Part 20 (1/2)

”What do you think?”

”Well, I suppose you'd have said that his question wasn't fair.”

”That would have been tantamount to admitting the worst.”

”Yes,” Waterville brooded again, ”you couldn't do that. On the other hand if he had put it to you on your honour whether she's a woman to marry it would have been very awkward.”

”Awkward enough. Luckily he has no business to put things to me on my honour. Moreover, nothing has pa.s.sed between us to give him the right to ask me _any_ questions about Mrs. Headway. As she's a great friend of mine he can't pretend to expect me to give confidential information.”

”You don't think she's a woman to marry, all the same,” Waterville returned. ”And if a man were to try to corner you on it you might knock him down, but it wouldn't be an answer.”

”It would have to serve,” said Littlemore. ”There are cases where a man must lie n.o.bly,” he added.

Waterville looked grave. ”What cases?”

”Well, where a woman's honour's at stake.”

”I see what you mean. That's of course if he has been himself concerned with her.”

”Himself or another. It doesn't matter.”

”I think it does matter. I don't like false swearing,” 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 lark 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, then, to give her a leg up?”

”Heaven forbid! But I mean to bet on her.”

Waterville gave his companion a serious glance; he thought him strangely superficial. The alternatives looked all formidable, however, and he sighed as he laid down his fork.

VI

The Easter holidays that year were unusually genial; mild watery suns.h.i.+ne a.s.sisted the progress of the spring. The high dense hedges, in Warwicks.h.i.+re, 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 more densely and downily to bristle. Rupert Waterville, devoted to his duties and faithful in attendance at the Legation, had had little time to enjoy the rural hospitality that shows the English, as he had promptly learned to say, at their best. Freshly yet not wildly exotic he had repeatedly been invited to grace such scenes, but had had hitherto to practise with reserve the great native art of ”staying.” He cultivated method and 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 appeal from 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, my son tells me you will perhaps be able to come down here on the seventeenth 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 him, a fortnight before from an hotel in Cork Street, to say she had arrived in London for the season and should be happy to see him. He had called on her, trembling with the fear that she would break ground about her presentation at Court; but he was agreeably surprised by her overlooking for the hour 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 had made many friends; she a.s.sured him she knew half the Roman n.o.bility. ”They're charming people; they've only one fault, they stay too long,” she said. And in answer to his always slower process, ”I mean when they come to see you,” she explained. ”They used to come every evening and then wanted to stay till the next day. They were all princes and counts. I used to give them cigars and c.o.c.ktails-n.o.body else did. I knew as many people as I wanted,” she added in a moment, feeling perhaps again in her visitor the intimate intelligence 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've a feeling for the ruins and the Campagna; I found 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 Pablo-if it hadn't been for the temples. I liked to think it all over when I was riding round; I was always brooding over the past.” At this moment, nevertheless, 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 what 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 Tory member 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 had reference to Mrs.

Headway. Our young man, the previous autumn, had been recalled to London just after the incident of which he found himself witness in the court of the Hotel Meurice; and all he knew of its consequence was what he had learned from Littlemore, who, proceeding to America, where he had suddenly been advised of reasons for his spending the winter, pa.s.sed through the British capital. Littlemore had then 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,” dear Nancy had reported. ”I should be willing to be old if I could be like that,”

she had added, forgetting for the moment that the crown of the maturer charm dangled before her at a diminis.h.i.+ng distance. 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's up to in Rome?” Waterville had asked; his imagination failing him here, as he was not yet in possession of that pa.s.sage.

”I haven't the least idea. And I don't care!” Littlemore had added in a moment. Before leaving London he had further mentioned that Mrs.