Waterville listened to this little description with intense interest. ‘And if he had asked you, what would you have said?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Well, I suppose you would have said that his question wasn’t fair?’
‘That would have been tantamount to admitting the worst.’
‘Yes,’ said Waterville, thoughtfully, ‘you couldn’t do that. On the other hand, if he had put it to you on your honour whether she were a woman to marry, it would have been very awkward.’
‘Awkward enough. Fortunately, 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 questions about Mrs Headway. As she is a great friend of mine, he can’t pretend to expect me to give confidential information about her.’
‘You don’t think she’s a woman to marry, all the same,’ Waterville declared. ‘And if a man were to ask you that, you might knock him down, but it wouldn’t be an answer.’
‘It would have to serve,’ said Littlemore. He added in a moment, ‘There are certain cases where it’s a man’s duty to commit perjury.’
Waterville looked grave. ‘Certain cases?’
‘Where a woman’s honour is at stake.’
‘I see what you mean. That’s of course if he has been himself concerned –’
‘Himself or another. It doesn’t matter.’
‘I think it does matter. I don’t like perjury,’ 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 joke 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 to assist her, then?’
‘Heaven forbid! But I mean to bet on her.’
Waterville gave his companion a serious glance; he thought him strangely superficial. The situation, however, was difficult, and he laid down his fork with a little sigh.
PART II
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 to cover themselves with a kind of green downiness. Rupert Waterville, devoted to his duties and faithful in attendance at the Legation, had had little time to enjoy that rural hospitality which is the great invention of the English people and the most perfect expression of their character. He had been invited now and then – for in London he commended himself to many people as a very sensible young man – but he had been obliged to decline more proposals than he accepted. It was still, therefore, rather a novelty to him to stay at one of those fine old houses, surrounded with hereditary acres, which from the first of his coming to England he had thought of with such curiosity and such envy. He proposed to himself to see as many of them as possible, but he disliked to do things in a hurry, or when his mind was preoccupied, as it was so apt to be, with what he believed to be business of importance. He 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 invitation to 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,’ she wrote, ‘my son tells me that you will perhaps be able to come down here on the 17th, 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 to him a fortnight before from an hotel in Cork Street, to say that she had arrived in London for the season and should be very glad to see him. He had gone to see her, trembling with the fear that she would break ground about her presentation; but he was agreeably surprised to observe that she neglected 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 made many friends; she assured him that she knew half the Roman nobility. ‘They are charming people; they have only one fault, they stay too long,’ she said. And, in answer to his inquiring glance, ‘I mean when they come to see you,’ she explained. ‘They used to come every evening, and they wanted to stay till the next day. They were all princes and counts. I used to give them cigars, &c. I knew as many people as I wanted,’ she added, in a moment, discovering perhaps in Waterville’s eye the traces of that sympathy 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 have a feeling for the ruins and the Campagna; 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 Diego – if it hadn’t been for the temples. I liked to think it all over, when I was driving round; I was always brooding over the past.’ At this moment, however, 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 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 baronet 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 reference to Mrs Headway. Waterville had been recalled to London just after the incident of which he was witness in the court of the Hôtel Meurice; and all he knew of its consequence was what he had learned from Littlemore, who, on his way back to America, where he had suddenly ascertained that there were reasons for his spending the winter, passed through the British capital. Littlemore had 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,’ Mrs Headway had related. ‘I should be willing to be old if I could be like that,’ she had added, oblivious for the moment that she was at least as near to the age of the mother as to that of the son. 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’ll do in Rome?’ Waterville had asked; his imagination failing him here, for he had not yet trodden the Seven Hills.
‘I haven’t the least idea. And I don’t care!’ Littlemore added in a moment. Before he left London he mentioned to Waterville that Mrs Headway, on his going to take leave of her in Paris, had made another, and a rather unexpected, attack. ‘About the society business – she said I must really do something – she couldn’t go on in that way. And she appealed to me in the name – I don’t think I quite know how to say it.’
‘I should be very glad if you would try,’ said Waterville, who was constantly reminding himself that Amer
icans in Europe were, after all, in a manner, to a man in his position, as the sheep to the shepherd.
‘Well, in the name of the affection that 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 paused, not defining the result of such an obligation. Waterville tried to imagine what it would be; while his friend embarked for New York, without telling him how, after all, he had resisted Mrs Headway’s attack.
