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Scarlet and Hyssop: A Novel

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Title: Scarlet and Hyssop: A Novel

Author: E. F. Benson


        
Release date: September 18, 2012 [eBook #40795]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SCARLET AND HYSSOP: A NOVEL ***

SCARLET AND HYSSOP




By E. F. BENSON.

       *       *       *       *       *

Scarlet and Hyssop.
     12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

The Luck of the Vails.
     12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

Mammon and Co.
     12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

Dodo.
     _A Detail of the Day._ 12mo. Cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 cents.

The Rubicon.
     12mo. Cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 cents.

       *       *       *       *       *

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.




SCARLET AND HYSSOP
_A NOVEL_


By E. F. BENSON


AUTHOR OF DODO
MAMMON & CO.
THE LUCK
OF THE
VAILS
ETC.


[Illustration]


NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1902




COPYRIGHT, 1902
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY




CHAPTER I


It has been ordained by the wisdom of Nature that the same fact shall
strike the majority of her foolish children almost simultaneously. This
phenomenon can hardly have escaped the most casual observer; the
majority of swallows, for instance, in any given area will agree,
practically in the same week, that our English autumn is no longer
tolerable, and with consenting twitterings set their heads southwards;
or in the spring, again, one may observe that in any given field daisies
and buttercups will determine, only to be nipped by unpunctual frosts,
that it is now time to come out, while even man, that most vacillating
and least uniform of all created things, has a certain sympathy in his
sensations; the sap stirs with moderately equal effervescence in the
most dissimilar units; and without further preamble, to take the case in
point, London settles without consultation, but with considerable
unanimity, when spring may be considered to have stopped and summer to
have begun. It is hardly necessary to state that London is, if not
always, at any rate very frequently, completely deceived--like the
buttercups and daisies--about a point so apparently palpable as even
this, and a few biting frosts about mid-May usually send it back to its
furs again; but the fact remains that on or about the same day the
streets suddenly wear a completely different garb. On all sides the
chrysalises burst, and butterflies gay or sober, according to their
temperaments, hover and try their wings over a ground strewn, so to
speak, with the brown husks of the "winter weeds outworn." Nor is this
bursting of the chrysalis confined to externals: the time has come; the
tides of vitality turn and flow through the town, and the reopened
houses, newly decked window-boxes, and the flush of colour in the
streets, are but symptomatic of the inward conviction of their
inhabitants that a fresh season for doing a quantity of things they
should not do, and as great an opportunity for leaving undone many
things that they should do, has been turned up by the spade of Time,
that irresponsible farmer of years.

Though not usually given to prosing, Lady Alston had been making remarks
somewhat to this effect as she sat with Mrs. Brereton after lunch in a
balconied window of her drawing-room in Park Lane looking over the haze
and warmth of the Park. Being for the moment, at any rate, in a
pessimistic mood, she accounted for it by a belittling explanation.

"We are so obvious; that is why we all do things simultaneously," she
said; "and a thing that everybody does is not in itself worth doing at
all. I don't suppose there ever was a race so utterly deficient in
originality."

The sun was not very hot, and Mrs. Brereton put down her parasol, and
pointed dramatically with it down Park Lane.

"What do you call that?" she asked. "Did you ever see anything so wildly
and colossally original? You have travelled, dear Marie, and have seen
Aztecs and wigwams and the gorgeous East in fee, whatever that may mean.
But have you ever seen anything to approach Park Lane?"

Lady Alston laughed.

"I don't call nightmares original," she said.

"I'm sure I don't know why not. I see nothing in the nature of a
nightmare which is incompatible with originality. Just look: there we
have a Gothic façade, followed by a very plain English erection which
reminds me of beef and beer and Sunday. A little further down you will
observe a kind of kiosk, and after that the front of the Erechtheum and
something from the slums of Nürnberg. If one could look round the
corner, we would see a rustic cottage, a bit of Versailles, a slice of
Buckingham Palace as _pièce de resistance_, and some Pompeian frescoes
by way of a savoury. There's richness for you."

"Scraps only, scraps from other places. It always reminds me of a dog's
dinner," said Lady Alston; "and all of us who live here are like scraps
for a dog's dinner, too. Bits of things, remnants, a jumble sale, with
everything priced above its proper value."

Mildred Brereton leaned back in her chair, so that the sun did not catch
her hair. The particular Titian shade she affected was so difficult to
please in a strong light, and she felt sure that at this moment there
was a sort of metallic iridescence on it. She would have to go to the
hair-dresser's again to-day.

"Dear Marie, what possesses you this lovely morning?" she asked. "Why
is the world so stupid?"

"Probably only because I had a very short night. I am quite aware that
when one is dissatisfied with things in general, it means that one's
_vie interieure_, shall we say? is dissatisfied with something
particular."

"And what form does the dissatisfaction take?"

Lady Alston threw her hands wide with an admirably graceful gesture.

"I despair of the human race of the day," she said, "but I have enough
grace to include myself. Do you suppose there ever was such a stupid
class of people--especially we, Mildred, the women! We have all,
literally all, we should want to make ourselves happy in an animal
way--good health, sufficient money, and a deep abiding selfishness. But
we can't amuse ourselves; we are not happy; we are like dogs out for a
walk, we must continually have sticks thrown for us. We can none of us
invent anything ourselves. We can none of us stand solitude, which is in
itself a complete confession of our stupidity, our parasitic nature. We
go and hear people sing and act, and make music; and go and see horses
race; we play cards for hours because we have not got the wit to
talk--they say Bridge killed conversation. What nonsense! there was none
to kill. Our whole brains, such as they are, are occupied in devising
things to do to make the time pass. And we devise very badly: we are
always glad when each thing is over. We go to a concert. How long! We
live three months in London. How nice it will be to get down to the
country again! We play Bridge. Will the rubber never end? We spend the
autumn in the country. Will November never be over? On the top of that
we do all in our power to make it appear that time has not passed with
us. We dye our hair and paint our faces, in order to appear young, but
the moment we open our mouths it is obvious we are tired, withered old
women! There!"

Mrs. Brereton moved a little into the shadow.

"Don't mind me, dear," she said, "I am going to have it done again this
afternoon; it won't do at all."

Lady Alston laughed; she had noticed the iridescence.

"Now you, Mildred," she said, "you are an excellent case in point. Tell
me why you find it worth while to do that. What object is served by
your spending hours at your hair-dresser's? Can you find nothing better
to do?"

"You don't know my hair-dresser. He is a small Frenchman with a
lack-lustre eye, who sighs over the wickedness of the world. I sigh too;
and we find sympathy in each other's eyes. Some day I shall ask him to
dinner, and that will be disappointing. Besides, my hair is beginning to
be neatly picked out with gray, and when your hair is gray it looks as
if you were no longer young. Nor am I. I am thirty-six. But I have still
a greedy appetite for pleasure, which is the only real test of youth.
Therefore I cut my coat, or rather dye my hair, according to my
essential age, and pay no attention to the utterly misleading measure of
years."

"But what is the use of being young if it is only to be young?" asked
Lady Alston.

"That is a question which you will not ask when you are thirty-six. Most
delightful things are of no use whatever, and useful things are seldom
delightful. Go on about the want of originality in the world."

"There is really nothing to say about it. It is there, a colossal fact.
Nobody is serious--seriousness is considered the greatest of social
crimes--and we drift along like thistle-down. We are vicious; we are
idle. No one has any dignity or any manners, and there is no object
under the sun, except perhaps the avoidance of physical pain, for which
we would sacrifice our breakfast or dinner."

"There is no one under the sun," said Mildred, "for whom many of us
would not sacrifice our reputations."

"But not our dinner. Oh, I know I am only really speaking of--well, of
people you and I know best, among whom we choose to pass our time. There
again you see our utter want of originality. We are bound hand and foot
by conventions of our own making. Supposing I happened to go into the
country for a fortnight, instead of grilling here in London, every one
would say it was quite unheard of. And I have not got sufficient
originality to go, although I do think that it is simply silly and
absurd to live in a town in the summer."

"Every one would say a great deal more than that," remarked Mrs.
Brereton.

"I know they would. They would wonder whom I had gone with, and they
would speedily invent several people. I beg the pardon of the people
among whom we live. They have one passion, and it is scandal; the more
ill-natured the better."

"No; ill-nature has nothing to do with it," said Mrs. Brereton. "They
have a passion for scandal, it is true. What else is there to talk
about? I share it; in fact, I have a particularly large helping, but it
is the subject-matter of scandal which really interests people. I don't
see why you shouldn't call it the study of human nature. It is if you
come to think of it."

Lady Alston shook her head.

"No, the study of the worst side of it," she said. "So far, what you say
is true. All that most men think about is women, and all that women
think about is men. That is the coarse, raw truth of the thing; that is
the real indictment. Oh, it is inexplicable to me! All that we want in
this world is at our command--at any rate all the beautiful and
interesting things in existence can be read or heard or seen by us. But
we don't waste two thoughts on them all. We sit in corners and giggle
like barmaids with our young men. And, as long as there is no public
scandal, no scandal of the wrong sort--you know what I mean--the more
people that see us, the better we like it. We put our noses in the air
when we see a Harry and a Harriet with their arms round each other's
necks, having changed hats, and say, 'How those people _can_!' But we
can! And we do!"

Mrs. Brereton shrieked with laughter.

"Oh, Marie, you are too heavenly!" she said. "And you certainly have a
right to say those things, because nobody ever accused you of changing
hats with anybody. You don't draw them in, you know, dear. They call you
'Snowflake' and all sorts of things, I am told. And such lots of people
offer you their hats. Yet you never take one."

Lady Alston shifted her position slightly, as if something had suddenly
made her uncomfortable.

"It is no use talking about wickedness nowadays," she said, "because
people simply stare, as if they did not know what you meant. But I made
Blanche stare in a different kind of manner the other day, when I asked
her if she really had no idea how vulgar she was."

"Surely she did not mind being called vulgar?"

"She did when I explained carefully what I meant by vulgarity. Of course
a certain sort of vulgarity is _chic_ now. It is very vulgar not to be
vulgar, not to talk at the top of one's voice, and eat too much, and
laugh very loud at things which ought not to be said; but when I told
her what sort of a picture she makes when she sits simpering and ogling
Dick all across the room, and, so to speak, spreading herself on the
floor for him to walk over, she did not think I was so pleasant. But
that's exactly what she does."

Mrs. Brereton drew on her gloves.

"There is something very successful in your attitude, Marie," she said.
"You go about hurling home-truths at people; you hold up looking-glasses
to them, and make them see themselves; you point out what brutes they
are, and scold them for it; but they never bear you any ill-will, and
always want to see you. You really must not go into the country: we
cannot get on without you!"

"Ah, if I only was conceited enough to think that, I should go!"

"That is truly amiable. But what I mean is this: you have got somehow
the quality of centrality; our parties--I'm sure I don't know why--are
brilliant if you are there, and sensibly flatter if you are not. I
suppose it is because people are always talking about you, and it is so
nice in one's own house to be able to point to the original. At the same
time, I always feel about you as if you were the volcano on which we
were all dancing."

"I shan't explode: I am the least likely person in the world to
explode," said Marie.

"Ah, you never can tell about volcanoes. That is the joy of them. I
snatch a fearful joy from you, dear. I wish I was a volcano. How do you
manage it? Do you get very angry inside, and determine not to say
anything till the pressure is irresistible? By the way, Jim Spencer has
just come back. You know him, I suppose? Anyhow, you will meet him at
dinner this evening."

Marie looked up with a sudden vivacity.

"Jim Spencer? Why, of course I do. We were brought up together almost.
Then--well, then I married, and I lost sight of him somehow."

"One does," observed Mrs. Brereton. "Marriage often produces a sort of
moral cataract."

"Don't be foolish, Mildred. There is nothing cheaper or easier or falser
than that sort of innuendo. Besides, he went abroad; he has been away
two years, I should think."

"They do go abroad," said Mrs. Brereton.

"Oh, if you want to know, there is no earthly reason why I should not
tell you. He proposed to me. But I always liked him very much."

"I always said so," remarked Mrs. Brereton.

"Then you had no business to. Dear Jim! I shall be delighted to see him
again. He is one of the few really reasonable people I know. He has got
some sort of plan of his own; he has always known what he meant to do,
though he has not always done it. For instance, he wanted impossible
things; he had no money and I had none, so he proposed that we should
marry and support ourselves by his writings. He has appeared before now
in Christmas numbers."

"Then, perhaps you acted wisely. But he rolls in wealth now. A South
African millionaire, without anything South African about him: no local
colour, in fact. He is also remarkably handsome. Wealth, manners, good
looks! A fairy-prince combination."

Lady Alston laughed.

"Dear me! I shall like to see Jim with society at his feet," she said.

"You make certain it will go there?"

Lady Alston raised her eyebrows.

"My dear, how can you ask? He is rich--that is sufficient alone."

"He must not kick us, then. It is to be understood he gives us
halfpence, golden halfpence. And it is very interesting--that story
about him and you, I mean."

Lady Alston did not at once reply.

"You give one a bad taste in the mouth sometimes, Mildred," she said at
length.

"Very possibly. And you always tell one that one has done so."

"I know. That is why we are friends."

Mrs. Brereton looked doubtful.

"In spite of it, I should say."

"No, because of it. Ah! here is Jack."

Jack Alston was one of those people whom it was quite unnecessary to
point out, because he was distinctly visible not only to the outward,
but also to the inward eye. He was so large, that is to say, that you
could not fail to notice that he had come into a room, and at the same
time, he had about him the quality of making himself felt in some subtle
and silent manner. As a rule he spoke but little; but his silence, as
Mildred Brereton once remarked with more than her usual insight, took up
all the time. It could not be described as a rich silence, for it was
essentially dry, but somehow it compelled attention. Probably, if he
had been short and squat, it would have passed unnoticed, but coming as
it did from him, it was charged with a certain force, partaking of his
own quality. Also it was doubly unnecessary for his wife to call
attention to his entrance, for on no one did it produce such an effect
as on her. Thus, on this occasion, having remarked on it, she said no
more.

Jack lounged slowly into the balcony, shook hands with Mrs. Brereton,
and sat down on a basket chair sideways to his wife, so that he looked
straight at her profile.

"Decent afternoon for once, Mildred," he said. "Summer at last. You look
summery, too."

"What there is left of me," said she. "Marie has been taking the hide
off us all--skinning us."

Jack considered this a moment.

"Well, you look all right skinned," he said at length. "Bad habit of
Marie's, though. What has she been skinning you about?"

"She's been telling me we are all wicked and stupid, and vicious and
vulgar."

"That's a hobby of hers. One must have a hobby. Going out this
afternoon, Marie?"

Mildred took the hint instantly.

"I must be off," she said. "Really, Jack, you have the most brutal
manner. You send me to the right-about with the least possible ceremony.
So I wish to tell you I was going in any case. I've a hundred things to
do."

Jack rose.

"When have you not? I'll see you down. Wait a minute, Marie, if you're
not in a hurry; I want to have a word with you."

"Oh, don't trouble," said Mildred. "I can find my way."

Jack said nothing, but merely followed her into the house, and when they
had passed the drawing-room, "Has she been cutting up rough about
anything in particular?" he asked.

"Oh, no; merely the rigid attitude, fire-works, thunder-storms, what you
will."

"I'm rather tired of them. For several reasons she had better stop. I
believe most idiots find it amusing."

Mildred took a parasol out of the stand, with the air of a purchaser
selecting the one that most struck her fancy. As a matter of fact, it
happened to be her own.

"I should take care if I were you," she said in a low voice. "A man like
you cannot form the least idea of what a woman like Marie really is. Is
my carriage here? Just see, please."

She stood on the bottom step of the stairs, putting on her rather thick
and masculine driving-gloves, while Jack crossed the hall and rang the
bell. Then he came back to the bottom of the stairs again.

"Do you mean that she suspects anything?" he asked.

"No, of course not. What I do mean is that she is beginning to see what
we all are like. You and I, when we see that, are delighted. It is a
nice big playground. But it does not strike Marie as a playground. Also
you must remember that she is the--how shall I say it!--the sensation,
the latest, the fashion. You've got to be careful. She is capable of
exploding some day, and if she did it would be noticeable. It will
hardly be worth while picking up the fragments of you and me that
remain, Jack, if she does. Because if she does, it will be since
something has touched her personally."

"Well?"

"You are extraordinarily slow. Of course the person who is most likely
to touch her personally is you."

"I've got to mind my p's and q's, in fact. That's not the way to manage
her."

Mrs. Brereton's face clouded a little as she walked across the hall to
the door which was being held open for her.

"Well, _au revoir_," she said. "I shall have more to say to you
to-night. You dine with us, you know."

Jack Alston did not appear to be in any particular hurry to go upstairs
again after Mrs. Brereton had gone. He waited on the door-step to see
her get in, a groom who barely reached up to the horses' heads holding
them while she took up the reins, then running stiffly to scramble in
behind, as she went off down Park Lane in the most approved fashion,
elbows square, a whip nearly perpendicular, and her horses stepping as
if there were a succession of hurdles to negotiate, each to be taken in
the stride. Her remarks about the importance of taking care had annoyed
Jack a little, and still more his own annoyance at being annoyed. He had
his own ideas about the management of his affairs, among which, about
halfway down, came his wife, and the hint that she might, even
conceivably, make matters unpleasant for him was the same sort of
indignity as a suggestion that he could not quite manage his own dogs
or horses. But after a minute he turned.

"For what time is her ladyship's carriage ordered?" he asked of the
footman.

"Half-past three, my lord."

"Tell them to come round at a quarter to four instead," he said, and
went slowly upstairs again.

He found his wife on the balcony where he had left her, with her maid
beside her with two hats in her hand.

"Yes, that one will do," she said, "and send the other back. No, I will
take it myself this afternoon. It is all wrong. Put it in a box and
leave it in the hall. I am going out immediately."

The maid retired with the condemned hat, and while Marie pinned the
other on, she turned to her husband.

"You wanted to speak to me?" she said, not lifting her eyes.

Jack looked at her in silence a moment, and lit another cigar.

"Finish pinning on your hat first," he said.

Marie found herself obeying him, with a sense of wanting, just in order
to see what happened, not to do as he told her. However, she pinned her
hat on.

"Well?" she said again.

"Jim Spencer has come back," he said.

"I knew that. Mildred told me just now."

"I wanted to say a few words to you about him. I find people have not
forgotten that he was very much attached to you once."

She looked up at him with eyes of indifferent wonder, as if he had asked
her some inane unanswerable sort of riddle.

"People are quite at liberty to remember or forget what they like, as
far as I am concerned," she said. "Is that all you have to say to me? If
so, I will go out, I think. The carriage ought to be round."

"Not yet. I told them not to come round till a quarter to four. And I
have more to say."

"Please consult me another time," she said, "before you take it upon
yourself to alter my arrangements."

Jack did not reply at once. Then in a voice expressive neither of
compunction nor annoyance, "It is no use making a fuss," he said. "I
wish merely to warn you that people have not forgotten. I wish also to
ask you to behave reasonably. People, very likely, will connect your
names again: you know what they are."

She rose flushing.

"So you wanted a quiet quarter of an hour in which to insult me," she
said.

He pointed to a chair.

"Sit down, Marie," he said.

"Supposing I choose not to?"

"We will not suppose anything so absurd. There! Why not have done it at
once? As I was saying, this will inevitably happen, and so I should
advise you to accept it. That will entail certain alterations in
your--your general style. I have often heard you criticising rather
mercilessly the world you live in; Mildred tells me you were doing so
this afternoon. I don't mind your doing that: you have a racy sort of
way of talking, and no doubt all your criticisms are perfectly true. But
with the return of Jim Spencer, I should advise you either to drop that
sort of thing, or else not see very much of him."

He paused, and flicked the end of his cigar-ash over the balcony.

"Not that I mind your doing either the one or the other in themselves,"
he continued, "but to do both will show a want of wisdom."

"Ah, you don't mind what I do, but only what people say!"

"Exactly. You have quite grasped my meaning."

Again she rose from the chair in which she had sat at his bidding.

"That is all, then, I imagine," she said. "Five minutes was enough."

"Yes, for what I had to say. I thought you might like to talk over it."

"I have not the least desire to."

Jack reached out his hand for an early edition of the evening paper, and
unfolded it.

"Perhaps you would tell me what you mean to do."

"I have no intention of doing anything. Certainly I have no intention of
discussing the question with you."

Jack did not show the slightest impatience.

"There's no use in being so nettled about it," he observed. "If a woman
behaves in a certain way, she gets talked about. That is all. I have
indicated to you that if you do certain things you will get talked
about; I do not want that."

