"My Sweetheart,"It is Saturday and we are having a dinner party this evening, and I'm feeling awfully excited. Things are particularly slow here on the whole. I have scarcely spoken to a man since I addressed my porter at King's Cross four days ago. Isn't it rank? What mother and my sister Cleo do with their men I can't imagine, unless they think they are better out of harm's way. I know they know heaps of men."By the way, talking of keeping out of harm's way, you remember you used to tell me at school that if I looked long enough at a young man with my dark eyes he would get sunburnt,—well, the day before yesterday a very funny thing happened. I was in the train with poor old Cleo (she's grown a most appalling old maid, by-the-bye), and there was a young man opposite who really looked a most awful devil. You know, he had those wicked eyes that go up at their outside corners like tigers'. He was heavenly. I simply couldn't take my eyes off him, and he kept looking at me. Cleo said very stuffily (she's always stuffy with me), 'Don't stare!' and he must have overheard, because he turned away, and there was a most devilish curl on his lips. If we hadn't got out at the next station, I'm sure we should have ended by smiling at each other quite openly. You know, he was one of the sort who one guesses has got good teeth before they even open their mouths."Some men are coming this evening, thank God! But what they'll be like Heaven alone knows! I have hopes though, because mother always did have a sweet tooth for rather nice men, you see father was tremendously attractive. But what poor Auntie Cleo's choice will be I daren't think. One of the men is supposed to be earmarked for her."Oh, and now listen. Peachy—that's my mother—insists upon your coming to our place at Brineweald for at least three weeks during the summer holidays. Oh, Nessy, my heart's love!—what a joy to see you again! So you will come, won't you? I told Peachy you could play a good game of tennis, and now she insists on your coming. So mind, no refusal. Youmust tell your dear mother she simply must spare you, and there's an end of it."Thank you a billion trillion times for your absolutely divine letter. But I cannot write about all you say, I'm too excited as it is. When can you come? Then we can talk. Oh for another long talk with my wise and wicked Nessy."Now listen! We leave for Brineweald in about ten days. Can you join us in about a fortnight from now? We might have gone at once, but I must have some clothes. And it seems to me that it will take all my time to get them before we start."Oh, and now another thing (and this is very,verysecret, so secret that you mustswearyou'll tear up this letterat once, the moment you have read it). You remember you and the other girls used to laugh at me at school about my brown neck and my brown eyelids, and my brownish knuckles. You used to chaff me and tell me it was because I hadn't washed. Well, you were all wrong, and I told you at the time you were all wrong. I have just been reading a most interesting book, all about these things (but you must never let Peachy know about it, as it is one of father's and I have been reading it on the sly). Remember you've sworn to tear this letter up. In any case it explains all about my brown neck and my brown eyelids and knuckles. It calls it 'Pigmentation'—the 'pigmentation of the mature virgin.' Isn't it interesting? So you see it was quite natural; and I can't help it; on the contrary it shows I am very vigorous. So you were all wrong—even Miss Butterworth who said I was afraid of cold water."But I'll forgive everything to my sweet Nessy ifonly,if onlyshe will come to the bosom of her love at Brineweald.
"My Sweetheart,
"It is Saturday and we are having a dinner party this evening, and I'm feeling awfully excited. Things are particularly slow here on the whole. I have scarcely spoken to a man since I addressed my porter at King's Cross four days ago. Isn't it rank? What mother and my sister Cleo do with their men I can't imagine, unless they think they are better out of harm's way. I know they know heaps of men.
"By the way, talking of keeping out of harm's way, you remember you used to tell me at school that if I looked long enough at a young man with my dark eyes he would get sunburnt,—well, the day before yesterday a very funny thing happened. I was in the train with poor old Cleo (she's grown a most appalling old maid, by-the-bye), and there was a young man opposite who really looked a most awful devil. You know, he had those wicked eyes that go up at their outside corners like tigers'. He was heavenly. I simply couldn't take my eyes off him, and he kept looking at me. Cleo said very stuffily (she's always stuffy with me), 'Don't stare!' and he must have overheard, because he turned away, and there was a most devilish curl on his lips. If we hadn't got out at the next station, I'm sure we should have ended by smiling at each other quite openly. You know, he was one of the sort who one guesses has got good teeth before they even open their mouths.
"Some men are coming this evening, thank God! But what they'll be like Heaven alone knows! I have hopes though, because mother always did have a sweet tooth for rather nice men, you see father was tremendously attractive. But what poor Auntie Cleo's choice will be I daren't think. One of the men is supposed to be earmarked for her.
"Oh, and now listen. Peachy—that's my mother—insists upon your coming to our place at Brineweald for at least three weeks during the summer holidays. Oh, Nessy, my heart's love!—what a joy to see you again! So you will come, won't you? I told Peachy you could play a good game of tennis, and now she insists on your coming. So mind, no refusal. Youmust tell your dear mother she simply must spare you, and there's an end of it.
"Thank you a billion trillion times for your absolutely divine letter. But I cannot write about all you say, I'm too excited as it is. When can you come? Then we can talk. Oh for another long talk with my wise and wicked Nessy.
"Now listen! We leave for Brineweald in about ten days. Can you join us in about a fortnight from now? We might have gone at once, but I must have some clothes. And it seems to me that it will take all my time to get them before we start.
"Oh, and now another thing (and this is very,verysecret, so secret that you mustswearyou'll tear up this letterat once, the moment you have read it). You remember you and the other girls used to laugh at me at school about my brown neck and my brown eyelids, and my brownish knuckles. You used to chaff me and tell me it was because I hadn't washed. Well, you were all wrong, and I told you at the time you were all wrong. I have just been reading a most interesting book, all about these things (but you must never let Peachy know about it, as it is one of father's and I have been reading it on the sly). Remember you've sworn to tear this letter up. In any case it explains all about my brown neck and my brown eyelids and knuckles. It calls it 'Pigmentation'—the 'pigmentation of the mature virgin.' Isn't it interesting? So you see it was quite natural; and I can't help it; on the contrary it shows I am very vigorous. So you were all wrong—even Miss Butterworth who said I was afraid of cold water.
"But I'll forgive everything to my sweet Nessy ifonly,if onlyshe will come to the bosom of her love at Brineweald.
"With crates of kisses,
"Yours ever,
"Leo."
"P.S. Excuse this short scribble. I must go to dress. Tell Charlie that if he has not kissed that horrid Dewlap girl yet, I send him a nice long kiss. By-the-bye, he's such a blind fool, he won't have noticed she bites her nails.Dotell him!
"P.S. Excuse this short scribble. I must go to dress. Tell Charlie that if he has not kissed that horrid Dewlap girl yet, I send him a nice long kiss. By-the-bye, he's such a blind fool, he won't have noticed she bites her nails.Dotell him!
"YoursLeo."
This letter written, sealed, and stamped, Leonetta put on a tam-o'-shanter, and ran to the post with it; whereupon hurrying upstairs, she burst violently into her mother's bedroom, to announce what she had done. It was half-past six and her mother was dressing.
Now Mrs. Delarayne's toilet, as may be imagined, was an unusually elaborate and skilful business. Every corner of her large bedroom seemed to offer its contribution towards the final effect. The bed, the chairs, and even the mantelpiece participated in the process, while cupboard and wardrobe doors stood ominously open.
