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The Oyster

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Title: The Oyster

Author: Peer


        
Release date: February 8, 2011 [eBook #35217]
                Most recently updated: January 7, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OYSTER ***




Produced by Andrew Sly, Al Haines and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net











The Oyster


By

a Peer




London

John Long, Limited

Norris Street, Haymarket

[_All rights reserved_]




_First Published in 1914_




_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

In Two Editions, 6s. and 1s. net.

  Theo
  The Hard Way
  The Decoy Duck
  A Wife Imperative
  To Justify the Means
  The Ordeal of Silence

_All Published by_

JOHN LONG, LIMITED, London




The Oyster




CHAPTER I


Gleams of bright sunshine came through the windows of the trim little
flat into the drawing-room furnished in miniature aping of luxury. The
chairs and tables were Sheraton--Sheraton passably imitated--the
covering rich brocade. Soft white cushion covers, fine as cobwebs,
clothed the big squares stuffed with feathers. Late narcissi and early
roses made the air heavy with scent. The place was small, but it
carried the air of comfort; it was a miniature of its roomy brothers
and sisters in big town houses. The door of the dining-room, standing
open, showed the same taste. Polished inlaid mahogany, good silver,
embroidered table linen. Early as it was there had been strawberries
for breakfast, and cream, and hot bread.

"Luncheon at the Berkeley. It will be a good one too. I'm driving with
Denise to that show at the Duchess's. Tea at the Carlton. Dining with
Robbie at his club; the Gay Delight afterwards; supper at Jules. Oh!
the days are not half long enough."

Long-limbed, slender, gracefully pretty, Esme Carteret turned over the
leaves of her engagement-book. Her blue eyes sparkled behind dark
lashes; her skin was fair and carefully looked after. She was so
bright, so dazzling, that at first sight one missed the selfishness of
the weak, red-lipped mouth, the shallowness of the blue eyes.

"Not half long enough," she repeated. "Oh, Bertie, you--"

A flashing smile, a hand held out, yet in the greeting no look of the
real love some women feel for their husbands.

"Well, Butterfly." Bertie Carteret had a bundle of letters in his
hands; he was opening them methodically with an ivory cutter.

A dark man, with a quiet, strong face. Dazzled, attracted by this fair
piece of womanhood, loving her as men love when they do not stop to
look further than the flesh and blood they covet, and so, married. And
now, loving her still, but with eyes which were no longer blinded, with
little lines of thought crinkling round his eyes when he looked at her,
yet still her slave if she ordered him, thrilling to the satin softness
of her skin, the scented masses of her hair.

"Well, my Butterfly," he said, opening another letter.

Esme did not pay her own bills. She had not as yet sufficient wisdom to
keep the house accounts. It saved trouble to let Bertie take them.

"Esme child!" He looked at the total written under a long line of
figures. "Esme! those cushion covers are not made of gold, are they?"

"No--hand embroidery," she said carelessly. "Everyone gets them."

"They seem to represent gold, you extravagant child."

"Dollie Maynard had them; she kind of crowed over mine last day we had
bridge here. I must have things same as other people, Bert. I can't be
shabby and dowdy."

"So it seems." He opened several other letters. "Well, we can just do
it, girlie, so it doesn't matter. Breakfast now. I was working hard
this morning."

"And I was eating strawberries. Bobbie sent them. There are eggs for
you."

"Once upon a time laid by a hen," he said resignedly. "Got the stalls
for to-night. That blue gown suits you, Butterfly."

"It ought to," she said, coming in to give him his breakfast. "It cost
fifteen guineas."

Bertie Carteret was adjutant of volunteers in London; he had taken it
to please Esme, who would not endure the idea of a country station in
Ireland.

Now Carteret was going abroad, his adjutancy over. His battalion was in
South Africa; he was to join it there until he got something else to
do. Esme flashed out at the thought of the place.

"Dust and bottled butter; black servants and white ants. No thank you,
Bertie--I won't go."

No one expected sacrifice from Esme; she was too pretty, too brilliant,
to endure worry or trouble. Bertie Carteret smiled at her. She should
stay at home. They would soon get something else to do, and he would
come back.

Esme bent across to him that day, her face set in unwonted thought.

"Just think if your Uncle Hugh had no sons," she said, "he'd leave you
everything. We'd be rich then."

Bertie laughed. Two boys made barrier between him and hopes of the
Carteret money.

A pleasure-loving pair, absolutely happy in their way. Well enough off
to have all they wanted, and pleasant enough to get the rest from their
friends.

They chattered through breakfast of engagements, parties, trips, of
days filled to the brim. Bertie was lunching at the Bath Club. Esme,
with her friend, Denise Blakeney, at the Carlton.

"And oh, Bert--ring up those fruiterer people. Dollie dines here
to-morrow. We must have strawberries, and asparagus--the fat kind--and
peas, Bert. She had them--Dollie. I don't want her to go away and talk
of 'those poor Carterets and their mutton chops'--and send in matron
glaces, Bert, and sweets from Buzzard's, will you, and some Petit Fours
for tea."

"Anything else?" he said. "Esme, do you know, my Butterfly, that we
spend every penny we have, and a little more?"

With a laugh she slipped a supple arm about his neck. "And why not?"
she said lightly--"why not, Sir Croaker?"

He drew her to his knee, kissing her firm neck, her soft arms--on fire
to her touch.

"She was a witch," he told her, "and a Butterfly, hovering over a man's
heart." She should have her strawberries, her sweeties. "And--what is
it?"

For Esme had turned white, put her hand to her throat, a sudden nausea
seizing her.

"I've been like that twice before," she said; "it's the racket. Bertie,
I don't feel up to luncheon now, and I like to be hungry when I lunch
with Denise. Oh, thank you, dear."

For he brought smelling-salts, holding the fragrant, pungent, scented
stuff to her nostrils. He was genuinely anxious.

"It's nothing," she said lightly; "something disagreed with me."

"Lunching with Denise?" He lighted his pipe. Carteret was not a
cigarette-smoker. "Ever see Blakeney with her now, girlie?"

"No-o," she said reluctantly.

"H'm! I hear they're not too good pals. Denise has been playing the
fool with young Jerry Roche--the 'wily fish' as they call him. She'd
better not go too far with Cyril Blakeney. I was at school with
him--came just when he left. But I knew his brother there also. I tell
you, Esme, they're a bad lot to vex."

Esme shook her head thoughtfully.

"Hope Jimmie Helmsley won't be at luncheon," Carteret went on. "Steer
clear of him, old dear."

"I'm lunching with him on Saturday, Bert."

"Well, don't again. He's a beast. Of course there's no fear of you, but
there was the Grange Stukeley girl, poor soul, married off to a parson
cousin; and Lettice Greene, and--oh, heaps of his victims."

There are some women who create trust. The dazzle about Esme was not
one of warmth. It was cold as she was selfish. Her husband, without
realizing this, yet knew that he might trust her implicitly, that
beyond mere careless flirtation nothing amused her.

"Well, good-bye, Esme. I must go to do a few things which don't want
doing, even as this morning I paraded unwilling youths at seven."

Carteret strolled out. Esme picked up the salts bottle, sniffing at it.
She rang for a trim, superior maid to take away, going back herself to
the pretty drawing-room to write a few notes.

"I'm feeling rotten," wrote Esme to a girl friend, "slack and seedy--"
and then she jumped up, crying out aloud.

"Not that! Not that! Not the end of their dual in the treble. Not the
real cares of life forced on her. Oh, it could not be--it could not!"
Esme raged round the room, crying hysterically, fighting off an
imaginary enemy with her hands.

It would mean a move from the little expensive flat. Doctors, nurses,
extra maids swallowing their income.

"It can't be!" she stormed. "I'm mad!" and rushed off to dress.

She looked hungrily at her slim figure in her glass, watched her maid
fasten hooks and buttons until the perfectly-cut early summer gown
seemed to cling to the slender figure. There was that, too--a figure
spoilt. Dowdy, disfiguring clothes, and fear, the fear of the
inevitable. She was counting, calculating as the maid finished
fastening her dress, brought her a cloudy feather wrap, deep brown over
the creamy gown, long white gloves, a scented handkerchief, a bunch of
deep pink roses.

"Shall I alter Madame's yellow gown?" Marie wondered at Esme's silence.
"Madame is weary of its present aspect, with silver and violet. I can
make it new--and the waist, it seemed a little tight last evening for
Madame."

"It wasn't," Esme flung out. "It's quite right. Get me new corsets,
Marie--these are old. A taxi, yes."

Speeding westward swiftly, but with dread flying as swiftly. Not
that--not the ending of her careless, selfish life.

"Why, Esme, what a pretty gown; but you look pale, dear."

Lady Blakeney was at the Berkeley. A big, soft woman, with a weak,
pretty face, palpably face-creamed, powdered, tinted, yet the whole
effect that of a carefully-done picture, harmonizing, never clashing.
With her brown hair, her deep brown eyes, she was a foil to flashing,
dazzling Esme.

"Just four, you see," Lady Blakeney sauntered to her table. She was in
dull rose, exquisitely dressed.

"Yes, Jerry and Jimmie Helmsley."

Lord Gerald Roche, slim, distinctly young, just getting over being
deeply in love, and still trying to think he was a victim to it, more
impressive, as if to whip his jaded fancy, came in; a bunch of rare
mauve orchids, fresh from a florist's, in his hand. Behind him, Jimmie
Gore Helmsley, a tall man, dark, with satyr's ears, thick, sensual
lips, and black eyes of cool determination. No one realized Jimmie's
fascination until they spoke to him. It was in his manner, his power of
subtle flattery, of making the woman he spoke to feel herself someone
apart, not of common attraction, but a goddess, an allurement.

Unkind men, unfascinated, called Jimmie's black eyes boiled sloes, and
swore that he rouged his cheeks; but women raved about him.

Jimmie was a pursuer of many women, a relentless one if his fancy were
touched; there were girls--girls of his own rank of life--who whispered
his name bitterly. The plucking of a bird sometimes amused him more
than the wearing of a full-blown rose.

"Ah you! the sunshine is here now." He bent over Esme's hands, and his
flattery was as water pattering off polished marble. Esme had no use
for the Gore Helmsleys of life; she had laughed when he had given her a
flower as though it were made of diamonds. Jimmie made things as cheap
for himself as he could.

But Esme talked to him now. Jerry was almost whispering to Denise
Blakeney, making his adoration foolishly conspicuous.

The restaurant was filling. Denise had ordered luncheon; she never
trusted to chance. A soufflet of fish, asparagus, grilled fillets of
beef.

As the fish was handed to them, Denise Blakeney started and flushed
painfully. Her young admirer had been showing her a jewel flashing in a
tiny box--a pear-shaped pink pearl.

"Oh!" she cried sharply, and pushed the box away.

A bluff man, with heavy features, had gone up the room and sat down at
a small table. His companion was an elderly woman, dowdy, rather
fussily impressed.

"It's Cyrrie!" said Denise. "Cyrrie and his old Aunt Grace. He asked me
to have her at Grosvenor Square to-day, and I told him a fib to
escape." Denise fidgeted uneasily, her colour changing. "I told one
fib," she said, "now it will take a dozen more to make it credible."

"The fib is a mental fly," said Jimmie, laughing; "he's grown large
quickly. Cheer up, Milady, don't look tragic."

The big man nodded to his wife with a careless smile. It is an
Englishman's need to be outwardly pleasant, to glaze a volcano with a
laugh--in public.

"He hasn't scolded me enough lately," said Denise, grimly. "And the
nature of husbands being to scold, it makes me nervous." She watched
Cyrrie narrowly.

"Aunt Grace is having boiled chicken, specially ordered for her; she
will finish up with stewed fruit and rice. It makes it so difficult
when she comes. My cook is uncertain as to boiling chickens plainly."
Lady Blakeney tried to fling off her depression, to do her duty as
hostess. She muttered something sharply to Lord Gerald, she talked a
little too fast, a little too gaily.

Esme would flash smiles, planning some future gaiety, forget for a
moment, and then, across her happiness, a cloud rose looming,
threatening. Oh! it could not be! It must not be! There were so many
things she meant to do. Bertie's appointment was up; he was going to
South Africa until they got something else, or his other battalion came
to Aldershot. Exchanges could always be managed. And Esme was due at
Trouville in August; she was going on to Scotland; she had been asked
to Cheshire to hunt for two months. It must not be!

Once, in a spasm of fear, she clenched her hand, crushing her glass in
her fingers, spilling her champagne. Esme drank champagne on a hot May
day because it looked well to see it there, because it brightened her
wits, made pleasure keener. She liked expensive dishes, ordering
them recklessly when she was asked out, taking the best of everything.
She was never tired, never knew sleeplessness; could dance until four
and be out riding next morning, with her bright colour undimmed.
Perfect health makes perfect temper. Esme was an unruffled companion,
provided she got her own way. Down in the country, without amusement,
she would have fretted, beaten against bars of dulness.

"Oh, Mrs Carteret!" she heard Jimmie exclaim as the amber liquid
vanished, as the broken glass tinkled together on the cloth. "What
dream moved you?" he whispered, bending close. "What, lady fair?"

A man who could throw meaning into his lightest word, here it was
implied, had she thought of hidden things; the eyes burning into hers
expressed that she had thought of him. Though every road in the map of
love was known to Jimmie Gore Helmsley, he hinted at unknown turns, at
heights unclimbed to each fresh companion he took by the route, knowing
how women love mystery and hate the flat, soft paths they can see too
well.

"Of what?" he whispered. "If I dared to think. It would make Friday--"

"Don't dare," Esme flashed at him mockingly. "And Friday--where do we
lunch on Friday?" she asked carelessly. "Let it be near Dover Street; I
must be at the club at half-past two."

Esme looked shrewdly at the man, wondered what women saw in the
sloe-black eyes, the high-coloured cheeks; wondered why girls had made
fools of themselves for him.

"I heard of an old friend of yours to-day," she said--"Gracie
Stukeley--I forget her married name."

Jimmie nodded carelessly; there were no chinks in his armour. He gave
no thought to a little fool who had come flying to his rooms because
someone vexed her, who prattled to him of divorce; he was rather fond,
in a way, of his big, swearing, hard-riding wife. He remembered that
Grace Stukeley had to be married off to save her people's name.

"Nice girl," he said carelessly; "but a fool."

"Ah, Denise! You did not lunch with Eva? She put you off an hour ago; I
see."

Big Cyril paused as he passed his wife. Denise made sweetly-drawled
apology to Aunt Grace.

"I see," said Sir Cyril, his big face set a little grimly; "and now,
whither away, Denise? To drive--to the cloth show? Well--we meet at
dinner."

"Yes--to drive;" but first Denise knew that she had meant to go home to
spend an hour with Jerry in her boudoir. And now she was afraid; she
faltered and flushed. Would not Aunt Grace drive? Esme could come any
day.

Aunt Grace, easily flattered, gravely believing the previous
engagement, accepted willingly.

She quite understood how difficult it was to find time to receive
visitors from the country. Engagements were sacred. The vicar had never
forgiven her once because she forgot to go to tea to meet the bishop's
wife, and the hot buns were overcooked waiting for her. Mrs Lemon made
a speciality of hot buns. Grace Bullingham chattered on, delighted with
her luncheon, her day in London; but Sir Cyril stood silent, a curious
smile on his lips.

"You're coming, Cyrrie? Denise, isn't Cyrrie coming?"

"The electric limousine of the moment has only room for two--and an
interloper," said Blakeney. "No, I'm not coming, Aunt Grace. I should
be the interloper. But I'll meet you at four at the station, the car
can take you there, and--"

Denise was still flustered; still talking nervously. She arranged to
meet Esme again; she fussed uneasily, afraid that Jerry might be openly
impressive, that he might try to whisper his regret.

"Now, auntie, come along. Au revoir, Esme. Good-bye, Lord Gerald. See
you some time next week--to luncheon on Sunday if there's no other
attraction."

Something fell with a little clatter on the pavement. Sir Cyril stooped
and picked it up.

"You've dropped this," he said to his wife.

It was a pear-shaped pink pearl set with tiny diamonds, a valuable toy.

Denise took it from him, hesitating.

"A pretty thing," said Blakeney, quietly. "Be more careful of it,
Denise."

"Sit and smoke a cigarette with me," Esme heard Gore Helmsley's
caressing voice close to her, "in my club. And look here--I've a lovely
scheme--listen!"

The scheme was unrolled simply. As Carteret would be away, Esme must
come to Leicestershire for a few days in the winter. He had a lodge
there; she could get another girl to come.

"I'll lend you horses," said Jimmie. "You'd sell them for me with your
riding. Brutally frank, ain't I, but you know I must keep going. Come
for a month."

Another month's hunting after Christmas; the fun of staying with three
men. Four or five days a week on perfect mounts. Bridge in the
evenings; the planning of tea-gowns, the airing of new habits.

She was not afraid of Jimmie, or of any man. Esme did not know the
lower depths Gore Helmsley was capable of in hours when he mixed with
the underworld--the great stream which glides beneath London's surface.

"I'd love to," Esme began.

And then again the sudden fear. May--this was May. In January there
might be no hunting, no enjoyment, nothing but a weary waiting for what
must be.

"I'll come," she said gaily; "I must have my hunting. Oh! I must!"

Gore Helmsley smiled softly. "And--drop a hint to Denise Blakeney to go
slow," he said. "Those big men think a lot."




CHAPTER II


May made her brilliant, treacherous way across her allotted span of
days. A thing of sunshine, a lady of bitter winds, she laid her finger
on London's pulse and felt it throb to life beneath her touch. She saw
the golden sacrifices made to the gods of the season; money poured out
as water in the huge city; money spent everywhere; in the crowded
shops; in stately _salons_, where the great dressmakers created their
models; on cabs and motors; on fruit and flowers and vegetables out of
season--since it is ordained that when the gifts of the earth come to
their ordinary time your entertainer has no use for them.

Strawberries in June are mere berries of no worth; asparagus in May
becomes a comrade to cabbage. It is only that which costs much money
which is of value in the eyes of the rich.

Hundreds of pounds on roses to decorate walls for one night; odd
hundreds on a gown which will never be worn twice; the clerks, the
poor, look on without envy, merely with admiration, with a glow perhaps
of pride for the great country which can pour out gold as water.

Esme Carteret, in a soft muslin gown, sat in her pretty drawing-room;
sat for a moment, jumped up restlessly, trying to escape her thoughts.

Suspicion had become certainty; there was no escape save through folly
or worse; her easy happiness was at an end.

"Vilette has 'phoned, madame. She wishes to know if you will have your
gown for Cup day quite tight, with a soft chiffon coat, she says."

"I'll think of it, Marie. No, tell her not to; make it loose, soft."

Marie coughed discreetly. Marie guessed--or knew.

Esme reddened, tore at a pink carnation, pulling its fragrant petals to
pieces.

In ten minutes her guests would be there; she would have to talk to
them, to laugh and chatter, and not show her uneasiness.

Dollie Maynard, fluttering in, a slender, bright-eyed woman, brainless
and yet sharp-witted, weighing men and women by what they could give
her. Denise Blakeney was coming; they were all going on to Ranelagh.
Esme's flat was not much out of the way.

Esme's little lunches were perfection in their way; there was sure to
be some highly-spiced story to be discussed; someone would have
transgressed or be about to transgress, someone would already have
given London food for gossip.

"Esme, dear! what lovely flowers!" Dollie's quick eyes appraised the
roses. "Oh! extravagant Esme!--or is it Esme well beloved, with a
someone who wastes his income at a florist's."

"In this case--my lawful spouse! He sent them in yesterday." Esme
omitted to say that she had asked for them.

"You are a model pair, Esme." Dollie sat down; she was a woman who was
never hardly dressed; chiffons, laces seemed necessary to soften her
sharp little face. "You've all you want. Oh--Denise!"

Denise Blakeney, looking worried--her soft, weak face was drawn a
little. Dollie was fluttering softness; Denise Blakeney solid wealth;
the pearls on her throat were worth a fortune; the diamonds pinned
about her dress splendid in their flashing purity.

Dollie detested Esme because she did so much on half the Maynards'
income; she envied Denise deeply.

"It's a mystery how the Carterets manage," Dollie would whisper. "A
mystery--unless--" and then came the whisper which kills reputation,
the hint which sets the world talking, in this case generally put aside
with an "Oh! they've enough, those two, and people are very good to
her--she's so pretty."

Another time Esme would have been proud of her luncheon; the soles in
cunning sauce; the soufflet of peas; the cutlets; the savoury--Esme
prided herself on original savouries. There was hock which was owed to
bright smiles to a Society wine merchant, who sent it to her at cost
price.

On other days Esme would have smiled to herself at Dollie Maynard's
peevish envy, at the praise veiled by pricks of innuendo.

"Esme dear, you might be a millionaire. How delicious this hock is.
Holbrook keeps it, but it's beyond poor little me; he told me the
price. But to you perhaps he relents."

Coffee, liqueurs, cigarettes; then Dollie fluttered away, called for by
friends.

"Shall we go?"--Denise Blakeney strolled to the window--"or shall I
send the car away? Esme, I'm in bad spirits; it's raining, too!"

"And I am in bad spirits." Esme looked pinched, almost unhealthy. "Yes,
tell her to come back, Denise--let's talk."

Speech is the safety valve of sorrow; a trouble which can be spoken of
will not hurt gravely. It did Esme good to fling out her fears--to tell
of what might--what would be.

"It will upset everything," she moaned. "Scotland--the winter
hunting--and then the expense afterwards. We were just right together,
Bertie and I."

Denise listened to the outburst, almost astonished, scarcely
comprehending; half wistfully--she had no child; they would not have
worried her. Her empty life might have been so different if they had
come to her.

"And Bertie," she said, "he hates it, as you do?"

"He would, of course. He doesn't know. He would fuss and
sentimentalize. Oh! Denise!" Esme began to cry hysterically. "It will
spoil everything. Something will have to be given up."

Denise looked at her thoughtfully. This sheer selfishness was beyond
her comprehension.

"Perhaps when I was thirty," sobbed Esme, "or thirty-five, and didn't
want to fly about."

"And then"--Denise Blakeney lighted another cigarette--"then, my Esme,
you might pray for the child you want--in vain."

She got up, her weak mouth set slackly, her blue eyes shining.

"Es--I'm in mortal fear--fear of Cyril."

Esme stopped crying to listen.

