Book II
20. Chapter XX.
(continued)
Not long after their arrival in London he had run
across the Duke of St. Austrey, and the Duke, instantly
and cordially recognising him, had said: "Look me up,
won't you?"--but no proper-spirited American would
have considered that a suggestion to be acted on, and
the meeting was without a sequel. They had even managed
to avoid May's English aunt, the banker's wife,
who was still in Yorkshire; in fact, they had purposely
postponed going to London till the autumn in order
that their arrival during the season might not appear
pushing and snobbish to these unknown relatives.
"Probably there'll be nobody at Mrs. Carfry's--London's
a desert at this season, and you've made yourself
much too beautiful," Archer said to May, who sat at
his side in the hansom so spotlessly splendid in her
sky-blue cloak edged with swansdown that it seemed
wicked to expose her to the London grime.
"I don't want them to think that we dress like
savages," she replied, with a scorn that Pocahontas might
have resented; and he was struck again by the religious
reverence of even the most unworldly American women
for the social advantages of dress.
"It's their armour," he thought, "their defence against
the unknown, and their defiance of it." And he understood
for the first time the earnestness with which
May, who was incapable of tying a ribbon in her hair
to charm him, had gone through the solemn rite of
selecting and ordering her extensive wardrobe.
He had been right in expecting the party at Mrs.
Carfry's to be a small one. Besides their hostess and her
sister, they found, in the long chilly drawing-room,
only another shawled lady, a genial Vicar who was her
husband, a silent lad whom Mrs. Carfry named as her
nephew, and a small dark gentleman with lively eyes
whom she introduced as his tutor, pronouncing a French
name as she did so.
Into this dimly-lit and dim-featured group May Archer
floated like a swan with the sunset on her: she seemed
larger, fairer, more voluminously rustling than her
husband had ever seen her; and he perceived that the
rosiness and rustlingness were the tokens of an extreme
and infantile shyness.
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