"I don't adore the girl in blueFor all her family's after you."
"I don't adore the girl in blueFor all her family's after you."
There is probably in most men a sense of quality, a power of divination in regard to value which, on occasions when they are confronted by a stranger whose worth they do not know, informs them immediately of the comparative rarity or commonness of his type. This sense may at first be baffled by the delusive disguises in which men sometimes present themselves, but as a rule a chance word, an artless gesture, or even a glance, quickly corrects the initial error of the eye, and in a moment the original estimate is adjusted to the unmistakable evidence of a definite quality.
When this peculiar apprehensiveness in regard to worth becomes aware of any marked superiority in a fellow creature,—an experience which in unhappy lives very seldom occurs,—a feeling of certainty usually accompanies it, which is as mysterious as the evidence upon which it is based is intangible and elusive. A man knows that he has met his superior, he knows too how far the superiority he recognises extends, and he is consciousof experiencing something exceptional, something exquisitely precious.
That such encounters are becoming every day more rare, probably explains the increasing growth, in modern times, of that kind of disbelief and heresy which, far from being wanton, arises from a total inability to envisage greatness, whether in kings, ideals, or gods. For we arrive at our most exalted images, not by solitary flights of imagination unassisted, but by actual progressive steps in the world of concrete things; so that the spring-board from which we take our final leap into the highest concepts of what a god might be, is always the highest man we happen to have met. We can have no other starting-point. Hence in an age when greatness among men is too rare to be felt as a universal fact, a disbelief in all gods is bound sooner or later to supervene.
When Lord Henry Highbarn presented himself before Sir Joseph, it was plain from the meek droop of the baronet's eyelids and the subdued hesitating tone of his voice, that something in the young nobleman's appearance had like a flash intimated to the experienced financial magnate that here was someone of a quality as unfamiliar as it was rare. Moreover, the difference which the older man felt distinguished him from his visitor was of a kind too fundamental and insuperable to challenge even that friendly rivalry so instinctive between two natures each conscious of their own particular efficiency and excellence.
Indeed, it needed all the elaborate complications of our modern civilisation to account even for the meeting of these two people under the same roof, not to speak of the fact that they met on an equal footing.
The one, a plain but not unpretentious man of business, still a little perplexed by his stupendous success, and not yet certain of his precise social level, revealed in his unshapely but kindly features the modest rung on which Nature herself would probably have placed him, if the peculiar economic conditions of his Age had not intervened to bring about a different result; while two characteristics alone led one to suspect his latent power,—his large energetic hands with their powerful spatulate fingers, and his masterful and meditative dark eyes.
The other,—a tall, muscular, youthful-looking aristocrat, with deep-set thoughtful blue eyes, a straight finely-chiselled nose, and a full eloquent mouth (the whole overshadowed by an unusually lofty brow, from which, particularly over the temples, the hair had noticeably receded)—possessed that unconscious ease of manner and unassertive masterfulness of bearing, which derive on the one hand from breeding, and on the other from a constant habit of preoccupation with external problems, that is unfavourable to any self-concern. As his alert vision took in the details of his surroundings, including the person of Sir Joseph himself, on whom he appeared to castonly the most casual sidelong glances, it was clear that his mind, far from being occupied with internal questionings, was measuring even then the probable extent to which this visit might serve some ultimate important purpose upon which the whole gravity and earnestness of his being seemed to be concentrated; and if his solemn features occasionally relaxed into a smile, it was precisely the habitual gravity of his mien that lent his passing levity such extraordinarily persuasive merriness.
It was chiefly Lord Henry's air of preoccupation that set Sir Joseph so quickly at his ease. For although the baronet was familiar enough with the sons of peers and peers themselves,—for had he not a number of them on his various boards?—there was, as we have seen, something more than mere rank in his youthful visitor to disturb him.
While the first courteous platitudes were being exchanged, Sir Joseph quietly took stock of his companion, and was for a brief moment a little perturbed by the latter's unconventional attire.
We have noticed that though he was young, Lord Henry's hair receded a little from his brow, and made it appear even loftier than it actually was. Between the high bald temples, however, a wisp of stiff fair hair still remained over the centre of the young man's forehead, somewhat resembling that seen in the portraits of Napoleon, and with this tuft his long well-shapedand sensitive fingers would play continuously while he spoke, with the result that he constantly bowed his head.
Occasionally, therefore, when his customary gravity gave way for a space and his face was irradiated with a smile or a laugh, an expression of such irresistible and almost wicked mirth suffused his features, owing to the upward glance he was constrained to give you from the bowed angle of his head, that willy-nilly you were compelled to laugh with him.
