THE success of Pimpernel Schley in London was great and immediate, and preceded her appearance upon the stage. To some people, who thought they knew their London, it was inexplicable. Miss Schley was pretty and knew how to dress. These facts, though of course denied by some, as all facts in London are, were undeniable. But Miss Schley had nothing to say. She was not a brilliant talker, as so many of her countrywomen are. She was not vivacious in manner, except on rare occasions. She was not interested in all the questions of the day. She was not—a great many things. But she was one thing.
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.
It was all a little like an imitation, with just a touch of caricature added.
One or two friends remarked upon it to Lady Holme, who heard them very airily.
“Are we alike?” she said. “I daresay, but you mustn’t expect me to see it. One never knows the sort of impression one produces on the world. 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. “And wears glass beads and little bits of coloured cloth.”
“But her acting?” asked Lady Holme, with careless indifference.
“Oh, that’s improper but not brilliant,” said Mrs. Wolfstein. “The American critics says it’s beneath contempt.”
“But not beneath popularity, I suppose?” said Lady Holme.
“No, she’s enormously popular. Newspaper notices don’t matter to Pimpernel. Are you going to ask her to your house? You might. She’s longing to come. Everybody else has, and she knew you first.”
Lady Holme began to realise why she could never like Mrs. Wolfstein. The latter would try to manage other people’s affairs.
“I had no idea she would care about it,” she answered, rather coldly.
“My dear—an American! And your house! You’re absurdly modest. She’s simply pining to come. May I tell her to?”
“I should prefer to invite her myself,” said Lady Holme, with a distinct touch of hauteur which made Mrs. Wolfstein smile maliciously.
When Lady Holme was alone she realised that she had, half unconsciously, meant that Miss Schley should find that there was at any rate one house in London whose door did not at once fly open to welcome her demure presence. But now? She certainly did not intend to be a marked exception to a rule that was apparently very general. If people were going to talk about her exclusion of Miss Schley, she would certainly not exclude her. She asked herself why she wished to, and said to herself that Miss Schley’s slyness bored her. But she knew that the real reason of the secret hostility she felt towards the American was the fact of their resemblance to each other. Until Miss Schley appeared in London she—Viola Holme—had been original both in her beauty and in her manner of presenting it to the world. Miss Schley was turning her into a type.
It was too bad. Any woman would have disliked it.
She wondered whether Miss Schley recognised the likeness. But of course people had spoken to her about it. Mrs. Wolfstein was her bosom friend. The Jewess had met her first at Carlsbad and, with that terrible social flair which often dwells in Israel, had at once realised her fitness for a London success and resolved to “get her over.” Women of the Wolfstein species are seldom jealously timorous of the triumphs of other women. A certain coarse cleverness, a certain ingrained assurance and unconquerable self-confidence keeps them hardy. And they generally have a noble reliance on the power of the tongue. Being incapable of any fear of Miss Schley, Mrs. Wolfstein, ever on the look-out for means of improving her already satisfactory position in the London world, saw one in the vestal virgin and resolved to launch her in England. She was delighted with the result. Miss Schley had already added several very desirable people to the Wolfstein visiting-list. In return “Henry” had “put her on to” one or two very good things in the City. Everything would be most satisfactory if only Lady Holme were not tiresome about the Cadogan Square door.
“She hates you, Pimpernel,” said Mrs. Wolfstein to her friend.
“Why?” drawled Miss Schley.
“You know why perfectly well. You reproduce her looks. I’m perfectly certain she’s dreading your first night. She’s afraid people will begin to think that extraordinary colourless charm she and you possess stagey. Besides, you have certain mannerisms—you don’t imitate her, Pimpernel?”
The pawnbroking expression was remarkably apparent for a moment in Mrs. Wolfstein’s eyes.
“I haven’t started to yet.”
“Yet?”
“Well, if she don’t ask me to number thirty-eight—‘tis thirty-eight?”
“Forty-two.”
