Lady Barbarina, The Siege of London, An International Episode, and Other Tales

“Go and dress for dinner—that’s your salvation,” Littlemore returned as he quitted her at the head of the stairs.

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 she put it, to hold him with glittering eyes.  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 might have pitied her if she had “muffed” it, as they said, but he just sensibly resented her heavy scoring.  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 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 her brother’s den.  Reggie had gone on to a “squash” somewhere, and she had returned in her eagerness to the third member of their party.  She was too impatient even to wait for morning.  She looked impatient; she was very unlike George Littlemore.  “I want you to tell me about Mrs. Headway,” she at once began, 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 fair neat woman, who had once been pretty, with a small thin voice, a finished 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 under that banner borrowed distinction from rarity.  She was by nature a great conservative and had ended by figuring as a better Tory than her husband; to the effect of being thought by some of her old friends to have changed immensely since her marriage.  She knew English society as if she had compiled a red-covered handbook of the subject; had a way of looking prepared for far-reaching social action; 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; whereby she thought it rather odd he had never spoken of her “at home.”  Littlemore admitted, on this, that he had known her a long time, referred to the conditions in which the acquaintance had sprung up, and added that he had seen her that afternoon.  He sat there smoking his cigar and looking up at the cornice 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 true that her antecedents had not been most peculiar?

“I may as well tell you I’ve a letter from Lady Demesne,” his visitor went on.  “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 him; but he gave her no invitation to proceed.  He knew she had come to him to extract a declaration adverse to Mrs. Headway’s projects, and however little edification he might find in this lady’s character he hated to be arraigned or prodded.  He had a great esteem for Mrs. Dolphin, who, among other Hampshire notions, had picked up that of the major weight of the male members of any family, so that she treated him with a consideration which made his having an English sister rather a luxury.  Nevertheless he was not, on the subject of his old Texan friend, very accommodating.  He admitted once for all that she hadn’t behaved properly—it wasn’t worth while to split hairs about that; but he couldn’t see that she was much worse than lots of other women about the place—women at once less amusing and less impugned; and he couldn’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 not to save poor Arthur Demesne.

“Perfectly willing!” Littlemore returned.  “I’ve nothing to do with saving others.  All I’ve got to do is not to marry her myself.”

“Don’t you think then we’ve any responsibilities, any duties to society?”

“I don’t know what you mean.  Society can look after itself.  If she can bring it off 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 she has an assurance à toute épreuve.  But English society has become scandalously easy.  I never saw anything like the people who are taken up.  Mrs. Headway has had only to appear to succeed.  If they can only make out big enough spots in you they’ll find you attractive.  It’s like the decadence of the Roman Empire.  You can see to look at this person that she’s not a lady.  She’s pretty, very pretty, but she might be a dissipated dressmaker.  She wouldn’t go down for a minute in New York.  I’ve seen her three times—she apparently goes everywhere.  I didn’t speak of her—I was wanting to see what you’d do.  I judged you meant to do nothing, then this letter decided me.  It’s written on purpose to be shown you; it’s what the poor lady—such a nice woman herself—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’d draw up a little statement I’d put it before you as soon as we should get 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 as Mrs. Headway 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’d know who I was and get somehow at me.  I believe she’d really have been capable of it, and I got so frightened 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 neither agitated nor voluble; she moved from point to point with the temper and method of a person accustomed to preside at committees and to direct them.  She deeply desired, however, that Mrs. Headway’s triumphant career should be checked; such a person had sufficiently abused a tolerance already so overstrained.  Herself a party to an international marriage, Mrs. Dolphin naturally desired the class to which she belonged to close its ranks and carry its standard high.

“It seems to me she’s quite as good as the poor young man himself,” said Littlemore, lighting another cigar.

“As good?  What do you mean by ‘good’?  No one has ever breathed a word against him.”

“Very likely.  But he’s a nonentity of the first water, and she at least a positive quantity, not to say a positive force.  She’s a person, and a very clever one.  Besides, she’s quite as good as the women lots of them have married.  It’s new to me that your alliances have been always so august.”

“I know nothing about other cases,” Mrs. Dolphin said, “I only know about this one.  It so happens that I’ve been brought near 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 of 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 wretched.  How can you pretend that such a flaming barbarian can be worked into any civilisation?  What I see is a fine old race—one of the oldest and most honourable in England, people with every tradition of good conduct and high principle—and a dreadful disreputable vulgar little woman, who hasn’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!”

