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diff --git a/555-0.txt b/555-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..56c47bb --- /dev/null +++ b/555-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5468 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Unbearable Bassington, by Saki + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Unbearable Bassington + + +Author: Saki + + + +Release Date: February 4, 2013 [eBook #555] +[Updated edition of: etext96/nbrbl10h.htm] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNBEARABLE BASSINGTON*** + + +Transcribed from the 1913 John Lane edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + THE UNBEARABLE + BASSINGTON + + + :: BY H. H. MUNRO (“SAKI”) :: + + * * * * * + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + * * * * * + + LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD + + NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY + + TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN. MCMXIII + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + + _SIXTH EDITION_ + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + + PRINTED BY JAS. TRUSCOTT & SON, LTD. LONDON + + * * * * * + + + + +AUTHOR’S NOTE + + +This story has no moral. + +If it points out an evil at any rate it suggests no remedy. + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +FRANCESCA BASSINGTON sat in the drawing-room of her house in Blue Street, +W., regaling herself and her estimable brother Henry with China tea and +small cress sandwiches. The meal was of that elegant proportion which, +while ministering sympathetically to the desires of the moment, is +happily reminiscent of a satisfactory luncheon and blessedly expectant of +an elaborate dinner to come. + +In her younger days Francesca had been known as the beautiful Miss +Greech; at forty, although much of the original beauty remained, she was +just dear Francesca Bassington. No one would have dreamed of calling her +sweet, but a good many people who scarcely knew her were punctilious +about putting in the “dear.” + +Her enemies, in their honester moments, would have admitted that she was +svelte and knew how to dress, but they would have agreed with her friends +in asserting that she had no soul. When one’s friends and enemies agree +on any particular point they are usually wrong. Francesca herself, if +pressed in an unguarded moment to describe her soul, would probably have +described her drawing-room. Not that she would have considered that the +one had stamped the impress of its character on the other, so that close +scrutiny might reveal its outstanding features, and even suggest its +hidden places, but because she might have dimly recognised that her +drawing-room was her soul. + +Francesca was one of those women towards whom Fate appears to have the +best intentions and never to carry them into practice. With the +advantages put at her disposal she might have been expected to command a +more than average share of feminine happiness. So many of the things +that make for fretfulness, disappointment and discouragement in a woman’s +life were removed from her path that she might well have been considered +the fortunate Miss Greech, or later, lucky Francesca Bassington. And she +was not of the perverse band of those who make a rock-garden of their +souls by dragging into them all the stoney griefs and unclaimed troubles +they can find lying around them. Francesca loved the smooth ways and +pleasant places of life; she liked not merely to look on the bright side +of things but to live there and stay there. And the fact that things +had, at one time and another, gone badly with her and cheated her of some +of her early illusions made her cling the closer to such good fortune as +remained to her now that she seemed to have reached a calmer period of +her life. To undiscriminating friends she appeared in the guise of a +rather selfish woman, but it was merely the selfishness of one who had +seen the happy and unhappy sides of life and wished to enjoy to the +utmost what was left to her of the former. The vicissitudes of fortune +had not soured her, but they had perhaps narrowed her in the sense of +making her concentrate much of her sympathies on things that immediately +pleased and amused her, or that recalled and perpetuated the pleasing and +successful incidents of other days. And it was her drawing-room in +particular that enshrined the memorials or tokens of past and present +happiness. + +Into that comfortable quaint-shaped room of angles and bays and alcoves +had sailed, as into a harbour, those precious personal possessions and +trophies that had survived the buffetings and storms of a not very +tranquil married life. Wherever her eyes might turn she saw the embodied +results of her successes, economies, good luck, good management or good +taste. The battle had more than once gone against her, but she had +somehow always contrived to save her baggage train, and her complacent +gaze could roam over object after object that represented the spoils of +victory or the salvage of honourable defeat. The delicious bronze +Fremiet on the mantelpiece had been the outcome of a Grand Prix +sweepstake of many years ago; a group of Dresden figures of some +considerable value had been bequeathed to her by a discreet admirer, who +had added death to his other kindnesses; another group had been a +self-bestowed present, purchased in blessed and unfading memory of a +wonderful nine-days’ bridge winnings at a country-house party. There +were old Persian and Bokharan rugs and Worcester tea-services of glowing +colour, and little treasures of antique silver that each enshrined a +history or a memory in addition to its own intrinsic value. It amused +her at times to think of the bygone craftsmen and artificers who had +hammered and wrought and woven in far distant countries and ages, to +produce the wonderful and beautiful things that had come, one way and +another, into her possession. Workers in the studios of medieval Italian +towns and of later Paris, in the bazaars of Baghdad and of Central Asia, +in old-time English workshops and German factories, in all manner of +queer hidden corners where craft secrets were jealously guarded, nameless +unremembered men and men whose names were world-renowned and deathless. + +And above all her other treasures, dominating in her estimation every +other object that the room contained, was the great Van der Meulen that +had come from her father’s home as part of her wedding dowry. It fitted +exactly into the central wall panel above the narrow buhl cabinet, and +filled exactly its right space in the composition and balance of the +room. From wherever you sat it seemed to confront you as the dominating +feature of its surroundings. There was a pleasing serenity about the +great pompous battle scene with its solemn courtly warriors bestriding +their heavily prancing steeds, grey or skewbald or dun, all gravely in +earnest, and yet somehow conveying the impression that their campaigns +were but vast serious picnics arranged in the grand manner. Francesca +could not imagine the drawing-room without the crowning complement of the +stately well-hung picture, just as she could not imagine herself in any +other setting than this house in Blue Street with its crowded Pantheon of +cherished household gods. + +And herein sprouted one of the thorns that obtruded through the rose-leaf +damask of what might otherwise have been Francesca’s peace of mind. +One’s happiness always lies in the future rather than in the past. With +due deference to an esteemed lyrical authority one may safely say that a +sorrow’s crown of sorrow is anticipating unhappier things. The house in +Blue Street had been left to her by her old friend Sophie Chetrof, but +only until such time as her niece Emmeline Chetrof should marry, when it +was to pass to her as a wedding present. Emmeline was now seventeen and +passably good-looking, and four or five years were all that could be +safely allotted to the span of her continued spinsterhood. Beyond that +period lay chaos, the wrenching asunder of Francesca from the sheltering +habitation that had grown to be her soul. It is true that in imagination +she had built herself a bridge across the chasm, a bridge of a single +span. The bridge in question was her schoolboy son Comus, now being +educated somewhere in the southern counties, or rather one should say the +bridge consisted of the possibility of his eventual marriage with +Emmeline, in which case Francesca saw herself still reigning, a trifle +squeezed and incommoded perhaps, but still reigning in the house in Blue +Street. The Van der Meulen would still catch its requisite afternoon +light in its place of honour, the Fremiet and the Dresden and Old +Worcester would continue undisturbed in their accustomed niches. +Emmeline could have the Japanese snuggery, where Francesca sometimes +drank her after-dinner coffee, as a separate drawing-room, where she +could put her own things. The details of the bridge structure had all +been carefully thought out. Only—it was an unfortunate circumstance that +Comus should have been the span on which everything balanced. + +Francesca’s husband had insisted on giving the boy that strange Pagan +name, and had not lived long enough to judge as to the appropriateness, +or otherwise, of its significance. In seventeen years and some odd +months Francesca had had ample opportunity for forming an opinion +concerning her son’s characteristics. The spirit of mirthfulness which +one associates with the name certainly ran riot in the boy, but it was a +twisted wayward sort of mirth of which Francesca herself could seldom see +the humorous side. In her brother Henry, who sat eating small cress +sandwiches as solemnly as though they had been ordained in some +immemorial Book of Observances, fate had been undisguisedly kind to her. +He might so easily have married some pretty helpless little woman, and +lived at Notting Hill Gate, and been the father of a long string of pale, +clever useless children, who would have had birthdays and the sort of +illnesses that one is expected to send grapes to, and who would have +painted fatuous objects in a South Kensington manner as Christmas +offerings to an aunt whose cubic space for lumber was limited. Instead +of committing these unbrotherly actions, which are so frequent in family +life that they might almost be called brotherly, Henry had married a +woman who had both money and a sense of repose, and their one child had +the brilliant virtue of never saying anything which even its parents +could consider worth repeating. Then he had gone into Parliament, +possibly with the idea of making his home life seem less dull; at any +rate it redeemed his career from insignificance, for no man whose death +can produce the item “another by-election” on the news posters can be +wholly a nonentity. Henry, in short, who might have been an +embarrassment and a handicap, had chosen rather to be a friend and +counsellor, at times even an emergency bank balance; Francesca on her +part, with the partiality which a clever and lazily-inclined woman often +feels for a reliable fool, not only sought his counsel but frequently +followed it. When convenient, moreover, she repaid his loans. + +Against this good service on the part of Fate in providing her with Henry +for a brother, Francesca could well set the plaguy malice of the destiny +that had given her Comus for a son. The boy was one of those untameable +young lords of misrule that frolic and chafe themselves through nursery +and preparatory and public-school days with the utmost allowance of storm +and dust and dislocation and the least possible amount of collar-work, +and come somehow with a laugh through a series of catastrophes that has +reduced everyone else concerned to tears or Cassandra-like forebodings. +Sometimes they sober down in after-life and become uninteresting, +forgetting that they were ever lords of anything; sometimes Fate plays +royally into their hands, and they do great things in a spacious manner, +and are thanked by Parliaments and the Press and acclaimed by gala-day +crowds. But in most cases their tragedy begins when they leave school +and turn themselves loose in a world that has grown too civilised and too +crowded and too empty to have any place for them. And they are very +many. + +Henry Greech had made an end of biting small sandwiches, and settled down +like a dust-storm refreshed, to discuss one of the fashionably prevalent +topics of the moment, the prevention of destitution. + +“It is a question that is only being nibbled at, smelt at, one might say, +at the present moment,” he observed, “but it is one that will have to +engage our serious attention and consideration before long. The first +thing that we shall have to do is to get out of the dilettante and +academic way of approaching it. We must collect and assimilate hard +facts. It is a subject that ought to appeal to all thinking minds, and +yet, you know, I find it surprisingly difficult to interest people in +it.” + +Francesca made some monosyllabic response, a sort of sympathetic grunt +which was meant to indicate that she was, to a certain extent, listening +and appreciating. In reality she was reflecting that Henry possibly +found it difficult to interest people in any topic that he enlarged on. +His talents lay so thoroughly in the direction of being uninteresting, +that even as an eye-witness of the massacre of St. Bartholomew he would +probably have infused a flavour of boredom into his descriptions of the +event. + +“I was speaking down in Leicestershire the other day on this subject,” +continued Henry, “and I pointed out at some length a thing that few +people ever stop to consider—” + +Francesca went over immediately but decorously to the majority that will +not stop to consider. + +“Did you come across any of the Barnets when you were down there?” she +interrupted; “Eliza Barnet is rather taken up with all those subjects.” + +In the propagandist movements of Sociology, as in other arenas of life +and struggle, the fiercest competition and rivalry is frequently to be +found between closely allied types and species. Eliza Barnet shared many +of Henry Greech’s political and social views, but she also shared his +fondness for pointing things out at some length; there had been occasions +when she had extensively occupied the strictly limited span allotted to +the platform oratory of a group of speakers of whom Henry Greech had been +an impatient unit. He might see eye to eye with her on the leading +questions of the day, but he persistently wore mental blinkers as far as +her estimable qualities were concerned, and the mention of her name was a +skilful lure drawn across the trail of his discourse; if Francesca had to +listen to his eloquence on any subject she much preferred that it should +be a disparagement of Eliza Barnet rather than the prevention of +destitution. + +“I’ve no doubt she means well,” said Henry, “but it would be a good thing +if she could be induced to keep her own personality a little more in the +background, and not to imagine that she is the necessary mouthpiece of +all the progressive thought in the countryside. I fancy Canon Besomley +must have had her in his mind when he said that some people came into the +world to shake empires and others to move amendments.” + +Francesca laughed with genuine amusement. + +“I suppose she is really wonderfully well up in all the subjects she +talks about,” was her provocative comment. + +Henry grew possibly conscious of the fact that he was being drawn out on +the subject of Eliza Barnet, and he presently turned on to a more +personal topic. + +“From the general air of tranquillity about the house I presume Comus has +gone back to Thaleby,” he observed. + +“Yes,” said Francesca, “he went back yesterday. Of course, I’m very fond +of him, but I bear the separation well. When he’s here it’s rather like +having a live volcano in the house, a volcano that in its quietest +moments asks incessant questions and uses strong scent.” + +“It is only a temporary respite,” said Henry; “in a year or two he will +be leaving school, and then what?” + +Francesca closed her eyes with the air of one who seeks to shut out a +distressing vision. She was not fond of looking intimately at the future +in the presence of another person, especially when the future was draped +in doubtfully auspicious colours. + +“And then what?” persisted Henry. + +“Then I suppose he will be upon my hands.” + +“Exactly.” + +“Don’t sit there looking judicial. I’m quite ready to listen to +suggestions if you’ve any to make.” + +“In the case of any ordinary boy,” said Henry, “I might make lots of +suggestions as to the finding of suitable employment. From what we know +of Comus it would be rather a waste of time for either of us to look for +jobs which he wouldn’t look at when we’d got them for him.” + +“He must do something,” said Francesca. + +“I know he must; but he never will. At least, he’ll never stick to +anything. The most hopeful thing to do with him will be to marry him to +an heiress. That would solve the financial side of his problem. If he +had unlimited money at his disposal, he might go into the wilds somewhere +and shoot big game. I never know what the big game have done to deserve +it, but they do help to deflect the destructive energies of some of our +social misfits.” + +Henry, who never killed anything larger or fiercer than a trout, was +scornfully superior on the subject of big game shooting. + +Francesca brightened at the matrimonial suggestion. “I don’t know about +an heiress,” she said reflectively. “There’s Emmeline Chetrof of course. +One could hardly call her an heiress, but she’s got a comfortable little +income of her own and I suppose something more will come to her from her +grandmother. Then, of course, you know this house goes to her when she +marries.” + +“That would be very convenient,” said Henry, probably following a line of +thought that his sister had trodden many hundreds of times before him. +“Do she and Comus hit it off at all well together?” + +“Oh, well enough in boy and girl fashion,” said Francesca. “I must +arrange for them to see more of each other in future. By the way, that +little brother of hers that she dotes on, Lancelot, goes to Thaleby this +term. I’ll write and tell Comus to be specially kind to him; that will +be a sure way to Emmeline’s heart. Comus has been made a prefect, you +know. Heaven knows why.” + +“It can only be for prominence in games,” sniffed Henry; “I think we may +safely leave work and conduct out of the question.” + +Comus was not a favourite with his uncle. + +Francesca had turned to her writing cabinet and was hastily scribbling a +letter to her son in which the delicate health, timid disposition and +other inevitable attributes of the new boy were brought to his notice, +and commanded to his care. When she had sealed and stamped the envelope +Henry uttered a belated caution. + +“Perhaps on the whole it would be wiser to say nothing about the boy to +Comus. He doesn’t always respond to directions you know.” + +Francesca did know, and already was more than half of her brother’s +opinion; but the woman who can sacrifice a clean unspoiled penny stamp is +probably yet unborn. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +LANCELOT CHETROF stood at the end of a long bare passage, restlessly +consulting his watch and fervently wishing himself half an hour older +with a certain painful experience already registered in the past; +unfortunately it still belonged to the future, and what was still more +horrible, to the immediate future. Like many boys new to a school he had +cultivated an unhealthy passion for obeying rules and requirements, and +his zeal in this direction had proved his undoing. In his hurry to be +doing two or three estimable things at once he had omitted to study the +notice-board in more than a perfunctory fashion and had thereby missed a +football practice specially ordained for newly-joined boys. His fellow +juniors of a term’s longer standing had graphically enlightened him as to +the inevitable consequences of his lapse; the dread which attaches to the +unknown was, at any rate, deleted from his approaching doom, though at +the moment he felt scarcely grateful for the knowledge placed at his +disposal with such lavish solicitude. + +“You’ll get six of the very best, over the back of a chair,” said one. + +“They’ll draw a chalk line across you, of course you know,” said another. + +“A chalk line?” + +“Rather. So that every cut can be aimed exactly at the same spot. It +hurts much more that way.” + +Lancelot tried to nourish a wan hope that there might be an element of +exaggeration in this uncomfortably realistic description. + +Meanwhile in the prefects’ room at the other end of the passage, Comus +Bassington and a fellow prefect sat also waiting on time, but in a mood +of far more pleasurable expectancy. Comus was one of the most junior of +the prefect caste, but by no means the least well-known, and outside the +masters’ common-room he enjoyed a certain fitful popularity, or at any +rate admiration. At football he was too erratic to be a really brilliant +player, but he tackled as if the act of bringing his man headlong to the +ground was in itself a sensuous pleasure, and his weird swear-words +whenever he got hurt were eagerly treasured by those who were fortunate +enough to hear them. At athletics in general he was a showy performer, +and although new to the functions of a prefect he had already established +a reputation as an effective and artistic caner. In appearance he +exactly fitted his fanciful Pagan name. His large green-grey eyes seemed +for ever asparkle with goblin mischief and the joy of revelry, and the +curved lips might have been those of some wickedly-laughing faun; one +almost expected to see embryo horns fretting the smoothness of his sleek +dark hair. The chin was firm, but one looked in vain for a redeeming +touch of ill-temper in the handsome, half-mocking, half-petulant face. +With a strain of sourness in him Comus might have been leavened into +something creative and masterful; fate had fashioned him with a certain +whimsical charm, and left him all unequipped for the greater purposes of +life. Perhaps no one would have called him a lovable character, but in +many respects he was adorable; in all respects he was certainly damned. + +Rutley, his companion of the moment, sat watching him and wondering, from +the depths of a very ordinary brain, whether he liked or hated him; it +was easy to do either. + +“It’s not really your turn to cane,” he said. + +“I know it’s not,” said Comus, fingering a very serviceable-looking cane +as lovingly as a pious violinist might handle his Strad. “I gave Greyson +some mint-chocolate to let me toss whether I caned or him, and I won. He +was rather decent over it and let me have half the chocolate back.” + +The droll lightheartedness which won Comus Bassington such measure of +popularity as he enjoyed among his fellows did not materially help to +endear him to the succession of masters with whom he came in contact +during the course of his schooldays. He amused and interested such of +them as had the saving grace of humour at their disposal, but if they +sighed when he passed from their immediate responsibility it was a sigh +of relief rather than of regret. The more enlightened and experienced of +them realised that he was something outside the scope of the things that +they were called upon to deal with. A man who has been trained to cope +with storms, to foresee their coming, and to minimise their consequences, +may be pardoned if he feels a certain reluctance to measure himself +against a tornado. + +Men of more limited outlook and with a correspondingly larger belief in +their own powers were ready to tackle the tornado had time permitted. + +“I think I could tame young Bassington if I had your opportunities,” a +form-master once remarked to a colleague whose House had the embarrassing +distinction of numbering Comus among its inmates. + +“Heaven forbid that I should try,” replied the housemaster. + +“But why?” asked the reformer. + +“Because Nature hates any interference with her own arrangements, and if +you start in to tame the obviously untameable you are taking a fearful +responsibility on yourself.” + +“Nonsense; boys are Nature’s raw material.” + +“Millions of boys are. There are just a few, and Bassington is one of +them, who are Nature’s highly finished product when they are in the +schoolboy stage, and we, who are supposed to be moulding raw material, +are quite helpless when we come in contact with them.” + +“But what happens to them when they grow up?” + +“They never do grow up,” said the housemaster; “that is their tragedy. +Bassington will certainly never grow out of his present stage.” + +“Now you are talking in the language of Peter Pan,” said the form-master. + +“I am not thinking in the manner of Peter Pan,” said the other. “With +all reverence for the author of that masterpiece I should say he had a +wonderful and tender insight into the child mind and knew nothing +whatever about boys. To make only one criticism on that particular work, +can you imagine a lot of British boys, or boys of any country that one +knows of, who would stay contentedly playing children’s games in an +underground cave when there were wolves and pirates and Red Indians to be +had for the asking on the other side of the trap door?” + +The form-master laughed. “You evidently think that the ‘Boy who would +not grow up’ must have been written by a ‘grown-up who could never have +been a boy.’ Perhaps that is the meaning of the ‘Never-never Land.’ I +daresay you’re right in your criticism, but I don’t agree with you about +Bassington. He’s a handful to deal with, as anyone knows who has come in +contact with him, but if one’s hands weren’t full with a thousand and one +other things I hold to my opinion that he could be tamed.” + +And he went his way, having maintained a form-master’s inalienable +privilege of being in the right. + + * * * * * + +In the prefects’ room, Comus busied himself with the exact position of a +chair planted out in the middle of the floor. + +“I think everything’s ready,” he said. + +Rutley glanced at the clock with the air of a Roman elegant in the +Circus, languidly awaiting the introduction of an expected Christian to +an expectant tiger. + +“The kid is due in two minutes,” he said. + +“He’d jolly well better not be late,” said Comus. + +Comus had gone through the mill of many scorching castigations in his +earlier school days, and was able to appreciate to the last ounce the +panic that must be now possessing his foredoomed victim, probably at this +moment hovering miserably outside the door. After all, that was part of +the fun of the thing, and most things have their amusing side if one +knows where to look for it. + +There was a knock at the door, and Lancelot entered in response to a +hearty friendly summons to “come in.” + +“I’ve come to be caned,” he said breathlessly; adding by way of +identification, “my name’s Chetrof.” + +“That’s quite bad enough in itself,” said Comus, “but there is probably +worse to follow. You are evidently keeping something back from us.” + +“I missed a footer practice,” said Lancelot + +“Six,” said Comus briefly, picking up his cane. + +“I didn’t see the notice on the board,” hazarded Lancelot as a forlorn +hope. + +“We are always pleased to listen to excuses, and our charge is two extra +cuts. That will be eight. Get over.” + +And Comus indicated the chair that stood in sinister isolation in the +middle of the room. Never had an article of furniture seemed more +hateful in Lancelot’s eyes. Comus could well remember the time when a +chair stuck in the middle of a room had seemed to him the most horrible +of manufactured things. + +“Lend me a piece of chalk,” he said to his brother prefect. + +Lancelot ruefully recognised the truth of the chalk-line story. + +Comus drew the desired line with an anxious exactitude which he would +have scorned to apply to a diagram of Euclid or a map of the +Russo-Persian frontier. + +“Bend a little more forward,” he said to the victim, “and much tighter. +Don’t trouble to look pleasant, because I can’t see your face anyway. It +may sound unorthodox to say so, but this is going to hurt you much more +than it will hurt me.” + +There was a carefully measured pause, and then Lancelot was made vividly +aware of what a good cane can be made to do in really efficient hands. +At the second cut he projected himself hurriedly off the chair. + +“Now I’ve lost count,” said Comus; “we shall have to begin all over +again. Kindly get back into the same position. If you get down again +before I’ve finished Rutley will hold you over and you’ll get a dozen.” + +Lancelot got back on to the chair, and was re-arranged to the taste of +his executioner. He stayed there somehow or other while Comus made eight +accurate and agonisingly effective shots at the chalk line. + +“By the way,” he said to his gasping and gulping victim when the +infliction was over, “you said Chetrof, didn’t you? I believe I’ve been +asked to be kind to you. As a beginning you can clean out my study this +afternoon. Be awfully careful how you dust the old china. If you break +any don’t come and tell me but just go and drown yourself somewhere; it +will save you from a worse fate.” + +“I don’t know where your study is,” said Lancelot between his chokes. + +“You’d better find it or I shall have to beat you, really hard this time. +Here, you’d better keep this chalk in your pocket, it’s sure to come in +handy later on. Don’t stop to thank me for all I’ve done, it only +embarrasses me.” + +As Comus hadn’t got a study Lancelot spent a feverish half-hour in +looking for it, incidentally missing another footer practice. + +“Everything is very jolly here,” wrote Lancelot to his sister Emmeline. +“The prefects can give you an awful hot time if they like, but most of +them are rather decent. Some are Beasts. Bassington is a prefect though +only a junior one. He is the Limit as Beasts go. At least I think so.” + +Schoolboy reticence went no further, but Emmeline filled in the gaps for +herself with the lavish splendour of feminine imagination. Francesca’s +bridge went crashing into the abyss. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +ON the evening of a certain November day, two years after the events +heretofore chronicled, Francesca Bassington steered her way through the +crowd that filled the rooms of her friend Serena Golackly, bestowing nods +of vague recognition as she went, but with eyes that were obviously +intent on focussing one particular figure. Parliament had pulled its +energies together for an Autumn Session, and both political Parties were +fairly well represented in the throng. Serena had a harmless way of +inviting a number of more or less public men and women to her house, and +hoping that if you left them together long enough they would constitute a +_salon_. In pursuance of the same instinct she planted the flower +borders at her week-end cottage retreat in Surrey with a large mixture of +bulbs, and called the result a Dutch garden. Unfortunately, though you +may bring brilliant talkers into your home, you cannot always make them +talk brilliantly, or even talk at all; what is worse you cannot restrict +the output of those starling-voiced dullards who seem to have, on all +subjects, so much to say that was well worth leaving unsaid. One group +that Francesca passed was discussing a Spanish painter, who was +forty-three, and had painted thousands of square yards of canvas in his +time, but of whom no one in London had heard till a few months ago; now +the starling-voices seemed determined that one should hear of very little +else. Three women knew how his name was pronounced, another always felt +that she must go into a forest and pray whenever she saw his pictures, +another had noticed that there were always pomegranates in his later +compositions, and a man with an indefensible collar knew what the +pomegranates “meant.” “What I think so splendid about him,” said a stout +lady in a loud challenging voice, “is the way he defies all the +conventions of art while retaining all that the conventions stand for.” +“Ah, but have you noticed—” put in the man with the atrocious collar, and +Francesca pushed desperately on, wondering dimly as she went, what people +found so unsupportable in the affliction of deafness. Her progress was +impeded for a moment by a couple engaged in earnest and voluble +discussion of some smouldering question of the day; a thin spectacled +young man with the receding forehead that so often denotes advanced +opinions, was talking to a spectacled young woman with a similar type of +forehead, and exceedingly untidy hair. It was her ambition in life to be +taken for a Russian girl-student, and she had spent weeks of patient +research in trying to find out exactly where you put the tea-leaves in a +samovar. She had once been introduced to a young Jewess from Odessa, who +had died of pneumonia the following week; the experience, slight as it +was, constituted the spectacled young lady an authority on all things +Russian in the eyes of her immediate set. + +“Talk is helpful, talk is needful,” the young man was saying, “but what +we have got to do is to lift the subject out of the furrow of +indisciplined talk and place it on the threshing-floor of practical +discussion.” + +The young woman took advantage of the rhetorical full-stop to dash in +with the remark which was already marshalled on the tip of her tongue. + +“In emancipating the serfs of poverty we must be careful to avoid the +mistakes which Russian bureaucracy stumbled into when liberating the +serfs of the soil.” + +She paused in her turn for the sake of declamatory effect, but recovered +her breath quickly enough to start afresh on level terms with the young +man, who had jumped into the stride of his next sentence. + +“They got off to a good start that time,” said Francesca to herself; “I +suppose it’s the Prevention of Destitution they’re hammering at. What on +earth would become of these dear good people if anyone started a crusade +for the prevention of mediocrity?” + +Midway through one of the smaller rooms, still questing for an elusive +presence, she caught sight of someone that she knew, and the shadow of a +frown passed across her face. The object of her faintly signalled +displeasure was Courtenay Youghal, a political spur-winner who seemed +absurdly youthful to a generation that had never heard of Pitt. It was +Youghal’s ambition—or perhaps his hobby—to infuse into the greyness of +modern political life some of the colour of Disraelian dandyism, tempered +with the correctness of Anglo-Saxon taste, and supplemented by the +flashes of wit that were inherent from the Celtic strain in him. His +success was only a half-measure. The public missed in him that touch of +blatancy which it looks for in its rising public men; the decorative +smoothness of his chestnut-golden hair, and the lively sparkle of his +epigrams were counted to him for good, but the restrained sumptuousness +of his waistcoats and cravats were as wasted efforts. If he had +habitually smoked cigarettes in a pink coral mouthpiece, or worn spats of +Mackenzie tartan, the great heart of the voting-man, and the gush of the +paragraph-makers might have been unreservedly his. The art of public +life consists to a great extent of knowing exactly where to stop and +going a bit further. + +It was not Youghal’s lack of political sagacity that had brought the +momentary look of disapproval into Francesca’s face. The fact was that +Comus, who had left off being a schoolboy and was now a social problem, +had lately enrolled himself among the young politician’s associates and +admirers, and as the boy knew and cared nothing about politics, and +merely copied Youghal’s waistcoats, and, less successfully, his +conversation, Francesca felt herself justified in deploring the intimacy. +To a woman who dressed well on comparatively nothing a year it was an +anxious experience to have a son who dressed sumptuously on absolutely +nothing. + +The cloud that had passed over her face when she caught sight of the +offending Youghal was presently succeeded by a smile of gratified +achievement, as she encountered a bow of recognition and welcome from a +portly middle-aged gentleman, who seemed genuinely anxious to include her +in the rather meagre group that he had gathered about him. + +“We were just talking about my new charge,” he observed genially, +including in the “we” his somewhat depressed-looking listeners, who in +all human probability had done none of the talking. “I was just telling +them, and you may be interested to hear this—” + +Francesca, with Spartan stoicism, continued to wear an ingratiating +smile, though the character of the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear and +will not hearken, seemed to her at that moment a beautiful one. + +Sir Julian Jull had been a member of a House of Commons distinguished for +its high standard of well-informed mediocrity, and had harmonised so +thoroughly with his surroundings that the most attentive observer of +Parliamentary proceedings could scarcely have told even on which side of +the House he sat. A baronetcy bestowed on him by the Party in power had +at least removed that doubt; some weeks later he had been made Governor +of some West Indian dependency, whether as a reward for having accepted +the baronetcy, or as an application of a theory that West Indian islands +get the Governors they deserve, it would have been hard to say. To Sir +Julian the appointment was, doubtless, one of some importance; during the +span of his Governorship the island might possibly be visited by a member +of the Royal Family, or at the least by an earthquake, and in either case +his name would get into the papers. To the public the matter was one of +absolute indifference; “who is he and where is it?” would have correctly +epitomised the sum total of general information on the personal and +geographical aspects of the case. + +Francesca, however, from the moment she had heard of the likelihood of +the appointment, had taken a deep and lively interest in Sir Julian. As +a Member of Parliament he had not filled any very pressing social want in +her life, and on the rare occasions when she took tea on the Terrace of +the House she was wont to lapse into rapt contemplation of St. Thomas’s +Hospital whenever she saw him within bowing distance. But as Governor of +an island he would, of course, want a private secretary, and as a friend +and colleague of Henry Greech, to whom he was indebted for many little +acts of political support (they had once jointly drafted an amendment +which had been ruled out of order), what was more natural and proper than +that he should let his choice fall on Henry’s nephew Comus? While +privately doubting whether the boy would make the sort of secretary that +any public man would esteem as a treasure, Henry was thoroughly in +agreement with Francesca as to the excellence and desirability of an +arrangement which would transplant that troublesome’ young animal from +the too restricted and conspicuous area that centres in the parish of St. +James’s to some misty corner of the British dominion overseas. Brother +and sister had conspired to give an elaborate and at the same time cosy +little luncheon to Sir Julian on the very day that his appointment was +officially announced, and the question of the secretaryship had been +mooted and sedulously fostered as occasion permitted, until all that was +now needed to clinch the matter was a formal interview between His +Excellency and Comus. The boy had from the first shewn very little +gratification at the prospect of his deportation. To live on a remote +shark-girt island, as he expressed it, with the Jull family as his chief +social mainstay, and Sir Julian’s conversation as a daily item of his +existence, did not inspire him with the same degree of enthusiasm as was +displayed by his mother and uncle, who, after all, were not making the +experiment. Even the necessity for an entirely new outfit did not appeal +to his imagination with the force that might have been expected. But, +however lukewarm his adhesion to the project might be, Francesca and her +brother were clearly determined that no lack of deft persistence on their +part should endanger its success. It was for the purpose of reminding +Sir Julian of his promise to meet Comus at lunch on the following day, +and definitely settle the matter of the secretaryship that Francesca was +now enduring the ordeal of a long harangue on the value of the West +Indian group as an Imperial asset. Other listeners dexterously detached +themselves one by one, but Francesca’s patience outlasted even Sir +Julian’s flow of commonplaces, and her devotion was duly rewarded by a +renewed acknowledgment of the lunch engagement and its purpose. She +pushed her way back through the throng of starling-voiced chatterers +fortified by a sense of well-earned victory. Dear Serena’s absurd +_salons_ served some good purpose after all. + +Francesca was not an early riser and her breakfast was only just +beginning to mobilise on the breakfast-table next morning when a copy of +_The Times_, sent by special messenger from her brother’s house, was +brought up to her room. A heavy margin of blue pencilling drew her +attention to a prominently-printed letter which bore the ironical +heading: “Julian Jull, Proconsul.” The matter of the letter was a cruel +dis-interment of some fatuous and forgotten speeches made by Sir Julian +to his constituents not many years ago, in which the value of some of our +Colonial possessions, particularly certain West Indian islands, was +decried in a medley of pomposity, ignorance and amazingly cheap humour. +The extracts given sounded weak and foolish enough, taken by themselves, +but the writer of the letter had interlarded them with comments of his +own, which sparkled with an ironical brilliance that was Cervantes-like +in its polished cruelty. Remembering her ordeal of the previous evening +Francesca permitted herself a certain feeling of amusement as she read +the merciless stabs inflicted on the newly-appointed Governor; then she +came to the signature at the foot of the letter, and the laughter died +out of her eyes. “Comus Bassington” stared at her from above a thick +layer of blue pencil lines marked by Henry Greech’s shaking hand. + +Comus could no more have devised such a letter than he could have written +an Episcopal charge to the clergy of any given diocese. It was obviously +the work of Courtenay Youghal, and Comus, for a palpable purpose of his +own, had wheedled him into foregoing for once the pride of authorship in +a clever piece of political raillery, and letting his young friend stand +sponsor instead. It was a daring stroke, and there could be no question +as to its success; the secretaryship and the distant shark-girt island +faded away into the horizon of impossible things. Francesca, forgetting +the golden rule of strategy which enjoins a careful choosing of ground +and opportunity before entering on hostilities, made straight for the +bathroom door, behind which a lively din of splashing betokened that +Comus had at least begun his toilet. + +“You wicked boy, what have you done?” she cried, reproachfully. + +“Me washee,” came a cheerful shout; “me washee from the neck all the way +down to the merrythought, and now washee down from the merrythought to—” + +“You have ruined your future. _The Times_ has printed that miserable +letter with your signature.” + +A loud squeal of joy came from the bath. “Oh, Mummy! Let me see!” + +There were sounds as of a sprawling dripping body clambering hastily out +of the bath. Francesca fled. One cannot effectively scold a moist +nineteen-year old boy clad only in a bath-towel and a cloud of steam. + +Another messenger arrived before Francesca’s breakfast was over. This +one brought a letter from Sir Julian Jull, excusing himself from +fulfilment of the luncheon engagement. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +FRANCESCA prided herself on being able to see things from other people’s +points of view, which meant, as it usually does, that she could see her +own point of view from various aspects. As regards Comus, whose doings +and non-doings bulked largely in her thoughts at the present moment, she +had mapped out in her mind so clearly what his outlook in life ought to +be, that she was peculiarly unfitted to understand the drift of his +feelings or the impulses that governed them. Fate had endowed her with a +son; in limiting the endowment to a solitary offspring Fate had certainly +shown a moderation which Francesca was perfectly willing to acknowledge +and be thankful for; but then, as she pointed out to a certain complacent +friend of hers who cheerfully sustained an endowment of half-a-dozen male +offsprings and a girl or two, her one child was Comus. Moderation in +numbers was more than counterbalanced in his case by extravagance in +characteristics. + +Francesca mentally compared her son with hundreds of other young men whom +she saw around her, steadily, and no doubt happily, engaged in the +process of transforming themselves from nice boys into useful citizens. +Most of them had occupations, or were industriously engaged in qualifying +for such; in their leisure moments they smoked reasonably-priced +cigarettes, went to the cheaper seats at music-halls, watched an +occasional cricket match at Lord’s with apparent interest, saw most of +the world’s spectacular events through the medium of the cinematograph, +and were wont to exchange at parting seemingly superfluous injunctions to +“be good.” The whole of Bond Street and many of the tributary +thoroughfares of Piccadilly might have been swept off the face of modern +London without in any way interfering with the supply of their daily +wants. They were doubtless dull as acquaintances, but as sons they would +have been eminently restful. With a growing sense of irritation +Francesca compared these deserving young men with her own intractable +offspring, and wondered why Fate should have singled her out to be the +parent of such a vexatious variant from a comfortable and desirable type. +As far as remunerative achievement was concerned, Comus copied the +insouciance of the field lily with a dangerous fidelity. Like his mother +he looked round with wistful irritation at the example afforded by +contemporary youth, but he concentrated his attention exclusively on the +richer circles of his acquaintance, young men who bought cars and polo +ponies as unconcernedly as he might purchase a carnation for his +buttonhole, and went for trips to Cairo or the Tigris valley with less +difficulty and finance-stretching than he encountered in contriving a +week-end at Brighton. + +Gaiety and good-looks had carried Comus successfully and, on the whole, +pleasantly, through schooldays and a recurring succession of holidays; +the same desirable assets were still at his service to advance him along +his road, but it was a disconcerting experience to find that they could +not be relied on to go all distances at all times. In an animal world, +and a fiercely competitive animal world at that, something more was +needed than the decorative _abandon_ of the field lily, and it was just +that something more which Comus seemed unable or unwilling to provide on +his own account; it was just the lack of that something more which left +him sulking with Fate over the numerous breakdowns and stumbling-blocks +that held him up on what he expected to be a triumphal or, at any rate, +unimpeded progress. + +Francesca was, in her own way, fonder of Comus than of anyone else in the +world, and if he had been browning his skin somewhere east of Suez she +would probably have kissed his photograph with genuine fervour every +night before going to bed; the appearance of a cholera scare or rumour of +native rising in the columns of her daily news-sheet would have caused +her a flutter of anxiety, and she would have mentally likened herself to +a Spartan mother sacrificing her best-beloved on the altar of State +necessities. But with the best-beloved installed under her roof, +occupying an unreasonable amount of cubic space, and demanding daily +sacrifices instead of providing the raw material for one, her feelings +were tinged with irritation rather than affection. She might have +forgiven Comus generously for misdeeds of some gravity committed in +another continent, but she could never overlook the fact that out of a +dish of five plovers’ eggs he was certain to take three. The absent may +be always wrong, but they are seldom in a position to be inconsiderate. + +Thus a wall of ice had grown up gradually between mother and son, a +barrier across which they could hold converse, but which gave a wintry +chill even to the sparkle of their lightest words. The boy had the gift +of being irresistibly amusing when he chose to exert himself in that +direction, and after a long series of moody or jangling meal-sittings he +would break forth into a torrential flow of small talk, scandal and +malicious anecdote, true or more generally invented, to which Francesca +listened with a relish and appreciation, that was all the more flattering +from being so unwillingly bestowed. + +“If you chose your friends from a rather more reputable set you would be +doubtless less amusing, but there would be compensating advantages.” + +Francesca snapped the remark out at lunch one day when she had been +betrayed into a broader smile than she considered the circumstances of +her attitude towards Comus warranted. + +“I’m going to move in quite decent society to-night,” replied Comus with +a pleased chuckle; “I’m going to meet you and Uncle Henry and heaps of +nice dull God-fearing people at dinner.” + +Francesca gave a little gasp of surprise and annoyance. + +“You don’t mean to say Caroline has asked you to dinner to-night?” she +said; “and of course without telling me. How exceedingly like her!” + +Lady Caroline Benaresq had reached that age when you can say and do what +you like in defiance of people’s most sensitive feelings and most +cherished antipathies. Not that she had waited to attain her present age +before pursuing that line of conduct; she came of a family whose +individual members went through life, from the nursery to the grave, with +as much tact and consideration as a cactus-hedge might show in going +through a crowded bathing tent. It was a compensating mercy that they +disagreed rather more among themselves than they did with the outside +world; every known variety and shade of religion and politics had been +pressed into the family service to avoid the possibility of any agreement +on the larger essentials of life, and such unlooked-for happenings as the +Home Rule schism, the Tariff-Reform upheaval and the Suffragette crusade +were thankfully seized on as furnishing occasion for further differences +and sub-divisions. Lady Caroline’s favourite scheme of entertaining was +to bring jarring and antagonistic elements into close contact and play +them remorselessly one against the other. “One gets much better results +under those circumstances” she used to observe, “than by asking people +who wish to meet each other. Few people talk as brilliantly to impress a +friend as they do to depress an enemy.” + +She admitted that her theory broke down rather badly if you applied it to +Parliamentary debates. At her own dinner table its success was usually +triumphantly vindicated. + +“Who else is to be there?” Francesca asked, with some pardonable +misgiving. + +“Courtenay Youghal. He’ll probably sit next to you, so you’d better +think out a lot of annihilating remarks in readiness. And Elaine de +Frey.” + +“I don’t think I’ve heard of her. Who is she?” + +“Nobody in particular, but rather nice-looking in a solemn sort of way, +and almost indecently rich.” + +“Marry her” was the advice which sprang to Francesca’s lips, but she +choked it back with a salted almond, having a rare perception of the fact +that words are sometimes given to us to defeat our purposes. + +“Caroline has probably marked her down for Toby or one of the +grand-nephews,” she said, carelessly; “a little money would be rather +useful in that quarter, I imagine.” + +Comus tucked in his underlip with just the shade of pugnacity that she +wanted to see. + +An advantageous marriage was so obviously the most sensible course for +him to embark on that she scarcely dared to hope that he would seriously +entertain it; yet there was just a chance that if he got as far as the +flirtation stage with an attractive (and attracted) girl who was also an +heiress, the sheer perversity of his nature might carry him on to more +definite courtship, if only from the desire to thrust other more +genuinely enamoured suitors into the background. It was a forlorn hope; +so forlorn that the idea even crossed her mind of throwing herself on the +mercy of her _bête noire_, Courtenay Youghal, and trying to enlist the +influence which he seemed to possess over Comus for the purpose of +furthering her hurriedly conceived project. Anyhow, the dinner promised +to be more interesting than she had originally anticipated. + +Lady Caroline was a professed Socialist in politics, chiefly, it was +believed, because she was thus enabled to disagree with most of the +Liberals and Conservatives, and all the Socialists of the day. She did +not permit her Socialism, however, to penetrate below stairs; her cook +and butler had every encouragement to be Individualists. Francesca, who +was a keen and intelligent food critic, harboured no misgivings as to her +hostess’s kitchen and cellar departments; some of the human side-dishes +at the feast gave her more ground for uneasiness. Courtenay Youghal, for +instance, would probably be brilliantly silent; her brother Henry would +almost certainly be the reverse. + +The dinner party was a large one and Francesca arrived late with little +time to take preliminary stock of the guests; a card with the name, “Miss +de Frey,” immediately opposite her own place at the other side of the +table, indicated, however, the whereabouts of the heiress. It was +characteristic of Francesca that she first carefully read the menu from +end to end, and then indulged in an equally careful though less open +scrutiny of the girl who sat opposite her, the girl who was nobody in +particular, but whose income was everything that could be desired. She +was pretty in a restrained nut-brown fashion, and had a look of grave +reflective calm that probably masked a speculative unsettled temperament. +Her pose, if one wished to be critical, was just a little too elaborately +careless. She wore some excellently set rubies with that indefinable air +of having more at home that is so difficult to improvise. Francesca was +distinctly pleased with her survey. + +“You seem interested in your _vis-à-vis_,” said Courtenay Youghal. + +“I almost think I’ve seen her before,” said Francesca; “her face seems +familiar to me.” + +“The narrow gallery at the Louvre; attributed to Leonardo da Vinci,” said +Youghal. + +“Of course,” said Francesca, her feelings divided between satisfaction at +capturing an elusive impression and annoyance that Youghal should have +been her helper. A stronger tinge of annoyance possessed her when she +heard the voice of Henry Greech raised in painful prominence at Lady +Caroline’s end of the table. + +“I called on the Trudhams yesterday,” he announced; “it was their Silver +Wedding, you know, at least the day before was. Such lots of silver +presents, quite a show. Of course there were a great many duplicates, +but still, very nice to have. I think they were very pleased to get so +many.” + +“We must not grudge them their show of presents after their twenty-five +years of married life,” said Lady Caroline, gently; “it is the silver +lining to their cloud.” + +A third of the guests present were related to the Trudhams. + +“Lady Caroline is beginning well,” murmured Courtenay Youghal. + +“I should hardly call twenty-five years of married life a cloud,” said +Henry Greech, lamely. + +“Don’t let’s talk about married life,” said a tall handsome woman, who +looked like some modern painter’s conception of the goddess Bellona; +“it’s my misfortune to write eternally about husbands and wives and their +variants. My public expects it of me. I do so envy journalists who can +write about plagues and strikes and Anarchist plots, and other pleasing +things, instead of being tied down to one stale old topic.” + +“Who is that woman and what has she written?” Francesca asked Youghal; +she dimly remembered having seen her at one of Serena Golackly’s +gatherings, surrounded by a little Court of admirers. + +“I forget her name; she has a villa at San Remo or Mentone, or somewhere +where one does have villas, and plays an extraordinary good game of +bridge. Also she has the reputation, rather rare in your sex, of being a +wonderfully sound judge of wine.” + +“But what has she written?” + +“Oh, several novels of the thinnish ice order. Her last one, ‘The Woman +who wished it was Wednesday,’ has been banned at all the libraries. I +expect you’ve read it.” + +“I don’t see why you should think so,” said Francesca, coldly. + +“Only because Comus lent me your copy yesterday,” said Youghal. He threw +back his handsome head and gave her a sidelong glance of quizzical +amusement. He knew that she hated his intimacy with Comus, and he was +secretly rather proud of his influence over the boy, shallow and negative +though he knew it to be. It had been, on his part, an unsought intimacy, +and it would probably fall to pieces the moment he tried seriously to +take up the _rôle_ of mentor. The fact that Comus’s mother openly +disapproved of the friendship gave it perhaps its chief interest in the +young politician’s eyes. + +Francesca turned her attention to her brother’s end of the table. Henry +Greech had willingly availed himself of the invitation to leave the +subject of married life, and had launched forthwith into the equally +well-worn theme of current politics. He was not a person who was in much +demand for public meetings, and the House showed no great impatience to +hear his views on the topics of the moment; its impatience, indeed, was +manifested rather in the opposite direction. Hence he was prone to +unburden himself of accumulated political wisdom as occasion presented +itself—sometimes, indeed, to assume an occasion that was hardly visible +to the naked intelligence. + +“Our opponents are engaged in a hopelessly uphill struggle, and they know +it,” he chirruped, defiantly; “they’ve become possessed, like the +Gadarene swine, with a whole legion of—” + +“Surely the Gadarene swine went downhill,” put in Lady Caroline in a +gently enquiring voice. + +Henry Greech hastily abandoned simile and fell back on platitude and the +safer kinds of fact. + +Francesca did not regard her brother’s views on statecraft either in the +light of gospel or revelation; as Comus once remarked, they more usually +suggested exodus. In the present instance she found distraction in a +renewed scrutiny of the girl opposite her, who seemed to be only +moderately interested in the conversational efforts of the diners on +either side of her. Comus who was looking and talking his best, was +sitting at the further end of the table, and Francesca was quick to +notice in which direction the girl’s glances were continually straying. +Once or twice the eyes of the young people met and a swift flush of +pleasure and a half-smile that spoke of good understanding came to the +heiress’s face. It did not need the gift of the traditional intuition of +her sex to enable Francesca to guess that the girl with the desirable +banking account was already considerably attracted by the lively young +Pagan who had, when he cared to practise it, such an art of winning +admiration. For the first time for many, many months Francesca saw her +son’s prospects in a rose-coloured setting, and she began, unconsciously, +to wonder exactly how much wealth was summed up in the expressive label +“almost indecently rich.” A wife with a really large fortune and a +correspondingly big dower of character and ambition, might, perhaps, +succeed in turning Comus’s latent energies into a groove which would +provide him, if not with a career, at least with an occupation, and the +young serious face opposite looked as if its owner lacked neither +character or ambition. Francesca’s speculations took a more personal +turn. Out of the well-filled coffers with which her imagination was +toying, an inconsiderable sum might eventually be devoted to the leasing, +or even perhaps the purchase of, the house in Blue Street when the +present convenient arrangement should have come to an end, and Francesca +and the Van der Meulen would not be obliged to seek fresh quarters. + +A woman’s voice, talking in a discreet undertone on the other side of +Courtenay Youghal, broke in on her bridge-building. + +“Tons of money and really very presentable. Just the wife for a rising +young politician. Go in and win her before she’s snapped up by some +fortune hunter.” + +Youghal and his instructress in worldly wisdom were looking straight +across the table at the Leonardo da Vinci girl with the grave reflective +eyes and the over-emphasised air of repose. Francesca felt a quick throb +of anger against her match-making neighbour; why, she asked herself, must +some women, with no end or purpose of their own to serve, except the +sheer love of meddling in the affairs of others, plunge their hands into +plots and schemings of this sort, in which the happiness of more than one +person was concerned? And more clearly than ever she realised how +thoroughly she detested Courtenay Youghal. She had disliked him as an +evil influence, setting before her son an example of showy ambition that +he was not in the least likely to follow, and providing him with a model +of extravagant dandyism that he was only too certain to copy. In her +heart she knew that Comus would have embarked just as surely on his +present course of idle self-indulgence if he had never known of the +existence of Youghal, but she chose to regard that young man as her son’s +evil genius, and now he seemed likely to justify more than ever the +character she had fastened on to him. For once in his life Comus +appeared to have an idea of behaving sensibly and making some use of his +opportunities, and almost at the same moment Courtenay Youghal arrived on +the scene as a possible and very dangerous rival. Against the good looks +and fitful powers of fascination that Comus could bring into the field, +the young politician could match half-a-dozen dazzling qualities which +would go far to recommend him in the eyes of a woman of the world, still +more in those of a young girl in search of an ideal. Good-looking in his +own way, if not on such showy lines as Comus, always well turned-out, +witty, self-confident without being bumptious, with a conspicuous +Parliamentary career alongside him, and heaven knew what else in front of +him, Courtenay Youghal certainly was not a rival whose chances could be +held very lightly. Francesca laughed bitterly to herself as she +remembered that a few hours ago she had entertained the idea of begging +for his good offices in helping on Comus’s wooing. One consolation, at +least, she found for herself: if Youghal really meant to step in and try +and cut out his young friend, the latter at any rate had snatched a +useful start. Comus had mentioned Miss de Frey at luncheon that day, +casually and dispassionately; if the subject of the dinner guests had not +come up he would probably not have mentioned her at all. But they were +obviously already very good friends. It was part and parcel of the state +of domestic tension at Blue Street that Francesca should only have come +to know of this highly interesting heiress by an accidental sorting of +guests at a dinner party. + +Lady Caroline’s voice broke in on her reflections; it was a gentle +purring voice, that possessed an uncanny quality of being able to make +itself heard down the longest dinner table. + +“The dear Archdeacon is getting so absent-minded. He read a list of +box-holders for the opera as the First Lesson the other Sunday, instead +of the families and lots of the tribes of Israel that entered Canaan. +Fortunately no one noticed the mistake.” + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +ON a conveniently secluded bench facing the Northern Pheasantry in the +Zoological Society’s Gardens, Regent’s Park, Courtenay Youghal sat +immersed in mature flirtation with a lady, who, though certainly young in +fact and appearance, was some four or five years his senior. When he was +a schoolboy of sixteen, Molly McQuade had personally conducted him to the +Zoo and stood him dinner afterwards at Kettner’s, and whenever the two of +them happened to be in town on the anniversary of that bygone festivity +they religiously repeated the programme in its entirety. Even the menu +of the dinner was adhered to as nearly as possible; the original +selection of food and wine that schoolboy exuberance, tempered by +schoolboy shyness, had pitched on those many years ago, confronted +Youghal on those occasions, as a drowning man’s past life is said to rise +up and parade itself in his last moments of consciousness. + +The flirtation which was thus perennially restored to its old-time +footing owed its longevity more to the enterprising solicitude of Miss +McQuade than to any conscious sentimental effort on the part of Youghal +himself. Molly McQuade was known to her neighbours in a minor hunting +shire as a hard-riding conventionally unconventional type of young woman, +who came naturally into the classification, “a good sort.” She was just +sufficiently good-looking, sufficiently reticent about her own illnesses, +when she had any, and sufficiently appreciative of her neighbours’ +gardens, children and hunters to be generally popular. Most men liked +her, and the percentage of women who disliked her was not inconveniently +high. One of these days, it was assumed, she would marry a brewer or a +Master of Otter Hounds, and, after a brief interval, be known to the +world as the mother of a boy or two at Malvern or some similar seat of +learning. The romantic side of her nature was altogether unguessed by +the countryside. + +Her romances were mostly in serial form and suffered perhaps in fervour +from their disconnected course what they gained in length of days. Her +affectionate interest in the several young men who figured in her affairs +of the heart was perfectly honest, and she certainly made no attempt +either to conceal their separate existences, or to play them off one +against the other. Neither could it be said that she was a husband +hunter; she had made up her mind what sort of man she was likely to +marry, and her forecast did not differ very widely from that formed by +her local acquaintances. If her married life were eventually to turn out +a failure, at least she looked forward to it with very moderate +expectations. Her love affairs she put on a very different footing and +apparently they were the all-absorbing element in her life. She +possessed the happily constituted temperament which enables a man or +woman to be a “pluralist,” and to observe the sage precaution of not +putting all one’s eggs into one basket. Her demands were not exacting; +she required of her affinity that he should be young, good-looking, and +at least, moderately amusing; she would have preferred him to be +invariably faithful, but, with her own example before her, she was +prepared for the probability, bordering on certainty, that he would be +nothing of the sort. The philosophy of the “Garden of Kama” was the +compass by which she steered her barque and thus far, if she had +encountered some storms and buffeting, she had at least escaped being +either shipwrecked or becalmed. + +Courtenay Youghal had not been designed by Nature to fulfil the _rôle_ of +an ardent or devoted lover, and he scrupulously respected the limits +which Nature had laid down. For Molly, however, he had a certain +responsive affection. She had always obviously admired him, and at the +same time she never beset him with crude flattery; the principal reason +why the flirtation had stood the test of so many years was the fact that +it only flared into active existence at convenient intervals. In an age +when the telephone has undermined almost every fastness of human privacy, +and the sanctity of one’s seclusion depends often on the ability for +tactful falsehood shown by a club pageboy, Youghal was duly appreciative +of the circumstance that his lady fair spent a large part of the year +pursuing foxes, in lieu of pursuing him. Also the honestly admitted fact +that, in her human hunting, she rode after more than one quarry, made the +inevitable break-up of the affair a matter to which both could look +forward without a sense of coming embarrassment and recrimination. When +the time for gathering ye rosebuds should be over, neither of them could +accuse the other of having wrecked his or her entire life. At the most +they would only have disorganised a week-end. + +On this particular afternoon, when old reminiscences had been gone +through, and the intervening gossip of past months duly recounted, a lull +in the conversation made itself rather obstinately felt. Molly had +already guessed that matters were about to slip into a new phase; the +affair had reached maturity long ago, and a new phase must be in the +nature of a wane. + +“You’re a clever brute,” she said, suddenly, with an air of affectionate +regret; “I always knew you’d get on in the House, but I hardly expected +you to come to the front so soon.” + +“I’m coming to the front,” admitted Youghal, judicially; “the problem is, +shall I be able to stay there. Unless something happens in the financial +line before long, I don’t see how I’m to stay in Parliament at all. +Economy is out of the question. It would open people’s eyes, I fancy, if +they knew how little I exist on as it is. And I’m living so far beyond +my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.” + +“It will have to be a rich wife, I suppose,” said Molly, slowly; “that’s +the worst of success, it imposes so many conditions. I rather knew, from +something in your manner, that you were drifting that way.” + +Youghal said nothing in the way of contradiction; he gazed steadfastly at +the aviary in front of him as though exotic pheasants were for the moment +the most absorbing study in the world. As a matter of fact, his mind was +centred on the image of Elaine de Frey, with her clear untroubled eyes +and her Leonardo da Vinci air. He was wondering whether he was likely to +fall