +<p><a name="page330"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 330</span>On +another occasion—just after a dinner-party—she +mentioned something else in England she didn’t like.</p> +<p>“Oh I say!” he cried; “haven’t you +abused us enough?”</p> +<p>“I’ve never abused you at all,” said Bessie; +“but I don’t like your +‘precedence.’”</p> +<p>She was to feel relieved at his not taking it solemnly. +“It isn’t <i>my</i> precedence!”</p> +<p>“Yes, it’s yours—just exactly yours; and I +think it’s odious,” she insisted.</p> +<p>“I never saw such a young lady for discussing +things! Has some one had the impudence to go before +you?” Lord Lambeth asked.</p> +<p>“It’s not the going before me I object to,” +said Bessie; “it’s their pretending they’ve a +right to do it—a right I should grovellingly +recognise.”</p> +<p>“I never saw such a person, either, for not +‘recognising,’ let alone for not +‘grovelling.’ Every one here has to grovel to +somebody or to something—and no doubt it’s all +beastly. But one takes the thick with the thin, and it +saves a lot of trouble.”</p> +<p>“It <i>makes</i> a lot of trouble, by which I mean a lot +of ugliness. It’s horrid!” Bessie +maintained.</p> +<p>“But how would you have the first people go?” the +young man asked. “They can’t go last, you +know.”</p> +<p>“Whom do you mean by the first people?”</p> +<p>“Ah, if you mean to question first principles!” +said Lord Lambeth.</p> +<p>“If those are your first principles no wonder some of +your arrangements are horrid!” she cried, with a charming +but not wholly sincere ferocity. “I’m a silly +chit, no doubt, so of course I go last; but imagine what Kitty +must feel on being informed that she’s not at liberty to +budge till certain other ladies have passed out!”</p> +<p><a name="page331"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +331</span>“Oh I say, she’s not +‘informed’!” he protested. “No one +would do such a thing as that.”</p> +<p>“She’s made to feel it—as if they were +afraid she’d make a rush for the door. No, +you’ve a lovely country”—she clung as for +consistency to her discrimination—“but your +precedence is horrid.”</p> +<p>“I certainly shouldn’t think your sister would +like it,” Lord Lambeth said, with even exaggerated +gravity. But she couldn’t induce him—amused as +he almost always was at the effect of giving her, as he called +it, her head—to join her in more formal reprobation of this +repulsive custom, which he spoke of as a convenience she would +destroy without offering a better in its place.</p> +<h3><a name="page332"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +332</span>VI</h3> +<p>Percy Beaumont had all this time been a very much less +frequent visitor at Jones’s Hotel than his former fellow +traveller; he had in fact called but twice on the two American +ladies. Lord Lambeth, who often saw him, reproached him +with his neglect and declared that though Mrs. Westgate had said +nothing about it he made no doubt she was secretly wounded by +it. “She suffers too much to speak,” said his +comrade.</p> +<p>“That’s all gammon,” Percy returned; +“there’s a limit to what people can +suffer!” And though sending no apologies to +Jones’s Hotel he undertook in a manner to explain his +absence. “You’re always there yourself, +confound you, and that’s reason enough for my not +going.”</p> +<p>“I don’t see why. There’s enough for +both of us.”</p> +<p>“Well, I don’t care to be a witness of your +reckless passion,” said Percy Beaumont.</p> +<p>His friend turned on him a cold eye and for a moment said +nothing, presently, however, speaking a little stiffly. +“My passion doesn’t make such a show as you might +suppose, considering what a demonstrative beggar I am.”</p> +<p>“I don’t want to know anything about +it—anything whatever,” said Beaumont. +“Your mother asks me every time she sees me whether I +believe you’re really lost—and Lady Pimlico does the +same. I prefer to be able to answer that I’m in +complete <a name="page333"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +333</span>ignorance, that I never go there. I stay away for +consistency’s sake. As I said the other day, they +must look after you themselves.”</p> +<p>“Well, you’re wonderfully considerate,” the +young man returned. “They never question +<i>me</i>.”</p> +<p>“They’re afraid of you. They’re afraid +of annoying you and making you worse. So they go to work +very cautiously, and, somewhere or other, they get their +information. They know a great deal about you. They +know you’ve been with those ladies to the dome of Saint +Paul’s and—where was the other place?—to the +Thames Tunnel.”</p> +<p>“If all their knowledge is as accurate as that it must +be very valuable,” said Lord Lambeth.</p> +<p>“Well, at any rate, they know you’ve been visiting +the ‘sights of the metropolis.’ They +think—very naturally, as it seems to me—that when you +take to visiting the sights of the metropolis with a little +nobody of an American girl something may be supposed to be +‘up.’” The young man met this remark with +scornful laughter, but his companion continued after a pause: +“I told you just now that I cultivate my ignorance, but I +find I can no longer stand my suspense. I confess I do want +to know whether you propose to marry Miss Alden.”</p> +<p>On this point Lord Lambeth gave his questioner no prompt +satisfaction; he only mused—frowningly, portentously. +“By Jove they go rather too far. They <i>shall</i> +have cause to worry—I promise them.”</p> +<p>Percy Beaumont, however, continued to aim at lucidity. +“You don’t, it’s true, quite redeem your +threats. You said the other day you’d make your +mother call.”</p> +<p>Lord Lambeth just hung fire. “Well, I asked her +to.”</p> +<p>“And she declined?”</p> +<p>“Yes, but she shall do it yet.”</p> +<p><a name="page334"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +334</span>“Upon my word,” said Percy, “if she +gets much more scared I verily believe she will.” His +friend watched him on this, and he went on. +“She’ll go to the girl herself.”</p> +<p>“How do you mean ‘go’ to her?”</p> +<p>“She’ll try to get ‘at’ her—to +square her. She won’t care what she does.”</p> +<p>Lord Lambeth turned away in silence; he took twenty steps and +slowly returned. “She had better take care what she +does. I’ve invited Mrs. Westgate and Miss Alden to +Branches, and this evening I shall name a day.”</p> +<p>“And shall you invite your mother and your sisters to +meet them?”</p> +<p>Lord Lambeth indulged in one of his rare +discriminations. “I shall give them the +opportunity.”</p> +<p>“That will touch the Duchess up,” said Percy +Beaumont. “I ‘guess’ she’ll +come.”</p> +<p>“She may do as she pleases.”</p> +<p>“Then do you really propose to marry the little +sister?”</p> +<p>“I like the way you talk about it!” the young man +cried. “She won’t gobble me down. +Don’t be afraid.”</p> +<p>“She won’t leave you on your knees,” Percy +declared. “What the devil’s the +inducement?”</p> +<p>“You talk about proposing—wait till I <i>have</i> +proposed,” Lord Lambeth went on.</p> +<p>His friend looked at him harder. “That’s +right, my dear chap. Think of <i>all</i> the +bearings.”</p> +<p>“She’s a charming girl,” pursued his +lordship.</p> +<p>“Of course she’s a charming girl. I +don’t know a girl more charming—in a very quiet +way. But there are other charming girls—charming in +all sorts of ways—nearer home.”</p> +<p>“I particularly like her spirit,” said +Bessie’s admirer—almost as on a policy of +aggravation.</p> +<p><a name="page335"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +335</span>“What’s the peculiarity of her +spirit?”</p> +<p>“She’s not afraid, and she says things out and +thinks herself as good as any one. She’s the only +girl I’ve ever seen,” Lord Lambeth explained, +“who hasn’t seemed to me dying to marry +me.”</p> +<p>Mr. Beaumont considered it. “How do you know she +isn’t dying if you haven’t felt her pulse? I +mean if you haven’t asked her?”</p> +<p>“I don’t know how; but I know it.”</p> +<p>“I’m sure she asked <i>me</i>—over +there—questions enough about your property and your +titles,” Percy declared.</p> +<p>“She has done that to me too—again and +again,” his friend returned. “But she wants to +know about everything.”</p> +<p>“Everything? Ah, I’ll warrant she wants to +know. Depend upon it she’s dying to marry you just as +much, and just by the same law, as all the rest of +them.”</p> +<p>It appeared to give the young man, for a moment, something +rather special to think of. “I shouldn’t like +her to refuse me—I shouldn’t like that.”</p> +<p>“If the thing would be so disagreeable then, both to you +and to her, in heaven’s name leave it alone.” +Such was the moral drawn by Mr. Beaumont; which left him +practically the last word in the discussion.</p> +<p>Mrs. Westgate, on her side, had plenty to say to her sister +about the rarity of the latter’s visits and the +non-appearance at their own door of the Duchess of +Bayswater. She confessed, however, to taking more pleasure +in this hush of symptoms than she could have taken in the most +lavish attentions on the part of that great lady. +“It’s unmistakable,” she said, +“delightfully unmistakable; a most interesting sign that +we’ve made them wretched. The day we dined with him I +was really sorry for the poor boy.” It will have been +<a name="page336"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 336</span>gathered +that the entertainment offered by Lord Lambeth to his American +friends had been graced by the presence of no near +relation. He had invited several choice spirits to meet +them, but the ladies of his immediate family were to Mrs. +Westgate’s sense—a sense perhaps morbidly +acute—conspicuous by their hostile absence.</p> +<p>“I don’t want to work you up any further,” +Bessie at last ventured to remark, “but I don’t know +why you should have so many theories about Lord Lambeth’s +poor mother. You know a great many young men in New York +without knowing their mothers.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Westgate rested deep eyes on her sister and then turned +away. “My dear Bessie, you’re +superb!”</p> +<p>“One thing’s certain”—the girl +continued not to blench at her irony. “If I believed +I were a cause of annoyance, however unwitting, to Lord +Lambeth’s family I should insist—”</p> +<p>“Insist on my leaving England?” Mrs. Westgate +broke in.</p> +<p>“No, not that. I want to go to the National +Gallery again; I want to see Stratford-on-Avon and Canterbury +Cathedral. But I should insist on his ceasing relations +with us.”</p> +<p>“That would be very modest and very pretty of +you—but you wouldn’t do it at this point.”</p> +<p>“Why do you say ‘at this point’?” +Bessie asked. “Have I ceased to be modest?”</p> +<p>“You care for him too much. A month ago, when you +said you didn’t, I believe it was quite true. But at +present, my dear child,” said Mrs. Westgate, “you +wouldn’t find it quite so simple a matter never to see Lord +Lambeth again. I’ve watched it come on.”</p> +<p>“You’re mistaken,” Bessie declared. +“You don’t understand.”</p> +<p><a name="page337"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +337</span>“Ah, you poor proud thing, don’t be +perverse!” her companion returned.</p> +<p>The girl gave the matter, thus admonished, some visible +thought. “I know him better certainly, if you mean +that. And I like him very much. But I don’t +like him enough to make trouble for him with his family. +However, I don’t believe in that.”</p> +<p>“I like the way you say ‘however’!” +Mrs. Westgate commented. “Do you pretend you +wouldn’t be glad to marry him?”</p> +<p>Again Bessie calmly considered. “It would take a +great deal more than is at all imaginable to make me marry +him.”</p> +<p>Her relative showed an impatience. “And +what’s the great difficulty?”</p> +<p>“The great difficulty is that I shouldn’t care +to,” said Bessie Alden.</p> +<p>The morning after Lord Lambeth had had with his own frankest +critic that exchange of ideas which has just been narrated, the +ladies at Jones’s Hotel received from him a written +invitation to pay their projected visit to Branches Castle on the +following Tuesday. “I think I’ve made up a very +pleasant party,” his lordship went on. “Several +people whom you know, and my mother and sisters, who have been +accidentally prevented from making your acquaintance +sooner.” Bessie at this lost no time in calling her +sister’s attention to the injustice she had done the +Duchess of Bayswater, whose hostility was now proved to be a vain +illusion.</p> +<p>“Wait till you see if she comes,” said Mrs. +Westgate. “And if she’s to meet us at her +son’s house the obligation’s all the greater for her +to call on us.”</p> +<p>Bessie hadn’t to wait long, for it appeared that her +friend’s parent now descried the direction in which, +according to her companion’s observation, courtesy +pointed. On the morrow, early in the afternoon, two <a +name="page338"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 338</span>cards were +brought to the apartment of the American ladies—one of them +bearing the name of the Duchess of Bayswater and the other that +of the Countess of Pimlico. Mrs. Westgate glanced at the +clock. “It isn’t yet four,” she said; +“they’ve come early; they want really to find +us. We’ll receive them.” And she gave +orders that her visitors should be admitted. A few moments +later they were introduced and a solemn exchange of amenities +took place. The Duchess was a large lady with a fine fresh +colour; the Countess of Pimlico was very pretty and elegant.</p> +<p>The Duchess looked about her as she sat down—looked not +especially at Mrs. Westgate. “I daresay my son has +told you that I’ve been wanting to come to see you,” +she dropped—and from no towering nor inconvenient +height.</p> +<p>“You’re very kind,” said Mrs. Westgate +vaguely—her conscience not allowing her to assent to this +proposition, and indeed not permitting her to enunciate her own +with any appreciable emphasis.</p> +<p>“He tells us you were so kind to him in America,” +said the Duchess.</p> +<p>“We’re very glad,” Mrs. Westgate replied, +“to have been able to make him feel a little more—a +little less—a little at home.”</p> +<p>“I think he stayed at your house,” the visitor +more heavily breathed, but as an overture, across to Bessie +Alden.</p> +<p>Mrs. Westgate intercepted the remark. “A very +short time indeed.”</p> +<p>“Oh!” said the Duchess; and she continued to +address her interest to Bessie, who was engaged in conversation +with her daughter.</p> +<p>“Do you like London?” Lady Pimlico had asked of +Bessie, after looking at her a good deal—at her face and +her hands, her dress and her hair.</p> +<p><a name="page339"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 339</span>The +girl was prompt and clear. “Very much +indeed.”</p> +<p>“Do you like this hotel?”</p> +<p>“It’s very comfortable.”</p> +<p>“Do you like stopping at hotels?” Lady Pimlico +asked after a pause.</p> +<p>“I’m very fond of travelling, and I suppose hotels +are a necessary part of it. But they’re not the part +I’m fondest of,” Bessie without difficulty +admitted.</p> +<p>“Oh I hate travelling!” said Lord Lambeth’s +sister, who transferred her attention to Mrs. Westgate.</p> +<p>“My son tells me you’re going to Branches,” +the Duchess presently resumed.</p> +<p>“Lord Lambeth has been so good as to ask us,” said +Mrs. Westgate, who felt herself now under the eyes of both +visitors and who had her customary happy consciousness of a +distinguished appearance. The only mitigation of her +felicity on this point was that, having taken in every item of +that of the Duchess, she said to herself: “She won’t +know how well I’m dressed!”</p> +<p>“He has been so good as to tell me he expects me, but +I’m not quite sure of what I can do,” the noble lady +exhaled.</p> +<p>“He had offered us the p—the prospect of meeting +you,” Mrs. Westgate further contributed.</p> +<p>“I hate the country at this season,” the Duchess +went on.</p> +<p>Her hostess melted to sweetness. “I delight in it +at all seasons. And I think it now above all pleasanter +than London.”</p> +<p>But the Duchess’s eyes were absent again; she was +looking very fixedly at Bessie. In a minute she slowly +rose, passed across the room with a great rustle and an effect of +momentous displacement, reached a chair that stood empty at the +girl’s right hand and <a name="page340"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 340</span>silently seated herself. As +she was a majestic voluminous woman this little transaction had +inevitably an air of somewhat impressive intention. It +diffused a certain awkwardness, which Lady Pimlico, as a +sympathetic daughter, perhaps desired to rectify in turning to +Mrs. Westgate. “I suppose you go out +immensely.”</p> +<p>“No, very little. We’re strangers, and we +didn’t come for the local society.”</p> +<p>“I see,” said Lady Pimlico. +“It’s rather nice in town just now.”</p> +<p>“I’ve known it of course duskier and +dingier. But we only go to see a few people,” Mrs. +Westgate added—“old friends or persons we +particularly like.”</p> +<p>“Of course one can’t like every one,” Lady +Pimlico conceded.</p> +<p>“It depends on one’s society,” Mrs. Westgate +returned.</p> +<p>The Duchess meanwhile had addressed herself to Bessie. +“My son tells me the young ladies in America are so +clever.”</p> +<p>“I’m glad they made so good an impression on +him,” our heroine smiled.</p> +<p>The Duchess took the case, clearly, as no matter for +grimacing; there reigned in her large pink face a meridian +calm. “He’s very susceptible. He thinks +every one clever—and sometimes they are.”</p> +<p>“Sometimes,” Bessie cheerfully assented.</p> +<p>The Duchess continued all serenely and publicly to appraise +her. “Lambeth’s very susceptible, but +he’s very volatile too.”</p> +<p>“Volatile?” Bessie echoed.</p> +<p>“He’s very inconstant. It won’t do to +depend on him.”</p> +<p>“Ah,” the girl returned, “I don’t +recognise that description. We’ve depended on him +greatly, my <a name="page341"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +341</span>sister and I, and have found him so faithful. He +has never disappointed us.”</p> +<p>“He’ll disappoint you yet,” said her Grace +with a certain rich force.</p> +<p>Bessie gave a laugh of amusement as at such a contention from +such a quarter. “I suppose it will depend on what we +expect of him.”</p> +<p>“The less you expect the better,” said her massive +monitress.</p> +<p>“Well, we expect nothing unreasonable.”</p> +<p>The Duchess had a fine contemplative pause—evidently +with more to say. She made, in the quantity, her next +selection. “Lambeth says he has seen so much of +you.”</p> +<p>“He has been with us very often—he has been a +ministering angel,” Bessie hastened to put on record.</p> +<p>“I daresay you’re used to that. I’m +told there’s a great deal of that in America.”</p> +<p>“A great deal of angelic ministering?” the girl +laughed again.</p> +<p>“Is that what you call it? I know you’ve +different expressions.”</p> +<p>“We certainly don’t always understand each +other,” said Mrs. Westgate, the termination of whose +interview with Lady Pimlico had allowed her to revert to their +elder visitor.</p> +<p>“I’m speaking of the young men calling so much on +the young ladies,” the Duchess explained.</p> +<p>“But surely in England,” Mrs. Westgate appealed, +“the young ladies don’t call on the young +men?”</p> +<p>“Some of them do—almost!” Lady Pimlico +declared. “When a young man’s a great +<i>parti</i>.”</p> +<p>“Bessie, you must make a note of that,” said Mrs. +Westgate. “My sister”—she gave their +friends the benefit of the knowledge—“is a model +traveller. She writes down all the curious facts she hears +in a little book she keeps for the purpose.”</p> +<p><a name="page342"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 342</span>The +Duchess took it, with a noble art of her own, as if she +hadn’t heard it; and while she was so occupied—for +this involved a large deliberation—her daughter turned to +Bessie. “My brother has told us of your being so +clever.”</p> +<p>“He should have said my sister,” Bessie +returned—“when she treats you to such flights as +that.”</p> +<p>“Shall you be long at Branches?” the Duchess +abruptly asked of her.</p> +<p>Bessie was to have afterwards a vivid remembrance of wondering +what her Grace (she was so glad Duchesses had that predicate) +would mean by “long.” But she might as well +somehow have wondered what the occupants of the planet Mars +would. “He has invited us for three days.”</p> +<p>“I think I must really manage it,” the Duchess +declared—“and my daughter too.”</p> +<p>“That will be charming!”</p> +<p>“Delightful!” cried Mrs. Westgate.</p> +<p>“I shall expect to see a deal of you,” the Duchess +continued. “When I go to Branches I monopolise my +son’s guests.”</p> +<p>“They must give themselves up to you,” said Mrs. +Westgate all graciously.</p> +<p>“I quite yearn to see it—to see the Castle,” +Bessie went on to the larger lady. “I’ve never +seen one—in England at least; and you know we’ve none +in America.”</p> +<p>“Ah, you’re fond of castles?”—her +Grace quite took it up.</p> +<p>“Of the idea of them—which is all I +know—immensely.” And the girl’s pale +light deepened for the assurance. “It has been the +dream of my life to live in one.”</p> +<p>The Duchess looked at her as if hardly knowing how to take +such words, which, from the ducal point of view, had either to be +very artless or very <a name="page343"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 343</span>aggressive. +“Well,” she said, rising, “I’ll show you +Branches myself.” And upon this the noble ladies took +their departure.</p> +<p>“What did they mean by it?” Mrs. Westgate sought +to know when they had gone.</p> +<p>“They meant to do the friendly thing,” Bessie +surmised, “because we’re going to meet +them.”</p> +<p>“It’s too late to do the friendly thing,” +Mrs. Westgate replied almost grimly. “They meant to +overawe us by their fine manners and their grandeur; they meant +to make you <i>lâcher prise</i>.”</p> +<p>“<i>Lâcher prise</i>? What strange things +you say!” the girl sighed as fairly for pain.</p> +<p>“They meant to snub us so that we shouldn’t dare +to go to Branches,” Mrs. Westgate substituted with +confidence.</p> +<p>“On the contrary,” said Bessie, “the Duchess +offered to show me the place herself.”</p> +<p>“Yes, you may depend upon it she won’t let you out +of her sight. She’ll show you the place from morning +till night.”</p> +<p>“You’ve a theory for everything,” our young +woman a little more helplessly allowed.</p> +<p>“And you apparently have none for anything.”</p> +<p>“I saw no attempt to ‘overawe’ us,” +Bessie nevertheless persisted. “Their manners +weren’t fine.”</p> +<p>“They were not even good!” Mrs. Westgate +declared.</p> +<p>Her sister had a pause, but in a few moments claimed the +possession of an excellent theory. “They just came to +look at me!” she brought out as with much ingenuity. +Mrs. Westgate did the idea justice; she greeted it with a smile +and pronounced it a credit to a fresh young mind; while in +reality she felt that the girl’s scepticism, or her +charity, or, as she had sometimes called it appropriately, her +idealism, was <a name="page344"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +344</span>proof against irony. Bessie, however, remained +meditative all the rest of that day and well on into the +morrow. She privately ached—almost as under a +dishonour—with the aftersense of having been inspected in +that particular way.</p> +<p>On the morrow before luncheon Mrs. Westgate, having occasion +to go out for an hour, left her sister writing a letter. +When she came back she met Lord Lambeth at the door of the hotel +and in the act of leaving it. She thought he looked +considerably embarrassed; he certainly, she said to herself, had +no spring. “I’m sorry to have missed you. +Won’t you come back?” she asked.</p> +<p>“No—I can’t. I’ve seen your +sister. I can never come back.” Then he looked +at her a moment and took her hand. “Good-bye, Mrs. +Westgate—you’ve been very kind to me.” +And with what she thought a strange sad air on his handsome young +face he turned away.</p> +<p>She went in only to find Bessie still writing her letter; find +her, that is, seated at the table with the arrested pen in her +hand. She put her question after a moment. +“Lord Lambeth has been here?”</p> +<p>Then Bessie got up and showed her a pale serious +face—bending it on her for some time, confessing silently +and, a little, pleading. “I told him,” the girl +said at last, “that we couldn’t go to +Branches.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Westgate gave a gasp of temporary disappointment. +“He might have waited,” she nevertheless smiled, +“till one had seen the Castle.” An hour +afterwards she spoke again. “I do wish, you know, you +might have accepted him.”</p> +<p>“I couldn’t,” said Bessie, with the slowest +gravest gentlest of headshakes.</p> +<p>“He’s really such a dear,” Mrs. Westgate +pursued.</p> +<p>“I couldn’t,” Bessie repeated.</p> +<p><a name="page345"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +345</span>“If it’s only,” her sister added, +“because those women will think they succeeded—that +they paralysed us!”</p> +<p>Our young lady turned away, but presently added: “They +were interesting. I should have liked to see them +again.”</p> +<p>“So should I!” cried Mrs. Westgate, with much +point.</p> +<p>“And I should have liked to see the Castle,” said +Bessie. “But now we must leave England.”</p> +<p>Her sister’s eyes studied her. “You +won’t wait to go to the National Gallery?”</p> +<p>“Not now.”</p> +<p>“Nor to Canterbury Cathedral?”</p> +<p>Bessie lost herself for a little in this. “We can +stop there on our way to Paris,” she then said.</p> +<p>Lord Lambeth didn’t tell Percy Beaumont that the +contingency he was not prepared at all to like had occurred; but +that gentleman, on hearing that the two ladies had left London, +wondered with some intensity what had happened; wondered, that +is, till the Duchess of Bayswater came a little to his +assistance. The two ladies went to Paris—when Mrs. +Westgate beguiled the journey by repeating several times: +“That’s what I regret; they’ll think they +petrified us.” But Bessie Alden, strange and charming +girl, seemed to regret nothing.</p> +<h2><a name="page347"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 347</span>THE +PENSION BEAUREPAS</h2> +<h3><a name="page349"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +349</span>I</h3> +<p>I was not rich—on the contrary; and I had been told the +Pension Beaurepas was cheap. I had further been told that a +boarding-house is a capital place for the study of human +nature. I was inclined to a literary career and a friend +had said to me: “If you mean to write you ought to go and +live in a boarding-house: there’s no other such way to pick +up material.” I had read something of this kind in a +letter addressed by the celebrated Stendhal to his sister: +“I have a passionate desire to know human nature, and a +great mind to live in a boarding-house, where people can’t +conceal their real characters.” I was an admirer of +<i>La Chartreuse de Parme</i>, and easily believed one +couldn’t do better than follow in the footsteps of its +author. I remembered, too, the magnificent boarding-house +in Balzac’s <i>Père Goriot</i>—the +“pension bourgeoise des deux sexes et autres,” kept +by Madame Vauquer, née de Conflans. Magnificent, I +mean, as a piece of portraiture; the establishment, as an +establishment, was certainly sordid enough, and I hoped for +better things from the Pension Beaurepas. This institution +was one of the most esteemed in Geneva and, standing in a little +garden of its own not far from the lake, had a very homely +comfortable sociable aspect. The regular entrance was, as +one might say, at the back, which looked upon the street, or +rather upon a little <i>place</i> adorned, <a +name="page350"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 350</span>like every +<i>place</i> in Geneva, great or small, with a generous cool +fountain. That approach was not prepossessing, for on +crossing the threshold you found yourself more or less in the +kitchen—amid the “offices” and struck with +their assault on your nostril. This, however, was no great +matter, for at the Pension Beaurepas things conformed frankly to +their nature and the whole mechanism lay bare. It was +rather primitive, the mechanism, but it worked in a friendly +homely regular way. Madame Beaurepas was an honest little +old woman—she was far advanced in life and had been keeping +a pension for more than forty years—whose only faults were +that she was slightly deaf, that she was fond of a surreptitious +pinch of snuff, and that, at the age of seventy-four, she wore +stacks of flowers in her cap. There was a legend in the +house that she wasn’t so deaf as she pretended and that she +feigned this infirmity in order to possess herself of the secrets +of her lodgers. I never indeed subscribed to this theory, +convinced as I became that Madame Beaurepas had outlived the +period of indiscreet curiosity. She dealt with the present +and the future in the steady light of a long experience; she had +been having lodgers for nearly half a century and all her concern +with them was that they should pay their bills, fold their +napkins and make use of the doormat. She cared very little +for their secrets. “J’en ai vus de toutes les +couleurs,” she said to me. She had quite ceased to +trouble about individuals; she cared only for types and clear +categories. Her large observation had made her acquainted +with a number of these and her mind become a complete collection +of “heads.” She flattered herself that she knew +at a glance where to pigeonhole a new-comer, and if she made +mistakes her deportment never betrayed them. I felt that as +regards particular persons—once they conformed to the few +rules—she had neither likes <a name="page351"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 351</span>nor dislikes; but she was capable of +expressing esteem or contempt for a species. She had her +own ways, I suppose, of manifesting her approval, but her manner +of indicating the reverse was simple and unvarying. +“Je trouve que c’est +déplacé!”—this exhausted her view of +the matter. If one of her inmates had put arsenic into the +<i>pot-au-feu</i> I believe Madame Beaurepas would have been +satisfied to remark that this receptacle was not the place for +arsenic. She could have imagined it otherwise and suitably +applied. The line of misconduct to which she most objected +was an undue assumption of gentility; she had no patience with +boarders who gave themselves airs. “When people come +chez moi it isn’t to cut a figure in the world; I’ve +never so flattered myself,” I remember hearing her say; +“and when you pay seven francs a day, tout compris, it +comprises everything but the right to look down on the +others. Yet there are people who, the less they pay, take +themselves the more au sérieux. My most difficult +boarders have always been those who’ve fiercely bargained +and had the cheapest rooms.”</p> +<p>Madame Beaurepas had a niece, a young woman of some forty odd +years; and the two ladies, with the assistance of a couple of +thick-waisted red-armed peasant-women, kept the house +going. If on your exits and entrances you peeped into the +kitchen it made very little difference; as Célestine the +cook shrouded herself in no mystery and announced the day’s +fare, amid her fumes, quite with the resonance of the priestess +of the tripod foretelling the future. She was always at +your service with a grateful grin: she blacked your boots; she +trudged off to fetch a cab; she would have carried your baggage, +if you had allowed her, on her broad little back. She was +always tramping in and out between her kitchen and the fountain +in the <i>place</i>, where it often seemed to me <a +name="page352"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 352</span>that a +large part of the preparation for our meals went +forward—the wringing-out of towels and table-cloths, the +washing of potatoes and cabbages, the scouring of saucepans and +cleansing of water-bottles. You enjoyed from the door-step +a perpetual back-view of Célestine and of her large loose +woollen ankles as she craned, from the waist, over into the +fountain and dabbled in her various utensils. This sounds +as if life proceeded but in a makeshift fashion at the Pension +Beaurepas—as if we suffered from a sordid tone. But +such was not at all the case. We were simply very +bourgeois; we practised the good old Genevese principle of not +sacrificing to appearances. Nothing can be better than that +principle when the rich real underlies it. We had the rich +real at the Pension Beaurepas: we had it in the shape of soft +short beds equipped with fluffy <i>duvets</i>; of admirable +coffee, served to us in the morning by Célestine in person +as we lay recumbent on these downy couches; of copious wholesome +succulent dinners, conformable to the best provincial +traditions. For myself, I thought the Pension Beaurepas +local colour, and this, with me, at that time, was a grand +term. I was young and ingenuous and had just come from +America. I wished to perfect myself in the French tongue +and innocently believed it to flourish by Lake Leman. I +used to go to lectures at the Academy, the nursing mother of the +present University, and come home with a violent appetite. +I always enjoyed my morning walk across the long +bridge—there was only one just there in those +days—which spans the deep blue out-gush of the lake, and up +the dark steep streets of the old Calvinistic city. The +garden faced this way, toward the lake and the old town, and gave +properest access to the house. There was a high wall with a +double gate in the middle and flanked by a couple of ancient +massive posts; the big rusty grille <a name="page353"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 353</span>bristled with old-fashioned +iron-work. The garden was rather mouldy and weedy, tangled +and untended; but it contained a small thin-flowing fountain, +several green benches, a rickety little table of the same +complexion, together with three orange-trees in tubs disposed as +effectively as possible in front of the windows of the salon.</p> +<h3><a name="page354"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +354</span>II</h3> +<p>As commonly happens in boarding-houses the rustle of +petticoats was at the Pension Beaurepas the most familiar form of +the human tread. We enjoyed the usual allowance of +economical widows and old maids and, to maintain the balance of +the sexes, could boast but of a finished old Frenchman and an +obscure young American. It hardly made the matter easier +that the old Frenchman came from Lausanne. He was a native +of that well-perched place, but had once spent six months in +Paris, where he had tasted of the tree of knowledge; he had got +beyond Lausanne, whose resources he pronounced inadequate. +Lausanne, as he said, “<i>manquait +d’agrêments</i>.” When obliged, for +reasons he never specified, to bring his residence in Paris to a +close, he had fallen back on Geneva; he had broken his fall at +the Pension Beaurepas. Geneva was after all more like +Paris, and at a Genevese boarding-house there was sure to be +plenty of Americans who might be more or less counted on to add +to the resemblance. M. Pigeonneau was a little lean man +with a vast narrow nose, who sat a great deal in the garden and +bent his eyes, with the aid of a large magnifying glass, on a +volume from the <i>cabinet de lecture</i>.</p> +<p>One day a fortnight after my adoption of the retreat I +describe I came back rather earlier than usual from my academic +session; it wanted half an hour of the <a +name="page355"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 355</span>midday +breakfast. I entered the salon with the design of +possessing myself of the day’s <i>Galignani</i> before one +of the little English old maids should have removed it to her +virginal bower—a privilege to which Madame Beaurepas +frequently alluded as one of the attractions of the +establishment. In the salon I found a new-comer, a tall +gentleman in a high black hat, whom I immediately recognised as a +compatriot. I had often seen him, or his equivalent, in the +hotel-parlours of my native land. He apparently supposed +himself to be at the present moment in an hotel-parlour; his hat +was on his head or rather half off it—pushed back from his +forehead and more suspended than poised. He stood before a +table on which old newspapers were scattered; one of these he had +taken up and, with his eye-glass on his nose, was holding out at +arm’s length. It was that honourable but extremely +diminutive sheet the <i>Journal de Genève</i>, a newspaper +then of about the size of a pocket-handkerchief. As I drew +near, looking for my <i>Galignani</i>, the tall gentleman gave +me, over the top of his eyeglass, a sad and solemn stare. +Presently, however, before I had time to lay my hand on the +object of my search, he silently offered me the <i>Journal de +Genève</i>.</p> +<p>“It appears,” he said, “to be the paper of +the country.”</p> +<p>“Yes,” I answered, “I believe it’s the +best.”</p> +<p>He gazed at it again, still holding it at arm’s-length +as if it had been a looking-glass. “Well,” he +concluded, “I suppose it’s natural a small country +should have small papers. You could wrap this one up, +mountains and all, in one of our dailies!”</p> +<p>I found my <i>Galignani</i> and went off with it into the +garden, where I seated myself on a bench in the shade. +Presently I saw the tall gentleman in the hat appear at one of +the open windows of the salon and stand there with his hands in +his pockets and <a name="page356"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +356</span>his legs a little apart. He looked infinitely +bored, and—I don’t know why—I immediately felt +sorry for him. He hadn’t at all—as M. +Pigeonneau, for instance, in his way, had it—the romantic +note; he looked just a jaded, faded, absolutely voided man of +business. But after a little he came into the garden and +began to stroll about; and then his restless helpless carriage +and the vague unacquainted manner in which his eyes wandered over +the place seemed to make it proper that, as an older resident, I +should offer him a certain hospitality. I addressed him +some remark founded on our passage of a moment before, and he +came and sat down beside me on my bench, clasping one of his long +knees in his hands.</p> +<p>“When is it this big breakfast of theirs comes +off?” he inquired. “That’s what I call +it—the little breakfast and the big breakfast. I +never thought I should live to see the time when I’d want +to eat two breakfasts. But a man’s glad to do +anything over here.”</p> +<p>“For myself,” I dropped, “I find plenty to +do.”</p> +<p>He turned his head and glanced at me with an effect of +bottomless wonder and dry despair. “You’re +getting used to the life, are you?”</p> +<p>“I like the life very much,” I laughed.</p> +<p>“How long have you tried it?”</p> +<p>“Do you mean this place?”</p> +<p>“Well, I mean anywhere. It seems to me pretty much +the same all over.”</p> +<p>“I’ve been in this house only a fortnight,” +I said.</p> +<p>“Well, what should you say, from what you’ve +seen?” my companion asked.</p> +<p>“Oh you can see all there is at once. It’s +very simple.”</p> +<p>“Sweet simplicity, eh? Well then I guess my two +ladies will know right off what’s the matter with +it.”</p> +<p>“Oh everything’s very good,” I hastened to +<a name="page357"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +357</span>explain. “And Madame Beaurepas is a +charming old woman. And then it’s very +cheap.”</p> +<p>“Cheap, is it?” my friend languidly echoed.</p> +<p>“Doesn’t it strike you so?” I thought +it possible he hadn’t inquired the terms. But he +appeared not to have heard me; he sat there, clasping his knee +and absently blinking at the sunshine.</p> +<p>“Are you from the United States, sir?” he +presently demanded, turning his head again.</p> +<p>“Well, I guess I am, sir,” I felt it indicated to +reply; and I mentioned the place of my nativity.</p> +<p>“I presumed you were American or English. +I’m from the United States myself—from New York +City. Many of our people here?” he went on.</p> +<p>“Not so many as I believe there have sometimes +been. There are two or three ladies.”</p> +<p>“Well,” my interlocutor observed, “I’m +very fond of ladies’ society. I think when it’s +really nice there’s nothing comes up to it. +I’ve got two ladies here myself. I must make you +acquainted with them.” And then after I had rejoined +that I should be delighted and had inquired of him if he had been +long in Europe: “Well, it seems precious long, but my +time’s not up yet. We’ve been here nineteen +weeks and a half.”</p> +<p>“Are you travelling for pleasure?” I hazarded.</p> +<p>Once more he inclined his face to me—his face that was +practically so odd a comment on my question, and I so felt his +unspoken irony that I soon also turned and met his eyes. +“No, sir. Not much, sir,” he added after a +considerable interval.</p> +<p>“Pardon me,” I said; for his desolation had a +little the effect of a rebuke.</p> +<p>He took no notice of my appeal; he simply continued to look at +me. “I’m travelling,” he said at last, +“to please the doctors. They seemed to think +<i>they’d</i> enjoy it.”</p> +<p><a name="page358"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +358</span>“Ah, they sent you abroad for your +health?”</p> +<p>“They sent me abroad because they were so plaguey +muddled they didn’t know what else to do.”</p> +<p>“That’s often the best thing,” I ventured to +remark.</p> +<p>“It was a confession of medical bankruptcy; they wanted +to stop my run on them. They didn’t know enough to +cure me, as they had originally pretended they did, and +that’s the way they thought they’d get round +it. I wanted to be cured—I didn’t want to be +transported. I hadn’t done any harm.” I +could but assent to the general proposition of the inefficiency +of doctors, and put to my companion that I hoped he hadn’t +been seriously ill. He only shook his foot at first, for +some time, by way of answer; but at last, “I didn’t +get natural rest,” he wearily observed.</p> +<p>“Ah, that’s very annoying. I suppose you +were overworked.”</p> +<p>“I didn’t have a natural appetite—nor even +an unnatural, when they fixed up things for me. I took no +interest in my food.”</p> +<p>“Well, I guess you’ll both eat and sleep +here,” I felt justified in remarking.</p> +<p>“I couldn’t hold a pen,” my neighbour went +on. “I couldn’t sit still. I +couldn’t walk from my house to the cars—and +it’s only a little way. I lost my interest in +business.”</p> +<p>“You needed a good holiday,” I concluded.</p> +<p>“That’s what the doctors said. It +wasn’t so very smart of them. I had been paying +strict attention to business for twenty-three years.”</p> +<p>“And in all that time you had never let up?” I +cried in horror.</p> +<p>My companion waited a little. “I kind o’ let +up Sundays.”</p> +<p>“Oh that’s nothing—because our Sundays +themselves never let up.”</p> +<p><a name="page359"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +359</span>“I guess they do over here,” said my +friend.</p> +<p>“Yes, but you weren’t over here.”</p> +<p>“No, I wasn’t over here. I shouldn’t +have been where I was three years ago if I had spent my time +travelling round Europe. I was in a very advantageous +position. I did a very large business. I was +considerably interested in lumber.” He paused, +bending, though a little hopelessly, about to me again. +“Have you any business interests yourself?” I +answered that I had none, and he proceeded slowly, mildly and +deliberately. “Well, sir, perhaps you’re not +aware that business in the United States is not what it was a +short time since. Business interests are very +insecure. There seems to be a general falling-off. +Different parties offer different explanations of the fact, but +so far as I’m aware none of their fine talk has set things +going again.” I ingeniously intimated that if +business was dull the time was good for coming away; whereupon my +compatriot threw back his head and stretched his legs a +while. “Well, sir, that’s one view of the +matter certainly. There’s something to be said for +that. These things should be looked at all round. +That’s the ground my wife took. That’s the +ground,” he added in a moment, “that a lady would +naturally take.” To which he added a laugh as ghostly +as a dried flower.