IN the morning Lord Holme woke very late and in a different humour. Lady Holme was already up, sitting by a little table and pouring out tea, when he stretched himself, yawned, turned over, uttered two or three booming, incohorent exclamations, and finally raised himself on one arm, exhibiting a touzled head and a pair of blinking eyes, stared solemnly at his wife’s white figure and at the tea-table, and ejaculated:
“Eh?”
“Tea?” she returned, lifting up the silver teapot and holding it towards him with an encouraging, half-playful gesture.
Lord Holme yawned again, put up his hands to his hair, and then looked steadily at the teapot, which his wife was moving about in the sunbeams that were shining in at the window. The morning was fine.
“Tea, Fritz?”
He smiled and began to roll out of bed. But the action woke up his memory, and when he was on his feet he looked at his wife again more doubtfully. She saw that he was beginning, sleepily but definitely, to consider whether he should go on being absolutely furious about the events of the preceding night, and acted with promptitude.
“Don’t be frightened,” she said quickly. “I’ve made up my mind to forgive you. You’re only a great schoolboy after all. Come along.”
She began to pour out the tea. It made a pleasant little noise falling into the cup. The sun was wonderfully bright in the pretty room, almost Italian in its golden warmth. Lady Holme’s black Pomeranian, Pixie, stood on its hind legs to greet him. He came up to the sofa, still looking undecided, but with a wavering light of dawning satisfaction in his eyes.
“You behaved damned badly last night,” he growled.
He sat down beside his wife with a bump. She put up her hand to his rough, brown cheek.
“We both behaved atrociously,” she answered. “There’s your tea.”
She poured in the cream and buttered a thin piece of toast. Lord Holme sipped. As he put the cup down she held the piece of toast up to his mouth. He took a bite.
“And we both do the Christian act and forgive each other,” she added.
He leaned back. Sleep was flowing away from him, full consciousness of life and events returning to him.
“What made you speak to that feller?” he said.
“Drink your tea. I don’t know. He looked miserable at being avoided, and—”
“Miserable! He was drunk. He’s done for himself in London, and pretty near done for you too.”
As he thought about it all a cloud began to settle over his face. Lady Holme saw it and said:
“That depends on you, Fritz.”
She nestled against him, put her hand over his, and kept on lifting his hand softly and then letting it fall on his knee, as she went on:
“That all depends on you.”
“How?”
He began to look at her hand and his, following their movements almost like a child.
“If we are all right together, obviously all right, very, very par-ti-cu-lar-ly all right—voyez vous, mon petit chou?—they will think nothing of it. ‘Poor Mr. Carey! What a pity the Duke’s champagne is so good!’ That’s what they’ll say. But if we—you and I—are not on perfect terms, if you behave like a bear that’s been sitting on a wasps’ nest—why then they’ll say—they’ll say—”
“What’ll they say?”
“They’ll say, ‘That was really a most painful scene at the Duke’s. She’s evidently been behaving quite abominably. Those yellow women always bring about all the tragedies—‘”
“Yellow women!” Lord Holme ejaculated.
He looked hard at his wife. It was evident that his mind was tacking.
“Miss Schley heard what you said to the feller,” he added.
“People who never speak hear everything—naturally.”
“How d’you mean—never speak? Why, she’s full of talk.”
“How well she listened to him!” was Lady Holme’s mental comment.
“If half the world heard it doesn’t matter if you and I choose it shouldn’t. Unless—”
“Unless what?”
“Unless you did anything last night—afterwards—that will make a scandal?”
“Ah!”
“Did you?”
“That’s all right.”
He applied himself with energy to the toast. Lady Holme recognised, with a chagrin which she concealed, that Lord Holme was not going to allow himself to be “managed” into any revelation. She recognised it so thoroughly that she left the subject at once.
“We’d better forgive and forget,” she said. “After all, we are married and I suppose we must stick together.”
There was a clever note of regret in her voice.
“Are you sorry?” Lord Holme said, with a manner that suggested a readiness to be surly.
“For what?”
“That we’re married?”
She sat calmly considering.
“Am I? Well, I must think. It’s so difficult to be sure. I must compare you with other men—”
“If it comes to that, I might do a bit of comparin’ too.”
“I should be the last to prevent you, old boy. But I’m sure you’ve often done it already and always made up your mind afterwards that she wasn’t quite up to the marrying mark.”
“Who wasn’t?”
“The other—horrid creature.”
He could not repress a chuckle.
“You’re deuced conceited,” he said.
“You’ve made me so.”
“I—how?”
“By marrying me first and adoring me afterwards.”
