Lady Haslemere was entertaining what she called the "Gee-gees" or "Great Grundys" one night at her house in Berkeley Street. The "Gee-gee" party was an idea borrowed from Jack, and all who were weightiest in society came to it, a large number of them to dine, and the rest to the evening party. Just now her brother, Tom Abbotsworthy, was living with them, for his own house was being done up, and Alice had easily persuaded him to stay with them, instead of living with the Duke. Indeed to live with the Duke was nearly an impossibility; three women already had attempted to support the burden of being his Duchess, but they had all collapsed before long, leaving him in each case eminently consolable. He could hurry a person into the grave, so it was said, sooner than any man or woman in the kingdom. The last time Tom had seen him was about a week ago, at dinner somewhere, and the whole of his conversation had been to say loudly to him across the dinner-table at intervals of about two minutes, "Why don't you marry?"
Tom's presence in the house was a great boon during the season; he relieved his brother-in-law of his duties as host in an easy, unostentatious manner, thereby earning his heartfelt gratitude, and discharging these duties, instead of leaving them undischarged.Lord Haslemere himself had a habit of being unreckoned with. He was an adept at doing wire puzzles, and played a remarkably good game at billiards, but otherwise there was nothing of him. He wore whiskers, spent the greater part of his day at the club, and was known as Whisky-and-Soda, not because he had intemperate leanings in that direction, but because there was really nothing else to call him. When his wife entertained, he shrank into what there was of himself, and the majority of his guests at an evening party did not generally know him by sight. His face was one stamped with the quality of obliviality; to see him once was to insure forgetting him at least twice. But at the "Gee-gee" parties he was made tidy, which he usually was not, and put in prominent places. He had been very prominent this evening, and correspondingly unhappy. He had taken a parrot-hued Duchess into dinner, and spilt a glass of wine over her new dress, and as her Grace's temper was as high as the bridge of her nose, the evening had been unusually bitter.
The "Grundy" dinner-party was succeeded by a vast "Grundy" At Home, to which flocked all the solid people in London, including those who "bridle" when a very smart set is mentioned, and flock thirstily to their houses, like camels to a desert well, whenever they are asked. It was the usual thing. There had been a little first-rate music—during which everyone talked their loudest—and a great many pink and china-blue hydrangeas on the stairs, a positive coruscation of stars and orders and garters—for two royal princes had been included among the "Gee-gees"—and about midnight Lady Haslemere was yawning dismally behind her fan, and wondering when people would begin to go away. Inthe intervals of her yawns, which she concealed most admirably, she spoke excellent and vivacious French to the Hungarian Ambassador, an old bald-headed little man, who only wanted a stick to make him into a monkey on one, and laughed riotously at his stuffy little monkey-house jokes, all of which she had frequently heard before. In consequence, he considered her an extremely agreeable woman, as indeed she was.
Kit and her husband were not at the dinner, both having refused point-blank to go, on the ground that they had done their duty to "Grundy" already; but they turned up, having dined quietly at home, at about half-past eleven, with Mr. Alington in tow. He was not known to many people present, but Lady Haslemere instantly left her Ambassador, having received instructions from Kit, and led him about like a dancing bear. She introduced him to royalty, which asked him graciously whether he enjoyed England, or preferred Australia, and other questions of a highly original and penetrating kind; she presented him to stars and orders and garters, and to all the finest "Gee-gees" present, as if he had been the guest of the evening. Kit's eye was on her all the time, though she was talking to two thousand people, and saw that she did her duty.
The rooms were as pretty as decorated boxes can be, and hotter than one would have thought any boxes could possibly get. People stood packed together like sardines in a tin, cheek to jowl, and appeared to enjoy it. Anæmic men dropped inaudible questions to robust females, and ethereal-lookingdébutantesscreamed replies to elderly Conservatives. Nobody sat down—indeed, there was not room to sit down—and the happiest of all the crowd, exceptingthose who had dined there, were the enviable mortals who had come on from one house, and were able to announce that they were going on to another. Three small drawing-rooms opened out the one from the other, and the doorways were inflamed and congested. Whoever took up most room seemed to stand there, and whoever took up most room seemed to be dressed in red. Altogether, one could not imagine a more successful evening. Politicians considered it a political party, those who were not quite so smart as Lady Haslemere's set considered it the smartest party of the year, and everybody who was nobody considered that everybody was there, and looked forward to buying the next issue of Smart Society, in order to see what "Belle" or "Amy" thought of it all.
The noise of two or three hundred people all talking at once in small rooms causes a roar extraordinarily strident, and, as in the case of rooms full of tobacco-smoke, intolerable unless one contributes to it oneself. Mr. Alington had to raise his small, precise voice till it sounded as if he was intoning, and the effort was considerable. This particular way of passing a pleasant evening in the heat of the summer was hitherto unknown to him, and he looked about him in mild wonder. He felt himself reminded of those crates of ducks and fowls which are to be seen on the decks of ocean-going steamers, the occupants of which are so cruelly overcrowded, and of whom the most fortunate only can thrust their beaks through the wicker of their prison-house, and quack desolately to the breeze of the sea. Lady Haslemere's rooms seemed to him to resemble these bird-crates, the only difference being that people sought this suffocating imprisonment of their own free will,because they liked it, the birds because the passengers had to be fed. One or two very tall men had their heads free, a few others stood by windows, and could breathe; but the majority could neither breathe nor hear, nor see further than their immediate neighbours. They could only quack. And they quacked.
By degrees the party thinned; an unwilling lane was cut through the crowd for the exit of the princes, and the great full-blown flowers in the hedges, so to speak, bobbed down in turn as they passed, like a field of poppies blown on by a passing wind. After them those lucky folk who were going on to another house, where they would stand shoulder to shoulder again with a slightly different crowd, and express extreme wonder that their neighbours had not been at Lady Haslemere's ("I thought everyone was there!"), made haste to follow. Outside all down the street from Berkeley Square at one end to Piccadilly at the other stretched the lines of carriage-lamps, looking like some gigantic double necklace. The congestion in the drawing-room developed into a really alarming inflammation in the cloak-room and the hall, and everyone wanted her carriage and was waiting for it, except the one unfortunate lady whose carriage stopped the whole of the way, as a stentorian policeman studiously informed her, but who could only find attached to her ticket a small opera hat instead of the cloak which should have covered her. People trod on each other's toes and heels, and entangled themselves in other folks' jewels and lace. Rain had begun to fall heavily, the red carpet from the door to the curbstone was moist and muddy, contemptuous footmen escorted elderly ladies under carriage umbrellas to their broughams, and large drops of rain fell chill on the elderly ladies' backs.Loungers of the streets criticised the outgoers with point and cockney laughter, but still the well-dressed crowd jostled and quacked and talked, and said how remarkably pleasant it had been, and how doubly delightful it was to have come here from somewhere else, and to go on somewhere else from here.