</p> +<p>“You think there’s a flaw in the reasoning?” +I asked.</p> +<p>“Well, sir, the ground I took was that the worse a +man’s business is the more it requires looking after. +I shouldn’t want to go out to recreation—not even to +go to church—if my house was on fire. My firm’s +not doing the business it was; it’s like a sick +child—it requires nursing. What I wanted the doctors +to do was to fix me up so that I could go on at home. +I’d have taken anything they’d have given me, and as +many times a day. I wanted to be right there; I had <a +name="page360"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 360</span>my reasons; +I have them still. But I came off all the same,” said +my friend with a melancholy smile.</p> +<p>I was a great deal younger than he, but there was something so +simple and communicative in his tone, so expressive of a desire +to fraternise and so exempt from any theory of human differences, +that I quite forgot his seniority and found myself offering him +paternal advice. “Don’t think about all +that. Simply enjoy yourself, amuse yourself, get +well. Travel about and see Europe. At the end of a +year, by the time you’re ready to go home, things will have +improved over there, and you’ll be quite well and +happy.”</p> +<p>He laid his hand on my knee; his wan kind eyes considered me, +and I thought he was going to say “You’re very +young!” But he only brought out: +“<i>You’ve</i> got used to Europe anyway!”</p> +<h3><a name="page361"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +361</span>III</h3> +<p>At breakfast I encountered his ladies—his wife and +daughter. They were placed, however, at a distance from me, +and it was not until the pensionnaires had dispersed and some of +them, according to custom, had come out into the garden, that he +had an opportunity of carrying out his offer.</p> +<p>“Will you allow me to introduce you to my +daughter?” he said, moved apparently by a paternal +inclination to provide this young lady with social +diversion. She was standing with her mother in one of the +paths, where she looked about with no great complacency, I +inferred, at the homely characteristics of the place. Old +M. Pigeonneau meanwhile hovered near, hesitating apparently +between the desire to be urbane and the absence of a +pretext. “Mrs. Ruck, Miss Sophy Ruck”—my +friend led me up.</p> +<p>Mrs. Ruck was a ponderous light-coloured person with a smooth +fair face, a somnolent eye and an arrangement of hair, with +forehead-tendrils, water-waves and other complications, that +reminded me of those framed “capillary” tributes to +the dead which used long ago to hang over artless mantel-shelves +between the pair of glass domes protecting wax flowers. +Miss Sophy was a girl of one-and-twenty, tiny and pretty and +lively, with no more maiden shyness than a feminine terrier in a +tinkling collar. Both of these ladies were arrayed in black +silk dresses, <a name="page362"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +362</span>much ruffled and flounced, and if elegance were +<i>all</i> a matter of trimming they would have been elegant.</p> +<p>“Do you think highly of this pension?” asked Mrs. +Ruck after a few preliminaries.</p> +<p>“It’s a little rough,” I made answer, +“but it seems to me comfortable.”</p> +<p>“Does it take a high rank in Geneva?”</p> +<p>“I imagine it enjoys a very fair fame.”</p> +<p>“I should never dream of comparing it to a New York +boarding-house,” Mrs. Ruck pursued.</p> +<p>“It’s quite in a different style,” her +daughter observed. Miss Ruck had folded her arms; she held +her elbows with a pair of small white hands and tapped the ground +with a pretty little foot.</p> +<p>“We hardly expected to come to a pension,” said +Mrs. Ruck, who looked considerably over my head and seemed to +confide the truth in question, as with an odd austerity or +chastity, a marked remoteness, to the general air. +“But we thought we’d try; we had heard so much about +Swiss pensions. I was saying to Mr. Ruck that I wondered if +this is a favourable specimen. I was afraid we might have +made a mistake.”</p> +<p>“Well, we know some people who have been here; they +think everything of Madame Beaurepas,” said Miss +Sophy. “They say she’s a real +friend.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Ruck, at this, drew down a little. “Mr. and +Mrs. Parker—perhaps you’ve heard her speak of +them.”</p> +<p>“Madame Beaurepas has had a great many Americans; +she’s very fond of Americans,” I replied.</p> +<p>“Well, I must say I should think she would be if she +compares them with some others.”</p> +<p>“Mother’s death on comparing,” remarked Miss +Ruck.</p> +<p>“Of course I like to study things and to see for <a +name="page363"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +363</span>myself,” the elder lady returned. “I +never had a chance till now; I never knew my privileges. +Give me an American!” And, recovering her distance +again, she seemed to impose this tax on the universe.</p> +<p>“Well, I must say there are some things I like over +here,” said Miss Sophy with courage. And indeed I +could see that she was a young woman of sharp affirmations.</p> +<p>Her father gave one of his ghostly grunts. “You +like the stores—that’s what you like most, I +guess.”</p> +<p>The young lady addressed herself to me without heeding this +charge. “I suppose you feel quite at home +here.”</p> +<p>“Oh he likes it—he has got used to the life. +He says you <i>can</i>!” Mr. Ruck proclaimed.</p> +<p>“I wish you’d teach Mr. Ruck then,” said his +wife. “It seems as if he couldn’t get used to +anything.”</p> +<p>“I’m used to you, my dear,” he retorted, but +with his melancholy eyes on me.</p> +<p>“He’s intensely restless,” continued Mrs. +Ruck. “That’s what made me want to come to a +pension. I thought he’d settle down more.”</p> +<p>“Well, lovey,” he sighed, “I’ve had +hitherto mainly to settle up!”</p> +<p>In view of a possible clash between her parents I took refuge +in conversation with Miss Ruck, who struck me as well out in the +open—as leaning, subject to any swing, so to speak, on the +easy gate of the house of life. I learned from her that +with her companions, after a visit to the British islands, she +had been spending a month in Paris and that she thought she +should have died on quitting that city. “I hung out +of the carriage, when we left the hotel—I assure you I +did. And I guess mother did, too.”</p> +<p>“Out of the other window, I hope,” said I.</p> +<p>“Yes, one out of each window”—her +promptitude was perfect. “Father had hard work, I can +tell <a name="page364"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +364</span>you. We hadn’t half-finished—there +were ever so many other places we wanted to go to.”</p> +<p>“Your father insisted on coming away?”</p> +<p>“Yes—after we had been there about a month he +claimed he had had enough. He’s fearfully restless; +he’s very much out of health. Mother and I took the +ground that if he was restless in Paris he needn’t hope for +peace anywhere. We don’t mean to let up on him till +he takes us back.” There was an air of keen +resolution in Miss Ruck’s pretty face, of the lucid +apprehension of desirable ends, which made me, as she pronounced +these words, direct a glance of covert compassion toward her poor +recalcitrant sire. He had walked away a little with his +wife, and I saw only his back and his stooping patient-looking +shoulders, whose air of acute resignation was thrown into relief +by the cold serenity of his companion. “He’ll +have to take us back in September anyway,” the girl +pursued; “he’ll have to take us back to get some +things we’ve ordered.”</p> +<p>I had an idea it was my duty to draw her out. +“Have you ordered a great many things?”</p> +<p>“Well, I guess we’ve ordered <i>some</i>. Of +course we wanted to take advantage of being in Paris—ladies +always do. We’ve left the most important ones till we +go back. Of course that’s the principal interest for +ladies. Mother said she’d feel so shabby if she just +passed through. We’ve promised all the people to be +right there in September, and I never broke a promise yet. +So Mr. Ruck has got to make his plans accordingly.”</p> +<p>“And what are his plans?” I continued, true to my +high conception.</p> +<p>“I don’t know; he doesn’t seem able to make +any. His great idea was to get to Geneva, but now that he +has got here he doesn’t seem to see the point. +It’s the effect of bad health. He used to be so +bright and <a name="page365"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +365</span>natural, but now he’s quite subdued. +It’s about time he should improve, anyway. We went +out last night to look at the jewellers’ windows—in +that street behind the hotel. I had always heard of those +jewellers’ windows. We saw some lovely things, but it +didn’t seem to rouse father. He’ll get tired of +Geneva sooner than he did of Paris.”</p> +<p>“Ah,” said I, “there are finer things here +than the jewellers’ windows. We’re very near +some of the most beautiful scenery in Europe.”</p> +<p>“I suppose you mean the mountains. Well, I guess +we’ve seen plenty of mountains at home. We used to go +to the mountains every summer. We’re familiar enough +with the mountains. Aren’t we, mother?” my +young woman demanded, appealing to Mrs. Ruck, who, with her +husband, had drawn near again.</p> +<p>“Aren’t we what?” inquired the elder +lady.</p> +<p>“Aren’t we familiar with the mountains?”</p> +<p>“Well, I hope so,” said Mrs. Ruck.</p> +<p>Mr. Ruck, with his hands in his pockets, gave me a sociable +wink. “There’s nothing much you can <i>tell</i> +them!”</p> +<p>The two ladies stood face to face a few moments, surveying +each other’s garments. Then the girl put her mother a +question. “Don’t you want to go out?”</p> +<p>“Well, I think we’d better. We’ve got +to go up to that place.”</p> +<p>“To what place?” asked Mr. Ruck.</p> +<p>“To that jeweller’s—to that big +one.”</p> +<p>“They all seemed big enough—they were <i>too</i> +big!” And he gave me another dry wink.</p> +<p>“That one where we saw the blue cross,” said his +daughter.</p> +<p>“Oh come, what do you want of that blue cross?” +poor Mr. Ruck demanded.</p> +<p>“She wants to hang it on a black velvet ribbon and tie +it round her neck,” said his wife.</p> +<p><a name="page366"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +366</span>“A black velvet ribbon? Not much!” +cried the young lady. “Do you suppose I’d wear +that cross on a black velvet ribbon? On a nice little gold +chain, if you please—a little narrow gold chain like an +old-fashioned watch-chain. That’s the proper thing +for that blue cross. I know the sort of chain I mean; +I’m going to look for one. When I want a +thing,” said Miss Ruck with decision, “I can +generally find it.”</p> +<p>“Look here, Sophy,” her father urged, “you +don’t want that blue cross.”</p> +<p>“I do want it—I happen to want it.” +And her light laugh, with which she glanced at me, was like the +flutter of some gage of battle.</p> +<p>The grace of this demonstration, in itself marked, suggested +that there were various relations in which one might stand to +Miss Ruck; but I felt that the sharpest of the strain would come +on the paternal. “Don’t worry the poor +child,” said her mother.</p> +<p>She took it sharply up. “Come on, +mother.”</p> +<p>“We’re going to look round a little,” the +elder lady explained to me by way of taking leave.</p> +<p>“I know what that means,” their companion dropped +as they moved away. He stood looking at them while he +raised his hand to his head, behind, and rubbed it with a +movement that displaced his hat. (I may remark in +parenthesis that I never saw a hat more easily displaced than Mr. +Ruck’s.) I supposed him about to exhale some plaint, +but I was mistaken. Mr. Ruck was unhappy, but he was a +touching fatalist. “Well, they want to pick up +something,” he contented himself with recognising. +“That’s the principal interest for ladies.”</p> +<h3><a name="page367"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +367</span>IV</h3> +<p>He distinguished me, as the French say; he honoured me with +his esteem and, as the days elapsed, with no small share of his +confidence. Sometimes he bored me a little, for the tone of +his conversation was not cheerful, tending as it did almost +exclusively to a melancholy dirge over the financial prostration +of our common country. “No, sir, business in the +United States is not what it once was,” he found occasion +to remark several times a day. “There’s not the +same spring—there’s not the same hopeful +feeling. You can see it in all departments.” He +used to sit by the hour in the little garden of the pension with +a roll of American newspapers in his lap and his high hat pushed +back, swinging one of his long legs and reading the <i>New York +Herald</i>. He paid a daily visit to the American +banker’s on the other side of the Rhône and remained +there a long time, turning over the old papers on the green +velvet table in the centre of the Salon des Etrangers and +fraternising with chance compatriots. But in spite of these +diversions the time was heavy on his hands. I used at times +to propose him a walk, but he had a mortal horror of any use of +his legs other than endlessly dangling or crossing them, and +regarded my direct employment of my own as a morbid form of +activity. “You’ll kill yourself if you +don’t look out,” he said, “walking all over the +country. I don’t want to stump round that way—I +ain’t <a name="page368"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +368</span>a postman!” Briefly speaking, Mr. Ruck had +few resources. His wife and daughter, on the other hand, it +was to be supposed, were possessed of a good many that +couldn’t be apparent to an unobtrusive young man. +They also sat a great deal in the garden or in the salon, side by +side, with folded hands, taking in, to vague ends, material +objects, and were remarkably independent of most of the usual +feminine aids to idleness—light literature, tapestry, the +use of the piano. They lent themselves to complete +displacement, however, much more than their companion, and I +often met them, in the Rue du Rhône and on the quays, +loitering in front of the jewellers’ windows. They +might have had a cavalier in the person of old M. Pigeonneau, who +professed a high appreciation of their charms, but who, owing to +the absence of a common idiom, was deprived, in the connexion, of +the pleasures of intimacy. He knew no English, and Mrs. +Ruck and her daughter had, as it seemed, an incurable mistrust of +the beautiful tongue which, as the old man endeavoured to impress +upon them, was pre-eminently the language of conversation.</p> +<p>“They have a tournure de princesse—a distinction +suprême,” he said to me. “One’s +surprised to find them in a little pension bourgeoise at seven +francs a day.”</p> +<p>“Oh they don’t come for economy. They must +be rich.”</p> +<p>“They don’t come for my beaux yeux—for +mine,” said M. Pigeonneau sadly. “Perhaps +it’s for yours, young man. Je vous recommande la +maman!”</p> +<p>I considered the case. “They came on account of +Mr. Ruck because at hotels he’s so restless.”</p> +<p>M. Pigeonneau gave me a knowing nod. “Of course he +is, with such a wife as that!—a femme superbe. +She’s preserved in perfection—a miraculous +fraîcheur. I like those large, fair, quiet women; <a +name="page369"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +369</span>they’re often, dans l’intimité, the +most agreeable. I’ll warrant you that at heart Madame +Roque is a finished coquette.” And then as I +demurred: “You suppose her cold? Ne vous y fiez +pas!”</p> +<p>“It’s a matter in which I’ve nothing at +stake.”</p> +<p>“You young Americans are droll,” said M. +Pigeonneau; “you never have anything at stake! But +the little one, for example; I’ll warrant you she’s +not cold. Toute menue as she is she’s admirably +made.”</p> +<p>“She’s very pretty.”</p> +<p>“‘She’s very pretty’! Vous dites +cela d’un ton! When you pay compliments to Mees Roque +I hope that’s not the way you do it.”</p> +<p>“I don’t pay compliments to Miss Ruck.”</p> +<p>“Ah, decidedly,” said M. Pigeonneau, “you +young Americans are droll!”</p> +<p>I should have suspected that these two ladies wouldn’t +especially commend themselves to Madame Beaurepas; that as a +maîtresse de salon, which she in some degree aspired to be, +she would have found them wanting in a certain colloquial +ease. But I should have gone quite wrong: Madame Beaurepas +had no fault at all to find with her new pensionnaires. +“I’ve no observation whatever to make about +them,” she said to me one evening. “I see +nothing in those ladies at all déplacé. They +don’t complain of anything; they don’t meddle; they +take what’s given them; they leave me tranquil. The +Americans are often like that. Often, but not +always,” Madame Beaurepas pursued. “We’re +to have a specimen to-morrow of a very different sort.”</p> +<p>“An American?” I was duly interested.</p> +<p>“Two Américaines—a mother and a +daughter. There are Americans and Americans: when +you’re difficiles you’re more so than any one, and +when you’ve pretensions—ah, par exemple, it’s +serious. I foresee that with this little lady everything +will be <a name="page370"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +370</span>serious, beginning with her café au lait. +She has been staying at the Pension Chamousset—my +concurrente, you know, further up the street; but she’s +coming away because the coffee’s bad. She holds to +her coffee, it appears. I don’t know what liquid +Madame Chamousset may dispense under that name, but we’ll +do the best we can for her. Only I know she’ll make +me des histoires about something else. She’ll demand +a new lamp for the salon; vous allez voir cela. She wishes +to pay but eleven francs a day for herself and her daughter, tout +compris; and for their eleven francs they expect to be lodged +like princesses. But she’s very +‘ladylike’—isn’t that what you call it in +English? Oh, pour cela, she’s ladylike!”</p> +<p>I caught a glimpse on the morrow of the source of these +portents, who had presented herself at our door as I came in from +a walk. She had come in a cab, with her daughter and her +luggage; and with an air of perfect softness and serenity she now +disputed the fare as she stood on the steps and among her +boxes. She addressed her cabman in a very English accent, +but with extreme precision and correctness. “I wish +to be perfectly reasonable, but don’t wish to encourage you +in exorbitant demands. With a franc and a half you’re +sufficiently paid. It’s not the custom at Geneva to +give a pourboire for so short a drive. I’ve made +inquiries and find it’s not the custom even in the best +families. I’m a stranger, yes, but I always adopt the +custom of the native families. I think it my duty to the +natives.”</p> +<p>“But I’m a native too, moi!” cried the +cabman in high derision.</p> +<p>“You seem to me to speak with a German accent,” +continued the lady. “You’re probably from +Basel. A franc and a half are sufficient. I see +you’ve left behind the little red bag I asked you to hold +between your knees; you’ll please to go back to the other +house <a name="page371"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +371</span>and get it. Very well, si vous me manquez +I’ll make a complaint of you to-morrow at the +administration. Aurora, you’ll find a pencil in the +outer pocket of my embroidered satchel; please write down his +number—87; do you see it distinctly?—in case we +should forget it.”</p> +<p>The young lady so addressed—a slight fair girl holding a +large parcel of umbrellas—stood at hand while this +allocution went forward, but apparently gave no heed to it. +She stood looking about her in a listless manner—looking at +the front of the house, at the corridor, at Célestine +tucking back her apron in the doorway, at me as I passed in amid +the disseminated luggage; her mother’s parsimonious +attitude seeming to produce in Miss Aurora neither sympathy nor +embarrassment. At dinner the two ladies were placed on the +same side of the table as myself and below Mrs. Ruck and her +daughter—my own position being on the right of Mr. +Ruck. I had therefore little observation of Mrs. +Church—such I learned to be her name—but I +occasionally heard her soft distinct voice.</p> +<p>“White wine, if you please; we prefer white wine. +There’s none on the table? Then you’ll please +get some and remember to place a bottle of it always here between +my daughter and myself.”</p> +<p>“That lady seems to know what she wants,” said Mr. +Ruck, “and she speaks so I can understand her. I +can’t understand every one over here. I’d like +to make that lady’s acquaintance. Perhaps she knows +what <i>I</i> want, too: it seems so hard to find out! But +I don’t want any of their sour white wine; that’s one +of the things I don’t want. I guess she’ll be +an addition to the pension.”</p> +<p>Mr. Ruck made the acquaintance of Mrs. Church that evening in +the parlour, being presented to her by his wife, who presumed on +the rights conferred <a name="page372"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 372</span>upon herself by the mutual +proximity, at table, of the two ladies. I seemed to make +out that in Mrs. Church’s view Mrs. Ruck presumed too +far. The fugitive from the Pension Chamousset, as M. +Pigeonneau called her, was a little fresh plump comely woman, +looking less than her age, with a round bright serious +face. She was very simply and frugally dressed, not at all +in the manner of Mr. Ruck’s companions, and had an air of +quiet distinction which was an excellent defensive weapon. +She exhibited a polite disposition to listen to what Mr. Ruck +might have to say, but her manner was equivalent to an intimation +that what she valued least in boarding-house life was its social +opportunities. She had placed herself near a lamp, after +carefully screwing it and turning it up, and she had opened in +her lap, with the assistance of a large embroidered marker, an +octavo volume which I perceived to be in German. To Mrs. +Ruck and her daughter she was evidently a puzzle; they were +mystified beyond appeal by her frugal attire and expensive +culture. The two younger ladies, however, had begun to +fraternise freely, and Miss Ruck presently went wandering out of +the room with her arm round the waist of Miss Church. It +was a warm evening; the long windows of the salon stood wide open +to the garden, and, inspired by the balmy darkness, M. Pigeonneau +and Mademoiselle Beaurepas, a most obliging little woman who +lisped and always wore a huge cravat, declared they would +organise a fête de nuit. They engaged in this +enterprise, and the fête developed itself on the lines of +half a dozen red paper lanterns hung about in the trees, and of +several glasses of <i>sirop</i> carried on a tray by the +stout-armed Célestine. As the occasion deepened to +its climax I went out into the garden, where M. Pigeonneau was +master of ceremonies.</p> +<p>“But where are those charming young ladies,” he <a +name="page373"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 373</span>cried, +“Mees Roque and the new-comer, l’aimable +transfuge? Their absence has been remarked and +they’re wanting to the brilliancy of the scene. +Voyez, I have selected a glass of syrup—a generous +glass—for Mees Roque, and I advise you, my young friend, if +you wish to make a good impression, to put aside one which you +may offer to the other young lady. What’s her +name? Mees Cheurche? I see; it’s a singular +name. Ca veut dire ‘église,’ +n’est-ce-pas? Voilà, a church where I’d +willingly worship!”</p> +<p>Mr. Ruck presently came out of the salon, having concluded his +interview with the elder of the pair. Through the open +window I saw that accomplished woman seated under the lamp with +her German octavo, while Mrs. Ruck, established empty-handed in +an armchair near her, fairly glowered at her for fascination.</p> +<p>“Well, I told you she’d know what I want,” +he promptly observed to me. “She says I want to go +right up to Appenzell, wherever that is; that I want to drink +whey and live in a high latitude—what did she call +it?—a high altitude. She seemed to think we ought to +leave for Appenzell to-morrow; she’d got it all +fixed. She says this ain’t a high enough lat—a +high enough altitude. And she says I mustn’t go too +high either; that would be just as bad; she seems to know just +the right figure. She says she’ll give me a list of +the hotels where we must stop on the way to Appenzell. I +asked her if she didn’t want to go with us, but she says +she’d rather sit still and read. I guess she’s +a big reader.”</p> +<p>The daughter of this devotee now reappeared, in company with +Miss Ruck, with whom she had been strolling through the outlying +parts of the garden; and that young lady noted with interest the +red paper lanterns. “Good gracious,” she +inquired, “are they trying to stick the flower-pots into +the trees?”</p> +<p><a name="page374"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +374</span>“It’s an illumination in honour of our +arrival,” her companion returned. “It’s a +triumph over Madame Chamousset.”</p> +<p>“Meanwhile, at the Pension Chamousset,” I ventured +to suggest, “they’ve put out their +lights—they’re sitting in darkness and lamenting your +departure.”</p> +<p>She smiled at me—she was standing in the light that came +from the house. M. Pigeonneau meanwhile, who had awaited +his chance, advanced to Miss Ruck with his glass of syrup. +“I’ve kept it for you, mademoiselle,” he said; +“I’ve jealously guarded it. It’s very +delicious!”</p> +<p>Miss Ruck looked at him and his syrup without making any +motion to take the glass. “Well, I guess it’s +sour,” she dropped with a small shake of her head.</p> +<p>M. Pigeonneau stood staring, his syrup in his hand; then he +slowly turned away. He looked about at the rest of us as to +appeal from Miss Ruck’s insensibility, and went to deposit +his rejected tribute on a bench. “Won’t you +give it to me?” asked Miss Church in faultless +French. “J’adore le sirop, moi.”</p> +<p>M. Pigeonneau came back with alacrity and presented the glass +with a very low bow. “I adore good +manners.”</p> +<p>This incident caused me to look at Miss Church with quickened +interest. She was not strikingly pretty, but in her +charming irregular face was a light of ardour. Like her +mother, though in a less degree, she was simply dressed.</p> +<p>“She wants to go to America, and her mother won’t +let her”—Miss Sophy explained to me her +friend’s situation.</p> +<p>“I’m very sorry—for America,” I +responsively laughed.</p> +<p>“Well, I don’t want to say anything against your +<a name="page375"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 375</span>mother, +but I think it’s shameful,” Miss Ruck pursued.</p> +<p>“Mamma has very good reasons. She’ll tell +you them all.”</p> +<p>“Well, I’m sure I don’t want to hear +them,” said Miss Ruck. “You’ve got a +right to your own country; every one has a right to their own +country.”</p> +<p>“Mamma’s not very patriotic,” Aurora was at +any rate not too spiritless to mention.</p> +<p>“Well, I call that dreadful,” her companion +declared. “I’ve heard there are some Americans +like that, but I never believed it.”</p> +<p>“Oh there are all sorts of Americans.”</p> +<p>“Aurora’s one of the right sort,” cried Miss +Ruck, ready, it seemed, for the closest comradeship.</p> +<p>“Are you very patriotic,” I asked of the +attractive exile.</p> +<p>Miss Ruck, however, promptly answered for her. +“She’s right down homesick—she’s dying to +go. If you were me,” she went on to her friend, +“I guess your mother would <i>have</i> to take +me.”</p> +<p>“Mamma’s going to take me to Dresden.”</p> +<p>“Well, I never heard of anything so cold-blooded!” +said Miss Ruck. “It’s like something in a weird +story.”</p> +<p>“I never heard Dresden was so awful a fate,” I +ventured to interpose.</p> +<p>Miss Ruck’s eyes made light of me. “Well, I +don’t believe <i>you</i>’re a good American,” +she smartly said, “and I never supposed you were. +You’d better go right in there and talk to Mrs. +Church.”</p> +<p>“Dresden’s really very nice, isn’t +it?” I asked of her companion.</p> +<p>“It isn’t nice if you happen to prefer New +York,” Miss Ruck at once returned. “Miss Church +prefers New York. Tell him you’re dying to see New +York; it will make him mad,” she went on.</p> +<p><a name="page376"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +376</span>“I’ve no desire to make him mad,” +Aurora smiled.</p> +<p>“It’s only Miss Ruck who can do that,” I +hastened to state. “Have you been a long time in +Europe?” I added.</p> +<p>“As long as I can remember.”</p> +<p>“I call that wicked!” Miss Ruck declared.</p> +<p>“You might be in a worse place,” I +continued. “I find Europe very +interesting.”</p> +<p>Miss Ruck fairly snorted. “I was just +<i>saying</i> that you wanted to pass for a European.”</p> +<p>Well, I saw my way to admit it. “Yes, I want to +pass for a Dalmatian.”</p> +<p>Miss Ruck pounced straight. “Then you had better +not come home. We know how to treat your sort.”</p> +<p>“Were you born in these countries?” I asked of +Aurora Church.</p> +<p>“Oh no—I came to Europe a small child. But I +remember America a little, and it seems delightful.”</p> +<p>“Wait till you see it again. It’s just too +lovely,” said Miss Ruck.</p> +<p>“The grandest country in all the world,” I +added.</p> +<p>Miss Ruck began to toss her head. “Come away, my +dear. If there’s a creature I despise it’s a +man who tries to say funny things about his own +country.”</p> +<p>But Aurora lingered while she all appealingly put it to +me. “Don’t you think one can be tired of +Europe?”</p> +<p>“Well—as one may be tired of life.”</p> +<p>“Tired of the life?” cried Miss Ruck. +“Father was tired of it after three weeks.”</p> +<p>“I’ve been here sixteen years,” her friend +went on, looking at me as for some charming intelligence. +“It <a name="page377"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +377</span>used to be for my education. I don’t know +what it’s for now.”</p> +<p>“She’s beautifully educated,” Miss Ruck +guaranteed. “She knows four languages.”</p> +<p>“I’m not very sure I know English!”</p> +<p>“You should go to Boston!” said our +companion. “They speak splendidly in +Boston.”</p> +<p>“C’est mon rêve,” said Aurora, still +looking at me. “Have you been all over Europe,” +I asked—“in all the different countries?”</p> +<p>She consulted her reminiscences. “Everywhere you +can find a pension. Mamma’s devoted to +pensions. We’ve lived at one time or another in every +pension in Europe—say at some five or six +hundred.”</p> +<p>“Well, I should think you had seen about enough!” +Miss Ruck exhaled.</p> +<p>“It’s a delightful way of seeing +Europe”—our friend rose to a bright high irony. +“You may imagine how it has attached me to the different +countries. I have such charming souvenirs! +There’s a pension awaiting us now at Dresden—eight +francs a day, without wine. That’s so much beyond our +mark that mamma means to make them give us wine. +Mamma’s a great authority on pensions; she’s known, +that way, all over Europe. Last winter we were in Italy, +and she discovered one at Piacenza—four francs a day. +We made economies.”</p> +<p>“Your mother doesn’t seem to mingle much,” +observed Miss Ruck, who had glanced through the window at Mrs. +Church’s concentration.</p> +<p>“No, she doesn’t mingle, except in the native +society. Though she lives in pensions she detests our +vulgar life.”</p> +<p>“‘Vulgar’?” cried Miss Ruck. +“Why then does she skimp so?” This young woman +had clearly no other notion of vulgarity.</p> +<p><a name="page378"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +378</span>“Oh because we’re so poor; it’s the +cheapest way to live. We’ve tried having a cook, but +the cook always steals. Mamma used to set me to watch her; +that’s the way I passed my jeunesse—my belle +jeunesse. We’re frightfully poor,” she went on +with the same strange frankness—a curious mixture of +girlish grace and conscious cynicism. “Nous +n’avons pas le sou. That’s one of the reasons +we don’t go back to America. Mamma says we could +never afford to live there.”</p> +<p>“Well, any one can see that you’re an American +girl,” Miss Ruck remarked in a consolatory manner. +“I can tell an American girl a mile off. You’ve +got the natural American style.”</p> +<p>“I’m afraid I haven’t the natural American +clothes,” said Aurora in tribute to the other’s +splendour.</p> +<p>“Well, your dress was cut in France; any one can see +that.”</p> +<p>“Yes,” our young lady laughed, “my dress was +cut in France—at Avranches.”</p> +<p>“Well, you’ve got a lovely figure anyway,” +pursued her companion.</p> +<p>“Ah,” she said for the pleasantry of it, “at +Avranches, too, my figure was admired.” And she +looked at me askance and with no clear poverty of +intention. But I was an innocent youth and I only looked +back at her and wondered. She was a great deal nicer than +Miss Ruck, and yet Miss Ruck wouldn’t have said that in +that way. “I try to be the American girl,” she +continued; “I do my best, though mamma doesn’t at all +encourage it. I’m very patriotic. I try to +strike for freedom, though mamma has brought me up à la +française; that is as much as one can in pensions. +For instance I’ve never been out of the house without +mamma—oh never never! But sometimes I despair; +American girls do come out so <a name="page379"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 379</span>with things. I can’t +come out, I can’t rush in, like that. I’m +awfully pinched, I’m always afraid. But I do what I +can, as you see. Excusez du peu!”</p> +<p>I thought this young lady of an inspiration at least as +untrammelled as her unexpatriated sisters, and her despondency in +the true note of much of their predominant prattle. At the +same time she had by no means caught, as it seemed to me, what +Miss Ruck called the natural American style. Whatever her +style was, however, it had a fascination—I knew not what +(as I called it) distinction, and yet I knew not what odd +freedom.</p> +<p>The young ladies began to stroll about the garden again, and I +enjoyed their society until M. Pigeonneau’s conception of a +“high time” began to languish.</p> +<h3><a name="page380"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +380</span>V</h3> +<p>Mr. Ruck failed to take his departure for Appenzell on the +morrow, in spite of the eagerness to see him off quaintly +attributed by him to Mrs. Church. He continued on the +contrary for many days after to hang about the garden, to wander +up to the banker’s and back again, to engage in desultory +conversation with his fellow boarders, and to endeavour to +assuage his constitutional restlessness by perusal of the +American journals. But it was at least on the morrow that I +had the honour of making Mrs. Church’s acquaintance. +She came into the salon after the midday breakfast, her German +octavo under her arm, and appealed to me for assistance in +selecting a quiet corner.</p> +<p>“Would you very kindly,” she said, “move +that large fauteuil a little more this way? Not the +largest; the one with the little cushion. The fauteuils +here are very insufficient; I must ask Madame Beaurepas for +another. Thank you; a little more to the left, please; that +will do. Are you particularly engaged?” she inquired +after she had seated herself. “If not I should like +briefly to converse with you. It’s some time since +I’ve met a young American of your—what shall I call +it?—affiliations. I’ve learned your name from +Madame Beaurepas; I must have known in other days some of your +people. I ask myself what has become of all my +friends. I used to have a charming little circle at home, +but now I meet no one I either <a name="page381"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 381</span>know or desire to know. +Don’t you think there’s a great difference between +the people one meets and the people one would like to meet? +Fortunately, sometimes,” my patroness graciously added, +“there’s no great difference. I suppose +you’re a specimen—and I take you for a good +one,” she imperturbably went on—“of modern +young America. Tell me, then, what modern young America is +thinking of in these strange days of ours. What are its +feelings, its opinions, its aspirations? What is its +<i>ideal</i>?” I had seated myself and she had +pointed this interrogation with the gaze of her curiously bright +and impersonal little eyes. I felt it embarrassing to be +taken for a superior specimen of modern young America and to be +expected to answer for looming millions. Observing my +hesitation Mrs. Church clasped her hands on the open page of her +book and gave a dismal, a desperate smile. +“<i>Has</i> it an ideal?” she softly asked. +“Well, we must talk of this,” she proceeded without +insisting. “Speak just now for yourself simply. +Have you come to Europe to any intelligent conscious +end?”</p> +<p>“No great end to boast of,” I said. +“But I seem to feel myself study a little.”</p> +<p>“Ah, I’m glad to hear that. You’re +gathering up a little European culture; that’s what we +lack, you know, at home. No individual can do much, of +course; but one mustn’t be discouraged—every little +so counts.”</p> +<p>“I see that you at least are doing your part,” I +bravely answered, dropping my eyes on my companion’s +learned volume.</p> +<p>“Ah yes, I go as straight as possible to the +sources. There’s no one after all like the +Germans. That is for digging up the facts and the +evidence. For conclusions I frequently diverge. I +form my opinions myself. I’m sorry to say, +however,” Mrs. Church continued, “that I don’t +do much to spread the light. <a name="page382"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 382</span>I’m afraid I’m sadly +selfish; I do little to irrigate the soil. I belong—I +frankly confess it—to the class of impenitent +absentees.”</p> +<p>“I had the pleasure, last evening,” I said, +“of making the acquaintance of your daughter. She +tells me you’ve been a long time in Europe.”</p> +<p>She took it blandly. “Can one ever be <i>too</i> +long? You see it’s <i>our</i> world, that of us few +real fugitives from the rule of the mob. We shall never go +back to that.”</p> +<p>“Your daughter nevertheless fancies she yearns!” I +replied.</p> +<p>“Has she been taking you into her confidence? +She’s a more sensible young lady than she sometimes +appears. I’ve taken great pains with her; she’s +really—I may be permitted to say it—superbly +educated.”</p> +<p>“She seemed to me to do you honour,” I made +answer. “And I hear she speaks fluently four +languages.”</p> +<p>“It’s not only that,” said Mrs. Church in +the tone of one sated with fluencies and disillusioned of +diplomas. “She has made what we call <i>de fortes +études</i>—such as I suppose you’re making +now. She’s familiar with the results of modern +science; she keeps pace with the new historical +school.”</p> +<p>“Ah,” said I, “she has gone much further +than I!”</p> +<p>She seemed to look at me a moment as for the tip of the ear of +irony. “You doubtless think I exaggerate, and you +force me therefore to mention the fact that I speak of such +matters with a certain intelligence.”</p> +<p>“I should never dream of doubting it,” I returned, +“but your daughter nevertheless strongly holds that you +ought to take her home.” I might have feared that +these words would practically represent treachery to the young +lady, but I was reassured by seeing them <a +name="page383"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 383</span>produce in +her mother’s placid surface no symptom whatever of +irritation.</p> +<p>“My daughter has her little theories,” that lady +observed; “she has, I may say, her small fond illusions and +rebellions. And what wonder! What would youth be +without its Sturm and Drang? Aurora says to +herself—all at her ease—that she would be happier in +their dreadful New York, in their dreary Boston, in their +desperate Philadelphia, than in one of the charming old cities in +which our lot is cast. But she knows not what she babbles +of—that’s all. We must allow our children their +yearning to make mistakes, mustn’t we? But we must +keep the mistakes down to as few as possible.”</p> +<p>Her soft sweet positiveness, beneath which I recognised all +sorts of really hard rigours of resistance and aggression, +somehow breathed a chill on me. “American +cities,” I none the less threw off, “are the paradise +of the female young.”</p> +<p>“Do you mean,” she inquired, “that the +generations reared in those places are angels?”</p> +<p>“Well,” I said resolutely, “they’re +the nicest of all girls.”</p> +<p>“This young lady—what’s her odd +name?—with whom my daughter has formed a somewhat +precipitate acquaintance: is Miss Ruck an angel and one of the +nicest of all? But I won’t,” she amusedly +added, “force you to describe her as she deserves. It +would be too cruel to make a single exception.”</p> +<p>“Well,” I at any rate pleaded, “in America +they’ve the easiest lot and the best time. +They’ve the most innocent liberty.”</p> +<p>My companion laid her hand an instant on my arm. +“My dear young friend, I know America, I know the +conditions of life there down to the ground. There’s +perhaps no subject on which I’ve reflected more than on our +national idiosyncrasies.”</p> +<p><a name="page384"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +384</span>“To the effect, I see, of your holding them in +horror,” I said a little roughly.</p> +<p>Rude indeed as was my young presumption Mrs. Church had still +her cultivated patience, even her pity, for it. +“We’re very crude,” she blandly remarked, +“and we’re proportionately indigestible.” +And lest her own refined strictures should seem to savour of the +vice she deprecated she went on to explain. “There +are two classes of minds, you know—those that hold back and +those that push forward. My daughter and I are not pushers; +we move with the slow considerate steps to which a little dignity +may still cling. We like the old trodden paths; we like the +old old world.”</p> +<p>“Ah,” said I, “you know what you like. +There’s a great virtue in that.”</p> +<p>“Yes, we like Europe; we prefer it. We like the +opportunities of Europe; we like the <i>rest</i>. +There’s so much in that, you know. The world seems to +me to be hurrying, pressing forward so fiercely, without knowing +in the least where it’s going. ‘Whither?’ +I often ask in my little quiet way. But I’ve yet to +learn that any one can tell me.”</p> +<p>“You’re a grand old conservative,” I +returned while I wondered whether I myself might have been able +to meet her question.</p> +<p>Mrs. Church gave me a smile that was equivalent to a +confession. “I wish to retain a wee bit—just a +wee bit. Surely we’ve done so much we might rest a +while; we might pause. That’s all my +feeling—just to stop a little, to wait, to take +breath. I’ve seen so many changes. I want to +draw in, to draw in—to hold back, to hold back.”</p> +<p>“You shouldn’t hold your daughter back!” I +laughed as I got up. I rose not by way of closing our small +discussion, for I felt my friend’s exposition of her views +to be by no means complete, but in order to <a +name="page385"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 385</span>offer a +chair to Miss Aurora, who at this moment drew near. She +thanked me and remained standing, but without at first, as I +noticed, really facing her parent.</p> +<p>“You’ve been engaged with your new acquaintance, +my dear?” this lady inquired.</p> +<p>“Yes, mamma,” said the girl with a sort of prompt +sweet dryness.</p> +<p>“Do you find her very edifying?”</p> +<p>Aurora had a silence; then she met her mother’s +eyes. “I don’t know, mamma. She’s +very fresh.”</p> +<p>I ventured a respectful laugh. “Your mother has +another word for that. But I must not,” I added, +“be indigestibly raw.”