"When I find it, you shall have it," she said.
"And last night it was the moon you wanted," said he, "not yourself."
Nadine shrugged her shoulders.
"What would you have?" she said. "That was but another point of view. Do not ask me to see things always from the same standpoint. And now, since my mama and Berts have made us all feel old, let us put on our night-caps and put some cold cream on our venerable faces and go to bed. Perhaps to-morrow we shall feel younger."
Seymour Sturgis (who, Berts thought, ought to have been drowned when he was a girl) was employed one morning in July in dusting his jade. He lived in a small flat just off Langham Place, with a large, capable, middle-aged Frenchwoman, who worshiped the ground on which he so delicately trod with the cloth-topped boots which she made so resplendent. She cooked for him in the inimitable manner of her race, she kept his flat speckless and shining, she valeted him, she did everything in fact except dust the jade. Highly as Seymour thought of Antoinette he could not let her do that. He always alluded to her as "my maid," and used to take her with him, as valet, to country-houses. It must, however, be added that he did this largely to annoy, and he largely succeeded.
The room which was adorned by his collection of jade, seemed somehow strangely unlike a man's room. A French writing-table stood in the window with a writing-case and blotting-book stamped with his initials in gilt; by the pen-tray was a smelling-bottle with a gold screw-top to it. Thin lace blinds hung across the windows, and the carpet was of thick fawn-colored fabric with remarkably good Persian rugs laid down over it. On the chimney-piece was a LouisSeize garniture of clock and candlesticks, and a quantity of invitation cards were stuck into the mirror behind. There were half-a-dozen French chairs, a sofa, a baby-grand, a small table or two, and a book-case of volumes all in morocco dress-clothes. On the walls there were a few prints, and in glazed cabinets against the wall was the jade. Nothing, except perhaps the smelling-bottle, suggested a mistress rather than a master, but the whole effect was feminine. Seymour rather liked that: he had very little liking for his own sex. They seemed to him both clumsy and stupid, and his worst enemies (of whom he had plenty) could not accuse him of being either the one or the other. On their side they disliked him because he was not like a man: he disliked them because they were.
But while he detested his own sex, he did not regard the other with the ordinary feeling of a man. He liked their dresses, their perfumes, their hair, their femininity, more than he liked them. He was quite as charming to plain old ladies, even as Dodo had said, as he was to girls, and he was perfectly happy, when staying in the country, to go a motor drive with aunts and grandmothers. He had a perfectly marvelous digestion; ate a huge lunch, sat still in the motor all afternoon, and had quantities of buttered buns for tea. He dressed rather too carefully to be really well-dressed and always wore a tie and socks of the same color, which repeated in a more vivid shade the tone of his clothes. He had a large ruby ring, a sapphire ring and an emerald ring: theywere worn singly and matched his clothes. He spoke French quite perfectly.
All these depressing traits naturally enraged such men as came in contact with him, but though they abhorred him they could not openly laugh at him, for he had a tongue, when he chose, of quite unparalleled acidity, and was markedly capable of using it when required and taking care of himself afterwards. In matters of art, he had a taste that was faultless, and his taste was founded on real knowledge and technique, so that really great singers delighted to perform to his accompaniment, and in matters of jewelry he designed for Cartier. In fact, from the point of view of his own sex, he was detestable rather than ridiculous, while considerable numbers of the other sex did their very best to spoil him, for none could want a more amusing companion, and his good looks were quite undeniable. But somewhere in his nature there was a certain grit which quite refused to be ground into the pulp of a spoiled young man. In his slender frame, too, there were nerves of steel, and, most amazing of all, when not better employed in designing for Cartier, or engaged in bloodless flirtations, he was a first-class golfer. But he preferred to go for a drive in the afternoon, and smoke a succession of rose-scented cigarettes, which could scarcely be considered tobacco at all. He was fond of food, and drank a good many glasses of port rather petulantly, after dinner, as if they were medicine.
This morning he was particularly anxious that hisjade should show to advantage, for Nadine was coming to lunch with him, to ask his advice about something which she thought was old Venetian-point lace. He had taken particular pains also about the lunch: everything was to been casserole; there were eggs in spinach, and quails, and a marvelous casseroled cherry tart. He could not bear that anything about him, whether designed for the inside or the outside, should be other than exquisite, and he would have been just as sedulous a Martha, if that strange barbarian called Berts was coming, only he would have given Berts an immense beefsteak as well.
The bell of his flat tinkled announcing Nadine. He did not like the shrill treble bells, and had got one that made a low bubbling note like the laugh of Sir Charles Wyndham; and Nadine came in.
"Enchanted!" he said. "How is Philistia?"
"Not being the least glad of you," she said. "I wish I could make people detest me, as Berts detests you. It shows force of character. Oh, Seymour, what jade! It is almost shameless! Isn't it shameless jade I mean? Is any one else coming to lunch?"
"Of course not. I don't dilute you with other people; I prefer Nadine neat. Now let's have the crisis at once. Bring out the lace."
Nadine produced a small parcel and unfolded it.
"Pretty," said he.
Then he looked at it more closely, and tossed it aside. "I hoped it was more like Venetian pointthan that," he said. "It's all quite wrong: the thread's wrong: the stitch is wrong: it smells wrong. Don't tell me you've bought it."
"No, I shan't tell you," she said.
He took it up again and pondered.
"You got it at Ducane's," he said. "I remember seeing it. Well, take it back to Ducane, and tell him if he sold it as Venetian, that he must give you back your money. My dear, it is no wonder that these dealers get rich, if they can palm off things like that.C'est fini.—Ah, but that is an exquisite aquamarine you are wearing. Those little diamond points round it throw the light into it. How odd people usually are about jewelry. They think great buns of diamonds are sufficient to make an adornment. You might as well send up an ox's hind-leg on the table. What makes the difference is the manner of its presentation. Who is that lady who employs herself in writing passionate love-novels? She says on page one that he was madly in love with her, on page two that she was madly in love with him, on page three that they were madly in love with each other, and then come some asterisks. (How much more artistic, by the way, if they printed the asterisks and left out the rest! Then we should know what it really was like.) You can appreciate nothing until it is framed or cooked: then you can see the details. The poor lady presents us with chunks of meat and informs us that they are amorous men and women. I will write a novel some day, from the detached standpoint, observing and noting. Then I shall go away, abroad. It is onlybachelors who can write about love. Do you like my tie?"
Seymour had a trick of putting expression into what he said by means of his hands. He waved and dabbed with them: they fondled each other, and then started apart as if they had quarreled. Sometimes one finger pointed, sometimes another, and they were all beautifully manicured. Antoinette did that, and as she scraped and filed and polished, he talked his admirable French to her, and asked after the old home in Normandy, where she learned to make wonderful soup out of carrots and turnips and shin-bones of beef. At the moment she came in to announce the readiness of lunch.
