by E. F. Benson
“Soufflé,” continued the dowager, glancing down the menu, “when composed of meat — that is, of nitrogenous substance — is utterly unsuitable to human food. It produces a distention—”
But Mrs. Davenport broke in, —
“Dear Lady Hayes, let me send for the wing of a chicken. I know you like chicken wing.”
A sigh resembling relief went round the table. Mrs. Davenport had broken the charmed circle, who were waiting, like the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, for the unaccountable brimstone to descend on them. Reggie began to talk very rapidly about the Ascot cup; Jim Armine engaged Mrs. Davenport on the Irish question; and Mr. Davenport, by way of transition, asked Lady Hayes whether gas was not very unhealthy.
But the subject of gas did not appear to interest the old lady. She wished to talk about something else, and when she wished to do anything, she did it.
“My daughter-in-law—” she began.
Reggie was still discussing, or rather enunciating, truths or untruths on the chances of Orme, and Lady Hayes’s words did not reach him. But Lady Hayes was accustomed to demand a universal deference and attention for her remarks. So she glared at Reggie, who soon caught her eye — it was impossible not to catch her eye very soon when it meant business — and subsided.
“My daughter-in-law,” repeated the dowager— “whom I saw this afternoon, driving a dogcart in the Park — it was quite unheard of for a young woman to drive a dogcart alone when I was young — asked me to tell you all to keep Monday week open. She is sending out cards for a dance on that day — or rather she has sent them out, and she forgot to send them to you. Therefore I am a penny postman. She would be glad to see you all. Personally, I think the dances that are given now are simply disgusting. They are very unhealthy, because everyone sits up at the time when the ordinary evening fever sets in; that is, from twelve to two. But I promised to give her message. I am responsible no further. And the cotillion is indecent.”
Mr. Davenport made a bad matter worse.
“I am sure there will be none of that romping which you so rightly — ah! — dislike,” he said. “I always think—”
But what Mr. Davenport always thought will never be known, for her ladyship interrupted him.
“It is based on immorality,” she announced; “it is an exhibition that would disgrace any Christian country, and more especially England.”
“Why especially England?” asked Jim, who was conscious of a challenge in her words.
“Because English people seem to pretend to a high morality more than any other nation.”
“And are you cruel enough to include your daughter-in-law in that category?” asked Jim.
“Eva Hayes is very English,” said the old lady.
“I am sure she never made any pretence of an exceptional morality,” remarked Jim, eating his nitrogenous food, and getting angry.
“No one would accuse her of being exceptionally moral.”
“I said she didn’t make a pretence of it,” said Jim.
Mrs. Davenport threw herself into the breach, and asked the dowager how digitalis was made.
Gertrude was sitting next Jim Armine, and wished to know more. Old Lady Hayes was well embarked on the structure of foxglove seeds, and she turned to Jim.
“You know Lady Hayes very well, don’t you?” she asked.
“I was with them in Algiers last year.”
“Do you like her very much?”
“That’s a wrong word to use, somehow,” he said. “I think she is the cleverest woman I ever saw, and, perhaps, the most interesting,” he added, in a burst of veiled confidence.
“Ah!” — it was somewhat discouraging to hear that so many people took this as their main characteristic— “I don’t know her at all. But I don’t feel as if I should like her.”
“I believe women dislike her very much, as a rule,” remarked Jim, drily.
Something in his speech made Gertrude angry. It is always annoying, however modest an opinion we may have of ourselves, to be classed as a probable example to an universal rule. She waited a moment before she answered him.
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, there are very few people whom both women and men like much. Of course, I am not referring to the ordinary, stupid, good-natured people who are universal favourites — that is to say, whom no one dislikes — but to the people whom many men or women get excited about. She is one of those.”
Mrs. Davenport was beginning to collect eyes — that is to say, she was looking at Gertrude, for no one could collect the dowager’s eyes — and Gertrude rose in obedience.
“I think I know what you mean,” she said.
Jim was left in excusable uncertainty as to what she meant, and the ladies left the room.
Mr. Davenport sat down again with an air of relief.
“I have always been considered a strong man,” he said, “but, by the side of that old lady, I am a cripple and a baby. Get the cigarettes, Reggie.”
“She told me that cigarettes were slow but certain death, yesterday,” remarked Reggie, “but she cannot make me rude to her. It would be such a pity.”
“Oh! she regards you as a possible convert,” said Jim. “She hopes that you will go about with eight holes in your boots before long.”
“How does she get on with Percy’s sister?” asked Reggie, innocently.
Jim Armine laughed.
“Didn’t you know you were her ark? She got routed in several pitched battles, and retired precipitately.”
“That was when you were abroad last year, Reggie,” said Mr. Davenport. “She came here one day with her boxes and medicines, and asked us to take her in. She gave no reason; but Lady Hayes told your mother.”
“Was Lady Hayes so rude to her?”
Jim Armine laughed.
“She was so polite, on the contrary. Don’t you know her?”
Gertrude went off next morning to meet Mrs. Carston at Tunbridge, and go with her to Aix. Reggie went with her to Victoria, and had parting words on the platform.