"From your point of view, I wonder why. Mildred is talked about, so I am
told; but I never knew that you considered that a reason for not seeing
her a good deal."

For one moment he looked quickly up, then turned back a fluttering leaf
of his paper.

"Quite true. And if you were anybody else's wife, I should not mind how
much you were talked about. But you are mine--it happens you are mine."

Marie did not reply.

"Somehow the matter has grown to larger dimensions than I had intended,"
he added. "I only meant to give you quite a friendly and, in a way,
insignificant word of warning. But somehow you have put it all into
capital letters. There, go out for your drive. Really, Marie, I had not
the slightest conception you would make such an affair of it."

"You think I have been unreasonable."

"I do."

She made a great effort with herself.

"Very well, I will forget all about it. You see, we rub each other up
the wrong way, Jack. It is a great pity."

"Yes. But it's not worth bothering about."

The paper appeared to have nothing much in it, and it was only a few
moments after his wife had left him that Jack put it down, and finished
his cigar without other employment than his own thoughts. This short
scene with Marie had disturbed him in the same way as a fall in the
barometer may disturb a picnic-giver: it may come to nothing, but there
is a hint of the fair weather breaking. At the same time, he was
perfectly well accustomed to be utterly at variance with her, and never
contemplated any divergence of opinion between them which could result
in his having to give way. It is only selfish people who cannot believe
that they are selfish, and Jack never passed moral judgments on himself
or anybody else. To be critical of any behaviour that did not annoy him
personally he held to be an absurd attitude to adopt; it was only
behaviour that might prove inconvenient to one's self that could
reasonably be criticised, or, rather, not so much criticised as
corrected. He knew quite well that the small but well-dressed fragment
of the world that at all concerned him, was perfectly aware that his
marriage with Marie had not been a romantic success, though personally
he considered it quite up to the average. To a nature like his, unbroken
constancy and devotion to one's wife is not only an achievement never
aimed at, but an achievement not even contemplated. He had married, as
many men do, simply because many men do marry, and an heir is certainly
the natural complement to estates and a title. But no heir had been
born, and, in a manner of speaking, Marie had made his estates and title
appear ridiculous and lopsided; she had not fulfilled her part of the
bargain.

It is not meant to be understood that he stated these things to himself
with the foregoing baldness, but none the less, if he had analyzed the
springs of action that determined the course of the life he led, he
would have admitted that they represented its ground-motives with
sufficient accuracy. But Jack was not in the habit of analyzing
anything: inquiry into the reasons for conduct seemed to him a
profitless pursuit, since--again to put the matter baldly--he did not
care at all whether a person acted wickedly or not. In fact, as his wife
had said, there were many people who simply stared if you talked of
wickedness. Her husband was among them, but he did not even stare.

It is commonly said that modern life is too full and too complex, but
this generalization requires limiting. Certainly to a man, or in
particular a woman, not belonging to "the world," a sudden plunge into
that frothy mill-race would be complex to the verge of distraction. But
there are many ways of simplifying this complexity, and one of the most
convenient and efficient is to strike out, without further
consideration, all moral obligations, positive and negative. When once
one no longer thinks it necessary to reflect whether one ought or ought
not to do or to avoid a thing, the saving of time and tissue is quite
enormous. For it is not so much doing things as thinking about them
which consumes the minutes and the nerves, and once having made an
unalterable rule to do a thing if it is pleasant, and refrain from it if
it is not, one can get into a single day a number of delightful
experiences which would appear to those who do not know the recipe quite
incredible. Again, as among wild beasts, so in the world, the weak go to
the wall. There is no place for them, and no use for them. Every one has
to look out for himself, and fight for his own possessions and those of
other people. Not to recognise this spells failure. Such, at any rate,
was Lord Alston's experience, and he was generally understood to have
had a good deal of it.

But as he sat now with the stale paper on his knees he had a vague
sense of being balked. He knew his own section of the world fairly well,
and having broken his rose-coloured spectacles a long time ago, and not
having desired to get new ones, he realized that people certainly
remembered Jim Spencer's attachment to his wife, and that piecing
together with their habitual amiability, their opinion of the
ill-success of his own marriage with her, her frankly low opinion of the
world, and the possibility of the renewed intimacy of his wife and this
man, they would say things which would annoy him personally. He had
hoped that Marie would see this, or if not that, at any rate learn it by
heart, so to speak, from a few well-chosen remarks of his. But she had
done neither the one nor the other; she had taken the well-chosen
remarks, so he considered, remarkably ill, and the only _amende_ had
been to say that she would forget all about it. To Jack's mind this was
but poor wifely conduct.




CHAPTER II


Andrew Brereton, Mildred's husband, was a man about whom little was
known and hardly more conjectured, since he was most emphatically of
that type of man who arouses in none the remotest feeling of curiosity.
There seemed to be no doubt that he was of humble origin, but his
origin, whether humble or haughty, he had completely built over with the
tall edifice of his subsequent achievements, which had resulted in the
amassing of a fortune large enough to satisfy the requirements even of
his wife. It is generally supposed that brains of some kind are
necessary in order to make a very large quantity of money, and these
must be postulated for him; but having made a fortune, brains--or
so a study of this particular millionaire would lead one to
suppose--thenceforth become a superfluity. Certainly it appeared that
Mr. Brereton, on his retirement from business, either locked his up, or,
perhaps, as a concluding bargain, disposed of them, no doubt at a
suitable valuation, to his house, which dealt largely and wisely in
sound mining concerns in South Africa. Physically he was thin and meagre
in build, and habitually wore a harassed and troubled look, especially
in his own house, where he sat at the head of the table, and, for all
the attention that was usually paid him, might as well have been sitting
on the area-steps. But inasmuch as he really had an immense fortune, and
his wife had the spending of it, the privilege of being present when she
entertained her friends in his house was accorded him without question,
and the further advantage of his sitting on the area-steps instead of at
his table was never seriously weighed by any one.

To-night there was only a very small party, all the members of which,
with the exception of Jim Spencer, had probably met five or six times a
week since they came up to London, and during the winter had been
together more often than not in each other's houses. There was,
therefore, no sorting and resorting of groups required; conversation
could either be general, or in a single moment split up like broken
quicksilver and roll away into appropriate corners. For the moment it
was general, or rather everybody was listening to Arthur Naseby, a stout
young man, fresh-faced, but prematurely bald, who, standing on the
hearth-rug, harangued the room in a loud and strident barytone.

"_The_ most awful party I ever was at," he was saying. "Mrs. Boneman was
there, the wife of our eminent artist, wearing a sort of bird's-nest on
her head with three Union Jacks and some Easter eggs stuck into it. She
was dressed in a sort of Brussels carpet trimmed with what looked like
horsehair. I'm sure it was not horsehair really, but probably some rare
and precious material, but it looked like it; and she wore what I
understood to be the famous Yeere diamonds. They were about as large as
pen-wipers, and were plastered round her neck and pinned on to the
shoulders; others were scattered about her back. I imagine she stood in
the middle of the room, and her maid threw them at her, and they stuck
in the horsehair."

Mrs. Brereton shrieked with laughter.

"You are too heavenly!" she cried. "Go on, Arthur. Who else was there?"

"All the people whom one always sees coming out of the door of the Cecil
at Brighton, and all those who ask one to supper at the Carlton, in
order to inquire apparently who is sitting at the other tables. It is a
sort of passion with a certain kind of person to know who is supping at
the other tables at the Carlton, and his, or usually her, limitation
that he never does. It appears to them of far greater importance than
who is supping at their own. Well, they were all there, Princess
Demirep, and the Linoleums and Lincrustas. Hosts of them! I assume it
was most brilliant."

"Whom did you go with?" asked Lady Davies, who always wore an air of
intent study when Arthur Naseby was talking, because she was trying to
remember all he said in order to repeat it as original.

"I went with Blanche Devereux. I was dining with her, and she insisted
on my coming. We are both going again on the 16th."

"So am I. Dear Blanche! what did she make of it all?"

"She said she had never felt so humbled in her life. You see, this was a
particular party of _intimes_; the 16th is an omnibus. The brilliance of
the gathering overwhelmed her, just as it did me. We really knew nobody
there, and sat in a corner alone in London, till Mrs. Maxwell herself
left her commanding situation at the head of the stairs where she
received her guests and came and talked to us. I know she thought she
was being kind. So she was, but not in the way she meant."

"She is too wonderful," said Mildred, "Was she dressed in red satin?"

"I should have said bound, not dressed. Very tightly and neatly bound
with silk-markers and gilt edges. She thanked Blanche for coming, and
just stopped herself saying she felt much honoured; also she had hoped
to see her husband as well. Now, I have heard many tactful things in my
life, but I think never anything quite so tactful as that. A strange
fatality pursues poor Mrs. Maxwell; she says unerringly and loudly the
only thing which it is absolutely impossible to say. Blanche is not a
prude, I think we are all agreed, and therefore not easily shocked. Poor
Mrs. Maxwell might have said almost anything, however improper, without
offending her. Again, Blanche is a woman of the world; she can usually
make some sort of reply to the most awful put-your-foot-in-it. But she
was completely outclassed by that one simple sentence. Mrs. Maxwell was
first, and nobody else anywhere."

Lady Davies was so far carried away by this brilliance as to laugh, and
thus completely forgot all she had learned by heart from Arthur's
previous conversation.

"Then poor Mrs. Maxwell turned to me," he went on, "and remarked that I
looked far from well. When any one says that to me, I am always ill for
the next three days; in fact, I hardly thought I could get here
to-night. Of course, that spoiled the rest of my pleasure, and I hardly
knew what happened, except that Dick turned up later in the evening,
and--and pursued his impetuous path. I fancy that poor Mrs. Maxwell
imagined that he was Blanche's husband. But I don't wonder at that."

Marie's nerves were a little on edge to-night, and both what Mr. Naseby
said and the roaring volubility with which he said it jarred on them. At
this particular moment certainly she was possessed with a longing of an
almost passionate kind to cover him up like a canary with a piece of
green baize. But, as there was no baize to hand, she got up from where
she was sitting in the canary's immediate vicinity, and sought a safe
distance in the window-seat. Jim Spencer, who had been sitting at the
other side of the room, got up also, and, crossing the hearth-rug where
Mr. Naseby stood, followed her into her retreat. The latter, seeing a
secession from his audience, cast one pained and pitying glance at them,
and then covered their retreat by the continuation of his monologue.

"So you, like me, find it a little trying, Jim," said Marie, when they
were seated together; "but you will have to get used to it."

"Is there much of that sort of man?" asked Jim. "I don't remember
anything quite like it when I was in London last."

"No, he is a recent invention. He invented himself, in fact. Mildred
thinks she invented him, but she only detected him. The truth is, I
think, that on the whole people have grown rather stupider in the last
year or two, or perhaps it is only lazier, and Arthur Naseby saves them
the trouble of having to talk themselves. In fact, he makes it
impossible."

"Is he always like that?"

"As far as I know, always."

"How odd that he doesn't find it fatiguing! Or perhaps it is even odder
that other people don't find it fatiguing. Tell me something about
him."

"I know nothing whatever about him more than what you can see and hear,"
said Marie. "Indeed, I don't believe there is any more. He is very rich,
and declines to marry."

"Then the man is a husk, a husk with a tongue," said Jim.

"Probably about that; at least, I never heard that any one had reason to
believe there was anything more than the husk. Jim, I wonder how many of
us have real people inside. I expect there are lots of husks and nothing
more."

"Do you think so? I rather believe that most of us have got something
real, though perhaps nothing very wholesome or very pleasant. That being
so, one tries to conceal it, though sometimes it pops out like a lizard
from a crevice. I think I would give anything to get inside anybody
else, just for a minute, to see what he was really like."

"You would be rash to do it. It is quite certain that if you could get
inside anybody, as you say, you would never speak to him again. Good
gracious! could you imagine writing down all that had been in your mind
during a normal half-hour?"

"It depends who was to read it."

"You mean you would let a friend read it?"

Jim laughed.

"Well, if I am as bad as you think, it would clearly be a dangerously
stupid thing to show it to an enemy."

"Ah! you would sooner lose a friend than give a handle to an enemy,"
said Marie. "I entirely disagree with that. I would choose to make or
keep one friend, even at the risk of arming a whole regiment of enemies
against myself. Enemies matter so little."

"Certainly friends matter more," said Jim, "and perhaps acquaintances
less than either. The worst of having been away from London so long is
that one finds so many of the latter and so few of either of the
others!"

"What are your general impressions at present?" asked Marie.

The stream of talk from Mr. Naseby was apparently beginning to run dry;
the pressure was diminishing, and Jim spoke lower.

"I hardly know what to think at present," he said. "London seems to me
to have changed extraordinarily during the last few years. As far as I
can make out, it does not matter now how dull and stupid a man is, how
vulgar or vicious a woman is, as long as he or she is rich enough."

Marie raised her eyebrows.

"Why, of course," she said calmly. "What else did you imagine?"

"That is not all. Apparently, also, you can go to a man's house or a
woman's house, eat her food and drink her wines. Then you hurry on to
the next and tell them that it was _the_ most awful party you ever were
at. But still, apparently, you can go there again on the 16th."

Mildred Brereton had joined them, and lit a cigarette from a
fire-breathing Japanese dragon. She blew out a great cloud of laughter
and smoke together, with her mouth very wide.

"Dear Jim, you are too delicious!" she shrieked. "Really, I shall get
you to come and talk to me instead of Mr. Naseby, for you amuse me much
more. Arthur, you are dropped; Jim is funnier. Of course we are all
going on the 16th, because Pagani and Guardina are both going to sing,
and they sing too divinely for words. Also, considering what we all know
about them, and considering that they know we all know it, it is
exceedingly amusing to see them look at each other with frigid
politeness. Why, only the other day Mrs. Maxwell introduced them to each
other, saying she must make two great artists acquainted. Too screaming!
But you are too delightful and old-fashioned. Your idea about the
obligations entailed by hospitality is a savage notion, dear Jim, like
cannibalism, and vanishes before the march of civilization. I believe
there is an excessively native tribe in Java or Japan, or somewhere,
which still practises it. If you eat their salt, they stick to you
through thick and thin."

Arthur Naseby had joined them.

"How too dreadful!" he exclaimed. "Fancy having a lot of assorted
savages, thick and thin, sticking to one! It sounds as if one was a kind
of superior fly-paper."

"Arthur, you mustn't begin talking again, or we shall never get any
Bridge," said Mrs. Brereton. "Won't you play, Marie?"

"No, I really haven't got time," she said. "I told you I have to go on
at half-past ten. Please what time is it, Jim?"

"Close on eleven."

"Then I must really be moving, Mildred. But Jack will play; he isn't
coming on with me."

"Where are you going, Lady Alston?" asked Arthur.

"To see Blanche Devereux."

Arthur Naseby's face fell.

"I never knew she was giving a party," he said.

Marie laughed, rising.

"She isn't; don't be frightened; it is still possible that she has not
dropped you, like Mildred. I'm only going to see her about the soldiers'
bazaar. In fact, it is because she isn't giving a party that I am
going."

Jim Spencer got up too.

"Will you give me a lift?" he asked. "I am going to Eaton Place also."

"Certainly. Good-night, Mildred. Yes, I know my carriage is here. They
told me half an hour ago. Jack is stopping to play, I suppose. Please
tell him I have taken the carriage."

The two went out, and Mrs. Brereton and Naseby stood still looking at
them. When they had disappeared they looked at each other.

"Dear Marie!" said that lady effusively, "how delighted she evidently is
to see Jim Spencer again! Oh, dear, yes, they were very great friends
in the old days, very great friends indeed. Come, Arthur, they are
waiting for us."

"You always have such delightful people at your house," said Arthur,
"and you always have something interesting to say about them. And that
stiff young man is very rich, is he not?"

"Beyond the dreams," said Mrs. Brereton. "I wonder whom he will find to
make his money fly for him?"

"One can never tell. He looks to me as if he might spend it on Corots or
charity or something of that imperishable kind. Doesn't it strike you as
odd that whereas the perishable nature of money is always dinned into
one, yet one can apparently purchase imperishable treasure by being
charitable with it? No, I can't imagine any one making his money fly.
Some one might make it march away, very solemnly and in good order, but
not fly. He is a little stiff, is he not?"

"Perhaps a little reserved. But when reserve breaks down, it is so
_very_ unreserved. I like seeing a reserved person having a real
holiday."

"How many days would you say it was to the holidays?" asked Arthur, in a
low voice, as they reached the card-table where Jack and another were
waiting.

"I can't tell. I shouldn't wonder--no, I can't tell."

Marie and Jim Spencer meantime were driving down from Grosvenor Square
towards the Park. The night was warm, and hosts of stars burned very
large and luminous in a sky that was beyond the usual London measure of
clearness. After the heat of the rooms, in particular after a certain
feverishness of atmosphere, not physical so much as moral, a sense of
extreme hurry and pressure, the night air and the cool steadiness of the
stars were refreshing, not only physically but morally. Perhaps from
their years of early companionship and intimacy, perhaps from a certain
more deeply seated sympathy of mind, each was very conscious of the
thoughts of the other, and the swift silent motion through the glare of
the streets seemed to isolate them from the world. It was with something
of this in her mind that Lady Alston spoke to the other.

"Yes, put down my window, Jim," she said, "and your own, too, if you are
not afraid of catching cold. We are both outdoor people, I think."

"We used to be," said he.

"Do you mean you have changed? Or do you find I have?"

"I find you have. But I am quite willing to believe that it may be some
change in myself that makes me think so."

Marie unwound the light shawl which she had thrown over her head, and
undid the fastening of her gold-thread cloak, so as to let the air play
on her uncovered neck. In another woman, he felt, this might have
indicated some suspicion of coquetry, but he did her the justice to feel
that no such imputation was possible.

"No, if you feel that you are probably right," she said, "for you do not
seem to me to have changed at all. We both agree, in fact, about you.
There remains then me. How have I changed?"

He looked at her in the dusk of the carriage for a moment without
replying.

"You seemed so much in harmony with those people," he said. "I felt that
you felt yourself to be one of them. But I, obviously, I am afraid, felt
that I was not. That is how I think you have changed; in the old days
you would have appeared to yourself as alien to them as I do."

She gave him one glance.

"Ah, the old days!" she said with some impatience. "It is absurd and
ridiculous to want to remain as one was. Indeed, not to change shows
that one has a nature incapable of development. It implies a sort of
moral torpor, an atrophy of one's nature not to get older as one gets
older. And one of the biggest, and perhaps best effects of age is to
give one tolerance, to make one realize that it takes all sorts to make
a world."

He laughed.

"Why this sudden vehemence?" he asked.

"Oh, for a variety of reasons! One is because you judge me correctly,
another because you judge me incorrectly. You are perfectly right to say
that I have changed, but perfectly wrong to imply, even tacitly, that
one is the worse for changing. And you do me the grossest injustice when
you suppose that I am in harmony with those people. I am not any more
than I ever was. But it is absurd to coil one's self up like a hedgehog,
and run your spines into everything you come across. As a matter of fact
I often do, but it is a mistake."

They drove on some way in silence. At last she spoke again.

"Many of the people with whom I appear to you to be in harmony I
consider wicked," she said; "and many of them, I am sure, are vulgar in
the largest sense of that wonderful term. England is a plutocracy, let
me tell you, Jim. It worships wealth. It will certainly worship you. How
will you like it? It will really be very interesting to see how you
behave. It is an awful position for you: if you refuse to smile on your
worshippers, they will write you down a miser; if you do smile on them,
you will make yourself as vulgar as they."

He laughed.

"You frighten me," he said. "Is there no place in London for a quiet
millionaire?"

She leaned forward with a sudden eagerness.

"Ah, Jim, make one, make one!" she said. "That is the root of the
matter. Try if you can spend your money without encouraging either vice
or vulgarity. It is worth an effort."

She leaned back again, laughing lightly, and drew her cloak round her
again.

"Dear me, I have been vehement," she said; "but don't be afraid; I will
treat you to no more outbursts. Only this afternoon my husband told me
how absurd they were."

"Well, reserve them for me," he said; "I rather like them. You are an
inspiring person, Marie. You know I always found you inspiring."

"Many thanks. But no inspiration will make any one do anything. One's
motive has to come from within, not without, if it is worth anything."

"I am not so sure of that."

They stopped at Lady Devereux's house in Eaton Place, and until the bell
was answered sat silent. Then, as the footman opened the carriage-door,
"I am delighted you have come back, Jim," she said--"I really am
delighted. Come and see me often. Come to lunch to-morrow, for instance.
Yes! That is right. Thirty-one, you know, and lunch at one-thirty."