"Oh, is it lunch already?" said Nadine. "Can't we have it after half an hour? I should like to see the jade."
"Oh, quite impossible," said he. "She has taken such pains. It would distress her. For me, I should prefer not to lunch yet, but she is the artist now. They are fragile things, Nadine, eggs in spinach. You must come at once."
"How greedy you are," she said.
"For you that is a foolish thing to say. I am simply thinking of Antoinette's pride. It is as if I blew a soap-bubble, all iridescent, and you said you would come to look at it in ten minutes. You shall tell me news: if you talk you can always eat. What has happened in Philistia?"
Nadine frowned.
"You think of us all as Philistines," she said, "becausewe like simple pleasures, and because we are enthusiastic."
"Ah, you mistake!" he said. "You couple two reasons which have nothing to do with each other. To be enthusiastic is the best possible condition, but you must be enthusiastic over what is worth enthusiasm. Is it so lovely really, that Aunt Dodo has settled to marry the Ripper? Surely that is arechauffée. You wrote me the silliest letter about it. Of course it does not matter at all. Much more important is that you look perfectly exquisite. Antoinette, the spinach issans pareil: give me some more spinach. But it is slightlybourgeoisin Jack the R. to have been faithful for so many years. It shows want of imagination, also I think a want of vitality, only to care for one woman."
"That is one more than you ever cared for," remarked Nadine.
"I know. I said it wasbourgeoisto care for one. There is a difference. It is also like a troubadour. I am not in the least like a troubadour. But I think I shall get married soon. It gives one more liberty: people don't feel curious about one any more. English people are so odd: they think you must lead a double life, and if you don't lead the ordinary double life with a wife, they think you lead it with somebody else and they get curious. I am not in the least curious about other people: they can lead as many lives as a piano has strings for all I care, and thump all the strings together, or play delicate arpeggios on them.Nadine, that hat-pin of yours is simply too divine. I will eat it pin and all if it is not Fabergé."
Nadine laughed.
"I can't imagine you married," she said. "You would make a very odd husband."
"I would make a very odd anything," said he. "I don't find any recognized niche that really fits me, whereas almost everybody has some sort of niche. Indeed in the course of hundreds of years the niches, that is the manners of life, have been evolved to suit the sorts of types which nature produces. They live in rows and respect each other. But why it should be considered respectable to marry and have hosts of horrible children I cannot imagine. But it is, and I bow to the united strength of middle-class opinion. But neither you nor I are really made to live in rows. We are Bedouins by nature, and like to see a different sunrise every day. There shall be another tent for Antoinette."
That admirable lady was just bringing them their coffee, and he spoke to her in French.
"Antoinette, we start for the desert of Sahara to-morrow," he said. "We shall live in tents."
Antoinette's plump face wrinkled itself up into enchanted smiles.
"Bien, m'sieur," she said. "A quelle heure?"
Nadine crunched up her coffee-sugar between her white teeth.
"You are as little fitted to cross the desert of Sahara as any one I ever met," she said.
"I should not cross it: I should—"
"You would be miserable without your jade or your brocade and the sand would get into your hair, and you would have no bath," she said. "But every one who thinks has a Bedouin mind: it always wants me to go on and find new horizons and get nearer to blue mountains."
"The matter with you is that you want and you don't know what you want," said he.
Nadine nodded at him. Sometimes when she was with him she felt as if she was talking to a shrewd middle-aged man, sometimes to a rather affected girl. Then occasionally, and this had been in evidence to-day, she felt as if she was talking to some curious mixture of the two, who had a girl's intuition and a man's judgment. Fond as she was of the friends whom she had so easily gathered round her, gleeful as was the nonsense they talked, serious as was her study of Plato, she felt sometimes that all those sunny hours concerned but the surface of her, that, as she had said before, the individual, the character that sat behind was not really concerned in them. And Seymour, when he made mixture of his two types, had the effect of making her very conscious of the character that sat behind. He had described it just now in a sentence: it wanted it knew not what.
"And I want it so frightfully," she said. "It is a pity I don't know what it is. Because then I should probably get it. One gets what one wants if one wants enough."
"A convenient theory," he said, "and if you don't get it, you account for it by saying you didn't want it enough. I don't think it's true. In any case the converse isn't; one gets a quantity of things which one doesn't want in the least. Whereas you ought not to get, on the same theory, the things you passionately desire not to have."
Nadine finished her sugar and lit a cigarette.
"Oh, don't upset every theory," she said. "I am really rather serious about it."
He regarded her with his head on one side for a moment. "What has happened is that somebody has asked you to do something, and you have refused. You are salving your conscience by saying that he doesn't want it enough, or you would not have refused."
She laughed.
"You are really rather uncanny sometimes," she said.
"Only a guess," he said.
"Guess again then: define," she said.
"The obvious suggestion is that Hugh has proposed to you again."
"You would have been burned as a witch two hundred years ago," said she. "I should have contributed fagots. Oh, Seymour, that was really why I came to see you. I didn't care two straws about the foolish lace. They all tell me I had better marry Hugh, and I wanted to find somebody to agree with me. I hoped perhaps you might. He is such a dear,you know, and I should always have my own way: I could always convince him I was right."
"Most girls would consider that an advantage."
"In that case I am not like most girls; I often wish I was. I wrote an article a month or two ago about Tolstoi, and read it him, and he thought it quite wonderful. Well, it wasn't. It was silly rot: I wrote it, and so of course I know. It came out in a magazine."
"I read it," remarked Seymour in a strictly neutral voice.
"Well, wasn't it very poor stuff?" asked Nadine.
"To be quite accurate," said Seymour, "I only read some of it. I thought it very poor indeed. If was ignorant and affected."
Nadine gave him an approving smile.
"There you are then! And with Hugh it would be the same in everything else. He would always think what I did was quite wonderful. They say love is blind, don't they? So much the worse for love. It seems to me a very poor sort of thing if in order to love anybody you must lose, with regard to her, any power of mind and judgment that you may happen to possess. I don't want to be loved like that. I want people to sing my praises with understanding, and sit on my defects also with discretion. If I was perfectly blind too, I suppose it would be quite ideal to marry him. But I'm not, and I'm not even sure that I wish I was. Again if Hugh was perfectly critical about me, it would be quite ideal. It seems to me you must have the same quality of love on bothsides, or at any rate the same quality of affection. People make charming marriages without any love at all, if they have affection and esteem and respect for each other."