Half an hour after the departure of the princes, Lady Haslemere, who was fast ceasing to yawn, manœuvred the two or three dozen people who still could not manage to tear themselves away, into the outermost of the three drawing-rooms, and nodded to a footman who lingered in the doorway, and had obvious orders to catch her eye. Upon this he and another impassive giant glided into the innermost room, and took two green-baize-covered tables from where they had been folded against the wall, setting them in the middle of the room, and placed a dozen chairs round them; then, making use of a back staircase, so that they should not be seen by the remaining "Grundys," they brought up and laid out a cold supper, consisting chiefly of jelly and frills and froth and glass and bottles and quails and cigarettes, put cards, counters, and candles on the green-baize tables, and withdrew. Ten minutes later the last of the "Grundys" withdrew also, and the rest, some dozen people who had stood about in attitudes of the deepest dejection for the last half-hour, while a Bishop played the man of the world to Kit, heaved a heartfelt sigh of relief, and brightened up considerably. Automatically, or as if by the action of a current of air or a tide, they drifted into the inner room, and chalk lines were neatly drawn on the green-baize cloth.
Baccarat is a game admirably suited to people who have had a long day, and is believed to be a specificantidote to the gloom induced by huge "Grundy" parties. It is an effort and a strain on the mind to talk to very solid people who are interested in great questions and delight in discussion; but at baccarat the mind, so to speak, lights a cigarette, throws itself into an armchair, and puts on its slippers. Baccarat requires no judgment, no calculation, no previous knowledge of anything, and though it is full of pleasing excitement, it makes no demands whatever on the strongest or feeblest intellect. The players have only to put themselves blindly, as ladies dressing for dinner surrender themselves to a skilful maid, into the hands of Luck, and the austere elemental forces which manage the winds and waves, and decree in what order nines and other cards are dealt from packs, do the rest. You buy your counters, and when they are all gone you buy some more. If, on the other hand, they behave as counters should, and increase and multiply like rabbits, you have the pleasure of presenting them to your host at the end of the evening or the beginning of the morning, as the case may be, and he very kindly gives you shining sterling gold and rich crackling bank-notes in exchange.
Tom Abbotsworthy, since he had been staying with his sister, always took the place of host when this soothing game was being played at Berkeley Street; for Lord Haslemere, if he were not in bed, was by this time busily practising nursery cannons on the billiard-table. Occasionally he looked in, with his fidgety manner, and trifled with the froth and frills, and if there was anyone present whose greatness demanded his attendance, he took a hesitating hand. But to-night he was spared; there was only a small, intimate party, who would have found him a bore. He was slow at cards, displayed an inordinategreed for his stake, and had been known at baccarat to consider whether he should have another. This, as already stated, is unnecessary. With certain numbers you must; with all the others you must not, and consideration delays the game.
The hours passed much more pleasantly and briskly than during the period of the "Grundy" party. It was a warm, still night, the windows were flung wide, and the candles burned unwaveringly. Round the table were a dozen eager, attentive faces. Luck, like some Pied Piper, was fluting to the nobility and gentry, and the nobility and gentry followed her like the children of Hamelin. Now and then one of them would rise and consult the side-table to the diminishment of frills and froth, or the crisp-smelling smoke of a cigarette would hold the room for a few minutes. Most of those present had been idle all day, now they were employed and serious. Outside the rain had ceased, and for a couple of hours the never-ending symphony of wheels sank to a pianissimo. Occasionally, with a sharp-cut noise of hoofs and the jingle of a bell, a hansom would trot briskly past, and at intervals an iron-shod van made thunder in the street. But the siesta of noise was short, for time to the most is precious; barely had the world got home from its parties of the night, when those whose business it is to rise when their masters are going to bed, in order that the breakfast-table may not lack its flowers and fruits, began to get to the morning's work, and the loaded, fragrant vans went eastward. The candles had once burned down, and had been replaced by one of the impassive giants, when the hint of dawn, the same dawn that in the country illuminated with tremulous light the dewy hollows of untrodden ways, was whisperedin the world. Here it but changed the blank, dark faces of the houses opposite into a more visible gray; it sucked the fire from the candles, was strangely unbecoming to Lady Haslemere, who was calculated for artificial light, and out of the darkness was born day.
There was no longer any need for the carriage-lamps to be lit when Kit and her husband got into their brougham. A very pale-blue sky, smokeless and clear, was over the city, and the breath of the morning was deliciously chill. Kit, whether from superior art or mere nature, did not look in the least out of keeping with the morning. She was a little flushed, but her flush was that of a child just awakened from a long night's rest more than that of a woman of twenty-five, excited by baccarat and sufficient—in no degree more than sufficient—champagne. Her constant harmony with her surroundings was her most extraordinary characteristic; it seemed to be an instinct, acting automatically, just as the chameleon takes its colour from its surroundings. Set her in a well-dressed mob of the world, she was the best dressed and most worldly woman there; among rosy-faced children she would look at the most a pupil teacher. Just now in Lady Haslemere's drawing-room you would have called her gambler to her finger-tips; but as she stood for a moment on the pavement outside waiting for her carriage-door to be opened, she was a child of morning.
She drew her cloak, lined with the plucked breast feathers that grow on the mother only in breeding-time, more closely about her, and drew the window half up.
"You were in luck as well as I, were you not, Jack?" she said. "I suppose I am mercenary, butI must confess I like winning other people's money. I feel as if I was earning something."
"Yes, we were both on the win to-night," said Jack.
Then he stopped, but as if he had something more to say, and to Kit as well as to him the silence was awkward.
"You noticed something?" she asked.
"Yes; Alington."
"So did I. So did Alice, I think. What a bore it is! What is to be done?"
Jack fidgeted on his seat, lit a cigarette, took two whiffs at it, and threw it away.
"Perhaps we are wrong," he said. "Perhaps he didn't cheat."
Kit did not find it worth while to reply to so half-hearted a suggestion.
"It's damned awkward," he continued, abandoning this himself. "I don't know what to do. You see, Kit, what an awful position I am in. In any case, do let us have no scandal; that sort of thing has been tried once, and I don't know that it did any good to anybody."
"Of course we will have no scandal," said Kit quickly. "If there was a scandal, you would have to break with him, and pop go the gold mines as far as we are concerned."
Jack started. His thoughts had been so absolutely identical with what his wife said, that it was as if he had heard a sudden echo. And though the thoughts had been his own, and Kit had merely stated them, yet when she did so, so unreasonable is man, he felt inclined to repudiate what she said. The thing sounded crude when put like that. Kit saw him start, divined the cause with intuitive accuracy,and felt a sudden impatient anger at him. She hated hypocritical cowardice of this kind, for, having plenty of immoral courage herself, she had no sympathy with those who were defective in it. Jack, she knew very well, had no intention of breaking with Alington, because the latter had cheated at baccarat. Then, in Heaven's name, even if you are too squeamish to be frank yourself, try to make an effort not to wince when somebody else is.