They had finished tea and were no longer preoccupied with cups and saucers. It was very bright in the room, very silent. Lord Holme looked at his wife and remembered how much she was admired by other men, how many men would give—whatever men are ready to give—to see her as she was just then. It occurred to him that he would have been rather a fool if he had yielded to his violent impulse and shut her out of the house the previous night.
“You’re never to speak to that cad again,” he said. “D’you hear?”
“Whisper it close in my ear and I’ll try to hear. Your voice is so—what’s your expression—so infernally soft.”
He put his great arm round her.
“D’you hear?”
“I’m trying.”
“I’ll make you.”
Whether Lord Holme succeeded or not, Lady Holme had no opportunity—even if she desired it—of speaking to Rupert Carey for some time. He left London and went up to the North to stay with his mother. The only person he saw before he went was Robin Pierce. He came round to Half Moon Street early on the afternoon of the day after the Arkell House Ball. Robin was at home and Carey walked in with his usual decision. He was very pale, and his face looked very hard. Robin received him coldly and did not ask him to sit down. That was not necessary, of course. But Robin was standing by the door and did not move back into the room.
“I’m going North to-night,” said Carey.
“Are you?”
“Yes. If you don’t mind I’ll sit down.”
Robin said nothing. Carey threw himself into an armchair.
“Going to see the mater. A funny thing—but she’s always glad to see me.”
“Why not?”
“Mothers have a knack that way. Lucky for sons like me.”
There was intense bitterness in his voice, but there was a sound of tenderness too. Robin shut the door but did not sit down.
“Are you going to be in the country long?”
“Don’t know. What time did you leave Arkell House last night?”
“Not till after Lady Holme left.”
“Oh!”
He was silent for a moment, biting his red moustache.
“Were you in the hall after the last lancers?”
“No.”
“You weren’t?”
He spoke quickly, with a sort of relief, hesitated then added sardonically:
“But of course you know—and much worse than the worst. The art of conversation isn’t dead yet, whatever the—perhaps you saw me being got out?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“But you do know?”
“Naturally.”
“I say, I wish you’d let me have—”
He checked himself abruptly, and muttered:
“Good God! What a brute I am.”
He sprang up and walked about the room. Presently he stopped in front of the statuette of the “Danseuse de Tunisie.”
“Is it the woman that does it all, or the fan?” he said. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think it’s one, and sometimes the other. Without the fan there’s purity, what’s meant from the beginning—”
“By whom?” said Robin. “I thought you were an atheist?”
“Oh, God! I don’t know what I am.”
He turned away from the statuette.
“With the fan there’s so much more than purity, than what was meant to complete us—as devils—men. But—mothers don’t carry the fan. And I’m going North to-night.”
“Do you mean to say that Lady Holme—?”
Robin’s voice was stern.
“Why did she say that to me?”
“What did she say?”
“That she wished to speak to me, to dance with me.”
“She said that? How can you know?”
“Oh, I wasn’t so drunk that I couldn’t hear the voice from Eden. Pierce, you know her. She likes you. Tell her to forgive as much as she can. Will you? And tell her not to carry the fan again when fools like me are about.”
And then, without more words, he went out of the room and left Robin standing alone.
Robin looked at the statuette, and remembered what Sir Donald Ulford had said directly he saw it—“Forgive me, that fan makes that statuette wicked.”
“Poor old Carey!” he murmured.
His indignation at Carey’s conduct, which had been hot, had nearly died away.
“If I had told him what she said about him at supper!” he thought.
And then he began to wonder whether Lady Holme had changed her mind on that subject. Surely she must have changed it. But one never knew—with women. He took up his hat and gloves and went out. If Lady Holme was in he meant to give her Carey’s message. It was impossible to be jealous of Carey now.
Lady Holme was not in.
As Robin walked away from Cadogan Square he was not sure whether he was glad or sorry that he had not been able to see her.
After his cup of early morning tea Lord Holme had seemed to be “dear old Fritz” again, and Lady Holme felt satisfied with herself despite the wagging tongues of London. She knew she had done an incautious thing. She knew, too, that Carey had failed her. Her impulse had been to use him as a weapon. He had proved a broken reed. And this failure on his part was likely to correct for ever her incautious tendencies. That was what she told herself, with some contempt for men. She did not tell herself that the use to which she had intended to put Carey was an unworthy one. Women as beautiful, and as successful in their beauty, as she was seldom tell themselves these medicinal truths.
She went about as usual, and on several occasions took Lord Holme with her. And though she saw a light of curiosity in many eyes, and saw lips almost forced open by the silent questions lurking within many minds, it was as she had said it would be. The immediate future had been in Fritz’s hands, and he had made it safe enough.