Mrs. Delarayne's maid Wilmott,—silent, grave, preoccupied and efficient,—moved hither and thither, calmly but quickly, her head discreetly bowed, her voice more subdued than at ordinary times, as if she were officiating at a rite; and gradually, very gradually, the business proceeded.
Facing a corner of the bedroom, with a large window to her left, Mrs. Delarayne sat before her dressing-table, upon which, towering above the forest of bottles, brushes, boxes, and other paraphernalia, stood a large triple mirror, which enabled the elegant widow to get three different aspects of her handsome face at the same time.
The expression upon Mrs. Delarayne's face when she peered into this formidable reflector of her own image was scarcely self-complacent or serene. It was rather studious, anxious, critical, almost fierce, like that one would expect to find on the face of an ancient alchemist contemplating an alembic of precious compounds. Year in, year out, ever since her gradually waning youth had begun to add ever fresh complications to her once rapid and easy toilet, Mrs. Delarayne had faced herself with this determined and defiant expression on her features, resolved to overcome every difficulty and every undesirable innovation of time. Slowly the complex equipment had grown up. Now it was so extensive, that it required all the dexterity and knowledge that habit alone can impart, in order to master and understand its multitudinous intricacies.
In this mirror, then, when her expression was at its fiercest in intentness and concentration, she saw her daughter enter the room behind her, and for an instant a spasmodic frown darkened her already lowering brow.
"I cannot see you now, you know that, Leodarling," she hastened to exclaim as sweetly as possible, while her daughter was still on the threshold.
"All right, Peachy,—I shan't keep you a moment."
A slight flush crept up the mother's neck just below her ears,—this was a thing Cleo had too much delicacy to do. Cleo never disturbed her while she was dressing,—and she straightway stopped all operations and laid her hands resignedly in her lap.
"Well, be quick," she said, with ill-concealed irritation. "What is it?"
In the glass she could see her daughter's quick and intelligent eyes wandering all about her with the deepest interest, and resting here and there as if more than usually absorbed, and she frowned again.
Meanwhile, Leonetta, who had not seen her mother's bedroom, particularly the dressing-table, at such a busy crisis for many years, and who, when she had seen it in the past had been too young to grasp its full meaning, was too eagerly engaged scanning its imposing array of creams, scents, powders, oils, salves, cosmetics, tresses of hair, and other "aids," to be able to remember what she had come for, and simply stood there like one fascinated and spellbound.
"Quick, child! can't you see you're wasting my time?" her mother ejaculated irascibly. "Besides, you've got to get dressed too!"
This was an unfortunate remark. It broughtout more vividly than was necessary, the immense contrast between her own and her daughter's toilet, and before she had time to think, Leonetta had replied.
"Oh, I've got heaps of time. It doesn't take me a moment. I'll race you easily, even now."
Then a thought entered Leonetta's mind, which, to her credit be it said, she resisted at first, but which was too overpowering to be completely banished. It struck her for a moment that there was something faintly comical, almost pathetically ridiculous, in this elderly matron taking such laborious and elaborate pains to make herself attractive. Try as she might, Leonetta, from her angle of vision of seventeen years, could not repress the question: "What was it all for? What was the good of it all? Who could possibly care? Was the end commensurate with the exhaustive and exhausting means?" As the fierce light from the window beat down upon her mother's face, it seemed so old, so wondrously old, that all the formidable machinery of beautification about the room struck a chord of compassion in the flapper's breast, which was, however, at once compounded with humour in her mind. And then she could control herself no longer, and was forced to smile,—one of those broad mirthful smiles that are parlously near a laugh. Feeling, however, that her mood was one of derision, she turned quickly aside,—but not soon enough successfully to evade her mother's observant scrutiny.
Mrs. Delarayne was too well aware of the awkward possibilities of the situation, and moreover too acutely sensitive generally, to be in any doubt as to the meaning of her younger daughter's amusement, and the flush beneath her ears spread to her cheeks. Simultaneously, however, her handsome face seemed suddenly to grow wonderfully stern and composed, and her eyes flashed with the fire which every woman seems to hold in reserve for an anti-feminine attack.
"Wilmott," she said quietly, "will you leave the room a moment? I'll ring when I want you."
Without even turning round to satisfy her curiosity, the well-trained servant dropped on to the corner of the bed the things she held in her hands, and was gone.
For some unaccountable reason Leonetta at the same time felt a tremor of apprehension pass slowly over her, and her hands grew icily cold. She could feel her mother's masterful will in the atmosphere of the room, and glancing tremulously askance at the widow's unfinished coiffure, every line of which seemed crisp with power, walked over to the hearth-rug.
Mrs. Delarayne's redness had now vanished. She was if anything a little pale, and she turned to face her daughter.
"I am not angry, Leo," she began with terrifying suavity, "but I felt I really could not explain all these things to you,"—she waved a hand over the mass of articles displayed on the dressing-table,— "in front of Wilmott. You see, servants have to take these things for granted without explanation."
Leonetta felt her ears beginning to burn furiously. Her mother could be terrible.
"Yes, you see now," continued the widow, "how worrying and how difficult are the means which I have to use to make myself presentable. Age is a tiresome thing, is it not? It is so much more simple when one is young."
The invincible "Warrior" smiled kindly, and saw that tears were gathering in her daughter's eyes.
"Would you perhaps like me to go through these things with you, and explain them to you one by one?" she continued. "I have had to learn it all myself. I might save you a good many pitfalls in the remote future."
Leonetta's throat was dry, and her lips were parched.
"No, thank you," she replied hoarsely, and she made quickly towards the door.
"You have not told me what you wanted to say," said her mother playfully.
"I'll tell you later on," rejoined the girl in broken tones.
"Then will you please ring for Wilmott?" said Mrs. Delarayne, turning calmly to face her mirror again.
And after savagely pressing the bell, the flapper vanished.
With her eyes blinded by stinging tears, and feeling very much more maddened by regret than by mortification, Leonetta fled to her room. She was not only staggered, she was also thoroughly ashamed. A boy suddenly butted by a lamb, which he had believed he might torment with impunity, could not have felt more astonished. A convert brought face to face with the livid wounds which, in her days of unbelief, she had inflicted upon a Christian martyr could not have felt more deeply dejected and penitent. Like a flash, an old emotion of childhood had filled her breast; an old emotion that seemed only to have gathered strength in the intervening years,—that blind, unthinking and dependent love of the infant for its mother.
Should she go back and throw herself at the wonderful woman's knees? Should she set out her plea for forgiveness in the folds of her mother's dress as she had done as a baby? No, Wilmott would be there,—Wilmott and everything besides! Moreover,—she looked in the glass,—her face was distraught, her ears flared, her eyes still smarted horribly. Even if Wilmott were dismissed as before, the girl would guess something.
Slowly she proceeded with her dressing, and, as she did so, a certain vague delicacy of feeling, a sort of secret reverence for her brave youth-loving mother downstairs, kept her from glancing too frequently in the glass. The contrast now, instead of elating her, simply accentuated herreminiscence of guilt. The very speed with which she adjusted her hair and made it "presentable," as her mother had expressed it, brought back the cruel memory of what had happened only a few minutes previously.