"That is what a man calls his honour," she thought to herself with amused annoyance. "It is unlike Jack, though."
Meantime her quick brain was spinning threads like a spider.
"Look here, Jack," she said in a moment. "Leave the thing entirely to me. It was stupid of me to mention it. You saw nothing: I saw nothing. You know nothing about it. There was no baccarat, no cheating, no nothing. Come."
"What are you going to do?" asked Jack doubtfully.
He had great confidence in Kit, but this matter required consideration.
"Oh, Jack, I am not a fool," said Kit. "I only want you, officially, so to speak, to know nothing about this, just in case of accidents; but there will be no accidents if you let me manage it. If you want to know what I shall do, it is this: I shall go to Alice to-morrow—to-day, rather—and tell her what I saw. I am sure she saw it herself, or I should say nothing to her. I shall also add how lucky it was that only she and I noticed it. Then the whole thing shall be hushed up, though I dare say we shall watch Alington play once more to be certain about it, and if we see him cheat again, make him promise to playno more. Trust us for not letting it come out. I am in your galley about the mines, you see."
"She is to understand that I saw nothing?" asked Jack.
"Of course, of course," said Kit. "That is the whole point of it. What is your scruple? I am really unable to understand. I know it is not nice to deal with a person who cheats at cards. You have always to be on the watch. You'll have to keep your eyes open in this business of the mines, but that is your own affair. Clearly it is much better that Alice should imagine you know nothing about the cheating. She might think you ought to break with the man; people are so queer and unexpected."
"What about Tom?" asked he.
They had arrived at Park Lane, and Kit stepped out.
"Jack, will you or will you not leave the whole matter in my hands—the whole matter, you understand—without interference?"
He paused for a moment, still irresolute.
"Yes," he said at last; "but be careful."
Kit hardly heard this injunction; as soon as he had said "Yes" she turned quickly from him, and went into the house.
It was already after four, and the tops of the trees in the Park had caught the first level rays of the eastern sun. The splendid, sordid town still lay asleep, and the road was glistening from the rain which had fallen earlier in the night, and empty of passengers. But the birds, those fit companions of the dawn, were awake, and the twittered morning hymn of sparrows pricked the air. Kit went straight to her bedroom, where the rose-coloured blinds, drawn down over the wide-open windows, filled theroom with soft, subdued light, and rang the bell which communicated with her maid's room. When she was likely to be out very late she always let her maid go to bed, and rang for her when she was wanted. Often she even made an effort to get to bed without her help, but this morning she was preoccupied, and rang before she could determine whether she needed her. Kit herself was one of those happily-constituted people who can do with very little sleep, though they can manage a great deal, and in these London months four or five hours during the night and a possible half-hour before dinner was sufficient to make her not only just awake, but excessively so at other times. In the country, it is true, she made up for unnatural hours by really bucolic behaviour. She took vigorous exercise every day in any weather, ate largely of wholesome things, hardly drank any wine, and slept her eight hours like a child. In this she was wiser than the majority of her world, who, in order to correct their errors in London, spend a month of digestive retirement at Carlsbad.
"Live wholesomely six months of the year," said Kit once, "and you will repair your damages. Why should I listen to German bands and drink salt water?"
Instead, she fished all August and September, cut down her cigarettes, and lived, as she said, like a milkmaid. It would have been rather a queer sort of milkmaid, but people knew what she meant.
Before her maid came (Kit's arrangement that she might go to bed was partly the result of kindness, partly of her disinclination to be waited on by a very sleepy attendant) she had taken off her jewels, and put them into her safe. There also she placedthe very considerable sum of money which she had just won at baccarat, to join the rainy-day fund. Jack did not know about the rainy-day fund—it was of Kit's very private possessions; but it is only fair to her to say that if he had been in a financialimpasseit would have been at his disposal. No number of outstanding bills, however, constituted animpassetill you were absolutely sued for debt; the simplest way of discharging them, a way naturally popular, was to continue ordering things at the same shops.
Kit and her husband did not meet at breakfast, but took that plebeian meal in their own rooms. And she, having told Hortense to open the windows still wider, and bring her breakfast at half-past ten, put the key of her jewel-safe under her pillow, and lay down to sleep for five hours. She would want her victoria at twelve, and she scribbled a note to Lady Haslemere saying that she would be with her at a quarter past.
Outside the day grew ever brighter, and rivulets of traffic began to flow down Park Lane. The hour of the starting of the omnibuses brought a great accession of sound, but Kit fell asleep as soon as she got into bed, and, the sleep of the just and the healthy being sound, she heard them not. She dreamed in a vague way that she had won a million pounds, but that as she was winning the last of them, which would mean eternal happiness, she cheated some undefined shadow of a penny, which, in the misty, unexplained fashion of dreams, took away the whole of her winnings. Then the smell of tea and bacon and a sudden influx of light scattered these vain and inauspicious imaginings, and she woke to another day of her worthless, selfish, aimless life.
To many people the events of the day before, and the anticipations of the day to come, give with the most pedantic exactness an automatic colour to the waking moments. The first pulse of conscious consciousness, without apparent cause, is happy, unhappy, or indifferent. Then comes a backward train of thought, the brain gropes for the reason of its pleasure or chagrin, something has happened, something is going to happen, and the instinct of the first moment is justified. The thing lay in the brain; it gave the colour of itself to the moment when reasoned thought was yet dormant.
Bacon and tea were the first savours of an outer world to Kit when she awoke, for she had slept soundly, but simultaneously, and not referring to these excellent things, her brain said to her, "Not nice!" Now, this was odd: she shared with her husband his opinion of the paramount importance of money, and the night before she had locked up in her safe enough to pay for six gowns at least, and a year's dentist bills, for her teeth were very good. Indeed, it was generally supposed that they were false, and though Kit always laughed with an open mouth, she had been more than once asked who her dentist was. Herein she showed less than her ordinary wisdom when she replied that she had not gotone, for the malignity of the world, how incomparable she should have known, felt itself justified.
Yet in spite of that delightful round sum in her jewel-safe, the smell of bacon woke her to no sense of bliss beyond bacon. For a moment she challenged her instinct, and told herself that she was going to have tea with the Carburys, and that Coquelin was coming; that she was dining with the Arbuthnots, where they were going to play a little French farce so screaming and curious that the Censor would certainly have had a fit if he had known that such a piece had been performed within the bounds of his paternal care. All this was as it should be, yet as the river of thought began to flow more fully, she was even less pleased with the colour of the day. Something unpleasant had happened; something unpleasant was still in the air—ah! that was it, and she sat up in bed and wondered exactly how she should put it to Lady Haslemere. Anyhow she hadcarte blanchefrom Jack, and if between half-past ten and a quarter past twelve she could not think of something simple and sufficient, she was a fool, and that she knew she certainly was not.