He had made it safe. Even the Duchess of Arkell was quite charming, and laid the whole burden of blame—where it always ought to be laid, of course—upon the man’s shoulders. Rupert Carey was quite done for socially. Everyone said so. Even Upper Bohemia thought blatant intemperance—in a Duke’s house—an unnecessary defiance flung at the Blue Ribbon Army. Only Amalia Wolfstein, who had never succeeded in getting an invitation to Arkell House, remarked that “It was probably the champagne’s fault. She had always noticed that where the host and hostess were dry the champagne was apt to be sweet.”
Yes, Fritz had made it safe, but:
Circumstances presently woke in Lady Holme’s mind a rather disagreeable suspicion that though Fritz had “come round” with such an admirable promptitude he had reserved to himself a right to retaliate, that he perhaps presumed to fancy that her defiant action, and its very public and unpleasant result, gave to him a greater license than he had possessed before.
Some days after the early morning tea Lord Holme said to his wife:
“I say, Vi, we’ve got nothing on the first, have we?”
There was a perceptible pause before she replied.
“Yes, we have. We’ve accepted a dinner at Brayley House.”
Lord Holme looked exceedingly put out.
“Brayley House. What rot!” he exclaimed. “I hate those hind-leg affairs. Why on earth did you accept it?”
“Dear boy, you told me to. But why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you so anxious to be free for the first?”
“Well, it’s Miss Schley’sdebutat the British. Everyone’s goin’ and Laycock says—”
“I’m not very interested in Mr. Laycock’s aphorisms, Fritz. I prefer yours, I truly do.”
“Oh, well, I’m as good as Laycock, I know. Still—”
“You’re a thousand times better. And so everybody’s going, on Miss Schley’s first night? I only wish we could, but we can’t. Let’s put up with number two. We’re free on the second.”
Lord Holme did not look at all appeased.
“That’s not the same thing,” he said.
“What’s the difference? She doesn’t change the play, I suppose?”
“No. But naturally on the first night she wants all her friends to come up to the scratch, muster round—don’t you know?—and give her a hand.”
“And she thinks your hand, being enormous, would be valuable? But we can’t throw over Brayley House.”
Lord Holme’s square jaw began to work, a sure sign of acute irritation.
“If there’s a dull, dreary house in London, it’s Brayley House,” he grumbled. “The cookin’s awful—poison—and the wine’s worse. Why, last time Laycock was there they actually gave him—”
“Poor dear Mr. Laycock! Did they really? But what can we do? I’m sure I don’t want to be poisoned either. I love life.”
She was looking brilliant. Lord Holme began to straddle his legs.
“And there’s the box!” he said. “A box next the stage that holds six in a row can’t stand empty on a first night, eh? It’d throw a damper on the whole house.”
“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand. What box?”
“Hang it all!—ours.”
“I didn’t know we had a box for this important social function.”
Lady Holme really made a great effort to keep the ice out of her voice, but one or two fragments floated in nevertheless.
“Well, I tell you I’ve taken a box and asked Laycock—”
The reiterated mention of this hallowed name was a little too much for Lady Holme’s equanimity.
“If Mr. Laycock’s going the box won’t be empty. So that’s all right,” she rejoined. “Mr. Laycock will make enough noise to give the critics a lead. And I suppose that’s all Miss Schley wants.”
“But it isn’t!” said Lord Holme, violently letting himself down at the knees and shooting himself up again.
“What does she want?”
“She wants you to be there.”
“Me! Why?”
“Because she’s taken a deuce of a fancy to you.”
“Really!”
An iceberg had entered the voice now.
“Yes, thinks you the smartest woman in London, and all that. So you are.”
“I’m very sorry, but even the smartest woman in London can’t throw over the Brayley’s. Take another box for the second.”
Lord Holme looked fearfully sulky and lounged out of the room.
On the following morning he strode into Lady Holme’s boudoir about twelve with a radiant face.
“It’s all right!” he exclaimed. “Talk of diplomatists! I ought to be an ambassador.”
He flung himself into a chair, grinning with satisfaction like a schoolboy.
“What is it?” asked Lady Holme, looking up from her writing-table.
“I’ve been to Lady Brayley, explained the whole thing, and got us both off. After all, she was a friend of my mother’s, and knew me in kilts and all that, so she ought to be ready to do me a favour. She looked a bit grim, but she’s done it. You’ve—only got to tip her a note of thanks.”
“You’re mad then, Fritz!”
Lady Holme stood up suddenly.
“Never saner.”
He put one hand into the breast pocket of his coat and pulled out an envelope.
“Here’s what she says to you.”