Sir Joseph felt this; he was also aware of the peculiar charm of it; but what struck him even more forcibly were Lord Henry's loose-fitting and apparently badly cut clothes. Anyone else so clad would have looked hopelessly dowdy, while the carelessly knotted green tie that bulged all askew from beneath the young man's ample collar, seemed for a moment almost offensive.
It was strange how the displeasure provoked by these shortcomings in his attire gradually vanished beneath the steady persuasiveness of the wearer's fascinating personality; and very soon not only had Sir Joseph ceased from feeling their aggressiveness, but had actually begun to associate them inseparably with the strange charm of the creature before him.
"Mrs. Delarayne," said Lord Henry, "would give me no peace until I came to see you, Sir Joseph, so you must forgive me for forcing myself upon you in this way, and relying for your forbearance simply upon the strength of the friendship you bear her."
He laughed, and Sir Joseph perforce laughed with him.
"'Ave you seen her lately?" the baronet enquired.
"She's always seeing me," Lord Henry replied, smiling in a manner that was at once childishly winsome and wise. He was still startlingly boyish, despite his thirty-three years, and though his slight baldness added a few years to his face, he did not look a month older than five-and-twenty.
"She is very fond of you," Sir Joseph proceeded earnestly, beginning to feel, for the first time, not only that Mrs. Delarayne's infatuation was clearly justified, but also that young St. Maur had probably been right in his remarks concerning Charles I.'s creations. It was strange to recognise the evidences of unusual wisdom in such a childish face; it reminded him vaguely of what he had heard or dreamt of Chinese mandarins,—evidently such phenomena were possible.
"She's an amazingly captivating woman," muttered Lord Henry, still pulling at the tuft of hair over his brow. "Her blank refusal to accept the fact of her advancing years is the most wonderful and at the same time the most pathetic thing about her."
Sir Joseph, with an expression of deep curiosity, leant heavily over the right arm of his chair, and stared expectantly at his visitor.
"She has not had her second decisive love affair, you see," Lord Henry continued. "And every day she arrays herself to experience it,—that second and decisive love affair which alone reconciles the best women to old age and to snow-white locks."
Sir Joseph fidgeted. He did not understand, but thought he did. "Her second and decisive love affair," he repeated,—"yes."
"We are apt to forget," continued Lord Henry, "that all deep, decently constituted women have two definite relationships to man, one alone of which is insufficient to satisfy them. The first is their relationship of wife to the man more or less of their own generation whom they have loved; the second is the relationship of mother to the man of their children's generation, whom under favourable circumstances they worship."
Sir Joseph shifted in his chair, raised his hand to his chin and looked fixedly at the speaker.
"This last and most precious relationship is the only one that reconciles a woman to her wrinkles and makes her happy in her grey hairs. Without it she takes to peroxide, smooths out her wrinkles with cream, and what is even more tragic, developes a tendency to pursue the young men of her children's generation. People call it ridiculous, lunatic,—so it would be, if it were not so nobly, so terribly pathetic."
"But I have known women with grown-up sons behave exactly as Mrs. Delarayne behaves," SirJoseph objected with as much breath as he could summon in his surprise at what Lord Henry had said.
"Not sons with whom they are in love," Lord Henry corrected. "Most mothers have sons, but of these not all experience that great love for one of their male offspring which is perhaps the most beautiful, the most passionate, and the most permanent of earthly relationships. Mrs. Delarayne is obviously a woman who would have been capable of such a relationship had she only had a son."
"Is it only one particular son?" Sir Joseph enquired with an unconscious note of profound humility in his voice.
"Always—yes!"
Lord Henry, still tugging at his wisp of hair, now turned to Sir Joseph, and blinking very quickly, as was his wont when deeply absorbed in a subject, contemplated the baronet for a moment in silence.
"Doesn't that clear up the problem of Mrs. Delarayne a little for you?" he asked at last. "Believe me, few women care to admit that they are thirty-five unless they have a husband whom they love, and still fewer women resign themselves to their fiftieth year unless they are wrapped up in a beloved son."
Sir Joseph, to whom Mrs. Delarayne, except for her repeated refusals of his hand, had never been precisely a problem, demurred a little. "It certainly sheds some light,—yes," he said slowly. "But don't you think that a second great lovewith a man more or less of her own generation is equally satisfying to a woman like that?"
"How can it be when it is simply a repetition of a former and thoroughly explored experience?" Lord Henry replied. "I do not mean, mind you, that great-hearted women who have not enjoyed that exquisite relationship to a beloved son, are conscious that it is this circumstance which has been lacking in their lives. Because precious little whatever is conscious in the best women. But in their loathing and repudiation of advancing years, and in their repeated attachments to men of my generation, such women reveal to the psychologist the constant ache they feel from the vast empty chamber in their hearts."