With her breakfast came the post. There were half a dozen cards of invitation to concerts and dinners and garden-parties; an autograph note from a very great personage about her guests at the banquet next week; a number of bills making a surprising but uninteresting total; another note, which she read with interest twice, and then tore into very small pieces; and a few lines from Jack, scribbled on a half-sheet of paper.
"Do the best you can, Kit," he said; "I am off to the City to see A. I shall behave as if I knew nothing."
Kit tore up this also, but not into small pieces, with a little sigh of relief. "Sense cometh in the morning," she said to herself, and ate her breakfast with a very good appetite.
Whatever she had been doing, however unwisely she had supped, Kit always "wanted" her breakfast, and as she took it the affair of the night before seemed to her to assume a somewhat different complexion. In her heart of hearts she began to be not very sorry for the lapse in social morality of which Mr. Alington had been guilty on the previous night. It seemed to her on post-prandial consideration that it might not be altogether a bad thing that she should have some little check upon him. It might even be called a blessing, with hardly any disguise at all, and she put the position to herself thus. When you went careering about in unexplored goldfields with the owner, a comparative stranger, harnessed to your cart, it was just as well to have some sort of a break ready to your hand. Very likely it would be unnecessary to use it; indeed, she did not want to have to use it at all, but it was certainly preferable to know that it was there, and that if the comparative stranger took it into his head to bolt, he would find it suddenly clapped on. The only drawback was that Alice knew about it too; at least, Kit was morally certain that she had noticed Mr. Alington's surreptitious pushing forward of his stake after the declaration of his card, which was very clumsily done, and she would have preferred, had it been possible, that only Jack and she should have known, for a secret has only one value, and the more it is shared the less valuable does each share become, on the simple arithmetical postulate that if you divide a unit into pieces, each piece is less than the original unit.
Indeed, the more she thought of it, the more convenient did it appear that Mr. Alington should have made this little mistake, and that she should have noticed it. And, after all, perhaps it would save trouble that Alice should have noticed it too, for in all probability it would be necessary to make Alington play again and watch him. For this she must have some accomplice, and as Jack was not to come into the affair at all, there really was no better accomplice to have than Alice. To lay this trap for the bland financier did not seem to Kit to be in any way a discreditable proceeding. She put it to herself that, if a man cheated, he ought not to be allowed to play cards and win his friends' money, and that it was in justice to him that it was necessary to verify the suspicion. But that it was a low and loathsome thing to ask a man as a friend to play cards in order to see whether he cheated or not did not present itself to her. Her mind—after all, it is a question of taste—was not constructed in such a way as to be able to understand this point of view, and she was not hide-bound or pedantic in her idea of the obligation entailed by hospitality. To cheat at cards was an impossible habit, it would not do in the least; for a rich man to cheat at cards was inexplicable. Indeed, it would not be too much to say that Kit was really shocked at the latter.
In the course of an hour came an answer from Lady Haslemere. She was unavoidably out till two, but if Kit would come to lunch then she would be at home. Haslemere and Tom were both out, and they could be alone.
Kit always found Alice Haslemere excellent company, and during lunch they blackened the reputations of their more intimate friends with all the masteryof custom, and a firm though gentle touch. Like some deductive detective of unreadable fiction, Kit could most plausibly argue guilt from cigarette ashes, muddy boots, cups of tea—anything, in fact, wholly innocent in itself. But luckier than he, she had not got to wrest verdicts from reluctant juries, but only to convince Lady Haslemere, which was a far lighter task, as she could without the slightest effort believe anything bad of anybody. Kit, moreover, was a perfect genius at innuendo; it was one of the greatest charms of her conversation.
After lunch they sat in the card-room and smoked gold-tipped, opium-tainted cigarettes, and when the servants had brought coffee and left them, Kit went straight to the point, and asked Alice whether she had seen anything irregular as they played baccarat the night before.
Lady Haslemere took a sip of coffee and lit another cigarette; she intended to enjoy herself very much.
"You mean the Australian," she said. "Well, I had suspicions; that is to say, last night I felt certain. It is so easy to feel certain about that sort of thing when one is losing."
Kit laughed a sympathetic laugh.
"Itisa bore, losing," she said. "If there is one thing I dislike more than winning other people's money, it is losing my own. And the certainty of last night is still a suspicion to-day?"
"Ye-es. But you know a man may mean to stake, and yet not put the counters quite clear of that dear little chalk line. I am sure, in any case, that Tom saw nothing, because I threw a hint at him this morning, which he would have understood if he had seen anything."
"Oh, Tom never sees anything," said Kit; "he is like Jack."
Lady Haslemere's natural conclusion was that Jack had not seen anything either, and for the moment Kit was saved from a more direct misstatement. Not that she had any prudish horror of misstatements, but it was idle to make one unless it was necessary; it is silly to earn a reputation for habitual prevarication. Lies are like drugs or stimulants, the more frequent use you make of them, the less effect they have, both on yourself and on other people.
"Well, then, Kit," continued Lady Haslemere, "we have not yet got much to go on. You, Tom, Jack, and I are the only four people who could really have seen: Jack and I because we were sitting directly opposite Mr. Alington, you and Tom because you were sitting one on each side of him. And of us four, you alone really think that this—this unfortunate moral collapse, I think you called it, happened. And Jack is so sharp. I don't at all agree that he never sees anything; there is nothing, rather, that he does not see. I attach as much weight to his seeing nothing as to anybody else seeing anything. You and I see things very quick, you know, dear," she added with unusual candour.
"Perhaps Jack was lighting a cigarette or something," said Kit. "Indeed, now I come to think of it, I believe he was."
"Jack can see through cigarette smoke as well as most people," remarked Alice. "But on the whole I agree with you, Kit; we cannot leave it as it is. I believe the recognised thing to do is to get him to play again and watch him."
"I believe so," said Kit, with studied unconcern.
Here she made a mistake; the unconcern was alittle overdone, and it caused Lady Haslemere to look up quickly. At that moment it occurred to her for the first time that Kit was not being quite ingenuous.
"But I don't like doing that sort of thing," she went on, throwing out a feeler.
"But what else are we to do?" asked Kit, who since breakfast had evolved from her inner consciousness several admirable platitudes. "It is really not fair to Alington himself to leave it like this; to have lurking in one's mind—one can't help it—a suspicion against the man which may be quite erroneous. On the other hand, supposing it is not erroneous, supposing he did cheat, it is not fair on other people that he should be allowed to go on playing. He either did cheat or else he did not."