into a frame of mind concerning her which would be in the least like +falling in love. + +“I shall mind horribly,” continued Molly, after a pause, “but, of course, +I have always known that something of the sort would have to happen one +of these days. When a man goes into politics he can’t call his soul his +own, and I suppose his heart becomes an impersonal possession in the same +way.” + +“Most people who know me would tell you that I haven’t got a heart,” said +Youghal. + +“I’ve often felt inclined to agree with them,” said Molly; “and then, now +and again, I think you have a heart tucked away somewhere.” + +“I hope I have,” said Youghal, “because I’m trying to break to you the +fact that I think I’m falling in love with somebody.” + +Molly McQuade turned sharply to look at her companion, who still fixed +his gaze on the pheasant run in front of him. + +“Don’t tell me you’re losing your head over somebody useless, someone +without money,” she said; “I don’t think I could stand that.” + +For the moment she feared that Courtenay’s selfishness might have taken +an unexpected turn, in which ambition had given way to the fancy of the +hour; he might be going to sacrifice his Parliamentary career for a life +of stupid lounging in momentarily attractive company. He quickly +undeceived her. + +“She’s got heaps of money.” + +Molly gave a grunt of relief. Her affection for Courtenay had produced +the anxiety which underlay her first question; a natural jealousy +prompted the next one. + +“Is she young and pretty and all that sort of thing, or is she just a +good sort with a sympathetic manner and nice eyes? As a rule that’s the +kind that goes with a lot of money.” + +“Young and quite good-looking in her way, and a distinct style of her +own. Some people would call her beautiful. As a political hostess I +should think she’d be splendid. I imagine I’m rather in love with her.” + +“And is she in love with you?” + +Youghal threw back his head with the slight assertive movement that Molly +knew and liked. + +“She’s a girl who I fancy would let judgment influence her a lot. And +without being stupidly conceited, I think I may say she might do worse +than throw herself away on me. I’m young and quite good-looking, and I’m +making a name for myself in the House; she’ll be able to read all sorts +of nice and horrid things about me in the papers at breakfast-time. I +can be brilliantly amusing at times, and I understand the value of +silence; there is no fear that I shall ever degenerate into that fearsome +thing—a cheerful talkative husband. For a girl with money and social +ambitions I should think I was rather a good thing.” + +“You are certainly in love, Courtenay,” said Molly, “but it’s the old +love and not a new one. I’m rather glad. I should have hated to have +you head-over-heels in love with a pretty woman, even for a short time. +You’ll be much happier as it is. And I’m going to put all my feelings in +the background, and tell you to go in and win. You’ve got to marry a +rich woman, and if she’s nice and will make a good hostess, so much the +better for everybody. You’ll be happier in your married life than I +shall be in mine, when it comes; you’ll have other interests to absorb +you. I shall just have the garden and dairy and nursery and lending +library, as like as two peas to all the gardens and dairies and nurseries +for hundreds of miles round. You won’t care for your wife enough to be +worried every time she has a finger-ache, and you’ll like her well enough +to be pleased to meet her sometimes at your own house. I shouldn’t +wonder if you were quite happy. She will probably be miserable, but any +woman who married you would be.” + +There was a short pause; they were both staring at the pheasant cages. +Then Molly spoke again, with the swift nervous tone of a general who is +hurriedly altering the disposition of his forces for a strategic retreat. + +“When you are safely married and honey-mooned and all that sort of thing, +and have put your wife through her paces as a political hostess, some +time, when the House isn’t sitting, you must come down by yourself, and +do a little hunting with us. Will you? It won’t be quite the same as +old times, but it will be something to look forward to when I’m reading +the endless paragraphs about your fashionable political wedding.” + +“You’re looking forward pretty far,” laughed Youghal; “the lady may take +your view as to the probable unhappiness of a future shared with me, and +I may have to content myself with penurious political bachelorhood. +Anyhow, the present is still with us. We dine at Kettner’s to-night, +don’t we?” + +“Rather,” said Molly, “though it will be more or less a throat-lumpy +feast as far as I am concerned. We shall have to drink to the health of +the future Mrs. Youghal. By the way, it’s rather characteristic of you +that you haven’t told me who she is, and of me that I haven’t asked. And +now, like a dear boy, trot away and leave me. I haven’t got to say +good-bye to you yet, but I’m going to take a quiet farewell of the +Pheasantry. We’ve had some jolly good talks, you and I, sitting on this +seat, haven’t we? And I know, as well as I know anything, that this is +the last of them. Eight o’clock to-night, as punctually as possible.” + +She watched his retreating figure with eyes that grew slowly misty; he +had been such a jolly comely boy-friend, and they had had such good times +together. The mist deepened on her lashes as she looked round at the +familiar rendezvous where they had so often kept tryst since the day when +they had first come there together, he a schoolboy and she but lately out +of her teens. For the moment she felt herself in the thrall of a very +real sorrow. + +Then, with the admirable energy of one who is only in town for a fleeting +fortnight, she raced away to have tea with a world-faring naval admirer +at his club. Pluralism is a merciful narcotic. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +ELAINE DE FREY sat at ease—at bodily ease—at any rate—in a low wicker +chair placed under the shade of a group of cedars in the heart of a +stately spacious garden that had almost made up its mind to be a park. +The shallow stone basin of an old fountain, on whose wide ledge a +leaden-moulded otter for ever preyed on a leaden salmon, filled a +conspicuous place in the immediate foreground. Around its rim ran an +inscription in Latin, warning mortal man that time flows as swiftly as +water and exhorting him to make the most of his hours; after which piece +of Jacobean moralising it set itself shamelessly to beguile all who might +pass that way into an abandonment of contemplative repose. On all sides +of it a stretch of smooth turf spread away, broken up here and there by +groups of dwarfish chestnut and mulberry trees, whose leaves and branches +cast a laced pattern of shade beneath them. On one side the lawn sloped +gently down to a small lake, whereon floated a quartette of swans, their +movements suggestive of a certain mournful listlessness, as though a +weary dignity of caste held them back from the joyous bustling life of +the lesser waterfowl. Elaine liked to imagine that they re-embodied the +souls of unhappy boys who had been forced by family interests to become +high ecclesiastical dignitaries and had grown prematurely Right Reverend. +A low stone balustrade fenced part of the shore of the lake, making a +miniature terrace above its level, and here roses grew in a rich +multitude. Other rose bushes, carefully pruned and tended, formed little +oases of colour and perfume amid the restful green of the sward, and in +the distance the eye caught the variegated blaze of a many-hued hedge of +rhododendron. With these favoured exceptions flowers were hard to find +in this well-ordered garden; the misguided tyranny of staring geranium +beds and beflowered archways leading to nowhere, so dear to the suburban +gardener, found no expression here. Magnificent Amherst pheasants, whose +plumage challenged and almost shamed the peacock on his own ground, +stepped to and fro over the emerald turf with the assured self-conscious +pride of reigning sultans. It was a garden where summer seemed a +part-proprietor rather than a hurried visitor. + +By the side of Elaine’s chair under the shadow of the cedars a wicker +table was set out with the paraphernalia of afternoon tea. On some +cushions at her feet reclined Courtenay Youghal, smoothly preened and +youthfully elegant, the personification of decorative repose; equally +decorative, but with the showy restlessness of a dragonfly, Comus +disported his flannelled person over a considerable span of the available +foreground. + +The intimacy existing between the two young men had suffered no immediate +dislocation from the circumstance that they were tacitly paying court to +the same lady. It was an intimacy founded not in the least on friendship +or community of tastes and ideas, but owed its existence to the fact that +each was amused and interested by the other. Youghal found Comus, for +the time being at any rate, just as amusing and interesting as a rival +for Elaine’s favour as he had been in the _rôle_ of scapegrace +boy-about-Town; Comus for his part did not wish to lose touch with +Youghal, who among other attractions possessed the recommendation of +being under the ban of Comus’s mother. She disapproved, it is true, of a +great many of her son’s friends and associates, but this particular one +was a special and persistent source of irritation to her from the fact +that he figured prominently and more or less successfully in the public +life of the day. There was something peculiarly exasperating in reading +a brilliant and incisive attack on the Government’s rash handling of +public expenditure delivered by a young man who encouraged her son in +every imaginable extravagance. The actual extent of Youghal’s influence +over the boy was of the slightest; Comus was quite capable of deriving +encouragement to rash outlay and frivolous conversation from an anchorite +or an East-end parson if he had been thrown into close companionship with +such an individual. Francesca, however, exercised a mother’s privilege +in assuming her son’s bachelor associates to be industrious in labouring +to achieve his undoing. Therefore the young politician was a source of +unconcealed annoyance to her, and in the same degree as she expressed her +disapproval of him Comus was careful to maintain and parade the intimacy. +Its existence, or rather its continued existence, was one of the things +that faintly puzzled the young lady whose sought-for favour might have +been expected to furnish an occasion for its rapid dissolution. + +With two suitors, one of whom at least she found markedly attractive, +courting her at the same moment, Elaine should have had reasonable cause +for being on good terms with the world, and with herself in particular. +Happiness was not, however, at this auspicious moment, her dominant mood. +The grave calm of her face masked as usual a certain degree of grave +perturbation. A succession of well-meaning governesses and a plentiful +supply of moralising aunts on both sides of her family, had impressed on +her young mind the theoretical fact that wealth is a great +responsibility. The consciousness of her responsibility set her +continually wondering, not as to her own fitness to discharge her +“stewardship,” but as to the motives and merits of people with whom she +came in contact. The knowledge that there was so much in the world that +she could buy, invited speculation as to how much there was that was +worth buying. Gradually she had come to regard her mind as a sort of +appeal court before whose secret sittings were examined and judged the +motives and actions, the motives especially, of the world in general. In +her schoolroom days she had sat in conscientious judgment on the motives +that guided or misguided Charles and Cromwell and Monck, Wallenstein and +Savonarola. In her present stage she was equally occupied in examining +the political sincerity of the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, the +good-faith of a honey-tongued but possibly loyal-hearted waiting-maid, +and the disinterestedness of a whole circle of indulgent and flattering +acquaintances. Even more absorbing, and in her eyes, more urgently +necessary, was the task of dissecting and appraising the characters of +the two young men who were favouring her with their attentions. And +herein lay cause for much thinking and some perturbation. Youghal, for +example, might have baffled a more experienced observer of human nature. +Elaine was too clever to confound his dandyism with foppishness or +self-advertisement. He admired his own toilet effect in a mirror from a +genuine sense of pleasure in a thing good to look upon, just as he would +feel a sensuous appreciation of the sight of a well-bred, well-matched, +well-turned-out pair of horses. Behind his careful political flippancy +and cynicism one might also detect a certain careless sincerity, which +would probably in the long run save him from moderate success, and turn +him into one of the brilliant failures of his day. Beyond this it was +difficult to form an exact appreciation of Courtenay Youghal, and Elaine, +who liked to have her impressions distinctly labelled and pigeon-holed, +was perpetually scrutinising the outer surface of his characteristics and +utterances, like a baffled art critic vainly searching beneath the +varnish and scratches of a doubtfully assigned picture for an +enlightening signature. The young man added to her perplexities by his +deliberate policy of never trying to show himself in a favourable light +even when most anxious to impart a favourable impression. He preferred +that people should hunt for his good qualities, and merely took very good +care that as far as possible they should never draw blank; even in the +matter of selfishness, which was the anchor-sheet of his existence, he +contrived to be noted, and justly noted, for doing remarkably unselfish +things. As a ruler he would have been reasonably popular; as a husband +he would probably be unendurable. + +Comus was to a certain extent as great a mystification as Youghal, but +here Elaine was herself responsible for some of the perplexity which +enshrouded his character in her eyes. She had taken more than a passing +fancy for the boy—for the boy as he might be, that was to say—and she was +desperately unwilling to see him and appraise him as he really was. Thus +the mental court of appeal was constantly engaged in examining witnesses +as to character, most of whom signally failed to give any testimony which +would support the favourable judgment which the tribunal was so anxious +to arrive at. A woman with wider experience of the world’s ways and +shortcomings would probably have contented herself with an endeavour to +find out whether her liking for the boy outweighed her dislike of his +characteristics; Elaine took her judgments too seriously to approach the +matter from such a simple and convenient standpoint. The fact that she +was much more than half in love with Comus made it dreadfully important +that she should discover him to have a lovable soul, and Comus, it must +be confessed, did little to help forward the discovery. + +“At any rate he is honest,” she would observe to herself, after some +outspoken admission of unprincipled conduct on his part, and then she +would ruefully recall certain episodes in which he had figured, from +which honesty had been conspicuously absent. What she tried to label +honesty in his candour was probably only a cynical defiance of the laws +of right and wrong. + +“You look more than usually thoughtful this afternoon,” said Comus to +her, “as if you had invented this summer day and were trying to think out +improvements.” + +“If I had the power to create improvements anywhere I think I should +begin with you,” retorted Elaine. + +“I’m sure it’s much better to leave me as I am,” protested Comus; “you’re +like a relative of mine up in Argyllshire, who spends his time producing +improved breeds of sheep and pigs and chickens. So patronising and +irritating to the Almighty I should think, to go about putting superior +finishing touches to Creation.” + +Elaine frowned, and then laughed, and finally gave a little sigh. + +“It’s not easy to talk sense to you,” she said. + +“Whatever else you take in hand,” said Youghal, “you must never improve +this garden. It’s what our idea of Heaven might be like if the Jews +hadn’t invented one for us on totally different lines. It’s dreadful +that we should accept them as the impresarios of our religious dreamland +instead of the Greeks.” + +“You are not very fond of the Jews,” said Elaine. + +“I’ve travelled and lived a good deal in Eastern Europe,” said Youghal. + +“It seems largely a question of geography,” said Elaine; “in England no +one really is anti-Semitic.” + +Youghal shook his head. “I know a great many Jews who are.” + +Servants had quietly, almost reverently, placed tea and its accessories +on the wicker table, and quietly receded from the landscape. Elaine sat +like a grave young goddess about to dispense some mysterious potion to +her devotees. Her mind was still sitting in judgment on the Jewish +question. + +Comus scrambled to his feet. + +“It’s too hot for tea,” he said; “I shall go and feed the swans.” + +And he walked off with a little silver basket-dish containing brown +bread-and-butter. + +Elaine laughed quietly. + +“It’s so like Comus,” she said, “to go off with our one dish of +bread-and-butter.” + +Youghal chuckled responsively. It was an undoubted opportunity for him +to put in some disparaging criticism of Comus, and Elaine sat alert in +readiness to judge the critic and reserve judgment on the criticised. + +“His selfishness is splendid but absolutely futile,” said Youghal; “now +my selfishness is commonplace, but always thoroughly practical and +calculated. He will have great difficulty in getting the swans to accept +his offering, and he incurs the odium of reducing us to a +bread-and-butterless condition. Incidentally he will get very hot.” + +Elaine again had the sense of being thoroughly baffled. If Youghal had +said anything unkind it was about himself. + +“If my cousin Suzette had been here,” she observed, with the shadow of a +malicious smile on her lips, “I believe she would have gone into a flood +of tears at the loss of her bread-and-butter, and Comus would have +figured ever after in her mind as something black and destroying and +hateful. In fact I don’t really know why we took our loss so +unprotestingly.” + +“For two reasons,” said Youghal; “you are rather fond of Comus. And I—am +not very fond of bread-and-butter.” + +The jesting remark brought a throb of pleasure to Elaine’s heart. She +had known full well that she cared for Comus, but now that Courtenay +Youghal had openly proclaimed the fact as something unchallenged and +understood matters seemed placed at once on a more advanced footing. The +warm sunlit garden grew suddenly into a Heaven that held the secret of +eternal happiness. Youth and comeliness would always walk here, under +the low-boughed mulberry trees, as unchanging as the leaden otter that +for ever preyed on the leaden salmon on the edge of the old fountain, and +somehow the lovers would always wear the aspect of herself and the boy +who was talking to the four white swans by the water steps. Youghal was +right; this was the real Heaven of one’s dreams and longings, +immeasurably removed from that Rue de la Paix Paradise about which one +professed utterly insincere hankerings in places of public worship. +Elaine drank her tea in a happy silence; besides being a brilliant talker +Youghal understood the rarer art of being a non-talker on occasion. + +Comus came back across the grass swinging the empty basket-dish in his +hand. + +“Swans were very pleased,” he cried, gaily, “and said they hoped I would +keep the bread-and-butter dish as a souvenir of a happy tea-party. I may +really have it, mayn’t I?” he continued in an anxious voice; “it will do +to keep studs and things in. You don’t want it.” + +“It’s got the family crest on it,” said Elaine. Some of the happiness +had died out of her eyes. + +“I’ll have that scratched off and my own put on,” said Comus. + +“It’s been in the family for generations,” protested Elaine, who did not +share Comus’s view that because you were rich your lesser possessions +could have no value in your eyes. + +“I want it dreadfully,” said Comus, sulkily, “and you’ve heaps of other +things to put bread-and-butter in.” + +For the moment he was possessed by an overmastering desire to keep the +dish at all costs; a look of greedy determination dominated his face, and +he had not for an instant relaxed his grip of the coveted object. + +Elaine was genuinely angry by this time, and was busily telling herself +that it was absurd to be put out over such a trifle; at the same moment a +sense of justice was telling her that Comus was displaying a good deal of +rather shabby selfishness. And somehow her chief anxiety at the moment +was to keep Courtenay Youghal from seeing that she was angry. + +“I know you don’t really want it, so I’m going to keep it,” persisted +Comus. + +“It’s too hot to argue,” said Elaine. + +“Happy mistress of your destinies,” laughed Youghal; “you can suit your +disputations to the desired time and temperature. I have to go and +argue, or what is worse, listen to other people’s arguments, in a hot and +doctored atmosphere suitable to an invalid lizard.” + +“You haven’t got to argue about a bread-and-butter dish,” said Elaine. + +“Chiefly about bread-and-butter,” said Youghal; “our great preoccupation +is other people’s bread-and-butter. They earn or produce the material, +but we busy ourselves with making rules how it shall be cut up, and the +size of the slices, and how much butter shall go on how much bread. That +is what is called legislation. If we could only make rules as to how the +bread-and-butter should be digested we should be quite happy.” + +Elaine had been brought up to regard Parliaments as something to be +treated with cheerful solemnity, like illness or family re-unions. +Youghal’s flippant disparagement of the career in which he was involved +did not, however, jar on her susceptibilities. She knew him to be not +only a lively and effective debater but an industrious worker on +committees. If he made light of his labours, at least he afforded no one +else a loophole for doing so. And certainly, the Parliamentary +atmosphere was not inviting on this hot afternoon. + +“When must you go?” she asked, sympathetically. + +Youghal looked ruefully at his watch. Before he could answer, a cheerful +hoot came through the air, as of an owl joyously challenging the sunlight +with a foreboding of the coming night. He sprang laughing to his feet. + +“Listen! My summons back to my galley,” he cried. “The Gods have given +me an hour in this enchanted garden, so I must not complain.” + +Then in a lower voice he almost whispered, “It’s the Persian debate +to-night.” + +It was the one hint he had given in the midst of his talking and laughing +that he was really keenly enthralled in the work that lay before him. It +was the one little intimate touch that gave Elaine the knowledge that he +cared for her opinion of his work. + +Comus, who had emptied his cigarette-case, became suddenly clamorous at +the prospect of being temporarily stranded without a smoke. Youghal took +the last remaining cigarette from his own case and gravely bisected it. + +“Friendship could go no further,” he observed, as he gave one-half to the +doubtfully appeased Comus, and lit the other himself. + +“There are heaps more in the hall,” said Elaine. + +“It was only done for the Saint Martin of Tours effect,” said Youghal; “I +hate smoking when I’m rushing through the air. Good-bye.” + +The departing galley-slave stepped forth into the sunlight, radiant and +confident. A few minutes later Elaine could see glimpses of his white +car as it rushed past the rhododendron bushes. He woos best who leaves +first, particularly if he goes forth to battle or the semblance of +battle. + +Somehow Elaine’s garden of Eternal Youth had already become clouded in +its imagery. The girl-figure who walked in it was still distinctly and +unchangingly herself, but her companion was more blurred and undefined, +as a picture that has been superimposed on another. + +Youghal sped townward well satisfied with himself. To-morrow, he +reflected, Elaine would read his speech in her morning paper, and he knew +in advance that it was not going to be one of his worst efforts. He knew +almost exactly where the punctuations of laughter and applause would +burst in, he knew that nimble fingers in the Press Gallery would be +taking down each gibe and argument as he flung it at the impassive +Minister confronting him, and that the fair lady of his desire would be +able to judge what manner of young man this was who spent his afternoon +in her garden, lazily chaffing himself and his world. + +And he further reflected, with an amused chuckle, that she would be +vividly reminded of Comus for days to come, when she took her afternoon +tea, and saw the bread-and-butter reposing in an unaccustomed dish. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +TOWARDS four o’clock on a hot afternoon Francesca stepped out from a shop +entrance near the Piccadilly end of Bond Street and ran almost into the +arms of Merla Blathlington. The afternoon seemed to get instantly +hotter. Merla was one of those human flies that buzz; in crowded +streets, at bazaars and in warm weather, she attained to the proportions +of a human bluebottle. Lady Caroline Benaresq had openly predicted that +a special fly-paper was being reserved for her accommodation in another +world; others, however, held the opinion that she would be miraculously +multiplied in a future state, and that four or more Merla Blathlingtons, +according to deserts, would be in perpetual and unremitting attendance on +each lost soul. + +“Here we are,” she cried, with a glad eager buzz, “popping in and out of +shops like rabbits; not that rabbits do pop in and out of shops very +extensively.” + +It was evidently one of her bluebottle days. + +“Don’t you love Bond Street?” she gabbled on. “There’s something so +unusual and distinctive about it; no other street anywhere else is quite +like it. Don’t you know those ikons and images and things scattered up +and down Europe, that are supposed to have been painted or carved, as the +case may be, by St. Luke or Zaccheus, or somebody of that sort; I always +like to think that some notable person of those times designed Bond +Street. St. Paul, perhaps. He travelled about a lot.” + +“Not in Middlesex, though,” said Francesca. + +“One can’t be sure,” persisted Merla; “when one wanders about as much as +he did one gets mixed up and forgets where one _has_ been. I can never +remember whether I’ve been to the Tyrol twice and St. Moritz once, or the +other way about; I always have to ask my maid. And there’s something +about the name Bond that suggests St. Paul; didn’t he write a lot about +the bond and the free?” + +“I fancy he wrote in Hebrew or Greek,” objected Francesca; “the word +wouldn’t have the least resemblance.” + +“So dreadfully non-committal to go about pamphleteering in those bizarre +languages,” complained Merla; “that’s what makes all those people so +elusive. As soon as you try to pin them down to a definite statement +about anything you’re told that some vitally important word has fifteen +other meanings in the original. I wonder our Cabinet Ministers and +politicians don’t adopt a sort of dog-Latin or Esperanto jargon to +deliver their speeches in; what a lot of subsequent explaining away would +be saved. But to go back to Bond Street—not that we’ve left it—” + +“I’m afraid I must leave it now,” said Francesca, preparing to turn up +Grafton Street; “Good-bye.” + +“Must you be going? Come and have tea somewhere. I know of a cosy +little place where one can talk undisturbed.” + +Francesca repressed a shudder and pleaded an urgent engagement. + +“I know where you’re going,” said Merla, with the resentful buzz of a +bluebottle that finds itself thwarted by the cold unreasoning resistance +of a windowpane. “You’re going to play bridge at Serena Golackly’s. She +never asks me to her bridge parties.” + +Francesca shuddered openly this time; the prospect of having to play +bridge anywhere in the near neighbourhood of Merla’s voice was not one +that could be contemplated with ordinary calmness. + +“Good-bye,” she said again firmly, and passed out of earshot; it was +rather like leaving the machinery section of an exhibition. Merla’s +diagnosis of her destination had been a correct one; Francesca made her +way slowly through the hot streets in the direction of Serena Golackly’s +house on the far side of Berkeley Square. To the blessed certainty of +finding a game of bridge, she hopefully added the possibility of hearing +some fragments of news which might prove interesting and enlightening. +And of enlightenment on a particular subject, in which she was acutely +and personally interested, she stood in some need. Comus of late had +been provokingly reticent as to his movements and doings; partly, +perhaps, because it was his nature to be provoking, partly because the +daily bickerings over money matters were gradually choking other forms of +conversation. Francesca had seen him once or twice in the Park in the +desirable company of Elaine de Frey, and from time to time she heard of +the young people as having danced together at various houses; on the +other hand, she had seen and heard quite as much evidence to connect the +heiress’s name with that of Courtenay Youghal. Beyond this meagre and +conflicting and altogether tantalising information, her knowledge of the +present position of affairs did not go. If either of the young men was +seriously “making the running,” it was probable that she would hear some +sly hint or open comment about it from one of Serena’s gossip-laden +friends, without having to go out of her way to introduce the subject and +unduly disclose her own state of ignorance. And a game of bridge, played +for moderately high points, gave ample excuse for convenient lapses into +reticence; if questions took an embarrassingly inquisitive turn, one +could always find refuge in a defensive spade. + +The afternoon was too warm to make bridge a generally popular diversion, +and Serena’s party was a comparatively small one. Only one table was +incomplete when Francesca made her appearance on the scene; at it was +seated Serena herself, confronted by Ada Spelvexit, whom everyone was +wont to explain as “one of the Cheshire Spelvexits,” as though any other +variety would have been intolerable. Ada Spelvexit was one of those +naturally stagnant souls who take infinite pleasure in what are called +“movements.” “Most of the really great lessons I have learned have been +taught me by the Poor,” was one of her favourite statements. The one +great lesson that the Poor in general would have liked to have taught +her, that their kitchens and sickrooms were not unreservedly at her +disposal as private lecture halls, she had never been able to assimilate. +She was ready to give them unlimited advice as to how they should keep +the wolf from their doors, but in return she claimed and enforced for +herself the penetrating powers of an east wind or a dust storm. Her +visits among her wealthier acquaintances were equally extensive and +enterprising, and hardly more welcome; in country-house parties, while +partaking to the fullest extent of the hospitality offered her, she made +a practice of unburdening herself of homilies on the evils of leisure and +luxury, which did not particularly endear her to her fellow guests. +Hostesses regarded her philosophically as a form of social measles which +everyone had to have once. + +The third prospective player, Francesca noted without any special +enthusiasm, was Lady Caroline Benaresq. Lady Caroline was far from being +a remarkably good bridge player, but she always managed to domineer +mercilessly over any table that was favoured with her presence, and +generally managed to win. A domineering player usually inflicts the +chief damage and demoralisation on his partner; Lady Caroline’s special +achievement was to harass and demoralise partner and opponents alike. + +“Weak and weak,” she announced in her gentle voice, as she cut her +hostess for a partner; “I suppose we had better play only five shillings +a hundred.” + +Francesca wondered at the old woman’s moderate assessment of the stake, +knowing her fondness for highish play and her usual good luck in card +holding. + +“I don’t mind what we play,” said Ada Spelvexit, with an incautious +parade of elegant indifference; as a matter of fact she was inwardly +relieved and rejoicing at the reasonable figure proposed by Lady +Caroline, and she would certainly have demurred if a higher stake had +been suggested. She was not as a rule a successful player, and money +lost at cards was always a poignant bereavement to her. + +“Then as you don’t mind we’ll make it ten shillings a hundred,” said Lady +Caroline, with the pleased chuckle of one who has spread a net in the +sight of a bird and disproved the vanity of the proceeding. + +It proved a tiresome ding-dong rubber, with the strength of the cards +slightly on Francesca’s side, and the luck of the table going mostly the +other way. She was too keen a player not to feel a certain absorption in +the game once it had started, but she was conscious to-day of a +distracting interest that competed with the momentary importance of leads +and discards and declarations. The little accumulations of talk that +were unpent during the dealing of the hands became as noteworthy to her +alert attention as the play of the hands themselves. + +“Yes, quite a small party this afternoon,” said Serena, in reply to a +seemingly casual remark on Francesca’s part; “and two or three +non-players, which is unusual on a Wednesday. Canon Besomley was here +just before you came; you know, the big preaching man.” + +“I’ve been to hear him scold the human race once or twice,” said +Francesca. + +“A strong man with a wonderfully strong message,” said Ada Spelvexit, in +an impressive and assertive tone. + +“The sort of popular pulpiteer who spanks the vices of his age and +lunches with them afterwards,” said Lady Caroline. + +“Hardly a fair summary of the man and his work,” protested Ada. “I’ve +been to hear him many times when I’ve been depressed or discouraged, and +I simply can’t tell you the impression his words leave—” + +“At least you can tell us what you intend to make trumps,” broke in Lady +Caroline, gently. + +“Diamonds,” pronounced Ada, after a rather flurried survey of her hand. + +“Doubled,” said Lady Caroline, with increased gentleness, and a few +minutes later she was pencilling an addition of twenty-four to her score. + +“I stayed with his people down in Herefordshire last May,” said Ada, +returning to the unfinished theme of the Canon; “such an exquisite rural +retreat, and so restful and healing to the nerves. Real country scenery; +apple blossom everywhere.” + +“Surely only on the apple trees,” said Lady Caroline. + +Ada Spelvexit gave up the attempt to reproduce the decorative setting of +the Canon’s homelife, and fell back on the small but practical +consolation of scoring the odd trick in her