Lady Holme tore the note open.
“BRAYLEY HOUSE, W.“DEAR VIOLA,—Holme tells me you made a mistake when you acceptedmy invitation for the first, and that you have long been pledgedto be present on that date at some theatrical performance or other.I am sorry I did not know sooner, but of course I release you withpleasure from your engagement with me, and I have already filled upyour places.—Believe me, yours always sincerely,“MARTHA BRAYLEY.”
Lady Holme read this note carefully, folded it up, laid it quietly on the writing-table and repeated:
“You’re mad, Fritz.”
“What d’you mean—mad?”
“You’ve made Martha Brayley my enemy for life.”
“Rubbish!”
“I beg your pardon. And for—for—”
She stopped. It was wiser not to go on. Perhaps her face spoke for her, even to so dull an observer as Lord Holme, for he suddenly said, with a complete change of tone:
“I forgave you about Carey.”
“Oh, I see! You want aquid pro quo. Thank you, Fritz.”
“Don’t forget to tip Lady Brayley a note of thanks,” he said rather loudly, getting up from his chair.
“Oh, thanks! You certainly ought to be an ambassador—at the court of some savage monarch.”
He said nothing, but walked out of the room whistling the refrain about Ina.
When he had gone Lady Holme sat down and wrote two notes. One was to Lady Brayley and was charmingly apologetic, saying that the confusion was entirely owing to Fritz’s muddle-headedness, and that she was in despair at her misfortune—which was almost literally true. The other was to Sir Donald Ulford, begging him to join them in their box on the first, and asking whether it was possible to persuade Mr. and Mrs. Leo Ulford to come with him. If he thought so she would go at once and leave cards on Mrs. Ulford, whom she was longing to know.
Both notes went off by hand before lunch.
THE Ulfords accepted for the first. Lady Holme left cards on Mrs. Leo and told her husband that the box was filled up. He received the information with indifference. So long as his wife was there to please Miss Schley, and Mr. Laycock to “give her a hand and show ‘em all whether she was popular,” he was satisfied. Having gained his point, he was once again in excellent humour. Possibly Lady Holme would have appreciated his large gaieties more if she had not divined their cause. But she expressed no dissatisfaction with them, and indeed increased them by her own brilliant serenity during the days that intervened between the Martha Brayley incident and the first night.
Lord Holme had no suspicion that during these days she was inwardly debating whether she would go to the theatre or not.
It would be very easy to be unwell. She was going out incessantly and could be over-fatigued. She could have woman’s great stand-by in moments of crisis—a bad attack of neuralgia. It was the simplest matter in the world. The only question was—all things considered, was it worth while? By “all things considered” she meant Leo Ulford. The touch of Fritz in him made him a valuable ally at this moment. Fritz and Miss Schley were not going to have things quite all their own way. And then Mrs. Leo! She would put Fritz next the ear-trumpet. She had enough sense of humour to smile to herself at the thought of him there. On the whole, she fancied the neuralgia would not attack her at the critical instant.
Only when she thought of what her husband had said about the American’s desire for her presence did she hesitate again. Her suspicions were aroused. Miss Schley was not anxious that she should be conspicuously in the theatre merely because she was the smartest woman in London. That was certain. Besides, she was not the smartest woman in London. She was far too well-born to be that in these great days of thedemi-mondaine. She remembered Robin Pierce’s warning at the Arkell House ball—“Consider yourselves enemies for no reasons or secret woman’s reasons. It’s safer.”
When do women want the bulky, solid reasons obtusely demanded by men before they can be enemies? Where man insists on an insult, a blow, they will be satisfied with a look—perhaps not even at them but only at the skirt of their gown—with a turn of the head, with nothing at all. For what a man calls nothing can be the world and all that there is in it to a woman. Lady Holme knew that she and the American had been enemies since the moment when the latter had moved with the tiny steps that so oddly caricatured her own individual walk down the stairs at the Carlton. She wanted no tiresome reasons; nor did Miss Schley. Robin was right, of course. He understood women. But then—?
Should she go to the theatre?
The night came and she went. Whether an extraordinary white lace gown, which arrived from Paris in the morning, and fitted too perfectly for words, had anything to do with the eventual decision was not known to anybody but herself.
Boxes are no longer popular in London except at the Opera. The British Theatre was new, and the management, recognising that people prefer stalls, had given up all the available space to them, and only left room for two large boxes, which faced each other on a level with the dress circle and next the stage. Lord Holme had one. Mrs. Wolfstein had taken the other.