There was no gainsaying the common-sense of this, and Lady Haslemere was silent a moment.
"Tell Jack," she suggested at length, after racking her brains for something rather awkward to say.
As a rule she and Kit were excellent friends, and treated each other with immense frankness; but Lady Haslemere this morning had a very distinct impression that Kit was keeping something back, which annoyed her. Doubtless it was something quite trivial and unimportant, but she herself did not relish being kept in the dark about anything by anybody. But Kit replied immediately.
"I don't see why we should tell anybody, Alice," she said; "and poor dear Jack would pull his moustache off in his perplexity, if he were to know," she added, with a fine touch of local colour. "In any case, the last thing we want is a scandal, for it never looks well to see in the papers that the 'Marchionessof Conybeare, while entertaining a large baccarat party last night, detected one of her guests cheating. Her ladyship now lies in a precarious state.' You know the sort of thing. Then follow the names of the guests. I hate the public press!" she observed with dignity.
"Yes; it is like X rays," observed Lady Haslemere; "and enables the curious public to see one's bones. And however charming one may be, one's bones are not fit for public inspection. Also the papers would put the name of one of the guests with dashes for vowels, and the excited reader would draw his conclusions. Really, the upper class is terribly ill-used. It is the whipping-boy of the nation. Supposing Smith and Jones had a baccarat-party, and Smith cheated, no one would care, not even Robinson."
Kit laughed.
"That is just why I don't want to tell anybody," she said. "If three people are in a secret, the chances of it getting out are enormously greater than if only two are. Not that anyone tells it exactly; but the atmosphere gets impregnated with it. You know what happened before. One has to keep the windows open, so to speak, and let in plenty of fresh air, politics, and so on. Other people breathe the secret."
"We can't tackle the man alone," said Alice.
"Why not? A man always hates a scene, because a man is never any good at a scene; and, personally, I rather like them. I am at my best in a scene, dear; I really am ripping."
Again Lady Haslemere had a quite distinct sensation that Kit was keeping something back. She seemed to wish to prove her case against Alington,yet she did not want anybody else to know. It was puzzling why she desired a private handle against the man. Perhaps—Lady Haslemere thought she had an inkling of the truth, and decided to take a shot at it.
"Of course it would be awkward for Jack," she observed negligently, "to be connected in business with this man, if it became known that he knew that Alington had cheated at baccarat."
Kit was off her guard.
"That is just what he feels—what I feel," she said.
She made this barefaced correction with the most silken coolness; she neither hurried nor hesitated, but Lady Haslemere burst out laughing.
"My dear Kit!" she said.
Kit sat silent a moment, and then perfectly naturally she laughed too.
"Oh, Alice," she said, "how sharp you are! Really, dear, if I had been a man and had married you, we should have been King and Queen of England before you could say 'knife.' Indeed, it was very quick of you, because I didn't correct myself at all badly. I was thinking I had carried my point, and so I got careless. Now I'll apologize, dear, and I promise never to try to take you in again, partly because it's no use, and partly because you owe me one. Jack does know, and he, at my request, left me to deal with it as if he didn't. It would be very awkward for him if he knew, so to speak, officially. At present, you see, he has only his suspicions. He could not be certain any more than you or I. As you so sensibly said, dear, we have only suspicions. But now, Alice, let us leave Jack out of it. Don't let him know that you know that he knows. Dearme, how complicated! You see, he would have to break with Alington if he knew."
Lady Haslemere laughed.
"I suppose middle-class people would think us wicked?" she observed.
"Probably; and it would be so middle-class of them," said Kit. "That is the convenient thing about the middle class; they are never anything else. Now, there is no counting on the upper and lower class; at one time we both belong to the criminal class, at another we are both honest labourers. But the middle class preserves a perpetual monopoly of being shocked and thinking us wicked. And then it puts us in pillories and throws dirt. Such fun it must be, too, because it thinks we mind. So don't let us have a scandal."
Lady Haslemere pursed her pretty mouth up, and blew an excellent smoke-ring. She was a good-humoured woman, and her detection of Kit took the sting out of the other's attempted deception. She was quite pleased with herself.
"Very well, I won't tell him," she said.
"That's a dear!" said Kit cordially; "and you must see that it would do no good to tell anybody else. Jack would have to break with him if it got about, and when a reduced marquis is really wanting to earn his livelihood it is cruel to discourage him. So let's get Alington to play again, and watch him, you and I, like two cats. Then if we see him cheat again, we'll ask him to lunch and tell him so, and make him sign a paper, and stamp it and seal it and swear it, to say he'll never play again, amen."
Lady Haslemere rose.
"The two conspirators swear silence, then," shesaid. "But how awkward it will be, Kit, if anyone else notices it on this second occasion!"
"Bluff it out!" said Kit. "You and I will deny seeing anything at all, and say the thing is absurd. Then we'll tell this Alington that we know all about it, but that unless he misbehaves or plays again the incident will be clo-o-o-sed!"
"I should be sorry to trust my money to that man," said Alice.
"Oh, there you make a mistake," said Kit. "You are cautious in the wrong place, and I shouldn't wonder if you joined us Carmelites before long. For some reason he thinks that Conybeare's name is worth having on his 'front page,' as he calls it, and I am convinced he will give him his money's worth. He may even give him more, especially as Jack hasn't got any. He thinks Jack is very sharp, and he is quite right. You are very sharp, too, Alice, and so am I. How pleasant for us all, and how right we are to be friends! Dear me! if you, Jack, and I were enemies, we should soon make London too hot to hold any of us. As it is, the temperature is perfectly charming."
"And is this bounder going to make you and Jack very rich?" asked Lady Haslemere.
"The bounder is going to do his best," laughed Kit; "at least, Jack thinks so. But it would need a very persevering sort of bounder to make us rich for long together. Money is so restless; it is always flying about, and it so seldom flies in my direction."
"It has caught the habit from the world, perhaps," said Alice.
"I dare say. Certainly we are always flying about, and it is so tiresome having to pay ready money at booking-offices. Jack quite forgot theother day when we were going to Sandown, and he told the booking-office man to put it down to him, which he barbarously refused to do."
"How unreasonable, dear!"
"Wasn't it? I'd give a lot to be able to run up a bill with railway companies. Dear me, it's after three! I must fly. There's a bazaar for the prevention of something or the propagation of something at Knightsbridge, and I am going to support Princess Frederick, who is going to open it, and eat a large tea. How they eat, those people! We are always propagating or preventing, and one can't cancel them against each other, because one wants to propagate exactly those things one wants not to prevent."
"What are you going to propagate to-day?"