</p> +<p>“Ah, vous m’en voulez?” Mrs. Church serenely +sighed. “And yet I can’t pretend I said it in +jest. I feel it too much. We’ve been having a +little social discussion,” she said to her daughter. +“There’s still so much to be said. And I +wish,” she continued, turning to me, “that I could +give you our point of view. Don’t you wish, Aurora, +that we could give him our point of view?”</p> +<p>“Yes, mamma,” said Aurora.</p> +<p>“We consider ourselves very fortunate in our point of +view, don’t we, dearest?” mamma demanded.</p> +<p>“Very fortunate indeed, mamma.”</p> +<p>“You see we’ve acquired an insight into European +life,” the elder lady pursued. “We’ve our +place at many a European fireside. We find so much to +esteem—so much to enjoy. Don’t we find +delightful things, my daughter?”</p> +<p>“So very delightful, mamma,” the girl went on with +her colourless calm. I wondered at it; it offered so +strange a contrast to the mocking freedom of her tone the night +before; but while I wondered I desired to testify to the interest +at least with which she inspired me.</p> +<p>“I don’t know what impression you ladies may <a +name="page386"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 386</span>have found +at European firesides,” I again ventured, “but there +can be very little doubt of the impression you must have made +there.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Church got in motion to acknowledge my compliment. +“We’ve spent some charming hours. And that +reminds me that we’ve just now such an occasion in +prospect. We’re to call upon some Genevese +friends—the family of the Pasteur Galopin. +They’re to go with us to the old library at the Hôtel +de Ville, where there are some very interesting documents of the +period of the Reformation: we’re promised a glimpse of some +manuscripts of poor Servetus, the antagonist and victim, you +know, of the dire Calvin. Here of course one can only speak +of ce monsieur under one’s breath, but some day when +we’re more private”—Mrs. Church looked round +the room—“I’ll give you my view of him. I +think it has a force of its own. Aurora’s familiar +with it—aren’t you, my daughter, familiar with my +view of the evil genius of the Reformation?”</p> +<p>“Yes, mamma—<i>very</i>,” said Aurora with +docility—and also, as I thought, with subtlety—while +the two ladies went to prepare for their visit to the Pasteur +Galopin.</p> +<h3><a name="page387"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +387</span>VI</h3> +<p>“She has demanded a new lamp: I told you she +would!” This communication was made me by Madame +Beaurepas a couple of days later. “And she has asked +for a new tapis de lit, and she has requested me to provide +Célestine with a pair of light shoes. I remarked to +her that, as a general thing, domestic drudges aren’t shod +with satin. That brave Célestine!”</p> +<p>“Mrs. Church may be exacting,” I said, “but +she’s a clever little woman.”</p> +<p>“A lady who pays but five francs and a half +shouldn’t be too clever. C’est +déplacé. I don’t like the +type.”</p> +<p>“What type then,” I asked, “do you pronounce +Mrs. Church’s?”</p> +<p>“Mon Dieu,” said Madame Beaurepas, +“c’est une de ces mamans, comme vous en avez, qui +promènent leur fille.”</p> +<p>“She’s trying to marry her daughter? I +don’t think she’s of that sort.”</p> +<p>But Madame Beaurepas shrewdly held to her idea. +“She’s trying it in her own way; she does it very +quietly. She doesn’t want an American; she wants a +foreigner. And she wants a mari sérieux. But +she’s travelling over Europe in search of one. She +would like a magistrate.”</p> +<p>“A magistrate?”</p> +<p><a name="page388"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +388</span>“A gros bonnet of some kind; a professor or a +deputy.”</p> +<p>“I’m awfully sorry for the poor girl,” I +found myself moved to declare.</p> +<p>“You needn’t pity her too much; she’s a +<i>fine mouche</i>—a sly thing.”</p> +<p>“Ah, for that, no!” I protested. +“She’s no fool, but she’s an honest +creature.”</p> +<p>My hostess gave an ancient grin. “She has hooked +you, eh? But the mother won’t have you.”</p> +<p>I developed my idea without heeding this insinuation. +“She’s a charming girl, but she’s a shrewd +politician. It’s a necessity of her case. +She’s less submissive to her mother than she has to pretend +to be. That’s in self-defence. It’s to +make her life possible.”</p> +<p>“She wants to get away from her +mother”—Madame Beaurepas so far confirmed me. +“She wants to <i>courir les champs</i>.”</p> +<p>“She wants to go to America, her native +country.”</p> +<p>“Precisely. And she’ll certainly manage +it.”</p> +<p>“I hope so!” I laughed.</p> +<p>“Some fine morning—or evening—she’ll +go off with a young man; probably with a young +American.”</p> +<p>“Allons donc!” I cried with disgust.</p> +<p>“That will be quite America enough,” pursued my +cynical hostess. “I’ve kept a boarding-house +for nearly half a century. I’ve seen that +type.”</p> +<p>“Have such things as that happened chez vous?” I +asked.</p> +<p>“Everything has happened chez moi. But nothing has +happened more than once. Therefore this won’t happen +here. It will be at the next place they go to, or the +next. Besides, there’s here no young American pour la +partie—none except you, monsieur. You’re +susceptible but you’re too reasonable.”</p> +<p>“It’s lucky for you I’m reasonable,” I +answered. <a name="page389"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +389</span>“It’s thanks to my cold blood you escape a +scolding!”</p> +<p>One morning about this time, instead of coming back to +breakfast at the pension after my lectures at the Academy, I went +to partake of this meal with a fellow student at an ancient +eating-house in the collegiate quarter. On separating from +my friend I took my way along that charming public walk known in +Geneva as the Treille, a shady terrace, of immense elevation, +overhanging a stretch of the lower town. Here are spreading +trees and well-worn benches, and over the tiles and chimneys of +the <i>ville basse</i> a view of the snow-crested Alps. On +the other side, as you turn your back to the view, the high level +is overlooked by a row of tall sober-faced <i>hôtels</i>, +the dwellings of the local aristocracy. I was fond of the +place, resorting to it for stimulation of my sense of the social +scene at large. Presently, as I lingered there on this +occasion, I became aware of a gentleman seated not far from where +I stood, his back to the Alpine chain, which this morning was all +radiant, and a newspaper unfolded in his lap. He +wasn’t reading, however; he only stared before him in +gloomy contemplation. I don’t know whether I +recognised first the newspaper or its detainer; one, in either +case, would have helped me to identify the other. One was +the <i>New York Herald</i>—the other of course was Mr. +Ruck. As I drew nearer he moved his eyes from the stony +succession, the grey old high-featured house-masks, on the other +side of the terrace, and I knew by the expression of his face +just how he had been feeling about these distinguished +abodes. He had made up his mind that their proprietors were +a “mean” narrow-minded unsociable company that +plunged its knotted roots into a superfluous past. I +endeavoured therefore, as I sat down beside him, to strike a +pleasanter note.</p> +<p><a name="page390"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +390</span>“The Alps, from here, do make a wondrous +show!”</p> +<p>“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Ruck without a stir, +“I’ve examined the Alps. Fine thing in its way, +the view—fine thing. Beauties of nature—that +sort of thing. We came up on purpose to look at +it.”</p> +<p>“Your ladies then have been with you?”</p> +<p>“Yes—I guess they’re fooling round. +They’re awfully restless. They keep saying +<i>I’m</i> restless, but I’m as quiet as a sleeping +child to <i>them</i>. It takes,” he added in a moment +dryly, “the form of an interest in the stores.”</p> +<p>“And are the stores what they’re after +now?”</p> +<p>“Yes—unless this is one of the days the stores +don’t keep. They regret them, but I wish there were +more of them! They told me to sit here a while and +they’d just have a look. I generally know what that +means—it’s <i>their</i> form of scenery. But +that’s the principal interest for ladies,” he added, +retracting his irony. “We thought we’d come up +here and see the cathedral; Mrs. Church seemed to think it a dead +loss we shouldn’t see the cathedral, especially as we +hadn’t seen many yet. And I had to come up to the +banker’s anyway. Well, we certainly saw the +cathedral. I don’t know as we’re any the better +for it, and I don’t know as I should know it again. +But we saw it anyway, stone by stone—and heard about it +century by century. I don’t know as I should want to +go there regularly, but I suppose it will give us in conversation +a kind of hold on Mrs. Church, hey? I guess we want +something of that kind. Well,” Mr. Ruck continued, +“I stepped in at the banker’s to see if there +wasn’t something, and they handed me out an old +<i>Herald</i>.”</p> +<p>“Well, I hope the <i>Herald’s</i> full of good +news,” I returned.</p> +<p>“Can’t say it is. Damned bad +news.”</p> +<p><a name="page391"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +391</span>“Political,” I inquired, “or +commercial?”</p> +<p>“Oh hang politics! It’s business, sir. +There <i>ain’t</i> any business. It’s all gone +to—” and Mr. Ruck became profane. “Nine +failures in one day, and two of them in our locality. What +do you say to that?”</p> +<p>“I greatly hope they haven’t inconvenienced +you,” was all I could gratify him with.</p> +<p>“Well, I guess they haven’t affected me quite +desirably. So many houses on fire, that’s all. +If they happen to take place right where you live they +don’t increase the value of your own property. When +mine catches I suppose they’ll write and tell me—one +of these days when they get round to me. I didn’t get +a blamed letter this morning; I suppose they think I’m +having such a good time over here it’s a pity to break +in. If I could attend to business for about half an hour +I’d find out something. But I can’t, and +it’s no use talking. The state of my health was never +so unsatisfactory as it was about five o’clock this +morning.”</p> +<p>“I’m very sorry to hear that,” I said, +“and I recommend you strongly not to think of +business.”</p> +<p>“I don’t,” Mr. Ruck replied. +“You can’t <i>make</i> me. I’m thinking +of cathedrals. I’m thinking of the way they used to +chain you up under them or burn you up in front of them—in +those high old times. I’m thinking of the beauties of +nature too,” he went on, turning round on the bench and +leaning his elbow on the parapet. “You can get killed +over there I suppose also”—and he nodded at the +shining crests. “I’m thinking of going +over—because, whatever the danger, I seem more afraid not +to. That’s why I do most things. How do you get +over?” he sighed.</p> +<p>“Over to Chamouni?”</p> +<p>“Over to those hills. Don’t they run a train +right up?”</p> +<p>“You can go to Chamouni,” I said. “You +can go <a name="page392"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +392</span>to Grindelwald and Zermatt and fifty other +places. You can’t go by rail, but you can +drive.”</p> +<p>“All right, we’ll drive—you can’t tell +the difference in these cars. Yes,” Mr. Ruck +proceeded, “Chamouni’s one of the places we put +down. I hope there are good stores in +Chamouni.” He spoke with a quickened ring and with an +irony more pointed than commonly served him. It was as if +he had been wrought upon, and yet his general submission to fate +was still there. I judged he had simply taken, in the face +of disaster, a sudden sublime resolution not to worry. He +presently twisted himself about on his bench again and began to +look out for his companions. “Well, they <i>are</i> +taking a look,” he resumed; “I guess they’ve +struck something somewhere. And they’ve got a +carriage waiting outside of that archway too. They seem to +do a big business in archways here, don’t they? They +like to have a carriage to carry home the things—those +ladies of mine. Then they’re sure they’ve got +’em.” The ladies, after this, to do them +justice, were not very long in appearing. They came toward +us from under the archway to which Mr. Ruck had somewhat +invidiously alluded, slowly and with a jaded air. My +companion watched them as they advanced. +“They’re right down tired. When they look like +that it kind o’ foots up.”</p> +<p>“Well,” said Mrs. Ruck, “I’m glad +you’ve had some company.” Her husband looked at +her, in silence, through narrowed eyelids, and I suspected that +her unusually gracious observation was prompted by the less +innocent aftertaste of her own late pastime.</p> +<p>Her daughter glanced at me with the habit of straighter +defiance. “It would have been more proper if +<i>we</i> had had the company. Why didn’t you come +after us instead of sneaking there?” she asked of Mr. +Ruck’s companion.</p> +<p>“I was told by your father,” I explained, +“that you <a name="page393"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +393</span>were engaged in sacred rites.” If Miss Ruck +was less conciliatory it would be scarcely, I felt sure, because +she had been more frugal. It was rather because her +conception of social intercourse appeared to consist of the +imputation to as many persons as possible—that is to as +many subject males—of some scandalous neglect of her charms +and her claims. “Well, for a gentleman there’s +nothing so sacred as ladies’ society,” she replied in +the manner of a person accustomed to giving neat retorts.</p> +<p>“I suppose you refer to the cathedral,” said her +mother. “Well, I must say we didn’t go back +there. I don’t know what it may be for regular +attendants, but it doesn’t meet my idea of a really +pleasant place of worship. Few of these old buildings +do,” Mrs. Ruck further mentioned.</p> +<p>“Well, we discovered a little lace-shop, where I guess I +could regularly attend!” her daughter took occasion to +announce without weak delay.</p> +<p>Mr. Ruck looked at his child; then he turned about again, +leaning on the parapet and gazing away at the +“hills.”</p> +<p>“Well, the place was certainly not expensive,” his +wife said with her eyes also on the Alps.</p> +<p>“We’re going up to Chamouni,” he +pursued. “You haven’t any call for lace up +there.”</p> +<p>“Well, I’m glad to hear you’ve decided to go +somewhere,” Mrs. Ruck returned. “I don’t +want to be a fixture at an old pension.”</p> +<p>“You can wear lace anywhere,” her daughter +reminded us, “if you put it on right. That’s +the great thing with lace. I don’t think they know +how to wear lace in Europe. I know how I mean to wear mine; +but I mean to keep it till I get home.”</p> +<p>Mr. Ruck transferred his melancholy gaze to her +elaborately-appointed little person; there was a great deal of +very new-looking detail in Miss Ruck’s <a +name="page394"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +394</span>appearance. Then in a tone of voice quite out of +consonance with his facial despondency, “Have you purchased +a great deal?” he inquired.</p> +<p>“I’ve purchased enough for you to make a fuss +about.”</p> +<p>“He can’t make a fuss about <i>that</i>,” +said Mrs. Ruck.</p> +<p>“Well, you’ll see!”—the girl had +unshaken confidence.</p> +<p>The subject of this serenity, however, went on in the same +tone: “Have you got it in your pocket? Why +don’t you put it on—why don’t you hang it round +you?”</p> +<p>“I’ll hang it round <i>you</i> if you don’t +look out!” cried Miss Ruck.</p> +<p>“Don’t you want to show it off to this +gentleman?” he sociably continued.</p> +<p>“Mercy, how you do carry on!” his wife sighed.</p> +<p>“Well, I want to be lively. There’s every +reason for it. We’re going up to Chamouni.”</p> +<p>“You’re real restless—that’s +what’s the matter with you.” And Mrs. Ruck +roused herself from her own repose.</p> +<p>“No, I ain’t,” said her husband. +“I never felt so quiet. I feel as peaceful as a +little child.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Ruck, who had no play of mind, looked at her daughter and +at me. “Well, I hope you’ll improve,” she +stated with a certain flatness.</p> +<p>“Send in the bills,” he went on, rising to +match. “Don’t let yourself suffer from want, +Sophy. I don’t care what you do now. We +can’t be more than gay, and we can’t be worse than +broke.”</p> +<p>Sophy joined her mother with a little toss of her head, and we +followed the ladies to the carriage, where the younger addressed +her father. “In your place, Mr. Ruck, I +wouldn’t want to flaunt my meanness quite so much before +strangers.”</p> +<p><a name="page395"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 395</span>He +appeared to feel the force of this rebuke, surely deserved by a +man on whom the humiliation of seeing the main ornaments of his +hearth betray the ascendency of that character had never yet been +laid. He flushed and was silent; his companions got into +their vehicle, the front seat of which was adorned with a large +parcel. Mr. Ruck gave the parcel a poke with his umbrella +and turned to me with a grimly penitent smile. “After +all, for the ladies, that’s the principal +interest.”</p> +<h3><a name="page396"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +396</span>VII</h3> +<p>Old M. Pigeonneau had more than once offered me the privilege +of a walk in his company, but his invitation had hitherto, for +one reason or another, always found me hampered. It befell, +however, one afternoon that I saw him go forth for a vague airing +with an unattended patience that attracted my sympathy. I +hastily overtook him and passed my hand into his venerable arm, +an overture that produced in the good old man so rejoicing a +response that he at once proposed we should direct our steps to +the English Garden: no scene less consecrated to social ease was +worthy of our union. To the English Garden accordingly we +went; it lay beyond the bridge and beside the lake. It was +always pretty and now was really recreative; a band played +furiously in the centre and a number of discreet listeners sat +under the small trees on benches and little chairs or strolled +beside the blue water. We joined the strollers, we observed +our companions and conversed on obvious topics. Some of +these last, of course, were the pretty women who graced the +prospect and who, in the light of M. Pigeonneau’s +comprehensive criticism, appeared surprisingly numerous. He +seemed bent upon our making up our minds as to which might be +prettiest, and this was an innocent game in which I consented to +take a hand.</p> +<p>Suddenly my companion stopped, pressing my arm <a +name="page397"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 397</span>with the +liveliest emotion. “La voilà, la voilà, +the prettiest!” he quickly murmured; “coming toward +us in a blue dress with the other.” It was at the +other I was looking, for the other, to my surprise, was our +interesting fellow pensioner, the daughter of the most systematic +of mothers. M. Pigeonneau meanwhile had redoubled his +transports—he had recognised Miss Ruck. “Oh la +belle rencontre, nos aimables convives—the prettiest girl +in the world in effect!” And then after we had +greeted and joined the young ladies, who, like ourselves, were +walking arm in arm and enjoying the scene, he addressed himself +to the special object of his admiration, Mees Roque. +“I was citing you with enthusiasm to my young friend here +even before I had recognised you, mademoiselle.”</p> +<p>“I don’t believe in French compliments,” +remarked Miss Sophy, who presented her back to the smiling old +man.</p> +<p>“Are you and Miss Ruck walking alone?” I asked of +her companion. “You had better accept M. +Pigeonneau’s gallant protection, to say nothing of +mine.”</p> +<p>Aurora Church had taken her hand from Miss Ruck’s arm; +she inclined her head to the side and shone at me while her open +parasol revolved on her shoulder. “Which is most +improper—to walk alone or to walk with gentlemen that one +picks up? I want to do what’s most +improper.”</p> +<p>“What perversity,” I asked, “are you, with +an ingenuity worthy of a better cause, trying to work +out?”</p> +<p>“He thinks you can’t understand him when he talks +like that,” said Miss Ruck. “But I <i>do</i> +understand you,” she flirted at +me—“always!”</p> +<p>“So I’ve always ventured to hope, my dear Miss +Ruck.”</p> +<p><a name="page398"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +398</span>“Well, if I didn’t it wouldn’t be +much loss!” cried this young lady.</p> +<p>“Allons, en marche!” trumpeted M. Pigeonneau, all +gallant urbanity and undiscouraged by her impertinence. +“Let us make together the tour of the garden.” +And he attached himself to Miss Ruck with a respectful elderly +grace which treated her own lack even of the juvenile form of +that attraction as some flower of alien modesty, and was ever +sublimely conscious of a mission to place modesty at its +ease. This ill-assorted couple walked in front, while +Aurora Church and I strolled along together.</p> +<p>“I’m sure this is more improper,” said my +companion; “this is delightfully improper. I +don’t say that as a compliment to you,” she +added. “I’d say it to any clinging man, no +matter how stupid.”</p> +<p>“Oh I’m clinging enough,” I answered; +“but I’m as stupid as you could wish, and this +doesn’t seem to me wrong.”</p> +<p>“Not for you, no; only for me. There’s +nothing that a man can do that’s wrong, is there? +<i>En morale</i>, you know, I mean. Ah, yes, he can kill +and steal; but I think there’s nothing else, is +there?”</p> +<p>“Well, it’s a nice question. One +doesn’t know how those things are taken till after one has +done them. Then one’s enlightened.”</p> +<p>“And you mean you’ve never been enlightened? +You make yourself out very good.”</p> +<p>“That’s better than making one’s self out +very bad, as you do.”</p> +<p>“Ah,” she explained, “you don’t know +the consequences of a false position.”</p> +<p>I was amused at her great formula. “What do you +mean by yours being one?”</p> +<p>“Oh I mean everything. For instance, I’ve to +pretend to be a jeune fille. I’m not a jeune fille; +no American girl’s a jeune fille; an American girl’s +<a name="page399"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 399</span>an +intelligent responsible creature. I’ve to pretend to +be idiotically innocent, but I’m not in the least +innocent.”</p> +<p>This, however, was easy to meet. “You don’t +in the least pretend to be innocent; you pretend to be—what +shall I call it?—uncannily wise.”</p> +<p>“That’s no pretence. I <i>am</i> uncannily +wise. You could call it nothing more true.”</p> +<p>I went along with her a little, rather thrilled by this finer +freedom. “You’re essentially not an American +girl.”</p> +<p>She almost stopped, looking at me; there came a flush to her +cheek. “Voilà!” she said. +“There’s my false position. I want to be an +American girl, and I’ve been hideously deprived of that +immense convenience, that beautiful resource.”</p> +<p>“Do you want me to tell you?” I pursued with +interest. “It would be utterly impossible to an +American girl—I mean unperverted, and that’s the +whole point—to talk as you’re talking to me +now.”</p> +<p>The expressive eagerness she showed for this was +charming. “Please tell me then! How would she +talk?”</p> +<p>“I can’t tell you all the things she’d say, +but I think I can tell you most of the things she +wouldn’t. She wouldn’t reason out her conduct +as you seem to me to do.”</p> +<p>Aurora gave me the most flattering attention. “I +see. She would be simpler. To do very simply things +not at all simple—that’s the American +girl!”</p> +<p>I greatly enjoyed our intellectual relation. “I +don’t know whether you’re a French girl, or what you +are, but, you know, I find you witty.”</p> +<p>“Ah, you mean I strike false notes!” she quite +comically wailed. “See how my whole sense for such +things has been ruined. False notes are just what I want to +avoid. I wish you’d always tell me.”</p> +<p><a name="page400"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 400</span>The +conversational union between Miss Ruck and her neighbour, in +front of us, had evidently not borne fruit. Miss Ruck +suddenly turned round to us with a question. +“Don’t you want some ice-cream?”</p> +<p>“<i>She</i> doesn’t strike false notes,” I +declared.</p> +<p>We had come into view of a manner of pavilion or large kiosk, +which served as a café and at which the delicacies +generally procurable at such an establishment were +dispensed. Miss Ruck pointed to the little green tables and +chairs set out on the gravel; M. Pigeonneau, fluttering with a +sense of dissipation, seconded the proposal, and we presently sat +down and gave our order to a nimble attendant. I managed +again to place myself next Aurora; our companions were on the +other side of the table.</p> +<p>My neighbour rejoiced to extravagance in our situation. +“This is best of all—I never believed I should come +to a café with two strange and possibly depraved +men! Now you can’t persuade me this isn’t +wrong.”</p> +<p>“To make it wrong,” I returned, “we ought to +see your mother coming down that path.”</p> +<p>“Ah, my mother makes everything wrong,” she cried, +attacking with a little spoon in the shape of a spade the apex of +a pink ice. And then she returned to her idea of a moment +before. “You must promise to tell me—to warn me +in some way—whenever I strike a false note. You must +give a little cough, like that—ahem!”</p> +<p>“You’ll keep me very busy and people will think +I’m in a consumption.”</p> +<p>“Voyons,” she continued, “why have you never +talked to me more? Is that a false note? Why +haven’t you been ‘attentive’? +That’s what American girls call it; that’s what Miss +Ruck calls it.”</p> +<p>I assured myself that our companions were out of ear-shot and +that Miss Ruck was much occupied with <a name="page401"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 401</span>a large vanilla cream. +“Because you’re always interlaced with that young +lady. There’s no getting near you.”</p> +<p>Aurora watched her friend while the latter devoted herself to +her ice. “You wonder, no doubt, why I should care for +her at all. So does mamma; elle s’y perd. I +don’t like her particularly; je n’en suis pas +folle. But she gives me information; she tells me about +her—your—everything but <i>my</i>—extraordinary +country. Mamma has always tried to prevent my knowing +anything about it, and I’m all the more devoured with +curiosity. And then Miss Ruck’s so very +fresh.”</p> +<p>“I may not be so fresh as Miss Ruck,” I said, +“but in future, when you want information, I recommend you +to come to me for it.”</p> +<p>“Ah, but our friend offers to take me there; she invites +me to go back with her, to stay with her. You +couldn’t do that, could you?” And my companion +beautifully faced me on it. “Bon, a false note! +I can see it by your face; you remind me of an outraged +maître de piano.”</p> +<p>“You overdo the character—the poor American +girl,” I said. “Are you going to stay with that +delightful family?”</p> +<p>“I’ll go and stay with any one who will take me or +ask me. It’s a real nostalgie. She says that in +New York—in Thirty-Seventh Street near Fourth +Avenue—I should have the most lovely time.”</p> +<p>“I’ve no doubt you’d enjoy it.”</p> +<p>“Absolute liberty to begin with.”</p> +<p>“It seems to me you’ve a certain liberty +here,” I returned.</p> +<p>“Ah, <i>this</i>? Oh I shall pay for this. I +shall be punished by mamma and lectured by Madame +Galopin.”</p> +<p>“The wife of the pasteur?”</p> +<p>“His digne épouse. Madame Galopin, for +mamma, <a name="page402"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +402</span>is the incarnation of European opinion. +That’s what vexes me with mamma, her thinking so much of +people like Madame Galopin. Going to see Madame +Galopin—mamma calls that being in European society. +European society! I’m so sick of that expression; +I’ve heard it since I was six years old. Who’s +Madame Galopin—who the devil thinks anything of her +here? She’s nobody; she’s the dreariest of +frumps; she’s perfectly third-rate. If I like your +America better than mamma I also know my Europe +better.”</p> +<p>“But your mother, certainly,” I objected a trifle +timidly—for my young lady was excited and had a charming +little passion in her eye—“your mother has a great +many social relations all over the continent.”</p> +<p>“She thinks so, but half the people don’t care for +us. They’re not so good as we and they know +it—I’ll do them that justice—so that they +wonder why we should care for them. When we’re polite +to them they think the less of us; there are plenty of people +like that. Mamma thinks so much of them simply because +they’re foreigners. If I could tell you all the ugly +stupid tenth-rate people I’ve had to talk to for no better +reason than that they were <i>de leur pays</i>!—Germans, +French, Italians, Turks, everything. When I complain mamma +always says that at any rate it’s practice in the +language. And she makes so much of the most impossible +English too; I don’t know what <i>that’s</i> practice +in.”</p> +<p>Before I had time to suggest an hypothesis as regards this +latter point I saw something that made me rise—I fear with +an undissimulated start—from my chair. This was +nothing less than the neat little figure of Mrs. Church—a +perfect model of the femme comme il faut—approaching our +table with an impatient step and followed most unexpectedly in +her advance by the pre-eminent form of Mr. Ruck, whose <a +name="page403"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 403</span>high hat +had never looked so high. She had evidently come in search +of her daughter, and if she had commanded this gentleman’s +attendance it had been on no more intimate ground than that of +his unenvied paternity to her guilty child’s +accomplice. My movement had given the alarm and my young +friend and M. Pigeonneau got up; Miss Ruck alone didn’t, in +the local phrase, derange herself. Mrs. Church, beneath her +modest little bonnet, looked thoroughly resolute though not at +all agitated; she came straight to her daughter, who received her +with a smile, and then she took the rest of us in very fixedly +and tranquilly and without bowing. I must do both these +ladies the justice that neither of them made the least little +“scene.”</p> +<p>“I’ve come for you, dearest,” said the +mother.</p> +<p>“Yes, dear mamma.”</p> +<p>“Come for you—come for you,” Mrs. Church +repeated, looking down at the relics of our little feast, on +which she seemed somehow to shed at once the lurid light of the +disreputable. “I was obliged to appeal to Mr. +Ruck’s assistance. I was much perplexed. I +thought a long time.”</p> +<p>“Well, Mrs. Church, I was glad to see you perplexed once +in your life!” cried Mr. Ruck with friendly jocosity. +“But you came pretty straight for all that. I had +hard work to keep up with you.”</p> +<p>“We’ll take a cab, Aurora,” Mrs. Church went +on without heeding this pleasantry—“a closed one; +we’ll enter it at once. Come, ma fille.”</p> +<p>“Yes, dear mamma.” The girl had flushed for +humiliation, but she carried it bravely off; and her grimace as +she looked round at us all and her eyes met mine didn’t +keep her, I thought, from being beautiful. +“Good-bye. I’ve had a ripping time.”</p> +<p>“We mustn’t linger,” said her mother; +“it’s <a name="page404"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +404</span>five o’clock. We’re to dine, you +know, with Madame Galopin.”</p> +<p>“I had quite forgotten,” Aurora declared. +“That will be even more charming.”</p> +<p>“Do you want me to assist you to carry her back, +ma’am?” asked Mr. Ruck.</p> +<p>Mrs. Church covered him for a little with her coldest +contemplation. “Do you prefer then to leave your +daughter to finish the evening with these gentlemen?”</p> +<p>Mr. Ruck pushed back his hat and scratched the top of his +head. “Well, I don’t know. How’d +you like that, Sophy?”</p> +<p>“Well, I never!” gasped Sophy as Mrs. Church +marched off with her daughter.</p> +<h3><a name="page405"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +405</span>VIII</h3> +<p>I had half-expected a person of so much decision, and above +all of so much consistency, would make me feel the weight of her +disapproval of my own share in that little act of revelry by the +most raffish part of the lakeside. But she maintained her +claim to being a highly reasonable woman—I couldn’t +but admire the justice of this pretension—by recognising my +practical detachment. I had taken her daughter as I found +her, which was, according to Mrs. Church’s view, in a very +equivocal position. The natural instinct of a young man in +such a situation is not to protest but to profit; and it was +clear to Mrs. Church that I had had nothing to do with Miss +Aurora’s appearing in public under the compromising +countenance, as she regarded the matter, of Miss Ruck. +Besides, she liked to converse, and she apparently did me the +honour to consider that of all the inmates of the Pension +Beaurepas I was the best prepared for that exercise. I +found her in the salon a couple of evenings after the incident I +have just narrated, and I approached her with a view to making my +peace with her if this should prove necessary. But Mrs. +Church was as gracious as I could have desired; she put her +marker into her inveterate volume and folded her plump little +hands on the cover. She made no specific allusion to the +English Garden; she embarked rather on those general +considerations in which her cultivated mind was so much at +home.</p> +<p><a name="page406"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +406</span>“Always at your deep studies, Mrs. Church,” +I didn’t hesitate freely to observe.</p> +<p>“Que voulez-vous, monsieur? To say studies is to +say too much; one doesn’t study in the parlour of a +boarding-house of this character. But I do what I can; +I’ve always done what I can. That’s all +I’ve ever claimed.”</p> +<p>“No one can do more, and you appear to have done a great +deal.”</p> +<p>“Do you know my secret?” she asked with an air of +brightening confidence. And this treasure hung there a +little temptingly before she revealed it. “To care +only for the <i>best</i>! To do the best, to know the +best—to have, to desire, to recognise, only the best. +That’s what I’ve always done in my little quiet +persistent way. I’ve gone through Europe on my +devoted little errand, seeking, seeing, heeding, only the +best. And it hasn’t been for myself alone—it +has been for my daughter. My daughter has had the +best. We’re not rich, but I can say that.”</p> +<p>“She has had <i>you</i>, madam,” I pronounced +finely.</p> +<p>“Certainly, such as I am, I’ve been devoted. +We’ve got something everywhere; a little here, a little +there. That’s the real secret—to get something +everywhere; you always can if you <i>are</i> devoted. +Sometimes it has been a little music, sometimes a little deeper +insight into the history of art; sometimes into that of +literature, politics, economics: every little counts, you +know. Sometimes it has been just a glimpse, a view, a +lovely landscape, a mere impression. We’ve always +been on the look-out. Sometimes it has been a valued +friendship, a delightful social tie.”</p> +<p>“Here comes the ‘European society,’ the poor +daughter’s bugbear,” I said to myself. +“Certainly,” I remarked aloud—I admit rather +hypocritically—“if you’ve lived a great deal in +pensions you must have got acquainted with lots of +people.”</p> +<p><a name="page407"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 407</span>Mrs. +Church dropped her eyes an instant; taking it up, however, as one +for whom discrimination was always at hand. “I think +the European pension system in many respects remarkable and in +some satisfactory. But of the friendships that we’ve +formed few have been contracted in establishments of this +stamp.”</p> +<p>“I’m sorry to hear that!” I ruefully +laughed.</p> +<p>“I don’t say it for you, though I might say it for +some others. We’ve been interested in European +<i>homes</i>.”</p> +<p>“Ah there you’re beyond me!”</p> +<p>“Naturally”—she quietly assented. +“We have the entrée of the old Genevese +society. I like its tone. I prefer it to that of Mr. +Ruck,” added Mrs. Church calmly; “to that of Mrs. +Ruck and Miss Ruck. To that of Miss Ruck in +particular.”</p> +<p>“Ah the poor Rucks <i>have</i> no tone,” I +pleaded. “That’s just the point of them. +Don’t take them more seriously than they take +themselves.”</p> +<p>Well, she would see what she could do. But she bent +grave eyes on me. “Are they really fair +examples?”</p> +<p>“Examples of what?”</p> +<p>“Of our American tendencies.”</p> +<p>“‘Tendencies’ is a big word, dear lady; +tendencies are difficult to calculate.” I used even a +greater freedom. “And you shouldn’t abuse those +good Rucks, who have been so kind to your daughter. +They’ve invited her to come and stay with them in +Thirty-Seventh Street near Fourth Avenue.”</p> +<p>“Aurora has told me. It might be very +serious.”</p> +<p>“It might be very droll,” I said.</p> +<p>“To me,” she declared, “it’s all too +terrible. I think we shall have to leave the Pension +Beaurepas. I shall go back to Madame Chamousset.”</p> +<p>“On account of the Rucks?” I asked.</p> +<p><a name="page408"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +408</span>“Pray why don’t they go themselves? +I’ve given them some excellent addresses—written down +the very hours of the trains. They were going to Appenzell; +I thought it was arranged.”</p> +<p>“They talk of Chamouni now,” I said; “but +they’re very helpless and undecided.”</p> +<p>“I’ll give them some Chamouni addresses. +Mrs. Ruck will send for a <i>chaise à porteurs</i>; +I’ll give her the name of a man who lets them lower than +you get them at the hotels. After that they <i>must</i> +go.”</p> +<p>She had thoroughly fixed it, as we said; but her large +assumptions ruffled me. “I nevertheless doubt,” +I returned, “if Mr. Ruck will ever really be seen on the +Mer de Glace—great as might be the effect there of that +high hat. He’s not like you; he doesn’t value +his European privileges. He takes no interest. He +misses Wall Street all the time. As his wife says, +he’s deplorably restless, but I guess Chamouni won’t +quiet him. So you mustn’t depend too much on the +effect of your addresses.”</p> +<p>“Is it, in its strange mixture of the barbaric and the +effete, a frequent type?” asked Mrs. Church with all the +force of her noble appetite for knowledge.</p> +<p>“I’m afraid so. Mr. Ruck’s a +broken-down man of business. He’s broken-down in +health and I think he must be broken-down in fortune. He +has spent his whole life in buying and selling and watching +prices, so that he knows how to do nothing else. His wife +and daughter have spent their lives, not in selling, but in +buying—with a considerable indifference to prices—and +they on their side know how to do nothing else. To get +something in a ‘store’ that they can put on their +backs—that’s their one idea; they haven’t +another in their heads. Of course they spend no end of +money, and they do it with an implacable persistence, with a +mixture of audacity and of cunning. They do it in his teeth +and they do it behind his <a name="page409"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 409</span>back; the mother protects the +daughter, while the daughter eggs on the mother. Between +them they’re bleeding him to death.”</p> +<p>“Ah what a picture!” my friend calmly +sighed. “I’m afraid they’re grossly +illiterate.”</p> +<p>“I share your fears. We make a great talk at home +about education, but see how little that ideal has ever breathed +on them. The vision of fine clothes rides them like a +fury. They haven’t an idea of any sort—not even +a worse one—to compete with it. Poor Mr. Ruck, +who’s a mush of personal and private concession—I +don’t know what he may have been in the business +world—strikes me as a really tragic figure. +He’s getting bad news every day from home; his affairs may +be going to the dogs. He’s unable, with his lost +nerve, to apply himself; so he has to stand and watch his +fortunes ebb. He has been used to doing things in a big way +and he feels ‘mean’ if he makes a fuss about +bills. So the ladies keep sending them in.”</p> +<p>“But haven’t they common sense? Don’t +they know they’re marching to ruin?”</p> +<p>“They don’t believe it. The duty of an +American husband and father is to keep them going. If he +asks them how, that’s his own affair. So by way of +not being mean, of being a good American husband and father, poor +Ruck stands staring at bankruptcy.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Church, with her cold competence, picked my story +over. “Why, if Aurora were to go to stay with them +she mightn’t even have a good <i>nourriture</i>.”</p> +<p>“I don’t on the whole recommend,” I smiled, +“that your daughter should pay a visit to Thirty-Seventh +Street.”</p> +<p>She took it in—with its various bearings—and had +after all, I think, to renounce the shrewd view of a +contingency. “Why should I be subjected to such +trials—so sadly éprouveé?” From +the moment <a name="page410"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +410</span>nothing at all was to be got from the Rucks—not +even eventual gratuitous board—she washed her hands of them +altogether. “Why should a daughter of mine like that +dreadful girl?”</p> +<p>“<i>Does</i> she like her?”</p> +<p>She challenged me nobly. “Pray do you mean that +Aurora’s such a hypocrite?”</p> +<p>I saw no reason to hesitate. “A little, since you +inquire. I think you’ve forced her to be.”</p> +<p>“I?”—she was shocked. “I +<i>never</i> force my daughter!”</p> +<p>“She’s nevertheless in a false position,” I +returned. “She hungers and thirsts for her own great +country; she wants to ‘come out’ in New York, which +is certainly, socially speaking, the El Dorado of young +ladies. She likes any one, for the moment, who will talk to +her of that and serve as a connecting-link with the paradise she +imagines there. Miss Ruck performs this agreeable +office.”</p> +<p>“Your idea is, then, that if she were to go with such a +person to America she could drop her afterwards?”</p> +<p>I complimented Mrs. Church on her quickly-working mind, but I +explained that I prescribed no such course. “I +can’t imagine her—when it should come to the +point—embarking with the famille Roque. But I wish +she might go nevertheless.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Church shook her head lucidly—she found amusement +in my inappropriate zeal. “I trust my poor child may +never be guilty of so fatal a mistake. She’s +completely in error; she’s wholly unadapted to the peculiar +conditions of American life. It wouldn’t please +her. She wouldn’t sympathise. My +daughter’s ideal’s not the ideal of the class of +young women to which Miss Ruck belongs. I fear +they’re very numerous; they pervade the place, they give +the tone.”</p> +<p>“It’s you who are mistaken,” I said. +“There are <a name="page411"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +411</span>plenty of Miss Rucks, and she has a terrible +significance—though largely as the product of her +weak-kneed sire and his ‘absorption in +business.’ But there are other forms. Go home +for six months and see.”</p> +<p>“I’ve not, unfortunately, the means to make costly +experiments. My daughter,” Mrs. Church pursued, +“has had great advantages—rare advantages—and I +should be very sorry to believe that <i>au fond</i> she +doesn’t appreciate them. One thing’s certain: I +must remove her from this pernicious influence. We must +part company with this deplorable family. If Mr. Ruck and +his ladies can’t be induced to proceed to Chamouni—a +journey from which no traveller with the smallest self-respect +can dispense himself—my daughter and I shall be obliged to +retire from the field. <i>We</i> shall go to +Dresden.”</p> +<p>“To Dresden?” I submissively echoed.