opponent’s declaration of +hearts. + +“If you had led your highest club to start with, instead of the nine, we +should have saved the trick,” remarked Lady Caroline to her partner in a +tone of coldly, gentle reproof; “it’s no use, my dear,” she continued, as +Serena flustered out a halting apology, “no earthly use to attempt to +play bridge at one table and try to see and hear what’s going on at two +or three other tables.” + +“I can generally manage to attend to more than one thing at a time,” said +Serena, rashly; “I think I must have a sort of double brain.” + +“Much better to economise and have one really good one,” observed Lady +Caroline. + +“_La belle dame sans merci_ scoring a verbal trick or two as usual,” said +a player at another table in a discreet undertone. + +“Did I tell you Sir Edward Roan is coming to my next big evening,” said +Serena, hurriedly, by way, perhaps, of restoring herself a little in her +own esteem. + +“Poor dear, good Sir Edward. What have you made trumps?” asked Lady +Caroline, in one breath. + +“Clubs,” said Francesca; “and pray, why these adjectives of +commiseration?” + +Francesca was a Ministerialist by family interest and allegiance, and was +inclined to take up the cudgels at the suggested disparagement aimed at +the Foreign Secretary. + +“He amuses me so much,” purred Lady Caroline. Her amusement was usually +of the sort that a sporting cat derives from watching the Swedish +exercises of a well-spent and carefully thought-out mouse. + +“Really? He has been rather a brilliant success at the Foreign Office, +you know,” said Francesca. + +“He reminds one so of a circus elephant—infinitely more intelligent than +the people who direct him, but quite content to go on putting his foot +down or taking it up as may be required, quite unconcerned whether he +steps on a meringue or a hornet’s nest in the process of going where he’s +expected to go.” + +“How can you say such things?” protested Francesca. + +“I can’t,” said Lady Caroline; “Courtenay Youghal said it in the House +last night. Didn’t you read the debate? He was really rather in form. +I disagree entirely with his point of view, of course, but some of the +things he says have just enough truth behind them to redeem them from +being merely smart; for instance, his summing up of the Government’s +attitude towards our embarrassing Colonial Empire in the wistful phrase +‘happy is the country that has no geography.’” + +“What an absurdly unjust thing to say,” put in Francesca; “I daresay some +of our Party at some time have taken up that attitude, but every one +knows that Sir Edward is a sound Imperialist at heart.” + +“Most politicians are something or other at heart, but no one would be +rash enough to insure a politician against heart failure. Particularly +when he happens to be in office.” + +“Anyhow, I don’t see that the Opposition leaders would have acted any +differently in the present case,” said Francesca. + +“One should always speak guardedly of the Opposition leaders,” said Lady +Caroline, in her gentlest voice; “one never knows what a turn in the +situation may do for them.” + +“You mean they may one day be at the head of affairs?” asked Serena, +briskly. + +“I mean they may one day lead the Opposition. One never knows.” + +Lady Caroline had just remembered that her hostess was on the Opposition +side in politics. + +Francesca and her partner scored four tricks in clubs; the game stood +irresolutely at twenty-four all. + +“If you had followed the excellent lyrical advice given to the Maid of +Athens and returned my heart we should have made two more tricks and gone +game,” said Lady Caroline to her partner. + +“Mr. Youghal seems pushing himself to the fore of late,” remarked +Francesca, as Serena took up the cards to deal. Since the young +politician’s name had been introduced into their conversation the +opportunity for turning the talk more directly on him and his affairs was +too good to be missed. + +“I think he’s got a career before him,” said Serena; “the House always +fills when he’s speaking, and that’s a good sign. And then he’s young +and got rather an attractive personality, which is always something in +the political world.” + +“His lack of money will handicap him, unless he can find himself a rich +wife or persuade someone to die and leave him a fat legacy,” said +Francesca; “since M.P.’s have become the recipients of a salary rather +more is expected and demanded of them in the expenditure line than +before.” + +“Yes, the House of Commons still remains rather at the opposite pole to +the Kingdom of Heaven as regards entrance qualifications,” observed Lady +Caroline. + +“There ought to be no difficulty about Youghal picking up a girl with +money,” said Serena; “with his prospects he would make an excellent +husband for any woman with social ambitions.” + +And she half sighed, as though she almost regretted that a previous +matrimonial arrangement precluded her from entering into the competition +on her own account. + +Francesca, under an assumption of languid interest, was watching Lady +Caroline narrowly for some hint of suppressed knowledge of Youghal’s +courtship of Miss de Frey. + +“Whom are you marrying and giving in marriage?” + +The question came from George St. Michael, who had strayed over from a +neighbouring table, attracted by the fragments of small-talk that had +reached his ears. + +St. Michael was one of those dapper bird-like illusorily-active men, who +seem to have been in a certain stage of middle-age for as long as human +memory can recall them. A close-cut peaked beard lent a certain dignity +to his appearance—a loan which the rest of his features and mannerisms +were continually and successfully repudiating. His profession, if he had +one, was submerged in his hobby, which consisted of being an +advance-agent for small happenings or possible happenings that were or +seemed imminent in the social world around him; he found a perpetual and +unflagging satisfaction in acquiring and retailing any stray items of +gossip or information, particularly of a matrimonial nature, that chanced +to come his way. Given the bare outline of an officially announced +engagement he would immediately fill it in with all manner of details, +true or, at any rate, probable, drawn from his own imagination or from +some equally exclusive source. The _Morning Post_ might content itself +with the mere statement of the arrangement which would shortly take +place, but it was St. Michael’s breathless little voice that proclaimed +how the contracting parties had originally met over a salmon-fishing +incident, why the Guards’ Chapel would not be used, why her Aunt Mary had +at first opposed the match, how the question of the children’s religious +upbringing had been compromised, etc., etc., to all whom it might +interest and to many whom it might not. Beyond his industriously-earned +pre-eminence in this special branch of intelligence, he was chiefly +noteworthy for having a wife reputed to be the tallest and thinnest woman +in the Home Counties. The two were sometimes seen together in Society, +where they passed under the collective name of St. Michael and All +Angles. + +“We are trying to find a rich wife for Courtenay Youghal,” said Serena, +in answer to St. Michael’s question. + +“Ah, there I’m afraid you’re a little late,” he observed, glowing with +the importance of pending revelation; “I’m afraid you’re a little late,” +he repeated, watching the effect of his words as a gardener might watch +the development of a bed of carefully tended asparagus. “I think the +young gentleman has been before you and already found himself a rich mate +in prospect.” + +He lowered his voice as he spoke, not with a view to imparting impressive +mystery to his statement, but because there were other table groups +within hearing to whom he hoped presently to have the privilege of +re-disclosing his revelation. + +“Do you mean—?” began Serena. + +“Miss de Frey,” broke in St. Michael, hurriedly, fearful lest his +revelation should be forestalled, even in guesswork; “quite an ideal +choice, the very wife for a man who means to make his mark in politics. +Twenty-four thousand a year, with prospects of more to come, and a +charming place of her own not too far from town. Quite the type of girl, +too, who will make a good political hostess, brains without being brainy, +you know. Just the right thing. Of course, it would be premature to +make any definite announcement at present—” + +“It would hardly be premature for my partner to announce what she means +to make trumps,” interrupted Lady Caroline, in a voice of such sinister +gentleness that St. Michael fled headlong back to his own table. + +“Oh, is it me? I beg your pardon. I leave it,” said Serena. + +“Thank you. No trumps,” declared Lady Caroline. The hand was +successful, and the rubber ultimately fell to her with a comfortable +margin of honours. The same partners cut together again, and this time +the cards went distinctly against Francesca and Ada Spelvexit, and a +heavily piled-up score confronted them at the close of the rubber. +Francesca was conscious that a certain amount of rather erratic play on +her part had at least contributed to the result. St. Michael’s incursion +into the conversation had proved rather a powerful distraction to her +ordinarily sound bridge-craft. + +Ada Spelvexit emptied her purse of several gold pieces and infused a +corresponding degree of superiority into her manner. + +“I must be going now,” she announced; “I’m dining early. I have to give +an address to some charwomen afterwards.” + +“Why?” asked Lady Caroline, with a disconcerting directness that was one +of her most formidable characteristics. + +“Oh, well, I have some things to say to them that I daresay they will +like to hear,” said Ada, with a thin laugh. + +Her statement was received with a silence that betokened profound +unbelief in any such probability. + +“I go about a good deal among working-class women,” she added. + +“No one has ever said it,” observed Lady Caroline, “but how painfully +true it is that the poor have us always with them.” + +Ada Spelvexit hastened her departure; the marred impressiveness of her +retreat came as a culminating discomfiture on the top of her ill-fortune +at the card-table. Possibly, however, the multiplication of her own +annoyances enabled her to survey charwomen’s troubles with increased +cheerfulness. None of them, at any rate, had spent an afternoon with +Lady Caroline. + +Francesca cut in at another table and with better fortune attending on +her, succeeded in winning back most of her losses. A sense of +satisfaction was distinctly dominant as she took leave of her hostess. +St. Michael’s gossip, or rather the manner in which it had been received, +had given her a clue to the real state of affairs, which, however slender +and conjectural, at least pointed in the desired direction. At first she +had been horribly afraid lest she should be listening to a definite +announcement which would have been the death-blow to her hopes, but as +the recitation went on without any of those assured little minor details +which St. Michael so loved to supply, she had come to the conclusion that +it was merely a piece of intelligent guesswork. And if Lady Caroline had +really believed in the story of Elaine de Frey’s virtual engagement to +Courtenay Youghal she would have taken a malicious pleasure in +encouraging St. Michael in his confidences, and in watching Francesca’s +discomfiture under the recital. The irritated manner in which she had +cut short the discussion betrayed the fact, that, as far as the old +woman’s information went, it was Comus and not Courtenay Youghal who held +the field. And in this particular case Lady Caroline’s information was +likely to be nearer the truth than St. Michael’s confident gossip. + +Francesca always gave a penny to the first crossing-sweeper or +match-seller she chanced across after a successful sitting at bridge. +This afternoon she had come out of the fray some fifteen shillings to the +bad, but she gave two pennies to a crossing-sweeper at the north-west +corner of Berkeley Square as a sort of thank-offering to the Gods. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +IT was a fresh rain-repentant afternoon, following a morning that had +been sultry and torrentially wet by turns; the sort of afternoon that +impels people to talk graciously of the rain as having done a lot of +good, its chief merit in their eyes probably having been its recognition +of the art of moderation. Also it was an afternoon that invited bodily +activity after the convalescent languor of the earlier part of the day. +Elaine had instinctively found her way into her riding-habit and sent an +order down to the stables—a blessed oasis that still smelt sweetly of +horse and hay and cleanliness in a world that reeked of petrol, and now +she set her mare at a smart pace through a succession of long-stretching +country lanes. She was due some time that afternoon at a garden-party, +but she rode with determination in an opposite direction. In the first +place neither Comus or Courtenay would be at the party, which fact seemed +to remove any valid reason that could be thought of for inviting her +attendance thereat; in the second place about a hundred human beings +would be gathered there, and human gatherings were not her most crying +need at the present moment. Since her last encounter with her wooers, +under the cedars in her own garden, Elaine realised that she was either +very happy or cruelly unhappy, she could not quite determine which. She +seemed to have what she most wanted in the world lying at her feet, and +she was dreadfully uncertain in her more reflective moments whether she +really wanted to stretch out her hand and take it. It was all very like +some situation in an Arabian Nights tale or a story of Pagan Hellas, and +consequently the more puzzling and disconcerting to a girl brought up on +the methodical lines of Victorian Christianity. Her appeal court was in +permanent session these last few days, but it gave no decisions, at least +none that she would listen to. And the ride on her fast light-stepping +little mare, alone and unattended, through the fresh-smelling leafy lanes +into unexplored country, seemed just what she wanted at the moment. The +mare made some small delicate pretence of being roadshy, not the staring +dolt-like kind of nervousness that shows itself in an irritating +hanging-back as each conspicuous wayside object presents itself, but the +nerve-flutter of an imaginative animal that merely results in a quick +whisk of the head and a swifter bound forward. She might have +paraphrased the mental attitude of the immortalised Peter Bell into + + A basket underneath a tree + A yellow tiger is to me, + If it is nothing more. + +The more really alarming episodes of the road, the hoot and whir of a +passing motor-car or the loud vibrating hum of a wayside +threshing-machine, were treated with indifference. + +On turning a corner out of a narrow coppice-bordered lane into a wider +road that sloped steadily upward in a long stretch of hill Elaine saw, +coming toward her at no great distance, a string of yellow-painted vans, +drawn for the most part by skewbald or speckled horses. A certain rakish +air about these oncoming road-craft proclaimed them as belonging to a +travelling wild-beast show, decked out in the rich primitive colouring +that one’s taste in childhood would have insisted on before it had been +schooled in the artistic value of dulness. It was an unlooked-for and +distinctly unwelcome encounter. The mare had already commenced a sixfold +scrutiny with nostrils, eyes and daintily-pricked ears; one ear made +hurried little backward movements to hear what Elaine was saying about +the eminent niceness and respectability of the approaching caravan, but +even Elaine felt that she would be unable satisfactorily to explain the +elephants and camels that would certainly form part of the procession. +To turn back would seem rather craven, and the mare might take fright at +the manœuvre and try to bolt; a gate standing ajar at the entrance to a +farmyard lane provided a convenient way out of the difficulty. + +As Elaine pushed her way through she became aware of a man standing just +inside the lane, who made a movement forward to open the gate for her. + +“Thank you. I’m just getting out of the way of a wild-beast show,” she +explained; “my mare is tolerant of motors and traction-engines, but I +expect camels—hullo,” she broke off, recognising the man as an old +acquaintance, “I heard you had taken rooms in a farmhouse somewhere. +Fancy meeting you in this way.” + +In the not very distant days of her little-girlhood, Tom Keriway had been +a man to be looked upon with a certain awe and envy; indeed the glamour +of his roving career would have fired the imagination, and wistful desire +to do likewise, of many young Englishmen. It seemed to be the grown-up +realisation of the games played in dark rooms in winter fire-lit +evenings, and the dreams dreamed over favourite books of adventure. +Making Vienna his headquarters, almost his home, he had rambled where he +listed through the lands of the Near and Middle East as leisurely and +thoroughly as tamer souls might explore Paris. He had wandered through +Hungarian horse-fairs, hunted shy crafty beasts on lonely Balkan +hillsides, dropped himself pebble-wise into the stagnant human pool of +some Bulgarian monastery, threaded his way through the strange racial +mosaic of Salonika, listened with amused politeness to the shallow +ultra-modern opinions of a voluble editor or lawyer in some wayside +Russian town, or learned wisdom from a chance tavern companion, one of +the atoms of the busy ant-stream of men and merchandise that moves +untiringly round the shores of the Black Sea. And far and wide as he +might roam he always managed to turn up at frequent intervals, at ball +and supper and theatre, in the gay Hauptstadt of the Habsburgs, haunting +his favourite cafés and wine-vaults, skimming through his favourite +news-sheets, greeting old acquaintances and friends, from ambassadors +down to cobblers in the social scale. He seldom talked of his travels, +but it might be said that his travels talked of him; there was an air +about him that a German diplomat once summed up in a phrase: “a man that +wolves have sniffed at.” + +And then two things happened, which he had not mapped out in his route; a +severe illness shook half the life and all the energy out of him, and a +heavy money loss brought him almost to the door of destitution. With +something, perhaps, of the impulse which drives a stricken animal away +from its kind, Tom Keriway left the haunts where he had known so much +happiness, and withdrew into the shelter of a secluded farmhouse lodging; +more than ever he became to Elaine a hearsay personality. And now the +chance meeting with the caravan had flung her across the threshold of his +retreat. + +“What a charming little nook you’ve got hold of,” she exclaimed with +instinctive politeness, and then looked searchingly round, and discovered +that she had spoken the truth; it really was charming. The farmhouse had +that intensely English look that one seldom sees out of Normandy. Over +the whole scene of rickyard, garden, outbuildings, horsepond and orchard, +brooded that air which seems rightfully to belong to out-of-the-way +farmyards, an air of wakeful dreaminess which suggests that here, man and +beast and bird have got up so early that the rest of the world has never +caught them up and never will. + +Elaine dismounted, and Keriway led the mare round to a little paddock by +the side of a great grey barn. At the end of the lane they could see the +show go past, a string of lumbering vans and great striding beasts that +seemed to link the vast silences of the desert with the noises and sights +and smells, the naphtha-flares and advertisement hoardings and trampled +orange-peel, of an endless succession of towns. + +“You had better let the caravan pass well on its way before you get on +the road again,” said Keriway; “the smell of the beasts may make your +mare nervous and restive going home.” + +Then he called to a boy who was busy with a hoe among some defiantly +prosperous weeds, to fetch the lady a glass of milk and a piece of +currant loaf. + +“I don’t know when I’ve seen anything so utterly charming and peaceful,” +said Elaine, propping herself on a seat that a pear-tree had obligingly +designed in the fantastic curve of its trunk. + +“Charming, certainly,” said Keriway, “but too full of the stress of its +own little life struggle to be peaceful. Since I have lived here I’ve +learnt, what I’ve always suspected, that a country farmhouse, set away in +a world of its own, is one of the most wonderful studies of interwoven +happenings and tragedies that can be imagined. It is like the old +chronicles of medieval Europe in the days when there was a sort of +ordered anarchy between feudal lords and overlords, and burg-grafs, and +mitred abbots, and prince-bishops, robber barons and merchant guilds, and +Electors and so forth, all striving and contending and counter-plotting, +and interfering with each other under some vague code of loosely-applied +rules. Here one sees it reproduced under one’s eyes, like a musty page +of black-letter come to life. Look at one little section of it, the +poultry-life on the farm. Villa poultry, dull egg-machines, with records +kept of how many ounces of food they eat, and how many pennyworths of +eggs they lay, give you no idea of the wonder-life of these farm-birds; +their feuds and jealousies, and carefully maintained prerogatives, their +unsparing tyrannies and persecutions, their calculated courage and +bravado or sedulously hidden cowardice, it might all be some human +chapter from the annals of the old Rhineland or medieval Italy. And +then, outside their own bickering wars and hates, the grim enemies that +come up against them from the woodlands; the hawk that dashes among the +coops like a moss-trooper raiding the border, knowing well that a charge +of shot may tear him to bits at any moment. And the stoat, a creeping +slip of brown fur a few inches long, intently and unstayably out for +blood. And the hunger-taught master of craft, the red fox, who has +waited perhaps half the afternoon for his chance while the fowls were +dusting themselves under the hedge, and just as they were turning +supper-ward to the yard one has stopped a moment to give her feathers a +final shake and found death springing upon her. Do you know,” he +continued, as Elaine fed herself and the mare with morsels of +currant-loaf, “I don’t think any tragedy in literature that I have ever +come across impressed me so much as the first one, that I spelled out +slowly for myself in words of three letters: the bad fox has got the red +hen. There was something so dramatically complete about it; the badness +of the fox, added to all the traditional guile of his race, seemed to +heighten the horror of the hen’s fate, and there was such a suggestion of +masterful malice about the word ‘got.’ One felt that a countryside in +arms would not get that hen away from the bad fox. They used to think me +a slow dull reader for not getting on with my lesson, but I used to sit +and picture to myself the red hen, with its wings beating helplessly, +screeching in terrified protest, or perhaps, if he had got it by the +neck, with beak wide agape and silent, and eyes staring, as it left the +farmyard for ever. I have seen blood-spillings and down-crushings and +abject defeat here and there in my time, but the red hen has remained in +my mind as the type of helpless tragedy.” He was silent for a moment as +if he were again musing over the three-letter drama that had so dwelt in +his childhood’s imagination. “Tell me some of the things you have seen +in your time,” was the request that was nearly on Elaine’s lips, but she +hastily checked herself and substituted another. + +“Tell me more about the farm, please.” + +And he told her of a whole world, or rather of several intermingled +worlds, set apart in this sleepy hollow in the hills, of beast lore and +wood lore and farm craft, at times touching almost the border of +witchcraft—passing lightly here, not with the probing eagerness of those +who know nothing, but with the averted glance of those who fear to see +too much. He told her of those things that slept and those that prowled +when the dusk fell, of strange hunting cats, of the yard swine and the +stalled cattle, of the farm folk themselves, as curious and remote in +their way, in their ideas and fears and wants and tragedies, as the +brutes and feathered stock that they tended. It seemed to Elaine as if a +musty store of old-world children’s books had been fetched down from some +cobwebbed lumber-room and brought to life. Sitting there in the little +paddock, grown thickly with tall weeds and rank grasses, and shadowed by +the weather-beaten old grey barn, listening to this chronicle of +wonderful things, half fanciful, half very real, she could scarcely +believe that a few miles away there was a garden-party in full swing, +with smart frocks and smart conversation, fashionable refreshments and +fashionable music, and a fevered undercurrent of social strivings and +snubbings. Did Vienna and the Balkan Mountains and the Black Sea seem as +remote and hard to believe in, she wondered, to the man sitting by her +side, who had discovered or invented this wonderful fairyland? Was it a +true and merciful arrangement of fate and life that the things of the +moment thrust out the after-taste of the things that had been? Here was +one who had held much that was priceless in the hollow of his hand and +lost it all, and he was happy and absorbed and well-content with the +little wayside corner of the world into which he had crept. And Elaine, +who held so many desirable things in the hollow of her hand, could not +make up her mind to be even moderately happy. She did not even know +whether to take this hero of her childhood down from his pedestal, or to +place him on a higher one; on the whole she was inclined to resent rather +than approve the idea that ill-health and misfortune could so completely +subdue and tame an erstwhile bold and roving spirit. + +The mare was showing signs of delicately-hinted impatience; the paddock, +with its teasing insects and very indifferent grazing, had not thrust out +the image of her own comfortable well-foddered loose-box. Elaine +divested her habit of some remaining crumbs of bun-loaf and jumped +lightly on to her saddle. As she rode slowly down the lane, with Keriway +escorting her as far as its gate, she looked round at what had seemed to +her, a short while ago, just a picturesque old farmstead, a place of +bee-hives and hollyhocks and gabled cart-sheds; now it was in her eyes a +magic city, with an undercurrent of reality beneath its magic. + +“You are a person to be envied,” she said to Keriway; “you have created a +fairyland, and you are living in it yourself.” + +“Envied?” + +He shot the question out with sudden bitterness. She looked down and saw +the wistful misery that had come into his face. + +“Once,” he said to her, “in a German paper I read a short story about a +tame crippled crane that lived in the park of some small town. I forget +what happened in the story, but there was one line that I shall always +remember: ‘it was lame, that is why it was tame.’” + +He had created a fairyland, but assuredly he was not living in it. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +IN the warmth of a late June morning the long shaded stretch of raked +earth, gravel-walk and rhododendron bush that is known affectionately as +the Row was alive with the monotonous movement and alert stagnation +appropriate to the time and place. The seekers after health, the seekers +after notoriety and recognition, and the lovers of good exercise were all +well represented on the galloping ground; the gravel-walk and chairs and +long seats held a population whose varied instincts and motives would +have baffled a social catalogue-maker. The children, handled or in +perambulators, might be excused from instinct or motive; they were +brought. + +Pleasingly conspicuous among a bunch of indifferent riders pacing along +by the rails where the onlookers were thickest was Courtenay Youghal, on +his handsome plum-roan gelding Anne de Joyeuse. That delicately stepping +animal had taken a prize at Islington and nearly taken the life of a +stable-boy of whom he disapproved, but his strongest claims to +distinction were his good looks and his high opinion of himself. Youghal +evidently believed in thorough accord between horse and rider. + +“Please stop and talk to me,” said a quiet beckoning voice from the other +side of the rails, and Youghal drew rein and greeted Lady Veula Croot. +Lady Veula had married into a family of commercial solidity and +enterprising political nonentity. She had a devoted husband, some blonde +teachable children, and a look of unutterable weariness in her eyes. To +see her standing at the top of an expensively horticultured staircase +receiving her husband’s guests was rather like watching an animal +performing on a music-hall stage. + +One always tells oneself that the animal likes it, and one always knows +that it doesn’t. + +“Lady Veula is an ardent Free Trader, isn’t she?” someone once remarked +to Lady Caroline. + +“I wonder,” said Lady Caroline, in her gently questioning voice; “a woman +whose dresses are made in Paris and whose marriage has been made in +Heaven might be equally biassed for and against free imports.” + +Lady Veula looked at Youghal and his mount with slow critical +appraisement, and there was a note of blended raillery and wistfulness in +her voice. + +“You two dear things, I should love to stroke you both, but I’m not sure +how Joyeuse would take it. So I’ll stroke you down verbally instead. I +admired your attack on Sir Edward immensely, though of course I don’t +agree with a word of it. Your description of him building a hedge round +the German cuckoo and hoping he was isolating it was rather sweet. +Seriously though, I regard him as one of the pillars of the +Administration.” + +“So do I,” said Youghal; “the misfortune is that he is merely propping up +a canvas roof. It’s just his regrettable solidity and integrity that +makes him so expensively dangerous. The average Briton arrives at the +same judgment about Roan’s handling of foreign affairs as Omar does of +the Supreme Being in his dealings with the world: He’s a good fellow and +’twill all be well.’” + +Lady Veula laughed lightly. “My Party is in power so I may exercise the +privilege of being optimistic. Who is that who bowed to you?” she +continued, as a dark young man with an inclination to stoutness passed by +them on foot; “I’ve seen him about a good deal lately. He’s been to one +or two of my dances.” + +“Andrei Drakoloff,” said Youghal; “he’s just produced a play that has had +a big success in Moscow and is certain to be extremely popular all over +Russia. In the first three acts the heroine is supposed to be dying of +consumption; in the last act they find she is really dying of cancer.” + +“Are the Russians really such a gloomy people?” + +“Gloom-loving but not in the least gloomy. They merely take their +sadness pleasurably, just as we are accused of taking our pleasures +sadly. Have you noticed that dreadful Klopstock youth has been pounding +past us at shortening intervals. He’ll come up and talk if he half +catches your eye.” + +“I only just know him. Isn’t he at an agricultural college or something +of the sort?” + +“Yes, studying to be a gentleman farmer, he told me. I didn’t ask if +both subjects were compulsory.” + +“You’re really rather dreadful,” said Lady Veula, trying to look as if +she thought so; “remember, we are all equal in the sight of Heaven.” + +For a preacher of wholesome truths her voice rather lacked conviction. + +“If I and Ernest Klopstock are really equal in the sight of Heaven,” said +Youghal, with intense complacency, “I should recommend Heaven to consult +an eye specialist.” + +There was a heavy spattering of loose earth, and a squelching of +saddle-leather, as the Klopstock youth lumbered up to the rails and +delivered himself of loud, cheerful greetings. Joyeuse laid his ears well +back as the ungainly bay cob and his appropriately matched rider drew up +beside him; his verdict was reflected and endorsed by the cold stare of +Youghal’s eyes. + +“I’ve been having a nailing fine time,” recounted the newcomer with +clamorous enthusiasm; “I was over in Paris last month and had lots of +strawberries there, then I had a lot more in London, and now I’ve been +having a late crop of them in Herefordshire, so I’ve had quite a lot this +year.” And he laughed as one who had deserved well and received well of +Fate. + +“The charm of that story,” said Youghal, “is that it can be told in any +drawing-room.” And with a sweep of his wide-brimmed hat to Lady Veula he +turned the impatient Joyeuse into the moving stream of horse and +horsemen. + +“That woman reminds me of some verse I’ve read and liked,” thought +Youghal, as Joyeuse sprang into a light showy canter that gave full +recognition to the existence of observant human beings along the side +walk. “Ah, I have it.” + +And he quoted almost aloud, as one does in the exhilaration of a canter: + + “How much I loved that way you had + Of smiling most, when very sad, + A smile which carried tender hints + Of sun and spring, + And yet, more than all other thing, + Of weariness beyond all words.” + +And having satisfactorily fitted Lady Veula on to a quotation he +dismissed her from his mind. With the constancy of her sex she thought +about him, his good looks and his youth and his railing tongue, till late +in the afternoon. + +While Youghal was putting Joyeuse through his paces under the elm trees +of the Row a little drama in which he was directly interested was being +played out not many hundred yards away. Elaine and Comus were indulging +themselves in two pennyworths of Park chair, drawn aside just a little +from the serried rows of sitters who were set out like bedded plants over +an acre or so of turf. Comus was, for the moment, in a mood of +pugnacious gaiety, disbursing a fund of pointed criticism and unsparing +anecdote concerning those of the promenaders or loungers whom he knew +personally or by sight. Elaine was rather quieter than usual, and the +grave serenity of the Leonardo da Vinci portrait seemed intensified in +her face this morning. In his leisurely courtship Comus had relied +almost exclusively on his physical attraction and the fitful drollery of +his wit and high spirits, and these graces had gone far to make him seem +a very desirable and rather lovable thing in Elaine’s eyes. But he had +left out of account the disfavour which he constantly risked and +sometimes incurred from his frank and undisguised indifference to other +people’s interests and wishes, including, at times, Elaine’s. And the +more that she felt that she liked him the more she was irritated by his +lack of consideration for her. Without expecting that her every wish +should become a law to him she would at least have liked it to reach the +formality of a Second Reading. Another important factor he had also left +out of his reckoning, namely the presence on the scene of another suitor, +who also had youth and wit to recommend him, and who