Jim Spencer woke next morning with that thrill of quickened anticipation which serves to remind us even before full consciousness has returned, that something new and exciting has come into our lives. He needed but little thought to remember what it was, and as he lay watching with idle but wide-awake eyes his man putting his clothes out, he told over and over again in his mind, like the beads of a rosary, the events of the evening before, always finishing with the pendant, so to speak, the fact that in a few hours he was going to see her again. Frankly and honestly he reminded himself that all romance was over: to begin with, and also to end with, she was another man's wife, and that was sufficient for him, as no doubt it was sufficient for her. Three years ago he had left England because he desired in every fibre of his being to marry her, and since that was impossible, because he entirely refused to waste his lifein purposeless dangling after what he could not get. And in this spirit, which is more instinct with manliness than any sacrifice of years and youth to the mere watching of the unattainable shadow on the blind, he had gone out to the Transvaal, farmed there with the same fervour as that which he had thrown into his love-making, and subsequently, by the discovery of the reef on his land, had become, if not one of the richest men who had found colossal fortunes as sheep-farmers, at any rate one of the second rank-millionaire, if not multi-millionaire. But at that point a certain sobriety of nature had reasserted itself; he had not mistaken that full meal of gold for thehors d'œuvre, nor sought to duplicate it and reduplicate it. He had not lost sight of the fact that he had enough, but recognising it with all the thankfulness that plenitude gives, and not with the false appetite of the habitual glutton, he had, so to speak, said grace and retired from the dinner-table.
So now, at the age of thirty, he was temporarily, at any rate, without employment, even as he had been, temporarily also, without employment when Marie decided to marry, not him, but Jack Alston. True, hehad plenty of artistic tastes; in music and pictures he could easily have passed the remainder of his life, however long, just as, without ever being bored, he could have shot all the autumn, hunted all the winter, and dozed and dined all the spring and summer, according to the traditional method of the English gentleman, whose obituary notice eventually teems with encomium on his useful and simple life, which means that he has been a J. P. But to pass one's life merely in hearing music and looking at or buying pictures seemed to him as unworthy of a person who called himself a man, as did the recognised round of shooting and hunting appear to him unworthy of a rational being at all. But as to what this temporary abandonment of employment should terminate in, he, as he lay in bed this morning, had no present idea. Anyhow, he was to see Marie again, and he deliberately quenched further reflection.
The morning had not been foresworn, but fulfilled with liberal generosity the promise of the last few days, and when Mildred Brereton reached the Row on a black mare, which had been behaving itself as might a crab on hot plates, and would have tried any but the most masterly seat and hands, the broadbrown expanse of the Ladies' Mile was plentifully dotted with riders. The little green seats, too, by the side were in high request, and she walked, or rather danced, very slowly up for a hundred yards or so, before letting her chafing mount have a canter, noting with her quick eye a hundred things and people which would have escaped one less trained and less naturally gifted to observe combinations of interest. Jack Alston had joined her, and she kept up a running comment.
"There's Pagani with that absurd Italian woman," she said. "Why must a man of that kind do that when Guardina is sure to be here? There, I told you so! what a row there will be! She has the temper of a fiend, like me. Jack, if you ever flirt with another woman on the sly, and I see you, there'll be the deuce to pay. Come and tell me frankly if you are going to do that sort of thing. Dear Madame Guardina, how are you? Do walk a little way with us. No, there's not a soul here this morning, is there? I've seen no one, not even the most constant habitués like Pagani. And you sang Lucia last night, I hear, too divinely, and I had some stupid people to dinner and couldn't come. Yes, LordAlston was one of them; he was the cleverest there. Judge of the rest!"
The prima donna, a good-natured soul, who had the most perfect vocal chords in the world, absolutely no artistic sense, a passion for Pagani, and an adoration for the particular set to which Mrs. Brereton belonged, was delighted to be seen talking to her, and, turning back, walked along the rails in the opposite direction to that in which Pagani sat.
"Well, I must say you missed something," she said with engaging frankness, "for I never was in better voice. And on Saturday I sing La Tosca. With the open mouth, too, as I've no other engagement for a fortnight."
"What are you going to do?"
"Go to my house on the river and throw sticks for my dogs. You've never been there yet, Mrs. Brereton. Do come down sometimes. I shall drive there on Saturday night after the opera."
Mrs. Brereton made a short calculation.
"I will; I should love to," she said. "I hear it is charming."
"A dozen basket chairs and two dozen dogs," said Madame Guardina.
"I adore dogs. Are you off? Good-bye. About the middle of next week?"
"Any day."
Mildred gave her a charming smile and turned to Jack.
"That's one good-natured thing this morning already," she said, "and it's barely ten yet. Pagani was just moving when I saw Guardina; he'll be gone before she gets to him."
"I wish you were half as good-natured to me," remarked Jack.
"Well, what can I do for you?"
"Tell me how to behave to a hopelessly unreasonable woman, who is one's wife!"
Mildred puckered her lips as if to whistle.
"Explain in five minutes," she said. "I can't really hold this untamed savage any longer. Come on, Jack; we'll canter—shall we call it? up to the end."
Whether Mildred called it a canter or not, it is not doubtful what other people would have called it. But even the heart of the restraining policeman must have been touched by the splendid vision that flew by him, Mildred sitting her horse as no other woman could, sitting a horse also that few could have sat at all, and treating its agitated toe-stepswith less concern than a man in an arm-chair gives to a persistent fly on a summer afternoon. The consciousness that hundreds of people were looking at her added, if anything, to her unconcern; certainly also the fact that many who saw her saw also, and remarked, that Jack was with her gave an additional zest to her enjoyment. For her creed was that secrecy in this world was impossible, and the only way to prevent people talking in the way that mattered and was annoying was to do things quite openly. It mattered not in the least if people said, "Oh, we have always known that!" or if they always took it for granted; what did matter was if they said, "We have lately thought there must be something of the kind!" Trespassers can be prosecuted; length of possession constitutes a title.
They drew up at the top of the mile, and Mildred adjusted her hat.
"There," she said, "the cobwebs have been dispersed for the day. Now we'll go on talking. Explain, Jack. Why do you want treatment for Marie?"
Jack lit a cigarette.
"She makes scenes," he said, "and they bore me. She made one last night."
"What about?"
"I don't know that it's worth repeating, really," he said.
"Probably not, but you are going to tell me."
He looked at her a moment with his thin eyebrows drawn together in a frown, hit his horse rather savagely for an imaginary stumble, and reined it in again more sharply than was necessary.
"I don't the least like being dictated to, Mildred," he said. "Nobody adopts that tone with me—with any success, that is to say."