“Well, I don’t,” Littlemore returned at his leisure.  “I don’t care a pin for 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 isn’t indecent—you go too far.  You must remember that she’s an old friend of mine.”  He 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’re in love with her too!” she quite wailed, 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 had been one winter when even Mrs. Headway’s sister didn’t know who was her husband?

Mrs. Dolphin’s reply was to read out Lady Demesne’s letter, which her brother, as she folded it up again, pronounced one of the most extraordinary communications he had ever listened to.  “It’s very sad—it’s a cry of distress,” she declared.  “The whole meaning of it is that she wishes you’d come and see her.  She doesn’t say it in so many words, but I can read between the lines.  Besides, she told me she’d give anything to see you.  Let me assure you it’s your duty to go.”

“To go and abuse Nancy Beck?”

“Go and rave about her if you like!”  This was very clever of Mrs. Dolphin, but her brother was not so easily beguiled.  He didn’t take that view of his duty, and he declined to cross her ladyship’s threshold.  “Then she’ll come and see you,” said his visitor 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.”  And she gathered up her cloak and gloves.

Meeting Rupert Waterville the next day, as he often did, at the Saint 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 desperate letter from her.”

Our young man was all critical attention again.  “‘Desperate’?”

“The letter of a woman so scared that she’ll do anything.  I may be a great brute, but her scare amuses me.”

“You’re in the position of Olivier de Jalin in Le Demi-Monde,” Waterville remarked.

“In Le 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 honourable man, who doesn’t know how bad she is, and they who do know step in and push her back.”

“Yes, it comes to me.  There was a good deal of lying,” Littlemore recalled, “all round.”

“They prevented the marriage, however—which is the great thing.”

“The great thing if your heart’s set!  One of the active parties was the intimate friend of the man in love, the other was his son.  Demesne’s nothing at all to me.”

“He’s a very good fellow,” said Waterville.

“Then go and talk to him.”

“Play the part of Olivier de Jalin?  Oh I can’t.  I’m not Olivier.  But I think I do wish he’d corner me of himself.  Mrs. Headway oughtn’t really to be allowed to pass.”

“I wish to heaven they’d let me alone,” Littlemore murmured ruefully and staring 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.

“Assuredly I can refuse to answer questions—even that one.”

“As I told you before, that will amount to a condemnation.”

Longmore frowningly debated.  “It may amount to what it pleases.  I guess I’ll go back to Paris.”

“That will be the same as not answering.  But it’s quite the best thing you can do.  I’ve really been thinking it out,” Waterville continued, “and I don’t hold that from the point of view of social good faith she’s an article we ought to contribute—!”  He looked at the matter clearly now from a great elevation; his tone, the expression of his face, betrayed this lofty flight; the effect of which, as he glanced down at his didactic young friend, Littlemore found peculiarly irritating.

He shifted about.  “No, after all, hanged if they shall drive me away!” he exclaimed abruptly; and he walked off while his companion wondered.

X

The morning after this the elder man received a note from Mrs. Headway—a short and simple note, consisting merely of the words: “I shall be at home this afternoon; will you come and see me at five?  I’ve something particular to say to you.”  He sent no answer to the question, but went to the little house in Chesterfield Street at the hour its mistress had proposed.

“I don’t believe you know what sort of a woman I am!” she began as soon as he stood before her.

“Oh Lord!” Littlemore groaned as he dropped into a chair.  Then he added: “Please don’t strike up that air!”

“Ah, but it’s exactly what I’ve wanted to say.  It’s very important.  You don’t know me—you don’t understand me.  You think you do—but you don’t.”

“It isn’t for the want of your having told me—many many times!”  And Littlemore had a hard critical smile, irritated as he was at so austere a prospect.  The last word of all was decidedly that Mrs. Headway was a dreadful bore.  It was always the last word about such women, who never really deserved to be spared.

She glared at him a little on this; her face was no longer the hospitable inn-front with the showy sign of the Smile.  The sign had come down; she looked sharp and strained, almost old; the change was complete.  It made her serious as he had never seen her—having seen her always only either too pleased or too disgusted.  “Yes, I know; men are so stupid.  They know nothing about women but what women tell them.  And women tell them things on purpose to see how stupid they can be.  I’ve told you things like that just for amusement when it was dull.  If you believed them it was your own fault.  But now I want you really to know.”

“I don’t want to know.  I know enough.”

