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diff --git a/old/nbrbl10h.htm b/old/nbrbl10h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ebc076e --- /dev/null +++ b/old/nbrbl10h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5620 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII"> +<title>The Unbearable Bassington</title> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">The Unbearable Bassington, by Saki</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Unbearable Bassington, by Saki +(#2 in our series by Saki) + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Unbearable Bassington + +Author: Saki + +Release Date: Jun, 1996 [EBook #555] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on April 7, 1996] +[Most recently updated: August 27, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII +</pre> +<p> +<a name="startoftext"></a> +Transcribed from the 1913 John Lane edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE UNBEARABLE BASSINGTON<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER I<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Francesca Bassington sat in the drawing-room of her house in Blue Street, +W., regaling herself and her estimable brother Henry with China tea +and small cress sandwiches. The meal was of that elegant proportion +which, while ministering sympathetically to the desires of the moment, +is happily reminiscent of a satisfactory luncheon and blessedly expectant +of an elaborate dinner to come.<br> +<br> +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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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 - ”<br> +<br> +Francesca went over immediately but decorously to the majority that +will not stop to consider.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +Francesca laughed with genuine amusement.<br> +<br> +“I suppose she is really wonderfully well up in all the subjects +she talks about,” was her provocative comment.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“From the general air of tranquillity about the house I presume +Comus has gone back to Thaleby,” he observed.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“It is only a temporary respite,” said Henry; “in +a year or two he will be leaving school, and then what?”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“And then what?” persisted Henry.<br> +<br> +“Then I suppose he will be upon my hands.”<br> +<br> +“Exactly.”<br> +<br> +“Don’t sit there looking judicial. I’m quite +ready to listen to suggestions if you’ve any to make.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“He must do something,” said Francesca.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +Henry, who never killed anything larger or fiercer than a trout, was +scornfully superior on the subject of big game shooting.<br> +<br> +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.”<br> +<br> +“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?”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“It can only be for prominence in games,” sniffed Henry; +“I think we may safely leave work and conduct out of the question.”<br> +<br> +Comus was not a favourite with his uncle.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER II<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Lancelot Chetrof stood at the end of a long bare passage, restlessly +consulting his watch and fervently wishing himself half an hour older +with a certain painful experience already registered in the past; unfortunately +it still belonged to the future, and what was still more horrible, to +the immediate future. Like many boys new to a school he had cultivated +an unhealthy passion for obeying rules and requirements, and his zeal +in this direction had proved his undoing. In his hurry to be doing +two or three estimable things at once he had omitted to study the notice-board +in more than a perfunctory fashion and had thereby missed a football +practice specially ordained for newly-joined boys. His fellow +juniors of a term’s longer standing had graphically enlightened +him as to the inevitable consequences of his lapse; the dread which +attaches to the unknown was, at any rate, deleted from his approaching +doom, though at the moment he felt scarcely grateful for the knowledge +placed at his disposal with such lavish solicitude.<br> +<br> +“You’ll get six of the very best, over the back of a chair,” +said one.<br> +<br> +“They’ll draw a chalk line across you, of course you know,” +said another.<br> +<br> +“A chalk line?”<br> +<br> +“Rather. So that every cut can be aimed exactly at the same +spot. It hurts much more that way.”<br> +<br> +Lancelot tried to nourish a wan hope that there might be an element +of exaggeration in this uncomfortably realistic description.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“It’s not really your turn to cane,” he said.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +Men of more limited outlook and with a correspondingly larger belief +in their own powers were ready to tackle the tornado had time permitted.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“Heaven forbid that I should try,” replied the housemaster.<br> +<br> +“But why?” asked the reformer.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“Nonsense; boys are Nature’s raw material.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“But what happens to them when they grow up?”<br> +<br> +“They never do grow up,” said the housemaster; “that +is their tragedy. Bassington will certainly never grow out of +his present stage.”<br> +<br> +“Now you are talking in the language of Peter Pan,” said +the form-master.<br> +<br> +“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?”<br> +<br> +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.”<br> +<br> +And he went his way, having maintained a form-master’s inalienable +privilege of being in the right.<br> +<br> +* * * * *<br> +<br> +In the prefects’ room, Comus busied himself with the exact position +of a chair planted out in the middle of the floor.<br> +<br> +“I think everything’s ready,” he said.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“The kid is due in two minutes,” he said.<br> +<br> +“He’d jolly well better not be late,” said Comus.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +There was a knock at the door, and Lancelot entered in response to a +hearty friendly summons to “come in.”<br> +<br> +“I’ve come to be caned,” he said breathlessly; adding +by way of identification, “my name’s Chetrof.”<br> +<br> +“That’s quite bad enough in itself,” said Comus, “but +there is probably worse to follow. You are evidently keeping something +back from us.”<br> +<br> +“I missed a footer practice,” said Lancelot<br> +<br> +“Six,” said Comus briefly, picking up his cane.<br> +<br> +“I didn’t see the notice on the board,” hazarded Lancelot +as a forlorn hope.<br> +<br> +“We are always pleased to listen to excuses, and our charge is +two extra cuts. That will be eight. Get over.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“Lend me a piece of chalk,” he said to his brother prefect.<br> +<br> +Lancelot ruefully recognised the truth of the chalk-line story.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“I don’t know where your study is,” said Lancelot +between his chokes.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +As Comus hadn’t got a study Lancelot spent a feverish half-hour +in looking for it, incidentally missing another footer practice.