She was exquisitely sly.
Her slyness was definite and pervasive. In her it took the place of wit. It took the place of culture. It even took the place of vivacity. It was a sort of maid-of-all-work in her personality and never seemed to tire. The odd thing was that it did not seem to tire others. They found it permanently piquant. Men said of Miss Schley, “She’s a devilish clever little thing. She don’t say much, but she’s up to every move on the board.” Women were impressed by her. There was something in her supreme and snowy composure that suggested inflexible will. Nothing ever put her out or made her look as if she were in a false position.
London was captivated by the abnormal combination of snow and slyness which she presented to it, and began at once to make much of her.
At one time the English were supposed to be cold; and rather gloried in the supposition. But recently a change has taken place in the national character—at any rate as exhibited in London. Rigidity has gone out of fashion. It is condemned as insular, and unless you are cosmopolitan nowadays you are nothing, or worse than nothing. The smart Englishwoman is beginning to be almost as restless as a Neapolitan. She is in a continual flutter of movement, as if her body were threaded with trembling wires. She uses a great deal of gesture. She is noisy about nothing. She is vivacious at all costs, and would rather suggest hysteria than British phlegm.
Miss Schley’s calm was therefore in no danger of being drowned in any pervasive calm about her. On the contrary, it stood out. It became very individual. Her composed speechlessness in the midst of uneasy chatter—the Englishwoman is seldom really self-possessed—carried with it a certain dignity which took the place of breeding. She was always at her ease, and to be always at your ease makes a deep impression upon London, which is full of self-consciousness.
She began to be the fashion at once. A great lady, who had a passion for supplying smart men with what they wanted, saw that they were going to want Miss Schley and promptly took her up. Other women followed suit. Miss Schley had a double triumph. She was run after by women as well as by men. She got her little foot in everywhere, and in no time. Her personal character was not notoriously bad. The slyness had taken care of that. But even if it had been, if only the papers had not been too busy in the matter, she might have had success. Some people do whose names have figured upon the evening bills exposed at the street corners. Hers had not and was not likely to. It was her art to look deliberately pure and good, and to suggest, in a way almost indefinable and very perpetual, that she could be anything and everything, and perhaps had been, under the perfumed shadow of the rose. The fact that the suggestion seemed to be conveyed with intention was the thing that took corrupt old London’s fancy and made Miss Schley a pet.
Her name of Pimpernel was not against her.
Men liked it for its innocence, and laughed as they mentioned it in the clubs, as who should say:
“We know the sort of Pimpernel we mean.”
Miss Schley’s social success brought her into Lady Holme’s set, and people noticed, what Lady Holme had been the first to notice, the faint likeness between them. Lady Holme was not exquisitely sly. Her voice was not like a choir-boy’s; her manner was not like the manner of an image; her eyes were not for ever cast down. Even her characteristic silence was far less perpetual than the equally characteristic silence of Miss Schley. But men said they were the same colour. What men said women began to think, and it was not an assertion wholly without foundation. At a little distance there was an odd resemblance in the one white face and fair hair to the other. Miss Schley’s way of moving, too, had a sort of reference to Lady Holme’s individual walk. There were several things characteristic of Lady Holme which Miss Schley seemed to reproduce, as it were, with a sly exaggeration. Her hair was similar, but paler, her whiteness more dead, her silence more perpetual, her composure more enigmatically serene, her gait slower, with diminished steps.