In being thus affected by Mrs. Delarayne's able and perfectly relentless handling of a difficult situation; in feeling her love for her mother intensified backwards, so to speak, to the degree it had attained in infancy, as the result of the incident, Leonetta showed not only that she was worthy of her incomparable mother, but also that she had survived less unimpaired, than some might have thought, the questionable blessings of a finishing education.
Mrs. Delarayne who, without being truculently triumphant, was nevertheless mildly conscious of having scored a valuable and highly desirable point, repaired to the drawing-room twenty minutes later in a mood admirably suited to giving her guests a warm and hearty welcome.
Cleopatra was the first to join her. Each woman honestly thought that she had rarely seen the other look quite so beautiful, and the comments that were exchanged were as sincere as they were flattering.
Mrs. Delarayne was too loyal to betray one sister to the other, so she did not refer to the incident in her bedroom. Occasionally, however, thoughts of it would make her glance a little anxiously in the direction of the door, and as shedid so, she fervently hoped that the lesson she had administered to her younger daughter had not been too severe.
"I wonder what Baby can be doing all this time!" Cleopatra exclaimed at last.
"I'll go and see, I think," said Mrs. Delarayne, lifting her dress just slightly in front, and making towards the door.
"No, Edith," her daughter exclaimed, rising quickly. "I'll go. I cannot have you making yourself hot by climbing all those stairs. Please let me go!"
Mrs. Delarayne's wiry arm braced itself as her hand clasped the handle of the door. "I think I'd better go," she replied.
For the first time Cleopatra began to suspect that something had happened. She knew the relations existing between Leonetta and her mother, but as the latter had always been so surprisingly patient and long-suffering, she was very far from suspecting what had actually occurred.
Their hesitation was cut short for them by the arrival of the first guest, Sir Joseph Bullion, who, a moment later, was followed by Denis Malster, Guy Tyrrell, Agatha Fearwell and her brother Stephen (friends of Cleopatra's), and Miss Mallowcoid.
The last to enter the drawing-room was Leonetta. She had evidently dreaded encountering her mother and sister alone, and she had purposely waited till she heard the guests arrive before coming down. Although to those who knew her there were certain unusual signs of demurity in her expression and demeanour in the early part of the evening, she presented a dramatically beautiful appearance, and the sober reserve of her mood if anything enhanced this effect, by lending it the additional charm of mystery and inscrutableness.
Cleopatra was a little puzzled. Never had she expected that Leo would behave in this way, particularly in the presence of young men, and her feeling towards her sister underwent a momentary revulsion. She noticed that Denis scarcely took his eyes off her sister; but she also observed that Leo hardly ever responded, and simply talked quietly and demurely on to Guy Tyrrell or Stephen Fearwell. She could not understand, nor did her deepest wishes allow her to suspect, that her sister's delightfully sober mood was only a transient one.
During the dinner a slight diversion was created by Leonetta's addressing her parent as "Mother." But the poor child was so confused when she realised what she had done, and particularly when she thought of why she had done it, that everybody except Miss Mallowcoid endeavoured to ease the situation by being tremendously voluble.
After what had occurred between herself and her mother, the cold and distant appellation "Edith" did not spring naturally or spontaneously to Leonetta's lips. On the other hand "Peachy" seemed to belong to another and previous existence. She did not wish her mother to suspect, however, that she had used the term "mother" with deliberate intent to annoy.
"That's right, my child," cried Miss Mallowcoid. "It is really refreshing to hear one of you girls, at least, addressing your mother in the usual and proper fashion!"
Leonetta with her cheeks ablaze, glared at her aunt menacingly.
"Well, I don't like it," she blurted out. "It was a slip of the tongue. Cleo and I much prefer the name Edith."
She spoke sharply and even rudely, seeing that it was her aunt she was addressing, but Mrs. Delarayne, who was beginning to understand the penitential spirit she was in, smiled kindly at her notwithstanding.
"I always look upon them as three sisters," Sir Joseph exclaimed somewhat laboriously, "whatever they call one another."
Miss Mallowcoid scoffed, and Mrs. Delarayne patted his hand persuasively. "You get on with your dinner," she said playfully.
Meanwhile Miss Mallowcoid had not taken her vindictive eyes off her younger niece, and the latter in sheer desperation plunged into an animated but very perfunctory conversation with her right-hand neighbour, Guy Tyrrell.
It is time that this young man should be described. He was the type usually called healthy and "clean-minded." He loved all sports and allkinds of exercise, particularly walking, and he could talk about these out-of-door occupations fairly amusingly. He was fair, blue-eyed, clean-shaven, and healthy-looking, and he believed in the possibility of being a "pal" to a girl,—particularly if she happened to be a flapper. His age was twenty-seven.
It is not generally understood what precisely is implied by the so-called healthy "clean-minded" unmarried Englishman of twenty-seven, or thereabouts. As a rule the epithet "clean-minded" sums up not merely a mental condition, but a method of life. It signifies that the young man to whom it may justly be applied is either a master, or at least a lover, of games, that his outlook is what is known as "breezy," that he observes the rules of cricket in every relation to his fellow creatures, and that he is capable of enduring defeat or success with the same impassable calm and good-nature. Now it would be absurd to deny that here we have a very imposing catalogue of highly desirable characteristics; it would, however, be equally absurd to claim that the person in whom they are all happily combined, necessarily displays, side by side with his mastery of games and his deep understanding of cricket in particular, that mastery or understanding of the mysteries of life, that virtuosity in the art of life, which would constitute him a desirable mate. There is asavoir faire, there are problems and intricacies in life, which no degree of familiarity with cricket,no vast fund of experience in the football field, can help a man to master; and it is even questionable whether a young man's ultimate destiny as a husband and a father, far from being assisted, is not even seriously complicated by the extent to which he must have specialised in games and sports in order to earn for himself the whiteflower of "clean-mindedness." It is the wives of such men who are in a position to throw the most light on this question. There is no doubt that they frequently have a tale to tell; but the best among them are naturally disinclined to admit the very serious reasons they may have for disliking the silver trophies that adorn their homes.
As the dinner wore on, animation waxed greater; Sir Joseph dropped an ever-increasing number of aspirates, and Leonetta was actually heard to laugh quite merrily.
Cleopatra still noticed that Denis was very much interested in her, and also observed that, from time to time, Leonetta now responded to his attentive scrutiny.
The conversation turned on gymnastics. Denis, Guy, and Leonetta all seemed to be talking at once; it was a subject that Cleopatra did not know much about.
"We always had three quarters of an hour's gym a day," said Leonetta, looking straight at Denis.
He laughed. "Oh, well," he exclaimed, "you have done me. I haven't touched parallel bars or a trapeze for ten years."
"Neither have I," Guy added.
Thereupon Leonetta allowed Guy to feel the muscles of her arm.
"Iron!" he ejaculated, while Cleopatra looked on with just a little surprise.
"You might at least say steel," she interjected, trying to sustain her rôle as one of the juveniles at table.
In the midst of a very prosy conversation with Sir Joseph and Miss Mallowcoid, Mrs. Delarayne found opportunities enough to watch the younger people, and she was not a little relieved to see the cloud gradually lifting from Leonetta's brow. She knew that in the circumstances she had not been too hard, and gathered from a hundred different signs that her relationship to her younger daughter had been materially improved by what had occurred.