certainly did not +lack physical attractions. Comus, marching carelessly through unknown +country to effect what seemed already an assured victory, made the +mistake of disregarding the existence of an unbeaten army on his flank. + +To-day Elaine felt that, without having actually quarrelled, she and +Comus had drifted a little bit out of sympathy with one another. The +fault she knew was scarcely hers, in fact from the most good-natured +point of view it could hardly be denied that it was almost entirely his. +The incident of the silver dish had lacked even the attraction of +novelty; it had been one of a series, all bearing a strong connecting +likeness. There had been small unrepaid loans which Elaine would not +have grudged in themselves, though the application for them brought a +certain qualm of distaste; with the perversity which seemed inseparable +from his doings, Comus had always flung away a portion of his borrowings +in some ostentatious piece of glaring and utterly profitless +extravagance, which outraged all the canons of her upbringing without +bringing him an atom of understandable satisfaction. Under these +repeated discouragements it was not surprising that some small part of +her affection should have slipped away, but she had come to the Park that +morning with an unconfessed expectation of being gently wooed back to the +mood of gracious forgetfulness that she was only too eager to assume. It +was almost worth while being angry with Comus for the sake of +experiencing the pleasure of being coaxed into friendliness again with +the charm which he knew so well how to exert. It was delicious here +under the trees on this perfect June morning, and Elaine had the blessed +assurance that most of the women within range were envying her the +companionship of the handsome merry-hearted youth who sat by her side. +With special complacence she contemplated her cousin Suzette, who was +self-consciously but not very elatedly basking in the attentions of her +fiancé, an earnest-looking young man who was superintendent of a People’s +something-or-other on the south side of the river, and whose clothes +Comus had described as having been made in Southwark rather than in +anger. + +Most of the pleasures in life must be paid for, and the chair-ticket +vendor in due time made his appearance in quest of pennies. + +Comus paid him from out of a varied assortment of coins and then balanced +the remainder in the palm of his hand. Elaine felt a sudden +foreknowledge of something disagreeable about to happen and a red spot +deepened in her cheeks. + +“Four shillings and fivepence and a half-penny,” said Comus, +reflectively. “It’s a ridiculous sum to last me for the next three days, +and I owe a card debt of over two pounds.” + +“Yes?” commented Elaine dryly and with an apparent lack of interest in +his exchequer statement. Surely, she was thinking hurriedly to herself, +he could not be foolish enough to broach the matter of another loan. + +“The card debt is rather a nuisance,” pursued Comus, with fatalistic +persistency. + +“You won seven pounds last week, didn’t you?” asked Elaine; “don’t you +put by any of your winnings to balance losses?” + +“The four shillings and the fivepence and the half-penny represent the +rearguard of the seven pounds,” said Comus; “the rest have fallen by the +way. If I can pay the two pounds to-day I daresay I shall win something +more to go on with; I’m holding rather good cards just now. But if I +can’t pay it of course I shan’t show up at the club. So you see the fix +I am in.” + +Elaine took no notice of this indirect application. The Appeal Court was +assembling in haste to consider new evidence, and this time there was the +rapidity of sudden determination about its movement. + +The conversation strayed away from the fateful topic for a few moments +and then Comus brought it deliberately back to the danger zone. + +“It would be awfully nice if you would let me have a fiver for a few +days, Elaine,” he said quickly; “if you don’t I really don’t know what I +shall do.” + +“If you are really bothered about your card debt I will send you the two +pounds by messenger boy early this afternoon.” She spoke quietly and +with great decision. “And I shall not be at the Connor’s dance +to-night,” she continued; “it’s too hot for dancing. I’m going home now; +please don’t bother to accompany me, I particularly wish to go alone.” + +Comus saw that he had overstepped the mark of her good nature. Wisely he +made no immediate attempt to force himself back into her good graces. He +would wait till her indignation had cooled. + +His tactics would have been excellent if he had not forgotten that +unbeaten army on his flank. + +Elaine de Frey had known very clearly what qualities she had wanted in +Comus, and she had known, against all efforts at self-deception, that he +fell far short of those qualities. She had been willing to lower her +standard of moral requirements in proportion as she was fond of the boy, +but there was a point beyond which she would not go. He had hurt her +pride besides alarming her sense of caution. + +Suzette, on whom she felt a thoroughly justified tendency to look down, +had at any rate an attentive and considerate lover. Elaine walked +towards the Park gates feeling that in one essential Suzette possessed +something that had been denied to her, and at the gates she met Joyeuse +and his spruce young rider preparing to turn homeward. + +“Get rid of Joyeuse and come and take me out to lunch somewhere,” +demanded Elaine. + +“How jolly,” said Youghal. “Let’s go to the Corridor Restaurant. The +head waiter there is an old Viennese friend of mine and looks after me +beautifully. I’ve never been there with a lady before, and he’s sure to +ask me afterwards, in his fatherly way, if we’re engaged.” + +The lunch was a success in every way. There was just enough orchestral +effort to immerse the conversation without drowning it, and Youghal was +an attentive and inspired host. Through an open doorway Elaine could see +the café reading-room, with its imposing array of _Neue Freie Presse_, +_Berliner Tageblatt_, and other exotic newspapers hanging on the wall. +She looked across at the young man seated opposite her, who gave one the +impression of having centred the most serious efforts of his brain on his +toilet and his food, and recalled some of the flattering remarks that the +press had bestowed on his recent speeches. + +“Doesn’t it make you conceited, Courtenay,” she asked, “to look at all +those foreign newspapers hanging there and know that most of them have +got paragraphs and articles about your Persian speech?” + +Youghal laughed. + +“There’s always a chastening corrective in the thought that some of them +may have printed your portrait. When once you’ve seen your features +hurriedly reproduced in the _Matin_, for instance, you feel you would +like to be a veiled Turkish woman for the rest of your life.” + +And Youghal gazed long and lovingly at his reflection in the nearest +mirror, as an antidote against possible incitements to humility in the +portrait gallery of fame. + +Elaine felt a certain soothed satisfaction in the fact that this young +man, whose knowledge of the Middle East was an embarrassment to Ministers +at question time and in debate, was showing himself equally well-informed +on the subject of her culinary likes and dislikes. If Suzette could have +been forced to attend as a witness at a neighbouring table she would have +felt even happier. + +“Did the head waiter ask if we were engaged?” asked Elaine, when +Courtenay had settled the bill, and she had finished collecting her +sunshade and gloves and other impedimenta from the hands of obsequious +attendants. + +“Yes,” said Youghal, “and he seemed quite crestfallen when I had to say +‘no.’” + +“It would be horrid to disappoint him when he’s looked after us so +charmingly,” said Elaine; “tell him that we are.” + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +THE Rutland Galleries were crowded, especially in the neighbourhood of +the tea-buffet, by a fashionable throng of art-patrons which had gathered +to inspect Mervyn Quentock’s collection of Society portraits. Quentock +was a young artist whose abilities were just receiving due recognition +from the critics; that the recognition was not overdue he owed largely to +his perception of the fact that if one hides one’s talent under a bushel +one must be careful to point out to everyone the exact bushel under which +it is hidden. There are two manners of receiving recognition: one is to +be discovered so long after one’s death that one’s grandchildren have to +write to the papers to establish their relationship; the other is to be +discovered, like the infant Moses, at the very outset of one’s career. +Mervyn Quentock had chosen the latter and happier manner. In an age when +many aspiring young men strive to advertise their wares by imparting to +them a freakish imbecility, Quentock turned out work that was +characterised by a pleasing delicate restraint, but he contrived to +herald his output with a certain fanfare of personal eccentricity, +thereby compelling an attention which might otherwise have strayed past +his studio. In appearance he was the ordinary cleanly young Englishman, +except, perhaps, that his eyes rather suggested a library edition of the +Arabian Nights; his clothes matched his appearance and showed no taint of +the sartorial disorder by which the bourgeois of the garden-city and the +Latin Quarter anxiously seeks to proclaim his kinship with art and +thought. His eccentricity took the form of flying in the face of some of +the prevailing social currents of the day, but as a reactionary, never as +a reformer. He produced a gasp of admiring astonishment in fashionable +circles by refusing to paint actresses—except, of course, those who had +left the legitimate drama to appear between the boards of Debrett. He +absolutely declined to execute portraits of Americans unless they hailed +from certain favoured States. His “water-colour-line,” as a New York +paper phrased it, earned for him a crop of angry criticisms and a shoal +of Transatlantic commissions, and criticism and commissions were the +things that Quentock most wanted. + +“Of course he is perfectly right,” said Lady Caroline Benaresq, calmly +rescuing a piled-up plate of caviare sandwiches from the neighbourhood of +a trio of young ladies who had established themselves hopefully within +easy reach of it. “Art,” she continued, addressing herself to the Rev. +Poltimore Vardon, “has always been geographically exclusive. London may +be more important from most points of view than Venice, but the art of +portrait painting, which would never concern itself with a Lord Mayor, +simply grovels at the feet of the Doges. As a Socialist I’m bound to +recognise the right of Ealing to compare itself with Avignon, but one +cannot expect the Muses to put the two on a level.” + +“Exclusiveness,” said the Reverend Poltimore, “has been the salvation of +Art, just as the lack of it is proving the downfall of religion. My +colleagues of the cloth go about zealously proclaiming the fact that +Christianity, in some form or other, is attracting shoals of converts +among all sorts of races and tribes, that one had scarcely ever heard of, +except in reviews of books of travel that one never read. That sort of +thing was all very well when the world was more sparsely populated, but +nowadays, when it simply teems with human beings, no one is particularly +impressed by the fact that a few million, more or less, of converts, of a +low stage of mental development, have accepted the teachings of some +particular religion. It not only chills one’s enthusiasm, it positively +shakes one’s convictions when one hears that the things one has been +brought up to believe as true are being very favourably spoken of by +Buriats and Samoyeds and Kanakas.” + +The Rev. Poltimore Vardon had once seen a resemblance in himself to +Voltaire, and had lived alongside the comparison ever since. + +“No modern cult or fashion,” he continued, “would be favourably +influenced by considerations based on statistics; fancy adopting a +certain style of hat or cut of coat, because it was being largely worn in +Lancashire and the Midlands; fancy favouring a certain brand of champagne +because it was being extensively patronised in German summer resorts. No +wonder that religion is falling into disuse in this country under such +ill-directed methods.” + +“You can’t prevent the heathen being converted if they choose to be,” +said Lady Caroline; “this is an age of toleration.” + +“You could always deny it,” said the Rev. Poltimore, “like the Belgians +do with regrettable occurrences in the Congo. But I would go further +than that. I would stimulate the waning enthusiasm for Christianity in +this country by labelling it as the exclusive possession of a privileged +few. If one could induce the Duchess of Pelm, for instance, to assert +that the Kingdom of Heaven, as far as the British Isles are concerned, is +strictly limited to herself, two of the under-gardeners at Pelmby, and, +possibly, but not certainly, the Dean of Dunster, there would be an +instant reshaping of the popular attitude towards religious convictions +and observances. Once let the idea get about that the Christian Church +is rather more exclusive than the Lawn at Ascot, and you would have a +quickening of religious life such as this generation has never witnessed. +But as long as the clergy and the religious organisations advertise their +creed on the lines of ‘Everybody ought to believe in us: millions do,’ +one can expect nothing but indifference and waning faith.” + +“Time is just as exclusive in its way as Art,” said Lady Caroline. + +“In what way?” said the Reverend Poltimore. + +“Your pleasantries about religion would have sounded quite clever and +advanced in the early ’nineties. To-day they have a dreadfully warmed-up +flavour. That is the great delusion of you would-be advanced satirists; +you imagine you can sit down comfortably for a couple of decades saying +daring and startling things about the age you live in, which, whatever +other defects it may have, is certainly not standing still. The whole of +the Sherard Blaw school of discursive drama suggests, to my mind, Early +Victorian furniture in a travelling circus. However, you will always +have relays of people from the suburbs to listen to the Mocking Bird of +yesterday, and sincerely imagine it is the harbinger of something new and +revolutionising.” + +“_Would_ you mind passing that plate of sandwiches,” asked one of the +trio of young ladies, emboldened by famine. + +“With pleasure,” said Lady Caroline, deftly passing her a nearly empty +plate of bread-and-butter. + +“I meant the place of caviare sandwiches. So sorry to trouble you,” +persisted the young lady. + +Her sorrow was misapplied; Lady Caroline had turned her attention to a +newcomer. + +“A very interesting exhibition,” Ada Spelvexit was saying; “faultless +technique, as far as I am a judge of technique, and quite a master-touch +in the way of poses. But have you noticed how very animal his art is? +He seems to shut out the soul from his portraits. I nearly cried when I +saw dear Winifred depicted simply as a good-looking healthy blonde.” + +“I wish you had,” said Lady Caroline; “the spectacle of a strong, brave +woman weeping at a private view in the Rutland Galleries would have been +so sensational. It would certainly have been reproduced in the next +Drury Lane drama. And I’m so unlucky; I never see these sensational +events. I was ill with appendicitis, you know, when Lulu Braminguard +dramatically forgave her husband, after seventeen years of estrangement, +during a State luncheon party at Windsor. The old queen was furious +about it. She said it was so disrespectful to the cook to be thinking of +such a thing at such a time.” + +Lady Caroline’s recollections of things that hadn’t happened at the Court +of Queen Victoria were notoriously vivid; it was the very widespread fear +that she might one day write a book of reminiscences that made her so +universally respected. + +“As for his full-length picture of Lady Brickfield,” continued Ada, +ignoring Lady Caroline’s commentary as far as possible, “all the +expression seems to have been deliberately concentrated in the feet; +beautiful feet, no doubt, but still, hardly the most distinctive part of +a human being.” + +“To paint the right people at the wrong end may be an eccentricity, but +it is scarcely an indiscretion,” pronounced Lady Caroline. + +One of the portraits which attracted more than a passing flutter of +attention was a costume study of Francesca Bassington. Francesca had +secured some highly desirable patronage for the young artist, and in +return he had enriched her pantheon of personal possessions with a clever +piece of work into which he had thrown an unusual amount of imaginative +detail. He had painted her in a costume of the great Louis’s brightest +period, seated in front of a tapestry that was so prominent in the +composition that it could scarcely be said to form part of the +background. Flowers and fruit, in exotic profusion, were its dominant +note; quinces, pomegranates, passion-flowers, giant convolvulus, great +mauve-pink roses, and grapes that were already being pressed by gleeful +cupids in a riotous Arcadian vintage, stood out on its woven texture. +The same note was struck in the beflowered satin of the lady’s kirtle, +and in the pomegranate pattern of the brocade that draped the couch on +which she was seated. The artist had called his picture “Recolte.” And +after one had taken in all the details of fruit and flower and foliage +that earned the composition its name, one noted the landscape that showed +through a broad casement in the left-hand corner. It was a landscape +clutched in the grip of winter, naked, bleak, black-frozen; a winter in +which things died and knew no rewakening. If the picture typified +harvest, it was a harvest of artificial growth. + +“It leaves a great deal to the imagination, doesn’t it?” said Ada +Spelvexit, who had edged away from the range of Lady Caroline’s tongue. + +“At any rate one can tell who it’s meant for,” said Serena Golackly. + +“Oh, yes, it’s a good likeness of dear Francesca,” admitted Ada; “of +course, it flatters her.” + +“That, too, is a fault on the right side in portrait painting,” said +Serena; “after all, if posterity is going to stare at one for centuries +it’s only kind and reasonable to be looking just a little better than +one’s best.” + +“What a curiously unequal style the artist has,” continued Ada, almost as +if she felt a personal grievance against him; “I was just noticing what a +lack of soul there was in most of his portraits. Dear Winifred, you +know, who speaks so beautifully and feelingly at my gatherings for old +women, he’s made her look just an ordinary dairy-maidish blonde; and +Francesca, who is quite the most soulless woman I’ve ever met, well, he’s +given her quite—” + +“Hush,” said Serena, “the Bassington boy is just behind you.” + +Comus stood looking at the portrait of his mother with the feeling of one +who comes suddenly across a once-familiar half-forgotten acquaintance in +unfamiliar surroundings. The likeness was undoubtedly a good one, but +the artist had caught an expression in Francesca’s eyes which few people +had ever seen there. It was the expression of a woman who had forgotten +for one short moment to be absorbed in the small cares and excitements of +her life, the money worries and little social plannings, and had found +time to send a look of half-wistful friendliness to some sympathetic +companion. Comus could recall that look, fitful and fleeting, in his +mother’s eyes when she had been a few years younger, before her world had +grown to be such a committee-room of ways and means. Almost as a +re-discovery he remembered that she had once figured in his boyish mind +as a “rather good sort,” more ready to see the laughable side of a piece +of mischief than to labour forth a reproof. That the bygone feeling of +good fellowship had been stamped out was, he knew, probably in great part +his own doing, and it was possible that the old friendliness was still +there under the surface of things, ready to show itself again if he +willed it, and friends were becoming scarcer with him than enemies in +these days. Looking at the picture with its wistful hint of a long ago +comradeship, Comus made up his mind that he very much wanted things to be +back on their earlier footing, and to see again on his mother’s face the +look that the artist had caught and perpetuated in its momentary +flitting. If the projected Elaine-marriage came off, and in spite of +recent maladroit behaviour on his part he still counted it an assured +thing, much of the immediate cause for estrangement between himself and +his mother would be removed, or at any rate, easily removable. With the +influence of Elaine’s money behind him he promised himself that he would +find some occupation that would remove from himself the reproach of being +a waster and idler. There were lots of careers, he told himself, that +were open to a man with solid financial backing and good connections. +There might yet be jolly times ahead, in which his mother would have her +share of the good things that were going, and carking thin-lipped Henry +Greech and other of Comus’s detractors could take their sour looks and +words out of sight and hearing. Thus, staring at the picture as though +he were studying its every detail, and seeing really only that wistful +friendly smile, Comus made his plans and dispositions for a battle that +was already fought and lost. + +The crowd grew thicker in the galleries, cheerfully enduring an amount of +overcrowding that would have been fiercely resented in a railway +carriage. Near the entrance Mervyn Quentock was talking to a Serene +Highness, a lady who led a life of obtrusive usefulness, largely imposed +on her by a good-natured inability to say “No.” “That woman creates a +positive draught with the number of bazaars she opens,” a +frivolously-spoken ex-Cabinet Minister had once remarked. At the present +moment she was being whimsically apologetic. + +“When I think of the legions of well-meaning young men and women to whom +I’ve given away prizes for proficiency in art-school curriculum, I feel +that I ought not to show my face inside a picture gallery. I always +imagine that my punishment in another world will be perpetually +sharpening pencils and cleaning palettes for unending relays of misguided +young people whom I deliberately encouraged in their artistic delusions.” + +“Do you suppose we shall all get appropriate punishments in another world +for our sins in this?” asked Quentock. + +“Not so much for our sins as for our indiscretions; they are the things +which do the most harm and cause the greatest trouble. I feel certain +that Christopher Columbus will undergo the endless torment of being +discovered by parties of American tourists. You see I am quite old +fashioned in my ideas about the terrors and inconveniences of the next +world. And now I must be running away; I’ve got to open a Free Library +somewhere. You know the sort of thing that happens—one unveils a bust of +Carlyle and makes a speech about Ruskin, and then people come in their +thousands and read ‘Rabid Ralph, or Should he have Bitten Her?’ Don’t +forget, please, I’m going to have the medallion with the fat cupid +sitting on a sundial. And just one thing more—perhaps I ought not to ask +you, but you have such nice kind eyes, you embolden one to make daring +requests, would you send me the recipe for those lovely +chestnut-and-chicken-liver sandwiches? I know the ingredients of course, +but it’s the proportions that make such a difference—just how much liver +to how much chestnut, and what amount of red pepper and other things. +Thank you so much. I really am going now.” + +Staring round with a vague half-smile at everybody within nodding +distance, Her Serene Highness made one of her characteristic exits, which +Lady Caroline declared always reminded her of a scrambled egg slipping +off a piece of toast. At the entrance she stopped for a moment to +exchange a word or two with a young man who had just arrived. From a +corner where he was momentarily hemmed in by a group of tea-consuming +dowagers, Comus recognised the newcomer as Courtenay Youghal, and began +slowly to labour his way towards him. Youghal was not at the moment the +person whose society he most craved for in the world, but there was at +least the possibility that he might provide an opportunity for a game of +bridge, which was the dominant desire of the moment. The young +politician was already surrounded by a group of friends and +acquaintances, and was evidently being made the recipient of a salvo of +congratulation—presumably on his recent performances in the Foreign +Office debate, Comus concluded. But Youghal himself seemed to be +announcing the event with which the congratulations were connected. Had +some dramatic catastrophe overtaken the Government, Comus wondered. And +then, as he pressed nearer, a chance word, the coupling of two names, +told him the news. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +AFTER the momentous lunch at the Corridor Restaurant Elaine had returned +to Manchester Square (where she was staying with one of her numerous +aunts) in a frame of mind that embraced a tangle of competing emotions. +In the first place she was conscious of a dominant feeling of relief; in +a moment of impetuosity, not wholly uninfluenced by pique, she had +settled the problem which hours of hard thinking and serious +heart-searching had brought no nearer to solution, and, although she felt +just a little inclined to be scared at the headlong manner of her final +decision, she had now very little doubt in her own mind that the decision +had been the right one. In fact the wonder seemed rather that she should +have been so long in doubt as to which of her wooers really enjoyed her +honest approval. She had been in love, these many weeks past with an +imaginary Comus, but now that she had definitely walked out of her +dreamland she saw that nearly all the qualities that had appealed to her +on his behalf had been absent from, or only fitfully present in, the +character of the real Comus. And now that she had installed Youghal in +the first place of her affections he had rapidly acquired in her eyes +some of the qualities which ranked highest in her estimation. Like the +proverbial buyer she had the happy feminine tendency of magnifying the +worth of her possession as soon as she had acquired it. And Courtenay +Youghal gave Elaine some justification for her sense of having chosen +wisely. Above all other things, selfish and cynical though he might +appear at times, he was unfailingly courteous and considerate towards +her. That was a circumstance which would always have carried weight with +her in judging any man; in this case its value was enormously heightened +by contrast with the behaviour of her other wooer. And Youghal had in +her eyes the advantage which the glamour of combat, even the combat of +words and wire-pulling, throws over the fighter. He stood well in the +forefront of a battle which however carefully stage-managed, however +honeycombed with personal insincerities and overlaid with calculated +mock-heroics, really meant something, really counted for good or wrong in +the nation’s development and the world’s history. Shrewd parliamentary +observers might have warned her that Youghal would never stand much +higher in the political world than he did at present, as a brilliant +Opposition freelance, leading lively and rather meaningless forays +against the dull and rather purposeless foreign policy of a Government +that was scarcely either to be blamed for or congratulated on its +handling of foreign affairs. The young politician had not the strength +of character or convictions that keeps a man naturally in the forefront +of affairs and gives his counsels a sterling value, and on the other hand +his insincerity was not deep enough to allow him to pose artificially and +successfully as a leader of men and shaper of movements. For the moment, +however, his place in public life was sufficiently marked out to give him +a secure footing in that world where people are counted individually and +not in herds. The woman whom he would make his wife would have the +chance, too, if she had the will and the skill, to become an individual +who counted. + +There was balm to Elaine in this reflection, yet it did not wholly +suffice to drive out the feeling of pique which Comus had called into +being by his slighting view of her as a convenient cash supply in moments +of emergency. She found a certain satisfaction in scrupulously observing +her promise, made earlier on that eventful day, and sent off a messenger +with the stipulated loan. Then a reaction of compunction set in, and she +reminded herself that in fairness she ought to write and tell her news in +as friendly a fashion as possible to her dismissed suitor before it burst +upon him from some other quarter. They had parted on more or less +quarrelling terms it was true, but neither of them had foreseen the +finality of the parting nor the permanence of the breach between them; +Comus might even now be thinking himself half-forgiven, and the awakening +would be rather cruel. The letter, however, did not prove an easy one to +write; not only did it present difficulties of its own but it suffered +from the competing urgency of a desire to be doing something far +pleasanter than writing explanatory and valedictory phrases. Elaine was +possessed with an unusual but quite overmastering hankering to visit her +cousin Suzette Brankley. They met but rarely at each other’s houses and +very seldom anywhere else, and Elaine for her part was never conscious of +feeling that their opportunities for intercourse lacked anything in the +way of adequacy. Suzette accorded her just that touch of patronage which +a moderately well-off and immoderately dull girl will usually try to mete +out to an acquaintance who is known to be wealthy and suspected of +possessing brains. In return Elaine armed herself with that particular +brand of mock humility which can be so terribly disconcerting if properly +wielded. No quarrel of any description stood between them and one could +not legitimately have described them as enemies, but they never disarmed +in one another’s presence. A misfortune of any magnitude falling on one +of them would have been sincerely regretted by the other, but any minor +discomfiture would have produced a feeling very much akin to +satisfaction. Human nature knows millions of these inconsequent little +feuds, springing up and flourishing apart from any basis of racial, +political, religious or economic causes, as a hint perhaps to crass +unseeing altruists that enmity has its place and purpose in the world as +well as benevolence. + +Elaine had not personally congratulated Suzette since the formal +announcement of her engagement to the young man with the dissentient +tailoring effects. The impulse to go and do so now, overmastered her +sense of what was due to Comus in the way of explanation. The letter was +still in its blank unwritten stage, an unmarshalled sequence of sentences +forming in her brain, when she ordered her car and made a hurried but +well-thought-out change into her most sumptuously sober afternoon +toilette. Suzette, she felt tolerably sure, would still be in the +costume that she had worn in the Park that morning, a costume that aimed +at elaboration of detail, and was damned with overmuch success. + +Suzette’s mother welcomed her unexpected visitor with obvious +satisfaction. Her daughter’s engagement, she explained, was not so +brilliant from the social point of view as a girl of Suzette’s +attractions and advantages might have legitimately aspired to, but Egbert +was a thoroughly commendable and dependable young man, who would very +probably win his way before long to membership of the County Council. + +“From there, of course, the road would be open to him to higher things.” + +“Yes,” said Elaine, “he might become an alderman.” + +“Have you seen their photographs, taken together?” asked Mrs. Brankley, +abandoning the subject of Egbert’s prospective career. + +“No, do show me,” said Elaine, with a flattering show of interest; “I’ve +never seen that sort of thing before. It used to be the fashion once for +engaged couples to be photographed together, didn’t it?” + +“It’s _very_ much the fashion now,” said Mrs. Brankley assertively, but +some of the complacency had filtered out of her voice. Suzette came into +the room, wearing the dress that she had worn in the Park that morning. + +“Of course, you’ve been hearing all about _the_ engagement from mother,” +she cried, and then set to work conscientiously to cover the same ground. + +“We met at Grindelwald, you know. He always calls me his Ice Maiden +because we first got to know each other on the skating rink. Quite +romantic, wasn’t it? Then we asked him to tea one day, and we got to be +quite friendly. Then he proposed.” + +“He wasn’t the only one who was smitten with Suzette,” Mrs. Brankley +hastened to put in, fearful lest Elaine might suppose that Egbert had had +things all his own way. “There was an American millionaire who was quite +taken with her, and a Polish count of a very old family. I assure you I +felt quite nervous at some of our tea-parties.” + +Mrs. Brankley had given Grindelwald a sinister but rather alluring +reputation among a large circle of untravelled friends as a place where +the insolence of birth and wealth was held in precarious check from +breaking forth into scenes of savage violence. + +“My marriage with Egbert will, of course, enlarge the sphere of my life +enormously,” pursued Suzette. + +“Yes,” said Elaine; her eyes were rather remorselessly taking in the +details of her cousin’s toilette. It is said that nothing is sadder than +victory except defeat. Suzette began to feel that the tragedy of both +was concentrated in the creation which had given her such unalloyed +gratification, till Elaine had come on the scene. + +“A woman can be so immensely helpful in the social way to a man who is +making a career for himself. And I’m so glad to find that we’ve a great +many ideas in common. We each made out a list of our idea of the hundred +best books, and quite a number of them were the same.” + +“He looks bookish,” said Elaine, with a critical glance at the +photograph. + +“Oh, he’s not at all a bookworm,” said Suzette quickly, “though he’s +tremendously well-read. He’s quite the man of action.” + +“Does he hunt?” asked Elaine. + +“No, he doesn’t get much time or opportunity for riding.” + +“What a pity,” commented Elaine; “I don’t think I could marry a man who +wasn’t fond of riding.” + +“Of course that’s a matter of taste,” said Suzette, stiffly; “horsey men +are not usually gifted with overmuch brains, are they?” + +“There is as much difference between a horseman and a horsey man as there +is between a well-dressed man and a dressy one,” said Elaine, judicially; +“and you may have noticed how seldom a dressy woman really knows how to +dress. As an old lady of my acquaintance observed the other day, some +people are born with a sense of how to clothe themselves, others acquire +it, others look as if their clothes had been thrust upon them.” + +She gave