CHAPTER III


Jim Spencer woke next morning with that thrill of quickened anticipation
which serves to remind us even before full consciousness has returned,
that something new and exciting has come into our lives. He needed but
little thought to remember what it was, and as he lay watching with idle
but wide-awake eyes his man putting his clothes out, he told over and
over again in his mind, like the beads of a rosary, the events of the
evening before, always finishing with the pendant, so to speak, the fact
that in a few hours he was going to see her again. Frankly and honestly
he reminded himself that all romance was over: to begin with, and also
to end with, she was another man's wife, and that was sufficient for
him, as no doubt it was sufficient for her. Three years ago he had left
England because he desired in every fibre of his being to marry her, and
since that was impossible, because he entirely refused to waste his
life in purposeless dangling after what he could not get. And in this
spirit, which is more instinct with manliness than any sacrifice of
years and youth to the mere watching of the unattainable shadow on the
blind, he had gone out to the Transvaal, farmed there with the same
fervour as that which he had thrown into his love-making, and
subsequently, by the discovery of the reef on his land, had become, if
not one of the richest men who had found colossal fortunes as
sheep-farmers, at any rate one of the second rank-millionaire, if not
multi-millionaire. But at that point a certain sobriety of nature had
reasserted itself; he had not mistaken that full meal of gold for the
_hors d'oeuvre_, nor sought to duplicate it and reduplicate it. He had
not lost sight of the fact that he had enough, but recognising it with
all the thankfulness that plenitude gives, and not with the false
appetite of the habitual glutton, he had, so to speak, said grace and
retired from the dinner-table.

So now, at the age of thirty, he was temporarily, at any rate, without
employment, even as he had been, temporarily also, without employment
when Marie decided to marry, not him, but Jack Alston. True, he had
plenty of artistic tastes; in music and pictures he could easily have
passed the remainder of his life, however long, just as, without ever
being bored, he could have shot all the autumn, hunted all the winter,
and dozed and dined all the spring and summer, according to the
traditional method of the English gentleman, whose obituary notice
eventually teems with encomium on his useful and simple life, which
means that he has been a J. P. But to pass one's life merely in hearing
music and looking at or buying pictures seemed to him as unworthy of a
person who called himself a man, as did the recognised round of shooting
and hunting appear to him unworthy of a rational being at all. But as to
what this temporary abandonment of employment should terminate in, he,
as he lay in bed this morning, had no present idea. Anyhow, he was to
see Marie again, and he deliberately quenched further reflection.

The morning had not been foresworn, but fulfilled with liberal
generosity the promise of the last few days, and when Mildred Brereton
reached the Row on a black mare, which had been behaving itself as might
a crab on hot plates, and would have tried any but the most masterly
seat and hands, the broad brown expanse of the Ladies' Mile was
plentifully dotted with riders. The little green seats, too, by the side
were in high request, and she walked, or rather danced, very slowly up
for a hundred yards or so, before letting her chafing mount have a
canter, noting with her quick eye a hundred things and people which
would have escaped one less trained and less naturally gifted to observe
combinations of interest. Jack Alston had joined her, and she kept up a
running comment.

"There's Pagani with that absurd Italian woman," she said. "Why must a
man of that kind do that when Guardina is sure to be here? There, I told
you so! what a row there will be! She has the temper of a fiend, like
me. Jack, if you ever flirt with another woman on the sly, and I see
you, there'll be the deuce to pay. Come and tell me frankly if you are
going to do that sort of thing. Dear Madame Guardina, how are you? Do
walk a little way with us. No, there's not a soul here this morning, is
there? I've seen no one, not even the most constant habitués like
Pagani. And you sang Lucia last night, I hear, too divinely, and I had
some stupid people to dinner and couldn't come. Yes, Lord Alston was
one of them; he was the cleverest there. Judge of the rest!"

The prima donna, a good-natured soul, who had the most perfect vocal
chords in the world, absolutely no artistic sense, a passion for Pagani,
and an adoration for the particular set to which Mrs. Brereton belonged,
was delighted to be seen talking to her, and, turning back, walked along
the rails in the opposite direction to that in which Pagani sat.

"Well, I must say you missed something," she said with engaging
frankness, "for I never was in better voice. And on Saturday I sing La
Tosca. With the open mouth, too, as I've no other engagement for a
fortnight."

"What are you going to do?"

"Go to my house on the river and throw sticks for my dogs. You've never
been there yet, Mrs. Brereton. Do come down sometimes. I shall drive
there on Saturday night after the opera."

Mrs. Brereton made a short calculation.

"I will; I should love to," she said. "I hear it is charming."

"A dozen basket chairs and two dozen dogs," said Madame Guardina.

"I adore dogs. Are you off? Good-bye. About the middle of next week?"

"Any day."

Mildred gave her a charming smile and turned to Jack.

"That's one good-natured thing this morning already," she said, "and
it's barely ten yet. Pagani was just moving when I saw Guardina; he'll
be gone before she gets to him."

"I wish you were half as good-natured to me," remarked Jack.

"Well, what can I do for you?"

"Tell me how to behave to a hopelessly unreasonable woman, who is one's
wife!"

Mildred puckered her lips as if to whistle.

"Explain in five minutes," she said. "I can't really hold this untamed
savage any longer. Come on, Jack; we'll canter--shall we call it? up to
the end."

Whether Mildred called it a canter or not, it is not doubtful what other
people would have called it. But even the heart of the restraining
policeman must have been touched by the splendid vision that flew by
him, Mildred sitting her horse as no other woman could, sitting a horse
also that few could have sat at all, and treating its agitated
toe-steps with less concern than a man in an arm-chair gives to a
persistent fly on a summer afternoon. The consciousness that hundreds of
people were looking at her added, if anything, to her unconcern;
certainly also the fact that many who saw her saw also, and remarked,
that Jack was with her gave an additional zest to her enjoyment. For her
creed was that secrecy in this world was impossible, and the only way to
prevent people talking in the way that mattered and was annoying was to
do things quite openly. It mattered not in the least if people said,
"Oh, we have always known that!" or if they always took it for granted;
what did matter was if they said, "We have lately thought there must be
something of the kind!" Trespassers can be prosecuted; length of
possession constitutes a title.

They drew up at the top of the mile, and Mildred adjusted her hat.

"There," she said, "the cobwebs have been dispersed for the day. Now
we'll go on talking. Explain, Jack. Why do you want treatment for
Marie?"

Jack lit a cigarette.

"She makes scenes," he said, "and they bore me. She made one last
night."

"What about?"

"I don't know that it's worth repeating, really," he said.

"Probably not, but you are going to tell me."

He looked at her a moment with his thin eyebrows drawn together in a
frown, hit his horse rather savagely for an imaginary stumble, and
reined it in again more sharply than was necessary.

"I don't the least like being dictated to, Mildred," he said. "Nobody
adopts that tone with me--with any success, that is to say."

She laughed.

"Oh, my excellent friend," she said, "you really speak as if I was
afraid of you. For goodness' sake, don't put on schoolmaster airs. You
know perfectly well that doesn't go down. Don't hit your horse now; you
are behaving like a sulky child that whips its doll. What was the scene
about?"

"Did you see the infernal manner in which she walked off with Jim
Spencer last night, driving him home in her brougham and saying she was
going to Blanche Devereux'? That was her way of getting quits with me."

"Quits with you? What for?"

"For a conversation I had with her after lunch yesterday. I told her
that if she was seen about with Jim Spencer people would talk, and if
they talked it was absurd for her to keep up the sort of attitude she
maintains towards society in general, saying that we are both fools and
knaves."

Mildred made a gesture of despair.

"The stupidity of men really exceeds all bounds," she said. "I beg your
pardon, that is by the way. You were saying that she walked off with Jim
last night. I suppose you commented on that too, did you?"

He flushed angrily.

"If she imagines she is going to make a fool of me before all the world,
the sooner she learns her mistake the better," said he.

"You said that to her?" asked Mildred in a tone in which "even despair
was mild."

"Of course I did, or rather, I asked her whether she really went to see
Blanche. She saw what I meant all right."

"You seem to imagine she is as great a fool as you," remarked Mildred.

He turned half round on his horse.

"I don't stand such language from any one," said he.

"Oh, for God's sake don't be absurd! You stand exactly what language I
choose to use to you. Is it really possible, Jack, that you don't see
what a dangerous and foolish game you are playing? _Mon Dieu! mon Dieu!_
you are married to that pearl of a woman, and you think you can treat
her like that. You aren't fit to tie her boot-laces, and----"

"I have no intention of trying."

"Don't be funny. I was saying you weren't fit to tie her boot-laces, but
I can't expect you to see that. And you have practically told her you
suspect her of an intrigue with Jim Spencer. Now, if she was the sort of
woman you seem to think she is, that would be the very way to drive her
into it. Personally, I wish she was, but she isn't, and we must make the
best of it. But what you have done is to show her, if further
demonstration were necessary, your own utter depravity. Of the sickening
folly of that, I needn't speak. Go on: what did she say then?"

"She said she didn't care in the slightest degree whether I believed she
went to Lady Devereux's or not. She also said that Jim was coming to
lunch. So of course I shall go home to lunch."

Mildred laughed outright.

"You have the most wonderful power of choosing the only impossible
thing to do or say," she remarked. "That is the one thing out of the
question. The impeccable attitude of guardian angel, my dear Jack, is
the one attitude that cannot be made to pose well. Nor have you the
figure for it."

They rode on a little while in silence.

"Have your own way, then," he said at length.

"Of course I shall. Poor old Jack, how you do manage to put your foot in
it! And I have to pull you out so often. Aren't you grateful to me?"

"Not particularly this moment."

"Well, you will be soon. You needn't tell me when you are. A good action
is its own reward, and I am bursting with an approving conscience this
morning. I've helped Guardina and Pagani, I've helped you."

"Yourself perhaps?"

"That also is my reward. I didn't think of myself--at least, not much."

She looked at him with a gay and kindled eye; the exercise had brought
the blood into her face, and it was impossible to credit her with the
six-and-thirty years which she had assured Marie were hers. And looking
at her, his smarting ill-humour evaporated.

"How is it one never gets tired of you?" he said.

She laughed.

"Because I do not let you get accustomed to me," she answered.

Certainly if Jack Alston had, as was generally supposed, the gift of
getting his way with other people, Mrs. Brereton had the gift of getting
her way with him. This, she knew well, but was far too wise to say, was
the true secret of his absolute dependence on her, for there is nothing
that a masterful and brutal mind really enjoys so much as finding some
one stronger than itself. At times she was inwardly afraid that she
would some day get the worst of it, but knowing that in managing men, as
in managing horses, the real secret of their mutiny is not so much fear
on their driver's part, as the knowledge of that fear in the driver, she
was always, as in this particular instance, more than usually brutal,
and was accustomed to make him, so to speak, more resonant under her
hand, when she was not quite certain in the depths of her own mind that
she was going to win. Then, when the stress was over, she gave him his
own head again, with such completeness as to convey to him the
impression that he had always been free: there was no reminder, not the
faintest strain on the curb to show him that the curb was still there.
She used it, in fact, rarely, but in earnest, and never fell into the
habit, so common in women of her stamp who are otherwise clever, of
nagging, or making a point of getting her way over any matter on which
she did not really desire it.

Nor was her genuine attachment to him less capable of comprehension than
his to her. In addition to the immense charm of his extraordinary good
looks and his devotion to her, there was added that sense, so dear to an
ambitious woman, that she was controlling a figure that bade fair to be
one of the most prominent of the day, and could make it dance to her
wire-pulling like a marionette on its string. Though Jack was not yet
forty, he already held a minor post in the Government, and when the
elections came on in the summer or autumn, it was expected in many
quarters that he would be made Chief Secretary at the War Office. For
the nation had of late begun to wonder whether that serene and unbiased
attitude which is the natural outcome of complete ignorance on the
affairs of the Department is really the ideal equipment for a statesman.
A little knowledge, it has long been agreed, is a dangerous thing, but
the nation, in view of recent events, had distinctly formed the
suspicion that no knowledge at all was almost as hazardous. Indeed, it
was supposed that this idea had gently begun to communicate itself to
the Government itself. Anyhow, it was rumoured that more than a mere
reshuffling of the old cards would take place, and Jack Alston's name
was freely mentioned as a probable occupant of the office in Pall Mall.
Until his succession to the title on his father's death six years ago,
he had been a soldier of the practical, hard-working order, not content
with figures and much polo, but busy with ideas on boots and rifles, and
the knowledge he had thus acquired he had since used on more than one
occasion with telling effect on discussions in the Upper House about
military matters, and the cold, aloof attitude with which anything so
out of taste as criticism founded on knowledge, or the discussion of
practical questions in a practical manner, is usually treated in that
august assembly had not produced the slightest effect on him. He asked
awkward questions, and pointed out the absurdity of the answers or the
silence they received with such imperturbable pertinacity that it was
beginning to be felt that there really might be something in this novel
idea of letting a man who knew a good deal about a subject be employed
in that capacity. At any rate, he could not then continue to criticise
the Department in question if he controlled it. Builders and Government
contractors Jack appeared to consider not as masters of the Government,
but as their servants, and where a firm vowed that a particular
programme could not be completed under six years, he would have no
hesitation in demanding to know how they had managed to take foreign
orders in the interval. These things shook the immemorial calm of Pall
Mall, and produced the sort of gentle perturbation which might be caused
by the introduction of a risky topic at a tea-party of elderly maiden
ladies. But Jack Alston was without tact in these matters, and continued
to be horribly risky.

So he who should perhaps control so huge an affair as the army, and she
who controlled him, rode back towards Hyde Park Corner, a
striking-looking pair, at which many gazed. Their friendship was now of
several years' standing, and people had begun to find that there was
nothing new to say about so well-established a fact. There had never
been any scandal, and London is a wonderfully tolerant town. It is, in
fact, almost incapable of being shocked except by that which is printed
in the daily papers. This constitutes the real power of the press. As
long as definite publicity in black type on white or pink paper is not
given, a fact, however well known, remains private; it is only truly
shocking when the compositor has set it up; then takes place a great and
essential change. And this morning half the world looked at them, and
remarked on the beauty of their horses and the fine horsemanship of
their riders, and shrugged their shoulders now and then, and smiled and
talked about something else.

"So you had better lunch with me, Jack," said Mrs. Brereton, going back
to her subject. "You have a Committee at three, I know."

"And what must I say to Marie?" asked he.

"Say? Say you lunched with me. It has also the minor advantage of being
perfectly true. Oh, so few people see the extraordinary advantage to be
gained by telling the truth. It is so easy, too: you can tell the truth
by a mere effort of memory, whereas any--any diplomatic evasion calls
the imaginative faculty into play."

"I don't think I've got the imaginative faculty," said Jack.

"No, you haven't much. That is why, when you evade, you are always so
unconvincing. Rich ornamental detail is necessary to the simplest
untruth, whereas if you are telling the truth the cruder you are the
better. Your very crudity, Jack, is the making of you as a politician."

"I know what I want politically, anyhow," he said. "I want proper rifles
and the knowledge among the men as to the right direction in which to
fire them off."

"Oh, don't make speeches. That is exactly your oratorical style--in
other words, no style at all. The British public likes that. It says
there is no nonsense about you. How odd it is that politically you
should be a man of such astounding simplicity, and socially--well, a
person who savours of duplicity!"

"I'm straightforward enough," said he.

"Oh--oh! Never mind that. But the British public is odder still. It
insists--at least, it wishes to believe--that its public men should be
people of blameless private life. Now, what can that matter? But I
don't think it has any doubt about you, Jack. It believes you to be a
model of domesticity. Also by my advice, you see, you breed pigs and
shorthorns. There is something magical about pigs and shorthorns. The
public consider them a sort of testimonial to a man's character; I
suppose it is the touch of Nature, or the touch of the farmyard."

"Making the whole world kind!"

"Chestnuts, surely. Well, _au revoir_; go home and dress, and try not to
look glum, and tell Marie you are lunching with me. Good-bye, I must
hurry: I have some things to do before lunch."




CHAPTER IV


Mrs. Maxwell was a voluminous woman of gorgeous exterior, who would have
been pained to hear herself alluded to as a woman instead of a lady.
There was, as she had more than once acutely remarked, a breeding that
is altogether independent either of beauty or wit, and Cleopatra herself
might have been utterly without it.

"And that," said Mrs. Maxwell, "is what makes the difference between a
lady and not a lady."

The inference which she herself drew and meant to be drawn is too
obvious to need pointing out, especially when we remember that she
certainly had neither beauty nor wit, except in so far as it may be held
a proof of ability to have married a money-lender of Jewish extraction
and enormous wealth. But Mrs. Maxwell had ambition, and an amazing
industry. Years ago when she married her Henry she had made up her mind
that, if there was any power whatever in the fact of millions, she
would procure whatever was to be procured with them, and in especial she
had set her heart on bringing not to her feet, but to her table and her
ballroom, all that was noblest and highest in the land. The task had
been far less arduous than she had anticipated, and she felt on this
night of the 16th of May that the prize had been publicly presented to
her. Every one who was any one was going to cross her threshold that
night; a favoured three or four dozen were going to dine there first,
and the rest would come in afterwards. Earls and Countesses were among
them. There was not room for all such nowadays at Mrs. Maxwell's table.

The form that the entertainment was going to take was a concert, for, as
Mrs. Maxwell said, you can dance anywhere for the cost of your
shoe-leather and a couple of trumpets; but it meant a prettier penny
than most people can find in their purse to hear Pagani and Guardina
sitting in a comfortable chair instead of that dreadful draughty
opera-house, and having to go to that cold, creepy "foyure" to get a
glass of lemonade. There was no nonsense or affectation, it will be
remarked, about Mrs. Maxwell's French, which she used ruthlessly in her
conversation, and all her epithets ran in well-matched pairs, like her
horses.

The Maxwells' house stood in Piccadilly overlooking the Green Park, and
it had been purchased as it stood, glass, plate, china, and books
complete, from its owner, who was in straitened circumstances. There
were not many books in the bargain, but among them, luckily enough, was
the callers' book of the late owner, and for the sake of continuity and
general interest Mrs. Maxwell's visitors went on writing their names
there without a break, since the book at the time of their taking
possession was only about half full. It was curious to observe how at
first there was a sort of slump in distinguished names, which now had
completely rallied and developed into a boom; in fact, on the last few
pages half the names were the same as those on the earlier part of the
book.

Among the many other desirable objects in the house were the pictures.
These included several very fine Italian pictures by great masters,
"Raffle," as Mrs. Maxwell rather familiarly called that eminent artist,
being notably represented. They had occasioned a somewhat violent
difference between their present master and mistress, Mrs. Maxwell
maintaining that it was impossible to feel easy and comfortable beneath
such serious-like pictures, Transfigurations and what not, and observing
with some heat that you couldn't sit quiet in your chair with St.
Stephen stoned and bleeding immediately above your head. Eventually a
compromise had been arrived at, and they had been removed from the
drawing-room into the corridor. But even more pointed had been the
discrepancies arising from the small but exquisite half-dozen of Dutch
pictures that had hung in the dining-room. Mr. Maxwell, again, had been
disposed to leave everything exactly as they had found it, arguing that
a family who had lived in the house for a couple of hundred years knew
more about what was suitable to the house than they. This had inflamed
his wife.

"It's a matter of taste, Maxwell," she said; "and I've got as much right
to my own taste as any Duke in the kingdom. And I maintain that while
you're eating your dinner there's no pleasure in looking at a row of
pots and pans hung on the wall, as if to remind you of where your food
has been, and cheeses and what not. And as for that picture of old
Dutchmen eating I don't know what horror, and smoking their pipes the
while, why, it's enough to turn the good wholesome food in your stomach.
And that's my opinion, whether you like it or not."

Mr. Maxwell, who was a just man except in matters of money-lending,
realized that he did not feel as keenly as this.

"But if you take them away, my dear, what will you put in their place!"

"Why, the portraits of you and me and Anthony: you and me on each side
of the fireplace, and Anthony in the middle."

This suggestion was a happy one, and had been put into effect. The
portraits in question were admirable examples of a very eminent painter
of the day, and Henry as large as life, with the unmistakable features
of his race, sat smoking his cigar, so natural, on one side of the
Italian fireplace, while on the other hung Mrs. Maxwell in her crimson
gown with all her diamonds on. Both pictures were diabolically clever,
and much more like the sitters than the sitters (happily for them) had
any idea: for where Mrs. Maxwell saw only the impressionist blurs of
coloured light which indicated her priceless stones, the painter had
finely observed and faithfully represented an intolerably ostentatious
opulence; where Mr. Maxwell saw only that he was, as usual, smoking a
cigar, the painter had seen the man who liked to be painted as doing so.
Besides, the glowing end of it, smouldering beneath its white ash, was
marvellously indicated, and Mr. Maxwell often declared he could almost
catch a whiff of it. Between them hung Anthony, a young man of about
twenty-three. He was undoubtedly the son of each of his parents. And the
two parents were turned fondly, as in life, towards the hope of the
house, and the hope of this house, beautifully dressed, also as in life,
stared somewhat vacuously in front of him.

