XIV
TO bring together certain of the dramatic critics (such high arbiters of the stage as Sylvester Fry of theDispatch, Lupin Petrol ofNow, Amethyst Valer ofFashion, Berinthia ofWoodfalls(the terrible, the embittered Berinthia who was also Angela)), cards had been sent out from Foreign-Colony Street, in the comprehensive name of Sir Oliver Dawtry, the famous banker and financier, to meet the new lessee of the Source.
It was one of those sultry summer nights of electricity and tension, when nerves at almost nothing are apt to explode. Beyond the iron Calvary on the Ursulines’ great wall, London flared with lights.
Perched upon a parapet in brilliant solitude, her identity unsuspected by the throng, Miss Sinquier, swathed in black mousseline and nursing a sheaf of calla lilies, surveyed the scene with inexpressive eyes.
“And there was the wind bellowing and wewitches wailing: and no Macbeth!” a young man with a voice like cheap scent was saying to a sympathetic journalist for whatever it might be worth....
Miss Sinquier craned her head.
Where were the two “Washingtons”? or the little Iris girl?
By the Buddha shrine, festively decked with lamps, couples were pirouetting to a nigger band, while in the vicinity of the buffet, a masked adept was holding a clairaudience of a nature only to be guessed at from afar. An agile negro melody, wild rag-time with passages of almost Wesleyan hymnishness—reminiscent of Georgia gospel-missions; the eighteenth century in the Dutch East Indies—charmed and soothed the ear.
Miss Sinquier jigged her foot.
At their cell windows, as if riveted by the lights and commotion, leaned a few pale nuns.
Poor things.
The call of the world could seldom wholly be quenched!
She started as a fan of seabirds’ feathers skimmed her arm.
“Sylvester’s come,” Mrs. Sixsmith in passing said.
“Oh!”
“Aren’t you scared?”
“Scared?”
“You know, he always belittles people. Sylvester traduces everyone; he even crabs his daughter; he damns all he sees.”
“Boom!”
“How he got up those narrow stairs is a mystery to me,” Mrs. Sixsmith smiled.
Miss Sinquier raised her face towards the bustling stars. An elfish horse-shoe moon, felicitously bright, struck her as auspicious.
“One should bow to it,” she said.
“Idolatry!”
“There! look what nodding does.”
A blanche bacchante with a top-knot of leaves venturesomely approached.
“I’m Amethyst,” she murmured.
“Indeed?”
“OfFashion.You are Miss Sinquier, I take it, whose costumes for Romeo—Renaissance, and ergoà la mode!—I so long to hear about.”
Miss Sinquier dimpled.
“The frocks,” she said, “some of them, will be simply killing.”
“I want your first.”
“Loose white.”
“I suppose,coiffé de sphinx avec un tortis de perles?”
Miss Sinquier shook her head.
“No ‘Juliet-cap’ of spurious pearls for me,” she said.
“You dare to abolish it?”
“I do.”
“You excite me.”
“Unless the bloom is off the peach, Juliet needs no nets.”
Miss Valer lowered discreetly her voice.
“And your Romeo?” she queried. “He must make love angelically?”
“He does.”
“I admire enormously his friend.”
“Mr. Nice?”
“He has such perfect sloth. I love his lazaroni-ness, his Riva-Schiavoni-ness.... He’s very, very handsome. But, of course, it cannot last!”
“No?”
“Like an open rose: Have you no sympathy yourself?”
“None.”
“That’s a pity. An actress ... she needs a lover: a sort of husbandina, as itwere ...; I always say Passion tells:L’amour!”
Miss Sinquier threw a glance towards Mrs. Sixsmith, who stood listlessly flirting her fan.
“I’m going to the buffet, child,” she said.
“Then I think I’ll join you.”
And drawing her friend’s arm within her own, Miss Sinquier moved away.
“She must belong to more than one weekly!” she reflected.
“You didn’t mention your Old Mechlin scarf, or your fox-trimmed nightie,” Mrs. Sixsmith murmured, dexterously evading the psychic freedoms of the masked adept.
“Have you no shame,Paul?” she asked.
“Paul!”
Miss Sinquier wondered.
“Mephisto! I know his parlour tricks ... though it would only be just, perhaps, to say he did foresee our separation some time before it occurred.”
“Oh, how extraordinary.”
“Once as I was making ready to pay some calls, in order to frighten me, he caused the hare’s foot on my toilet-table to leave its carton sheath and go skipping about the room.”
“Whatever did you do?”
“My dear, I was disgusted. It really seemed as if the whole of Womanhood was outraged. So, topunishhim—for revenge—instead of going to a number of houses that day, I went to only one.”
“There wouldn’t be time?”
“I shall always blame myself....”
“Why?”
But a lanthorn falling in flames just then above them put an end to the conversation.
“That’s the second I’ve seen drop,” Miss May Mant exclaimed, darting up.
“What have you been up to?”
“Having my bumps examined.”
“What!”
“By the masked professor.... Oh, the things he said; only fancy, he told me I’d cause the death of one both near and dear; Ita’s near ...; but she certainly isn’t dear—odious cat.”
“He must have thought you curiously credulous,” Miss Sinquier murmured, turning her head aside.
To her annoyance she perceived the scholarly representative of theDispatch—a man of prodigious size—leaning solidly on a gold-headedcane while appraising her to Sir Oliver Dawtry, from her bebandeaued head to her jewelly shoes.
“She reminds me just a little of someonede l’Évangile,” she could hear the great critic say.
“Sylvester!”
“Oh?”
“Should he speak,” Mrs. Sixsmith murmured, wincing at the summer lightning that flickered every now and then, “don’t forget the mediæval nightie or the Mechlin lace! Five long yards—a cloud....”
Miss Sinquier buried her lips in her flowers.
Through the barred windows of the convent opposite, certain novices appeared to be enjoying a small saltation among themselves.
Up and down the corridor to the yearning melody of the minstrel players they twirled, clinging to one another in an ecstasy of delight.
Her fine eyes looked beautiful as, raising them fraught with soul, they met the veteran critic’s own.