She laughed.
"Oh, my excellent friend," she said, "you really speak as if I was afraid of you. For goodness' sake, don't put on schoolmaster airs. You know perfectly well that doesn't go down. Don't hit your horse now; you are behaving like a sulky child that whips its doll. What was the scene about?"
"Did you see the infernal manner in which she walked off with Jim Spencer last night, driving him home in her brougham and saying she was going to Blanche Devereux'? That was her way of getting quits with me."
"Quits with you? What for?"
"For a conversation I had with her after lunch yesterday. I told her that if she was seen about with Jim Spencer people would talk, and if they talked it was absurd for her to keep up the sort of attitude she maintains towards society in general, saying that we are both fools and knaves."
Mildred made a gesture of despair.
"The stupidity of men really exceeds all bounds," she said. "I beg your pardon, that is by the way. You were saying that she walked off with Jim last night. I suppose you commented on that too, did you?"
He flushed angrily.
"If she imagines she is going to make a fool of me before all the world, the sooner she learns her mistake the better," said he.
"You said that to her?" asked Mildred in a tone in which "even despair was mild."
"Of course I did, or rather, I asked her whether she really went to see Blanche. She saw what I meant all right."
"You seem to imagine she is as great a fool as you," remarked Mildred.
He turned half round on his horse.
"I don't stand such language from any one," said he.
"Oh, for God's sake don't be absurd! Youstand exactly what language I choose to use to you. Is it really possible, Jack, that you don't see what a dangerous and foolish game you are playing?Mon Dieu! mon Dieu!you are married to that pearl of a woman, and you think you can treat her like that. You aren't fit to tie her boot-laces, and——"
"I have no intention of trying."
"Don't be funny. I was saying you weren't fit to tie her boot-laces, but I can't expect you to see that. And you have practically told her you suspect her of an intrigue with Jim Spencer. Now, if she was the sort of woman you seem to think she is, that would be the very way to drive her into it. Personally, I wish she was, but she isn't, and we must make the best of it. But what you have done is to show her, if further demonstration were necessary, your own utter depravity. Of the sickening folly of that, I needn't speak. Go on: what did she say then?"
"She said she didn't care in the slightest degree whether I believed she went to Lady Devereux's or not. She also said that Jim was coming to lunch. So of course I shall go home to lunch."
Mildred laughed outright.
"You have the most wonderful power ofchoosing the only impossible thing to do or say," she remarked. "That is the one thing out of the question. The impeccable attitude of guardian angel, my dear Jack, is the one attitude that cannot be made to pose well. Nor have you the figure for it."
They rode on a little while in silence.
"Have your own way, then," he said at length.
"Of course I shall. Poor old Jack, how you do manage to put your foot in it! And I have to pull you out so often. Aren't you grateful to me?"
"Not particularly this moment."
"Well, you will be soon. You needn't tell me when you are. A good action is its own reward, and I am bursting with an approving conscience this morning. I've helped Guardina and Pagani, I've helped you."
"Yourself perhaps?"
"That also is my reward. I didn't think of myself—at least, not much."
She looked at him with a gay and kindled eye; the exercise had brought the blood into her face, and it was impossible to credit her with the six-and-thirty years which she had assured Marie were hers. And looking at her, his smarting ill-humour evaporated.
"How is it one never gets tired of you?" he said.
She laughed.
"Because I do not let you get accustomed to me," she answered.
Certainly if Jack Alston had, as was generally supposed, the gift of getting his way with other people, Mrs. Brereton had the gift of getting her way with him. This, she knew well, but was far too wise to say, was the true secret of his absolute dependence on her, for there is nothing that a masterful and brutal mind really enjoys so much as finding some one stronger than itself. At times she was inwardly afraid that she would some day get the worst of it, but knowing that in managing men, as in managing horses, the real secret of their mutiny is not so much fear on their driver's part, as the knowledge of that fear in the driver, she was always, as in this particular instance, more than usually brutal, and was accustomed to make him, so to speak, more resonant under her hand, when she was not quite certain in the depths of her own mind that she was going to win. Then, when the stress was over, she gave him his own head again, with such completeness as to convey to him the impression that he had alwaysbeen free: there was no reminder, not the faintest strain on the curb to show him that the curb was still there. She used it, in fact, rarely, but in earnest, and never fell into the habit, so common in women of her stamp who are otherwise clever, of nagging, or making a point of getting her way over any matter on which she did not really desire it.
Nor was her genuine attachment to him less capable of comprehension than his to her. In addition to the immense charm of his extraordinary good looks and his devotion to her, there was added that sense, so dear to an ambitious woman, that she was controlling a figure that bade fair to be one of the most prominent of the day, and could make it dance to her wire-pulling like a marionette on its string. Though Jack was not yet forty, he already held a minor post in the Government, and when the elections came on in the summer or autumn, it was expected in many quarters that he would be made Chief Secretary at the War Office. For the nation had of late begun to wonder whether that serene and unbiased attitude which is the natural outcome of complete ignorance on the affairs of the Department is really the ideal equipment for a statesman. A little knowledge, it has longbeen agreed, is a dangerous thing, but the nation, in view of recent events, had distinctly formed the suspicion that no knowledge at all was almost as hazardous. Indeed, it was supposed that this idea had gently begun to communicate itself to the Government itself. Anyhow, it was rumoured that more than a mere reshuffling of the old cards would take place, and Jack Alston's name was freely mentioned as a probable occupant of the office in Pall Mall. Until his succession to the title on his father's death six years ago, he had been a soldier of the practical, hard-working order, not content with figures and much polo, but busy with ideas on boots and rifles, and the knowledge he had thus acquired he had since used on more than one occasion with telling effect on discussions in the Upper House about military matters, and the cold, aloof attitude with which anything so out of taste as criticism founded on knowledge, or the discussion of practical questions in a practical manner, is usually treated in that august assembly had not produced the slightest effect on him. He asked awkward questions, and pointed out the absurdity of the answers or the silence they received with such imperturbable pertinacity that it wasbeginning to be felt that there really might be something in this novel idea of letting a man who knew a good deal about a subject be employed in that capacity. At any rate, he could not then continue to criticise the Department in question if he controlled it. Builders and Government contractors Jack appeared to consider not as masters of the Government, but as their servants, and where a firm vowed that a particular programme could not be completed under six years, he would have no hesitation in demanding to know how they had managed to take foreign orders in the interval. These things shook the immemorial calm of Pall Mall, and produced the sort of gentle perturbation which might be caused by the introduction of a risky topic at a tea-party of elderly maiden ladies. But Jack Alston was without tact in these matters, and continued to be horribly risky.
