II
TWO TELEGRAMS
Sir Bryan sat in his study at Mount Street one dark Saturday afternoon late in December, sucking happily upon a calcined briar, but with a watchful eye on the clock, for it was nearly time he began to dress. He was by now a man of thirty-seven or thirty-eight, with a beautiful but rather battered face, strikingly like certain portraits of Marshal Blucher. He had heavy shoulders, straight legs, and lean flanks. His enemies and men who boxed with him said his arms were disproportionate even to his height. His hair was fair and longer than most men wear it to-day: it was thinning over his forehead, and his wavy moustache was streaked with gray. There are people, like buildings, who, for all their size and show, we suspect of being hurriedly and cheaply put together. The paucity or poverty of material shows somewhere: in a mouth that doesn't quite shut, in ears that protrude—hair badly planted on the scalp. No better description of Lumsden could be ventured than that he seemed to have been built slowly and with a good deal of thought. He was expensive in grain, like the pipe he was smoking or the tie he was wearing.
He had been golfing all the afternoon, and was dressed, with happy slouchiness, in a brown flannel suit and a limp shirt-collar. His soft white waistcoat was a little soiled and lacked a button. The room he sat in was clear and light, but simply furnished, a refuge in fact from other splendors.Estampes galantesof Fragonard and the younger Morean decorated its walls sparsely. There was only one photograph, of a woman, which stood by itself in a narrow gilt frame on a side table. It was a large modern chiaroscuro affair. One noted frail emergent shoulders, a head turned aside, delicate lines of neck and chin, and a cloud of hair.
A dark, discreet man-servant knocked and showed his face in the doorway.
"Gentleman to see you, sir."
"Who is it, Becket?"
"Mr. Dollfus, sir."
"Oh! show him up!" But with the precipitancy of his race Mr. Dollfus had shown himself up, and entered hard upon the man's heels.
The baronet hailed him after his cheery wont.
"Hello, Dolly! Another five minutes and I'd have been shaving. Sit down and make yourself a whiskey and soda. Cigars are over there. How are the girls kicking?"
"They're kicking too much," said Mr. Dollfus; "on the stage and off too."
"Rotten notices theMotor Girlgot," said Lumsden, reaching for a crumpled paper.
"That's all right," answered Dollfus with easy confidence. "We'll pull it rount. Got a new College Song from America. Came too late to put in. With a chorus, my boy, a chorus! 'Cher want to hear it?"
"Go ahead!"
"Back oar—back roar—back waller—back nigger and bantabaloo."
"Back oar—back roar—back waller—back nigger and bantabaloo."
"Sounds useful."
"Eh! ah! Cantcher hear it on the organs? And—I say, Lumpsden?"
"What is it?"
"Remember a little girl we saw at La Palèze in the summer?"
Lumsden's face altered ever so little.
"Can't say I do very clearly. We saw so many."
"Went rount wit' a kind of fisherman. Artist feller. Eh? ah? Danced, too. Remember now?"
"Oh yes! I do, now. You were professional on the subject of her legs."
"That's the one. Well, she's come to me, my boy."
"Come to you? What the deuce for?"
"What do they all come for?" the Jew asked with sub-acidity. "Money. A lead. A 'shance.'"
"And what did you say, Dolly? Took her on your knee—played uncle—told her that if she was good to her mother you might give her a place in the back row some day if you thought of it."
Dollfus looked at him keenly for a moment. He had a theory that Lumsden remembered the girl better than he pretended; that he had, in fact, spoken to her at La Palèze and been rebuffed.
"Yer on the wrong track, Lumpsden," he said; "she's quite respectable. Madame de Rudder brought her—voman that useter teach the princesses. She's vell connected, too."
"What's her name?"
"Fenella Barbour."
Sir Bryan started a little at the name, and his sudden movement did not escape the Dominion manager.
"I say, Lumpsden," he went on casually; "aintcher a relation of the Lady Lulford that died this year?"