"He'll divorce me," said Denise, dully. "He's off to Central Africa or
somewhere now, but I know he means to, and what troubles you is the one
thing which would save me. He told me once that if his wife had
children he would never disgrace their mother. He meant it. Cyrrie says
very little, and he means it all. He's so quiet, Es, so big. I'm
afraid!"

"But surely," Esme queried, "there's no evidence?"

"Oh! evidence!" Denise shrugged her shoulders. "I've been reckless
lately, Es--a fool. I've stayed with those Bellew people near Ascot.
I've been a fool with Jerry; he was such a boy that I was too open;
being very little harm in it, I judged the opinion of onlookers by my
own feelings; and Cyrrie's found out. He knows the mad things I've
done. The boy was so proud of being my belonging--bah! I know! I can
see Cyrrie look at me with a threat behind his eyes. Think of it, Esme!
The disgrace! Those vile papers reporting; poor Jerry defending; and
then the after life. Oh! if one could only see in time. If I had
stopped to think two years ago--it may be too late now. I've been
absolutely making love to Cyrrie lately, and he looks at me with such a
smile on his big face. You see, there's the title--it's as old as the
world, almost--and all the money; and we have no heir; that vexes
Cyrrie horribly. He'll get rid of me and marry Anne Bellairs, his
cousin, a great, healthy, bovine country girl, while I sit in outer
darkness and gnash my teeth."

"Oh, Denise! Oh! if we could change--" Esme's voice rang so shrilly
that Lady Blakeney dropped her cigarette and picked it up again from
the skirt of her rich white dress.

"Esme," she said, "it's burnt a hole in it. Heavens! yes! if we could!"
She threw away the cigarette. "If we could!"

In her heart she knew she ought to tell Esme not to be foolishly
hysterical. Talk quietly and soothe her. Instead, with her eyes alight,
she fed the flame of the fear of loss of fun. Talked of how a baby was
a nuisance in London, of how much they cost.

"If you could give me yours," she said, "and pretend that it was mine.
Lord! what a difference it would make for me."

Esme sat staring at her, puzzled.

"Oh! I suppose it's too melodramatic to think of," Denise said, getting
up. "It's still pouring, and I'm going home. We have people to dinner
to-night. Cheer up, dear."

She left Esme sitting brooding alone; she had been so happy with her
husband; there was just enough--enough for amusement, for entertaining
mildly, for paying visits. Her pretty face won many friends; people
were kind to so pleasant a guest.

"Oh! I can't afford it! I'd love to go!" and then someone found an
outsider at ten to one, or a stock which was safe to rise, and someone
else sent wine at wholesale prices; someone else fruit and flowers.
They were such a merry pair; they ought to enjoy themselves, was the
world's verdict.

Esme knew the value of smiles; in shops, in Society they were current
coinage to her. She did not want to be tied, to have to weary over a
something more important than she was.

"If we could only change," said Esme, dolefully. "Denise quite sees how
it will spoil everything."

"Call a taxi, Marie. I'll go to the club to tea."

Denise went to pay some calls, and then to her house in Grosvenor
Square. The scent of flowers drifted from the hall; she loved to fill
it with anything sweet. The butler handed her her letters as she
passed--invitations, notes.

She went into her boudoir at the back of the drawing-room, a nest of
blue, background for her fair beauty, with flowers everywhere.

Denise shivered; she was a Someone--a well-known hostess in society; a
personage in her way; she went to dull house-parties, where royalty was
entertained; and she yawned sorely but yet was glad to go. Where one
ate simple food and had to smoke in the conservatories, because a very
great lady was an advocate for simplicity.

"And if--if--" her fears were not unfounded.

Denise knew what it would mean. A few loyal friends writing kindly
letters before they slipped away from her. Cold, evasive nods from
people who would not cut her; the delighted, uplifted noses of the
people she had ignored.

A hole-and-corner marriage somewhere with young Jerry, who was already
wearying of his chains; a marriage reft of all things which makes
marriage a joy. Life in some poky place abroad or in the country,
received on sufferance or not at all.

Denise flung out her hands as if to ward off an enemy. She heard her
husband coming in; his heavy step on the stairs; his deep, even voice.

"Her ladyship in? Yes? A message from Lord Hugh Landseer; wished Sir
Cyril to lunch there to-morrow to discuss guns, etc. Yes. Dinner at
eight or half-past? At eight-fifteen? The champagne? Better have two
sorts out, Lady St Clare didn't like Bollinger."

There was a cool reserve of strength in Cyril Blakeney's trivial words;
he thought slowly, spoke slowly, but seldom idly. He was a man who
could wait. Wait for a day which he believed would be good, wait for a
young dog which he thought might improve. "Give him a year--we'll see
then." And if at the end of the time the setter was still hopeless, he
was not seen again. Cyril Blakeney would not sell a dog to be beaten
into submission--and the end was swift and painless. A vicious horse, a
bad jumper, went the same way. People did not dispute his opinions; if
they could not agree they listened to the arguments and wondered at
their quiet shrewdness.

Denise heard the heavy step go on; he did not come into her boudoir.
She went up herself, fidgeting over her dresses, coming down at last in
shimmering opal satin, a crown of pearls in her soft hair, pearls at
her throat, and in the lace on her bodice one pear-shaped and pink.
Stanley, her maid, had fastened it in, picking it out of several jewels.

Denise looked at them and shivered again. Her diamonds were
magnificent, but they were not hers; they were heirlooms of the
Blakeneys; she thought of the old house in Yorkshire, big, heavy, solid
as her husband himself; full of carved panels, of cold, stately rooms;
a home which Cyril delighted in. She dreaded the keen moorland air, the
loneliness of the country; but they spent the winter there hunting and
shooting; and she knew how Cyril longed for a boy to come after him.

"That will do, Stanley. What do you say?--That I told you to remind me
of new dresses for Stranray Park. Yes. Anything will do for the
mornings, and tea-gowns are forbidden; but I'll want six evening gowns.
Oh! Cyrrie!"

Catch of nervousness in her voice; she met her husband on the stairs;
put out a hand and touched his arm. Quietly he lifted it, held it out,
and laid it lightly where her wedding ring gleamed behind a blaze of
diamonds.

"Had a pleasant day?" he asked.

Denise recounted it almost eagerly. The big man listened, held her hand
still as they came to the drawing-room.

"And you gave up Ranelagh--stayed talking to Esme Carteret." She saw
him smile finely. "Friends, Denise, to waste an afternoon. I was at
Ranelagh and missed you. Dollie Maynard told me she left you just
starting. I wondered where you were. Oh! here is Elsie."

They were a merry little party of four, taking an evening off until it
was time for one or two balls.

Elsie St Clare, her husband, and a Baron de Reville.

Denise was a charming hostess; she knew how to order a dinner; there
was no hint of the fluttering wings of trouble as the four talked and
laughed.

"Stanley would not let me rest in peace to-night," she said, "she
reminded me of Stranray in October. Cyril will not be there; it will be
worse than ever. No smoking there after dinner," laughed Denise, "and
it all seems standing up and taking the weather's temperature with our
tongues; we are so bored we talk of nothing else. And H.R.H. likes the
Stranray babies down to breakfast. One of them upset an egg over her
one day, on purpose; they are outwardly mild, and inwardly demons. And
when we are not out we work, because it looks domestic. I put three
stitches in last time, because I saw eyes upon me. I shall never forget
the day we found the three babies playing when we came in. Jinnie, the
eldest, gravely smoking paper cigarettes. Just as state entry was made,
she shrieked out:

"'That's when they're gone to bed; that's what we do. _I_ saw over the
bannisters. Now you're so loud, Nettie; and you, Tim, you say thank
goodness.' But H.R.H. was quite nice about it; and only laughed and
kissed them all.

"'I expect it's what you all do and say,' she said, and kissed Nettie
again."

"I shall disport myself at Swords," Elsie St Clare laughed. "I couldn't
stand the strain of behaving perfectly for a week. Prince Wilhelm goes
to you at White Friars some time, doesn't he?"

"Next spring for the races," said Denise. "But she's a dear, and if you
give her a chair to sleep in she bothers no one; the only thing which
worries her is that Wilhelm will play the bridge game.

"'It hass my orphanage ruined,' she told me last time."

After dinner they played bridge. Denise forgot her fears a little,
though her luck was against her; she could not hold a card.

"How I hate paying you, Cyrrie," she said, laughing, as she took gold
from her purse.

"Women always hate the day of reckoning." Something in his quiet voice
made her heart thump. "The game is full of excitement, but it must
end--and your sex dislikes the ending."

The guests went on to a big dance; the Blakeneys were left alone; they
were not going out.

Quite quietly Sir Cyril came across to his wife, stood looking at her.

"A lovely gown," he said. "But--do you need new jewels, Denise?"

His fingers, big, strong, deft, fell on the pink pearl, undid the
fastening.

Denise turned pale, stood stammering, seeking excuse.

"Don't bother," he said smoothly. "I saw the boy give it you. You've
been foolish there, Denise--foolish. Well, I'm off for months, and when
I come back--"

"Yes?" she said, dry-lipped, or rather tried to say yes and merely made
some sound.

"If we had had a child, Denise," he said, his head bent. "They make a
difference--one makes allowances then."

"If we had--now," she said. "Now, Cyrrie!" her voice rang shrilly.

He laughed. "If we had--you might be thankful," he said. "Come, you
look tired out. Go to bed."

"I have not been feeling well," she faltered.

If she was to be saved, something must be managed.

Esme was still in her wrapper of silk and lace, when Lady Blakeney came
to her next day. Came, white and excited, her eyes blazing, her face
tense. For half an hour Esme sat almost silent, listening to an
outpouring of plot and plan. The weak, flighty woman developed
undreamt-of powers of organization.

Esme wanted money, freedom. Oh! it had often been done before. She
flung out its simplicity. Away in some remote part of the Continent the
child which was to come should be born as a Blakeney.

What was easier than a change of names?

"See, Esme--I'll give you a thousand a year always. Honour! Think of
it! Five hundred pounds every six months, and you and Bertie can be
happy when he comes back. And I--it will save me. We'll go away
together in the autumn; we are always together. We'll go without maids.
Oh--do--do!"

Esme flung up her pretty head.

"I'll do it," she said, "but I must have a doctor. I must not die."

"A doctor to attend Lady Blakeney. Why not? Strange servants, a strange
place, who would know?" Denise remembered everything.

"Yet it is wonderful how people do know," said Esme, shrewdly, half
afraid now that she had agreed; wondering what might happen. Yet she
looked round her flat with a little sigh of relief. She could live her
merry, careless life, live it more easily than before, and she did not
want a child. She hated children, hated their responsibility.

"Some day," said Esme, "I won't mind; then there can be another."

May had given way to a dismal June. Cold winds and showers swept over
the world. Flowers were dragged from grates and fires put in. Esme had
lighted hers; sat over it, as her husband came in; they were lunching
out.

He hung over her, delighting in her soft beauty, crying out at her pale
cheeks.

"You're tired, girlie; we're always out. And now that I must leave you
alone you'll do much more."

She leant back against him, ruffling her cloud of fair hair.

"We're absolutely happy, aren't we, Bertie? I'll be here when you come.
I can let the flat until the spring, and you must leave that stupid
army and live here all summer in dear London."

He held her close, sat silent for a time.

"I was at Evie's yesterday," he said. "Eve Gresham's my cousin. I saw
her boy."

"Horrid little things at that age," said Esme, unsympathetically.

"It wasn't--it was fat and bonny; and Eve is so proud of it. If we had
a sonny, Butterfly, you and I, I'd like him to be like Eve's."

Esme sat astonished. Bertie wishing for a third in their lives. Bertie!
knowing the difference it would make.

She jumped up, almost angrily. "If we had, we couldn't hunt, or do half
what we do," she said. "And you've got me, Bertie. Do you want more?"

She began to cry suddenly, broke down, overwrought by her morning's
plot, by this new idea of Carteret's.

Something, stronger for the moment than her selfish love of amusement,
fought with her. If she gave up their mad scheme, told him now, he
would not go to Africa; he would stay, watching her, guarding her. Esme
wavered.

"I looked at those emeralds too, yesterday," Bertie said; he was
staring into the fire; had not noticed her agitation. "You know that
queer old clasp. Fifty pounds. I couldn't manage it, girlie, for you."

"I wanted it," said Esme, fretfully.

"A note from Lady Blakeney, madame."

Marie brought the letter up, wondering at its plump softness, feeling
the wad which the notes made. The chauffeur had bidden her be careful;
refused to give it to the porter of the flats.

"Oh!" Esme opened it, her back to her husband. There were bank notes,
crisp, delightful; she saw five of them; five for fifty pounds each.
Denise was beginning the payment already.

"Milady Blakeney also wishes to know if Madame will use the car to
drive to luncheon. It is at Madame's service until five," Marie said.

"Denise is very good to you," Carteret turned round. "You have a lot of
friends, my Butterfly."

Esme crushed the notes up. The impulse to tell was gone. She wanted
money, comfort, ease; the chance was hers, and she would take it.

The luncheon party was a big one, given by Luke Holbrook, the wine
merchant. He paid his cook a clerk's income, and she earned her salary
elaborately. What her dishes lacked in taste they made up for in
ornament; if a white sauce be merely smoothly flour-like, who shall
grumble if it is flecked with truffles, cocks-combs and pistachio nuts.
No gourmet enjoyed eating at the Holbrooks', but ordinary people who
are impressed by magnificence talked in hushed tones of the cook.

The house was as heavily expensive as the meal; gold plate shone on the
vast sideboard; orchids decorated the tables; one's feet sank into deep
carpeting. Mrs Holbrook, a plumply foolish little woman who had married
the big man obediently that he might have a wife who claimed the prefix
of "honourable" on her letters, accepted the magnificence placidly. She
had a shrewd idea that outward show helped the business, and that they
were not as rich as they seemed to be.

The dining-room had been opened into the study so that it ran right
across the house, and to increase the apparent size at the end wall was
a huge mirror reflecting the room.

They lunched at small tables. Sylvia Holbrook knew how to divide her
guests. Esme found herself one of four with Jimmie Gore Helmsley, Sybil
Chauntsey, a soft-hued debutante, and a dark young soldier vividly in
love with the girl.

"Going to the Bellews? Lord! I'm weary of cream pies done up in
colours." Jimmie waved a sweet away. "Going, Mrs Carteret?"

"Bertie has to go home." Esme had eaten nothing; she was feeling sick
and tired. "He doesn't like my going there."

"To Thames Cottage? Oh, how I'd love to go," Sybil Chauntsey broke in.
"They have such fun there."

Her peach bloom deepened; the beauty of youth, which is as no other
beauty, sparkled in her deep grey eyes.

The big dark man looked at her, his own eyes taking fire. These men
delight in rosebuds, find an unflagging zest in seeing the tender
petals unfold to their hot admiration.

"Easily managed," he said. "If Madame the mother permits."

Captain Knox, a mere no one, son of a hunting Irishman, flushed.

"It's not a nice house," he said. "I've heard of it. Don't go, Miss
Chauntsey."

"Lila Navotsky will be there"--Jimmie turned to the girl, carelessly
ignoring the man--"she'll dance. It will be rather a bright party.
Prince Fritz of Grosse Holbein is going, Lady Deverelle, and Loftus
Laking, the actor. We'll have a moonlight dance, all costumes home
made."

Fresh from the country, doing her first season, the great names dazzled
the child. Mother's friends were so dull; the peach-bloom flush
deepened, the sweet eyes flashed for Jimmie, who had watched so many
flushes, seen so many bright eyes flash into his. Sybil was very
pretty, soft and fresh as fruit just ripe; sun-kissed, unpowdered,
roundly contoured.

With a smile Esme saw that the conqueror's glances were no longer for
her. He was growing fascinated by Sybil. Even the best of women hate to
lose an admirer; no one knew better than Gore Helmsley how they will
suddenly put good resolves aside to keep the slipping fancy. How many
are morally lost because they fear to lose.

Young Knox turned to talk to Esme, his handsome face troubled. A mere
ordinary young fellow, capable of ordinary love, cleanly bred, cleanly
minded, with nothing to offer the girl but the life of a marching
soldier's wife, and some day a house on the shores of a lake far away
in the west.

"It's--it's _very_ rowdy, isn't it?" he asked.

But Esme was not thinking of him.

"Oh, sometimes not," she said absently, eating a forced nectarine;
"depends on the party there. Now they're moving."

Up to a drawing-room of oppressive luxury; the Staffordshire groups,
the Dresden shepherdesses seemed larger than other people's; the
brocades gleamed in their richness, the flowers stood in Venetian
glasses; the whole room seemed to shake its wealth in your face, and to
glitter and shine with colour. Coffee came in Dresden cups set in gold
holders; sugar candy peeped from a gilt basin studded with dull stones.
The cigarettes had their name blazoned over them in diamonds.

Luke Holbrook came among his guests, big, kind, frankly vulgar,
redeemed by his good-natured eyes. Openly proud of seeing a Duchess in
his drawing-room, pointing out to her a pair of historical figures
which stood on the mantel-shelf.

"Wonderful they tell me," he said. "I don't know, but I like size when
I buy."

"Yes," said the Duchess, blandly, looking round the room. "Yes. If you
must pay thousands better pay them for two feet of glaze and colour
than for two inches, no doubt."

"That's it," he said gaily, "that's it. Of course, you've such heaps of
the stuff at Blenkalle. But my boy's collection has to be gathered now."

Holbrook's pure wines gained many orders in his own house. He had
stored away, kept for customers with palates, a few casks of port which
was not branded and flavoured for the English taste, some good hock and
claret. But the pure wines he made his millions off did not deserve
their title.

Esme, sipping Turkish coffee, saw Sybil Chauntsey come hurrying to her
mother. The girl was fresh and sweet, heads turned as she passed.

"Oh, Mumsie, Captain Gore Helmsley has telephoned. Oh, Mumsie, they've
asked me to the Bellews for Saturday to Monday. Oh, may I go?"

"But alone, Sybil," said her mother.

"Mrs Carteret will take me. I'll ask her. Oh, Mumsie. Prince Fritz of
Grosse Holbein will be there, and Madame Navotsky, Lord Ralph Crellton,
Lady Deverelle. Mumsie, I might be asked to Deverelle if I meet her."

Princes, countesses, dancers. Might not Sybil attract the attention of
Lord Ralph, who would one day be a Marquis. "But, aren't there
stories?" Mrs Chauntsey wavered.

Jimmie strolled across. "Mrs Bellew is so anxious for your daughter to
go to her," he said. "It's rather an honour, they are generally full
up, and there's a dance this time."

He omitted to remark that his reply down the telephone had been: "Who?
I don't know the brat. Oh, send her along; I'll invite. Suppose you'd
sulk and wouldn't manage the cotillon if I refused. Can't you let girls
alone, Jimmie? Yes, I've got the address--I'll invite--bother her!"

Mrs Chauntsey wavered, gave way, turned to a stout lady who was
anxiously waiting for the brougham she still clung to, and told her.

"I wouldn't let my girls walk past the garden wall," said Lady
Adderley, grimly. "Sybil's a child, too."

Mrs Chauntsey grew doubtful again. This stout and dowdy woman held the
keys of the dullest and most exclusive houses. And Sybil had once been
asked to luncheon there on Sunday; but a Prince, and a future
Marquis--one must give a girl her chance.

Esme was going on to a tea-party. She sat down by the open window,
looking out at the Park, a dull place now, its afternoon hour not yet
upon it.

"Rather full here." Jimmie Gore Helmsley's dark face appeared close to
her; he pulled up a chair and sat down. "Feel as if we're all Aunt
Sallies being pelted with gold; the riches jump out and hit you in the
face."

"He's kind," said Esme, remembering her hock.

"Kind? Oh, yes! he can be! Appreciate," he muttered, "what I've done
coming here--to meet you, eh? I've talked to Lady Susan and Lady Hebe
Ploddy for ten minutes, and I've only just escaped from the horns of
Lady Hebe's jersey cattle. They have been going out for ten years,"
said Jimmie, "and Mamma, her grace, still calls them 'my baby girls.'
They are coming this way," he added, "with the pigs and cows in the
leash of their minds. Are you off it--hipped?" he whispered softly,
"you look pale."

Whispers had gained him many things in life; a sudden drop of voice, a
change of tone, an intimacy as it were of sympathy. But Esme scarcely
noticed it. She was too carelessly selfish to dream of the
inconveniences of a lover, even if she had not been fond of Bertie.

"Coming Saturday," he asked, "to the Bungalow?"

"Oh, I suppose so. I've promised that child. Where am I going to? To
buy a toy which has taken my fancy. Yes, you may come with me."

Half an hour later one of the new crisp notes had gone for the emerald
clasp, and the Ladies Susan and Hebe Ploddy, coming by chance into the
shop, told all their friends that Captain Gore Helmsley had given it to
that Mrs Carteret.




CHAPTER III


Esme Carteret had chosen her own picture in the _tableaux vivants_ at
the Leigh-Dilneys. It was called Joy.

"I'm so happy," she had said merrily, "it will suit me."

The Leigh-Dilneys gave entertainments in the name of charity, and since
charity is all-powerful, and the pheasants at Leigh Grange were as
flies in summer, everyone who was anyone in London gasped for air in
the big drawing-room.

Faint breaths of summer breeze eddying over scarlet geraniums and white
marguerites were powerless to stir the heat generated by the crowd
which packed itself in resignation on hired chairs and dreamt of
getting away. Lady Delilah Leigh-Dilney looked as though she spent life
trying to live down her name. A high-nosed, earnest woman, with an
insatiable appetite for organized entertainment. Her bridge winnings
went to support missions in distant China; an invitation to tea was
certain to plunge the accepter into the dusty uncertainty of a bran pie
at five shillings a dip, proceeds for something; or the obligatory
buying of tickets for a vase or cushion which was too ugly ever to be
used.

Electric fans, Lady Delilah said, were noisy, useless and merely
fashionable. Her guests sweltered on hard chairs as an overheated stage
manager scrabbled the blue curtains of the miniature stage to and fro
and wished he had never seen a tableaux.

And Esme was Joy. Merely herself, dressed in a cloud of rosy pink, her
setting an ordinary room; her hands outstretched to, as it were, meet
Life; her radiant face lighted by smiles; her burnished hair fluffed
out softly.

"Yet not so much Joy as self-satisfaction," murmured a panting cynic as
he finished applauding. "For true Joy is a simple thing--its smile of
the eyes and not of the teeth."

