Collected Stories by Henry James
‘I’m curious to see what you’ll do for me, now that you’ve got your sister with you,’ Mrs Headway presently remarked, having heard of this circumstance from Rupert Waterville. ‘I suppose you’ll have to do something, you know. I’m sorry for you; but I don’t see how you can get off. You might ask me to dine some day when she’s dining out. I would come even then, I think, because I want to keep on the right side of you.’
‘I call that the wrong side,’ said Littlemore.
‘Yes, I see. It’s your sister that’s on the right side. You’re in rather an embarrassing position, ain’t you? However, you take those things very quietly. There’s something in you that exasperates me. What does your sister think of me? Does she hate me?’
‘She knows nothing about you.’
‘Have you told her nothing?’
‘Never a word.’
‘Hasn’t she asked you? That shows that she hates me. She thinks I ain’t creditable to America. I know all that. She wants to show people over here that, however they may be taken in by me, she knows much better. But she’ll have to ask you about me; she can’t go on for ever. Then what’ll you say?’
‘That you’re the most successful woman in Europe.’
‘Oh, bother!’ cried Mrs Headway, with irritation.
‘Haven’t you got into European society?’
‘Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t. It’s too soon to see. I can’t tell this season. Every one says I’ve got to wait till next, to see if it’s the same. Sometimes they take you up for a few weeks, and then never know you again. You’ve got to fasten the thing somehow – to drive in a nail.’
‘You speak as if it were your coffin,’ said Littlemore.
‘Well, it is a kind of coffin. I’m burying my past!’
Littlemore winced at this. He was tired to death of her past. He changed the subject, and made her talk about London, a topic which she treated with a great deal of humour. She entertained him for half an hour, at the expense of most of her new acquaintances and of some of the most venerable features of the great city. He himself looked at England from the outside, as much as it was possible to do; but in the midst of her familiar allusions to people and things known to her only since yesterday, he was struck with the fact that she would never really be initiated. She buzzed over the surface of things like a fly on a window-pane. She liked it immensely; she was flattered, encouraged, excited; she dropped her confident judgements as if she were scattering flowers, and talked about her intentions, her prospects, her wishes. But she knew no more about English life than about the molecular theory. The words in which he had described her of old to Waterville came back to him: ‘Elle ne se doute de rien!’ Suddenly she jumped up; she was going out to dine, and it was time to dress. ‘Before you leave I want you to promise me something,’ she said off-hand, but with a look which he had seen before and which meant that the point was important. ‘You’ll be sure to be questioned about me.’ And then she paused.
‘How do people know I know you?’
‘You haven’t bragged about it? Is that what you mean? You can be a brute when you try. They do know it, at any rate. Possibly I may have told them. They’ll come to you, to ask about me. I mean from Lady Demesne. She’s in an awful state – she’s so afraid her son’ll marry me.’
Littlemore was unable to control a laugh. ‘I’m not, if he hasn’t done it yet.’
‘He can’t make up his mind. He likes me so much, yet he thinks I’m not a woman to marry.’ It was positively grotesque, the detachment with which she spoke of herself.
‘He must be a poor creature if he won’t marry you as you are,’ Littlemore said.
This was not a very gallant form of speech; but Mrs Headway let it pass. She only replied, ‘Well, he wants to be very careful, and so he ought to be!’
‘If he asks too many questions, he’s not worth marrying.’
‘I beg your pardon – he’s worth marrying whatever he does – he’s worth marrying for me. And I want to marry him – that’s what I want to do.’
‘Is he waiting for me, to settle it?’
‘He’s waiting for I don’t know what – for some one to come and tell him that I’m the sweetest of the sweet. Then he’ll believe it. Some one who has been out there and knows all about me. Of course you’re the man, you’re created on purpose. Don’t you remember how I told you in Paris that he wanted to ask you? He was ashamed, and he gave it up; he tried to forget me. But now it’s all on again; only, meanwhile, his mother has been at him. She works at him night and day, like a weasel in a hole, to persuade him that I’m far beneath him. He’s very fond of her, and he’s very open to influence – I mean from his mother, not from any one else. Except me, of course. Oh, I’ve influenced him, I’ve explained everything fifty times over. But some things are rather complicated, don’t you know; and he keeps coming back to them. He wants every little speck explained. He won’t come to you himself, but his mother will, or she’ll send some of her people. I guess she’ll send the lawyer – the family solicitor, they call him. She wanted to send him out to America to make inquiries, only she didn’t know where to send. Of course I couldn’t be expected to give the places, they’ve got to find them out for themselves. She knows all about you, and she has made the acquaintance of your sister. So you see how much I know. She’s waiting for you; she means to catch you. She has an idea she can fix you – make you say what’ll meet her views. Then she’ll lay it before Sir Arthur. So you’ll be so good as to deny everything.’
Littlemore listened to this little address attentively, but the conclusion left him staring. ‘You don’t mean that anything I can say will make a difference?’
‘Don’t be affected! You know it will as well as I.’
‘You make him out a precious idiot.’
‘Never mind what I make him out. I want to marry him, that’s all. And I appeal to you solemnly. You can save me, as you can lose me. If you lose me, you’ll be a coward. And if you say a word against me, I shall be lost.’
‘Go and dress for dinner, that’s your salvation,’ Littlemore answered, separating from 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 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
‘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 couldn’t see that she was much worse than many other women, 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 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 à 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 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!’
‘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 isn’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 didn’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 doesn’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 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 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.’
‘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 honourable man, who doesn’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 oughtn’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 oughtn’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.