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER III<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +On the evening of a certain November day, two years after the events +heretofore chronicled, Francesca Bassington steered her way through +the crowd that filled the rooms of her friend Serena Golackly, bestowing +nods of vague recognition as she went, but with eyes that were obviously +intent on focussing one particular figure. Parliament had pulled +its energies together for an Autumn Session, and both political Parties +were fairly well represented in the throng. Serena had a harmless +way of inviting a number of more or less public men and women to her +house, and hoping that if you left them together long enough they would +constitute a <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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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?”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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 +- ”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“You wicked boy, what have you done?” she cried, reproachfully.<br> +<br> +“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 - ”<br> +<br> +“You have ruined your future. <i>The Times</i> has printed +that miserable letter with your signature.”<br> +<br> +A loud squeal of joy came from the bath. “Oh, Mummy! +Let me see!”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER IV<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Francesca prided herself on being able to see things from other people’s +points of view, which meant, as it usually does, that she could see +her own point of view from various aspects. As regards Comus, +whose doings and non-doings bulked largely in her thoughts at the present +moment, she had mapped out in her mind so clearly what his outlook in +life ought to be, that she was peculiarly unfitted to understand the +drift of his feelings or the impulses that governed them. Fate +had endowed her with a son; in limiting the endowment to a solitary +offspring Fate had certainly shown a moderation which Francesca was +perfectly willing to acknowledge and be thankful for; but then, as she +pointed out to a certain complacent friend of hers who cheerfully sustained +an endowment of half-a-dozen male offsprings and a girl or two, her +one child was Comus. Moderation in numbers was more than counterbalanced +in his case by extravagance in characteristics.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“If you chose your friends from a rather more reputable set you +would be doubtless less amusing, but there would be compensating advantages.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +Francesca gave a little gasp of surprise and annoyance.<br> +<br> +“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!”<br> +<br> +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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“Who else is to be there?” Francesca asked, with some pardonable +misgiving.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“I don’t think I’ve heard of her. Who is she?”<br> +<br> +“Nobody in particular, but rather nice-looking in a solemn sort +of way, and almost indecently rich.”<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +Comus tucked in his underlip with just the shade of pugnacity that she +wanted to see.<br> +<br> +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</i> <i>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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“You seem interested in your <i>vis-à-vis</i>,” said +Courtenay Youghal.<br> +<br> +“I almost think I’ve seen her before,” said Francesca; +“her face seems familiar to me.”<br> +<br> +“The narrow gallery at the Louvre; attributed to Leonardo da Vinci,” +said Youghal.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +A third of the guests present were related to the Trudhams.<br> +<br> +“Lady Caroline is beginning well,” murmured Courtenay Youghal.<br> +<br> +“I should hardly call twenty-five years of married life a cloud,” +said Henry Greech, lamely.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“But what has she written?”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“I don’t see why you should think so,” said Francesca, +coldly.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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 - ”<br> +<br> +“Surely the Gadarene swine went downhill,” put in Lady Caroline +in a gently enquiring voice.<br> +<br> +Henry Greech hastily abandoned simile and fell back on platitude and +the safer kinds of fact.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +A woman’s voice, talking in a discreet undertone on the other +side of Courtenay Youghal, broke in on her bridge-building.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER V<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +On a conveniently secluded bench facing the Northern Pheasantry in the +Zoological Society’s Gardens, Regent’s Park, Courtenay Youghal +sat immersed in mature flirtation with a lady, who, though certainly +young in fact and appearance, was some four or five years his senior. + When he was a schoolboy of sixteen, Molly McQuade had personally conducted +him to the Zoo and stood him dinner afterwards at Kettner’s, and +whenever the two of them happened to be in town on the anniversary of +that bygone festivity they religiously repeated the programme in its +entirety. Even the menu of the dinner was adhered to as nearly +as possible; the original selection of food and wine that schoolboy +exuberance, tempered by schoolboy shyness, had pitched on those many +years ago, confronted Youghal on those occasions, as a drowning man’s +past life is said to rise up and parade itself in his last moments of +consciousness.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“Most people who know me would tell you that I haven’t got +a heart,” said Youghal.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +Molly McQuade turned sharply to look at her companion, who still fixed +his gaze on the pheasant run in front of him.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“She’s got heaps of money.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“And is she in love with you?”<br> +<br> +Youghal threw back his head with the slight assertive movement that +Molly knew and liked.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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?”