CHAPTER XXII
Romney Placeslumbered in the afternoon sunshine. Most of the blinds of the Early-Victorian houses were drawn, symbols of quietude within. A Persian cat, walking across the roadway, stopped in the middle, after the manner of cats, and leisurely made her toilette. A milk-cart progressed discreetly from door to door, and the milkman handed the cans to hands upstretched from areas with unclattering and non-flirtatious punctilio. When he had finished his round and disappeared by the church, the street was empty for a moment. The cat resumed her journey and sat on a doorstep blinking in the sun. Presently a foxy-faced man, shabbily clad, entered this peaceful scene, and walked slowly down the pavement.
It was Vandermeer, still burning with a sense of wrong, yearning for vengeance, yet trembling at the prospect of wreaking it. At Tommy’s door he hesitated. Of his former visit to the young man no pleasant recollections lingered. Tommy’s manners were impulsive rather than urbane. Would he listen to Vandermeer’s story or would he kick him out of the house? Vandermeer, starting out on his pilgrimage to Romney Place, had fortified himself with the former conjecture. Now that he had come to the end of it the latter appeared inevitable. He always shrank from physical violence. It would hurt very much to be kicked out of the house, to say nothing of the moral damage. He hovered in agonising uncertainty, and took off his hat, for the afternoon was warm. Now, while he was mopping the brow of dubiety, a front door lower down the street opened, and a nurse and a little girl appeared. They descended the steps and walked past him. Vandermeer looked after them for a moment, then stuck on his hat and punched the left-hand palm with the right-hand fist with the air of a man to whom has occurred an inspiration. Miss Clementina Wing also lived in Romney Place. That must be the child, Quixtus’s ward, of whom Huckaby had spoken. It would be much better to take his story to Clementina Wing, now so intimately associated with Quixtus. Women, he argued, are much more easily inveigled into intrigue than men, and they don’t kick you out of the house in a manner to cause bodily pain. Besides, Clementina had once befriended him. Why had he not thought of her before? He walked boldly up the steps and rang the bell.
Clementina was fiercely painting drapery from the lay figure—a grey silk dress full of a thousand folds and shadows. The texture was not coming right. The more she painted the less like silk did it look. Now was it muddy canvas; now fluffy wool. Every touch was wrong. Every stroke of the brush since her yesterday’s talk with Quixtus was wrong. She could not paint. Yet in a frenzy of anger she determined to paint. What had the woman invited to Quixtus’s dinner-party to do with her art? She would make the thing come right. She would prove to herself that she was a woman of genius, that she had not her sex hanging round the neck of her spirit. If Quixtus chose to make a fool of himself with Mrs. Fontaine, in Heaven’s name let him do so. She had her work to do. She would do it, in spite of all the society hacks in Christendom. The skirt began to look like a blanket stained with coffee. Let him have his dinner-party. What was there of importance in so contemptible a thing as a dinner-party? But this infernal woman had suggested it. How far was he compromised with this infernal woman? She could wring her neck. The dress began to suggest a humorously streaky London fog.
“Damn the thing!” cried Clementina, wiping the whole skirt out. “I’ll stand here for ever, until I get it right.”
Her tea, on a little table at the other end of the studio, remained untouched. Her hair fell in loose strands over her forehead, and she pushed it back every now and then with impatient fingers. The front-door bell rang, and soon her maid appeared at the gallery door.
“A gentleman to see you, ma’am.”
“I can’t see anybody. You know I can’t. Tell him to go away.”
The maid came down the stairs.
“I told him you weren’t in to anybody—but he insisted. He hadn’t a card, but wrote his name on a slip of paper. Here it is, ma’am.”
Clementina angrily took the slip; “Mr. Vandermeer would be glad to see Miss Wing on the most urgent business.”
“Tell him I can’t see him.”
The maid mounted the stairs. Vandermeer? Vandermeer? Where had she heard that name before? Suddenly she remembered.
“All right. Show him down here,” she shouted to the disappearing maid.
She might just as well see him. If she sent him away the buzzing worry of conjecture as to his urgent business would flitter about her mind. She threw down her palette and brush and impatiently rubbed her hands together. Into what shape of moral flaccidity was she weakening? Five months ago all the urgent business of all the Vandermeers in the world could go hang when she was painting and could not get a thing right. Why should she be different now from the Clementina of five months ago? Why, why, why? With exasperated hands she further confounded the confusion of her hair.
The introduction of Vandermeer put a stop to these questionings. She received him, arms akimbo, at a short distance from the foot of the stairs.
“I must apologise, Miss Wing, for this intrusion,” said he, “but perhaps you may remember——”
“Yes, yes,” she interrupted. “Ham-and-beef shop, which you transmogrified into a restaurant. Also Mr. Burgrave. What do you want? I’m very busy.”
The sight of the mean little figure holding his felt hat with both hands in front of him, with his pointed face, ferret eyes, and red, crinkly hair, did not in any way redeem her remembered impression.
“A very grave danger is threatening Dr. Quixtus,” said he. “It is impossible for me to warn him myself, so I have come to you, as a friend of his.”
“Danger?” cried Clementina, taken off her guard. “What kind of danger?”
“You will only understand, if I tell you rather a long story. But first I must have your promise of secrecy as far as I am concerned.”
“Don’t like secrecy,” said Clementina.
“You can take whatever action you like,” he said, hastily. “It’s in order that you may act in his interest that I’m here. I only want you to give me your word that you won’t compromise me personally. I assure you, you’ll see why when I tell you the story.”
Clementina reflected for a moment. It was a danger threatening Quixtus. It might be important. This little weasel of a man was of no account.
“All right,” she said. “I give my word. Go ahead.”
She took a pinch of tobacco from the yellow package and a cigarette paper, and, sitting in a chair in the cool draught of the door opening on to the garden, with shaky fingers rolled a cigarette.
“Sit down. You can smoke if you like. You can also help yourself to tea. I won’t have any.”
Vandermeer poured himself out some tea and cut an enormous hunk of cake.
“I warn you,” said he, drawing a chair within conversational distance, “that the story will be a long one—I want to begin from the beginning.”
“Go ahead, for goodness’ sake,” said Clementina.
Vandermeer was astute enough to conjecture that a sudden denunciation of Mrs. Fontaine might defeat his object by exciting her generous indignation; whereas by gradually arousing her interest in the affairs of Quixtus, the climactic introduction of the execrated lady might pass almost unrecognised.
“The story has to do, in the first place,” said he, “with three men, John Billiter, Eustace Huckaby, and myself.”
“Huckaby?” cried Clementina, startled. “What has he to do with you?”