They had gone back to the drawing-room and Seymour was handing pieces of his most precious jade to Nadine, who looked at them absently and then gave them back to him, with the same incuriousness as people give tickets to be punched by the collector. This Seymour bore with equanimity, for Nadine was interesting on her own account, and he did not care whether she looked at his jade or not. But at this moment he screamed loudly, for she put a little round medallion of exquisitely carved yellow jade up to her mouth, as if to bite it.
"Oh, Seymour, I'm so sorry," she said. "I wasn't attending to your jade, which is quite lovely, and subconsciously this piece appeared like a biscuit. Tell me, do you like jade better than anything else? It is part of a larger question, which is: 'Do you like things better than people?' Personally I like people so far more than anything else in the world, but I don't like any particular person nearly as much. I like them in groups I suppose. If I married at all, I should probably be a polyandrist. Certainly if I could marry four or five people at once, I should marry them all. But I don't want to marry any one of them."
Seymour put the priceless biscuit back into its cabinet.
"Who," he asked, "are this quartette of fortunate swains?"
"Well, Hugh of course would be one," said she, "and I think Berts would be another. And if it won't be a shock to you, you would be the third, and Jack the R. would be the fourth. I should then have a variety of interests: this would be the world and the flesh and the devil, and a saint."
"St. Seymour," said he, as if trying how it sounded, like a Liberal peer selecting his title.
"I am afraid you are cast for the devil," said Nadine candidly. "Berts is the world because he thinks he is cynical. And Jack is the flesh—"
"Because he is so thin?"
"Partly. But also because he is so rich."
Seymour turned the key on his jade. This interested him much more. But he had to make further inquiries.
"If every girl wanted four husbands," he said, "there wouldn't be enough men to go round."
"Round what?" asked Nadine, still entirely absorbed in what she was thinking.
"Round the marriageable females. Or does your plan include poly-womany, whatever the word is, for men?"
"But of course. There are such lots of bachelors who would marry if they could have two or three wives, just as there are such lots of girls who would marry if they could have two or three husbands. All those laws about 'one man, one wife' were made by ordinary people for ordinary people. And ordinary people are in the majority. There ought to be a small county set apart for ridiculous people, with a rabbitfence all round it, and any one who could be certified to be ridiculous in his tastes should be allowed to go and live there unmolested. That would be much better than your plan of going to the Sahara with Antoinette. You would have to get five householders to certify you as ridiculous, in order to obtain admission. Then you would do what you chose within the rabbit fence, but when you wanted to be what they call sensible again you would come out, and be bound to behave like anybody else, as long as you were out, under penalty of not being admitted again."
Seymour considered this.
"There's a lot in it," he said, "and there would be a lot of people in the rabbit fence. I should go there to-morrow and never come out at all. But a smaller county would be no use. I should start with Kent, not Rutlandshire, and be prepared to migrate to Yorkshire. I accept the position of one of your husbands."
"That is sweet of you. I think—"
He interrupted.
"I shall have some more wives," he said. "I should like a lunch wife and a dinner wife. I want to see a certain kind of person from about mid-day till tea-time."
"Is that a hint that it is time for me to go?" asked Nadine.
"Nearly. Don't interrupt. But then, if one is not in love with anybody at all, as you are not, and as I am not, you want a perfectly different kind of person in the evening. To be allowed only one wife, hasevolved a very tiresome type of woman; a woman who is like a general servant, and can, so to speak, wait at table, cook a little, and make beds. You look for somebody who, on the whole, suits you. It is like buying a reach-me-down suit, which I have never done. It probably fits pretty well. But if it is to be worn every day until you die, it must fit absolutely. If it doesn't, there are fifty other suits that would do as well."
"Translate," said Nadine.
"Surely there is no need. What I mean is that occasionally two people are ideally fitted. But the fit only occurs intermittently: it is not common. Short of that, as long as people don't blow their noses wrong, or walk badly, or admire Carlo Dolci, or fail to admire Bach, so long, in fact, as they do not have impossible tastes, any phalanx of a thousand men can marry a similar phalanx of a thousand women, and be as happy, the one with the other, as with any other permutation or combination of the thousand. There is a high, big, tremulous, romantic attachment possible, and it occasionally occurs. Short of that, with the limitation about Carlo Dolci and Bach, anybody would be as happy with anybody else, as anybody would be with anybody. We are all on a level, except the highest of all, and the lowest of all. Life, not death, is the leveler!"
"Still life is as bad as still death," said she.
Seymour groaned and waved his hands.
"You deserve a good scolding, Nadine, for saying a foolish thing like that," he said. "You are not withyour Philistines now. There is not Esther here to tell you how marvelous you are, nor Berts to wave his great legs and say you are like the moon coming out of the clouds over the sea. I am not in the least impressed by a little juggling with words such as they think clever. It isn't clever: it is a sort of parrot-talk. You open your mouth and say something that sounds paradoxical and they all hunt about to find some sense in it, and think they do."
Seymour got up and began walking up and down the room with his little short-stepped, waggling walk. "It is the most amazing thing to me," he said, "that you, who have got brains, should be content to score absurd little successes with your dreadful clan, who have the most ordinary intelligences. I love your Philistines, but I cannot bear that they should think they are clever. They are stupid, and though stupid people are excellent in their way, they become trying when they think they are wise. You are not made wise by bathing all day in the silly salt sea, and reading a book—"
"How did you know?" asked Nadine.
"I didn't: it is merely the sort of thing I imagine you do at Meering. Aunt Dodo is different: there is no rot about Aunt Dodo, nor is there about Hugh. But Esther, my poor sister, and the beautiful Berts!"
Nadine took up the cudgels for the clan.
"Ah, you are quite wrong," she said. "You do us no justice at all. We are eager, we are, really: we want to learn, we think it waste of time to spend all day and night at parties and balls. We are critical,and want to know how and why. Seymour, I wish we saw more of you. Whenever I am with you, I feel like a pencil being sharpened. I can make fine marks afterwards."
"Keep them for the clan," he said. "No, I can't stand the clan, nor could they possibly stand me. When Esther squirms and says, 'O Nadine, how wonderful you are,' I want to be sick, and when I wave my hands and talk in a high voice as I frequently do, I can see Berts turning pale with the desire to kill me. Poor Berts! Once I took his arm and he shuddered at my baleful touch. I must remember to do it again. Really, I don't think I can be one of your husbands if Berts is to be another."
"Very well: I'll leave out Berts," said she.
"This is almost equivalent to a proposal," said Seymour in some alarm.
She laughed.
"I won't press it," she said. "And now I must go. Thanks for sharpening me, my dear, though you have done it rather roughly. I am going down to Meering again to-morrow: London is a mere rabble of colonels and colonials. Come down if you feel inclined."
"God forbid!" said Seymour piously.
