The Better Sort (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1903)/The Two Faces/Chapter 2
II
They did meet at dinner, and if they were not, as it happened, side by side, they made that up afterwards in the happiest angle of a drawing-room that offered both shine and shadow and that was positively much appreciated, in the circle in which they moved, for the favourable "corners" created by its shrewd mistress. Her face, charged with something produced in it by Lord Gwyther's visit, had been with him so constantly for the previous hours that, when she instantly challenged him on his "treatment" of her in the afternoon, he was on the point of naming it as his reason for not having remained with her. Something new had quickly come into her beauty; he couldn't as yet have said what, nor whether on the whole to its advantage or its loss. Till he could make up his mind about that, at any rate, he would say nothing; so that, with sufficient presence of mind, he found a better excuse. If in short he had in defiance of her particular request left her alone with Lord Gwyther, it was simply because the situation had suddenly turned so exciting that he had fairly feared the contagion of it—the temptation of its making him, most improperly, put in his word.
They could now talk of these things at their ease. Other couples, ensconced and scattered, enjoyed the same privilege, and Sutton had more and more the profit, such as it was, of feeling that his interest in Mrs. Grantham had become—what was the luxury of so high a social code—an acknowledged and protected relation. He knew his London well enough to know that he was on the way to be regarded as her main source of consolation for the trick that, several months before, Lord Gwyther had publicly played her. Many persons had not held that, by the high social code in question, his lordship could have "reserved the right" to turn up in that way, from one day to another, engaged. For himself London took, with its short cuts and its cheap psychology, an immense deal for granted. To his own sense he was never—could in the nature of things never be—any man's "successor." Just what had constituted the predecessorship of other men was apparently that they had been able to make up their mind. He, worse luck, was at the mercy of her face, and more than ever at the mercy of it now, which meant, moreover, not that it made a slave of him, but that it made, disconcertingly, a sceptic. It was the absolute perfection of the handsome; but things had a way of coming into it. "I felt," he said, "that you were there together at a point at which you had a right to the ease that the absence of a listener would give. I reflected that when you made me promise to stay you hadn't guessed———"
"That he could possibly have come to me on such an extraordinary errand? No, of course, I hadn't guessed. Who would? But didn't you see how little I was upset by it?"
Sutton demurred. Then with a smile, "I think he saw how little."
"You yourself didn't, then?"
He again held back, but not, after all, to answer. "He was wonderful, wasn't he?"
"I think he was," she replied after a moment. To which she added: "Why did he pretend that way he knew you?"
"He didn't pretend. He felt on the spot as if we were friends." Sutton had found this afterwards, and found truth in it. "It was an effusion of cheer and hope. He was so glad to see me there, and to find you happy."
"Happy?"
"Happy. Aren't you?"
"Because of you?"
"Well—according to the impression he received as he came in."
"That was sudden then," she asked, "and unexpected?"
Her companion thought. "Prepared in some degree, but confirmed by the sight of us, there together, so awfully jolly and sociable over your fire."
Mrs. Grantham turned this round. "If he knew I was 'happy' then—which, by the way, is none of his business, nor of yours either—why in the world did he come?"
"Well, for good manners, and for his idea," said Sutton.
She took it in, appearing to have no hardness of rancour that could bar discussion. "Do you mean by his idea his proposal that I should grandmother his wife? And, if you do, is the proposal your reason for calling him wonderful?"
Sutton laughed. "Pray, what's yours?" As this was a question, however, that she took her time to answer or not to answer—only appearing interested for a moment in a combination that had formed itself on the other side of the room—he presently went on. "What's his?—that would seem to be the point. His, I mean, for having decided on the extraordinary step of throwing his little wife, bound hands and feet, into your arms. Intelligent as you are, and with these three or four hours to have thought it over, I yet don't see how that can fail still to mystify you."
She continued to watch their opposite neighbours. "'Little,' you call her. Is she so very small?"
"Tiny, tiny—she must be; as different as possible in every way—of necessity—from you. They always are the opposite pole, you know," said Shirley Sutton.
She glanced at him now. "You strike me as of an impudence———!"
"No, no. I only like to make it out with you."
She looked away again and, after a little, went on. "I'm sure she's charming, and only hope one isn't to gather that he's already tired of her."
"Not a bit! He's tremendously in love, and he'll remain so."
"So much the better. And if it's a question," said Mrs. Grantham, "of one's doing what one can for her, he has only, as I told him when you had gone, to give me the chance."
"Good! So he is to commit her to you?"
"You use extraordinary expressions, but it's settled that he brings her."
"And you'll really and truly help her?"
"Really and truly?" said Mrs. Grantham, with her eyes again upon him. "Why not? For what do you take me?"
"Ah, isn't that just what I still have the discomfort, every day I live, of asking myself?"
She had made, as she spoke, a movement to rise, which, as if she was tired of his tone, his last words appeared to determine. But, also getting up, he held her, when they were on their feet, long enough to hear the rest of what he had to say. "If you do help her, you know, you'll show him that you've understood."
"Understood what?"
"Why, his idea—the deep, acute train of reasoning that has led him to take, as one may say, the bull by the horns; to reflect that as you might, as you probably would, in any case, get at her, he plays the wise game, as well as the bold one, by assuming your generosity and placing himself publicly under an obligation to you."
Mrs. Grantham showed not only that she had listened, but that she had for an instant considered. "What is it you elegantly describe as my getting at her?"
"He takes his risk, but puts you, you see, on your honour."
She thought a moment more. "What profundities indeed then over the simplest of matters! And if your idea is," she went on, "that if I do help her I shall show him I've understood them, so it will be that if I don't———"
"You'll show him"—Sutton took her up—"that you haven't? Precisely. But in spite of not wanting to appear to have understood too much———"
"I may still be depended on to do what I can? Quite certainly. You'll see what I may still be depended on to do." And she moved away.