For some moments Sir Joseph played idly with an ivory paper-knife on his desk. He had completely forgotten the object of Lord Henry's visit. It was as if he had always known the man, and that they were just having one of their usual pleasant chats after their work was done. Such was the power that Lord Henry possessed of immersing his listeners in the thoughts that occupied his mind.
"And this," continued the younger man, after a while, "is the only consideration which makes me feel I ought to marry. I mean that it almost amounts to wanton vandalism not to give a wife of one's choice and a son of one's own begetting at least the chance of beautifying the world by this most wonderful of all relationships."
"You are a poet," said Sir Joseph with that spontaneous penetration of which the uncultivated are sometimes capable.
"If to understand Mrs. Delarayne a man must be a poet, then I am one," Lord Henry replied, smiling in his irresistible way.
Sir Joseph perforce smiled too, and the return to earth which this faint levity signified, reminded him of the real object of the young nobleman's visit. The thought did not reassure him, however; for after all the intelligence he had been able to glean regarding his visitor's character, he realised that if Lord Henry had resolved to undertake this mission to China, it would obviously serve no purpose to exhort him to change his mind. It was clear that Mrs. Delarayne could not have understood the man she was dealing with; or, if she had, she must have urged this step as a last hope.
As a forlorn hope it certainly appeared to Sir Joseph, and it was only half-heartedly that he opened the attack.
"And now tell me about China," he said. "Have you quite made up your mind?"
Lord Henry rose, thrust his hands deep into his trousers pockets, and paced the hearth-rug.
"I think so," he replied, musing deeply as he glanced from one to the other of Sir Joseph's art treasures.
"But you are doing good here," the baronet protested feebly. "What good will you do in China?"
"I'm not convinced that I am doing good here," Lord Henry rejoined sharply. "That's precisely the point."
"But everybody says you are."
"No doubt."
Sir Joseph turned to his ivory paper-knife. He did not understand.
"If it's doing good," Lord Henry added, "to salve the nervous wreckage that our unspeakable Western civilisation produces with every generation; if it's doing good to render the disastrous mess which we have made of human life possible for a few years longer, by bringing relief to the principal victims of it; then, indeed, I am a desirable member of society. But I question the whole thing. I question very much whether it can be doing good to help this hopeless condition of things to last one moment longer than it need."
Sir Joseph glanced up a little anxiously. "Are you serious?" he enquired.
Lord Henry sat down again.
"Am I serious?" he scoffed. "Can you be serious, can you be sane, and expect me to think otherwise? But you have been a great success by means of the very system which is rotten and iniquitous to the core. How could you sympathise?"
Sir Joseph stammered hopelessly that he was trying to sympathise.
"You are no doubt convinced," Lord Henry continued, "that all you are witnessing to-day iswhat you would call Progress. And the further we recede from a true understanding of human life and its most vital needs, and the more we complicate the world and increase its machinery, the more persuaded you become of the reality of your illusion. How could it be otherwise?"
Sir Joseph expostulated ineffectually, and Lord Henry continued:
"Still, I am not a reformer," he said. "I do not wish to reform, even if I could. It is not only too late, things are also too desperate. What I chiefly want is to take refuge somewhere where humanity and its deepest needs are the subject of greater mastery, greater understanding; so that I can cease from being distracted by the immensity of modern error. No great intellect, no great creative power can exist in this country; because the moment it becomes conscious it is so obsessed by the shams and the shamelessness that surround it, that instead of devoting itself to the joys and enrichment of life, it feels impelled by the horrors on every side to take up the social system and attempt to put it right. This sterile pitfall is now the temptation of the greatest minds. Your Shelley, your Coleridge, even your Byron,—what did they do? Menaced by this same vortex of negative effort, sentenced to intellectual annihilation if they attempted to straighten out the muddle of modernity, they fled, or drowned themselves in water or opium."
He had ceased playing with his tuft of hair.His face was distraught with indignation and with the bitterness of a thwarted love of mankind; it was also illuminated by the distant dream of a world as he would have it, so that though he brought down his fist on the corner of Sir Joseph's table with some weight, the baronet was too much moved to notice the gesture.
"Things are so bad," he pursued, lightly lowering his voice, "that to have any genuine insight to-day, any special human feeling to-day, means perforce to devote these gifts to the social problem, instead of to art and to beauty. That is the curse of being born into this Age. The gigantic ghastliness of modern Western civilisation successfully engulfs every superior brain that comes to being in its midst."
Sir Joseph fell back limply in his chair. He acknowledged the game was lost before the struggle had actually begun. How could he presume to strike a bargain with such a man? He remembered Mrs. Delarayne, however, and braced himself once more.
"There are times," Lord Henry began again, glancing kindly at Sir Joseph, "when I feel that perhaps I ought at least to risk even my life in order to do something here, in this country. But what is one man's life in the face of this sea of blunders? What is even a giant's effort, against the Lilliputian swarm of modern men who are determined to gain the precipice?"
