Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874 (84 page)

Page 497

exact would probably be that the pair had snatched a walk together (in the course of a day of many edifying episodes) for the lark of it, and for the sake of the walk had taken the risk, which in that part of London, so detached from all gentility, had appeared to them small. The last thing Selina could have expected was to meet her sister in such a strange cornerher sister with a young man of her own!

She was dining out that night with both Selina and Lionela conjunction that was rather rare. She was by no means always invited with them, and Selina constantly went without her husband. Appearances, however, sometimes got a sop thrown them; three or four times a month Lionel and she entered the brougham together like people who still had forms, who still said my dear. This was to be one of those occasions, and Mrs. Berrington's young unmarried sister was included in the invitation. When Laura reached home she learned, on inquiry, that Selina had not yet come in, and she went straight to her own room. If her sister had been there she would have gone to hers insteadshe would have cried out to her as soon as she had closed the door: Oh, stop, stopin God's name, stop before you go any further, before exposure and ruin and shame come down and bury us! That was what was in the airthe vulgarest disgrace, and the girl, harder now than ever about her sister, was conscious of a more passionate desire to save herself. But Selina's absence made the difference that during the next hour a certain chill fell upon this impulse from other feelings: she found suddenly that she was late and she began to dress. They were to go together after dinner to a couple of balls; a diversion which struck her as ghastly for people who carried such horrors in their breasts. Ghastly was the idea of the drive of husband, wife and sister in pursuit of pleasure, with falsity and detection and hate between them. Selina's maid came to her door to tell her that she was in the carriagean extraordinary piece of punctuality, which made her wonder, as Selina was always dreadfully late for everything. Laura went down as quickly as she could, passed through the open door, where the servants were grouped in the foolish majesty of their superfluous attendance, and through the file of dingy gazers who had paused at the sight of the carpet across the pavement and the

Page 498

waiting carriage, in which Selina sat in pure white splendour. Mrs. Berrington had a tiara on her head and a proud patience in her face, as if her sister were really a sore trial. As soon as the girl had taken her place she said to the footman: Is Mr. Berrington there?to which the man replied: No ma'am, not yet. It was not new to Laura that if there was any one later as a general thing than Selina it was Selina's husband. Then he must take a hansom. Go on. The footman mounted and they rolled away.

There were several different things that had been present to Laura's mind during the last couple of hours as destined to markone or the otherthis present encounter with her sister; but the words Selina spoke the moment the brougham began to move were of course exactly those she had not foreseen. She had considered that she might take this tone or that tone or even no tone at all; she was quite prepared for her presenting a face of blankness to any form of interrogation and saying, What on earth are you talking about? It was in short conceivable to her that Selina would deny absolutely that she had been in the museum, that they had stood face to face and that she had fled in confusion. She was capable of explaining the incident by an idiotic error on Laura's part, by her having seized on another person, by her seeing Captain Crispin in every bush; though doubtless she would be taxed (of course she would say
that
was the woman's own affair) to supply a reason for the embarrassment of the other lady. But she was not prepared for Selina's breaking out with: Will you be so good as to inform me if you are engaged to be married to Mr. Wendover?

Engaged to him? I have seen him but three times.

And is that what you usually do with gentlemen you have seen three times?

Are you talking about my having gone with him to see some sights? I see nothing wrong in that. To begin with you see what he is. One might go with him anywhere. Then he brought us an introductionwe have to do something for him. Moreover you threw him upon me the moment he cameyou asked me to take charge of him.

I didn't ask you to be indecent! If Lionel were to know it he wouldn't tolerate it, so long as you live with us.

Page 499

Laura was silent a moment. I shall not live with you long. The sisters, side by side, with their heads turned, looked at each other, a deep crimson leaping into Laura's face. I wouldn't have believed itthat you are so bad, she said. You are horrible! She saw that Selina had not taken up the idea of denyingshe judged that would be hopeless: the recognition on either side had been too sharp. She looked radiantly handsome, especially with the strange new expression that Laura's last word brought into her eyes. This expression seemed to the girl to show her more of Selina morally than she had ever yet seensomething of the full extent and the miserable limit.

It's different for a married woman, especially when she's married to a cad. It's in a girl that such things are odiousscouring London with strange men. I am not bound to explain to youthere would be too many things to say. I have my reasonsI have my conscience. It was the oddest of all things, our meeting in that placeI know that as well as you, Selina went on, with her wonderful affected clearness; but it was not your finding me that was out of the way; it was my finding youwith your remarkable escort! That was incredible. I pretended not to recognise you, so that the gentleman who was with me shouldn't see you, shouldn't know you. He questioned me and I repudiated you. You may thank me for saving you! You had better wear a veil next timeone never knows what may happen. I met an acquaintance at Lady Watermouth's and he came up to town with me. He happened to talk about old prints; I told him how I have collected them and we spoke of the bother one has about the frames. He insisted on my going with him to that placefrom Waterlooto see such an excellent model.

Laura had turned her face to the window of the carriage again; they were spinning along Park Lane, passing in the quick flash of other vehicles an endless succession of ladies with dressed heads, of gentlemen in white neckties. Why, I thought your frames were all so pretty! Laura murmured. Then she added: I suppose it was your eagerness to save your companion the shock of seeing mein my dishonourthat led you to steal our cab.

Your cab?

Page 500

Your delicacy was expensive for you!

You don't mean you were knocking about in
cabs
with him! Selina cried.

Of course I know that you don't really think a word of what you say about me, Laura went on; though I don't know that that makes your saying it a bit less unspeakably base.

The brougham pulled up in Park Lane and Mrs. Berrington bent herself to have a view through the front glass. We are there, but there are two other carriages, she remarked, for all answer. Ah, there are the Collingwoods.

Where are you goingwhere are you goingwhere are you going? Laura broke out.

The carriage moved on, to set them down, and while the footman was getting off the box Selina said: I don't pretend to be better than other women, but you do! And being on the side of the house she quickly stepped out and carried her crowned brilliancy through the long-lingering daylight and into the open portals.

What do you intend to do? You will grant that I have a right to ask you that.

To do? I shall do as I have always donenot so badly, as it seems to me.

This colloquy took place in Mrs. Berrington's room, in the early morning hours, after Selina's return from the entertainment to which reference was last made. Her sister came home before hershe found herself incapable of going on when Selina quitted the house in Park Lane at which they had dined. Mrs. Berrington had the night still before her, and she stepped into her carriage with her usual air of graceful resignation to a brilliant lot. She had taken the precaution,however, to provide herself with a defence, against a little sister bristling with righteousness, in the person of Mrs. Collingwood, to whom she offered a lift, as they were bent upon the same business and Mr.Collingwood had a use of his own for his brougham. The Collingwoods were a happy pair who could discuss such a divergence before their friends candidly, amicably, with a

Page 501

great many My loves and Not for the worlds. Lionel Berrington disappeared after dinner, without holding any communication with his wife, and Laura expected to find that he had taken the carriage, to repay her in kind for her having driven off from Grosvenor Place without him. But it was not new to the girl that he really spared his wife more than she spared him; not so much perhaps because he wouldn't do the nastiest thing as because he couldn't. Selina could always be nastier. There was ever a whimsicality in her actions: if two or three hours before it had been her fancy to keep a third person out of the carriage she had now her reasons for bringing such a person in. Laura knew that she would not only pretend, but would really believe, that her vindication of her conduct on their way to dinner had been powerful and that she had won a brilliant victory. What need, therefore, to thresh out further a subject that she had chopped into atoms? Laura Wing, however, had needs of her own, and her remaining in the carriage when the footman next opened the door was intimately connected with them.

I don't care to go in, she said to her sister. If you will allow me to be driven home and send back the carriage for you, that's what I shall like best.

Selina stared and Laura knew what she would have said if she could have spoken her thought. Oh, you are furious that I haven't given you a chance to fly at me again, and you must take it out in sulks! These were the ideasideas of fury and sulksinto which Selina could translate feelings that sprang from the pure depths of one's conscience. Mrs. Collingwood protestedshe said it was a shame that Laura shouldn't go in and enjoy herself when she looked so lovely. Doesn't she look lovely? She appealed to Mrs. Berrington. Bless us, what's the use of being pretty? Now, if she had
my
face!

I think she looks rather cross, said Selina, getting out with her friend and leaving her sister to her own inventions. Laura had a vision, as the carriage drove away again, of what her situation would have been, or her peace of mind, if Selina and Lionel had been good, attached people like the Collingwoods, and at the same time of the singularity of a good woman's being ready to accept favours from a person as to whose behaviour she had the lights that must have come to the lady in

Page 502

question in regard to Selina. She accepted favours herself and she only wanted to be good: that was oppressively true; but if she had not been Selina's sister she would never drive in her carriage. That conviction was strong in the girl as this vehicle conveyed her to Grosvenor Place; but it was not in its nature consoling. The prevision of disgrace was now so vivid to her that it seemed to her that if it had not already overtaken them she had only to thank the loose, mysterious, rather ignoble tolerance of people like Mrs. Collingwood. There were plenty of that species, even among the good; perhaps indeed exposure and dishonour would begin only when the bad had got hold of the facts. Would the bad be most horrified and do most to spread the scandal? There were, in any event, plenty of them too.

Laura sat up for her sister that night, with that nice question to help her to torment herselfwhether if she was hard and merciless in judging Selina it would be with the bad too that she would associate herself. Was she all wrong after allwas she cruel by being too rigid? Was Mrs. Collingwood's attitude the right one and ought she only to propose to herself to allow more and more, and to allow ever, and to smooth things down by gentleness, by sympathy, by not looking at them too hard? It was not the first time that the just measure of things seemed to slip from her hands as she became conscious of possible, or rather of very actual, differences of standard and usage. On this occasion Geordie and Ferdy asserted themselves, by the mere force of lying asleep upstairs in their little cribs, as on the whole the proper measure. Laura went into the nursery to look at them when she came homeit was her habit almost any nightand yearned over them as mothers and maids do alike over the pillow of rosy childhood. They were an antidote to all casuistry; for Selina to forget
them
that was the beginning and the end of shame. She came back to the library, where she should best hear the sound of her sister's return; the hours passed as she sat there, without bringing round this event. Carriages came and went all night; the soft shock of swift hoofs was on the wooden roadway long after the summer dawn grew fairtill it was merged in the rumble of the awakening day. Lionel had not come in when she returned, and he continued absent, to Laura's satisfaction;

Other books

Connecting Strangers (Discovering Emily) by Rachel Carrington

Blood Money by Thomas Perry

Waiting for Prince Harry by Aven Ellis

¡Pobre Patria Mía! by Marcos Aguinis

Fire Monks by Colleen Morton Busch

Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon

The Magpies Nest by Isabel Paterson

The Preacher's Daughter by Cheryl St.John

The Laird's Future Bride by Hazel Gower

PROLOGUE by beni