It was, in fact, on Anthony, quite as much as on the mounting of the
ladder of social distinction, that his mother's ambitions centred, and
Anthony, it must be allowed, was largely that which his mother would
have him be; but on the great question of the potency of wealth, its
being able to get for you, if you spend it properly, anything you wish,
from a wife or an ancestor to a pair of shoes, she did not feel certain
of his soundness. There were other things, too, about Anthony which
puzzled his mother: he was accustomed to read poetry, and appeared to
enjoy Wagner, a curious crookedness, so she thought, in one otherwise
honest. But both mother and son were agreed that, wherever he got his
shoes, he could not do better than get his wife from Andrew Brereton's
house, the prospective bride being Maud Brereton, a young goddess of
about eighteen years and six feet of wholesome growth, whom her mother
invariably alluded to as "my little girl."

To-night it certainly seemed that the new patron saint of England, St.
Sovereign, received definite canonization. Royalty, stars and garters,
wit, talent, beauty, and birth, all came and bowed the knee. Even a
stray copy of the menu at dinner was picked up by an enterprising
reporter for publication next day in the paper he represented, so that
Mr. Maxwell's inimitable _chef_ would have the opportunity of living his
triumph o'er again. Dinner was not till half-past eight, and a feast
that costs five pounds a head necessarily takes time to negotiate,
especially since Mr. Maxwell always ate largely and slowly of every dish
that was put before him, so that before the gentlemen left the
dining-room the less favoured guests had already begun to arrive. Among
these was Guardina, who with great good sense had declined her dinner
invitation for the very excellent reason that if she dined there she
would eat too much, and if she ate too much she would not be able to
sing. "And I am here to sing," she added, being without illusions.

Among the diners there had been Mrs. Brereton and Lady Alston, and the
former, following her invariable practice of always paying court to
Jack's wife, linked her arm in Marie's as they were going upstairs, to
the momentary consternation of Mrs. Maxwell, who clearly saw from her
place at the end of the procession of ascending ladies that there were
several women of higher rank behind her.

"Dear Marie, I haven't seen you for a whole two days," she said. "Where
have you hidden yourself? And I never expected to see you here."

"Why not? Surely the dinner was excellent, and is not Guardina to sing?"

"Yes, of course. Oh, I see, you are laughing at me. Don't be cross,
Marie."

"I'm not cross, only frank."

"Oh, but frankness is such a bore, except when you use it as a weapon of
concealment. In fact, I was talking to Jack about that very point two
days ago. As a means of convincing people that you are not telling the
truth, there is nothing so certain as to tell it."

This Bismarckian but imaginative _résumé_ of the conversation in the
Park came out quite glibly, and Marie laughed.

"Really, Mildred, you have a way with you," she said. "Jack went out
yesterday morning in a vile temper, and came back after riding with you
like a drifting angel, all sweetness and smiles. What had you done to
him?"

"I forget what we talked about--probably about him, for that always puts
a man in a good temper quicker than anything else. I'm so glad it was
successful."

Marie sat down on a gilt Louis XV chair upholstered in Genoese velvet.

"I shall send him to you whenever he is in a bad temper, I think," she
went on, "with a ticket pinned on to him, 'Please return in good
condition.'"

Mildred laughed.

"Dearly as I like Jack," she said, "I am not sure that my affection
would quite go to those lengths. Because Jack in an odious temper is
like--well, like Jack in an odious temper. I know nothing, indeed, to
compare to him."

"Well, I wish you would tell me your secret."

"My dear, there is none. Besides, another woman can so often put a man
in a good temper, when his wife could not possibly."

"That doesn't say much for matrimony."

Mildred looked up a moment, and then fell to fingering her fan again.

"Oh, matrimony is such an excellent institution that a few little
disadvantages of that sort really don't weigh. But certainly what I say
is true. And you know it is just the same with us. Jack can put me in a
good temper when my dear Andrew would assuredly fare pretty badly if he
tried."

"I never quite knew why you married him."

"Oh, for a variety of reasons. He was very rich, I liked him, he wanted
to marry me. And we have been very happy. One can't look for perfection
in one's husband any more than in one's own servants or one's horses.
The point is that they should not have any vices, and on the whole suit
you."

"Is that the modern theory?" asked Marie.

"No, I don't know that it is exclusively modern. But what's the matter,
Marie? What was Jack in a bad temper about?"

Marie frowned.

"Jack was coarse. I don't see why I shouldn't tell you. Do you remember
my going home with Jim two nights ago from your house, when I was going
to see Blanche about the bazaar? Well, he hinted that I had not been to
see her at all. Now, what are you to do when your husband behaves like
that?"

Mildred laughed.

"Dear me! is that all? Men are coarse folk, you will not recognise that,
and when they are in a bad temper they say all sorts of things they
don't mean. Now, I can tell you how I should deal with that. I should
simply have laughed in his face, laughed with a wide mouth. But as for
letting it disturb my peace of mind-- You, too, of all people, who
simply are the most enviable woman in London."

"So you tell me," said Marie; "but I don't quite know why."

"Oh, my dear, if it was not you I should think you were fishing for
compliments-- Why? Because you have the brains to be sometimes amused
and sometimes bored at what absorbs all of us; because you are young;
because somehow or other you are _the_ person; because you make any
woman standing near you look dowdy and coarse----"

Marie laughed.

"I am stifled in my own perfections," she said. "Let me get a breath of
air."

"Guardina is just going to oblige us with one," said Mildred. "She
really is like the girl in the fairy stories out of whose mouth drop
diamonds and pearls. I suppose she is paid at least a sovereign a note.
How pleasant that must be! Look, there is poor Nellie Leighton standing
close to her, as if she hoped to be able to pick some of them up. What a
wonderful woman! Not a penny of any sort to bless herself with, an
insatiable appetite for pleasure, and the most light-hearted and
appreciative woman I know. She sees us; she is coming over here."

Mrs. Leighton, in fact, opened her mouth sideways towards one ear, which
was her way of smiling, and rustled elaborately across the room. She
laid an affectionate hand on Marie's arm, and looked as if she had
something very important to say.

"She is going to sing the 'Zitanella,'" she whispered as the accompanist
played a brilliant chromatic passage to compel silence. "Quite too
divine for words. And I have bought a new house. Rustic."

But at the moment a sound as faint and far-away as the ring of a musical
glass pierced the air. Guardina's lips were hardly parted, but that
spear of sound thrilled through the room. Certainly, if she was paid a
sovereign a note, that first note of the "Zitanella" was good measure.
Then it broke like quicksilver into a thousand perfectly round and
shining globules of sound, collected itself again, poised, quavered,
trilled, thrilled, perched as it were like a bird on the topmost twig of
sound, and vanished like a conjurer's handkerchief into air. Mrs.
Leighton again extended her mouth over her right cheek.

"Too delicious!" she said. "And how we are to pay for it all--the house
I mean--I haven't got the remotest idea. It is so comfortable having no
money at all: you not only don't, but you can't pay for anything, and
it's no use thinking about it. Marie, you must come down and see it.
There are two spare bedrooms all white and chintz. When I am there I
always dream of milk and butter and litters of pigs. Yes, isn't Guardina
marvellous? I wish she would lend me her vocal cords for a week. I
would willingly lend her anything I have for a fortnight."

The end of Guardina's song was marked by a sort of general post, and
Marie was snapped up by Mr. Maxwell, if such a phrase can properly be
used of so deliberate a process. His interpretation of the art of
conversation chiefly consisted in opening his mouth as if he was going
to speak, and then shutting it again, like a fish in an aquarium. The
person with whom he was conversing he stood over in an encompassing
manner, with an air of proprietorship. Elsewhere Anthony had cornered
Mildred Brereton's little girl, who evidently wanted to go away, but was
checked by her mother's eye, which from time to time pinned her like a
fluttering butterfly to the spot. She herself was taken possession of by
Mrs. Maxwell, who, unlike her husband, was as voluminous in speech as
she was in person. Arthur Naseby, close beside them, was half listening
to his hostess's conversation, while he was discussing a quantity of
subjects entirely unfit for discussion with Mrs. Leighton.

"Yes, I'm sure she sings beautiful," said Mrs. Maxwell, "and so true.
She seems to hit the note every time. What a thing to have a gift like
that! and I'm sure she makes the most of it. Why, I remember her first
coming out, and she went away in a hanson-cab from the opera. But she
can go handsomer than cabs now!"

Mrs. Brereton again pinned the unfortunate Maud to her seat.

"And what a brilliant party you have got together, Mrs. Maxwell!" she
said. "Positively, there is every one here one has ever heard of, and
absolutely nobody that one hasn't heard of. That is so clever of you! It
is easy enough to get people, but the difficulty is to not have the
wrong ones. I'm sure you must find it so."

Mrs. Maxwell sighed.

"It's as much as Anthony and me can do in a week's work to go through
the calling-book," she said. "Talk of weeding, you never saw such a deal
of it as we have to do. People seem to think they can all come for the
calling. But one must be careful, and I try never to ask any one whom a
single one of my guests would be sorry to have in their own houses."

Mrs. Brereton smiled a congratulatory smile.

"We should most of us be very glad to see them in ours," she said.

Mrs. Maxwell's mood grew more sublime.

"And the pushing and the shoving that some people do to get asked to
other people's houses," she said, "why, it fair passes belief. Now,
Maxwell has no spirit. 'Let 'em all come,' he says, like that horrid
vulgar song; but I said, 'No, Maxwell--if they all come, half of them
will keep away, and them's the very half you want, and where shall we be
then?' There's Guardina going to sing again, with Pagani this time.
She's got to sing two solos and two duos. How wonderfully their voices
suit! you would say they was made for each other. Excuse me, there's the
Duchess of Perth just come, and I must say a word to her."

Arthur Naseby sank into the unoccupied seat.

"Anything more divine I never wish to hear," he said in a shrill
whisper. "And the diamonds have caught an added lustre for their
brilliant surroundings. To-night Mrs. Maxwell is one coruscation, with a
collation to follow."

"How true, too, what she said about Pagani and Guardina," murmured Mrs.
Brereton. "It takes that sort of person to say that sort of thing. I am
not nervous personally, but"--and her eye caught sight of Maud and
Anthony again--"but she is an excellent good kind woman," she added with
a very distinct change of tone.

"And what of the new man, Jim Spencer?" asked Naseby. "Are there
developments? I always look on you as a sort of barometer. You can tell
what is going to happen before it does happen."

Mildred looked round.

"A little cloud like a man's hand," she said.

"Rising out of South Africa. You mean his head will follow?"

"Hush! That's the worst of having these great people to sing. One cannot
talk."

"So unsociable," said Arthur Naseby.

The room where they sat was the ballroom, with six windows overlooking
Piccadilly. It would have held certainly a hundred couples on the floor,
and, crowded as it was now, it must have contained twice the number. All
the world, as Mrs. Brereton had said, was there, and if it was true
that, as Mrs. Maxwell hoped, every one present would have been glad to
see any of the guests at their houses, the world, it must be confessed,
was of very catholic if not apostolic tendencies. It would be, in fact,
impossible to imagine a more heterogeneous gathering: here a peer of
European reputation, whose very name was considered by the country at
large to be synonymous with solid respectability, was being talked to by
a woman who in other circles, and in widely different ways, was also of
European reputation, and who seemed capable of quite making him forget
for the moment, at any rate, the happy colonies which were intrusted to
his wise and well-judged care; here a traveller recently returned from
regions which were supposed to be impenetrable on account of the
cannibal habits of their denizens was relating to two overdressed
dowagers the internal horrors which ensued on drinking the only water
which could be found in these abandoned spots; here a terrible man with
curiously arched eyebrows and carmine-coloured cheeks, who looked like a
decadent wax-work, was retailing to a brilliant _débutante_, in discreet
whispers, things that made her white shoulders shake with laughter, till
she was whisked away by an indignant mother. Princes of royal blood
mingled with the crowd, which bobbed as they approached, and
straightened itself again to make itself amusing, and all talked and
giggled and gabbled together with the utmost freedom and impartiality.
But the predominant feature of the entertainment which brought all its
heterogeneous components into one harmonious whole was Wealth: Wealth
burst from the throat of the singers, Wealth gleamed from the gilded
chairs and Genoese upholstering, Wealth beamed from the ropes of pearls
and diamonds which encircled lean necks and plump necks, old necks and
young necks, and sat enthroned on black and gray and white and brown,
and particularly on golden, hair. There were no doubt many people there
who were not rich, but the wives of such were pretty, or had some
_cachet_ other than mere good breeding about them; but it is certain
that there was no one in London who was very rich who had not at any
rate been asked for that night, and but few who had not come. This
probably was what Mrs. Maxwell meant when she said there was no one
there whom any of her guests would not have liked to have at their own
houses, and, with exceptions so few as to be negligible, she was
perfectly right. All the plutocracy, in fact, were there, English,
American, German, Greek, and Jew, with all the mixtures of religion,
race and language which wealth, with its wonderful amalgamating power,
can bring together. It was, in fact, a typical English party, for there
was there all that money could buy and all those whom the power of money
could bring. That is why it was so very full. People of birth and
breeding were there, who screamed with unkindly laughter at Mrs. Maxwell
and her bevy of quite impossible millionaires, yet they drank her
champagne and danced to her fiddles with the greatest goodwill in the
world, and had Mrs. Maxwell a hundred sons, each of whom would be as
rich as Anthony, they would have hurled two hundred daughters at their
heads; and had she a hundred daughters, it is perfectly certain that at
least two hundred coronets, prospective or immediate, some with
strawberry leaves, some with pearls, some possibly, even with
fleur-de-lis, would have been laid at their feet. There were, of course,
many people who still were not seen in Mrs. Maxwell's drawing-rooms, and
who persisted in looking over her head when they met her elsewhere, but
she in her turn called them "stuck-up," so the honours were pretty
evenly divided. The world in general, moreover, distinctly agreed with
Mrs. Maxwell, and said how absurd it was to give yourself airs.

Mrs. Maxwell by this time was getting to know the ropes sufficiently
well to refrain from telling people how honoured she felt by seeing them
at her house; she also was sufficiently well acquainted with the minute
appetite the English have for music and the great appetite that our
healthy nation has for food. Consequently the concert, at which every
item was admirable and performed by first-rate artists, was short, and
the supper, also in the hands of first-rate artists, elaborate. Her
other preparations also were on the most complete scale, and
Bridge-tables were ready in one room, all sorts of nicotine and spirits
in another, and in the garden behind, brilliantly illuminated as to its
paths and decently obscure as to its seats, there were plenty of
opportunities to enjoy the coolness of the night air, which many people
seemed to find refreshing and invigorating. In the supper-room, finally,
there was a huge sort of bar for the rank and file, and a quantity of
small tables for the very elect. "In fact," as Mildred Brereton said to
Jack as they strolled about the garden after a violent tussle to get
food, owing to the invincible determination of every one to eat without
delay, "it is as good as the best restaurant, and there is no bill
afterwards."

Jack laughed.

"You mistake the character of the entertainment," he said. "It is a
_salon_; I heard Mrs. Maxwell say so, and not a restaurant. Also, the
bill is your presence here."

"I expect many people would like to know another restaurant conducted on
the same principle," said Mildred; "but for you to say that sort of
thing is absurd, Jack. I believe Marie is making you as old-fashioned as
herself."

Jack swore gently.

"Has she been old-fashioned to-night?" he asked.

"Immensely. She told me about her row with you."

"How like a woman! They have to unburden to their friends about
everything. What's the good of unburdening?"

"Jack, you are such a pig--so am I; that is why we are friends. But,
anyhow, I can see what a pearl she is. Sometimes I've half a mind to
finish with the whole affair. Marie makes----"

He turned on her fiercely.

"You don't dare," he said.

"My good man, it is no use storming. You get your way in the world, I
allow, for somehow or other most people are afraid of you. But if you
think I am, you are stupendously mistaken. To resume--half a mind, I
said. When I have the whole mind you shall be instantly told. I am
scrupulously fair in such matters, and I recognise the justice of your
knowing first."

She got up as she spoke.

"I shall now go home," she said.

He laid his hand on her arm.

"No, don't go yet, Mildred," he said. "And I wish to Heaven you would
not say such horrible things. But never mind that: you don't mean it.
Sit down again."

She laughed.

"I mean every word," she said, "also that I must go. Come; Andrew is
sure to be playing Bridge. You can just drive me home. I will leave the
carriage for him."

Jack rose also.

"Won't he look for you?" he asked.

"Not for long, and then he will play some more Bridge."




CHAPTER V


Mrs. Brereton, among her many other moral hallucinations, was in the
constant habit of remembering that she was an excellent mother, and
that, next to her own affairs, it was highly probable that among all
others she took most thought for those of her daughter. Consequently, on
the afternoon following the Maxwell entertainment she determined to
devote herself to Maud and her prospects, and with that end in view
drove down with her in a space-annihilating motor-car to their house
just above Windsor, in order both to talk with her by the way, and when
arrived there see that things were in order for the week-end party that
they were giving on Saturday. The summer weather which had begun with
such splendour a week ago had by an unparalleled effort kept itself up,
and seven days of sunshine had brought out a wealth of fresh green leaf
on the trees, in London still varnished and undimmed by dust, and in
the country of an exquisite verdure. Overhead the sun was set in a sky
of divine purity, and the swift motion through the air she felt to be
quite as exhilarating to the senses as would have been the afternoon
party to which, had not duty called, she would otherwise have gone. She
had never wished to have a daughter, and the abandonment of this party
reminded her how often she was sacrificing herself to Maud. Indeed, she
seemed to herself a most excellent mother.

But, notwithstanding that she was generally and justly supposed to be
able to spar with the most robust emergencies, Mrs. Brereton did not
particularly fancy the task she had set herself, or that, strictly
speaking, had been set her; in fact, early this morning there had
arrived for her a note from her hostess of last night, saying what sort
of communication her dear Anthony had made her before he went to his
bed. Under these circumstances it was only right that Maud's mother
should be asked whether she sanctioned the step he proposed to take in
presenting himself as a suitor for her daughter's hand. The phrasing of
the note, as might be expected from so successful a lady as Mrs.
Maxwell, was as unimpeachable as its contents, and both filled Mrs.
Brereton with joy, for the two odious sons of her husband by his first
marriage would inherit the bulk of her husband's fortune, and Maud would
have almost nothing. Now, Mrs. Brereton had no desire whatever to see
her an impecunious peeress, or, indeed, an impecunious anything, and she
had come to the very wise conclusion that money certainly is money, and
that where a chance of marrying a huge fortune was presented, it would
be distinctly a failure of maternal duty not to put its advantages very
distinctly and decidedly before her daughter. But she was never very
much at ease with Maud, whom, if she had been another woman's child, she
would have described as an uncomfortable kind of girl. But being her
own, she spoke of her always as very original and with great opinions of
her own. She did not particularly like girls, any more than she liked
young men or new wines: they all needed maturing before they were fit
for the palate. But she was just, and gave full allowance to the
necessity for being young before you can become mellow, though she
wished that Maud would be quick about it. Really, when a girl is nearly
nineteen, nearly six feet high, with a superb figure, and a face at
which men undisguisedly stare, and with reason, it is time for the
possessor of such advantages to begin thinking about making her nest.
Here was one ready, excellently well-feathered. She only hoped, strongly
but somehow remotely, that Maud might see it in that light. But she
considered her daughter to combine symptoms of hopeless simplicity with
those of the most world-weary cynicism. It was impossible that both
could be genuine, but it puzzled her mother to say which was.

The sun was quite hot, and Mrs. Brereton at once put up her parasol, for
a large glass screen sheltered them from the wind.

"Delicious the sun is," she said, as she extinguished it. "And what a
delightful drive we shall have, Maud! When one goes into the country
like this, I can never understand why we ever live in town. So sensible
of dear Nellie, is it not? She has bought a cottage in the country, with
an orchard and a dairy and all that, and dreams of butter, she tells me.
She probably wakes and finds that it is earwigs. That she doesn't tell
me."

"I don't think she would care about it if she couldn't tell every one
about it," said Maud. "She doesn't strike me as a real country-lover,
does she you?"

"Oh, I dare say not in the sense you are, dear," said her mother. "I
always wonder where you get it from. Fancy your father or I existing in
the country!"

