CHAPTER V
IT was Lady Wilmot’s at-home day, but so early in the afternoon that she could still indulge in thetête-à-têtegossip with the friend who had lunched with her, a branch of her life’s occupation in which she excelled.
She was a woman who supported well her fifty-five years. A little portly, her gray crinkled hair arrangedà la Marquise, her ample skirts further suggesting the era of powder and patches, her bright eyes full of rather malicious humor, Lady Wilmot was a somewhat striking figure. That she was more feared than loved probably flattered the vanity which was not the least of her characteristics. The circumstance certainly did not affect her. Possessed of an income sufficiently large to make the exercise of life’s amenities a matter of inclination rather than of necessity, her inclination was naturally capricious, and she not infrequently smiled to hear herself described with a nervous laugh as “so delightfully uncommon.”
“Uncommon rude, my dear,” had been her reply in one instance, “as you would have discovered if I had happened to be Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Smith, or Mrs. Robinson.”
As it was, Lady Wilmot’s parties were attended by as heterogeneous a throng as any private house in London. In search of possible amusement, she cast her net wide, and, in company with men and women of her own sort, drew into the Onslow Square drawing-room, journalists who wrote fashion articles, novelists who went into many editions, painters whose imposing canvases appeared every year on the sacred walls of the Academy, as well as those who worked in Chelsea garrets. Then there were the faddists.
“I have the best collection in London,” Lady Wilmot was wont to boast. “I have several excellent antique Vegetarians, a very good color, considering; a complete set of Mystics, only slightly cracked; any number of women athletes in a fairly good state of preservation, as well as one or two interesting oddments.”
Lady Wilmot’s present guest was her niece, a sharp-faced little woman, who for two or three years had been living quietly in the country on account of her health. This factat least was stimulating. It meant arrears of gossip to be retailed respecting the life-history of their common acquaintances, and since half-past one Lady Wilmot’s tongue had not been idle.
The doings of the immediate family lasted through a protracted and hilarious lunch, and when, somewhat maimed and damaged, its members had been dismissed, there still remained the concentric circles of acquaintances. Lady Wilmot began at the inner rings.
“You know Rose Summers is home?” she said, settling the fat cushions at her back with a view to lengthy comfort. “No, dear,withouther gaby of a husband. She’s left him out there to get into mischief. Oh, yes, my dear, he’s not too great a fool for that. None of them are. Did you never meet Jack Summers? A huge imbecile, you know. Over life-size, all body and no brains. The ideal man for a soldier.”
“Rose had enough brains for two,” returned Mrs. Carruthers.
“Yes, but no looks. Most unfortunate arrangement for a woman. She has to marry a man stupid enough not to know she’s got them. She’s staying with Cecily Kingslake.”
“Oh, tell me about the Kingslakes,”asked Mrs. Carruthers, with interest. “They were just married the last time I met them. I used to think Cecily so pretty.Whata mistake to make such a poor match!”
“You should see her now,” returned Lady Wilmot, composedly.
“Gone off?”
“Gone under. Buried beneath honeysuckle and green stuff. The worst of love in a cottage is that love doesn’t last, and the cottage does.”
“But I thought Robert was getting on? Some one was talking about his last book the other day, and saying——”
“Yes, quite lately he’s been making money. There was always a popular streak in Robert which only needed working. Some woman’s shown him where it lies, and he’s got it in full swing now, so the guineas are beginning to roll in.”
“Why some woman?”
Lady Wilmot chuckled. “Don’t you know our Robert? A clever woman laughs when she sees him coming.”
“Susceptible?”
“That’s putting it mildly. All men can take flattery in gigantic doses. Robert lives on it entirely. He dined here last night.Incidentally he ate his dinner, but his true meal was provided by the girl he took down, who flung at himpoundsof the best butter,—solid pounds. I blushed for her and trembled for him, but I might have spared myself the trouble. She’s too clever, and he has too good a digestion.”
