Her standard of comfort at a hotel was so impossible that she became an object of terror and dislike to the waiters and chambermaids. She was punctual in payment, but very grasping, and wrung many concessions from the hotels by a persistence which no men and few women would have had the courage to display. She was always seeking the ideal hotel, and for this reason she was always wandering, and never was long enough in one place to strike any roots and create a feeling of home. This life corroded her character. She became more bad-tempered and nagging, always up in arms, scenting out liberties, and thinking she was taken advantage of. She was not a character which does well by itself, and under a domineering manner she concealed her weakness, vacillation, and timidity. She was divorced from every duty, every responsibility, every natural tie, with no outlet for her interest or her sympathy. It seems inconceivable that she should willingly have led such an existence. She was however, much more satisfied with herself and with things in general, than she had formerly been. She did not have stormy repentances or outbursts against her lot; she no longer desired what was unattainable. If she did not have a particularly high standard of happiness or of character, neither, in her opinion, had the rest of the world. Not that she thought much of these things. Over-thinking and over-longing had caused her much misery in early life, and she shrank from opening all those wounds again. She faced facts as little as she could. She lived from day to day, and her inner self was really very much what her outer self seemed, absorbed in the very small round of events which concerned her. The days passed, the months passed, the years passed. She saw them go unregretted, and when they were gone, she did not remember them. Nothing had happened in them, bad or good, to mark their course.
"What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form, in moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!"
CHAPTER X
It has been shown that Henrietta had not much power of attracting affection to herself, and she had long ceased to desire it. She was now brought into contact with numbers of different people, and as travelling acquaintances she liked them, but when they parted, she did not want to see them again.
There was, however, an exception to this rule. Henrietta found many companions in misfortune, expatriated either from health, pleasure, or poverty. An intelligent foreigner has inquired whether there are any single elderly ladies left in England, so innumerable are the hosts abroad. Some, like her, had worn their personalities so thin that it seemed likely they would eventually become shadows with no character left; others were nice and cheerful, and made little encampments in the wilderness, so that the unfortunates might gather round them, and almost feel they had got a home.
It was in the room of a nice one that Henrietta met a Colonel. There are fewer occupationless Englishmen abroad, but there is a fair supply—half-pay officers, consumptives, and mysterious creatures, who have no good reason for being there. They were a strange medley for Henrietta to associate with, people whom in her palmy days, as mistress of her father's house, she would have thought unspeakable. She had none of this generation's tolerance and love of new sensations to attract her to unsatisfactory people. She only really liked conventional respectability.
This Colonel was not respectable. He was not a Colonel in the English army, and never would say much about himself. He was very pleasant and polite, and Henrietta, as she walked back to table d'hôte, felt she had spent a livelier afternoon than usual. It was at the beginning of the season, and looking back six weeks later she was astonished to find how often they had met.
Shortly after, the lady in whose room Henrietta had first seen him, asked her to tea. She did not seem quite so easy-going as usual, and at last began: "You know, Miss Symons, my cousin, Colonel Hilton, is rather a peculiar man. I've known him all my life, and I don't think there is any harm in him, but money is his difficulty. He ought to be well off, but it always seems to slip through his fingers."
Henrietta realized that this was a warning.