</p> +<p>“The capital of Saxony. I had arranged to go there +for the autumn, but it will be simpler to go immediately. +There are several works in the gallery with which Aurora has not, +I think, sufficiently familiarised herself. It’s +especially strong in the seventeenth-century schools.”</p> +<p>As my companion offered me this information I caught sight of +Mr. Ruck, who lounged in with his hands in his pockets and his +elbows making acute angles. He had his usual anomalous +appearance of both seeking and avoiding society, and he wandered +obliquely toward Mrs. Church, whose last words he had +overheard. “The seventeenth-century schools,” +he said as if he were slowly weighing some very small object in a +very large pair of scales. “Now do you suppose they +<i>had</i> schools at that period?”</p> +<p>Mrs. Church rose with a good deal of majesty, making no answer +to this incongruous jest. She clasped her large volume to +her neat little bosom and looked at our luckless friend more in +pity than <a name="page412"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +412</span>in anger, though more in edification than in +either. “I had a letter this morning from +Chamouni.”</p> +<p>“Well,” he made answer, “I suppose +you’ve got friends all round.”</p> +<p>“I’ve friends at Chamouni, but they’re +called away. To their great regret.” I had got +up too; I listened to this statement and wondered. +I’m almost ashamed to mention my wanton thought. I +asked myself whether this mightn’t be a mere extemporised +and unestablished truth—a truth begotten of a deep desire; +but the point has never been cleared. “They’re +giving up some charming rooms; perhaps you’d like +them. I would suggest your telegraphing. The +weather’s glorious,” continued Mrs. Church, +“and the highest peaks are now perceived with extraordinary +distinctness.”</p> +<p>Mr. Ruck listened, as he always listened, respectfully. +“Well,” he said, “I don’t know as I want +to go up Mount Blank. That’s the principal +attraction, ain’t it?”</p> +<p>“There are many others. I thought I would offer +you an exceptional opportunity.”</p> +<p>“Well,” he returned, “I guess you know, and +if I could <i>let</i> you fix me we’d probably have some +big times. But I seem to strike opportunities—well, +in excess of my powers. I don’t seem able to +respond.”</p> +<p>“It only needs a little decision,” remarked Mrs. +Church with an air that was a perfect example of this +virtue. “I wish you good-night, sir.” And +she moved noiselessly away.</p> +<p>Mr. Ruck, with his long legs apart, stood staring after her; +then he transferred his perfectly quiet eyes to me. +“Does she own a hotel over there? Has she got any +stock in Mount Blank?” Indeed in view of the way he +had answered her I thought the dear man—to whom I found +myself becoming hourly more attached—had beautiful +manners.</p> +<h3><a name="page413"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +413</span>IX</h3> +<p>The next day Madame Beaurepas held out to me with her own +venerable fingers a missive which proved to be a telegram. +After glancing at it I let her know that it appeared to call me +away. My brother had arrived in England and he proposed I +should meet him there; he had come on business and was to spend +but three weeks in Europe. “But my house empties +itself!” the old woman cried on this. “The +famille Roque talks of leaving me and Madame Cheurche nous fait +la réverénce.”</p> +<p>“Mrs. Church is going away?”</p> +<p>“She’s packing her trunk; she’s a very +extraordinary person. Do you know what she asked me this +morning? To invent some combination by which the famille +Roque should take itself off. I assured her I was no such +inventor. That poor famille Roque! ‘Oblige me +by getting rid of them,’ said Madame Cheurche—quite +as she would have asked Célestine to remove a strong +cheese. She speaks as if the world were made for Madame +Cheurche. I hinted that if she objected to the company +there was a very simple remedy—and at present elle fait ses +paquets.”</p> +<p>“She really asked you to get the Rucks out of the +house?”</p> +<p>“She asked me to tell them that their rooms had been let +three months ago to another family. She has an +aplomb!”</p> +<p><a name="page414"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 414</span>Mrs. +Church’s aplomb caused me considerable diversion; I’m +not sure that it wasn’t in some degree to laugh at my +leisure that I went out into the garden that evening to smoke a +cigar. The night was dark and not particularly balmy, and +most of my fellow pensioners, after dinner, had remained +indoors. A long straight walk conducted from the door of +the house to the ancient grille I’ve described, and I stood +here for some time looking through the iron bars at the silent +empty street. The prospect was not enlivening and I +presently turned away. At this moment I saw in the distance +the door of the house open and throw a shaft of lamplight into +the darkness. Into the lamplight stepped the figure of an +apparently circumspect female, as they say in the old stories, +who presently closed the door behind her. She disappeared +in the dusk of the garden and I had seen her but an instant; yet +I remained under the impression that Aurora Church, on the eve of +departure, had come out to commune, like myself, with +isolation.</p> +<p>I lingered near the gate, keeping the red tip of my cigar +turned toward the house, and before long a slight but interesting +figure emerged from among the shadows of the trees and +encountered the rays of a lamp that stood just outside the +gate. My fellow solitary was in fact Aurora Church, who +acknowledged my presence with an impatience not wholly +convincing.</p> +<p>“Ought I to retire—to return to the +house?”</p> +<p>“If you ought,” I replied, “I should be very +sorry to tell you so.”</p> +<p>“But we’re all alone. There’s no one +else in the garden.”</p> +<p>“It’s not the first time, then, that I’ve +been alone with a young lady. I’m not at all +terrified.”</p> +<p>“Ah, but I?” she wailed to extravagance. +“I’ve <i>never</i> been alone—!” +Quickly, however, she interrupted herself. “Bon, +there’s another false note!”</p> +<p><a name="page415"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +415</span>“Yes, I’m obliged to admit that one’s +very false.”</p> +<p>She stood looking at me. “I’m going away +to-morrow; after that there will be no one to tell me.”</p> +<p>“That will matter little,” I presently +returned. “Telling you will do no good.”</p> +<p>“Ah, why do you say that?” she all ruefully +asked.</p> +<p>I said it partly because it was true, but I said it for other +reasons, as well, which I found hard to define. Standing +there bareheaded in the night air, in the vague light, this young +lady took on an extreme interest, which was moreover not +diminished by a suspicion on my own part that she had come into +the garden knowing me to be there. I thought her charming, +I thought her remarkable and felt very sorry for her; but as I +looked at her the terms in which Madame Beaurepas had ventured to +characterise her recurred to me with a certain force. I had +professed a contempt for them at the time, but it now came into +my head that perhaps this unfortunately situated, this +insidiously mutinous young creature was in quest of an effective +preserver. She was certainly not a girl to throw herself at +a man’s head, but it was possible that in her +intense—her almost morbid—desire to render operative +an ideal charged perhaps after all with as many fallacies as her +mother affirmed, she might do something reckless and +irregular—something in which a sympathetic compatriot, as +yet unknown, would find his profit. The image, unshaped +though it was, of this sympathetic compatriot filled me with a +semblance of envy. For some moments I was silent, conscious +of these things; after which I answered her question. +“Because some things—some differences—are felt, +not learned. To you liberty’s not natural; +you’re like a person who has bought a repeating watch and +is, in his satisfaction, <a name="page416"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 416</span>constantly taking it out of his +pocket to hear it sound. To a real American girl her +liberty’s a very vulgarly-ticking old clock.”</p> +<p>“Ah, you mean then,” said my young friend, +“that my mother has ruined me?”</p> +<p>“Ruined you?”</p> +<p>“She has so perverted my mind that when I try to be +natural I’m necessarily indecent.”</p> +<p>I threw up hopeless arms. “That again’s a +false note!”</p> +<p>She turned away. “I think you’re +cruel.”</p> +<p>“By no means,” I declared; “because, for my +own taste, I prefer you as—as—”</p> +<p>On my hesitating she turned back. “As +what?”</p> +<p>“As you are!”</p> +<p>She looked at me a while again, and then she said in a little +reasoning tone that reminded me of her mother’s, only that +it was conscious and studied, “I wasn’t aware that +I’m under any particular obligation to please +you!” But she also gave a clear laugh, quite at +variance with this stiffness. Suddenly I thought her +adorable.</p> +<p>“Oh there’s no obligation,” I said, +“but people sometimes have preferences. I’m +very sorry you’re going away.”</p> +<p>“What does it matter to you? You are going +yourself.”</p> +<p>“As I’m going in a different direction, that makes +all the greater separation.”</p> +<p>She answered nothing; she stood looking through the bars of +the tall gate at the empty dusky street. “This grille +is like a cage,” she said at last.</p> +<p>“Fortunately it’s a cage that will +open.” And I laid my hand on the lock.</p> +<p>“Don’t open it”; and she pressed the gate +close. “If you should open it I’d go out. +There you’d be, monsieur—for I should never +return.”</p> +<p><a name="page417"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 417</span>I +treated it as wholly thrilling, and indeed I quite found it +so. “Where should you go?”</p> +<p>“To America.”</p> +<p>“Straight away?”</p> +<p>“Somehow or other. I’d go to the American +consul. I’d beg him to give me money—to help +me.”</p> +<p>I received this assertion without a smile; I was not in a +smiling humour. On the contrary I felt singularly excited +and kept my hand on the lock of the gate. I believed, or I +thought I believed, what my companion said, and I +had—absurd as it may appear—an irritated vision of +her throwing herself on consular tenderness. It struck me +for a moment that to pass out of that gate with this yearning +straining young creature would be to pass to some mysterious +felicity. If I were only a hero of romance I would myself +offer to take her to America.</p> +<p>In a moment more perhaps I should have persuaded myself that I +was one, but at this juncture I heard a sound hostile to the +romantic note. It was nothing less than the substantial +tread of Célestine, the cook, who stood grinning at us as +we turned about from our colloquy.</p> +<p>“I ask bien pardon,” said Célestine. +“The mother of mademoiselle desires that mademoiselle +should come in immediately. M. le Pasteur Galopin has come +to make his adieux to ces dames.”</p> +<p>Aurora gave me but one glance, the memory of which I +treasure. Then she surrendered to Célestine, with +whom she returned to the house.</p> +<p>The next morning, on coming into the garden, I learned that +Mrs. Church and her daughter had effectively quitted us. I +was informed of this fact by old M. Pigeonneau, who sat there +under a tree drinking his café-au-lait at a little green +table.</p> +<p>“I’ve nothing to envy you,” he said; +“I had the last glimpse of that charming Mees +Aurore.”</p> +<p><a name="page418"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +418</span>“I had a very late glimpse,” I answered, +“and it was all I could possibly desire.”</p> +<p>“I’ve always noticed,” rejoined M. +Pigeonneau, “that your desires are more under control than +mine. Que voulez-vous? I’m of the old +school. Je crois que cette race se perd. I regret the +departure of that attractive young person; she has an enchanting +smile. Ce sera une femme d’esprit. For the +mother, I can console myself. I’m not sure <i>she</i> +was a femme d’esprit, though she wished so prodigiously to +pass for one. Round, rosy, potelée, she yet had not +the temperament of her appearance; she was a femme +austère—I made up my mind to that. I’ve +often noticed that contradiction in American ladies. You +see a plump little woman with a speaking eye and the contour and +complexion of a ripe peach, and if you venture to conduct +yourself in the smallest degree in accordance with these +<i>indices</i>, you discover a species of Methodist—of what +do you call it?—of Quakeress. On the other hand, you +encounter a tall lean angular form without colour, without grace, +all elbows and knees, and you find it’s a nature of the +tropics! The women of duty look like coquettes, and the +others look like alpenstocks! However, we’ve still la +belle Madame Roque—a real femme de Rubens, +celle-là. It’s very true that to talk to her +one must know the Flemish tongue!”</p> +<p>I had determined in accordance with my brother’s +telegram to go away in the afternoon; so that, having various +duties to perform, I left M. Pigeonneau to his ethnic +studies. Among other things I went in the course of the +morning to the banker’s, to draw money for my journey, and +there I found Mr. Ruck with a pile of crumpled letters in his +lap, his chair tipped back and his eyes gloomily fixed on the +fringe of the green plush table-cloth. I timidly expressed +the hope that he had got better news from home; whereupon he <a +name="page419"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 419</span>gave me a +look in which, considering his provocation, the habit of forlorn +patience was conspicuous.</p> +<p>He took up his letters in his large hand and, crushing them +together, held it out to me. “That stack of postal +matter,” he said, “is worth about five cents. +But I guess,” he added, rising, “that I know where I +am by this time.” When I had drawn my money I asked +him to come and breakfast with me at the little brasserie, much +favoured by students, to which I used to resort in the old +town. “I couldn’t eat, sir,” he frankly +pleaded, “I couldn’t eat. Bad disappointments +strike at the seat of the appetite. But I guess I’ll +go with you, so as not to be on show down there at the +pension. The old woman down there accuses me of turning up +my nose at her food. Well, I guess I shan’t turn up +my nose at anything now.”</p> +<p>We went to the little brasserie, where poor Mr. Ruck made the +lightest possible dejeuner. But if he ate very little he +still moved his lean jaws—he mumbled over his spoilt repast +of apprehended facts; strange tough financial fare into which I +was unable to bite. I was very sorry for him, I wanted to +ease him off; but the only thing I could do when we had +breakfasted was to see him safely back to the Pension +Beaurepas. We went across the Treille and down the +Corraterie, out of which we turned into the Rue du +Rhône. In this latter street, as all the world knows, +prevail those shining shop-fronts of the watchmakers and +jewellers for its long list of whom Geneva is famous. I had +always admired these elegant exhibitions and never passed them +without a lingering look. Even on this occasion, +preoccupied as I was with my impending departure and with my +companion’s troubles, I attached my eyes to the precious +tiers that flashed and twinkled behind the huge clear plates of +glass. Thanks to this inveterate habit I recorded <a +name="page420"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 420</span>a fresh +observation. In the largest and most irresistible of these +repositories I distinguished two ladies, seated before the +counter with an air of absorption which sufficiently proclaimed +their identity. I hoped my companion wouldn’t see +them, but as we came abreast of the door, a little beyond, we +found it open to the warm summer air. Mr. Ruck happened to +glance in, and he immediately recognised his wife and +daughter. He slowly stopped, his eyes fixed on them; I +wondered what he would do. A salesman was in the act of +holding up a bracelet before them on its velvet cushion and +flashing it about in a winsome manner.</p> +<p>Mr. Ruck said nothing, but he presently went in; whereupon, +feeling that I mustn’t lose him, I did the same. +“It will be an opportunity,” I remarked as cheerfully +as possible, “for me to bid good-bye to the +ladies.”</p> +<p>They turned round on the approach of their relative, opposing +an indomitable front. “Well, you’d better get +home to breakfast—that’s what <i>you’d</i> +better do,” his wife at once remarked. Miss Sophy +resisted in silence; she only took the bracelet from the +attendant and gazed at it all fixedly. My friend seated +himself on an empty stool and looked round the shop. +“Well, we’ve been here before, and you ought to know +it,” Mrs. Ruck a trifle guiltily contended. “We +were here the first day we came.”</p> +<p>The younger lady held out to me the precious object in her +hand. “Don’t you think that’s +sweet?”</p> +<p>I looked at it a moment. “No, I think it’s +ugly.”</p> +<p>She tossed her head as at a challenge to a romp. +“Well, I don’t believe you’ve any +taste.”</p> +<p>“Why, sir, it’s just too lovely,” said her +mother.</p> +<p>“You’ll see it some day <i>on</i> me, +anyway,” piped Miss Ruck.</p> +<p>“Not very much,” said Mr. Ruck quietly.</p> +<p><a name="page421"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +421</span>“It will be his own fault, then,” Miss +Sophy returned.</p> +<p>“Well, if we’re going up to Chamouni we want to +get something here,” said Mrs. Ruck. “We +mayn’t have another chance.”</p> +<p>Her husband still turned his eyes over the shop, whistling +half under his breath. “We ain’t going up to +Chamouni. We’re going back to New York City +straight.”</p> +<p>“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” she made +answer. “Don’t you suppose we want to take +something home?”</p> +<p>“If we’re going straight back I must have that +bracelet,” her daughter declared. “Only I +don’t want a velvet case; I want a satin case.”</p> +<p>“I must bid you good-bye,” I observed all +irrelevantly to the ladies. “I’m leaving Geneva +in an hour or two.”</p> +<p>“Take a good look at that bracelet, so you’ll know +it when you see it,” was hereupon Miss Sophy’s form +of farewell to me.</p> +<p>“She’s bound to have something!” her mother +almost proudly attested.</p> +<p>Mr. Ruck still vaguely examined the shop; he still just +audibly whistled. “I’m afraid he’s not at +all well,” I took occasion to intimate to his wife.</p> +<p>She twisted her head a little and glanced at him; she had a +brief but pregnant pause. “Well, I must say I wish +he’d improve!”</p> +<p>“A satin case, and a nice one!” cried Miss Ruck to +the shopman.</p> +<p>I bade her other parent good-bye. “Don’t +wait for me,” he said, sitting there on his stool and not +meeting my eye. “I’ve got to see this thing +through.”</p> +<p>I went back to the Pension Beaurepas, and when an hour later I +left it with my luggage these interesting friends had not +returned.</p> +<h2><a name="page423"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 423</span>A +BUNDLE OF LETTERS</h2> +<h3><a name="page425"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 425</span>I<br +/> +FROM MISS MIRANDA HOPE IN PARIS TO MRS. ABRAHAM C. HOPE AT BANGOR +MAINE</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>September</i> 5, 1879.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">My dear Mother</span>,</p> +<p>I’ve kept you posted as far as Tuesday week last, and +though my letter won’t have reached you yet I’ll +begin another before my news accumulates too much. +I’m glad you show my letters round in the family, for I +like them all to know what I’m doing, and I can’t +write to every one, even if I do try to answer all reasonable +expectations. There are a great many unreasonable ones, as +I suppose you know—not yours, dear mother, for I’m +bound to say that you never required of me more than was +natural. You see you’re reaping your reward: I write +to you before I write to any one else.</p> +<p>There’s one thing I hope—that you don’t show +any of my letters to William Platt. If he wants to see any +of my letters he knows the right way to go to work. I +wouldn’t have him see one of these letters, written for +circulation in the family, for anything in the world. If he +wants one for himself he has got to write to me first. Let +him write to me first and then I’ll see about answering +him. You can show him this if you like; but if you show him +anything more I’ll never write to you again.</p> +<p><a name="page426"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 426</span>I +told you in my last about my farewell to England, my crossing the +Channel and my first impressions of Paris. I’ve +thought a great deal about that lovely England since I left it, +and all the famous historic scenes I visited; but I’ve come +to the conclusion that it’s not a country in which I should +care to reside. The position of woman doesn’t seem to +me at all satisfactory, and that’s a point, you know, on +which I feel very strongly. It seems to me that in England +they play a very faded-out part, and those with whom I conversed +had a kind of downtrodden tone, a spiritless and even benighted +air, as if they were used to being snubbed and bullied <i>and as +if they liked it</i>, which made me want to give them a good +shaking. There are a great many people—and a great +many things too—over here that I should like to get at for +that purpose. I should like to shake the starch out of some +of them and the dust out of the others. I know fifty girls +in Bangor that come much more up to my notion of the stand a +truly noble woman should take than those young ladies in +England. But they had the sweetest way of speaking, as if +it were a second nature, and the men are <i>remarkably +handsome</i>. (You can show <i>that</i> to William Platt if +you like.)</p> +<p>I gave you my first impressions of Paris, which quite came up +to my expectations, much as I had heard and read about it. +The objects of interest are extremely numerous, and the climate +remarkably cheerful and sunny. I should say the position of +woman here was considerably higher, though by no means up to the +American standard. The manners of the people are in some +respects extremely peculiar, and I feel at last that I’m +indeed in <i>foreign parts</i>. It is, however, a truly +elegant city (much more majestic than New York) and I’ve +spent a great deal of time in visiting the various monuments and +palaces. I won’t give you an account of all my +wanderings, <a name="page427"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +427</span>though I’ve been most indefatigable; for +I’m keeping, as I told you before, a most <i>exhaustive</i> +journal, which I’ll allow you the <i>privilege</i> of +reading on my return to Bangor. I’m getting on +remarkably well, and I must say I’m sometimes surprised at +my universal good fortune. It only shows what a little +Bangor energy and gumption will accomplish wherever +applied. I’ve discovered none of those objections to +a young lady travelling in Europe by herself of which we heard so +much before I left, and I don’t expect I ever shall, for I +certainly don’t mean to look for them. I know what I +want and I always go straight for it.</p> +<p>I’ve received a great deal of politeness—some of +it really most pressing, and have experienced no drawbacks +whatever. I’ve made a great many pleasant +acquaintances in travelling round—both ladies and +gentlemen—and had a great many interesting and +open-hearted, if quite informal, talks. I’ve +collected a great many remarkable facts—I guess we +don’t know quite <i>everything</i> at Bangor—for +which I refer you to my journal. I assure you my +journal’s going to be a splendid picture of an earnest +young life. I do just exactly as I do in Bangor, and I find +I do perfectly right. At any rate I don’t care if I +don’t. I didn’t come to Europe to lead a merely +conventional society life: I could do that at Bangor. You +know I never <i>would</i> do it at Bangor, so it isn’t +likely I’m going to worship false gods over here. So +long as I accomplish what I desire and make my money hold out I +shall regard the thing as a success. Sometimes I feel +rather lonely, especially evenings; but I generally manage to +interest myself in something or in some one. I mostly read +up, evenings, on the objects of interest I’ve visited +during the day, or put in time on my journal. Sometimes I +go to the theatre or else play the piano in the public +parlour. The <a name="page428"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +428</span>public parlour at the hotel isn’t much; but the +piano’s better than that fearful old thing at the Sebago +House. Sometimes I go downstairs and talk to the lady who +keeps the books—a real French lady, who’s remarkably +polite. She’s very handsome, though in the peculiar +French way, and always wears a black dress of the most beautiful +fit. She speaks a little English; she tells me she had to +learn it in order to converse with the Americans who come in such +numbers to this hotel. She has given me lots of points on +the position of woman in France, and seems to think that on the +whole there’s hope. But she has told me at the same +time some things I shouldn’t like to write to +you—I’m hesitating even about putting them into my +journal—especially if my letters are to be handed round in +the family. I assure you they appear to talk about things +here that we never think of mentioning at Bangor, even to +ourselves or to our very closest; and it has struck me that +people are closer—to each other—down in Maine than +seems mostly to be expected here. This bright-minded lady +appears at any rate to think she can tell me everything because +I’ve told her I’m travelling for general +culture. Well, I <i>do</i> want to know so much that it +seems sometimes as if I wanted to know most everything; and yet I +guess there are some things that don’t count for +improvement. But as a general thing everything’s +intensely interesting; I don’t mean only everything this +charming woman tells me, but everything I see and hear for +myself. I guess I’ll come out where I want.</p> +<p>I meet a great many Americans who, as a general thing, I must +say, are not so polite to me as the people over here. The +people over here—especially the gentlemen—are much +more what I should call almost oppressively attentive. I +don’t know whether Americans are more truly sincere; I +haven’t yet made <a name="page429"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 429</span>up my mind about that. The +only drawback I experience is when Americans sometimes express +surprise that I should be travelling round alone; so you see it +doesn’t come from Europeans. I always have my answer +ready: “For general culture, to acquire the languages and +to see Europe for myself”; and that generally seems to calm +them. Dear mother, my money holds out very well, and it is +real interesting.</p> +<h3><a name="page430"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +430</span>II<br /> +FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>September</i> 16.</p> +<p>Since I last wrote to you I’ve left that nice hotel and +come to live in a French family—which, however, is nice +too. This place is a kind of boarding-house that’s at +the same time a kind of school; only it’s not like an +American boarding-house, nor like an American school +either. There are four or five people here that have come +to learn the language—not to take lessons, but to have an +opportunity for conversation. I was very glad to come to +such a place, for I had begun to realise that I wasn’t +pressing onward quite as I had dreamed with the French. +Wasn’t I going to feel ashamed to have spent two months in +Paris and not to have acquired more insight into the +language? I had always heard so much of French +conversation, and I found I wasn’t having much more +opportunity to practise it than if I had remained at +Bangor. In fact I used to hear a great deal more at Bangor +from those French-Canadians who came down to cut the ice than I +saw I should ever hear at that nice hotel where was no +struggle—<i>some</i> fond struggle being my real +atmosphere. The lady who kept the books seemed to want so +much to talk to me in English (for the sake of practice, too, I +suppose)—she kind of yearned to struggle too: we +don’t yearn <i>only</i> down in <a name="page431"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 431</span>Maine—that I couldn’t +bear to show her I didn’t like it. The chambermaid +was Irish and all the waiters German, so I never heard a word of +French spoken. I suppose you might hear a great deal in the +shops; but as I don’t buy anything—I prefer to spend +my money for purposes of culture—I don’t have that +advantage.</p> +<p>I’ve been thinking some of taking a teacher, but am well +acquainted with the grammar already, and over here in Europe +teachers don’t seem to think it’s <i>really</i> in +their interest to let you press forward. The more you +strike out and realise your power the less they’ve got to +teach you. I was a good deal troubled anyhow, for I felt as +if I didn’t want to go away without having at least got a +general idea of French conversation. The theatre gives you +a good deal of insight, and as I told you in my last I go a good +deal to the brightest places of amusement. I find no +difficulty whatever in going to such places alone, and am always +treated with the politeness which, as I’ve +mentioned—for I want you to feel happy about that—I +encounter everywhere from the best people. I see plenty of +other ladies alone (mostly French) and they generally seem to be +enjoying themselves as much as I. Only on the stage every +one talks so fast that I can scarcely make out what they say; +and, besides, there are a great many vulgar expressions which +it’s unnecessary to learn. But it was this experience +nevertheless that put me on the track. The very next day +after I wrote to you last I went to the Palais Royal, which is +one of the principal theatres in Paris. It’s very +small but very celebrated, and in my guide-book it’s marked +with <i>two stars</i>, which is a sign of importance attached +only to <i>first-class</i> objects of interest. But after I +had been there half an hour I found I couldn’t understand a +single word of the play, they gabbled it off so fast and made use +of such <a name="page432"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +432</span>peculiar expressions. I felt a good deal +disappointed and checked—I saw I wasn’t going to come +out where I had dreamed. But while I was thinking it +over—thinking what I <i>would</i> do—I heard two +gentlemen talking behind me. It was between the acts, and I +couldn’t help listening to what they said. They were +talking English, but I guess they were Americans.</p> +<p>“Well,” said one of them, “it all depends on +what you’re after. I’m after French; +that’s what I’m after.”</p> +<p>“Well,” said the other, “I’m after +Art.”</p> +<p>“Well,” said the first, “I’m after Art +too; but I’m after French most.”</p> +<p>Then, dear mother, I’m sorry to say the second one swore +a little. He said “Oh damn French!”</p> +<p>“No, I won’t damn French,” said his +friend. “I’ll acquire it—that’s +what I’ll do with it. I’ll go right into a +family.”</p> +<p>“What family’ll you go into?”</p> +<p>“Into some nice French family. That’s the +only way to do—to go to some place where you can +talk. If you’re after Art you want to stick to the +galleries; you want to go right through the Louvre, room by room; +you want to take a room a day, or something of that sort. +But if you want to acquire French the thing is to look out for +some family that has got—and they mostly have—more of +it than they’ve use for themselves. How <i>can</i> +they have use for so much as they seem to <i>have</i> to +have? They’ve got to work it off. Well, they +work it off on <i>you</i>. There are lots of them that take +you to board and teach you. My second cousin—that +young lady I told you about—she got in with a crowd like +that, and they posted her right up in three months. They +just took her right in and let her have it—the full +force. That’s what they do to you; they set you right +down and they talk <i>at</i> <a name="page433"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 433</span>you. You’ve got to +understand them or perish—so you strike out in +self-defence; you can’t help yourself. That family my +cousin was with has moved away somewhere, or I should try and get +in with them. They were real live people, that family; +after she left my cousin corresponded with them in French. +You’ve got to do <i>that</i> too, to make much real +head. But I mean to find some other crowd, if it takes a +lot of trouble!”</p> +<p>I listened to all this with great interest, and when he spoke +about his cousin I was on the point of turning around to ask him +the address of the family she was with; but the next moment he +said they had moved away, so I sat still. The other +gentleman, however, didn’t seem to be affected in the same +way as I was.</p> +<p>“Well,” he said, “you may follow up that if +you like; I mean to follow up the pictures. I don’t +believe there’s ever going to be any considerable demand in +the United States for French; but I can promise you that in about +ten years there’ll be a big demand for Art! And it +won’t be temporary either.”</p> +<p>That remark may be very true, but I don’t care anything +about the demand; I want to know French for its own sake. +“Art for art,” they say; but I say French for +French. I don’t want to think I’ve been all +this while without having gained an insight. . . . The very +next day, I asked the lady who kept the books at the hotel +whether she knew of any family that could take me to board and +give me the benefit of their conversation. She instantly +threw up her hands with little shrill cries—in their +wonderful French way, you know—and told me that her dearest +friend kept a regular place of that kind. If she had known +I was looking out for such a place she would have told me before; +she hadn’t spoken of it herself because she didn’t +wish to injure the hotel by working <a name="page434"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 434</span>me off on another house. She +told me this was a charming family who had often received +American ladies—and others, including three +Tahitans—who wished to follow up the language, and she was +sure I’d fall in love with them. So she gave me their +address and offered to go with me to introduce me. But I +was in such a hurry that I went off by myself and soon found them +all right. They were sitting there as if they kind of +expected me, and wouldn’t scarcely let me come round again +for my baggage. They seemed to have right there on hand, as +those gentlemen of the theatre said, plenty of what I was after, +and I now feel there’ll be no trouble about +<i>that</i>.</p> +<p>I came here to stay about three days ago, and by this time +I’ve quite worked in. The price of board struck me as +rather high, but I must remember what a chance to press onward it +includes. I’ve a very pretty little +room—without any carpet, but with seven mirrors, two clocks +and five curtains. I was rather disappointed, however, +after I arrived, to find that there are several other Americans +here—all also bent on pressing onward. At least there +are three American and two English pensioners, as they call them, +as well as a German gentleman—and there seems nothing +backward about <i>him</i>. I shouldn’t wonder if +we’d make a regular class, with “moving up” and +moving down; anyhow I guess I won’t be at the foot, but +I’ve not yet time to judge. I try to talk with Madame +de Maisonrouge all I can—she’s the lady of the house, +and the <i>real</i> family consists only of herself and her two +daughters. They’re bright enough to give points to +our own brightest, and I guess we’ll become quite +intimate. I’ll write you more about everything in my +next. Tell William Platt I don’t care a speck +<i>what</i> he does.</p> +<h3><a name="page435"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +435</span>III<br /> +FROM MISS VIOLET RAY IN PARIS TO MISS AGNES RICH IN NEW YORK</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>September</i> 21.</p> +<p>We had hardly got here when father received a telegram saying +he would have to come right back to New York. It was for +something about his business—I don’t know exactly +what; you know I never understand those things and never want +to. We had just got settled at the hotel, in some charming +rooms, and mother and I, as you may imagine, were greatly +annoyed. Father’s extremely fussy, as you know, and +his first idea, as soon as he found he should have to go back, +was that we should go back with him. He declared he’d +never leave us in Paris alone and that we must return and come +out again. I don’t know what he thought would happen +to us; I suppose he thought we should be too extravagant. +It’s father’s theory that we’re always +running-up bills, whereas a little observation would show him +that we wear the same old <i>rags</i> <span class="smcap">for +months</span>. But father has no observation; he has +nothing but blind theories. Mother and I, however, have +fortunately a great deal of <i>practice</i>, and we succeeded in +making him understand that we wouldn’t budge from Paris and +that we’d rather be chopped into small pieces than cross +that squalid sea again. So at last he decided to go back <a +name="page436"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 436</span>alone and +to leave us here for three months. Only, to show you how +fussy he is, he refused to let us stay at the hotel and insisted +that we should go into a <i>family</i>. I don’t know +what put such an idea into his head unless it was some +advertisement that he saw in one of the American papers that are +published here. Don’t think you can escape from them +anywhere.</p> +<p>There are families here who receive American and English +people to live with them under the pretence of teaching them +French. You may imagine what people they are—I mean +the families themselves. But the Americans who choose this +peculiar manner of seeing Paris must be actually just as +bad. Mother and I were horrified—we declared that +<i>main force</i> shouldn’t remove us from the hotel. +But father has a way of arriving at his ends which is more +effective than violence. He worries and goes on; he +“nags,” as we used to say at school; and when mother +and I are quite worn to the bone his triumph is assured. +Mother’s more quickly ground down than I, and she ends by +siding with father; so that at last when they combine their +forces against poor little me I’ve naturally to +succumb. You should have heard the way father went on about +this “family” plan; he talked to every one he saw +about it; he used to go round to the banker’s and talk to +the people there—the people in the post-office; he used to +try and exchange ideas about it with the waiters at the +hotel. He said it would be more safe, more respectable, +more economical; that I should pick up more French; that mother +would learn how a French household’s conducted; that he +should feel more easy, and that we ourselves should enjoy it when +we came to see. All this meant nothing, but that made no +difference. It’s positively cruel his harping on our +pinching and saving when every one knows that business in America +has completely recovered, that the prostration’s all over +and <a name="page437"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 437</span>that +<i>immense fortunes</i> are being made. We’ve been +depriving ourselves of the commonest necessities for the last +five years, and I supposed we came abroad to reap the benefits of +it.</p> +<p>As for my French it’s already much better than that of +most of our helpless compatriots, who are all unblushingly +destitute of the very rudiments. (I assure you I’m +often surprised at my own fluency, and when I get a little more +practice in the circumflex accents and the genders and the idioms +I shall quite hold my own.) To make a long story short, +however, father carried his point as usual; mother basely +deserted me at the last moment, and after holding out alone for +three days I told them to do with me what they would. +Father lost three steamers in succession by remaining in Paris to +argue with me. You know he’s like the schoolmaster in +Goldsmith’s <i>Deserted Village</i>—“e’en +though vanquished” he always argues still. He and +mother went to look at some seventeen families—they had got +the addresses somewhere—while I retired to my sofa and +would have nothing to do with it. At last they made +arrangements and I was transported, as in chains, to the +establishment from which I now write you. I address you +from the bosom of a Parisian ménage—from the depths +of a second-rate boarding-house.</p> +<p>Father only left Paris after he had seen us what he calls +comfortably settled here and had informed Madame de +Maisonrouge—the mistress of the establishment, the head of +the “family”—that he wished my French +pronunciation especially attended to. The pronunciation, as +it happens, is just what I’m most at home in; if he had +said my genders or my subjunctives or my idioms there would have +been some sense. But poor father has no native tact, and +this deficiency has become flagrant since we’ve been in +Europe. He’ll be absent, however, for three <a +name="page438"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 438</span>months, and +mother and I shall breathe more freely; the situation will be +less tense. I must confess that we breathe more freely than +I expected in this place, where we’ve been about a +week. I was sure before we came that it would prove to be +an establishment of the <i>lowest description</i>; but I must say +that in this respect I’m agreeably disappointed. The +French spirit is able to throw a sort of grace even over a +swindle of this general order. Of course it’s very +disagreeable to live with strangers, but as, after all, if I +weren’t staying with Madame de Maisonrouge I +shouldn’t be <i>vautrée</i> in the Faubourg +Saint-Germain, I don’t know that from the point of view of +exclusiveness I’m much the loser.</p> +<p>Our rooms are very prettily arranged and the table’s +remarkably good. Mamma thinks the whole thing—the +place and the people, the manners and customs—very amusing; +but mamma can be put off with any imposture. As for me, you +know, all that I ask is to be let alone and not to have +people’s society <i>forced upon me</i>. I’ve +never wanted for society of my own choosing, and, so long as I +retain possession of my faculties, I don’t suppose I ever +shall. As I said, however, the place seems to scramble +along, and I succeed in doing as I please, which, you know, is my +most cherished pursuit. Madame de Maisonrouge has a great +deal of tact—much more than poor floundering father. +She’s what they call here a <i>grande belle femme</i>, +which means that she’s high-shouldered and short-necked and +literally hideous, but with a certain quantity of false +type. She has a good many clothes, some rather bad; but a +very good manner—only one, and worked to death, but +intended to be of the best. Though she’s a very good +imitation of a <i>femme du monde</i> I never see her behind the +dinner-table in the evening, never see her smile and bow and duck +as the people come in, really glaring all the <a +name="page439"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 439</span>while at +the dishes and the servants, without thinking of a <i>dame de +comptoir</i> blooming in a corner of a shop or a +restaurant. I’m sure that in spite of her <i>beau +nom</i> she was once a paid book-keeper. I’m also +sure that in spite of her smiles and the pretty things she says +to every one, she hates us all and would like to murder us. +She is a hard clever Frenchwoman who would like to amuse herself +and enjoy her Paris, and she must be furious at having to pass +her time grinning at specimens of the stupid races who mumble +broken French at her. Some day she’ll poison the soup +or the <i>vin rouge</i>, but I hope that won’t be until +after mother and I shall have left her. She has two +daughters who, except that one’s decidedly pretty, are +meagre imitations of herself.