“The biggest blackguard of us all,” said Vandermeer.
Clementina lay back in her chair, her attention caught at once.
“Go on,” she said.
Whereupon Vandermeer began, and with remorseless veracity—for here truth was far more effective than fiction—told the story of the relations of the three with Quixtus, in the days of their comparative prosperity, when he himself was on the staff of a newspaper, Billiter in possession of the fag-end of his fortune, and Huckaby a tutor at Cambridge. He told how, one by one, they sank; how Quixtus held out the helping hand. He told of the weekly dinners, the overcoat pockets.
“Not a soul on earth but you three knew anything about it?” asked Clementina, in a quavering voice.
“As far as I know, not a soul.”
He told of the drunken dinner; of Quixtus’s anger; of the cessation of the intercourse; of the extraordinary evening when Quixtus had invited them to be his ministers of evil; of his madness; of his fixed idea to work wickedness; of his own suggestion as regards Tommy.
“You infamous devil!” said Clementina, between her set teeth. In her wildest conjectures, she had never imagined so grotesque and so pitiable a history. She sat absorbed, pale-cheeked, holding the extinct stump of cigarette between her fingers.
Vandermeer paid no attention to the ejaculation. He proceeded with his story; told of Billiter and the turf; of Huckaby and the heart-breaking adventure.
“Oh, my God!” cried Clementina. “Oh, my God!” He told of the meetings in the tavern. Of the hunger and misery of the three. Of the plot to use a decoy woman in Paris, who was to bleed him to the extent of three thousand pounds.
“What’s her name?” she cried, her lips parted in an awful surmise.
“Lena Fontaine,” said Vandermeer.
Clementina grew very white, and fell back into her chair. She felt faint. She had worked violently, she had felt violently since early morning. Vandermeer started up.
“Can I get you anything? Some water—some tea?”
“Nothing,” she said, shortly. The idea of receiving anything from his abhorrent hands acted as a shock. “I’m all right. Go on. Tell me all you know about her.”
He related the unsavoury details that he had gleaned from Billiter, scrupulously explaining that these were at second hand. Finally he informed her with fair accuracy of Huckaby’s latest report, giving however his own interpretation of Huckaby’s conduct, and laid the position of Billiter and himself before her.
“You see,” said he, “how important it was for me to obtain your pledge of secrecy.”
“And what do you get out of coming to me with this story?”
Vandermeer rose, and held his hat tight.
“Nothing except the satisfaction of having queered the damned pitch of both of them.”
Clementina shrank together in her chair, her hands tight over her face, all her flesh a shuddering horror. Then she waved both hands at him blindly.
“Go away! Go away!” she said, in a hoarse whisper.
Vandermeer’s shifty eyes glanced from Clementina to a stool beside his chair. On it lay the great hunk of cake which he had cut but had not been able to eat during his narration. She was not looking. He pocketed the cake and turned. But Clementina had seen. She uttered a cry of anguish and horror.
“Oh, God! Are you as hungry as that? You’ll find some money in that end drawer—” she pointed to an oak dresser against the gallery wall. “Take what you want to buy food with, and go. Only go!”
Vandermeer opened the drawer, took out a five-pound note, and, having mounted the stairs, left the studio.
Clementina staggered into the little garden; her brain reeling. She, who thought she had fathomed the depths of life, and, scornful of her knowledge thereof, rode serene on the surface, knew nothing. Nothing of the wolf instinct of man when hunger drives. Nothing of the degradation of a man when the drink fiend clutches at his throat. Lord! How sweet the air, even in this ridiculous little London garden, after the awful atmosphere of that beast of prey!
Quixtus! All her heart went out to him in fierce love and pity. Generous, high-souled gentleman, at the mercy of these ravening wolves! She walked round and round the little garden path. Things obscure to her gradually became clear. But many remained dark—maddeningly impenetrable. Something had happened to throw the beloved man off his balance. The Marrable trial might well be a factor. But was that enough? Yet what did the past matter? The present held peril. The web was being woven tight around him. She had hated the woman intuitively at first sight. Had dreaded complications. It was a million times worse than she had in her most jealous dreams conceived. If he were lured into marriage, what but disaster could be the end? And Sheila! Her blood froze at the thought of her darling coming into contact with the woman. All her sex clamoured.
Before she acted, every dark corner must be illuminated. There must be no groping; no false movement. One man would certainly be able to throw light—Huckaby, the trusted friend of Quixtus. The more she thought of him the more she was amazed. Here was one of the ghastly band, an illimitable scoundrel, the one who had openly suggested to Quixtus the most despicable, yet the most fantastic, wickedness of all, now the confidential secretary, the collaborator, thefidus Achates, of the sane and disillusioned gentleman.
With sudden decision she marched into the studio and took up the telephone and gave a number. Quixtus’s voice eventually answered. Who was there?
“It’s me. Clementina. Is Mr. Huckaby still with you?”
Huckaby had left half an hour ago.
“Can you give me his address? I want to ask him to come and see me. To come to tea. I like him so much, you know.”
The address came through the telephone. She noted it in her memory. Quixtus inquired for Sheila. Clementina gave him cheery news and rang off. All this was arrant disingenuousness and duplicity. But Clementina did not care. What woman ever does?
She ran up to her bedroom, thrust on a coat; pinned on the hat with the wobbly rose, and went out. In the King’s Road she found a taxi-cab. A quarter of an hour brought her to Huckaby’s lodgings.
He had spent a happy and untroubled day, and was finishing the “Phædo” with great enjoyment, when Clementina burst into the room. He leaped from his chair in amazement.
“My dear Miss Wing!”
“You infernal villain!” said Clementina.
Huckaby staggered back. To such a salutation it is difficult to respond in the ordinary terms of hospitality.
“Will you take a seat,” said he, “and explain?”
He drew a chair to the open window. She plumped herself down.
“I think it’s for you to explain,” she said.
“I presume,” said Huckaby, after a pause, “that something in connection with my past life has come to your ears. I will grant that there was in it much that was not particularly creditable. But my conscience now is free from reproach.”
Clementina sniffed. “You must have a very accommodating conscience. What about Dr. Quixtus and Mrs. Fontaine?”
“Well, what about it?”
“You know the kind of woman Mrs. Fontaine is—you introduced her to him—and yet you are allowing her to inveigle him into marriage. Oh, don’t deny it. I know the whole infamous conspiracy from A to Z.”
Huckaby stifled an oath. “Those brutes Vandermeer and Billiter have been giving the woman away to you!” He clenched his fists. “The blackguards!”