Esme had chosen the scene because she was really so happy. She seemed
to have everything she wanted. Popular, young, helped by a dozen kindly
friends, with Bertie as lover and husband satisfying every whim.

The audience fled from sandwiches and thin coffee to amuse themselves
after self-sacrifice. Esme, in her pink gown, had danced the night away
at two balls.

She had not felt ill again; she put her secret fear away, hoping
eagerly that she was mistaken. Went out next morning to shop. Was there
not always something one wanted?

Joy! She had acted her part yesterday, flashed her dazzling smile at
the world. To-day discontent walked with her on the hot pavement.

She had been contented, happy, in her little flat, childishly pleased
with her new life, her pretty clothes, her gaieties. And now she wanted
more. Electric motors glided by, silent, powerful; wealth which would
not have missed the Carterets' yearly income for a day passed her on
all sides.

A fat woman got out of a car; the Pekingese dog she carried had cost
two hundred pounds.

"Oh! Mrs Carteret!" Mrs Holbrook held out a fat hand. "Hot, isn't it?
I'm just going in to Benhusan's here. This necklace Luke gave me
yesterday has a bad clasp. So dangerous! I want a pendant for it too.
Come in and advise me--_do_!"

Into the shop with its sombre splendour. Background to pearl and ruby,
to diamond and opal and sapphire and emerald.

These spread before this merchant's wife, dazzling toys of pink and
blue and sparkling white.

Esme wanted them. Mere youth ceased to content her. She could not buy
even one of these things. She must look and long.

"This one is two hundred guineas, madam."

"Oh! Luke said I might go to that. Mrs Carteret, do advise me. This
pearl, the pear shaped; or the circle of opals--or what do you think of
the sapphires? I am so stupid."

Sapphires would not go with the pearl and diamond necklace. Esme's slim
fingers picked up the pearl pendant, held it longingly.

It was the only possible thing, and even then not quite right, but it
would do, she said.

"You've such perfect taste, child. Luke always says so. So _glad_ I met
you. Well, see you soon again--to-morrow. We've a large party."

Men and women buying lovely--perhaps unneeded--jewels, spending
hundreds, thousands, that they might see someone turn to look at their
adornments. A millionaire American grumbled over the merits of pearls
spread on purple velvet.

He wanted something extra. "Get these anywhere. Mrs Cyrus J. Markly was
going to Court. He'd promised she should have a string to knock
creation. No, these wouldn't do."

Hurried calling on heads of departments, rooting into hidden safes.
Fresh glistening treasures laid out.

Mr Markly might trust Benhusan's. The rope with its diamond links and
clasps should be magnificent. He might leave it in their hands. They
would ransack London for perfect pearls.

With a little gasp of impatience Esme Carteret went out.

She wanted money. Mere comfort was nothing to her to-day.

Furs are neglected in summer, but Esme strolled into the great Bond
Street store. She was sending a coat for alteration and storage.

Denise Blakeney was there, a stole of black fox spread before her.

"Summer prices, my lady. See, a rare bargain."

"And out of fashion by September or October; but it _is_ good." Denise
held up the soft fur. "Oh! you, Esme! See, shall I have it? These
things are always useful."

Esme stroked the supple softness of the furs, held the wrap longingly.

"Twenty pounds off our winter prices, madam. And perfection. Skins such
as one seldom sees. The price a mere bagatelle--seventy guineas."

"Oh! put it with my other things then. Store it. Are you
bargain-hunting, Es?"

"No--_I_ have no money." Esme looked almost sullenly at the stole which
Denise did not want and bought so carelessly. "No, I cannot
bargain-hunt. I came to see about my one coat."

"What is it, my Joy? You are out of spirits to-day. You looked so
lovely yesterday, dear."

Lady Blakeney touched Esme's arm affectionately.

"Tired of genteel poverty, Denise. I paddle on the edge of the world's
sea, where you people swim. Yes--we'll meet at the Holbrooks' lunch.
Will their new gold plate have diamond crests on it? Good-bye."

Left alone again in the fur shop, envying, longing for the treasures
there.

Out into the crowded streets. A flower-shop caught her eyes. One sheaf
of roses and orchids, pale cream and scarlet and mauve, made her stop
and long. Denise could take these home if she wanted them.

Esme went in, paid five shillings for a spray of carnations.

"Those orchids and roses? Oh! they were ten guineas. Mr Benhusan had
just bought them for his table that evening."

So on again with this new discontent hurting her. She went on to
another shop; saw a painted, loud-voiced girl buying silk lingerie,
taking models carelessly, without thought of price. Her dog, a
pathetic-looking white poodle, had on a gold collar set with jewels.
The girl struck him once, roughly, across the nose, making him howl.

"Straighten him up," she said carelessly. "There, that's all. You know
the address. Enter the lot; send 'em with the other things."

Esme knew the girl by sight; had seen her dancing at the Olympic. She
knew, too, who would pay for those cobwebby things of silk and real
lace.

The spirit of discontent held Esme Carteret with his cruel claws,
rending her, hurting her mentally.

She was Joy no longer. Her little flat, her merry, careless life, could
not content her.

Her mood led her to her dressmaker's to look at model gowns, and on to
Jay's and Fenwick's. Discontent urging her to look at rich things which
she could not buy; the blended beauty of Venetian glass, jewels, laces,
silks, all seemed to come before her with a new meaning.

And then the sudden fear; stopping as if a blow had been struck at her.
She was not safe; hope was not realization. The flat and the life she
grumbled at might--would--pass to something smaller. To a house in a
cheaper district, to money spent on cabs and dinners going to keep the
child she dreaded.

Esme hurried on, faster and faster, as if she would escape the fears
which followed her. She wheeled, panting, into Oxford Street; turned
from its crush and flurry, and went again down Bond Street, her colour
high as she raced on.

"Dear lady, is it a walking race or a wager?" Esme cannoned into Gore
Helmsley. He stopped her, holding her hand impressively.

A handsome man, if sloe-black eyes and high colour constituted good
looks. Women admired him. Men shrugged their shoulders impatiently.

"Neither. I was running away from my own thoughts."

"Ah!" He drew a soft breath. When women hurried to escape their
thoughts Gore Helmsley thought he could guess at the meaning.

"I feel lost to-day." Esme was glad to find a friend to speak to.
"Poor, an outcast amid the wealth of London."

"Joy," he said caressingly, "looked yesterday as though the world
denied her nothing."

"A week ago she would have said so. To-day--" Esme frowned.

The dark man used his own dictionary. He had grown to admire this
dazzling woman. Discontent on married lips generally meant the fruit
grew weary of its tree and would come lightly to the hand stretched to
pick it.

"Lunch with me," he said. "I can break a dull engagement. To-morrow we
shall endeavour to assail eight courses at the Holbrooks. To-day we
might try the Berkeley, or the Carlton, or the Ritz."

Esme had promised to meet Bertie at his club; the club was dull; she
wanted to play at being rich to-day, to look enviously at the people
who spent money.

"The Ritz," she said. "If you'll tempt me with quails and asparagus.
And if you can get a table."

Jimmie was not given to extravagance, but this was worth it.

They strolled across seething Piccadilly, with its riot of noise and
traffic; they went into the big hotel.

An ordered luncheon takes time. They sat in the hall waiting, watching
the tide of wealth sweep in. The glass doors swung and flashed as
motors and taxis brought the luncheon-goers to their destination.

Jimmie knew everyone.

"Coraline de Vine." He nodded at the girl whom Esme had seen buying.
"And Trent. He says he does not know what his income is. People say he
may marry her--he's infatuated. Did you see her new car? It cost two
thousand. I saw him buying it for her. That emerald she's wearing is
the celebrated Cenci stone. He got it at Christie's for her last
week--outbid everyone."

Thousands--thousands. Esme's eyes glittered hungrily. She opened her
pretty mouth as if she were thirsty for all this gold, as if she would
bathe herself in it, drink it if she could.

"And see Lord Ellis and the bride. She was no one--his parson's
daughter. She has probably spent more on that frock than papa has for
half a year's income."

A big, rather cunning-looking girl, healthy and young.

"Mamma wanted to send the two children up to me this week," she said,
as she paused near Esme. "I said it was absurd, in the season. They can
slip up in July before we shut up the house. Doris wants to see a
dentist, mamma says; they _are_ so expensive up here. I have
discouraged her; the man at home is much cheaper."

Already anxious to keep her prize money to herself. Not to share it
with her sisters. Later, when they grew up, she would give them a
chance, not now. Already a _grande dame_, spending only where it
pleased her.

Wealth everywhere, and with Esme this new discontent.

The table next to theirs was half smothered in orchids. The American
millionaire was giving a luncheon party. A duchess honoured him, a
slender, dark little lady, shrugging mental shoulders at the
ostentation. Lady Lila Gore, heavily beautiful, was one of the party.
The sallow master of millions devoured her with his shrewd, sunken
eyes. This splendid pink-and-white piece of true English beauty made
his own thin, vivacious wife nothing to him.

He had bought Mrs Markly a rope of pearls that she might shine at the
Court, but he was prepared to pay ten times their price for a smile
from the big blonde Englishwoman, who knew it, and considered the
question.

The quails were tasteless to Esme. She could not eat. The fear returned
as she felt a distaste for her food, as she refused the ice which she
had specially ordered.

She grew restless, tired of Jimmie Helmsley's caressing manner, of the
undercurrent of meaning in his voice.

"I shall see you to-morrow at Luke's," he said. "You are looking pale,
fair lady. What is it? Can I help? You know I'd do anything for you."

"I've not been well," she said irritably. "We're so far out. The flat's
so poky and stuffy. Oh! I shall be all right in a day or two."

She would be. Hope spread his wings again.

She telephoned to Bertie and met him for tea.

For a few hours she was content again. The flat looked its prettiest.
Her flowers were lovely. Denise Blakeney had sent her a sheaf of roses;
their fragrance filled the air. Marie had put them in the vases.

Esme tried to love it all, to realize that in her way she wanted
nothing. She had been so happy with Bertie in their careless life.

She sat on the arm of his chair. He was allowed one big one in the
flat. She laughed as he did accounts.

"Butterfly, we spend every penny we have got, and a little more
besides." He looked up into her radiant face. "We seem--we seem to buy
a lot of things, Es."

"Not half as many things as we ought to." She put her cheek to his. "We
want _all_ new chair coverings, Bert, and I got the old ones cleaned."

"Oh! model of economy," he said gravely.

"And I bought a new hat instead. I should have to have got the hat in
any case, you see. And if I do spend a little, am I not worth it, boy?"

With the fragrance of her hair so close to him, with her soft cheek
against his own, could he say or think so? He was losing time up there,
rusting when he ought to have been with his regiment, all for Esme's
sake, because she loved London. But if it made her happy it was enough.

He told her so, holding her closely. Told her how everyone loved her;
poured out the flattery she was never tired of.

"We can't do anything for these people; they are content to see you.
Your face is repayment," he said. "No one would bother about me without
you, sweetheart. You were born for society."

"Yes." Esme's voice grew strained. If Fate had sent her Arthur Ellis
and his coal mines! How she would have loved to act hostess in the big
town house, in Ellis Court, and Dungredy Lodge; she put the thought
away, almost angrily, for she loved Bertie.

Yet, clinging to him, his arms about her, his lips on hers, she missed
something. Was she growing older that kisses failed to thrill?

"I am so tired, Bertie," she said suddenly. "I have not been well all
day."

Fear and discontent swept love aside. In a moment she was querulous,
irritable, all the evening's happiness gone again.

It was time to dress. People were coming to dine; there would be new
salad; iced rice cunningly flavoured. But the thought of food made Esme
wretched.

"I _want_ to be happy. Why cannot the Fates let me be?" she almost
whimpered to her glass.

Brilliantly pretty, slim, young, she wanted to lose nothing.

"If I were happy again I would not fret for all the impossible things
as I did to-day," she said aloud, with the idea--too common with
humanity--that one may strike a bargain with Fate.




CHAPTER IV


Once a mere cottage, now a long ornate bungalow jutting into angles,
full of unexpected rooms, the Bellews' river-side house is more
luxurious than many big structures of brick and mortar.

"We run down to picnic here," but Belle Bellew knew that picnicking
without everything out of season, and a _chef_ of quality, could not
appeal to the people she gathered about her. The picnic element was
kept up by breakfast-tables laid under trees, things deserted and
unused--man likes his breakfast free from fly and midge. The ideal,
talked of in the gleam of electric light, is fresh air, the plash of
old Father Thames, morning sunshine; the real is that we prefer
tempered light, copper heaters, and a roof.

The long low house jutted out in two wings, all the windows opening
onto a covered veranda.

Dull people turned their heads aside when they rowed past on Sunday
evenings, for the flash of lights, the sound of raised voices, could be
seen and heard from the river.

The chairs were wicker, but the rugs on the stained floors Persian. It
was wealth, less ostentatious than the Holbrooks'; light, frothy,
merry, careless wealth, with pleasure for its high priest.

Jimmie Gore Helmsley motored Denise and Sybil down; the place seemed
empty when they came, but looking closer one could see groups here and
there, see flutter of light dresses; hear tinkle of light laughter,
bass of man's deeper note.

A thin, svelte woman, green-eyed, ferret-faced, came out of the open
door. Mousie Cavendish said she found her ugliness more powerful than
other women's beauty. A bitter-tongued little creature, stirring every
surface maliciously to point out something foul below it. But clever,
moderately rich, perfectly gowned; gaining what income she lacked
through her too keen power of observation.

You sat with her, sweetly pulling some reputation to pieces; you left
full-fed with evil spice; and then you shivered. Were not the same thin
fingers pulling out your secrets now, those secrets you foolishly
hinted at?

"Ah! pretty Esme!" Mousie blew a kiss from her reddened lips. "You
here! Where's Mrs Bellew, Miss Chauntsey? We may see her at
dinner-time; we may not, if she has taken a tea-basket to the backwater
close by." Mousie laughed at Sybil. "Does your young mind run upon
hostesses who wait to receive their guests? You will not find them
here, my child. Tell the men to get tea, Jimmie; we'll have it here."

The veranda was a series of outdoor rooms, wooden partitions,
rose-grown, dividing it.

Sybil's grey eyes were sparkling; this was so different from tea in
decorous drawing-rooms, from a stately week-end spent at Ascot with her
mother.

"Tea?" Mousie turned to the footman. "Cream sandwiches and fruit. This
riverside hotel," said Mrs Cavendish, "is an excellent one. Why, fair
Esme, you look pallid. And what pretty emeralds, cherie. Oh! the
rewards of beauty!"

The keen little eyes were frankly malicious, frankly open as to what
they meant.

Esme flushed a little; she saw the green eyes flash on at Gore
Helmsley. Esme was almost crudely virtuous; the hint offended.

Servants were preparing the lawn for the night's revel. Temporary
lights were being hung on strings, the turf swept and rolled; a great
mirror was set up.

"For the cotillon?" Esme asked.

"For the cotillon. We begin at nine. So that at twelve the cock shall
crow and we shall all--not go to bed."

"More people coming. Mrs Bellew," said Sybil, "was not out; she is
coming into the garden now."

"Ah! tiens, my child! it was my kindness to say that she was out,
knowing it was the hour of electricity. Once the knell of forty sounds
we must have our faces recharged daily. The Prince is coming--look ye!"

Prince Fritz--young, fat, extremely volatile, a thorn in the side of
his august mother and his wife--came tripping across the grass. He
talked English with a strong accent, and he bemoaned the future when he
must go home.

Yet, though Belle Bellew might box his ears later in a romp, she must
bob to him now discreetly as she greeted him.

Prince Fritz boomed out content and delight. "There is no place such as
this river house," he said, "none, fair lady." Then he looked round for
the dancer, who was his special attraction.

"Don't be alarmed, sir--she arrives," mocked Mousie from her balcony,
"she arrives. The revenues can continue to be squandered, and a nice
little woman's heart torn by the snapshots she sees of you in the
picture papers."

Prince Fritz grinned equably; he was not dignified.

"Like to see the river?" Gore Helmsley asked Sybil.

The girl was charming in her simple dress. Fresh and sweet and
unspoiled, eagerly delighted with everything.

But down by gliding, stately Thames, Jimmie was fatherly. She must be
careful here, keep quiet; a good deal of romping went on--and girls
could not behave as married women could.

"I'm your godfather here, you see." His dark face came close to hers,
showing the crinkles round his eyes, the hard lines near his mouth; but
he was at the age girls delight to worship. Someone who knows the
mysteries they only dream of; someone so different to honest, pleasant
boys, who thought more of sport than their companions.

Friendship! It was Jimmie Gore Helmsley's deadly weapon; there was
nothing to frighten the maid--he was only a pal--a pal to win her
confidences, to tell her how sweet she looked, to point out the perfect
smoothness of her fresh young skin, to find beauty in the lights in her
hair, the curves of her dimpled neck; to take her about discreetly in
town, to walk and talk with her at country houses; to listen, with a
face set a little wistfully, about some boy who adored her. Frank or
Tom was a good sort, a brick; youth went to youth; heaven send she
would be happy, and--appreciated--that the blind boy would see plainly
the perfection of the treasure he was winning. Ah! if someone who could
see could win it!

After this, next day, meeting her young lover, mademoiselle the
debutante would fret and sulk because Frank or Tom talked of his last
score at cricket, or his great day with the Team, instead of
worshipping her beauty.

And, later, the confidences would grow fewer; would come a day when the
boy's image faded; when a fool's heart beat for the world-worn man who
set her up as goddess, and then.... There were broken hearts and lives
in high society which could tell the rest. There were women, married
now, who shivered angrily at one hidden corner in their lives.

This nut-brown maid, with her grey eyes and cloud of dusky hair,
appealed to Jimmie. He came with a careless zest to each new conquest.
But first there was bright, flashing Esme, paid court to now for half a
year. The girl attracted vaguely as yet. Esme's careless coldness had
made him the more determined, but to-day he felt more confident.

Dinner was in two rooms, divided by an arch; the clatter of voices, the
flash of lights at the little tables, made it like a restaurant.

Belle Bellew, slim and tall, perfectly preserved, sorted her more
important guests, took scant trouble with the others.

The drawing-room almost dazzled Sybil. Lights glowed through rose
petals; jewels flashed on women's dresses and necks and arms; silks
shimmered; chiffons floated round cleverly-outlined forms.

The finger-bowls at dinner all held stephanotis flowers; the cloying,
heavy scent floated through the hot air.

Navotsky, the dancer, was in black, dead and unrelieved, clinging to
her sensuous limbs, outlining her white skin, and when she moved the
sombre draperies parted, with flash of orange and silver underneath,
sheath fitting, brilliantly gorgeous. A great band of diamonds outlined
her small, sleek head.

"More taxes on Grosse Holbein," murmured Mousie Cavendish. "Oh, what a
joy to dine where there is a cook and not a preparer of defunct meats."

There was no ostentation here, but a cunning which reached perfection.

"Laying up for ourselves water-drinking in Homburg," remarked Jimmie,
as he finished fish smothered in a sauce compound of many things, and
went on with a soufflet of asparagus. "Well, it's worth it. Look at our
Fritz, he's longing for stewed pork and plums; the butler tells me he
has cold galantine and bread and pickles left in his room at night to
assuage his hunger."

As the blue smoke haze drifted, and black coffee and liqueurs came to
interfere with digestion, Jimmie had dropped his voice to the note
_intime_ which women recognize. He half whispered to Esme; his
admiration for her was more open than usual.

Sybil talked to a clean-shaven youth who found her very dull, and
almost showed it. Who stared when she chattered and admired, and seemed
to think it provincial not to take all the world for granted.

"Think her lovely, that dancer woman. All right in her way, I imagine.
What a lovely ice, did you say? S'pose it's all right. Nevah eat 'em
myself."

Lord Francis Lennon got up with a sigh of relief to confide to the fair
lady of forty who amused him that he hated "dinin' in the nursery."

Outside a new moon lay silver on her azure, star-spangled bed. The
lights in the garden were making a glittering circle.

Mr Bellew, a sleek, dark man, who was occasionally recognized by his
own guests as their host, rang a bell and read out some rules.

Twenty minutes were given, and then every guest must have assumed a
character, and only used what materials they could find in the heap
prepared in the hall. Prizes to be given.

"Think us fools," said Mousie, pulling a green overdress from under a
cushion and becoming Undine.

But the picnic had begun. Men pinned on newspapers, rushed for
cardboard to cut out armour, rifled the linen cupboards for
tablecloths. Journals, sandwich men, knights, ghosts, came laughing to
the garden, odd ends fluttering, pins proving unstable friends.

Women got at the heap of odds and ends--gauzes, tinsel crowns, veils
and lace, tying great sashes over their evening dresses, shrieking for
inspiration.

With a ripple of laughter, Lady Deverelle, wife of the tenth earl,
flung off her long green skirt, and stood forth audaciously in a froth
of green silk reaching not far below her knees; put a paper crown on
her head, and called herself a fairy.

Echo of their laughter drifted to the river. Boats massed outside as
people peered through the shrubs.

"Those dreadful people at the Bungalow," said Lady Susan Ploddy to her
sister; they were on a houseboat a short way off.

Into the circle of light ran a crowd of laughing people, snatching at
enjoyment. Out on the velvet turf, dancing to the music of hidden
musicians.

"Idyllic but exhausting," said Undine to her partner. "There will be
more fun to-night in looking on."

The dance would not last long; it was only an excuse for a romp.

Prince Fritz, his stout person hung about with dusters, calling himself
a cheque, held the dancer in his arms, whirling her round. Navotsky
shrugged her shoulders. "She was Night," she said, and merely put on a
black veil, floating from her crown of diamond stars.

The great mirror reflected them all; they danced the cotillon, taking
up handsome presents carelessly; scarfs, pins, studs, a hundred pounds'
worth of toys which no one wanted.

Sybil Chauntsey had picked up roses, pinned them in her hair and in her
dress, wrote on her card "Summer." She was left alone as they danced,
until some man, seeing her, whirled her noisily round and laughed and
dropped her. The girl felt that she was not one of this romping crowd;
her pleasure began to taste bitterly to her.

Esme, forgetting her troubles, had tied a sash round her dress, twisted
some stuff into a head-dress, and called herself a Spaniard. The yellow
gown and scarlet sash suited her.

She only did one figure in the cotillon; she liked looking on. Then
they formed up for the prize before the judges.

Lady Deverelle, in her green underskirt, took first easily. They gave
the Prince the next.

