"His Grace the Duke of Pentland," announced a grandiloquent footman, flinging wide the door.
"Don't look so disgusted!" Leah flung an angry whisper in Askew's lowering face as she sailed forward to meet her father-in-law. "How are you, Duke? This is a surprise--a delightful one, of course. I never expected so pleasant a visitor."
The room was tolerably dim, and the Duke had not the keen sight of his youth. "Mr.--Mr.----!" hesitated His Grace.
"Mr. Askew," chimed in Lady Jim, glad that the mask of twilight was on the younger man's very cross face. "He's just going. You know Mr. Askew, of course, Duke. I met him at Firmingham. Must you really go, Mr. Askew? So sorry! We may meet at Lady Quain's to-night--I look in there for half an hour. Good-bye for the present. So kind of you to see me home from Ranelagh! Very dull, wasn't it?" and, rattling on to drown any too tender word he might let slip, she hustled him to the door.
"Our future!" breathed the inconvenient third, opening the gate of paradise most reluctantly.
"Even the brutes have instincts, if not sense," snapped Lady Jim, scathingly, and Adam, without Eve, took his solitary way down the stairs, to be dismissed into a cheerless world by an indifferent footman.
To prevent interruption, Leah closed the door herself, and switched on the electrics, before she returned to her untimely visitor.
"Will you be long, Duke?" she asked, again consulting the clock. "I have to dress for dinner. Mrs. Martin's, you know: a stupid woman with a bad cook. Such a bore!"
"I wonder you care to see people when Jim's away," said Pentland, fretfully, and she noted suddenly his aged looks.
Lady Jim felt inclined to retort with the proverb of the absent cat and the jubilant mice, but she really felt sorry for the old man's drooping mouth and additional wrinkles.
"I won't see any one, if you like, Duke--I'm sure it's no pleasure to make conversation without ideas. Do let me ring for hot tea--you look so tired. Sit down in this chair--and the cushion--there!" She made him comfortable with genuine womanly sympathy, wondering, meanwhile, what was ageing him.
"No tea, my dear. I can only wait for a few minutes; my carriage is below. Tired? Yes, I am very tired; worried, also."
"Nothing wrong, I hope," murmured Leah, sympathetically.
"Jim, my dear--poor Jim! Have you heard about his health lately?"
"Oh yes! Last week I received a few lines, and he said that he felt ever so much better. His cough is almost gone."
"Ah," said Pentland, sadly; "like all consumptives, he is too hopeful."
Leah became nervous and anxious. Had Jim been obliterated at last? "What is it?" she demanded irritably. "Is he--is he?" her tongue could not form the lying word.
"Worse--yes, much worse," said the Duke, rubbing his forehead and producing a letter. "This is from Demetrius. We may expect--oh, my poor son!" and he almost broke down.
"I don't trust these doctors," remarked Lady Jim, skimming the letter with a feeling that Demetrius was really too imaginative. "They always shout wolf, when the animal is miles away. Don't worry."
"But you see, Demetrius says that poor Jim may go off at any moment--and Demetrius is a clever man."
"He may be mistaken. I have heard of surprising recoveries."
Pentland shook his head, and groaned. "Not Jim. I had a conviction that I should never see him again when we parted in this very room."
"It's absurd!" argued Leah, artfully. "Jim was quite well till he caught that stupid cold at Firmingham. Why should he go off suddenly?"
"What they call galloping consumption is----"
"I can't believe it. Nothing would surprise me more than to hear of Jim's death;" and she soothed her conscience with the reflection that this speech was perfectly true, considering Jim had the strength of a bull and the appetite of a shark.
"If I lose him----"
"You won't lose him. I'll send a cable to Demetrius, and if Jim is really so sick, I'll go out and nurse him."
Pentland's face lighted up, and he pressed her hand. "How good of you, my dear! It will ease my mind; but--" he hesitated--"I never thought you cared enough about Jim to inconvenience yourself."