So he who should perhaps control so huge an affair as the army, and she who controlled him, rode back towards Hyde Park Corner, a striking-looking pair, at which many gazed. Their friendship was now of several years' standing, and people had begun to find that there was nothing new to say about so well-establisheda fact. There had never been any scandal, and London is a wonderfully tolerant town. It is, in fact, almost incapable of being shocked except by that which is printed in the daily papers. This constitutes the real power of the press. As long as definite publicity in black type on white or pink paper is not given, a fact, however well known, remains private; it is only truly shocking when the compositor has set it up; then takes place a great and essential change. And this morning half the world looked at them, and remarked on the beauty of their horses and the fine horsemanship of their riders, and shrugged their shoulders now and then, and smiled and talked about something else.
"So you had better lunch with me, Jack," said Mrs. Brereton, going back to her subject. "You have a Committee at three, I know."
"And what must I say to Marie?" asked he.
"Say? Say you lunched with me. It has also the minor advantage of being perfectly true. Oh, so few people see the extraordinary advantage to be gained by telling the truth. It is so easy, too: you can tell the truth by a mere effort of memory, whereas any—anydiplomatic evasion calls the imaginative faculty into play."
"I don't think I've got the imaginative faculty," said Jack.
"No, you haven't much. That is why, when you evade, you are always so unconvincing. Rich ornamental detail is necessary to the simplest untruth, whereas if you are telling the truth the cruder you are the better. Your very crudity, Jack, is the making of you as a politician."
"I know what I want politically, anyhow," he said. "I want proper rifles and the knowledge among the men as to the right direction in which to fire them off."
"Oh, don't make speeches. That is exactly your oratorical style—in other words, no style at all. The British public likes that. It says there is no nonsense about you. How odd it is that politically you should be a man of such astounding simplicity, and socially—well, a person who savours of duplicity!"
"I'm straightforward enough," said he.
"Oh—oh! Never mind that. But the British public is odder still. It insists—at least, it wishes to believe—that its public men should be people of blameless private life. Now, what can that matter? But I don'tthink it has any doubt about you, Jack. It believes you to be a model of domesticity. Also by my advice, you see, you breed pigs and shorthorns. There is something magical about pigs and shorthorns. The public consider them a sort of testimonial to a man's character; I suppose it is the touch of Nature, or the touch of the farmyard."
"Making the whole world kind!"
"Chestnuts, surely. Well,au revoir; go home and dress, and try not to look glum, and tell Marie you are lunching with me. Good-bye, I must hurry: I have some things to do before lunch."
Mrs. Maxwell was a voluminous woman of gorgeous exterior, who would have been pained to hear herself alluded to as a woman instead of a lady. There was, as she had more than once acutely remarked, a breeding that is altogether independent either of beauty or wit, and Cleopatra herself might have been utterly without it.
"And that," said Mrs. Maxwell, "is what makes the difference between a lady and not a lady."
The inference which she herself drew and meant to be drawn is too obvious to need pointing out, especially when we remember that she certainly had neither beauty nor wit, except in so far as it may be held a proof of ability to have married a money-lender of Jewish extraction and enormous wealth. But Mrs. Maxwell had ambition, and an amazing industry. Years ago when she married her Henry she had made up her mind that, ifthere was any power whatever in the fact of millions, she would procure whatever was to be procured with them, and in especial she had set her heart on bringing not to her feet, but to her table and her ballroom, all that was noblest and highest in the land. The task had been far less arduous than she had anticipated, and she felt on this night of the 16th of May that the prize had been publicly presented to her. Every one who was any one was going to cross her threshold that night; a favoured three or four dozen were going to dine there first, and the rest would come in afterwards. Earls and Countesses were among them. There was not room for all such nowadays at Mrs. Maxwell's table.
The form that the entertainment was going to take was a concert, for, as Mrs. Maxwell said, you can dance anywhere for the cost of your shoe-leather and a couple of trumpets; but it meant a prettier penny than most people can find in their purse to hear Pagani and Guardina sitting in a comfortable chair instead of that dreadful draughty opera-house, and having to go to that cold, creepy "foyure" to get a glass of lemonade. There was no nonsense or affectation, it will be remarked, about Mrs. Maxwell's French, whichshe used ruthlessly in her conversation, and all her epithets ran in well-matched pairs, like her horses.
The Maxwells' house stood in Piccadilly overlooking the Green Park, and it had been purchased as it stood, glass, plate, china, and books complete, from its owner, who was in straitened circumstances. There were not many books in the bargain, but among them, luckily enough, was the callers' book of the late owner, and for the sake of continuity and general interest Mrs. Maxwell's visitors went on writing their names there without a break, since the book at the time of their taking possession was only about half full. It was curious to observe how at first there was a sort of slump in distinguished names, which now had completely rallied and developed into a boom; in fact, on the last few pages half the names were the same as those on the earlier part of the book.
Among the many other desirable objects in the house were the pictures. These included several very fine Italian pictures by great masters, "Raffle," as Mrs. Maxwell rather familiarly called that eminent artist, being notably represented. They had occasioned a somewhat violent difference between theirpresent master and mistress, Mrs. Maxwell maintaining that it was impossible to feel easy and comfortable beneath such serious-like pictures, Transfigurations and what not, and observing with some heat that you couldn't sit quiet in your chair with St. Stephen stoned and bleeding immediately above your head. Eventually a compromise had been arrived at, and they had been removed from the drawing-room into the corridor. But even more pointed had been the discrepancies arising from the small but exquisite half-dozen of Dutch pictures that had hung in the dining-room. Mr. Maxwell, again, had been disposed to leave everything exactly as they had found it, arguing that a family who had lived in the house for a couple of hundred years knew more about what was suitable to the house than they. This had inflamed his wife.
"It's a matter of taste, Maxwell," she said; "and I've got as much right to my own taste as any Duke in the kingdom. And I maintain that while you're eating your dinner there's no pleasure in looking at a row of pots and pans hung on the wall, as if to remind you of where your food has been, and cheeses and what not. And as for that pictureof old Dutchmen eating I don't know what horror, and smoking their pipes the while, why, it's enough to turn the good wholesome food in your stomach. And that's my opinion, whether you like it or not."
Mr. Maxwell, who was a just man except in matters of money-lending, realized that he did not feel as keenly as this.
"But if you take them away, my dear, what will you put in their place!"
"Why, the portraits of you and me and Anthony: you and me on each side of the fireplace, and Anthony in the middle."