“I don’t know anything about Van-what’s-his-name or the other man. I only know one thing. This marriage is not going to take place. I might have gone straight to Dr. Quixtus; but I thought it best to see you first. There are various things I want cleared up.”
Huckaby looked at the woman’s strong, rugged face, and then his eyes wandered round the little cool haven that was his home, and a great fear fell upon him. If Quixtus learned the truth now about Mrs. Fontaine, he would never be forgiven. He would be put on the same footing as the two others; and then the abyss. Of course he could lie, and Mrs. Fontaine could lie. But what would be the use? The revelation of the true facts to Quixtus would fit in only too well with his past disingenuousness and with his urgent insistence on the heart-breaking adventure. And his iron-faced visitor would soon see to it that the lies were swept away. His face grew ashen.
“You have me in your power,” he said, humbly. “Once I was a gentleman and a scholar. Then there were years of degradation. Now, thanks to Quixtus, I’m on the way to becoming my former self. If you denounce me to Quixtus, I go back. For sheer pity’s sake don’t do it.”
“Let me hear what you’ve got to say for yourself,” said Clementina, grimly.
“What are Quixtus’s feelings with regard to Mrs. Fontaine I don’t know. He has never spoken to me on the subject. But he certainly admires her for what she really is—a charming, well-bred woman.”
“Umph!” said Clementina.
“Suppose,” continued Huckaby, “suppose we were drawn into this conspiracy. Suppose when we came to put it into practice both our souls revolted. Suppose she began to like Quixtus for his own sake. Suppose her soul also revolted from her past life——”
“Fiddlesticks!” said Clementina.
“I assure you it’s true,” he said, earnestly. “Let us suppose it is, anyhow. Suppose she saw in a marriage with a good man her salvation. Suppose she was ready to make him a good wife. Suppose I thoroughly believed her. How could I, clinging to the same plank as she, do otherwise than I have done—keep silent?”
“Your duty to your benefactor should certainly outweigh your supposed duty to this worthless creature.”
Huckaby sighed. “That’s the woman’s point of view.”
Clementina made an angry gesture. “I suppose you’re right. Always the confounded woman’s point of view—when one wants to look at things judicially. Yes. You couldn’t give the woman away—a man’s perverted notion—I see. Well—let us take it; for the sake of argument, that I believe you. What then?”
“I don’t know,” said he. “Mrs. Fontaine and myself are at your mercy.”
“Umph!” said Clementina again. She paused, glanced shrewdly at his face, as he sat forward in the chair on the opposite side of the window, twisting nervous fingers and staring out across the street.
“Tell me your story—frankly—of Dr. Quixtus,” she said at last, “from the time of the Marrable trial. As many details as you can remember. I want to know.”
Huckaby obeyed. He was, as he said, at her mercy. His story confirmed Vandermeer’s, but it covered a wider ground, and, told with truer perception, cast the desired light on dark places. She learned for the first time—for hitherto she had concerned herself little with Quixtus’s affairs—the fact of his disinheritance, Quixtus having, one raging day, revealed to Huckaby the history of the cynical will. She questioned him about Will Hammersley. His account of Quixtus’s half-given and hastily snatched confidence was a lightning flash.
Clementina rose, aghast, and walked about the room. The idea of such a horror had never entered her head. Hammersley and Angela—it was incredible, impossible. There must have been some awful hallucination. That Hammersley, Bayard without fear and without reproach, and Angela, quiet, colourless saint, could have done this thing baffled all imaginings of human passion. It was inconceivable, ludicrous, grotesque. But to Quixtus it was real. He believed it. It lay at the root of his disorder. Even now, with his disorder cured, he believed it still. She was rent with his anguish.
“My God! How he must have suffered!”
“And in spite of everything,” said Huckaby, “he is as tender to Hammersley’s little daughter as if she were his own.”
She swooped upon him in her abrupt fashion.
“Thank you for that. You’ve got a heart somewhere about you.”
She sat down again. “When do you think this suspicion, or whatever it was, crossed his mind? Let us go back.”
They talked long and earnestly. At length, Huckaby having ransacked his memory of things past, they fixed as a probable date the day of the hostless dinner. Quixtus had sent down word that he was ill. The excuse was entirely false. Nothing but severe mental trouble could have stood in the way of his taking the head of the table. Obviously something had happened. Huckaby had a vague memory of seeing Quixtus, as he entered the museum, crush a letter in his hand and stuff it in his jacket pocket. It might possibly have been a letter incriminating the pair.
Whether the conjecture was right or wrong did not greatly matter. Clementina felt now that she held the key to Quixtus’s mad conduct. Blow after blow had fallen on him. Those whom he had trusted had betrayed him. He had lost faith in humanity. The gentle nature could not withstand this loss of faith. There had been shock. He had set out to work devildom. The pity of it!
She uttered a queer, choking laugh. “And not one piece of wickedness could he commit!”
The summer twilight began to creep over the quiet street, and the darkness deepened at the back of the room. A long silence fell upon them. Clementina sat as motionless as a dusky sphinx, absorbed by strange thoughts and wrung by strange emotions that made her bosom heave and her breath come quickly. A scheme, audacious, fantastic, romantic, began to shape itself in her mind, sending the blood tingling down to her feet, to her finger-tips.
At last she made an abrupt movement.
“It’s getting dark. What can the time be? I must go home.”
She rose.
“Before I go,” she said, “we must settle up about Mrs. Fontaine.”
“I suppose we must,” groaned Huckaby. “All I ask you is to spare her as much as you can.”
“We must think first of Quixtus,” she replied, shortly. “What we’ve got to do for him is to build up his faith in humanity again—not to give the little he has left another knockdown blow. See?”
Huckaby raised his head with swift hope.
“Do you mean that he must not know about her?”
“Or about you. That’s what I mean.”
“God bless you!” gasped Huckaby.
“All the same, this precious marriage project has got to be put a stop to—for ever and ever, amen. I hope you realise that thoroughly.”
Huckaby could not meet her keen eyes. He hung his head.
“I suppose you mean me to break it gently to her that—that the game is up.”
“I don’t mean anything of the kind,” she snapped. “Now look here. Pay strict attention. If you obey me implicitly and scrupulously, I’ll still see whether I can’t be your friend—and I can be a good friend; but if you don’t, God help you! I’ve given a pledge of secrecy to my informant this afternoon. Of course I’ve broken it, like a woman. So you’ve got to keep it for me. See? You’re not to let those two blackguards suffer in any way on my account. Promise.”
“I promise,” said Huckaby.