</p> +<p>The “family,” for the rest, consists altogether of +our beloved compatriots and of still more beloved +Englanders. There’s an Englander with his sister, and +they seem rather decent. He’s remarkably handsome, +but excessively affected and patronising, especially to us +Americans; and I hope to have a chance of biting his head off +before long. The sister’s very pretty and apparently +very nice, but in costume Britannia incarnate. +There’s a very pleasant little Frenchman—when +they’re nice they’re charming—and a German +doctor, a big blond man who looks like a great white bull; and +two Americans besides mother and me. One of them’s a +young man from Boston—an esthetic young man who talks about +its being “a real Corot day,” and a young +woman—a girl, a female, I don’t know what to call +her—from Vermont or Minnesota or some such place. +This young woman’s the most extraordinary specimen of +self-complacent provinciality that I’ve ever encountered; +she’s really too horrible and too humiliating. +I’ve been three times to Clémentine about your +underskirt, etc.</p> +<h3><a name="page440"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +440</span>IV<br /> +FROM LOUIS LEVERETT IN PARIS TO HARVARD TREMONT IN BOSTON</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>September</i> 25.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">My dear Harvard</span>,</p> +<p>I’ve carried out my plan, of which I gave you a hint in +my last, and I only regret I shouldn’t have done it +before. It’s human nature, after all, that’s +the most interesting thing in the world, and it only reveals +itself to the truly earnest seeker. There’s a want of +earnestness in that life of hotels and railroad-trains which so +many of our countrymen are content to lead in this strange rich +elder world, and I was distressed to find how far I myself had +been led along the dusty beaten track. I had, however, +constantly wanted to turn aside into more unfrequented +ways—to plunge beneath the surface and see what I should +discover. But the opportunity had always been missing; +somehow I seem never to meet those opportunities that we hear +about and read about—the things that happen to people in +novels and biographies. And yet I’m always on the +watch to take advantage of any opening that may present itself; +I’m always looking out for experiences, for +sensations—I might almost say for adventures.</p> +<p>The great thing is to <i>live</i>, you know—to feel, to +be conscious of one’s possibilities; not to pass through <a +name="page441"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 441</span>life +mechanically and insensibly, even as a letter through the +post-office. There are times, my dear Harvard, when I feel +as if I were really capable of everything—<i>capable de +tout</i>, as they say here—of the greatest excesses as well +as the greatest heroism. Oh to be able to say that one has +lived—<i>qu’on a vécu</i>, as they say +here—that idea exercises an indefinable attraction for +me. You’ll perhaps reply that nothing’s easier +than to say it! Only the thing’s to make people +believe you—to make above all one’s self. And +then I don’t want any second-hand spurious sensations; I +want the knowledge that leaves a trace—that leaves strange +scars and stains, ineffable reveries and aftertastes, behind +it! But I’m afraid I shock you, perhaps even frighten +you.</p> +<p>If you repeat my remarks to any of the West Cedar Street +circle be sure you tone them down as your discretion will +suggest. For yourself you’ll know that I have always +had an intense desire to see something of <i>real French +life</i>. You’re acquainted with my great sympathy +with the French; with my natural tendency to enter into their so +supremely fine exploitation of the whole personal +consciousness. I sympathise with the artistic temperament; +I remember you used sometimes to hint to me that you thought my +own temperament <i>too</i> artistic. I don’t consider +that in Boston there’s any real sympathy with the artistic +temperament; we tend to make everything a matter of right and +wrong. And in Boston one can’t +<i>live</i>—<i>on ne peut pas vivre</i>, as they say +here. I don’t mean one can’t reside—for a +great many people manage that; but one can’t live +esthetically—I almost venture to say one can’t live +sensuously. This is why I’ve always been so much +drawn to the French, who are so esthetic, so sensuous, so +<i>entirely</i> living. I’m so sorry dear +Théophile Gautier has passed away; I should have liked so +much to go <a name="page442"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +442</span>and see him and tell him all I owe him. He was +living when I was here before; but, you know, at that time I was +travelling with the Johnsons, who are not esthetic and who used +to make me feel rather ashamed of my love and my need of +beauty. If I had gone to see the great apostle of that +religion I should have had to go clandestinely—<i>en +cachette</i>, as they say here; and that’s not my nature; I +like to do everything frankly, freely, <i>naïvement, au +grand jour</i>. That’s the great thing—to be +free, to be frank, to be naïf. Doesn’t Matthew +Arnold say that somewhere—or is it Swinburne or Pater?</p> +<p>When I was with the Johnsons everything was superficial, and, +as regards life, everything was brought down to the question of +right and wrong. They were eternally didactic; art should +never be didactic; and what’s life but the finest of +arts? Pater has said that so well somewhere. With the +Johnsons I’m afraid I lost many opportunities; the whole +outlook or at least the whole medium—of feeling, of +appreciation—was grey and cottony, I might almost say +woolly. Now, however, as I tell you, I’ve determined +to take right hold for myself; to look right into European life +and judge it without Johnsonian prejudices. I’ve +taken up my residence in a French family, in a real Parisian +house. You see I’ve the courage of my opinions; I +don’t shrink from carrying out my theory that the great +thing is to <i>live</i>.</p> +<p>You know I’ve always been intensely interested in +Balzac, who never shrank from the reality and whose almost +<i>lurid</i> pictures of Parisian life have often haunted me in +my wanderings through the old wicked-looking streets on the other +side of the river. I’m only sorry that my new +friends—my French family—don’t live in the old +city, <i>au cour de vieux Paris</i>, as they say here. They +live only on the Boulevard Haussmann, which is a compromise, but +in spite of <a name="page443"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +443</span>this they have a great deal of the Balzac tone. +Madame de Maisonrouge belongs to one of the oldest and proudest +families in France, but has had reverses which have compelled her +to open an establishment in which a limited number of travellers, +who are weary of the beaten track, who shun the great +caravanseries, who cherish the tradition of the old French +sociability—she explains it herself, she expresses it so +well—in short to open a “select” +boarding-house. I don’t see why I shouldn’t +after all use that expression, for it’s the correlative of +the term pension bourgeoise, employed by Balzac in <i>Le +Père Goriot</i>. Do you remember the pension +bourgeoise of Madame Vauquer née de Conflans? But +this establishment isn’t at all like that, and indeed +isn’t bourgeois at all; I don’t quite know how the +machinery of selection operates, but we unmistakably feel +we’re select. The Pension Vauquer was dark, brown, +sordid, graisseuse; but this is in quite a different tone, with +high clear lightly-draped windows and several rather good Louis +Seize pieces—family heirlooms, Madame de Maisonrouge +explains. She recalls to me Madame Hulot—do you +remember “la belle Madame Hulot”?—in <i>Les +Parents Pauvres</i>. She has a great charm—though a +little artificial, a little jaded and faded, with a suggestion of +hidden things in her life. But I’ve always been +sensitive to the seduction of an ambiguous fatigue.</p> +<p>I’m rather disappointed, I confess, in the society I +find here; it isn’t so richly native, of so indigenous a +note, as I could have desired. Indeed, to tell the truth, +it’s not native at all; though on the other hand it +<i>is</i> furiously cosmopolite, and that speaks to me too at my +hours. We’re French <i>and</i> we’re English; +we’re American <i>and</i> we’re German; I believe too +there are some Spaniards and some Hungarians expected. +I’m much interested in the study of racial <a +name="page444"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 444</span>types; in +comparing, contrasting, seizing the strong points, the weak +points, in identifying, however muffled by social hypocrisy, the +sharp keynote of each. It’s interesting to shift +one’s point of view, to despoil one’s self of +one’s idiotic prejudices, to enter into strange exotic ways +of looking at life.</p> +<p>The American types don’t, I much regret to say, make a +strong or rich affirmation, and, excepting my own (and what +<i>is</i> my own, dear Harvard, I ask you?), are wholly negative +and feminine. We’re <i>thin</i>—that I should +have to say it! we’re pale, we’re poor, we’re +flat. There’s something meagre about us; our line is +wanting in roundness, our composition in richness. We lack +temperament; we don’t know how to live; <i>nous ne savons +pas vivre</i>, as they say here. The American temperament +is represented—putting myself aside, and I often think that +my temperament isn’t at all American—by a young girl +and her mother and by another young girl without her mother, +without either parent or any attendant or appendage +whatever. These inevitable creatures are more or less in +the picture; they have a certain interest, they have a certain +stamp, but they’re disappointing too: they don’t go +far; they don’t keep all they promise; they don’t +satisfy the imagination. They are cold slim sexless; the +physique’s not generous, not abundant; it’s only the +drapery, the skirts and furbelows—that is, I mean in the +young lady who has her mother—that are abundant. +They’re rather different—we <i>have</i> our little +differences, thank God: one of them all elegance, all “paid +bills” and extra-fresh <i>gants de Suède</i>, from +New York; the other a plain pure clear-eyed narrow-chested +straight-stepping maiden from the heart of New England. And +yet they’re very much alike too—more alike than they +would care to think themselves; for they face each other with +scarcely disguised opposition and disavowal. They’re +<a name="page445"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 445</span>both +specimens of the practical positive passionless young thing as we +let her loose on the world—and yet with a certain fineness +and knowing, as you please, either too much or too little. +With all of which, as I say, they have their spontaneity and even +their oddity; though no more mystery, either of them, than the +printed circular thrust into your hand on the street-corner.</p> +<p>The little New Yorker’s sometimes very amusing; she asks +me if every one in Boston talks like me—if every +one’s as “intellectual” as your poor +correspondent. She’s for ever throwing Boston up at +me; I can’t get rid of poor dear little Boston. The +other one rubs it into me too, but in a different way; she seems +to feel about it as a good Mahommedan feels toward Mecca, and +regards it as a focus of light for the whole human race. +Yes, poor little Boston, what nonsense is talked in thy +name! But this New England maiden is in her way a rare +white flower; she’s travelling all over Europe +alone—“to see it,” she says, “for +herself.” For herself! What can that strangely +serene self of hers do with such sights, such depths! She +looks at everything, goes everywhere, passes her way with her +clear quiet eyes wide open; skirting the edge of obscene abysses +without suspecting them; pushing through brambles without tearing +her robe; exciting, without knowing it, the most injurious +suspicions; and always holding her course—without a stain, +without a sense, without a fear, without a charm!</p> +<p>Then by way of contrast there’s a lovely English girl +with eyes as shy as violets and a voice as sweet!—the +difference between the printed, the distributed, the gratuitous +hand-bill and the shy scrap of a <i>billet-doux</i> dropped where +you may pick it up. She has a sweet Gainsborough head and a +great Gainsborough hat with a mighty plume in front of it that +makes <a name="page446"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 446</span>a +shadow over her quiet English eyes. Then she has a +sage-green robe, “mystic wonderful,” all embroidered +with subtle devices and flowers, with birds and beasts of tender +tint; very straight and tight in front and adorned behind, along +the spine, with large strange iridescent buttons. The +revival of taste, of the sense of beauty, in England, interests +me deeply; what is there in a simple row of spinal buttons to +make one dream—to <i>donner à rêver</i>, as +they say here? I believe a grand esthetic renascence to be +at hand and that a great light will be kindled in England for all +the world to see. There are spirits there I should like to +commune with; I think they’d understand me.</p> +<p>This gracious English maiden, with her clinging robes, her +amulets and girdles, with something quaint and angular in her +step, her carriage, something medieval and Gothic in the details +of her person and dress, this lovely Evelyn Vane (isn’t it +a beautiful name?) exhales association and implication. +She’s so much a woman—<i>elle est bien femme</i>, as +they say here; simpler softer rounder richer than the easy +products I spoke of just now. Not much talk—a great +sweet silence. Then the violet eye—the very eye +itself seems to blush; the great shadowy hat making the brow so +quiet; the strange clinging clutched pictured raiment! As I +say, it’s a very gracious tender type. She has her +brother with her, who’s a beautiful fair-haired grey-eyed +young Englishman. He’s purely objective, but he too +is very plastic.</p> +<h3><a name="page447"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 447</span>V<br +/> +FROM MIRANDA HOPE TO HER MOTHER</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>September</i> 26.</p> +<p>You mustn’t be frightened at not hearing from me +oftener; it isn’t because I’m in any trouble, but +because I’m getting on so well. If I were in any +trouble I don’t think I’d write to you; I’d +just keep quiet and see it through myself. But that’s +not the case at present; and if I don’t write to you +it’s because I’m so deeply interested over here that +I don’t seem to find time. It was a real providence +that brought me to this house, where, in spite of all obstacles, +I <i>am</i> able to press onward. I wonder how I find time +for all I do, but when I realise I’ve only got about a year +left, all told, I feel as if I wouldn’t sacrifice a single +hour.</p> +<p>The obstacles I refer to are the disadvantages I have in +acquiring the language, there being so many persons round me +speaking English, and that, as you may say, in the very bosom of +a regular French family. It seems as if you heard English +everywhere; but I certainly didn’t expect to find it in a +place like this. I’m not discouraged, however, and I +exercise all I can, even with the other English boarders. +Then I’ve a lesson every day from Mademoiselle—the +elder daughter of the lady of the house and the intellectual one; +she has a wonderful fearless mind, <a name="page448"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 448</span>almost like my friend at the +hotel—and French give-and-take every evening in the salon, +from eight to eleven, with Madame herself and some friends of +hers who often come in. Her cousin, Mr. Verdier, a young +French gentleman, is fortunately staying with her, and I make a +point of talking with him as much as possible. I have +<i>extra-private lessons</i> from him, and I often ramble round +with him. Some night soon he’s to accompany me to the +comic opera. We’ve also a most interesting plan of +visiting the galleries successively together and taking the +schools in their order—for they mean by “the +schools” here something quite different from what we +do. Like most of the French Mr. Verdier converses with +great fluency, and I feel I may really gain from him. +He’s remarkably handsome, in the French style, and +extremely polite—making a great many speeches which +I’m afraid it wouldn’t always do to pin one’s +faith on. When I get down in Maine again I guess I’ll +tell you some of the things he has said to me. I think +you’ll consider them extremely curious—very beautiful +<i>in their French way</i>.</p> +<p>The conversation in the parlour (from eight to eleven) ranges +over many subjects—I sometimes feel as if it really avoided +<i>none</i>; and I often wish you or some of the Bangor folks +could be there to enjoy it. Even though you couldn’t +understand it I think you’d like to hear the way they go +on; they seem to express so much. I sometimes think that at +Bangor they don’t express enough—except that it seems +as if over there they’ve less <i>to</i> express. It +seems as if at Bangor there were things that folks never +<i>tried</i> to say; but I seem to have learned here from +studying French that you’ve no idea what you <i>can</i> say +before you try. At Bangor they kind of give it up +beforehand; they don’t make any effort. (I +don’t say this in the least for William Platt <i>in +particular</i>.)</p> +<p><a name="page449"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +449</span>I’m sure I don’t know what they’ll +think of me when I get back anyway. It seems as if over +here I had learned to come out with everything. I suppose +they’ll think I’m not sincere; but isn’t it +more sincere to come right out with things than just to keep +feeling of them in your mind—without giving any one the +benefit? I’ve become very good friends with every one +in the house—that is (you see I <i>am</i> sincere) with +<i>almost</i> every one. It’s the most interesting +circle I ever was in. There’s a girl here, an +American, that I don’t like so much as the rest; but +that’s only because she won’t let me. I should +like to like her, ever so much, because she’s most lovely +and most attractive; but she doesn’t seem to want to know +me or to take to me. She comes from New York and +she’s remarkably pretty, with beautiful eyes and the most +delicate features; she’s also splendidly stylish—in +this respect would bear comparison with any one I’ve seen +over here. But it seems as if she didn’t want to +recognise me or associate with me, as if she wanted to make a +difference between us. It is like people they call +“haughty” in books. I’ve never seen any +one like that before—any one that wanted to make a +difference; and at first I was right down interested, she seemed +to me so like a proud young lady in a novel. I kept saying +to myself all day “haughty, haughty,” and I wished +she’d keep on so. But she did keep on—she kept +on too long; and then I began to feel it in a different way, to +feel as if it kind of wronged me. I couldn’t think +what I’ve done, and I can’t think yet. +It’s as if she had got some idea about me or had heard some +one say something. If some girls should behave like that I +wouldn’t make any account of it; but this one’s so +refined, and looks as if she might be so fascinating if I once +got to know her, that I think about it a good deal. +I’m bound to find out what her reason is—for of +course <a name="page450"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +450</span>she has got some reason; I’m right down curious +to know.</p> +<p>I went up to her to ask her the day before yesterday; I +thought that the best way. I told her I wanted to know her +better and would like to come and see her in her room—they +tell me she has got a lovely one—and that if she had heard +anything against me perhaps she’d tell me when I +came. But she was more distant than ever and just turned it +off; said she had never heard me mentioned and that her room was +too small to receive visitors. I suppose she spoke the +truth, but I’m sure she has some peculiar ground, all the +same. She has got some idea; which I’ll die if I +don’t find out soon—if I have to ask every one in the +house. I never <i>could</i> be happy under an appearance of +wrong. I wonder if she doesn’t think me +refined—or if she had ever heard anything against +Bangor? I can’t think it’s that. +Don’t you remember when Clara Barnard went to visit in New +York, three years ago, how much attention she received? And +you know Clara <i>is</i> Bangor, to the soles of her shoes. +Ask William Platt—so long as he isn’t native—if +he doesn’t consider Clara Barnard refined.</p> +<p>Apropos, as they say here, of refinement, there’s +another American in the house—a gentleman from +Boston—who’s just crammed with it. His +name’s Mr. Louis Leverett (such a beautiful name I think) +and he’s about thirty years old. He’s rather +small and he looks pretty sick; he suffers from some affection of +the liver. But his conversation leads you right +on—they <i>do</i> go so far over here: even our people seem +to strain ahead in Europe, and perhaps when I get back it may +strike you I’ve learned to keep up with them. I +delight to listen to him anyhow—he has such beautiful +ideas. I feel as if these moments were hardly right, not +being in French; but fortunately he <a name="page451"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 451</span>uses a great many French +expressions. It’s in a different style from the +dazzle of Mr. Verdier—not so personal, but much more +earnest: he says the only earnestness left in the world now is +French. He’s intensely fond of pictures and has given +me a great many ideas about them that I’d never have gained +without him; I shouldn’t have known how to go to work to +strike them. He thinks everything of pictures; he thinks we +don’t make near enough of them. They seem to make a +good deal of them here, but I couldn’t help telling him the +other day that in Bangor I really don’t think we do.</p> +<p>If I had any money to spend I’d buy some and take them +back to hang right up. Mr. Leverett says it would do them +good—not the pictures, but the Bangor folks (though +sometimes he seems to want to hang <i>them</i> up too). He +thinks everything of the French, anyhow, and says we don’t +make nearly enough of them. I couldn’t help telling +him the other day that they certainly make enough of +<i>themselves</i>. But it’s very interesting to hear +him go on about the French, and it’s so much gain to me, +since it’s about the same as what I came for. I talk +to him as much as I dare about Boston, but I do feel as if this +were right down wrong—a stolen pleasure.</p> +<p>I can get all the Boston culture I want when I go back, if I +carry out my plan, my heart’s secret, of going there to +reside. I ought to direct all my efforts to European +culture now, so as to keep Boston to finish off. But it +seems as if I couldn’t help taking a peep now and then in +advance—with a real Bostonian. I don’t know +when I may meet one again; but if there are many others like Mr. +Leverett there I shall be certain not to lack when I carry out my +dream. He’s just as full of culture as he can +live. But it seems strange how many different sorts there +are.</p> +<p><a name="page452"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 452</span>There +are two of the English who I suppose are very cultivated too; but +it doesn’t seem as if I could enter into theirs so easily, +though I try all I can. I do love their way of speaking, +and sometimes I feel almost as if it would be right to give up +going for French and just try to get the hang of English as these +people have got it. It doesn’t come out in the things +they say so much, though these are often rather curious, but in +the sweet way they say them and in their kind of making so much, +such an easy lovely effect, of saying almost anything. It +seems as if they must try a good deal to sound like that; but +these English who are here don’t seem to try at all, either +to speak or do anything else. They’re a young lady +and her brother, who belong, I believe, to some noble +family. I’ve had a good deal of intercourse with +them, because I’ve felt more free to talk to them than to +the Americans—on account of the language. They often +don’t understand mine, and then it’s as if I had to +learn theirs to explain.</p> +<p>I never supposed when I left Bangor that I was coming to +Europe to improve in <i>our</i> old language—and yet I feel +I can. If I do get where I <i>may</i> in it I guess +you’ll scarcely understand me when I get back, and I +don’t think you’ll particularly see the point. +I’d be a good deal criticised if I spoke like that at +Bangor. However, I verily believe Bangor’s the most +critical place on earth; I’ve seen nothing like it over +here. Well, tell them I’ll give them about all they +can do. But I was speaking about this English young lady +and her brother; I wish I could put them before you. +She’s lovely just to see; she seems so modest and +retiring. In spite of this, however, she dresses in a way +that attracts great attention, as I couldn’t help noticing +when one day I went out to walk with her. She was ever so +much more looked at than what I’d have thought she’d +like; but she <a name="page453"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +453</span>didn’t seem to care, till at last I +couldn’t help calling attention to it. Mr. Leverett +thinks everything of it; he calls it the “costume of the +future.” I’d call it rather the costume of the +past—you know the English have such an attachment to the +past. I said this the other day to Madame de +Maisonrouge—that Miss Vane dressed in the costume of the +past. De l’an passé, vous voulez dire? she +asked in her gay French way. (You can get William Platt to +translate this; he used to tell me he knows so much French.)</p> +<p>You know I told you, in writing some time ago, that I had +tried to get some insight into the position of woman in England, +and, being here with Miss Vane, it has seemed to me to be a good +opportunity to get a little more. I’ve asked her a +great deal about it, but she doesn’t seem able to tell me +much. The first time I asked her she said the position of a +lady depended on the rank of her father, her eldest brother, her +husband—all on somebody else; and they, as to their +position, on something quite else (than themselves) as +well. She told me her own position was very good because +her father was some relation—I forget what—to a +lord. She thinks everything of this; and that proves to me +their standing can’t be <i>really</i> good, because if it +were it wouldn’t be involved in that of your relations, +even your nearest. I don’t know much about lords, and +it does try my patience—though she’s just as sweet as +she can live—to hear her talk as if it were a matter of +course I should.</p> +<p>I feel as if it were right to ask her as often as I can if she +doesn’t consider every one equal; but she always says she +doesn’t, and she confesses that she doesn’t think +<i>she’s</i> equal to Lady Something-or-Other, who’s +the wife of that relation of her father. I try and persuade +her all I can that she <i>is</i>; but it seems as if she +didn’t want to be persuaded, and when I ask her if that +superior being is of the same <a name="page454"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 454</span>opinion—that Miss Vane +isn’t her equal—she looks so soft and pretty with her +eyes and says “How can she not be?” When I tell +her that this is right down bad for the other person it seems as +if she wouldn’t believe me, and the only answer +she’ll make is that the other person’s “awfully +nice.” I don’t believe she’s nice at all; +if she were nice she wouldn’t have such ideas as +that. I tell Miss Vane that at Bangor we think such ideas +vulgar, but then she looks as though she had never heard of +Bangor. I often want to shake her, though she <i>is</i> so +sweet. If she isn’t angry with the people who make +her feel that way at least I’m angry <i>for</i> her. +I’m angry with her brother too, for she’s evidently +very much afraid of him, and this gives me some further insight +into the subject. She thinks everything of her brother; she +thinks it natural she should be afraid of him not only +physically—for that is natural, as he’s enormously +tall and strong, and has very big fists—but morally and +intellectually. She seems unable, however, to take in any +argument, and she makes me realise what I’ve often +heard—that if you’re timid nothing will reason you +out of it.</p> +<p>Mr. Vane also, the brother, seems to have the same prejudices, +and when I tell him, as I often think it right to do, that his +sister’s not his subordinate, even if she does think so, +but his equal, and perhaps in some respects his superior, and +that if my brother in Bangor were to treat me as he treats this +charming but abject creature, who has not spirit enough to see +the question in its true light, there would be an +indignation-meeting of the citizens to protest against such an +outrage to the sanctity of womanhood—when I tell him all +this, at breakfast or dinner, he only bursts out laughing so loud +that all the plates clatter on the table.</p> +<p>But at such a time as this there’s always one person <a +name="page455"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 455</span>who seems +interested in what I say—a German gentleman, a professor, +who sits next to me at dinner and whom I must tell you more about +another time. He’s very learned, but wants to push +further and further all the time; he appreciates a great many of +my remarks, and after dinner, in the salon, he often comes to me +to ask me questions about them. I have to think a little +sometimes to know what I did say or what I do think. He +takes you right up where you left off, and he’s most as +fond of discussing things as William Platt ever was. +He’s splendidly educated, in the German style, and he told +me the other day that he was an “intellectual +broom.” Well, if he is he sweeps clean; I told him +that. After he has been talking to me I feel as if I +hadn’t got a speck of dust left in my mind anywhere. +It’s a most delightful feeling. He says he’s a +remorseless observer, and though I don’t know about +remorse—for a bright mind isn’t a crime, is +it?—I’m sure there’s plenty over here to +observe. But I’ve told you enough for to-day. I +don’t know how much longer I shall stay here; I’m +getting on now so fast that it has come to seem sometimes as if I +shouldn’t need all the time I’ve laid out. I +suppose your cold weather has promptly begun, as usual; it +sometimes makes me envy you. The fall weather here is very +dull and damp, and I often suffer from the want of bracing.</p> +<h3><a name="page456"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +456</span>VI<br /> +FROM MISS EVELYN VANE IN PARIS TO THE LADY AUGUSTA FLEMING AT +BRIGHTON</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Paris</span>, +<i>September</i> 30.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Dear Lady Augusta</span>,</p> +<p>I’m afraid I shall not be able to come to you on January +7th, as you kindly proposed at Homburg. I’m so very +very sorry; it’s an immense disappointment. But +I’ve just heard that it has been settled that mamma and the +children come abroad for a part of the winter, and mamma wishes +me to go with them to Hyères, where Georgina has been +ordered for her lungs. She has not been at all well these +three months, and now that the damp weather has begun she’s +very poorly indeed; so that last week papa decided to have a +consultation, and he and mamma went with her up to town and saw +some three or four doctors. They all of them ordered the +south of France, but they didn’t agree about the place; so +that mamma herself decided for Hyères, because it’s +the most economical. I believe it’s very dull, but I +hope it will do Georgina good. I’m afraid, however, +that nothing will do her good until she consents to take more +care of herself; I’m afraid she’s very wild and +wilful, and mamma tells me that all this month it has taken +papa’s positive orders to make her stop indoors. +She’s very cross (mamma writes me) about coming abroad, and +<a name="page457"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +457</span>doesn’t seem at all to mind the expense papa has +been put to—talks very ill-naturedly about her loss of the +hunting and even perhaps of the early spring meetings. She +expected to begin to hunt in December and wants to know whether +anybody keeps hounds at Hyères. Fancy that rot when +she’s too ill to sit a horse or to go anywhere. But I +daresay that when she gets there she’ll be glad enough to +keep quiet, as they say the heat’s intense. It may +cure Georgina, but I’m sure it will make the rest of us +very ill.</p> +<p>Mamma, however, is only going to bring Mary and Gus and Fred +and Adelaide abroad with her: the others will remain at Kingscote +till February (about the 3rd) when they’ll go to Eastbourne +for a month with Miss Turnover, the new governess, who has proved +such a very nice person. She’s going to take Miss +Travers, who has been with us so long, but is only qualified for +the younger children, to Hyères, and I believe some of the +Kingscote servants. She has perfect confidence in Miss T.; +it’s only a pity the poor woman has such an odd name. +Mamma thought of asking her if she would mind taking another when +she came; but papa thought she might object. Lady +Battledown makes all her governesses take the same name; she +gives £5 more a year for the purpose. I forget what +it is she calls them; I think it’s Johnson (which to me +always suggests a lady’s maid). Governesses +shouldn’t have too pretty a name—they shouldn’t +have a nicer name than the family.</p> +<p>I suppose you heard from the Desmonds that I didn’t go +back to England with them. When it began to be talked about +that Georgina should be taken abroad mamma wrote to me that I had +better stop in Paris for a month with Harold, so that she could +pick me up on their way to Hyères. It saves the +expense of my journey to Kingscote and back, <a +name="page458"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 458</span>and gives +me the opportunity to “finish” a little in +French.</p> +<p>You know Harold came here six weeks ago to get up his French +for those dreadful exams that he has to pass so soon. He +came to live with some French people that take in young men (and +others) for this purpose; it’s a kind of coaching-place, +only kept by women. Mamma had heard it was very nice, so +she wrote to me that I was to come and stop here with +Harold. The Desmonds brought me and made the arrangement or +the bargain or whatever you call it. Poor Harold was +naturally not at all pleased, but he has been very kind and has +treated me like an angel. He’s getting on beautifully +with his French, for though I don’t think the place is so +good as papa supposed, yet Harold is so immensely clever that he +can scarcely help learning. I’m afraid I learn much +less, but fortunately I haven’t to go up for +anything—unless perhaps to mamma if she takes it into her +head to examine me. But she’ll have so much to think +of with Georgina that I hope this won’t occur to her. +If it does I shall be, as Harold says, in a dreadful funk.</p> +<p>This isn’t such a nice place for a girl as for a +gentleman, and the Desmonds thought it <i>exceedingly odd</i> +that mamma should wish me to come here. As Mrs. Desmond +said, it’s because she’s so very +unconventional. But you know Paris is so very amusing, and +if only Harold remains good-natured about it I shall be content +to wait for the caravan—which is what he calls mamma and +the children. The person who keeps the establishment, or +whatever they call it, is rather odd and <i>exceedingly +foreign</i>; but she’s wonderfully civil and is perpetually +sending to my door to see if I want anything. She’s +tremendously pretentious and of course isn’t a lady. +The servants are not at all like English ones and come <a +name="page459"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 459</span>bursting +in, the footman—they’ve only one—and the maids +alike, at all sorts of hours, in the <i>most sudden +way</i>. Then when one rings it takes ages. Some of +the food too is rather nasty. All of which is very +uncomfortable, and I daresay will be worse at +Hyères. There, however, fortunately, we shall have +our own people.</p> +<p>There are some very odd Americans here who keep throwing +Harold into fits of laughter. One’s a dreadful little +man whom indeed he also wants to kick and who’s always +sitting over the fire and talking about the colour of the +sky. I don’t believe he ever saw the sky except +through the window-pane. The other day he took hold of my +frock—that green one you thought so nice at +Homburg—and told me that it reminded him of the texture of +the Devonshire turf. And then he talked for half an hour +about the Devonshire turf, which I thought such a very +extraordinary subject. Harold firmly believes him +mad. It’s rather horrid to be living in this way with +people one doesn’t know—I mean doesn’t know as +one knows them in England.</p> +<p>The other Americans, beside the madman, are two girls about my +own age, one of whom is rather nice. She has a mother; but +the mother always sits in her bedroom, which seems so very +odd. I should like mamma to ask them to Kingscote, but +I’m afraid mamma wouldn’t like the mother, +who’s awfully vulgar. The other girl is awfully +vulgar herself—she’s travelling about quite +alone. I think she’s a middle-class +schoolmistress—sacked perhaps for some irregularity; but +the other girl (I mean the nicer one, with the objectionable +mother) tells me she’s more respectable than she +seems. She has, however, the most extraordinary +opinions—wishes to do away with the aristocracy, thinks it +wrong that Arthur should have Kingscote when papa dies, +etc. <a name="page460"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +460</span>I don’t see what it signifies to her that poor +Arthur should come into the property, which will be so +delightful—except for papa dying. But Harold says +she’s mad too. He chaffs her tremendously about her +radicalism, and he’s so immensely clever that she +can’t answer him, though she has a supply of the most +extraordinary big words.</p> +<p>There’s also a Frenchman, a nephew or cousin or +something of the person of the house, who’s a horrid low +cad; and a German professor or doctor who eats with his knife and +is a great bore. I’m so very sorry about giving up my +visit. I’m afraid you’ll never ask me +again.</p> +<h3><a name="page461"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +461</span>VII<br /> +FROM LÉON VERDIER IN PARIS TO PROSPER GOBAIN AT LILLE</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>September</i> 28.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Mon Gros Vieux</span>,</p> +<p>It’s a long time since I’ve given you of my news, +and I don’t know what puts it into my head to-night to +recall myself to your affectionate memory. I suppose it is +that when we’re happy the mind reverts instinctively to +those with whom formerly we shared our vicissitudes, and <i>je +t’en ai trop dit dans le bon temps</i>, <i>cher vieux</i>, +and you always listened to me too imperturbably, with your pipe +in your mouth and your waistcoat unbuttoned, for me not to feel +that I can count on your sympathy to-day. <i>Nous en +sommes-nous flanqués</i>, <i>des confidences</i>?—in +those happy days when my first thought in seeing an adventure +<i>poindre à l’horizon</i> was of the pleasure I +should have in relating it to the great Prosper. As I tell +thee, I’m happy; decidedly <i>j’ai de la chance</i>, +and from that avowal I trust thee to construct the rest. +Shall I help thee a little? Take three adorable +girls—three, my good Prosper, the mystic number, neither +more nor less. Take them and place in the midst of them thy +insatiable little Léon. Is the situation +sufficiently indicated, or does the scene take more doing?</p> +<p>You expected perhaps I was going to tell thee I had made my +fortune, or that the Uncle Blondeau <a name="page462"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 462</span>had at last decided to recommit +himself to the breast of nature after having constituted me his +universal legatee. But I needn’t remind you for how +much women have always been in any happiness of him who thus +overflows to you—for how much in any happiness and for how +much more in any misery. But don’t let me talk of +misery now; time enough when it comes, when <i>ces +demoiselles</i> shall have joined the serried ranks of their +amiable predecessors. Ah, I comprehend your +impatience. I must tell you of whom <i>ces demoiselles</i> +consist.</p> +<p>You’ve heard me speak of my <i>cousine</i> de +Maisonrouge, that <i>grande belle femme</i> who, after having +married, <i>en secondes noces</i>—there had been, to tell +the truth, some irregularity about her first union—a +venerable relic of the old noblesse of Poitou, was left, by the +death of her husband, complicated by the crash of expensive +tastes against an income of 17,000 francs, on the pavement of +Paris with two little demons of daughters to bring up in the path +of virtue. She managed to bring them up; my little cousins +are ferociously <i>sages</i>. If you ask me how she managed +it I can’t tell you; it’s no business of mine, and +<i>a fortiori</i> none of yours. She’s now fifty +years old—she confesses to thirty-eight—and her +daughters, whom she has never been able to place, are +respectively twenty-seven and twenty-three (they confess to +twenty and to seventeen). Three years ago she had the +thrice-blest idea of opening a well-upholstered and otherwise +attractive <i>asile</i> for the blundering barbarians who come to +Paris in the hope of picking up a few stray pearls from the +<i>écrin</i> of Voltaire—or of Zola. The idea +has brought her luck; the house does an excellent business. +Until within a few months ago it was carried on by my cousins +alone; but lately the need of a few extensions and improvements +has caused itself to be felt. My <a +name="page463"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 463</span>cousin has +undertaken them, regardless of expense; in other words she has +asked me to come and stay with her—board and lodging +gratis—and correct the conversational exercises of her +<i>pensionnaire</i>-pupils. I’m the extension, my +good Prosper; I’m the improvement. She has enlarged +the <i>personnel</i>—I’m the enlargement. I +form the exemplary sounds that the prettiest English lips are +invited to imitate. The English lips are not all pretty, +heaven knows, but enough of them are so to make it a good bargain +for me.</p> +<p>Just now, as I told you, I’m in daily relation with +three separate pairs. The owner of one of them has private +lessons; she pays extra. My cousin doesn’t give me a +sou of the money, but I consider nevertheless that I’m not +a loser by the arrangement. Also I’m well, very very +well, with the proprietors of the two other pairs. One of +these is a little Anglaise of twenty—a <i>figure de +keepsake</i>; the most adorable miss you ever, or at least I +ever, beheld. She’s hung all over with beads and +bracelets and amulets, she’s embroidered all over like a +sampler or a vestment; but her principal decoration consists of +the softest and almost the hugest grey eyes in the world, which +rest upon you with a profundity of confidence—a confidence +I really feel some compunction in betraying. She has a tint +as white as this sheet of paper, except just in the middle of +each cheek, where it passes into the purest and most transparent, +most liquid, carmine. Occasionally this rosy fluid +overflows into the rest of her face—by which I mean that +she blushes—as softly as the mark of your breath on the +window-pane.