This suggestion was a happy one, and had been put into effect. The portraits in question were admirable examples of a very eminent painter of the day, and Henry as large as life, with the unmistakable features of his race, sat smoking his cigar, so natural, on one side of the Italian fireplace, while on the other hung Mrs. Maxwell in her crimson gown with all her diamonds on. Both pictures were diabolically clever, and much more like the sitters than the sitters (happily for them) had any idea: for where Mrs. Maxwell saw only the impressionist blurs of coloured light which indicated her priceless stones, the painter had finely observed and faithfullyrepresented an intolerably ostentatious opulence; where Mr. Maxwell saw only that he was, as usual, smoking a cigar, the painter had seen the man who liked to be painted as doing so. Besides, the glowing end of it, smouldering beneath its white ash, was marvellously indicated, and Mr. Maxwell often declared he could almost catch a whiff of it. Between them hung Anthony, a young man of about twenty-three. He was undoubtedly the son of each of his parents. And the two parents were turned fondly, as in life, towards the hope of the house, and the hope of this house, beautifully dressed, also as in life, stared somewhat vacuously in front of him.
It was, in fact, on Anthony, quite as much as on the mounting of the ladder of social distinction, that his mother's ambitions centred, and Anthony, it must be allowed, was largely that which his mother would have him be; but on the great question of the potency of wealth, its being able to get for you, if you spend it properly, anything you wish, from a wife or an ancestor to a pair of shoes, she did not feel certain of his soundness. There were other things, too, about Anthony which puzzled his mother: he was accustomed to read poetry, and appeared to enjoy Wagner, a curiouscrookedness, so she thought, in one otherwise honest. But both mother and son were agreed that, wherever he got his shoes, he could not do better than get his wife from Andrew Brereton's house, the prospective bride being Maud Brereton, a young goddess of about eighteen years and six feet of wholesome growth, whom her mother invariably alluded to as "my little girl."
To-night it certainly seemed that the new patron saint of England, St. Sovereign, received definite canonization. Royalty, stars and garters, wit, talent, beauty, and birth, all came and bowed the knee. Even a stray copy of the menu at dinner was picked up by an enterprising reporter for publication next day in the paper he represented, so that Mr. Maxwell's inimitablechefwould have the opportunity of living his triumph o'er again. Dinner was not till half-past eight, and a feast that costs five pounds a head necessarily takes time to negotiate, especially since Mr. Maxwell always ate largely and slowly of every dish that was put before him, so that before the gentlemen left the dining-room the less favoured guests had already begun to arrive. Among these was Guardina, who with great good sense had declined her dinner invitationfor the very excellent reason that if she dined there she would eat too much, and if she ate too much she would not be able to sing. "And I am here to sing," she added, being without illusions.
Among the diners there had been Mrs. Brereton and Lady Alston, and the former, following her invariable practice of always paying court to Jack's wife, linked her arm in Marie's as they were going upstairs, to the momentary consternation of Mrs. Maxwell, who clearly saw from her place at the end of the procession of ascending ladies that there were several women of higher rank behind her.
"Dear Marie, I haven't seen you for a whole two days," she said. "Where have you hidden yourself? And I never expected to see you here."
"Why not? Surely the dinner was excellent, and is not Guardina to sing?"
"Yes, of course. Oh, I see, you are laughing at me. Don't be cross, Marie."
"I'm not cross, only frank."
"Oh, but frankness is such a bore, except when you use it as a weapon of concealment. In fact, I was talking to Jack about that very point two days ago. As a means of convincingpeople that you are not telling the truth, there is nothing so certain as to tell it."
This Bismarckian but imaginativerésuméof the conversation in the Park came out quite glibly, and Marie laughed.
"Really, Mildred, you have a way with you," she said. "Jack went out yesterday morning in a vile temper, and came back after riding with you like a drifting angel, all sweetness and smiles. What had you done to him?"
"I forget what we talked about—probably about him, for that always puts a man in a good temper quicker than anything else. I'm so glad it was successful."
Marie sat down on a gilt Louis XV chair upholstered in Genoese velvet.
"I shall send him to you whenever he is in a bad temper, I think," she went on, "with a ticket pinned on to him, 'Please return in good condition.'"
Mildred laughed.
"Dearly as I like Jack," she said, "I am not sure that my affection would quite go to those lengths. Because Jack in an odious temper is like—well, like Jack in an odious temper. I know nothing, indeed, to compare to him."
"Well, I wish you would tell me your secret."
"My dear, there is none. Besides, another woman can so often put a man in a good temper, when his wife could not possibly."
"That doesn't say much for matrimony."
Mildred looked up a moment, and then fell to fingering her fan again.
"Oh, matrimony is such an excellent institution that a few little disadvantages of that sort really don't weigh. But certainly what I say is true. And you know it is just the same with us. Jack can put me in a good temper when my dear Andrew would assuredly fare pretty badly if he tried."
"I never quite knew why you married him."
"Oh, for a variety of reasons. He was very rich, I liked him, he wanted to marry me. And we have been very happy. One can't look for perfection in one's husband any more than in one's own servants or one's horses. The point is that they should not have any vices, and on the whole suit you."
"Is that the modern theory?" asked Marie.
"No, I don't know that it is exclusivelymodern. But what's the matter, Marie? What was Jack in a bad temper about?"
Marie frowned.
"Jack was coarse. I don't see why I shouldn't tell you. Do you remember my going home with Jim two nights ago from your house, when I was going to see Blanche about the bazaar? Well, he hinted that I had not been to see her at all. Now, what are you to do when your husband behaves like that?"
Mildred laughed.
"Dear me! is that all? Men are coarse folk, you will not recognise that, and when they are in a bad temper they say all sorts of things they don't mean. Now, I can tell you how I should deal with that. I should simply have laughed in his face, laughed with a wide mouth. But as for letting it disturb my peace of mind— You, too, of all people, who simply are the most enviable woman in London."
"So you tell me," said Marie; "but I don't quite know why."
"Oh, my dear, if it was not you I should think you were fishing for compliments— Why? Because you have the brains to be sometimes amused and sometimes bored at what absorbs all of us; because you are young; because somehow orother you aretheperson; because you make any woman standing near you look dowdy and coarse——"
Marie laughed.
"I am stifled in my own perfections," she said. "Let me get a breath of air."
"Guardina is just going to oblige us with one," said Mildred. "She really is like the girl in the fairy stories out of whose mouth drop diamonds and pearls. I suppose she is paid at least a sovereign a note. How pleasant that must be! Look, there is poor Nellie Leighton standing close to her, as if she hoped to be able to pick some of them up. What a wonderful woman! Not a penny of any sort to bless herself with, an insatiable appetite for pleasure, and the most light-hearted and appreciative woman I know. She sees us; she is coming over here."
