“This afternoon!” cried Mrs. Erwin. “I must get up!”
At her toilette she had the exaltation and fury of a champion arming for battle.
XXV.
Mr. Erwin entered about the completion of her preparations, and without turning round from her glass she said, “I want you to think of the worst thing you can, Henshaw. I don't see how I'm ever to lift up my head again.” As if this word had reminded her of her head, she turned it from side to side, and got the effect in the glass, first of one ear-ring, and then of the other. Her husband patiently waited, and she now confronted him. “You may as well know first as last, Henshaw, and I want you to prepare yourself for it. Nothing can be done, and you will just have to live through it. Lydia—has come over—on that ship—alone,—with three young men,—and not the shadow—not the ghost—of another woman—on board!” Mrs. Erwin gesticulated with her hand-glass in delivering the words, in a manner at once intensely vivid and intensely solemn, yet somehow falling short of the due tragic effect. Her husband stood pulling his mustache straight down, while his wife turned again to the mirror, and put the final touches to her personal appearance with hands which she had the effect of having desperately washed of all responsibility. He stood so long in this meditative mood that she was obliged to be peremptory with his image in the glass. “Well?” she cried.
“Why, my dear,” said Mr. Erwin, at last, “they were all Americans together, you know.”
“And what difference does that make?” demanded Mrs. Erwin, whirling from his image to the man again.
“Why, of course, you know, it isn't as if they were—English.” Mrs. Erwin flung down three hair-pins upon her dressing-case, and visibly despaired. “Of course you don't expect your countrymen—” His wife's appearance was here so terrible that he desisted, and resumed by saying, “Don't be vexed, my dear. I—I rather like it, you know. It strikes me as a genuine bit of American civilization.”
“American civilization! Oh, Henshaw!” wailed Mrs. Erwin, “is it possible that after all I've said, and done, and lived, you still think that any one but a girl from the greenest little country place could do such a thing as that? Well, it is no use trying to enlighten English people. You like it, do you? Well, I'm not sure that the Englishman who misunderstands American things and likes them isn't a little worse than the Englishman who misunderstands them and dislikes them. You all misunderstand them. And would you like it, if one of the young men had been making love to Lydia?”
The amateur of our civilization hesitated and was serious, but he said at last, “Why, you know, I'm not surprised. She's so uncommonly pretty. I—I suppose they're engaged?” he suggested.