The musicians thrummed, but the dancers were weary of fooling;
shadow-like, they melted away into nooks and summer-houses, until from
every corner echoed the hushed treble of women's voices, the hushed
depth of men's.

"See, I have marked down my corner." Captain Gore Helmsley tore off a
shield of paper off his arm and took Esme's arm. She felt his fingers
press on her warm, soft flesh. "See here." He had the key of a small
outdoor room, a glorified summer-house hung about with fragrant roses,
furnished with lounge chairs and soft cushions. Darkness wrapped it,
but with a click Esme turned on a shaded light, giving a faint glimmer
through the gloom.

Gore Helmsley pulled the chairs to one side, so that to curious
passers-by they were in shade. The dim glow fell on Esme, on her
shining hair, her brilliantly pretty face.

"So, it was good of you to come down," Jimmie said. "I was afraid you
wouldn't. And once here--" he said.

"And here," Esme's voice, interrupting, was not lowered. "Here we can
be amused for two days--no more."

"No more," he whispered.

His hands pressing hers, his voice was more eloquent than words.

"No more? After all these months, Esme," he said. "Here, where no one
watches, where it is so easy to arrange--where--"

Esme Carteret sat up in her chair, impatient, annoyed; she interrupted
again sharply.

"Where people make awful fools of themselves," she said.

Gore Helmsley moved nearer to her. "Sweet fools," he muttered, and
stooping suddenly, he kissed her.

Esme got up; she neither started nor showed emotion. "My husband said
no woman could trust you," she said coldly. "Come--I am going in."

Captain Gore Helmsley stammered as he realized that Esme would never be
pieced into the puzzle of his loves. Then, being extremely offended, he
endeavoured to hide it, and Esme's faint malicious smile made him her
enemy for life.

Except for the kiss he had not committed himself in any way, and except
for her one sharp speech Esme had said nothing to show resentment; they
talked carelessly going in. He knew that he had thrown and lost.

Sybil Chauntsey, overlooked in the prize-giving, while she had been
involved in a romping dance, came towards the veranda. The partitions
each held its Jack and Jill; she could hear rustles, whispers,
low-toned laughter.

From one Prince Fritz's guttural was unmistakable, as indiscreetly he
muttered his adoration.

"Mein angel," said Prince Fritz, as Sybil passed. "You shall haf the
pearl--so that I clasp it on your neck."

A big, squarely-built man stood at the lighted doorway; Sybil had met
him in London--Lord Innistenne. He whistled as he saw her.

"What the--why are you here, Miss Chauntsey?" he said slowly.

"I came to see it all." Sybil's voice brightened. "It was fun, wasn't
it? I made mother let me come."

She was panting, her rose crown crooked, one of her chiffon sleeves
torn.

"Fun, for grown-ups," he said shortly. "I thought your mother"--he
paused--"did not know the Bellews."

"Captain Gore Helmsley got them to ask me. He wanted me to come down to
see it all."

Innistenne frowned. "Look here," he said. "Let me motor you up to town
to-morrow. Leave this place."

Sybil shook her head, doubtfully. She was not enjoying herself.

There was no solemn meeting at breakfast at the Bellews. People who
liked to come down strolled in to a meal which was kept hot until
twelve. Others breakfasted outside their bedrooms; pretty women in
silken wrappers might send invitations to a friend to join them in the
rose-covered partitions outside their windows.

The fresh air of a June day came whispering across the water and the
shaven lawns. Later it would be very hot, but as yet the coolness of
the dew was on the grass; the sun beamed softly gold through fresh
green leaves.

Esme smiled a little, for, coming into the breakfast-room, she saw that
Jimmie Gore Helmsley meant to have no more to do with her. He did not
come to her table, get her fruit, hang over her lovingly. Sybil, fresh
as the day itself, was listening to his caressing voice, tasting her
first plate of delicately-flavoured flattery.

Feminine eighteen comes gaily to its breakfast. It has had no weary
thoughts to trouble it, no fading skin to cream and powder.

What was she going to do to-day? Oh! anything and everything; boat,
play tennis, idle, watch the people.

The silver sweetness of the morning called to Sybil. She would have
breakfast out, under the trees. She saw tables ready there. Cool damp
of dew, a gentle cloud of midges and flies did not deter Sybil. Cold
tea and a narrow choice of breakfast, brought by a languid footman,
were enough for her. Gore Helmsley, with the morning peevishness which
comes when we are forty, brushed mosquitoes from his hair, stabbed
irritably at congealing bacon and leathery egg, listened with tempered
enthusiasm to Sybil's picture of ideal life.

Out in the woods somewhere, breakfast and lunch and dinner with the
lovely trees overhead, and the lovely grass at one's feet, and no
stuffy rooms and cold roast beef, but eggs and fish and tea, she
chattered.

Captain Gore Helmsley said, "With pneumonia sauce," and said it
irritably. He sat watching the girl's fresh face, the sparkle of her
grey eyes, and presently deemed her worth even outdoor breakfast.

As cigarettes banished midges his voice grew soft again; he knew how to
listen, how to make youth talk of itself. He planned the day out; he
bought a box of sweets for Sybil to crunch.

The girl was excited, pleased by her conquest. She had seen Jimmie in
attendance on well-known beauties; had never dreamt the black eyes
would look at her with open admiration; or that the man would talk of
lunches together, of a drive somewhere in his car, of singling her out.

She thanked him warmly, with flushed cheeks which made her lovely.
"Take her to Brighton some day, down to the sea, for a picnic! Oh, how
lovely, and how good of him; he had so much to do, so many friends."

Lord Innistenne, strolling across the gardens, saw the two under the
big beech tree--saw Esme reading alone on the veranda.

He walked down to the river, where two long chairs were hidden in a
nook of shrubs, a slight, brown-eyed woman sitting in one, sitting
palpably waiting.

"Joan, would you do good works?" he said. "Let this day slip for it."

She looked up at him quickly.

"Come with me, use persuasion, get the Chauntsey child back to London
to her mother. I'll drive her up."

Joan Blacker looked at the river, seen dimly through the trees, at the
wall of shrubs about the hidden nook. They had not many days like this.
Then wistfully she looked at Innistenne's strong, rugged face--a look
with a shade of fear in it, the fear which must haunt each woman who
has sold her birthright, purity, that what is so much to her may be
mere pastime to the man she loves. Joan Blacker might have been
moderately unhappy, moderately lonely all her life, if Innistenne had
not come across her path.

"The dark Adonis is fitting arrows to his bow," said Innistenne. "He
delights in the bringing to earth of foolish, half-fledged birdlings.
We shall be back early, Joan. Come--help me."

She had counted on her morning; on a few hours of the talking women
delight in, of tender memories referred to, of future plans discussed.
But without a word she got up.

"She is very pretty, Fred." Joan Blacker stopped once, looked up at
Innistenne.

"She may be," he said carelessly. "There is a brick wall named Joan
built across my vision, you see."

It was her reward--she was satisfied.

Jimmie Gore Helmsley's black eyes did not smile at a pair of intruders.
He was taking Sybil out in a punt after lunch, with a tea-basket for a
picnic. He strolled off now with a last low word to Sybil. "Come to the
rose garden. I'll wait there. Bother these people!"

Joan Blacker did not fail in her good deed. She said some simple things
to Sybil--told her quietly that the Bungalow was not fit for her; that
if her mother realized, or heard, it might stop liberty for evermore.

"To go back to London," cried Sybil, "to the house in Lancaster Gate,
to the dreariness of a dull dinner there. Navotsky was to dance
to-night. Besides--Mrs Bellew--"

"The servants may tell her that there is a vacant room," said Joan,
equably, "otherwise she will not know. And for to-night--we'll take you
out somewhere if you like, in London. I warn you your mother does not
understand."

When Gore Helmsley, attractive to those who admired him in his
flannels, strolled back to look for a Sybil who came not, he only saw
the dust of a motor on the road at the back of the house.

"Miss Chauntsey has gone back to London," said Esme. "Her mother, I
think, telephoned."

Gore Helmsley nodded carelessly. But Esme, looking drearily out across
the gardens, trying hard not to think, had made a bitter enemy.

She was rung up by Denise Blakeney later.

"Yes. Cyril leaves next week. I tell you, Esme, I am afraid--afraid of
when he comes back. Be careful of cross lines. No one will know.
Dismiss your maid at once. Come to me here and write to her if you
think it best."

Esme hung up the receiver with a sigh. The great scheme was becoming
greater, looming before her. But money and liberty and an allowance
made it all feasible.

A week later Bertie Carteret sailed for South Africa, and on the same
day a broad, quiet man left London for a year's shooting. Both thought
of their wives as the big steamers began to churn up the water. But one
with wistful longing, looking back at a figure on the quay which waved
and waved until it was lost, a blur among other figures; and one whose
mouth set grimly as he recalled a good-bye in a luxurious dining-room,
arms which he had put away from his neck, and an unsteady voice which
had hinted of some confession which he would not hear.

"Later," said Cyril Blakeney, "later." But his eyes were full of bitter
hatred for the thing which, for his name's sake, he meant to do.

Some hours after the steamer had left port Marie Leroy was rung up on
the telephone.

She stood listening, a curious expression on her dark face, her lips
murmuring, "Oui, madame. Oui, certainement, madame."

Esme was dismissing her, was going away with Lady Blakeney, wanted no
maid. Marie was to receive extra wages, a superfine character; to pack
Madame's things.

Marie walked away, her slim brown fingers pressed together.

"And--what means it?" said the Frenchwoman, softly. "That would I like
to know. What means it?"




CHAPTER V


Winter came softly across Italy. There were hours of sunlight, breaths
of wind which carried no chill dampness. Here on a sheltered slope, its
back to the hills, its windows overlooking stretches of olive groves, a
villa had been built. Once a country home for a prince, now patched and
painted when a strange tenant took it.

The _Morning Post_ had announced that "Lady Blakeney and Mrs Carteret
had left London together for the Continent. Lady Blakeney, having found
the strain of the season too much this year, was going to rest by the
sea in some quiet part of France." Later, a rumour crept out; there was
a reason for the delicacy. After all these years! Denise had just
whispered a hint before she left. She was coming home in the spring.

The difficulty of losing oneself was soon forced upon the two
wanderers. They had gone without maids; they packed abominably; they
were helpless without the attendance they had been used to.

Denise remarked tearfully that she had never put on her own stockings
except once, when she was paddling. Esme, less helpless, helped her,
but was querulous, full of fancies, ill-pleased with life.

After a time Denise changed her trim dresses for loose coats and
skirts. The two moved to Dinard, met a few friends there. Observant
people looked shrewdly significant.

It was time then! When? they asked. Oh! some time in the spring. March,
Denise said. Yes, it was quite true.

They wrote to friends at home.

Then came a time when they tried to vanish, went to small towns and
fretted in dull hotels.

Denise had made inquiries, found out where there was a good doctor. One
day the two came to Riccione, a little Italian town, built on a gentle
slope, spying at the distant mountains, able, with powerful glasses, to
catch a shimmer of the distant sea.

Luigi Frascatelle, slight and dark, a man immersed in his art of
curing, was startled by the visit of two English ladies.

They were taking the Villa Picciani, ten miles out; they were coming in
December. One asked for advice, for attendance if necessary.

Frascatelle's dark eyes read the sign words of wealth; the woman who
did spokeswoman was brown, slender, distinguished, but wrapped in a
long cloak; the other dazzlingly fair, younger, black circles under her
brilliant blue eyes.

"Would the signor tell them where to procure servants--men and women?
They would hire a motor. Was there a nurse, a trained one, available
for some time? Lady Blakeney was nervous."

"Lady Blakeney!" Luigi looked at the fair girl curiously. "But,
Madame," he spoke French, "will not Madame return for the event to
England--to the great physicians there--to her own home?"

"Sir Cyril is away; her ladyship is lonely in England; has a fancy for
sunshine and for solitude."

The doctor bowed. "Ah! at such times there are ever fancies, better
indulged. Ah! si, always better indulged."

The ladies were coming in December. He would call as required; there
were worthy servants to be found. There was one, English.

"No," the elder woman shot out, "all Italian. We want your Italian
cooking, Es--Denise and I. We want omelettes, macaroni, to amuse us in
our solitude."

"But, sapristi! a strange amusement," said the doctor to himself.

"You will get us reliable servants, signor?" Denise asked.

"Che lo sa," said Luigi, absently. "Ah! yes, Madame, certainly."

"It is so kind of you," Denise went on graciously, "so very kind and
good, signor."

He kept her back, he pressed his slim, strong fingers together.

"Madame, is it wise for your friend to be out here alone? She does not
look strong; she is surely hysterical, nervous."

"It is her fancy, signor. I have left England to be with her and
indulge it."

"The devotion of a friend," said Luigi. "And--Monsieur Sir Blakenee--is
he satisfied?"

"He is abroad, shooting. Miladi has written, trusts he may meet her in
England in time. We, will return before the event; but it is well to be
prepared, to know of help if it is needed."

"That's all over," said Denise, coming out. "Why, child, don't look so
white."

Denise had written to her husband, her letter was making its way up to
a camping-ground under huge mountains, where Sir Cyril was shooting. It
told her news; named March as the date; prayed him to meet her in
London. Went on to talk simply of having been a fool, no more, a fool,
and of how she had loved him before he went. But now she had left her
old life, was travelling with Esme Carteret, enjoying herself as well
as health would permit. The past was the past; in the future an heir to
his name might make Cyrrie happier. She tried to tell before he left,
but she was not sure then.

A shallow woman, scheming for her own ends, she did not see the man's
face as he read the letter. Opening it carelessly, sitting stricken,
staring at it; his strong face stirred, the harsh lines slipping from
it.

"Poor Denise," he said. "It was that she wanted to tell. Oh! poor old
Denise--after all these years. The letter's dated Florence; she says to
write to England as they're moving about. Poor old Denise!" he went on,
and looked into the fire. "Perhaps she was only a fool. But the mother
of my child," said Sir Cyril, simply, "is my wife for evermore."

His man, one he had had for years, was making a stew with skill.

"Reynolds," he shot out, "Reynolds! We trek for the coast to-morrow.
Her ladyship wants me, Reynolds. There's an heir coming."

Reynolds gave polite congratulation.

"Comin' just in time," muttered the valet to the stew. "Just in time,
milady."

Denise had no thought of how her husband's big nature would be moved.
How, with old tender thoughts crowding back on him, he sat in the
shadows and made plans, plans which included her, Denise, his wife.
He'd take her on that yachting trip she'd hankered for; she'd want a
change in the spring; they'd have a new honeymoon off her pet coast of
Italy. But could they leave the child? The mystery of birth comes
freshly to each man who calls himself Father for the first time. The
child--He'd be in the old nurseries at White Friars, behind the wooden
bars. He'd be a sturdy boy, strong, bright-eyed, no puling weakling,
but a true Blakeney, clean-limbed and big. Soon he'd come toddling out
in the gardens, a little creature wondering at big life; a mite who had
to be taught the names of simple things. And later still he would ride
and shoot and fish and swim, and learn that the Blakeneys were men of
clean lives, and that he must follow the tracks of his fathers. Honour
first, the house motto was carved over the old mantelshelf in the hall,
where Cyril had been shown it as a boy.

Honour first! And when he re-read his letter, the letter which changed
his life from loneliness to sudden hope of happiness, Denise was coming
out of the little house in the Italian town, puckering her forehead
lest she had forgotten anything to make her scheme perfect.

"If we catch that weekly boat we could get to England by February,
Reynolds."

"Yes, Sir Cyril; just about the second or first week of February."

"I can cable from the coast. Tell her ladyship to meet me."

Sir Cyril was boyish as he sat dreaming. Big people have the power to
put the past behind them, to see sunshine in the future.

      *      *      *      *      *

The brown-skinned Italian nurse looked regretfully at the morsel of
humanity in her arms. A bonny, bright-eyed little thing, blinking at
the world solemnly.

"I shall miss my bambino, signora," she said sadly.

Esme talked haltingly; she bent over the boy, looking down at him; she
was pale, a little worn and thin; some of the brilliance had left her
eyes.

"Is he not a pride--a joy? Ah, signora. Old Beatrice has nursed many
bambinos, but none such as this."

Esme turned away impatiently. She looked out across the Italian
landscape, fair even in winter.

It was January. There would be time to hunt still in England, to enjoy
herself. To taste the reward of her scheme. But....

"None such as this." The mite cooed at nothing, smiling and stretching
his hands.

"Esme! I mean Denise!"

Lady Blakeney ran into the room, calling excitedly: "My dear, the post
is in."

"Well! Carefully, Esme." Esme flung accent on the name. "Well?"

"The post! Cyril has written; oh, it's splendid."

The nurse bent over her charge, crooning to it, but there was a curious
look on her face.

"Oh, carefully!" said Esme, shutting the door, going out on to the old
marble terrace. "Carefully. One never knows what these people
understand. You must not take the letters."

"I had to, Esme. He's caught some boat. He will be in London at once.
He--Cyril! He will hear--see the papers. We must leave at once,
to-morrow. I am wiring to Paris, and to the nurse in London. Wiring for
rooms. Ah! the doctor, prying at us."

But little Luigi was not prying. He came to advise, to counsel caution
for the fair English miladi. She must not run about so much.

"There was a strain," he said. "Madame was not well--no, not well at
all."

His dark eyes looked at Esme's drawn face; he grunted thoughtfully.

"Madame is not so strong," he said. "It is but three weeks--but three,
and she is up and about."

"And we leave to-morrow," she said. "My husband is coming home, signor.
I must fly to meet him."

"He could come here," said Luigi Frascatelle. "You are not fit to
travel."

"He hates Italy. This was my fancy--this coming here."

Her fancy! The big, bare rooms had made Esme nervous and irritable; she
had chafed during the dullness of waiting; had grown fretful and
afraid. She hated the big room she had lain sick in, with its ornate
bed, its bare, polished boards; the fire of chestnut wood. How often
she had woken in terror, dreading what must come to her in it. Then
there was constant need of caution; the strain of remembering had told
on the woman who ought to have been with her own people, with her hours
full, her time taken up.

She could have played bridge, grumbled to her friends, learnt comfort,
been with her husband.

"No, Madame is nervous; not well," said the little Italian, "run down.
Better if Sir Blakeney came here to take Madame the journey. Madame
does not know that there were difficulties which have weakened her."

Esme went away irritably. Denise, laughing, excited, came in.

"She will be all right," she said impatiently. "It is nothing, surely,
mere natural strain."

"Che lo sa?" said Frascatelle, half to himself. "There is a
nervousness, Madame, as if from mental strain--and there were
complications at the birth."

"It's this Italy," Denise said carelessly, "so depressing."

"But I thought," Luigi looked up in astonishment, "that Italy was
Miladi's whim--"

"But of course," Denise flushed, "but whims, signor, are not always
wise. The place was lonely."

When Luigi Frascatelle came next day to the villa it was empty. The
Italian men and maids had been paid off liberally. Beatrice, weeping
for her charge, had come in the motor to the station and seen the
ladies off. They were both thickly veiled, both muffled up.

The little doctor drove back to the town and on to the station, to meet
the old woman returning from the station.

"From here to Paris, without maids, without a nurse," he cried, "and
with a baby of four weeks. They are strange, these English."

"They who know not how to feed it," groaned Beatrice. "All is not
right, signor."

He drove back to his house; he piled fragrant chestnut wood upon the
fire; he applied himself thoughtfully to a dish of golden risotto.

"There is something strange about this miladi," he said to his
favourite almond pudding. "No, all is not right."

It was a weary journey. Little Cyril learnt to weep upon it, torn from
kindly arms who knew how to hold him; he learnt the meaning of pain and
hunger. He voiced his protest as best he could.

"Oh! stop him, Esme. Stop the brat!"

Denise woke at the fretful wailing. "Make a bed for him there, a bed on
the seat," she said.

"He might fall off." Esme held the whimpering bundle in her arms, sat
wearily, afraid she might drop off to sleep.

"Feed him then; he wants milk. Oh, what a terrible journey!"

Yet she did nothing on it; for Esme, curiously silent, saw to the child.

A tall woman, kindly-faced, hurried through the crowd at the Gare;
cried out as she saw the baby in Esme's arms.

"Lady Blakeney, is it not? I am the nurse, Mrs Stanson, engaged for
your ladyship. Oh, milady, have you come alone--without a nurse?"

"The nurse was useless, insolent, neglecting baby," said Lady Blakeney,
carelessly. "Take him now. He is so naughty. The woman neglected him."

"As those foreigners would do; yet he looks splendid. One moment,
milady, while I gather these things."

She put the baby into Denise's arms, turning to pick up some of the
tiny traveller's luggage. "Oh, not like that, milady," she cried, for
the small head flopped on a stiffly-held arm and the boy wailed
fretfully.

"H'm!" Esme swept the mite out of Denise's hold. "Here! give him to me.
H'sh, baby, hush!"

The nurse looked puzzled. She had seen Lady Blakeney once in London,
but she blinked now, afraid her memory had played her false.

"Excuse me," she began, "I understood that this was her ladyship." She
looked at Denise.

"_I_ am Lady Blakeney," said Denise, angrily. "Oh! two taxis, please. I
am tired of crying babies. Take him in one."

Mrs Stanson looked grave.

Esme's eyes followed the tall woman who carried a little bundle down
the platform. A sudden fierce ache of regret came to her--regret and
anger. This little, white-limbed thing was hers. She would not have
sent it off alone.

"Her ladyship," said Mrs Stanson, later, as she put her charge to
sleep, "does not seem to care for children, ma'am."

"Some people do not." Esme looked at the sleeping face. "He is happier
now that you have him, nurse."

Downstairs the God of Chance was working wonders.

Denise, coming into the hall of the Bristol, cried out in astonishment.

A big man was registering at the bureau. Her name was written before
his. He swung round with a cry as he looked at it.

"Denise!" his hands were on hers. He held them hard. "Denise, I got a
paper at Marseilles. My poor child, out away there in Italy. Were you
ill? It was two months too soon."

With a little sob Denise held to the big strong hands, knew then what
she had so nearly lost; this man's protection, his name; his kind eyes
looked into hers.

The past was past; she knew that. Some women make resolutions and keep
them. Denise did then. For the future, the future she had made by
fraud, Sir Cyril Blakeney's wife should be above suspicion.

"Oh, Denny, why didn't you tell me--keep me here?"

"I was afraid," she faltered. "You were cross then. And I was not sure."

"I was cross then." He took her away to a quiet corner. "That's over,
my wife. And the boy? Come up to see him. Our boy! He's not delicate, I
hope?"