"I was hoping," said Sir Joseph quietly, "that Imight make you an offer which would induce you to abandon this mission to the Far East. I was hoping, in fact, that I might help you."
Lord Henry glanced thoughtfully at the baronet and then shook his head.
Sir Joseph, more and more convinced that he was embarking on a hopeless enterprise, persisted notwithstanding.
"I am prepared to put a considerable sum of money at your disposal," he said. "I believe your sanatorium for nervous disorders in Kent is a veritable public boon. I feel that I could not find a nobler public object for my wealth than to support you in your work."
Lord Henry rapped his fingers on his knees impatiently.
"Could I not assist you in enlarging this establishment? Could I not give it a permanent foundation or effect what alterations in it you may suggest for its improvement and greater utility? If by the same token I succeeded in retaining you in England, I feel I should in addition be doing a personal service to someone, to a lady, for whom you and I have a very deep respect."
Lord Henry blinked rapidly as he turned to face the old gentleman at his side, and his smile was kind and courteous.
"If, Sir Joseph, my only motive in going abroad were indeed to transact the business of the Society for Anthropological Research, I might perhaps be induced to yield to the temptation you so generously put in my way. But seeing that possibly my principal object is to give my endowments a fair chance away from this whirlpool of confusion, which makes social reform a morbididée fixe, I cannot persuade myself that it would be worth while."
"But supposing," Sir Joseph persisted lamely, "I gave youcarte-blancheto extend your work as you liked?"
"And with what object?"
"I have told you the object," the baronet replied mildly.
"No!" exclaimed the younger man with emphasis. "The object would be to add to the organisations which are springing up everywhere for the purpose of making our impossible civilisation possible for at least a little while longer.Thatwould be the ultimate object."
"How much would you require?" Sir Joseph suggested in his most melting tones, still clinging desperately to his belief in the only bait he possessed.
Lord Henry laughed despondently. "Only enough to purchase sufficient dynamite to blow my present sanatorium skywards," he said. Then resuming his gravity and rising, he extended a hand to the baronet.
"No," he added, "I'm afraid my mind is made up. I must leave this country, Mrs. Delarayne or no Mrs. Delarayne. Thank you very much indeed, all the same. I have seen you and enjoyedour talk. Mrs. Delarayne's behest has at least been strictly obeyed."
"When will you be leaving?" Sir Joseph enquired, gracefully throwing down his cards.
"In about three months' time, I expect."
"I am sorry, very sorry," ejaculated the baronet.
The two men walked gravely to the door.
On the threshold Lord Henry stopped, and looking methodically round the room, pointed at last to one of the most beautiful of Sir Joseph's Stuart cabinets.
"You also unconsciously acknowledge that there is something revolting and intolerable about this Age, Sir Joseph," he said smiling mischievously; "otherwise why do you use your wealth to surround yourself both here, and as I understand at Brineweald too, with all the treasures of art that were produced by our ancestors."
Lord Henry laughed again; his deep thoughtful eyes filled with the tears of mirth, and he vanished from the room leaving Sir Joseph contemplating his costly old furniture with feelings of utter bewilderment.
Despite Sir Joseph's very careful reservations in regard to the increase, which unsolicited he had thought fit to make in his chief secretary's salary, Denis, who was perfectly well aware of his own efficiency, was inclined rather to discount every feature of his master's generous behaviour, except the covert tribute which he believed it was intended to make to his invaluable services. He knew the business man's instinctive reluctance to reveal his full appreciation of a subordinate's worth, and felt he must allow for this. But, on the other hand, in view of Sir Joseph's intimate relations with the Delarayne household, he was unable altogether to dispel a certain lurking anxiety concerning the baronet's very precise allusions to the question of marriage, which it was hard to believe could have been altogether gratuitous. This thought was disquieting.
Denis Malster, without being exactly an incurable philanderer, was nevertheless insufficiently commonplace to contemplate marriage, in the Pauline sense, as a necessity. He was much more disposed, at least for the present, to regard it merely as a piquant possibility, towards which hisvery attitude of indecision lent him an extra weapon of power in his relations with the other sex.
His life, hitherto, had been enjoyable, he thought, simply because it had been an uninterrupted preparation for marriage without the dull certainty of a definite conclusion. To excite interest in the other sex and envy in his own had, ever since he had been a boy of eighteen, constituted the breath of his nostrils, the one spring from which he drew his love of life and his desire to live. Immaculate in his dress, adequately cultivated and intellectual in his speech, and carefully punctilious in the adoption of such amateur pursuits as would be likely to give him the stamp of artistic connoisseurship, he had until now employed his ample income principally in furnishing his extensive wardrobe, in collecting old books and prints, and in giving his chambers that appearance ofoutrérefinement, which was calculated to force his friends to certain inevitable conclusions concerning both his means and the extent of his æsthetic development.