Miss Schley’s personal success in London brought together a rather special audience. There were some of the usual people who go to first nights—critics, ladies who describe dresses, fashionable lawyers and doctors. But there were also numbers of people who are scarcely ever seen on these occasions, people who may be found in the ground and grand tier boxes at Covent Garden during the summer season. These thronged the stalls, and every one of them was a dear friend of Lady Holme’s. Among them were Lady Cardington, Lady Manby, Sally Perceval with her magnificently handsome and semi-idiotic husband, old Lady Blower, in a green cap that suggested the bathing season, Robin Pierce and Mr. Bry. Smart Americans were scattered all over the house. Most of them had already seen the play in New York during the preceding winter, and nearly everyone in the stalls had seen the French original in Paris. The French piece had been quite shocking and quite delicious. Every Royaltyde passagein Paris had been to see it, and one wandering monarch had gone three nights running, and had laughed until his gentleman-in-waiting thought the heir to his throne was likely to succeed much sooner than was generally expected.
The Holmes came in early. Lady Holme hated arriving anywhere early, but Lord Holme was in such a prodigious fuss about being in plenty of time to give Miss Schley a “rousin’ welcome,” that she yielded to his bass protestations, and had the satisfaction of entering their box at least seven minutes before the curtain went up. The stalls, of course, were empty, and as they gradually filled she saw the faces of her friends looking up at her with an amazement that under other circumstances might have been amusing, but under these was rather irritating. Mr. Laycock arrived two minutes after they did, and was immediately engaged in a roaring conversation by Fritz. He was a man who talked a great deal without having anything to say, who had always had much success with women, perhaps because he had always treated them very badly, who dressed, danced and shot well, and who had never, even for a moment, really cared for anyone but himself. A common enough type.
Sir Donald appeared next, looking even more ghostly than usual. He sat down by Lady Holme, a little behind her. He seemed depressed, but the expression in his pale blue eyes when they first rested upon her made her thoroughly realise one thing—that it was one of her conquering nights. His eyes travelled quickly from her face to her throat, to her gown. She wore no jewels. Sir Donald had a fastidious taste in beauty—the taste that instinctively rejects excess of any kind. Her appeal to it had never been so great as to-night. She knew it, and felt that she had never found Sir Donald so attractive as to-night.
Mr. and Mrs. Ulford came in just as the curtain was going up, and the introductions had to be gone through with a certain mysterious caution, and the sitting arrangements made with as little noise as possible. Lady Holme managed them deftly. Mr. Laycock sat nearest the stage, then Leo Ulford next to her, on her right. Sir Donald was on her other side, Mrs. Leo sat in the place of honour, with Lord Holme between her and Sir Donald. She was intensely pink. Even her gown was of that colour, and she wore a pink aigrette in her hair, fastened with a diamond ornament. Her thin, betraying throat was clasped by the large dog-collar she had worn at Arkell House. She cast swift, bird-like glances, full of a sort of haggard inquiry, towards Lady Holme as she settled down in her arm-chair in the corner. Lord Holme looked at her and at her ear-trumpet, and Lady Holme was glad she had decided not to have neuralgia. There are little compensations about all women even in the tiresome moments of their lives. Whether this moment was going to be tiresome or not she could not yet decide.
The Wolfstein party had come in at the same time as the Leo Ulfords, and the box opposite presented an interesting study of Jewish types. For Mrs. Wolfstein and “Henry” were accompanied by four immensely rich compatriots, three of whom were members of the syndicate that was “backing” Miss Schley. The fourth was the wife of one of them, and a cousin of Henry’s, whom she resembled, but on a greatly enlarged scale. Both she and Amalia blazed with jewels, and both were slightly overdressed and looked too animated. Lady Holme saw Sir Donald glance at them, and then again at her, and began to think more definitely that the evening would not be tiresome.
Leo Ulford seemed at present forced into a certain constraint by the family element in the box. He looked at his father sideways, then at Lady Holme, drummed one hand on his knee, and was evidently uncertain of himself. During the opening scene of the play he found an opportunity to whisper to Lady Holme:
“I never can talk when pater’s there!”
She whispered back:
“We mustn’t talk now.”
Then she looked towards the stage with apparent interest. Mrs. Leo sat sideways with her trumpet lifted up towards her ear, Lord Holme had his eyes fixed on the stage, and held his hands ready for the “rousin’ welcome.” Mr. Laycock, at the end of the row, was also all attention. Lady Holme glanced from one to the other, and murmured to Sir Donald with a smile:
“I think we shall find to-night that the claque is not abolished in England.”
He raised his eyebrows and looked distressed.
“I have very little hope of her acting,” he murmured back.
Lady Holme put her fan to her lips.
