In the Cage

H >> Henry James >> In the Cage


"Another?"--Mrs. Jordan's thoughts had to come back from a distance.

"Of her ladyship's admirers. He's 'going,' you say, to her?"

At this Mrs. Jordan really faltered. "She has engaged him."

"Engaged him?"--our young woman was quite at sea.

"In the same capacity as Lord Rye."

"And was Lord Rye engaged?"




CHAPTER XXVI


Mrs. Jordan looked away from her now--looked, she thought, rather injured
and, as if trifled with, even a little angry. The mention of Lady
Bradeen had frustrated for a while the convergence of our heroine's
thoughts; but with this impression of her old friend's combined
impatience and diffidence they began again to whirl round her, and
continued it till one of them appeared to dart at her, out of the dance,
as if with a sharp peck. It came to her with a lively shock, with a
positive sting, that Mr. Drake was--could it be possible? With the idea
she found herself afresh on the edge of laughter, of a sudden and strange
perversity of mirth. Mr. Drake loomed, in a swift image, before her;
such a figure as she had seen in open doorways of houses in Cocker's
quarter--majestic, middle-aged, erect, flanked on either side by a
footman and taking the name of a visitor. Mr. Drake then verily _was_ a
person who opened the door! Before she had time, however, to recover
from the effect of her evocation, she was offered a vision which quite
engulfed it. It was communicated to her somehow that the face with which
she had seen it rise prompted Mrs. Jordan to dash, a bit wildly, at
something, at anything, that might attenuate criticism. "Lady Bradeen's
re-arranging--she's going to be married."

"Married?" The girl echoed it ever so softly, but there it was at last.

"Didn't you know it?"

She summoned all her sturdiness. "No, she hasn't told me."

"And her friends--haven't they?"

"I haven't seen any of them lately. I'm not so fortunate as you."

Mrs. Jordan gathered herself. "Then you haven't even heard of Lord
Bradeen's death?"

Her comrade, unable for a moment to speak, gave a slow headshake. "You
know it from Mr. Drake?" It was better surely not to learn things at all
than to learn them by the butler.

"She tells him everything."

"And he tells _you_--I see." Our young lady got up; recovering her muff
and her gloves she smiled. "Well, I haven't unfortunately any Mr. Drake.
I congratulate you with all my heart. Even without your sort of
assistance, however, there's a trifle here and there that I do pick up. I
gather that if she's to marry any one it must quite necessarily be my
friend."

Mrs. Jordan was now also on her feet. "Is Captain Everard your friend?"

The girl considered, drawing on a glove. "I saw, at one time, an immense
deal of him."

Mrs. Jordan looked hard at the glove, but she hadn't after all waited for
that to be sorry it wasn't cleaner. "What time was that?"

"It must have been the time you were seeing so much of Mr. Drake." She
had now fairly taken it in: the distinguished person Mrs. Jordan was to
marry would answer bells and put on coals and superintend, at least, the
cleaning of boots for the other distinguished person whom she might--well,
whom she might have had, if she had wished, so much more to say to. "Good-
bye," she added; "good-bye."

Mrs. Jordan, however, again taking her muff from her, turned it over,
brushed it off and thoughtfully peeped into it. "Tell me this before you
go. You spoke just now of your own changes. Do you mean that Mr.
Mudge--?"

"Mr. Mudge has had great patience with me--he has brought me at last to
the point. We're to be married next month and have a nice little home.
But he's only a grocer, you know"--the girl met her friend's intent
eyes--"so that I'm afraid that, with the set you've got into, you won't
see your way to keep up our friendship."

Mrs. Jordan for a moment made no answer to this; she only held the muff
up to her face, after which she gave it back. "You don't like it. I
see, I see."

To her guest's astonishment there were tears now in her eyes. "I don't
like what?" the girl asked.

"Why my engagement. Only, with your great cleverness," the poor lady
quavered out, "you put it in your own way. I mean that you'll cool off.
You already have--!" And on this, the next instant, her tears began to
flow. She succumbed to them and collapsed; she sank down again, burying
her face and trying to smother her sobs.

Her young friend stood there, still in some rigour, but taken much by
surprise even if not yet fully moved to pity. "I don't put anything in
any 'way,' and I'm very glad you're suited. Only, you know, you did put
to me so splendidly what, even for me, if I had listened to you, it might
lead to."

Mrs. Jordan kept up a mild thin weak wail; then, drying her eyes, as
feebly considered this reminder. "It has led to my not starving!" she
faintly gasped.

