“It’s very good of you to try and patch it up; all I know is that not one of them crossed my threshold. No, you needn’t try and tone it down; I know perfectly how the case stands. In New York, if you please, I didn’t go.”
“So much the worse for New York!” cried Waterville, who, as he afterwards said to Littlemore, had got quite worked up.
“And now you know why I want to get into society over here?” She jumped up and stood before him; with a dry hard smile she looked down at him. Her smile itself was an answer to her question; it expressed a sharp vindictive passion. There was an abruptness in her movements which left her companion quite behind; but as he still sat there returning her glance he felt he at last in the light of that smile, the flash of that almost fierce demand, understood Mrs. Headway.
She turned away to walk to the gate of the garden, and he went with her, laughing vaguely and uneasily at her tragic tone. Of course she expected him to serve, all obligingly, all effectively, her rancour; but his female relations, his mother and his sisters, his innumerable cousins, had been a party to the slight she had suffered, and he reflected as he walked along that after all they had been right. They had been right in not going to see a woman who could chatter that way about her social wrongs; whether she were respectable or not they had had the true assurance she’d be vulgar. European society might let her in, but European society had its limpness. New York, Waterville said to himself with a glow of civic pride, was quite capable of taking a higher stand in such a matter than London. They went some distance without speaking; at last he said, expressing honestly the thought at that moment uppermost in his mind: “I hate that phrase, ‘getting into society.’ I don’t think one ought to attribute to one’s self that sort of ambition. One ought to assume that one’s in the confounded thing—that one is society—and to hold that if one has good manners one has, from the social point of view, achieved the great thing. ‘The best company’s where I am,’ any lady or gentleman should feel. The rest can take care of itself.”
For a moment she appeared not to understand, then she broke out: “Well, I suppose I haven’t good manners; at any rate I’m not satisfied! Of course I don’t talk right—I know that very well. But let me get where I want to first—then I’ll look after the details. If I once get there I shall be perfect!” she cried with a tremor of passion. They reached the gate of the garden and stood a moment outside, opposite the low arcade of the Odéon, lined with bookstalls, at which Waterville cast a slightly wistful glance, waiting for Mrs. Headway’s carriage, which had drawn up at a short distance. The whiskered Max had seated himself within and, on the tense elastic cushions, had fallen into a doze. The carriage got into motion without his waking; he came to his senses only as it stopped again. He started up staring and then without confusion proceeded to descend.
“I’ve learned it in Italy—they call it the siesta,” he remarked with an agreeable smile, holding the door open to Mrs. Headway.
“Well, I should think you had and they might!” this lady replied, laughing amicably as she got into the vehicle, where Waterville placed himself beside her. It was not a surprise to him that she spoiled her courier; she naturally would spoil her courier. But civilisation begins at home, he brooded; and the incident threw an ironic light on her desire to get into society. It failed, however, to divert her thoughts from the subject she was discussing with her friend, for as Max ascended the box and the carriage went on its way she threw out another note of defiance. “If once I’m all right over here I guess I can make New York do something! You’ll see the way those women will squirm.”
Waterville was sure his mother and sisters wouldn’t squirm; but he felt afresh, as the carriage rolled back to the Hôtel Meurice, that now he understood Mrs. Headway. As they were about to enter the court of the hotel a closed carriage passed before them, and while a few moments later he helped his companion to alight he saw that Sir Arthur Demesne had stepped from the other vehicle. Sir Arthur perceived Mrs. Headway and instantly gave his hand to a lady seated in the coupé. This lady emerged with a certain slow impressiveness, and as she stood before the door of the hotel—a woman still young and fair, with a good deal of height, gentle, tranquil, plainly dressed, yet distinctly imposing—it came over our young friend that the Tory member had brought his principal female relative to call on Nancy Beck. Mrs. Headway’s triumph had begun; the dowager Lady Demesne had taken the first step. Waterville wondered whether the ladies in New York, notified by some magnetic wave, were beginning to be convulsed. Mrs. Headway, quickly conscious of what had happened, was neither too prompt to appropriate the visit nor too slow to acknowledge it. She just paused, smiling at Sir Arthur.
“I should like to introduce my mother—she wants very much to know you.” He approached Mrs. Headway; the lady had taken his arm. She was at once simple and circumspect; she had every resource of the English matron.
Mrs. Headway, without advancing a step, put out a hand as if to draw her quickly closer. “I declare you’re too sweet!” Waterville heard her say.