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VI<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Elaine de Frey sat at ease - at bodily ease - at any rate - in a low +wicker chair placed under the shade of a group of cedars in the heart +of a stately spacious garden that had almost made up its mind to be +a park. The shallow stone basin of an old fountain, on whose wide +ledge a leaden-moulded otter for ever preyed on a leaden salmon, filled +a conspicuous place in the immediate foreground. Around its rim +ran an inscription in Latin, warning mortal man that time flows as swiftly +as water and exhorting him to make the most of his hours; after which +piece of Jacobean moralising it set itself shamelessly to beguile all +who might pass that way into an abandonment of contemplative repose. +On all sides of it a stretch of smooth turf spread away, broken up here +and there by groups of dwarfish chestnut and mulberry trees, whose leaves +and branches cast a laced pattern of shade beneath them. On one +side the lawn sloped gently down to a small lake, whereon floated a +quartette of swans, their movements suggestive of a certain mournful +listlessness, as though a weary dignity of caste held them back from +the joyous bustling life of the lesser waterfowl. Elaine liked +to imagine that they re-embodied the souls of unhappy boys who had been +forced by family interests to become high ecclesiastical dignitaries +and had grown prematurely Right Reverend. A low stone balustrade +fenced part of the shore of the lake, making a miniature terrace above +its level, and here roses grew in a rich multitude. Other rose +bushes, carefully pruned and tended, formed little oases of colour and +perfume amid the restful green of the sward, and in the distance the +eye caught the variegated blaze of a many-hued hedge of rhododendron. +With these favoured exceptions flowers were hard to find in this well-ordered +garden; the misguided tyranny of staring geranium beds and beflowered +archways leading to nowhere, so dear to the suburban gardener, found +no expression here. Magnificent Amherst pheasants, whose plumage +challenged and almost shamed the peacock on his own ground, stepped +to and fro over the emerald turf with the assured self-conscious pride +of reigning sultans. It was a garden where summer seemed a part-proprietor +rather than a hurried visitor.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“If I had the power to create improvements anywhere I think I +should begin with you,” retorted Elaine.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +Elaine frowned, and then laughed, and finally gave a little sigh.<br> +<br> +“It’s not easy to talk sense to you,” she said.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“You are not very fond of the Jews,” said Elaine.<br> +<br> +“I’ve travelled and lived a good deal in Eastern Europe,” +said Youghal.<br> +<br> +“It seems largely a question of geography,” said Elaine; +“in England no one really is anti-Semitic.”<br> +<br> +Youghal shook his head. “I know a great many Jews who are.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +Comus scrambled to his feet.<br> +<br> +“It’s too hot for tea,” he said; “I shall go +and feed the swans.”<br> +<br> +And he walked off with a little silver basket-dish containing brown +bread-and-butter.<br> +<br> +Elaine laughed quietly.<br> +<br> +“It’s so like Comus,” she said, “to go off with +our one dish of bread-and-butter.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +Elaine again had the sense of being thoroughly baffled. If Youghal +had said anything unkind it was about himself.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“For two reasons,” said Youghal; “you are rather fond +of Comus. And I - am not very fond of bread-and-butter.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +Comus came back across the grass swinging the empty basket-dish in his +hand.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“It’s got the family crest on it,” said Elaine. +Some of the happiness had died out of her eyes.<br> +<br> +“I’ll have that scratched off and my own put on,” +said Comus.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“I want it dreadfully,” said Comus, sulkily, “and +you’ve heaps of other things to put bread-and-butter in.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“I know you don’t really want it, so I’m going to +keep it,” persisted Comus.<br> +<br> +“It’s too hot to argue,” said Elaine.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“You haven’t got to argue about a bread-and-butter dish,” +said Elaine.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“When must you go?” she asked, sympathetically.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +Then in a lower voice he almost whispered, “It’s the Persian +debate to-night,”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“Friendship could go no further,” he observed, as he gave +one-half to the doubtfully appeased Comus, and lit the other himself.<br> +<br> +“There are heaps more in the hall,” said Elaine.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VII<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Towards four o’clock on a hot afternoon Francesca stepped out +from a shop entrance near the Piccadilly end of Bond Street and ran +almost into the arms of Merla Blathlington. The afternoon seemed +to get instantly hotter. Merla was one of those human flies that +buzz; in crowded streets, at bazaars and in warm weather, she attained +to the proportions of a human bluebottle. Lady Caroline Benaresq +had openly predicted that a special fly-paper was being reserved for +her accommodation in another world; others, however, held the opinion +that she would be miraculously multiplied in a future state, and that +four or more Merla Blathlingtons, according to deserts, would be in +perpetual and unremitting attendance on each lost soul.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +It was evidently one of her bluebottle days.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“Not in Middlesex, though,” said Francesca.<br> +<br> +“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?”<br> +<br> +“I fancy he wrote in Hebrew or Greek,” objected Francesca; +“the word wouldn’t have the least resemblance.”<br> +<br> +“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 - ”<br> +<br> +“I’m afraid I must leave it now,” said Francesca, +preparing to turn up Grafton Street; “Good-bye.”<br> +<br> +“Must you be going? Come and have tea somewhere. I +know of a cosy little place where one can talk undisturbed.”<br> +<br> +Francesca repressed a shudder and pleaded an urgent engagement.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“I’ve been to hear him scold the human race once or twice,” +said Francesca.<br> +<br> +“A strong man with a wonderfully strong message,” said Ada +Spelvexit, in an impressive and assertive tone.<br> +<br> +“The sort of popular pulpiteer who spanks the vices of his age +and lunches with them afterwards,” said Lady Caroline.<br> +<br> +“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 - ”<br> +<br> +“At least you can tell us what you intend to make trumps,” +broke in Lady Caroline, gently.<br> +<br> +“Diamonds,” pronounced Ada, after a rather flurried survey +of her hand.<br> +<br> +“Doubled,” said Lady Caroline, with increased gentleness, +and a few minutes later she was pencilling an addition of twenty-four +to her score.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“Surely only on the apple trees,” said Lady Caroline.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“Much better to economise and have one really good one,” +observed Lady Caroline.<br> +<br> +“<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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“Poor dear, good Sir Edward. What have you made trumps?” +asked Lady Caroline, in one breath.<br> +<br> +“Clubs,” said Francesca; “and pray, why these adjectives +of commiseration?”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“Really? He has been rather a brilliant success at the Foreign +Office, you know,” said Francesca.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“How can you say such things?” protested Francesca.<br> +<br> +“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.’”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“Anyhow, I don’t see that the Opposition leaders would have +acted any differently in the present case,” said Francesca.