</p> +<p>Like every Anglaise she’s rather pinched and prim in +public; but it’s easy to see that when no one’s +looking <i>elle ne demande qu’à se laisser +aller</i>! Whenever she wants it I’m always there, +and I’ve given <a name="page464"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 464</span>her to understand she can count upon +me. I’ve reason to believe she appreciates the +assurance, though I’m bound in honesty to confess that with +her the situation’s a little less advanced than with the +others. <i>Que voulez-vous</i>? The English are heavy +and the Anglaises move slowly, that’s all. The +movement, however, is perceptible, and once this fact’s +established I can let the soup simmer, I can give her time to +arrive, for I’m beautifully occupied with her +competitors. <i>They</i> don’t keep me waiting, +please believe.</p> +<p>These young ladies are Americans, and it belongs to that +national character to move fast. “All right—go +ahead!” (I’m learning a great deal of English, +or rather a great deal of American.) They go ahead at a +rate that sometimes makes it difficult for me to keep up. +One of them’s prettier than the other; but this +latter—the one that takes the extra-private +lessons—is really <i>une fille étonnante</i>. +<i>Ah par exemple</i>, <i>elle brûle ses vaisseaux</i>, +<i>celle-là</i>! She threw herself into my arms the +very first day, and I almost owed her a grudge for having +deprived me of that pleasure of gradation, of carrying the +defences one by one, which is almost as great as that of entering +the place. For would you believe that at the end of exactly +twelve minutes she gave me a rendezvous? In the Galerie +d’Apollon at the Louvre I admit; but that was respectable +for a beginning, and since then we’ve had them by the +dozen; I’ve ceased to keep the account. <i>Non</i>, +<i>c’est une fille qui me dépasse</i>.</p> +<p>The other, the slighter but “smarter” little +person—she has a mother somewhere out of sight, shut up in +a closet or a trunk—is a good deal prettier, and perhaps on +that account <i>elle y met plus de façons</i>. She +doesn’t knock about Paris with me by the hour; she contents +herself with long interviews in the <i>petit salon</i>, with the +blinds half-drawn, beginning at about <a name="page465"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 465</span>three o’clock, when every one +is <i>à la promenade</i>. She’s admirable, +<i>cette petite</i>, a little too immaterial, with the bones +rather over-accentuated, yet of a detail, on the whole, most +satisfactory. And you can say anything to her. She +takes the trouble to appear not to understand, but her conduct, +half an hour afterwards, reassures you completely—oh +completely!</p> +<p>However, it’s the big bouncer of the extra-private +lessons who’s the most remarkable. These private +lessons, my good Prosper, are the most brilliant invention of the +age, and a real stroke of genius on the part of Miss +Miranda! They also take place in the <i>petit salon</i>, +but with the doors tightly closed and with explicit directions to +every one in the house that we are not to be disturbed. And +we’re not, <i>mon gros</i>, we’re not! Not a +sound, not a shadow, interrupts our felicity. My cousins +are on the right track—such a house must make its +fortune. Miss Miranda’s too tall and too flat, with a +certain want of coloration; she hasn’t the transparent +<i>rougeurs</i> of the little Anglaise. But she has +wonderful far-gazing eyes, superb teeth, a nose modelled by a +sculptor, and a way of holding up her head and looking every one +in the face, which combines apparent innocence with complete +assurance in a way I’ve never seen equalled. +She’s making the <i>tour du monde</i>, entirely alone, +without even a soubrette to carry the ensign, for the purpose of +seeing for herself, seeing <i>à quoi s’en tenir sur +les hommes et les choses</i>—on <i>les hommes</i> +particularly. <i>Dis donc</i>, <i>mon vieux</i>, it must be +a <i>drôle de pays</i> over there, where such a view of the +right thing for the aspiring young bourgeoises is taken. If +we should turn the tables some day, thou and I, and go over and +see it for ourselves? Why isn’t it as well we should +go and find them <i>chez elles</i>, as that they should come out +here after us? <i>Dis donc</i>, <i>mon gros Prosper</i> . . +. !</p> +<h3><a name="page466"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +466</span>VIII<br /> +FROM DR. RUDOLPH STAUB IN PARIS TO DR. JULIUS HIRSCH AT +GÖTTINGEN</h3> +<p><span class="smcap">My dear Brother in Science</span>,</p> +<p>I resume my hasty notes, of which I sent you the first +instalment some weeks ago. I mentioned that I intended to +leave my hotel, not finding in it real matter. It was kept +by a Pomeranian and the waiters without exception were from the +Fatherland. I might as well have sat down with my note-book +Unter den Linden, and I felt that, having come here for +documentation, or to put my finger straight upon the social +pulse, I should project myself as much as possible into the +circumstances which are in part the consequence and in part the +cause of its activities and intermittences. I saw there +could be no well-grounded knowledge without this preliminary +operation of my getting a near view, as slightly as possible +modified by elements proceeding from a different combination of +forces, of the spontaneous home-life of the nation.</p> +<p>I accordingly engaged a room in the house of a lady of pure +French extraction and education, who supplements the shortcomings +of an income insufficient to the ever-growing demands of the +Parisian system of sense-gratification by providing food and +lodging for a limited number of distinguished strangers. <a +name="page467"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 467</span>I should +have preferred to have my room here only, and to take my meals in +a brewery, of very good appearance, which I speedily discovered +in the same street; but this arrangement, though very clearly set +out by myself, was not acceptable to the mistress of the +establishment—a woman with a mathematical head—and I +have consoled myself for the extra expense by fixing my thoughts +upon the great chance that conformity to the customs of the house +gives me of studying the table-manners of my companions, and of +observing the French nature at a peculiarly physiological moment, +the moment when the satisfaction of the <i>taste</i>, which is +the governing quality in its composition, produces a kind of +exhalation, an intellectual transpiration, which, though light +and perhaps invisible to a superficial spectator, is nevertheless +appreciable by a properly adjusted instrument. I’ve +adjusted my instrument very satisfactorily—I mean the one I +carry in my good square German head—and I’m not +afraid of losing a single drop of this valuable fluid as it +condenses itself upon the plate of my observation. A +prepared surface is what I need, and I’ve prepared my +surface.</p> +<p>Unfortunately here also I find the individual native in the +minority. There are only four French persons in the +house—the individuals concerned in its management, three of +whom are women, and one a man. Such a preponderance of the +Weibliche is, however, in itself characteristic, as I +needn’t remind you what an abnormally-developed part this +sex has played in French history. The remaining figure is +ostensibly that of a biped, and apparently that of a man, but I +hesitate to allow him the whole benefit of the higher +classification. He strikes me as less human than simian, +and whenever I hear him talk I seem to myself to have paused in +the street to listen to the shrill clatter of a hand-organ, to +which the <a name="page468"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +468</span>gambols of a hairy <i>homunculus</i> form an +accompaniment.</p> +<p>I mentioned to you before that my expectation of rough usage +in consequence of my unattenuated, even if not frivolously +aggressive, Teutonism was to prove completely unfounded. No +one seems either unduly conscious or affectedly unperceiving of +my so rich Berlin background; I’m treated on the contrary +with the positive civility which is the portion of every +traveller who pays the bill without scanning the items too +narrowly. This, I confess, has been something of a surprise +to me, and I’ve not yet made up my mind as to the +fundamental cause of the anomaly. My determination to take +up my abode in a French interior was largely dictated by the +supposition that I should be substantially disagreeable to its +inmates. I wished to catch in the fact the different forms +taken by the irritation I should naturally produce; for it is +under the influence of irritation that the French character most +completely expresses itself. My presence, however, +operates, as I say, less than could have been hoped as a +stimulus, and in this respect I’m materially +disappointed. They treat me as they treat every one else; +whereas, in order to be treated differently, I was resigned in +advance to being treated worse. A further proof, if any +were needed, of that vast and, as it were, fluid <i>waste</i> (I +have so often dwelt on to you) which attends the process of +philosophic secretion. I’ve not, I repeat, fully +explained to myself this logical contradiction; but this is the +explanation to which I tend. The French are so exclusively +occupied with the idea of themselves that in spite of the very +definite image the German personality presented to them by the +war of 1870 they have at present no distinct apprehension of its +existence. They are not very sure that there <i>are</i>, +concretely, any Germans; they have already forgotten the <a +name="page469"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 469</span>convincing +proofs presented to them nine years ago. A German was +something disagreeable and disconcerting, an irreducible mass, +which they determined to keep out of their conception of +things. I therefore hold we’re wrong to govern +ourselves upon the hypothesis of the <i>revanche</i>; the French +nature is too shallow for that large and powerful plant to bloom +in it.</p> +<p>The English-speaking specimens, too, I’ve not been +willing to neglect the opportunity to examine; and among these +I’ve paid special attention to the American varieties, of +which I find here several singular examples. The two most +remarkable are a young man who presents all the characteristics +of a period of national decadence; reminding me strongly of some +diminutive Hellenised Roman of the third century. +He’s an illustration of the period of culture in which the +faculty of appreciation has obtained such a preponderance over +that of production that the latter sinks into a kind of rank +sterility, and the mental condition becomes analogous to that of +a malarious bog. I hear from him of the existence of an +immense number of Americans exactly resembling him, and that the +city of Boston indeed is almost exclusively composed of +them. (He communicated this fact very proudly, as if it +were greatly to the credit of his native country; little +perceiving the truly sinister impression it made on me.)</p> +<p>What strikes one in it is that it is a phenomenon to the best +of my knowledge—and you know what my knowledge +is—unprecedented and unique in the history of mankind; the +arrival of a nation at an ultimate stage of evolution without +having passed through the mediate one; the passage of the fruit, +in other words, from crudity to rottenness, without the +interposition of a period of useful (and ornamental) +ripeness. With the Americans indeed the crudity and the <a +name="page470"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 470</span>rottenness +are identical and simultaneous; it is impossible to say, as in +the conversation of this deplorable young man, which is the one +and which the other: they’re inextricably confused. +Homunculus for homunculus I prefer that of the Frenchman; +he’s at least more amusing.</p> +<p>It’s interesting in this manner to perceive, so largely +developed, the germs of extinction in the so-called powerful +Anglo-Saxon family. I find them in almost as recognisable a +form in a young woman from the State of Maine, in the province of +New England, with whom I have had a good deal of +conversation. She differs somewhat from the young man I +just mentioned in that the state of affirmation, faculty of +production and capacity for action are things, in her, less +inanimate; she has more of the freshness and vigour that we +suppose to belong to a young civilisation. But +unfortunately she produces nothing but evil, and her tastes and +habits are similarly those of a Roman lady of the lower +Empire. She makes no secret of them and has in fact worked +out a complete scheme of experimental adventure, that is of +personal licence, which she is now engaged in carrying out. +As the opportunities she finds in her own country fail to satisfy +her she has come to Europe “to try,” as she says, +“for herself.” It’s the doctrine of +universal “unprejudiced” experience professed with a +cynicism that is really most extraordinary, and which, presenting +itself in a young woman of considerable education, appears to me +to be the judgement of a society.</p> +<p>Another observation which pushes me to the same +induction—that of the premature vitiation of the American +population—is the attitude of the Americans whom I have +before me with regard to each other. I have before me a +second flower of the same huge so-called democratic garden, who +is less abnormally developed than the one I have just described, +<a name="page471"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 471</span>but who +yet bears the stamp of this peculiar combination of the barbarous +and, to apply to them one of their own favourite terms, the +<i>ausgespielt</i>, the “played-out.” These +three little persons look with the greatest mistrust and aversion +upon each other; and each has repeatedly taken me apart and +assured me secretly, that he or she only is the real, the +genuine, the typical American. A type that has lost itself +before it has been fixed—what can you look for from +this?</p> +<p>Add to this that there are two young Englanders in the house +who hate all the Americans in a lump, making between them none of +the distinctions and favourable comparisons which they insist +upon, and for which, as involving the recognition of shades and a +certain play of the critical sense, the still quite primitive +insular understanding is wholly inapt, and you will, I think, +hold me warranted in believing that, between precipitate decay +and internecine enmities, the English-speaking family is destined +to consume itself, and that with its decline the prospect of +successfully-organised conquest and unarrested incalculable +expansion, to which I alluded above, will brighten for the +deep-lunged children of the Fatherland!</p> +<h3><a name="page472"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +472</span>IX<br /> +MIRANDA HOPE TO HER MOTHER</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>October</i> 22.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Dear Mother</span>,</p> +<p>I’m off in a day or two to visit some new country; I +haven’t yet decided which. I’ve satisfied +myself with regard to France, and obtained a good knowledge of +the language. I’ve enjoyed my visit to Madame de +Maisonrouge deeply, and feel as if I were leaving a circle of +real friends. Everything has gone on beautifully up to the +end, and every one has been as kind and attentive as if I were +their own sister, especially Mr. Verdier, the French gentleman, +from whom I have gained more than I ever expected (in six weeks) +and with whom I have promised to <i>correspond</i>. So you +can imagine me dashing off the liveliest and yet the most elegant +French letters; and if you don’t believe in them I’ll +keep the rough drafts to show you when I go back.</p> +<p>The German gentleman is also more interesting the more you +know him; it seems sometimes as if I could fairly drink in his +ideas. I’ve found out why the young lady from New +York doesn’t like me! It’s because I said one +day at dinner that I <i>admired</i> to go to the Louvre. +Well, when I first came it seemed as if I <i>did</i> admire +everything! Tell William Platt his letter has come. I +knew he’d have to write, <a name="page473"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 473</span>and I was bound I’d make +him! I haven’t decided what country I’ll visit +next; it seems as if there were so many to choose from. But +I must take care to pick out a good one and to meet plenty of +fresh experiences. Dearest mother, my money holds out, and +it is most interesting!</p> +<h2><a name="page475"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 475</span>THE +POINT OF VIEW</h2> +<h3><a name="page477"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 477</span>I<br +/> +FROM MISS AURORA CHURCH AT SEA TO MISS WHITESIDE IN PARIS</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>September</i> 1880.</p> +<p>. . . My dear child, the bromide of sodium (if +that’s what you call it) proved perfectly useless. I +don’t mean that it did me no good, but that I never had +occasion to take the bottle out of my bag. It might have +done wonders for me if I had needed it; but I didn’t, +simply because I’ve been a wonder myself. Will you +believe that I’ve spent the whole voyage on deck, in the +most animated conversation and exercise? Twelve times round +the deck make a mile, I believe; and by this measurement +I’ve been walking twenty miles a day. And down to +every meal, if you please, where I’ve displayed the +appetite of a fishwife. Of course the weather has been +lovely; so there’s no great merit. The wicked old +Atlantic has been as blue as the sapphire in my only +ring—rather a good one—and as smooth as the slippery +floor of Madame Galopin’s dining-room. We’ve +been for the last three hours in sight of land, and are soon to +enter the Bay of New York which is said to be exquisitely +beautiful. But of course you recall it, though they say +everything changes so fast over here. I find I don’t +remember anything, for my recollections of our voyage to Europe +so many years ago are <a name="page478"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 478</span>exceedingly dim; I’ve only a +painful impression that mamma shut me up for an hour every day in +the stateroom and made me learn by heart some religious +poem. I was only five years old and I believe that as a +child I was extremely timid; on the other hand mamma, as you +know, had what she called a method with me. She has it to +this day; only I’ve become indifferent; I’ve been so +pinched and pushed—morally speaking, <i>bien +entendu</i>. It’s true, however, that there are +children of five on the vessel to-day who have been extremely +conspicuous—ranging all over the ship and always under +one’s feet. Of course they’re little +compatriots, which means that they’re little +barbarians. I don’t mean to pronounce <i>all</i> our +compatriots barbarous; they seem to improve somehow after their +first communion. I don’t know whether it’s that +ceremony that improves them, especially as so few of them go in +for it; but the women are certainly nicer than the little girls; +I mean of course in proportion, you know. You warned me not +to generalise, and you see I’ve already begun, before +we’ve arrived. But I suppose there’s no harm in +it so long as it’s favourable.</p> +<p>Isn’t it favourable when I say I’ve had the most +lovely time? I’ve never had so much liberty in my +life, and I’ve been out alone, as you may say, every day of +the voyage. If it’s a foretaste of what’s to +come I shall take very kindly to that. When I say +I’ve been out alone I mean we’ve always been +two. But we two were alone, so to speak, and it +wasn’t like always having mamma or Madame Galopin, or some +lady in the pension or the temporary cook. Mamma has been +very poorly; she’s so very well on land that it’s a +wonder to see her at all taken down. She says, however, +that it isn’t the being at sea; it’s on the contrary +approaching the land. She’s not in a hurry to arrive; +she keeps well before her that great disillusions <a +name="page479"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 479</span>await +us. I didn’t know she <i>had</i> any +illusions—she has too many opinions, I should think, for +that: she discriminates, as she’s always saying, from +morning till night. Where would the poor illusions find +room? She’s meanwhile very serious; she sits for +hours in perfect silence, her eyes fixed on the horizon. I +heard her say yesterday to an English gentleman—a very odd +Mr. Antrobus, the only person with whom she converses—that +she was afraid she shouldn’t like her native land, and that +she shouldn’t like not liking it. But this is a +mistake; she’ll like that immensely—I mean the not +liking it. If it should prove at all agreeable she’ll +be furious, for that will go against her system. You know +all about mamma’s system; I’ve explained it so +often. It goes against her system that we should come back +at all; that was <i>my</i> system—I’ve had at last to +invent one! She consented to come only because she saw +that, having no <i>dot</i>, I should never marry in Europe; and I +pretended to be immensely preoccupied with this idea in order to +make her start. In reality <i>cela m’est parfaitement +égal</i>. I’m only afraid I shall like it too +much—I don’t mean marriage, of course, but the sense +of a native land. Say what you will, it’s a charming +thing to go out alone, and I’ve given notice that I mean to +be always <i>en course</i>. When I tell mamma this she +looks at me in the same silence; her eyes dilate and then she +slowly closes them. It’s as if the sea were affecting +her a little, though it’s so beautifully calm. I ask +her if she’ll try my bromide, which is there in my bag; but +she motions me off and I begin to walk again, tapping my little +boot-soles on the smooth clean deck. This allusion to my +boot-soles, by the way, isn’t prompted by vanity; but +it’s a fact that at sea one’s feet and one’s +shoes assume the most extraordinary importance, so that one +should take the precaution to have nice ones. They’re +all you seem to see as the people <a name="page480"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 480</span>walk about the deck; you get to know +them intimately and to dislike some of them so much. +I’m afraid you’ll think that I’ve already +broken loose; and for aught I know I’m writing as a +demoiselle bien-élévee shouldn’t write. +I don’t know whether it’s the American air; if it is, +all I can say is that the American air’s very +charming. It makes me impatient and restless, and I sit +scribbling here because I’m so eager to arrive and the time +passes better if I occupy myself.</p> +<p>I’m in the saloon, where we have our meals, and opposite +me is a big round porthole, wide open to let in the smell of the +land. Every now and then I rise a little and look through +it to see if we’re arriving. I mean in the Bay, you +know, for we shall not come up to the city till dark. I +don’t want to lose the Bay; it appears it’s so +wonderful. I don’t exactly understand what it +contains except some beautiful islands; but I suppose +you’ll know all about that. It’s easy to see +that these are the last hours, for all the people about me are +writing letters to put into the post as soon as we come up to the +dock. I believe they’re dreadful at the custom-house, +and you’ll remember how many new things you persuaded mamma +that—with my preoccupation of marriage—I should take +to this country, where even the prettiest girls are expected not +to go unadorned. We ruined ourselves in +Paris—that’s partly accountable for mamma’s +solemnity—<i>mais au moins je serai belle</i>! +Moreover I believe that mamma’s prepared to say or to do +anything that may be necessary for escaping from their odious +duties; as she very justly remarks she can’t afford to be +ruined twice. I don’t know how one approaches these +terrible <i>douaniers</i>, but I mean to invent something very +charming. I mean to say “Voyons, Messieurs, a young +girl like me, brought up in the strictest foreign traditions, +kept always in the background by a very superior +mother—<i>la voilà</i>; <a name="page481"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 481</span>you can see for yourself!—what +is it possible that she should attempt to smuggle in? +Nothing but a few simple relics of her convent!” I +won’t tell them my convent was called the Magasin du Bon +Marché. Mamma began to scold me three days ago for +insisting on so many trunks, and the truth is that between us +we’ve not fewer than seven. For relics, that’s +a good many! We’re all writing very long +letters—or at least we’re writing a great +number. There’s no news of the Bay as yet. Mr. +Antrobus, mamma’s friend, opposite to me, is beginning on +his ninth. He’s a Right Honourable and a Member of +Parliament; he has written during the voyage about a hundred +letters and seems greatly alarmed at the number of stamps +he’ll have to buy when he arrives. He’s full of +information, but he hasn’t enough, for he asks as many +questions as mamma when she goes to hire apartments. +He’s going to “look into” various things; he +speaks as if they had a little hole for the purpose. He +walks almost as much as I, and has enormous shoes. He asks +questions even of me, and I tell him again and again that I know +nothing about America. But it makes no difference; he +always begins again, and indeed it’s not strange he should +find my ignorance incredible. “Now how would it be in +one of your South-western States?”—that’s his +favourite way of opening conversation. Fancy me giving an +account of one of “my” South-western States! I +tell him he had better ask mamma—a little to tease that +lady, who knows no more about such places than I. Mr. +Antrobus is very big and black; he speaks with a sort of brogue; +he has a wife and ten children; he doesn’t say—apart +from his talking—anything at all to me. But he has +lots of letters to people <i>là-bas</i>—I forget +that we’re just arriving—and mamma, who takes an +interest in him in spite of his views (which are dreadfully +advanced, <a name="page482"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +482</span>and not at all like mamma’s own) has promised to +give him the entrée to the best society. I +don’t know what she knows about the best society over here +to-day, for we’ve not kept up our connexions at all, and no +one will know—or, I am afraid, care—anything about +us. She has an idea we shall be immensely recognised; but +really, except the poor little Rucks, who are bankrupt and, +I’m told, in no society at all, I don’t know on whom +we can count. C’est égal, mamma has an idea +that, whether or no we appreciate America ourselves, we shall at +least be universally appreciated. It’s true we have +begun to be, a little; you would see that from the way Mr. +Cockerel and Mr. Louis Leverett are always inviting me to +walk. Both of these gentlemen, who are Americans, have +asked leave to call on me in New York, and I’ve said <i>Mon +Dieu oui</i>, if it’s the custom of the country. Of +course I’ve not dared to tell this to mamma, who flatters +herself that we’ve brought with us in our trunks a complete +set of customs of our own and that we shall only have to shake +them out a little and put them on when we arrive. If only +the two gentlemen I just spoke of don’t call at the same +time I don’t think I shall be too much frightened. If +they do, on the other hand, I won’t answer for it. +They’ve a particular aversion to each other and are ready +to fight about poor little me. I’m only the pretext, +however; for, as Mr. Leverett says, it’s really the +opposition of temperaments. I hope they won’t cut +each other’s throats, for I’m not crazy about either +of them. They’re very well for the deck of a ship, +but I shouldn’t care about them in a salon; they’re +not at all distinguished. They think they are, but +they’re not; at least Mr. Louis Leverett does; Mr. Cockerel +doesn’t appear to care so much. They’re +extremely different—with their opposed +temperaments—and each very amusing for a while; but I +should get <a name="page483"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +483</span>dreadfully tired of passing my life with either. +Neither has proposed that as yet; but it’s evidently what +they’re coming to. It will be in a great measure to +spite each other, for I think that au fond they don’t quite +believe in me. If they don’t, it’s the only +point on which they agree. They hate each other awfully; +they take such different views. That is Mr. Cockerel hates +Mr. Leverett—he calls him a sickly little ass; he +pronounces his opinions half affectation and the other half +dyspepsia. Mr. Leverett speaks of Mr. Cockerel as a +“strident savage,” but he allows he finds him most +diverting. He says there’s nothing in which we +can’t find a certain entertainment if we only look at it in +the right way, and that we have no business with either hating or +loving: we ought only to strive to understand. He +“claims”—he’s always claiming—that +to understand is to forgive. Which is very pretty, but I +don’t like the suppression of our affections, though +I’ve no desire to fix mine upon Mr. Leverett. +He’s very artistic and talks like an article in some +review. He has lived a great deal in Paris, and Mr. +Cockerel, who doesn’t believe in Paris, says it’s +what has made him such an idiot.</p> +<p>That’s not complimentary to you, dear Louisa, and still +less to your brilliant brother; for Mr. Cockerel explains that he +means it (the bad effect of Paris) chiefly of men. In fact +he means the bad effect of Europe altogether. This, +however, is compromising to mamma; and I’m afraid +there’s no doubt that, from what I’ve told him, he +thinks mamma also an idiot. (I’m not responsible, you +know—I’ve always wanted to go home.) If mamma +knew him, which she doesn’t, for she always closes her eyes +when I pass on his arm, she would think him disgusting. Mr. +Leverett meanwhile assures me he’s nothing to what we shall +see yet. He’s from <a name="page484"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 484</span>Philadelphia (Mr. Cockerel); he +insists that we shall go and see Philadelphia, but mamma says she +saw it in 1855 and it was then <i>affreux</i>. Mr. Cockerel +says that mamma’s evidently not familiar with the rush of +improvement in this country; he speaks of 1855 as if it were a +hundred years ago. Mamma says she knows it goes only too +fast, the rush—it goes so fast that it has time to do +nothing well; and then Mr. Cockerel, who, to do him justice, is +perfectly good-natured, remarks that she had better wait till she +has been ashore and seen the improvements. Mamma retorts +that she sees them from here, the awful things, and that they +give her a sinking of the heart. (This little exchange of +ideas is carried on through me; they’ve never spoken to +each other.) Mr. Cockerel, as I say, is extremely +good-natured, and he bears out what I’ve heard said about +the men in America being very considerate of the women. +They evidently listen to them a great deal; they don’t +contradict them, but it seems to me this is rather +negative. There’s very little gallantry in not +contradicting one; and it strikes me that there are some things +the men don’t express. There are others on the ship +whom I’ve noticed. It’s as if they were all +one’s brothers or one’s cousins. The extent to +which one isn’t in danger from them—my dear, my +dear! But I promised you not to generalise, and perhaps +there will be more expression when we arrive. Mr. Cockerel +returns to America, after a general tour, with a renewed +conviction that this is the only country. I left him on +deck an hour ago looking at the coast-line with an opera-glass +and saying it was the prettiest thing he had seen in all his +travels. When I remarked that the coast seemed rather low +he said it would be all the easier to get ashore. Mr. +Leverett at any rate doesn’t seem in a hurry to get ashore, +he’s sitting within sight of me in a corner of the +saloon—writing letters, I suppose, <a +name="page485"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 485</span>but +looking, from the way he bites his pen and rolls his eyes about, +as if he were composing a sonnet and waiting for a rhyme. +Perhaps the sonnet’s addressed to me; but I forget that he +suppresses the affections! The only person in whom mamma +takes much interest is the great French critic, M. Lejaune, whom +we have the honour to carry with us. We’ve read a few +of his works, though mamma disapproves of his tendencies and +thinks him a dreadful materialist. We’ve read them +for the style; you know he’s one of the new +Academicians. He’s a Frenchman like any other, except +that he’s rather more quiet; he has a grey moustache and +the ribbon of the Legion of Honour. He’s the first +French writer of distinction who has been to America since De +Tocqueville; the French, in such matters, are not very +enterprising. Also he has the air of wondering what +he’s doing <i>dans cette galère</i>. He has +come with his beau-frère, who’s an engineer and is +looking after some mines, and he talks with scarcely any one +else, as he speaks no English and appears to take for granted +that no one speaks French. Mamma would be delighted to +convince him of the contrary; she has never conversed with an +Academician. She always makes a little vague inclination, +with a smile, when he passes her, and he answers with a most +respectful bow; but it goes no further, to mamma’s +disappointment. He’s always with the +beau-frère, a rather untidy fat bearded +man—decorated too, always smoking and looking at the feet +of the ladies, whom mamma (though she has very good feet) has not +the courage to <i>aborder</i>. I believe M. Lejaune is +going to write a book about America, and Mr. Leverett says it +will be terrible. Mr. Leverett has made his acquaintance +and says M. Lejaune will put him into his book; he says the +movement of the French intellect is superb. As a general +thing he doesn’t care for Academicians, <a +name="page486"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 486</span>but M. +Lejaune’s an exception—he’s so living, so +remorseless, so personal.</p> +<p>I’ve asked Mr. Cockerel meanwhile what he thinks of M. +Lejaune’s plan of writing a book, and he answers that he +doesn’t see what it matters to him that a Frenchman the +more should make the motions of a monkey—on that side poor +Mr. Cockerel is <i>de cette force</i>. I asked him why he +hadn’t written a book about Europe, and he says that in the +first place Europe isn’t worth writing about, and that in +the second if he said what he thought people would call it a +joke. He says they’re very superstitious about Europe +over here; he wants people in America to behave as if Europe +didn’t exist. I told this to Mr. Leverett, and he +answered that if Europe didn’t exist America +wouldn’t, for Europe keeps us alive by buying our +corn. He said also that the trouble with America in the +future will be that she’ll produce things in such enormous +quantities that there won’t be enough people in the rest of +the world to buy them, and that we shall be left with our +productions—most of them very hideous—on our +hands. I asked him if he thought corn a hideous production, +and he replied that there’s nothing more unbeautiful than +too much food. I think that to feed the world too well, +however, will be after all a <i>beau rôle</i>. Of +course I don’t understand these things, and I don’t +believe Mr. Leverett does; but Mr. Cockerel seems to know what +he’s talking about, and he describes America as complete in +herself. I don’t know exactly what he means, but he +speaks as if human affairs had somehow moved over to this side of +the world. It may be a very good place for them, and heaven +knows I’m extremely tired of Europe, which mamma has always +insisted so on my appreciating; but I don’t think I like +the idea of our being so completely cut off. Mr. Cockerel +says it is not we that are cut off, but Europe, <a +name="page487"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 487</span>and he +seems to think Europe has somehow deserved it. That may be; +our life over there was sometimes extremely tiresome, though +mamma says it’s now that our real fatigues will +begin. I like to abuse those dreadful old countries myself, +but I’m not sure I’m pleased when others do the +same. We had some rather pretty moments there after all, +and at Piacenza we certainly lived for four francs a day. +Mamma’s already in a terrible state of mind about the +expenses here; she’s frightened by what people on the ship +(the few she has spoken to) have told her. There’s +one comfort at any rate—we’ve spent so much money in +coming that we shall have none left to get away. I’m +scribbling along, as you see, to occupy me till we get news of +the islands. Here comes Mr. Cockerel to bring it. +Yes, they’re in sight; he tells me they’re lovelier +than ever and that I must come right up right away. I +suppose you’ll think I’m already beginning to use the +language of the country. It’s certain that at the end +of the month I shall speak nothing else. I’ve picked +up every dialect, wherever we’ve travelled; you’ve +heard my Platt-Deutsch and my Neapolitan. But, <i>voyons un +peu</i> the Bay! I’ve just called to Mr. Leverett to +remind him of the islands. “The islands—the +islands? Ah my dear young lady, I’ve seen Capri, +I’ve seen Ischia!” Well, so have I, but that +doesn’t prevent . . . (<i>A little later</i>.) +I’ve seen the islands—they’re rather queer.</p> +<h3><a name="page488"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +488</span>II<br /> +MRS. CHURCH IN NEW YORK TO MADAME GALOPIN AT GENEVA</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>October</i> 1880.</p> +<p>If I felt far way from you in the middle of that deplorable +Atlantic, chère Madame, how do I feel now, in the heart of +this extraordinary city? We’ve +arrived—we’ve arrived, dear friend; but I don’t +know whether to tell you that I consider that an advantage. +If we had been given our choice of coming safely to land or going +down to the bottom of the sea I should doubtless have chosen the +former course; for I hold, with your noble husband and in +opposition to the general tendency of modern thought, that our +lives are not our own to dispose of, but a sacred trust from a +higher power by whom we shall be held responsible. +Nevertheless if I had foreseen more vividly some of the +impressions that awaited me here I’m not sure that, for my +daughter at least, I shouldn’t have preferred on the spot +to hand in our account. Should I not have been less (rather +than more) guilty in presuming to dispose of <i>her</i> destiny +than of my own? There’s a nice point for dear M. +Galopin to settle—one of those points I’ve heard him +discuss in the pulpit with such elevation. We’re +safe, however, as I say; by which I mean we’re physically +safe. We’ve taken up the thread of our familiar +pension-life, but under <a name="page489"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 489</span>strikingly different +conditions. We’ve found a refuge in a boarding-house +which has been highly recommended to me and where the +arrangements partake of the barbarous magnificence that in this +country is the only alternative from primitive rudeness. +The terms per week are as magnificent as all the rest. The +landlady wears diamond ear-rings and the drawing-rooms are +decorated with marble statues. I should indeed be sorry to +let you know how I’ve allowed myself to be +rançonnée; and I should be still more sorry that it +should come to the ears of any of my good friends in Geneva, who +know me less well than you and might judge me more harshly. +There’s no wine given for dinner, and I’ve vainly +requested the person who conducts the establishment to garnish +her table more liberally. She says I may have all the wine +I want if I will order it at the merchant’s and settle the +matter with himself. But I’ve never, as you know, +consented to regard our modest allowance of eau rougie as an +extra; indeed, I remember that it’s largely to your +excellent advice that I’ve owed my habit of being firm on +this point.</p> +<p>There are, however, greater difficulties than the question of +what we shall drink for dinner, chère Madame. Still, +I’ve never lost courage and I shall not lose it now. +At the worst we can re-embark again and seek repose and +refreshment on the shores of your beautiful lake. +(There’s absolutely no scenery here!) We shall not +perhaps in that case have achieved what we desired, but we shall +at least have made an honourable retreat. What we +desire—I know it’s just this that puzzles you, dear +friend; I don’t think you ever really comprehended my +motives in taking this formidable step, though you were good +enough, and your magnanimous husband was good enough, to press my +hand at parting in a way that seemed to tell me you’d still +be with me even were I wrong. To be very <a +name="page490"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 490</span>brief, I +wished to put an end to the ceaseless reclamations of my +daughter. Many Americans had assured her that she was +wasting her belle jeunesse in those historic lands which it was +her privilege to see so intimately, and this unfortunate +conviction had taken possession of her. “Let me at +least see for myself,” she used to say; “if I should +dislike it over there as much as you promise me, so much the +better for you. In that case we’ll come back and make +a new arrangement at Stuttgart.” The +experiment’s a terribly expensive one, but you know how my +devotion never has shrunk from an ordeal. There’s +another point moreover which, from a mother to a mother, it would +be affectation not to touch upon. I remember the just +satisfaction with which you announced to me the +fiançailles of your charming Cécile. You know +with what earnest care my Aurora has been educated—how +thoroughly she’s acquainted with the principal results of +modern research. We’ve always studied together, +we’ve always enjoyed together. It will perhaps +surprise you to hear that she makes these very advantages a +reproach to me—represents them as an injury to +herself. “In this country,” she says, +“the gentlemen have not those accomplishments; they care +nothing for the results of modern research. Therefore it +won’t help a young person to be sought in marriage that she +can give an account of the latest German presentation of +Pessimism.” That’s possible, and I’ve +never concealed from her that it wasn’t for this country I +had educated her. If she marries in the United States +it’s of course my intention that my son-in-law shall +accompany us to Europe. But when she calls my attention +more and more to these facts I feel that we’re moving in a +different world. This is more and more the country of the +many; the few find less and less place for them; and the +individual—well, the individual has quite ceased to be +recognised. He’s <a name="page491"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 491</span>recognised as a voter, but +he’s not recognised as a gentleman—still less as a +lady. My daughter and I of course can only pretend to +constitute a <i>few</i>!</p> +<p>You know that I’ve never for a moment remitted my +pretensions as an individual, though among the agitations of +pension-life I’ve sometimes needed all my energy to uphold +them. “Oh yes, I may be poor,” I’ve had +occasion to say, “I may be unprotected, I may be reserved, +I may occupy a small apartment au quatrième and be unable +to scatter unscrupulous bribes among the domestics; but at least +I’m a <i>person</i> and have personal rights.” +In this country the people have rights, but the person has +none. You’d have perceived that if you had come with +me to make arrangements at this establishment. The very +fine lady who condescends to preside over it kept me waiting +twenty minutes, and then came sailing in without a word of +apology. I had sat very silent, with my eyes on the clock; +Aurora amused herself with a false admiration of the room, a +wonderful drawing-room with magenta curtains, frescoed walls and +photographs of the landlady’s friends—as if one cares +for her friends! When this exalted personage came in she +simply remarked that she had just been trying on a +dress—that it took so long to get a skirt to hang. +“It seems to take very long indeed!” I answered; +“but I hope the skirt’s right at last. You +might have sent for us to come up and look at it!” +She evidently didn’t understand, and when I asked her to +show us her rooms she handed us over to a negro as +dégingandé as herself. While we looked at +them I heard her sit down to the piano in the drawing-room; she +began to sing an air from a comic opera. I felt certain we +had gone quite astray; I didn’t know in what house we could +be, and was only reassured by seeing a Bible in every room. +When we came down our musical hostess expressed no hope the rooms +had pleased us, she <a name="page492"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 492</span>seemed grossly indifferent to our +taking them. She wouldn’t consent moreover to the +least diminution and was inflexible, as I told you, on the +article of our common beverage. When I pushed this point +she was so good as to observe that she didn’t keep a +cabaret. One’s not in the least considered; +there’s no respect for one’s privacy, for one’s +preferences, for one’s reserves. The +familiarity’s without limits, and I’ve already made a +dozen acquaintances, of whom I know, and wish to know, +nothing. Aurora tells me she’s the “belle of +the boarding-house.” It appears that this is a great +distinction.</p> +<p>It brings me back to my poor child and her prospects. +She takes a very critical view of them herself—she tells me +I’ve given her a false education and that no one will marry +her to-day. No American will marry her because she’s +too much of a foreigner, and no foreigner will marry her because +she’s too much of an American. I remind her how +scarcely a day passes that a foreigner, usually of distinction, +doesn’t—as perversely as you will indeed—select +an American bride, and she answers me that in these cases the +young lady isn’t married for her fine eyes. Not +always, I reply; and then she declares that she’ll marry no +foreigner who shall not be one of the first of the first. +You’ll say doubtless that she should content herself with +advantages that haven’t been deemed insufficient for +Cécile; but I’ll not repeat to you the remark she +made when I once employed this argument. You’ll +doubtless be surprised to hear that I’ve ceased to argue; +but it’s time I should confess that I’ve at last +agreed to let her act for herself. She’s to live for +three months à l’Américaine and I’m to +be a mere passive spectator. You’ll feel with me that +this is a cruel position for a cœur de mère. I +count the days till our three months are over, and I know +you’ll join with me in my prayers. Aurora walks the +streets alone; <a name="page493"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +493</span>she goes out in the tramway: a voiture de place costs +five francs for the least little <i>course</i>. (I beseech +you not to let it be known that I’ve sometimes had the +weakness.) My daughter’s frequently accompanied by a +gentleman—by a dozen gentlemen; she remains out for hours +and her conduct excites no surprise in this establishment. +I know but too well the emotions it will excite in your quiet +home. If you betray us, chère Madame, we’re +lost; and why, after all, should any one know of these things in +Geneva? Aurora pretends she has been able to persuade +herself that she doesn’t care who knows them; but +there’s a strange expression in her face which proves that +her conscience isn’t at rest. I watch her, I let her +go, but I sit with my hands clasped. There’s a +peculiar custom in this country—I shouldn’t know how +to express it in Genevese: it’s called “being +attentive,” and young girls are the object of the futile +process. It hasn’t necessarily anything to do with +projects of marriage—though it’s the privilege only +of the unmarried and though at the same time (fortunately, and +this may surprise you) it has no relation to other +projects. It’s simply an invention by which young +persons of the two sexes pass large parts of their time together +with no questions asked. How shall I muster courage to tell +you that Aurora now constitutes the main apparent recreation of +several gentlemen? Though it has no relation to marriage +the practice happily doesn’t exclude it, and marriages have +been known to take place in consequence (or in spite) of +it. It’s true that even in this country a young lady +may marry but one husband at a time, whereas she may receive at +once the attentions of several gentlemen, who are equally +entitled “admirers.” My daughter then has +admirers to an indefinite number. You’ll think +I’m joking perhaps when I tell you that I’m unable to +be exact—I who was formerly l’exactitude +même.</p> +<p><a name="page494"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 494</span>Two +of these gentlemen are to a certain extent old friends, having +been passengers on the steamer which carried us so far from +you. One of them, still young, is typical of the American +character, but a respectable person and a lawyer considerably +launched. Every one in this country follows a profession, +but it must be admitted that the professions are more highly +remunerated than chez vous. Mr. Cockerel, even while I +write you, is in not undisputed, but temporarily triumphant, +possession of my child. He called for her an hour ago in a +“boghey”—a strange unsafe rickety vehicle, +mounted on enormous wheels, which holds two persons very near +together; and I watched her from the window take her place at his +side. Then he whirled her away behind two little horses +with terribly thin legs; the whole equipage—and most of all +her being in it—was in the most questionable taste. +But she’ll return—return positively very much as she +went. It’s the same when she goes down to Mr. Louis +Leverett, who has no vehicle and who merely comes and sits with +her in the front salon. He has lived a great deal in Europe +and is very fond of the arts, and though I’m not sure I +agree with him in his views of the relation of art to life and +life to art, and in his interpretation of some of the great works +that Aurora and I have studied together, he seems to me a +sufficiently serious and intelligent young man. I +don’t regard him as intrinsically dangerous, but on the +other hand he offers absolutely no guarantees. I’ve +no means whatever of ascertaining his pecuniary situation. +There’s a vagueness on these points which is extremely +embarrassing, and it never occurs to young men to offer you a +reference. In Geneva I shouldn’t be at a loss; I +should come to you, chère Madame, with my little inquiry, +and what you shouldn’t be able to tell me wouldn’t be +worth my knowing. But no one in New York can give me the +smallest information <a name="page495"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 495</span>about the état de fortune of +Mr. Louis Leverett. It’s true that he’s a +native of Boston, where most of his friends reside; I +can’t, however, go to the expense of a journey to Boston +simply to learn perhaps that Mr. Leverett (the young Louis) has +an income of five thousand francs. As I say indeed, he +doesn’t strike me as dangerous. When Aurora comes +back to me after having passed an hour with him she says he has +described to her his emotions on visiting the home of Shelley or +discussed some of the differences between the Boston temperament +and that of the Italians of the Renaissance. You’ll +not enter into these rapprochements, and I can’t blame +you. But you won’t betray me, chère +Madame?</p> +<h3><a name="page496"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +496</span>III<br /> +FROM MISS STURDY AT NEWPORT TO MRS. DRAPER AT OUCHY</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>September</i> 1880.</p> +<p>I promised to tell you how I like it, but the truth is +I’ve gone to and fro so often that I’ve ceased to +like and dislike. Nothing strikes me as unexpected; I +expect everything in its order. Then too, you know, +I’m not a critic; I’ve no talent for keen analysis, +as the magazines say; I don’t go into the reasons of +things. It’s true I’ve been for a longer time +than usual on the wrong side of the water, and I admit that I +feel a little out of training for American life. +They’re breaking me in very fast, however. I +don’t mean that they bully me—I absolutely decline to +be bullied. I say what I think, because I believe +I’ve on the whole the advantage of knowing what I +think—when I think anything; which is half the +battle. Sometimes indeed I think nothing at all. They +don’t like that over here; they like you to have +impressions. That they like these impressions to be +favourable appears to me perfectly natural; I don’t make a +crime to them of this; it seems to me on the contrary a very +amiable point. When individuals betray it we call them +sympathetic; I don’t see why we shouldn’t give +nations the same benefit. But there are things I +haven’t the least desire to have an opinion about. +The privilege <a name="page497"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +497</span>of indifference is the dearest we possess, and I hold +that intelligent people are known by the way they exercise +it. Life is full of rubbish, and we have at least our share +of it over here. When you wake up in the morning you find +that during the night a cartload has been deposited in your front +garden. I decline, however, to have any of it in my +premises; there are thousands of things I want to know nothing +about. I’ve outlived the necessity of being +hypocritical; I’ve nothing to gain and everything to +lose. When one’s fifty years old—single stout +and red in the face—one has outlived a good many +necessities. They tell me over here that my increase of +weight’s extremely marked, and though they don’t tell +me I’m coarse I feel they think me so. There’s +very little coarseness here—not quite enough, I +think—though there’s plenty of vulgarity, which is a +very different thing. On the whole the country becomes much +more agreeable. It isn’t that the people are +charming, for that they always were (the best of them, I +mean—it isn’t true of the others), but that places +and things as well recognise the possibility of pleasing. +The houses are extremely good and look extraordinarily fresh and +clean. Many European interiors seem in comparison musty and +gritty. We have a great deal of taste; I shouldn’t +wonder if we should end by inventing something pretty; we only +need a little time. Of course as yet it’s all +imitation, except, by the way, these delicious piazzas. +I’m sitting on one now; I’m writing to you with my +portfolio on my knees. This broad light <i>loggia</i> +surrounds the house with a movement as free as the expanded wings +of a bird, and the wandering airs come up from the deep sea, +which murmurs on the rocks at the end of the lawn.</p> +<p>Newport’s more charming even than you remember it; like +everything else over here it has improved. It’s very +exquisite to-day; it’s indeed, I think, in all <a +name="page498"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 498</span>the world +the only exquisite watering-place, for I detest the whole +genus. The crowd has left it now, which makes it all the +better, though plenty of talkers remain in these large light +luxurious houses which are planted with a kind of Dutch +definiteness all over the green carpet of the cliff. This +carpet’s very neatly laid and wonderfully well swept, and +the sea, just at hand, is capable of prodigies of blue. +Here and there a pretty woman strolls over one of the lawns, +which all touch each other, you know, without hedges or fences; +the light looks intense as it plays on her brilliant dress; her +large parasol shines like a silver dome. The long lines of +the far shores are soft and pure, though they are places one +hasn’t the least desire to visit. Altogether the +effect’s very delicate, and anything that’s delicate +counts immensely over here; for delicacy, I think, is as rare as +coarseness. I’m talking to you of the sea, however, +without having told you a word of my voyage. It was very +comfortable and amusing; I should like to take another next +month. You know I’m almost offensively well at +sea—I breast the weather and brave the storm. We had +no storm fortunately, and I had brought with me a supply of light +literature; so I passed nine days on deck in my sea-chair with my +heels up—passed them reading Tauchnitz novels. There +was a great lot of people, but no one in particular save some +fifty American girls. You know all about the American girl, +however, having been one yourself. They’re on the +whole very nice, but fifty’s too many; there are always too +many. There was an inquiring Briton, a radical M.P., by +name Mr. Antrobus, who entertained me as much as any one +else. He’s an excellent man; I even asked him to come +down here and spend a couple of days. He looked rather +frightened till I told him he shouldn’t be alone with me, +that the house was my brother’s and that I gave the +invitation in his name. <a name="page499"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 499</span>He came a week ago; he goes +everywhere; we’ve heard of him in a dozen places. The +English are strangely simple, or at least they seem so over +here. Their old measurements and comparisons desert them; +they don’t know whether it’s all a joke or whether +it’s too serious by half. We’re quicker than +they, though we talk so much more slowly. We think fast, +and yet we talk as deliberately as if we were speaking a foreign +language. They toss off their sentences with an air of easy +familiarity with the tongue, and yet they misunderstand +two-thirds of what people say to them. Perhaps after all it +is only <i>our</i> thoughts they think slowly; they think their +own often to a lively tune enough.</p> +<p>Mr. Antrobus arrived here in any case at eight o’clock +in the morning; I don’t know how he managed it; it appears +to be his favourite hour; wherever we’ve heard of him he +has come in with the dawn. In England he would arrive at +5.30 <span class="smcap">p.m.</span> He asks innumerable +questions, but they’re easy to answer, for he has a sweet +credulity. He made me rather ashamed; he’s a better +American than so many of us; he takes us more seriously than we +take ourselves. He seems to think we’ve an oligarchy +of wealth growing up which he advised me to be on my guard +against. I don’t know exactly what I can do, but I +promised him to look out. He’s fearfully energetic; +the energy of the people here is nothing to that of the inquiring +Briton. If we should devote half the zeal to building up +our institutions that they devote to obtaining information about +them we should have a very satisfactory country. Mr. +Antrobus seemed to think very well of us—which surprised me +on the whole, since, say what one will, it’s far from being +so agreeable as England. It’s very horrid that this +should be; and it’s delightful, when one thinks of it, that +some things in England are after all so hateful. <a +name="page500"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 500</span>At the same +time Mr. Antrobus appeared to be a good deal preoccupied with our +dangers. I don’t understand quite what they are; they +seem to me so few on a Newport piazza this bright still +day. Yet alas what one sees on a Newport piazza isn’t +America; it’s only the back of Europe. I don’t +mean to say I haven’t noticed any dangers since my return; +there are two or three that seem to me very serious, but they +aren’t those Mr. Antrobus apprehends. One, for +instance, is that we shall cease to speak the English language, +which I prefer so to any other. It’s less and less +spoken; American’s crowding it out. All the children +speak American, which as a child’s language is dreadfully +rough. It’s exclusively in use in the schools; all +the magazines and newspapers are in American. Of course a +people of fifty millions who have invented a new civilisation +have a right to a language of their own; that’s what they +tell me, and I can’t quarrel with it. But I wish they +had made it as pretty as the mother-tongue, from which, when +all’s said, it’s more or less derived. We ought +to have invented something as noble as our country. They +tell me it’s more expressive, and yet some admirable things +have been said in the Queen’s English. There can be +no question of the Queen over here of course, and American no +doubt is the music of the future. Poor dear future, how +“expressive” you’ll be! For women and +children, as I say, it strikes one as very rough; and, moreover, +they don’t speak it well, their own though it be. My +small nephews, when I first came home, hadn’t gone back to +school, and it distressed me to see that, though they’re +charming children, they had the vocal inflexions of little +news-boys. My niece is sixteen years old; she has the +sweetest nature possible; she’s extremely well-bred and is +dressed to perfection. She chatters from morning till +night; but its helplessness breaks my heart. These little +persons are in the <a name="page501"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +501</span>opposite case from so many English girls who know how +to speak but don’t know how to talk. My niece knows +how to talk but doesn’t know how to speak.</p> +<p>If I allude to the young people, that’s our other +danger; the young people are eating us up—there’s +nothing in America but the young people. The +country’s made for the rising generation; life’s +arranged for them; they’re the destruction of +society. People talk of them, consider them, defer to them, +bow down to them. They’re always present, and +whenever they’re present nothing else of the smallest +interest is. They’re often very pretty, and +physically are wonderfully looked after; they’re scoured +and brushed, they wear hygienic clothes, they go every week to +the dentist’s. But the little boys kick your shins +and the little girls offer to slap your face. There’s +an immense literature entirely addressed to them in which the +kicking of shins and the slapping of faces carries the day. +As a woman of fifty I protest, I insist on being judged by my +peers. It’s too late, however, for several millions +of little feet are actively engaged in stamping out conversation, +and I don’t see how they can long fail to keep it +under. The future’s theirs; adult forms will +evidently be at an increasing discount. Longfellow wrote a +charming little poem called “The Children’s +Hour,” but he ought to have called it “The +Children’s Century.” And by children I +naturally don’t mean simple infants; I mean everything of +less than twenty. The social importance of the young +American increases steadily up to that age and then suddenly +stops. The little girls of course are more important than +the lads, but the lads are very important too. I’m +struck with the way they’re known and talked about; +they’re small celebrities; they have reputations and +pretensions; they’re taken very seriously. As for the +little girls, as I just said, they’re ever so much too +many. You’ll say perhaps that my fifty <a +name="page502"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 502</span>years and +my red face are jealous of them. I don’t think so, +because I don’t suffer; my red face doesn’t frighten +people away, and I always find plenty of talkers. The young +things themselves, I believe, like me very much, and I delight in +the young things. They’re often very pretty; not so +pretty as people say in the magazines, but pretty enough. +The magazines rather overdo that; they make a mistake. +I’ve seen no great beauties, but the level of prettiness is +high, and occasionally one sees a woman completely +handsome. (As a general thing, a pretty person here means a +person with a pretty face. The figure’s rarely +mentioned, though there are several good ones.) The level +of prettiness is high, but the level of conversation is low; +that’s one of the signs of its being a young ladies’ +country. There are a good many things young ladies +can’t talk about, but think of all the things they can when +they are as clever as most of these. Perhaps one ought to +content one’s self with that measure, but it’s +difficult if one has lived long by a larger one. This +one’s decidedly narrow—I stretch it sometimes till it +cracks. Then it is they call me coarse, which I undoubtedly +am, thank goodness.</p> +<p>What it comes to, obviously, is that people’s talk is +much less conveniently free than in Europe; I’m struck with +that wherever I go. There are certain things that are never +said at all, certain allusions that are never made. There +are no light stories, no propos risqués. I +don’t know exactly what people find to bite into, for the +supply of scandal’s small and it’s little more than +twaddle at that. They don’t seem, however, to lack +topics. The little girls are always there; they keep the +gates of conversation; very little passes that’s not +innocent. I find we do very well without wickedness, and +for myself, as I take my ease, I don’t miss my +liberties. You remember what I thought of the tone of your +table in Florence last year, and how <a name="page503"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 503</span>surprised you were when I asked you +why you allowed such things. You said they were like the +courses of the seasons; one couldn’t prevent them; also +that to change the tone of your table you’d have to change +so many other things. Of course in your house one never saw +a little girl; I was the only spinster and no one was afraid of +me. Likewise if talk’s more innocent in this country +manners are so to begin with. The liberty of the young +people is the strongest proof of it. The little girls are +let loose in the world, and the world gets more good of it than +ces demoiselles get harm. In your world—pardon me, +but you know what I mean—this wouldn’t do at +all. Your world’s a sad affair—the young ladies +would encounter all sorts of horrors. Over here, +considering the way they knock about, they remain wonderfully +simple, and the reason is that society protects them instead of +setting them traps. There’s almost no gallantry as +you understand it; the flirtations are child’s play. +People have no time for making love; the men in particular are +extremely busy. I’m told that sort of thing consumes +hours; I’ve never had any time for it myself. If the +leisure class should increase here considerably there may +possibly be a change; but I doubt it, for the women seem to me in +all essentials exceedingly reserved. Great superficial +frankness, but an extreme dread of complications. The men +strike me as very good fellows. I find them at bottom +better than the women, who if not inveterately hard haven’t +at least the European, the (as I heard some one once call it) +chemical softness. They’re not so nice to the men as +the men are to them; I mean of course in proportion, you +know. But women aren’t so nice as men +“anyway,” as they say here.</p> +<p>The men at any rate are professional, commercial; there are +very few gentlemen pure and simple. This personage needs to +be very well done, however, to be <a name="page504"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 504</span>of great utility; and I suppose you +won’t pretend he’s always well done in your +countries. When he’s not, the less of him the +better. It’s very much the same indeed with the +system on which the female young are brought up. (You see I +have to come back to the female young.) When it succeeds +they’re the most charming creatures possible; when it +doesn’t the failure’s disastrous. If a +girl’s a very nice girl the American method brings her to +great completeness—makes all her graces flower; but if she +isn’t nice it plays the devil with any possible compromise +or <i>biais</i> in the interest of social convenience. In a +word the American girl’s rarely negative, and when she +isn’t a great success she’s a great warning. In +nineteen cases out of twenty, among the people who know how to +live—I won’t say what <i>their</i> proportion +is—the results are highly satisfactory. The girls +aren’t shy, but I don’t know why they should be, for +there’s really nothing here to be afraid of. Manners +are very gentle, very humane; the democratic system deprives +people of weapons that every one doesn’t equally +possess. No one’s formidable; no one’s on +stilts; no one has great pretensions or any recognised right to +be arrogant. I think there’s not much wickedness, and +there’s certainly less human or social cruelty—less +than in “good” (that is in more amusing) +society. Every one can sit—no one’s kept +standing. One’s much less liable to be snubbed, which +you will say is a pity. I think it is—to a certain +extent; but on the other hand folly’s less fatuous in form +than in your countries; and as people generally have fewer +revenges to take there’s less need of their being squashed +in advance. The general good nature, the social equality, +deprive them of triumphs on the one hand and of grievances on the +other. There’s extremely little impertinence, +there’s almost none. You’ll say I’m +describing a terrible world, a world without great <a +name="page505"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 505</span>figures or +great social prizes. You’ve hit it, my +dear—there are no great figures. (The great prize of +course in Europe is the opportunity to <i>be</i> a great +figure.) You’d miss these things a good +deal—you who delight to recognise greatness; and my advice +to you therefore is never to come back. You’d miss +the small people even more than the great; every one’s +middle-sized, and you can never have that momentary sense of +profiting by the elevation of your class which is so agreeable in +Europe. I needn’t add that you don’t, either, +languish with its depression. There are at all events no +brilliant types—the most important people seem to lack +dignity. They’re very bourgeois; they make little +jokes; on occasion they make puns; they’ve no form; +they’re too good-natured. The men have no style; the +women, who are fidgety and talk too much, have it only in their +tournures, where they have it superabundantly.</p> +<p>Well, I console myself—since consolation is +needed—with the greater bonhomie. Have you ever +arrived at an English country-house in the dusk of a +winter’s day? Have you ever made a call in London +when you knew nobody but the hostess? People here are more +expressive, more demonstrative; and it’s a pleasure, when +one comes back—if one happens, like me, to be no one in +particular—to feel one’s merely personal and +unclassified value rise. They attend to you more; they have +you on their mind; they talk to you; they listen to you. +That is the men do; the women listen very little—not +enough. They interrupt, they prattle, one feels their +presence too much as importunate and untrained sound. I +imagine this is partly because their wits are quick and they +think of a good many things to say; not indeed that they always +say such wonders! Perfect repose, after all, is not +<i>all</i> self-control; it’s also partly stupidity. +American women, however, make too many <a +name="page506"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 506</span>vague +exclamations—say too many indefinite things, have in short +still a great deal of nature. The American order or climate +or whatever gives them a nature they <i>can</i> let loose. +Europe has to protect itself with more art. On the whole I +find very little affectation, though we shall probably have more +as we improve. As yet people haven’t the assurance +that carries those things off; they know too much about each +other. The trouble is that over here we’ve all been +brought up together. You’ll think this a picture of a +dreadfully insipid society; but I hasten to add that it’s +not all so tame as that. I’ve been speaking of the +people that one meets socially, and these’re the smallest +part of American life. The others—those one meets on +a basis of mere convenience—are much more exciting; they +keep one’s temper in healthy exercise. I mean the +people in the shops and on the railroads; the servants, the +hack-men, the labourers, the conductors; every one of whom you +buy anything or have occasion to make an inquiry. With them +you need all your best manners, for you must always have enough +for two. If you think we’re <i>too</i> democratic +taste a little of American life in these walks and you’ll +be reassured. This is the region of inequality, and +you’ll find plenty of people to make your curtsey to. +You see it from below—the weight of inequality’s on +your own back. You asked me to tell you about prices. +They’re unspeakable.</p> +<h3><a name="page507"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +507</span>IV<br /> +FROM THE RIGHT HON. EDWARD ANTROBUS, M.P., IN BOSTON TO THE +HONOURABLE MRS. ANTROBUS</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>November</i> 1880.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">My dear Susan</span>,</p> +<p>I sent you a post-card on the 13th and a native newspaper +yesterday; I really have had no time to write. I sent you +the newspaper partly because it contained a +report—extremely incorrect—of some remarks I made at +the meeting of the Association of the Teachers of New England; +partly because it’s so curious that I thought it would +interest you and the children. I cut out some portions I +didn’t think it well the children should go into—the +passages remaining contain the most striking features. +Please point out to the children the peculiar orthography, which +probably will be adopted in England by the time they are grown +up; the amusing oddities of expression and the like. Some +of them are intentional; you’ll have heard of the +celebrated American humour—remind me, by the way, on my +return to Thistleton, to give you a few of the examples of it +that my own experience supplies. Certain other of the +journalistic eccentricities I speak of are unconscious and are +perhaps on that account the more diverting. Point out to +the children the difference—in so far as you’re sure +that you yourself perceive it. You <a +name="page508"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 508</span>must excuse +me if these lines are not very legible; I’m writing them by +the light of a railway lamp which rattles above my left ear; it +being only at odd moments that I can find time to extend my +personal researches. You’ll say this is a very odd +moment indeed when I tell you I’m in bed in a +sleeping-car. I occupy the upper berth (I will explain to +you the arrangement when I return) while the lower forms the +couch—the jolts are fearful—of an unknown +female. You’ll be very anxious for my explanation, +but I assure you that the circumstance I mention is the custom of +the country. I myself am assured that a lady may travel in +this manner all over the Union (the Union of States) without a +loss of consideration. In case of her occupying the upper +berth I presume it would be different, but I must make inquiries +on this point. Whether it be the fact that a mysterious +being of another sex has retired to rest behind the same +curtains, or whether it be the swing of the train, which rushes +through the air with very much the same movement as the tail of a +kite, the situation is at the best so anomalous that I’m +unable to sleep. A ventilator’s open just over my +head, and a lively draught, mingled with a drizzle of cinders, +pours in through this dubious advantage. (I will describe +to you its mechanism on my return.) If I had occupied the +lower berth I should have had a whole window to myself, and by +drawing back the blind—a safe proceeding at the dead of +night—I should have been able, by the light of an +extraordinary brilliant moon, to see a little better what I +write. The question occurs to me, however, would the lady +below me in that case have ascended to the upper berth? +(You know my old taste for hypothetic questions.) I incline +to think (from what I have seen) that she would simply have +requested me to evacuate my own couch. (The ladies in this +country ask for anything they want.) In this case, I <a +name="page509"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 509</span>suppose, I +should have had an extensive view of the country, which, from +what I saw of it before I turned in (while the sharer of my +privacy was going to bed) offered a rather ragged expanse dotted +with little white wooden houses that resembled in the moonshine +large pasteboard boxes. I’ve been unable to ascertain +as precisely as I should wish by whom these modest residences are +occupied; for they are too small to be the homes of country +gentlemen, there’s no peasantry here, and (in New England, +for all the corn comes from the far West) there are no yeomen nor +farmers. The information one receives in this country is +apt to be rather conflicting, but I’m determined to sift +the mystery to the bottom.</p> +<p>I’ve already noted down a multitude of facts bearing on +the points that interest me most—the operation of the +school-boards, the co-education of the sexes, the elevation of +the tone of the lower classes, the participation of the latter in +political life. Political life indeed is almost wholly +confined to the lower middle class and the upper section of the +lower class. In fact in some of the large towns the lowest +order of all participates considerably—a very interesting +phase, to which I shall give more attention. It’s +very gratifying to see the taste for public affairs pervading so +many social strata, but the indifference of the gentry is a fact +not to be lightly considered. It may be objected perhaps +that there are no gentry; and it’s very true that +I’ve not yet encountered a character of the type of Lord +Bottomley—a type which I’m free to confess I should +be sorry to see disappear from our English system, if system it +may be called where so much is the growth of blind and incoherent +forces. It’s nevertheless obvious that an idle and +luxurious class exists in this country and that it’s less +exempt than in our own from the reproach of preferring inglorious +ease to the furtherance of liberal ideas. It’s +rapidly <a name="page510"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +510</span>increasing, and I’m not sure that the indefinite +growth of the dilettante spirit, in connexion with large and +lavishly-expended wealth, is an unmixed good even in a society in +which freedom of development has obtained so many interesting +triumphs. The fact that this body is not represented in the +governing class is perhaps as much the result of the jealousy +with which it is viewed by the more earnest workers as of its own +(I dare not perhaps apply a harsher term than) levity. Such +at least is the impression made on me in the Middle States and in +New England; in the South-west, the North-west and the far West +it will doubtless be liable to correction. These divisions +are probably new to you; but they are the general denomination of +large and flourishing communities, with which I hope to make +myself at least superficially acquainted. The fatigue of +traversing, as I habitually do, three or four hundred miles at a +bound, is of course considerable; but there is usually much to +feed the mind by the way. The conductors of the trains, +with whom I freely converse, are often men of vigorous and +original views and even of some social eminence. One of +them a few days ago gave me a letter of introduction to his +brother-in-law, who’s president of a Western +University. Don’t have any fear therefore that +I’m not in the best society!</p> +<p>The arrangements for travelling are as a general thing +extremely ingenious, as you will probably have inferred from what +I told you above; but it must at the same time be conceded that +some of them are more ingenious than happy. Some of the +facilities with regard to luggage, the transmission of parcels +and the like are doubtless very useful when thoroughly mastered, +but I’ve not yet succeeded in availing myself of them +without disaster. There are on the other hand no cabs and +no porters, and I’ve calculated that I’ve myself +carried my <i>impedimenta</i>—which, you know, <a +name="page511"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 511</span>are +somewhat numerous, and from which I can’t bear to be +separated—some seventy or eighty miles. I have +sometimes thought it was a great mistake not to bring +Plummeridge—he would have been useful on such +occasions. On the other hand the startling question would +have presented itself of who would have carried +Plummeridge’s portmanteau? He would have been useful +indeed for brushing and packing my clothes and getting me my tub; +I travel with a large tin one—there are none to be obtained +at the inns—and the transport of this receptacle often +presents the most insoluble difficulties. It is often too +an object of considerable embarrassment in arriving at private +houses, where the servants have less reserve of manner than in +England; and to tell you the truth I’m by no means certain +at the present moment that the tub has been placed in the train +with me. “On board” the train is the +consecrated phrase here; it’s an allusion to the tossing +and pitching of the concatenation of cars, so similar to that of +a vessel in a storm. As I was about to inquire, however, +Who would get Plummeridge <i>his</i> tub and attend to his little +comforts? We couldn’t very well make our appearance, +on arriving for a visit, with <i>two</i> of the utensils +I’ve named; even if as regards a single one I have had the +courage, as I may say, of a lifelong habit. It would hardly +be expected that we should both use the same; though there have +been occasions in my travels as to which I see no way of blinking +the fact that Plummeridge would have had to sit down to dinner +with me. Such a contingency would completely have unnerved +him, so that on the whole it was doubtless the wiser part to +leave him respectfully touching his hat on the tender in the +Mersey. No one touches his hat over here, and, deem this +who will the sign of a more advanced social order, I confess that +when I see poor Plummeridge again that familiar little +gesture—familiar I <a name="page512"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 512</span>mean only in the sense of +one’s immemorial acquaintance with it—will give me a +measurable satisfaction. You’ll see from what I tell +you that democracy is not a mere word in this country, and I +could give you many more instances of its universal reign. +This, however, is what we come here to look at and, in so far as +there appears proper occasion, to admire; though I’m by no +means sure that we can hope to establish within an appreciable +time a corresponding change in the somewhat rigid fabric of +English manners. I’m not even inclined to believe +such a change desirable; you know this is one of the points on +which I don’t as yet see my way to going so far as Lord +B. I’ve always held that there’s a certain +social ideal of inequality as well as of equality, and if +I’ve found the people of this country, as a general thing, +quite equal to each other, I’m not quite ready to go so far +as to say that, as a whole, they’re equal to—pardon +that dreadful blot! The movement of the train and the +precarious nature of the light—it is close to my nose and +most offensive—would, I flatter myself, long since have got +the better of a less resolute diarist!</p> +<p>What I was distinctly <i>not</i> prepared for is the very +considerable body of aristocratic feeling that lurks beneath this +republican simplicity. I’ve on several occasions been +made the confidant of these romantic but delusive vagaries, of +which the stronghold appears to be the Empire City—a slang +name for the rich and predominant, but unprecedentedly +maladministered and disillusioned New York. I was assured +in many quarters that this great desperate eternally-swindled +city at least is ripe, everything else failing, for the +monarchical experiment or revolution, and that if one of the +Queen’s sons would come over to sound the possibilities he +would meet with the highest encouragement. This information +was given me in <a name="page513"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +513</span>strict confidence, with closed doors, as it were; it +reminded me a good deal of the dreams of the old Jacobites when +they whispered their messages to the king across the water. +I doubt, however, whether these less excusable visionaries will +be able to secure the services of a Pretender, for I fear that in +such a case he would encounter a still more fatal Culloden. +I have given a good deal of time, as I told you, to the +educational system, and have visited no fewer than one hundred +and forty-three schools and colleges. It’s +extraordinary the number of persons who are being educated in +this country; and yet at the same time the tone of the people is +less scholarly than one might expect. A lady a few days +since described to me her daughter as being always “on the +go,” which I take to be a jocular way of saying that the +young lady was very fond of paying visits. Another person, +the wife of a United States Senator, informed me that if I should +go to Washington in January I should be quite “in the +swim.” I don’t regard myself as slow to grasp +new meanings, however whimsical; but in this case the +lady’s explanation made her phrase rather more than less +ambiguous. To say that I’m on the go describes very +accurately my own situation. I went yesterday to the +Poganuc High School, to hear fifty-seven boys and girls recite in +unison a most remarkable ode to the American flag, and shortly +afterward attended a ladies’ luncheon at which some eighty +or ninety of the sex were present. There was only one +individual in trousers—his trousers, by the way, though he +brought several pair, begin to testify to the fury of his +movements! The men in America absent themselves +systematically from this meal, at which ladies assemble in large +numbers to discuss religious, political and social topics.