Later on in the drawing-room, before the men arrived, however, Leonetta seemed to suffer a relapse into her former mood of excessive sobriety, and it was then that Miss Mallowcoid beckoned her niece to her.
"I think you were unnecessarily cross with me at dinner," Mrs. Delarayne overheard her sister saying.
Leonetta pouted, and with an air of utter indifference turned to Cleopatra.
"I think Guy Tyrrell rather tame, don't you? It was most awful uphill work talking to him all through dinner."
Cleopatra held up a finger admonishingly."You seemed to be talking animatedly enough," she said.
"Yes," Leonetta began, "all about photography, walking tours, and things that don't matter—" Then she felt Miss Mallowcoid's huge cold hand on her arm.
"Leonetta dear, I said something to you a moment ago," lisped the elderly spinster. And again Mrs. Delarayne looked up to try to catch her daughter's reply.
"I'm sorry, Aunt Bella," said the girl, "but really one does not usually expect to be congratulated on a slip of the tongue, and your—" she burst out laughing.
Mrs. Delarayne thereupon resumed her conversation with Agatha Fearwell, as she was now satisfied that Leonetta was both thoroughly recovered and satisfactorily reformed.
"But I did not congratulate you, I—" her aunt persisted.
"Oh, well," Leonetta interrupted, "it really isn't worth discussing."
In any case it was not discussed, for at this juncture the men appeared.
They distributed themselves anything but haphazardly; Sir Joseph, for instance, seating himself by the side of his hostess; Denis Malster between Leonetta and her sister, and Guy and Stephen, as their diffidence suggested, as remotely as possible from the younger women of the party.
"Now, Leonetta," Sir Joseph began, "tell ussomething about your school life. You are the only one amongst us who has just come from a strange world."
Leonetta laughed. "Yes, a very strange world," she exclaimed.
Sir Joseph laughed too at what he conceived to be a most whimsical suggestion.
"And did you 'ave nice teachers?" he pursued.
"Miss Tomlinson, the history mistress was my favourite," replied the girl.
Denis remarked that he did not know they taught history at a school of Domesticity.
"Yes, you see," Leonetta replied, "the history of the subject. Cookery since the dawn of civilisation, or something desperate like that."
"Was she nice?" Sir Joseph enquired.
"I thought so," answered the girl, "though she wasn't beautiful. You know, she had that sort of very long chin that you feel you ought to shake hands with."
Sir Joseph laughed and made all kinds of grimaces at Mrs. Delarayne, intended to convey that Leonetta was indeed a chip of the old block.
"That's unkind," said Miss Mallowcoid.
Denis Malster threw out his legs and clasped his hands at the back of his head preparatory to making a speech.
"The heartlessness of flappers!" he murmured. "This is indeed a subject worthy of elaboration. Why is the flapper usually heartless?"
Mrs. Delarayne was quick to perceive the unpleasant possibilities of developing such a theme, particularly in view of what had happened earlier in the evening, and, seeking to save Leonetta's feelings, she valiantly tried to change the subject.
"Well, in any case," she said, addressing Leonetta, "you are none the worse for it, my dear. Two years ago you were such a tomboy you could scarcely get out of the door without chipping a piece off each hip; and now——"
"Yes, now she chips pieces off other people," interposed Miss Mallowcoid.
Leonetta, however, was not attending. Her eyes were for the moment fastened on Denis Malster. He had known how to say just the very thing to provoke her interest. He had as much as declared that she was heartless. He,—a man,—had said this. It was like a challenge. She, who felt all heart, or what the world calls "heart," was strangely moved. How could he say such a thing? This was the last remark she would have expected from any man. Her curiosity was kindled, and with it her vanity.
She noticed, as her sister had noticed before her, that he was efficient, well-groomed, smart of speech, passably good-looking, independent at least in bearing, hard, at least in appearance, and possessed of a certain gift of irony that could act like a lash.
She began to think more highly of him; in fact the recollection of his last remark actually piqued her now she thought of it again. At last, forsheer decency, she had to look away from him, and as she did so, she observed that Cleopatra averted her eyes from her.
There was a stir in the company. Agatha Fearwell was going to sing, and Miss Mallowcoid went to the piano.
The performance was not above the usual standard of such amateur efforts, and at the end of it the singer was vouchsafed the usual perfunctory plaudits.
Thereupon Sir Joseph requested a song from Cleopatra. This apparently necessitated a long search in the music cabinet during which all the young people rose from their seats. At last a song was found; it was a sort of French folk-song entitledLes Épouseuses du Berry.
As Cleopatra turned to join her aunt at the piano, however, a spectacle met her eyes which, innocent as it appeared, was nevertheless fatal to her composure.
Denis Malster and Leonetta, facing each other in a far corner of the room, with heads so close that they almost touched, and with hands tightly clasped, were playing the old, old game of trying the strength of each other's wrists, each endeavouring to force the other to kneel.
It was harmless enough,—simply one of those very transparent and very early attempts that are almost unconsciously made by two young people of opposite sexes, to become decently and interestingly in close touch with each other.
Cleopatra's first feeling was one of surprise at Leonetta's being so wonderfully resourceful in engaging the attention of men. When, however, she observed the details of the contest,—the closely gripped hands, the fingers intertwined, the palms now meeting, now parting, and the two smiling faces, Denis Malster's rather attractive figure, appearing to tremendous advantage now, she could not quite see why,—a feeling of uncontrollable alarm took possession of her, and she spread her music with some agitation before her aunt.
Miss Mallowcoid played the opening bars, and still the contest in the far corner did not stop. Denis was not even aware that she—Cleopatra—was about to sing.
At last Mrs. Delarayne, who had not been blind to what was taking place, felt she must interfere. Cleopatra's first note was already overdue.
"Leo, Leo, my dear," she cried, "your sister is going to sing to us."
Leonetta turned round, said she was sorry, released her hands, and she and Denis joined the seated group at some distance from the piano.
The incident, however, was not over yet; for, just as her sister sang her first note, Leonetta, her eyes sparkling with excitement, and her hands discoloured by the struggle, ejaculated loud enough for everyone to hear, "Denis, you're a fibber. Your hands are like iron too!"
Mrs. Delarayne put a finger to her lips, but it was too late. There was a sound of music beingroughly folded up, and Cleopatra turned away from the piano.
"If you're all going to talk," she said, looking a little pale, "it's no use my singing, is it? I can wait a moment."
"Sorry, old girl," Leonetta cried. "It was only me. I'm dumb now."
Mrs. Delarayne had risen and was urging her elder daughter back to the piano. Sir Joseph was also trying his hand at persuasion, and when Miss Mallowcoid and Agatha added their prayers to the rest, Cleopatra at last spread her music out again, and the song began.
Those, however, who know the swing and gaiety ofLes Épouseuses du Berry, will hardly require to be told how hopeless was the effect of it when sung by a voice which, owing to recent and unabated vexation, was continually on the verge of tears. Nothing, perhaps, is more thoroughly tragic than a really lively melody intoned by a voice quavering with emotion, and even Sir Joseph, who did not understand a word of the song, was deeply grateful when it was all over.
Mrs. Delarayne made determined efforts at restoring the natural and spontaneous good cheer which the party appeared to have lost, but her exertions were only partially successful, and although Agatha Fearwell and Cleopatra sang other songs, the recollection of that tragico-comicLes Épouseuses du Berryhad evidently sunk too deeply to be removed.
That night, as Cleopatra was taking leave of her mother, in the latter's bedroom, she lingered a little at the door.
"What is it, my darling?" Mrs. Delarayne demanded. "Do you want to ask me something?"
"Yes, Edith," Cleopatra replied slowly, looking down at the handle she was holding. "I am perfectly prepared to admit that Leo did not perhaps intend to be offensive over my song, although, of course, as you know she ruined the whole thing; but anyhow, do you think that she has any right, so soon after meeting him, to call Mr. Malster 'Denis'? Isn't it rather bad form?"
Mrs. Delarayne sighed. "Very bad form, my dear, very bad form," she replied. "Of course, I admit, it's very bad form. But for all we know, he may have asked her to do it. You see, both you and I call him 'Denis,' and I suppose he thought it would sound odd if Leo did not also."
Still Cleopatra lingered. She wanted to say more, and Mrs. Delarayne divined that she wanted to say more. The words, however, were hard to find, and, at last, bidding her mother "Good-night," she departed only half comforted.
Lord Henry felt he had done his best for England, and now his mind turned covetously towards a country and a clime where his best promised to yield richer and better fruit. He had mended society's nervous wrecks so long that he had come to look upon the whole modern world as a machine too hopelessly out of gear to repay his skilful efforts.
"People who never sit down to a meal with an appetite," he would say, "people whose bodies are as surcharged as their houses with superfluous loot, cannot hope to be well, physically or spiritually. We live on an island huddled together, and yet we grow every day further apart. For the acquisition of superfluous loot means incessant strife. The worst sign of the times is that abstract terms no longer mean the same thing to any two people. Individualism is thus destroying even the value of language. Because where each man has his individual view a common language itself becomes an impossibility. The effort of the Middle Ages was to convert Europe into a single nation. The effort of the modern or 'Muddle' Age, is to convert each single nation into a Europe.That is why abstract terms are slowly losing their value as the current coin of speech."
St. Maur had attached himself to Lord Henry as a kind of voluntary or honorary secretary. He assisted his master where and when he could, and felt that he was more than adequately repaid in the enormous amount he learnt from him.
"Is there no remedy?" he demanded seriously on a day early in August, when the prospect of losing his friend was weighing more heavily than usual upon him. The two were sitting talking in the study of Lord Henry's cottage which stood in a lane off the London road, about two miles north of Ashbury, where his sanatorium was situated.
"There is a remedy, of course," replied Lord Henry. "It would consist in uniting modern nations afresh by means of a powerful common culture. It is only then that men can be guided and led, for it is only then that they can understand what they are taught about life and humanity. In the Middle Ages a common culture was so universal, that even the barriers of nationality did not prevent men from understanding one another. Now there is such a total lack of a uniform culture that men of the same nation speak an unknown tongue to one another. That is the recipe for stupidity."
"But cannot this new uniform culture be created?" St. Maur insisted.
"It would mean a great new religion," Lord Henry answered. "And we are all too muchexhausted for such a stupendous undertaking. New religions depend in the first place upon the belief in great men, and where are the great men of to-day? Only those whose coarse impudence has made them forget their limitations start new religions nowadays. And look at the result!"
"There are enough of them at all events," suggested St. Maur.
"Exactly,—their number is the best comment on their futility."
"But surely the effort, general as it is, shows that people agree with you, and feel the need that you see and recognise?"
"Yes, but the arrogance with which they pretend to supply the need themselves, is the best proof of how deeply they misunderstand the gravity of their plight. Look at these Theosophists, Spiritualists, and members of the Inner Light,—mere cliques, mere handfuls of uninspired and uninspiring cranks. They'll never spread a uniform and unifying culture. They cannot therefore make language once more a common currency for thought."
Aubrey St. Maur had endeared himself to Lord Henry chiefly by the inordinate beauty of his person, his exuberant health, and his modesty. He was wealthy and the only son of a wealthy father. All the "loot" of the de Porvilliers had come to him through his mother, and to Lord Henry's surprise had failed to turn his head. On the contrary, it had if anything filled him with afeeling of guilt, or perhaps that which is most akin to guilt—obligation. And he had long wondered how best he could discharge this obligation to the world. In Lord Henry's company he had elected to find a solution to this problem.
But Lord Henry did not want the youth to join him on his journey to China. The love the young nobleman still felt for his native country bade him leave this promising member of it, if only as a forlorn hope, to prove to Englishmen that here and there, at ever more distant intervals, their blood was still capable of producing something that was eminently desirable.
"You will succeed your father in the Upper House," he said to St. Maur on this occasion, when the latter expressed the desire to become a pious mandarin, "and you will, I trust, be an example of health and wisdom to all. The faith in blood and lineage wants people like you. There is so precious little to which it can be pinned nowadays."
"That's all very well," protested St. Maur. "But you are deserting the battlefield, and leaving an unfledged pupil in charge. Is this nothing to you? Are you incapable of becoming attached to anybody? Without fishing for compliments, is it nothing to you to break our friendship in this way?"
Lord Henry, who as usual was curling his mesh of hair with his fingers, cast a sidelong glance full of meaning at his friend and smiled.
"My dear boy, if it hadn't been for you," hesaid, "I should not be here now. Do you suppose it amuses me to investigate the unsavoury details of every society lady's nervous affliction? Do you suppose I'm flattered by such and such a Guardsman's encomiums when I have cured his stammer, or his inability to proceed beyond the letter 'P' when writing a letter?"
"What is your real purpose in going to China?" persisted the younger man. "I shan't divulge. Can't you tell me?"
"In the first place, my dear boy," Lord Henry replied, "curiosity. I honestly want to see how Chinamen have escaped the madness that is overtaking Europe. Secondly, I have a heart, and I love my country, and I cannot witness my country's decline. Thirdly, and chiefly,—but this is a secret,—I feel that now it is the duty of all enlightened Western Europeans, who have seen the madness of European civilisation, to hasten to the last healthy spot on earth and to preach the Gospel of Europophobia,—that is to say, to warn the wise East against our criminal errors, and to save it from becoming infected by our diseases. If the world is to be saved, acordon sanitairemust be established round Europe and everything like Europe; for Europe has now become a pestilence."
St. Maur who had been standing at the window with his back turned to his friend swung suddenly round, his face illumined as if by an inspiration.
"By Jove," he cried, "that is an idea! That is indeed a crusade! I hadn't thought of that!"
"It is the only beneficent direction in which I feel I can use my powers," said Lord Henry gravely. "It is, if you will, my religion. I feel I am called to be a missionary to the East, to preach the solemn warning against Western civilisation."
"God!" St. Maur exclaimed, "that's an idea with which to fire a generation. It is a new gospel; a new gospel of sin and the Devil."
"I assure you," Lord Henry rejoined, "the bulk of the men at my club would not turn a hair at the suggestion. They would simply turn their papers over, nod significantly at each other, and whisper, 'The fellow's not all there.'"
At this moment Lord Henry's man, Fordham, entered the room.
"Yes?" his master grunted from the depths of his chair.
"A lady to see you, my lord," replied the man.
"I'm out."
"That's what I said, my lord."
"Well?"
"The lady said that was all nonsense; she 'ad called at the Sanatorium, and they'd said you was 'ere."
"Then her name's Delarayne," said Lord Henry.
"Yes, that's it, my lord."
"Very well, then, show her up."
"That woman's a wonder," St. Maur exclaimed. "It is a boiling hot day; at any moment there may be a storm; there was probably no fly at the station,—there never is when I come,—and she must have walked the whole of the two miles in the dust. She has an eye on you, my friend."
"Yes," said Lord Henry, "and by the time a woman has her eye on you, she usually has her claws in you as well. You needn't go," he added, as he noticed St. Maur preparing to leave. "But she's an admirable woman. Good taste amounts almost to heroism in these women who battle with age until their very last breath."
Mrs. Delarayne, if anything more regal and more youthful than ever, but certainly showing signs of having taken violent exercise along a chalky thoroughfare, stepped eagerly towards Lord Henry.
"My dear Lord Henry," she began, "so good of you to be in only to me. But oh, I felt I must see you before leaving town."
She turned and shook hands with St. Maur, and Lord Henry moved an easy chair in her direction.
"Oh, that's right; give me a chair, quick!" she gasped. "I'm broken—broken in body and spirit."
Lord Henry asked the expected question.
"Only this," she said, "that my life soon won't be worth a moment's purchase."
"You are tired," suggested her host. "You don't look after yourself."
"It isn't that," Mrs. Delarayne rejoined. "Nobody takes greater care of themselves than I do. I go to bed every night at ten o'clock precisely,and read until half-past two. What more can I do?"
Lord Henry blinked rapidly, and surveyed her with an air of deep interest. "And you say you are leaving town?" he enquired.
"Yes, I'm taking my family to Brineweald, you know. It is my annual penance, my yearly sacrificial offering to my children. It lasts just six weeks. By the end of it, of course, I am at death's door; but I feel that I can then face the remaining forty-six weeks of gross selfishness with a clean conscience and a brazen face."
"Who's going?"
"Oh, the usual crowd,—my daughters, of course, a friend of theirs, a young Jewess, and perhaps the Fearwell children. The men of the party and my sister Bella will be lodged at Sir Joseph's place, Brineweald Park."
"It sounds engaging enough," said St. Maur.
"Oh, most!" sighed Mrs. Delarayne. "Oh, you can't think what a happy mother I'd be if only I had no children!"
Both men laughed, and Mrs. Delarayne who, ever since her arrival, had been casting unmistakable glances at St. Maur, at last succeeded in silently conveying her meaning to him.
"Well, I'm afraid I must be going downstairs," he said, "I've letters to write."
She extended a hand with alacrity. "Oh, it looks as if I were driving you away," she said.
St. Maur protested feebly against this truthfulinterpretation of his proposed retreat, and withdrew.
Lord Henry took a seat opposite to his visitor, who was obviously as shy as a schoolgirl in his presence, and surveyed her covertly.
"Have you come to tell me that you have abandoned that absurd Inner Light?" he demanded playfully.
"No, indeed; why should I?" she rejoined with affected indignation.
"It is unpardonable," he murmured.
"Why unpardonable?"
"Had you been a Protestant in the past, it would at least have been comprehensible," he said, "because any kind of absurdity is possible after one has been a Protestant. What after all are all these ridiculous, new-fangled creeds but further schisms of Protestantism? But seeing that you were once a Catholic, I repeat, it is unpardonable."
Mrs. Delarayne purred resentfully, as if to imply that it would require something more than that line of persuasion to convince her of her error.
"What do you do to induce me to abandon anything—however erroneous?" she protested at last. "It isn't as if you were even remaining in the country. You are going away. But I cannot bear to think of your going away."
Lord Henry folded his hands and scrutinised her for a moment beneath lowered brows. Her manner was unmistakable; she revealed as much of hergame as her dignity allowed. His heart softened towards her.
"Is it so much to you that I am going?" he demanded.
"Oh, no," she replied, mock cheerfully, "le roi est mort, vive le roi!"
"Haven't you a number of friends?"
"Weighed in the scales, of course," she said, "they represent a tremendous amount of friendship."
"Aren't your daughters an interest?"
"Too adorable, of course,—so adorable that I sometimes wish I'd never been born."
The problem as it presented itself to Lord Henry was rightly: how could this quinquagenarian be given a son whom she could worship? To Mrs. Delarayne the problem was: how could she induce this young man to overcome the obvious objection consisting in the disparity of their ages? She could read her own nature no further than this.
"Have you never any feelings of loneliness?" she demanded. "Don't you ever reflect upon the happiness you might secure yourself and somebody else by being decently married?"
"I might be tempted to marry. It is perfectly possible," Lord Henry replied. "Hitherto the only thing that has deterred me has been my vanity. It would be so horrible to watch the love a woman might bear me slowly turning to indifference,—for that is what marriage means,—thatI don't think I could have the courage to embark upon the undertaking."
"You are flippant," said the widow sadly. "You pipe and joke while Rome is burning."
"One day, of course, I shall have to marry," he muttered, as if to himself.
She would have liked to ask him to Brineweald. She wanted a deep breath of him before he left. For some reason, however, for which she was not too anxious to account, she did not express this wish.
"Why will youhaveto?" she asked.
"I mean," he said, "simply what I am always repeating in my clinique, that save in the case of those who are really called to celibacy,—the Newmans, the Spencers, and the Nietzsches of this world,—physical and spiritual health is difficult without a normal sexual life."
"Quite so," the widow agreed.
"Quite so," Lord Henry repeated, "anormalsexual life." He emphasised the word "normal," hoping thereby to convey gently how hopeless her scheme was.
"And when will that be?"
"Oh, Heaven knows!"
She rose, went to the window, and there was a pause.
"Lord Henry," she began after a while, "would it seem odd to you? Would you think me shameless? Am I hopelessly abandoned, to tell you now, how very much more than mere friendship, mere gratitude I feel for you?"
He buried his face in his hands and held his breath. He knew this was inevitable; but as he had already told St. Maur, he had a heart.
She did not look at him, but continued speaking fluently, warmly, incisively.
"Ever since I met you, I have felt what all of us women long to feel, the ridiculous inferiority of the bulk of modern men suddenly relieved by an object which we are willing to serve and obey. Your cures, if you have ever effected any in me, were just that,—not your regimens or your analyses,—but your words, your glance, the touch of your hand, your presence. Everybody knows you have a bewildering presence. I need not add to the idle compliments you must receive on all hands. But surely I have recognised the greatness beneath the outward glamour. And it has cast a spell over me. I admit it. I am fettered to it, riveted to it. We women suffer to-day because we have no such men as you to look up to. Oh, to have met for once something great, something precious, in a world where these things are so rare!"
He glanced up at her. He could not help observing her spruce footgear smothered in the dust of the road, her straight proud back, her fine profile outlined against the bright colours of the chintz, and her blue-veined hands. And he felt an uncontrollable impulse to tell her how deeply he admired her.
"You are no fool," she pursued; "you must have known that I loved you. Therefore I'monly confirming what you already know. But, believe me, Lord Henry, I am something more than one of your interesting cases."
He protested.
"Yes, I know; you always say women cannot understand men, because to comprehend is to comprise, and the smaller cannot comprise the greater——"
He smiled approvingly.
"You see how accurately I can quote you. That is possibly true. I do not claim to be able to understand you. But surely you will grant me that a woman may have a deep and very real knowledge of being in the presence of something exceptionally great, without precisely understanding it?"
Lord Henry rose. He was blinking rapidly and tugging with more than usual force at his mesh of hair.
"Am I impossible?" she asked hoarsely. "Is the disparity of our ages such that, hitherto, the thought of our being more than friends has been unthinkable to you?"
He went to her side by the window. Words were forming on his lips, but they would make no sentence. She saw his lips moving and noticed his distress.
"Is it not a sign of our deep sympathy that you are the only man in all England in whose presence I forget my ghastly age, my half century and more expended on futilities?"
He took her hand.
"Oh, Edith Delarayne, you wonderful creature!" he exclaimed; "that is the tragedy. You put your finger on the tragedy. If only you could be twenty again, what a wife you would make for me!"
She gave a little sob and fell into his arms. "Oh, my boy, my dear boy!" she cried, and kissed his hand almost with the avidity of hunger, as it clasped hers on his shoulder.
She released herself slowly and lightly dabbed her eyes.
"When are you going away?" he demanded gravely.
"The day after to-morrow," she replied.
"Write to me as usual," he said.
She caught his hand and grasped it firmly. "Oh, Lord Henry, be the same to me!" she pleaded.
He laughed the plea to scorn. "Of course I'll always be the same to you. What do you think?"
She saw that he meant it and moved lightly towards the door. "I must be going," she said, putting away her handkerchief, and trying to control an awkward catch in her breath which was reminiscent of her weeping.
He urged her to stay for lunch; he offered to have her fetched by the Sanatorium car; he begged to be allowed to accompany her back to Ashbury; but she stalwartly refused; and in a moment he and St. Maur were watching her, sprightly as a girl, tripping back along the dusty road to the station.
"My boy, my dear boy," he muttered to St. Maur, "that is what she felt, that is what she said. The unconscious voice in her knew the desired relationship and expressed the wish, although the conscious mind thought only of 'husband.'"
"So inexhaustibly rich is the sun that even when it goes down it pours its gold into the very depths of the sea; and then even the poorest boatman rows with golden oars."
Thus spoke the greatest poet of the nineteenth century, and thus all generations of men have felt.
The warm rich colour, as of ripeness, that it gives to the youngest cheek, the tawny tinge as of jungle fauna with which it vitalises every dead-white urban hand, and the enchanting glamour it lends to the plainest head and face,—these are a few of the works of the sun that are surely a proof of its demoniacal glory. Halos, it is true, it fashions as well, and beyond reckoning; but the white teeth that flash from the tanned mask are scarcely those of a saint. Or has a saint actually been known who really had white teeth of his own?
August in England, between the moist wood-clad hills and the blinding glitter of the sea; August in a beautiful country homestead, with its flowering garden, its cool carpet of lawn stretching to a black line of thick hedgerow which seems to be the last barrier between earth and ocean,—what a season it is, and what a setting for the greatest game of youth, the game of catch as catch can, with a cheerless winter for the losers!
The world is at her old best, and all her children are exalted and exhilarated by the knowledge that they are at their best also. Even the trippers are perpetually in Sabbath clothes, as a sign that they are infected with the prevalent feeling of festivity.
Sabbath clothes without the Sabbath gloom, beauty without piety, freedom with open shops, sunshine without duty,—these to the masses are some of the chief joys of the summer sun in England.
In this enumeration of a few of the leading features of a sunny August in England, however, we should not forget to mention what will appear to some the least desirable of them all. The fact that this particular feature is omitted by the most successful English poets of the Victorian School, as by other sentimentalists, would not excuse us in failing to give it at least a passing reference here; for Victorian, alas! does not by any means signify Alexandrian in regard to the periods of English poetry; and even if it be a sin to mention this aspect of a sunny August, we prefer to sin rather than to resemble a Victorian poet.
The quality referred to, then, is a certain result of the eternally pagan influence of the sun. For, say what you will, the sun is pagan. It says "Yea" to life. In its glorious rays it is ridiculously easy to forget the alleged beauties of another world. Under its scorching heat the snakysinuousness of a basking cat seems more seductive than the image of a winged angel, and amid the gold it lavishes, nothing looks more loathsome, more repulsive, than the pale cheek of pious ill-health. In short it urges man and woman to a wanton enjoyment of life and their fellows; it recalls to them their relationship to the beasts of the field and the birds in the trees; it fills them with a careless thirst and hunger for the chief pastimes of these animals,—feeding, drinking, and procreation; and the more "exalted" practices of self-abnegation, self-sacrifice, and the mortification of the flesh, are easily forgotten in such a mood.
Nothing goes wrong, nothing can go wrong, while the sun blazes and the flowers are beautiful. So thinks everybody who has survived Puritanism unscathed, so thought the majority of Brineweald's visitors that year, so thought Mrs. Delarayne and her party of eager young swains and still more eager virgins. Wantonness was in the air,—wantonness and beauty; and when these two imps of passion come together August is at its zenith.
Mrs. Delarayne had been down at Brineweald a little under a week; Vanessa Vollenberg and the young Fearwells had already been of the party four whole days; Sir Joseph with Denis Malster and Guy Tyrrell, Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Tribe and Miss Mallowcoid had arrived at Brineweald Park twenty-four hours after the Delarayne householdhad been completed, and now everybody was busy settling down to the novelty of life, effacing the traces of strangeness wherever they appeared, and measuring each other's skill and power at pastimes not necessarily confined to swimming, golf, and tennis.
Leonetta had been congratulated on her friend Vanessa. Mrs. Delarayne who had expected an over-dressed, heavy young lady, with Shylock countenance and shaggy negroid coiffure, had been not a little surprised when she saw alight on the Brineweald down platform a girl who, though distinctly Semitic in features, had all the refinement, good taste, and sobriety of a Gentile and a lady. It was a relief, to say the least, and when, in addition, she found her intelligent and a lively companion, she was devoutly thankful.
Nothing beneath that fierce August sun escaped the keen comprehending eye of Vanessa Vollenberg. The mother and the two daughters with whom she found her present lot cast, gave her food enough for meditation and secret comment; but while their acumen and penetration were hardly inferior to her own, she felt an adult among people not completely grown up. It was as if they still retained more of the ingenuousness of primitive womanhood than she, and thus she "circumnavigated" them, while they, all too self-centred, had barely discovered in which hemisphere her shores were to be found. In this way the seniority of her race was probably revealed.
Beautiful in her own Oriental style, voluptuous and graceful, with small well-made hands, and shapely limbs, she might have proved a formidable rival to Leonetta; or was it perhaps precisely her Jewish blood,—which seemed in Leonetta's eyes to preclude rivalry,—that had first endeared this attractive young Jewess to her wilful Gentile friend?
Girls have strange reasons for "falling in love" with each other at school. It is not impossible that the inconceivability of eventual rivalry should be one of these.
Mrs. Delarayne's house, "The Fastness," was one of a round dozen large houses that stood along the crest of Brineweald Hill, overlooking the little seaside town of Stonechurch. It took a little over fifteen minutes to walk down from Brineweald to the beach at Stonechurch, and perhaps a little over twenty minutes to walk back up the steep hill. Sir Joseph's place, Brineweald Park, lay inland on the far side of the village of Brineweald, about a mile from "The Fastness," but the distance was soon covered by the young people, even when they could not dispose of one of Sir Joseph's cars; and the two households were therefore practically always mingled.
Bathing, tennis, golf, picnicking, croquet,—these helped to fill the time while the sun was high; and when the cool of the evening came, the quiet paths and groves of Brineweald Park, or the bowers of Mrs. Delarayne's garden, were an agreeablerefuge for bodies pleasantly fatigued and faintly langorous.
Mrs. Delarayne who was not uncommonly in a condition of faint languor was content, during these terrible six weeks of her life, to play the part of spectator. Silently, but with a good proportion of the available interest, she contemplated the younger members of the party, and whether she happened to be on herchaise-longueoverlooking her own lawn, or on the terrace of Brineweald Park, her deep concern about the performances of her juniors never abated. The fact that a good deal of this determined attention was calculated to ward off the less attractive alternative of Sir Joseph's untiring advances, was suspected least of all by the generous squire of Brineweald himself; but it was noticeable too, that she would often sit for long spells neither observing the pranks of her young people nor listening to Sir Joseph's dulcet tones, and then it was that her daughters would suspect that age was after all beginning to tell, even in the case of their valiant parent. At such times she was, of course, simply dreaming day dreams of the life she could have had if, as "he" had said, she had been twenty now; and the beatific expression that would come into her face was scarcely one of reconciliation to senility.
To say that Vanessa Vollenberg and Agatha Fearwell were perfectly happy on this holiday, would be a little wide of the mark. Indeed their condition fell very much more short of perfecthappiness than they could possibly have anticipated.
Truth to tell, Leonetta was too indisputably mistress of the stage. The infinite resource with which she contrived always to draw the limelight in her direction, the unremitting regularity with which she turned every circumstance into a "curtain" for her own apotheosis, while it fired the proud Cleopatra to ever fresh efforts at successful competition,—efforts which were proving tremendously exhausting,—left Vanessa and Agatha in a state not unlike a suspension of hostilities. They simply waited. Of all the men, Denis Malster was certainly the only one that a girl could have been expected to make a struggle for, and since he appeared to be entirely hypnotised by Leonetta, the remaining two, one of whom, in Agatha's case, was a brother, seemed to invite only a Platonic relationship of games and sports.
It is true that Guy Tyrrell felt he could have gone to any lengths with the fascinating, voluptuous Jewess; but he had the inevitable defects of his "clean-mindedness," and knew as little how to engage the interest of a thoroughly matriculated girl as to rouse enthusiasm for botany in a cat.
The first walk they had taken with the three young men and Cleopatra and her sister had been typical of much that followed.
In the middle of a conversation in which Vanessa's native Jewish wit was beginning to tellagainst the more homely gifts of the rest of the party, Leonetta would suddenly fall back, stand in an attitude of rapt attention over a brook, a well, a wild flower, a plank bridge, a pool, or anything; and, at a signal from her, the three men of the party would quickly rally to her halting place, and enter heartily into whatever spirit the object contemplated was supposed to stimulate.
It was usually the merest trifle that caused her thus to arrest for a moment the forward movement of her companions, and to interrupt a conversation to boot; but Vanessa alone had the penetration to see the unfailing instinct for power, the unflagging determination to be the centre of attention, which prompted this simple strategy, on Leonetta's part; and rather than compete with it,—seeing that it was practised with all the usual efficiency of unconsciousness,—she saved herself the vexation of possible defeat by yielding quietly to Leonetta the supremacy she apparently insisted upon having. Thus, while she kept a steady eye upon Denis Malster, whose manner had captivated her from the start, she was content, or rather discontent, to note step by step Guy Tyrrell's blundering innocence in attempted courtship.
Agatha, accustomed as she was to the rôle of padding in life, fell back on her devoted brother, and used such influence as she possessed over him, to keep his mind well aired and cool amid the slightly overheating breezes of that memorable midsummer.
Cleopatra, on the other hand, not so wise perhaps as Vanessa, certainly not so ready to retire as Agatha, and possibly less able to feel if not to simulate indifference, than either of them, plunged into the conflict with a vigour and a degree of animation which made her almost as unbearable to the other girls as Leonetta herself. Again, however, Vanessa was shrewd enough to realise the emergency Cleopatra was in, and forgave her much that left Agatha painfully wondering. For Cleopatra the fight was a serious one. It called for all her resources and all her skill. Unfortunately she lacked Leonetta's fertility in finding means by which to draw the general attention upon herself, and being overanxious as well, her tactics frequently failed. She would descend to every shift to thwart her sister's wiles,—only to find, however, that it was more often Stephen Fearwell or the Incandescent Gerald, than Guy and Denis, who allowed themselves to be diverted from their orbit round Leonetta, to attend to her.
At tennis it would be a blister suddenly formed on Leonetta's hand; at croquet it would be a fledgling just beside her ball; on the beach it would be a peculiar pebble,—anywhere, everywhere, there was always something over which Leonetta would suddenly stand dramatically still, until every male within sight, including sometimes Sir Joseph himself, had run all agog to her side.
Now the imitation of such tactics is difficult enough; their defeat, when they are combatedconsciously, is literally exhausting. In two or three days Cleopatra was exhausted.
Never at a loss for a pretext, never apparently thinking any excuse too jejune, too transparently fatuous, or too puerile, to draw the attention of the men, Leonetta, with unabated high spirits, won again and again, every day, every hour, such a number of these silent secret victories over the rest of the young women of the party, that at the end of a week, when their cumulative effect was so overwhelmingly manifest as no longer to allow of denial, she openly assumed the rôle of queen of the party.
Again and again, in a game of tennis, Cleopatra's tired and overworked brain would grapple with the problem, why a certain empty remark of Leonetta's had caused Denis and Guy to double up with laughter, and had thus held up the game for a moment; and the solution was hard to find. She knew that even a brighter remark from herself would not have so much as caused them to interrupt their service; but she was imperfectly acquainted with the psychology of rulership, and did not understand that when once, by fair means or foul, a certain member of a party has by her own unaided efforts elevated herself to the position of its queen, everything ostensibly witty that proceeds from her mouth is greeted with obsequious laughter by her devoted subjects.
Indeed, in order not to appear a spoilsport, Cleopatra was at last reduced to the humiliatingresort of joining in the courtly merriment which appeared to her so extravagantly to result from her sister's mildest jests.
To say that by this time she was feeling a slight sinking sensation in the region of her heart, would be to express with scrupulous moderation what was actually taking place. For Cleopatra, theretofore, had held her own against the best. A good rider, a splendid shot, with almost a professional form in tennis and golf, and a good swimmer and dancer besides, she possessed none of those shortcomings, so handsomely acknowledged when they are present, which would even have justified her in taking up an unassuming position. Besides she was quite rightly aware of owning certain sterling qualities which promised to afford a very much more solid support to the everyday life of this world, than the constant carnival brilliance of her sister; and she found it oppressive to have to appear perpetually in carnival spirits, when she craved for those more sober moods in which her less volatile virtues could make a good display.