In the circumstances, therefore, it was difficult for him to regard the addition to his income, which Sir Joseph had suddenly thought fit to make, as anything more than a fresh means of indulging his various whims to an even greater degree than he had indulged them heretofore,—those whims which had by now become almost driving passions to the exclusion of all else;—and he was certainlynot in the least disposed to take Sir Joseph at his word, and to embark upon that undertaking which he knew would put an abrupt end to all the careless dalliance in which his clothes, his fastidious speech, and his parade of artistic discrimination played so effective a part.
Such were the thoughts that occupied his mind as he made his way from Lombard Street to his rooms in Essex Court; and by the time he had dressed for dinner and was waiting for a cab in the Strand, a look of fixed determination had settled on his face which was indicative of the firm resolve he had made.
In any case Sir Joseph could not expect him to marry immediately. For a while yet, therefore, he would continue to enjoy the life so full of secret triumphs which he had succeeded in leading ever since he had entered the house of Bullion & Bullion, and from this day with the additional pleasures that his increased income would allow. Had he not been told by Mrs. Delarayne herself that a man should not marry until flappers had ceased to turn round to get a second look at him in the street? And was there not something profoundly wise in this advice, although it had been pronounced in one of the old lady's most flippant moods? A smile of complacent well-being spread slowly over his features as he recalled this remark, and the last endorsement was mentally affixed to his private plans.
What would Cleopatra Delarayne do? Charitably, almost chivalrously, he imagined, he gave her a thought. Had he led her to hope? Undoubtedly he had. But then he had not resolved never to marry; he had merely determined to postpone the stepsine die. Perhaps in a year or two he would come to a definite understanding with Cleopatra. After all, she was only twenty-five. She was an attractive girl, and she would be wealthy. He felt that marriage with her would not be an uninviting conclusion to another year or two of his present delightful existence. Thus he satisfied his conscience and gratified his deepest wishes into the bargain.
He dined alone at the Café Royal. It was a sultry evening, and London was still stifling after a sweltering day. One had the feeling that the roofs and masonry of the buildings all about were still burning, as probably they were, with the heat of the sun that had been pouring down upon them all day; and the big city seemed to breathe its hot dust into the face of its inhabitants.
Having nothing better to do, he thought how pleasant it would be to finish the day in Mrs. Delarayne's cool garden in Kensington, and thither he betook himself after his meal, devoutly hoping that they would be at home.
Cleopatra had evidently been half expecting him, for she appeared in the drawing-room on the heels of the maid who had ushered him in, and gave him a friendly welcome. Mrs. Delarayne had ensconced herself upstairs and did not wish tobe disturbed, and at that moment her penetrating voice could be heard conducting what appeared to be a most lively and acrimonious debate with someone unknown across the telephone. So on Denis's suggestion they went into the garden and installed themselves there in Cleopatra's favourite bower.
"Rather late for the Warrior to be upbraiding a tradesman," Denis observed. "I wonder what she can be doing."
He had nicknamed Mrs. Delarayne "the Warrior" himself. He was sensitive enough to apprehend the strong strain of courage in her character; he had on several occasions been impressed by the tenacious boldness of her claims to youth and by the energy she displayed in keeping up the difficult part,—frequently entailing exertions out of all proportion to her bodily vigour;—so he had nicknamed her "the Warrior." But this sobriquet was used only when he and Cleopatra were alone together.
"The poor Warrior is peevish anyhow, you see," Cleopatra explained. "Baby comes home to-morrow, and if there's anything that annoys mother to exasperation, it is to have to cluck and fuss round her chick like an old hen. She loathes it, and Baby always makes her feel she must do it."
Denis pretended to be interested only in a casual way. "What sort of a girl is—Baby?" he asked. "Is she like you?"
"I suppose she is like me to the same extent thatI am like the Warrior," the girl replied. "But she's most like the Warrior herself. Imagine my mother at the age of seventeen and you know my sister. Surely you have seen that old photograph of the Warrior as a girl in the drawing-room? It is simply Baby over again,—or rathervice versa."
"I must look at it," said Denis thoughtfully.
"In fact they are so much alike," Cleopatra proceeded, "that they know each other inside out, and annoy each other accordingly."
"They don't get on well then?" he enquired.
"Oh, yes, but Baby's a little trying at times. You see, she will forget for instance that we call mother Edith, and have done ever since father died; and she will suddenly shout Mother! out loud on crowded railway platforms, or at the Academy, or worse still at garden parties, which always gives the Warrior one of those nervous attacks for which she has to go to Lord Henry."