"A little. Why do you ask?"
"That's who she is, my boy. They were talking about all being together at Christmas."
"Who were talking?"
"Voman she called her cousin Leslie, that came wit' 'em too. At their country house. The name's gone outer my head."
Sir Bryan yawned, stretched himself, and gave a meaning look at the clock.
"Sorry I can't keep you any longer, Dolly. I'm dining out. What is it exactly you want?"
"Vell, I believe the girl's a find, Lumpsden. And natcherally I can't do anything at the Dominion—wit'out—wit'out——You understand?"
"I understand. You've seen her dance, I suppose? Is it any good? You know how much of this humbug there's been lately. Is hers something quite special?"
"Quite," said Mr. Dollfus, briefly. He seemed to weigh his opinion once more. "Oh quite!" he said again.
"You see a furore, in fact?"
"Maybe a riot," said Joe.
The financial support smiled. "You've made it such a family matter, Joe, that you won't mind my telling you I don't particularly want riots about relations of mine."
The manager shrugged his shoulders, but did not revise his opinion. Lumsden held out his hand.
"I'll telephone you to-morrow, and fix a night after Christmas when we can talk this over. Meantime, of course, you'll be discreet. Ta-ta, Dolly. I like your song."
An hour later he re-entered the room and flung a fur coat and crush hat on a lounge. He was dressed for dinner, was polishing his nails and appeared thoughtful. Sitting down before a big knee-hole desk, that was tucked away in a corner underneath a telephone, he switched on a light, drew a letter-pad toward him and wrote:
"Dear Leslie:"May I usurp your sex's privilege and change my mind about coming to Freres Lulford for Christmas. I was going to Ponty's, as you know, but somehow, this year, don't feel keyed up to the light-hearted crowd they get together at Capelant. I want somewhere to hide my unrevered head until the Spirit of Christmas is gone out of the land, and I should like a look at Saleratus. The alternative is to go to Scotland and turn myself into a sort of Dana Gibson picture of the sorrows of the rich. You know the sort of thing: 'Where Get-there Lumsden really got to.'"To tell you the truth, dear Leslie, I should never have refused your invitation if you hadn't frightened me with our mysterious newly discovered relative. Even, now, when I've decided to take the risk, I'll feel nervous. You say 'brilliant.' Suppose it turns out to be some dreadful little artist or writer person who'll want to paint me, or use me as 'a type.'..."
"Dear Leslie:
"May I usurp your sex's privilege and change my mind about coming to Freres Lulford for Christmas. I was going to Ponty's, as you know, but somehow, this year, don't feel keyed up to the light-hearted crowd they get together at Capelant. I want somewhere to hide my unrevered head until the Spirit of Christmas is gone out of the land, and I should like a look at Saleratus. The alternative is to go to Scotland and turn myself into a sort of Dana Gibson picture of the sorrows of the rich. You know the sort of thing: 'Where Get-there Lumsden really got to.'
"To tell you the truth, dear Leslie, I should never have refused your invitation if you hadn't frightened me with our mysterious newly discovered relative. Even, now, when I've decided to take the risk, I'll feel nervous. You say 'brilliant.' Suppose it turns out to be some dreadful little artist or writer person who'll want to paint me, or use me as 'a type.'..."
When he had got so far he re-read the letter, tore it up, and wrote out two telegrams. One was addressed to Lady Pontardawe, Capelant, Flintshire, and its contents are no affair of ours. The other said—
"Changed my mind. Motoring down, if fine, Wednesday."
"Changed my mind. Motoring down, if fine, Wednesday."