"But you said this moment that you couldn't understand why we ever live
in town."

This was the kind of thing which frequently occurred when Mrs. Brereton
chattered to her daughter. Maud seemed to think that in light
conversation people meant what they said, an error so astounding that it
seemed almost hopeless to point it out.

"Dear Maud, how literal you are!" she said. "You don't seem to realize
that one has moods which may last a year or more, and may only last a
minute. That one lasted less than a minute."

Maud laughed.

"How unsettling!" she said. "For how can one know whether one really
likes anything? It may only last a minute."

Mrs. Brereton plunged at the opening, a header, so to speak, into the
frothy water.

"Ah, that is where wisdom comes in," she said. "You have not only to
choose and to do what you like, but to choose that which your reason
dictates, that which you know is really advantageous for you. Life would
be a very simple matter if one only followed one's inclinations. It is a
lesson one cannot learn too early."

There was a short pause, in which Mrs. Brereton passed in rapid summary
to herself all the occasions she could remember on which she had not
followed her inclination. It seemed to her that there were an immense
number; she was always doing kind things, and the pause would have been
a long one had not Maud broken it.

"I suppose you mean that you want me to marry Anthony Maxwell!" she
remarked in a perfectly even voice.

This was an occasion on which her mother was absolutely unable to decide
whether Maud's disconcerting directness sprang from internal and
childlike simplicity or a brutally frank insight into the diplomacy of
others. But she put the best construction possible on it.

"Dear Maud," she exclaimed effusively, "it is too dear of you to meet me
halfway like that. To tell you the truth, I was a little shy about
opening the subject to you, as I did not know what you thought; but it
is much easier for me to talk about it now."

"Much," said Maud.

"To think that you should have guessed!" said the other; "but you always
were so quick."

"It did not need much quickness after my prolonged conversation with him
last night."

"So you had a good talk to him," said Mrs. Brereton. "I am so glad."

Maud raised her eyebrows.

"Surely you meant me to," she said. "Whenever I looked up, meaning to
go, I always thought I saw you pinning me down again. Did you not?"

Mrs. Brereton was not quite sure that things were going comfortably.

"I don't know what you mean by pinning you down," she said; "but it is,
of course, perfectly true that I wanted you to get better acquainted
with him. I am sure, Maud, you are a very lucky girl."

The lucky girl put up her parasol; her face was absolutely immobile
except for the least curl at the corner of her mouth, which might have
expressed almost anything--fatigue, indifference, anything.

"Then he has made formal proposals?" she asked. "His mother wrote to me
asking if I sanctioned his doing so."

"You said yes, I suppose?"

"Naturally I should not forbid it, considering, as I do, that it is an
admirable match for you. The young man is amiable, quite without vices I
should think (which, after all, is _most_ important, as so many
marriages are wrecked that way). He is shrewd and clever, quite his
father's son, and he is immensely wealthy."

"Those are all very good qualities," said Maud.

"My dear, of course they are. In bare justice to myself, I must say
that, when I recommend a thing, I do so not on vague grounds, but on
well-defined and cogent reasoning. Or perhaps you would prefer a husband
who is a sot, a fool, and a pauper? You could easily find one of those
without any great trouble."

Maud laughed; she was one of those people whom temper in others leaves
perfectly undisturbed. Then she laid her hand on her mother's.

"Dearest mother," she said, "I really did not mean to be tiresome. Was
I? You were saying that he was well-conducted, clever and wealthy."

"I should have thought that was a good deal to say for any one," said
her mother, not yet quite calm. "There are heaps of perfectly
well-conducted people in the world who are fools, heaps of very wealthy
people who are vicious, and plenty, as I said, who have neither wits,
morals, nor money. Which sort do you want? Or do you look forward to
spinsterhood in a cottage with a canary? Almost all your father's
fortune will go to Otho and Reginald. You will be quite poor."

"I don't love Anthony Maxwell," said Maud, with a deplorable relapse
into directness.

"Oh, my dear, have you been reading some sentimental novel? You seem to
think that every girl meets the man eternally pre-destined for her, with
clear-cut features and a coiffure like a hair-dresser's. That sort of
romantic stuff is extinct. It never existed in fact, and it is rapidly
disappearing in fiction. If it were true, the world would have come to
an end long ago, for we should all have caught such frightful colds by
reading Dante and Shakespeare on violet-covered banks that we should
have died without children."

       *       *       *       *       *

Mrs. Brereton settled herself on the cushions of the carriage, feeling
much more comfortable. If only Maud would continue to argue the
question, she felt sure of her ground.

"You are not silly, I know, dear," she went on; "in fact, I think you
are too much the other way. You like analyzing and picking things to
bits, and saying, 'This seems to me faulty here, and that seems to me
exaggerated there.' I assure you it is a mistake. And when you say you
do not love him, you are using expressions of the meaning of which you
have no idea. You don't know what love is--no girl can. You may feel
attracted to a handsome face as you can be attracted by a landscape or a
piece of jewellery, but no one with the slightest sense of refinement
could marry a man because he was handsome. It is a grossly indelicate
idea, and one I am sure which you never entertained."

"I was not proposing to marry any man because of his good looks," said
Maud.

"No, dear, I am certain you were not; and I was only saying in the
abstract that to do such a thing would be an inconceivable folly. If
your husband was Adonis himself, you would forget he was even passably
good-looking in a fortnight. Dear me, yes! one gets used to nothing so
quickly. And in the same way and with the same speed you get used to the
absence of good looks. Anthony Maxwell, I allow, has but small claim to
them; and I was only wondering whether, when you said that you did not
love him, you did not have a half-conscious idea in your mind that if he
was very handsome you might have. Dearest Maud, how wonderfully well you
are looking! no wonder Anthony fell in love with you."

Again the corner of Maud's mouth twitched.

"I hope that was not the cause," she said, "for you have just told me
what an absurd reason that is for wanting to marry anybody!"

For the moment Mrs. Brereton had a violent desire to box those eligible
ears, but restrained it, and proceeded to propound her philosophy of
matrimony with the most admirable lucidity.

"Ah, that is where men are different from us," she said. "It is part of
the province of women, as dear Mr. Austin says, to be beautiful, but it
is quite outside the province of men. Look at your father now, Maud; he
has perhaps less pretentions to good looks than any one I ever saw. But
what a happy, what a blessed"--and the word did not stick--"marriage
ours has been! Looking back even now, I have never yet seen a man whom I
would sooner have chosen. And long, long ago--a year ago at least--I
thought that if only dear Anthony would be attracted by you, what a
happy thing it would be. It is silly to expect high romance. High
romance does not exist for ninety-nine hundredths of the world--luckily,
I am sure. And I am sure you are not romantic."

Maud had listened with the closest attention to what her mother was
saying, but she made no reply, and in silence they bowled swiftly along
the Bath Road, which seemed to open like torn linen in front of them.
Mrs. Brereton also well knew that silence in season is as necessary an
equipment to the dialectician as the most eloquent speech, and having
said all that she really intended, she had no design of ruining the
effect of her words by vain repetition. Once, indeed, she called
attention to the loveliness of the clustered pyramids of bloom that
covered the horse-chestnut-trees in the gardens round the houses of some
small village half buried in blossom, but the tone of Maud's "Lovely!"
showed her quite unmistakably that general conversation was for the
present a futility. At the same time her daughter's abstraction
indicated that her own words were probably sinking in, a process with
which Mrs. Brereton had no desire whatever to interfere. At last, as
they approached their gates, the girl furled her parasol with a snap
which might easily betoken a decision.

"I have made up my mind," she said--"at least, I have made up my mind
not to make up my mind immediately. I suppose you don't expect me to
decide at once?"

"No, dear, certainly not," said her mother; "though personally I cannot
see why you should hesitate."

"You think it is ideal in every way?"

"Ideal, no! An ideal is realized about once every hundred years. There
are disadvantages necessarily attaching to every step, however
advantageous. But I consider it most eminently desirable."

The girl looked at her a moment.

"Did you never look out for what seemed to you ideal, mother?" she
asked.

"Yes, dear, once. When I was exactly fifteen I fell passionately in love
with the Emperor of Germany, whom I had once seen at a distance. To
marry him seemed to me ideal. But whether it would have been or not I
was never privileged to know. He and I both married some one else. I was
acutely miserable for at least a fortnight. But during that fortnight I
learned something, which was that your time can be fully occupied in
getting what you can get, without wasting your energy in longing for
what you can't."

"Poor mother!" said Maud gravely; and in her voice Mrs. Brereton thought
she could detect more of irony than simplicity.

They had no further conversation on the subject for the present, since
during the next couple of hours Mrs. Brereton successfully settled a
hundred details and arrangements that would have taken a less quick
woman half a day to grapple with. The house stood some quarter of a mile
from the river-bank, on the reach between Maidenhead and Bray,
red-bricked and creeper-covered, but picturesque in a haphazard,
bungalow manner, intolerably dank in the winter, when languid, foggy
water covered the lower lawn, but ideally adapted for summer Sunday
parties. It had long been left to moulder and mildew, but some ten years
ago, while the Thames was still only a geographical expression, Mrs.
Brereton, in a hunt for some place of the kind near London, but
sufficiently remote not to be overrun, had lighted on it, and with her
quick eye had seen how admirably it would suit her wants. Inside there
were not more than a dozen bedrooms and two or three adequate
reception-rooms; but the garden was exquisite, and had now under her
guiding hand fulfilled rare possibilities.

A steep slope of grass, negotiable by three flights of stone steps, led
from the gravel path, which bordered the house, on to the lawn, which
lay in terraces towards the river, framed with intersections of box
hedges, cut into pyramidal and geometric shapes, and bordered by vivid
beds of flowers. The entrance of each of these lawns was in line with
the centre of the house, and they communicated one with another by broad
steps of grass. One was levelled for croquet, another was a rose-garden
with a pergola running round it, while that nearest the house was
during the summer chiefly occupied by garden and basket chairs. The
whole front of the house, again, was, with its gravel path, capable of
being roofed in with an awning, carpeted with rugs, and furnished for
eating, drinking, card-playing, and other diversions not less diverting.
Behind the framing of box hedge which encircled the lawn lay on each
side a shrubbery of blossoming trees, lilacs and laburnums, and behind,
again, tall elms and beeches shaded the paths that led to the meadow of
untamed land below the lawn, and bordered the river itself, where
weeping-willows trailed their slow-moving, slender fingers over the
tarred roof of the boat-house. Here, also, Mrs. Brereton had caused to
be erected a private bathing-place, dug out at great expense in the
river. It was remarkable only for the fact that it had never been used,
except once by Mr. Brereton by mistake.

Mildred had not been down here before during the spring, and as she was
going to entertain next Sunday, and would not be able to get down again
in the interval, it followed that a good deal of method and quickness
were required to effect all that had to be done in a couple of hours.
Like a wise woman, she knew that in those cases in which, as here, she
was quite aware what she wanted, and only required it to be done, the
best servants are those who will not be intelligent and have ideas of
their own, but simply obey. Consequently she had, as gardeners, a staff
of Parsifals, simple blameless fools, who moved tubs of geraniums to
such places as she wished and to no others, who planted carnations in
beds where she wished carnations to be planted, and did not execute
fantasies of their own. The greenhouses which lay on the other side of
the house were full and ready with plants to be bedded out, and for the
first half-hour she was occupied in choosing exactly what she wanted in
each bed. After that there was the upholsterer with his choice of
canvases for the awning that lay along the length of the house, and the
carpenter who was to erect a small wooden shelter which should be
convenient for Bridge-players. Then came the choice of rugs, hangings,
and furniture for the marquee which stood on the first lawn, as well as
for the awning-shelter close to the house. Persian carpets had to be
unrolled, spread out, and examined, the choice of chairs and tables had
to be made, palms to be sought for the corners, a piano to be tuned,
the croquet to be inspected and set up.

After an hour, indeed, it seemed as if chaos had resumed its reign, or
that some half-dozen London drawing-rooms had been sacked and the
contents strewn on the lawn. Here stood a great Chinese vase forlornly
alone in the middle of the grass, here two Chippendale tables huddled
together for company, here roll upon roll of Persian rugs were gradually
creeping like a tide of many-coloured waters over the green, here was a
stack of chairs, and here half a hundred lanterns with which the tent
was lit. And in the middle of it all, triumphantly ruling chaos, stood
Mrs. Brereton, never confused herself and never confusing others,
bidding, forbidding, changing, confirming, as she directed
simultaneously the struggling gardeners and an army of housemaids, at
her best, as she always was, when a great deal of practical business had
to be managed in a very short time.

"No, the croquet must be shifted to the right; it gives more margin,"
she was saying. "Just show them, Maud. The piano opposite the French
window from the drawing-room, but it's no use putting it in till you
have the carpets down. The scarlet cushions belong to the other sofa;
no, there's no answer"--this to a footman with a telegram. "Of course,
if there are no nasturtiums out yet it can't be helped. Yes, seven
lanterns at least; the electrician must look to the wires, one on each
of the supports; we shall dine there as well as lunch next Sunday if it
is warm. Bridge-tables? Yes, in the new shelter, two of them, and one in
the corner of the long awning. What's that matting doing? It belongs to
the conservatory; put it back there. I shall want thick common baize
under the rugs; they will get damp otherwise. The big flower-holder in
the corner; no, more in the corner than that. Wolland's will send down
two palms, one to go behind the piano, the other indoors in the
drawing-room."

But out of chaos by such processes of evolution emerged order, and it
was still an hour before sunset when they left again. Mrs. Brereton had
to a high degree that most useful gift of being able to banish any one
subject completely from her mind when she was occupied with another, and
it was not till she was seated with Maud again in the carriage that the
question which had occupied them so exclusively driving down reasserted
itself. Even then she felt it was the better part of wisdom to let
things be. Maud was clearly preoccupied, with what, it was impossible
not to guess, and as she was, her mother knew, one who chose to make
decisions for herself, she bridled her desire to know what was passing
in her daughter's mind. She always found that conversation with Maud was
difficult; to-day it was particularly so. But just as they stopped at
the Grosvenor Square house this desire mastered her.

"And what do you think you intend to do?" she asked.

"I think I intend to refuse him, but I am not sure."

And with such cold comfort her mother had to be content.

That evening Mrs. Brereton was dining at Lady Ardingly's, the woman whom
she admired and respected more than any one in the world. She had been
nobody quite knew who, but, anyhow, Russian and as poor as a church
mouse; but she had got, and nobody quite knew how, a position which was
in its way unique. She had married Lord Ardingly while quite a girl in
the teeth of strenuous opposition, fighting her battle quite unaided,
and, instead of his having to live her down, it had soon become quite
clear that it would be his part to toil, faint yet pursuing, in her
wake. All her life success had attended her, she always knew what she
wanted and always got it, and whoever else rose and shone and passed,
Lady Ardingly continued to burn with unbated luminance. To-day, so
Mildred Brereton thought, Marie Alston was the star, but she quite
realized that this particular star, like those of the music-halls, might
some day set; but Lady Ardingly remained swung high in the social
heavens, a permanent centrepiece. Marie was the fashion, it is true, but
Lady Ardingly was much more than the fashion; that word was far too
superficial to describe her.

She had been, no doubt, once of great personal beauty, but clearly it
was not that which gave her the power she possessed, for it had passed
years ago, and she was now something over sixty, with splashes of rouge
dashed in an impressionist manner on to her face, not from any motive of
vanity, but simply from long force of habit; a wig, no more to be
mistaken for natural growth than a top-hat, was perched negligently on
one side of her head, and to balance it, in the evening, a tiara perched
on the other. Her neck was covered with jewels; her hands, which were
somewhat lean and knuckly, were crammed with rings; and she dressed
superbly. But all these things, like the rouge, were the result of
habit; she had been accustomed to that sort of thing, and continued it,
and certainly he would have been a bold man who tried to reason with her
or alter her. Her husband, for instance, never attempted it. Finally,
she was inordinately fond of gossip, card-playing, and other people's
business, and was eminently good-natured provided that path did not
cross her own. But she had so many private side-paths down which she was
liable to wander, that one never knew for certain where she would come
out next, or how she would act in any given set of circumstances. But as
long as doing a kindness to another did not interfere with what she
desired herself, she was always ready, even at the cost of trouble and
personal exertion, to help her friends if they approached her in the
proper spirit, which implied a good deal of abasement. She had been in
her time a very considerable political intriguer, and, following her
invariable rule of always getting whatever she wanted, she had built up
her husband into the edifice of the Conservative Government. But the
game--for it had never been more to her than that--had now ceased to
amuse her, and she cared no longer how greatly her poor Ardingly
floundered in the spacious halls of the Admiralty. This he seldom failed
to do. She was, finally, the very antipodes of those women who, because
generals and statesmen tell them things not generally known, consider
themselves, in that they are at the centre of things, as wielding some
vague political influence, and fly about telling all their friends what
everybody has said. Lady Ardingly never flew about; she sat quite still
and gave orders. Why people did as she told them they never quite knew;
it arose, perhaps, from her habit of always being right.

Ardingly House was a vast and modern erection in Pall Mall. "So
convenient for Ardingly," as his wife used to say in her slow foreign
speech, "now that he is at the Admiralty. He can come home to lunch, and
tell me all the blunders he has made since breakfast. And there is
plenty of time for him to take two steps and make them all over again
before dinner." Not long ago, at the time when Mrs. Maxwell was
house-hunting, she had heard a vague rumour that there was a possibility
of this mansion being in the market, and had had the temerity to call
on Lady Ardingly to know if it was so. She heard her in silence, not
helping her out at difficult points, and then remarked: "Yes, we are
going to sell it, and live at Clapham Junction. So convenient a train
service." This Mrs. Maxwell had rightly interpreted to be a denial of
the rumour, and had quitted the subject with some precipitation. It was
also characteristic of Lady Ardingly that she did not fly about town,
making the place ring with the story. Here, perhaps, lay one of the
secrets of her effectiveness: she never dissipated her energy.

It was to this lady that Mrs. Brereton decided to carry her doubts and
perplexities. There was only a small dinner-party that night, and before
the men left the dining-room she found herself sitting by her on a sofa.
Lady Ardingly happened to be in an admirable temper, and the opportunity
was golden.

"I have not seen you for very long, dear Mildred," said she. "Tell me
your news. How is Jack Alston? Have you seen him lately?"

This kind of frankness even Mildred found a little embarrassing. Lady
Ardingly, of course, knew everything about everybody, and never, except
when there was something to be got by it, assumed ignorance.

"Jack Alston? Oh, yes, I constantly meet him, in the way one does meet
in London," she said rather foolishly.

"Yes, dear, I know you are great friends. Who does not? Do you hope he
will get a Government post after the election? Tell me; I am really
asking for news."

"Well, Jack hopes for it, of course. The War Office is what he is
running for."

"The War Office? He knows about rifles and powder, does he not? Well,
there is a feeling just now for having men who know their work.
Ardingly, I find, is reading Nelson despatches. Very nice for him. What
is there of news? Never mind politics; they are dull. Some scandal."

"They say Mrs. Alington has made a mess of her affairs," said Mildred.
"I always knew she would, dabbling in the mining-market like that. Her
husband is furious."

"Ah! Now, I wonder who can have told you that? I saw Alington only this
evening. It is not so at all. They are the best of friends. What else?"

"Did you hear about Jim Netson? I am told he was down at Brighton on
Sunday with----"

"Dear Mildred, where can you get these things from?" asked Lady
Ardingly. "Jim Netson was lunching with me on Sunday. What else?"

Mildred found it difficult to bear this sort of thing quite
good-naturedly. Like many other women, she repeated what she heard,
adding a little here and there, not caring particularly about the truth
of a story so long as it amused. But Lady Ardingly contradicted her
flat, and, the worst of it was, she was invariably right. She did not in
the least care for made-up stories, and Mildred, who was by way of being
a well-informed woman on the matter of other people's backyards, was
rather nettled. But she swallowed her pique and laughed.

"Dear Lady Ardingly," she said, "it is no use my telling you things. You
always know best and most."

Lady Ardingly took some coffee, and as she removed the cup from the
tray, the spoon clattered on the floor.

"Clumsy fool!" she said to the footman, and without a pause: "You have
got something on your mind, Mildred. What is it? Always get things off
your mind, my dear, as soon as possible. It is very enfeebling to worry.
Is it"--and her eye fell on Maud, who was talking in a group on the
other side of the room--"is it about your daughter? She is getting a big
girl. It is time you married her."

Mrs. Brereton gave a little staccato note of admiration.

"You are too wonderful!" she said. "Yes, it is exactly that. Anthony
Maxwell wants to marry her."

