Miss Schley

“ 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. ”

“ Miss Schley had certainly been the cause of the whole affair. Lady Holme had spoken to Rupert Carey merely because she knew that her husband was immediately behind her with the American. There had been within her at that moment something of a broad, comprehensive feeling, mingled with the more limited personal feeling of anger against another woman’s successful impertinence, a sentiment of revolt in which womanhood seemed to rise up against the selfish tyrannies of men. ”

“ AS Lady Holme had foreseen, the impertinent mimicry of Miss Schley concentrated a great deal of attention upon the woman mimicked. Many people, accepting the American’s cleverness as a fashionable fact, also accepted her imitation as the imitation of a fact more surreptitious, and credited Lady Holme with a secret leading towards the improper never before suspected by them. They remembered the break between the Holmes and Carey, the strange scene at the Arkell House ball, and began to whisper many things of Lady Holme, and to turn a tide of pity and of sympathy upon her husband. ”

“ As she sat in the box looking on at this gross impertinence, she seemed to herself to be watching herself after a long degringolade, which had brought her, not to the gutter, but to the smart restaurant, the smart music-hall, the smart night club; the smart everything else that is beyond the borderland of even a lax society. This was Miss Schley’s comment upon her. The sting of it lay in this fact, that it followed immediately upon the heels of the unpleasant scene at Arkell House. ”

“ The people in the artists’ room began to sit down with a slight air of resignation. The French actor looked at the very pointed toes of his varnished boots and composed his india-rubber features into a solemn, almost priestly, expression. Lady Holme went over to a sofa near the screen and listened attentively to the duet, but from time to time she glanced towards the middle of the room where Miss Schley was still calmly standing up with Leo holding the bouquet. ”

“ She asked herself whether the angel were spreading her wings at last. All the small, sordid details of which lives lived in society, lives such as hers, are full, details which assume often an extraordinary importance, a significance like that of molecules seen through a magnifying glass, had suddenly become to her as nothing. A profound indifference had softly invaded her towards the petty side of life. Miss Schley, Leo Ulford, even Fritz in his suppressed rage and jealousy of a male animal openly trampled upon, had nothing to do with her, could have no effect on her at this moment. ”

“ Bry.”
“Mr. Bry is the least short-sighted man I know. That’s why he always wears an eyeglass.”
“To create an illusion?”
“Who knows?”
She looked down the long room. Between the heads of innumerable men and women she could see Miss Schley. Her husband was hidden. She would have preferred to see him. Miss Schley’s head was by no means expressive of the naked truth. It merely looked cool, self-possessed, and—so Lady Holme said to herself—extremely American. ”

“ Mrs. Wolfstein was by this time in violent conversation with a pale young man, who always looked as if he were on the point of fainting, but who went literally everywhere. Miss Schley glanced up into Lady Holme’s eyes.
“I hoped to make the acquaintance of Lord Holme to-night,” she murmured. “Folks tell me he’s a most beautiful man. Isn’t he anywhere around?”
She looked away into vacancy, ardently. Lady Holme felt a slight tingling sensation in her cool skin. For a moment it seemed to her as if she watched herself in caricature, distorted perhaps by a mirror with a slight flaw in it. ”

“ Robin shook his head.
“You think she dislikes me then?”
“Do women want definite reasons for half the things they do? Miss Schley may not say to herself that she dislikes you, any more than you say to yourself that you dislike her. ”

“ Mrs. Wolfstein did not warn Lady Holme. She was far too fond of being amused to do anything so short-sighted. Indeed, from that moment she was inclined to conspire to keep the Cadogan Square door shut against her friend. She did not go so far as that; for she had a firm faith in Pimpernel’s cuteness and was aware that she would be found out. But she remained passive and kept her eyes wide open.
Miss Schley was only going to act for a month in London. ”

“ Then, in an uneasy voice, he added:
“You must not take my character altogether from Leo.”
“Nor you mine altogether from Miss Schley,” said Lady Holme.
She scarcely knew why she said it. She thought herself stupid, ridiculous almost, for saying it. Yet she could not help speaking. Perhaps she relied on Sir Donald’s age. Or perhaps—but who knows why a woman is cautious or incautious in moments the least expected? God guides her, perhaps, or the devil—or merely a bottle imp. Men never know, and that is why they find her adorable. ”

“ Leo Ulford’s laugh was triumphant and prolonged.
“That’s where they breed marmars!” he exclaimed, when he was able to speak. “Women are stunning.”
“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,” said Lady Holme, preserving a quiet air of pupilage. “But perhaps it’s better I shouldn’t. Anyhow, I am quite sure Miss Schley’s mother will be worthy of her daughter.” ”

“ She’s the devil.”
There was a reluctant admiration in his voice, as there always is in the voice of a man when he describes a woman as gifted with infernal attributes, and this sound stung Lady Holme. It seemed to set that angel upon whom she was calling in the dust, to make of that angel a puppet, an impotent, even a contemptible thing.
“My dear Fritz,” she said in a rather loud, clear voice, like the voice of one speaking to a child, “my dear Fritz, you’re surely aware that I have been the subject of Miss Schley’s talent ever since she arrived in London?” ”

“ Wolfstein, with her strongest accent, while Miss Schley put out a limp hand to meet Lady Holme’s and very slightly accentuated her smile.
“Your mother? I shall be delighted to meet her. I hope you’ll bring her one day,” said Lady Holme; thinking more emphatically than ever that for a woman with a complexion as perfect as hers it was a mistake to wear many jewels. ”