"I forget. I believe it is the anti-propagation of prevention in general. Do you go to the Hungarian ball to-night? Yes? We shall meet then.Au revoir!"
"You are so full of good works, Kit," said Lady Haslemere, with no touch of regret in her tone.
Kit laughed loudly.
"Yes, isn't it sweet of me?" she said. "Really, bazaars are an excellent policy, as good as honesty. And they tell so much more. If you have been to a bazaar it is put in the papers, whereas they don't put it in the papers if you have been honest. I often have. Bazaars are soon over, too, and you feel afterwards as if you'd earned your ball, just as you feel you've earned your dinner after bicycling."
Kit rustled pleasantly downstairs, leaving Alice in the card-room where they had talked. That lady had as keen a scent for money as Kit herself, and evidently if Kit denied herself the pleasure of causing a scandal over this cheating at baccarat (apiquant subject), she must have a strong reason for doing so. She wanted, so Lady Haslemere reasoned, to have Alington under her very private thumb, not, so she concluded, to get anything definite out of him, for blackmail was not in Kit's line, but as a precautionary measure. She followed her train of thought with admirable lucidity, and came to the very sensible conclusion that the interest that the Conybeares had in Alington was large. Indeed, taking into consideration the utter want of cash in the Conybeare establishment, it must be immense; for neither of them would have considered anything less than a fair settled income or a very large sum of money worth trying for. This being the case, she wished to have a hand in it, too.
Tom, she knew, had been approached by Mr. Alington and Jack on the subject of his becoming a director, and she determined to persuade him to do so. At present he had not decided. Anyhow, to win money out of mines was fully as respectable as to lose it at cards, and much more profitable. Besides, the daily papers might become interesting if it was a personal matter whether Bonanzas were up or Rands down. Tom had a large interest as it was in Robinsons—whatever they were, and they sounded vulgar but rich—and she had occasionally read the reports of the money market from his financial paper, as an idle person may spell out words in some unknown language. The "ursine operators," "bulls," "flatness," "tightness," "realizations"—how interesting all these terms would become if they applied to one's own money! She had often noticed that the political outlook affected the money market, and during the Fashoda time Tom had been like a bear with a sore head. To knowsomething about politics, to have, as she had, a Conservative leader ready to whisper to her things that were not officially supposed to be whispered, would evidently be an advantage if you had an interest in prices. And the demon of speculation made his introductory bow to her.
It is difficult for those who dwell on the level lands of sanity to understand the peaks and valleys of mania. To fully estimate the intolerable depression which ensues on the conviction that you have a glass leg, or the secret majesty which accompanies the belief that one is Charles I., is impossible to anyone who does not know the heights and depths to which such creeds conduct the holder. But the mania for speculation—as surely a madness as either of these—is easier of comprehension. Only common-sense of the crudest kind is required; if it is supposed that your country is on the verge of war, and you happen to know for certain that reassuring events will be made public to-morrow, it is a corollary to invest all you can lay hands on in the sunken consols in the certainty of a rise to-morrow. This is as simple as A B C, and your gains are only limited by the amount that you can invest. A step further and you have before you the enchanting plan of not paying for what you buy at all. Buy merely. Consols (of this you must be sure) will rise before next settling-day, and before next settling-day sell. And thus the secret of not taking up shares is yours.
But consols are a slow gamble. They may conceivably rise two points in a day. Instead of your hundred pounds you will have a hundred and two (minus brokerage), an inglorious spoil for so many shining sovereigns to lead home. But for the sake of those who desire to experience this fascinatingform of excitement in less staid a manner there are other means supplied, and the chiefest and choicest is mines. A single mining share which, judiciously bought, cost a sterling sovereign may under advantageous circumstances be worth three or four in a week or two. How much more stirring an adventure! When we estimate this in hundreds and thousands, the prospect will be found to dazzle comparatively sober eyes.
Now, of the people concerned at present in this story, no less than five, as Kit drove to her bazaar, were pondering these simple things. Alington was always pondering them and acting on them; Jack had been pondering them for a full week, Kit for the same period, and Tom Abbotsworthy was on the point of consenting to become a director. And Lady Haslemere, thinking over her interview with Kit, said to herself, with her admirable common-sense, that if there was a cake going, she might as well have a slice. She had immense confidence in the power of both Kit and Jack to take care of themselves, and knew well that neither would have stirred a finger for Mr. Alington, if they had not quite clearly considered it to be worth their while. And Kit was stirring all her fingers; she was taking Alington about as constantly as she took her pocket-handkerchief; she took him not merely to big parties and large Grundy dinners, but to the intimate gatherings of the brightest and best. For she was a good wife to Jack, and she at any rate believed that there was a cake going.
Lord Evelyn Ronald Anstruther D'Eyncourt Massingbird was not usually known as all or any of this, but as Toby. It would have been a difficult matter, requiring a faith of the most preposterous sort, to have stood in front of him and seriously said, "I believe you to be Lord Evelyn Ronald Anstruther D'Eyncourt Massingbird," and the results of so doing might have been quite disconcerting. But having been told he was Toby, it would have been impossible to forget or to doubt it. The most vivid imagination could not conceive a more obvious Toby; the identity might almost have been guessed by a total stranger or an intelligent foreigner. He was about twenty-four years old (the usual age of Tobys), and he had a pleasantly ugly face, with a snub nose, slightly freckled. Blue eyes, in no way beautiful, but very white as to the white and blue as to the blue, looked honestly out from under a typically unintellectual forehead, above which was a shock head of sandy hair, which stood up like a terrier's coat or a doormat, and on which no brush yet invented had been known to exert a flattening tendency. He was about five foot ten in height, and broad for that. His hat had a tendency to tilt towards the back of his head, and he had big, firm hands, callous on their insides with the constantuse of weapons made for the violent propulsion of balls. He always looked comfortable in his clothes, and whether he was adorning the streets of London, immaculately dressed and hot and large, or trudging through heather in homespun, he was never anything but Toby.
A further incredible fact about him, in addition to his impossible baptismal name, was that he was Jack Conybeare's younger brother, and Kit's brother-in-law. Nature, that exquisite humorist who turns so many dissimilar little figures out of the same moulds, had never shown herself a more imaginative artist than when she ordained that Jack and Toby should have the same father and mother. The more you considered their relationship, the stranger that relationship appeared. Jack, slim, aquiline, dark, with his fine, taper-fingered hands and the unmistakable marks of breeding in face and form, was sufficiently remote to all appearance from Toby—fair, snub-nosed, squat, with his big gloves and his big boots, and his chair-filling build; but in character they were, considered as brothers, perfectly irreconcilable. The elder had what we may call a spider-mind. It wove a thread invisible almost to the eye, but strong enough to bear the weight of what it was meant to bear. Obvious issues, the natural consequences of things, Jack passed by in the manner of an express rushing through a wayside station, and before Toby, to continue the metaphor, had drawn up, flushed and panting, at the platform, and read the name on the station board, Jack would be a gray streamer of smoke on the horizon. But Toby's grasp of the obvious was as sure as Jack's keen appreciation of subtleties, and though he made no dragon-fly dartings through the air, nor vanishedunaware on horizon points, he went very steadily along, right in the middle of the road, and was never in any danger of falling into obvious ditches, or colliding with anyone who did not unquestionably get in his way, or where he might be expected to go.
