diff options
Diffstat (limited to '555-h/555-h.htm')
| -rw-r--r-- | 555-h/555-h.htm | 5669 |
1 files changed, 5669 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/555-h/555-h.htm b/555-h/555-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..58e77b2 --- /dev/null +++ b/555-h/555-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5669 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>The Unbearable Bassington, by Saki</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +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: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNBEARABLE BASSINGTON*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from the 1913 John Lane edition by David Price, +email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<h1>THE UNBEARABLE<br /> +BASSINGTON</h1> +<p style="text-align: center">:: BY H. H. MUNRO +(“SAKI”) ::</p> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p0b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Decorative graphic" +title= +"Decorative graphic" +src="images/p0s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY +HEAD</p> +<p style="text-align: center">NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY</p> +<p style="text-align: center">TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN. +MCMXIII</p> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<div class="gapmediumdoubleline"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>SIXTH EDITION</i></p> +<div class="gapmediumdoubleline"> </div> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">PRINTED BY +JAS. TRUSCOTT & SON, LTD. LONDON</span></p> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<h2><span class="smcap">Author’s Note</span></h2> +<p>This story has no moral.</p> +<p>If it points out an evil at any rate it suggests no +remedy.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Francesca Bassington</span> 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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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—”</p> +<p>Francesca went over immediately but decorously to the majority +that will not stop to consider.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>Francesca laughed with genuine amusement.</p> +<p>“I suppose she is really wonderfully well up in all the +subjects she talks about,” was her provocative comment.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“From the general air of tranquillity about the house I +presume Comus has gone back to Thaleby,” he observed.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“It is only a temporary respite,” said Henry; +“in a year or two he will be leaving school, and then +what?”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“And then what?” persisted Henry.</p> +<p>“Then I suppose he will be upon my hands.”</p> +<p>“Exactly.”</p> +<p>“Don’t sit there looking judicial. I’m +quite ready to listen to suggestions if you’ve any to +make.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“He must do something,” said Francesca.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>Henry, who never killed anything larger or fiercer than a +trout, was scornfully superior on the subject of big game +shooting.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>“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?”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“It can only be for prominence in games,” sniffed +Henry; “I think we may safely leave work and conduct out of +the question.”</p> +<p>Comus was not a favourite with his uncle.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Lancelot Chetrof</span> 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.</p> +<p>“You’ll get six of the very best, over the back of +a chair,” said one.</p> +<p>“They’ll draw a chalk line across you, of course +you know,” said another.</p> +<p>“A chalk line?”</p> +<p>“Rather. So that every cut can be aimed exactly at +the same spot. It hurts much more that way.”</p> +<p>Lancelot tried to nourish a wan hope that there might be an +element of exaggeration in this uncomfortably realistic +description.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“It’s not really your turn to cane,” he +said.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Men of more limited outlook and with a correspondingly larger +belief in their own powers were ready to tackle the tornado had +time permitted.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“Heaven forbid that I should try,” replied the +housemaster.</p> +<p>“But why?” asked the reformer.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Nonsense; boys are Nature’s raw +material.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“But what happens to them when they grow up?”</p> +<p>“They never do grow up,” said the housemaster; +“that is their tragedy. Bassington will certainly +never grow out of his present stage.”</p> +<p>“Now you are talking in the language of Peter +Pan,” said the form-master.</p> +<p>“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?”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>And he went his way, having maintained a form-master’s +inalienable privilege of being in the right.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>In the prefects’ room, Comus busied himself with the +exact position of a chair planted out in the middle of the +floor.</p> +<p>“I think everything’s ready,” he said.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“The kid is due in two minutes,” he said.</p> +<p>“He’d jolly well better not be late,” said +Comus.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>There was a knock at the door, and Lancelot entered in +response to a hearty friendly summons to “come +in.”</p> +<p>“I’ve come to be caned,” he said +breathlessly; adding by way of identification, “my +name’s Chetrof.”</p> +<p>“That’s quite bad enough in itself,” said +Comus, “but there is probably worse to follow. You +are evidently keeping something back from us.”</p> +<p>“I missed a footer practice,” said Lancelot</p> +<p>“Six,” said Comus briefly, picking up his +cane.</p> +<p>“I didn’t see the notice on the board,” +hazarded Lancelot as a forlorn hope.</p> +<p>“We are always pleased to listen to excuses, and our +charge is two extra cuts. That will be eight. Get +over.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Lend me a piece of chalk,” he said to his brother +prefect.