"Jim has given me very little reason to care for him," said Leah, with some bitterness. "If he had been a better husband, I should have been a different woman;" she used the stale argument tactfully and regretfully.
"Yes--er--I'm afraid that's true," said the Duke, recalling his son's peccability; "but he is so ill. Forgive and forget, Leah."
"For your sake, if not for Jim's," she said gracefully. "I'll send the cable this very night."
And she did. When Pentland, overflowing with outspoken approbation of her correct conduct, took his leave, she went to her desk and hunted out a cypher with which Demetrius had supplied her. It would not do to let the postal authorities know of their schemes, and the cypher was a particularly intricate one. Leah spent an hour in concocting her cablegram, and was late for dinner in consequence. But she had a good appetite, all the same, in spite of the bad food and the dull conversation. For, on their way to Kingston, Jamaica, were a few lines in cypher, a translation of which would have been of great interest to the father-in-law, who thought her so womanly and good.
"Duke wants me to nurse Jim," ran the cypher, when Demetrius used the key. "Wire that there is no need."
If Jim had really been dying, she would not have altered a single word.
An urchin throws a stone into the horse-pond. Circles; form, not only in the still water, but in the fluent air, to enring invisibly our sphere. And who can say to what limit they recede, if limit there be? So with a carelessly selected, hastily flung word. Had Lady Jim saidyourfuture, Askew, assuming no coupling, would have grumbled himself back into tame-catism and canine contentment with casual head-pats. But,ourfuture! The pronoun bulked portentous. Its three letters encompassed, to the lover's prolific imagination--divorce, remarriage, a life-long duet and amorous communings in the highest paradise attainable by those yet moving in time.
Lady Jim, less philological, gave him to understand, that a single word could by no means embrace such various interpretations. She again emphasised her matronhood, called Askew's attention to the spotless reputation he wished to smirch, and intimated that poor Jim's illness precluded her from thinking of anything save poor Jim's possible decease. "In which sad case," mourned Leah, "we could renew our conversation without reproach."
"A widow has no bridesmaids, I believe?" hinted Askew, reflectively. She hinted back with sweet smiles, "Don't you prefer a quiet wedding?" And on this adjustment of the situation he built castles, believing the foundation to be sound. Strangely enough, in so honest a gentleman, the heartlessness of utilising possibilities connected with the Kaimes' vault never occurred to him. Which proved, without need of words, the essential selfishness of the feeling he miscalled love.
On this arrangement Lady Jim frolicked gaily through the remaining weeks of the season, well content that things were as they were. A Jamaica cablegram, which--it designedly not being in cypher--she could and did show to the Duke, informed both that a wifely nurse was needless. The last word of the communication promised a letter, which duly arrived. This last also was a public document, Demetrius being too cunning to detail criminality in black and white. Pentland and Leah read the letter cheek by jowl. Lord James was a trifle better, said the script, and if able to outlast the voyage, would return to England, en route for Algiers. Lady James could then nurse him into health, say, at Biskra.
"Thank heaven," quavered the Duke, not reading between the lines, as did his better-informed daughter-in-law. "We'll make a party and go there for the autumn. Frith will be delighted."
"On Jim's account?" inquired Leah, dryly. "Rather an effort, Duke."
"On my account," rebuked the old man. "Frith knows that if Jim is to leave us"--his voice faltered and fell--"I should like to see him depart."
"Why does the prodigal son always banquet on the calf?" mused Lady Jim, restoring the letter to her pocket.
"My dear, many failings require many excuses."
"So it seems. Selfish people receive more praise for one creditable action, than do those kind-hearted fools who spend their lives in self-denial."
"We must encourage the good seed to grow, my dear."
She laughed unpleasantly. "It usually springs up wild oats, with over-attention!" and she departed to consider the inexplicable growth of green bay-trees.