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“You mean they may one day be at the head of affairs?” asked +Serena, briskly.<br> +<br> +“I mean they may one day lead the Opposition. One never +knows.”<br> +<br> +Lady Caroline had just remembered that her hostess was on the Opposition +side in politics.<br> +<br> +Francesca and her partner scored four tricks in clubs; the game stood +irresolutely at twenty-four all.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“Yes, the House of Commons still remains rather at the opposite +pole to the Kingdom of Heaven as regards entrance qualifications,” +observed Lady Caroline.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“Whom are you marrying and giving in marriage?”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“We are trying to find a rich wife for Courtenay Youghal,” +said Serena, in answer to St. Michael’s question.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“Do you mean - ?” began Serena.<br> +<br> +“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 - ”<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“Oh, is it me? I beg your pardon. I leave it,” +said Serena.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +Ada Spelvexit emptied her purse of several gold pieces and infused a +corresponding degree of superiority into her manner.<br> +<br> +“I must be going now,” she announced; “I’m dining +early. I have to give an address to some charwomen afterwards.”<br> +<br> +“Why?” asked Lady Caroline, with a disconcerting directness +that was one of her most formidable characteristics.<br> +<br> +“Oh, well, I have some things to say to them that I daresay they +will like to hear,” said Ada, with a thin laugh.<br> +<br> +Her statement was received with a silence that betokened profound unbelief +in any such probability.<br> +<br> +“I go about a good deal among working-class women,” she +added.<br> +<br> +“No one has ever said it,” observed Lady Caroline, “but +how painfully true it is that the poor have us always with them.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VIII<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +It was a fresh rain-repentant afternoon, following a morning that had +been sultry and torrentially wet by turns; the sort of afternoon that +impels people to talk graciously of the rain as having done a lot of +good, its chief merit in their eyes probably having been its recognition +of the art of moderation. Also it was an afternoon that invited +bodily activity after the convalescent languor of the earlier part of +the day. Elaine had instinctively found her way into her riding-habit +and sent an order down to the stables - a blessed oasis that still smelt +sweetly of horse and hay and cleanliness in a world that reeked of petrol, +and now she set her mare at a smart pace through a succession of long-stretching +country lanes. She was due some time that afternoon at a garden-party, +but she rode with determination in an opposite direction. In the +first place neither Comus or Courtenay would be at the party, which +fact seemed to remove any valid reason that could be thought of for +inviting her attendance thereat; in the second place about a hundred +human beings would be gathered there, and human gatherings were not +her most crying need at the present moment. Since her last encounter +with her wooers, under the cedars in her own garden, Elaine realised +that she was either very happy or cruelly unhappy, she could not quite +determine which. She seemed to have what she most wanted in the +world lying at her feet, and she was dreadfully uncertain in her more +reflective moments whether she really wanted to stretch out her hand +and take it. It was all very like some situation in an Arabian +Nights tale or a story of Pagan Hellas, and consequently the more puzzling +and disconcerting to a girl brought up on the methodical lines of Victorian +Christianity. Her appeal court was in permanent session these +last few days, but it gave no decisions, at least none that she would +listen to. And the ride on her fast light-stepping little mare, +alone and unattended, through the fresh-smelling leafy lanes into unexplored +country, seemed just what she wanted at the moment. The mare made +some small delicate pretence of being roadshy, not the staring dolt-like +kind of nervousness that shows itself in an irritating hanging-back +as each conspicuous wayside object presents itself, but the nerve-flutter +of an imaginative animal that merely results in a quick whisk of the +head and a swifter bound forward. She might have paraphrased the +mental attitude of the immortalised Peter Bell into<br> +<br> +<br> +A basket underneath a tree<br> +A yellow tiger is to me,<br> +If it is nothing more.<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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 manoeuvre and try to bolt; a gate standing +ajar at the entrance to a farmyard lane provided a convenient way out +of the difficulty.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“Tell me more about the farm, please.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“You are a person to be envied,” she said to Keriway; “you +have created a fairyland, and you are living in it yourself.”<br> +<br> +“Envied?”<br> +<br> +He shot the question out with sudden bitterness. She looked down +and saw the wistful misery that had come into his face.<br> +<br> +“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.’”<br> +<br> +He had created a fairyland, but assuredly he was not living in it.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER IX<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +In the warmth of a late June morning the long shaded stretch of raked +earth, gravel-walk and rhododendron bush that is known affectionately +as the Row was alive with the monotonous movement and alert stagnation +appropriate to the time and place. The seekers after health, the +seekers after notoriety and recognition, and the lovers of good exercise +were all well represented on the galloping ground; the gravel-walk and +chairs and long seats held a population whose varied instincts and motives +would have baffled a social catalogue-maker. The children, handled +or in perambulators, might be excused from instinct or motive; they +were brought.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +One always tells oneself that the animal likes it, and one always knows +that it doesn’t.<br> +<br> +“Lady Veula is an ardent Free Trader, isn’t she?” +someone once remarked to Lady Caroline.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.’”<br> +<br> +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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“Are the Russians really such a gloomy people?”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“I only just know him. Isn’t he at an agricultural +college or something of the sort?”<br> +<br> +“Yes, studying to be a gentleman farmer, he told me. I didn’t +ask if both subjects were compulsory.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +For a preacher of wholesome truths her voice rather lacked conviction.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +And he quoted almost aloud, as one does in the exhilaration of a canter:<br> +<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“The card debt is rather a nuisance,” pursued Comus, with +fatalistic persistency.