"Very nice. The son of the great Mr. Maxwell, you mean?" asked Lady
Ardingly, without the slightest inflection of irony.

"Yes."

Lady Ardingly laughed.

"What a pity we did not sell them this house! Maud would have been
mistress here," she said. "At present she does not wish to marry him. Is
it so? I do not wonder, dear Mildred, at a momentary hesitation. Do you?
But it would be a very good marriage for her."

"So I have told her."

"Then, do not tell her so again. Ah, here come the men! Let us play
Bridge immediately. Only I will not play with your husband, dear
Mildred. I would sooner play with a groom out of the stables. We will
have two tables, and he shall be at the other one. Send Maud here a
moment. I will speak to her."

Mrs. Brereton rose with alacrity.

"Dear Lady Ardingly, you are too kind!" she said with heartfelt
gratitude.

"And do not put your oar in, my dear," said Lady Ardingly impassively.

Maud, looking very shy and tall, came in obedience to the summons.

"You are too unkind, dear Maud, to an old woman," said Lady Ardingly.
"You have not said a word to me all the evening, and now we are going to
play Bridge. They all insist on playing Bridge. You would like to play
with your father, would you not? We will arrange a table for you. Yes,
that will be very pleasant. You must come and talk to me one of these
days quite quietly. To-morrow--no, to-morrow will not do. Come to lunch
with me on Friday. What a tall girl you are! and, my dear, do you know
you are wonderfully handsome? Now they want me to play Bridge."




CHAPTER VI


It was Sunday afternoon, and Riversdale, by reason of the gaiety
gathered there, had eclipsed the gaiety of all other places. Some dozen
people were staying in the house, but the most of them had come down
from London to spend the afternoon and return after dinner, and the
lawns, which the company of blameless fools had caused to wear their
most ravishing appearance, were suitably crowded. A set of croquet-hoops
had been put up on one, and a game was proceeding in the orthodox Sunday
afternoon style; that is to say, a nervous, palpitating little man, to
whom at the moment croquet seemed of more importance than his eternal
salvation, was busy, with a tea-party of four balls, separating
adversaries and making hoops with intolerable precision, while a long,
willowy girl, his partner, trailed after him in his triumphal progress
and gave faint and languid sounds of sycophantic applause.

"There you see they are separated, Miss Martin," said the zealot at
length, "and now I'll mobilize with you. Then you can make your hoop
next time, and I ought to go out."

"Yes, it's quite too beautiful," said Miss Martin; "but I know I'll
miss. Oh, it's not my turn, is it? Where are they gone?"

"They" at this moment--a Guardsman of the most pronounced type and a
middle-aged woman of the most un-middle-aged type--being weary with this
faultless exhibition, had retired to a seat at the far end of the
garden, and were talking very low and laughing very loud. They were
recalled with difficulty, still lingering on the way, and the
unpromising situation was carefully explained to them by the palpitating
man in a voice in which the endeavour not to appear jubilant was rather
too marked. It being the lady's turn, she chipped her ball sideways at
about right angles to the required direction, and, without even
affecting to look where it had gone, dropped her mallet in the middle of
the lawn, and instantly retired with her Guardsman again.

Elsewhere other groups were forming and dispersing. In the new wooden
shelter Lady Ardingly had taken up her permanent position at the
Bridge-table, and, while others cut in and out, kept her seat with
tree-like composure, and played rubber after rubber with a success which
appeared monotonous to her adversaries. Anthony Maxwell occasionally
took a hand at her table, and in the intervals chased Maud Brereton from
terrace to terrace with a hunter's pertinacity, conscious of the
approving eye both of his mother and of Maud's. The fathers of them both
would no doubt have viewed his employment with equal approbation, had
they not been deeply engaged in a secluded corner in trying to rook each
other at piquet, each, however, finding to his indescribable dismay that
he had caught a Tartar. Like many very rich men, they played for very
low stakes, and exhibited an inordinate greed for half-crowns, and even
smaller coins.

Jack Alston and his wife had been among the guests who came down from
the Saturday till Monday, but he had gone over for the day, rather to
Mildred's disgust, to a neighbouring golf-links, and would not be back
till dinner. Marie, however, had been, so Mildred considered, at her
very best all the afternoon, conferring, as she in some mysterious
manner had always the power to do, an air of distinction and success to
the party. Wherever she was there was a crowd; wherever she was there
was more constant laughter, more animated conversation. She had the
gift, rare and inimitable, of making people play up. Dull folk aroused
themselves when she talked to them, brilliant people coruscated, for
there went from her, an unconscious but pervading emanation, some air of
freshness and vitality, which acted like a breath of wind in a close
atmosphere, reviving and bracing. At present she was talking to Lady
Devereux and Arthur Naseby, who wore a straw hat which was strangely
unsuitable to him and appeared stouter than ever, in the comparative
privacy of the lower lawn.

"Ah yes," she was saying, "that is just the fault with us all now. We
think we can be amused merely by having people to amuse us. It is not
so; being amused depends almost entirely on one's self. Some days
nothing amuses one; on others one is amused by the other sort of
nothing."

"It's always the other sort of nothing with me," said Arthur Naseby.
"And what I like really best of all is the pantomime. You find in the
pantomime exactly what you take there. I take there an invincible
gaiety. That is why I find it there."

"That's what I mean," said Marie. "It is the case with everything. I
love the pantomime, like you. Everything takes place without the
slightest reason. It is so like life; and, like the clowns, we belabour
each other with bladders and throw mud at butter belonging to other
people. But the audience--the part of it like Mr. Naseby and me--are
enormously amused."

"You are horribly unjust, Marie," said Lady Devereux in her sleepy,
drawling voice. "We never belabour you. You are a privileged person; you
go flying over hedges and ditches, while if I, for instance, as much as
look over a hedge, I am supposed to be there for no good purpose. Is it
the consciousness of innocence that gives you such license! One can
acquire almost anything by practice. I think I shall set about that."

Marie laughed.

"I would, dear. Be innocent for an hour a day, to begin with, and
increase it by degrees."

"Ah, it's not innocence, but the consciousness of it, I want," said
Blanche. "It is a different matter."

"But it leads to absolutely nothing," said Arthur Naseby, in a
discontented voice, "except, perhaps, promotion in the Church; but I
have given up all real thought of that."

"I thought the real way to get on in the Church now was to preach
heretical doctrine," remarked Lady Devereux. "Our parson at Rye always
casts doubt on things like Jonah and the whale, or tries to explain them
by supposing it was not a whale, but an extinct animal with an enormous
gullet, which seems to me just as remarkable. They tell me he is certain
to be made a Bishop. My grandfather was a Bishop."

"And mine was a draper," said Arthur Naseby. "I am thankful every day
that he was such a successful one. Really, nothing matters nowadays
except money. That is so convenient for the people who have some. Here
is a most convenient person, for instance, just coming."

Jim Spencer entered the tent with the air of looking for somebody. He
also had the air of having found somebody when he saw Marie, and sat
down in a low chair by her.

"I have been playing croquet," he said; "but I shall never play again."

"What happened?"

"Nothing happened. I remained in sublime inactivity, except when other
people used me for their own base ends. I never felt so useful in my
life."

"But that, again, is no use," said Arthur--"like the consciousness of
innocence which Lady Devereux means to cultivate. Being simply an
opportunity for other people seems to me the very type of a wasted life.
I am continually being an opportunity for other people, and the
opportunity I give them is to make unkind remarks about me; they
constantly take advantage of it."

"What do they say?" asked Marie.

"They say I am idle, and therefore probably vicious. Now, nothing was
ever less proved than that; it is a perfect fallacy, entirely due to
that pessimistic person who said that Satan finds some mischief still
for idle hands to do. That I am idle is, of course, quite true. For
thirty years I have been very busy doing nothing whatever, and every day
I live I find more nothing to do, if you understand."

"Then, you allow the world doesn't libel you?" said Lady Devereux.

"Certainly it does. It is that to which I so strongly object. People go
about saying all sorts of things about me which are perfectly true. The
greater the truth, the greater the libel."

Marie got up from her chair.

"It is true that the world has a keen grasp of the obvious," she said.
"Why don't you disappoint them, Mr. Naseby, and do something?"

"I am ready to do almost anything in the world," said he, "for a
suitable inducement; but nobody ever induces me."

"Well, I shall go for a stroll," said Marie, "and expect neither
inducement nor companionship unless any one is inclined."

Jim Spencer got up instantly.

"Please let me come," he said.

The two left the tent, but Arthur Naseby and Lady Devereux continued to
sit there. There was a moment's pause, and then in a shrill whisper,
"Yes, the case certainly presents some points of interest," said he;
"and as a consulting doctor, although nobody has shown the slightest
desire to consult me, I don't see why I shouldn't give my diagnosis.
Briefly it is this: This exceeding warm weather will undoubtedly cause
the snowflake to melt; if it does not, it is no true snowflake. But it
must be, for anything but a snowflake would have melted long ago; in
fact, it is proved."

Lady Devereux considered this.

"Marie is a great friend of mine," she said; "but I have one criticism
to make upon her: Her extraordinarily healthy way of looking at things
cannot be genuine; she would not be human if it was. She gave me a
lecture the other day about the vulgarity of lying down to be trampled
on. Now, any one that was human would know that that is just about the
only thing in the world worth doing. Personally, I consider it an
instance of the wonderful self-abandonment and self-sacrificing
character of love."

"And she wouldn't even call it love," said Arthur.

"No; she would use some perfectly antiquated and shocking word. Now,
whatever I am, I am not antique. It is absurd to treat me as if I was
Old Testament history. But Marie is a great dear. She has been too sweet
about the bazaar, and has promised to hold a stall every day."

"I never can quite make out what people see in her," said Arthur. "Of
course I adore her, simply because one has to--it is unheard of not
to--but is there anything there after all, except--except what one
sees?"

"Yes, of course there is," said Blanche. "There is in her all that you
and I and the rest of us are without. To put it baldly, she is a good
woman. You get force from being good if you are clever as well. Yes, you
may laugh, but it is so true. Now, the rest of us are not good--neither
you, nor I, nor dear Mildred."

"But Andrew is," said Arthur.

"That is why one never knows whether he is in the room or not," said
Lady Devereux. "He is, or may be, good; but there is nothing else there
whatever. Mere goodness is pretty colourless by itself; but Marie is
everything else, and good as well. She is about five times as clever as
all of us. She has tact, else she would have made rows long ago; she is
a woman of the world, but she is also good."

"I suppose that is probably why I am never quite comfortable with her,"
said Arthur in a mild, ruminating voice.

"Very likely. It is also why you are quite wrong in your diagnosis just
now. Oh, there's Lady Ardingly looking for people to make up her table.
She has probably cleaned everybody else out. Come, Arthur, let us go
and be cleaned out too."

They both laughed loudly and went.

Marie and Jim Spencer meantime had strolled away from the crowds on the
lawn towards the meadow and the river. Even though he had been only a
fortnight or so back in England, he had begun clearly to recognise that
his experiment of going away, his self-banishment to South Africa in
order to win back freedom from the spell which she had cast on him, had
been a failure. He had thought that by filling his mind with other
interests, by drugging his soul with the pursuit of gold, as you can
drug an aching body into unconsciousness, he would still that pain. So,
indeed, he had done for the time, but the opiate, it appeared, was not
permanent in its effects; the drowsiness had passed off, and again at
the sight of her his love had awoke. It seemed, too, to him now that he
loved her with a more devout passion than ever before; all the old
longing was there with this added--that his heightened and matured
perception could now appreciate how fine she was; how different from the
jostling race that swirled round her, who clutched like greedy children
with both hands at the two things they alone thought worthy of effort:
pleasure, at whatever cost or violation; and money, which was worth any
sacrifice except that of pleasure. Like the whole of the rest of London,
he knew the intrigue which Jack had been carrying on for years, and
which was now so stale that it had almost ceased to form a subject for
gossip, and this thought was bitterly poisonous to his mind. Could it be
possible, he wondered, that Marie knew and condoned it? that she had
accepted that for which there was no remedy but divorce, played
gooseberry to her husband, and knew what were his relations to the woman
whose hospitality she was even now enjoying? That she and Jack had
drifted into the apathetic estrangement which so often is the result of
childless marriages, he did not doubt; but was the reason for it that
which was so well known to everybody else? Again and again during this
last fortnight this unworthy and debasing suspicion had assailed him,
and, to do him justice, he had as often cast it from him, his trust and
whole-hearted belief in her rejecting and strangling it; and as often as
it presented itself, he vowed that he would give it no home. But the
other alternative, the only other possible, though it left her stainless
and unsullied, was hardly less painful; and it was an intolerable
thought to him that she alone should be ignorant of that of which all
his better mind told him she was ignorant. Three-quarters of the world,
no doubt, if they ever gave a thought now to a piece of scandal which
had long outlived its first youth, commended her for her admirable
common-sense in recognising the folly of making a fruitless public
exhibition of her private affairs; the other quarter no doubt wondered
idly how long her blissful ignorance would continue, and saw material
for drama the moment that enlightenment came. And in this wonder he
could not help joining--what would she do if ever she found out? Her
worldly wisdom would assuredly indicate a direction completely opposite
to that in which her moral sense would point. That there would be a
struggle he regarded as inevitable; but even he, knowing her as well as
he did, could form no conjecture as to which way it would go. Marie
accepting what had happened, and not quarrelling with the irremediable,
made a picture unpaintable; but Marie, living the life of a woman who
had separated herself from her husband, was almost equally outside
possibilities. He had a vague sense of approaching storm and brewing
mischief, remote it might be, but marching inevitably nearer, even as in
some spell of sultry and oppressive days we know that it is only through
thunder and a convulsion of elements that we can get back to cool and
dewy mornings, and again regard sunshine as a friend, not as a thing to
be shunned and shrunk from.

It may have been that the vividness with which he was conscious in every
fibre of threatening disaster was communicated by some subtle brain-wave
to her; in any case, her first words as they walked down the shady path
below the full-fledged elms bore very distinctly on that which filled
his mind.

"How hot it is!" she said. "There will surely be a storm."

The echo made by her audible voice to his inaudible thought startled
him.

"What sort of storm?" he asked quickly, still busy on his own ground.

She laughed.

"So you have been thinking of storms, too," she said. "We often used to
think in harness--do you remember, Jim? What sort of storm? Well, I too
had other storms than thunder in my mind. You used to dislike real
thunder-storms, I remember; but I always loved them. I expect other
sorts of storms affect one similarly. I hate compromise, you know. If
one is absolutely at cross-purposes with other people, it is much better
to have it out fair and square, to upset the furniture and smash the
china if necessary, rather than concede a little here and have a little
conceded there. That always results in a state of things no better than
before, and an added distaste on both sides to open the subject again."

He did not at once answer; this bore directly on his stifled
questionings, and answered them.

"Was anything particular in your mind?" he asked at length.

"No--I mean yes. I can't lie to any purpose, Jim; it's no good my
trying. Yes, what was partly in my mind was a disagreement I had with
Jack some ten days ago. We patched it up quite beautifully, and agreed
that nothing was worth bothering about. I acquiesced, though I should
personally have preferred to have it out. At least I am sure of this,
that if one differs fundamentally from any one, it is no use arguing,
or, as he says, bothering. And fundamentally Jack and I are very
different."

She paused a moment and glanced suddenly at him.

"And that is why we get on so excellently," she added, with just a
suspicion of hurry in her words.

Jim longed to applaud her quickness; it had been excellently done. But
the most elementary courtesy forbade him to call attention to it.
"Asides" are conventionally observed at other places besides the
theatres.

"I am glad of that," he said in a perfectly even voice.

This was a turning of the tables; his conventionality was as obvious as
hers; she silently noticed it and also passed on.

"Yes, that little patch-up with Jack was in my mind," she said; "but
then, as I told you, we have privately settled to have no storms. No,
the storm which I mean will be a bigger storm than that. On that subject
Jack and I are quite agreed. I mean a national storm, a general
upheaval. My goodness! some high towers and steeples will be smashed.
And here we all go, meantime, dancing in the middle of the
thunder-clouds, with the lightning, so to speak, playing about us."

They had emerged from the wooded walk on to the edge of the meadow
bordering the river, and as Marie spoke she pointed across the field to
the lawn visible beyond it, filled with gay figures, and bordered with
the bright colour of the flower-beds, and set in the sombre green of the
yew hedges. Jim followed her finger.

"Yes, assuredly we are dancing," he said. "But Sunday afternoon in the
country is an innocuous sort of high-dress dance, isn't it?"

"Certainly; but if we dance all and every day we don't get on with our
work. And in point of fact, Jim, all our dances are not very high-dress.
No; the fact is we are going to the dogs as quick as ever we can. Money,
money, money! That is a perfectly sound and legitimate cry if the means
you adopt are those that increase wealth. But if I get a tip from a City
man and speculate, I am merely snatching at what I want. Did you go to
the Maxwells' the other night? I did, because we all do. That is what we
all have come to; but it does not spell efficiency. We worship the
golden calf, but instead of feeding it we try to cut little pieces off
it."

"And Deborah was a prophetess before the Lord," said Jim. "Proceed,
Deborah."

"I wish I were," said Marie. "Oh, you should hear the truth if I was!
But, Jack, I must tell you, comes pretty near to being a prophet."

"Then you are the prophet's wife. Tell me what he says about it."

"Ah! he is a prophet in all but the one thing needful--I mean the fire
and the burning. The prophet is like the phoenix; he is born from the
ashes of a conflagration. In Jack's case all the message is there, but
it is delivered--I don't know if it will mean anything to you, but
personally I feel it--it is delivered out of cold lips. He needs the
touch of the red-hot coal like Isaiah. Did you hear or read his speech
last week about the Army Estimates? The First Secretary had given his
statement in an apologetic kind of way, apparently wishing to conciliate
the Opposition for the estimates being so high. The usual bickering over
rounds of ammunition followed, and then Jack got up. Instead of
apologizing for their being so high, he fell foul of his own chief for
their being so low. He wanted to know why the autumn manoeuvres had
been curtailed; he wanted to know why the experiments at Lydd had been
abandoned in the middle; he wanted to know why the projected battery at
Gibraltar had not been constructed: was it because of the expense? Why,
in fact, they had not spent twice as much as they had."

"That would hardly be a popular speech from a member of the Government."

"Popular? No. The prophet is no opportunist, and thank God Jack cares
absolutely not one jot what either his own side or the Opposition think
of him. The press the next morning was worth reading; he got the most
violent abuse from both sides."

"Won't that sort of thing damage him both in and after the next
election? I should not think his party would like it, and I am sure the
Government will not."

"Ah, I disagree with you there," said Marie. "Jack, I think, is getting
a great hold on the people--the masses, if you like. He dislikes them,
and he treats them like dirt; but the masses, as you know, are profound
snobs, and rather enjoy that. They like a lord to behave in the way they
imagine lords do behave. They even like a wicked lord. On the other
hand, they are beginning to see that Jack means business. He thinks the
army is wholly inadequate, and, judging from the length of the Boer War,
would crumple under a great stress. You see, he considers that the
walk-over which was anticipated has degenerated into a stroll. So,
instead of joining in the hymn of praise to the British Empire which the
Government spend their time in singing, rather out of tune with each
other, he stands apart, and says bluntly that we must set to and put
ourselves in a far greater state of efficiency, otherwise 'Pop goes the
Empire.' Now, that is impalatable, but I think people in general are
beginning to see that it may be medicinal."

"I should say it was lucky he's a hereditary legislator," said Jim. "But
how about a Government post afterwards?"

"Well, I think the Government may see that, too. They know perfectly
well that Jack doesn't care one straw about party questions. He has said
as much. What he does care about is the Empire--I think he cares for it
more than anything else in the world--and what he knows about is the
army. And if this cry for efficiency--which certainly is getting
louder--in the country continues, they will have a far better chance of
remaining in power if Jack is put at the War Office."

They had come to the far end of the meadow, and Marie paused a moment,
looking at the broad, patient stream. Hundreds of pleasure-boats were
scattered over its surface, and electric launches and river steamers
crowded with roaring Sunday excursionists did their best to make vile
one of the most beautiful rivers in the world. Each, indeed, seemed a
Bedlam let loose and packed tight. Even the stuffy little cabins were
full of feather-hatted girls and amorous young men, who changed hats
with each other, without finding the brilliancy of this wit grow the
least stale even in endless repetition; took alternate mouthfuls of
solid refreshment out of paper bags and of beer out of the same bottle,
with shouts of laughter at slightly indelicate suggestions. The poor
river was flecked with fragments of bun-bags and floating bottles where
trout should have been feeding, and echoes of the music-halls, with
absolutely independent wheezings of concertinas, owning no suzerainty,
by way of accompaniment, came to Marie and her companion with that
curious sharp distinctness with which sound travels over water. For a
moment they stood there in silence; then Marie turned quickly in the
direction of the lawn behind them, and back to the river again.