His tickled sense of expectancy supported him through a dull dinner—possessed him, in fact, to the extent of making him rather adistraitcompanion. Once he laughed out unaccountably. Expectation was as rare with him as regret. He probably regarded them as equivalent weaknesses, but there was no doubt which was the pleasanter to indulge. Not quite a satyr, he was still less a saint. Men who knew him well, contented themselves by saying that Bryan "stayed it well," and the secret of his power to last was probably that, for him, the life that began when he was called in the morning ended when he switched the light off from above his pillow. He was not an imaginative man, but if he had been, his morning bath might justly have been conceived by him as a wide cool river, reflecting a gray morning sky, that flowed between him and all follies and fevers of the night. He took no heed what phantoms waved to him from the other shore, nor what urgency and significance might be in their gestures.
He got back before twelve, changed his coat for a wadded Indian silk smoking-jacket, and finished a long black cigar before he turned in. He felt tranquil, and, for reasons possibly connected with his telegram to Wales, even virtuous. Lulford, with its cloister terrace, its gray walled fruit-gardens beneath the "Prior's oriel," and its lilied carp-wood, girt with bastion and towers of clipped yew, had always been a favorite house with him, far beyond the wind-tortured barrack in Scotland that was the cradle of his own grim race, and which all his money could not make bloom afresh. The glamour of his youth still invested it. He had spent many a long holiday there, the while his mother, widowed but no ways desolate, was seeking her own distractions at Wiesbaden or Lausanne, and to the end of his school days (not particularly pleasant ones, for he had been in an unfashionable house and perpetually short of pocket-money) whatever sentiment of eclogue or pastoral survived the drudgery of construe, always had for its stage and background the remembered pleasantness of Lulford. Wonderful, not how little had survived, but how much!
And to-night something else haunted it, something that was real, that rather appealed to imagination than was evoked by it. Youth, flushed, timorously daring, beckoned and eluded him down those alleys and groves. (Eternal illusion, making your own summer wherever your feet choose to pass!) He was of the age when a man is looking for the heralds of middle life, and hisempressementstruck him as one rather ominous sign. The growing simplification of life was another. The match-makers were giving Bryan up at last. He remembered a time when it would not have been so easy to sneak away for two weeks in the hunting season.
Dollfus had, after all, not been so far astray in his surmise. There had been an encounter at La Palèze—one of those secrets which the most transparent of women never seem to feel the need of telling. She had not appeared frightened nor very much surprised—had let him walk by her side across the dunes and through the pine woods, even chatted a little, lightly. But then neither had she made any attempt to keep the appointment he had so subtly forced upon her for the morrow. He had never seen her alone again.
Ill at ease among abstractions, his mind turned with relief to the case in point. Condensed slightly, his reflections ran something after this fashion:
"I wonder what Leslie's game is. Of course she's stark mad, but it's funny the others making a mystery about it too. Are they just giving a hard-worked little relation a holiday, or do they mean to take her up and bring her out next year. If they do, I'll wager she marries a title or is ruined inside the year. I know what I'm talking about. All my sweethearts do well. Things ain't like what they used to be. There's a sight too much young blood about, and the cubs will be in everywhere. A girl that can play 'em can land 'em. Good lord! Look at Bewdley! look at the Colfax good boy! With the Nampore rubies round her blasted neck! This one's clever, but I don't think she's that kind. But if she isn't, what the devil was she doing at Palèze? Funny, Dollfus coming to me! And I believe I'd rather see her on the stage after all, as long as it's decent. What did he mean by 'a riot'?"
He got up, yawned, and threw his cigar butt into the fire. As he did so his reflection confronted him, a little flattered by the red-shaded globe. He pushed his face closer.
"Not much youth there, old man!" he said, referring to the eyes; "but how many of the young 'uns will be where you are in fifteen years' time? Money! Money! Gad! I can't spend it if I try."
He frowned at the fire and turned impatiently away. "I'm a fool," he said. "None of 'em live up to their faces. Besides, you can never corner that market. A lot is not knowing when to pull out, and idleness and over-feeding, and seeing too many new faces. Heigho! I wonder what Stanwood will be doing in the spring."
He yawned again, and, an hour later, was fast asleep.