“ But at this point she recognised a fact recognised by thousands of women with exasperation, sometimes with despair—that men would often hate in their wives the thing that draws them to women not their wives. The Pimpernel Schleys of the world know this masculine propensity of seeking different things—opposites, even—in the wife and the woman beyond the edge of the hearthstone, a propensity perhaps more tragic to wives than any other that exists in husbands. And having recognised this fact, Lady Holme knew that it would be worse than useless for her to imitate Miss Schley’s imitation of her. ”

“ MRS. WOLFSTEIN was right. There was money in Miss Schley’s performance. Her sly impropriety appealed with extraordinary force to the peculiar respectability characteristic of the British temperament, and her celebrity, hitherto mainly social, was suddenly and enormously increased. Already a popular person, she became a popular actress, and was soon as well-known to the world in the streets and the suburbs as to the world in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair. And this public celebrity greatly increased the value that was put upon her in private—especially the value put upon her by men. ”

“ The mere thought sent the American a step down from her throne. She stood below him now, as he stood below Viola. It seemed to him that there was less resemblance between his wife and Miss Schley than he had fancied. He even said so to Lady Holme. The angel smiled. Somebody else in her smiled too. Once he remarked to the angel, a propos de bottes, “We men are awful brutes sometimes.” ”

“ I think Miss Schley a very attractive little creature, and as to her social gifts, I bow to them.”
“But she has none,” cried Mrs. Wolfstein, who was one of those who had drawn Lady Holme’s attention to the likeness.
“How can you say so? Everyone is at her feet.”
“Her feet, perhaps. They are lovely. But she has no gifts. That’s why she gets on. Gifted people are a drug in the market. London’s sick of them. They worry. Pimpernel’s found that out and gone in for the savage state. I mean mentally of course.”
“Her mind dwells in a wigwam,” said Lady Manby. ”

“ One day she spoke to Robin Pierce about it. Lord Holme’s treatment of Carey had not yet been applied to him. They met at a private view in Bond Street, given by a painter who was adored by the smart world, and, as yet, totally unknown in every other circle. The exhibition was of portraits of beautiful women, and all the beautiful women and their admirers crowded the rooms. Both Lady Holme and Miss Schley had been included among the sitters of the painter, and—was it by chance or design?—their portraits hung side by side upon the brown-paper-covered walls. ”

“ He saw that while they were of an obvious type one was insipid, and the other rather pretty, dark with Irish black eyes.
"Ladies, I wish to make you acquainted with my friends," said Schley, as he might speak to a duchess. "The ill-favored gent with the vermilion hair is the Reverend Doctor Balmfinder; the one with the padded shoulders is Binks, my trainer. Now what is this little girl's name?"
"Muriel," said the blonde, "Muriel Stacey." ”

“ He drank his Kummel.
“I always learn something when I talk to a woman. I’ve learnt something from you.”
Lady Holme did not ask him what it was. She saw that he was now more intent on her than he had been on Miss Schley, and she got up to go, feeling more cheerful than she had since she left the atelier of “Cupido.” ”

“ She could have woman’s great stand-by in moments of crisis—a bad attack of neuralgia. It was the simplest matter in the world. The only question was—all things considered, was it worth while? By “all things considered” she meant Leo Ulford. The touch of Fritz in him made him a valuable ally at this moment. Fritz and Miss Schley were not going to have things quite all their own way. And then Mrs. Leo! She would put Fritz next the ear-trumpet. She had enough sense of humour to smile to herself at the thought of him there. ”

“ I’m a horrible bore in a house—the lazy man who does nothing and knows a lot. Casa Felice—Casa Felice. You won’t alter the name?”
“Would you advise me to?”
“I don’t know. To keep it is to tempt the wrath of the gods, but I should keep it.”
He poured out another whisky-and-soda and suddenly began to curse Miss Schley.
Sir Donald had spoken to her after Mrs. Wolfstein’s lunch.
“She’s imitating Lady Holme,” said Carey.
“I cannot see the likeness,” Sir Donald said. “Miss Schley seems to me uninteresting and common.”
“She is.” ”

“ Lady Holme was watching Fritz. The necessary suppression of his anger at such a moment, and in such surroundings, suppression of any demonstration of it at least, was evidently torturing him. Someone—a man—spoke to him. His wife saw that he seemed to choke something down before he could get out a word in reply. Directly he had answered he moved away from the man towards Miss Schley, but he did not go up to her. He did not trust himself to do that. He stood still again, staring. Leo bent protectively over the American. She smiled at him demurely beneath lowered eyelids. ”

“ Wolfstein. “Pimpernel, are you Yankees as bad?”
Miss Schley was eating sole a la Colbert with her eyes on her plate. She ate very slowly and took tiny morsels. Now she looked up.
“We’re pretty respectable over in America, I suppose,” she drawled. “Why not? What harm does it do anyway?”
“Well, it limits the inventive faculties for one thing. If one is strictly respectable life is plain sailing.”
“Oh, life is never that,” said Mrs. Trent, “for women.”
Lady Cardington seemed touched by this remark. ”

“ On the following day Fritz drove her himself to Manchester House in a new motor he had recently bought. All the morning he had stayed at home and fidgeted about the house. It was obvious to his wife that he was in an unusually distracted frame of mind. He wanted to tell her something, yet could not do so. She saw that plainly, and she felt almost certain that since their interview of the previous day he had seen Miss Schley. She fancied that there had been a scene of some kind between them, and she guessed that Fritz had been hopelessly worsted in it and was very sorry for himself. ”

“ But the devil generally dwells where the angel dwells—cloud and moon together. Now you want to get on with that poem.”
Half London was smiling gently at the resemblance between Lady Holme and Miss Schley before the former made up her mind to ask the latter to “something.” And when, moved to action by certain evidences of the Philadelphia talent which could not be misunderstood, she did make up her mind, she resolved that the “something” should be very large and by no means very intimate. Safety wanders in crowds. ”