“Forty-two Cadogan Square, I might be tempted. I came out as a mimic, you know, at Corsher and Byall’s in Philadelphia.”
Miss Schley gazed reflectively upon the brown carpet of Mrs. Wolfstein’s boudoir.
“Folks said I wasn’t bad,” she added meditatively.
“I think I ought to warn Viola,” said Mrs. Wolfstein.
She was peculiarly intimate with people of distinction when they weren’t there. Miss Schley looked as if she had not heard. She often did when anything of importance to her was said. It was important to her to be admitted to Lady Holme’s house. Everybody went there. It was one of the very smartest houses in London, and since everybody knew that she had been introduced to Lady Holme, since half the world was comparing their faces and would soon begin to compare their mannerisms—well, it would be better that she should not be forced into any revival of her Philadelphia talents.
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. Her managers had taken a theatre for her from the first of June till the first of July. As she was to appear in a play she had already acted in all over the States, and as her American company was coming over to support her, she had nothing to do in the way of preparation. Having arrived early in the year, she had nearly three months of idleness to enjoy. Her conversation with Mrs. Wolfstein took place in the latter days of March. And it was just at this period that Lady Holme began seriously to debate whether she should, or should not, open her door to the American. She knew Miss Schley was determined to come to her house. She knew her house was one of those to which any woman setting out on the conquest of London would wish to come. She did not want Miss Schley there, but she resolved to invite her if peopled talked too much about her not being invited. And she wished to be informed if they did. 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. Lady Holme was not aware of this when she caught Robin’s eye through a crevice in the picture hats and called him to her with a little nod.
“Is there tea?”
“Yes. In the last room.”
“Take me there. Oh, there’s Ashley Greaves. Avoid him, like a dear, till I’ve looked at something.”
Ashley Greaves was the painter. There was nothing of the Bohemian about him. He looked like a heavy cavalry officer as he stood in the centre of the room talking to a small, sharp-featured old lady in a poke bonnet.
“He’s safe. Lady Blower’s got hold of him.”
“Poor wretch! She ought to have a keeper. Strong tea, Robin.”
They found a settee in a corner walled in by the backs of tea-drinking beauties.
“I want to ask you something,” said Lady Holme, confidentially. “You go about and hear what they’re saying.”
“And greater nonsense it seems each new season.”
“Nonsense keeps us alive.”
“Is it the oxygen self-administered by an almost moribund society?”
“It’s the perfume that prevents us from noticing the stuffiness of the room. But, Robin, tell me—what is the nonsense of now?”
“Religious, political, theatrical, divorce court or what, Lady Holme?”
He looked at her with a touch of mischief in his dark face, which told her, and was meant to tell her, that he was on the alert, and had divined that she had a purpose in thus pleasantly taking possession of him.
“Oh, the people—nonsense. You know perfectly what I mean.”
“Whom are they chattering about most at the moment? You’ll be contemptuous if I tell you.”
“It’s a woman, then?”
“When isn’t it?”
“Do I know her?”
“Slightly.”
“Well?”
“Miss Schley.”
“Really?”
Lady Holme’s voice sounded perfectly indifferent and just faintly surprised. There was no hint of irritation in it.
“And what are they saying about Miss Schley?” she added, sipping her tea and glancing about the crowded room.
“Oh, many things, and among the many one that’s more untrue than all the rest put together.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s too absurd. I don’t think I’ll tell you.”
“But why not? If it’s too absurd it’s sure to be amusing.”
“I don’t think so.”
His voice sounded almost angry.
“Tell me, Robin.”
He looked at her quickly with a warm light in his dark eyes.
“If you only knew how I—”
“Hush! Go on about Miss Schley.”
“They’re saying that she’s wonderfully like you, and that—have some more tea?”
“That—?”
“That you hate it.”
Lady Holme smiled, as if she were very much entertained.
“But why should I hate it?”
“I don’t know. But women invent reasons for everything.”
“What have they invented for this?”