Toby was a person who got continually slapped on the back—a lovable habit, but one which no amount of diplomacy or thread-spinning will produce. To slap Jack on the back, for instance, must always, from his earliest years, have been an impossibility. This was lucky, for he would have resented it. That nobody ever quarrelled with either of them appears at first sight a point in common; in reality it illustrates their dissimilarity. It was dangerous to quarrel with Jack; it was blankly impossible to quarrel with Toby. You dare not try it with the one; it was useless to try it with the other.
At the present moment his sister-in-law was trying her utmost to do so, and failing pitiably. Kit was not accustomed to fail or to be pitiable, and it irritated her.
"You have no sense, Toby," she was saying. "You cannot see, or you will not, where your interest lies—yes, and your duty, too."
Now, when Kit talked about duty Toby always smiled. When he smiled his eyes wrinkled up till they closed, and he showed a row of strong, clean, useful teeth. Strength, cleanliness, and utility, in fact, were his most salient features.
Kit leaned back in her chair, waiting for his answer, for Toby got confused unless you gave him time. They were sitting in the tented balcony of the Hungarian Embassy, and from within came the rhythm of dance music and a delicious murmur of voices. It was the evening of the day of the bazaar,and Kit felt that she had earned her ball. The night was hot, and as she attempted the hopeless task of quarrelling with Toby she fanned herself, partly, no doubt, for the sake of the current of air, but to a psychologist, judging by her face, not without the intention of fanning the embers of her wrath. She had sat out this dance with him on purpose, and she was beginning to think that she was wasting her time.
Toby's smile broadened.
"When did you last do your duty, Kit?" he asked.
"My duty?" said Kit sharply. "We are talking about yours."
"And my duty is——"
"Not to go to that vulgar, stupid music-hall to-morrow night with that loutish friend of yours from Oxford, but to dine with us, and meet Miss Murchison. You seem to forget that Jack is your elder brother."
"My duty towards Jack——" began Toby irreverently.
"Don't be profane. You are Jack's only brother, and I tell you plainly that it is no fun being Lord Conybeare unless you have something to be Lord Conybeare with. Putting money into the estate," said Kit rather unwisely, "is like throwing it down a well."
Toby became thoughtful, and his eyes opened again. His mind worked slowly, but it soon occurred to him that he had never heard that his brother was famed for putting money into the estate.
"And taking money out of the estate is like taking it out of a well," he remarked at length, with an air of a person who is sure of his facts, but does not mean to draw inferences of any kind whatever.
Kit stared at him a moment. It had happened once or twice before that she had suspected Toby of dark sayings, and this sounded remarkably like another of them. He was so sensible that sometimes he was not at all stupid. She made a mental note of how admirable a thing is a perfectly impenetrable manner if you wish to make an innuendo; there was nothing so telling.
"Well?" she said at length.
Toby's face expressed nothing whatever. He took off a large eight and lit a cigarette.
"That's all," he said—"nothing more."
Kit decided to pass on.
"It's all very well for you now," she said, "for you have six or seven hundred a year, and you happen to like nothing so much as hitting round balls with pieces of wood and iron. It is an inexpensive taste, and you are lucky to find it amusing. In your position at present you have no calls upon you and no barrack of a house to keep up. But when you are Lord Conybeare you will find how different it is. Besides, you must marry some time, and when you marry you must marry money. Old bachelors are more absurd, if possible, than old spinsters. And goodness knows how ridiculous they are!"
"My sister-in-law is a mercenary woman," remarked Toby. "And aren't we getting on rather quick?"
"Quick!" screamed Kit. "I am painfully trying to drag you a few steps forward, and you say we are getting on quick! Now, Toby, you are twenty-five——"
"Four," said Toby.
"Oh, Toby, you are enough to madden Job!What difference does that make? I choose that you should be twenty-five! All your people marry early; they always did; and it is a most proper thing for a young man to do. Really, young men are getting quite impossible. They won't dance—you aren't dancing; they won't marry—you aren't married; they spend all their lazy, selfish lives in amusing themselves and—and ruining other people."
"It's better to amuse yourself than not to amuse yourself," said Toby. This, as he knew, was a safe draw. If Kit was at home, out she came.
"That is your view. Thank goodness there are other views," said Kit, with extraordinary energy. "Why, for instance, do you suppose that I went down to the wilds of Kensington and opened a bazaar, as I did this afternoon?"
"I can't think," said Toby. "Wasn't it awfully slow?"
He began to grin again.
"Slow? Yes, of course it was slow; but it is one's duty not to mind what is slow," continued Kit rapidly, pumping up moral sentiments with surprising fluency. "Why do you suppose Jack goes to the House whenever there is a Church Bill on? Why do I come and argue with you and quarrel with you like this?"
Toby opened his blue eyes as wide as Kit's bazaar.
"Are you quarrelling with me?" he asked. "I didn't know. Try not, Kit."
Kit laughed.
"Dear Toby, don't be so odious and tiresome," she said. "Do be nice. You can behave so nicely if you like, and the Princess was saying at the bazaar this afternoon what a dear boy you were."
"So the bazaar wasn't so slow," thought Toby,who knew that Kit had a decided weakness, quite unaccountable, for Princesses. But he was wise enough to say nothing.
"And I've taken all the trouble to ask Miss Murchison to dinner just because of you," continued Kit quickly, seeing her partner out of the corner of her eye careering wildly about in search of her. "She's perfectly charming, Toby, and very pretty, and you always like talking to pretty girls, and quite right, too; and the millions—oh, the millions! You have no one to look after you but Jack and me, and Jack is a City man now; and what will happen to the Conybeares if you don't marry money I don't know. You want money; she wants a Marquis. There it is!"
"Did you ask her?" said Toby parenthetically.
"No, darling, I did not," said Kit, with pardonable asperity. "I left that to you."
Toby sighed.
"You go so quick, Kit," he said. "You marry me to a person I've never yet seen."
Kit drew on her gloves; the partner was imminent.
"Come and see her, Toby—come and see her. That is all I ask. Oh, here you are, Ted; I've been waiting for you for ages. I thought you had thrown me over. Good-bye, Toby; to-morrow at half-past eight, and I'll promise to order iced asparagus, which I know you like."