"Oh, not yet--he'll be asleep now." Denise was gay, radiant, her colour
bright. "I'm hungry, Cyrrie. Let's have dinner now--and talk--talk!"

"Talk," he laughed. "Why didn't you wire for Sir Herman to go out? Were
you bad? I never saw you looking stronger."

"Oh, no, I was not bad. I'm very strong," she said, a little uneasily.

"And you came on so soon. There's nothing wrong with him, is there? Oh,
Denise, tell me."

"Wrong with him? No!" she said, laughing carelessly. "He's a great
baby."

Denise was looking through a door of life which she had never tried to
open, that of love and trust. She was too shallow to regret the use of
the false key which she had forced it open with. She was safe; Cyril
would never bring up the past to the boy's mother.

"Come then, and see a sleeping bundle of flannels," she said.

The boy had just gone to sleep. Sir Cyril's first view of him was with
Esme stooping over the cot, looking wistfully down at the tiny face.

"Mrs Carteret has quite a way with a child," said the nurse,
graciously. "He's a splendid boy, Sir Cyril."

Sir Cyril had had shy ideas of a something whispered across the new
hope in his life, of a promise for the future or regrets for the past.
As it was, he could only stand almost awkwardly, afraid that a clumsy
movement might wake the child.

"Great fellow, isn't he?" he said sheepishly.

"A splendid boy, Sir Cyril--really splendid; fair, sir, as you are; he
has a curious mark, a regular small plum, on his shoulder."

Esme started. Just on her shoulder she had a round, purple mark, shaped
as a plum; she had never dreamt of the baby inheriting it.

A true Blakeney, big and strong, cleanly made, Sir Cyril stood by the
cot, with the pride of this heir to his big in him.

"He's just wonderful, Den," he said simply. "I thought that, coming too
soon, he might be puny, delicate--but he's fine."

Esme turned away. It was her boy they praised, and she knew the
bitterness of jealousy.

If gold could have been fried for dinner, and diamonds used for sauce,
Sir Cyril would have ordered them that night. He was too big and quiet
to be openly hilarious, but its very quiet made it more marked. He
ordered a special dinner, special wines, fruit, boxes of sweets. The
table was littered as if it were one at Maxim's. To-morrow they would
search Paris for a memento, for something to mark this meeting.

Esme, listening, felt as some mortal who, standing in the cold, looks
through clear glass at a blazing fire yet cannot warm himself. They
shut a door on her; she had no boy lying upstairs; no husband to
rejoice in his heir.

The cold stung bitterly; it loosed dull pangs of envy, of futile wrath.
For what had brought these two together was hers, and she had sold it.
Sometimes they turned to her vaguely, bringing her into their plans.
Esme would come shopping in the morning, of course, help to choose
jewels; Esme had been such a friend--so devoted.

"I'll never forget it, Mrs Carteret," Sir Cyril said once. "You lost
half a year to keep my wife company. Lord! you're a real friend!"

"Yes." Esme crunched a silvered bonbon, a cunning mixture of almonds
and fruit and sugar. She picked another up, looking at it. Had she not
looked on life as a bonbon, to crunch prettily and enjoy, a painted,
flavoured piece of sugar?

She had money; she could go to the hidden shops on the second storeys,
and buy the dainty fripperies that Paris knows how to produce; she
wanted a fur coat, new frocks, hats, a dozen things.

Sir Cyril was bending close to his wife, holding her out a glass of
Chartreuse, clinking it against hers.

"Den," his voice was stirred by deep emotion, "some day we'll go, you
and I, and take that villa for a month, and I can see where my boy was
born."

The glassful of amber syrup fell on the table, the glass splinters
dulled by the oily liquid.

"Oh, some day," said Denise, trembling. "How stupid of me! But it was a
dull spot, Cyrrie. It was only fancy, nerves, which took me there.
Wasn't it dull, Den"--she stopped--"Esme?"

"I never hated any place so much in my life," said Esme, dully.

That night she crept along the corridor, stood listening at a door.

Primitive instinct was stronger than the power of money. Her boy lay
sleeping in that quiet room.

"Oh, Esme!"--Denise called her into her room next day--"Esme! Come
here! You can go, Summers."

Her new maid, sent from England with the nurse, went quietly out.

"Esme!" Denise lowered her voice. "About that money. I owe you some
now. I can't write cheques, you see, every half-year; but this time I
can explain." She threw a slip of paper across to Esme.

"Thank you. And the boy?" said Esme.

"Oh! he's all right. I saw Mrs Stanson. He slept well. Don't mess about
him, Esme! It would only look silly--better not. Will you meet us at
the Ritz for _dejeuner_?"

Esme excused herself. She might be late. She would come back to the
hotel.

She went out into the crisp, stinging cold of early February. Touch of
frost on Paris, drift of hot air from shop doors, clear sunlight
overhead, people hurrying along the dry pavements. Furs everywhere,
outlining piquant French faces; from solid sombre imitation to the
sheen of Russian sable and the coarse richness of silver fox.

A fur coat--Esme wanted one--went restlessly into a shop, tried on,
priced, gloried in their soft richness, their linings of mauve and
white; saw her fair beauty framed by dark sable, by light-hued mink, by
rich fox skin, and knew again disappointment.

The three coats she wanted were splendid things; each one would take
almost all her money, leave nothing for frocks and hats.

Impatiently, almost angrily, she stood frowning at the glass.

"Oh! yes, the coat was lovely; but the price! Four hundred pounds of
English money; and this other was five!" There was the little coat of
mink priced at a mere bagatelle.

"Yes, but Madame must see that it was coarse beside the others."

Cunningly the shopman put the two together; showed the rare sheen of
the sable, the cravat of real lace, the exquisite tinting of the blue
and silver brocade lining, and laid against it a coat which would have
looked rich alone, but here, against this, was a mere outcast.

"Madame sees; the coat is cheap--a bargain. We sold one to-day, almost
like it. Ah! here it is!"

"I must take the cheap one," Esme muttered. "I--"

"See, this one was sold to Milady Blakeney. And this which we wish
Madame to have is almost as good. Milady's has remained for slight
alteration."

Truly a gorgeous garment this--sables black in their splendour; clasps
of jade and silver and paste; lining such as fairy princesses might
wear. A ruffle of old Mechlin.

"This is of English money nine hundred pounds. Unique, exquisite. And
this other looks as well."

Sudden bitter resentment choked Esme. Denise could have this coat and
go on to other shops to buy jewels, laces, unneeded follies. What was
five hundred pounds? Denise might easily have taken her out to-day,
bought her furs or given her twice the stipulated money; this time
might have been generous.

"Oh! I'll take this one." Esme touched the sable coat. After all, she
had money in the bank; she had lived free for six months. "Yes, I'll
pay for it now."

She had to wait while they went to the bank; then she went out in the
rich mantle. It was heavy, a little difficult to walk in, but she could
see her fair face against the dark furs as she peered into mirrors.

At the dressmaker's she grew irritable again. Why again should all she
wanted be so dear? That soft wisp of satin and chiffon and lace, a mere
rag in the hand, but on a model cunningly outlining rounded limbs,
setting off a soft throat, billowing about one's feet; that tea-gown of
opal velvet; that severe coat and skirt of blue, were all beyond her
now that the coat was hers. Yet Esme bought recklessly, a sullen anger
driving her. Madame Arielle would copy and create others, these three
she must have. And this--and this blouse; another dress and scarf.

Esme had ordered there before, but never in this style. Madame looked
dubious.

"I'll pay you fifty now on account." And so only fifty left of a
half-yearly price. "That brown--you'll copy it at once?"

"Ah, yes--shortly." But Madame was pressed. "Milady Blakeney had been
in ordering a dozen frocks, but of a beauty," gushed Madame, "one all
of real lace and silver crepe. Ah, yes."

Denise again before her, dwarfing her, Esme's, orders. The coat seemed
heavier now. She bought hats almost languidly; passed a jeweller's
window, saw a necklace, a thing of diamonds and emeralds exquisite in
its fine work, with one great diamond swinging from the fret of green
and white.

"How much?" Esme shrugged her shoulders. "It would have gone so well
with her new gown." She bought a tiny brooch of enamel and went out.

It was dull at lunch at the Cafe de la Paix. She did not go back for
it. It was stupid to eat alone; the omelette tasted leathery; the
little fillets tough; the place was overheated; she would have taken
off her coat, but the dress underneath was last year's, therefore a
thing to be hidden.

Men stared at the beautiful English woman in her daring green hat and
gorgeous furs.

Sipping her liqueur, Esme tried to lose her irritation in dreams of the
future. Bertie would be home; they would take up their old happy life;
but even more happily. She would be so well off now. Able to buy her
own frocks, to help in many ways. When she got back she would go off to
hunt somewhere. Esme looked at her hands; they were so much thinner.
Would she be strong enough to hunt? She had lost her rounded contours;
she knew that there were new lines on her fair skin, that she had lost
some of her youth.

These things age one. And yet--"L'addition," she said sharply. Yet she
thought of a little soft thing lying in the big upstairs room at the
Bristol, and something hurt her sharply again.

She was tired of shopping, she would go back there now. It was lonely
in Paris.

Mrs Stanson, writing letters to engage a variety of nursemaids--she
considered a person of her position must be thoroughly waited on--was
surprised by a visit from Esme.

The baby was splendid after all his trials and his journey. Mrs Stanson
did not hold with infants travelling; she dreaded the cold journey back
to England.

"Nor do I hold with the heat of these here rooms," said the English
nurse, "and with the cold a-rushing in like a mad dog with its mouth
open if one stirs a window. Give me air for a child, Mrs Carteret, air
and warmth; but above all, air."

An autocrat of the nursery, this Mrs Stanson, who had nursed heirs of
great houses and loved her charges. A death now, the passing of pretty
delicate Lady de Powers and her infant son, had set the woman free.

"You'll love him, Mrs Stanson--be good to him?" Esme flung out the
words in sudden impulse; she took the smiling baby up.

"I declare, Mrs Carteret, he might be yours instead of her ladyship's,"
laughed the nurse. "She came in for five minutes, and asked if I wanted
anything, and to order what I wanted. I made it two nursery-maids
to-day. Like many young mothers, she's careless. It's the ladies
without that would give their eyes for one," said Mrs Stanson, softly.

"Without." A slur on her, Esme, whose child was in her arms. Something
hurt in her throat; she turned red and then white. She sat for an hour
in the big bright room, listening to all the ills which lurk in wait
for infant life, related with gusto by the nurse. A little chill, a
spoon of soured food, and poof! out goes the life; then later,
chicken-pox, measles, whooping-cough; wet feet. It seemed wonderful to
think that there were any children left alive. Little Cyril, dribbling
thoughtfully, had no idea of what was before him.

But at the end, comfort. "And yet they lives," said Mrs Stanson, "lives
on, on beer and dripping, which I am informed is used as baby food by
the very poor."

Denise came in for tea, fresh, radiant, wrapped in a great stole of
fox. Big Sir Cyril pulling little boxes innumerable from his pockets.

They had a sitting-room. Denise called Esme in to her, spread purchases
on the table.

"See, Esme--this pendant, isn't it sweet? And this enamel clasp--and
this brooch--and that diamond heart." The table glittered with the
things. "Oh, Cyril could not buy enough for me. He is so good."

Almost sullenly Esme looked down at the stone of green, white and red;
the pendant and necklace was the one which she had coveted. Denise
might offer to give her some of these; she might ask her if there was
nothing she wanted.

"And I got you something, Es--just as remembrance. Cyril wished me to.
Summers! bring in the parcels. Yes, there it is."

Esme knew the label--that of a huge shop close to the Place de l'Opera;
good, but bourgeois, cheap.

"See! I hate that musquash thing you wear. It's too dark for you."
Denise pulled out a stole of brown fox--a huge thing, covered with
tails, but meretricious, showy; the satin of the lining crackled as she
touched it. This for all she had done for her friend.

"Thank you, Denise." Esme took up the fur. "How pretty. It was nice of
you to think of me, now that I am of no further use."

Denise looked up, startled by momentary fear. Surely Esme was more than
content with her share of the bargain. Was glad to be rid of her
unwanted brat; to have ample allowance and be free. For a minute she
saw what it might be if Esme failed her.

But Denise was shallowly optimistic; she laughed the fears away; she
kissed Esme affectionately.

"It was a great thought, and it's splendidly over," she
whispered--"over for us both."

"And you? You really begin to feel that he is yours?" whispered Esme
back, almost fiercely.

"I believe I do. I shall have forgotten it completely in ten years'
time," laughed Lady Blakeney.

"And--shall I?" said Esme to herself.




CHAPTER VI


"Some people," said Mousie Cavendish, "appear to have come into a
fortune."

She touched Esme Carteret's sable coat, stroking the soft fur, her
small greenish eyes looking up wickedly.

"Friends ... are nice things," said Mousie, softly. "Hey, my pretty
Esme."

Esme flushed. Five minutes before she had grumbled at her poverty, now
she came down in her splendid wrap waiting for the motor.

Money had never seemed to go so fast. The half-year's allowance from
Denise had been spent in a day. More new frocks, new habits had seemed
necessary. A restlessness haunted Esme; she was not satisfied with
anything, she was nervous, lacked appetite, had grown thin.

She was doing the last of the hunting season at Coombe Regis now, an
old Elizabethan house taken by the Holbrooks.

Their only difficulty, as Mousie said sweetly, is "that they cannot
remake the bricks with gold dust, it's so ordinary to have one's house
made of clay and straw and water, otherwise bricks."

There were horses in the stables, sleek, shining hunters, belonging to
friends who came to stay. Esme hired from a local stable. She rode hard
and straight, but came in tired after her day; her old perfect health
had deserted her.

"There," said Mousie, looking out onto the chill March day, "is Luke,
our host, seeking for something he may spend money on. He wants to be a
peer next birthday, and his hopes are high."

The flowers in the old-fashioned flower-garden were a blaze of
magnificence. Mr Holbrook was looking at them, greatly interested in
one patch of pure white daffodils because he had paid ten pounds a
piece for the bulbs. The Cabinet minister who was coming to stay was a
florist. A gift of some of these might please him greatly.

The Holbrooks had made Coombe Regis into a passable imitation of a
Hotel de Luxe. The old hall was now a palm court, heated by hot air,
its great open fireplace offended by a new grate which held coals; the
drawing-room was magnificent in dull blue and gold; stiffly hideous,
with great mirrors shining everywhere.

The dining-room was a mass of mechanical devices, of lifts and electric
heaters and telephones to everywhere, the small tables were all
polished wood spread with slips of real lace. One dined scratchily off
luke-warm silver, one's breakfast cup was Crown Derby set in filigree.

"So annoying of the hens not to learn to lay golden eggs," remarked Mrs
Cavendish one morning when she had examined half a dozen things smoking
over the electric heaters. "What's the use of this pure gold Orpington
here sitting on a silver nest when she only hatches things which can be
purchased at a penny and twopence each. No, I refuse to eat truffles
and cream and salmon for breakfast, nor do I require ham and champagne
sauce."

A big party had assembled for the ball of Regis Hunt races. Dull people
and smart people, who ate their meals together with regret, and drifted
apart directly afterwards. The dull people ate the ornamented dishes
and sighed inwardly for roast mutton, the smart people picked at them
and wanted the French cookery their greedy souls adored.

But Mr Holbrook was content. He was getting on. He did kind things
which he concealed rigorously, and he did generous things for his own
benefit, and his peerage loomed ahead.

"My dear love," said Holbrook, coming into the library. He had
furnished the shelves with first editions of various authors whom no
one ever read. Statues stood, coldly graceful in corners, gleaming
white against the brown background. The library table carried a writing
set of leather worked in gold. Grace Holbrook was dictating letters to
her secretary, a slim girl with a pink nose and an irritated expression.

"My dear," said Holbrook. "Do you think--?" He paused.

"You can go, Miss Harris," said Mrs Holbrook.

"Do you think," he said--"hum, Critennery has a little weakness ... she
dances at the Magnificent, in some gauze ... that we could have her
down. Lady Ermyntrude is not coming."

"We couldn't," said Mrs Holbrook, hastily. "The Duchess is coming."

"Well, it's quite his little weakness and he can do as he likes," said
Holbrook, mournfully. "I do want Henry to be Lord Regis, my love. It's
just to dance on Saturday. I would arrange with Hewson of the
Magnificent. And dancers are so fashionable."

"My dear Luke, the Duchess of Dullshire will be here," said his wife,
firmly, "and the Trents, and Lord Frensham. We couldn't. The Duchess
was at the Magnificent, I remember seeing it mentioned--she must have
seen the woman without any ... that is dancing."

"She is so very graceful," said Luke. "Well, my love, of course if we
cannot. But artistes do go everywhere now. She lunches with Lady
Ermyntrude, and I thought that her presence, combined with a present of
those Angel bulb roots; but if you object ... well, it's quite a little
weakness, my love. Critennery would have liked to talk to Mavis Moover."

Mrs Holbrook wavered visibly. "If the Duchess had not been in front,"
she said; "still, she's very blind and won't wear glasses; she may not
have noticed the gauze. I don't want our party to be spoilt, Luke,
but--"

"Think it over, my love," said Holbrook, going out. "Think it over. And
there's Jimmie Gore Helmsley coming. I see his name down. I don't like
him, Gracie. He's a bad 'un, my love."

"He goes everywhere. He's running a horse," said Mrs Holbrook. "That
long-legged bay thing we saw galloping to-day. People say it will win.
He goes everywhere, Luke."

"So much the worse," said Mr Holbrook, "for everywhere."

Something had happened to the motor Esme was going out in--a tyre had
punctured as it was starting and the chauffeur gave warning of an
hour's delay. Esme yawned, waiting in the over-heated hall.

Bertie would be home in a week; she would want more wine at cost price
from her host. Seeing him come out she flashed a friendly smile at him.
She asked him to send her some.

But Luke Holbrook, who had been glad to help a pretty girl in a tiny
flat, saw no reason for losing a profit to a woman in magnificent
sables.

"Want more hock?" he said. "The same as last, eh? Yes, I told you to
ask me--but it's gone up--gone up, and whisky too, and port.... I'll
send it on to you. Kind of me. It's my business, pretty lady, my
business. No bother at all."

Esme did not realize that he meant to charge her full price.

"We've had such a hunt, we came back early." Sybil Chauntsey ran into
the hall in her habit, young Knox close behind her. Mrs Holbrook
approved of love. She had asked them together. "Oh, such a run,"
babbled Sybil. "And my chestnut was glorious, the dear."

"Jimmie always said that the chestnut was his best horse." Mousie
Cavendish's thin lips curved in a spiteful smile.

Young Knox started, looked at Sybil.

"I thought it was your own horse," he said gravely.

"Captain Gore Helmsley lent him to me for the season. I call him mine.
I thought that you knew."

"No, I did not." The young soldier seemed to have forgotten his gallop;
he looked tired and put out.

"The car, madam, is ready." A butler who bore the mark of experience
stamped upon his impassive face came forward. Esme fastened her coat,
asked for a companion--Mrs Cavendish would come. Her spiteful tongue
made light strokes at reputations as the car hummed along. No one
escaped. No one was immune. She had come to drive to find out who had
given Esme the coat, for the fair girl had never made herself
auspicious.

"Met heaps of nice things abroad, I s'pose.... Why didn't you order a
limousine, Esme? I hate the wind in these open things ... heaps of
princes, I suppose, and rich potentates, didn't you, in your travels?"

"Heaps," said Esme. "At least we must have seen them sometimes."

"Funniest thing rushing off like that for all these months, so unlike
Denise Blakeney. It didn't agree with you, Esme; it made you thin, and
different somehow."

"The climate," Esme said, flushing a little.

"And fancy Denise not coming home for the event, trusting herself to
foreign doctors and nurses."

"She did not intend to stay," Esme answered. "She meant to be back."

"I saw the son and heir. A great fat thing, fair like Cyril. Well, it
settles all the difficulties then. Denise doesn't play the _role_ of
devoted mother; she says the baby bores her."

A sudden wave of anger shook Esme--fear for her child--it might be
neglected, grow up unloved. Then they stopped at the toy shop at Regis.

"A parcel for Mrs Holbrook," she said to the man. Obsequious assistants
ran out to the Coombe Regis motors.

A hunting man, still in his splashed pink, stopped them. He, too, was
full of the great run.

"Coming out to-morrow to Welcombe," he said. "We're all training down."

Esme's face clouded.

"I can't afford it. I owe the man twenty pounds. I've done two days
this week."

A year ago Esme would have almost expected a horse offered to her.
Major Jackson had fifteen of them; she had only to look appealing then,
talked of poverty, and horses came as from the clouds.

Now he too looked at her coat. Its owner could not want help.

"Other engagements," he chaffed lightly. "You're losing your keenness,
Mrs Carteret. Fact."

Esme turned away ill-humouredly. They drove back to Coombe Regis, the
open car humming through the cool spring afternoon. Mousie Cavendish
questioning, surmising, as they went.

The palm court was crowded now, partitions had been knocked away, a
room thrown in to make it large enough; there was no gathering round
for tea. Trays were placed on the little glass-topped satinwood tables.
Hot biscuits and scones were kept hot on electric heaters. The butler
laid a species of buffet covered with huge iced cakes, and relays of
sandwiches if the supplies on each tray were not sufficient.

"Only one thing required--cold roast beef and plum pudding," Mousie
said ill-naturedly, as she looked at it. The tea-pots were all silver
gilt, the little piles of cakes and sandwiches rested on real lace. In
the drawing-room Mrs Holbrook gathered her dullest guests at a table,
where she poured out tea herself, away from the more clouded atmosphere
of the hall.

Several expensive toy dogs sat about on the blue and gold brocade and
ate scraps of cake merely to oblige the guests.

They dined off minced chicken and fillet of beef, and breakfasted off
cream and grape nuts. Mr Holbrook liked them because he had paid three
hundred for Li Chi the pug, and two for Holboin Santoi the pomeranian.

"Luke," said Mrs Holbrook, taking her second cup of chilly tea. "Luke,
I think we could do it; the Duchess may never know who she is."

"Do you really, my love?" said Holbrook, briskly. "Then I'll write to
her manager and to her, enclosing a note from you. She will go so well
with the bulbs--Critennery must be pleased."

Esme had found a pile of letters waiting for her, long envelopes
containing accounts rendered. She did not know where her money had gone
to. Nothing seemed paid for.

