Lady Barbarina Part 17

"Every one was looking at you the other night at the theatre," Littlemore continued. "How can you hope to escape notice?"

"I don't want to escape notice. People have always looked at me and I guess they always will. But there are different ways of being looked at, and I know the way I want. I mean to have it too!" Mrs. Headway prettily shrilled. Yes, she was full of purpose.

He sat there face to face with her and for some time said nothing. He had a mixture of feelings, and the memory of other places, other hours, was stealing over him. There had been of old a very considerable absence of interposing surfaces between these two-he had known her as one knew people only amid the civilisation of big tornadoes and back piazzas. He had liked her extremely in a place where it would have been ridiculous to be difficult to please. But his sense of this fact was somehow connected with other and such now alien facts; his liking for Nancy Beck was an emotion of which the sole setting was a back piazza. She presented herself here on a new basis-she appeared to want to be cla.s.sified afresh.

Littlemore said to himself that this was too much trouble; he had taken her at the great time in that way-he couldn't begin at this late hour to take her in another way. He asked himself if she were going to be a real bore. It wasn't easy to suppose her bent on ravage, but she might become tiresome if she were too disposed to be different. It made him rather afraid when she began to talk about European society, about his sister, to p.r.o.nounce things vulgar. Littlemore was naturally merciful and decently just; but there was in his composition an element of the indolent, the sceptical, perhaps even the brutal, which made him decidedly prefer the simplicity of their former terms of intercourse. He had no particular need to see a woman rise again, as the mystic process was called; he didn't believe in women's rising again. He believed in their not going down, thought it perfectly possible and eminently desirable; but held it was much better for society that the divisions, the categories, the differing values, should be kept clear. He didn't believe in bridging the chasms, in muddling the kinds. In general he didn't pretend to say what was good for society-society seemed to him rather in a bad way; but he had a conviction on this particular point.

Nancy Beck going in for the great prizes, that spectacle might be entertaining for a simple spectator; but it would be a nuisance, an embarra.s.sment, from the moment anything more than detached "fun" should represent his share. He had no wish to be "mean," but it might be well to show her he wasn't to be humbugged.

"Oh if there's anything you want you'll have it," he said in answer to her last remark. "You've always had what you want."

"Well, I want something new this time. Does your sister reside in London?"

"My dear lady, what do you know about my sister?" Littlemore asked.

"She's not a woman you'd care in the least for."

His old friend had a marked pause. "You don't really respect me!" she then abruptly and rather gaily cried. It had one of her "Texan" effects of drollery; so that, yes, evidently, if he wished to preserve the simplicity of their former intercourse she was willing to humour him.

"Ah, my dear Mrs. Beck-!" he vaguely protested, using her former name quite by accident. At San Pablo he-and apparently she-had never thought whether he respected her or not. That never came up.

"That's a proof of it-calling me by that hateful name! Don't you believe I'm married? I haven't been fortunate in my names," she pensively added.

"You make it very awkward when you say such mad things. My sister lives most of the year in the country; she's very simple, rather dull, perhaps a trifle narrow-minded. You're very clever, very lively, and as large and loose and free as all creation. That's why I think you wouldn't like her."

"You ought to be ashamed to run down your sister!" Mrs. Headway made prompt answer. "You told me once-at San Pablo-that she was the nicest woman you knew. I made a note of that, you see. And you told me she was just my age. So that makes it rather inglorious for you if you won't introduce me!" With which she gave a laugh that perhaps a little heralded danger. "I'm not in the least afraid of her being dull. It's all right, it's just refined and nice, to be dull. I'm ever so much too exciting."

"You are indeed, ever so much! But nothing is more easy than to know my sister," said Littlemore, who knew perfectly that what he said was untrue. And then as a diversion from this delicate topic he brought out: "Are you going to marry Sir Arthur?"

"Don't you think I've been married about enough?"

"Possibly; but this is a new line, it would be different. An Englishman-that's a new sensation."

"If I _should_ marry it would be a European," she said judiciously.

"Your chance is very good-they're all marrying Americans."

"He would have to be some one fine, the man I should marry now. I have a good deal to make up, you know. That's what I want to learn about Sir Arthur. All this time you haven't told me."

"I've nothing in the world to tell-I've never heard of him. Hasn't he told you himself?"

"Nothing at all; he's very modest. He doesn't brag nor 'blow' nor make himself out anything great. That's what I like him for: I think it's in such good taste. I do love good taste!" said Mrs. Headway. "But all this time," she added, "you haven't told me you'd help me."

"How can I help you? I'm no one here, you know-I've no power."

"You can help me by not preventing me. I want you to promise not to prevent me." She continued to give him her charming conscious eyes, which seemed to look far into his own.

"Good Lord, how could I prevent you?"

"Well, I'm not quite sure of how. But you might try."

"Oh I'm too lazy and too stupid," Littlemore said.

"Yes," she replied, musing as she still looked at him. "I think you're too stupid. But I think you're also too kind," she added more graciously. She was almost irresistible when she said such a thing as that.

They talked for a quarter of an hour longer, and at last-as if she had had scruples-she spoke to him of his own marriage, of the death of his wife, matters to which she alluded more felicitously (as he thought) than to some other points. "If you've a little girl you ought to be very happy; that's what I should like to have. Lord, I should make her a nice woman! Not like me-in another style!" When he rose to leave her she made a great point of his coming again-she was to be some weeks longer in Paris. And he must bring Mr. Waterville.

"Your English friend won't like that-our coming very often," Littlemore reminded her as he stood with his hand on the door.

But she met this without difficulty. "I don't know what he has to do with it."

"Neither do I. Only he must be in love with you."

"That doesn't give him any right. Mercy, if I had had to put myself out for all the men that have been in love with me!"

"Of course you'd have had a terrible life. Even doing as you please you've had rather an agitated one," Littlemore pursued. "But your young Englishman's sentiments appear to give him the right to sit there, after one comes in, looking blighted and bored. That might become very tiresome."

"The moment he becomes tiresome I send him away. You can trust me for that."

"Oh it doesn't matter after all." Our friend was perfectly conscious that nothing would suit him less than to have undisturbed possession of Mrs. Headway.

She came out with him into the antechamber. Mr. Max, the courier, was fortunately not there. She lingered a little; she appeared to have more to say. "On the contrary he likes you to come," she then continued; "he wants to study my friends."

"To study them?"

"He wants to find out about me, and he thinks they may tell him something. Some day he'll ask you right out 'What sort of a woman is she anyway?'"

"Hasn't he found out yet?"

"He doesn't understand me," said Mrs. Headway, surveying the front of her dress. "He has never seen any one like me."

"I should imagine not!"

"So he'll just try to find out from you."

"Well then he _shall_ find out," Littlemore returned. "I'll just tell him you're the most charming woman in Europe."

"That ain't a description! Besides, he knows it. He wants to know if I'm respectable."

"Why should he fuss about it?" Littlemore asked-not at once.

She grew a little pale; she seemed to be watching his lips. "Well, mind you tell him all right," she went on, with her wonderful gay glare, the strain of which yet brought none of her colour back.

"Respectable? I'll tell him you're adorable!"

She stood a moment longer. "Ah, you're no use!" she rather harshly wailed. And she suddenly turned away and pa.s.sed back into her sitting-room, with the heavy rustle of her far-trailing skirts.

III