“‘Sh! No sacrilege!” she said in an under voice.
She saw Leo Ulford shoot an angry glance at his father. Mrs. Wolfstein nodded and smiled at her from the opposite box, and it struck Lady Holme that her smile was more definitely malicious than usual, and that her large black eyes were full of a sort of venomous anticipation. Mrs. Wolfstein had at all times an almost frightfully expressive face. To-night it had surely discarded every shred of reticence, and proclaimed an eager expectation of something which Lady Holme could not divine, but which must surely be very disagreeable to her. What could it possibly be? And was it in any way connected with Miss Schley’s anxiety that she should be there that night? She began to wish that the American would appear, but Miss Schley had nothing to do in the first act till near the end, and then had only one short scene to bring down the curtain. Lady Holme knew this because she had seen the play in Paris. She thought the American version very dull. The impropriety had been removed and with it all the fun. People began to yawn and to assume the peculiar blank expression—the bankrupt face—that is indicative of thwarted anticipation. Only the Americans who had seen the piece in New York preserved their lively looks and an appearance of being on thequi vive.
Lord Holme’s blunt brown features gradually drooped, seemed to become definitely elongated. As time went on he really began to look almost lantern-jawed. He bent forward and tried to catch Mr. Laycock’s eye and to telegraph an urgent question, but only succeeded in meeting the surly blue eyes of Leo Ulford, whom he met to-night for the first time. In his despair he turned towards Mrs. Leo, and at once encountered the ear-trumpet. He glanced at it with apprehension, and, after a moment of vital hesitation, was about to pour into it the provender, “Have you any notion when she’s comin’ on?” when there was a sudden rather languid slapping of applause, and he jerked round hastily to find Miss Schley already on the stage and welcomed without any of the assistance which he was specially there to give. He lifted belated hands, but met a glance from his wife which made him drop them silently. There was a satire in her eyes, a sort of humorous, half-urging patronage that pierced the hide of his self-satisfied and lethargic mind. She seemed sitting there ready to beat time to his applause, nod her head to it as to a childish strain of jigging music. And this apparent preparation for a semi-comic, semi-pitiful benediction sent his hands suddenly to his knees.
He stared at the stage. Miss Schley was looking wonderfully like Viola, he thought, on the instant, more like than she did in real life; like Viola gone to the bad, though become a very reticent, yet very definite,cocotte. There was not much in the scene, but Miss Schley, without apparent effort and with a profound demureness, turned the dulness of it into something that was—not French, certainly not that—but that was quite as outrageous as the French had been, though in a different way; something without definite nationality, but instinct with the slyness of acute and unscrupulous womankind. The extraordinary thing was the marvellous resemblance this acute and unscrupulous womanhood bore to Lady Holme’s, even through all its obvious difference from hers. All her little mannerisms of voice, look, manner and movement, were there but turned towards commonness, even towards a naive but very self-conscious impropriety. Had she been a public performer instead of merely a woman of the world, the whole audience must have at once recognised the imitation. As it was, her many friends in the house noticed it, and during the short progress of the scene various heads were turned in her direction, various faces glanced up at the big box in which she sat, leaning one arm on the ledge, and looking towards Miss Schley with an expression of quiet observation—a little indifferent—on her white face. Even Sir Donald, who was next to her, and who once—in the most definite moment of Miss Schley’s ingenious travesty—looked at her for an instant, could not discern that she was aware of what was amusing or enraging all her acquaintances.
Naturally she had grasped the situation at once, had discovered at once why Miss Schley was anxious for her to be there. As she sat in the box looking on at this gross impertinence, she seemed to herself to be watching herself after a longdegringolade, which had brought her, not to the gutter, but to the smart restaurant, the smart music-hall, the smart night club; the smart everything else that is beyond the borderland of even a lax society. This was Miss Schley’s comment upon her. The sting of it lay in this fact, that it followed immediately upon the heels of the unpleasant scene at Arkell House. Otherwise, she thought it would not have troubled her. Now it did trouble her. She felt not only indignant with Miss Schley. She felt also secretly distressed in a more subtle way. Miss Schley’s performance was calculated, coming at this moment, to make her world doubtful just when it had been turned from doubt. A good caricature fixes the attention upon the oddities, or the absurdities, latent in the original. But this caricature did more. It suggested hidden possibilities which she, by her own indiscreet action at the ball, had made perhaps to seem probabilities to many people.
Here, before her friends, was set a woman strangely like her, but evidently a bad woman. Lady Holme was certain that the result of Miss Schley’s performance would be that were she to do things now which, done before the Arkell House ball and this first night, would not have been noticed, or would have been merely smiled at, they would be commented upon with acrimony, exaggerated, even condemned.