<br> +<br> +“You won seven pounds last week, didn’t you?” asked +Elaine; “don’t you put by any of your winnings to balance +losses?”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +The conversation strayed away from the fateful topic for a few moments +and then Comus brought it deliberately back to the danger zone.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +His tactics would have been excellent if he had not forgotten that unbeaten +army on his flank.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“Get rid of Joyeuse and come and take me out to lunch somewhere,” +demanded Elaine.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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</i> <i>Presse, 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.<br> +<br> +“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?”<br> +<br> +Youghal laughed.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“Yes,” said Youghal, “and he seemed quite crestfallen +when I had to say ‘no.’”<br> +<br> +“It would be horrid to disappoint him when he’s looked after +us so charmingly,” said Elaine; “tell him that we are.”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER X<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +The Rutland Galleries were crowded, especially in the neighbourhood +of the tea-buffet, by a fashionable throng of art-patrons which had +gathered to inspect Mervyn Quentock’s collection of Society portraits. +Quentock was a young artist whose abilities were just receiving due +recognition from the critics; that the recognition was not overdue he +owed largely to his perception of the fact that if one hides one’s +talent under a bushel one must be careful to point out to everyone the +exact bushel under which it is hidden. There are two manners of +receiving recognition: one is to be discovered so long after one’s +death that one’s grandchildren have to write to the papers to +establish their relationship; the other is to be discovered, like the +infant Moses, at the very outset of one’s career. Mervyn +Quentock had chosen the latter and happier manner. In an age when +many aspiring young men strive to advertise their wares by imparting +to them a freakish imbecility, Quentock turned out work that was characterised +by a pleasing delicate restraint, but he contrived to herald his output +with a certain fanfare of personal eccentricity, thereby compelling +an attention which might otherwise have strayed past his studio. +In appearance he was the ordinary cleanly young Englishman, except, +perhaps, that his eyes rather suggested a library edition of the Arabian +Nights; his clothes matched his appearance and showed no taint of the +sartorial disorder by which the bourgeois of the garden-city and the +Latin Quarter anxiously seeks to proclaim his kinship with art and thought. +His eccentricity took the form of flying in the face of some of the +prevailing social currents of the day, but as a reactionary, never as +a reformer. He produced a gasp of admiring astonishment in fashionable +circles by refusing to paint actresses - except, of course, those who +had left the legitimate drama to appear between the boards of Debrett. +He absolutely declined to execute portraits of Americans unless they +hailed from certain favoured States. His “water-colour-line,” +as a New York paper phrased it, earned for him a crop of angry criticisms +and a shoal of Transatlantic commissions, and criticism and commissions +were the things that Quentock most wanted.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +The Rev. Poltimore Vardon had once seen a resemblance in himself to +Voltaire, and had lived alongside the comparison ever since.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“You can’t prevent the heathen being converted if they choose +to be,” said Lady Caroline; “this is an age of toleration.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“Time is just as exclusive in its way as Art,” said Lady +Caroline.<br> +<br> +“In what way?” said the Reverend Poltimore.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“<i>Would</i> you mind passing that plate of sandwiches,” +asked one of the trio of young ladies, emboldened by famine.<br> +<br> +“With pleasure,” said Lady Caroline, deftly passing her +a nearly empty plate of bread-and-butter.<br> +<br> +“I meant the place of caviare sandwiches. So sorry to trouble +you,” persisted the young lady<br> +<br> +Her sorrow was misapplied; Lady Caroline had turned her attention to +a newcomer.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“To paint the right people at the wrong end may be an eccentricity, +but it is scarcely an indiscretion,” pronounced Lady Caroline.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“At any rate one can tell who it’s meant for,” said +Serena Golackly.<br> +<br> +“Oh, yes, it’s a good likeness of dear Francesca,” +admitted Ada; “of course, it flatters her.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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 - ”<br> +<br> +“Hush,” said Serena, “the Bassington boy is just behind +you.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“Do you suppose we shall all get appropriate punishments in another +world for our sins in this?” asked Quentock.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER XI<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +After the momentous lunch at the Corridor Restaurant Elaine had returned +to Manchester Square (where she was staying with one of her numerous +aunts) in a frame of mind that embraced a tangle of competing emotions. +In the first place she was conscious of a dominant feeling of relief; +in a moment of impetuosity, not wholly uninfluenced by pique, she had +settled the problem which hours of hard thinking and serious heart-searching +had brought no nearer to solution, and, although she felt just a little +inclined to be scared at the headlong manner of her final decision, +she had now very little doubt in her own mind that the decision had +been the right one. In fact the wonder seemed rather that she +should have been so long in doubt as to which of her wooers really enjoyed +her honest approval. She had been in love, these many weeks past +with an imaginary Comus, but now that she had definitely walked out +of her dreamland she saw that nearly all the qualities that had appealed +to her on his behalf had been absent from, or only fitfully present +in, the character of the real Comus. And now that she had installed +Youghal in the first place of her affections he had rapidly acquired +in her eyes some of the qualities which ranked highest in her estimation. +Like the proverbial buyer she had the happy feminine tendency of magnifying +the worth of her possession as soon as she had acquired it. And +Courtenay Youghal gave Elaine some justification for her sense of having +chosen wisely. Above all other things, selfish and cynical though +he might appear at times, he was unfailingly courteous and considerate +towards her. That was a circumstance which would always have carried +weight with her in judging any man; in this case its value was enormously +heightened by contrast with the behaviour of her other wooer. +And Youghal had in her eyes the advantage which the glamour of combat, +even the combat of words and wire-pulling, throws over the fighter. +He stood well in the forefront of a battle which however carefully stage-managed, +however honeycombed with personal insincerities and overlaid