“Didn’t his wife come?”
“No. He comes up to town ‘to read,’ if one may believe him. And I happened to have asked Philippa Burton and young Nevern in to dine last night—not a dinner-party—so I invited Robert too.”
“Perhaps she’s the lady who inspires the new style of writing?” observed Mrs. Carruthers, building better than she knew.
“She’s quite capable of it,” returned Lady Wilmot, “but they only met last night. She has designs on Nevern, I think, temporarily abandoned for Robert. She’s coming this afternoon, by the way.” Lady Wilmot laughed again. “I asked her on purpose to meet Dick Mayne. I thought they’d be so quaint together.”
“Why?” inquired her niece.
“You haven’t seen Philippa? She’s one of the most interesting objects in my collection.”
“Where did you find her?”
“Don’t you remember Major Burton, that seedy-looking man at Cheltenham? Retired, you know, on half-pay. Used to be in your father’s regiment. Well, she’s his daughter. He died some five or six years ago, leaving her next to nothing, and now she potters about. You know the sort of thing such girls do; tinkering with copper, messing about with furnaces to make enamel hat-pins, designing horrible, bleak-looking furniture, and so on.”
“Does she get a living at that?”
“My dear, don’t ask me to probe the mysteries of a woman’s income,” exclaimed her hostess with a laugh. “She’s pretty, and evidently she finds sandals and mystic gowns useful. When a woman’s not sufficiently original to get money or notoriety by her brains, she often achieves both through her fads. Philippa is one of those young women who will always be ‘taken up’ by some one. Silly spinsters of uncertain age have a habit of doing it. She’s just been living with one of them who adored her—thought her a transcendent genius instead of a clever little humbug. Now the smash has come. If you mention Miss Wetherby to Philippa, she looks pained and sighs: ‘It is so sad to lose one’s illusions. Miss Wetherby is notquitethe finewoman I thought her.’ What Miss Wetherby says about Philippa, I don’t know—I’m not acquainted with the lady—but I can guess. There used to be a man about. What’s become of him now I don’t know. Another illusion gone, possibly. Philippa’s mysterious in more ways than one. But there, my dear, what does it matter? If you begin to be moral, you lose half the fun of life. I’m strictlyunmoral on principle—unmoral’s such a good word, isn’t it? Anyhow I’m looking forward to the meeting between Philippa and Dick Mayne. He doesn’t know the type, and she’ll embarrass him so beautifully. I hope she’ll try to flirt with him. I think I shall scream with joy if she does. It will be too funny.”
“You know Mr. Mayne is going to stay with the Kingslakes?” gasped Mrs. Carruthers, placing edgeways with difficulty her little contribution to “the news.”
“No!” It was a piece of information that had hitherto escaped her aunt, whose manner of receiving it caused Mrs. Carruthers to bridle with importance.
“Yes, I happened to meet him yesterday at the Vezeys’, and he told me so. Why shouldn’t he?”
“Why, you know how desperately in love he was with Cecily.”
“But that was years ago.”
“When they were engaged? Yes. My dear, if you’d heard Robert’s ravings at the time! Heavens! how funny it was! He and Cecily nearly came to grief over it, because Cecily said Mayne was an old friend, and she couldn’t refuse to see him, which was, I believe, what the lunatic wanted her to promise. Robert’s my godson, and he’s good-looking enough to make me quite fond of him, but he’s a heaven-born fool for all that. Have you ever heard his rhetoric when he’s excited? You should. It’s worthy of a successful melodrama. He used to do the romantic hero-in-love to perfection. His feeling for Cecily was such that it was a profanation for any other man to touch her hand, and did I think a woman who allowed a rejected suitor to have tea in the same drawing-room with her,couldpossess that burning, white-souled adoration for her affianced husband which he required from the woman who was to bear his name? I offered him the impossible advice of not being a fool, and Mayne went away to catch tigers and fevers—and the public ear.”