Mrs. Leighton, in fact, opened her mouth sideways towards one ear, which was her way of smiling, and rustled elaborately across the room. She laid an affectionate hand on Marie's arm, and looked as if she had something very important to say.
"She is going to sing the 'Zitanella,'" she whispered as the accompanist played a brilliant chromatic passage to compel silence."Quite too divine for words. And I have bought a new house. Rustic."
But at the moment a sound as faint and far-away as the ring of a musical glass pierced the air. Guardina's lips were hardly parted, but that spear of sound thrilled through the room. Certainly, if she was paid a sovereign a note, that first note of the "Zitanella" was good measure. Then it broke like quicksilver into a thousand perfectly round and shining globules of sound, collected itself again, poised, quavered, trilled, thrilled, perched as it were like a bird on the topmost twig of sound, and vanished like a conjurer's handkerchief into air. Mrs. Leighton again extended her mouth over her right cheek.
"Too delicious!" she said. "And how we are to pay for it all—the house I mean—I haven't got the remotest idea. It is so comfortable having no money at all: you not only don't, but you can't pay for anything, and it's no use thinking about it. Marie, you must come down and see it. There are two spare bedrooms all white and chintz. When I am there I always dream of milk and butter and litters of pigs. Yes, isn't Guardina marvellous? I wish she would lend me her vocalcords for a week. I would willingly lend her anything I have for a fortnight."
The end of Guardina's song was marked by a sort of general post, and Marie was snapped up by Mr. Maxwell, if such a phrase can properly be used of so deliberate a process. His interpretation of the art of conversation chiefly consisted in opening his mouth as if he was going to speak, and then shutting it again, like a fish in an aquarium. The person with whom he was conversing he stood over in an encompassing manner, with an air of proprietorship. Elsewhere Anthony had cornered Mildred Brereton's little girl, who evidently wanted to go away, but was checked by her mother's eye, which from time to time pinned her like a fluttering butterfly to the spot. She herself was taken possession of by Mrs. Maxwell, who, unlike her husband, was as voluminous in speech as she was in person. Arthur Naseby, close beside them, was half listening to his hostess's conversation, while he was discussing a quantity of subjects entirely unfit for discussion with Mrs. Leighton.
"Yes, I'm sure she sings beautiful," said Mrs. Maxwell, "and so true. She seems to hit the note every time. What a thing to have a gift like that! and I'm sure she makes themost of it. Why, I remember her first coming out, and she went away in a hanson-cab from the opera. But she can go handsomer than cabs now!"
Mrs. Brereton again pinned the unfortunate Maud to her seat.
"And what a brilliant party you have got together, Mrs. Maxwell!" she said. "Positively, there is every one here one has ever heard of, and absolutely nobody that one hasn't heard of. That is so clever of you! It is easy enough to get people, but the difficulty is to not have the wrong ones. I'm sure you must find it so."
Mrs. Maxwell sighed.
"It's as much as Anthony and me can do in a week's work to go through the calling-book," she said. "Talk of weeding, you never saw such a deal of it as we have to do. People seem to think they can all come for the calling. But one must be careful, and I try never to ask any one whom a single one of my guests would be sorry to have in their own houses."
Mrs. Brereton smiled a congratulatory smile.
"We should most of us be very glad to see them in ours," she said.
Mrs. Maxwell's mood grew more sublime.
"And the pushing and the shoving that some people do to get asked to other people's houses," she said, "why, it fair passes belief. Now, Maxwell has no spirit. 'Let 'em all come,' he says, like that horrid vulgar song; but I said, 'No, Maxwell—if they all come, half of them will keep away, and them's the very half you want, and where shall we be then?' There's Guardina going to sing again, with Pagani this time. She's got to sing two solos and two duos. How wonderfully their voices suit! you would say they was made for each other. Excuse me, there's the Duchess of Perth just come, and I must say a word to her."
Arthur Naseby sank into the unoccupied seat.
"Anything more divine I never wish to hear," he said in a shrill whisper. "And the diamonds have caught an added lustre for their brilliant surroundings. To-night Mrs. Maxwell is one coruscation, with a collation to follow."
"How true, too, what she said about Pagani and Guardina," murmured Mrs. Brereton. "It takes that sort of person to saythat sort of thing. I am not nervous personally, but"—and her eye caught sight of Maud and Anthony again—"but she is an excellent good kind woman," she added with a very distinct change of tone.
"And what of the new man, Jim Spencer?" asked Naseby. "Are there developments? I always look on you as a sort of barometer. You can tell what is going to happen before it does happen."
Mildred looked round.
"A little cloud like a man's hand," she said.
"Rising out of South Africa. You mean his head will follow?"
"Hush! That's the worst of having these great people to sing. One cannot talk."
"So unsociable," said Arthur Naseby.
The room where they sat was the ballroom, with six windows overlooking Piccadilly. It would have held certainly a hundred couples on the floor, and, crowded as it was now, it must have contained twice the number. All the world, as Mrs. Brereton had said, was there, and if it was true that, as Mrs. Maxwell hoped, every one present would have been glad to see any of the guests at their houses, the world, it must be confessed,was of very catholic if not apostolic tendencies. It would be, in fact, impossible to imagine a more heterogeneous gathering: here a peer of European reputation, whose very name was considered by the country at large to be synonymous with solid respectability, was being talked to by a woman who in other circles, and in widely different ways, was also of European reputation, and who seemed capable of quite making him forget for the moment, at any rate, the happy colonies which were intrusted to his wise and well-judged care; here a traveller recently returned from regions which were supposed to be impenetrable on account of the cannibal habits of their denizens was relating to two overdressed dowagers the internal horrors which ensued on drinking the only water which could be found in these abandoned spots; here a terrible man with curiously arched eyebrows and carmine-coloured cheeks, who looked like a decadent wax-work, was retailing to a brilliantdébutante, in discreet whispers, things that made her white shoulders shake with laughter, till she was whisked away by an indignant mother. Princes of royal blood mingled with the crowd, which bobbed as they approached,and straightened itself again to make itself amusing, and all talked and giggled and gabbled together with the utmost freedom and impartiality. But the predominant feature of the entertainment which brought all its heterogeneous components into one harmonious whole was Wealth: Wealth burst from the throat of the singers, Wealth gleamed from the gilded chairs and Genoese upholstering, Wealth beamed from the ropes of pearls and diamonds which encircled lean necks and plump necks, old necks and young necks, and sat enthroned on black and gray and white and brown, and particularly on golden, hair. There were no doubt many people there who were not rich, but the wives of such were pretty, or had somecachetother than mere good breeding about them; but it is certain that there was no one in London who was very rich who had not at any rate been asked for that night, and but few who had not come. This probably was what Mrs. Maxwell meant when she said there was no one there whom any of her guests would not have liked to have at their own houses, and, with exceptions so few as to be negligible, she was perfectly right. All the plutocracy, in fact, were there, English, American, German, Greek,and Jew, with all the mixtures of religion, race and language which wealth, with its wonderful amalgamating power, can bring together. It was, in fact, a typical English party, for there was there all that money could buy and all those whom the power of money could bring. That is why it was so very full. People of birth and breeding were there, who screamed with unkindly laughter at Mrs. Maxwell and her bevy of quite impossible millionaires, yet they drank her champagne and danced to her fiddles with the greatest goodwill in the world, and had Mrs. Maxwell a hundred sons, each of whom would be as rich as Anthony, they would have hurled two hundred daughters at their heads; and had she a hundred daughters, it is perfectly certain that at least two hundred coronets, prospective or immediate, some with strawberry leaves, some with pearls, some possibly, even with fleur-de-lis, would have been laid at their feet. There were, of course, many people who still were not seen in Mrs. Maxwell's drawing-rooms, and who persisted in looking over her head when they met her elsewhere, but she in her turn called them "stuck-up," so the honours were pretty evenly divided. The world in general, moreover, distinctlyagreed with Mrs. Maxwell, and said how absurd it was to give yourself airs.