Lady Caroline her due quotation marks, but the sudden +tactfulness with which she looked away from her cousin’s frock was +entirely her own idea. + +A young man entering the room at this moment caused a diversion that was +rather welcome to Suzette. + +“Here comes Egbert,” she announced, with an air of subdued triumph; it +was at least a satisfaction to be able to produce the captive of her +charms, alive and in good condition, on the scene. Elaine might be as +critical as she pleased, but a live lover outweighed any number of +well-dressed straight-riding cavaliers who existed only as a distant +vision of the delectable husband. + +Egbert was one of those men who have no small talk, but possess an +inexhaustible supply of the larger variety. In whatever society he +happened to be, and particularly in the immediate neighbourhood of an +afternoon-tea table, with a limited audience of womenfolk, he gave the +impression of someone who was addressing a public meeting, and would be +happy to answer questions afterwards. A suggestion of gas-lit +mission-halls, wet umbrellas, and discreet applause seemed to accompany +him everywhere. He was an exponent, among other things, of what he +called New Thought, which seemed to lend itself conveniently to the +employment of a good deal of rather stale phraseology. Probably in the +course of some thirty odd years of existence he had never been of any +notable use to man, woman, child or animal, but it was his +firmly-announced intention to leave the world a better, happier, purer +place than he had found it; against the danger of any relapse to earlier +conditions after his disappearance from the scene, he was, of course, +powerless to guard. ’Tis not in mortals to insure succession, and Egbert +was admittedly mortal. + +Elaine found him immensely entertaining, and would certainly have exerted +herself to draw him out if such a proceeding had been at all necessary. +She listened to his conversation with the complacent appreciation that +one bestows on a stage tragedy, from whose calamities one can escape at +any moment by the simple process of leaving one’s seat. When at last he +checked the flow of his opinions by a hurried reference to his watch, and +declared that he must be moving on elsewhere, Elaine almost expected a +vote of thanks to be accorded him, or to be asked to signify herself in +favour of some resolution by holding up her hand. + +When the young man had bidden the company a rapid business-like farewell, +tempered in Suzette’s case by the exact degree of tender intimacy that it +would have been considered improper to omit or overstep, Elaine turned to +her expectant cousin with an air of cordial congratulation. + +“He is exactly the husband I should have chosen for you, Suzette.” + +For the second time that afternoon Suzette felt a sense of waning +enthusiasm for one of her possessions. + +Mrs. Brankley detected the note of ironical congratulation in her +visitor’s verdict. + +“I suppose she means he’s not her idea of a husband, but, he’s good +enough for Suzette,” she observed to herself, with a snort that expressed +itself somewhere in the nostrils of the brain. Then with a smiling air +of heavy patronage she delivered herself of her one idea of a damaging +counter-stroke. + +“And when are we to hear of your engagement, my dear?” + +“Now,” said Elaine quietly, but with electrical effect; “I came to +announce it to you but I wanted to hear all about Suzette first. It will +be formally announced in the papers in a day or two.” + +“But who is it? Is it the young man who was with you in the Park this +morning?” asked Suzette. + +“Let me see, who was I with in the Park this morning? A very +good-looking dark boy? Oh no, not Comus Bassington. Someone you know by +name, anyway, and I expect you’ve seen his portrait in the papers.” + +“A flying-man?” asked Mrs. Brankley. + +“Courtenay Youghal,” said Elaine. + +Mrs. Brankley and Suzette had often rehearsed in the privacy of their +minds the occasion when Elaine should come to pay her personal +congratulations to her engaged cousin. It had never been in the least +like this. + +On her return from her enjoyable afternoon visit Elaine found an express +messenger letter waiting for her. It was from Comus, thanking her for +her loan—and returning it. + +“I suppose I ought never to have asked you for it,” he wrote, “but you +are always so deliciously solemn about money matters that I couldn’t +resist. Just heard the news of your engagement to Courtenay. Congrats. +to you both. I’m far too stoney broke to buy you a wedding present so +I’m going to give you back the bread-and-butter dish. Luckily it still +has your crest on it. I shall love to think of you and Courtenay eating +bread-and-butter out of it for the rest of your lives.” + +That was all he had to say on the matter about which Elaine had been +preparing to write a long and kindly-expressed letter, closing a rather +momentous chapter in her life and his. There was not a trace of regret +or upbraiding in his note; he had walked out of their mutual fairyland as +abruptly as she had, and to all appearances far more unconcernedly. +Reading the letter again and again Elaine could come to no decision as to +whether this was merely a courageous gibe at defeat, or whether it +represented the real value that Comus set on the thing that he had lost. + +And she would never know. If Comus possessed one useless gift to +perfection it was the gift of laughing at Fate even when it had struck +him hardest. One day, perhaps, the laughter and mockery would be silent +on his lips, and Fate would have the advantage of laughing last. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +A DOOR closed and Francesca Bassington sat alone in her well-beloved +drawing-room. The visitor who had been enjoying the hospitality of her +afternoon-tea table had just taken his departure. The tête-à-tête had +not been a pleasant one, at any rate as far as Francesca was concerned, +but at least it had brought her the information for which she had been +seeking. Her rôle of looker-on from a tactful distance had necessarily +left her much in the dark concerning the progress of the all-important +wooing, but during the last few hours she had, on slender though +significant evidence, exchanged her complacent expectancy for a +conviction that something had gone wrong. She had spent the previous +evening at her brother’s house, and had naturally seen nothing of Comus +in that uncongenial quarter; neither had he put in an appearance at the +breakfast table the following morning. She had met him in the hall at +eleven o’clock, and he had hurried past her, merely imparting the +information that he would not be in till dinner that evening. He spoke +in his sulkiest tone, and his face wore a look of defeat, thinly masked +by an air of defiance; it was not the defiance of a man who is losing, +but of one who has already lost. + +Francesca’s conviction that things had gone wrong between Comus and +Elaine de Frey grew in strength as the day wore on. She lunched at a +friend’s house, but it was not a quarter where special social information +of any importance was likely to come early to hand. Instead of the news +she was hankering for, she had to listen to trivial gossip and +speculation on the flirtations and “cases” and “affairs” of a string of +acquaintances whose matrimonial projects interested her about as much as +the nesting arrangements of the wildfowl in St. James’s Park. + +“Of course,” said her hostess, with the duly impressive emphasis of a +privileged chronicler, “we’ve always regarded Claire as the marrying one +of the family, so when Emily came to us and said, ‘I’ve got some news for +you,’ we all said, ‘Claire’s engaged!’ ‘Oh, no,’ said Emily, ‘it’s not +Claire this time, it’s me.’ So then we had to guess who the lucky man +was. ‘It can’t be Captain Parminter,’ we all said, ‘because he’s always +been sweet on Joan.’ And then Emily said—” + +The recording voice reeled off the catalogue of inane remarks with a +comfortable purring complacency that held out no hope of an early +abandoning of the topic. Francesca sat and wondered why the innocent +acceptance of a cutlet and a glass of indifferent claret should lay one +open to such unsparing punishment. + +A stroll homeward through the Park after lunch brought no further +enlightenment on the subject that was uppermost in her mind; what was +worse, it brought her, without possibility of escape, within hailing +distance of Merla Blathington, who fastened on to her with the enthusiasm +of a lonely tsetse fly encountering an outpost of civilisation. + +“Just think,” she buzzed inconsequently, “my sister in Cambridgeshire has +hatched out thirty-three White Orpington chickens in her incubator!” + +“What eggs did she put in it?” asked Francesca. + +“Oh, some very special strain of White Orpington.” + +“Then I don’t see anything remarkable in the result. If she had put in +crocodile’s eggs and hatched out White Orpingtons, there might have been +something to write to _Country Life_ about.” + +“What funny fascinating things these little green park-chairs are,” said +Merla, starting off on a fresh topic; “they always look so quaint and +knowing when they’re stuck away in pairs by themselves under the trees, +as if they were having a heart-to-heart talk or discussing a piece of +very private scandal. If they could only speak, what tragedies and +comedies they could tell us of, what flirtations and proposals.” + +“Let us be devoutly thankful that they can’t,” said Francesca, with a +shuddering recollection of the luncheon-table conversation. + +“Of course, it would make one very careful what one said before them—or +above them rather,” Merla rattled on, and then, to Francesca’s infinite +relief, she espied another acquaintance sitting in unprotected solitude, +who promised to supply a more durable audience than her present rapidly +moving companion. Francesca was free to return to her drawing-room in +Blue Street to await with such patience as she could command the coming +of some visitor who might be able to throw light on the subject that was +puzzling and disquieting her. The arrival of George St. Michael boded +bad news, but at any rate news, and she gave him an almost cordial +welcome. + +“Well, you see I wasn’t far wrong about Miss de Frey and Courtenay +Youghal, was I?” he chirruped, almost before he had seated himself. +Francesca was to be spared any further spinning-out of her period of +uncertainty. “Yes, it’s officially given out,” he went on, “and it’s to +appear in the _Morning Post_ to-morrow. I heard it from Colonel Deel +this morning, and he had it direct from Youghal himself. Yes, please, +one lump; I’m not fashionable, you see.” He had made the same remark +about the sugar in his tea with unfailing regularity for at least thirty +years. Fashions in sugar are apparently stationary. “They say,” he +continued, hurriedly, “that he proposed to her on the Terrace of the +House, and a division bell rang, and he had to hurry off before she had +time to give her answer, and when he got back she simply said, ‘the Ayes +have it.’” St. Michael paused in his narrative to give an appreciative +giggle. + +“Just the sort of inanity that would go the rounds,” remarked Francesca, +with the satisfaction of knowing that she was making the criticism direct +to the author and begetter of the inanity in question. Now that the blow +had fallen and she knew the full extent of its weight, her feeling +towards the bringer of bad news, who sat complacently nibbling at her +tea-cakes and scattering crumbs of tiresome small-talk at her feet, was +one of wholehearted dislike. She could sympathise with, or at any rate +understand, the tendency of oriental despots to inflict death or +ignominious chastisement on messengers bearing tidings of misfortune and +defeat, and St. Michael, she perfectly well knew, was thoroughly aware of +the fact that her hopes and wishes had been centred on the possibility of +having Elaine for a daughter-in-law; every purring remark that his mean +little soul prompted him to contribute to the conversation had an easily +recognizable undercurrent of malice. Fortunately for her powers of +polite endurance, which had been put to such searching and repeated tests +that day, St. Michael had planned out for himself a busy little +time-table of afternoon visits, at each of which his self-appointed task +of forestalling and embellishing the newspaper announcements of the +Youghal-de Frey engagement would be hurriedly but thoroughly performed. + +“They’ll be quite one of the best-looking and most interesting couples of +the Season, won’t they?” he cried, by way of farewell. The door closed +and Francesca Bassington sat alone in her drawing-room. + +Before she could give way to the bitter luxury of reflection on the +downfall of her hopes, it was prudent to take precautionary measures +against unwelcome intrusion. Summoning the maid who had just speeded the +departing St. Michael, she gave the order: “I am not at home this +afternoon to Lady Caroline Benaresq.” On second thoughts she extended +the taboo to all possible callers, and sent a telephone message to catch +Comus at his club, asking him to come and see her as soon as he could +manage before it was time to dress for dinner. Then she sat down to +think, and her thinking was beyond the relief of tears. + +She had built herself a castle of hopes, and it had not been a castle in +Spain, but a structure well on the probable side of the Pyrenees. There +had been a solid foundation on which to build. Miss de Frey’s fortune +was an assured and unhampered one, her liking for Comus had been an +obvious fact; his courtship of her a serious reality. The young people +had been much together in public, and their names had naturally been +coupled in the match-making gossip of the day. The only serious shadow +cast over the scene had been the persistent presence, in foreground or +background, of Courtenay Youghal. And now the shadow suddenly stood +forth as the reality, and the castle of hopes was a ruin, a hideous +mortification of dust and débris, with the skeleton outlines of its +chambers still standing to make mockery of its discomfited architect. +The daily anxiety about Comus and his extravagant ways and intractable +disposition had been gradually lulled by the prospect of his making an +advantageous marriage, which would have transformed him from a +ne’er-do-well and adventurer into a wealthy idler. He might even have +been moulded, by the resourceful influence of an ambitious wife, into a +man with some definite purpose in life. The prospect had vanished with +cruel suddenness, and the anxieties were crowding back again, more +insistent than ever. The boy had had his one good chance in the +matrimonial market and missed it; if he were to transfer his attentions +to some other well-dowered girl he would be marked down at once as a +fortune-hunter, and that would constitute a heavy handicap to the most +plausible of wooers. His liking for Elaine had evidently been genuine in +its way, though perhaps it would have been rash to read any deeper +sentiment into it, but even with the spur of his own inclination to +assist him he had failed to win the prize that had seemed so temptingly +within his reach. And in the dashing of his prospects, Francesca saw the +threatening of her own. The old anxiety as to her precarious tenure of +her present quarters put on again all its familiar terrors. One day, she +foresaw, in the horribly near future, George St. Michael would come +pattering up her stairs with the breathless intelligence that Emmeline +Chetrof was going to marry somebody or other in the Guards or the Record +Office as the case might be, and then there would be an uprooting of her +life from its home and haven in Blue Street and a wandering forth to some +cheap unhappy far-off dwelling, where the stately Van der Meulen and its +companion host of beautiful and desirable things would be stuffed and +stowed away in soulless surroundings, like courtly émigrés fallen on evil +days. It was unthinkable, but the trouble was that it had to be thought +about. And if Comus had played his cards well and transformed himself +from an encumbrance into a son with wealth at his command, the tragedy +which she saw looming in front of her might have been avoided or at the +worst whittled down to easily bearable proportions. With money behind +one, the problem of where to live approaches more nearly to the simple +question of where do you wish to live, and a rich daughter-in-law would +have surely seen to it that she did not have to leave her square mile of +Mecca and go out into the wilderness of bricks and mortar. If the house +in Blue Street could not have been compounded for there were other +desirable residences which would have been capable of consoling Francesca +for her lost Eden. And now the detested Courtenay Youghal, with his +mocking eyes and air of youthful cynicism, had stepped in and overthrown +those golden hopes and plans whose non-fulfilment would make such a world +of change in her future. Assuredly she had reason to feel bitter against +that young man, and she was not disposed to take a very lenient view of +Comus’s own mismanagement of the affair; her greeting when he at last +arrived, was not couched in a sympathetic strain. + +“So you have lost your chance with the heiress,” she remarked abruptly. + +“Yes,” said Comus, coolly; “Courtenay Youghal has added her to his other +successes.” + +“And you have added her to your other failures,” pursued Francesca, +relentlessly; her temper had been tried that day beyond ordinary limits. + +“I thought you seemed getting along so well with her,” she continued, as +Comus remained uncommunicative. + +“We hit it off rather well together,” said Comus, and added with +deliberate bluntness, “I suppose she got rather sick at my borrowing +money from her. She thought it was all I was after.” + +“You borrowed money from her!” said Francesca; “you were fool enough to +borrow money from a girl who was favourably disposed towards you, and +with Courtenay Youghal in the background waiting to step in and oust +you!” + +Francesca’s voice trembled with misery and rage. This great stroke of +good luck that had seemed about to fall into their laps had been thrust +aside by an act or series of acts of wanton paltry folly. The good ship +had been lost for the sake of the traditional ha’porth of tar. Comus had +paid some pressing tailor’s or tobacconist’s bill with a loan unwillingly +put at his disposal by the girl he was courting, and had flung away his +chances of securing a wealthy and in every way desirable bride. Elaine +de Frey and her fortune might have been the making of Comus, but he had +hurried in as usual to effect his own undoing. Calmness did not in this +case come with reflection; the more Francesca thought about the matter, +the more exasperated she grew. Comus threw himself down in a low chair +and watched her without a trace of embarrassment or concern at her +mortification. He had come to her feeling rather sorry for himself, and +bitterly conscious of his defeat, and she had met him with a taunt and +without the least hint of sympathy; he determined that she should be +tantalised with the knowledge of how small and stupid a thing had stood +between the realisation and ruin of her hopes for him. + +“And to think she should be captured by Courtenay Youghal,” said +Francesca, bitterly; “I’ve always deplored your intimacy with that young +man.” + +“It’s hardly my intimacy with him that’s made Elaine accept him,” said +Comus. + +Francesca realised the futility of further upbraiding. Through the tears +of vexation that stood in her eyes, she looked across at the handsome boy +who sat opposite her, mocking at his own misfortune, perversely +indifferent to his folly, seemingly almost indifferent to its +consequences. + +“Comus,” she said quietly and wearily, “you are an exact reversal of the +legend of Pandora’s Box. You have all the charm and advantages that a +boy could want to help him on in the world, and behind it all there is +the fatal damning gift of utter hopelessness.” + +“I think,” said Comus, “that is the best description that anyone has ever +given of me.” + +For the moment there was a flush of sympathy and something like outspoken +affection between mother and son. They seemed very much alone in the +world just now, and in the general overturn of hopes and plans, there +flickered a chance that each might stretch out a hand to the other, and +summon back to their lives an old dead love that was the best and +strongest feeling either of them had known. But the sting of +disappointment was too keen, and the flood of resentment mounted too high +on either side to allow the chance more than a moment in which to flicker +away into nothingness. The old fatal topic of estrangement came to the +fore, the question of immediate ways and means, and mother and son faced +themselves again as antagonists on a well-disputed field. + +“What is done is done,” said Francesca, with a movement of tragic +impatience that belied the philosophy of her words; “there is nothing to +be gained by crying over spilt milk. There is the present and the future +to be thought about, though. One can’t go on indefinitely as a +tenant-for-life in a fools’ paradise.” Then she pulled herself together +and proceeded to deliver an ultimatum which the force of circumstances no +longer permitted her to hold in reserve. + +“It’s not much use talking to you about money, as I know from long +experience, but I can only tell you this, that in the middle of the +Season I’m already obliged to be thinking of leaving Town. And you, I’m +afraid, will have to be thinking of leaving England at equally short +notice. Henry told me the other day that he can get you something out in +West Africa. You’ve had your chance of doing something better for +yourself from the financial point of view, and you’ve thrown it away for +the sake of borrowing a little ready money for your luxuries, so now you +must take what you can get. The pay won’t be very good at first, but +living is not dear out there.” + +“West Africa,” said Comus, reflectively; “it’s a sort of modern +substitute for the old-fashioned _oubliette_, a convenient depository for +tiresome people. Dear Uncle Henry may talk lugubriously about the burden +of Empire, but he evidently recognises its uses as a refuse consumer.” + +“My dear Comus, you are talking of the West Africa of yesterday. While +you have been wasting your time at school, and worse than wasting your +time in the West End, other people have been grappling with the study of +tropical diseases, and the West African coast country is being rapidly +transformed from a lethal chamber into a sanatorium.” + +Comus laughed mockingly. + +“What a beautiful bit of persuasive prose; it reminds one of the Psalms +and even more of a company prospectus. If you were honest you’d confess +that you lifted it straight out of a rubber or railway promotion scheme. +Seriously, mother, if I must grub about for a living, why can’t I do it +in England? I could go into a brewery for instance.” + +Francesca shook her head decisively; she could foresee the sort of steady +work Comus was likely to accomplish, with the lodestone of Town and the +minor attractions of race-meetings and similar festivities always +beckoning to him from a conveniently attainable distance, but apart from +that aspect of the case there was a financial obstacle in the way of his +obtaining any employment at home. + +“Breweries and all those sort of things necessitate money to start with; +one has to pay premiums or invest capital in the undertaking, and so +forth. And as we have no money available, and can scarcely pay our debts +as it is, it’s no use thinking about it.” + +“Can’t we sell something?” asked Comus. + +He made no actual suggestion as to what should be sacrificed, but he was +looking straight at the Van der Meulen. + +For a moment Francesca felt a stifling sensation of weakness, as though +her heart was going to stop beating. Then she sat forward in her chair +and spoke with energy, almost fierceness. + +“When I am dead my things can be sold and dispersed. As long as I am +alive I prefer to keep them by me.” + +In her holy place, with all her treasured possessions around her, this +dreadful suggestion had been made. Some of her cherished household gods, +souvenirs and keepsakes from past days, would, perhaps, not have fetched +a very considerable sum in the auction-room, others had a distinct value +of their own, but to her they were all precious. And the Van der Meulen, +at which Comus had looked with impious appraising eyes, was the most +sacred of them all. When Francesca had been away from her Town residence +or had been confined to her bedroom through illness, the great picture +with its stately solemn representation of a long-ago battle-scene, +painted to flatter the flattery-loving soul of a warrior-king who was +dignified even in his campaigns—this was the first thing she visited on +her return to Town or convalescence. If an alarm of fire had been raised +it would have been the first thing for whose safety she would have +troubled. And Comus had almost suggested that it should be parted with, +as one sold railway shares and other soulless things. + +Scolding, she had long ago realised, was a useless waste of time and +energy where Comus was concerned, but this evening she unloosed her +tongue for the mere relief that it gave to her surcharged feelings. He +sat listening without comment, though she purposely let fall remarks that +she hoped might sting him into self-defence or protest. It was an +unsparing indictment, the more damaging in that it was so irrefutably +true, the more tragic in that it came from perhaps the one person in the +world whose opinion he had ever cared for. And he sat through it as +silent and seemingly unmoved as though she had been rehearsing a speech +for some drawing-room comedy. When she had had her say his method of +retort was not the soft answer that turneth away wrath but the +inconsequent one that shelves it. + +“Let’s go and dress for dinner.” + +The meal, like so many that Francesca and Comus had eaten in each other’s +company of late, was a silent one. Now that the full bearings of the +disaster had been discussed in all its aspects there was nothing more to +be said. Any attempt at ignoring the situation, and passing on to less +controversial topics would have been a mockery and pretence which neither +of them would have troubled to sustain. So the meal went forward with +its dragged-out dreary intimacy of two people who were separated by a +gulf of bitterness, and whose hearts were hard with resentment against +one another. + +Francesca felt a sense of relief when she was able to give the maid the +order to serve her coffee upstairs. Comus had a sullen scowl on his +face, but he looked up as she rose to leave the room, and gave his +half-mocking little laugh. + +“You needn’t look so tragic,” he said, “You’re going to have your own +way. I’ll go out to that West African hole.” + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +COMUS found his way to his seat in the stalls of the Straw Exchange +Theatre and turned to watch the stream of distinguished and +distinguishable people who made their appearance as a matter of course at +a First Night in the height of the Season. Pit and gallery were already +packed with a throng, tense, expectant and alert, that waited for the +rise of the curtain with the eager patience of a terrier watching a +dilatory human prepare for outdoor exercises. Stalls and boxes filled +slowly and hesitatingly with a crowd whose component units seemed for the +most part to recognise the probability that they were quite as +interesting as any play they were likely to see. Those who bore no +particular face-value themselves derived a certain amount of social +dignity from the near neighbourhood of obvious notabilities; if one could +not obtain recognition oneself there was some vague pleasure in being +able to recognise notoriety at intimately close quarters. + +“Who is that woman with the auburn hair and a rather effective +belligerent gleam in her eyes?” asked a man sitting just behind Comus; +“she looks as if she might have created the world in six days and +destroyed it on the seventh.” + +“I forget her name,” said his neighbour; “she writes. She’s the author +of that book, ‘The Woman who wished it was Wednesday,’ you know. It used +to be the convention that women writers should be plain and dowdy; now we +have gone to the other extreme and build them on extravagantly decorative +lines.” + +A buzz of recognition came from the front rows of the pit, together with +a craning of necks on the part of those in less favoured seats. It +heralded the arrival of Sherard Blaw, the dramatist who had discovered +himself, and who had given so ungrudgingly of his discovery to the world. +Lady Caroline, who was already directing little conversational onslaughts +from her box, gazed gently for a moment at the new arrival, and then +turned to the silver-haired Archdeacon sitting beside her. + +“They say the poor man is haunted by the fear that he will die during a +general election, and that his obituary notices will be seriously +curtailed by the space taken up by the election results. The curse of +our party system, from his point of view, is that it takes up so much +room in the press.” + +The Archdeacon smiled indulgently. As a man he was so exquisitely +worldly that he fully merited the name of the Heavenly Worldling bestowed +on him by an admiring duchess, and withal his texture was shot with a +pattern of such genuine saintliness that one felt that whoever else might +hold the keys of Paradise he, at least, possessed a private latchkey to +that abode. + +“Is it not significant of the altered grouping of things,” he observed, +“that the Church, as represented by me, sympathises with the message of +Sherard Blaw, while neither the man nor his message find acceptance with +unbelievers like you, Lady Caroline.” + +Lady Caroline blinked her eyes. “My dear Archdeacon,” she said, “no one +can be an unbeliever nowadays. The Christian Apologists have left one +nothing to disbelieve.” + +The Archdeacon rose with a delighted chuckle. “I must go and tell that +to De la Poulett,” he said, indicating a clerical figure sitting in the +third row of the stalls; “he spends his life explaining from his pulpit +that the glory of Christianity consists in the fact that though it is not +true it has been found necessary to invent it.” + +The door of the box opened and Courtenay Youghal entered, bringing with +him subtle suggestion of chaminade and an atmosphere of political +tension. The Government had fallen out of the good graces of a section +of its supporters, and those who were not in the know were busy +predicting a serious crisis over a forthcoming division in the Committee +stage of an important Bill. This was Saturday night, and unless some +successful cajolery were effected between now and Monday afternoon, +Ministers would be, seemingly, in danger of defeat. + +“Ah, here is Youghal,” said the Archdeacon; “he will be able to tell us +what is going to happen in the next forty-eight hours. I hear the Prime +Minister says it is a matter of conscience, and they will stand or fall +by it.” + +His hopes and sympathies were notoriously on the Ministerial side. + +Youghal greeted Lady Caroline and subsided gracefully into a chair well +in the front of the box. A buzz of recognition rippled slowly across the +house. + +“For the Government to fall on a matter of conscience,” he said, “would +be like a man cutting himself with a safety razor.” + +Lady Caroline purred a gentle approval. + +“I’m afraid it’s true, Archdeacon,” she said. + +No one can effectively defend a Government when it’s been in office +several years. The Archdeacon took refuge in light skirmishing. + +“I believe Lady Caroline sees the makings of a great Socialist statesman +in you, Youghal,” he observed. + +“Great Socialist statesmen aren’t made, they’re stillborn,” replied +Youghal. + +“What is the play about to-night?” asked a pale young woman who had taken +no part in the talk. + +“I don’t know,” said Lady Caroline, “but I hope it’s dull. If there is +any brilliant conversation in it I shall burst into tears.” + +In the front row of the upper circle a woman with a restless +starling-voice was discussing the work of a temporarily fashionable +composer, chiefly in relation to her own emotions, which she seemed to +think might prove generally interesting to those around her. + +“Whenever I hear his music I feel that I want to go up into a mountain +and pray. Can you understand that feeling?” + +The girl to whom she was unburdening herself shook her head. + +“You see, I’ve heard his music chiefly in Switzerland, and we were up +among the mountains all the time, so it wouldn’t have made any +difference.” + +“In that case,” said the woman, who seemed to have emergency emotions to +suit all geographical conditions, “I should have wanted to be in a great +silent plain by the side of a rushing river.” + +“What I think is so splendid about his music—” commenced another +starling-voice on the further side of the girl. Like sheep that feed +greedily before the coming of a storm the starling-voices seemed impelled +to extra effort by the knowledge of four imminent intervals of acting +during which they would be hushed into constrained silence. + +In the back row of the dress circle a late-comer, after a cursory glance +at the programme, had settled down into a comfortable narrative, which +was evidently the resumed thread of an unfinished taxi-drive monologue. + +“We all said ‘it can’t be Captain Parminter, because he’s always been +sweet on Joan,’ and then Emily said—” + +The curtain went up, and Emily’s contribution to the discussion had to be +held over till the entr’acte. + +The play promised to be a success. The author, avoiding the pitfall of +brilliancy, had aimed at being interesting and as far as possible, +bearing in mind that his play was a comedy, he had striven to be amusing. +Above all he had remembered that in the laws of stage proportions it is +permissible and generally desirable that the part should be greater than +the whole; hence he had been careful to give the leading lady such a +clear and commanding lead over the other characters of the play that it +was impossible for any of them ever to get on level terms with her. The +action of the piece was now and then delayed thereby, but the duration of +its run would be materially prolonged. + +The curtain came down on the first act amid an encouraging instalment of +applause, and the audience turned its back on the stage and began to take +a renewed interest in itself. The authoress of “The Woman who wished it +was Wednesday” had swept like a convalescent whirlwind, subdued but +potentially tempestuous, into Lady Caroline’s box. + +“I’ve just trodden with all my weight on the foot of an eminent publisher +as I was leaving my seat,” she cried, with a peal of delighted laughter. +“He was such a dear about it; I said I hoped I hadn’t hurt him, and he +said, ‘I suppose you think, who drives hard bargains should himself be +hard.’ Wasn’t it pet-lamb of him?” + +“I’ve never trodden on a pet lamb,” said Lady Caroline, “so I’ve no idea +what its behaviour would be under the circumstances.” + +“Tell me,” said the authoress, coming to the front of the box, the better +to survey the house, and perhaps also with a charitable desire to make +things easy for those who might pardonably wish to survey her, “tell me, +please, where is the girl sitting whom Courtenay Youghal is engaged to?” + +Elaine was pointed out to her, sitting in the fourth row of the stalls, +on the opposite side of the house to where Comus had his seat. Once +during the interval she had turned to give him a friendly nod of +recognition as he stood in one of the side gangways, but he was absorbed +at the moment in looking at himself in the glass panel. The grave brown +eyes and the mocking green-grey ones had looked their last into each +other’s depths. + +For Comus this first-night performance, with its brilliant gathering of +spectators, its groups and coteries of lively talkers, even its +counterfoil of dull chatterers, its pervading atmosphere of stage and +social movement, and its intruding undercurrent of political flutter, all +this composed a tragedy in which he was the chief character. It was the +life he knew and loved and basked in, and it was the life he was leaving. +It would go on reproducing itself again and again, with its stage +interest and social interest and intruding outside interests, with the +same lively chattering crowd, the people who had done things being +pointed out by people who recognised them to people who didn’t—it would +all go on with unflagging animation and sparkle and enjoyment, and for +him it would have stopped utterly. He would be in some unheard-of +sun-blistered wilderness, where natives and pariah dogs and +raucous-throated crows fringed round mockingly on one’s loneliness, where +one rode for sweltering miles for the chance of meeting a collector or +police officer, with whom most likely on closer acquaintance one had +hardly two ideas in common, where female society was represented at long +intervals by some climate-withered woman missionary or official’s wife, +where food and sickness and veterinary lore became at last the three +outstanding subjects on which the mind settled or rather sank. That was +the life he foresaw and dreaded, and that was the life he was going to. +For a boy who went out to it from the dulness of some country rectory, +from a neighbourhood where a flower show and a cricket match formed the +social landmarks of the year, the feeling of exile might not be very +crushing, might indeed be lost in the sense of change and adventure. But +Comus had lived too thoroughly in the centre of things to regard life in +a backwater as anything else than stagnation, and stagnation while one is +young he justly regarded as an offence against nature and reason, in +keeping with the perverted mockery that sends decrepit invalids touring +painfully about the world and shuts panthers up in narrow cages. He was +being put aside, as a wine is put aside, but to deteriorate instead of +gaining in the process, to lose the best time of his youth and health and +good looks in a world where youth and health and good looks count for +much and where time never returns lost possessions. And thus, as the +curtain swept down on the close of each act, Comus felt a sense of +depression and deprivation sweep down on himself; bitterly he watched his +last evening of social gaiety slipping away to its end. In less than an +hour it would be over; in a few months’ time it would be an unreal +memory. + +In the third interval, as he gazed round at the chattering house, someone +touched him on the arm. It was Lady Veula Croot. + +“I suppose in a week’s time you’ll be on the high seas,” she said. “I’m +coming to your farewell dinner, you know; your mother has just asked me. +I’m not going to talk the usual rot to you about how much you will like +it and so on. I sometimes think that one of the advantages of Hell will +be that no one will have the impertinence to point out to you that you’re +really better off than you would be anywhere else. What do you think of +the play? Of course one can foresee the end; she will come to her +husband with the announcement that their longed-for child is going to be +born, and that will smooth over everything. So conveniently effective, +to wind up a comedy with the commencement of someone else’s tragedy. And +every one will go away saying ‘I’m glad it had a happy ending.’” + +Lady Veula moved back to her seat, with her pleasant smile on her lips +and the look of infinite weariness in her eyes. + +The interval, the last interval, was drawing to a close and the house +began to turn with fidgetty attention towards the stage for the unfolding +of the final phase of the play. Francesca sat in Serena Golackly’s box +listening to Colonel Springfield’s story of what happened to a +pigeon-cote in his compound at Poona. Everyone who knew the Colonel had +to listen to that story a good many times, but Lady Caroline had +mitigated the boredom of the infliction, and in fact invested it with a +certain sporting interest, by offering a prize to the person who heard it +oftenest in the course of the Season, the competitors being under an +honourable understanding not to lead up to the subject. Ada Spelvexit +and a boy in the Foreign Office were at present at the top of the list +with five recitals each to their score, but the former was suspected of +doubtful adherence to the rules and spirit of the competition. + +“And there, dear lady,” concluded the Colonel, “were the eleven dead +pigeons. What had become of the bandicoot no one ever knew.” + +Francesca thanked him for his story, and complacently inscribed the +figure 4 on the margin of her theatre programme. Almost at the same +moment she heard George St. Michael’s voice pattering out a breathless +piece of intelligence for the edification of Serena Golackly and anyone +else who might care to listen. Francesca galvanised into sudden +attention. + +“Emmeline Chetrof to a fellow in the Indian Forest Department. He’s got +nothing but his pay and they can’t be married for four or five years; an +absurdly long engagement, don’t you think so? All very well to wait +seven years for a wife in patriarchal times, when you probably had others +to go on with, and you lived long enough to celebrate your own +tercentenary, but under modern conditions it seems a foolish +arrangement.” + +St. Michael spoke almost with a sense of grievance. A marriage project +that tied up all the small pleasant nuptial gossip-items about +bridesmaids and honeymoon and recalcitrant aunts and so forth, for an +indefinite number of years seemed scarcely decent in his eyes, and there +was little satisfaction or importance to be derived from early and +special knowledge of an event which loomed as far distant as a +Presidential Election or a change of Viceroy. But to Francesca, who had +listened with startled apprehension at the mention of Emmeline Chetrof’s +name, the news came in a flood of relief and thankfulness. Short of +entering a nunnery and taking celibate vows, Emmeline could hardly have +behaved more conveniently than in tying herself up to a lover whose +circumstances made it necessary to relegate marriage to the distant +future. For four or five years Francesca was assured of undisturbed +possession of the house in Blue Street, and after that period who knew +what might happen? The engagement might stretch on indefinitely, it +might even come to nothing under the weight of its accumulated years, as +sometimes happened with these protracted affairs. Emmeline might lose +her fancy for her absentee lover, and might never replace him with +another. A golden possibility of perpetual tenancy of her present home +began to float once more through Francesca’s mind. As long as Emmeline +had been unbespoken in the marriage market there had always been the +haunting likelihood of seeing the dreaded announcement, “a marriage has +been arranged and will shortly take place,” in connection with her name. +And now a marriage had been arranged and would not shortly take place, +might indeed never take place. St. Michael’s information was likely to +be correct in this instance; he would never have invented a piece of +matrimonial intelligence which gave such little scope for supplementary +detail of the kind he loved to supply. As Francesca turned to watch the +fourth act of the play, her mind was singing a pæan of thankfulness and +exultation. It was as though some artificer sent by the Gods had +reinforced with a substantial cord the horsehair thread that held up the +sword of Damocles over her head. Her love for her home, for her +treasured household possessions, and her pleasant social life was able to +expand once more in present security, and feed on future hope. She was +still young enough to count four or five years as a long time, and +to-night she was optimistic enough to prophesy smooth things of the +future that lay beyond that span. Of the fourth act, with its carefully +held back but obviously imminent reconciliation between the leading +characters, she took in but little, except that she vaguely understood it +to have a happy ending. As the lights went up she looked round on the +dispersing audience with a feeling of friendliness uppermost in her mind; +even the sight of Elaine de Frey and Courtenay Youghal leaving the +theatre together did not inspire her with a tenth part of the annoyance +that their entrance had caused her. Serena’s invitation to go on to the +Savoy for supper fitted in exactly with her mood of exhilaration. It +would be a fit and appropriate wind-up to an auspicious evening. The +cold chicken and modest brand of Chablis waiting for her at home should +give way to a banquet of more festive nature. + +In the crush of the vestibule, friends and enemies, personal and +political, were jostled and locked together in the general effort to +rejoin temporarily estranged garments and secure the attendance of +elusive vehicles. Lady Caroline found herself at close quarters with the +estimable Henry Greech, and experienced some of the joy which comes to +the homeward wending sportsman when a chance shot presents itself on +which he may expend his remaining cartridges. + +“So the Government is going to climb down, after all,” she said, with a +provocative assumption of private information on the subject. + +“I assure you the Government will do nothing of the kind,” replied the +Member of Parliament with befitting dignity; “the Prime Minister told me +last night that under no circumstances—” + +“My dear Mr. Greech,” said Lady Caroline, “we all know that Prime +Ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other wedded couples they +sometimes live apart.” + +For her, at any rate, the comedy had had a happy ending. + +Comus made his way slowly and lingeringly from the stalls, so slowly that +the lights were already being turned down and great shroud-like +dust-cloths were being swaythed over the ornamental gilt-work. The +laughing, chattering, yawning throng had filtered out of the vestibule, +and was melting away in final groups from the steps of the theatre. An +impatient attendant gave him his coat and locked up the cloak room. +Comus stepped out under the portico; he looked at the posters announcing +the play, and in anticipation he could see other posters announcing its +200th performance. Two hundred performances; by that time the Straw +Exchange Theatre would be to him something so remote and unreal that it +would hardly seem to exist or to have ever existed except in his fancy. +And to the laughing chattering throng that would pass in under that +portico to the 200th performance, he would be, to those that had known +him, something equally remote and non-existent. “The good-looking +Bassington boy? Oh, dead, or rubber-growing or sheep-farming or +something of that sort.” + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +THE farewell dinner which Francesca had hurriedly organised in honour of +her son’s departure threatened from the outset to be a doubtfully +successful function. In the first place, as he observed privately, there +was very little of Comus and a good deal of farewell in it. His own +particular friends were unrepresented. Courtenay Youghal was out of the +question; and though Francesca would have stretched a point and welcomed +some of his other male associates of whom she scarcely approved, he +himself had been opposed to including any of them in the invitations. On +the other hand, as Henry Greech had provided Comus with this job that he +was going out to, and was, moreover, finding part of the money for the +necessary outfit, Francesca had felt it her duty to ask him and his wife +to the dinner; the obtuseness that seems to cling to some people like a +garment throughout their life had caused Mr. Greech to accept the +invitation. When Comus heard of the circumstance he laughed long and +boisterously; his spirits, Francesca noted, seemed to be rising fast as +the hour for departure drew near. + +The other guests included Serena Golackly and Lady Veula, the latter +having been asked on the inspiration of the moment at the theatrical +first-night. In the height of the Season it was not easy to get together +a goodly selection of guests at short notice, and Francesca had gladly +fallen in with Serena’s suggestion of bringing with her Stephen Thorle, +who was alleged, in loose feminine phrasing, to “know all about” tropical +Africa. His travels and experiences in those regions probably did not +cover much ground or stretch over any great length of time, but he was +one of those individuals who can describe a continent on the strength of +a few days’ stay in a coast town as intimately and dogmatically as a +paleontologist will reconstruct an extinct mammal from the evidence of a +stray shin bone. He had the loud penetrating voice and the prominent +penetrating eyes of a man who can do no listening in the ordinary way and +whose eyes have to perform the function of listening for him. His vanity +did not necessarily make him unbearable, unless one had to spend much +time in his society, and his need for a wide field of audience and +admiration was mercifully calculated to spread his operations over a +considerable human area. Moreover, his craving for attentive listeners +forced him to interest himself in a wonderful variety of subjects on +which he was able to discourse fluently and with a certain semblance of +special knowledge. Politics he avoided; the ground was too well known, +and there was a definite no to every definite yes that could be put +forward. Moreover, argument was not congenial to his disposition, which +preferred an unchallenged flow of dissertation modified by occasional +helpful questions which formed the starting point for new offshoots of +word-spinning. The promotion of cottage industries, the prevention of +juvenile street trading, the extension of the Borstal prison system, the +furtherance of vague talkative religious movements the fostering of +inter-racial _ententes_, all found in him a tireless exponent, a fluent +and entertaining, though perhaps not very convincing, advocate. With the +real motive power behind these various causes he was not very closely +identified; to the spade-workers who carried on the actual labours of +each particular movement he bore the relation of a trowel-worker, delving +superficially at the surface, but able to devote a proportionately far +greater amount of time to the advertisement of his progress and +achievements. Such was Stephen Thorle, a governess in the nursery of +Chelsea-bred religions, a skilled window-dresser in the emporium of his +own personality, and needless to say, evanescently popular amid a wide +but shifting circle of acquaintances. He improved on the record of a +socially much-travelled individual whose experience has become classical, +and went to most of the best houses—twice. + +His inclusion as a guest at this particular dinner-party was not a very +happy inspiration. He was inclined to patronise Comus, as well as the +African continent, and on even slighter acquaintance. With the exception +of Henry Greech, whose feelings towards his nephew had been soured by +many years of overt antagonism, there was an uncomfortable feeling among +those present that the topic of the black-sheep export trade, as Comus +would have himself expressed it, was being given undue prominence in what +should have been a festive farewell banquet. And Comus, in whose honour +the feast was given, did not contribute much towards its success; though +his spirits seemed strung up to a high pitch his merriment was more the +merriment of a cynical and amused onlooker than of one who responds to +the gaiety of his companions. Sometimes he laughed quietly to himself at +some chance remark of a scarcely mirth-provoking nature, and Lady Veula, +watching him narrowly, came to the conclusion that an element of fear was +blended with his seemingly buoyant spirits. Once or twice he caught her +eye across the table, and a certain sympathy seemed to grow up between +them, as though they were both consciously watching some lugubrious +comedy that was being played out before them. + +An untoward little incident had marked the commencement of the meal. A +small still-life picture that hung over the sideboard had snapped its +cord and slid down with an alarming clatter on to the crowded board +beneath it. The picture itself was scarcely damaged, but its fall had +been accompanied by a tinkle of broken glass, and it was found that a +liqueur glass, one out of a set of seven that would be impossible to +match, had been shivered into fragments. Francesca’s almost motherly +love for her possessions made her peculiarly sensible to a feeling of +annoyance and depression at the accident, but she turned politely to +listen to Mrs. Greech’s account of a misfortune in which four soup-plates +were involved. Mrs. Henry was not a brilliant conversationalist, and her +flank was speedily turned by Stephen Thorle, who recounted a slum +experience in which two entire families did all their feeding out of one +damaged soup-plate. + +“The gratitude of those poor creatures when I presented them with a set +of table crockery apiece, the tears in their eyes and in their voices +when they thanked me, would be impossible to describe.” + +“Thank you all the same for describing it,” said Comus. + +The listening eyes went swiftly round the table to gather evidence as to +how this rather disconcerting remark had been received, but Thorle’s +voice continued uninterruptedly to retail stories of East-end gratitude, +never failing to mention the particular deeds of disinterested charity on +his part which had evoked and justified the gratitude. Mrs. Greech had +to suppress the interesting sequel to her broken-crockery narrative, to +wit, how she subsequently matched the shattered soup-plates at Harrod’s. +Like an imported plant species that sometimes flourishes exceedingly, and +makes itself at home to the dwarfing and overshadowing of all native +species, Thorle dominated the dinner-party and thrust its original +purport somewhat into the background. Serena began to look helplessly +apologetic. It was altogether rather a relief when the filling of +champagne glasses gave Francesca an excuse for bringing matters back to +their intended footing. + +“We must all drink a health,” she said; “Comus, my own dear boy, a safe +and happy voyage to you, much prosperity in the life you are going out +to, and in due time a safe and happy return—” + +Her hand gave an involuntary jerk in the act of raising the glass, and +the wine went streaming across the tablecloth in a froth of yellow +bubbles. It certainly was not turning out a comfortable or auspicious +dinner party. + +“My dear mother,” cried Comus, “you must have been drinking healths all +the afternoon to make your hand so unsteady.” + +He laughed gaily and with apparent carelessness, but again Lady Veula +caught the frightened note in his laughter. Mrs. Henry, with practical +sympathy, was telling Francesca two good ways for getting wine stains out +of tablecloths. The smaller economies of life were an unnecessary branch +of learning for Mrs. Greech, but she studied them as carefully and +conscientiously as a stay-at-home plain-dwelling English child commits to +memory the measurements and altitudes of the world’s principal mountain +peaks. Some women of her temperament and mentality know by heart the +favourite colours, flowers and hymn-tunes of all the members of the Royal +Family; Mrs. Greech would possibly have failed in an examination of that +nature, but she knew what to do with carrots that have been over-long in +storage. + +Francesca did not renew her speech-making; a chill seemed to have fallen +over all efforts at festivity, and she contented herself with refilling +her glass and simply drinking to her boy’s good health. The others +followed her example, and Comus drained his glass with a brief “thank you +all very much.” The sense of constraint which hung over the company was +not, however, marked by any uncomfortable pause in the conversation. +Henry Greech was a fluent thinker, of the kind that prefer to do their +thinking aloud; the silence that descended on him as a mantle in the +House of Commons was an official livery of which he divested himself as +thoroughly as possible in private life. He did not propose to sit +through dinner as a mere listener to Mr. Thorle’s personal narrative of +philanthropic movements and experiences, and took the first opportunity +of launching himself into a flow of satirical observations on current +political affairs. Lady Veula was inured to this sort of thing in her +own home circle, and sat listening with the stoical indifference with +which an Esquimau might accept the occurrence of one snowstorm the more, +in the course of an Arctic winter. Serena Golackly felt a certain relief +at the fact that her imported guest was not, after all, monopolising the +conversation. But the latter was too determined a personality to allow +himself to be thrust aside for many minutes by the talkative M.P. Henry +Greech paused for an instant to chuckle at one of his own shafts of +satire, and immediately Thorle’s penetrating voice swept across the +table. + +“Oh, you politicians!” he exclaimed, with pleasant superiority; “you are +always fighting about how things should be done, and the consequence is +you are never able to do anything. Would you like me to tell you what a +Unitarian horsedealer said to me at Brindisi about politicians?” + +A Unitarian horsedealer at Brindisi had all the allurement of the +unexpected. Henry Greech’s witticisms at the expense of the Front +Opposition bench were destined to remain as unfinished as his wife’s +history of the broken soup-plates. Thorle was primed with an ample +succession of stories and themes, chiefly concerning poverty, +thriftlessness, reclamation, reformed characters, and so forth, which +carried him in an almost uninterrupted sequence through the remainder of +the dinner. + +“What I want to do is to make people think,” he said, turning his +prominent eyes on to his hostess; “it’s so hard to make people think.” + +“At any rate you give them the opportunity,” said Comus, cryptically. + +As the ladies rose to leave the table Comus crossed over to pick up one +of Lady Veula’s gloves that had fallen to the floor. + +“I did not know you kept a dog,” said Lady Veula. + +“We don’t,” said Comus, “there isn’t one in the house.” + +“I could have sworn I saw one follow you across the hall this evening,” +she said. + +“A small black dog, something like a schipperke?” asked Comus in a low +voice. + +“Yes, that was it.” + +“I saw it myself to-night; it ran from behind my chair just as I was +sitting down. Don’t say anything to the others about it; it would +frighten my mother.” + +“Have you ever seen it before?” Lady Veula asked quickly. + +“Once, when I was six years old. It followed my father downstairs.” + +Lady Veula said nothing. She knew that Comus had lost his father at the +age of six. + +In the drawing-room Serena made nervous excuses for her talkative friend. + +“Really, rather an interesting man, you know, and up to the eyes in all +sorts of movements. Just the sort of person to turn loose at a +drawing-room meeting, or to send down to a mission-hall in some +unheard-of neighbourhood. Given a sounding-board and a harmonium, and a +titled woman of some sort in the chair, and he’ll be perfectly happy; I +must say I hadn’t realised how overpowering he might be at a small +dinner-party.” + +“I should say he was a very good man,” said Mrs. Greech; she had forgiven +the mutilation of her soup-plate story. + +The party broke up early as most of the guests had other engagements to +keep. With a belated recognition of the farewell nature of the occasion +they made pleasant little good-bye remarks to Comus, with the usual +predictions of prosperity and anticipations of an ultimate auspicious +return. Even Henry Greech sank his personal dislike of the boy for the +moment, and made hearty jocular allusions to a home-coming, which, in the +elder man’s eyes, seemed possibly pleasantly remote. Lady Veula alone +made no reference to the future; she simply said, “Good-bye, Comus,” but +her voice was the kindest of all and he responded with a look of +gratitude. The weariness in her eyes was more marked than ever as she +lay back against the cushions of her carriage. + +“What a tragedy life is,” she said, aloud to herself. + +Serena and Stephen Thorle were the last to leave, and Francesca stood +alone for a moment at the head of the stairway watching Comus laughing +and chatting as he escorted the departing guests to the door. The +ice-wall was melting under the influence of coming separation, and never +had he looked more adorably handsome in her eyes, never had his merry +laugh and mischief-loving gaiety seemed more infectious than on this +night of his farewell banquet. She was glad enough that he was going +away from a life of idleness and extravagance and temptation, but she +began to suspect that she would miss, for a little while at any rate, the +high-spirited boy who could be so attractive in his better moods. Her +impulse, after the guests had gone, was to call him to her and hold him +once more in her arms, and repeat her wishes for his happiness and +good-luck in the land he was going to, and her promise of his welcome +back, some not too distant day, to the land he was leaving. She wanted +to forget, and to make him forget, the months of irritable jangling and +sharp discussions, the months of cold aloofness and indifference and to +remember only that he was her own dear Comus as in the days of yore, +before he had grown from an unmanageable pickle into a weariful problem. +But she feared lest she should break down, and she did not wish to cloud +his light-hearted gaiety on the very eve of his departure. She watched +him for a moment as he stood in the hall, settling his tie before a +mirror, and then went quietly back to her drawing-room. It had not been +a very successful dinner party, and the general effect it had left on her +was one of depression. + +Comus, with a lively musical-comedy air on his lips, and a look of +wretchedness in his eyes, went out to visit the haunts that he was +leaving so soon. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +ELAINE YOUGHAL sat at lunch in the Speise Saal of one of Vienna’s +costlier hotels. The double-headed eagle, with its “K.u.K.” legend, +everywhere met the eye and announced the imperial favour in which the +establishment basked. Some several square yards of yellow bunting, +charged with the image of another double-headed eagle, floating from the +highest flag-staff above the building, betrayed to the initiated the fact +that a Russian Grand Duke was concealed somewhere on the premises. +Unannounced by heraldic symbolism but unconcealable by reason of nature’s +own blazonry, were several citizens and citizenesses of the great +republic of the Western world. One or two Cobdenite members of the +British Parliament engaged in the useful task of proving that the cost of +living in Vienna was on an exorbitant scale, flitted with restrained +importance through a land whose fatness they had come to spy out; every +fancied over-charge in their bills was welcome as providing another nail +in the coffin of their fiscal opponents. It is the glory of democracies +that they may be misled but never driven. Here and there, like brave +deeds in a dust-patterned world, flashed and glittered the sumptuous +uniforms of representatives of the Austrian military caste. Also in +evidence, at discreet intervals, were stray units of the Semetic tribe +that nineteen centuries of European neglect had been unable to mislay. + +Elaine sitting with Courtenay at an elaborately appointed luncheon table, +gay with high goblets of Bohemian glassware, was mistress of three +discoveries. First, to her disappointment, that if you frequent the more +expensive hotels of Europe you must be prepared to find, in whatever +country you may chance to be staying, a depressing international likeness +between them all. Secondly, to her relief, that one is not expected to +be sentimentally amorous during a modern honeymoon. Thirdly, rather to +her dismay, that Courtenay Youghal did not necessarily expect her to be +markedly affectionate in private. Someone had described him, after their +marriage, as one of Nature’s bachelors, and she began to see how aptly +the description fitted him. + +“Will those Germans on our left never stop talking?” she asked, as an +undying flow of Teutonic small talk rattled and jangled across the +intervening stretch of carpet. “Not one of those three women has ceased +talking for an instant since we’ve been sitting here.” + +“They will presently, if only for a moment,” said Courtenay; “when the +dish you have ordered comes in there will be a deathly silence at the +next table. No German can see a _plat_ brought in for someone else +without being possessed with a great fear that it represents a more +toothsome morsel or a better money’s worth than what he has ordered for +himself.” + +The exuberant Teutonic chatter was balanced on the other side of the room +by an even more penetrating conversation unflaggingly maintained by a +party of Americans, who were sitting in judgment on the cuisine of the +country they were passing through, and finding few extenuating +circumstances. + +“What Mr. Lonkins wants is a real _deep_ cherry pie,” announced a lady in +a tone of dramatic and honest conviction. + +“Why, yes, that is so,” corroborated a gentleman who was apparently the +Mr. Lonkins in question; “a real _deep_ cherry pie.” + +“We had the same trouble way back in Paris,” proclaimed another lady; +“little Jerome and the girls don’t want to eat any more _crème +renversée_. I’d give anything if they could get some real cherry pie.” + +“Real _deep_ cherry pie,” assented Mr. Lonkins. + +“Way down in Ohio we used to have peach pie that was real good,” said +Mrs. Lonkins, turning on a tap of reminiscence that presently flowed to a +cascade. The subject of pies seemed to lend itself to indefinite +expansion. + +“Do those people think of nothing but their food?” asked Elaine, as the +virtues of roasted mutton suddenly came to the fore and received emphatic +recognition, even the absent and youthful Jerome being quoted in its +favour. + +“On the contrary,” said Courtenay, “they are a widely-travelled set, and +the man has had a notably interesting career. It is a form of +home-sickness with them to discuss and lament the cookery and foods that +they’ve never had the leisure to stay at home and digest. The Wandering +Jew probably babbled unremittingly about some breakfast dish that took so +long to prepare that he had never time to eat it.” + +A waiter deposited a dish of Wiener Nierenbraten in front of Elaine. At +the same moment a magic hush fell upon the three German ladies at the +adjoining table, and the flicker of a great fear passed across their +eyes. Then they burst forth again into tumultuous chatter. Courtenay +had proved a reliable prophet. + +Almost at the same moment as the luncheon-dish appeared on the scene, two +ladies arrived at a neighbouring table, and bowed with dignified +cordiality to Elaine and Courtenay. They were two of the more worldly +and travelled of Elaine’s extensive stock of aunts, and they happened to +be making a short stay at the same hotel as the young couple. They were +far too correct and rationally minded to intrude themselves on their +niece, but it was significant of Elaine’s altered view as to the sanctity +of honeymoon life that she secretly rather welcomed the presence of her +two relatives in the hotel, and had found time and occasion to give them +more of her society than she would have considered necessary or desirable +a few weeks ago. The younger of the two she rather liked, in a +restrained fashion, as one likes an unpretentious watering-place or a +restaurant that does not try to give one a musical education in addition +to one’s dinner. One felt instinctively about her that she would never +wear rather more valuable diamonds than any other woman in the room, and +would never be the only person to be saved in a steamboat disaster or +hotel fire. As a child she might have been perfectly well able to recite +“On Linden when the sun was low,” but one felt certain that nothing ever +induced her to do so. The elder aunt, Mrs. Goldbrook, did not share her +sister’s character as a human rest-cure; most people found her rather +disturbing, chiefly, perhaps, from her habit of asking unimportant +questions with enormous solemnity. Her manner of enquiring after a +trifling ailment gave one the impression that she was more concerned with +the fortunes of the malady than with oneself, and when one got rid of a +cold one felt that she almost expected to be given its postal address. +Probably her manner was merely the defensive outwork of an innate +shyness, but she was not a woman who commanded confidences. + +“A telephone call for Courtenay,” commented the younger of the two women +as Youghal hurriedly flashed through the room; “the telephone system +seems to enter very largely into that young man’s life.” + +“The telephone has robbed matrimony of most of its sting,” said the +elder; “so much more discreet than pen and ink communications which get +read by the wrong people.” + +Elaine’s aunts were conscientiously worldly; they were the natural +outcome of a stock that had been conscientiously straight-laced for many +generations. + +Elaine had progressed to the pancake stage before Courtenay returned. + +“Sorry to be away so long,” he said, “but I’ve arranged something rather +nice for to-night. There’s rather a jolly masquerade ball on. I’ve +’phoned about getting a costume for you and it’s alright. It will suit +you beautifully, and I’ve got my harlequin dress with me. Madame +Kelnicort, excellent soul, is going to chaperone you, and she’ll take you +back any time you like; I’m quite unreliable when I get into fancy dress. +I shall probably keep going till some unearthly hour of the morning.” + +A masquerade ball in a strange city hardly represented Elaine’s idea of +enjoyment. Carefully to disguise one’s identity in a neighbourhood where +one was entirely unknown seemed to her rather meaningless. With +Courtenay, of course, it was different; he seemed to have friends and +acquaintances everywhere. However, the matter had progressed to a point +which would have made a refusal to go seem rather ungracious. Elaine +finished