“Then you’re not to breathe a single syllable to Mrs. Fontaine. Best keep out of her way. Leave me to deal with her. I’ll let her down gently, I’ll give you my word on it. Is that a bargain?”
“Yes,” said Huckaby.
She put out her hand frankly.
“Good-bye.”
He accompanied her to the front door.
“Can I get you a taxi?”
“Lord, no. When I’m a lady you can. I’ll walk till I find one.”
Clementina sped to Romney Place with shining eyes, and a smile lurking at the corners of her lips. The first thing she did on arrival was to rush down to the telephone.
“Is that you, Ephraim?”
“Yes,” came the answer.
“I’ve changed my mind, and I’m coming to your dinner-party.”
“Delighted, my dear Clementina.”
“Good-bye.”
She rang off, and rushed upstairs to make a fool of herself over Sheila, who, already put to bed, lay awake in anticipation of Clementina’s good-night cuddle.
“When you go to stay with your uncle, I wonder whether he’ll spoil you like this.”
“You’ll come too,” said Sheila, sedately, “and then you can go on spoiling me.”
“Lord preserve us!” cried Clementina. “What a scandal in Russell Square!”
Towards ten o’clock Tommy made his appearance. The daily calls to inquire after her health and happiness had grown to be a sacred observance. But as the studio was rigorously closed to him during the daylight hours his visits were vespertilian. If she wanted him, she told him to stay. If she didn’t, she sent him about his business. He had got into the habit of kissing her, nephew fashion, when they met and parted. She liked the habit now, for she felt that the boy loved her very dearly. And in an aunt-like, and very satisfying and comfortful way, she, too, loved him with all her heart.
“Can I stay?”
She nodded. He removed the set palette from the chair on to which she had cast it when Vandermeer was announced, and sat down.
“What have you been doing with yourself?”
He entered upon a long story. Some picture or the other was shaping splendidly. His uncle had taken Etta and himself to lunch at the Savoy.
“Said he was thinking of going to Dinard for August. Rum place for him to go, isn’t it?”
Clementina repressed manifestation of interest in the announcement. But it set her pulses throbbing.
“I suppose he can go where he likes, can’t he?” she snapped. “What kind of a lunch did you have?”
Tommy ran through the menu. It was his own selection. He had given the dear old chap some hints in gastronomy. It was wonderful how little he knew of such essential things. Seemed to have set his heart on giving them pheasant. In July. After that they had gone to see the New Futurists. His uncle seemed to know all about them. Wonderful work; but they were all erring after false gods. He thanked heaven he had her, Clementina, to keep him orthodox. It was all absinthe and morphia. He rattled on. Clementina, leaning far back in her chair, watched the curls of cigarette smoke with shining eyes and a Leonardesque smile lurking at the corners of her lips.
“Why, Clementina!” he cried, with sudden indignation. “You’re paying not the slightest attention to me.”
“Never mind, Tommy,” she said. “You go on talking. It helps me to think. I’m going to have a devil of a time—the time of my life!”
“What in the world are you going to do?”
“Never mind, Tommy. Never mind. Oh, what a fool I was not to think of it before!”
CHAPTER XXIII
Thenext morning Clementina put off a sitter, a thing which she had never done before, and, letting work go hang, made an unprecedented irruption into Russell Square.
“It’s about this dinner of yours,” she said as soon as Quixtus appeared. “I telephoned you yesterday that I was coming.”
“And I said, my dear Clementina, that I was more than delighted.”
“It was the morose wart-hog inside me that made me decline,” she said frankly. “But there’s a woman of sense also inside me that can cut the throat of the wart-hog when it likes. So here I am, a woman of sense. Now will you let a woman of sense run this dinner-party for you? Oh—I know what you may be thinking,” she went on hastily without giving him time to reply. “I’m not going to suggest liver and bacon and a boiled potato. I know how things should be done, better than you.”
“I’m afraid I’m inexperienced in entertainments of this kind,” said Quixtus, with a smile. “Spriggs generally attends to such matters.”
“Spriggs and I will put our heads together,” said Clementina. “I want you to give rather a wonderful dinner-party. What kind of table decorations have you?”
Spriggs was summoned. He loaded the dining-room table with family plate and table-centres and solid cut glass. His pride lay in a mid-Victorian épergne that at every banquet in the house proudly took the place of honour with a fat load of grapes and oranges and apples. Clementina set apart a few articles of silver and condemned the rest including the épergne as horrors.
“You’ll let me have the pleasure, Ephraim,” she said, “of providing all the flowers and making out a scheme of decoration. Anything I want I’ll get myself and make you a present of it. I’m by way of being an artist, you know, so it will be all right.”
“Could any one doubt it?” said Quixtus. “I am very much indebted to you, Clementina.”
“A woman comes in useful now and then. I’ve never done a hand’s turn for you and it’s time I began. You’ll want a hostess, won’t you?”
“Dear me,” said Quixtus, somewhat taken aback. “I suppose I shall. I never thought of it.”
“I’ll be hostess,” said Clementina. “I’m a kind of aunt to Tommy and Etta for whom you’re giving the party. I’m a kind of connection of yours—and you and I are kind of father and mother to Sheila. So it will be quite correct. Let me have your list of guests and don’t you worry your head about anything.”
Clementina in her sweeping mood was irresistible. Quixtus, mild man, could do no more than acquiesce gratefully. It was most gracious of Clementina to undertake these perplexing arrangements. New sides of her character exhibited themselves every day. There was only one flaw in the newly revealed Clementina—her unaccountable disparagement of Mrs. Fontaine. But even this defect she remedied of her own accord.
“I take back what I said about Mrs. Fontaine,” she said abruptly. “I was in a wart-hoggy humour. She’s a charming woman, with brilliant social gifts.”
Quixtus beamed, whereat Clementina felt more wart-hoggy than ever; but she beamed also, with a mansuetude that would have deceived Mrs. Fontaine herself.
Clementina, after an intimate interview with a first resentful, then obfuscated and finally boneless and submissive Spriggs, went her way, a sparkle of triumph in her eyes. And then began laborious days, during which she sacrificed many glorious hours of daylight to the arrangements for the dinner-party. She spent an incredible time in antique shops and schools of art needlework, and even haunted places near the London docks hunting for the glass and embroideries and other things she needed. She ordered rare flowers from florists. She wasted her evenings over a water-colour design for the table decoration, and over designs for the menu and name-cards.
“It’s going to be a dinner that people shall remember,” she said to Etta.
“It’s going to be splendid,” said Etta. “You think of everything, darling, except the one thing—the most important.”
“What’s that, child?”
“Have you got a dress to wear, darling?”
