The Better Sort (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1903)/Broken Wings/Chapter 2
II
She, on her side, had her private consciousness, and quite as full a one, doubtless, as he, but with the advantage that, when the company separated for the night, she was not, like her friend, reduced to a vigil unalloyed. Lady Claude, at the top of the stairs, had said, "May I look in—in five minutes—if you don't mind?" and then had arrived in due course and in a wonderful new beribboned gown, the thing just launched for such occasions. Lady Claude was young and earnest and delightfully bewildered and bewildering, and however interesting she might, through certain elements in her situation, have seemed to a literary lady, her own admirations and curiosities were such as from the first promised to rule the hour. She had already expressed to Mrs. Harvey a really informed enthusiasm. She not only delighted in her numerous books, which was a tribute the author had not infrequently met, but she even appeared to have read them—an appearance with which her interlocutress was much less acquainted. The great thing was that she also yearned to write, and that she had turned up in her fresh furbelows not only to reveal this secret and to ask for direction and comfort, but literally to make a stranger confidence, for which the mystery of midnight seemed propitious. Midnight was, indeed, as the situation developed, well over before her confidence was spent, for it had ended by gathering such a current as floated forth, with everything in Lady Claude's own life, many things more in that of her adviser. Mrs. Harvey was, at all events, amused, touched, and effectually kept awake; and at the end of half an hour they had quite got what might have been called their second wind of frankness and were using it for a discussion of the people in the house. Their primary communion had been simply on the question of the pecuniary profits of literature as the producer of so many admired volumes was prepared to present them to an aspirant. Lady Claude was in financial difficulties and desired the literary issue. This was the breathless revelation she had rustled over a mile of crimson velvet corridor to make.
"Nothing?" she had three minutes later incredulously gasped. "I can make nothing at all?" But the gasp was slight compared with the stupefaction produced in her by a brief further parley, in the course of which Mrs. Harvey had, after a hesitation, taken her own plunge. "You make so little—wonderful you!" And then, as the producer of the admired volumes simply sat there in her dressing-gown, with the saddest of slow head-shakes, looking suddenly too wan even to care that it was at last all out: "What, in that case, is the use of success and celebrity and genius? You have no success?" She had looked almost awestruck at this further confession of her friend. They were face to face in a poor human crudity, which transformed itself quickly into an effusive embrace. "You've had it and lost it? Then when it has been as great as yours one can lose it?"
"More easily than one can get it."
Lady Claude continued to marvel. "But you do so much—and it's so beautiful!" On which Mrs. Harvey simply smiled again in her handsome despair, and after a moment found herself again in the arms of her visitor. The younger woman had remained for a little a good deal arrested and hushed, and had, at any rate, sensitive and charming, immediately dropped, in the presence of this almost august unveiling, the question of her own thin troubles. But there are short cuts at that hour of night that morning scarce knows, and it took but little more of the breath of the real to suggest to Lady Claude more questions in such a connection than she could answer for herself. "How, then, if you haven't private means, do you get on?"
"Ah! I don't get on."
Lady Claude looked about. There were objects scattered in the fine old French room. "You have lovely things."
"Two."
"Two?"
"Two frocks. I couldn't stay another day."
"Ah, what is that? I couldn't either," said Lady Claude soothingly. "And you have," she continued, in the same spirit, "your nice maid———"
"Who's indeed a charming woman, but my cook in disguise!" Mrs. Harvey dropped.
"Ah, you are clever!" her friend cried, with a laugh that was as a climax of reassurance.
"Extraordinarily. But don't think," Mrs. Harvey hastened to add, "that I mean that that's why I'm here."
Her companion candidly thought. "Then why are you?"
"I haven't the least idea. I've been wondering all the while, as I've wondered so often before on such occasions, and without arriving at any other reason than that London is so wild."
Lady Claude wondered. "Wild?"
"Wild!" said her friend, with some impatience. "That's the way London strikes."
"But do you call such an invitation a blow?"
"Yes—crushing. No one else, at all events, either," Mrs. Harvey added, "could tell you why I'm here."
Lady Claude's power to receive—and it was perhaps her most attaching quality—was greater still, when she felt strongly, than her power to protest. "Why, how can you say that when you've only to see how everyone likes and admires you? Just look at the Ambassador," she had earnestly insisted. And this was what had precisely, as I have mentioned, carried the stream of their talk a good deal away from its source. It had therefore not much further to go before setting in motion the name of Stuart Straith, as to whom Lady Claude confessed to an interest—good-looking, distinguished, "sympathetic," as he was—that she could really almost hate him for having done nothing whatever to encourage. He had not spoken to her once.
"But, my dear, if he hasn't spoken to me!"
Lady Claude appeared to regret this not too much for a hint that, after all, there might be a difference. "Oh but could he?"
"Without my having spoken to him first?" Mrs. Harvey turned it over. "Perhaps not; but I couldn't have done that." Then, to explain, and not only because Lady Claude was naturally vague, but because what was still visibly most vivid to her was her independent right to have been "made up" to: "And yet not because we're not acquainted."
"You know him, then?"
"But too well."
"You mean you don't like him?"
"On the contrary, I like him—to distraction."
"Then what's the matter?" Lady Claude asked with some impatience.
Her friend hesitated but a moment. "Well, he wouldn't have me."
"'Have' you?"
"Ten years ago, after Mr. Harvey's death, when, if he had lifted a finger, I would have married him."
"But he didn't lift it?"
"He was too grand. I was too small—by his measure. He wanted to keep himself; he saw his future."
Lady Claude earnestly followed. "His present position?"
"Yes—everything that was to come to him; his steady rise in value."
"Has it been so great?"
"Surely—his situation and name. Don't you know his lovely work and what's thought of it?"
"Oh yes, I know. That's why———" But Lady Claude stopped. After which: "But if he's still keeping himself?"
"Oh, it's not for me," said Mrs. Harvey.
"And evidently not for me. Whom then," her visitor asked, "does he think good enough?"
"Oh, these great people!" Mrs. Harvey smiled.
"But we're great people—you and I!" And Lady Claude kissed her good night.
"You mustn't, all the same," the elder woman said, "betray the secret of my greatness, which I've told you, please remember, only in the deepest confidence."
Her tone had a quiet purity of bitterness that for a moment longer held her friend, after which Lady Claude had the happy inspiration of meeting it with graceful gaiety. "It's quite for the best, I'm sure, that Mr. Straith wouldn't have you. You've kept yourself too; you'll marry yet—an ambassador!" And with another good night she reached the door. "You say you don't get on, but you do."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Harvey with vague attenuation.
"Oh yes, you do," Lady Claude insisted, while the door emphasised it with a little clap that sounded through the still house.