“Yes, he’s done that,” returned Mrs.Carruthers. “He’s quite a great man now—the papers are full of him.”
“Mr. Mayne,” announced the footman at the door.
“We were talking about you,” said Lady Wilmot, rising graciously.
“I was unconscious of my danger,” returned Mayne, with an audacious smile which met its friendly response. Mayne was, with Lady Wilmot, a privileged person, chiefly because he took her maliciousness for granted.
“You’ve grown,” she remarked, regarding with critical attention his bronzed face and tall, well-knit figure.
“What did you expect? I was but a lad of thirty when I left you.” He had shaken hands with Mrs. Carruthers, and seated himself on the end of a divan by this time—very much at his ease.
“You’re much better looking,” was Lady Wilmot’s next comment.
“I can bear it,” he returned, imperturbably. “If I sayyouhaven’t altered at all it’s the best compliment I can pay you.”
“I will ignore its lack of truthfulness, and give you some tea,” she said, crossing to the tea-table. “Are you going to read any more papers this time? Why didn’t you cometo see me when you were home two years ago?”
“Because, dear lady,youwere abroad.”
“Was I? So I was. Who did you see then? Did you see the Kingslakes?” She shot a glance at him as he rose to take the cup she offered, but his face was immovable.
“I didn’t see any one. After reading an exceedingly dull paper before the Royal Society, I fled to the shelter of the paternal roof in Ireland, desperately ashamed of myself.”
“You don’t want me to ask you about your travels and explorings, do you? It would bore me a great deal to hear them. Sugar?”
“Thanks, no. Not half so much, I’m sure, as it would bore me to tell them. I came to hear all the latest scandal. Won’t you begin before the actors arrive?”
“Miss Burton,” said the man at the door.
“Too late!” ejaculated Lady Wilmot, as she went forward to meet her new guest.
“Ah, how do you do, Philippa, my dear? Did you bring an escort of police?—or is the untutored savage getting used to sandals? My dear, where will your hair stop? You look like Mélisande. Can’t you throw some of it out of the window? Mr. Mayne willrun down and climb up. He’s used to athletic exercises. By the way, Mr. Mayne—Miss Burton. Now you can go and talk lions and things. He’s an explorer, you know. Here’s Mr. Nevern. He’ll have to put up with me. How do you do, Mr. Nevern?”
During these somewhat incoherent remarks Miss Burton had adopted the simple expedient of doing nothing, and, as Mayne was constrained to admit, doing it rather well.
She stood with a faint, dreamy smile just touching her lips, and waited till there was an opportunity of offering her hand to Mayne. This she did with a slow movement, according to the state of mind of its recipient, subtly graceful, or somewhat affected. Rather characteristically Mayne inclined to the least flattering of these strictures. He did not like “that kind of thing,” even though in this instance it was the act of a woman by many people considered beautiful.
Philippa Burton’s tall figure was of the sinuous type, and she clothed it in trailing garments, cut on the latest hygienic principle, combining conspicuousness with impracticability. The robe she now wore was of somecoarse white material, a little soiled at the hem where it trailed, and a little too low at the neck, where several necklaces of beads were wound about a full white throat. Her hat, of that peculiar make which flies from the head, and is restrained by ribbons tied under the ear, revealed, rather than covered, quantities of dark, rippling hair of the Rossetti texture.
Her dark eyes, full of a cultivated mystery, very effectively lit a pale face, whose excessive spirituality was redeemed by full red lips.
“You aretheMr. Mayne?” she began, with an elusive smile. “I read your travel-book. It is wonderful. A book that sets the blood racing in one’s veins.Youare one of the strong men. I worship strength in men.”
Mayne felt uncomfortable. He had been out of the civilized world for some time, and was new to the fashion of emotional conversation in drawing-rooms and omnibuses.
