They stand so still in this picture, those big, non-committal British, each gnawing his lip a little under the drooping mustache; the women's shoulders are ivory against the panelled oak and bowls of Guelder roses in Chinese bowls; that beautiful line from the base of the throat to the top of the corsage which America has not to give her daughters, as yet, heaves and droops; the Romneys smile behind their wax candles in sconces. It is only a waltz of the street, but she has bewitched us with it, has our Margarita.
But strongest and clearest of all, keen in light and dense in shadow like a Rembrandt, I see that extraordinary night in Trafalgar Square, that night that surely lives unique in the memory of Nelson and the Lions, though most that shared it may be, and doubtless are—for they were not for various reasons long-lived classes of people—dead and dust by now. How and why we found ourselves at Trafalgar Square I could not tell, though I went to the stake for it this minute. But I think it must have been that Margarita wanted to walk through the streets, a form of exercise for which she took fitful fancies at odd times, and that I, as was mostly the case, went with her.
We were all alone, for Roger, who shared our walks usually, when he was not too busy, had just left for Berlin an hour earlier, on one of his patient unravellings of Carter's diplomatic tangles.
It had been a dull, damp day—the kind of day that tried Margarita terribly in England, for she was much under the influence of the weather, and le beau temps brought out her plumage like her Mexican parrot in Whistler's portrait. Looking back at it all, too, I seem to feel, though with no definite reason for it, that she was perturbed and excited about something known only to herself, for she was strangely irritable on our walk, contradicted me fiercely, inquired testily who Nelson might be, then chid me for a dry old schoolmaster, when I told her, and such like flighty vagaries, inseparable, I believed, from her sex in general and her temperament in particular. If I have never taken the trouble to defend myself from the accusation of thinking The Pearl perfect in her somewhat spoiled relations with her best friends at this period of her life, it is because I have always considered that such people as are too inelastic in their views of human nature to realise that Margarita merely exhibited les défauts de ses qualités (as who of us does not, at one time or another?) are unworthy even my argumentative powers, which are not great, as I perfectly understand.
So she unsheathed her sharp little female claws and patted me mercilessly with them, and contrived to make me seem to myself a tactless, blundering fool to her heart's content that night, striding easily beside me, meanwhile, like a boy, though she had refused to change her high-heeled bronze slippers for more sensible footgear and carried the unreasonably long train of her black lace dinner gown over her arm. Roger did not care for her in black, and she seldom wore it, but had ordered this a few days ago from the great Worth, who then ruled those fortunate ladies who could afford to number themselves among his subjects with a sway he has since, I am assured, been forced to divide among other monarchs—the only monarchs left now to a Republic that has never denied that one divine succession through all her revolutions. For that monarchy Paris never will sing ça ira; for that principle she knows no cynicism; that wonderful juggernaut, the Fashion, shall never rumble across channel, it seems!
I had derided myself for a sentimentalist and spinner of fine theories when I had thought I detected a little defiance in her first assumption of this midnight black robe, with its startling corals on her arm and neck, and the foreign-looking comb behind her high-dressed hair, the whole bringing out markedly that continental strain that amused Whistler (naughty Jimmie!) and displeased Roger. But when she appeared in it that night determined on a dinner where most of the guests were highly distasteful to Roger, who had congratulated himself on a quiet evening at home; when she had dragged him to it at the risk of losing his only train and teased him shamefully all through it by the most ridiculous flirtation with one of the worst roués of Europe (Margarita was so fundamentally honest and so thoroughly attached to her husband that such performances could only be doubly painful to him, since they were obviously intended maliciously) when she sent him off before the long dinner's close without any but the most casual adieux and without the remotest intention of accompanying him, I was uncomfortably forced to the conclusion that this long-trained, inky dress was a veritable devil's livery, that she had put it on deliberately and that there would be no stopping her till the mood was off.
And now I find myself about to write a most unjustifiable thing, in view of the possibility of these idle memories falling somehow, sometime, somewhere, into the hands of that ubiquitous Young Person to whom all print is free as air in these enlightened days. In America it has been the rule, to suppress such print as could not brave this freedom; in France, to suppress such Young Persons as could! There is something to be said for both methods, and each has, perhaps, its defects; the one producing more stimulating Young Persons, the other enjoying more virile prose.
Be that as it may, I am quite aware that my duty to the youth of Anglo Saxondom should lead me to state, sadly but firmly, that such conduct as Margarita displayed on the night in question could have had but one result—that of filling me, her friend and admirer, with a grieved displeasure and disgust; that her unwomanly carelessness as to the feelings of others and her wanton disregard of the wishes and comfort of those who should have been dearest to her lowered her in my estimation and greatly detracted from her charm in my eyes. But I am not writing particularly for the Young Person and candour compels me to state that she was quite as interesting to me as ever! I didn't think she had treated Roger very handsomely—true; but Roger had known that he was marrying a delicious vixen when he married Margarita, you see, and if I had begun to lecture her, there were too many others who would have been only too delighted to relieve her of my society. She abused her power sometimes, I admit it—but then, she had the power! And oh, the balm she kept for the wounds she gave!
As I have said, I have not the remotest idea of how or why we confronted Nelson and the Lions, I cannot by any effort of memory see us arriving or leaving; but I see myself pausing in my lecture on English history, as a lighted transparency, a straggling crowd and a band bear down upon us suddenly out of nowhere. It is a poor, vicious sort of crowd, the gutter-sweepings of London; pale, stunted lads, haggard, idle slatterns, a handful of women of the street, a trio of tawdry flower girls. Around the band, which turns out to be only a big drum and a clattering tambourine, a group of men and women in a vaguely familiar uniform, the women in ugly coal-scuttle bonnets.
"What is that, Jerry?" says Margarita.