"After all--" she said half to herself.

Jim laughed. It was somehow strangely pleasant to him to find himself,
as Marie had said, thinking in harness.

"Yes, but less loudly so," he answered, replying to that which she had
not said.

"So it seems to us. Those good folk on the river don't seem loud to
themselves. But--oh dear me, Jim! what an awkward and inconvenient thing
it is to be different from the people one moves among!"

He did not feel that he owed her any mercy on this point. She had
refused deliberately the other life he had once offered her.

"Ah, you find that, do you?" he said, his love for her surging up with
bitterness in his throat. "Yet you chose it yourself."

They had begun walking back towards the lawn again, but at his words
Marie suddenly stopped. From one side came the sound of laughter and
talk, from the other, now more remote, fragments of "D'isy, D'isy."

She well knew what was in his mind, and thanked him silently for not
putting it into words.

"I know I did," she said; "and no doubt the very fact that I am
different to most of my _milieu_ is what makes it so entertaining."

At that moment Jim saw where he stood. He knew that his taunt that her
lot was of her own choosing had been dictated by that which was bitter
within him, and was of the nature of revenge, however ineffectual. And
Revenge is a very smoky lamp wherewith to guide one's steps in this
world, and he had the justice to quench it without more ado. But he knew
also that the void which she might have filled ached horribly, and by
the irony of fate he had now in abundance that of which the lack years
ago had made it impossible then that she should fill it. She had been
but a girl, he but a boy; and in him, he felt now, that which had
subsequently flowered into this great bloom of love had been but in bud.
But the bud, it was now proved, was authentic, for there was no
mistaking the flowers.

Marie also was troubled. She could not but guess something of what was
in his mind, but his taunt seemed to her unworthy of him, and she did
not regret the light finality of her answer. But as they walked back by
the meadow-side, already growing tall with hay, and redolent with the
hundred unprized flowers of English meadows, her mind changed. He had
loved her with an honourable love; she on her side had liked him, but it
had been impossible--so she told herself rather hurriedly. If she had
been free, and he came to her now--but she dismissed such unprofitable
conjectures. Meanwhile she had been harsh, though perhaps deservedly, to
her old friend. So just as he held the gate into the garden open for
her:

"But I am so glad you have come back, Jim!" she said.




CHAPTER VII


Tea--or, rather, the modern substitute for tea, which consistes of most
things except tea, from caviare sandwiches to strawberry ice, and
whisky-and-soda to iced coffee--had just been brought out when the two
returned to the lawn, and Mildred Brereton's guests had fallen upon it
with the most refreshingly healthy appetites, and were fluttering about
the tables like a school of gulls fishing. Every one, according to the
sensible modern plan, foraged privately and privateerly for himself, and
there were no rows of patient women agonizing for things to eat and
drink, until some man languidly brought them something they did not
want, instead of that which they desired. Nor, on the other hand, were
there rows of men parading slowly up the female line, like sightseers at
an exhibition, with teacups slipping and gliding over the saucers, and
buns being jerked from their plates by neighbouring elbows. Instead,
every one flocked to the tables, seized what he wanted, and retired
into corners to eat it. Anthony Maxwell in particular, who had a
wonderful gift for mimicry, was loading up with great care and solidity.
Something in his air might have reminded an observer of a steamer
coaling for a trip. He had had, in fact, a little conversation with both
Mrs. Brereton and Lady Ardingly during the afternoon.

"Yes, dear Mr. Anthony," Mildred had said. "You received my note, did
you not? And I am delighted you could come here to-day! Of course, it is
a dreadful thing to me to think that my little girl will be taken away
so soon. But that is what every mother has to go through. Dear me! it
seems only yesterday that she came into my room, a little toddling mite,
to announce that when she was grown up she was going to marry the groom,
because then she could always live among horses."

"Oh, that'll be all right," said Anthony. "She can have plenty of them."

"How generous of you to say that! You have not--ah--spoken to her yet?"

"No. I've been trying to all the afternoon, but I couldn't get an
opportunity."

"Dear Maud! She is--how shall I say it? But, anyhow, it is so
characteristic of her."

"She seemed to want to avoid me," said Anthony with a bluntness that
rather distressed Mrs. Brereton.

"Yes, it would seem like it," said she; "but indeed-- What I wanted to
say to you was this: You must be patient with her, and I expect you will
need a little perseverance. It is a rare thing, you know, to come and
see and conquer, like Julius Cæsar, or whoever it was. Dear Maud perhaps
scarcely knows her own mind. I am sure I do not know it. You see, she is
young, very young, and I do not think that hers is a nature that expands
very early."

The young man's rather heavy, commonplace face flushed; for the moment
it was lit up, as it were, by a flame from within.

"Oh, I'm not going to be impatient," he said. "And as for perseverance,
why, there's nothing I would not do, nor any number of years I would not
wait, to get her."

Mrs. Brereton looked at him critically for a half-moment. "Why, he's in
love!" she said to herself. Then aloud, "Dear Mr. Anthony! I am
convinced of it," she said. "And bear that in mind when you speak to
Maud. Also bear in mind that there is no marriage which either her
father or I so much desire. Ah, there is the Duchess of Bolton just
come! I must go and speak to her."

His interview with Lady Ardingly had been briefer, but, he felt, more to
the point.

"She will probably refuse you," said that lady. "In that case you had
better wait a month and ask her again. You have everything on your side
and everybody--except, perhaps, the girl. But eventually she will do
what is good for her. Here is a fourth. Let us play Bridge immediately."

This particular game of Bridge had rather taken it out of Anthony, for
he had been Lady Ardingly's partner, and had had the misfortune to
revoke in playing a _sans-à-tout_ hand. Her remarks to him were direct.

"You might just as well pick my pocket of twenty pounds," she said to
him, "as do that. Do you not see it so? By your gross carelessness you
have lost us the rubber, a mistake which one intelligent glance at your
hand would have avoided. Come, there are other pursuits, are there not,
in which you wish to be engaged? You will, perhaps, follow them with
better attention."

Then, seeing the young man's discomfiture, her admirable good-nature
returned. "Croquet, for instance," she added. "I hear you are a great
player. Ah! there is Lord Alston. No doubt he will make our fourth."

Maud, it is true, had spent the hours since lunch in flying before her
admirer, but her reasons, it must be confessed, were not those which one
would be disposed to think natural on the part of a young girl. There
was not, in fact, one atom of shyness or shirking about her; she had not
the least objection to hear impassioned speeches or blunt declarations,
whichever mode Anthony should choose to adopt, nor did the thought of
him in any way fill her with horror. She had listened very attentively
to her mother's advice when they drove down to Windsor earlier in the
week; she had also listened with the same consideration to Lady
Ardingly's far more convincing and sensible remarks when she had lunched
with her on Friday, and her only reason for refusing Anthony an
opportunity all the afternoon was that she really had not the slightest
idea whether she should say yes or no. She did not, as she had told her
mother, love him; she did not, either, dislike him. He was merely quite
indifferent to her, as, indeed, all men were. Men, in fact, as far as
she thought about them at all, seemed to her to be unattractive people;
she could not conceive what a girl should want with one permanently in
the house. They were for ever either putting tobacco or brandy into
their mouths or letting inane remarks out, and they stared at her in an
uncomfortable and incomprehensible manner. On the other hand, she knew
perfectly well that it was the natural thing for girls to marry; every
one always did it, and they were probably right. She supposed that she
also would ultimately marry, but was this--this utter absence of any
emotion--the correct thing? She was aware that tremblings and raptures
were in the world of printed things supposed to be the orthodox signals
flown by the parties engaged; she should be a creature of averted eyes
and deep blushes. But she did not feel the least inclined to either;
there was nothing in Anthony that would make her wish to avert her eyes,
nor, as far as she knew, did he ever say things which would make her
blush. He was simply indifferent to her, but so, for that matter, were
all men. Was she, then, to be a spinster? That was equally unthinkable.

There were other things as well. A great friend of hers, with whom she
had been accustomed to spend long days in the saddle, or in the company
of dogs in endless walks over moors, had been married only a month ago,
for no other reason, as far as Maud or Kitty Danefield herself knew, but
the one that every girl married if possible, that it was the natural
thing to do. Maud had seen her again only two days ago for the first
time since her marriage, and had found quite a different person. Kitty
had become a woman, radiantly happy, with an absorbing interest in life
which seemed quite to have eclipsed the loves of earlier days. She still
liked horses, dogs, great open country, Maud herself; but all these
things which had been the first ingredients of existence had gone into a
secondary place, and the one thing that made life now was her husband.
To Maud this was all perfectly incomprehensible--would Anthony, if she
accepted him, ever fill existence like that? She could not help feeling
that existence would be a much narrower thing if he did. Kitty, in fact,
had just arrived, and had rushed at Maud.

"Darling, I am so pleased to see you!" she said, "and we'll have a nice
long talk. Where's Arthur! Arthur is really too tiresome; he asked Tom
Liscombe to come down with us when I had counted on a nice quiet empty
carriage all to ourselves. He didn't want him, nor did I; but that is so
like Arthur, to do good-natured things from a sort of vague weakness. He
saw Tom, and asked him without thinking what he was doing. You look
rather careworn, Maud. What is it now?"

"Oh, come for a stroll, Kitty," said the other; "I want to talk."

"Very well; I must say good-bye to Arthur."

Maud laughed.

"Oh, you ridiculous person," she said; "you will be away ten minutes.
Would you like to make your will, too?"

"Well, if it's only ten minutes--oh, he's looking. There!" and she waved
a tiny morsel of a handkerchief to him.

Maud looked at her with grave attention.

"Now, I cannot understand that," she said.

"No, dear, of course not. You're not married. I should have thought it
as ridiculous as you before. By the way, Maud--oh, _that's_ why you look
careworn. Is it true you are going to marry Anthony Maxwell? Darling,
how nice, and _simply_ rolling!"

"You think that is important?" asked Maud.

"Why, of course. It's the only crumpled rose-leaf Arthur and I have. It
makes us quite miserable; there's always that little ghost in the
corner. Can we afford this? Can we spare the money for that? But you
haven't answered me. Is it true?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," said Maud.

Kitty laughed.

"You absurd creature!" she said; "you must know. Has he proposed to
you?"

"No, but he has told mother he wants to. And he has been stalking me all
the afternoon."

Kitty turned quickly back.

"He shall stalk you no longer," she said. "Really, Maud, you are
behaving very unfairly to him. If you are going to marry him, say so; if
not--well, if not, you will be a very foolish person, but still say so.
He has a mother, I know that, but really his mother matters very much
less than the man himself. He's all right, isn't he? Behaves nicely--I
mean, hasn't a vice about him--looks decent?"

"Moderately," said Maud.

"Oh, my dear, what do you want? Every one can't be an Adonis, and, as
the copybooks used to say, human nature is limited. I dare say he's not
a genius; well, no more are you. As for beauty, you've got enough for
two, and he's got money enough for three--baby, as well, do you see? Oh
yes, I am indelicate, I know, but it's far better than being delicate.
Being delicate never pays; on the other hand, you have to pay for it,
and I haven't got enough money for it. You are lucky, Maud."

"Why? I want to talk to you about it."

"My dear girl, there is nothing to say. You will be a fool if you don't
marry him, as I told you. There is simply nothing else to talk about. I
was in a state of blank indifference about Arthur before I married him.
My mother--and I bless her for it--absolutely obliged me to accept him.
So will yours do if she has any sense, and I am certain she has heaps.
Unless you are a visionary or a fanatic of some kind, you will be glad
to be married. Glad? Good gracious! it is much more than that."

She turned sharply on her heel, Maud following.

"Then, why are there so many unhappy marriages?" asked the latter.

"Ah, in books, only. They are there because the author does not know
what else to say. 'You can't write about happy marriages,' so an author
assured me. 'They are so dull. Happy people have no history.'"

Maud was silent a moment.

"You have changed very much, Kitty," she said at length.

"Thank goodness, I have! Oh, Maud, I don't mean to be nasty to you.
Those old days were really dear days. But one can't always remain a
girl, Maud. It is mercifully ordained that girls become women. And the
door by which they enter is marriage."

"It means all that?"

"All. More----"

Maud found herself struggling for utterance. The blush and the downcast
eye which she had thought Anthony could never have produced in her were
hers now.

"You mean a man--the fact of a man?" she said stammeringly.

Kitty laughed the laugh of a newly-married woman, which is as old as
Eve.

"Put it that way if you like," she said. "But there is another--the fact
of a woman."

"But I am content," she said almost piteously. "Why does everybody--you,
mother--want me to marry?"

"You have left out Anthony," remarked Kitty rigorously. "I and your
mother, because we are women; he, because he is a man."

They had come to the populated lawn again, and further intimate
conversation would next moment be impossible. Kitty turned to her
hurriedly.

"Oh, my dear, it is like having a tooth out," she said. "No doubt it is
a shock. But it no longer aches. There is Mr. Anthony; let him ask you,
anyhow. That is bare justice; and remember what I have said."

"I shall not forget it," said Maud.

Under no circumstances would Kitty have bitten out her tongue, so it
would be a mere figure of speech to say that she would have even been
inclined to had she known precisely what effect her volubility would
have had on her friend. But it is certain that she would sooner have
bitten it very hard--so that it hurt, in fact--could she have foreseen
in how opposite a direction to that intended her words had inclined her.
As it was, she left the two together in a small solitude encompassed by
company, and went to join her husband with a light heart and an
approving conscience--a delicious and rare combination. Anthony, at any
rate, was primed and ready.

"Do take me to see the rose-garden," he said to Maud, with a _banalité_
that seemed to him unavoidable. He was quite aware of it, and regretted
the necessity, for, to do him justice, he had tried many other lures
that afternoon. "I hear it is quite beautiful," he went on; "and Mrs.
Brereton promised me you should show it me after tea. And it is after
tea," he added.

Maud was slightly taller than he, and had the right to drop her eyelids
a little as she looked at him. Of the adventitious advantage she took
more than her justifiable measure, and beheld the back of his
collar-stud.

"By all means," she said. "A promise is a promise, whoever gave it."

"You are rather hard on me," observed Anthony.

"Hard? Surely not."

"Well, on your mother, then."

Maud thought a moment.

"It is natural for you to think so," she said, "since she agrees with
you."

They had left the lawn behind them, and threaded a dusky lane set in
rhododendrons. Anthony stopped.

"She agrees with me," he said. "In one thing, anyhow, she agrees with
me--we both love you."

In spite of herself Maud gave him a round of internal applause. She was
still so indifferent that she could easily judge him, as if he had been
an actor on a stage. Outwardly, with the tongue she could say nothing,
and stood, having walked on a pace or two, with her back to him. His
voice made her turn round.

"Maud, Maud!" he said. "Maud, they were crying and calling."

"Ah!" she said, with a sudden interest, "you learned that."

He shook his head.

"I read it three months ago," he said. "It has stuck in my memory.
Because everything cries 'Maud, Maud!' to me."

The blush and the averted eye were hers. Quite unconsciously she began
to know what Lady Ardingly had meant--what Kitty had meant.

"I am sorry," she said. "I ought never to have come here with you. I
thought I should laugh at you merely. I do not laugh; I would sooner
cry."

"Thank you for that," said he. "I understand that you do not accept my
devotion. What I do not understand is whether you definitely refuse it.
Do you refuse it?"

"Do not press me to answer you," she said.

"You postpone your answer!"

"Please."

       *       *       *       *       *

Meantime dusk had begun to fall, the sounds of rejoicing Cockneys came
more faintly from the river, the glow in the western sky faded into
saffron, and overhead the vault of velvet blue grew infinitely more
infinite. Birds chuckled and scurried through the bushes, bats extended
angled wings for the preliminary trials of their nameless ghoulish
errands, a nightingale bubbled suddenly, and a large yellow star swung
into sight over the dim edge of the earth. But the lawn itself, save for
a fine carpet of dew, that was spread without hands on the close-napped
turf, reflected none of the evening influences. Servants hurried
noiselessly about lighting the lamps that hung in the trees, and soon
the tents where dinner was laid began to shimmer with white linen and
gleam with silver. Jack was back from his golf, and Mrs. Brereton from
an extremely short walk (for she had been recommended plenty of
exercise), a few people had left to dine in town, but more people
arrived from town to dine here, and Andrew Brereton, having succeeded in
wresting four shillings and sixpence from the reluctant Mr. Maxwell,
felt that he had earned his dinner. And as night became deeper, the
animation of the party grew louder and their laughter more frequent; the
moon and the stars everlastingly set in heaven were to them but the
whitewash of the ceiling of the rooms where they dined, the trees and
infinite soft spaces of the dusk but the paper on the walls of their
restaurant, the miracle of the dewy lawn a carpet for unheeding feet.
Wine and food concerned them perhaps most, but in a place hardly
inferior must have been put the charms of screaming and scandalous
conversation. Dinner, in fact, was a great success. By midnight all the
guests for the day who were not staying over the Sunday had left, and
the stables, which had been a packed mass of broughams, victorias,
dogcarts, motor-cars, and bicycles, were once more empty; and Lady
Ardingly, whose rubber had most unjustifiably been interrupted by Mrs.
Brereton's adieus to her guests, picked up her hand again with some
acidity.

"Now, perhaps, we shall get on with our Bridge," she said. "I have
declared no trumps. Nobody doubles! That is a very masterly inactivity
on our adversaries' part."

The four consisted of the two Breretons, Lady Ardingly, and Jack Alston;
at another table were four more, who, however, abandoned their game at
about half-past one, again interrupting Lady Ardingly with their
superfluous good-nights, for she was having a very good night indeed.
Marie and Maud Brereton had long ago gone to bed, but the other four
still played on, in silence for the most part. Occasionally the dummy
rose, and refreshed his inner self with something from a side-table, and
from time to time the note of a cigarette would sound crisply, as it
were, on the soft air of the night. At last a strange change began to
pass over the sky, from which the moon had now long set, hardly visible
there at first, but making the faces of the players look suddenly white
and wan. Then the miracle grew; the dark blue of the sky brightened into
dove colour, the stars grew pale, and a little wind stirred in the
trees.

"You played that abominably, dear Mildred," said Lady Ardingly. "We
should have saved it if you had had any sense. What does that make?"

She pulled her cloak round her neck as Jack added it up.

"The night is growing a little chilly," she said.

Mildred, who had been following the figures, looked up.

"The night?" she said. "Why what is happening? It is day, is it not?"

"Very likely," said Lady Ardingly. "How much is it, Jack? Never mind,
tell me to-morrow. I will pay you to-morrow?"

Jack rattled his pencil-case between his teeth.

"Thirty pounds exactly, Lady Ardingly," he said.

They rose and walked across the lawn towards the house, Jack sauntering
a little behind, his hands in his pockets, smiling to himself. Mildred
dropped behind with him, the other two walking on a few paces ahead.

"The most odious hour in the twenty-four!" said Lady Ardingly, looking
ghastly in the dawn.

"Very trying," said Andrew.

"But we have spent the night very well," said the other, as they parted
at the foot of the stairs. "A charming Sunday, Mr. Brereton. You and
Mildred are great benefactors!"

And she hurried upstairs, conscious that she was looking awful, and, in
that hour of low vitality which comes with the dawn, not wishing to
appear thus before anybody, however insignificant.




CHAPTER VIII


It was about a fortnight after this Sunday at Richmond that the list of
Birthday honours came out, and it was a surprise to nobody that Mr.
Brereton's name appeared as the recipient of a peerage. For
respectability and cash are things that in themselves confer such
nobility on their fortunate possessor that it is only right and proper
to stamp him with a coronet like writing-paper. Respectability no doubt
has been, and will again be, dispensed with, but cash cannot be replaced
except by exceptional achievements of some kind, of which Andrew was
hopelessly incapable. And as it would clearly be absurd to bar a man
from his birth from the possibility of attaining to the ranks of
hereditary legislators, custom, slowly broadening down, has brought it
about that since achievement in great deeds is within the reach but of
the few, plenty of good gold, bestowed on plenty of good or party
institutions, paves the way, so to speak, to what has been called by
politicians who wrangle hotly in another place "the upper snows."

Marie Alston, who had known of the impending honours some days before,
was talking it over with Jim Spencer.