“Oh—well—that you like to—I can’t tell you it all, really. But in substance it comes to this! They are saying, or implying—”
“Implication is the most subtle of the social arts.”
“It’s the meanest—implying that all that’s natural to you, that sets you apart from others, is an assumption to make you stand out from the rest of the crowd, and that you hate Miss Schley because she happens to have assumed some of the same characteristics, and so makes you seem less unique than you did before.”
Lady Holme said nothing for a moment. Then she remarked:
“I’m sure no woman said ‘less unique.’”
“Why not?”
“Now did anyone? Confess!”
“What d’you suppose they did say?”
“More commonplace.”
He could not help laughing.
“As if you were ever commonplace!” he exclaimed, rather relieved by her manner.
“That’s not the question. But then Miss Schley’s said to be like me not only in appearance but in other ways? Are we really so Siamese?”
“I can’t see the faintest beginning of a resemblance.”
“Ah, now you’re falling into exaggeration in the other direction.”
“Well, not in realities. Perhaps in one or two trifling mannerisms—I believe she imitates you deliberately.”
“I think I must ask her to the house.”
“Why should you?”
“Well, perhaps you might tell me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Aren’t people saying that the reason I don’t ask her is because I am piqued at the supposed resemblance between us?”
“Oh, people will say anything. If we are to model our lives according to their ridiculous ideas—”
“Well, but we do.”
“Unless we follow the dictates of our own natures, our own souls.”
He lowered his voice almost to a whisper.
“Be yourself, be the woman who sings, and no one—not even a fool—will ever say again that you resemble a nonentity like Miss Schley. You see—you see now that even socially it is a mistake not to be your real self. You can be imitated by a cute little Yankee who has neither imagination nor brains, only the sort of slyness that is born out of the gutter.”
“My dear Robin, remember where we are. You—a diplomatist!”
She put her finger to her lips and got up.
“We must look at something or Ashley Greaves will be furious.”
They made their way into the galleries, which were almost impassable. In the distance Lady Holme caught sight of Miss Schley with Mrs. Wolfstein. They were surrounded by young men. She looked hard at the American’s pale face, saying to herself, “Is that like me? Is that like me?” Her conversation with Robin Pierce had made her feel excited. She had not shown it. She had seemed, indeed, almost oddly indifferent. But something combative was awake within her. She wondered whether the American was consciously imitating her. What an impertinence! But Miss Schley was impertinence personified. Her impertinence was her raison d’etre. Without it she would almost cease to be. She would at any rate be as nothing.
Followed by Robin, Lady Holme made her way slowly towards the Jewess and the American.
They were now standing together before the pictures, and had been joined by Ashley Greaves, who was beginning to look very warm and expressive, despite his cavalry moustache. Their backs were towards the room, and Lady Holme and Robin drew near to them without being perceived. Mrs. Wolfstein had a loud voice and did not control it in a crowd. On the contrary, she generally raised it, as if she wished to be heard by those whom she was not addressing.
“Sargent invariably brings out the secret of his sitters,” she was saying to Ashley Greaves as Lady Holme and Robin came near and stood for an instant wedged in by people, unable to move forward or backward. “You’ve brought out the similarities between Pimpernel and Lady Holme. I never saw anything so clever. You show us not only what we all saw but what we all passed over though it was there to see. There is an absurd likeness, and you’ve blazoned it.”
Robin stole a glance at his companion. Ashley Greaves said, in a thin voice that did not accord with his physique:
“My idea was to indicate the strong link there is between the English woman and the American woman. If I may say so, these two portraits, as it were, personify the two countries, and—er—and—er—”
His mind appeared to give way. He strove to continue, to say something memorable, conscious of his conspicuous and central position. But his intellect, possibly over-heated and suffering from lack of air, declined to back him up, and left him murmuring rather hopelessly:
“The one nation—er—and the other—yes—the give and take—the give and take. You see my meaning? Yes, yes.”
Miss Schley said nothing. She looked at Lady Holme’s portrait and at hers with serenity, and seemed quite unconscious of the many eyes fastened upon her.
“You feel the strong link, I hope, Pimpernel?” said Mrs. Wolfstein, with her most violent foreign accent. “Hands across the Herring Pond!”
“Mr. Greaves has been too cute for words,” she replied. “I wish Lady Holme could cast her eye on them.”
She looked up at nothing, with a sudden air of seeing something interesting that was happening along way off.
“Philadelphia!” murmured Mrs. Wolfstein, with an undercurrent of laughter.
It was very like Lady Holme’s look when she was singing. Robin Pierce saw it and pressed his lips together. At this moment the crowd shifted and left a gap through which Lady Holme immediately glided towards Ashley Greaves. He saw her and came forward to meet her with eagerness, holding out his hand, and smiling mechanically with even more than his usual intention.
“What a success!” she said.
“If it is, your portrait makes it so.”
“And where is my portrait?”
Robin Pierce nipped in the bud a rather cynical smile. The painter wiped his forehead with a white silk handkerchief.
“Can’t you guess? Look where the crowd is thickest.”
The people had again closed densely round the two pictures.
“You are an artist in more ways than one, I’m afraid,” said Lady Holme. “Don’t turn my head more than the heat has.”
The searching expression, that indicated the strong desire to say something memorable, once more contorted the painter’s face.
“He who would essay to fix beauty on canvas,” he began, in a rather piercing voice, “should combine two gifts.”
He paused and lifted his upper lip two or three times, employing his under-jaw as a lever.
“Yes?” said Lady Holme, encouragingly.
“The gift of the brush which perpetuates and the gift of—er—gift of the—”
His intellect once more retreated from him into some distant place and left him murmuring:
“Beauty demands all, beauty demands all. Yes, yes! Sacrifice! Sacrifice! Isn’t it so?”
He tugged at his large moustache, with an abrupt assumption of the cavalry officer’s manner, which he doubtless deemed to be in accordance with his momentary muddle-headedness.
“And you give it what it wants most—the touch of the ideal. It blesses you. Can we get through?”
She had glanced at Robin while she spoke the first words. Ashley Greaves, with an expression of sudden relief, began very politely to hustle the crowd, which yielded to his persuasive shoulders, and Lady Holme found herself within looking distance of the two portraits, and speaking distance of Mrs. Wolfstein and Miss Schley. She greeted them with a nod that was more gay and friendly than her usual salutations to women, which often lacked bonhomie. Mrs. Wolfstein’s too expressive face lit up.
“The sensation is complete!” she exclaimed loudly.
“Hope you’re well,” murmured Miss Schley, letting her pale eyes rest on Lady Holme for about a quarter of a second, and then becoming acutely attentive to vacancy.
Lady Holme was now in front of the pictures. She looked at Miss Schley’s portrait with apparent interest, while Mrs. Wolfstein looked at her with an interest that was maliciously real.
“Well?” said Mrs. Wolfstein. “Well?”
“There’s an extraordinary resemblance!” said Lady Holme. “It’s wonderfully like.”
“Even you see it! Ashley, you ought to be triumphant—”
“Wonderfully like—Miss Schley,” added Lady Holme, cutting gently through Mrs. Wolfstein’s rather noisy outburst.
She turned to the American.
“I have been wondering whether you won’t come in one day and see my little home. Everyone wants you, I know, but if you have a minute some Wednesday—”
“I’ll be delighted.”
“Next Wednesday, then?”
“Thanks. Next Wednesday.”
“Cadogan Square—the red book will tell you. But I’ll send cards. I must be running away now.”
When she had gone, followed by Robin, Mrs. Wolfstein said to Miss Schley:
“She’s been conquered by fear of Philadelphia.”
“Wait till I give her Noo York,” returned the American, placidly.
It seemed that Lady Holme’s secret hostility to Miss Schley was returned by the vestal virgin.
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