Mrs. Maxwell by this time was getting to know the ropes sufficiently well to refrain from telling people how honoured she felt by seeing them at her house; she also was sufficiently well acquainted with the minute appetite the English have for music and the great appetite that our healthy nation has for food. Consequently the concert, at which every item was admirable and performed by first-rate artists, was short, and the supper, also in the hands of first-rate artists, elaborate. Her other preparations also were on the most complete scale, and Bridge-tables were ready in one room, all sorts of nicotine and spirits in another, and in the garden behind, brilliantly illuminated as to its paths and decently obscure as to its seats, there were plenty of opportunities to enjoy the coolness of the night air, which many people seemed to find refreshing and invigorating. In the supper-room, finally, there was a huge sort of bar for the rank and file, and a quantity of small tables for the very elect. "In fact," as Mildred Brereton said to Jack as they strolled about the garden after a violent tussle to get food, owing to the invincible determinationof every one to eat without delay, "it is as good as the best restaurant, and there is no bill afterwards."
Jack laughed.
"You mistake the character of the entertainment," he said. "It is asalon; I heard Mrs. Maxwell say so, and not a restaurant. Also, the bill is your presence here."
"I expect many people would like to know another restaurant conducted on the same principle," said Mildred; "but for you to say that sort of thing is absurd, Jack. I believe Marie is making you as old-fashioned as herself."
Jack swore gently.
"Has she been old-fashioned to-night?" he asked.
"Immensely. She told me about her row with you."
"How like a woman! They have to unburden to their friends about everything. What's the good of unburdening?"
"Jack, you are such a pig—so am I; that is why we are friends. But, anyhow, I can see what a pearl she is. Sometimes I've half a mind to finish with the whole affair. Marie makes——"
He turned on her fiercely.
"You don't dare," he said.
"My good man, it is no use storming. You get your way in the world, I allow, for somehow or other most people are afraid of you. But if you think I am, you are stupendously mistaken. To resume—half a mind, I said. When I have the whole mind you shall be instantly told. I am scrupulously fair in such matters, and I recognise the justice of your knowing first."
She got up as she spoke.
"I shall now go home," she said.
He laid his hand on her arm.
"No, don't go yet, Mildred," he said. "And I wish to Heaven you would not say such horrible things. But never mind that: you don't mean it. Sit down again."
She laughed.
"I mean every word," she said, "also that I must go. Come; Andrew is sure to be playing Bridge. You can just drive me home. I will leave the carriage for him."
Jack rose also.
"Won't he look for you?" he asked.
"Not for long, and then he will play some more Bridge."
Mrs. Brereton, among her many other moral hallucinations, was in the constant habit of remembering that she was an excellent mother, and that, next to her own affairs, it was highly probable that among all others she took most thought for those of her daughter. Consequently, on the afternoon following the Maxwell entertainment she determined to devote herself to Maud and her prospects, and with that end in view drove down with her in a space-annihilating motor-car to their house just above Windsor, in order both to talk with her by the way, and when arrived there see that things were in order for the week-end party that they were giving on Saturday. The summer weather which had begun with such splendour a week ago had by an unparalleled effort kept itself up, and seven days of sunshine had brought out a wealth of fresh green leaf on the trees, in London still varnished and undimmed bydust, and in the country of an exquisite verdure. Overhead the sun was set in a sky of divine purity, and the swift motion through the air she felt to be quite as exhilarating to the senses as would have been the afternoon party to which, had not duty called, she would otherwise have gone. She had never wished to have a daughter, and the abandonment of this party reminded her how often she was sacrificing herself to Maud. Indeed, she seemed to herself a most excellent mother.
But, notwithstanding that she was generally and justly supposed to be able to spar with the most robust emergencies, Mrs. Brereton did not particularly fancy the task she had set herself, or that, strictly speaking, had been set her; in fact, early this morning there had arrived for her a note from her hostess of last night, saying what sort of communication her dear Anthony had made her before he went to his bed. Under these circumstances it was only right that Maud's mother should be asked whether she sanctioned the step he proposed to take in presenting himself as a suitor for her daughter's hand. The phrasing of the note, as might be expected from so successful a lady as Mrs. Maxwell, was as unimpeachable as its contents,and both filled Mrs. Brereton with joy, for the two odious sons of her husband by his first marriage would inherit the bulk of her husband's fortune, and Maud would have almost nothing. Now, Mrs. Brereton had no desire whatever to see her an impecunious peeress, or, indeed, an impecunious anything, and she had come to the very wise conclusion that money certainly is money, and that where a chance of marrying a huge fortune was presented, it would be distinctly a failure of maternal duty not to put its advantages very distinctly and decidedly before her daughter. But she was never very much at ease with Maud, whom, if she had been another woman's child, she would have described as an uncomfortable kind of girl. But being her own, she spoke of her always as very original and with great opinions of her own. She did not particularly like girls, any more than she liked young men or new wines: they all needed maturing before they were fit for the palate. But she was just, and gave full allowance to the necessity for being young before you can become mellow, though she wished that Maud would be quick about it. Really, when a girl is nearly nineteen, nearly six feet high, with a superb figure, anda face at which men undisguisedly stare, and with reason, it is time for the possessor of such advantages to begin thinking about making her nest. Here was one ready, excellently well-feathered. She only hoped, strongly but somehow remotely, that Maud might see it in that light. But she considered her daughter to combine symptoms of hopeless simplicity with those of the most world-weary cynicism. It was impossible that both could be genuine, but it puzzled her mother to say which was.