“Dress?” echoed Clementina, staring at the child. “Why, of course. I’ve got my black.”
Etta stood aghast. “That old thing you took with you packed anyhow on the motor trip?”
“Naturally. Isn’t it good enough for you?”
“It’s not for me,” said Etta, growing bold. “I love you in anything. It’s for the other people. Do go and get yourself a nice frock. There’s still time. I’ve never liked to tell you before, dear, but the old onegapesat the back——“—she paused dramatically—“gapes dreadfully.”
“Oh, Lord, let it gape,” cried Clementina impatiently. “Don’t worry me.”
But Etta continued to worry, with partial success. Clementina obstinately refused to buy new raiment, but consented to call in Miss Pugsley, the little dressmaker round the corner in the King’s Road, who fashioned such homely garments as Clementina deigned to wear, and to hand over the old black dress to her for alterations and repairs. Etta sighed and spent anxious hours with Miss Pugsley and forced a grumbling and sarcastic Clementina to stand half clad while the frumpy rag attained something resembling a fit.
“At any rate there are no seams burst and itdoeshook together,” said Etta, dismally surveying the horror at the final fitting.
“Humph!” said Clementina, contemplating herself wryly in the mirror. “I suppose I look like a lady. Now I hope you’re satisfied.”
Meanwhile such painting as she did in the intervals of her daily excursions abroad, progressed exceedingly. Tommy coming into the studio one evening caught sight of the picture of the lady in the grey dress standing on its easel.
“Stunning!” he cried. “Stunning! You can almost hear the stuff rustle. How the dickens do you get your texture? You’re a holy mystery. By Jove, you are! All this”—he ran his thumb parallel with a fold in the drapery—“all this is a miracle.” He turned and faced her with worshipping eyes in which the tears were ready to spring. “By God, you’re great!”
The artist was thrilled by the homage; the woman laughed inwardly. She had dashed at the task triumphantly and as if by magic the thing had come out right. She was living, these days, intensely. There was no miracle that she could not work.
A morning or two afterwards she issued a ukase to Tommy and Etta that they were to accompany her on an automobile excursion. Tommy to whom she had constituted herself taskmistress, boyishly glad of the holiday, flew down Romney Place, and found a great luxurious hired motor standing at her door. Presently Etta arrived, and then Clementina and Sheila and the young lovers started. Where were they going? Clementina explained. As she could not keep Sheila in London during August, she had decided on taking a furnished cottage in the country. Estate agents had highly recommended one at Moleham-on-Thames. She was going down to have a look at it, and wanted their advice. The motor ploughed through the squalor of Brentford and then sped along the Bath Road, through Colnbrook and Slough and Maidenhead and through the glorious greenery in which Henley is embowered, and on and on by winding shady roads, with here and there a flashing glimpse of river, by fields lush in golden pasture, up and down the gentle hills, through riverside villages where sleeping gaiety brings a smile to the eyes, between the high hedges of Oxfordshire lanes, through the cool verdant mystery of beech woods, until it entered through a great gateway and proceeded up a long avenue of elms and stopped before a slumbering red-brick manor-house.
“This the cottage?” asked Tommy.
“Do you think it’s a waterfall?” asked Clementina.
They alighted. A caretaker took the order-to-view given by the estate agents and conducted the party over the place. The more Tommy saw the more amazed did he grow. There was a park; a garden; a pergola of roses; a couple of tennis courts; a lawn reaching to the river. The house, richly furnished throughout, contained rooms innumerable; four or five sitting-rooms, large dining-room, billiard room, countless bedrooms, a magnificent studio; in the grounds another studio.
“I’ll take it,” said Clementina.
“But, my dear,” gasped Tommy, “have you considered? I don’t want to be impertinent—but the rent of this place must be a thousand pounds a minute.”
She drew him apart from Etta and Sheila.
“My dear boy,” she said. “For no reason that I can see, I’ve lived all my life on tuppence a year. It’s only quite lately that I’ve realised that I’m a very rich woman and can do anything more or less I please. I’m going to take this place for August and September and hire a motor-car, and you and Etta are going to stay with me, and you can each bring as many idiot boys and girls as you choose, and I shall paint and you can paint and Sheila can run about the garden, and we’re all going to enjoy ourselves.”
Tommy thrust his hands into the pockets of his grey flannels and declared she was a wonder. Whereupon they proceeded to Moleham and after lunch at “The Black Boy,” motored back to Chelsea.
These were days filled with a myriad activities. The dinner-party engaged her curious attention. She sent back proofs of the menu and name cards time after time to the firm of art printers before she was satisfied. Then she took them to Quixtus. He was delighted.
“But, my dear Clementina, why are you taking all this ridiculous trouble?”
She laughed in her gruff way, and summoned Spriggs to another dark and awful interview.
A day or two before the dinner, Mrs. Fontaine who, although she had suggested the idea, did not view a dinner-party as a world-shaking phenomenon, bethought her of the matter. A pretty little note had summoned Quixtus to tea. They were alone.
“I have been wondering, my dear Dr. Quixtus,” she said, sweetly, her soft eyes on his, as soon as she had heard of the acceptances of the people in whom she was interested—“I have been wondering whether we are good enough friends for me to be audacious.”
He smiled an assurance.
“If I brought you a few flowers for the table would you accept them? And if you did, would you let me come and arrange them for you? It would be such a pleasure. Even the best trained servants can’t give the little touch that a woman can.”
Quixtus blushed. It was difficult to be ungracious to the flower of womanhood; yet the flower of womanhood had come too late in the day with her gracious proposal. He explained, wishing to soften the necessary refusal, that he had already called in the help of his artistic friends, Miss Clementina Wing and Tommy Burgrave.
“Why didn’t you send for me? Didn’t you think of me?”
“I did not venture,” said he.
“I have been deluding myself with the fancy that we were friends.” She sighed and looked at him with feminine significance. “Nothing venture nothing win.”
But Quixtus, simple soul, was too genuinely distressed by obvious happenings to follow the insidious scent. With great wisdom Clementina had shown him her water-colour design, and he knew that Mrs. Fontaine, with all her daintiness, could not compete with the faultless taste and poetic imagination of a great artist. He wondered why so finely sensitive a nature as the flower of womanhood did not divine this. Her insistence jarred on him ever so little. And yet he shrank from wounding susceptibilities.
“I never thought you would be interested in such trivial domestic matters,” said he.
“It is the little things that count.”
For the first time in his intercourse with her, he felt uncomfortable. Here was the lady maintaining her reproach of neglect. If she took so much interest in this wretched dinner-party, why had she not offered her services at once? Unwittingly he contrasted her inaction with Clementina’s irresistible energy. In answer to her remark he said, smiling:
“I’m not so sure about that, although it’s often asserted. We lawyers have an axiom:De minimis non curat lex.”
