The Siege of London, The Pension Beaurepas, and The Point of View/The Siege of London/Chapter 9
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 Mrs. Headway put it, to catch him. 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 was irritated by her ascending movement. 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 some 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 Littlemore's den. Reginald had gone to a "squash" somewhere, and she had returned without delay, having something particular to say to her brother. She was too impatient even to wait till the next morning. She looked impatient; she was very unlike George Littlemore. "I want you to tell me about Mrs. Headway," she said, 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 small, neat woman, who had once been pretty, with a small, thin voice, a sweet, quiet 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, in that nationality, borrowed distinction from its rarity. She was by nature a great conservative, and had ended by being a better Tory than her husband. She was thought by some of her old friends to have changed immensely since her marriage. She knew as much about English society as if she had invented it; had a way, usually, of looking as if she were dressed for a ride; 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, and she thought it rather odd he had never spoken of her. He admitted that he had known her a long time, referred to the circumstances in which the acquaintance had sprung up, and added that he had seen her that afternoon. He sat there smoking his cigar and looking at the ceiling, 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 not true that her antecedents had heen most peculiar?
"I may as well tell you that I have a letter from Lady Demesne," Mrs. Dolphin said. "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 to him; but he gave her no invitation to do so. He knew that she had come to him to extract a declaration adverse to Mrs. Headway's projects, and however little satisfaction he might take in this lady's upward flight, he hated to be urged and pushed. He had a great esteem for Mrs. Dolphin, who, among other Hampshire notions, had picked up that of the preponderance of the male members of a family, so that she treated him with a consideration which made his having an English sister rather a luxury. Nevertheless he was not very encouraging about Mrs. Headway. He admitted once for all that she had not behaved properly—it wasn't worth while to split hairs about that—but he could n't see that she was much worse than many other women, and he could n'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 to let poor Arthur Demesne be taken in by her!
"Perfectly willing!" Littlemore exclaimed. "All I've got to do is not to marry her myself."
"Don't you think we have any responsibilities, any duties?"
"I don't know what you mean. If she can succeed, 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 that she has an audacity a toute épreuve. But English society has become scandalously easy. I never saw anything like the people that are taken up. Mrs. Headway has had only to appear to succeed. If they think there's something bad about you they 'll be sure to run after you. It 's like the decadence of the Roman Empire. You can see to look at Mrs. Headway that she 's not a lady. She 's pretty, very pretty, but she looks like a dissipated dressmaker. She failed absolutely in New York. I have seen her three times—she apparently goes everywhere. I didn't speak of her—I was wanting to see what you would do. I saw that you meant to do nothing, then this letter decided me. It's written on purpose to be shown to you; it's what she 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 would draw up a little statement I would put it before you as soon as we got 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 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 would know who I was and come and speak to me. I was so frightened that 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 not excited nor voluble; she moved from point to point with a calmness which had all the air of being used to have reason on its side. She deeply desired, however, that Mrs. Headway's triumphant career should be checked; she had sufficiently abused the facilities of things. Herself a party to an international marriage, Mrs. Dolphin naturally wished that the class to which she belonged should close its ranks and carry its standard high.
"It seems to me that she 's quite as good as the little baronet," said Littlemore, lighting another cigar.
"As good? What do you mean? No one has ever breathed a word against him."
"Very likely. But he's a nonentity, and she at least is somebody. She 's a person, and a very clever one. Besides, she 's quite as good as the women that lots of them have married. I never heard that the British gentry were so unspotted."
"I know nothing about other cases," Mrs. Dolphin said, "I only know about this one. It so happens that I have been brought near to 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 from 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 most wretched. How can you pretend that such a woman as that is to be trusted? What I see is a fine old race—one of the oldest and most honorable in England, people with every tradition of good conduct and high principle—and a dreadful, disreputable, vulgar little woman, who has n'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!"
"I don't—I don't care anything about 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 is n't indecent—you go too far. You must remember that she 's an old friend of mine." Littlemore 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 are in love with her, too!" she murmured, 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 was one winter when even Mrs. Headway's sister did n't know who was her husband?
Mrs. Dolphin answered this inquiry by reading out Lady Demesne's letter, which her brother, as she folded it up again, pronounced one of the most extraordinary letters he had ever heard.
"It 's very sad—it 's a cry of distress," said Mrs. Dolphin. "The whole meaning of it is that she wishes you would come and see her. She does n't say so in so many words, but I can read between the lines. Besides, she told me she would give anything to see you. Let me assure you it 's your duty to go."
"To go and abuse Nancy Beck?"
"Go and praise her, if you like!" This was very clever of Mrs. Dolphin, but her brother was not so easily caught. He did n't take that view of his duty, and he declined to cross her ladyship's threshold. "Then she 'll come and see you," said Mrs. Dolphin, 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," Mrs. Dolphin replied, as she gathered up her cloak and gloves.
Meeting Rupert Waterville the next day, as he often did, at the St. 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 most remarkable letter from her," he said.
"What sort of a letter?"
"The letter of a woman so scared that she will do anything. I may be a great brute, but her fright amuses me."
"You 're in the position of Olivier de Jalin, in the Demi-Monde," Waterville remarked.
"In the 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 honorable man, who does n't know how bad she is, and they who do know step in and push her back."
"Yes, I remember. There was a good deal of lying, all round."
"They prevented the marriage, however, which is the great thing."
"The great thing, if you care about it. One of them was the intimate friend of the fellow, the other was his son. Demesne 's nothing to me."
"He 's a very good fellow," said Waterville.
"Go and tell him, then."
"Play the part of Olivier de Jalin? Oh, I can't; I 'm not Olivier. But I wish he would come along. Mrs. Headway ought n't really to be allowed to pass."
"I wish to heaven they 'd let me alone," Littlemore murmured, ruefully, staring for 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.
"Of course I can refuse to answer questions—even that one."
"As I told you before, that will amount to a condemnation."
"It may amount to what it pleases. I think I will go to Paris."
"That will be the same as not answering. But it 's quite the best thing you can do. I have been thinking a great deal about it, and it seems to me, from the social point of view, that, as I say, she really ought n't to pass." Waterville had the air of looking at the thing from a great elevation; his tone, the expression of his face, indicated this lofty flight; the effect of which, as he glanced down at his didactic young friend, Littlemore found peculiarly irritating.
"No, after all, hanged if they shall drive me away!" he exclaimed abruptly; and walked off, while his companion looked after him.