“How do you mean you know enough?” she cried with all her sincerity.  “What business have you to know anything?”  The poor little woman, in her passionate purpose, was not obliged to be consistent, and the loud laugh with which Littlemore greeted this must have seemed to her unduly harsh.  “You shall know what I want you to know, however.  You think me a bad woman—you don’t respect me; I told you that in Paris.  I’ve done things I don’t understand, myself, to-day; that I admit as fully as you please.  But I’ve completely changed, and I want to change everything.  You ought to enter into that, you ought to see what I want.  I hate everything that has happened to me before this; I loathe it, I despise it.  I went on that way trying—trying one thing and another.  But now I’ve got what I want.  Do you expect me to go down on my knees to you?  I believe I will, I’m so anxious.  You can help me—no one else can do a thing; they’re only waiting to see if he’ll do it.  I told you in Paris you could help me, and it’s just as true now.  Say a good word for me for Christ’s sake!  You haven’t lifted your little finger, or I should know it by this time.  It will just make the difference.  Or if your sister would come and see me I should be all right.  Women are pitiless, pitiless, and you’re pitiless too.  It isn’t that Mrs. Dolphin’s anything so great, most of my friends are better than that!—but she’s the one woman who knows, and every one seems to know she knows.  He knows it, and he knows she doesn’t come.  So she kills me—she kills me!  I understand perfectly what he wants—I’ll do everything, be anything, I’ll be the most perfect wife.  The old woman will adore me when she knows me—it’s too stupid of her not to see.  Everything in the past’s over; it has all fallen away from me; it’s the life of another woman.  This was what I wanted; I knew I should find it some day.  I knew I should be at home in the best—and with the highest.  What could I do in those horrible places?  I had to take what I could.  But now I’ve got nice surroundings.  I want you to do me justice.  You’ve never done me justice.  That’s what I sent for you for.”

Littlemore had suddenly ceased to be bored, but a variety of feelings had taken the place of that one.  It was impossible not to be touched; she really meant what she said.  People don’t change their nature, but they change their desires, their ideal, their effort.  This incoherent passionate plea was an assurance that she was literally panting to be respectable.  But the poor woman, whatever she did, was condemned, as he had said of old, in Paris, to Waterville, to be only half right.  The colour rose to her visitor’s face as he listened to her outpouring of anxiety and egotism; she hadn’t managed her early life very well, but there was no need of her going down on her knees.  “It’s very painful to me to hear all this.  You’re under no obligation to say such things to me.  You entirely misconceive my attitude—my influence.”

“Oh yes, you shirk it—you only wish to shirk it!” she cried, flinging away fiercely the sofa-cushion on which she had been resting.

“Marry whom you damn please!” Littlemore quite shouted, springing to his feet.

He had hardly spoken when the door was thrown open and the servant announced Sir Arthur Demesne.  This shy adventurer entered with a certain briskness, but stopped short on seeing Mrs. Headway engaged with another guest.  Recognising Littlemore, however, he gave a light exclamation which might have passed for a greeting.  Mrs. Headway, who had risen as he came in, looked with wonderful eyes from one of the men to the other; then, like a person who had a sudden inspiration, she clasped her hands together and cried out: “I’m so glad you’ve met.  If I had arranged it it couldn’t be better!”

“If you had arranged it?” said Sir Arthur, crinkling a little his high white forehead, while the conviction rose before Littlemore that she had indeed arranged it.

“I’m going to do something very queer”—and her extravagant manner confirmed her words.

“You’re excited, I’m afraid you’re ill.”  Sir Arthur stood there with his hat and his stick; he was evidently much annoyed.

“It’s an excellent opportunity; you must forgive me if I take advantage.”  And she flashed a tender touching ray at the Baronet.  “I’ve wanted this a long time—perhaps you’ve seen I wanted it.  Mr. Littlemore has known me from far back; he’s an old old friend.  I told you that in Paris, don’t you remember?  Well he’s my only one, and I want him to speak for me.”  Her eyes had turned now to Littlemore; they rested upon him with a sweetness that only made the whole proceeding more audacious.  She had begun to smile again, though she was visibly trembling.  “He’s my only one,” she continued; “it’s a great pity, you ought to have known others.  But I’m very much alone and must make the best of what I have.  I want so much that some one else than myself should speak for me.  Women usually can ask that service of a relative or of another woman.  I can’t; it’s a great pity, but it’s not my fault, it’s my misfortune.  None of my people are here—I’m terribly alone in the world.  But Mr. Littlemore will tell you; he’ll say he has known me for ever so long.  He’ll tell you if he knows any reason—if there’s anything against me.  He has been wanting the chance—he thought he couldn’t begin himself.  You see I treat you as an old friend, dear Mr. Littlemore.  I’ll leave you with Sir Arthur.  You’ll both excuse me.”  The expression of her face, turned towards Littlemore as she delivered herself of this singular proposal, had the intentness of a magician who wishes to work a spell.  She darted at Sir Arthur another pleading ray and then swept out of the room.