The sun was quite hot, and Mrs. Brereton at once put up her parasol, for a large glass screen sheltered them from the wind.
"Delicious the sun is," she said, as she extinguished it. "And what a delightful drive we shall have, Maud! When one goes into the country like this, I can never understand why we ever live in town. So sensible of dear Nellie, is it not? She has bought a cottage in the country, with an orchard and a dairy and all that, and dreams of butter, she tells me. She probably wakes and finds that it is earwigs. That she doesn't tell me."
"I don't think she would care about it if she couldn't tell every one about it," saidMaud. "She doesn't strike me as a real country-lover, does she you?"
"Oh, I dare say not in the sense you are, dear," said her mother. "I always wonder where you get it from. Fancy your father or I existing in the country!"
"But you said this moment that you couldn't understand why we ever live in town."
This was the kind of thing which frequently occurred when Mrs. Brereton chattered to her daughter. Maud seemed to think that in light conversation people meant what they said, an error so astounding that it seemed almost hopeless to point it out.
"Dear Maud, how literal you are!" she said. "You don't seem to realize that one has moods which may last a year or more, and may only last a minute. That one lasted less than a minute."
Maud laughed.
"How unsettling!" she said. "For how can one know whether one really likes anything? It may only last a minute."
Mrs. Brereton plunged at the opening, a header, so to speak, into the frothy water.
"Ah, that is where wisdom comes in," she said. "You have not only to choose and to dowhat you like, but to choose that which your reason dictates, that which you know is really advantageous for you. Life would be a very simple matter if one only followed one's inclinations. It is a lesson one cannot learn too early."
There was a short pause, in which Mrs. Brereton passed in rapid summary to herself all the occasions she could remember on which she had not followed her inclination. It seemed to her that there were an immense number; she was always doing kind things, and the pause would have been a long one had not Maud broken it.
"I suppose you mean that you want me to marry Anthony Maxwell!" she remarked in a perfectly even voice.
This was an occasion on which her mother was absolutely unable to decide whether Maud's disconcerting directness sprang from internal and childlike simplicity or a brutally frank insight into the diplomacy of others. But she put the best construction possible on it.
"Dear Maud," she exclaimed effusively, "it is too dear of you to meet me halfway like that. To tell you the truth, I was a little shy about opening the subject to you, as Idid not know what you thought; but it is much easier for me to talk about it now."
"Much," said Maud.
"To think that you should have guessed!" said the other; "but you always were so quick."
"It did not need much quickness after my prolonged conversation with him last night."
"So you had a good talk to him," said Mrs. Brereton. "I am so glad."
Maud raised her eyebrows.
"Surely you meant me to," she said. "Whenever I looked up, meaning to go, I always thought I saw you pinning me down again. Did you not?"
Mrs. Brereton was not quite sure that things were going comfortably.
"I don't know what you mean by pinning you down," she said; "but it is, of course, perfectly true that I wanted you to get better acquainted with him. I am sure, Maud, you are a very lucky girl."
The lucky girl put up her parasol; her face was absolutely immobile except for the least curl at the corner of her mouth, which might have expressed almost anything—fatigue, indifference, anything.
"Then he has made formal proposals?" she asked. "His mother wrote to me asking if I sanctioned his doing so."
"You said yes, I suppose?"
"Naturally I should not forbid it, considering, as I do, that it is an admirable match for you. The young man is amiable, quite without vices I should think (which, after all, ismostimportant, as so many marriages are wrecked that way). He is shrewd and clever, quite his father's son, and he is immensely wealthy."
"Those are all very good qualities," said Maud.
"My dear, of course they are. In bare justice to myself, I must say that, when I recommend a thing, I do so not on vague grounds, but on well-defined and cogent reasoning. Or perhaps you would prefer a husband who is a sot, a fool, and a pauper? You could easily find one of those without any great trouble."
Maud laughed; she was one of those people whom temper in others leaves perfectly undisturbed. Then she laid her hand on her mother's.
"Dearest mother," she said, "I really did not mean to be tiresome. Was I? You weresaying that he was well-conducted, clever and wealthy."
"I should have thought that was a good deal to say for any one," said her mother, not yet quite calm. "There are heaps of perfectly well-conducted people in the world who are fools, heaps of very wealthy people who are vicious, and plenty, as I said, who have neither wits, morals, nor money. Which sort do you want? Or do you look forward to spinsterhood in a cottage with a canary? Almost all your father's fortune will go to Otho and Reginald. You will be quite poor."
"I don't love Anthony Maxwell," said Maud, with a deplorable relapse into directness.
"Oh, my dear, have you been reading some sentimental novel? You seem to think that every girl meets the man eternally pre-destined for her, with clear-cut features and a coiffure like a hair-dresser's. That sort of romantic stuff is extinct. It never existed in fact, and it is rapidly disappearing in fiction. If it were true, the world would have come to an end long ago, for we should all have caught such frightful colds by reading Dante and Shakespeare on violet-covered banksthat we should have died without children."
Mrs. Brereton settled herself on the cushions of the carriage, feeling much more comfortable. If only Maud would continue to argue the question, she felt sure of her ground.
"You are not silly, I know, dear," she went on; "in fact, I think you are too much the other way. You like analyzing and picking things to bits, and saying, 'This seems to me faulty here, and that seems to me exaggerated there.' I assure you it is a mistake. And when you say you do not love him, you are using expressions of the meaning of which you have no idea. You don't know what love is—no girl can. You may feel attracted to a handsome face as you can be attracted by a landscape or a piece of jewellery, but no one with the slightest sense of refinement could marry a man because he was handsome. It is a grossly indelicate idea, and one I am sure which you never entertained."
"I was not proposing to marry any man because of his good looks," said Maud.
"No, dear, I am certain you were not;and I was only saying in the abstract that to do such a thing would be an inconceivable folly. If your husband was Adonis himself, you would forget he was even passably good-looking in a fortnight. Dear me, yes! one gets used to nothing so quickly. And in the same way and with the same speed you get used to the absence of good looks. Anthony Maxwell, I allow, has but small claim to them; and I was only wondering whether, when you said that you did not love him, you did not have a half-conscious idea in your mind that if he was very handsome you might have. Dearest Maud, how wonderfully well you are looking! no wonder Anthony fell in love with you."
Again the corner of Maud's mouth twitched.
"I hope that was not the cause," she said, "for you have just told me what an absurd reason that is for wanting to marry anybody!"