Denis started almost imperceptibly at the mention of Lord Henry's name, and turned an interested face towards the girl. "Do you know Lord Henry?" he asked.
"No, I don't. There are some men the Warrior knows whom she never introduces to me. I feel as if I knew Lord Henry very well indeed, but I have never met him."
"You haven't lost much," Denis snapped.
"I beg your pardon?" Cleopatra exclaimed, smiling kindly but deprecatingly, and arching her neck a little, as she scented the injustice behind his remark.
"He dresses abominably," Denis pursued, "and from what I can gather is benighted enough to believe in our beheaded sovereign Charles I."
"He must be very able though," the girl objected. "It isn't often, is it, that our aristocracy distinguish themselves? And d'you know that he is a Fellow of the Royal Society entirely on the strength of his original research into the subject of modern nervous disorders?"
Denis pouted and smiled with an ostentatious show of incredulity. "He's the son of the Marquis of Firle, remember!"
"Oh, but I don't believe that's got anything to do with it—honestly!" she retorted.
Cleopatra knew her mother as well as any daughter has ever known her parent; she could have compiled a catalogue of Mrs. Delarayne's foibles more exhaustive and elaborate than any that Mrs. Delarayne's worst enemies could have produced; but, on the other hand, she had so often found her mother a safe guide where her fellow creatures were concerned, and had thus acquired so deep a faith in her mother's judgment, that it was hard for her to believe that in the matter of Lord Henry the Warrior could be mistaken.
She regarded her companion for some moments in silence. He was cutting a cigar, and failed to notice that she was observing him.
Certainly he was very sleek and smart, and showed that perfect efficiency in all he did which betokens general ability. What was it then thatgave her a little pang of doubt whenever she was moved by an impulse to look up to him? His voice, it is true, was thin and a trifle high-pitched,—always a bad sign in a man,—but she would have overlooked all his shortcomings if only her craving to revere where she loved had been sufficiently gratified. He was beyond all question the best type of man who had hitherto paid her attention. Others, perhaps, might have been more manly; but then they had been clumsy, heavy, and puerile, and had, above all, lacked that air of complete efficiency which was perhaps Denis's greatest asset.
She thought herself foolish for expecting too much from life, and without any effort turned a kindly smiling face to her visitor.
"The Warrior!" he ejaculated suddenly, blowing sharp strong puffs from his cigar; and he was either annoyed or made a good pretence of it.
Yes, there, indeed, was Mrs. Delarayne, stalking majestically up the garden, and from the way she glanced rapidly from side to side, and grabbed at her frock, it was plain that she was in none too pleasant a mood.
Denis rose when she was about four yards from them.
She glanced quickly at Cleopatra, seemed to notice the perfect serenity of both young people with marked dissatisfaction, rapidly recorded the fact that her daughter's hair was utterly undisturbed, and smiled grimly. "Evidently thingshave taken their usual course," she mused. "He had not even attempted to kiss her!"
"Don't you think you two people are rather silly to sit out here doing nothing?" she demanded irascibly.
"It's so delightfully cool," Denis protested.
"Yes, too cool!" snapped the old lady with a deliberate glance at her daughter, which was intended to convey the full meaning of her words.
Cleopatra moved impatiently. Her mother always made her feel so miserably defective, and this was hard to forgive.
Mrs. Delarayne settled herself elegantly in a wicker chair, took a cigarette from a case, and snapped the case to with a decisive click. She looked hot and a little tired, and as Denis proffered her a light he noticed the beads of perspiration amid the powder round her eyes.
"I've had the most tiresome evening imaginable," she croaked.
"I thought so," said her daughter. "We heard you."
"Really men are most ridiculous cowards," she cried, frowning hard at Denis. "There's Sir Joseph, for instance. He's failed ignominiously with Lord Henry; has been unable to induce him to give up his absurd mission to China, and instead of coming here to tell me all about it, he keeps me thirty-five minutes brawling at him over the 'phone in this heat, simply because he daren't face me!"
Denis stretched out his legs before him and clasped his hands at the back of his head. This was a signal, well known to the women, that a long analytical speech was to follow, and Mrs. Delarayne looked wearily away, as if to imply before the start that she was not in the least interested.
"It's all organisation nowadays," Denis began. "If you can organise your machinery with the help of good subordinates, the trick is done. And since Sir Joseph simply exudes lubricants, everything works smoothly and successfully. He——"
"Don't talk of exuding lubricants in this weather, please!" Mrs. Delarayne interrupted. "I suffer from the heat almost as badly as butter."
It was becoming clear to Cleopatra that her mother was for some reason intent on chastising their visitor, and she watched the interesting woman before her with her filial feeling in almost complete abeyance. The children of remarkable parents frequently do this after they have turned a certain age. It is not disrespect, but merely absent-mindedness.