The two went off, leaving Toby alone. Conversation of this kind with Kit always reduced him to a state of breathless mental collapse. She caught him up, so to speak, and whirled him along through endless seas of prospective alliances, to drop him at the end, a mere lifeless lump, in unknown localities, withthe prospect of iced asparagus as a restorative. This question of his marriage was not a new one between them. Many times before Kit had snatched him up like this, and plumped him down in front of some extraordinarily eligible maiden. But either he or the extraordinarily eligible maiden, or both, had walked away as soon as Kit's eye was turned, and made themselves disconcerting to her schemes. But to-night Kit had shown an unusual vigour and directness. Selfish and unscrupulous as she was, she had, like everybody else, a soft spot for Toby, and she could honestly think of nothing more conducive to his highest advantage than to procure him a wealthy wife. Wealth was thesine quâ non—no other need apply; but in Miss Murchison she thought she had found very much more. The girl was a beauty—a real beauty; and though she was not of the type that appealed personally to Kit, she might easily appeal immensely to Toby. She had only come out that season, and Kit had met her but once or twice before; but a very much duller eye than Kit's could have seen that in all probability she would not be on view in the eligible department very long. She was American by origin, but had been brought up entirely in England; and her countrymen observed with pain, and the men of her adopted country with that patronizing approval over which our Continental neighbours find it so hard to keep calm, that no one would have guessed her nationality. Of her father little was known, but that little was good, for he was understood to be wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, having made a colossal pile in some porky or oily manner, and to have had the good taste not to beget any other children. She and her mother had been at the bazaar that afternoon, where theyhad run across the pervasive Kit, who suddenly saw in her impulsive way that here at last was the very girl for Toby, wondered at her blindness in not seeing it before, and engaged them to dine next evening.
Now, Mrs. Murchison had long sighed and pined for an invitation from Kit, whom she considered to be the topmost flower of the smartest plant in the pleasant garden of society. At last her wish was fulfilled. Princes had drunk her champagne, and danced or sat out to her fiddles, and made themselves agreeable under her palms; but a small and particular set in society in which Kit most intimately moved had hitherto had nothing to say to her, and she accepted the invitation with effusion, though it meant an excuse or a subterfuge to a Countess. But Mrs. Murchison had picked up the line of London life with astonishing swiftness and great perspicuity. Her object was to get herself and her daughter, not into the cleverest or the most amusing, or, as she styled it, the "ducalest set," in London, but into what she and others, for want of a better name, called "the smart set," and she had observed, at first with surprise and pain, but unerringly, that rank counted for nothing there. She could not have told you, nor perhaps could they, what did count there, but she knew very well it was not rank.
"Why, we might play kiss-in-the-ring with the Queen and Royal Family," she had observed once to her daughter, "but we should be no nearer for that."
A year ago she would have hoarded a Countess as being a step in the ladder she proposed to get to the top of, but now she knew that no Countess,quâCountess, mattered a straw in the attainment of the goal for which she aimed; and this particular one,whom she had already thrown over for Kit, might as well have been a milkmaid in Connecticut for all the assistance she could give her in her quest. The smart set was the smart set, here was her creed; Americans had got there before, and Americans, she fully determined, should get there again. What she expected to find there she did not know; whether it would be at all worth the pains she did not care, and she would not be at all disappointed if it was exactly like everything else, or perhaps duller. It would be sufficient for her to be there.
In many ways Mrs. Murchison was a remarkable woman, and she had a kind and excellent heart. She had been the very pretty daughter of a man who had made a fair fortune in commerce, and had let his children grow up and get educated as God pleased; but from very early years this daughter of his had made up her mind that she was not going to revolve for the remainder of her life in commercial circles, and she had divided her money fairly evenly between adornments for the body and improvements for the mind. Thus she had acquired a great fluency in French, and an accent as remarkable as it was incorrect. In the same way she had read a great deal of history, and the classical literature of both English tongues; and though she seldom managed to get her names quite right, both she and those who heard her were easily able to guess to whom she referred. Thus, when she alluded to Richard Dent de Lion, though the name sounded like a yellow flower with a milky stem, there could be no reasonable doubt that she was speaking of the Crusader; or when she told you that her husband was as rich as Crœsum, those who had ever heard of Crœsus could not fail to see that they werehearing of him now. She was fond of allusions, and her conversation was as full of plums as a cake; but as she held the sensible and irrefutable view that conversation is but a means of making oneself understood, she was quite satisfied to do so.
Mrs. Murchison was now a big handsome woman of about forty, fresh, of high colour, and beautifully dressed. In spite of her manifest absurdities and the surprising nature of her conversation, she was eminently likeable, and to her friends lovable. There was no mistaking the honesty and kindliness of her nature; she was a good woman, and in ways a wise one. Lily, her daughter, who found herself on the verge of hysterics twenty times a day at her inimitable remarks, had the intensest affection for her mother, blindly reciprocated; and the daughter, to whom the wild chase after the smart set seemed perfectly incomprehensible, was willing that all the world should think her heart was in it sooner than that her mother should suspect it was not. Mrs. Murchison herself had begun to forget her French and history a little, for she was a mere slave to this new accomplishment, social success, and found it demanded all her time and attention. She worked at it from morning till night, and from night to morning she dreamed about it. Only the night before she had thought with extraordinary vividness in her sleep that her maid had come to her bedside with a note containing a royal command to sing duets with the Queen quite quietly at 11.30 that morning, and she had awoke with a pang of rapturous anxiety to find the vision unsubstantial, and that she need not get up to practise her scales. She made no secret of her ambitions, but rather paraded them, and told her dream to the Princess Frederick at the bazaar withhugenaïveté. And to see Lily married into the smart set would have caused her to say her Nunc Dimittis with a sober and grateful heart.
But the smart set was a terribly baffling Will-o'-the-Wisp kind of affair, or so it had hitherto been to her. A married daughter, an unmarried daughter even, so she observed, might be steeped in the smart set, while the mother was, figuratively speaking, in Bloomsbury. You might robe yourself from head to foot in Balas rubies, you might be a double Duchess, you might dance a cancan down Piccadilly, you might be the most amiable of God's creatures, the wittiest, the most corrupt, or the most correct of the daughters of Eve, and yet never get near it; but here was Mrs. Lancelot Gordon, who never did anything, was not even an Honourable, dressed rather worse than Mrs. Murchison's own maid, and yet was a pivot and centre of that charmed circle. Mrs. Murchison racked her brain over the problem, and came to the conclusion that no accomplishment could get you into it, no vice or virtue keep you out. That was a comfort, for she had no vices. But to-day Kit had asked her to dinner; the mystic doors perhaps were beginning to turn on their hinges, and her discarded Countess might continue to revolve on her unillumined orbit in decent and dull obscurity with her belted Earl.