with calculated +mock-heroics, really meant something, really counted for good or wrong +in the nation’s development and the world’s history. +Shrewd parliamentary observers might have warned her that Youghal would +never stand much higher in the political world than he did at present, +as a brilliant Opposition freelance, leading lively and rather meaningless +forays against the dull and rather purposeless foreign policy of a Government +that was scarcely either to be blamed for or congratulated on its handling +of foreign affairs. The young politician had not the strength +of character or convictions that keeps a man naturally in the forefront +of affairs and gives his counsels a sterling value, and on the other +hand his insincerity was not deep enough to allow him to pose artificially +and successfully as a leader of men and shaper of movements. For +the moment, however, his place in public life was sufficiently marked +out to give him a secure footing in that world where people are counted +individually and not in herds. The woman whom he would make his +wife would have the chance, too, if she had the will and the skill, +to become an individual who counted.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“From there, of course, the road would be open to him to higher +things.”<br> +<br> +“Yes,” said Elaine, “he might become an alderman.”<br> +<br> +“Have you seen their photographs, taken together?” asked +Mrs. Brankley, abandoning the subject of Egbert’s prospective +career.<br> +<br> +“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?”<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“My marriage with Egbert will, of course, enlarge the sphere of +my life enormously,” pursued Suzette.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“He looks bookish,” said Elaine, with a critical glance +at the photograph.<br> +<br> +“Oh, he’s not at all a bookworm,” said Suzette quickly, +“though he’s tremendously well-read. He’s quite +the man of action.”<br> +<br> +“Does he hunt?” asked Elaine.<br> +<br> +“No, he doesn’t get much time or opportunity for riding.”<br> +<br> +“What a pity,” commented Elaine; “I don’t think +I could marry a man who wasn’t fond of riding.”<br> +<br> +“Of course that’s a matter of taste,” said Suzette, +stiffly; “horsey men are not usually gifted with overmuch brains, +are they?”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +A young man entering the room at this moment caused a diversion that +was rather welcome to Suzette.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“He is exactly the husband I should have chosen for you, Suzette.”<br> +<br> +For the second time that afternoon Suzette felt a sense of waning enthusiasm +for one of her possessions.<br> +<br> +Mrs. Brankley detected the note of ironical congratulation in her visitor’s +verdict.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“And when are we to hear of your engagement, my dear?”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“But who is it? Is it the young man who was with you in +the Park this morning?” asked Suzette.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“A flying-man?” asked Mrs. Brankley.<br> +<br> +“Courtenay Youghal,” said Elaine.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER XII<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A door closed and Francesca Bassington sat alone in her well-beloved +drawing-room. The visitor who had been enjoying the hospitality +of her afternoon-tea table had just taken his departure. The tête-à-tête +had not been a pleasant one, at any rate as far as Francesca was concerned, +but at least it had brought her the information for which she had been +seeking. Her rôle of looker-on from a tactful distance had +necessarily left her much in the dark concerning the progress of the +all-important wooing, but during the last few hours she had, on slender +though significant evidence, exchanged her complacent expectancy for +a conviction that something had gone wrong. She had spent the +previous evening at her brother’s house, and had naturally seen +nothing of Comus in that uncongenial quarter; neither had he put in +an appearance at the breakfast table the following morning. She +had met him in the hall at eleven o’clock, and he had hurried +past her, merely imparting the information that he would not be in till +dinner that evening. He spoke in his sulkiest tone, and his face +wore a look of defeat, thinly masked by an air of defiance; it was not +the defiance of a man who is losing, but of one who has already lost.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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 - ”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“Just think,” she buzzed inconsequently, “my sister +in Cambridgeshire has hatched out thirty-three White Orpington chickens +in her incubator!”<br> +<br> +“What eggs did she put in it?” asked Francesca.<br> +<br> +“Oh, some very special strain of White Orpington.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“Let us be devoutly thankful that they can’t,” said +Francesca, with a shuddering recollection of the luncheon-table conversation.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“So you have lost your chance with the heiress,” she remarked +abruptly.<br> +<br> +“Yes,” said Comus, coolly; “Courtenay Youghal has +added her to his other successes.”<br> +<br> +“And you have added her to your other failures,” pursued +Francesca, relentlessly; her temper had been tried that day beyond ordinary +limits.<br> +<br> +“I thought you seemed getting along so well with her,” she +continued, as Comus remained uncommunicative.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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!”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“And to think she should be captured by Courtenay Youghal,” +said Francesca, bitterly; “I’ve always deplored your intimacy +with that young man.”<br> +<br> +“It’s hardly my intimacy with him that’s made Elaine +accept him,” said Comus.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“I think,” said Comus, “that is the best description +that anyone has ever given of me.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +Comus laughed mockingly.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“Can’t we sell something?” asked Comus.<br> +<br> +He made no actual suggestion as to what should be sacrificed, but he +was looking straight at the Van der Meulen.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“When I am dead my things can be sold and dispersed. As +long as I am alive I prefer to keep them by me.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“Let’s go and dress for dinner.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER XIII<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Comus found his way to his seat in the stalls of the Straw Exchange +Theatre and turned to watch the stream of distinguished and distinguishable +people who made their appearance as a matter of course at a First Night +in the height of the Season. Pit and gallery were already packed +with a throng, tense, expectant and alert, that waited for the rise +of the curtain with the eager patience of a terrier watching a dilatory +human prepare for outdoor exercises. Stalls and boxes filled slowly +and hesitatingly with a crowd whose component units seemed for the most +part to recognise the probability that they were quite as interesting +as any play they were likely to see. Those who bore no particular +face-value themselves derived a certain amount of social dignity from +the near neighbourhood of obvious notabilities; if one could not obtain +recognition oneself there was some vague pleasure in being able to recognise +notoriety at intimately close quarters.