"I don't say I like the principle," she was saying; "but, things being
as they are, I think it a most suitable thing. Oh, my dear Jim, you know
me sufficiently well to know that I think such a system all wrong from
top to bottom. But, after all, it is in a piece with the rest.
Plutocracy, not the King nor the Houses of Parliament, rules us, and
naturally plutocracy says, 'I will have all that is within reach.' Why
not? And peerages are certainly within reach. Of course the list is
rather pronounced. Mr. Maxwell, I see, has been made a Baronet. But,
after all, who else is there? Can you think of any eminent men whom one
would wish to see peers? I can't. And there are few people richer than
the Maxwells, I believe. It is no use screaming."

Jim shrugged his shoulders.

"At that rate, I could be made a peer," he said.

"Are you rich enough? How nice for you! And _vice versâ_, perhaps, Jack
should be made a commoner. No doubt that reform will follow next. At
least, perhaps Jack shouldn't because he really has the makings of an
eminent man, but half the House of Peers, anyhow, should be made
commoners. No doubt they would be if it were not for the innate
snobbishness of the average Englishman. The average Englishman knows
quite well that there is nothing whatever remarkable or admirable about
quantities of peers except their peerages; yet, because they are peers,
he loves and reverences them, and reserves them compartments, and
incidentally takes toll off them as well."

Jim Spencer raised his eyebrows.

"Of course you are right," he said, "but you say these things, and don't
take them seriously. You used to be serious, Marie."

"Ah, you do me an injustice," she said quickly. "I am just as serious as
ever I was, but I realize that it is no use being serious in public.
People have no time to spare from their amusements nowadays for anything
serious. But in private I am serious. I was serious in private to-day,
for instance."

"Well, be serious now, and tell me what you were serious about."

"Oh, nothing. I beg your pardon, this is not in public. Indeed, it was
something--something big, as it seems to me. I am not sure that I shall
tell you about it."

They were both silent a moment--he unwilling to ask a question on a
subject where she hesitated, she weighing in her mind whether or not she
should tell him. At last she spoke.

"It is about Maud Brereton," she said, "She came to me yesterday, calm
as a summer sea, to ask my advice as to whether she should marry Anthony
Maxwell, just as I might ask your advice as to whether I should have a
picture framed in gold or white. I did not ask her any questions as to
whether she loved him, because I believe that there are many girls who
have no idea what that means, and I think Maud is one of them."

Jim got up and began to walk up and down the room. He heard Marie with
his ear speaking of Maud, but his inward ear translated, so it seemed to
him, all she said of Maud into things she was saying about herself.

"Now, I am sufficiently modern," she went on, "not to wish all girls who
do not feel passion to abstain from marrying. I believe that quite
happy marriages often take place without it. Either the man or the woman
may not feel it, yet by marrying they are both happier than they would
have been if they had remained single. The ultimate sum of happiness is
a large factor, Jim. Do you not think so?"

Again she seemed to be talking of herself, but now he could not decide
whether she was speaking with complete sincerity. Her opinions, at any
rate, appeared to him monstrous.

"Finish the exposition first," he said. "After all, whether I agree with
you or not is a small matter. Maud Brereton asked your advice, not
mine."

Something in his tone startled her for a moment, and instinctively that
afternoon walk they had taken down by the river a fortnight ago came
into her mind; but she went on without a pause.

"I seem cold-blooded to you," she said; "and I dare say I am--it is
highly probable, in fact. Then, there is a further thing to be
considered: many girls, I feel sure, have their passion awakened by
marriage. Now, that constitutes a great danger, I admit, in passionless
marriages. Who can tell--well, that need not be discussed. But it
remains certain, I am afraid, that there are many women to whom the
becoming as one flesh with their husbands has not meant anything before
they married them."

"And less afterwards," remarked Jim.

"And less afterwards. Their physical nature is awakened, and-- But, and
here I am less modern than you at present are inclined to give me credit
for."

"Credit for?" asked Jim.

"Yes, because you are not modern at all. Oh, Jim, it is a great puzzle!
Supposing every girl had to feel that there was absolutely only one man
in the world for her, and supposing every man had to feel that here, and
here alone was his destiny, before he married, do you think we should
have an increase of the marriage returns? I am afraid not. And people
being what they are, do you think that this celibacy would have a good
effect on morals? It is no use advocating counsels of perfection when
you are dealing with the human race and its obvious imperfections. At
least, that, I suppose, may eventually come; but for practical purposes
the highest motive does not always secure such good results as a lower
one."

"So you advised her to marry him," said Jim slowly.

"No, I advised her not to. All the excellent reasons which I have given
you why she should marry him were present in my mind; I even told them
her. But at the back of my mind--mind or soul, call it what you
will--there was a great 'but.' I dare say it was unreasonable; it was
certainly not clear to me what it was. But whatever it was, it said
'No.' It wanted me not to impose what I called my experience of the
world on a girl. After all, what does one's experience amount to? The
recollection of one's mistakes."

She spoke the last words more to herself than him as she leaned back in
her low chair, her violet-coloured eyes looking "out and beyond,"
focused, not by the limit of her vision, but that of her thoughts.
Quick, uneven breaths disturbed the slow rise and fall of her bosom, and
the rose she had fastened in her dress shed half its fragrant petals on
her lap. And because he was a man, he looked at her with kindled eye;
and because he was a man who loved her, his blood also was kindled. More
than ever before he knew how idle had been his flight from her; the
_cælum non animum_ suddenly leaped in his mind from the dingy ranks of
truisms to the austere array of the things that are true. He drew his
chair a little closer to hers and laid his hand on its arm.

"Your mistakes, Marie?" he said.

It took her an appreciable fraction of time to recall herself, and
realize what was meant by his burning look; but it took her no time at
all, when once she had realized that, to answer him.

"Yes, one's mistakes," she said--"all the occasions on which one has
failed to grasp the true import of what one was doing, and, in
particular, all the mistakes one has seen other people making and their
consequences. I always think that one's experience means much more what
one has observed in other people than what one has done one's self. Of
course, all observation passes through the crucible of one's
personality, whether one observes things in one's self or other people,
and that certainly transforms it, crystallizes it, what you will. But if
one has a grain of imagination, other people's experiences are as vivid
to one's self as one's own, and as potentially profitable. Don't you
think so?"

She rose as she spoke, trembling slightly, and brushed the fallen petals
from her dress. She was just enough not to blame him for what he had
said; she was, indeed, just enough to commend him for his reticence,
since her words had necessarily for him such a significance, and the
need to stop him saying more was imperative. She could see what inward
excitement moved him, and in her soul she thanked him for the love he
bore her; but that any word of it should pass between them was
impossible--merely, it could not be. This being so, she desired with a
fervency of desire that she had not known for years not to lose her
friend, and words of such a kind as she knew were rising to his lips
would have meant this loss. Indeed, at this moment the world seemed to
hold for her nothing so desired as that friendship, which a word might
rob her of.

To him, her reply was both sobering and bracing. It showed him how close
he had been walking to the edge of a precipice. As Marie had just told
him, he was old-fashioned; he believed that "good" and "bad," "noble"
and "wicked," were not yet words of obsolete meaning, words like
"arquebus," which had no significance in the vocabulary of the day. A
temptation had come and gripped him by the throat--the temptation to
suggest to her that she should say that her marriage with Jack was,
among her experiences, a mistake. He knew also--and was honest enough to
confess that his desire to hear her say this was due to the fact that
her confession would necessarily open certain vistas--it would be the
first step, at any rate, down a path that a certain part of him had
during his past fortnight longed to tread with a fervour and a passion
that shook his whole nature, as a wind shakes and tosses a curtain. He
knew in what sort Jack had kept his marriage vow, and he had begun to
ask himself whether such conduct did not give emancipation, so to speak,
to the wife--had begun to tell himself that it was no use setting up
exceptional codes of morality. One lived in the world, the world did
this and that; but this douche of cold water was bracing. It recalled
him to sanity, to his better and his normal self, and he replied in a
voice still shaken with his own overwhelming though momentary tumult.

"So you advised her not to marry him?" he asked. "Do you think she will
take your advice?"

"Yes; because it showed her clearly what her own bias really was. One
often does not know what one really thinks till some one expresses a
strong opinion on one side or the other. Then one hears it with strong
repugnance or strong sympathy, which reveals to one's self what one's
true opinion is."

Jim smiled, a regurgitation of bitterness swelling up in his breast.

"Have you ever formulated to yourself what your own strongest passion
is?" he asked.

"No, never. It is the most difficult thing in the world to say what one
likes best until one is forty or thereabouts. All one's youth--which, I
take it, extends to about forty--is passed experimentally in determining
what one likes best, and one does not know till it is crystallized. By
then also it is probably unattainable."

Jim laughed again bitterly.

"Oh, you need not be afraid," he said, his rebuff now beginning to
sting. "I tell you that your chief passion is analysis. You do not care
so much what people do, as why they do it. If a Hooligan knocked you
down and began stamping on you, I can imagine you saying, 'Stop just a
moment to tell me why you are doing this. Does giving pain to me give
pleasure to you, or do you personally feel a grudge against me?' Then,
when he had told you, you would say, 'Thank you very much. Go on
stamping again.'"

Marie had detached the unpetalled rose from her dress, and had taken
another from the vase in her hand. But she did not pin it in, but, after
listening open-mouthed, sat down again with it in her fingers.

"I am egotistical, no doubt," she said, "and that must account for my
burning desire to know why you think that. I suppose you do think that,
Jim, or are you irritated with me for any cause?"

The question was unpremeditated, but as soon as she had spoken she could
have bitten out her tongue for having said it. Almost certainly, she
thought, in the moment's pause that ensued, he would tell her why he was
irritated with her. That she knew already, and, of all things in the
world, that was the one which she did not wish him to tell her. But his
answer came almost immediately.

"I don't think there is anything you could do which would irritate me,"
he said, "and I do think what I have said. I think you are bloodless,
Marie; I think you are like what you imagine Maud Brereton to be. And
bloodless people are disconcerting. One does not know how to make them
hear, how to make them feel the things that the majority of the race
feel."

Suddenly there rose in her mind a long, far-off, dusty memory. She had
been skating one day on a thinly frozen pond, and suddenly felt the ice
bend and sway under her, and had said to herself, "The ice is thinner
here." On that occasion she had put both feet down and gone straight for
the bank. On this occasion she did exactly the same.

"You are probably right," she said. "The things which many women do, and
find absorption in doing, I think stupid, and, what is worse, vulgar,
and what is worst, wicked. I am _bourgeoise_, I am _bonne femme_--that
is what you really mean, Jim. It is quite true; it is quite, quite true.
And, no doubt, if one is not in the habit of spending all one's energies
on--on matters of emotion, one disposes of them in other ways. If one
does not give one's self up to feeling, one probably has more time for
thinking, because one must do something if one has nerves and brains at
all. But the Hooligan business you describe is beyond me, I am afraid."

He got up abruptly.

"I must go," he said. "There are a hundred things I must--not do. I
must go and not do them."

At this moment, and for the first time during this interview, he had
touched and moved her. His struggle suddenly became pathetic to her--a
thing to pity and praise. Like a weir, he spouted at joints in the
strong doors of his determination not to speak, but the flood was
restrained. She rose also.

"That excuse has the charm of absolute sincerity," she said. "When
people say they have a hundred things to do, it seems to me a very bad
reason. Yours is better. When shall I see you again?"

"I don't know," said he, and for a moment left her awkwardly placed. But
his manliness once more came to his aid--for there could be but one
conclusion if he said no more--and he added: "I am away next Sunday; I
come back on Wednesday. That night I dine with the Ardinglys."

"I also. Till Wednesday, then, Jim--go and not do all these things you
spoke of! Not doing things takes longer than doing them. It takes all
the time, in fact. Good-bye!"




CHAPTER IX


It was never denied, even by the stupidest of her enemies, that Mildred
Brereton was a woman of the world, and her mode of procedure, when she
learned from Maud of her first rejection of Anthony's hand, was
perfectly correct from the standpoint of wisdom. She made no fuss or
scene of any kind, and only said:

"Dear Maud, I am very, very sorry. But you know, dear, how I trust you."

Maud pondered this remark, in her silent, uncomfortable way, for a
moment.

"Do you mean you trust me eventually to accept him?" she asked.

Mrs. Brereton wondered in her own mind where Maud _could_ have got her
tactlessness from. Aloud she said:

"I trust you in every way, dear--every way. And it shows your good sense
that you did not definitely refuse him. I do not wish to force you at
all or hurry your decision."

This was all that was said on the subject at the time, but Mildred,
after careful thought, was convinced she had done right. This impeccable
attitude was completed by her looking rather sad whenever her daughter
was observing her, sighing, and constantly calling her "dear child" in
well-modulated tones of chastened and uncomplaining affection. This
policy--if it is possible to use so cold and calculating a word for a
process so tender--had its desired effect, and Maud felt herself touched
with a sense of vague contrition. Eventually, not feeling sure of
herself, she had decided to confide her difficulty to Marie Alston, for
whom she cherished a shy and secret adoration. This interview, however,
had not been productive of a result which harmonized with her mother's
tender processes; indeed, had Mildred known that her gentle dropping of
water on a stone (the tender process) would have led her daughter to ask
advice of Marie, she would have adopted quite different methods. Maud
told her about the interview the same afternoon. She was not called
"dear child," or words to that effect, on this occasion.

Now, there is a sort of anger which, though it is often seen in
combination with irritation and ill-temper, is something very different
from either. It is not a quick-burning emotion; it is in no hurry to
strike and to hurt, but is quite deliberate, very patient, and at the
end, when a favourable opportunity presents itself, strikes hard. It was
this quality of anger that entered into Mildred's mind when Maud told
her of this interview. Had she been simply irritated with Marie or angry
with an anger of the less dangerous and quicker sort, she would probably
have rushed round to Park Lane, used the language of a cook to Marie,
burst into tears, and probably made it up a day or two later. But she
had not the slightest impulse to do any of those things. She was
irritated with Maud, called her a fool, and sent her away. Then she sat
down and thought about Marie.

There occurred to her, of course, at once a very obvious method of
injuring Marie. All London--every one, that is to say, who mattered at
all--except Marie herself, knew that she and Jack had been great friends
for a very long time. What would be the effect on Marie if she let her
know quietly, drop by drop, as one lets absinthe cloud and embitter
water, what had been going on so long, what she had been blind to so
long! Mildred knew her to be a woman of a pride and fastidiousness
quite beyond not only her own reach, but her own comprehension. This she
had never either resented or envied; if people chose to behave in what
she called a Holy Land manner, it was nothing to her, but she was not
jealous of their unattainable Oriental longitudes. It was all very well
to sit on a pedestal, but if you did, you had no idea what games went on
in the jostling world below. Marie's habitual attitude was to put her
nose in the air and draw her skirts away from the crowd; it would really
be very humiliating for her to get to learn by degrees what had been
going on all these years, to upset the pedestal, in fact, and let her
struggle to her feet as best she could, to let her, who always professed
to find scandal and gossip of all sorts so uninteresting, know for the
first time a bit of it which she could scarcely consider dull.

Mildred got up from the sofa where she was lying in her sitting-room,
and, lighting a cigarette, took a turn up and down. At first sight it
seemed an excellent plan, diabolical, which suited her mood, and simple
as all good plans are; but on second thoughts there were objections. In
her present anger she did not value Marie's friendship a straw, while
as for her own reputation, she was well aware that for all practical
purposes she had none. People, she knew, did not talk about Jack and her
any longer, simply because the facts were so stale, "and that," she
thought to herself with grim cynicism, "is what one calls living a thing
down." No, the danger lay elsewhere. Supposing Marie cut up very rough
indeed, supposing in her horror and disgust at Jack she did not hesitate
to punish herself as well, and bring the matter if she could into the
crude and convincing light of the Divorce Court, it would be both
unpleasant for Mildred herself, for she felt that cross-examination was
not likely to be amusing, and it would also spell ruin for Jack's
career, a thing which now, in the present state of her affections, she
cared about perhaps more than Jack. Of course, the matter might be
conveyed to Marie in so gradual and vague a manner that such proceedings
on her part would be without chance of success as far as getting a
divorce was concerned--to possess her mind with suspicions that
gradually became moral certainties was the point--but Mildred knew well
that in the mind of the great middle class to be mentioned in
connection with the Divorce Court is the mischief, not to lose or win
your case there. In any case, if she decided on this she would have to
think it very carefully over; it must be managed so that Marie could not
possibly go to the courts. Besides, ridiculous as Marie would appear
even if she adopted the least aggressive attitude of self-defence, yet
Mildred felt she must not underrate the strength of her position in
society. Perhaps another plan might be found as simple and without these
objections. She wanted, in fact, to think of something which would hurt
Marie as much as possible, and yet give her no chance of retaliation.
Where was Marie vulnerable? Where was she most vulnerable?

For a moment her irritation and exasperation got the upper hand, and she
flung off the sofa with clenched and trembling hands. "How dare she--how
dare she persuade Maud not to marry him!" she said to herself. It
frankly appeared to her the most outrageous thing to have done. Marie
must have known what her own desires for her daughter were--in fact, she
had before now told her of them--yet she had done this. Mildred felt a
qualm of almost physical sickness from the violence of her rage, and
sat down again to recover herself. It soon passed, leaving her again
quiet, patient, and implacable, searching about for a weapon. Suddenly
she got up, and stood quite still a moment.

"Most extraordinary that I should not have thought of that before," she
said aloud. Then she washed her face and bathed her eyes with some
rose-water, examining them a little anxiously as she dried them on her
silk face-napkin. They were as red as if she had been crying--red, she
must suppose, from anger, just as a mongoose's eyes get red when it sees
a cobra. Certainly she had been angry enough to account for the colour.
But on the whole she did not like emotions, except pleasant ones--they
were exhausting; and she lay down again on her sofa for half an hour to
recover herself, and told her maid to bring her a tablespoonful of
brandy with an egg beaten up into it. Then she dressed and went out to a
small private concert, where Saltsi was going to sing two little French
songs, exceedingly hard to understand, but simply screaming when you did
so. For herself, she was certain that she would understand quite
enough.

She had just come down-stairs when a note was brought her, which proved
to be from Marie.

     "Maud has just consulted me," it ran, "about the question of her
     marriage. Although I knew your views, I could not but advise her in
     opposition to them. This looks as if I set her against you--as far
     as that goes, I regret it extremely. But I could not do
     differently; I wanted to, but could not. I tell you this in case
     she does not."

Mildred read it and tore it up, not even troubling to question its
sincerity. Then, being told the carriage was waiting, she went out.

She was to call on her way to the concert for the person usually known
as Silly Billy, who in reality was an ignoble Earl. He was called Silly
Billy partly because his name was William, partly because he was
exceedingly sharp. His Countess was kept in the country, and was
supposed to go to church a great deal. The world was not particularly
interested in her, nor was her husband. Once she had had money, but she
no longer had any.

Silly Billy himself was now getting on for forty, and looked anything
between twenty-five and thirty. Probably he was naturally depraved, for
a career of vice seemed to suit him, and he thrived on it as other
people thrive on the ordinary rules of health. He had charming manners,
a slim attractive appearance, and no morals of any kind whatever. His
passion just now was Bridge, which he played regularly from sunset to
sunrise; the remaining hours of the twenty-four were occupied in
consuming large quantities of food, owing large sums of money, and
talking. He was supposed not to stand in need of sleep, which he
declared was a sheer waste of time. He was often to be seen in other
people's victorias; to-day he was in Lady Brereton's.

"Yes, we'll just stop for Saltsi's two songs," said she, as they drove
from his flat in Berkeley Mansions, "and then I'll set you down where
you like. How has the world been treating you, Silly Billy?"

He considered a moment.

"The world always treats me as I treat it," he said. "Lately I have not
had much to say to it; in fact, I have done nothing, and so I have heard
nothing. Tell me news. Anybody fresh about?"

"Only Jim Spencer, and he's rather a disappointment. As rich as
Croesus, you know?"

"That's always an advantage for him and his friends," remarked Silly
Billy candidly. "I should like to meet him. Does he play Bridge, or bet,
or anything?"

She laughed.

"You are always refreshing," she said, "because you are so very frank.
Does it pay?"

"Well, you must do one of two things," said he. "You must be absolutely
enigmatical or quite transparent. I am quite transparent. I want other
people's money."

"Shall I draw you a small cheque?"

"No, thanks; small cheques would be no good. By the way, I have heard
something about Jim Spencer.... Isn't he a friend of Marie Alston?"

Lady Brereton could not help smiling, and her inward anger licked its
lips.

"Ah! you have heard that too," she said. "But who cares?"

"Any one may do precisely what they please, so far as I am concerned,"
said Silly Billy, "so long as it doesn't personally annoy me. So it's
true, is it?"

"Dear Marie!" obs

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