Lord Frith had never given his father the slightest trouble; he was a model son, an admirable husband; his friendships were staunch, and his life clean--yet Pentland contented himself with perfunctory praise of these qualities. He expected his eldest son to be a domestic Bayard, as the unimaginative Marquis had shown no desire to sow the wind. Jim, on the other hand, left the reaping of his whirlwind to doting relatives. Devourer of husks with congenial swine, and caring only for his large, healthy, greedy self, he had never done a kind act or shown a filial trait. A spendthrift, a rogue in grain, cursed by many men, blessed by no woman, he--this profligate egotist--was dealt with not only tenderly, but in a way calculated to assure him that he was a pearl without price. His notorious failings were covered by the phrase that "he was his own worst enemy," and the presumed possession of good qualities, never manifested, entitled him to paternal pity. Leah, an easy-going sinner herself, was not hard on those who dwelt in glass houses. But this gilding of Jim's base metal made her gorge rise.
"What's the use of being good?" she moralised, as her brougham sped towards Curzon Street. "Kindness is looked upon as weakness, and the more generous one is, the more those who don't know the meaning of the word sponge and sneer. If you are really bad, sham philanthropists reclaim you and cocker you up, and praise you loudly if you say 'Hang' instead of 'Damn!' A sinner repents, and Heaven is a-flutter; a saint makes one slip, and the world yells hypocrite. A pied person, neither white nor black, is left alone, as the majority are of that mottled complexion. To be really good is to be hated; to be extremely bad means excuses, help, and trumpetings. Frith gets the kicks without deserving them, and Jim the half-pence he has never earned. Clever Jim, who has chosen the world's better part."
It will be seen that Leah, being of the world, judged as the world, and yet with greater discernment. In one way she was right. It is generally your sinner who gobbles up the cakes and ale. But Lady Jim--no very ardent Bible student--misread texts, or rather, read her own material meaning into them. Therefore, although conversant with green bay-trees--did she not dwell in a grove of such?--her memory did not recall the axe that might be laid to the roots thereof. The Seventy-third Psalm might also have assisted her to a better understanding of undeserved worldly prosperity, had she done other than gabble it hastily, when it happened to come into the service. But the fetish which stood to her in place of the Living God did not encourage spiritual explorations, and Leah saw life as a comprehensible stretch of time, limited by birth or death. The hereafter--if any--she could not conceive, knowing only the present as the real, the actual, and the true. Therefore did she grudge Jim his undeserved coddlings. Had he lain on a bed of his own making, it would have been justice--strict justice; but that fools should prepare him a feather mattress and downy pillow seemed, and really was, intolerable. Thinking of the Duke's wasted and misplaced affection, Leah plucked the fruit of her Tree of Knowledge. "Good people need missionaries," said Lady Jim.
However, as Jim and she had occupied separate rooms for many a long day, his featherbedism troubled her little. Also, Askew had been brought to heel by the promise of future bones. The plot was being rounded off in far Jamaica without her aid, and what with Sir Billy's winnings and a moderate cheque cajoled out of the Duke, she had enough to keep the wolf from the Curzon Street door. On the whole, things could not be improved, and it only remained to exercise patience. But of this virtue Leah possessed little, and did not care to expend what she had in twiddling her thumbs at home. Jim was away, so she could play--and did. A masked ball at Covent Garden amused her immensely; the plays condemned by Sir Billy found in her a lenient critic; and now that Pentland had paid off old bills, she ran up new ones with the zest of a woman who required nothing. Also, she went to Epsom, and pulled off a decent sum on a tip breathed into her ear by the racing baronet, whom she had snubbed into slangy admiration. To Hurlingham and Richmond she raced a split-new motor-car of the latest pattern, and exhibited her nerve and skill in the Park. Charity bazaars, Savoy dinners, bridge parties, Sunday river excursions, and such-like time-killers beheld her in varied and tasteful frocks, and she also dined with those friends upon whose cook she could rely. Altogether, she enjoyed the life of a busy idler, and had that remarkably agreeable time which magnificent health, comparative wealth, and a conscience of no importance would give to such a woman. But her head duly governed her frivolities, and she made no plans for the Cowes week, although she knew a manageable man with a delightful yacht. The daily expected decease of Jim had to be considered, and thoughtful Leah had already designed her mourning. Meanwhile, she babbled of Biskra to Lady Canvey, and rather overdid it.