“I wish you were coming with me, Reggie,” said Gertrude. “We’re going to Lucerne in a month from now, when mother has had her course. That will be towards the end of June. Do come. It is an awfully nice place, and you can go up mountains — or row if you like. Will you?”
Reggie thought it a brilliant and feasible idea.
“I don’t care a bit about London,” he said, “and I do happen to care about you. It will be lovely. Write to me just before you go there, and tell me the hotel, and so on. Of course, I’ll come. Ah! good-bye, Gerty.”
The train moved slowly out of the station, and Reggie was left standing on the platform, waiting for it to curl away into the dark arch which soon swallowed it up. He had lost a great deal, and he went home somewhat silently.
That evening there was a great reception at one of the Foreign Embassies. Mrs. Davenport was the sister of the Ambassador’s wife, and, after dinner, she asked whether anybody was going with her. Her husband eschewed such festivities; like a sensible man, he preferred, he said, to sit quietly at home, than to stand wedged in among a crowd of people who didn’t care whether they saw him or not, and fight his way into a stuffy drawing-room. Reggie was sitting in the window, which he had thrown wide open, and was reading The Field. He had written a short note to Gertrude because he missed her, and as her bodily presence was not there, he felt it was something to communicate with her, but letter-writing was a difficulty to him, and the note had been very short.
An idea seemed to strike Mrs. Davenport when she saw him.
“Reggie, why don’t you come?”
“I’ll come if you like. Will it be amusing? Yes; I should like to come. Let me smoke in the carriage, mummy.”
The two went downstairs together, and got into the carriage.
“Poor old boy,” said Mrs. Davenport, laying her hand on his, “you will feel rather lonely to-night. I thought you’d like to come.”
“It’s an awful bore, Ger
ty having to go away,” said Reggie, without any obvious discontent, “but it’s only for a month, you know. I’m going to join her at Lucerne, if you don’t want me. I hope there’s something to do there. She said there were some mountains about. I shall climb.”
Mrs. Davenport was conscious of a slight chill.
“Well, there’ll be Gerty there,” she said.
“Oh, yes; of course,” said Reggie. “I shouldn’t think of going if she wasn’t there. You said I might smoke, didn’t you?”
“I’m very happy about you and Gerty,” said Mrs. Davenport, after a pause. “I should have chosen her of all others for a daughter-in-law.”
“Oh! but I chose her first,” said Reggie. “That’s more important, isn’t it? I wrote her a line this evening. I wish I didn’t hate writing letters so. I can never think of anything to say. What do you say in letters, mother, you always write such good ones?”
“But you don’t find it difficult to talk, Reggie. Why should you find it difficult to write?”
“Oh! but I do find it difficult to talk,” said he. “It’s dreadfully puzzling. I never talk to Gerty.”
“Are you always quite silent, then?”
“No; but I don’t talk. At least, I suppose I do talk, in a way. I babble, you know. She does most of the talking.”
Mrs. Davenport laughed.
“Babble on paper, then,” she said; “Gerty will like it just as well.”
“Oh! but I can’t. It’s so silly if you put it down. Is this the Embassy? I hope I shall meet a lot of people I know.”
Reggie’s common sense was enormous. Gertrude had gone away, and she wouldn’t come back for the wishing. He wished she had not gone very much, but here he was in England without her. Surely England without her was the same as England with her, except that she was not there. Her absence, from a practical point of view, did not take the taste out of everything else. How should it? She was a very charming person, the most charming person Reggie had ever met. But there were other charming people, on a distinctly lower level, no doubt, but they did not cease to be charming because Gertrude had gone to Aix. After all, Reggie agreed with the great materialistic philosophers of all time, though he had never read their works. Mrs. Davenport felt somewhat annoyed with this school of thought as she dismounted from the carriage.
The Embassy stood at the corner of a large square, and a broad, red carpet ran from the door across to the road, for royalty was expected. Inside the house the arrangements all corresponded with the magnificent promise of the red carpet. A row of gorgeous flunkies, a band in the hall beneath the stairs, several hundred pounds’ worth of hot-house flowers banked up against the wall, a crowd of perfectly-dressed, bustling aristocrats, crowding up and staring, in the worst possible breeding, at a small space between two pillars, where three princesses were looking rather bored, and a similar number of princes were talking to the few who had managed, by dint of loyal shoves, to edge themselves into the august presences; the smiling host and hostess, the pleasant music of women’s voices, crossing the somewhat sombre strains of the band below, all these things are the invariable concomitants of such festivities, and on the whole one crush is rather like another crush.
Mrs. Davenport and Reggie had moved slowly up the staircase, and Reggie certainly was finding it amusing. There were lots of people he knew, and he stood chatting on the stairs while Mrs. Davenport talked for a few moments to her sister.
Later on he was standing in a doorway between two of the big reception rooms, talking and laughing, and commanding, by reason of his height, a good deal of the room beyond, when he saw the crowd by the door opposite to him sway and move, as if a wind had passed over it; and through the room, plainly visible, for the crowd made way for her as she was walking with a prince, came a woman he had never seen before. She was tall, dressed in some pale, soft material; round her neck went a single row of diamonds, and above it rose a face for the like of which men have lived and died. Eva had a habit of looking over people’s heads and noticing no one, but Reggie happened to be six foot three, and in his long, eager gaze was something that arrested Eva’s attention. She looked at him fixedly and gravely, until the thing became absurd, and then she turned away with a laugh, and asked who that pretty boy was.