It was almost dark now, and Denis noticed Mrs. Delarayne's fine profile outlined against the lighted rooms of the house. There was a sadness delineated on her handsome, aristocratic face, which, as he had observed before, was to be seen only when her features were quite still. Could this apparently gay widow still be mourning her husband? Denis was sufficiently romantic and ill-informed to imagine this just possible.
"So the interview between Sir Joseph and Lord Henry was a failure?" he enquired trying to be sympathetic.
"Yes, of course," Mrs. Delarayne rejoined, flinging her cigarette into the bushes at her side. "And I do so hate the idea of going out to China."
Cleopatra laughed. "But, Edith, surely you don't really mean that you'll go to China if Lord Henry goes?"
Denis glanced quickly at Cleopatra and in his eyes she read the supercilious message: "People ofourgeneration could not be so foolish."
"You don't flatter yourself, Cleo, I hope," Mrs. Delarayne retorted icily, "that I say these things to amuse you and Denis, do you?"
Cleopatra signified by a glance directed at Denis that she did not like the message in his eyes, and regretting the laugh with which she had opened her last remark, she turned conciliatingly to her mother.
"I'd go with you, Edith dear, if you wanted me to," she said.
For the first time since he had made their acquaintance Denis began to have the shadow of an understanding of the depth of these two women's attachment to each other, and he bowed his head.
"Thank you, Cleo," Mrs. Delarayne replied after satisfying herself that there was not a trace of insincerity either in the voice or features of her daughter. "We'll see."
She rose, smoothed down the front of her frockwith a few rapid gestures, and turned to the younger people.
"Come on!" she said. "You and I cannot afford to lose our beauty sleep, Cleo. Two hours before midnight,—you know the time, and it's now half-past nine."
Evidently Mrs. Delarayne intended to be rude to Denis. Sir Joseph had told her something across the telephone, and she had expected a result which had not occurred.
The following morning after breakfast Mrs. Delarayne as usual retired to the bureau in the library where every day she devoted at least thirty minutes to her housekeeping duties.
Silently on this occasion Cleopatra followed in her wake, and pretending to be in search of a book, lingered in her mother's company longer than was her wont after the morning meal. Book after book was taken down from the shelves, perfunctorily examined and returned to its place. Once or twice the girl looked towards her mother, possibly in the hope that the elder woman would provide the opening to the subject that was uppermost in both their minds. At last Cleopatra spoke.
"Baby comes home to-day," she said, in a voice strained to appear cheerful.
Mrs. Delarayne looked up from a tradesman's book. "Yes," she sighed wearily. "One of SirJoseph's cars is coming to fetch us at half-past two. The train reaches King's Cross at three. Will you come?"
"Of course,—rather!" Cleopatra exclaimed, taking down another book and examining it cursorily.
There was silence again, and Cleopatra could be heard running quickly through the pages of the volume she held.
"What is Baby going to do?" she asked after a while.
"Don't ask me!" exclaimed the mother.
"Haven't you any plans?" the daughter enquired with studied indifference, her eyes wandering vacantly over the letter-press before them.
"Plans—what plans?" ejaculated the old lady. "I suppose the poor child will have to put up with us now. You don't suppose we can send her gadding about the Continent again?"
"I didn't dream of any such thing!" Cleopatra protested a little guiltily.
"No, I promised her that she should come home for good after the School of Domesticity, and she expects it. You saw what she said in her last letter."
"Naturally," Cleopatra added, closing her book and replacing it hurriedly on the shelves.
"We'll have to put up with it—that's all, my dear. I hope she won't be too trying. But you must really help me a little by taking her off my hands, particularly on my Bridge and 'Inner Light' days."
Cleopatra cast a glance full of meaning at her mother, and quietly left the room. She had heard all she wanted to hear.
Meanwhile, the subject of this conversation, ensconced comfortably in the corner of a first-class carriage, was speeding rapidly towards London.
Looking remarkably at her ease in a smart tailor-made frock of navy serge, silk stockings, suede shoes, and a perfect summer hat trimmed with bright cherries as red as her lips, she sat amid a farraginous medley of newspapers, small parcels, and shiny leather traps, and presented an attractive picture of a flourishing schoolgirl of seventeen,—careless, mischievous, and keenly, though discreetly, interested in everything about her;—but, perhaps a little too healthy, and certainly too beautiful, to be quite typical either of the class or of the kind of school from which she hailed.
Her large dark eyes, veiled by unusually long lashes, looked sharply at you and then quickly turned away, with that air of mystery and secrecy, and love of secrets at all costs—even mock secrets—peculiar to the young virgin of all climes. Occasionally in glancing away they would half close in a thoughtful smile, which, to the uninitiated, unaware of the irrepressible spirits of their owner, was as unaccountable as it was provoking.
