“She doesn’t take a guinea at the time, but you may still get your account,” the Duchess returned. “Of course we know that the great business she does is in husbands and wives.”
“This then seems the day of the wives!” Mr. Mitchett interposed as he became aware, the first, of the illustration the Duchess’s image was in the act of receiving. “Lady Fanny Cashmore!”—the butler was already in the field, and the company, with the exception of Mrs. Donner, who remained seated, was apparently conscious of a vibration that brought it afresh, but still more nimbly than on Aggie’s advent, to its feet.
VI
“Go to her straight—be nice to her: you must have plenty to say. YOU stay with me—we have our affair.” The latter of these commands the Duchess addressed to Mr. Mitchett, while their companion, in obedience to the former and affected, as it seemed, by an unrepressed familiar accent that stirred a fresh flicker of Mitchy’s grin, met the new arrival in the middle of the room before Mrs. Brookenham had had time to reach her. The Duchess, quickly reseated, watched an instant the inexpressive concussion of the tall brother and sister; then while Mitchy again subsided into his place, “You’re not, as a race, clever, you’re not delicate, you’re not sane, but you’re capable of extraordinary good looks,” she resumed. “Vous avez parfois la grande beaute.”
Mitchy was much amused. “Do you really think Petherton has?”
The Duchess withstood it. “They’ve got, both outside and in, the same great general things, only turned, in each, rather different ways, a way safer for him as a man, and more triumphant for her as—whatever you choose to call her! What CAN a woman do,” she richly mused, “with such beauty as that—?”
“Except come desperately to advise with Mrs. Brook”—Mitchy undertook to complete her question—“as to the highest use to make of it? But see,” he immediately added, “how perfectly competent to instruct her our friend now looks.” Their hostess had advanced to Lady Fanny with an outstretched hand but with an eagerness of greeting merged a little in the sweet predominance of wonder as well as in the habit, at such moments most perceptible, of the languid lily-bend. Nothing in general could have been less conventionally poor than the kind of reception given in Mrs. Brookenham’s drawing-room to the particular element—the element of physical splendour void of those disparities that make the question of others tiresome—comprised in Lady Fanny’s presence. It was a place in which, at all times, before interesting objects, the unanimous occupants, almost more concerned for each other’s vibrations than for anything else, were apt rather more to exchange sharp and silent searchings than to fix their eyes on the object itself. In the case of Lady Fanny, however, the object itself—and quite by the same law that had worked, though less profoundly, on the entrance of little Aggie—superseded the usual rapt communion very much in the manner of some beautiful tame tigress who might really coerce attention. There was in Mrs. Brookenham’s way of looking up at her a dim despairing abandonment of the idea of any common personal ground. Lady Fanny, magnificent, simple, stupid, had almost the stature of her brother, a forehead unsurpassably low and an air of sombre concentration just sufficiently corrected by something in her movements that failed to give it a point. Her blue eyes were heavy in spite of being perhaps a couple of shades too clear, and the wealth of her black hair, the disposition of the massive coils of which was all her own, had possibly a satin sheen depreciated by the current fashion. But the great thing in her was that she was, with unconscious heroism, thoroughly herself; and what were Mrs. Brook and Mrs. Brook’s intimates after all, in their free surrender to the play of perception, but a happy association for keeping her so? The Duchess was moved to the liveliest admiration by the grand simple sweetness of her encounter with Mrs. Donner, a combination indeed in which it was a question if she or Mrs. Brook appeared to the higher advantage. It was poor Mrs. Donner—not, like Mrs. Brook, subtle in sufficiency, nor, like Lady Fanny, almost too simple—who made the poorest show. The Duchess immediately marked it to Mitchy as infinitely characteristic that their hostess, instead of letting one of her visitors go, kept them together by some sweet ingenuity and while Lord Petherton, dropping his sister, joined Edward and Aggie in the other angle, sat there between them as if, in pursuance of some awfully clever line of her own, she were holding a hand of each. Mr. Mitchett of course did justice all round, or at least, as would have seemed from an enquiry he presently made, wished not to fail of it. “Is it your real impression then that Lady Fanny has serious grounds—”
“For jealousy of that preposterous little person? My dear Mitchett,” the Duchess resumed after a moment’s reflexion, “if you’re so rash as to ask me in any of these connexions for my ‘real’ impression you deserve whatever you may get.” The penalty Mitchy had incurred was apparently grave enough to make his companion just falter in the infliction of it; which gave him the opportunity of replying that the little person was perhaps not more preposterous than any one else, that there was something in her he rather liked, and that there were many different ways in which a woman could be interesting. This further levity it was therefore that laid him fully open. “Do you mean to say you’ve been living with Petherton so long without becoming aware that he’s shockingly worried?”
“My dear Duchess,” Mitchy smiled, “Petherton carries his worries with a bravery! They’re so many that I’ve long since ceased to count them; and in general I’ve been disposed to let those pass that I can’t help him to meet. YOU’VE made, I judge,” he went on, “a better use of opportunities perhaps not so good—such as at any rate enables you to see further than I into the meaning of the impatience he just now expressed.”
The Duchess was admirable, in conversation, for neglecting everything not essential to her present plausibility. “A woman like Lady Fanny can have no ‘grounds’ for anything—for any indignation, I mean, or for any revenge worth twopence. In this particular case at all events they’ve been sacrificed with such extravagance that, as an injured wife, she hasn’t had the gumption to keep back an inch or two to stand on. She can do absolutely nothing.”