</p> +<p>Lancelot ruefully recognised the truth of the chalk-line +story.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“I don’t know where your study is,” said +Lancelot between his chokes.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>As Comus hadn’t got a study Lancelot spent a feverish +half-hour in looking for it, incidentally missing another footer +practice.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">On</span> 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 +<i>salon</i>. 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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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?”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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—”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>salons</i> served some good purpose after all.</p> +<p>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 <i>The Times</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“You wicked boy, what have you done?” she cried, +reproachfully.</p> +<p>“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—”</p> +<p>“You have ruined your future. <i>The Times</i> has +printed that miserable letter with your signature.”</p> +<p>A loud squeal of joy came from the bath. “Oh, +Mummy! Let me see!”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Francesca</span> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>abandon</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“If you chose your friends from a rather more reputable +set you would be doubtless less amusing, but there would be +compensating advantages.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>Francesca gave a little gasp of surprise and annoyance.</p> +<p>“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!”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Who else is to be there?” Francesca asked, with +some pardonable misgiving.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“I don’t think I’ve heard of her. Who +is she?”</p> +<p>“Nobody in particular, but rather nice-looking in a +solemn sort of way, and almost indecently rich.”</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>Comus tucked in his underlip with just the shade of pugnacity +that she wanted to see.</p> +<p>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 <i>bête noire</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“You seem interested in your +<i>vis-à-vis</i>,” said Courtenay Youghal.</p> +<p>“I almost think I’ve seen her before,” said +Francesca; “her face seems familiar to me.”</p> +<p>“The narrow gallery at the Louvre; attributed to +Leonardo da Vinci,” said Youghal.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>A third of the guests present were related to the +Trudhams.</p> +<p>“Lady Caroline is beginning well,” murmured +Courtenay Youghal.</p> +<p>“I should hardly call twenty-five years of married life +a cloud,” said Henry Greech, lamely.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“But what has she written?”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“I don’t see why you should think so,” said +Francesca, coldly.</p> +<p>“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 <i>rôle</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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—”</p> +<p>“Surely the Gadarene swine went downhill,” put in +Lady Caroline in a gently enquiring voice.</p> +<p>Henry Greech hastily abandoned simile and fell back on +platitude and the safer kinds of fact.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>A woman’s voice, talking in a discreet undertone on the +other side of Courtenay Youghal, broke in on her +bridge-building.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">On</span> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Courtenay Youghal had not been designed by Nature to fulfil +the <i>rôle</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Most people who know me would tell you that I +haven’t got a heart,” said Youghal.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>Molly McQuade turned sharply to look at her companion, who +still fixed his gaze on the pheasant run in front of him.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“She’s got heaps of money.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“And is she in love with you?”</p> +<p>Youghal threw back his head with the slight assertive movement +that Molly knew and liked.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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?”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Elaine de Frey</span> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>rôle</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“If I had the power to create improvements anywhere I +think I should begin with you,” retorted Elaine.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>Elaine frowned, and then laughed, and finally gave a little +sigh.</p> +<p>“It’s not easy to talk sense to you,” she +said.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“You are not very fond of the Jews,” said +Elaine.</p> +<p>“I’ve travelled and lived a good deal in Eastern +Europe,” said Youghal.</p> +<p>“It seems largely a question of geography,” said +Elaine; “in England no one really is +anti-Semitic.”</p> +<p>Youghal shook his head. “I know a great many Jews +who are.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Comus scrambled to his feet.</p> +<p>“It’s too hot for tea,” he said; “I +shall go and feed the swans.”</p> +<p>And he walked off with a little silver basket-dish containing +brown bread-and-butter.</p> +<p>Elaine laughed quietly.</p> +<p>“It’s so like Comus,” she said, “to go +off with our one dish of bread-and-butter.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>Elaine again had the sense of being thoroughly baffled. +If Youghal had said anything unkind it was about himself.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“For two reasons,” said Youghal; “you are +rather fond of Comus. And I—am not very fond of +bread-and-butter.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Comus came back across the grass swinging the empty +basket-dish in his hand.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“It’s got the family crest on it,” said +Elaine. Some of the happiness had died out of her eyes.