“Pity a poor woman. What on earth does that mean?”
He translated.
“The law is one thing and human sentiment another.”
With all her rough contradiction and violent assertion, Clementina never pinned him down to a fine point of sentimental argument. There was a spaciousness about Clementina wherein he could breathe freely. This close atmosphere began to grow distasteful. There was a slight pause, which Mrs. Fontaine filled in by handing him his second cup of tea.
“Miss Clementina Wing,” said he, dashing for the open, “is so intimately associated not only with the object of our little entertainment, but also with myself in other matters, that I could do no less than consult her.”
Lena Fontaine bent forward, sugar-tongs in hand, ready to drop a lump into his cup—a charmingly intimate pose.
“Of course, I understand, dear Dr. Quixtus. And is she really coming to the dinner?”
“Why not?”
“She’s so—so unconventional. I thought she never went into society.”
“She is honouring me by making an exception in my case,” replied Quixtus, a little stiffly.
“I’m delighted to hear it,” she said sweetly; but in her heart she bitterly resented Clementina’s interference. She would get even with the fishfag for this.
On the morning of the dinner-party Clementina sent for Tommy. He found her, as usual, at work. She laid down her brush and handed him the water-colour design.
“I’m too busy to-day to fool about with this silly nonsense. I can’t spare any more time for it. You can carry out the scheme quite as well as I can. You’ll find everything there. Do you mind?”
Tommy did not mind. In fact, he was delighted at the task. The artist in him loved to deal with things of beauty and exquisite colours.
“Shall I give an eye to the wines?”
“Everything’s quite settled. I saw to it yesterday. Now clear out. I’m busy. And look here,” she cried, as he was mounting the staircase, “I’m not going to have you or Etta fooling round the place to-day. I’m going to paint till the very last minute.”
She resumed her painting. A short while afterwards, a note and parcel came from Etta. From the parcel she drew a long pair of black gloves. She threw them to the maid, Eliza.
“What shall I do with them, ma’am?”
“Wear ’em at your funeral,” said Clementina.
A few minutes before eight Quixtus stood in the great drawing-room waiting to receive his guests. On the stroke came Admiral Concannon, scrupulously punctual, and Etta followed by Tommy, who, having given the last touches to the table, waylaid her on the stairs. Then came Lady Louisa Malling and Lena Fontaine demure in pale heliotrope. After them Lord and Lady Radfield, he, tall and distinguished, with white moustache and imperial, she, much younger than he, dumpy, expensively dressed, wearing a false air of vivacity. Then came in quick succession General and Lady Barnes, Griffiths (Quixtus’s colleague in the Anthropological Society), and his wife, John Powersfoot (the Royal Academician), Mr. and Mrs. Wilmour-Jackson, physically polished, vacant, opulent, friends of Mrs. Fontaine. Gradually the party assembled and the hum of talk filled the room. During an interval Quixtus turned to Tommy. What had become of Clementina, who had promised to play hostess? Tommy could give no information. All he knew about her was that he had stopped at her door and offered a lift in his cab, and Eliza had come down with a verbal message to the effect that he was to go away and that Miss Wing was not coming in his cab. Tommy opined that Clementina was in one of her crotchety humours. Possibly she would not turn up at all. Etta took Tommy aside.
“I’m sure that old black frock has split down the back and Eliza is mending it with black thread.”
Only the Quinns and Clementina to arrive; and at ten minutes past the Quinns, Sir Edward, Member of Parliament, and Lady, genial, flustered folk with many apologies for lateness. The hands of the clock on the mantelpiece marked the quarter. Still no Clementina. Quixtus grew uneasy. What could have happened? Lena Fontaine turned from him and whispered to Lord Radfield.
“She has forgotten to put on her boots and is driving back for them.”
Then Spriggs appeared at the door and announced:
“Miss Clementina Wing.”
And Clementina sailed into the room.
For the first and only time in his life did Quixtus lose his courtliness of manner. For a perceptible instant he stood stock still and stared open-mouthed. It was a Clementina that he had never seen before; a Clementina that no one had ever seen before. It was Clementina in a hundred-guinea gown, gold silk gleaming through ambergris net, Clementina exquisitely corseted and revealing a beautifully curved and rounded figure; Clementina with a smooth, clear olive skin, with her fine black hair coiled by a miracle of the hairdresser’s art, majestically on her head, and set off with a great diamond comb; Clementina wearing diamonds at her throat; Clementina perfectly gloved; Clementina carrying an ostrich feather fan; Clementina erect, proud, smiling, her strong face illuminated by her fine eyes a-glitter with suppressed excitement; Clementina a very great lady and almost a beautiful woman. Those who knew her stared like Quixtus; those who did not looked at her appreciatively.
She sailed across the room, hand outstretched to Quixtus.
“I’m so sorry I’m late, and so sorry I could not run in to-day. I’ve been up to my ears in work. I hope Tommy has been a satisfactory lieutenant.”
“He has most faithfully carried out your instructions,” said Quixtus, recovering his balance.
Clementina smiled on Mrs. Fontaine. “How d’ye do. How charming to meet you again. But you’re looking pale to-night, my dear, quite fagged out, I hope nothing’s the matter.”
She turned round quickly leaving Lena Fontaine speechless with amazement and indignation, and shook hands with the astonished Admiral. Was this regal-looking woman the same paint-daubed rabbit-skinner of the studio? He murmured vague nothings.
“Well, my dears?”
Tommy and Etta thus greeted stood paralysed before her like village children at a school feast when they are addressed by the awe-inspiring squire’s lady.
“Pinch me. Pinch me hard,” Tommy whispered, when Clementina had turned to meet Lord Radfield whom Quixtus was presenting.
“I believe I have the pleasure of taking you down to dinner,” said Lord Radfield.
“I’m a sort of brevet hostess in this house,” said Clementina. “A bad one, I’m afraid, seeing how late I am.”
Spriggs announced dinner. Quixtus led the way with Lady Radfield, Clementina on Lord Radfield’s arm closed the procession. The company took their places in the great dining-room. Quixtus at the end of the table by the door sat between Lady Radfield and Lady Louisa. Clementina at the foot between Lord Radfield and General Barnes. Lena Fontaine had her place as near Clementina as possible, between Lord Radfield and Griffiths, a dry splenetic man who had taken her in. Clementina had thus arranged the table-plan.