her pancake and began to take a polite interest in her costume. + +“What is your character?” asked Madame Kelnicort that evening, as they +uncloaked, preparatory to entering the already crowded ball-room. + +“I believe I’m supposed to represent Marjolaine de Montfort, whoever she +may have been,” said Elaine. “Courtenay declares he only wanted to marry +me because I’m his ideal of her.” + +“But what a mistake to go as a character you know nothing about. To +enjoy a masquerade ball you ought to throw away your own self and be the +character you represent. Now Courtenay has been Harlequin since half-way +through dinner; I could see it dancing in his eyes. At about six o’clock +to-morrow morning he will fall asleep and wake up a member of the British +House of Parliament on his honeymoon, but to-night he is unrestrainedly +Harlequin.” + +Elaine stood in the ball-room surrounded by a laughing jostling throng of +pierrots, jockeys, Dresden-china shepherdesses, Roumanian peasant-girls +and all the lively make-believe creatures that form the ingredients of a +fancy-dress ball. As she stood watching them she experienced a growing +feeling of annoyance, chiefly with herself. She was assisting, as the +French say, at one of the gayest scenes of Europe’s gayest capital, and +she was conscious of being absolutely unaffected by the gaiety around +her. The costumes were certainly interesting to look at, and the music +good to listen to, and to that extent she was amused, but the _abandon_ +of the scene made no appeal to her. It was like watching a game of which +you did not know the rules, and in the issue of which you were not +interested. Elaine began to wonder what was the earliest moment at which +she could drag Madame Kelnicort away from the revel without being guilty +of sheer cruelty. Then Courtenay wriggled out of the crush and came +towards her, a joyous laughing Courtenay, looking younger and handsomer +than she had ever seen him. She could scarcely recognise in him to-night +the rising young debater who made embarrassing onslaughts on the +Government’s foreign policy before a crowded House of Commons. He +claimed her for the dance that was just starting, and steered her +dexterously into the heart of the waltzing crowd. + +“You look more like Marjolaine than I should have thought a mortal woman +of these days could look,” he declared, “only Marjolaine did smile +sometimes. You have rather the air of wondering if you’d left out enough +tea for the servants’ breakfast. Don’t mind my teasing; I love you to +look like that, and besides, it makes a splendid foil to my Harlequin—my +selfishness coming to the fore again, you see. But you really are to go +home the moment you’re bored; the excellent Kelnicort gets heaps of +dances throughout the winter, so don’t mind sacrificing her.” + +A little later in the evening Elaine found herself standing out a dance +with a grave young gentleman from the Russian Embassy. + +“Monsieur Courtenay enjoys himself, doesn’t he?” he observed, as the +youthful-looking harlequin flashed past them, looking like some restless +gorgeous-hued dragonfly; “why is it that the good God has given your +countrymen the boon of eternal youth? Some of your countrywomen, too, +but all of the men.” + +Elaine could think of many of her countrymen who were not and never could +have been youthful, but as far as Courtenay was concerned she recognised +the fitness of the remark. And the recognition carried with it a sense +of depression. Would he always remain youthful and keen on gaiety and +revelling while she grew staid and retiring? She had thrust the lively +intractable Comus out of her mind, as by his perverseness he had thrust +himself out of her heart, and she had chosen the brilliant young man of +affairs as her husband. He had honestly let her see the selfish side of +his character while he was courting her, but she had been prepared to +make due sacrifices to the selfishness of a public man who had his career +to consider above all other things. Would she also have to make +sacrifices to the harlequin spirit which was now revealing itself as an +undercurrent in his nature? When one has inured oneself to the idea of a +particular form of victimisation it is disconcerting to be confronted +with another. Many a man who would patiently undergo martyrdom for +religion’s sake would be furiously unwilling to be a martyr to neuralgia. + +“I think that is why you English love animals so much,” pursued the young +diplomat; “you are such splendid animals yourselves. You are lively +because you want to be lively, not because people are looking on at you. +Monsieur Courtenay is certainly an animal. I mean it as a high +compliment.” + +“Am I an animal?” asked Elaine. + +“I was going to say you are an angel,” said the Russian, in some +embarrassment, “but I do not think that would do; angels and animals +would never get on together. To get on with animals you must have a +sense of humour, and I don’t suppose angels have any sense of humour; you +see it would be no use to them as they never hear any jokes.” + +“Perhaps,” said Elaine, with a tinge of bitterness in her voice, “perhaps +I am a vegetable.” + +“I think you most remind me of a picture,” said the Russian. + +It was not the first time Elaine had heard the simile. + +“I know,” she said, “the Narrow Gallery at the Louvre; attributed to +Leonardo da Vinci.” + +Evidently the impression she made on people was solely one of externals. + +Was that how Courtenay regarded her? Was that to be her function and +place in life, a painted background, a decorative setting to other +people’s triumphs and tragedies? Somehow to-night she had the feeling +that a general might have who brought imposing forces into the field and +could do nothing with them. She possessed youth and good looks, +considerable wealth, and had just made what would be thought by most +people a very satisfactory marriage. And already she seemed to be +standing aside as an onlooker where she had expected herself to be taking +a leading part. + +“Does this sort of thing appeal to you?” she asked the young Russian, +nodding towards the gay scrimmage of masqueraders and rather prepared to +hear an amused negative.” + +“But yes, of course,” he answered; “costume balls, fancy fairs, café +chantant, casino, anything that is not real life appeals to us Russians. +Real life with us is the sort of thing that Maxim Gorki deals in. It +interests us immensely, but we like to get away from it sometimes.” + +Madame Kelnicort came up with another prospective partner, and Elaine +delivered her ukase: one more dance and then back to the hotel. Without +any special regret she made her retreat from the revel which Courtenay +was enjoying under the impression that it was life and the young Russian +under the firm conviction that it was not. + +Elaine breakfasted at her aunts’ table the next morning at much her usual +hour. Courtenay was sleeping the sleep of a happy tired animal. He had +given instructions to be called at eleven o’clock, from which time onward +the _Neue Freie Presse_, the _Zeit_, and his toilet would occupy his +attention till he appeared at the luncheon table. There were not many +people breakfasting when Elaine arrived on the scene, but the room seemed +to be fuller than it really was by reason of a penetrating voice that was +engaged in recounting how far the standard of Viennese breakfast fare +fell below the expectations and desires of little Jerome and the girls. + +“If ever little Jerome becomes President of the United States,” said +Elaine, “I shall be able to contribute quite an informing article on his +gastronomic likes and dislikes to the papers.” + +The aunts were discreetly inquisitive as to the previous evening’s +entertainment. + +“If Elaine would flirt mildly with somebody it would be such a good +thing,” said Mrs. Goldbrook; “it would remind Courtenay that he’s not the +only attractive young man in the world.” + +Elaine, however, did not gratify their hopes; she referred to the ball +with the detachment she would have shown in describing a drawing-room +show of cottage industries. It was not difficult to discern in her +description of the affair the confession that she had been slightly +bored. From Courtenay, later in the day, the aunts received a much +livelier impression of the festivities, from which it was abundantly +clear that he at any rate had managed to amuse himself. Neither did it +appear that his good opinion of his own attractions had suffered any +serious shock. He was distinctly in a very good temper. + +“The secret of enjoying a honeymoon,” said Mrs. Goldbrook afterwards to +her sister, “is not to attempt too much.” + +“You mean—?” + +“Courtenay is content to try and keep one person amused and happy, and he +thoroughly succeeds.” + +“I certainly don’t think Elaine is going to be very happy,” said her +sister, “but at least Courtenay saved her from making the greatest +mistake she could have made—marrying that young Bassington.” + +“He has also,” said Mrs. Goldbrook, “helped her to make the next biggest +mistake of her life—marrying Courtenay Youghal.” + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +IT was late afternoon by the banks of a swiftly rushing river, a river +that gave back a haze of heat from its waters as though it were some +stagnant steaming lagoon, and yet seemed to be whirling onward with the +determination of a living thing, perpetually eager and remorseless, +leaping savagely at any obstacle that attempted to stay its course; an +unfriendly river, to whose waters you committed yourself at your peril. +Under the hot breathless shade of the trees on its shore arose that acrid +all-pervading smell that seems to hang everywhere about the tropics, a +smell as of some monstrous musty still-room where herbs and spices have +been crushed and distilled and stored for hundreds of years, and where +the windows have seldom been opened. In the dazzling heat that still +held undisputed sway over the scene, insects and birds seemed +preposterously alive and active, flitting their gay colours through the +sunbeams, and crawling over the baked dust in the full swing and pursuit +of their several businesses; the flies engaged in Heaven knows what, and +the fly-catchers busy with the flies. Beasts and humans showed no such +indifference to the temperature; the sun would have to slant yet further +downward before the earth would become a fit arena for their revived +activities. In the sheltered basement of a wayside rest-house a gang of +native hammock-bearers slept or chattered drowsily through the last hours +of the long mid-day halt; wide awake, yet almost motionless in the thrall +of a heavy lassitude, their European master sat alone in an upper +chamber, staring out through a narrow window-opening at the native +village, spreading away in thick clusters of huts girt around with +cultivated vegetation. It seemed a vast human ant-hill, which would +presently be astir with its teeming human life, as though the Sun God in +his last departing stride had roused it with a careless kick. Even as +Comus watched he could see the beginnings of the evening’s awakening. +Women, squatting in front of their huts, began to pound away at the rice +or maize that would form the evening meal, girls were collecting their +water pots preparatory to a walk down to the river, and enterprising +goats made tentative forays through gaps in the ill-kept fences of +neighbouring garden plots; their hurried retreats showed that here at +least someone was keeping alert and wakeful vigil. Behind a hut perched +on a steep hillside, just opposite to the rest-house, two boys were +splitting wood with a certain languid industry; further down the road a +group of dogs were leisurely working themselves up to quarrelling pitch. +Here and there, bands of evil-looking pigs roamed about, busy with +foraging excursions that came unpleasantly athwart the border-line of +scavenging. And from the trees that bounded and intersected the village +rose the horrible, tireless, spiteful-sounding squawking of the +iron-throated crows. + +Comus sat and watched it all with a sense of growing aching depression. +It was so utterly trivial to his eyes, so devoid of interest, and yet it +was so real, so serious, so implacable in its continuity. The brain grew +tired with the thought of its unceasing reproduction. It had all gone +on, as it was going on now, by the side of the great rushing swirling +river, this tilling and planting and harvesting, marketing and +store-keeping, feast-making and fetish-worship and love-making, burying +and giving in marriage, child-bearing and child-rearing, all this had +been going on, in the shimmering, blistering heat and the warm nights, +while he had been a youngster at school, dimly recognising Africa as a +division of the earth’s surface that it was advisable to have a certain +nodding acquaintance with. + +It had been going on in all its trifling detail, all its serious +intensity, when his father and his grandfather in their day had been +little boys at school, it would go on just as intently as ever long after +Comus and his generation had passed away, just as the shadows would +lengthen and fade under the mulberry trees in that far away English +garden, round the old stone fountain where a leaden otter for ever preyed +on a leaden salmon. + +Comus rose impatiently from his seat, and walked wearily across the hut +to another window-opening which commanded a broad view of the river. +There was something which fascinated and then depressed one in its +ceaseless hurrying onward sweep, its tons of water rushing on for all +time, as long as the face of the earth should remain unchanged. On its +further shore could be seen spread out at intervals other teeming +villages, with their cultivated plots and pasture clearings, their moving +dots which meant cattle and goats and dogs and children. And far up its +course, lost in the forest growth that fringed its banks, were hidden +away yet more villages, human herding-grounds where men dwelt and worked +and bartered, squabbled and worshipped, sickened and perished, while the +river went by with its endless swirl and rush of gleaming waters. One +could well understand primitive early races making propitiatory +sacrifices to the spirit of a great river on whose shores they dwelt. +Time and the river were the two great forces that seemed to matter here. + +It was almost a relief to turn back to that other outlook and watch the +village life that was now beginning to wake in earnest. The procession +of water-fetchers had formed itself in a long chattering line that +stretched river-wards. Comus wondered how many tens of thousands of +times that procession had been formed since first the village came into +existence. They had been doing it while he was playing in the +cricket-fields at school, while he was spending Christmas holidays in +Paris, while he was going his careless round of theatres, dances, suppers +and card-parties, just as they were doing it now; they would be doing it +when there was no one alive who remembered Comus Bassington. This +thought recurred again and again with painful persistence, a morbid +growth arising in part from his loneliness. + +Staring dumbly out at the toiling sweltering human ant-hill Comus +marvelled how missionary enthusiasts could labour hopefully at the work +of transplanting their religion, with its homegrown accretions of +fatherly parochial benevolence, in this heat-blistered, fever-scourged +wilderness, where men lived like groundbait and died like flies. Demons +one might believe in, if one did not hold one’s imagination in healthy +check, but a kindly all-managing God, never. Somewhere in the west +country of England Comus had an uncle who lived in a rose-smothered +rectory and taught a wholesome gentle-hearted creed that expressed itself +in the spirit of “Little lamb, who made thee?” and faithfully reflected +the beautiful homely Christ-child sentiment of Saxon Europe. What a far +away, unreal fairy story it all seemed here in this West African land, +where the bodies of men were of as little account as the bubbles that +floated on the oily froth of the great flowing river, and where it +required a stretch of wild profitless imagination to credit them with +undying souls. In the life he had come from Comus had been accustomed to +think of individuals as definite masterful personalities, making their +several marks on the circumstances that revolved around them; they did +well or ill, or in most cases indifferently, and were criticised, +praised, blamed, thwarted or tolerated, or given way to. In any case, +humdrum or outstanding, they had their spheres of importance, little or +big. They dominated a breakfast table or harassed a Government, +according to their capabilities or opportunities, or perhaps they merely +had irritating mannerisms. At any rate it seemed highly probable that +they had souls. Here a man simply made a unit in an unnumbered +population, an inconsequent dot in a loosely-compiled deathroll. Even +his own position as a white man exalted conspicuously above a horde of +black natives did not save Comus from the depressing sense of nothingness +which his first experience of fever had thrown over him. He was a lost, +soulless body in this great uncaring land; if he died another would take +his place, his few effects would be inventoried and sent down to the +coast, someone else would finish off any tea or whisky that he left +behind—that would be all. + +It was nearly time to be starting towards the next halting place where he +would dine or at any rate eat something. But the lassitude which the +fever had bequeathed him made the tedium of travelling through +interminable forest-tracks a weariness to be deferred as long as +possible. The bearers were nothing loth to let another half-hour or so +slip by, and Comus dragged a battered paper-covered novel from the pocket +of his coat. It was a story dealing with the elaborately tangled love +affairs of a surpassingly uninteresting couple, and even in his almost +bookless state Comus had not been able to plough his way through more +than two-thirds of its dull length; bound up with the cover, however, +were some pages of advertisement, and these the exile scanned with a +hungry intentness that the romance itself could never have commanded. +The name of a shop, of a street, the address of a restaurant, came to him +as a bitter reminder of the world he had lost, a world that ate and drank +and flirted, gambled and made merry, a world that debated and intrigued +and wire-pulled, fought or compromised political battles—and recked +nothing of its outcasts wandering through forest paths and steamy swamps +or lying in the grip of fever. Comus read and re-read those few lines of +advertisement, just as he treasured a much-crumpled programme of a +first-night performance at the Straw Exchange Theatre; they seemed to +make a little more real the past that was already so shadowy and so +utterly remote. For a moment he could almost capture the sensation of +being once again in those haunts that he loved; then he looked round and +pushed the book wearily from him. The steaming heat, the forest, the +rushing river hemmed him in on all sides. + +The two boys who had been splitting wood ceased from their labours and +straightened their backs; suddenly the smaller of the two gave the other +a resounding whack with a split lath that he still held in his hand, and +flew up the hillside with a scream of laughter and simulated terror, the +bigger lad following in hot pursuit. Up and down the steep bush-grown +slope they raced and twisted and dodged, coming sometimes to close +quarters in a hurricane of squeals and smacks, rolling over and over like +fighting kittens, and breaking away again to start fresh provocation and +fresh pursuit. Now and again they would lie for a time panting in what +seemed the last stage of exhaustion, and then they would be off in +another wild scamper, their dusky bodies flitting through the bushes, +disappearing and reappearing with equal suddenness. Presently two girls +of their own age, who had returned from the water-fetching, sprang out on +them from ambush, and the four joined in one joyous gambol that lit up +the hillside with shrill echoes and glimpses of flying limbs. Comus sat +and watched, at first with an amused interest, then with a returning +flood of depression and heart-ache. Those wild young human kittens +represented the joy of life, he was the outsider, the lonely alien, +watching something in which he could not join, a happiness in which he +had no part or lot. He would pass presently out of the village and his +bearers’ feet would leave their indentations in the dust; that would be +his most permanent memorial in this little oasis of teeming life. And +that other life, in which he once moved with such confident sense of his +own necessary participation in it, how completely he had passed out of +it. Amid all its laughing throngs, its card parties and race-meetings +and country-house gatherings, he was just a mere name, remembered or +forgotten, Comus Bassington, the boy who went away. He had loved himself +very well and never troubled greatly whether anyone else really loved +him, and now he realised what he had made of his life. And at the same +time he knew that if his chance were to come again he would throw it away +just as surely, just as perversely. Fate played with him with loaded +dice; he would lose always. + +One person in the whole world had cared for him, for longer than he could +remember, cared for him perhaps more than he knew, cared for him perhaps +now. But a wall of ice had mounted up between him and her, and across it +there blew that cold-breath that chills or kills affection. + +The words of a well-known old song, the wistful cry of a lost cause, rang +with insistent mockery through his brain: + + “Better loved you canna be, + Will ye ne’er come back again?” + +If it was love that was to bring him back he must be an exile for ever. +His epitaph in the mouths of those that remembered him would be, Comus +Bassington, the boy who never came back. + +And in his unutterable loneliness he bowed his head on his arms, that he +might not see the joyous scrambling frolic on yonder hillside. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +THE bleak rawness of a grey December day held sway over St. James’s Park, +that sanctuary of lawn and tree and pool, into which the bourgeois +innovator has rushed ambitiously time and again, to find that he must +take the patent leather from off his feet, for the ground on which he +stands is hallowed ground. + +In the lonely hour of early afternoon, when the workers had gone back to +their work, and the loiterers were scarcely yet gathered again, Francesca +Bassington made her way restlessly along the stretches of gravelled walk +that bordered the ornamental water. The overmastering unhappiness that +filled her heart and stifled her thinking powers found answering echo in +her surroundings. There is a sorrow that lingers in old parks and +gardens that the busy streets have no leisure to keep by them; the dead +must bury their dead in Whitehall or the Place de la Concorde, but there +are quieter spots where they may still keep tryst with the living and +intrude the memory of their bygone selves on generations that have almost +forgotten them. Even in tourist-trampled Versailles the desolation of a +tragedy that cannot die haunts the terraces and fountains like a +bloodstain that will not wash out; in the Saxon Garden at Warsaw there +broods the memory of long-dead things, coeval with the stately trees that +shade its walks, and with the carp that swim to-day in its ponds as they +doubtless swam there when “Lieber Augustin” was a living person and not +as yet an immortal couplet. And St. James’s Park, with its lawns and +walks and waterfowl, harbours still its associations with a bygone order +of men and women, whose happiness and sadness are woven into its history, +dim and grey as they were once bright and glowing, like the faded pattern +worked into the fabric of an old tapestry. It was here that Francesca +had made her way when the intolerable inaction of waiting had driven her +forth from her home. She was waiting for that worst news of all, the +news which does not kill hope, because there has been none to kill, but +merely ends suspense. An early message had said that Comus was ill, +which might have meant much or little; then there had come that morning a +cablegram which only meant one thing; in a few hours she would get a +final message, of which this was the preparatory forerunner. She already +knew as much as that awaited message would tell her. She knew that she +would never see Comus again, and she knew now that she loved him beyond +all things that the world could hold for her. It was no sudden rush of +pity or compunction that clouded her judgment or gilded her recollection +of him; she saw him as he was, the beautiful, wayward, laughing boy, with +his naughtiness, his exasperating selfishness, his insurmountable folly +and perverseness, his cruelty that spared not even himself, and as he +was, as he always had been, she knew that he was the one thing that the +Fates had willed that she should love. She did not stop to accuse or +excuse herself for having sent him forth to what was to prove his death. +It was, doubtless, right and reasonable that he should have gone out +there, as hundreds of other men went out, in pursuit of careers; the +terrible thing was that he would never come back. The old cruel +hopelessness that had always chequered her pride and pleasure in his good +looks and high spirits and fitfully charming ways had dealt her a last +crushing blow; he was dying somewhere thousands of miles away without +hope of recovery, without a word of love to comfort him, and without hope +or shred of consolation she was waiting to hear of the end. The end; +that last dreadful piece of news which would write “nevermore” across his +life and hers. + +The lively bustle in the streets had been a torture that she could not +bear. It wanted but two days to Christmas and the gaiety of the season, +forced or genuine, rang out everywhere. Christmas shopping, with its +anxious solicitude or self-centred absorption, overspread the West End +and made the pavements scarcely passable at certain favoured points. +Proud parents, parcel-laden and surrounded by escorts of their young +people, compared notes with one another on the looks and qualities of +their offspring and exchanged loud hurried confidences on the difficulty +or success which each had experienced in getting the right presents for +one and all. Shouted directions where to find this or that article at +its best mingled with salvos of Christmas good wishes. To Francesca, +making her way frantically through the carnival of happiness with that +lonely deathbed in her eyes, it had seemed a callous mockery of her pain; +could not people remember that there were crucifixions as well as joyous +birthdays in the world? Every mother that she passed happy in the +company of a fresh-looking clean-limbed schoolboy son sent a fresh stab +at her heart, and the very shops had their bitter memories. There was +the tea-shop where he and she had often taken tea together, or, in the +days of their estrangement, sat with their separate friends at separate +tables. There were other shops where extravagantly-incurred bills had +furnished material for those frequently recurring scenes of +recrimination, and the Colonial outfitters, where, as he had phrased it +in whimsical mockery, he had bought grave-clothes for his burying-alive. +The “oubliette!” She remembered the bitter petulant name he had flung at +his destined exile. There at least he had been harder on himself than +the Fates were pleased to will; never, as long as Francesca lived and had +a brain that served her, would she be able to forget. That narcotic +would never be given to her. Unrelenting, unsparing memory would be with +her always to remind her of those last days of tragedy. Already her mind +was dwelling on the details of that ghastly farewell dinner-party and +recalling one by one the incidents of ill-omen that had marked it; how +they had sat down seven to table and how one liqueur glass in the set of +seven had been shivered into fragments; how her glass had slipped from +her hand as she raised it to her lips to wish Comus a safe return; and +the strange, quiet hopelessness of Lady Veula’s “good-bye”; she +remembered now how it had chilled and frightened her at the moment. + +The park was filling again with its floating population of loiterers, and +Francesca’s footsteps began to take a homeward direction. Something +seemed to tell her that the message for which she waited had arrived and +was lying there on the hall table. Her brother, who had announced his +intention of visiting her early in the afternoon would have gone by now; +he knew nothing of this morning’s bad news—the instinct of a wounded +animal to creep away by itself had prompted her to keep her sorrow from +him as long as possible. His visit did not necessitate her presence; he +was bringing an Austrian friend, who was compiling a work on the +Franco-Flemish school of painting, to inspect the Van der Meulen, which +Henry Greech hoped might perhaps figure as an illustration in the book. +They were due to arrive shortly after lunch, and Francesca had left a +note of apology, pleading an urgent engagement elsewhere. As she turned +to make her way across the Mall into the Green Park a gentle voice hailed +her from a carriage that was just drawing up by the sidewalk. Lady +Caroline Benaresq had been favouring the Victoria Memorial with a long +unfriendly stare. + +“In primitive days,” she remarked, “I believe it was the fashion for +great chiefs and rulers to have large numbers of their relatives and +dependents killed and buried with them; in these more enlightened times +we have invented quite another way of making a great Sovereign +universally regretted. My dear Francesca,” she broke off suddenly, +catching the misery that had settled in the other’s eyes, “what is the +matter? Have you had bad news from out there?” + +“I am waiting for very bad news,” said Francesca, and Lady Caroline knew +what had happened. + +“I wish I could say something; I can’t.” Lady Caroline spoke in a harsh, +grunting voice that few people had ever heard her use. + +Francesca crossed the Mall and the carriage drove on. + +“Heaven help that poor woman,” said Lady Caroline; which was, for her, +startlingly like a prayer. + +As Francesca entered the hall she gave a quick look at the table; several +packages, evidently an early batch of Christmas presents, were there, and +two or three letters. On a salver by itself was the cablegram for which +she had waited. A maid, who had evidently been on the lookout for her, +brought her the salver. The servants were well aware of the dreadful +thing that was happening, and there was pity on the girl’s face and in +her voice. + +“This came for you ten minutes ago, ma’am, and Mr. Greech has been here, +ma’am, with another gentleman, and was sorry you weren’t at home. Mr. +Greech said he would call again in about half-an-hour.” + +Francesca carried the cablegram unopened into the drawing-room and sat +down for a moment to think. There was no need to read it yet, for she +knew what she would find written there. For a few pitiful moments Comus +would seem less hopelessly lost to her if she put off the reading of that +last terrible message. She rose and crossed over to the windows and +pulled down the blinds, shutting out the waning December day, and then +reseated herself. Perhaps in the shadowy half-light her boy would come +and sit with her again for awhile and let her look her last upon his +loved face; she could never touch him again or hear his laughing, +petulant voice, but surely she might look on her dead. And her starving +eyes saw only the hateful soulless things of bronze and silver and +porcelain that she had set up and worshipped as gods; look where she +would they were there around her, the cold ruling deities of the home +that held no place for her dead boy. He had moved in and out among them, +the warm, living, breathing thing that had been hers to love, and she had +turned her eyes from that youthful comely figure to adore a few feet of +painted canvas, a musty relic of a long departed craftsman. And now he +was gone from her sight, from her touch, from her hearing for ever, +without even a thought to flash between them for all the dreary years +that she should live, and these things of canvas and pigment and wrought +metal would stay with her. They were her soul. And what shall it profit +a man if he save his soul and slay his heart in torment? + +On a small table by her side was Mervyn Quentock’s portrait of her—the +prophetic symbol of her tragedy; the rich dead harvest of unreal things +that had never known life, and the bleak thrall of black unending Winter, +a Winter in which things died and knew no re-awakening. + +Francesca turned to the small envelope lying in her lap; very slowly she +opened it and read the short message. Then she sat numb and silent for a +long, long time, or perhaps only for minutes. The voice of Henry Greech +in the hall, enquiring for her, called her to herself. Hurriedly she +crushed the piece of paper out of sight; he would have to be told, of +course, but just yet her pain seemed too dreadful to be laid bare. +“Comus is dead” was a sentence beyond her power to speak. + +“I have bad news for you, Francesca, I’m sorry to say,” Henry announced. +Had he heard, too? + +“Henneberg has been here and looked at the picture,” he continued, +seating himself by her side, “and though he admired it immensely as a +work of art he gave me a disagreeable surprise by assuring me that it’s +not a genuine Van der Meulen. It’s a splendid copy, but still, +unfortunately, only a copy.” + +Henry paused and glanced at his sister to see how she had taken the +unwelcome announcement. Even in the dim light he caught some of the +anguish in her eyes. + +“My dear Francesca,” he said soothingly, laying his hand affectionately +on her arm, “I know that this must be a great disappointment to you, +you’ve always set such store by this picture, but you mustn’t take it too +much to heart. These disagreeable discoveries come at times to most +picture fanciers and owners. Why, about twenty per cent. of the alleged +Old Masters in the Louvre are supposed to be wrongly attributed. And +there are heaps of similar cases in this country. Lady Dovecourt was +telling me the other day that they simply daren’t have an expert in to +examine the Van Dykes at Columbey for fear of unwelcome disclosures. And +besides, your picture is such an excellent copy that it’s by no means +without a value of its own. You must get over the disappointment you +naturally feel, and take a philosophical view of the matter. . . ” + +Francesca sat in stricken silence, crushing the folded morsel of paper +tightly in her hand and wondering if the thin, cheerful voice with its +pitiless, ghastly mockery of consolation would never stop. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNBEARABLE BASSINGTON*** + + +******* This file should be named 555-0.txt or 555-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/5/5/555 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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