</p> +<p>“I’ll have that scratched off and my own put +on,” said Comus.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“I want it dreadfully,” said Comus, sulkily, +“and you’ve heaps of other things to put +bread-and-butter in.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“I know you don’t really want it, so I’m +going to keep it,” persisted Comus.</p> +<p>“It’s too hot to argue,” said Elaine.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“You haven’t got to argue about a bread-and-butter +dish,” said Elaine.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“When must you go?” she asked, +sympathetically.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>Then in a lower voice he almost whispered, “It’s +the Persian debate to-night.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Friendship could go no further,” he observed, as +he gave one-half to the doubtfully appeased Comus, and lit the +other himself.</p> +<p>“There are heaps more in the hall,” said +Elaine.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Towards</span> 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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>It was evidently one of her bluebottle days.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Not in Middlesex, though,” said Francesca.</p> +<p>“One can’t be sure,” persisted Merla; +“when one wanders about as much as he did one gets mixed up +and forgets where one <i>has</i> 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?”</p> +<p>“I fancy he wrote in Hebrew or Greek,” objected +Francesca; “the word wouldn’t have the least +resemblance.”</p> +<p>“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—”</p> +<p>“I’m afraid I must leave it now,” said +Francesca, preparing to turn up Grafton Street; +“Good-bye.”</p> +<p>“Must you be going? Come and have tea +somewhere. I know of a cosy little place where one can talk +undisturbed.”</p> +<p>Francesca repressed a shudder and pleaded an urgent +engagement.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“I’ve been to hear him scold the human race once +or twice,” said Francesca.</p> +<p>“A strong man with a wonderfully strong message,” +said Ada Spelvexit, in an impressive and assertive tone.</p> +<p>“The sort of popular pulpiteer who spanks the vices of +his age and lunches with them afterwards,” said Lady +Caroline.</p> +<p>“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—”</p> +<p>“At least you can tell us what you intend to make +trumps,” broke in Lady Caroline, gently.</p> +<p>“Diamonds,” pronounced Ada, after a rather +flurried survey of her hand.</p> +<p>“Doubled,” said Lady Caroline, with increased +gentleness, and a few minutes later she was pencilling an +addition of twenty-four to her score.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Surely only on the apple trees,” said Lady +Caroline.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Much better to economise and have one really good +one,” observed Lady Caroline.</p> +<p>“<i>La belle dame sans merci</i> scoring a verbal trick +or two as usual,” said a player at another table in a +discreet undertone.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“Poor dear, good Sir Edward. What have you made +trumps?” asked Lady Caroline, in one breath.</p> +<p>“Clubs,” said Francesca; “and pray, why +these adjectives of commiseration?”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“Really? He has been rather a brilliant success at +the Foreign Office, you know,” said Francesca.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“How can you say such things?” protested +Francesca.</p> +<p>“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.’”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Anyhow, I don’t see that the Opposition leaders +would have acted any differently in the present case,” said +Francesca.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“You mean they may one day be at the head of +affairs?” asked Serena, briskly.</p> +<p>“I mean they may one day lead the Opposition. One +never knows.”</p> +<p>Lady Caroline had just remembered that her hostess was on the +Opposition side in politics.</p> +<p>Francesca and her partner scored four tricks in clubs; the +game stood irresolutely at twenty-four all.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Yes, the House of Commons still remains rather at the +opposite pole to the Kingdom of Heaven as regards entrance +qualifications,” observed Lady Caroline.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Whom are you marrying and giving in +marriage?”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Morning Post</i> 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.</p> +<p>“We are trying to find a rich wife for Courtenay +Youghal,” said Serena, in answer to St. Michael’s +question.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Do you mean—?” began Serena.</p> +<p>“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—”</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“Oh, is it me? I beg your pardon. I leave +it,” said Serena.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>Ada Spelvexit emptied her purse of several gold pieces and +infused a corresponding degree of superiority into her +manner.</p> +<p>“I must be going now,” she announced; +“I’m dining early. I have to give an address to +some charwomen afterwards.”</p> +<p>“Why?” asked Lady Caroline, with a disconcerting +directness that was one of her most formidable +characteristics.</p> +<p>“Oh, well, I have some things to say to them that I +daresay they will like to hear,” said Ada, with a thin +laugh.</p> +<p>Her statement was received with a silence that betokened +profound unbelief in any such probability.</p> +<p>“I go about a good deal among working-class +women,” she added.</p> +<p>“No one has ever said it,” observed Lady Caroline, +“but how painfully true it is that the poor have us always +with them.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">It</span> 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</p> +<blockquote><p>A basket underneath a tree<br /> +A yellow tiger is to me,<br /> + If it is nothing +more.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“Tell me more about the farm, please.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“You are a person to be envied,” she said to +Keriway; “you have created a fairyland, and you are living +in it yourself.”