There was an air of childhood still clinging, as if from habit alone, to the outward insignia ofmaturity, in this mercurial, magnetic, and undaunted young person; and in her malicious elfish eyes could be read the solemn determination to force every possible claim that her double advantage, as child and adult, could, according to the occasion, uphold.
Her thick dark hair did not hang down her back in the rich spiral curl which is now becoming so common among schoolgirls; for that it was too plentiful, too troublesomely luxuriant. It hung like heavy bronze in a thick stiff plait—a badge both of her robust youth and the redundant richness of her blood,—and at its extremity it was tied with a broad ribbon of black silk. Beneath her hat, bold festoons of hair reached down almost to her eyebrows, and to these portions of her coiffure she constantly applied her soft shapely sun-tanned fingers, as if to reassure herself that they were keeping their proper position.
The roguish expression of her face was partly due to pure health and partly to wanton spirits, and her features possessed that exceptional animation which, even in the simple process of eating a fondant, produced the impression of extreme mobility.
Having long previously examined her fellow-passengers and judged them uninteresting, she divided her attention between the fleeting landscape at her side, a box of fruit creams, which she was consuming with grave perseverance, and the contents of a pocket-portfolio, which she appearedto be slowly sorting and weeding out. To everything she did, however, to each one of her movements, she had the air of imparting so much mysteriousness, so much elaborate secrecy, that she soon found herself the object of the united attention of all her companions. And occasionally when her fresh full lips parted in a smile at the things she read, the old gentleman opposite her had to turn also to the fleeting landscape as a prophylactic against the infection of her high spirits.
She gave the impression of that aggressive vitality with which Nature seems deliberately to equip her more favoured female children at this age, as if to challenge the other sex to a definite attitude immediately. A quivering freshness—the "bloom" of the poets—gave a soft shimmer to her skin of which the powder of later years is such a palpably poor travesty; her limbs were nicely rounded and not too fragile; her teeth, like Cleopatra's, were perfect, and although she was a trifle smaller than her sister, she was broad across the shoulders, and well developed.
Leonetta, as we have already seen, knew that she was attractive; but she did not know this fact as surely and unmistakably as—say, a philosopher looking at her did. She probably knew that she was sunburnt, for instance; but she was not aware of the depth which the dark natural virginal pigmentation of her neck, eyes, and knuckles, lent to the warm tanning of her skin. She did not knowhow prone the philosopher is to associate the combination of these two rich colourings with the wicked, dusky denizens of a tropical jungle—those creatures whose blood he suspects of being something deeper than red, who really look as if they were made from the earth and were going back to it, and who have nothing of that translucent pallor suggestive of heaven-sent and heaven-destined attributes.
She probably knew her dark eyes were fine and that their lashes were long; but she would have been surprised and perhaps even a little hurt if she had been told that their most striking feature was that, to every man, modest and shrewd enough to divine all that they could exact, they were terrifying. She knew her teeth were faultless; but she did not even suspect the thrill of pained joy that went through the philosopher's frame when he saw the life-hunger they revealed, and, what was more, the full deep bite and fast hold they would take of Life's entrails. A young girl's canines are self-revelatory in this respect. Let them be big and prominent, as Leonetta's were, and the fastness of her hold on Life, once she has bitten, promises to break all records. The sensitive philosopher has little patience with your fair delicate misses with small mouse-like canines. There are too many of them to begin with, and they are so instinctively ladylike.
Perhaps the most amusing thing in this worldis to watch the antics of a large-canined virginde bonne famillewho is trying to be a lady,—by "lady" is here meant someone who, among other parlour tricks, can perform the feat of "controlling" her feelings,—who has, that is to say, on the one hand "control" and on the other hand "feelings," and whose feelings are weaker than her control.
Leonetta's highly pigmented and sunburnt fingers suddenly ceased their twofold activity with the box of fondants and the pocket-portfolio of secret papers, and held a letter long and steadily before her eyes. Again the old gentleman opposite turned to the landscape of fields on his right, and his loose lips worked ominously. The fixity of those keen eyes with their tell-tale slight inward squint, as she studied the letter, proved too much for him, particularly when she began to smile; and his glance wandered desperately to the country he was traversing, in the cool, pallid British greenness of which he found relief.
Evidently the letter was a piece of life, for Leonetta was now in deadly earnest, pinching her beautiful tawny neck thoughtfully here and there with her free hand, as she read, and breathing deeply. Her glance travelled rapidly, too, over certain passages, and would then stop dead, sometimes in order to allow a smile to dawn, sometimes to wander a moment to frown at the country-side. Evidently certain portions of the letter were quite uninteresting, or else she knew them by heart.
The letter she read was as follows: