Chapter 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.