She was going to her room, walking on carpets so thick that her feet
sank into them, with all the silence of riches round her, doors which
opened and shut noiselessly, deadened footsteps, when she stopped
startled.

"Ah, Madame!" Marie, her late maid, smiled at her. "Ah, Madame." Marie
was enchanted. She had regretted so that Madame had been obliged to
part with her.

"I am with Milady Goold, Madame, and I see Madame has not been well;
she is looking delicate, then."

"It was Italy." Esme was nervous before the Frenchwoman, whose brown
eyes looked at her with a curious shrewdness.

"Madame had much travelling with Milady Blakeney? I have been to
Reggio, Madame; I have a cousin there."

Esme turned swiftly to her door to hide her white cheeks. She recovered
in a moment. Even if Marie did write or go there, there was nothing to
find out. "Yes--it's a dull place, Marie," she said. "And when you're
out of a place come back to me. Watson cannot do hair, Marie."

Marie went away smiling--a curious little smile. "There was something
curious in all that," she said softly. "Something, but yes,
strange--and one day I, Marie, will find it out."

The races were to be on Tuesday. Saturday saw Coombe Regis with every
room full. The Cabinet minister felt himself over-honoured in one of
the huge state rooms, where the old carved bedstead had been left, and
all the electric lights did not seem to dispel the shadows.

"Kind of thing queens died in," said the minister as he took a long
walk from his bed to the dressing-table.

The Duchess occupied another vast chamber, made incongruously modern by
a low bedstead representing a lily, and bought for a fabulous sum from
France. "Absurd," said Her Grace, as she poked into the down pillows
and lace-edged sheets arrayed among the inlaid petals. "Also it can't
have proper springs."

Her Grace of Dullshire was a large lady of philanthropic tendencies.
She kept a herd of prize cows which she sold to her friends for large
sums, and prize hens, and she knew a horse when she saw one, so had
come for the races. She also liked bridge, when she won. The Duchess
was a leader of society, one fully aware of the fact. Her deep voice
had power to slide an ambitious clamberer back over the edge of the
cliff which she had scaled with difficulty. To be asked to Dullengla
Court, where one dined off beef soup, boiled cod, roast mutton, cabbage
or turnips, and rice moulds, was to be marked as with an order. The
Duke never visited, and the Marquis of Boredom, their son, had so far
not been allowed to marry. He had, greatly against his will, been
included in this house-party, it being an unfortunate fact that his
taste was for attractive ladies on the stage. "I would allow you to
marry Lady Sukey Ploddy," said his mother when they got to the door of
Coombe Regis; "she will be here." The palm court was brilliant
to-night. Shaded lights glowed through the artificial leaves, showing
chiffons and satins, laces and silks, and the black-and-white dinner
armour of mankind. Rare jewels flashed, faint scents made the air
fragrant.

The Cabinet minister, coming down just before dinner, stood on the
Duchess's toe in his surprise at catching sight of a dark moving face
and a supple, slight form.

"Mavis," said the minister, blankly.... "Oh, so sorry, Duchess. I hope
it didn't hurt. Did Homburg last year, y'know. Now if it had been
before that...."

The Duchess's hop to a chair shook the palm court. Her only son, coming
down in almost painfully well-made clothes, was confiding his woes to a
friend. "Absolutely rotten bein' caught for it. Scarcely a girl to
speak to, and if there is she'll be off with some Johnny she knew
before. Nothin' but Ploddys and that spiteful Cavendish, and oh, hang,
rot all round, y'know. Yes, mamma."

"Who?" said the Duchess, "who, Francis, is that nice-looking girl in
black?"

"Gracious!" said Lord Boredom. "Lord! it isn't," he paused ... "her
name is Moover, mother," he said blandly--"Moover."

"American," summed up the Duchess, accepting her host's arm. Mrs
Holbrook sorted the vast party every evening and paired them off for
dinner.

Lord Boredom received Lady Sukey Ploddy's substantial hand upon his
coat sleeve, and intelligently remarked, "Eh oh, Imagin," when she told
him she was looking forward to the races.

The minister took in his hostess, and found the dancer at their table
for four. "I like this," said Miss Moover contentedly, taking caviare.
"Nice of 'em to ask me, wasn't it? Old Luke--"

"That's your hostess," said the minister, hurriedly. The magnificence
of dinner descended upon them and the food. One reached for fish
beneath a truffle-spangled vest of sauce; one poked at a snowy tower
and found that upon the menu it was harmless chicken in disguise. If
the cook did not earn her salary by spending money on elaboration she
would be speedily replaced.

Gay voices, light laughter, rang up to the vaulted roof. Armies of
powdered footmen moved deftly among the tables. The celebrated Holbrook
wines were poured out lavishly.

One finished with bad coffee and took choice of a dozen liqueurs, the
blue haze of smoke floating around the heated air. Huge golden boxes,
initialled and becrested, stood on the tables, filled with cigars and
cigarettes; the butler, faintly proud of so much wasted money, stood
for a moment before he left. Red bars gleamed along the shining
mahogany from the rich ruby of the port.

The dull people drifted away with their hostess to the drawing-room to
read and work and gossip, but the Duchess lingered in the palm court
waiting for her son.

"A very nice-looking girl," said Her Grace. "Miss Moover, I think I
have seen you somewhere."

"Perhaps," said Mavis, civilly. "Perhaps, Duchess."

Lord Boredom, who had quite woke up, sniggered softly; for the rest of
the evening the Cabinet minister, who was a philosopher, realized the
power of youth over mere prestige as he watched the Marquis of Boredom
devote himself to a demure-looking girl in black, with the manifest
approval of his mother.

A gentle feeler to Miss Moover, whose real name was Harris, had
resulted in a frank avowal from that young lady that at present her
income was several hundreds a week. "And all my own," said Mavis, a
little sadly, for she had come to London to work for a mother who had
died before her daughter grew famous.

There were a dozen little dramas played out under the high
roof--comedy, tragedy, drama, to each its caste, its players and its
audience.

Young Oliver Knox's bright face had lost its gaiety. He was a mere
everyday soldier, awkward of speech because he loved deeply and pitted
against Gore Helmsley, who woke to the game because there was a new
chance of losing it. With his black eyes full of the admiration he knew
how to throw into them, his words laden with subtle compliment, he
followed pretty Sybil, slipped her away from her fretting lover, took
her to play bridge, and praised her mistakes as flashes of genius.

The girl was flustered as she found herself playing against Mrs
Cavendish and Dolly Frensham, two gamblers of repute. She saw the
scores added and settled, heard Jimmie say carelessly that she could
settle with him next day, and scarcely knew what she had lost. Esme
flashed careless answer to Gore Helmsley's cool greeting; he had done
with her, and yet his coolness hurt. Comedy was played in the palm
court, played next day after breakfast, with Miss Mavis Moover as its
heroine. The Duchess was quite charmed with her, accepting certain
little frivolities as merely transatlantic. Mavis displayed a worthy
interest in cows, and was not averse to philanthropy. "You'd be happy
in a simple country place," said the Duchess, referring to the vast
house with at least ten sitting-rooms, in three of which they camped
out.

"I think so," said Mavis, quietly. "I guess so, if I liked the people."

"My love," said Luke Holbrook on Monday morning. "It hasn't quite
worked, my love. I fear our hope in the Cabinet has not had the time we
intended him to. I fear that nosey boy of the Duchess's has put his
foot in the pie," said Luke, sadly.

"Luke!" said his wife.

"Fallen into the dish. All the same, my love. Critennery is leaving
to-day."

"He can travel by the same train as his fancy," said Mrs Holbrook,
placidly.

The great man, urbanely gracious, came to make his adieux. Holbrook
looked at him apologetically. "You will travel up then with Miss
Moover," said Mrs Holbrook, brightly; "she leaves this morning."

The Cabinet minister drew on his grey gloves carefully, then adjusted
the fingers slowly.

"Lord Boredom," he said, "is motoring Miss Moover to Town just in time
for her performance. Good-bye again. So many thanks for a charming
visit." He turned to his host with a smile. "Come to me directly you
come up," he said. "If you want that baronetcy."

"In the outside lot again," said Holbrook, lugubriously. "But he's a
good sort, he may understand, my love."

The races played their part. Gore Helmsley, a splendid rider, won
easily, cantering in five lengths in front, his long figure looking its
best on horseback, his dark face glowed when he rode. Young Knox's
horse fell; the boy came in muddy, shaken, sad in mind, because it was
a jostle with his rival which had knocked him down.

Sybil gathered some gold gaily. Jimmy had put a tenner on for her. With
a girl's folly she feasted her eyes on tinsel, turning away from the
duller mint of hall-marked gold. Here the curtains might fall on a
tragedy, fall hurriedly, for the chief actress would have to smile and
call it comedy to her audience if she was ever to appear again on
Society's stage.

Sybil came laughing to one of the smaller sitting-rooms that evening, a
room warm, softly lighted, one ordered as one chose at Coombe Regis.
She was having tea then with Gore Helmsley.

"No one will look for us here," he had said as he rang the bell. "Let's
have a quiet half-hour. Talk to me, little pal, I'm tired."

Over the indifferent tea, poured out of a gilt teapot, Sybil smiled
gaily, held out her day's winnings--twenty pounds.

"See, I owe you money for bridge, for two nights. Take it. I hope
there's enough to pay. I did play stupidly."

Jimmie pushed back the pile of gold. "My dear, you lost eighty pounds.
What does it matter--that can stand over. I paid the Cavendish for you;
she's a cat and would talk."

Sybil cried out, frightened and astonished. Eighty pounds! and besides
that she had played in a lady's four and lost another ten. Her mother
was not rich; she could not pay easily.

"Keep your pennies," he mocked in lordly tones. "Some day you'll pay
me. I am glad to help a little pal." Jimmie meant the payment to be a
high one, with interest. He was a merciless human hawk, poising long,
swift to strike at the last. "We played sixpennies, you see."

"I never dreamt," Sybil faltered; "I thought it was pennies here."

When you owe a man eighty pounds, when he has paid rather than have you
cornered, it would be churlish to spring aside, a prude, if he kisses
you softly before you part. If he pulls you to the arm of his chair and
keeps you there, holding two small chill hands, it is surely all in
good friendship.

Sybil went away with some of the careless youth wiped from her fresh
face, with trouble and perplexity in her frank eyes; the big dark man
fascinated her, knew how to make her feel a little queen, how to bring
the hot blood to her cheeks, but to-night she was half afraid. His
little pal! She'd cured his headache--been a brick to stay with him.
Instead of playing bridge to-night they'd play piquet in a quiet
corner, he whispered.

"You didn't come to tea." Oliver Knox came straight to Sybil in the
hall, his face ill-humoured. "I was watching for you."

"No, I was tired," she said, blushing a little.

"And Gore Helmsley did not come--our black Adonis, Miss
Chauntsey--can't you see through the man?"

A foolish speech uttered by foolishly, honestly loving youth. Sybil
tossed her head angrily and walked away offended.

"Coming to play to-night?" Mousie Cavendish asked her.

Sybil's lips drooped.

"I don't think so. I've lost such a lot. You play too high for me."

"Pooh! What matter. Jimmie doesn't mind. He's full of money now after
the race."

"I've lost such a lot," Sybil repeated, forgetting that she was angry
with Oliver Knox, turning to him in her trouble, missing the meaning in
the woman's words.

"You ought not to play with that crowd. Mrs Cavendish is the best
player in London--the quickest to read a face, I'll bet. It's madness,
folly."

Another foolish speech. Sybil went off to change. This drama was being
played quickly. The girl was stirred, flattered; awakened nature made
her a lute too easily played on by a practised hand. She shrank from
decision, from promising to marry a soldier of slender fortune, and she
knew that decision was near. That night, after dinner, her young lover
followed her, took her, almost against her will, away from the others
to the library, with its rows of richly-bound volumes, its sombre
magnificence.

"Sybil"--the boy's face was white. He was too moved for eloquence.
"Sybil, you know I love you. I can't stand by and see that other fellow
follow you, as he has followed others. Making you--you remarkable.
Sybil, I'm not rich, but I love you, marry me--I'll make you happy."

And--she was not sure--for a moment she felt his arms close round her
and dreamt of peace and sheltered love, then again she was not sure,
she said so faltering. Give her time ... she muttered.

"Sybil, I can't wait. It's life or death to me. Give the fellow up.
Give him back his horse. I'll hire you one. Go, tell him now. It
maddens me to see you ride the brute."

Give back the horse, and to-morrow she was to ride the perfect chestnut
at the meet. Next day they were going back to London, they were dining
with Jimmie, motoring with him. "I'll tell you"--Sybil
faltered--"later--I don't know."

An anxious lover is always a fool. He would have no delay, he must
know. It was a choice--a challenge to fate. If she took him it must be
altogether. She was too young to understand. Sybil was tortured by
indecision. How, owing eighty pounds, could she go to her friend and
say, I will not ride your horse--I will not dine with you. How could
she hurt him?

"Sybil, I thought you cared," a hoarse voice roused her.

"I believe I do. Oh, Oliver, give me time."

"No!" he was going away, leaving next morning. "I cannot share you,
Sybil. Oh, friendship. Don't prate of that to me, but, if you want me,
send for me. If I can ever help, write or wire. I'll go on loving you
as long as I'm alive. As you don't care enough I can go."

He flung out bruised and hurt.

Was it chance or design which had made Jimmie Gore Helmsley talk that
day of the worries of a soldier's life?

"Kicked about, never enough money, poky houses, a rattling two-seater,
or a dogcart, a dog's life for a pretty woman," Jimmie had said
lightly. "Stuck in some wretched country town or in some big station
where the dust reeks of the army. I've pitied so many girls who have
married soldiers. Think of your beauty now thrown away." And all the
time as young Knox pleaded Sybil had recalled these words.

Esme went back to London next day, back to her little flat.

A bleak wind swept along the streets, dark clouds raced across the sky.
It was dreary, intensely cold, the flat was poky, its cosiness seemed
to have deserted it, it had become a tawdry box. The furniture looked
shabby, worn, the tenants had been careless. Esme stood discontentedly
pulling at her cushions, petulantly moving back china to old places.
Her servants were new, inclined to be lazy. The cook looked blankly
unenthusiastic as to lunch.

"Couldn't possibly have all that in time to-day, mem. They'd send round
something from Harrod's, no doubt."

Esme lunched ill-humouredly off galantine and tinned peas. She thought
of the big houses she had been in; they must move, take a little house.
This place was out of the way, inconvenient. She ordered flowers
recklessly, telephoned to Denise inviting herself to dinner.

The butler answered. "Yes, her ladyship would be dining in, he would
ask." There was a long pause, then an answer. "Her ladyship would be
pleased to see Mrs Carteret at eight."

"She might have spoken herself," said Esme, angrily.

The afternoon dragged wearily. Esme drove to one of the big shops,
ordering new cushions, new coverings, but languidly; she meant to leave
the flat and took no real interest in it.

She went early to the Blakeneys. Denise was not dressed. No message
came asking her to go to her friend's room. Esme had to learn that an
obligation creates constraint, as the person we owe money to, however
generously given, is never a welcome guest.

But Esme left the pretty drawing-room. Its spaciousness made her
envious, she stepped past Denise's room to the upper landings. Here Mrs
Stanson was just coming to her supper. A little lightly-breathing thing
lay asleep in his cot.

"But, nurse, he's pale, isn't he, thin?" Esme whispered.

"He caught a cold, Mrs Carteret. Oh, nothing. I feared croup, but it
passed. It's a trying month, you see, for tiny children."

Lightly, so softly that the baby never stirred, Esme stooped to kiss
him, stood looking down at the child which ought to have been sleeping
in the spare room at the flat.

But he would have been a nuisance there, an inconvenience, she told
herself insistently.

Then fear tore at her heart. What if the child should die. "Be good to
him," she whispered, slipping a sovereign into Mrs Stanson's hand. "Be
good to him, Mrs Stanson."

She got down before Denise did. Felt the want of warmth in her
hostess's greeting. Denise was splendidly gowned, gay, merry, looking
younger, happier. Sir Cyril's eyes followed his wife, contentment
visible in their look.

"My dear Esme, delighted, of _course_. When you are alone always come
here. We've only a four for bridge--Susie and her husband. You can cut
in."

"I'll look on." Esme felt that she was not wanted, she was odd man out.
She flushed unhappily.

Denise was full of plans, each one including Cyril now. She talked
lightly of that boy Jerry. She was completely the happy wife, confident
in her position.

"And the boy. He's had a cold," Esme said.

"A cold has he? I think I heard him sniff?"

"Yes, he's had a cold," Sir Cyril said. "He was quite feverish. Denise
is not a nursery bird, I fear."

"And you've been dining off gold plate at the Holbrooks, Esme. I
wouldn't go. Cyril and I went for a few last days with the Quorn. Cyril
bought me such a lovely mare, all quality. Ah, here is Sue." Lady Susan
Almorni was not a friend of Esme's. Denise seemed to be leaving her
smart friends, to be settling among the duller, greater people.

"Bertie will be home to-morrow. I want to leave the flat, to come more
west. It's poky, horribly stuffy. If--we could afford to." Esme
crumbled her toast, looked almost sullenly at Denise.

"But could you? And it's such a dear little flat. Could you afford it,
Esme dear? You are so comfy there."

The butler brought in the evening papers. Before they settled to play
bridge Sir Cyril opened them.

"Why, Mrs Carteret," he said, "this is awful about your cousins surely.
The two Carteret boys have both been killed in a motor accident. It
makes Bertie heir, I suppose, but what a tragedy."

Esme caught at the paper and read it feverishly. "To the title," she
said. "It's entailed. Hugh Carteret can leave his money as he
chooses--unless we have children." But she knew what a difference it
must make.

"You'll have to follow my example and have an heir now," laughed
Denise. "To make it all certain. Eh, Esme?"

Esme sat with the paper in her hands and did not answer.




CHAPTER VII


Spring rioting, chill and bleak, crushing the coming summer in its
impish hands. A day when cold came creeping under doors, sat even by
the fire and would not be denied.

Looking into her draped glass Esme was struck by new lines in her face,
by a loss of her dazzling youth, by a tired look in her eyes.
Discontent, weariness, were writing their names on her skin.

Bertie would be home early. She had been lazy and not gone to the ship
to meet him. He was coming to breakfast, the fires were smouldering in
the sitting-room, the new housemaid reasonably desirous of "gaus."
Esme, in her prettiest wrapper, shivered and grew irritable. She had
ordered an elaborate breakfast, but the new cook was a failure; the
fish was sodden, the bacon half raw, the hot bread mere heated bakers'
scones.

Esme recalled the breakfasts at Coombe Regis, at Harlands. She flung
out at the maids. Ordered new dishes angrily. Oh, it was hateful not to
have things right. Her old gaiety had left her. She would have laughed
a year ago and boiled eggs on a spirit lamp. Bertie at last, running
up, catching her in his arms, holding her close.

"Esme, my dear old butterfly. My sweetheart. Oh, it's good to be back
again here with you. Breakfast, Es, I'm starving."

So big and boyish and loving. She clung to him and found discontent
even there. She had cheated her man. There was a secret to be hidden
from him for ever. And where were all the comforts she had dreamt of
with her income? Where were they?

"Breakfast." Esme rang the bell.

"Cook is grilling the bacon, mem. It will take ten minutes." So Bertie
had to wait, and then eat cold eggs and burnt bacon, and drink stewed
tea. But he was happy.

"Extravagance," he said. "My silken-winged butterfly, that's a new gown
of fluff and laces."

"You don't expect me to have all last year's, do you?" Esme almost
snapped, then leant against him. He held her closely, loving the warm
suppleness of her body, the scent of her burnished hair, his lips were
hot on the satin smoothness of her skin.

"But, Es sweetheart, you're thinner," he whispered, "and looking sadly.
We'll have a week away, just you and I, in Paris. You must be rich now
with no house all this winter."

Esme slipped away from him and fidgeted as she lighted a cigarette.

"Oh, Bertie, you've seen about the accident. You're heir now."

"The place is entailed," he said. "It's worth nothing. But the old
man's money is his own. He may leave it to me. If we had a boy he
might, no doubt he would."

Esme flushed scarlet, turning away. The cold day grew colder. Try as
she would, the old happy intimacy, their careless happy youth, would
not come back. Before, she had told Bertie everything. Now if he knew,
if he knew.

Her husband seemed to have grown older, graver, to be less boyish. He
talked of one or two things as extravagant. They discussed Aldershot
and he spoke of lodgings. Houses were impossible there.

Esme grew petulant. Lodgings, she had seen them. Chops for dinner and
cold meat and salad for lunch. They must find a house. They'd heaps of
money.

They went out to luncheon, telephoned a table at the Berkeley, ordered
their favourite dishes recklessly. Esme came down in the Paris coat,
open to show the blue and silver lining.

"Butterfly! What a coat," her husband exclaimed at its beauty. "Where
did you get it?"

Esme hesitated, told half the truth.

"Denise gave it to me," she said slowly. "You see I did a lot for her."

Bertie was his old self then, foolishly merry. They must go up Bond
Street and order a limousine to go with the coat. It couldn't sit in
taxis. When it was off in the restaurant he saw the cunning beauty of a
Paris frock, a black one, the old pendant of emeralds gleaming against
real lace.

It was too cold, too bitter to walk about. They rang up friends, played
bridge. Esme ordered dinner at the flat, asked Dolly to come down and
bring a man, then telephoned imperiously to the new cook.

"Dinner for four, order what you want. It must be nice, remember. It
must be. Get some forced things, sweets, have salmon. Use your wits."

"It is a dear little hole. I'll be sorry to leave it," Bertie said, as
they came back to the brightly-lighted little drawing-room. "Why do you
want to, girlie?"

"It's so out of the way," Esme grumbled.

The new maid put her into a dress of clinging black. One must mourn for
first cousins.

Dolly was full of curiosity. Bertie was heir now. It was quite a
change. "So nice, dear Esme, to come to one of your wonderful little
dinners again."

The only wonder of this dinner was its expense. The new cook had gone
to Harrod's stores, chosen everything which cost money. Tinned turtle
soup, plain boiled salmon, tinned and truffled entree, tinned chicken,
and a bought sweet.

Esme grew angrier as it went on. Hated the guests' lack of appetite,
their polite declaimers as she abused her food.

"I begin to hate this place," Esme stormed to Dolly. "It's too small,
good servants won't come here. Hardness was a good chance. She's gone
to Denise Blakeney now, she can afford to pay her what she wanted, I
couldn't."