Miss Schley was turning upon her one of those mirrors which distorts by enlarging. Society would be likely to see her permanently distorted, and not only in mannerisms but in character.
It happened that this fact was specially offensive to her on this particular evening, and at this particular moment of her life.
While she sat there and watched the scene run its course, and saw, without seeming to see, the effect it had upon those whom she knew well in the house—saw Mrs. Wolfstein’s eager delight in it, Lady Manby’s broad amusement, Robin Pierce’s carefully-controlled indignation, Mr. Bry’s sardonic and always cold gratification, Lady Cardington’s surprised, half-tragic wonder—she was oscillating between two courses, one a course of reserve, of stern self-control and abnegation, the other a course of defiance, of reckless indulgence of the strong temper that dwelt within her, and that occasionally showed itself for a moment, as it had on the evening of Miss Filberte’s fiasco. That temper was flaming now unseen. Was she going to throw cold water over the flame, or to fan it? She did not know.
When the curtain fell, the critics, who sometimes seem to enjoy personally what they call very sad and disgraceful in print, were smiling at one another. The blank faces of the men about town in the stalls were shining almost unctuously. The smart Americans were busily saying to everyone, “Didn’t we say so?” The whole house was awake. Miss Schley might not be much of an actress. Numbers of people were already bustling about to say that she could not act at all. But she had banished dulness. She had shut the yawning lips, and stopped that uneasy cough which is the expression of the relaxed mind rather than of the relaxed throat.
Lady Holme sat back a little in the box.
“What d’you think of her?” she said to Sir Donald. “I think she’s rather piquant, not anywhere near Granier, of course, but still—”
“I think her performance entirely odious,” he said, with an unusual emphasis that was almost violent. “Entirely odious.”
He got up from his seat, striking his thin fingers against the palms of his hands.
“Vulgar and offensive,” he said, almost as if to himself, and with a sort of passion. “Vulgar and offensive!”
Suddenly he turned away and went out of the box.
“I say—”
Lady Holme, who had been watching Sir Donald’s disordered exit, looked round to Leo.
“I say—” he repeated. “What’s up with pater?”
“He doesn’t seem to be enjoying the play.”
Leo Ulford looked unusually grave, even thoughtful, as if he were pondering over some serious question. He kept his blue eyes fixed upon Lady Holme. At last he said, in a voice much lower than usual:
“Poor chap!”
“Who’s a poor chap?”
Leo jerked his head towards the door.
“Your father? Why?”
“Why—at his age!”
The last words were full of boyish contempt.
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes, you do. To be like that at his age. What’s the good? As if—” He smiled slowly at her. “I’m glad I’m young,” he said.
“I’m glad you’re young too,” she answered. “But you’re quite wrong about Sir Donald.”
She let her eyes rest on his. He shook his head.
“No, I’m not. I guessed it that day at the Carlton. All through lunch he looked at you.”
“But what has all this to do with Miss Schley’s performance?”
“Because she’s something like you, but low down, where you’d never go.”
He drew his chair a little closer to hers.
“Would you?” he added, almost in a whisper.
Mr. Laycock, who was in raptures over Miss Schley’s performance, had got up to speak to Fritz, but found the latter being steadily hypnotised by Mrs. Leo’s trumpet, which went up towards his mouth whenever he opened it. He bellowed distracted nothings but could not make her hear, obtaining no more fortunate result than a persistent flutter of pink eyelids, and a shrill, reiterated “The what? The what?”
A sharp tap came presently on the box door, and Mrs. Wolfstein’s painted face appeared. Lord Holme sprang up with undisguised relief.
“What d’you think of Pimpernel? Ah, Mr. Laycock—I heard your faithful hands.”
“Stunnin’!” roared Lord Holme, “simply stunnin’!”
“Stunnin’! stunnin’!” exclaimed Mr. Laycock; “Rippin’! There’s no other word. Simply rippin’!”
“The what? The what?” cried Mrs. Ulford.
Mrs. Wolfstein bent down, with expansive affection, over Lady Holme’s chair, and clasped the left hand which Lady Holme carelessly raised to a level with her shoulder.
“You dear person! Nice of you to come, and in such a gown too! The angels wear white lace thrown together by Victorine—it is Victorine? I was certain!—I’m sure. D’you like Pimpernel?”
Her too lustrous eyes—even Mrs. Wolfstein’s eyes looked over-dressed—devoured Lady Holme, and her large, curving features were almost riotously interrogative.
“Yes,” Lady Holme said. “Quite.”
“She’s startled everybody.”
“Startled!—why?”
“Oh, well—she has! There’s money in it, don’t you think?”
“Henry,” who had accompanied his wife, and who was standing sideways at the back of the box looking like a thief in the night, came a step forward at the mention of money.
“I’m afraid I’m no judge of that. Your husband would know better.”
“Plenty of money,” said “Henry,” in a low voice that seemed to issue from the bridge of his nose; “it ought to bring a good six thousand into the house for the four weeks. That’s—for Miss Schley—for the Syndicate—ten per cent. on the gross, and twenty-five per cent.—”
He found himself in mental arithmetic.
“The—swan with the golden eggs!” said Lady Holme, lightly, turning once more to Leo Ulford. “You mustn’t kill Miss Schley.”
Mrs. Wolfstein looked at Mr. Laycock and murmured to him:
“Pimpernel does any killing that’s going about—for herself. What d’you say, Franky?”
They went out of the box together, followed by “Henry,” who was still buzzing calculations, like a Jewish bee.
Lord Holme resolutely tore himself from the ear-trumpet, and was preparing to follow, with the bellowed excuse that he was “sufferin’ from toothache” and had been ordered to “do as much smokin’ as possible,” when the curtain rose on the second act.
Miss Schley was engaged to a supper-party that evening and did not wish to be late. Lord Holme sat down again looking scarcely pleasant.
“Do as much—the what?” cried Mrs. Ulford, holding the trumpet at right angles to her pink face.
Leo Ulford leant backwards and hissed “Hush!” at her. She looked at him and then at Lady Holme, and a sudden expression of old age came into her bird-like face and seemed to overspread her whole body. She dropped the trumpet and touched the diamonds that glittered in the front of her low gown with trembling hands.
Mr. Laycock slipped into the box when the curtain had been up two or three minutes, but Sir Donald did not return.
“I b’lieve he’s bolted,” Leo whispered to Lady Holme. “Just like him.”
“Why?”
“Oh!—I’m here, for one thing.”
He looked at her victoriously.
“You’ll have a letter from him to-morrow. Poor old chap!”
He spoke contemptuously.
For the first time Lord Holme seemed consciously and unfavourably observant of his wife and Leo. His under-jaw began to move. But Miss Schley came on to the stage again, and he thrust his head eagerly forward.
During the rest of the evening Miss Schley did not relax her ingenious efforts of mimicry, but she took care not to make them too prominent. She had struck her most resonant note in the first act, and during the two remaining acts she merely kept her impersonation to its original lines. Lady Holme watched the whole performance imperturbably, but before the final curtain fell she knew that she was not going to throw cold water on that flame which was burning within her. Fritz’s behaviour, perhaps, decided which of the two actions should be carried out—the douching or the fanning. Possibly Leo Ulford had something to say in the matter too. Or did the faces of friends below in the stalls play their part in the silent drama which moved step by step with the spoken drama on the stage? Lady Holme did not ask questions of herself. When Mr. Laycock and Fritz were furiously performing the duties of a claque at the end of the play, she got up smiling, and nodded to Mrs. Wolfstein in token of her pleasure in Miss Schley’s success, her opinion that it had been worthily earned. As she nodded she touched one hand with the other, making a silent applause that Mrs. Wolfstein and all her friends might see. Then she let Leo Ulford put on her cloak and called pretty words down Mrs. Leo’s trumpet, all the while nearly deafened by Fritz’s demonstrations, which even outran Mr. Laycock’s.
When at last they died away she said to Leo:
“We are going on to the Elwyns. Shall you be there?”
He stood over her, while Mrs. Ulford watched him, drooping her head sideways.
“Yes.”
“We can talk it all over quietly. Fritz!”
“What’s that about the Elwyns?” said Lord Holme.
“I was telling Mr. Ulford that we are going on there.”
“I’m not. Never heard of it.”
Lady Holme was on the point of retorting that it was he who had told her to accept the invitation on the ground that “the Elwyns always do you better than anyone in London, whether they’re second-raters or not,” but a look in Leo Ulford’s eyes checked her.
“Very well,” she said. “Go to the club if you like; but I must peep in for five minutes. Mrs. Ulford, didn’t you think Miss Schley rather delicious—?”
She went out of the box with one hand on a pink arm, talking gently into the trumpet.
“You goin’ to the Elwyns?” said Lord Holme, gruffly, to Leo Ulford as they got their coats and prepared to follow.
“Depends on my wife. If she’s done up—”
“Ah!” said Lord Holme, striking a match, and holding out his cigarette case, regardless of regulations.
A momentary desire to look in at the Elwyns’ possessed him. Then he thought of a supper-party and forgot it.