Reggie, when the spell of her look was broken, turned away too, and asked who the most beautiful woman in the world was.
“There, there,” he cried, pointing at her, regardless of men or manners.
So the great loom clashed and crossed, and two more threads were woven, side by side, into the garment of God.
CHAPTER V.
There is a distinct tendency, if we may trust books on travels and early stages of religious belief among the uncivilised, dusky masses of the world to assign every event to a direct supernatural influence. Certain savages, if they hit their foot against a stone, will say that there is a demon in that stone, and they hasten to appease him by sacrificial sops. We see the exact opposite of this among those nations, which, like those in our own favoured isle, assign every event to pure chance. There is no harm in calling it chance, and there is no harm in assigning the most insignificant event to a local god, and the lesson we may learn from these elementary reflections is, that there are, at least, two points of view from which we may regard anything.
To adopt, however, the nomenclature of the day, this chance that led Lady Hayes to walk down that room at the French Embassy, when Reggie was standing at the door, was a very big chance. One of the least important results of it was that it occasioned this book to be written.
Reggie was, as I have mentioned before, a very susceptible young man. He fully realised, in propriâ personâ, Mrs. Davenport’s “healthy condition” of being in a chronic state of devotion, and this, coupled to his extreme susceptibility, will fully account for the fact that he moved slowly after Lady Hayes, till, by another chance meeting, she fell in with his mother, who had followed him from the top of the stairs, and got introduced. Mrs. Davenport pronounced the mystic words, “Lady Hayes, may I introduce my son Reggie,” and the thing was done.
Lady Hayes was amused to find herself so quickly introduced to the “pretty boy” who had stared at her, and as her prince had gone away, she was ready to talk to him, and it appeared that he was ready to talk to her.
“I was so sorry I couldn’t come to lunch yesterday,” he began, “and I forgot to send a note to say I couldn’t.”
“We have lunch every day,” remarked Lady Hayes, gravely. “Come to-morrow. I shall think it very rude if you cut me again. So will Percy. I shall send him to call you out.”
“I know Percy very well,” said Reggie. “I’m awfully fond of him. I don’t believe he’d call me out.”
Eva looked at him again with some amusement. This particular type was somewhat new to her. He was so extraordinarily young.
“I’m very fond of Percy too,” she said.
“Oh, but he’s your brother,” said Reggie.
“So he is.”
She laughed again.
“How extremely handsome he is,” she thought to herself, in a parenthesis. “Why was I never so young as that.”
Then aloud, —
“I’m going to ask you to give me your arm, and take me to get something cold to drink. Do you like ices?” she asked with some experimental malice.
“Lemon water,” said Reggie after consideration, “but not cream ices, they’re stuffy, somehow. I’d better tell my mother where we’re going, and then I can meet her again afterwards.”
“Ah! Lady Hayes,” exclaimed the voice of their host’s brother, “I’ve been looking for you. Prince Waldenech wishes to be introduced to you. Adeline sent me to find you.”
Lady Hayes raised her eyebrows.
“I’ll come by and by,” she said. “I can’t now. I’m going to eat an ice — lemon water. Tell her I will be back soon — ten minutes.”
“Prince Waldenech’s just going.”
“Then I am afraid it will be a ple
asure deferred for me. Come, Mr. Davenport. You shall have a lemon water ice, and so will I.”
“That was very kind of you to keep your engagement to me,” said Reggie.
“You deserved I should cut you, as you cut me yesterday. But I felt inclined to keep this engagement, which makes all the difference. Of course, if you’d felt inclined to come yesterday you wouldn’t have forgotten. One never forgets things one likes.”
“Oh, but I did feel inclined to come,” said Reggie, and stopped short.
“It was self denial, was it?”
“No, I was wanted to do something else.”
“What did you do else, if it isn’t rude to ask?”
“Oh! I went to the concert at St. James’. They did the Tannhäuser overture.”
“Did you like it?”
“Oh yes, it was awfully pretty.”
Eva laughed again.
“I expected you would think it stupid or ugly.”
“How did you know?” asked he.
“You told me yourself. I knew almost as soon as you began to speak. Never mind. Don’t look so puzzled. You shall come to the opera some night with me, and hear it again. I’m dreadfully rude, am I not?”
“You rude! No!” said Reggie, stoutly. “But you mustn’t mind my being stupid.”
“I like stupid people.”
“I should have thought you would have hated them. But I’m glad you like them,” said he, blushing furiously.
“What pretty speeches! But you are quite wrong about my hating stupid people — I don’t say you’re stupid, you know — but in the abstract. You see I know much more about you already than you know about me. I was right about your thinking Wagner ugly, and you were wrong about my disliking stupid people. There’s the buffet. I shall sit down here, and you shall bring two ices — one for yourself and one for me.”