"Are you and Jim going on a second honeymoon?" inquired that suspicious old dame.
"We are," replied Leah, calmly. "How clever of you to guess it!"
"Humph! The poor wretch must be worse than I thought."
"I see; my affection, to your mind, is too obvious."
"The non-existent can never manifest itself," said Lady Canvey, in scientific English. "Either a miracle has happened to give you a heart, or Jim is dying, and you are getting ready to dance on his grave."
Leah coloured with suppressed anger. This plain speaking annoyed her, and she disliked people who peeped behind the scenes. "Jim and I are not angels, godmother," she said with dignity; "but we're pals enough to make me regret his death. My mourning, though you may doubt it, will be perfectly sincere."
Lady Canvey gave a dry laugh. "See Carlyle on the 'Philosophy of Clothes.' Well, I shan't pay your bill at Jay's."
"Thanks. I don't ask you to. The total might involve a larger cheque than you would care to sign."
"I'm sure of that, my dear, seeing your mourning is to be perfectly sincere."
The impracticable old woman and her god-daughter were alone, else this snapping might not have occurred. Leah had rather neglected Lady Canvey of late, because that astute octogenarian had locked up her cheque-book. But on her way to an "At Home" she had looked in for a few moments, and sat in the stuffy Victorian room, radiant in a crêpe ninon frock of Parma violet, elaborately flounced, and with a fichu and short sleeves. The dress was simple enough, and she wore little jewellery; but her dazzling neck and shoulders and arms, her glorious hair and calm strong face, would have made her noticeable even in a crowd of picked beauties. Lady Canvey, whose ill-humour was mostly surface-crabbedness, for she preferred losing a friend to withholding an epigram, could not refrain from grudging compliments. But between women these rang hollow.
"You look charming to-night, my dear."
"After the storm, the sunshine," said Lady Jim, smiling at such novel civility. "Well, I appreciate the change. Whatever my faults may be, godmother, you cannot say that I am disagreeable. I always call, in spite of your--your--what shall we say?"
"Home-truths! And you call when it suits you. Humph! Perhaps I am a trifle short-tempered."
"A trifle!"
"Old age has its privileges," Lady Canvey reminded her; "and you can be so cleverly nasty when you like, that it amuses me to bring the worst out of you."
"What a doubtful compliment! Do you extract amusement from the Tallentire girl in the same way?"
"She has no bad in her."
"Quite so, and you never try to bring out the good which doesnotamuse you. Sunday schools are beneficial rather than entertaining. I don't see Miss--what's her name?" and Lady Jim glanced round the room.
"Joan Tallentire," snapped her hostess; "you remember the name well enough. It's fashionable to have a short memory, I suppose."
"For debts," said Leah, sweetly; "but Miss Tallentire?"
"She is looking after her father's house, as the mother is ill."
"Poor woman! I hope Lionel is not preaching at her, to make her worse."
"Lionel isn't always in the pulpit. By the way, Leah, he told me that he had a serious talk with you at Firmingham."
"Did he? Yes! I believe he did give me a dull quarter of an hour. Something about sin, I fancy it was. Parsons have a monomania on that subject."
Lady Canvey made an angry noise in her wrinkled throat. "You're impossible," she pronounced tartly. "Lionel wishes to improve you."
"What about Jim? Charity should commence with his own family."
"Well, my dear, Lionel admires you, and----"
"Oh! Heisa man, then. I don't think I ever made running with a clergyman; it might be rather fun. I suppose Lionel would recite the Song of Solomon to me--there's lots of love-talk in it. Not very proper talk, either, I'm told. Perhaps Solomon wrote it for married women; he had some experience of them, hadn't he? He collected concubines, didn't he?--just like a stamp-maniac."
