The Nest, The White Pagoda, The Suicide, A Forsaken Temple, Miss Jones and the Masterpiece

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

Owen observed that Mrs. Waterlow, while maintaining all the suavities of intercourse, did not address Gwendolen as dearest.

It was not far to Mrs. Waterlow's, and he said, in reply to her question, that he liked walking, if she didn't mind going slowly on his account. He found himself telling her, then, about his lameness. A bad fall while skating in boyhood had handicapped him for life. The lamps had just been lighted and the evening of early spring was blurred with mist. Catkins hung against a faintly rosy sky, and in the gardens that they passed the crocuses stood thickly. Owen had a sense of adventure poignant in its reminiscent magic. Not for years had he so felt the savour of youth. He realised, with a deep happiness, that Mrs. Waterlow liked him; sometimes she laughed at things he said, and once or twice when her eyes turned on him he fancied in them the same expression of happy discovery with which she had looked at the pagoda. Well, he reflected, if she thought him delightful, too, she had had to get through a great many dusty newspapers to find him.

Mrs. Waterlow lived, away from the gardened houses of Chislebridge, in a small but rather stately house with a Georgian façade which stood on one of the narrower, older streets. They went up two or three stone steps from the pavement and knocked at a very bright and massive knocker, and the door was opened by a middle-aged Quakerish maid. The drawing-room was on the ground floor, and Mrs. Waterlow led him in.

Owen's astonishment, when he entered, prompted him to stand still and to gaze about him; but luckily he could not yield to the impulse, for he had to cross to the fire, near which, behind her tea-table, old Mrs. Waterlow sat, and had to be presented to her and to the middle-aged, academic-looking lady who was having tea with her. He was glad of the respite, for he had received a shock.

Old Mrs. Waterlow had dark, authoritative eyes and white hair much dressed under black lace, and the finest of hands, decorated with old seals and old diamonds. She must, he felt, be a companion at once inspiriting and disquieting, for she had the demeanour of a naughty, haughty child, and, as she held Owen in talk for some moments, he perceived that her conversation was of a sort to cause alarm and amusement in her listeners. Poor old Professor Selden, who was mentioned, offered her an opportunity for the frankest witticisms, and,—when her daughter-in-law protested,—"Yes, dear, I know you are fond of him," the old lady replied, "and so am I; but he is, all the same, very like a damp potato that has begun to sprout."

"Now look at my pagoda, Mr. Stacpole," said young Mrs. Waterlow, laughing, yet, he saw, not pleased, and turning from the fire where she had been standing with her foot on the fender.

"Does Mr. Stacpole care for bric-à-brac, too?" old Mrs. Waterlow inquired. "Cicely came home with this last treasure in as much triumph as if some one had left her a fortune. I resent the pagoda because it means that she will go without a spring hat. She is always coming home in triumph and always doing without hats; and I sit here without an atom of taste, and get the credit for hers. Frankly, Sybilla, my dear," she addressed the academic lady, "I'd be quite content to sit upon red reps and to cover my tea-pot with a pink satin cosy with apple-blossoms painted on it. I had such a cosy given to me this Christmas; but Cicely wouldn't let me use it."

Owen had risen to face his ordeal. Mrs. Waterlow, he had seen it in the first astonished glance, had, like everybody else in Chislebridge, been imitating Gwendolen, and his whole conception of her was undergoing a reconstruction. He followed her to the table on which the white pagoda stood, glancing about him and taking in deep drafts of disillusion. Red lacquer and Japanese prints, white porcelain and dimly shining jars of old Venetian glass—it was a replica, even to its white walls, of Gwendolen's drawing-room, but hushed and saddened, as it were, humbly smiling, with folded hands and no attempt at emulation. And in the midst, beautifully in place on its little black lacquer table, was the pagoda, offering him not a hint of help, but seeming rather, to smile at him with a fantastic and malicious mirth. He was aware, as from the pagoda he brought his eyes back to young Mrs. Waterlow, that he was dreadfully sorry. In another woman he would not have given the naïve derivativeness a thought; but in her, whom he had felt so full of savour and independence? One thing only helped him, beside the effortless atmosphere of the room, and that was the fact—he clung to it—that the glasses set everywhere among the red and black and white were filled not, thank goodness! with pink roses, but with poppy anemones, white and purple and rose. And the first thing he found to say of the pagoda to Mrs. Waterlow was, "It looks lovely in here," and then, turning to the nearest bowl of delicate colour, he added, "and how beautifully these flowers go with your room!"

He wondered, as their eyes met over the anemones, whether Mrs. Waterlow guessed his discomfiture.

When he saw Gwendolen that evening she asked him at once whether he liked old Mrs. Waterlow. She did not ask him how he liked young Mrs. Waterlow's drawing-room, and he reflected that this was really very magnanimous of her.