Cards too went against Esme. She lost and lost again, made declarations
which depended on luck, and found it desert her. They did not play for
high points, but she made side bets, and it mounted up. She cut with
Bertie, saw his eyebrows raise as she went a reckless no trumper.

"My dear, what had you got?" he asked.

"Oh, a king and ace. I expected something above a ten from you, Bertie."

The Midshires were coming to Aldershot at once. Esme had never been
with the regiment. She did not want to leave London. She coaxed Bertie
next day. Why not wait for another adjutancy, leave her in the flat, he
could come up so often.

But the very weapons she used turned against her, the caress of her
lips, her clinging arms were not things to leave. No, she must come to
Aldershot. They would find a house and be happy there.

"And the bills, sweetheart?" Bertie Carteret had always seen to them.
"I suppose you paid up all the old ones so we'll start fresh."

Esme had forgotten her bills. She was irritable over money, cried out
that her husband had learnt miser's thoughts in South Africa. "You fell
in love with a good housewife there, Bert," she mocked, "who fried the
cold potatoes of overnight for breakfast. Come, confess.... We've heaps
of money to be foolish on, don't bother."

"There was never a penny left over," he said. "If we were sick, or if,
well, anything happened we had no margin." Esme frowned sullenly.

Two hours later she was rung up at her club.

"Esme, I've seen Uncle Hugh, he wired for me. He is going to live in
London, and he wants to make arrangements. Meet me at once. Where? Oh,
the Carlton will do."

Erratically dreaming of riches Esme left a game of bridge and flew off
to the big restaurant. It was crowded for tea-time, people gathering at
the little tables. The cold air called for furs. Their rich softness
was everywhere, and among them all Esme felt her coat attracted
admiring eyes. Over her black dress, the blue lining brilliant over the
dark, with her hair massed against a dead black hat, Esme was
remarkable.

"An actress?" she heard a woman ask. What Esme would call a stodgy
woman, expensively dressed, a country cousin with a London friend.

"No, a Mrs Carteret, remarkable-looking, isn't she?"

"Well, Bertie. _What_ is it?" Esme could scarcely wait as her husband
ordered tea. "What has Uncle Hugh done?"

"Well, nothing. It is all for your approval, but Uncle Hugh is lonely.
He wants his nephew to live near him. There is a great deal of business
to see to. The Seaford estate and the Devonshire place, he farmed both.
Uncle Hugh found the journeying trying." Briefly, he offered to pay
Bertie the same pay as he had drawn from the Army, together with
travelling expenses, if he would stay in London and go down to these
places when necessary. No more.

"He hasn't promised to leave you the money then?" Esme asked. "Oh, it
suits me splendidly, I hated leaving town."

"No." Bertie Carteret shook his head. "He has promised me nothing,
merely that I shall not lose through leaving the Army, nothing more."

Esme grew angry then, abused the rich old man, forgot his trouble in
her annoyance.

"He has so much. Why should we starve now when we are young?" she
flashed.

"We have never quite starved, Es." Bertie Carteret laughed, then looked
grave. "I thought we were so comfortable, so happy."

"One seems to want more and more as one lives in town." Esme looked
sullen. She too had thought the same, less than a year ago. Been so
sure of it that she hated the thought of the third being who would have
disturbed their peace. And now with so much more money she seemed
poorer.

"That is a wonderful coat." Bertie looked admiringly at his wife.
"You're wonderful altogether, Esme, this time. With the stamp of Paris
on your frocks. But of course Denise gave you heaps of things. You did
a lot for her."

Esme began to plan, to grow brighter. "We must take a little house,
Bertie, get away from that box, nearer our friends."

"But we shall be no better off," he said.

"Oh, you must get money out of the old man. We'll save the rent on
taxis. Who is it, Bertie?"

For Bertie had jumped up and was shaking hands with a slim girl of
about twenty. Brown-haired, grey-eyed, pretty in a quiet way.

"It's Miss Reynolds," he said. "Miss Reynolds, Esme. Mrs Reynolds was
so kind to me at Pretoria when I was ill."

"Ill!" Esme held out a jewelled hand. "I thought it was only repentance
and indigestion."

"It was fever." Estelle Reynolds's voice was slow and musical, restful
as her gentle face. "Captain Carteret was very ill, and my uncle tried
to cure him."

"No idea," said Esme. "I'd no idea. But so good of you.... Bertie, you
should have told me." She was honestly fond of her husband.

"He did not want to worry you," said Estelle Reynolds.

Carteret was impressively glad to see Estelle. He talked eagerly of a
dinner, a theatre.

His eagerness vexed his wife. She got up, dazzlingly handsome in her
furs, the emeralds gleaming on her black gown.

"So sorry, Bertie, but this week is quite full, every day. Come to
luncheon on Sunday, Miss Reynolds. I'll have some people to meet you."

Estelle laughed pleasantly. "My Sunday will be a country cousin's," she
said. "Church, a very short luncheon, and the Albert Hall. You see,
I've never been to London before." The girl looked a little hurt, a
little snubbed.

"And I said I'd show it to you." Carteret let his wife walk on. "I'm
not engaged. Let me take you and your aunt to Daly's to-night and on to
the Savoy."

"Comic opera." Estelle shook her brown head. "If it might be the
Shakespearian piece at His Majesty's. I should love to come."

It did not seem to suggest itself to Estelle to ask if Bertie
Carteret's wife might wish to include him in her engagements. Esme was
one of those women who seem to stand alone.

"Very well then. I'll get seats at once," he said.

Making his way past little tables to the passage down the centre of the
restaurant, Bertie stood for a moment looking from one woman to another.

Estelle Reynolds had gone back to her tea. She was not remarkable in
any way, merely a rather dowdy girl sitting alone at a little table.
Esme had stopped to speak to friends near the door. She was brilliantly
handsome, flashing out gay smiles, the mirthless smile of society, and
splendidly dressed. As it grew thinner her face gave promise of
hardness; she had replaced her lost colour very cunningly with some
rose bloom. Carteret followed her slowly. He loved his wife, her touch,
a look from her blue eyes always had power to move him, but he realized
suddenly that she was too brilliant, too well-dressed for a
foot-soldier's wife.

She was talking to Luke Holbrook, smiling at him, but the smile had
lost its girlish charm; the kindly man who had been willing to help a
young couple not well off had no idea of losing money to this brilliant
woman.

Holbrook was always simply open as to his trade.

"I didn't forget your bundle of wines, fairest lady, they went on
to-day." Mr Holbrook started and put up his glasses. "My love," he
said, turning to his wife, "I see Lord Boredom taking tea with Miss
Moover, and Mr Critennery is over there alone. My love, I fear I did
not advance our interests by that most unfortunate invitation."

"The Duchess," said Mrs Holbrook, "will have a stroke. No one ever
broke Miss Mavis Moover's occupation to her Grace."

"Ready, Esme? You want a taxi back. Very well." Carteret went to the
door. Before he had gone away Esme had been quite content to take the
motor 'bus which set them nearly at their door, or to go by tube. He
sighed a little as he feed the gigantic person who hailed the cab for
him.

"They've either come into some money, my love, or it is the Italian
Prince whom Dollie Cavendish hints at," said Luke Holbrook,
thoughtfully.

"What a dowdy little friend," yawned Esme as they sped down Piccadilly.
"What clothes, Bertie. I could only ask her to a frumpy luncheon."

"They were very good to me out there," he said quickly. "And ... I did
not notice Miss Reynolds's dowdiness."

"No, one wouldn't. She is the kind of thing who goes with dowdiness.
All flat hair and plaintive eyes." Esme laughed. "Is she the good
housekeeper who made you careful, Bertie? Eh?"

He looked out without answering. Something was coming between him and
his wife. A rift, opening slowly in the groundwork of their love and
happiness. She had changed.

Carteret's papers went in. They settled in London. Esme looked for a
house, fretting because she could not find one they could afford. Esme
often fretted as cold March was pushed away by April. She was restless,
never quiet, unable to spend an hour at home by herself. Everything
seemed to cost more than it had. People gave up the little kindnesses
which she had counted. She was not paid for at theatres, nor sent
flowers and fruit.

"The Carterets must have come into money," people said carelessly.
"Esme's simply gorgeously clothed, and they're looking for a house. Of
course he's heir to old Hugh's place now."

More than once Bertie included Estelle Reynolds in their parties. She
came, enjoying everything almost childishly; never tired of looking at
the London streets with their roaring traffic. Hanging on every word at
theatres, openly delighted with the dishes at smart restaurants.

"Everyone is so rich here," said Estelle in wonder. "They pay and pay
and pay all round us."

They were lunching at Jules, and Esme had carelessly ordered one or two
things out of season. Estelle had watched the gold coins put on the
folded bill.

"You would not be so extravagant, I imagine," Esme laughed. She neither
liked nor disliked the quiet girl, even found her useful now to do
forgotten errands at the shops, to write her letters for her while Esme
lounged back smoking, to go off in the rain for a book which must be
read immediately. For, wanting anything, Esme could never wait. She
snapped at her share of life, to fling it away barely tasted. Estelle
came oftener and oftener to the flat. Settled flowers, put out sweets
for dinner, had the bridge tables ready, and then went away. She was
always useful, always willing to help.

"Extravagant!" Estelle answered. "No, I'd lunch at home."

"Off chops and fried potatoes," said Esme, taking asparagus.

"If you go to the Club mankind invariably lunches off chops and steak,"
broke in Bertie. "Women are the lovers of fluffy dishes; they please
'em, I suppose, as new dresses do, because poor people can't have them."

"Estelle would lunch at home," laughed Esme, "and go in a 'bus to see
the shops in Regent Street, or perhaps to the National Gallery or the
White City, and come home to make a new savoury which she had seen in
_Home Instructions_, and do her accounts after dinner. Eh, little home
bird?"

"Yes," said Estelle, simply. "Only I wouldn't live in London at all. I
would make the country my stable meal, my chops and fried potatoes, and
London my occasional savoury _bonne bouche_. I should choke in a town."

Esme laughed. "How absurd," she flashed out. "Now, be good children. I
go to sell pieces of cloth at completely ruinous prices to aid
something in distress. I know not what."

"Shall I take you home, Estelle?" Carteret stood looking out into the
sunshine. "Lord, what I'd give to live in the country. To see green
fields all round and have a horse or two in the winter, and laze over a
big log fire when the day was done. But somehow, here, there is never
an hour to laze in."

Hugh Carteret, grief stricken, had so far not seen his nephew's wife.
Bertie was doing his work, going down occasionally to see the big
places and look over the accounts with the stewards.

About a month after he had come back from South Africa, Esme's first
reckoning for extravagance was upon her. Unpaid accounts littered the
table. Harrod's deposit was overdrawn. She sat frowning and petulant,
as Bertie jotted down totals.

"We can't do it, Esme; there are all the old bills left unpaid. We
managed so well before."

Esme smoked furiously, flung the thin papers about. People were
robbers, her cook a fool.

"But we are not often in. You weren't even at home. It's beyond one,
Butterfly; debt won't do. And then your frocks and frills."

"I can pay for those," Esme was going to say, then stopped. How much of
her five hundred, her scant allowance, had she anticipated. Then there
would be a visit to Scotland, and she wanted to hunt. She could not
spare much of it; fifty of it must go to the French dressmaker, another
fifty to a jeweller. "Oh, it's sickening," she flung out in sudden
petulant anger. "Sickening. Poverty is too hateful."

Bertie had to listen to an outburst of grumbling, of fretful wrath,
because their income was not double its size. To be pinched, cramped
when one was young, to be worried by bills, bothered by meannesses.

Bertie Carteret's face grew pale. He stood up, gathering the bills. "I
had no idea that you were unhappy, Es," he said slowly. "We used to
manage so well before I left. It was all sunshine then. I have some
money I can dig out; we'll pay the bills and start again. Give me all
yours to see."

Indulgence made Esme penitent, almost grateful. That was right. Now
Bertie was a dear, a sweet old boy. And they'd have a lovely summer,
just as last year's had been.

She came over and sat on Bertie's knee, her face pressed against his,
the perfume of her golden hair in his nostrils.

But with her soft arm about his neck, her supple body in his arms,
Bertie Carteret did not hold her closer; she missed his quick sigh at
her contact, the hotness of his kisses on her neck.

"Bertie, dear old Bert."

But as she moved her face a little he could see between him and the
light the skilfully-applied red on her cheeks, the coating of powder
round it. It was not love for him which brought her to him, but selfish
relief at being released from worry. "Poor Butterfly," he said, kissing
her gently. "It shall flutter through its summer. But spent capital
means less income, Esme, remember that."

"Oh, here's the wine account." He sighed again, looking at it. Esme ran
her finger down the items, there were no wholesale prices now. The hock
was at its full value, the bill a heavy one. Jumping up, she railed at
Luke Holbrook, called him traitor and mean and treacherous. Swore that
if she could help it he would not get his peerage.

"The lilies and carnations, madam," said the tall maid, coming in with
a bundle of flowers.

"Leave them there, Miss Reynolds will settle them for me, she is coming
to lunch. And your Uncle Hugh, Bertie, I had forgotten."

"You'll have to take to cheaper flowers," said Carteret; "after all,
they wither just as soon."

"I _cannot_ skimp over flowers, Bert, I cannot." Esme went off to dress.

"What could she skimp over?" Bertie wondered.

Estelle Reynolds came in quietly, smiled good morning, began quite
naturally to get the vases ready. "How glorious they are," she said, as
she put the long-stemmed forced carnations into slender silver vases.
"They must cost a fortune now."

"They do." Bertie was writing to his broker. "They do, Estelle.
Everything costs a fortune here just now. But we must come to the
humble sweet peas next week, or something of its class. What a
housekeeper you would make, Estelle."

"Would I?" She hid the pain in her soft grey eyes, turned suddenly
away. One of the foolish women whose joy lies in sacrifice, who find
stupid satisfaction in balanced accounts, in saving for the man who
works for them, who in some mysterious way stretches the weekly
allowance when the children come, and finds only happiness in the
giving up to do it. A homely little brown thrush, looking, wondering at
a world of gay-plumaged songless birds.

"I." Estelle's eyes were under her control again. She smiled bravely.
"I am one of the dowdy people who like to mess in the kitchen and dust,
value a pleasure for what it costs ... it's childish."

"The fault of the world's inhabitants is that they are stamping out
childishness," he said slowly. "They have forgotten to take joy in blue
skies and green fields because it costs them nothing to look at them;
they are forgetting how to enjoy themselves except in herds. If we have
Irish stew at a shooting lunch it must be spoilt by half a dozen
expensive flavourings lest my Lady Sue or Madame Sally should say we
are so poor that we can only afford mutton and potatoes and onions.
Even the children must have tea at Charbonel's and sweets from Buzzard
or Fuller, though possibly a packet of butterscotch or home-made toffee
would be much more to their taste...."

Estelle laughed.

"I took the Handelle children out last week," she said. "Their mother
asked me to--you remember you took me once there to sing and she's been
kind to me--and we went on the top of a 'bus, and had tea at Lyon's,
bought flowers at Piccadilly Circus, and oh, they did enjoy themselves,
but Lady Eva was quite shocked."

"Oh, Estelle, thank you." Esme came back, radiant in clinging black,
the emeralds shining at her bare throat, a big hat framing her face.

Hugh Carteret came just then. An old man, deep lines of sorrow drawn on
his face, shrinking visibly from any allusion to his loss, suffering
from the grief which finds no relief in words. He was cold before
Esme's gush of greeting, looked at her critically and made scant
response to her smiles.

"It was so good of him to come, they were hidden away down here. And
oh, they did want to change and get a house farther west."

"Why not then?" Hugh Carteret asked.

"The dreadful rents," Esme answered. "We can't afford it. And we _do_
want to move. The flat is so stuffy, so small."

"It seems big enough for two," Colonel Carteret answered, looking hard
at Esme. "Of course, if you had children I could understand."

"Oh, we couldn't afford children," she said, flinging a wistful note in
her voice. And one not altogether feigned, for as she spoke she
remembered the boy who was growing strong in the nursery at Grosvenor
Square.

"Mrs Gresham," announced the maid.

"I'd no idea it was a party." Colonel Carteret looked at his black
clothes and spoke reproachfully.

"It wasn't. Dollie Gresham was not asked, uncle."

Dollie made it plain in a minute. She knew Esme was at home; she'd
asked the maid and she came along.

"It's about a bazaar, Esme. I want someone to help me to get one up for
that new little hospital. Denise Blakeney would help Susie Handelle.
We'd run it, you and I."

Through an elaborate, expensive lunch old Colonel Carteret was almost
silent. The _vol au vent_ of truffled chicken had given way for forced
fruit before Estelle got him to talk to her. He thawed before her
gentle voice, a shy, troubled old man, numbed still by his loss. His
boys had been his all. He could not realize that they had left him. He
had saved, planned, improved for Cyril and George; now mechanically,
because the places were there, he carried it on. He had seen very
little of Esme; until his boys' deaths he had been wrapped up in them,
never mixing in Society. Now he looked at the expensive flowers in
Venetian glasses; he tasted elaborate made dishes, forced fruits, ices,
and once or twice he shook his head as if at some inward thoughts.

Dollie Gresham chattered of her bazaar. It was just the time for one,
they would start it at once. Restlessly energetic, she went to the
telephone after luncheon, rang up Denise Blakeney.

"Yes, Denise will help sell. Only think, Esme"--this after a long
pause--"Sir Cyril's given her another car, and that diamond pendant of
old Lady Gilby's, you know, the one he was selling. Since that boy
came"--Dollie hung up the receiver--"Denise gets all she wants, and a
great deal more. She is simply, tiresomely happy, adores dear Cyril,
and has a convenient memory for the past. _Tiens_, such is life."

Esme's face was set, sullen, as she listened. Denise had everything.
Denise was not generous; there were so many things which she could have
given, yet the very tie between the two women seemed to destroy their
old friendship.

In the flower-decked, richly-furnished little drawing-room old Hugh
Carteret talked to Estelle. He looked bewildered, puzzled.

"Bertie told me they were not rich," he said. "Yet the place seems to
me to be almost too luxurious, that they lack nothing."

"I think"--Estelle fidgeted a little, her grey eyes distressed--"that
Esme is very young, that she perhaps grasps at things, so to speak,
perhaps spends a little more than she ought to."

"I am a judge of wines." Hugh Carteret nodded. "The hock was one of the
best, the old brandy cost fourteen or fifteen shillings a bottle, the
port was vintage. I tasted them all." He shook his head again.

Esme, coming in, sat by him, tried every trick she knew of winning
glance and smile. But her childish charm had left her; she could only
hark back to her poverty, to her want of money, and each half-veiled
appeal left the old man silent.

"You present-day women want too much," he said quietly. "You won't be
content. You live too much for yourselves; if you had children now"--he
stopped, his voice breaking. "I tell you what," he said, "if you are
really hard up you can have Cliff End rent free. It's lovely there,
close to the sea, and the staghounds to hunt with."

Esme knew where it was, an old house croaking on the cliffs of Devon,
near a country town, a place without society, without amusements. She
shivered.

"It would be too big for us," she said, trying to speak gratefully.
"Far too large to keep up; but thank you greatly, dear uncle."

"And too far from shopland," he said in his shy, shrewd way. "Yes,
well, my dear, it was a mere idea."

"He'll do nothing for us, old miser," Esme flung out in anger almost
before the old man had left. "He is hateful, Bertie, your old uncle."

"Perhaps, looking round him, he does not think there is much to be
done," said Bertie, drily. "I am very fond of old Uncle Hugh."

They drove up to Grosvenor Gate, strolled into the Park--the April day
had tempted people out there; the beds were a glory of wall-flowers and
spring bulbs. A green limousine, purring silently, pulled up close to
them. Esme turned swiftly; it held Lady Blakeney and the nurse, who
carried an elaborately-dressed bundle of babyhood.

"Wait here." Denise, jumping out lightly, ran across to speak to
friends. She was radiant, brilliant in her happiness, a woman without
sufficient brain to feel remorse.

"Oh, Mrs Stanson, let me see him."

Esme went to the side of the car; she had not dared lately to go up to
the nursery at Grosvenor Square. Denise had forbidden it.

Mrs Stanson got down, holding the rosy, healthy boy; he chuckled, his
blue eyes blinking, a picture of contented, soft-fleshed, mindless
life. His mittened fingers closed round Esme's as she looked into his
face. Hers this healthy atom--hers, and Denise was rich, happy,
contented because of him, while she, his mother, wanted everything.

"What a lovely mite." Bertie Carteret bent over the smiling baby. "He's
got eyes of your colour, Esme, true forget-me-nots."

"Yes. You do mind him well, nurse. Her ladyship--"

"It was great coaxing to get her ladyship to bring him out to-day," the
woman said carelessly. "She's not like you, Mrs Carteret; she doesn't
like these small things."

"Oh, yes, Esme"--Denise came back--"looking at the Baa. He's a fine
specimen, isn't he? Cyril gives him this car for himself, and a new one
to me. Come and see me soon, won't you? Lancaster Gate, Hillyard--Lady
Mary Graves's house. Bundle in that infant, Mrs Stanson, and if he
cries I get out."

The car glided on. Esme watched it going, with a sullen anger at her
heart; she had to clench her hands to keep quiet. Did Denise never
think? Had she no gratitude--no conscience--no regret for her
successful fraud? None, it would seem.

"Esme, you look quite white." Dollie Gresham's spiteful little giggle
rang out close by. "Are you coming on to play bridge with me?"

"Not to-day, Dollie. I've a shocking headache. I'll go home and rest."

"It must be bad," said Dollie, "to take you to your fireside. Was the
sight of that wonderful son and heir too much for you?--that Bayard
among babies? _Sans peur et sans reproche._"

"You do look seedy, child." Bertie took Esme to the gate and drove her
back.

She lighted the gas stove--the flat teemed in labour-saving
annoyances--and sat by it, the heat making the perfume of the flowers
almost overpowering.

Bertie got her hot tea, sat with her, some of the old loving
comradeship springing up between them.

"That little chap made me envious, Es," he said, after a long silence.

"Bertie--surely you wouldn't like a child?" Esme's voice rang shrilly.
"Surely you wouldn't. Coming to disturb us, crippling us!"

"People manage," he said slowly. "They manage. We could have gone out
of London, lived more quietly. Every man wants his son, Butterfly; they
are selfish people, you know."

"You'd like one?" The shrillness died out of Esme's voice, it grew
strained.