“Oh—my little book!” he answered, carelessly. “I can’t write a bit, you know. It was awful stuff. At least, the way it was put together. The material was all right.”
“But indeed you do yourself injustice,” Philippa returned, in her peculiar low voice, as always, surcharged with feeling. “Mr. Kingslake was saying only the other night howwonderfully vivid is your style. So much color—so much——”
“You know Robert Kingslake?” interrupted Mayne, with interest.
“We met here the other night, at dinner,” she said, fixing her wonderful eyes upon his face in an abstracted way. “What a charming man! He has a beautiful soul, I’m sure. There is poetry in his work, idealism——”
“He’s made a lot of money over this last novel of his,” remarked Mayne, a little brutally.
“Yes. Doesn’t thatshowthat the world is waiting for a message? The poor sad world that longs to be shown the beauty it is missing.”
“I hadn’t noticed it,” returned Mayne. “But then I haven’t seen much of the paying world lately.”
“One must have faith,” said Philippa, softly. “The faith that removes mountains.”
“And brings in the shekels,” laughed Mayne. “Kingslake’s has been justified, anyway. I’m going down there next week,” he added, for the sake of changing the rarefied atmosphere of the conversation. “To Sheepcote, you know, with the Kingslakes.”
“Yes, so Mr. Macdonald told me—Mr.Kingslake, I mean. I knew his work first through hisnom de guerre, and I can scarcely think of him yet as Mr. Kingslake. We shall meet again, then,” she went on. “I’m going to Sheepcote too.”
“What’s that?” asked Lady Wilmot, who, as Mayne rightly surmised, had been keeping one amused ear upon the conversation, while she failed to listen to Mr. Nevern with the other. “What’s that?Yougoing down to Sheepcote, Philippa? What for?”
“So strange!” returned Philippa, absolutely undisconcerted by the brusque impertinence of the question, and she recounted the information she had written to Cecily. “And do you know, dear Lady Wilmot, that I went to school with Mrs. Kingslake—Cecily Merivale? Wasn’t it a charming discovery to make? I’m longing to meet her again. Dear Cecily! I haven’t seen her since she was about seventeen. She wassopretty.”
“Well, if it’s her looks you care about, you’ll be disappointed. She’s lost them. I’ve no patience with a woman who loses her looks. It’s so careless.”
“But, dear Lady Wilmot,” began Philippa, with a tender smile, “after all, do looks matter?”
“Don’t be a humbug, my dear. You know they do,” returned her hostess with finality.
Mayne rose. “Don’t go, I haven’t spoken to you,” Lady Wilmot commanded. “Now, Mr. Nevern, you can talk to Philippa. So you are going to stay with the Kingslakes?”
“Kingslake asked me to go down—yes.”
“I thought you and he were not the best of friends?”
Mayne shrugged his shoulders with a smile. “I have no recollection of any quarrel.”
“Quarrel?No, but——” She paused. It was difficult even for Lady Wilmot to continue, before the impassivity of his face.
“I’m sorry Cecily is not looking well,” he said, deliberately mentioning the name he knew trembled on her tongue. “Diana told me. I went to see her yesterday.Diana’sgrown,” he added, with a broad smile.
“Grown up. How do you like Philippa?” she inquired, in a slightly lower tone, as she walked with him to the door.
“There are questions of yours which I have always resolutely refused to answer.”
Lady Wilmot laughed with evident enjoyment.
“You felt what a little boy feels when some one sings a hymn in the drawing-room onweek-days,” she declared. “Turn round. She’s telling Nevern what a beautiful soul he’s got.”
Involuntarily, Mayne followed the direction of her eyes. Mr. Nevern, a round-faced young poet, was leaning towards Miss Burton, and regarding her with an expression in which flattered vanity struggled with boyish admiration, and it was with difficulty that Mayne checked the laugh his hostess had been anxious to provoke.
“Good-bye,” he said. “I meant what I told you. You haven’t altered a bit—in any way.”