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.”<br> +<br> +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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +His hopes and sympathies were notoriously on the Ministerial side.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“For the Government to fall on a matter of conscience,” +he said, “would be like a man cutting himself with a safety razor.”<br> +<br> +Lady Caroline purred a gentle approval.<br> +<br> +“I’m afraid it’s true, Archdeacon,” she said.<br> +<br> +No one can effectively defend a Government when it’s been in office +several years. The Archdeacon took refuge in light skirmishing.<br> +<br> +“I believe Lady Caroline sees the makings of a great Socialist +statesman in you, Youghal,” he observed.<br> +<br> +“Great Socialist statesmen aren’t made, they’re stillborn,” +replied Youghal.<br> +<br> +“What is the play about to-night?” asked a pale young woman +who had taken no part in the talk.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“Whenever I hear his music I feel that I want to go up into a +mountain and pray. Can you understand that feeling?”<br> +<br> +The girl to whom she was unburdening herself shook her head.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“We all said ‘it can’t be Captain Parminter, because +he’s always been sweet on Joan,’ and then Emily said - ”<br> +<br> +The curtain went up, and Emily’s contribution to the discussion +had to be held over till the entr’acte.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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?”<br> +<br> +“I’ve never trodden on a pet lamb,” said Lady Caroline, +“so I’ve no idea what its behaviour would be under the circumstances.”<br> +<br> +“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?”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +In the third interval, as he gazed round at the chattering house, someone +touched him on the arm. It was Lady Veula Croot.<br> +<br> +“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.’”<br> +<br> +Lady Veula moved back to her seat, with her pleasant smile on her lips +and the look of infinite weariness in her eyes.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“And there, dear lady,” concluded the Colonel, “were +the eleven dead pigeons. What had become of the bandicoot no one +ever knew.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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 paean 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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“So the Government is going to climb down, after all,” she +said, with a provocative assumption of private information on the subject.<br> +<br> +“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 - ”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +For her, at any rate, the comedy had had a happy ending.<br> +<br> +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.”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER XIV<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +The farewell dinner which Francesca had hurriedly organised in honour +of her son’s departure threatened from the outset to be a doubtfully +successful function. In the first place, as he observed privately, +there was very little of Comus and a good deal of farewell in it. +His own particular friends were unrepresented. Courtenay Youghal +was out of the question; and though Francesca would have stretched a +point and welcomed some of his other male associates of whom she scarcely +approved, he himself had been opposed to including any of them in the +invitations. On the other hand, as Henry Greech had provided Comus +with this job that he was going out to, and was, moreover, finding part +of the money for the necessary outfit, Francesca had felt it her duty +to ask him and his wife to the dinner; the obtuseness that seems to +cling to some people like a garment throughout their life had caused +Mr. Greech to accept the invitation. When Comus heard of the circumstance +he laughed long and boisterously; his spirits, Francesca noted, seemed +to be rising fast as the hour for departure drew near.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“Thank you all the same for describing it,” said Comus.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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 - +”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“My dear mother,” cried Comus, “you must have been +drinking healths all the afternoon to make your hand so unsteady.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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?”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“At any rate you give them the opportunity,” said Comus, +cryptically.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“I did not know you kept a dog,” said Lady Veula.<br> +<br> +“We don’t,” said Comus, “there isn’t one +in the house.”<br> +<br> +“I could have sworn I saw one follow you across the hall this +evening,” she said.<br> +<br> +“A small black dog, something like a schipperke?” asked +Comus in a low voice.<br> +<br> +“Yes, that was it.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“Have you ever seen it before?” Lady Veula asked quickly.<br> +<br> +“Once, when I was six years old. It followed my father downstairs.”<br> +<br> +Lady Veula said nothing. She knew that Comus had lost his father +at the age of six.<br> +<br> +In the drawing-room Serena made nervous excuses for her talkative friend.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“I should say he was a very good man,” said Mrs. Greech; +she had forgiven the mutilation of her soup-plate story.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“What a tragedy life is,” she said, aloud to herself.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER XV<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Elaine Youghal sat at lunch in the Speise Saal of one of Vienna’s +costlier hotels. The double-headed eagle, with its “K.u.K.” +legend, everywhere met the eye and announced the imperial favour in +which the establishment basked. Some several square yards of yellow +bunting, charged with the image of another double-headed eagle, floating +from the highest flag-staff above the building, betrayed to the initiated +the fact that a Russian Grand Duke was concealed somewhere on the premises. +Unannounced by heraldic symbolism but unconcealable by reason of nature’s +own blazonry, were several citizens and citizenesses of the great republic +of the Western world. One or two Cobdenite members of the British +Parliament engaged in the useful task of proving that the cost of living +in Vienna was on an exorbitant scale, flitted with restrained importance +through a land whose fatness they had come to spy out; every fancied +over-charge in their bills was welcome as providing another nail in +the coffin of their fiscal opponents. It is the glory of democracies +that they may be misled but never driven. Here and there, like +brave deeds in a dust-patterned world, flashed and glittered the sumptuous +uniforms of representatives of the Austrian military caste. Also +in evidence, at discreet intervals, were stray units of the Semetic +tribe that nineteen centuries of European neglect had been unable to +mislay.