"Leah, you're insufferable."
"And impossible!" She rose to go, and arranged the fur-lined Medici collar of her evening wrap in the dim mirror. "But I'm about to be punished for my sins. The Duke made me promise to go to this At Home. Mrs. Saracen, you know--she's one of the submerged Upper Ten, or she married one of them; I forget which, though I know she has something to do with a pickle, or a sauce. Very amusing old thing, too. She gives you a nutshell biography of every one before she introduces."
"What on earth for?"
"Oh, so that you may be warned against people's skeletons. Mrs. Saracen points out the cupboard and tells you not to open it, and of course you do."
Lady Canvey chuckled. "Rather clever. And her friends----?"
"Male and female, I believe. She collects people who have done something."
"In the criminal way?"
"She would, if the law allowed them out of gaol. But at present she contents herself with freaks. I don't go to middle-class menageries as a rule, but at the Duke's request I patronise this one."
"Come to-morrow and tell me all about it."
"If you'll promise to be nice."
Her godmother was silent for a moment. "Leah, my dear," she said at length, taking the gloved hand, "I am sorry we always quarrel when we meet. I really have a corner in my heart for you, and if you were only less--less--" Lady Canvey hunted for the right word--"less exasperating, we should get on excellently."
Lady Jim nodded, squeezed the bony hands, and kissed the wrinkled cheek.
"Let us make a fresh start," she said gently, for she really felt sorry. "I'll come every day while Miss Tallentire is absent and tell you the news."
"That's a good girl. Goodnight. Enjoy yourself, my dear;" and the two parted better friends than they had been for months.
On her way to Mrs. Saracen, who lived in the wilds of Kensington, Leah saw herself in the new character of dry-nurse to a spiteful old harridan, and wondered at her good-nature. Why should she bore herself with a spent octogenarian, whose sole attraction was the possession of money, with which she declined to part? Yet Lady Jim had promised daily visits to this ruin, and what is more, for no reason discoverable to herself, intended to keep her promise, even though there was nothing to be gained by such self-denial. The idea that she, of all people, should do something for nothing, tickled her greatly, and the street-lamps swinging past the brougham flashed on an amused face. She was so pleased with discovering virtue in such an unexpected quarter that she quite forgot to look mournful when her hostess inquired after Jim's health.
The waist upon which the Honourable Mrs. Saracen had prided herself somewhere about the middle of the nineteenth century was now a matter of guess-work. Her stoutness impressed even the unobservant with the conviction that she had eaten her way through life, and was at present engaged in digging a not-far-off grave with her teeth. And, for her age, she had an astonishingly good set, obtrusively genuine. Her general appearance was in keeping, for she wore her own white hair in smooth bands, under a Waterloo turban, fearfully and wonderfully made, and presented a natural face of winter-apple rosiness, scored with good-humoured wrinkles. As Nature had made her, and Time had aged her, so she was, growing old healthily, if not gracefully. In an alarming dress, many-coloured as Joseph's coat, she wheezed like a plethoric poodle, and rolled in a nautical manner by reason of her bulk. Who would have guessed at a brain hidden in this ponderous mass of adipose?
Yet she was a self-made woman, who had acquired a large fortune by the sale of "Saracen's Sauce." Therefore did current gossip accuse her of beginning life as a cook. A perfect invention, this, as she was a gentlewoman who had, intellectually, married beneath her--that is, she had bought with the sauce money a scampish aristocrat of the Jim Kaimes type, only less manly. He had long since drank himself into the family vault, and had left his wife with one son, who was now in the army. Every one liked Mrs. Saracen, in spite of her eccentricities, and love of glaring colours, and many a society pauper had reason to thank her for timely help. And to cap her good qualities, she professed open pride in the sauce, which appeared on every middle-class dinner-table throughout the three kingdoms.
