“Jooly,” Mr. Mangles had been heard to say behind that lady’s back—“Jooly is an impressive dresser when she tries.”
But the truth is that Jooly did not always try. She had not tried this morning, but stood in the conventional hotel room dressed in a black cloth garment which had pleats down the front and back and a belt like a Norfolk jacket. Miss Mangles was large and square-shouldered. She was a rhomboid, in fact, and had that depressing square-and-flat waist which so often figures on the platform in a great cause. Her hair was black and shiny and straight; it was drawn back from her rounded temples by hydraulic pressure. Her mouth was large and rather loose; it had grown baggy by much speaking on public platforms—a fearsome thing in a woman. Her face was large and round and white. Her eyes were dull. Long ago there must have been depressing moments in the life of Julia P. Mangles—moments spent in front of her mirror. But, like the woman of spirit that she was, she had determined that, if she could not be beautiful, she could at all events be great.
One self-deception leads to another. Miss Mangles sat down and accepted Lady Orlay’s invitation in the full and perfect conviction that she owed it to her greatness.
“Are they abstainers?” she asked, reflectively, going back in her mind over the causes she had championed.
“Nay,” replied Joseph, winking gravely at a policeman in Northumberland Avenue.
“Perhaps Lord Orlay is open to conviction.”
“If you tackle Orlay, you’ll find you’ve bitten off a bigger bit than you can chew,” replied Joseph, who had a singular habit of lapsing into the vulgarest slang when Julia mounted her high horse in the presence of himself only. When others were present Mr. Mangles seemed to take a sort of pride in this great woman. Let those explain the attitude who can.
Lady Orlay’s entertainments were popularly said to be too crowded, and no one knew this better than Lady Orlay.
“Let us ask them all and be done with them,” she said; and had said it for thirty years, ever since she had begun a social existence with no other prospects than that which lay in her husband’s brain—then plain Mr. Orlay. She had never “done with them,” had never secured that peaceful domestic leisure which had always been her dream and her husband’s dream, and would never secure it. For these were two persons, now old and white-haired and celebrated, who lived in the great world, and had a supreme contempt for it.
The Mangleses were among the first to arrive, Julia in a dress of rich black silk, with some green about it, and a number of iridescent beetle-wings serving as a relief. Miss Netty Cahere was a vision of pink and self-effacing quietness.
“We shall know no one,” she said, with a shrinking movement of her shoulders as they mounted the stairs.
“Not even the waiters,” replied Joseph Mangles, in his lugubrious bass, glancing into a room where tea and coffee were set out. “But they will soon know us.”
They had not been in the room, however, five minutes before an acquaintance entered it, tall and slim, like a cheerful Don Quixote, with the ribbon of a great order across his shirtfront. He paused for a moment near Lord and Lady Orlay, and his entrance caused, as it usually did, a little stir in the room. Then he turned and greeted Joseph Mangles. Over the large, firm hand of that gentleman’s sister he bowed in silence.
“I have nothing to say to that great woman,” he sometimes said. “She is so elevated that my voice will not reach her.”
Deulin then turned to where Miss Cahere had been standing. But she had moved away a few paces, nearer to a candelabrum, under which she was now standing, and a young officer in full German uniform was openly admiring her, with a sort of wonder on his foolish, Teutonic face.
“Ah! I expected you had forgotten me,” she said, when Deulin presented himself.
“Believe me—I have tried,” he replied, with great earnestness; but the complete innocence of her face clearly showed that she did not attach any deep meaning to his remark.
“You must see so many people that you cannot be expected to remember them all.”
“I do not remember them all, mademoiselle—only a very, very few.”
“Then tell me, who is that lovely girl you bowed to as you came into the room?”
“Is there another in the room?” inquired Deulin, looking around him with some interest.
“Over there, with the fair hair, dressed in black.”
“Ah! talking to Cartoner. Yes. Do you think her beautiful?”
“I think she is perfectly lovely. But somehow she does not look like one of us, does she?” And Miss Cahere lowered her voice in a rather youthful and inexperienced way.
“She is not like one of us, Miss Cahere,” replied Deulin.
“Why?”
“Because we are plebeians, and she is a princess.”
“Oh, then she is married?” exclaimed Miss Cahere, and her voice fell three semitones on the last word.
“No. She is a princess in her own right. She is a Pole.”
Miss Cahere gave a little sigh.
“Poor thing,” she said, looking at the Princess Wanda, with a soft light of sympathy in her gentle eyes.
“Why do you pity her?” asked Deulin, glancing down sharply.
“Because princesses are always obliged to marry royalties, are they not—for convenience, I mean—not from … from inclination, like other girls?”
And Miss Cahere’s eyelids fluttered, but she did not actually raise her eyes towards her interlocutor. An odd smile flickered for an instant on Deulin’s lips.
“Ah!” he said, with a sharp sigh—and that was all. He bowed, and turned away to speak to a man who had been waiting at his elbow for some minutes. This also was a Frenchman, who seemed to have something special to report, for they walked aside together.
It was quite late in the evening before Deulin succeeded in his efforts to get a few moments’ speech with Lady
