I remember very well the occasion on which I first saw Jane Fowler.
It is indeed only because the details of the glimpse I had of her then are so clear that I trust my recollection at all, for, looking back, I must confess that I find it hard to believe that it had not played me a fantastic trick.
I had lately returned to London from China and was drinking a dish of tea with Mrs Tower.
Mrs Tower had been seized with the prevailing passion for decoration, and with the ruthlessness of her sex had sacrificed chairs in which she had comfortably sat for years, tables, cabinets, ornaments on which her eyes had dwelt in peace since she was married, pictures that had been familiar to her for a generation, and delivered herself into the hands of an expert.
Nothing remained in her drawing-room with which she had any association, or to which any sentiment was attached; and she had invited me that day to see the fashionable glory in which she now lived.
Everything that could be pickled was pickled and what couldn't be pickled was painted.
Nothing matched, but everything harmonized.
'Do you remember that ridiculous drawing-room suite that I used to have?' asked Mrs Tower.
The curtains were sumptuous yet severe; the sofa was covered with Italian brocade; the chair on which I sat was in petit point.
The room was beautiful, opulent without garnishness and original without affectation; yet to me it lacked something; and while I praised with my lips I asked myself why I so much preferred the rather shabby chintz of the despised suite, the Victorian water-colours that I had known so long, and the ridiculous Dresden china that had adorned the chimney-piece.
I wondered what it was that I missed in all these rooms that the decorators were turning out with a profitable industry.
Was it heart?
But Mrs Tower looked about her happily.
'Don't you like my alabaster lamps?' she said.
'They give such a soft light.'
'Personally I have a weakness for a light that you can see by,' I smiled.
'It's so difficult to combine that with a light that you can't be too much seen by,' laughed Mrs Tower.
I had no notion what her age was.
When I was quite a young man she was a married woman a good deal older than I, but now she treated me as her contemporary.
She constantly said that she made no secret of her age, which was forty, and then added with a smile that all women took five years off.
She never sought to conceal the fact that she dyed her hair (it was a very pretty brown with reddish tints), and she said she did this because hair was hideous while it was going grey; as soon as hers was white she she would cease to dye it.
'Then they'll say what a young face I have.'
Meanwhile it was painted, though with discretion, and her eyes owed not a little of their vivacity to art.
She was a handsome woman, exquisitely gowned, and in the sombre glow of the alabaster lamps did not look a day more than the forty she gave herself.
'It is only at my dressing-table that I can suffer the naked brightness of a thirty-two candle electric bulb,' she added with smiling cynicism.
'There I need it to tell me first the hideous truth and then to enable me to take the necessary steps to correct it.'
We gossiped pleasantly about our common friends and Mrs Tower brought me up to date in the scandal of the day.
After roughing it here and there it was very agreeable to sit in a comfortable chair, the fire burning brightly on the hearth, charming tea-things set out on a charming table, and talk with this amusing, attractive woman.
She treated me as a prodigal returning from his husks and was disposed to make much of me.
She prided herself on her dinner parties; she took no less trouble to have her guests suitably assorted than to give them excellent food; and there were few persons who did not look upon it as a treat to be bidden to one of them.
Now she fixed a date and asked me whom I would like to meet.
'There's only one thing I must tell you.
If Jane Fowler is still here I shall have to put it off.'
'Who is Jane Fowler?' I asked.
Mrs Tower gave a rueful smile.
'Jane Fowler is my cross.'
'Oh!'
'Do you remember a photograph that I used to have on the piano before I had my room done, of a woman in a tight dress with tight sleeves and a gold locket, with her hair drawn back from a broad forehead and her ears showing and spectacles on a rather blunt nose?
Well, that was Jane Fowler.'
'You had so many photographs about the room in your unregenerate days,' I said, vaguely.
'It makes me shudder to think of them.
I've made them into a huge brown-paper parcel and hidden them in an attic.'
'Well, who is Jane Fowler?' I asked again, smiling.
'She's my sister-in-law.
She was my husband's sister and she married a manufacturer in the North.
She's been a widow for many years, and she's very well-to-do.'
'And why is she your cross?'
'She's worthy, she's dowdy, she's provincial.
She looks twenty years older than I do and she's quite capable of telling anyone she meets that we were at school together.
She has an overwhelming sense of family affection and because I am her only living connection she's devoted to me.