The two men remained in the extraordinary position she had created for them; neither of them moved even to open the door for her.  She closed it behind her, and for a moment there was a deep portentous silence.  Sir Arthur Demesne, very pale, stared hard at the carpet.

“I’m placed in an impossible situation,” Littlemore said at last, “and I don’t imagine you accept it any more than I do.”  His fellow-visitor kept the same attitude, neither looking up nor answering.  Littlemore felt a sudden gush of pity for him.  Of course he couldn’t accept the situation, but all the same he was half-sick with anxiety to see how this nondescript American, who was both so precious and so superfluous, so easy and so abysmal, would consider Mrs. Headway’s challenge.  “Have you any question to ask me?” Littlemore went on.  At which Sir Arthur looked up.  The other had seen the look before; he had described it to Waterville after Mrs. Headway’s admirer came to call on him in Paris.  There were other things mingled with it now—shame, annoyance, pride; but the great thing, the intense desire to know, was paramount.  “Good God, how can I tell him?” seemed to hum in Littlemore’s ears.

Sir Arthur’s hesitation would have been of the briefest; but his companion heard the tick of the clock while it lasted.  “Certainly I’ve no question to ask,” the young man said in a voice of cool almost insolent surprise.

“Good-day then, confound you.”

“The same to you!”

But Littlemore left him in possession.  He expected to find Mrs. Headway at the foot of the staircase; but he quitted the house without interruption.

On the morrow, after luncheon, as he was leaving the vain retreat at Queen Anne’s Gate, the postman handed him a letter.  Littlemore opened and read it on the steps, an operation which took but a moment.

Dear Mr. Littlemore—It will interest you to know that I’m engaged to be married to Sir Arthur Demesne and that our marriage is to take place as soon as their stupid old Parliament rises.  But it’s not to come out for some days, and I’m sure I can trust meanwhile to your complete discretion.

Yours very sincerely,Nancy H.

P.S.—He made me a terrible scene for what I did yesterday, but he came back in the evening and we fixed it all right.  That’s how the thing comes to be settled.  He won’t tell me what passed between you—he requested me never to allude to the subject.  I don’t care—I was bound you should speak!

Littlemore thrust this epistle into his pocket and marched away with it.  He had come out on various errands, but he forgot his business for the time and before he knew it had walked into Hyde Park.  He left the carriages and riders to one side and followed the Serpentine into Kensington Gardens, of which he made the complete circuit.  He felt annoyed, and more disappointed than he understood—than he would have understood if he had tried.  Now that Nancy Beck had succeeded her success was an irritation, and he was almost sorry he hadn’t said to Sir Arthur: “Oh well, she was pretty bad, you know.”  However, now they were at one they would perhaps leave him alone.  He walked the irritation off and before he went about his original purposes had ceased to think of Mrs. Headway.  He went home at six o’clock, and the servant who admitted him informed him in doing so that Mrs. Dolphin had requested he should be told on his return that she wished to see him in the drawing-room.  “It’s another trap!” he said to himself instinctively; but in spite of this reflexion he went upstairs.  On entering his sister’s presence he found she had a visitor.  This visitor, to all appearance on the point of departing, was a tall elderly woman, and the two ladies stood together in the middle of the room.

“I’m so glad you’ve come back,” said Mrs. Dolphin without meeting her brother’s eye.  “I want so much to introduce you to Lady Demesne that I hoped you’d come in.  Must you really go—won’t you stay a little?” she added, turning to her companion; and without waiting for an answer went on hastily: “I must leave you a moment—excuse me.  I’ll come back!”  Before he knew it Littlemore found himself alone with her ladyship and understood that since he hadn’t been willing to go and see her she had taken upon herself to make an advance.  It had the queerest effect, all the same, to see his sister playing the same tricks as Nancy Beck!