Bessie reflected a moment. “We can stop there on our way to Paris,” she said.
Lord Lambeth did not tell Percy Beaumont that the contingency he was not prepared at all to like had occurred; but Percy Beaumont, on hearing that the two ladies had left London, wondered with some intensity what had happened; wondered, that is, until the Duchess of Bayswater came a little to his assistance. The two ladies went to Paris, and Mrs. Westgate beguiled the journey to that city by repeating several times—“That’s what I regret; they will think they petrified us.” But Bessie Alden seemed to regret nothing.
The Siege of London
The Siege of London
THE IDEA of The Siege of London came to James one evening in the autumn of 1877, after witnessing a performance at the Théâtre Francais of Le Demi-Monde, a play by the younger Dumas. The problem of the play was whether under certain circumstances a gentleman would be justified in “telling on” a lady whom he had once loved though never respected. Typically enough, James found the moral insensibility of the French playwright to be nothing less than “prodigious,” and he was sufficiently provoked to think of attempting to pose the same problem through the medium of characters of his own nationality. But it was not till 1882 that he wrote the novelette, which he sent to his friend Leslie Stephen, then editor of The Cornhill Magazine, where it appeared in the early months of 1883.
In the process of the composition, however, the original idea somehow lost its hold, and the story turned into a brilliant social comedy on the theme of “getting into society.” For this is the species of complication faced by Mrs. Headway, the American divorcée from the far West who is finally accepted by London society on the quite interesting ground of her accomplishments as an American humorist. This woman of “absolutely glaring motives” is a type heretofore not treated by James. In relating her adventures he struck that note of the social picaresque, so to speak, to which he returned from time to time in later years—as in the account of the marital difficulties of the racy Berrington couple in A London Life and of Maisie’s parents in What Maisie Knew. Relationships involving an element of the socially scandalous or ambiguous or any sort of amalgam of the low and the snobbish intrigued James. In The Siege of London this element is so effectively combined with the “international proposition” that it is hardly possible to tell them apart.
PART I
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 judgment’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 ev
en 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 judgment 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.