“But those are inferior,” said Hortense. “These.” And she touched rightly the bowl in which my roses stood close beside Eliza’s ledger.
Eliza paused for one second. “Those are not for sale.”
Hortense paused, too. Then she hung to it. “They are so much the best.” She was holding her purse.
“I think so, too,” said Eliza. “But I cannot let any one have them.”
Hortense put her purse away. “You know best. Shall you furnish us flowers as well as cake?”
Eliza’s sweetness rose an octave, softer and softer. “Why, they have flowers there! Didn’t you know?”
And to this last and frightful peck through the bars Hortense found no retaliation. With a bow to Eliza, and a total oblivion of me, she went out of the Exchange. She had flaunted “her” John in Eliza’s face, she had, as they say, rubbed it in that he was “her” John;—but was it such a neat, tidy victory, after all? She had given away the last word to Eliza, presented her with that poisonous speech which when translated meant:—
“Yes, he’s ‘your’ John; and you’re climbing up him into houses where you’d otherwise be arrested for trespass.” For it was in one of the various St. Michael houses that the marriage would be held, owing to the nomadic state of the Rieppes.
Yes, Hortense had gone altogether too close to the cage at the end, and, in that repetition of her taunt about “furnishing” supplies for the wedding, she had at length betrayed something which her skill and the intricate enamel of her experience had hitherto, and with entire success, concealed—namely, the latent vulgarity of the woman. She was wearing, for the sake of Kings Port, her best behavior, her most knowing form, and, indeed it was a well-done imitation of the real thing; it would last through most occasions, and it would deceive most people. But here was the trouble: she was wearing it; while, through the whole encounter, Eliza La Heu had worn nothing but her natural and perfect dignity; yet with that disadvantage (for good breeding, alas!, is at times a sort of disadvantage, and can be battered down and covered with mud so that its own fine grain is invisible) Eliza had, after a somewhat undecisive battle, got in that last frightful peck! But what had led Hortense, after she had come through pretty well, to lose her temper and thus, at the finish, expose to Eliza her weakest position? That her clothes were paid for by a Newport lady who had taken her to Worth, that her wedding feast was to be paid for by the bridegroom, these were not facts which Eliza would deign to use as weapons; but she was marrying inside the doors of Eliza’s Kings Port, that had never opened to admit her before, and she had slipped into putting this chance into Eliza’s hand—and how had she come to do this?
To be sure, my vision had been slow! Hortense had seen, through her thick veil, Eliza’s interest in John in the first minute of her arrival on the bridge, that minute when John had run up to Eliza after the automobile had passed over poor General. And Hortense had not revealed herself at once, because she wanted a longer look at them. Well, she had got it, and she had got also a look at her affianced John when he was in the fire-eating mood, and had displayed the conduct appropriate to 1840, while Charley’s display had been so much more modern. And so first she had prudently settled that awkward phosphate difficulty, and next she had paid this little visit to Eliza in order to have the pleasure of telling her in four or five different ways, and driving it in deep, and turning it round: “Don’t you wish you may get him?”