</p> +<p>Immense female symposia at which every delicacy is provided +are one of the most striking features of <a +name="page514"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 514</span>American +life, and would seem to prove that our sex is scarcely so +indispensable in the scheme of creation as it sometimes +supposes. I’ve been admitted on the footing of an +Englishman—“just to show you some of our bright +women,” the hostess yesterday remarked. +(“Bright” here has the meaning of <i>intellectually +remarkable</i>.) I noted indeed the frequency of the +predominantly cerebral—as they call it here +“brainy”—type. These rather oddly +invidious banquets are organised according to age, for I’ve +also been present as an inquiring stranger at several +“girls’ lunches,” from which married ladies are +rigidly excluded, but here the fair revellers were equally +numerous and equally “bright.” There’s a +good deal I should like to tell you about my study of the +educational question, but my position’s now somewhat +cramped, and I must dismiss the subject briefly. My leading +impression is that the children are better educated (in +proportion of course) than the adults. The position of a +child is on the whole one of great distinction. +There’s a popular ballad of which the refrain, if I’m +not mistaken, is “Make me a child again just for +to-night!” and which seems to express the sentiment of +regret for lost privileges. At all events they are a +powerful and independent class, and have organs, of immense +circulation, in the press. They are often extremely +“bright.” I’ve talked with a great many +teachers, most of them lady-teachers, as they are here +called. The phrase doesn’t mean teachers of ladies, +as you might suppose, but applies to the sex of the instructress, +who often has large classes of young men under her control. +I was lately introduced to a young woman of twenty-three who +occupies the chair of Moral Philosophy and Belles-Lettres in a +Western University and who told me with the utmost frankness that +she’s “just adored” by the +undergraduates. This young woman was the daughter of a +petty trader in one of the <a name="page515"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 515</span>South-western States and had studied +at Amanda College in Missourah, an institution at which young +people of the two sexes pursue their education together. +She was very pretty and modest, and expressed a great desire to +see something of English country life, in consequence of which I +made her promise to come down to Thistleton in the event of her +crossing the Atlantic. She’s not the least like +Gwendolen or Charlotte, and I’m not prepared to say how +they would get on with her; the boys would probably do +better. Still, I think her acquaintance would be of value +to dear Miss Gulp, and the two might pass their time very +pleasantly in the school-room. I grant you freely that +those I have seen here are much less comfortable than the +school-room at Thistleton. Has Charlotte, by the way, +designed any more texts for the walls? I’ve been +extremely interested in my visit to Philadelphia, where I saw +several thousand little red houses with white steps, occupied by +intelligent artisans and arranged (in streets) on the rectangular +system. Improved cooking-stoves, rosewood pianos, gas and +hot water, esthetic furniture and complete sets of the British +Essayists. A tramway through every street; every block of +exactly equal length; blocks and houses economically lettered and +numbered. There’s absolutely no loss of time and no +need of looking for, or indeed <i>at</i>, anything. The +mind always on one’s object; it’s very +delightful.</p> +<h3><a name="page516"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 516</span>V<br +/> +FROM LOUIS LEVERETT IN BOSTON TO HARVARD TREMONT IN PARIS</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>November</i> 1880.</p> +<p>The scales have turned, my sympathetic Harvard, and the beam +that has lifted you up has dropped me again on this terribly hard +spot. I’m extremely sorry to have missed you in +London, but I received your little note and took due heed of your +injunction to let you know how I got on. I don’t get +on at all, my dear Harvard—I’m consumed with the love +of the further shore. I’ve been so long away that +I’ve dropped out of my place in this little Boston world +and the shallow tides of New England life have closed over +it. I’m a stranger here and find it hard to believe I +ever was a native. It’s very hard, very cold, very +vacant. I think of your warm rich Paris; I think of the +Boulevard Saint-Michel on the mild spring evenings; I see the +little corner by the window (of the Café de la Jeunesse) +where I used to sit: the doors are open, the soft deep breath of +the great city comes in. The sense is of a supreme +splendour and an incomparable arrangement, yet there’s a +kind of tone, of body, in the radiance; the mighty murmur of the +ripest civilisation in the world comes in; the dear old <i>peuple +de Paris</i>, the most interesting people in the world, pass +by. I’ve a little book in my pocket; it’s +exquisitely printed, a <a name="page517"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 517</span>modern Elzevir. It consists of +a lyric cry from the heart of young France and is full of the +sentiment of form. There’s no form here, dear +Harvard; I had no idea how little form there is. I +don’t know what I shall do; I feel so undraped, so +uncurtained, so uncushioned; I feel as if I were sitting in the +centre of a mighty “reflector.” A terrible +crude glare is over everything; the earth looks peeled and +excoriated; the raw heavens seem to bleed with the quick hard +light.</p> +<p>I’ve not got back my rooms in West Cedar Street; +they’re occupied by a mesmeric healer. I’m +staying at an hotel and it’s all very dreadful. +Nothing for one’s self, nothing for one’s preferences +and habits. No one to receive you when you arrive; you push +in through a crowd, you edge up to a counter, you write your name +in a horrible book where every one may come and stare at it and +finger it. A man behind the counter stares at you in +silence; his stare seems to say “What the devil do +<i>you</i> want?” But after this stare he never looks +at you again. He tosses down a key at you; he presses a +bell; a savage Irishman arrives. “Take him +away,” he seems to say to the Irishman; but it’s all +done in silence; there’s no answer to your own wild +wail—“What’s to be done with me, +please?” “Wait and you’ll see” the +awful silence seems to say. There’s a great crowd +round you, but there’s also a great stillness; every now +and then you hear some one expectorate. There are a +thousand people in this huge and hideous structure; they feed +together in a big white-walled room. It’s lighted by +a thousand gas-jets and heated by cast-iron screens which vomit +forth torrents of scorching air. The temperature’s +terrible; the atmosphere’s more so; the furious light and +heat seem to intensify the dreadful definiteness. When +things are so ugly they shouldn’t be so definite, and +they’re terribly ugly here. There’s no mystery +in the <a name="page518"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +518</span>corners, there’s no light and shade in the +types. The people are haggard and joyless; they look as if +they had no passions, no tastes, no senses. They sit +feeding in silence under the dry hard light; occasionally I hear +the high firm note of a child. The servants are black and +familiar; their faces shine as they shuffle about; there are blue +tones in their dark masks. They’ve no manners; they +address but don’t answer you; they plant themselves at your +elbow (it rubs their clothes as you eat) and watch you as if your +proceedings were strange. They deluge you with iced water; +it’s the only thing they’ll bring you; if you look +round to summon them they’ve gone for more. If you +read the newspaper—which I don’t, gracious heaven, I +can’t!—they hang over your shoulder and peruse it +also. I always fold it up and present it to them; the +newspapers here are indeed for an African taste.</p> +<p>Then there are long corridors defended by gusts of hot air; +down the middle swoops a pale little girl on parlour +skates. “Get out of my way!” she shrieks as she +passes; she has ribbons in her hair and frills on her dress; she +makes the tour of the immense hotel. I think of Puck, who +put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes, and wonder what +<i>he</i> said as he flitted by. A black waiter marches +past me bearing a tray that he thrusts into my spine as he +goes. It’s laden with large white jugs; they tinkle +as he moves, and I recognise the unconsoling fluid. +We’re dying of iced water, of hot air, of flaring +gas. I sit in my room thinking of these things—this +room of mine which is a chamber of pain. The walls are +white and bare, they shine in the rays of a horrible chandelier +of imitation bronze which depends from the middle of the +ceiling. It flings a patch of shadow on a small table +covered with white marble, of which the genial surface supports +at the present moment the sheet of paper I thus employ for you; +and when I go to bed (I like to read in <a +name="page519"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 519</span>bed, +Harvard) it becomes an object of mockery and torment. It +dangles at inaccessible heights; it stares me in the face; it +flings the light on the covers of my book but not upon the +page—the little French Elzevir I love so well. I rise +and put out the gas—when my room becomes even lighter than +before. Then a crude illumination from the hall, from the +neighbouring room, pours through the glass openings that surmount +the two doors of my apartment. It covers my bed, where I +toss and groan; it beats in through my closed lids; it’s +accompanied by the most vulgar, though the most human, +sounds. I spring up to call for some help, some remedy; but +there’s no bell and I feel desolate and weak. +There’s only a strange orifice in the wall, through which +the traveller in distress may transmit his appeal. I fill +it with incoherent sounds, and sounds more incoherent yet come +back to me. I gather at last their meaning; they appear to +constitute an awful inquiry. A hollow impersonal voice +wishes to know what I want, and the very question paralyses +me. I want everything—yet I want nothing, nothing +this hard impersonality can give! I want my little corner +of Paris; I want the rich, the deep, the dark Old World; I want +to be out of this horrible place. Yet I can’t confide +all this to that mechanical tube; it would be of no use; a +barbarous laugh would come up from the office. Fancy +appealing in these sacred, these intimate moments to an +“office”; fancy calling out into indifferent space +for a candle, for a curtain! I pay incalculable sums in +this dreadful house, and yet haven’t a creature to assist +me. I fling myself back on my couch and for a long time +afterwards the orifice in the wall emits strange murmurs and +rumblings. It seems unsatisfied and indignant and is +evidently scolding me for my vagueness. My vagueness +indeed, dear Harvard! I loathe their horrible +arrangements—isn’t that definite enough?</p> +<p><a name="page520"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 520</span>You +asked me to tell you whom I see and what I think of my +friends. I haven’t very many; I don’t feel at +all <i>en rapport</i>. The people are very good, very +serious, very devoted to their work; but there’s a terrible +absence of variety of type. Every one’s Mr. Jones, +Mr. Brown, and every one looks like Mr. Jones and Mr. +Brown. They’re thin, they’re diluted in the +great tepid bath of Democracy! They lack completeness of +identity; they’re quite without modelling. No, +they’re not beautiful, my poor Harvard; it must be +whispered that they’re not beautiful. You may say +that they’re as beautiful as the French, as the Germans; +but I can’t agree with you there. The French, the +Germans, have the greatest beauty of all, the beauty of their +ugliness—the beauty of the strange, the grotesque. +These people are not even ugly—they’re only +plain. Many of the girls are pretty, but to be only pretty +is (to my sense) to be plain. Yet I’ve had some +talk. I’ve seen a young woman. She was on the +steamer, and I afterwards saw her in New York—a mere maiden +thing, yet a peculiar type, a real personality: a great deal of +modelling, a great deal of colour, and withal something elusive +and ambiguous. She was not, however, of this country; she +was a compound of far-off things. But she was looking for +something here—like me. We found each other, and for +a moment that was enough. I’ve lost her now; +I’m sorry, because she liked to listen to me. She has +passed away; I shall not see her again. She liked to listen +to me; she almost understood.</p> +<h3><a name="page521"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +521</span>VI<br /> +FROM M. GUSTAVE LEJAUNE OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY IN WASHINGTON TO M. +ADOLPHE BOUCHE IN PARIS</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>December</i> 1880.</p> +<p>I give you my little notes; you must make allowances for +haste, for bad inns, for the perpetual scramble, for +ill-humour. Everywhere the same impression—the +platitude of unbalanced democracy intensified by the platitude of +the spirit of commerce. Everything on an immense +scale—everything illustrated by millions of examples. +My brother-in-law is always busy; he has appointments, +inspections, interviews, disputes. The people, it appears, +are incredibly sharp in conversation, in argument; they wait for +you in silence at the corner of the road and then suddenly +discharge their revolver. If you fall they empty your +pockets; the only chance is to shoot them first. With this +no amenities, no preliminaries, no manners, no care for the +appearance. I wander about while my brother’s +occupied; I lounge along the streets; I stop at the corners; I +look into the shops; <i>je regarde passer les femmes</i>. +It’s an easy country to see; one sees everything there is; +the civilisation’s skin deep; you don’t have to +dig. This positive practical pushing bourgeoisie is always +about its business; it lives in the street, in the hotel, in <a +name="page522"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 522</span>the train; +one’s always in a crowd—there are seventy-five people +in the tramway. They sit in your lap; they stand on your +toes; when they wish to pass they simply push you. +Everything in silence; they know that silence is golden and +they’ve the worship of gold. When the conductor +wishes your fare he gives you a poke, very serious, without a +word. As for the types—but there’s only one, +they’re all variations of the same—the +commis-voyageur <i>minus</i> the gaiety. The women are +often pretty; you meet the young ones in the streets, in the +trains, in search of a husband. They look at you frankly, +coldly, judicially, to see if you’ll serve; but they +don’t want what you might think (<i>du moines on me +l’assure</i>); they only want the husband. A +Frenchman may mistake; he needs to be sure he’s right, and +I always make sure. They begin at fifteen; the mother sends +them out; it lasts all day (with an interval for dinner at a +pastry-cook’s); sometimes it goes on for ten years. +If they haven’t by that time found him they give it up; +they make place for the <i>cadettes</i>, as the number of women +is enormous. No salons, no society, no conversation; people +don’t receive at home; the young girls have to look for the +husband where they can. It’s no disgrace not to find +him—several have never done so. They continue to go +about unmarried—from the force of habit, from the love of +movement, without hopes, without regrets. There’s no +imagination, no sensibility, no desire for the convent.</p> +<p>We’ve made several journeys—few of less than three +hundred miles. Enormous trains, enormous <i>wagons</i>, +with beds and lavatories, with negroes who brush you with a big +broom, as if they were grooming a horse. A bounding +movement, a roaring noise, a crowd of people who look horribly +tired, a boy who passes up and down hurling pamphlets and +sweetmeats into your face: that’s an American +journey. <a name="page523"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +523</span>There are windows in the <i>wagons</i>—enormous +like everything else; but there’s nothing to see. The +country’s a void—no features, no objects, no details, +nothing to show you that you’re in one place more than +another. <i>Aussi</i> you’re not in one place, +you’re everywhere, anywhere; the train goes a hundred miles +an hour. The cities are all the same; little houses ten +feet high or else big ones two hundred; tramways, +telegraph-poles, enormous signs, holes in the pavement, oceans of +mud, commis-voyageurs, young ladies looking for the +husband. On the other hand no beggars and no +<i>cocottes</i>—none at least that you see. A +colossal mediocrity, except (my brother-in-law tells me) in the +machinery, which is magnificent. Naturally no architecture +(they make houses of wood and of iron), no art, no literature, no +theatre. I’ve opened some of the books—<i>ils +ne se laissent pas lire</i>. No form, no matter, no style, +no general ideas: they seem written for children and young +ladies. The most successful (those that they praise most) +are the facetious; they sell in thousands of editions. +I’ve looked into some of the most <i>vantés</i>; but +you need to be forewarned to know they’re amusing; grins +through a horse-collar, burlesques of the Bible, <i>des +plaisanteries de croquemort</i>. They’ve a novelist +with pretensions to literature who writes about the chase for the +husband and the adventures of the rich Americans in our corrupt +old Europe, where their primeval candour puts the Europeans to +shame. <i>C’est proprement écrit</i>, but +it’s terribly pale. What isn’t pale is the +newspapers—enormous, like everything else (fifty columns of +advertisements), and full of the <i>commérages</i> of a +continent. And such a tone, <i>grand Dieu</i>! The +amenities, the personalities, the recriminations, are like so +many <i>coups de revolver</i>. Headings six inches tall; +correspondences from places one never heard of; telegrams from +Europe about Sarah Bernhardt; little paragraphs <a +name="page524"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 524</span>about +nothing at all—the <i>menu</i> of the neighbour’s +dinner; articles on the European situation <i>à pouffer de +rire</i>; all the <i>tripotage</i> of local politics. The +<i>reportage</i> is incredible; I’m chased up and down by +the interviewers. The matrimonial infelicities of M. and +Madame X. (they give the name) <i>tout au long</i>, with every +detail—not in six lines, discreetly veiled, with an art of +insinuation, as with us; but with all the facts (or the +fictions), the letters, the dates, the places, the hours. I +open a paper at hazard and find <i>au beau milieu</i>, apropos of +nothing, the announcement: “Miss Susan Green has the +longest nose in Western New York.” Miss Susan Green +(<i>je me renseigne</i>) is a celebrated authoress, and the +Americans have the reputation of spoiling their women. They +spoil them <i>à coups de poing</i>.</p> +<p>We’ve seen few interiors (no one speaks French); but if +the newspapers give an idea of the domestic <i>mœurs</i>, +the <i>mœurs</i> must be curious. The +passport’s abolished, but they’ve printed my +<i>signalement</i> in these sheets—perhaps for the young +ladies who look for the husband. We went one night to the +theatre; the piece was French (they are the only ones) but the +acting American—too American; we came out in the +middle. The want of taste is incredible. An +Englishman whom I met tells me that even the language corrupts +itself from day to day; the Englishman ceases to +understand. It encourages me to find I’m not the only +one. There are things every day that one can’t +describe. Such is Washington, where we arrived this +morning, coming from Philadelphia. My brother-in-law wishes +to see the Bureau of Patents, and on our arrival he went to look +at his machines while I walked about the streets and visited the +Capitol! The human machine is what interests me most. +I don’t even care for the political—for that’s +what they call their Government here, “the +machine.” It operates very roughly, and <a +name="page525"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 525</span>some day +evidently will explode. It is true that you’d never +suspect they <i>have</i> a government; this is the principal +seat, but, save for three or four big buildings, most of them +<i>affreux</i>, it looks like a settlement of negroes. No +movement, no officials, no authority, no embodiment of the +State. Enormous streets, <i>comme toujours</i>, lined with +little red houses where nothing ever passes but the +tramway. The Capitol—a vast structure, false classic, +white marble, iron and stucco, which has <i>assez grand +air</i>—must be seen to be appreciated. The goddess +of liberty on the top, dressed in a bear’s skin; their +liberty over here is the liberty of bears. You go into the +Capitol as you would into a railway station; you walk about as +you would in the Palais Royal. No functionaries, no +door-keepers, no officers, no uniforms, no badges, no +reservations, no authority—nothing but a crowd of shabby +people circulating in a labyrinth of spittoons. We’re +too much governed perhaps in France; but at least we have a +certain incarnation of the national conscience, of the national +dignity. The dignity’s absent here, and I’m +told the public conscience is an abyss. +“<i>L’état c’est moi</i>” +even—I like that better than the spittoons. These +implements are architectural, monumental; they’re the only +monuments. <i>En somme</i> the country’s interesting, +now that we too have the Republic; it is the biggest +illustration, the biggest warning. It’s the last word +of democracy, and that word is—platitude. It’s +very big, very rich, and perfectly ugly. A Frenchman +couldn’t live here; for life with us, after all, at the +worst, is a sort of appreciation. Here one has nothing to +appreciate. As for the people, they’re the English +<i>minus</i> the conventions. You can fancy what +remains. The women, <i>pourtant</i>, are sometimes rather +well turned. There was one at Philadelphia—I made her +acquaintance by accident—whom it’s probable I shall +see again. <a name="page526"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +526</span>She’s not looking for the husband; she has +already got one. It was at the hotel; I think the husband +doesn’t matter. A Frenchman, as I’ve said, may +mistake, and he needs to be sure he’s right. +<i>Aussi</i> I always make sure!</p> +<h3><a name="page527"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +527</span>VII<br /> +FROM MARCELLUS COCKEREL IN WASHINGTON TO MRS. COOLER, NÉE +COCKEREL, AT OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>October</i> 1880.</p> +<p>I ought to have written you long before this, for I’ve +had your last excellent letter these four months in my +hands. The first half of that time I was still in Europe, +the last I’ve spent on my native soil. I think +accordingly my silence is owing to the fact that over there I was +too miserable to write and that here I’ve been too +happy. I got back the 1st of September—you’ll +have seen it in the papers. Delightful country where one +sees everything in the papers—the big familiar vulgar +good-natured delightful papers, none of which has any reputation +to keep up for anything but getting the news! I really +think that has had as much to do as anything else with my +satisfaction at getting home—the difference in what they +call the “tone of the press.” In Europe +it’s too dreary—the sapience, the solemnity, the +false respectability, the verbosity, the long disquisitions on +superannuated subjects. Here the newspapers are like the +railroad-trains which carry everything that comes to the station +and have only the religion of punctuality. As a woman, +however, you probably detest them; you think they’re (the +great word) vulgar. I admitted it just now, and I’m +very happy to have an early opportunity <a +name="page528"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 528</span>to announce +to you that that idea has quite ceased to have any terrors for +me. There are some conceptions to which the female mind can +never rise. Vulgarity’s a stupid superficial +question-begging accusation, which has become to-day the easiest +refuge of mediocrity. Better than anything else it saves +people the trouble of thinking, and anything which does that +succeeds. You must know that in these last three years in +Europe I’ve become terribly vulgar myself; that’s one +service my travels have rendered me. By three years in +Europe I mean three years in foreign parts altogether, for I +spent several months of that time in Japan, India and the rest of +the East. Do you remember when you bade me good-bye in San +Francisco the night before I embarked for Yokohama? You +foretold that I’d take such a fancy to foreign life that +America would never see me more, and that if you should wish to +see me (an event you were good enough to regard as possible) +you’d have to make a rendezvous in Paris or in Rome. +I think we made one—which you never kept; but I shall never +make another for those cities. It was in Paris, however, +that I got your letter; I remember the moment as well as if it +were (to my honour) much more recent. You must know that +among many places I dislike Paris carries the palm. +I’m bored to death there; it’s the home of every +humbug. The life is full of that false comfort which is +worse than discomfort, and the small fat irritable people give me +the shivers.</p> +<p>I had been making these reflexions even more devoutly than +usual one very tiresome evening toward the beginning of last +summer when, as I re-entered my hotel at ten o’clock, the +little reptile of a portress handed me your gracious lines. +I was in a villainous humour. I had been having an +overdressed dinner in a stuffy restaurant and had gone from there +to a suffocating theatre, where, by way of amusement, I saw <a +name="page529"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 529</span>a play in +which blood and lies were the least of the horrors. The +theatres over there are insupportable; the atmosphere’s +pestilential. People sit with their elbows in your sides; +they squeeze past you every half hour. It was one of my bad +moments—I have a great many in Europe. The +conventional mechanical play, all in falsetto, which I seemed to +have seen a thousand times; the horrible faces of the people, the +pushing bullying <i>ouvreuse</i> with her false politeness and +her real rapacity, drove me out of the place at the end of an +hour; and as it was too early to go home, I sat down before a +café on the Boulevard, where they served me a glass of +sour watery beer. There on the Boulevard, in the summer +night, life itself was even uglier than the play, and it +wouldn’t do for me to tell you what I saw. Besides, I +was sick of the Boulevard, with its eternal grimace and the +deadly sameness of the <i>article de Paris</i>, which pretends to +be so various—the shop-windows a wilderness of rubbish and +the passers-by a procession of manikins. Suddenly it came +over me that I was supposed to be amusing myself—my face +was a yard long—and that you probably at that moment were +saying to your husband: “He stays away so long! What +a good time he must be having!” The idea was the +first thing that had made me smile for a month; I got up and +walked home, reflecting as I went that I was “seeing +Europe” and that after all one <i>must</i> see +Europe. It was because I had been convinced of this that I +had come out, and it’s because the operation has been +brought to a close that I’ve been so happy for the last +eight weeks. I was very conscientious about it, and, though +your letter that night made me abominably homesick, I held out to +the end, knowing it to be once for all. I shan’t +trouble Europe again; I shall see America for the rest of my +days. My long delay has had the advantage that now at least +I can give you my impressions—I don’t mean <a +name="page530"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 530</span>of Europe; +impressions of Europe are easy to get—but of this country +as it strikes the reinstated exile. Very likely +you’ll think them queer; but keep my letter and twenty +years hence they’ll be quite commonplace. They +won’t even be vulgar. It was very deliberate, my +going round the world. I knew that one ought to see for +one’s self and that I should have eternity, so to speak, to +rest. I travelled energetically; I went everywhere and saw +everything; took as many letters as possible and made as many +acquaintances. In short I held my nose to the grindstone +and here I am back.</p> +<p>Well, the upshot of it all is that I’ve got rid of a +superstition. We have so many that one the +less—perhaps the biggest of all—makes a real +difference in one’s comfort. The one in +question—of course you have it—is that there’s +no salvation but through Europe. Our salvation is here, if +we have eyes to see it, and the salvation of Europe into the +bargain; that is if Europe’s to be saved, which I rather +doubt. Of course you’ll call me a bird of freedom, a +vulgar patriot, a waver of the stars and stripes; but I’m +in the delightful position of not minding in the least what any +one calls me. I haven’t a mission; I don’t want +to preach; I’ve simply arrived at a state of mind. +I’ve got Europe off my back. You’ve no idea how +it simplifies things and how jolly it makes me feel. Now I +can live, now I can talk. If we wretched Americans could +only say once for all “Oh Europe be hanged!” we +should attend much better to our proper business. +We’ve simply to mind that business and the rest will look +after itself. You’ll probably inquire what it is I +like better over here, and I’ll answer that it’s +simply—life. Disagreeables for disagreeables I prefer +our own. The way I’ve been bored and bullied in +foreign parts, and the way I’ve had to say I found it +pleasant! For a good while this appeared to be a sort of <a +name="page531"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 531</span>congenital +obligation, but one fine day it occurred to me that there was no +obligation at all and that it would ease me immensely to admit to +myself that (for me at least) all those things had no +importance. I mean the things they rub into you over there; +the tiresome international topics, the petty politics, the stupid +social customs, the baby-house scenery. The vastness and +freshness of this American world, the great scale and great pace +of our development, the good sense and good nature of the people, +console me for there being no cathedrals and no Titians. I +hear nothing about Prince Bismarck and Gambetta, about the +Emperor William and the Czar of Russia, about Lord Beaconsfield +and the Prince of Wales. I used to get so tired of their +Mumbo-Jumbo of a Bismarck, of his secrets and surprises, his +mysterious intentions and oracular words. They revile us +for our party politics; but what are all the European jealousies +and rivalries, their armaments and their wars, their rapacities +and their mutual lies, but the intensity of the spirit of +party? What question, what interest, what idea, what need +of mankind, is involved in any of these things? Their big +pompous armies drawn up in great silly rows, their gold lace, +their salaams, their hierarchies, seem a pastime for children: +there’s a sense of humour and of reality over here that +laughs at all that.</p> +<p>Yes, we’re nearer the reality, nearer what they’ll +all have to come to. The questions of the future are social +questions, which the Bismarcks and Beaconsfields are very much +afraid to see settled; and the sight of a row of supercilious +potentates holding their peoples like their personal property and +bristling all over, to make a mutual impression, with feathers +and sabres, strikes us as a mixture of the grotesque and the +abominable. What do we care for the mutual impressions of +potentates who amuse themselves with sitting on people? +Those things are their own affair, and they ought to be <a +name="page532"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 532</span>shut up in +a dark room to have it out together. Once one feels, over +here, that the great questions of the future are social +questions, that a mighty tide is sweeping the world to democracy, +and that this country is the biggest stage on which the drama can +be enacted, the fashionable European topics seem petty and +parochial. They talk about things that we’ve settled +ages ago, and the solemnity with which they propound to you their +little domestic embarrassments makes a heavy draft on one’s +good nature. In England they were talking about the Hares +and Rabbits Bill, about the extension of the County Franchise, +about the Dissenters’ Burials, about the Deceased +Wife’s Sister, about the abolition of the House of Lords, +about heaven knows what ridiculous little measure for the +propping-up of their ridiculous little country. And they +call <i>us</i> provincial! It’s hard to sit and look +respectable while people discuss the utility of the House of +Lords and the beauty of a State Church, and it’s only in a +dowdy musty civilisation that you’ll find them doing such +things. The lightness and clearness of the social +air—<i>that’s</i> the great relief in these +parts. The gentility of bishops, the propriety of parsons, +even the impressiveness of a restored cathedral, give less of a +charm to life than that. I used to be furious with the +bishops and beadles, with the humbuggery of the whole affair, +which every one was conscious of but which people agreed not to +expose because they’d be compromised all round. The +convenience of life in our conditions, the quick and simple +arrangements, the absence of the spirit of routine, are a blessed +change from the stupid stiffness with which I struggled for two +long years. There were people with swords and cockades who +used to order me about; for the simplest operation of life I had +to kootoo to some bloated official. When it was a question +of my doing a little differently from others the bloated official +<a name="page533"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 533</span>gasped +as if I had given him a blow on the stomach; he needed to take a +week to think of it.</p> +<p>On the other hand it’s impossible to take an American by +surprise; he’s ashamed to confess he hasn’t the wit +to do a thing another man has had the wit to think of. +Besides being as good as his neighbour he must therefore be as +clever—which is an affliction only to people who are afraid +he may be cleverer. If this general efficiency and +spontaneity of the people—the union of the sense of freedom +with the love of knowledge—isn’t the very essence of +a high civilisation I don’t know what a high civilisation +is. I felt this greater ease on my first railroad +journey—felt the blessing of sitting in a train where I +could move about, where I could stretch my legs and come and go, +where I had a seat and a window to myself, where there were +chairs and tables and food and drink. The villainous little +boxes on the European trains, in which you’re stuck down in +a corner with doubled-up knees, opposite to a row of people, +often most offensive types, who stare at you for ten hours on +end—these were part of my two years’ ordeal. +The large free way of doing things here is everywhere a +pleasure. In London, at my hotel, they used to come to me +on Saturday to make me order my Sunday’s dinner, and when I +asked for a sheet of paper they put it into the bill. The +meagreness, the stinginess, the perpetual expectation of a +sixpence, used to exasperate me. Of course I saw a great +many people who were pleasant; but as I’m writing to you +and not to one of them I may say that they were dreadfully apt to +be dull. The imagination among the people I see here is +more flexible, and then they have the advantage of a larger +horizon. It’s not bounded on the north by the British +aristocracy and on the south by the <i>scrutin de +liste</i>. (I mix up the countries a little, but +they’re not worth the keeping apart.) The absence of +little conventional <a name="page534"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 534</span>measurements, of little +cut-and-dried judgements, is an immense refreshment. +We’re more analytic, more discriminating, more familiar +with realities. As for manners, there are bad manners +everywhere, but an aristocracy is bad manners organised. (I +don’t mean that they mayn’t be polite among +themselves, but they’re rude to every one else.) The +sight of all these growing millions simply minding their business +is impressive to me—more so than all the gilt buttons and +padded chests of the Old World; and there’s a certain +powerful type of “practical” American (you’ll +find him chiefly in the West) who doesn’t +“blow” as I do (I’m not practical) but who +quietly feels that he has the Future in his vitals—a type +that strikes me more than any I met in your favourite +countries.</p> +<p>Of course you’ll come back to the cathedrals and +Titians, but there’s a thought that helps one to do without +them—the thought that, though we’ve an immense deal +of pie-eating plainness, we’ve little misery, little +squalor, little degradation. There’s no regular +wife-beating class, and there are none of the stultified peasants +of whom it takes so many to make a European noble. The +people here are more conscious of things; they invent, they act, +they answer for themselves; they’re not (I speak of social +matters) tied up by authority and precedent. We shall have +all the Titians by and by, and we shall move over a few +cathedrals. You had better stay here if you want to have +the best. Of course I’m a roaring Yankee; but +you’ll call me that if I say the least, so I may as well +take my ease and say the most. Washington’s a most +entertaining place; and here at least, at the seat of government, +one isn’t overgoverned. In fact there’s no +government at all to speak of; it seems too good to be +true. The first day I was here I went to the Capitol, and +it took me ever so long to figure to myself that I had as good a +right there as any one else—that the <a +name="page535"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 535</span>whole +magnificent pile (it <i>is</i> magnificent, by the way) was in +fact my own. In Europe one doesn’t rise to such +conceptions, and my spirit had been broken in Europe. The +doors were gaping wide—I walked all about; there were no +door-keepers, no officers nor flunkeys, there wasn’t even a +policeman to be seen. It seemed strange not to see a +uniform, if only as a patch of colour. But this isn’t +government by livery. The absence of these things is odd at +first; you seem to miss something, to fancy the machine has +stopped. It hasn’t, though; it only works without +fire and smoke. At the end of three days this simple +negative impression, the fact that there are no soldiers nor +spies, nothing but plain black coats, begins to affect the +imagination, becomes vivid, majestic, symbolic. It ends by +being more impressive than the biggest review I saw in +Germany. Of course I’m a roaring Yankee; but one has +to take a big brush to copy a big model. The future’s +here of course, but it isn’t only that—the +present’s here as well. You’ll complain that I +don’t give you any personal news, but I’m more modest +for myself than for my country. I spent a month in New York +and while there saw a good deal of a rather interesting girl who +came over with me in the steamer and whom for a day or two I +thought I should like to marry. But I +shouldn’t. She has been spoiled by Europe—and +yet the prime stuff struck me as so right.</p> +<h3><a name="page536"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +536</span>VIII<br /> +FROM MISS AURORA CHURCH IN NEW YORK TO MISS WHITESIDE IN +PARIS</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>January</i> 1881.</p> +<p>I told you (after we landed) about my agreement with +mamma—that I was to have my liberty for three months and +that if at the end of this time I shouldn’t have made a +good use of it I was to give it back to her. Well, the +time’s up to-day, and I’m very much afraid I +haven’t made a good use of it. In fact I +haven’t made any use of it at all—I haven’t got +married, for that’s what mamma meant by our little +bargain. She has been trying to marry me in Europe for +years, without a <i>dot</i>, and as she has never (to the best of +my knowledge) even come near it, she thought at last that if she +were to leave it to me I might possibly do better. I +couldn’t certainly do worse. Well, my dear, +I’ve done very badly—that is I haven’t done at +all. I haven’t even tried. I had an idea that +the <i>coup</i> in question came of itself over here; but it +hasn’t come to <i>me</i>. I won’t say I’m +disappointed, for I haven’t on the whole seen any one I +should like to marry. When you marry people in these parts +they expect you to love them, and I haven’t seen any one I +should like to love. I don’t know what the reason is, +but they’re none of them what I’ve thought of. +It may be that I’ve thought of the impossible; and yet +I’ve seen people in Europe whom I should have liked to +marry. It’s true they were almost always married to +some one else. What I <i>am</i> disappointed in is simply +<a name="page537"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 537</span>having +to give back my liberty. I don’t wish particularly to +be married, and I do wish to do as I like—as I’ve +been doing for the last month. All the same I’m sorry +for poor mamma, since nothing has happened that she wished to +happen. To begin with, we’re not appreciated, not +even by the Rucks, who have disappeared in the strange way in +which people over here seem to vanish from the world. +We’ve made no sensation; my new dresses count for nothing +(they all have better ones); our philological and historical +studies don’t show. We’ve been told we might do +better in Boston; but on the other hand mamma hears that in +Boston the people only marry their cousins. Then +mamma’s out of sorts because the country’s +exceedingly dear and we’ve spent all our money. +Moreover, I’ve neither eloped, nor been insulted, nor been +talked about, nor—so far as I know—deteriorated in +manners or character; so that she’s wrong in all her +previsions. I think she would have rather liked me to be +insulted. But I’ve been insulted as little as +I’ve been adored. They don’t adore you over +here; they only make you think they’re going to.</p> +<p>Do you remember the two gentlemen who were on the ship, and +who, after we arrived, came to see me <i>à tour de +rôle</i>? At first I never dreamed they were making +love to me, though mamma was sure it must be that; then, as it +went on a good while, I thought perhaps it <i>was</i> +that—after which I ended by seeing it wasn’t +anything! It was simply conversation—and conversation +a precocious child might have listened to at that. Mr. +Leverett and Mr. Cockerel disappeared one fine day without the +smallest pretension to having broken my heart, I’m +sure—though it only depended on me to think they must have +tried to. All the gentlemen are like that; you can’t +tell what they mean; the “passions” don’t rage, +the appearances <a name="page538"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +538</span>don’t matter—nobody believes them. +Society seems oddly to consist of a sort of innocent +jilting. I think on the whole I <i>am</i> a little +disappointed—I don’t mean about one’s not +marrying; I mean about the life generally. It looks so +different at first that you expect it will be very exciting; and +then you find that after all, when you’ve walked out for a +week or two by yourself and driven out with a gentleman in a +buggy, that’s about all there is to it, as they say +here. Mamma’s very angry at not finding more to +dislike; she admitted yesterday that, once one has got a little +settled, the country hasn’t even the merit of being +hateful. This has evidently something to do with her +suddenly proposing three days ago that we should “go +West.” Imagine my surprise at such an idea coming +from mamma! The people in the pension—who, as usual, +wish immensely to get rid of her—have talked to her about +the West, and she has taken it up with a kind of +desperation. You see we must do something; we can’t +simply remain here. We’re rapidly being ruined and +we’re not—so to speak—getting married. +Perhaps it will be easier in the West; at any rate it will be +cheaper and the country will have the advantage of being more +hateful. It’s a question between that and returning +to Europe, and for the moment mamma’s balancing. I +say nothing: I’m really indifferent; perhaps I shall marry +a pioneer. I’m just thinking how I shall give back my +liberty. It really won’t be possible; I haven’t +got it any more; I’ve given it away to others. Mamma +may get it back if she can from <i>them</i>! She comes in +at this moment to announce that we must push further—she +has decided for the West. Wonderful mamma! It appears +that my real chance is for a pioneer—they’ve +sometimes millions. But fancy us at Oshkosh!</p> +<div class="gapmediumline"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>Printed in Great Britain by</i> +<span class="smcap">R. & R. Clarke</span>, <span +class="smcap">Limited</span>, <i>Edinburgh</i>.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADY BARBARINA***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 37627-h.htm or 37627-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/7/6/2/37627 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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