Part 15 (1/2)
”Ah, at San Pablo the women did the shooting.”
”They don't seem to have killed _you_!” she returned archly.
”No, but I'm riddled with wounds.”
”Well, this is very remarkable”-the lady reverted to Houdon's statue.
”It's beautifully modelled.”
”You're perhaps reading M. de Voltaire,” Littlemore suggested.
”No; but I've purchased his works.”
”They're not proper reading for ladies,” said the young Englishman severely, offering his arm to his charge.
”Ah, you might have told me before I had bought them!” she exclaimed in exaggerated dismay.
”I couldn't imagine you'd buy a hundred and fifty volumes.”
”A hundred and fifty? I've only bought two.”
”Perhaps two won't hurt you!” Littlemore hopefully contributed.
She darted him a reproachful ray. ”I know what you mean-that I'm too bad already! Well, bad as I am you must come and see me.” And she threw him the name of her hotel as she walked away with her Englishman. Waterville looked after the latter with a certain interest; he had heard of him in London and had seen his portrait in _Vanity Fair_.
It was not yet time to go down, in spite of this gentleman's saying so, and Littlemore and his friend pa.s.sed out to the balcony of the foyer.
”Headway-Headway? Where the deuce did she get that name?” Littlemore asked as they looked down into the flaring dusk.
”From her husband I suppose,” his friend suggested.
”From her husband? From which? The last was named Beck.”
”How many has she had?” the younger man inquired, anxious to hear how it was Mrs. Headway wasn't respectable.
”I haven't the least idea. But it wouldn't be difficult to find out, as I believe they're all living. She was Mrs. Beck-Nancy Beck-when I knew her.”
”Nancy Beck!” cried Waterville, aghast. He was thinking of her delicate profile, like that of a pretty Roman empress. There was a great deal to be explained.
Littlemore explained it in a few words before they returned to their places, admitting indeed that he wasn't yet able to clear up her present appearance. She was a memory of his Western days; he had seen her last some six years before. He had known her very well and in several places; the circle of her activity was chiefly the South-west. This activity had been during that time of a vague character, except in the sense that it was exclusively social. She was supposed to have a husband, one Philadelphia Beck, the editor of a Democratic newspaper, the _Dakota Sentinel_; but Littlemore had never seen him-the pair were living apart-and it had been the impression at San Pablo that matrimony, for Mr.
and Mrs. Beck, was about played out. He remembered now to have heard afterwards that she was getting a divorce. She got divorces very easily, she was so taking in court. She had got one or two before from a man whose name he couldn't remember, and there was a legend that even these were not the first. She had been enormously divorced! When he first met her in California she called herself Mrs. Grenville, which he had been given to understand was not an appellation acquired by matrimony, but her parental name, resumed after the dissolution of an unfortunate union.
She had had these episodes-her unions were all unfortunate-and had borne half-a-dozen names. She was a charming woman, especially for New Mexico; but she had been divorced too often-it was a tax on one's credulity: she must have repudiated more husbands than she had married.
At San Pablo she was staying with her sister, whose actual spouse-she too had been divorced-the princ.i.p.al man of the place, kept a bank (with the aid of a six-shooter), and who had never suffered Nancy to want for a home during her unattached periods. Nancy had begun very young; she must be about thirty-seven to-day. That was all he meant by her not being respectable. Her chronology was rather mixed; her sister at least had once told him that there was one winter when she didn't know herself who was Nancy's husband. She had gone in mainly for editors-she esteemed the journalistic profession. They must all have been dreadful ruffians, for her own amiability was manifest. It was well known that whatever she had done she had done in self-defence. In fine she had done things-that was the main point now. She had been as pretty as could still be seen, and as good-natured and as clever as could likewise be yet measured; she had been quite the best company in those parts. She was a genuine product of the wild West-a flower of the Pacific slope; ignorant, absurd, crude, but full of pluck and spirit, of natural intelligence and of a certain intermittent haphazard felicity of impulse. She used to sigh that she only wanted a chance-apparently she had found that now. At one time, without her, he didn't see how he could have put up with the life. He had started a cattle-ranch, to which San Pablo was the nearest town, and he used to ride over to see her. Sometimes he stayed there a week; then he went to see her every evening. It was infernally hot; they used to sit on the back piazza. She was always as attractive and very nearly as well-dressed as they had just beheld her. As far as appearance went she might have been transplanted at an hour's notice from that dusty old settlement to the city by the Seine.
”Some of those barbaric women are wonderful,” Littlemore said. ”Like her, they only want a chance.”
He hadn't been in love with her-there never was anything of that sort between them. There might have been of course, but as happened there wasn't. Headway would have been then the successor of Beck; perhaps there had been others between. She was in no sort of ”society”; she only had a local reputation (”the well-known Texan belle,” the newspapers called her-the other editors, to whom she wasn't married), though indeed in that s.p.a.cious civilisation the locality was large. She knew nothing of the East and to the best of his belief at that period had never seen New York. Various things might have happened in those six years, however; no doubt she had ”come up.” The West was sending us everything (Littlemore spoke as a New Yorker); no doubt it would send us at last our brilliant women. The well-known Texan belle used to look quite over the head of New York; even in those days she thought and talked of Paris, which there was no prospect of her knowing: that was the way she had got on in New Mexico. She had had her ambition, her presentiments; she had known she was meant for better things. Even at San Pablo she had prefigured her member of Parliament; every now and then a wandering Englishman came within her range. They weren't all Sir Arthurs, like her present acquisition, but they were usually a change from the editors.
What she was doing with her present acquisition Littlemore was curious to see. She was certainly-if he had any capacity for that state of mind, which was not too apparent-making the gentleman happy. She looked very splendid; Headway had probably made a ”pile,” an achievement not to be imputed to any of the others. She didn't accept money-he was sure she didn't accept money. With all of which, on their way back to their seats, Littlemore, whose tone had been humorous, but with that strain of the pensive which is inseparable from retrospect, suddenly burst into audible laughter. ”The modelling of statues and the works of Voltaire!”