Our young lady, at this, dropped into the place beside her, and now, in a
rush, the small silly misery was clear. She took her hand as a sign of
pitying it, then, after another instant, confirmed this expression with a
consoling kiss. They sat there together; they looked out, hand in hand,
into the damp dusky shabby little room and into the future, of no such
very different suggestion, at last accepted by each. There was no
definite utterance, on either side, of Mr. Drake's position in the great
world, but the temporary collapse of his prospective bride threw all
further necessary light; and what our heroine saw and felt for in the
whole business was the vivid reflexion of her own dreams and delusions
and her own return to reality. Reality, for the poor things they both
were, could only be ugliness and obscurity, could never be the escape,
the rise. She pressed her friend--she had tact enough for that--with no
other personal question, brought on no need of further revelations, only
just continued to hold and comfort her and to acknowledge by stiff little
forbearances the common element in their fate. She felt indeed
magnanimous in such matters; since if it was very well, for condolence or
reassurance, to suppress just then invidious shrinkings, she yet by no
means saw herself sitting down, as she might say, to the same table with
Mr. Drake. There would luckily, to all appearance, be little question of
tables; and the circumstance that, on their peculiar lines, her friend's
interests would still attach themselves to Mayfair flung over Chalk Farm
the first radiance it had shown. Where was one's pride and one's passion
when the real way to judge of one's luck was by making not the wrong but
the right comparison? Before she had again gathered herself to go she
felt very small and cautious and thankful. "We shall have our own
house," she said, "and you must come very soon and let me show it you."

"_We_ shall have our own too," Mrs. Jordan replied; "for, don't you know?
he makes it a condition that he sleeps out?"

"A condition?"--the girl felt out of it.

"For any new position. It was on that he parted with Lord Rye. His
lordship can't meet it. So Mr. Drake has given him up."

"And all for you?"--our young woman put it as cheerfully as possible.

"For me and Lady Bradeen. Her ladyship's too glad to get him at any
price. Lord Rye, out of interest in us, has in fact quite _made_ her
take him. So, as I tell you, he will have his own establishment."

Mrs. Jordan, in the elation of it, had begun to revive; but there was
nevertheless between them rather a conscious pause--a pause in which
neither visitor nor hostess brought out a hope or an invitation. It
expressed in the last resort that, in spite of submission and sympathy,
they could now after all only look at each other across the social gulf.
They remained together as if it would be indeed their last chance, still
sitting, though awkwardly, quite close, and feeling also--and this most
unmistakeably--that there was one thing more to go into. By the time it
came to the surface, moreover, our young friend had recognised the whole
of the main truth, from which she even drew again a slight irritation. It
was not the main truth perhaps that most signified; but after her
momentary effort, her embarrassment and her tears Mrs. Jordan had begun
to sound afresh--and even without speaking--the note of a social
connexion. She hadn't really let go of it that she was marrying into
society. Well, it was a harmless compensation, and it was all the
prospective bride of Mr. Mudge had to leave with her.




CHAPTER XXVII


This young lady at last rose again, but she lingered before going. "And
has Captain Everard nothing to say to it?"

"To what, dear?"

"Why, to such questions--the domestic arrangements, things in the house."

"How can he, with any authority, when nothing in the house is his?"

"Not his?" The girl wondered, perfectly conscious of the appearance she
thus conferred on Mrs. Jordan of knowing, in comparison with herself, so
tremendously much about it. Well, there were things she wanted so to get
at that she was willing at last, though it hurt her, to pay for them with
humiliation. "Why are they not his?"

"Don't you know, dear, that he has nothing?"

"Nothing?" It was hard to see him in such a light, but Mrs. Jordan's
power to answer for it had a superiority that began, on the spot, to
grow. "Isn't he rich?"

Mrs. Jordan looked immensely, looked both generally and particularly,
informed. "It depends upon what you call--! Not at any rate in the
least as she is. What does he bring? Think what she has. And then,
love, his debts."

"His debts?" His young friend was fairly betrayed into helpless
innocence. She could struggle a little, but she had to let herself go;
and if she had spoken frankly she would have said: "Do tell me, for I
don't know so much about him as _that_!" As she didn't speak frankly she
only said: "His debts are nothing--when she so adores him."

Mrs. Jordan began to fix her again, and now she saw that she must only
take it all. That was what it had come to: his having sat with her there
on the bench and under the trees in the summer darkness and put his hand
on her, making her know what he would have said if permitted; his having
returned to her afterwards, repeatedly, with supplicating eyes and a
fever in his blood; and her having, on her side, hard and pedantic,
helped by some miracle and with her impossible condition, only answered
him, yet supplicating back, through the bars of the cage,--all simply
that she might hear of him, now for ever lost, only through Mrs. Jordan,
who touched him through Mr. Drake, who reached him through Lady Bradeen.
"She adores him--but of course that wasn't all there was about it."