Nadine had spent some time with him, but long after she had gone something of her seemed to linger in his room. Some subtle aroma of her, too fine to be purely physical, still haunted the room, and the sound of her detached crisp speech echoed in the chambers of his brain. He had never known a girl sovariable in her moods: on one day she would talk nothing but the most arrant nonsense; on another, as to-day, there mingled with it something extraordinarily tender and wistful; on a third day she would be an impetuous scholar; on the fourth she threw herself heart and soul (if she had a heart) into the gay froth of this London life. Indeed "moods" seemed to be too superficial a word to describe her aspects: it was as if three or four different personalities were lodged in that slim body or directed affairs from the cool brain in that small poised head. It would be scarcely necessary to marry other wives, according to their scheme, if Nadine was one of them, for it was impossible to tell even from minute to minute with which of her you were about to converse, or which of her was coming down to dinner. But all these personalities had the same vivid quality, the same exuberance of vitality, and in whatever character she appeared she was like some swiftly acting tonic, that braced you up and, unlike mere alcoholic stimulant, was not followed by a reaction. She often irritated him, but she never resented the expression of his impatience, and above all things she was never dull. And for once Seymour left incomplete the dusting of the precious jade, and tried to imagine what it would be like to have Nadine always here. He did not succeed in imagining it with any great vividness, but it must be remembered that this was the first time he had ever tried to imagine anything of the kind.
Edith had left Meering with Dodo two days beforeand was going to spend a week with her in town since she was rather tired of her own house. But she had seen out of the railway-carriage window on the north coast of Wales, so attractive-looking a golf-links, that she had got out with Berts at the next station, to have a day or two golfing. The obdurate guard had refused to take their labeled luggage out, and it was whirled on to London to be sent back by Dodo on arrival. But Edith declared that it gave her a sense of freedom to have no luggage, and she spent two charming days there, and had arrived in London only this afternoon. She had gone straight to Dodo's house, and had found Jack with her and then learned the news of their engagement which had taken place only the day before. Upon which she sprang up and remorselessly kissed both Dodo and Jack.
"I can't help it if you don't like it," she said; "but that's what I feel like. Of course it ought to have happened more than twenty years ago, and it would have saved you both a great deal of bother. Dodo, I haven't been so pleased since my mass was performed at the Queen's Hall. You must get married at once, and must have some children. It will be like living your life all over again without any of those fatal mistakes, Dodo. Jack—I shall call you Jack now—Jack, you have been more wonderfully faithful than anybody I ever heard of. You have seen all along what Dodo was, without being put off by what she did—"
Dodo screamed with laughter.
"Are these meant to be congratulations?" she said."It is the very oddest way to congratulate a man on his engagement, by telling him that he is so wise to overlook his future wife's past. It is also so pleasant for me."
Edith was still shaking hands with them both, as if to see whether their hands were fixtures or would come off if violently agitated.
"You know what I mean," she said. "It is useless my pretending to approve of most things you have done: it is useless for Jack also. But he marries the essential you, not a parcel of actions."
Jack kept saying "Thanks awfully" at intervals, like a minute gun, and trying to get his hand away. Eventually Edith released it.
"I am delighted with you both," she said. "And to think that only a fortnight ago I was still not on speaking terms with you, Dodo. And Jack wasn't either. I love having rows with people if I know things are going to come straight afterwards, because then you love them more than ever. And I knew that some time I should have to make it up with you, Dodo, though if I was Jack I don't think I could have forgiven—well, you don't wish me to go on about that. Anyhow, you are ducks, and I shall leave the young couple alone, and have a wash and brush-up. I have been playing golf quite superbly."
Edith banged the door behind her, and they heard her shrilly whistling as she went off down the passages.
Then Dodo turned to Jack.
"Jack, dear, I thought I should burst when Edithkissed you," she said. "You half shut your eyes and screwed up your face like a dog that is just going to be whipped. But I love Edith. Now come and sit here and talk. I have hardly seen you, since—well, since we settled that we should see a good deal more of each other in the future. I want you to tell me, oh, such lots of things. How often a month on the average have you thought about me during all these years? Jack, dear, I want to be wanted, so much."
"You have always been wanted by me," he said. "It is more a question of how many minutes in the month I haven't thought about you. They are easily counted."
He sat down on the sofa by her, as her hand indicated.
"Dodo," he said, "I don't make demands of you, except that you should be yourself. But I do want that. We are all made differently: if we were not the world would be a very stupidly simple affair. And you must know that in one respect anyhow I am appallingly simple. I have never cared for any woman except you. That is the fact. Let us have it out between us just once. I have never worn my heart on my sleeve, for any woman to pluck at, and carry away a mouthful of. There are no bits missing, I assure you. It is all there, and it is all yours. It is in no way the worse for wear, because it has had no wear. I feel as if—"
Jack paused a moment: he knew the meaning of his thought, but found it not so easy to make expression of it.
"I feel as if I had been sitting all my life at a window in my heart," he said, "looking out, and waiting for you to come by. But you had to come by alone. You came by once with my cousin. You came by a second time with Waldenech. You were bored the first time, you were frightened the second time. But you were not alone. I believe you are alone now: I believe you look up to my window. Ah, how stupid all language is! As if you looked up to it!"
Dodo was really moved, and when she spoke her voice was unsteady.
"I do look up to it, Jack," she said. "Oh, my dear, how the world would laugh at the idea of a woman already twice married, having romance still in front of her. But there is romance, Jack. You see—you see you have run through my life just as a string runs through a necklace of pearls or beads: beads perhaps is better—yet I don't know. Chesterford gave me pearls, all the pearls. A necklace of pearls before swine shall we say? I was swine, if you understand. But you always ran through it all, which sounds as if I meant you were a spendthrift, but you know what I do mean. Really I wonder if anybody ever made a worse mess of her life than I have done, and found it so beautifully cleaned up in the middle. But there you were—I ought to have married you originally: I ought to have married you unoriginally. But I never trusted my heart. You might easily tell me that I hadn't got one, but I had. I daresay it was a very little one, so little that I thought it didn't matter. I suppose I was like the man who swore something orother on the crucifix, and when he broke his oath, he said the crucifix was such a small one."
She paused again.
"Jack, are you sure?" she asked. "I want you to have the best life that you can have. Are you sure you give yourself the best chance with me? My dear, there will be no syllable of reproach, on my lips or in my mind, if you reconsider. You ought to marry a younger woman than me. You will be still a man at sixty, I shall be just a thing at fifty-eight."
Dodo took a long breath and stood up.