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“What Mr. Lonkins wants is a real <i>deep</i> cherry pie,” +announced a lady in a tone of dramatic and honest conviction.<br> +<br> +“Why, yes, that is so,” corroborated a gentleman who was +apparently the Mr. Lonkins in question; “a real <i>deep</i> cherry +pie.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“Real <i>deep</i> cherry pie,” assented Mr. Lonkins.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +Elaine’s aunts were conscientiously worldly; they were the natural +outcome of a stock that had been conscientiously straight-laced for +many generations.<br> +<br> +Elaine had progressed to the pancake stage before Courtenay returned.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“What is your character?” asked Madame Kelnicort that evening, +as they uncloaked, preparatory to entering the already crowded ball-room.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +A little later in the evening Elaine found herself standing out a dance +with a grave young gentleman from the Russian Embassy.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“Am I an animal?” asked Elaine.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“Perhaps,” said Elaine, with a tinge of bitterness in her +voice, “perhaps I am a vegetable.”<br> +<br> +“I think you most remind me of a picture,” said the Russian.<br> +<br> +It was not the first time Elaine had heard the simile.<br> +<br> +“I know,” she said, “the Narrow Gallery at the Louvre; +attributed to Leonardo da Vinci.”<br> +<br> +Evidently the impression she made on people was solely one of externals.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +The aunts were discreetly inquisitive as to the previous evening’s +entertainment.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“The secret of enjoying a honeymoon,” said Mrs. Goldbrook +afterwards to her sister, “is not to attempt too much.”<br> +<br> +“You mean - ?”<br> +<br> +“Courtenay is content to try and keep one person amused and happy, +and he thoroughly succeeds.”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“He has also,” said Mrs. Goldbrook, “helped her to +make the next biggest mistake of her life - marrying Courtenay Youghal.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER XVI<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +It was late afternoon by the banks of a swiftly rushing river, a river +that gave back a haze of heat from its waters as though it were some +stagnant steaming lagoon, and yet seemed to be whirling onward with +the determination of a living thing, perpetually eager and remorseless, +leaping savagely at any obstacle that attempted to stay its course; +an unfriendly river, to whose waters you committed yourself at your +peril. Under the hot breathless shade of the trees on its shore +arose that acrid all-pervading smell that seems to hang everywhere about +the tropics, a smell as of some monstrous musty still-room where herbs +and spices have been crushed and distilled and stored for hundreds of +years, and where the windows have seldom been opened. In the dazzling +heat that still held undisputed sway over the scene, insects and birds +seemed preposterously alive and active, flitting their gay colours through +the sunbeams, and crawling over the baked dust in the full swing and +pursuit of their several businesses; the flies engaged in Heaven knows +what, and the fly-catchers busy with the flies. Beasts and humans +showed no such indifference to the temperature; the sun would have to +slant yet further downward before the earth would become a fit arena +for their revived activities. In the sheltered basement of a wayside +rest-house a gang of native hammock-bearers slept or chattered drowsily +through the last hours of the long mid-day halt; wide awake, yet almost +motionless in the thrall of a heavy lassitude, their European master +sat alone in an upper chamber, staring out through a narrow window-opening +at the native village, spreading away in thick clusters of huts girt +around with cultivated vegetation. It seemed a vast human ant-hill, +which would presently be astir with its teeming human life, as though +the Sun God in his last departing stride had roused it with a careless +kick. Even as Comus watched he could see the beginnings of the +evening’s awakening. Women, squatting in front of their +huts, began to pound away at the rice or maize that would form the evening +meal, girls were collecting their water pots preparatory to a walk down +to the river, and enterprising goats made tentative forays through gaps +in the ill-kept fences of neighbouring garden plots; their hurried retreats +showed that here at least someone was keeping alert and wakeful vigil. +Behind a hut perched on a steep hillside, just opposite to the rest-house, +two boys were splitting wood with a certain languid industry; further +down the road a group of dogs were leisurely working themselves up to +quarrelling pitch. Here and there, bands of evil-looking pigs +roamed about, busy with foraging excursions that came unpleasantly athwart +the border-line of scavenging. And from the trees that bounded +and intersected the village rose the horrible, tireless, spiteful-sounding +squawking of the iron-throated crows.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +The words of a well-known old song, the wistful cry of a lost cause, +rang with insistent mockery through his brain:<br> +<br> +<br> +“Better loved you canna be,<br> +Will ye ne’er come back again?”<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +And in his unutterable loneliness he bowed his head on his arms, that +he might not see the joyous scrambling frolic on yonder hillside.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER XVII<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +The bleak rawness of a grey December day held sway over St. James’s +Park, that sanctuary of lawn and tree and pool, into which the bourgeois +innovator has rushed ambitiously time and again, to find that he must +take the patent leather from off his feet, for the ground on which he +stands is hallowed ground.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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?”<br> +<br> +“I am waiting for very bad news,” said Francesca, and Lady +Caroline knew what had happened.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +Francesca crossed the Mall and the carriage drove on.<br> +<br> +“Heaven help that poor woman,” said Lady Caroline; which +was, for her, startlingly like a prayer.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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?<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“I have bad news for you, Francesca, I’m sorry to say,” +Henry announced. Had he heard, too?<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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. . . ”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE UNBEARABLE BASSINGTON ***<br> +<pre> + +******This file should be named nbrbl10h.htm or nbrbl10h.zip****** +Corrected EDITIONS of our EBooks get a new NUMBER, nbrbl11h.htm +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, nbrbl10ah.htm + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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