The girl met her eyes a minute, then quite surrendered. "What was there
else about it?"

"Why, don't you know?"--Mrs. Jordan was almost compassionate.

Her interlocutress had, in the cage, sounded depths, but there was a
suggestion here somehow of an abyss quite measureless. "Of course I know
she would never let him alone."

"How _could_ she--fancy!--when he had so compromised her?"

The most artless cry they had ever uttered broke, at this, from the
younger pair of lips. "_Had_ he so--?"

"Why, don't you know the scandal?"

Our heroine thought, recollected there was something, whatever it was,
that she knew after all much more of than Mrs. Jordan. She saw him again
as she had seen him come that morning to recover the telegram--she saw
him as she had seen him leave the shop. She perched herself a moment on
this. "Oh there was nothing public."

"Not exactly public--no. But there was an awful scare and an awful row.
It was all on the very point of coming out. Something was lost--something
was found."

"Ah yes," the girl replied, smiling as if with the revival of a blurred
memory; "something was found."

"It all got about--and there was a point at which Lord Bradeen had to
act."

"Had to--yes. But he didn't."

Mrs. Jordan was obliged to admit it. "No, he didn't. And then, luckily
for them, he died."

"I didn't know about his death," her companion said.

"It was nine weeks ago, and most sudden. It has given them a prompt
chance."

"To get married?"--this was a wonder--"within nine weeks?"

"Oh not immediately, but--in all the circumstances--very quietly and, I
assure you, very soon. Every preparation's made. Above all she holds
him."

"Oh yes, she holds him!" our young friend threw off. She had this before
her again a minute; then she continued: "You mean through his having made
her talked about?"

"Yes, but not only that. She has still another pull."

"Another?"

Mrs. Jordan hesitated. "Why, he was _in_ something."

Her comrade wondered. "In what?"

"I don't know. Something bad. As I tell you, something was found."

The girl stared. "Well?"

"It would have been very bad for him. But, she helped him some way--she
recovered it, got hold of it. It's even said she stole it!"

Our young woman considered afresh. "Why it was what was found that
precisely saved him."

Mrs. Jordan, however, was positive. "I beg your pardon. I happen to
know."

Her disciple faltered but an instant. "Do you mean through Mr. Drake? Do
they tell him these things?"

"A good servant," said Mrs. Jordan, now thoroughly superior and
proportionately sententious, "doesn't need to be told! Her ladyship
saved--as a woman so often saves!--the man she loves."

This time our heroine took longer to recover herself, but she found a
voice at last. "Ah well--of course I don't know! The great thing was
that he got off. They seem then, in a manner," she added, "to have done
a great deal for each other."

"Well, it's she that has done most. She has him tight."

"I see, I see. Good-bye." The women had already embraced, and this was
not repeated; but Mrs. Jordan went down with her guest to the door of the
house. Here again the younger lingered, reverting, though three or four
other remarks had on the way passed between them, to Captain Everard and
Lady Bradeen. "Did you mean just now that if she hadn't saved him, as
you call it, she wouldn't hold him so tight?"

"Well, I dare say." Mrs. Jordan, on the doorstep, smiled with a
reflexion that had come to her; she took one of her big bites of the
brown gloom. "Men always dislike one when they've done one an injury."

"But what injury had he done her?"

"The one I've mentioned. He _must_ marry her, you know."

"And didn't he want to?"

"Not before."

"Not before she recovered the telegram?"

Mrs. Jordan was pulled up a little. "Was it a telegram?"

The girl hesitated. "I thought you said so. I mean whatever it was."

"Yes, whatever it was, I don't think she saw _that_."

"So she just nailed him?"

"She just nailed him." The departing friend was now at the bottom of the
little flight of steps; the other was at the top, with a certain
thickness of fog. "And when am I to think of you in your little
home?--next month?" asked the voice from the top.

"At the very latest. And when am I to think of you in yours?"

"Oh even sooner. I feel, after so much talk with you about it, as if I
were already there!" Then "_Good_-bye!" came out of the fog.

"Good-_bye_!" went into it. Our young lady went into it also, in the
opposed quarter, and presently, after a few sightless turns, came out on
the Paddington canal. Distinguishing vaguely what the low parapet
enclosed she stopped close to it and stood a while very intently, but
perhaps still sightlessly, looking down on it. A policeman; while she
remained, strolled past her; then, going his way a little further and
half lost in the atmosphere, paused and watched her. But she was quite
unaware--she was full of her thoughts. They were too numerous to find a
place just here, but two of the number may at least be mentioned. One of
these was that, decidedly, her little home must be not for next month,
but for next week; the other, which came indeed as she resumed her walk
and went her way, was that it was strange such a matter should be at last
settled for her by Mr. Drake