"Marry Nadine," she said. "She is so like what I was: you said it yourself. And she hasn't been battered like me. I think she would marry you. I know how fond she is of you, anyhow, and the rest will follow. I can't bear to think of you pushing my Bath chair. God knows, I have spoiled many of your years. But, God knows, I don't want to spoil more of them. She will give you all that I could have given you twenty years ago. Ah, my dear, the years. How cruel they are! How they take away from us all that we want most! You love children, for instance, Jack. Perhaps I shall not be able to give you children. Nadine is twenty-one. That is a long time ago. You should consider. I said 'yes' to you yesterday, but perhaps I had not thought about it sufficiently. I have thought since. Before you came down to Meering I was awake so long one night, wondering why you came. I was quite prepared that it should be Nadine you wanted. And, oh, how gladly I would give Nadine to you, instead of giving myself: I should see: I shouldunderstand. At first I thought that I should not like it, that I should be jealous, to put it quite frankly, of Nadine. But somehow now that I know that your first desire was for me, I am jealous no longer. Take Nadine, Jack! I want you to take Nadine. It will be better. We know each other well enough to trust each other, and now that I tell you that there will be nothing but rejoicing left in my heart, if you want Nadine, you must believe that I tell you the entire truth. I know very well about Nadine. She will not marry Hugh. She wants somebody who has a bigger mind. She wants also to put Hugh out of the question. She does not mean to marry him, and she would like it to be made impossible. Woo Nadine, dear Jack, and win her. She will give you all I could once have given you, all that I ought to have given you."
At that moment Dodo was making the great renunciation of her life. She had been completely stirred out of herself and she pleaded against her own cause. She was quite sincere and she wanted Jack's happiness more than her own. She believed even while she renounced all claim on him, that her best chance of happiness was with him, for it had taken her no time at all to make up her mind when he proposed to her yesterday. And she had not exaggerated when just now she told him that he ran through her life like a string that keeps the beads of time in place. She had never felt for another man what she had felt for him, and her declaration of his freedom was a real renunciation, made impulsively but most generously and completely.She really meant it, and she did not pause to consider that the offer was one of which no man could conceivably take advantage. And Jack felt and knew her sincerity.
"You are absolutely free, my dear," she said. "Absolutely! And I will come to your wedding, and dance at it if you like, for joy that you are happy."
He got up too.
"There will be no wedding unless you come to it," he said. "Dance at it, Dodo, but marry me. Nobody else will do."
Dodo looked him full in the face.
"Edith was quite right to remind you of—of what I have done," she said.
"And I am quite right to forget it," said he.
She shook her head, smiling a little tremulously.
"Oh, Jack," she said in a sigh.
He took her close to him.
"My beloved," he said, and kissed her.
Dodo's wedding, which took place at the end of July in Westminster Abbey, was a very remarkable and characteristic affair. In the first place she arrived so late that people began to wonder whether she was going to throw Jack over again, this time at the very last moment. Jack himself did not share these misgivings and stood at the west door rather hot and shy but quite serene, waiting till his bride should come. Eventually Nadine who was to have come with her mother appeared in a taxi going miles above the legal limit, with the information that Dodo was in floods of tears because she had been so horrible to Jack before, and wanted to be so nice now. She said she would stop crying as soon as she possibly could, but would Nadine ask Jack to be a dear and put off the wedding till to-morrow, since her tears had made her a perfect fright. On which the bridegroom took a card and wrote on it: "I won't put off the wedding, and if you don't come at once, I shall go away. Do be quick: there are millions and millions of people all staring."
"Oh, Jack, what a brute you are," said Nadine, as she read it, "I don't think I can take it."
"You can and will," said he. "You will also take Dodo by the hand and bring her here. Bring her, doyou understand? Tell her that in twenty minutes from now I shall go."
Somehow Dodo's marriage had seized the popular imagination, and the Abbey was crammed, so also for half a mile were the pavements. The traffic by the Abbey had been diverted, and all round the windows were clustered with sight-seers. The choir was reserved for the more intimate friends, and Bishop Algie who was to perform the ceremony was endorsed by a flock of eminent clergy. The news that Dodo was in tears, but that Nadine had been sent by the bridegroom to fetch her, traveled swiftly up the Abbey, and a perfect babel of conversation broke out, almost drowning the rather Debussy-like wedding march which Edith had composed for the occasion. She had also written an anthem, "Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine," a highly original hymn-tune, and two chants for the psalms written for full orchestra with percussion and an eight-part choir. She had wanted to conduct the whole herself, and expressed her perfect willingness to wear a surplice and her music-doctor's hood, and keep on her cap or not, exactly as the dean preferred. But the dean preferred that she should take no part whatever, beyond contributing the whole of the music, which annoyed her very much, and several incisive letters passed between them in which the topics of conventionalism, Pharisees and cant were freely introduced. Edith had to give way, but consoled herself by arranging that the whole of the "Marriage Suite" should be shortly after performed at the Queen's Hall, where no dean or other unenlightenedperson could prevent her conducting in any costume she chose. But temporarily she had been extremely upset by this ridiculous bigotry.
Dodo arrived before the twenty minutes were over, and she came up the choir on Jack's arm, looking quite superb and singing Edith's hymn tune very loud and occasionally incorrectly. She had just come opposite Edith, who had, in default of conducting, secured a singularly prominent position, when she sang a long bell-like B flat, and Edith had said "B natural, Dodo," in a curdling, sibilant whisper. There were of course no bridesmaids, but Dodo's train was carried by pages, both of whom she kissed when they arrived at the end of their long march up the choir. Mrs. Vivian, who on Dodo's engagement had finally capitulated, was next to Edith, and Dodo said "Vivy, dear!" into her ear-trumpet, as she passed up the aisle. Miss Grantham alone among the older friends was absent: she had said from the beginning that it was dreadfully common of Dodo to marry Jack, as it was a "lived-happily-ever-afterwards" kind of ending to Dodo's unique experiences. She knew that they would both become stout and serene and commonplace, instead of being wild and unhappy and interesting, and to mark her disapproval, made an appointment with her dentist at the hour at which the voice would be breathing over Eden in the exceedingly up-to-date music which Edith had composed. But so far from her dentist finding change and decay, he dismissed her five minutes after she had sat down, and seized by a sudden ungovernable fit of curiosity she drove straight off to the Abbey tofind that Dodo had not arrived, and it seemed possible that there was a thrill coming, and everything might not end happily. But when it became known that Dodo was only late for sentimental reasons, she left again in disgust, and ran into Dodo at the west door, and said, "I am disappointed, Dodo."
Dodo sang Edith's psalm with equal fervor, but thought it would be egoistic to join in the anthem, since it was about herself. But she whispered to Jack, "Jack, dear, it's much the most delicious marriage I ever had. Hush, you must be grave because dear Algie is going to address us. I hope he will give us a nice long sermon."
The register was signed by almost everybody in the world, and there were so many royalties that it looked at first as if everybody was going to leave out their surnames. But the time of ambassadors and peers came at last, and then it looked as if the fashion was to discard Christian names. "In fact," said Dodo, "I suppose if you were much more royal than anybody else, you would lose your Christian name as well, your Royal Highness, and simply answer to Hie! or to any loud cry—Oh, are we all ready again? We've got to go first, Jack. Darling, I hope you won't shy at the cinematographs. I hear the porch is full of them, like Gatling guns, and to-night you and I will be in all the music-halls of London. Where are my ducks of pages? That's right: one on each side. Now give me your arm, Jack. Here we go! Listen at Edith's wedding march! I wonder if it's safe to play as loudas that in anything so old as the Abbey. I should really be rather afraid of its falling down if Algie hadn't told me not to be afraid with any amazement."
It took the procession a considerable time to get down the choir, since Dodo had to kiss her bouquet (not having a hand to spare) to such an extraordinary number of people. But in course of time they got out, faced the battery of cameras and cinematograph machines, and got into their car. Jack effaced himself in a corner, but Dodo bowed and smiled with wonderful assiduity to the crowds.
"They have come to see us," she explained. "So it is essential that we should look pleased to see them. I should so like to be the Queen, say on Saturdays only, like the train you always want to go by on other days in the week. Darling, can't you smile at them? Or put out your tongue, and make a face. They would enjoy it hugely."
Eventually, as they got further away from the Abbey, it became clear to Dodo that the people in the street were concerned with their own businesses, and not hers, and she leaned back in the carriage.
"Oh, Jack," she said, "it is you and I at last. But I can't help talking nonsense, dear. I only do it because I'm so happy. I am indeed. And you?"
"It is morning with me," he said.
They left town that afternoon, though Dodo rather regretted that they would not see themselves in the cinematograph to make sure that she had smiled and that Jack's hair was tidy, and went down to Winston, Jack's country place, where so many years ago Dodohad arrived before as the bride of his cousin. He had wondered whether, for her sake, another place would not be more suitable as a honeymoon resort, but she thought the plan quite ideal.
"It will be like the renewal of one's youth," she said, "and I am going to be so happy there now. Jack, we were neither of us happy when you used to come to stay there before, and to go back like this will wipe out all that is painful in those old memories, and keep all that isn't. Is it much changed? I should so like my old sitting-room again if you haven't made it something else."
"It is exactly as you left it," said he. "I couldn't alter anything."
Dodo slipped her hand into his.
"Did you try to, Jack?" she asked.
"Yes. I meant to alter it entirely: I meant to put away all that could remind me of you. In fact, I went down there on purpose to do it. But when I saw it, I couldn't. I sat down there, and—"
"Cried?" said Dodo softly, sympathetically.
"No, I didn't cry. I smoked a cigarette and looked round in a stupid manner. Then I took out of its frame a big photograph of myself that I had given you, in order to tear it up. But I put it back in its frame again, and put the frame exactly where it was before."
Dodo gave a little moan.
"Oh, Jack, how you must have hated me!" she said.
"I hated what you had done: I hated that you could do it. But the other, never. And, Dodo, let us nevertalk about all those things again, don't let us even think of them. It is finished, and what is real is just beginning."
"It was real all along," she said, "and I knew it was real all along—you and me, that is to say—but I chose to tell myself that it wasn't. I have been like the people who when they hear the scream of somebody being murdered say it is only the cat. I have been a little brute all my life, and in all probability it is past half-time for me already; in fact it certainly is unless I am going to live to be ninety. I'm not sure that I want to, and yet I don't want to die one bit."
"I should be very much annoyed if you ventured to do anything of the sort," remarked Jack.
"Yes, and that is so wonderful of you. You ought to have wished me dead a hundred times. What's the phrase? 'Yes, she would be better dead.' Just now I want to be better without being dead. I often think we all have a sort of half-time in our lives, like people in foot-ball matches, when they stop playing and eat lemons. The lemons, you understand, are rather sour reflections that we are no better than we might be, but a great deal worse. And somehow that gives one a sort of a fresh start, and we begin playing again."
They arrived at Winston late in the afternoon; the village had turned out to greet them, flags and arches made rainbow of the gray street with its thatched houses and air of protected stability, and from the church-tower the bells pealed welcome. Dodo, alwaysimpressionable and impulsive, was tremendously moved, and with eyes brimming over, leaned out of one side of the carriage and then the other to acknowledge these salutations.
"Oh, Jack, isn't it dear of them?" she said. "Of course I know it's all for you really, but you've endowed me with everything, and so this is mine too. Look at that little duck whom that nice-faced woman is holding up, waving a flag! Hark to the bells! Do you remember the poem by Browning, 'The air broke into a mist with bells'? This is a positive London fog of bells; can't you taste it? Is it the foghorns, in that case, that make the fogs? And here we are at the lodge and there's the lake, and the house! Ah, what a gracious thing a summer evening is. But how fragile, Jack, and how soon over."
That wistful, underlying tenderness in her nature, almost melancholy but wholly womanly, rose for the moment to the surface. It was not the less sincere because it was seldom in evidence. It was as truly part of her (and a growing part of her) as her brilliant enjoyment andinsouciance. And the expression of it gleamed darkly in her soft brown eyes, as she leaned back in the carriage and took his hand.
"I will try to make you happy," she said.
He bent over her.
"Don't try to do anything, Dodo," he said. "Just—just be."
For a moment a queer little qualm came over her. Had she followed her immediate impulse, she would have said, "I don't know how to love like that. Ihave to try: I want to learn." But that would have done no good, and in her most introspective moments Dodo was always practical. The qualm lasted but a moment, as the door was opened, when they drew up. But it lasted long enough to cause her to wonder whether it would be the past that would be entered again instead of the future, entered, too, not by another door, but by the same.
On the doorstep she paused.
"Lift me over the threshold, Jack," she said; "it is such bad luck for a bride to stumble when she enters her home."
"My dear, what nonsense."
"Very likely, but let's be nonsensical. Let us propitiate all the gods and demons. Lift me, Jack."
He yielded to her whim.
"That is dear of you," she said. "That was a perfect entry. Aren't I silly? But no Austrian would ever dream of letting his wife walk over the threshold for the first time. And—and that's all about Austria," she added rather hastily.
Dodo looked swiftly round the old, remembered hall. Opposite was the big open fireplace round which they so often had sat, preferring its wide-flaring homely comfort to the more formal drawing-rooms. To-day, no fire burned there, for it was midsummer weather; but as in old times a big yellow collie sprawled in front of it, grandson perhaps, so short are the generations of dogs, to the yellow collies of the time when she was here last. He, too, gave good omen, for he rose and stretched and waved a banner ofa tail, and came stately towards them with a thrusting nose of welcome. The same pictures hung on the walls; high up there ran round the palisade of stags' heads and Dodo (with a conscious sense of most creditable memory) recognized the butler as having been her first husband's valet. She also remembered his name.
"Why, Vincent," she said, holding out her hand, "It is nice to see another old face. And you don't look one day older, any more than his lordship does. Tea? Yes, let us have tea at once, Jack. I am so hungry: happiness is frightfully exhausting, and I don't mind how exhausted I am."
Suddenly Dodo caught sight of the portrait of herself which had been painted when this house was for the first time her home.
"Oh, Jack, look at that little brute smiling there!" she said. "I was rather pretty, though, but I don't think I like myself at all. Dear me, I hope I'm not just the same now, with all the prettiness and youth removed. I don't think I am quite, and oh, Jack, there's poor dear old Chesterford. Ah, that hurts me; it gives me a bitter little heart-ache. Would you mind, Jack, if—"
Jack felt horribly annoyed with himself in not having seen to this.
"My dear," he said, "it was awfully thoughtless of me. Of course, it shall go. It was stupid, but, Dodo, I was so happy all this last month, that I have thought of nothing except myself."
Dodo turned away from the picture to him.
"And all the time I thought you were thinking about me!" she said. "Jack, what a deceiver!"
He shook his head.
"No: it is that you don't understand. Youareme.
"Am I? I should be a much nicer fellow if I was. Jack, don't have that picture moved. It only hurt for a moment: it was a ghost that startled me merely because I did not expect it. It is a dear ghost: it is not jealous, it will not spoil things or come between us. It—it wants us to be happy, for he told me, you know, it was the last thing he said—that I was to marry you. It is a long time ago, oh, how long ago, though I say it to my shame. Besides, if you are to pull down or put away all that reminds me of that dreadful young woman"—Dodo put out her tongue and made a face at her own picture—"you will have to pull down the house and drink up the lake and cut down the trees. Ah, how lovely the garden looks! I was never here in the summer before: we only came for the shooting and hunting and the garden invariably consisted of rows of blackened salvias and decaying dahlias. But it is summer now, Jack."
There was no mistaking the figurative sense in which she meant him to understand the word "summer." It had been winter, winter of discontent—so the glance she gave him inevitably implied—when she was here before, and she rejoiced in and admired this excellent glory of summer-time. And yet but a moment before the picture in the hall had "hurt" her, until she remembered that even on his death-bed herfirst husband had bidden her marry the man who had brought her back here to-day. She had neglected to do as she was told for about a quarter of a century, and had married somebody else instead, and yet this amazing variety of topics that concerned her heart, any one of which, you would have expected, was of sufficient import to fill her mind to the exclusion of all else, but bowled across it, as the shadows of clouds bowl across the fields on a day of spring winds, leaving the untarnished sunshine after their passage. It was not because she was heartless that she touched on this series of somewhat tremendous topics: it was rather that her vitality instantly reasserted itself: it was undeterred, impervious to discouraging or disturbing reflections.
Dodo ate what may be termed a good tea, and smoked several cigarettes. Then noticing that a small golf links had been laid out in the fields below the garden, she rushed indoors to change her dress, and play a game with her husband.
"It won't be much fun for you, darling," she said, "because my golf is a species of landscape gardening, and I dig immense hollows with my club and alter the lie of the country generally. Also I sometimes cheat, if nobody is looking, so admire the beauties of nature if you hear me say that I have a bad lie, because if you looked you would see me pushing the ball into a pleasanter place, and that would give you a low opinion of me. But a little exercise would be so good for us both after being married: the Abbey was terribly stuffy."
The fifth hole brought them near the memorial chapel in the Park, where her first husband was buried.
"Darling, that puts you five up," she said, "and would you mind waiting here a minute, while I go in alone? I don't want even you with me: I want to go alone and kneel for a minute by his grave, and say my prayers, and tell him I have come back again with you. Will you wait for a minute, Jack? I shan't be long."
Dodo wasn't long: she said her prayers with remarkable celerity, and came out again wiping her eyes.
"Oh, Jack," she said, "what a beautiful monument: it wasn't finished, you know, when I went away and I hadn't seen it. And it's so touching to have just those three words, 'Lead, kindly Light': the dear old boy was so fond of that hymn. It's all so lovely and peaceful, and if ever there was a saint in the nineteenth century, it was he. Somehow I felt as if he knew about us and approved, and I remember we had 'Lead, kindly Light' on the very last Sunday evening of all. I am so glad I went in."
Dodo gave a little sigh.
"Where are we?" she said. "Am I one hole up or two? Two, isn't it? Do let it be two. And what a lovely piece of marble. It looks like the most wonderful cold cream turned to stone. It must be Carrara. Oh, Jack, what a beautiful drive! It went much faster than the legal limit."
The flames of the summer-sunset were beginning to fade in the sky when they got back to the house, and it was near dinner-time. Dodo's spirits and appetitewere both of the most excellent order, and all the memories that this house brought back to her, so far from causing any aching resuscitation of past years, were, owing to the incomparable alchemy of her mind, but transformed into a soft and suitable background for the present. Afterwards, they sat on the terrace in the warm dusk.
"I must telegraph to Nadine to-morrow," she said, "and tell her how happy I am. Jack, sometimes Nadine seems to me exactly what I should expect a very attractive aunt to be. Do you know what I mean? I feel she could have warned me of all the mistakes I have made in my life, before they happened, if she had been born. And she approves of you and me; isn't it lucky? I wonder why I feel so young on the very day on which I should most naturally be thinking what a lot of life has passed. Jack, I don't want any more events. Some people reckon life by events, and that is so unreasonable. Events are thrust upon you; what counts is what you feel."
He moved his chair a little nearer to hers.
"I am satisfied with what I feel," he said. "And though I have felt it for very many years, it has never lost its freshness. I have always wanted, and now I have got."
Suddenly Dodo's mood changed.
"Oh, you take a great risk," she said. "Who is to assure you that I shan't disappoint you, disappoint you horribly? I can't assure you of that, Jack. It is easy to understand other people, but the sillyproverb that tells you to know yourself, makes a far more difficult demand. If I disappoint you, what are we to do?"
"You can't disappoint me if you are yourself," he said.
"You say that! To me, too, who have outraged every sort of decency with regard to you?"
He was silent a moment.
"Yes, I say that to you," he said.
Dodo gave a little bubbling laugh.
"You are not very polite," she said. "I say that I have outraged every sort of decency and you don't even contradict me."
"No. What you say is—is perfectly true. But the comment of you and me sitting here on our bridal night is sufficient, is it not? Dodo, there is no use in your calling yourself names. Leave it all alone: we are here, you and I. And it is getting late, my darling."
The same night Lady Ayr was giving one of her awful dinner-parties. Her family, John, Esther and Seymour were always bidden to them, and went in to dinner in exactly their proper places as sons and daughters of a marquis. Before now it had happened that Seymour had to take Esther in to dinner, and it was so to-night. But in the general way they saw so little of each other, that they did not very much object. They usually quarreled before long, but made their differences up again by their unanimity of opinion about their mother. That had already happened this evening.
"Mother is bursting with curiosity about Aunt Dodo's wedding," said Esther. "She wasn't asked. I told her it was a very pretty wedding."
"I went," said Seymour, "and I am going to write an account of it forThe Lady. If you will tell me how you were dressed, I will put it in, that is supposing you were decently dressed. Mother asked me about it, too, and I think I said the bridesmaids looked lovely."
"But there weren't any," said Esther.
"Of course there weren't, but it enraged her. By the way, there is some awful stained glass put up in the staircase since I was here last. A ruby crown has apparently had twins, one of which is a sapphire crown and the other a diamond crown. I shouldn't mind that sort of thing happening, if it wasn't so badly done. I shall try to break it by accident after dinner. Did you design it? My dear, I forgot: we had finished quarreling. Let us talk about something else. Nadine came to see me the other day, and if you will not tell anybody, I think it quite likely that I shall marry her. She likes jade. And she looks quite pretty to-night, doesn't she?"
Esther had already alluded to Nadine, who was sitting opposite, as the dream of dreams, and further appreciation was unnecessary.
"You don't happen to have asked her yet?" she said, with marked neutrality.
"No, one doesn't ask that sort of thing until one knows the answer," said he. "That is, unless you are one of the ridiculous people who ask for information.I hate the information I get by asking, unless I know it already."
"And then you don't get it."
"No. Esther, that is a charming emerald you are wearing but it is atrociously set. If you will send it round to-morrow, I will draw a decent setting for it. Do look at Mother. She has got the family lace on, which is made of string. I think it is Saxon. Oh, of course the coronets are about her. How foolish of me not to have guessed."
"It is more foolish of you to think that Nadine would look at you," said Esther.
"I didn't ask her to look at me, and I shan't ask her to look at me. I shall recommend her not to look at me. But I shall marry her or Antoinette. I don't see why you are so stuffy about it. Or perhaps you would prefer Antoinette for a sister-in-law."
"If she is to be your wife, dear, I think I should," said Esther.
Seymour laid his hand on hers. His smelt vaguely of wall-flowers.
"How disagreeable you are," he said. "I don't think I shall say anything about your dress inThe Lady. I shall simply say that Lady Esther Sturgis was there looking very plain and tired. I shall describe my own dress instead. I had an emerald pin, properly set, instead of its being set like that sort of cheese cake you are wearing. No, it's not exactly a cheese cake: it is as if you had spilt somecrème-de-mentheand put a little palisade of broken glass round it to prevent it spreading. What a disgusting dinnerwe are having, aren't we? I never know what to do before I dine with Mama, whether to eat so much lunch that I don't want any dinner, or to eat none at all so that I can manage to swallow this sort of garbage. To-night I am rather hungry: won't you come away early with me and have some supper at home? Perhaps Nadine will come too."
"If Nadine will come, I will," said Esther. "I suppose we can chaperone each other."
"Certainly, if it amuses you. Shall we ask anybody else? I see hardly anybody here whom I know by sight. I think they must all be earls and countesses. It's funny how few of one's own class are worth speaking to. Look at Mama! I know I keep telling you to look at Mama, but she is so remarkable. She said 'sir' just now to the man next her. He must be a Saxon king. I wish she was responsible for the wine instead of father: teetotalers usually give one excellent wine, because they don't imagine they know anything about it, and tell the wine merchants just to send round some champagne and hock. So of course they send the most expensive."
"I think we ought to talk to our neighbors," said Esther. "Mama is making faces."
"That is because she has eaten some of thisentrée, I expect. I make no face because I haven't. But I can't talk to my neighbor. I tried, but she is unspeakable-to. I wish my nose would bleed, because then I should go away."
One of the frequent pauses that occurred at LadyAyr's dinners was taking place at the moment, and Seymour's rather shrill voice was widely audible. A buzz of vacant conversation succeeded, and he continued.
"That was heard," he said, "and really I didn't mean it to be heard. I am sorry. I shall make myself agreeable. But tell Nadine we shall go away soon after dinner. If you will be ready, I shall not go up into the drawing-room at all."
Seymour turned brightly to the woman seated on his right.
"Have you been to 'The Follies'?" he asked. "I hope you haven't, because then we can't talk about them, since I haven't either. There are enough follies going about, without going to them."
"How amusin' you are," said his neighbor.
Seymour felt exasperated.
"I know I am," he said. "Do be amusing too; then we shall be delighted with each other."
"But I don't know who you are," said his neighbor.
"Well, that is the case with me," said he. "But my mother—"
His neighbor's face instantly changed from a chilly neutrality to a welcoming warmth.
"Oh, are you Lord Seymour?" she asked.
"I should find it very uncomfortable to be anybody else," said he. "I should not know what to do."
"Thendotell me, because of course you know all about these things: Are we all going to wear slabsof jade next year? And did you see me at Princess Waldenech's wedding this morning? And who manicures you? I hear you have got a marvelous person." Seymour really wished to atone for the unfortunate remark that had broken the silence and exerted himself.
"But of course," he said. "It is Antoinette. She cooks for me and calls me: she dusts my rooms, and brushes my boots. She stirs the soup with one hand and manicures me with the other. Fancy not knowing Antoinette! She is fifty-two: by the time you are fifty-two you ought to be known anywhere. If she marries I shall die: if I marry, she will still live I hope. Now do tell me: do you recommend me to marry?"
"Doesn't it depend upon whom you marry?"
"Not much, do you think? But perhaps you are married, and so know. Are you married? And would you mind telling me who you are, as I have told you?"
"You never told me: I guessed. Guess who I am."
Seymour looked at her attentively. She was a woman of about fifty, with a shrewd face, like a handsome monkey, and his millinerish eyes saw that she was dressed without the slightest regard to expense.
"I haven't the slightest idea," he said. "But please don't tell me, if you have any private reason for not wishing it to be known. I can readily understand you would not like people to be able to say thatyou were seen dining with Mama. Of course you are not English."
"Why do you think that?"
"Because you talk it so well. English people always talk it abominably. But—"
He looked at her again, and a vague resemblance both in speech and in the shape of her head struck him.
"I will guess," he said, "you are a relation of Nadine's."