“Oh, but what have you told them?”
“That she lives at the Hôtel Meurice and wants to know nice people.”
“They’re flattered, I suppose, at your thinking them nice, but they don’t go,” said Waterville.
“I spoke of her to Mrs. Bagshaw, and Mrs. Bagshaw has promised to go.”
“Ah,” Waterville murmured; “you don’t call Mrs. Bagshaw nice! Mrs. Headway won’t take up with Mrs. Bagshaw.”
“Well, then, that’s exactly what she wants—to be able to cut some one!”
Waterville had a theory that Sir Arthur was keeping Mrs. Headway as a surprise—he meant perhaps to produce her during the next London season. He presently, however, learned as much about the matter as he could have desired to know. He had once offered to accompany his beautiful compatriot to the Museum of the Luxembourg and tell her a little about the modern French school. She had not examined this collection, in spite of her resolve to see everything remarkable—she carried her “Murray” in her lap even when she went to see the great tailor in the Rue de la Paix, to whom, as she said, she had given no end of points—for she usually went to such places with Sir Arthur, who was indifferent to the modern painters of France. “He says there are much better men in England. I must wait for the Royal Academy next year. He seems to think one can wait for anything, but I’m not so good at waiting as he. I can’t afford to wait—I’ve waited long enough.” So much as this Mrs. Headway said on the occasion of her arranging with Rupert Waterville that they should some day visit the Luxembourg together. She alluded to the Englishman as if he were her husband or her brother, her natural protector and companion.
“I wonder if she knows how that sounds?” Waterville again throbbingly brooded. “I don’t believe she would do it if she knew how it sounds.” And he also drew the moral that when one was a well-known Texan belle there was no end to the things one had to learn: so marked was the difference between being well-known and being well-bred. Clever as she was, Mrs. Headway was right in saying she couldn’t afford to wait. She must learn, she must live quickly. She wrote to Waterville one day to propose that they should go to the Museum on the morrow; Sir Arthur’s mother was in Paris, on her way to Cannes, where she was to spend the winter. She was only passing through, but she would be there three days, and he would naturally give himself up to her. She appeared to have the properest ideas as to what a gentleman would propose to do for his mother. She herself, therefore, should be free, and she named the hour at which she should expect him to call for her. He was punctual to the appointment, and they drove across the river in a large high-hung barouche in which she constantly rolled about Paris. With Mr. Max on the box—the courier sported enormous whiskers—this vehicle had an appearance of great respectability, though Sir Arthur assured her (what she repeated to her other friends) that in London next year they would do the thing much better for her. It struck her other friends, of course, that this backer was prepared to go very far; which on the whole was what Waterville would have expected of him. Littlemore simply remarked that at San Pablo she drove herself about in a ramshackle buggy with muddy wheels and a mule very often in the shafts. Waterville throbbed afresh as he asked himself if the mother of a Tory M.P. would really consent to know her. She must of course be aware that it was a woman who was keeping her son in Paris at a season when English gentlemen were most naturally employed in shooting partridges.
“She’s staying at the Hôtel du Rhin, and I’ve made him feel that he mustn’t leave her while she’s here,” Mrs. Headway said as they drove up the narrow Rue de Seine. “Her name’s Lady Demesne, but her full title’s the Honourable Lady Demesne, as she’s a Baron’s daughter. Her father used to be a banker, but he did something or other for the Government—the Tories, you know they call them—and so he was raised to the peerage. So you see one can be raised! She has a lady with her as a companion.” Waterville’s neighbour gave him this information with a seriousness that made him smile; he tried to measure the degree to which it wouldn’t have occurred to her that he didn’t know how a Baron’s daughter was addressed. In that she was truly provincial; she had a way of exaggerating the value of her intellectual acquisitions and of assuming that others had shared her darkness. He noted, too, that she had ended by suppressing poor Sir Arthur’s name altogether and designating him only by a sort of conjugal pronoun. She had been so much and so easily married that she was full of these misleading references to gentlemen.