At Christmas, Waterville knew of Sir Arthur’s return to England, and believed that he also knew that the baronet had not 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, about going to see Mrs Headway; but, having seen her and judged her, she had determined to break the thing off. She had been sweet and kind, as Mrs Headway said, because for the moment that was easiest; but she had made 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 Mrs Headway, arriving in London for the season, 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, said to himself that she was waiting, that the baronet had not turned up. She was also getting into a house; the courier had found her in Chesterfield Street, Mayfair, a little gem, which was to cost her what jewels cost. After all this, Waterville was greatly surprised at Lady Demesne’s note, and he went down to Longlands with much the same impatience with which, in Paris, he would have gone, if he had 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 which came forward in a semicircle, with statues placed at intervals on the cornice; so that in the flattering dusk it looked like an Italian palace, erected through some magical evocation in an English park. Waterville 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 operation left him no time to inquire whether the apartment to which he had been assigned befitted the dignity of a Secretary of Legation. On emerging from his room he found there was an ambassador in the house, and this discovery was a check to uneasy reflections. He tacitly assumed that he would have had a better room if it had not 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 frescos, 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 people in the house had assembled for dinner in the principal hall, which was animated by a fire of great logs, and the company was so numerous that Waterville was afraid he was the last. Lady Demesne gave him a smile and a touch of her hand; she was very tranquil, and, saying nothing in particular, treated him as if he had been a constant visitor. Waterville was not sure whether he liked this or hated it; but these alternatives mattered equally little to his hostess, who looked at her guests as if to see whether the number were right. The master of the house was talking to a lady before the fire; when he caught sight of Waterville across the room, he waved him ‘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 her sweet vague smile, which looked as if it were the same for everything.
‘We are waiting for Mrs Headway,’ she said.
‘Ah, she has arrived?’ Waterville had quite forgotten her.
‘She came at half-past five. At six she went to dress. She has had two hours.’
‘Let us hope that the results will be proportionate,’ said Waterville, smiling.
‘Oh, the results; I don’t know,’ Lady Demesne murmured, without looking at him; and in these simple words Waterville saw the confirmation of his theory that she was playing a deep game. He wondered whether he should sit next to Mrs Headway at dinner, and hoped, with due deference to this lady’s charms, that he should have something more novel. The results of a toilet which 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 looked at her, felt that this was a moment of importance for her: it was virtually her entrance into English society. Mrs Headway entered English society very well, with her charming smile upon her lips and with the trophies of the Rue de la Paix trailing behind her. She made a portentous rustling as she moved. People turned their eyes toward her; there was soon a perceptible diminution of talk, though talk had not been particularly audible. She looked very much alone, and it was rather pretentious of her to come down last, though it was possible that this was simply because, before her glass, she had been unable to please herself. For she evidently felt the importance of the occasion, and Waterville was sure that her heart was beating. She was very valiant, however; she smiled more intensely, and advanced like a woman who was used to being looked at. She had at any rate the support of knowing that she was pretty; for nothing on this occasion was wanting to her prettiness, 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 Lady Demesne had presented him for this purpose when the hall was almost empty. The rank of this ecclesiastic in the hierarchy he learned early on the morrow; but in the mean time it seemed to him strange, somehow, 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 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 at moments 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 Waterville no greeting; she evidently had not seen him till they were seated at table, when she simply stared at him with a violence of surprise that for a moment almost effaced her smile. It was a copious and well-ordered banquet, but as Waterville looked up and down the table he wondered
whether some of its elements might not be a little dull. As he made this reflection he became conscious that 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 general; Waterville watched her more than he appeared to do, and saw that the general, who evidently was a cool hand, was drawing her out. Waterville hoped she would be careful. He was a man of fancy, in his way, and as he compared her with the rest of the company he 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 very serried phalanx; those who were there represented a thousand others. They looked so different from her that to the eye of the imagination she stood very much on her merits. All those 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 candlelight, 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 variations. Mrs Headway, with all her prettiness, seemed to transcend these variations; she looked foreign, exaggerated; she had too much expression; she might have been engaged for the evening. Waterville remarked, moreover, that English society was always looking out for amusement and that its transactions were conducted on a cash basis. If Mrs Headway were amusing enough she would probably succeed, and her fortune – if fortune there was – would not be a hindrance.