Nevertheless, in the teeth of difficulties, the theory gained ground. And as it did so, it was amusing to note the way in which the other girls accepted it. They were thoroughly scandalized, poor dears. Their sense of propriety bridled up in indignant astonishment. So long as they had been able to reckon Miss, simply and homogeneously, a case of total depravity,—a specimen of the British variety of their own species,—they had placed no stint upon their affable commendation of her. She was pas mal, très bien, très gentille, très comme il faut, even très chic. But directly the suspicion began to work in their minds that perhaps, after all, appearances had been misleading, and she might prove an entirely vertical member of society,—then perforce they had to wag their heads over her, and cry fie at her goings-on. What! how! a respectable unmarried woman,—a demoiselle, du monde,—a jeune fille bien élevie,—come by herself to Paris,—dwell unchaperoned in the Hôtel de l’.céan et de Shakespere,—hob and nob familiarly with you and me,—submit to be tutoyée by Tom, Dick, and Harry! Mais, allons donc, it was really quite too shameless. And they played my ladies Steyne and Bareacres to her inadequate Rebecca; looked askance at her when she came into the room, drew in their precious skirts when they had to pass her, gathered in corners to discuss her, and were, in fine, profoundly and sincerely shocked. For, here below, there are no sterner moralists, no more punctilious sticklers for the prunes and prisms of conventionality, than those harmful, unnecessary cats, the Zélies and the Germaines of the Quartier-Latin.
“Mai’s, enfin, si c’est vrai,—si elle est réellement comme, ça, nest-ce pas,—mais c’est une honte,” was one of their refrains; and “Elle manque complètement de pudeur alors,” was another; to which the chorus: “Oh, pour sur!”
And poor little Miss couldn’t understand it. Observing the frigid and austere reserve with which they met her, feeling their half suppressed disapproval in the atmosphere, she searched her conscience vainly to discover what she could have done to anger them, and was, for a time I fear, exceedingly unhappy.
We men, meanwhile, were cursing ourselves for blockheads, chewing the sharp cud of repentance, and trying in a hundred sheepish, clumsy fashions to make amends. It would have been diverting for an outsider to have watched us; the deference with which we spoke and listened to her, the interest we took in her work, the infinite little politenesses we paid her. When all is said, the sins we were guilty of towards her had been chiefly metaphysical; it was what we had thought, rather than what we had done. But I don’t know that our contrition was on this account any the less acute; we had thought such a lot. We fancied a sister of our own in her position, and we conceived a frantic desire to punch the heads of the men who should have dared to think of her as we, quite nonchalantly and with no sense of daring, had thought of Miss. Our biggest positive transgression was the latitude of speech we had allowed ourselves at the table d’hôte; and the effect of that was happily neutralised (no thanks to us) by the poverty of her French. But, though our salvation lay in the circumstance, I am far from sure that it did not aggravate our remorse. We were profiting by her limitations, taking sanctuary in her ignorance; and that smacked disagreeably of the sneakish.
Our yearning to make amends was singularly complicated by the necessity we were under, as much for her sake as for our own, to prevent her ever guessing how (or even that) we had offended. Not to confess is to shirk the better half of atonement; yet confession in this case was impossible, concealment was imperative. That, if she should get so much as a glimmer of the truth, it would blast us forever in her esteem, was a consideration, but a trifling one to the thought of what her emotions must be like to realise the sort of place she had lately held in ours. No, she must never guess. With the consciousness in our hearts that we had practised a kind of intellectual foul play upon her, and in our minds a vivid picture of the different footing things would be on if she only knew, we must continue cheerfully to enjoy her smiles and her good graces, and try to look as if we felt that we deserved them. It was bare-faced hypocrisy, it was a game of false pretences; but it was Hobson’s choice. We could not even cease to thee-and-thou her, lest she should wonder at the change, and from wonderment proceed to ratiocination.
“One thing we must do, though,” said Chalks, “we must get her out of this so-called hotel. Blamed if I can guess how she ever came here.”
This was before we had found the guidebook in her room, long before we had heard her simple story, which explained everything.
“We’ve acted like a pack of hounds, that’s my opinion,” Chalks went on. “And now we’ve got to step up to the captain’s office and settle.”
His rhetoric was confused, but I dare say we caught the idea.
“We’ve been acting like a pack of poodles latterly,” somebody put in, “following her about, fawning at her feet, fetching and carrying for her.”