The scheme of decoration was too striking in its beauty not to arouse immediate and universal comment. It was half barbaric. Rich Chinese gold embroideries on the damask; black and gold lacquer urns, a great black-and-gold lacquer tray. Black irises, with golden tongues, in gold-dust Venetian glass; tawny orchids flaring profusely among the black and gold. Here and there shining though greenery the glow of golden fruit, and, insistent down the long table, the cool sheen of ambergris grapes. Glass and silver and damask; black and gold and ambergris; audacious, startling; then appealing to the eye as perfect in its harmony.
Quixtus and Tommy each proclaimed the author. All eyes were directed to Clementina. Attention was diverted to the name-and menu-cards. Lord Radfield put his name-card into his pocket.
“It is not every day in the week that one takes away a precious work of art from a London dinner-party.”
Clementina enjoyed a little triumph, the flush of which mounted to her dark face. With the flush, and in the setting she had prepared for herself, she looked radiant. Her late entrance had produced a dramatic effect; the immediate concentration of every one on her work, added to the commonplace of her reputation, had at once established her as the central figure in the room; and she sat as hostess at the foot of the table a symphony in ambergris, gold and black. Woman, in the use of woman’s weapons, has evolved no laws of fence.
“One might almost have said she did it on purpose,” murmured the ingenuous Tommy.
“Did what?” asked Etta.
“Why used the table as a personal decoration. Don’t you see how it all leads up to her—leads up, by Jove, to her eyes and the diamonds in her hair. And, I say, doesn’t it wipe out Mrs. Fontaine?”
Tommy was right. Lena Fontaine’s pale colouring, her white face and chestnut hair faded into nothingness against the riot of colour. The pale heliotrope of her dress was killed. She was insignificant to the eye. Conscious of this eclipse, hating herself for having put on heliotrope and yet wondering which of her usual half-tone costumes she could have worn, she paid her tribute to the designer with acid politeness. She wished she had not come. Clementina as fishfag and Clementina as Princess were two totally different people. She could deal with the one. How could she deal with the other? The irony in Clementina’s glance made her quiver with fury; her heart still burned hot with the indignation of the first greeting. She felt herself to be in the midst of hostile influences. Griffiths, a man of unimaginative fact, plunged headlong into a discourse on comparative statistics of accidents to railway servants. She listened absently, angry with Quixtus for pairing her with so dreary a fellow. Griffiths, irritated by her non-intelligence, transferred the lecture to his other neighbour as soon as an opportunity occurred. Lena Fontaine awaited her chance with Lord Radfield. But Clementina held him amused and interested, and soon drew General Barnes into the talk. With the slough of her old outer trappings Clementina had cast off the slough of her abrupt and unconventional speech. She was a woman of acute intellect, wide reading and wide observation. She had ideas and wit and she had come out this evening flamingly determined to use all her powers. Her success sent her pulses throbbing. Here were two men, at the outset of her experiment, hanging on her words, paying indubitable homage, not to the woman of brains, not to the well-known painter, but to the essential woman herself. The talk quickly became subtle, personal, a quick interchange of hinted sentiment, that makes for charm. When Lord Radfield at last turned to Lena Fontaine, she could offer him nothing but commonplaces; Goodwood, a scandal or so, the fortunes of a bridge club. Clementina adroitly brought them both quickly into her circle, and Lena Fontaine had the chagrin to see the politely bored old face suddenly lit up with reawakened interest. For a moment or two Lena Fontaine flashed into the talk, determined to offer battle; but after a while she felt dominated, cowed, with no fight left in her. The other woman ruled triumphant.
Tommy could not keep his eyes off Clementina, and neglected Etta and his left-hand neighbour shamefully. An unprecedented rosiness of fingernails caught his keen vision. In awe-stricken tones he whispered to Etta:
“Manicured!”
“Go on with your dinner,” said Etta, “and don’t stare, Tommy. It’s rude.”
“She should have given us warning,” groaned Tommy. “We’re too young to stand it.”
The exquisitely cooked and served meal proceeded. The French chef whom Clementina had engaged and to whom she had given full scope for his art had felt like an architect unrestricted by site or expense who can put into concrete form the dreams of a lifetime. John Powersfoot, the sculptor, sitting next to Lady Louisa, cried out to his host:
“This is not a dinner you’re giving us, Quixtus, it’s a poem.”
Lady Louisa ate on, too much absorbed in flavours for articulate thought.
Quixtus smiled. “I’m not responsible. The mistress of the feast is facing me at the other end.”
Powersfoot, who knew the Clementina of everyday life, threw up his hands in a Latin gesture which he had learned at the Beaux-Arts and of which he was proud.
“The most remarkable woman of the century.”
“I think you’re right,” said Quixtus.
He looked down the table and caught her eye and exchanged smiles. Now that he could adjust his mind to the concept of Clementina transfigured, he felt conscious of a breathless admiration. He grew absurdly impatient of the social conventions which pinned him in his seat leagues of lacquer and orchids away from her. Idiotic envy of the two men whom she was fascinating by her talk entered his heart. She was laughing, showing her white strong teeth, as only once before she had shown her teeth to him. He longed to escape from the vivaciously inane Lady Radfield and join the group at the other end of the table. Now and then his eye rested on Lena Fontaine; but she had almost faded out of sight.
At the end of the dinner he held the door open for the ladies to pass out. Clementina, immediately preceded by Etta, whispered a needless recommendation not to linger. The door closed. Etta put her arm round Clementina’s waist.
“Oh, darling, you look too magnificent for words. But why didn’t you tell me? Why did you make a fool of me about the old black dress?”
Clementina disengaged the girl’s arm gently.
“My child,” she said. “If I have the extra pressure of a feather on me, I’ll yell. I’m suffering the tortures of the damned.”
“Oh, poor darling.”
“It’s worth it, though,” said Clementina.
When the men came upstairs, she again enjoyed a triumph. Men and women crowded round her and ministered instinctively to her talk. All the pent-up emotions, longings, laughter of years found torrential utterance. Powersfoot, standing over her was amazed to discover how shapely were her bare arms and how full and graceful her neck and shoulders.
Quixtus talked for a few moments with the spotless flower of womanhood. In the stiff formality of the drawing-room she regained her individuality. With a resumption of her air of possession she patted a vacant seat on the couch beside her and invited him to sit down. He obeyed.
“I thought you were going to neglect me altogether,” she said.