"Dear Lady James," she wheezed, wagging two fat hands, like a seal its flappers, "how good of you to come! You will find some interesting people here"--she looked round with pride at the collection of lions, old and young, tame and wild, fat and lean, sham and real. "Now, Mr. Wallace here--let me present him. Charming man--very outspoken--great traveller--Zambesi--knows cannibals intimately!" Then, behind a plump hand, whispered a nutshell biography, "Don't mention his wife--divorce."
Thus warned, Leah got on excellently with the lean, brown, keen-eyed man, who confessed to extensive explorations. "Cannibals?--yes, Lady James, I know a few and love them."
"What strange affection, Mr. Wallace! Why?"
"They ate a man I detested. I fear he disagreed with them in death, as he always disagreed with me in life."
Lady Jim laughed. "Is there any one here you would like to make a side-dish of?" she asked, letting her eyes rove.
"No; I am a complete stranger in London. It is the one place I have not explored. But Mrs. Saracen has told me the past of many here, and I can give you histories, if you like."
"Go on, then. Only don't give me dates, else the women here might scratch. I don't know these creatures myself," she went on, with the calm insolence of a great lady; "to me they are like your Central African natives."
"I agree, Lady James--only less civilised."
"In what way?"
"Niggers wear no clothes, and, therefore, are more modest."
"I can quite imagine it. That thin lady over there is evidently of your opinion;" and Leah glanced at a mature damsel who wore just sufficient clothing to prevent interference by the police.
"Miss Fastine? She's a Naturopath, and is trying to revert to primitive simplicity."
"With such a figure she might stop short of the Garden of Eden," said Lady Jim, dryly. "I never heard of a Naturopath. What is it?"
"An American sect, which needs solitude to carry out its theories. The members sleep in the open, cover themselves with earth when they feel sick, and advocate the altogether."
"You are joking, Mr. Wallace."
The traveller stifled a laugh. "Upon my word, Lady James, I am in earnest. The sect really does exist. That stout man talking to Mrs. Saracen belongs to another queer lot. Calls himself an Osteopath."
"What on earth is that?"
"One who cures by vitalising the nerves."
"I am as wise as I was before. Any more freaks?"
"Yonder is a Christian Scientist. And the man on the left advocates Mahomedanism as the State religion in England."
"While the dressmakers charge so ruinously, he'll never induce men to take four wives. And the woman in the red dress?"
"Lady Tansey--a believer in spirits."
"So I should imagine," said Lady Jim, surveying the lady's nose, which was long and thin and the hue of her gown.
"No, no! I talk of heavenly spirits. Lady Tansey has a large circle of departed friends, who rap."
"What a bore! As if one didn't get enough of friends in this world, without worrying them to knock out bad grammar from the next. Really, Mr. Wallace, I begin to think Mrs. Saracen must keep a lunatic asylum."
"Oh dear no," he answered, chuckling. "It is the sane people that are usually shut up."
"Certainly not the disagreeable people," retorted Lady Jim.
"Oh, if you go to those lengths, there would be no society," said Wallace, with a shrug.
The traveller's cynicism exactly suited Leah's humour at the moment, and she made him take her in to supper. Meanwhile, Askew, who had not seen Lady Jim arrive, was watching the grand entrance with a lowering face. He had called at Curzon Street, and thence had borne a message for Leah which he was anxious to deliver. Already he had been bored to distraction with faddists and their whims, and was seriously thinking of slipping away, when Mrs. Saracen bore down on him for the fourth time. Before he could object she had him by the arm, and confronted him with a severe-looking woman, pensive and solitary.
"Do let me introduce you to Miss Galway," she wheezed. "You'll get on so well with Mr. Askew, dear Miss Galway. He's navy, you know, or has been--left it--going to be married. And Mr. Askew, if you can talk of Ph[oe]nician inscriptions to Miss Galway, she'll entertain you for hours. Quite an authority on Solomon, I believe--very clever, most intellectual!" Then aside, hastily: "Say nothing about her brother--jail!"