</p> +<p>“Envied?”</p> +<p>He shot the question out with sudden bitterness. She +looked down and saw the wistful misery that had come into his +face.</p> +<p>“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.’”</p> +<p>He had created a fairyland, but assuredly he was not living in +it.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">In</span> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>One always tells oneself that the animal likes it, and one +always knows that it doesn’t.</p> +<p>“Lady Veula is an ardent Free Trader, isn’t +she?” someone once remarked to Lady Caroline.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.’”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Are the Russians really such a gloomy +people?”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“I only just know him. Isn’t he at an +agricultural college or something of the sort?”</p> +<p>“Yes, studying to be a gentleman farmer, he told +me. I didn’t ask if both subjects were +compulsory.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>For a preacher of wholesome truths her voice rather lacked +conviction.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>And he quoted almost aloud, as one does in the exhilaration of +a canter:</p> +<blockquote><p>“How much I loved that way you had<br /> +Of smiling most, when very sad,<br /> +A smile which carried tender hints<br /> +Of sun and spring,<br /> +And yet, more than all other thing,<br /> +Of weariness beyond all words.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“The card debt is rather a nuisance,” pursued +Comus, with fatalistic persistency.</p> +<p>“You won seven pounds last week, didn’t +you?” asked Elaine; “don’t you put by any of +your winnings to balance losses?”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The conversation strayed away from the fateful topic for a few +moments and then Comus brought it deliberately back to the danger +zone.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>His tactics would have been excellent if he had not forgotten +that unbeaten army on his flank.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Get rid of Joyeuse and come and take me out to lunch +somewhere,” demanded Elaine.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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 <i>Neue +Freie Presse</i>, <i>Berliner Tageblatt</i>, 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.</p> +<p>“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?”</p> +<p>Youghal laughed.</p> +<p>“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 <i>Matin</i>, for instance, you feel you would like to be a +veiled Turkish woman for the rest of your life.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“Yes,” said Youghal, “and he seemed quite +crestfallen when I had to say ‘no.’”</p> +<p>“It would be horrid to disappoint him when he’s +looked after us so charmingly,” said Elaine; “tell +him that we are.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER X</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> 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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>The Rev. Poltimore Vardon had once seen a resemblance in +himself to Voltaire, and had lived alongside the comparison ever +since.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“You can’t prevent the heathen being converted if +they choose to be,” said Lady Caroline; “this is an +age of toleration.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Time is just as exclusive in its way as Art,” +said Lady Caroline.</p> +<p>“In what way?” said the Reverend Poltimore.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“<i>Would</i> you mind passing that plate of +sandwiches,” asked one of the trio of young ladies, +emboldened by famine.</p> +<p>“With pleasure,” said Lady Caroline, deftly +passing her a nearly empty plate of bread-and-butter.</p> +<p>“I meant the place of caviare sandwiches. So sorry +to trouble you,” persisted the young lady.</p> +<p>Her sorrow was misapplied; Lady Caroline had turned her +attention to a newcomer.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“To paint the right people at the wrong end may be an +eccentricity, but it is scarcely an indiscretion,” +pronounced Lady Caroline.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“At any rate one can tell who it’s meant +for,” said Serena Golackly.</p> +<p>“Oh, yes, it’s a good likeness of dear +Francesca,” admitted Ada; “of course, it flatters +her.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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—”</p> +<p>“Hush,” said Serena, “the Bassington boy is +just behind you.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Do you suppose we shall all get appropriate punishments +in another world for our sins in this?” asked Quentock.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">After</span> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“From there, of course, the road would be open to him to +higher things.”</p> +<p>“Yes,” said Elaine, “he might become an +alderman.”</p> +<p>“Have you seen their photographs, taken together?” +asked Mrs. Brankley, abandoning the subject of Egbert’s +prospective career.</p> +<p>“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?”</p> +<p>“It’s <i>very</i> 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.</p> +<p>“Of course, you’ve been hearing all about +<i>the</i> engagement from mother,” she cried, and then set +to work conscientiously to cover the same ground.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“My marriage with Egbert will, of course, enlarge the +sphere of my life enormously,” pursued Suzette.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“He looks bookish,” said Elaine, with a critical +glance at the photograph.</p> +<p>“Oh, he’s not at all a bookworm,” said +Suzette quickly, “though he’s tremendously +well-read. He’s quite the man of action.”</p> +<p>“Does he hunt?” asked Elaine.</p> +<p>“No, he doesn’t get much time or opportunity for +riding.”</p> +<p>“What a pity,” commented Elaine; “I +don’t think I could marry a man who wasn’t fond of +riding.”</p> +<p>“Of course that’s a matter of taste,” said +Suzette, stiffly; “horsey men are not usually gifted with +overmuch brains, are they?”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>A young man entering the room at this moment caused a +diversion that was rather welcome to Suzette.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“He is exactly the husband I should have chosen for you, +Suzette.”</p> +<p>For the second time that afternoon Suzette felt a sense of +waning enthusiasm for one of her possessions.</p> +<p>Mrs. Brankley detected the note of ironical congratulation in +her visitor’s verdict.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“And when are we to hear of your engagement, my +dear?”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“But who is it? Is it the young man who was with +you in the Park this morning?” asked Suzette.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“A flying-man?” asked Mrs. Brankley.</p> +<p>“Courtenay Youghal,” said Elaine.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">A door</span> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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—”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Just think,” she buzzed inconsequently, “my +sister in Cambridgeshire has hatched out thirty-three White +Orpington chickens in her incubator!”</p> +<p>“What eggs did she put in it?” asked +Francesca.</p> +<p>“Oh, some very special strain of White +Orpington.”</p> +<p>“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 <i>Country Life</i> about.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Let us be devoutly thankful that they +can’t,” said Francesca, with a shuddering +recollection of the luncheon-table conversation.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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 <i>Morning Post</i> +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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“So you have lost your chance with the heiress,” +she remarked abruptly.</p> +<p>“Yes,” said Comus, coolly; “Courtenay +Youghal has added her to his other successes.”</p> +<p>“And you have added her to your other failures,” +pursued Francesca, relentlessly; her temper had been tried that +day beyond ordinary limits.</p> +<p>“I thought you seemed getting along so well with +her,” she continued, as Comus remained uncommunicative.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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!”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“And to think she should be captured by Courtenay +Youghal,” said Francesca, bitterly; “I’ve +always deplored your intimacy with that young man.”</p> +<p>“It’s hardly my intimacy with him that’s +made Elaine accept him,” said Comus.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“I think,” said Comus, “that is the best +description that anyone has ever given of me.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“West Africa,” said Comus, reflectively; +“it’s a sort of modern substitute for the +old-fashioned <i>oubliette</i>, 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.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>Comus laughed mockingly.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Can’t we sell something?” asked Comus.</p> +<p>He made no actual suggestion as to what should be sacrificed, +but he was looking straight at the Van der Meulen.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“When I am dead my things can be sold and +dispersed. As long as I am alive I prefer to keep them by +me.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Let’s go and dress for dinner.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Comus</span> 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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>His hopes and sympathies were notoriously on the Ministerial +side.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“For the Government to fall on a matter of +conscience,” he said, “would be like a man cutting +himself with a safety razor.”</p> +<p>Lady Caroline purred a gentle approval.</p> +<p>“I’m afraid it’s true, Archdeacon,” +she said.</p> +<p>No one can effectively defend a Government when it’s +been in office several years. The Archdeacon took refuge in +light skirmishing.</p> +<p>“I believe Lady Caroline sees the makings of a great +Socialist statesman in you, Youghal,” he observed.</p> +<p>“Great Socialist statesmen aren’t made, +they’re stillborn,” replied Youghal.</p> +<p>“What is the play about to-night?” asked a pale +young woman who had taken no part in the talk.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Whenever I hear his music I feel that I want to go up +into a mountain and pray. Can you understand that +feeling?”</p> +<p>The girl to whom she was unburdening herself shook her +head.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“We all said ‘it can’t be Captain Parminter, +because he’s always been sweet on Joan,’ and then +Emily said—”</p> +<p>The curtain went up, and Emily’s contribution to the +discussion had to be held over till the entr’acte.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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?”</p> +<p>“I’ve never trodden on a pet lamb,” said +Lady Caroline, “so I’ve no idea what its behaviour +would be under the circumstances.”</p> +<p>“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?”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>In the third interval, as he gazed round at the chattering +house, someone touched him on the arm. It was Lady Veula +Croot.</p> +<p>“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.’”</p> +<p>Lady Veula moved back to her seat, with her pleasant smile on +her lips and the look of infinite weariness in her eyes.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“And there, dear lady,” concluded the Colonel, +“were the eleven dead pigeons. What had become of the +bandicoot no one ever knew.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“So the Government is going to climb down, after +all,” she said, with a provocative assumption of private +information on the subject.</p> +<p>“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—”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>For her, at any rate, the comedy had had a happy ending.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>ententes</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Thank you all the same for describing it,” said +Comus.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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—”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“My dear mother,” cried Comus, “you must +have been drinking healths all the afternoon to make your hand so +unsteady.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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?”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“At any rate you give them the opportunity,” said +Comus, cryptically.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“I did not know you kept a dog,” said Lady +Veula.</p> +<p>“We don’t,” said Comus, “there +isn’t one in the house.”</p> +<p>“I could have sworn I saw one follow you across the hall +this evening,” she said.</p> +<p>“A small black dog, something like a schipperke?” +asked Comus in a low voice.</p> +<p>“Yes, that was it.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Have you ever seen it before?” Lady Veula asked +quickly.</p> +<p>“Once, when I was six years old. It followed my +father downstairs.”</p> +<p>Lady Veula said nothing. She knew that Comus had lost +his father at the age of six.</p> +<p>In the drawing-room Serena made nervous excuses for her +talkative friend.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“I should say he was a very good man,” said Mrs. +Greech; she had forgiven the mutilation of her soup-plate +story.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“What a tragedy life is,” she said, aloud to +herself.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Elaine Youghal</span> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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 <i>plat</i> 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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“What Mr. Lonkins wants is a real <i>deep</i> cherry +pie,” announced a lady in a tone of dramatic and honest +conviction.</p> +<p>“Why, yes, that is so,” corroborated a gentleman +who was apparently the Mr. Lonkins in question; “a real +<i>deep</i> cherry pie.”</p> +<p>“We had the same trouble way back in Paris,” +proclaimed another lady; “little Jerome and the girls +don’t want to eat any more <i>crème +renversée</i>. I’d give anything if they could +get some real cherry pie.”</p> +<p>“Real <i>deep</i> cherry pie,” assented Mr. +Lonkins.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>Elaine’s aunts were conscientiously worldly; they were +the natural outcome of a stock that had been conscientiously +straight-laced for many generations.</p> +<p>Elaine had progressed to the pancake stage before Courtenay +returned.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“What is your character?” asked Madame Kelnicort +that evening, as they uncloaked, preparatory to entering the +already crowded ball-room.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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 +<i>abandon</i> 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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>A little later in the evening Elaine found herself standing +out a dance with a grave young gentleman from the Russian +Embassy.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Am I an animal?” asked Elaine.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Perhaps,” said Elaine, with a tinge of bitterness +in her voice, “perhaps I am a vegetable.”</p> +<p>“I think you most remind me of a picture,” said +the Russian.</p> +<p>It was not the first time Elaine had heard the simile.</p> +<p>“I know,” she said, “the Narrow Gallery at +the Louvre; attributed to Leonardo da Vinci.”</p> +<p>Evidently the impression she made on people was solely one of +externals.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>Neue Freie Presse</i>, the <i>Zeit</i>, 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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>The aunts were discreetly inquisitive as to the previous +evening’s entertainment.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“The secret of enjoying a honeymoon,” said Mrs. +Goldbrook afterwards to her sister, “is not to attempt too +much.”</p> +<p>“You mean—?”</p> +<p>“Courtenay is content to try and keep one person amused +and happy, and he thoroughly succeeds.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“He has also,” said Mrs. Goldbrook, “helped +her to make the next biggest mistake of her life—marrying +Courtenay Youghal.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">It</span> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The words of a well-known old song, the wistful cry of a lost +cause, rang with insistent mockery through his brain:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Better loved you canna be,<br /> +Will ye ne’er come back again?”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<p>And in his unutterable loneliness he bowed his head on his +arms, that he might not see the joyous scrambling frolic on +yonder hillside.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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?”</p> +<p>“I am waiting for very bad news,” said Francesca, +and Lady Caroline knew what had happened.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>Francesca crossed the Mall and the carriage drove on.</p> +<p>“Heaven help that poor woman,” said Lady Caroline; +which was, for her, startlingly like a prayer.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“I have bad news for you, Francesca, I’m sorry to +say,” Henry announced. Had he heard, too?</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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. . . ”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNBEARABLE BASSINGTON***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 555-h.htm or 555-h.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. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at + www.gutenberg.org/license. + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +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 + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at 809 +North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email +contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the +Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. +</pre></body> +</html> |