"And after all better spend money on a little chap than waste it on
Holbrook's wines and old brandies," he said. "Yes, it's the one thing
I've wanted, Es--just to make our lives perfect. Monsieur, Madame, et
Bebe; marriage is never quite right until the third comes to show a
selfish pair what their fathers and mothers gave up for them."

"I thought two people were so much happier alone." Esme stared into the
glowing, companionless fire, with no crackle of coal or hiss of wood,
but the modern maid objects to blacking grates.

"Well, sweetheart, some day you'll know better," he said, "perhaps."
The maid brought in the evening paper, laying it on the table.

"Esme!" Bertie Carteret jumped up. "Young De Vinci is dead--dead of
pneumonia."

Death of the Earl of De Vinci on the eve of his marriage. Then Esme
caught the paper. "Is Uncle Hugh next heir--didn't you tell me so?"

"Uncle Hugh is Lord De Vinci, and if he does not marry again, a remote
contingency, I'm the next heir. A son, Esme, is a necessity now."

Esme put the paper down. Her son, heir to a title, was at Sir Cyril
Blakeney's house and she could not claim him.

"Bertie"--she walked restlessly about the room--"I heard such a strange
story the other day, a woman who did something hideously dreadful
and--was afraid to tell."

"Deceit is the one thing I could never forgive," said Carteret, firmly.
"I'd put a woman away, even if it broke my heart, if I found out that
she had done anything mean or had deceived me."

Esme grew white, for hers was a plot which no man could forgive. She
had sold her son for a paltry allowance, for the right to amuse herself
in peace.

"I wonder if old Uncle Hugh will do anything for us now," she said in a
strained, bitter voice.




CHAPTER VIII


"This bazaar," said Dollie Gresham, cheerily, "is humming. I have not
been asked about as much as I should like to be lately; people forget
poor little nobodies. The Duchess is giving her patronage, _entre
nous_. Mavis Moover will dance for me--joy for her Grace of Boredom!
Oh, I've got heaps and heaps of people! We are secretaries, and
cashiers, and so forth, and we shall all wear flower dresses. Our stall
shall be forget-me-nots. The Duchess chose tulips; she said she had a
black silk gown and she knew there was a tulip of that colour. We shall
be audaciously beautiful in sky blue, rather short."

Esme had rushed into this new scheme.

"It won't cost much, will it?" she asked.

"Secretaries, workers, _cherie_," prattled Dollie, "have all expenses
paid. All frocks, frills, etc.; they give their valuable time. Come
with me to Claire's. She is at least original."

Dollie's maid brought in two cards. Mrs Gresham frowned over them.

"The tiresome secretary of the hospital," she said, "and Canon Bright,
one of the founders. Look charitable, Esme."

Next moment, all smiles, she greeted a kindly-looking, middle-aged man
and a grey-haired clergyman; a stern-faced, clear-eyed man, who made
this hospital for little suffering children his hobby.

They overwhelmed Dollie with thanks.

"This debt"--Canon Bright took out some notes of figures--"was weighing
us down. Now, with your help, it will be paid off, and we shall have
something besides to go on with, to buy sorely-needed appliances."

"Oh, of course," said Dollie, vaguely.

"We were looking for some kind lady or society to take it up;
fortunately you met Mr Lucy at luncheon."

"Yes; that put it into my head," said Dollie, brightly. "Bazaars are so
paying; this is my friend and sister secretary, Mrs Carteret. I've got
every big name in London, Canon, or half of them. Oh, it will be a
great success. We've taken the hall. We're all going to be summer
flowers. 'The Summer Flower Bazaar,' such a good name, isn't it?"

Mr Lucy nursed his hat. "You won't let the expenses mount, Mrs
Gresham," he said, "will you? Once they begin to swell our cripples
would lose. You'll let me help you with the accounts. It's my _metier_,
you see, and I could help you."

Dollie chilled visibly. She preferred to do it all herself, she said.
"We really want to _work_," she went on, smiling again. "After all,
it's quite simple. We have all our cheques paid in and we pay the exes
and hand you the balance. We'll work it up like anything. You get all
your people to come, Canon--all your charitable friends. The dear
little cripples," cooed Dolly--"so nice to help them."

"Tiresome, muddling pair," she snapped when the two men had left. "Come
to Claire's, Esme. I owe her two hundred, but these flower dresses will
cool her rage, and she'll know we'll pay for this lot all right."

Claire received them dubiously, then thawed to the order for the
bazaar. If Mrs Gresham could get her the carnation order also, Lady
Louisa's stall, and the roses. Forget-me-nots, by the way, were spring
flowers.

Oh, it didn't matter. Clouds of gauze, blue satin, wreaths of flowers
stiffened with turquoises, shoes, stockings. Dollie ordered lavishly.

"That Estelle girl shall help," Esme said. "She is the kind of person
who'll open boxes and get dusty and save us trouble. By the way, what
shall we sell? Not tea. One has to run about. Sweets, I should think,
and buttonholes."

"We are not distinguished enough for buttonholes," said Dollie,
decidedly. "When Adolfus or Gargie buys a white pink for five shillings
he likes to tell mamma and his lady friend that the Countess of
'Ighlife pinned it in with her own fingers, Vilet, her very own. Dolfus
does not seem to realize that the use of other people's would be
confusing. No, let it be sweets. Chocolates will show off our blue
frocks."

Bertie Carteret found himself left more and more alone. Esme was always
feverishly busy, always just going on somewhere, chasing pleasure,
growing thinner in the pursuit, using just a little more rose bloom, a
little extra powder to hide jaded lines and fading colour.

At the end of May Bertie paid his household bills again and knew that
they were far too large. No extravagance seemed to have been curtailed;
if they had not lunched or dined so often at home, he had paid for a
score of meals at fashionable restaurants. Esme's careless demands for
a few pounds for cabs were endless.

"I can't do it," he muttered, writing his cheques. "I can't get on."

A plea to Esme would only make her sullen, irritable, railing at her
poverty, muttering against poor marriages.

"I--oh, you are alone. I've brought the book which Esme asked me for."
Estelle Reynolds came on Bertie as he sighed over his bills. "And the
pearls she left to be mended."

She put down a new novel on the table, one barred by libraries. Esme
would look at it, probably forget to finish it, unless she thought she
found any of her friends were pilloried between the flaring green
covers.

Estelle put down a receipt with the pearls, one for two pounds. Bertie
looked at the amount.

"Has Esme paid you?" he asked.

"Oh, no, it does not matter--any time." Estelle blushed. "I can ask
her."

"I wonder"--he turned--"how much she has let you pay, this careless
wife of mine. For the future, Estelle, bring anything to me."

"You seem to have enough to pay for." Estelle pointed to a pile of
books and cheques.

"Too much! More than I can manage. Estelle, is nothing of value unless
it costs money? Must one always lunch and dine and sup with people
whose daily income equals our half-yearly one? Can a woman ever look
well in a frock which costs less than twenty pounds? Oh, one must go to
so-and-so--everyone does. Is there nothing simple left in life?" said
Bertie, drearily. "No pleasure in a corner of the country where a man
could pay his way honestly, and eat strawberries in June and peaches in
August?"

"Is it as bad as that?" Estelle came to the table, glanced at some of
the books.

She was a slight girl, with nothing but her grey eyes redeeming her
from mediocrity.

Bertie Carteret sat opposite a full-length portrait of his wife. It was
tinted, showing her dazzling colouring, her rounded figure. It stared
at him with Esme's careless, joyous smile. Never yet, when he had
touched her, had the softness of her ivory neck, the warmth of her
white skin, failed to wake passion in him, make him wax to the heat of
love, melting and desiring. So she had won his heart when he met her in
the country, the beauty of a small military station, a doctor's
daughter, well born, but dowerless, bringing beauty alone as her
marriage portion. Her beauty, her joyous love of life, had won her a
niche in London Society. Friends had given her introductions, and Esme
had grown into the life as a graft grows to the parent stem.

What poet has written that each woman is a flower with its
characteristics, its scent, or beauty?

Was not this wife of his a gorgeous sunflower, turning her head to the
light and warmth of amusement, standing out among her fellows, dazzling
as she caught the light, a thing to look at and admire, but not to bend
one's face over drinking in a rare sweet perfume.

Now that he sat thinking he knew there had been none of the intimacy of
married lovers; no scheming for their dual interests, no planning of
some little trip to be taken together, none of the talks which wed man
and woman more surely than the service ordained by law. Nothing but
love and laughter. Together, with the world shut out, Bertie must not
talk of ordinary things, but of Esme. She would lean against him,
exquisite, perfect, silken draperies merely veiling her long, rounded
limbs, and he must talk of her alone. Tell her again and again how
beautiful she was; find new perfection in her golden hair, her bright
cheeks, the curves of her beauty.

Then in the mornings, when there was an hour before they need get up,
when Esme had put on a lace cap and got into some soft-hued wrapper,
she would chatter gaily, but never of their future, of the home which
Bertie, man-like, dreamt of; but of the day's doings, of luncheon and
tea and dinner and theatre, of flying from place to place, from friend
to friend.

"The Holbrooks are sending their small car for me to do my shopping in;
aren't they kind, Bert? Lady Sue sent us a big basket of fruit
yesterday for my little dinner. We've such heaps to do, Bertie,
to-day--such heaps!"

She would stretch her warm limbs in the luxurious joy of being alive,
the joy of youth and strength and happiness.

There were no kisses in the morning. Marie had already laved Madame's
face in scented water, and rubbed in Madame's face cream to prepare her
skin for its light dust of powder.

Sometimes, half shyly, Bertie would try to talk of the future, say they
could not always live in the army.

"There are such dear little places to be found, Es"--he used to study
advertisements--"just big enough. We could keep a horse or two, a
garden--be so happy!"

"And become cabbages ourselves. Play bridge with the parson and his
wife, and go to summer tennis-parties with two men and forty maids.
London, my Bertie, it's the only place for poor people. The country is
all very well if you need never stay there, but to grow rooted to
garden soil! Boo! I'll get you on! You shall be a General and inspect
armies."

Bertie gave up his dream of a little house in the country; he got used
to the careless, ever-moving life. And now he sickened of it.

If women were flowers, this woman standing near him was a violet, a
simple thing, only beautiful to those who love sweetness better than
flaring beauty.

"You're worried," she said. "Where is Esme?"

"Esme is out for the day," he said.

"Then you've often promised me an outing. Come and be a cheap tripper
with me; let it be my treat. I got a cheque from mother yesterday. I'm
rich. Let's pretend we're very poor, and enjoy ourselves. You mustn't
sit there brooding."

Bertie put away the books, laughed up at the gentle face. He would, but
he must pay half.

The May day was theirs; they would enjoy it as two children.

They would take a 'bus, lunch, go to the White City, see how economy
can be practised.

They lunched at a little restaurant in Germain Street, studying the
menu with puckered brows, taking omelette and a grill which they could
share, and biscuits and cheese, and light white wine.

The amount of a bill which would not have covered tips at the Berkeley
or the Ritz was gaily paid.

Bertie saw a new side to Estelle's character; the childish power of
enjoyment. Take a taxi? No! Taxis were for the rich. They sat on the
top of a motor 'bus, going down roaring Piccadilly.

Esme, coming to the door of the Berkeley, happened to look up at the
packed mass of humanity seated on the monster's head.

"Bertie!" she flashed out, mockingly, "and the South African girl.
Bertie happily saving his pennies and seeing London. Oh! how funny."

She forgot that a year ago she had often gone in a 'bus with him.

There were only taxis in the world for her now, or motors. The little
electric carriages were so cheap to hire. Esme's bill at the nearest
garage was running up rapidly. "It was such a 'bore' to look for a taxi
in the evenings; this was ready and took one on to supper or ball, and
back again, and cost very little more," she would say.

Bertie had not seen his wife. He sat enjoying the sunshine, looking
down at the packed streets, as the 'bus slipped through the
traffic--past Grosvenor Gate, on to the London which is not London to
Society, but merely "down in Kensington," into the vast grounds of the
Exhibition, to play as children might have played. To rock on
switchbacks, taking the front seat for the heart-sinking glides and
dips; to come foolishly down watershutes; to slide on mats round
perilous curves; to go and laugh at themselves in ridiculous mirrors.
And then with an aftermath of seriousness to look at the quaint
buildings of Shakespeare's time, and talk of the dead master of the
drama.

Estelle had read every play; she could quote aptly, talk of those which
she had seen.

"He had one fault," she said. "His good women were mawkish fools; his
villainesses splendidly lovable. It was the spirit of the age, no
doubt, that to be good one must be a mere loving nonentity, that brains
led the feminine world to destruction."

If the world would but hang out warnings to the blind mortals who
scurry through its maze, seeking for openings, or shouting, laughing,
as they go; if we knew that an hour hence our life's history would
change, and that a refusal to go to lunch, a turning up one corner
instead of another, would leave it as it was, would it be better for us?

If Bertie Carteret, talking eagerly, almost boyishly, with a new
interest in words, had realized that the turnstile of the Exhibition
was taking him into a land of pain and regret, would he have seen the
warning, laughed, or turned back? He had passed through it now; his
feet were set on the path.

They drank tea out of blue-and-white Japanese cups, with sight-seers
all round them. Esme would have shuddered at the place, absolutely
refused to take tea with milk in it, and with such impossible people
about her.

Estelle enjoyed it; the day was still theirs as they dined at the same
little restaurant with the same waiter, his memory sharpened by
Bertie's surreptitiously large tip, rushing to find a table for them.

Weariness made economy less rigid; the little dinner they picked out
was simple, but not for poor people. Since men in morning coats may not
appear in respectably expensive seats, they climbed high at a theatre,
looking down at the stage far below them; the brilliant mass of colour
in the stalls; the rows of perfectly-dressed women's heads; of
men's--sleek and generally thin of hair. Parties strolled into boxes,
late for half an act, carelessly looking at the play on the stage.

"There's Esme! See!"

Esme came into one of the larger boxes with Dollie Gresham, Jimmie Gore
Helmsley; a couple of soldiers; and then at the last, pretty Sybil
Chauntsey, gesticulating as she ran in, everyone laughing at something
she said.

"I wish"--Bertie looked gravely at the group--"that Sybil Chauntsey
would keep away from that Helmsley man. He's no child's guide."

It was Jimmie's party. He had telephoned to Esme to chaperone it. They
were supping at the Ritz afterwards. Little Sybil had been engaged; she
had run in telling them of her many difficulties before she could get
away. At a small dance to-night one man would look for a partner who
would never come.

Estelle was tired when the theatre was over; it was hot up there above
the dress circle. She pointed to her morning dress and refused supper.

"We'll have some at home then. Esme may be back. The economy must end
at twelve. I'll drive you home in a taxi."

They came to the flat to find it silent, shut up. Esme was not coming
home until three or four. A few sandwiches stood ready for her, but
Bertie would have none of them. He could cook; there were chafing
dishes downstairs. Together they raided the trim larder, to find
nothing but cold beef and eggs and butter. But how they laughed as
Bertie scrambled the eggs, and did it skilfully, if he had not put in
pepper twice, and Estelle grilled slices of beef in boiling butter, and
dusted them with curry powder; then they heated cold potatoes and
carried up their hot dishes, with bread and butter and plates.

Estelle said she adored pepper, as she burnt her throat with scrambled
eggs. Bertie concealed the fact that the beef was corned; the potatoes,
hot by the time the eggs and beef were finished, were excellent.
Estelle made coffee.

They cleared up at last, washing dishes, putting things away, going
home together on a cool summer's night in a crawling growler.

Esme's new maid, looking in once, had slipped away unseen.

A foolish, childish day; a glimpse of how two people may enjoy
themselves in the vast mother city of the world, away from where the
golden shower of wealth rains so heedlessly, where cost is the hallmark
of excellence, and a restaurant which is not the fashion of the moment
is impossible.

As they said good-bye on the doorstep--Estelle had her key--Bertie held
her cool, slender hands in his; asked her if she would spend a day out
of London with him. "Down in Devonshire," he said, "at Cliff End. I
have to go there soon. We can go early. Your aunt will not mind."

"Oh, not with you," said Estelle, simply. "She knows it is all right."

He felt a little pang at the words--a pang he could not understand. It
was right that she should trust herself with him; he was married and a
mere friend; yet the little vexed feeling in his heart was the warning
held up by the gods.

Bertie walked back--a long walk along quiet streets with great London
brooding in her silent might. Sometimes he passed a house lighted up,
red carpeting on its steps, rows of carriages and motors waiting; women
in rich cloaks coming out, their faces weary behind their smiles.
Sometimes strange birds of the night flitted past. Other women,
painted, weary as their rich sisters behind their set smile of
invitation, going home alone, abandoning search for foolish prey. Men,
evil-faced, furtive, glanced at him, standing to watch if the "toff"
would turn into some unfrequented narrow street. Gleams of white shirt
front as men of his class strolled to their rooms or lodging, their
black cloaks flapping back to show the evening dress underneath. A few
tipsy, foolish boys, lurching along looking for trouble. The big clubs
were still lighted, their warm wealth behind their great windows. On to
"down at Kensington," to the great pile of the flats towering to the
soft blue sky.

A little electric carriage rolled noiselessly past him. Esme got out. A
man's voice said "Good-bye." It was one of the soldiers whom he had
seen in the box. He heard some words of parting, then Esme's careless,
heart-whole laugh. They were on the second floor; he heard her exclaim
as she saw the lights all up:

"How careless of someone."

She was brilliantly dressed; something of black and silver, clinging,
graceful, billowing out round her feet; there were diamonds in her fair
hair, a new necklace on her soft white throat. She shivered a little,
turning on the fire, filling herself a glass of brandy from the
decanter, pouring in a little Perrier.

"I was the careless one, Esme. I forgot them."

"But you have only just come in," she said.

"I was in and went out again. You look tired, Esme."

The morning light, stealing in through the drawn curtains, was blue and
searching. It showed the powder on her cheeks, the line of the
deftly-applied carnation bloom; it made her a little haggard, older
than her twenty-five years.

"Yes, I'm tired," she yawned. "I thought you would be asleep." She
lighted a strong cigarette. "I'm tired. We had supper at the Ritz and
went on to Sue's ball. She had a new necklace, a beauty! She's just got
an electric landaulette. Heigho! I'm tired of being poor--of pinching."

"You came home in an electric landaulette, Butterfly," Bertie smiled at
her, but it was a mirthless smile.

"Oh! I'll pay for them myself," she flashed out ill-humouredly. "I
can't hunt for taxis. I--" she stopped. Bertie allowed her a hundred a
year for small things, pocket-money; she must make him think she saved
out of that.

"And new diamonds." He touched the necklace glittering on the soft
white flesh.

"Paste," she said, "paste. The thing only cost ten pounds. I had
nothing decent to wear."

Until one took up the necklace one could not guess--see the solid
backing. It was a brilliant thing; the workmanship perfect; but it had
cost five times ten pounds.

Bertie bent to kiss the soft, warm flesh; slipped his arm round the
supple shoulders.

"Come! I'll put you to bed," he whispered; "be your obedient maid,
Butterfly."

"Susan will come, I told her to. Go to the little room, Bertie. I sleep
so badly and anything disturbs me. I've heaps to do to-morrow."

He took his arm away, his ardour chilling, and went out without a word.
Susan, sleepy but attentive, came in; put Madame to bed; washed the
soft skin free of powder and paint; brought a little glass to the
bedside.

"Madame's drops. Madame might not sleep."

Crystal clear, tasteless, soothing, bringing dreamless, heavy sleep; a
slide of treachery down which women slip to ill-health and worse.
Already, at five-and-twenty, Esme was taking chloral.

The Society Bazaar began to take shape, to approach the days of its
holding. Gorgeous gowns of satin and gauze and lace were fashioned for
fair debutantes and pretty matrons.

Sweets, china, baskets; the hundred and one things which no one wants
and which they must buy at three times the value when ordered.

The Duchess of Boredom would sell baskets. Dollie suggested an idea of
diamond-like brilliancy: "Tie a card to every one:

  'The Duchess of Boredom,
          Boredom Court,'

with just a letter 's' and 'stall' in the corner. Everyone suburban in
the room will rush for those baskets, and shop with them for months to
come, forgetting, of course, to take off the card. It's perfect," said
Dollie, "if she'll do it."

"Or you might have some made in the shape of strawberry leaves," said
Bertie, gravely.

The Duchess did not object to her card being used. She was willing to
order some hundreds of cards for the sake of charity.

"The Bazaar, of course, paying my stationers," said the Duchess,
severely.

There were sweet stalls, where pretty notabilities, for five shillings
extra, would sign their names on the boxes.

There was a stall kept by great actresses, who sold their autographs
and their photographs, and buttonholes of rosebuds and carnations.

There were side shows, cafe chantants, everything to take money from
the public.

"For the tiny crippled children. Help them." Children selling flowers
and sweets, dressed all in pale pink, crowned with rosebuds, carried
little cards on their heads, with these words printed.

"Let us be nothing if not sentimental," said Dollie, looking round the
hall. Dull green gave background to the flower dresses; dull green on
stalls and against the walls. Royalty had promised to be present. It
was a great affair.

"It will buy tweeds," said Dollie. "It always does. And baskets, and
sweets for the hospitals. And it--the male part of it--won't be allowed
any of the photographs it wants from the stage stall."

A great bazaar, which a minor Royalty graciously declared open, and
then remembered an engagement; its royal purse was sparsely supplied.

All Society seemed to be assisting, but Suburbia flocked to it, and in
the evening Shopland would render gallant support.

"For the tiny crippled children; see the lovely dears," said Mrs Harris
to Mrs Smith of Clapham. "What's your name, little love, now?"

"Pollie Laverdean," a small mite of eight raised dark liquid eyes. "Buy
somefin', p'ease."

"Lady Marrianne," whispered a better-informed friend. "The Countess of
Gardenia's eldest--ain't she sweet?"

"An' to call her plain Pollie. My! my!" murmured the friend.

Mrs Smith and Mrs Harris bought two small china dogs at five shillings
each, and a box of shilling chocolates at the same price.

The Duchess's baskets went as snow before the sun.

Lady Lila Blyth and her lovely daughters sold flowers freely. The names
of the assistants were written plainly over each stall--another idea of
Dollie's.

Lady Lila Blyth, Miss Eva Blyth, Miss Lulu Blyth; Lady Eliza O'Neill;
Mrs Holmes; the Marquess of Tweesdale; Lord Rupe

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