He protested courteously. They sparred a little. Then Wilmour-Jackson, polished and opulent, eye-glass in eye, crossed over to the couch and Quixtus, rising with an eagerness that made Lena Fontaine bite her lip, yielded him the seat and joined the charmed circle around Clementina. A little thrill of pleasure passed through him as she glanced a welcome. He gazed at her, fascinated. Something magnetic, feminine, he was too confused to know what, emanated from her and held him bound. Never in all the years of his knowledge of her had she appealed to him in this extraordinary manner. Why had the perfect neck and arms, the graceful figure been hidden under shapeless garments? Why had the magnificence of her hair never been revealed? Why had grim frown and tightened lips locked within the features the laughter that now played about them? Once he had seen her face illuminated—at the hotel in Marseilles—but then it was with generous and noble feeling and he had forgotten the disfiguring attire. But now she had the stateliness of a queen, and men hung around her, irresistibly attracted. . . .
At last Lady Radfield disentangled her lord and departed. Others followed her example. The party broke up, with the curious suddenness of London. In a brief interval between adieux, Quixtus and Clementina found themselves alone together.
“Well?” she asked. “Are you pleased?”
“Pleased? What a word! I’m dumfounded. I’ve been blind and my eyes are open. I never knew you before.”
“Because I have a decent gown on? I couldn’t do less.”
“Because,” said he, “I never knew what a beautiful woman you were.”
The blood flew to her dark cheeks. She touched his arm, and looked at him.
“Do you really think I look nice?”
His reply was cut short by the Quinns coming up to take leave, but she read it on his face. The room thinned. Lena Fontaine came up.
“It’s getting late. I must rescue Louisa and go. Your dinner-party was quite a success, Dr. Quixtus.”
“So glad you think so,” said Clementina. “Especially now that I hear you were originally responsible for it. It was most kind of you to think of our dear young people. But don’t go yet. Lady Louisa is quite happy with Mr. Griffiths. He is feeding her with facts. Let us sit down for a minute or two and chat comfortably.”
She moved to a sofa near by and motioned Mrs. Fontaine to a seat. The latter had to yield. Quixtus drew up a chair.
“I’ve done a desperate thing,” said Clementina. “I’ve taken the old Manor House at Moleham-on-Thames, for August and September. It’s as big as a hotel and unless I fill it with people, I shall be lost in it. Now every one who wants to paint can have a studio—I myself am going to paint every morning—and any one who wants to write can have a library. Sheila has picked outthelibrary for you, Ephraim—takes it for granted that you’re coming. I hope you will. You’ll break her heart if you don’t—and there’ll be a room for Mr. Huckaby too. There’ll be Etta and Tommy, of course—and the Admiral has promised to put in a week or two—and so on. And if you’ll only come and stay August with me, my dear Mrs. Fontaine, my cup of happiness, unlike my house, will be full.”
Lena Fontaine gasped for an outraged moment. Then a swift, fierce temptation assailed her to take the enemy at her word and fight the battle; but, glancing at her, she saw the irony and banter and deadly purpose behind the glittering eyes, and her courage failed her. She was dominated again by the intense personality, frightened by her sudden and unexpected power. To stay under the woman’s roof was an impossibility.
“I’m sorry I can’t accept such a charming invitation,” she said with a smile of the lips, “for I’ve made an engagement with some friends to go to Dinard.”
“Oh—you’re going to Dinard too?” cried Clementina.
“What do you mean by ‘too’?” asked the other shortly.
“I heard a rumour that Dr. Quixtus was going there. It seemed so silly that I paid no attention to it. Are you really going Ephraim?”
It was a trap deliberately laid. It was a defiance, a challenge. From the corner of the sofa she stretched out her bare arm at full length and laid her hand on his shoulder. The other woman looked white and pinched; her eyes lost their allurement, and regarded him almost with enmity.
“You promised.”
The words were snapped out before she could realise their significance. The instant after she could have thrust hat-pins into herself in punishment for folly. The manhood in Quixtus leapt at the lash. He knew then, with a startling clarity of assurance, that nothing in the world would induce him to strut about casinos with her in Dinard. He smiled courteously.
“Pardon me, dear Mrs. Fontaine. I made no promise. You must remember my little—my little trope of the daw and the peacocks.”
Clementina satisfied, withdrew her hand.
“Of course, dear Ephraim, if you would prefer to go to Dinard with Mrs. Fontaine——”
Lena Fontaine rose. “Dr. Quixtus is obviously free to do what he chooses. I wish you would kindly leave me out of it.”
Clementina rose too, and held out her hand.
“I will, my dear Mrs. Fontaine,” she said sweetly. “If I can. Good-bye. It has been so delightful to have had you.”
Her exit with Lady Louisa was confused with that of other stragglers. The Admiral, Etta and Tommy remained. They all went down to Quixtus’s study, the little back room of the adventure of the drunken housekeeper now cheery with decanters and syphons and cigarettes, and chatted intimately till the Admiral reminded Etta that the horses—such fat horses, murmured Etta—had been standing for nearly an hour. Tommy accompanied father and daughter to the carriage. Quixtus and Clementina were left alone.
“Can I tell Sheila to-morrow that you’re coming down to Moleham?”
“I think you can,” said Quixtus. “I think you can quite safely.”
“I’m sorry Mrs. Fontaine wasn’t able to join us.”
“Now why?” he asked, vaguely conscious of outstretched claw and flying fur.
“Because she has such brilliant social gifts,” replied Clementina.
There was a span of silence. Clementina inhaled a puff of the Turkish cigarette she had lit and then threw it into the grate.
“For God’s sake, my dear man, look in that drawer and give me some tobacco I can smoke. I smuggled it in yesterday.”
Quixtus gave her the yellow package and papers and she rolled a cigarette of Maryland and smoked contentedly. Tommy came in.
“Will you and these infants lunch with me to-morrow at the Carlton?”
“With pleasure,” said Quixtus.
“Do you know,” she said, “I’ve never been inside the place? It will be quite an adventure.”
A few moments later Tommy and herself were speeding westward in a taxi-cab. The boy spoke little. All his darling conceptions of Clementina had been upheaved, dynamited, tossed into the air and lay around him in amorphous fragments. Nor was she conversationally inclined. Tommy now was a tiny little speck in her horizon. Yet when the motor drew up at her house in Romney Place and he opened the gate for her, something significant happened.
He put out his hand. “Good-night, Clementina.”
She laughed. “Where are your manners, Tommy? Aren’t you going to kiss me?”
He hesitated, just the fraction of a second, and then kissed her. She ran up to her room exultant; not because she had been kissed; far from it. But because he had hesitated. Between Clementina fishfag and Clementina princess was a mighty gulf. She knew it. She exulted. She went to bed, but could not sleep. She had a headache; such a headache; a glorious headache; a thunder and lightning of a headache!