For the moment Mrs. Brereton had a violent desire to box those eligible ears, but restrained it, and proceeded to propound her philosophy of matrimony with the most admirable lucidity.
"Ah, that is where men are different fromus," she said. "It is part of the province of women, as dear Mr. Austin says, to be beautiful, but it is quite outside the province of men. Look at your father now, Maud; he has perhaps less pretentions to good looks than any one I ever saw. But what a happy, what a blessed"—and the word did not stick—"marriage ours has been! Looking back even now, I have never yet seen a man whom I would sooner have chosen. And long, long ago—a year ago at least—I thought that if only dear Anthony would be attracted by you, what a happy thing it would be. It is silly to expect high romance. High romance does not exist for ninety-nine hundredths of the world—luckily, I am sure. And I am sure you are not romantic."
Maud had listened with the closest attention to what her mother was saying, but she made no reply, and in silence they bowled swiftly along the Bath Road, which seemed to open like torn linen in front of them. Mrs. Brereton also well knew that silence in season is as necessary an equipment to the dialectician as the most eloquent speech, and having said all that she really intended, she had no design of ruining the effect of her words by vain repetition. Once, indeed, shecalled attention to the loveliness of the clustered pyramids of bloom that covered the horse-chestnut-trees in the gardens round the houses of some small village half buried in blossom, but the tone of Maud's "Lovely!" showed her quite unmistakably that general conversation was for the present a futility. At the same time her daughter's abstraction indicated that her own words were probably sinking in, a process with which Mrs. Brereton had no desire whatever to interfere. At last, as they approached their gates, the girl furled her parasol with a snap which might easily betoken a decision.
"I have made up my mind," she said—"at least, I have made up my mind not to make up my mind immediately. I suppose you don't expect me to decide at once?"
"No, dear, certainly not," said her mother; "though personally I cannot see why you should hesitate."
"You think it is ideal in every way?"
"Ideal, no! An ideal is realized about once every hundred years. There are disadvantages necessarily attaching to every step, however advantageous. But I consider it most eminently desirable."
The girl looked at her a moment.
"Did you never look out for what seemed to you ideal, mother?" she asked.
"Yes, dear, once. When I was exactly fifteen I fell passionately in love with the Emperor of Germany, whom I had once seen at a distance. To marry him seemed to me ideal. But whether it would have been or not I was never privileged to know. He and I both married some one else. I was acutely miserable for at least a fortnight. But during that fortnight I learned something, which was that your time can be fully occupied in getting what you can get, without wasting your energy in longing for what you can't."
"Poor mother!" said Maud gravely; and in her voice Mrs. Brereton thought she could detect more of irony than simplicity.
They had no further conversation on the subject for the present, since during the next couple of hours Mrs. Brereton successfully settled a hundred details and arrangements that would have taken a less quick woman half a day to grapple with. The house stood some quarter of a mile from the river-bank, on the reach between Maidenhead and Bray, red-bricked and creeper-covered, but picturesque in a haphazard, bungalow manner, intolerablydank in the winter, when languid, foggy water covered the lower lawn, but ideally adapted for summer Sunday parties. It had long been left to moulder and mildew, but some ten years ago, while the Thames was still only a geographical expression, Mrs. Brereton, in a hunt for some place of the kind near London, but sufficiently remote not to be overrun, had lighted on it, and with her quick eye had seen how admirably it would suit her wants. Inside there were not more than a dozen bedrooms and two or three adequate reception-rooms; but the garden was exquisite, and had now under her guiding hand fulfilled rare possibilities.
A steep slope of grass, negotiable by three flights of stone steps, led from the gravel path, which bordered the house, on to the lawn, which lay in terraces towards the river, framed with intersections of box hedges, cut into pyramidal and geometric shapes, and bordered by vivid beds of flowers. The entrance of each of these lawns was in line with the centre of the house, and they communicated one with another by broad steps of grass. One was levelled for croquet, another was a rose-garden with a pergola running round it, while that nearest the house wasduring the summer chiefly occupied by garden and basket chairs. The whole front of the house, again, was, with its gravel path, capable of being roofed in with an awning, carpeted with rugs, and furnished for eating, drinking, card-playing, and other diversions not less diverting. Behind the framing of box hedge which encircled the lawn lay on each side a shrubbery of blossoming trees, lilacs and laburnums, and behind, again, tall elms and beeches shaded the paths that led to the meadow of untamed land below the lawn, and bordered the river itself, where weeping-willows trailed their slow-moving, slender fingers over the tarred roof of the boat-house. Here, also, Mrs. Brereton had caused to be erected a private bathing-place, dug out at great expense in the river. It was remarkable only for the fact that it had never been used, except once by Mr. Brereton by mistake.
Mildred had not been down here before during the spring, and as she was going to entertain next Sunday, and would not be able to get down again in the interval, it followed that a good deal of method and quickness were required to effect all that had to be done in a couple of hours. Like a wise woman,she knew that in those cases in which, as here, she was quite aware what she wanted, and only required it to be done, the best servants are those who will not be intelligent and have ideas of their own, but simply obey. Consequently she had, as gardeners, a staff of Parsifals, simple blameless fools, who moved tubs of geraniums to such places as she wished and to no others, who planted carnations in beds where she wished carnations to be planted, and did not execute fantasies of their own. The greenhouses which lay on the other side of the house were full and ready with plants to be bedded out, and for the first half-hour she was occupied in choosing exactly what she wanted in each bed. After that there was the upholsterer with his choice of canvases for the awning that lay along the length of the house, and the carpenter who was to erect a small wooden shelter which should be convenient for Bridge-players. Then came the choice of rugs, hangings, and furniture for the marquee which stood on the first lawn, as well as for the awning-shelter close to the house. Persian carpets had to be unrolled, spread out, and examined, the choice of chairs and tables had to be made, palms to be sought for the corners, a pianoto be tuned, the croquet to be inspected and set up.
After an hour, indeed, it seemed as if chaos had resumed its reign, or that some half-dozen London drawing-rooms had been sacked and the contents strewn on the lawn. Here stood a great Chinese vase forlornly alone in the middle of the grass, here two Chippendale tables huddled together for company, here roll upon roll of Persian rugs were gradually creeping like a tide of many-coloured waters over the green, here was a stack of chairs, and here half a hundred lanterns with which the tent was lit. And in the middle of it all, triumphantly ruling chaos, stood Mrs. Brereton, never confused herself and never confusing others, bidding, forbidding, changing, confirming, as she directed simultaneously the struggling gardeners and an army of housemaids, at her best, as she always was, when a great deal of practical business had to be managed in a very short time.