by E. F. Benson
Mrs. Brereton moved a little into the shadow.
“Don’t mind me, dear,” she said, “I am going to have it done again this afternoon; it won’t do at all.”
Lady Alston laughed; she had noticed the iridescence.
“Now you, Mildred,” she said, “you are an excellent case in point. Tell me why you find it worth while to do that. What object is served by your spending hours at your hair-dresser’s? Can you find nothing better to do?”
“You don’t know my hair-dresser. He is a small Frenchman with a lack-lustre eye, who sighs over the wickedness of the world. I sigh too; and we find sympathy in each other’s eyes. Some day I shall ask him to dinner, and that will be disappointing. Besides, my hair is beginning to be neatly picked out with gray, and when your hair is gray it looks as if you were no longer young. Nor am I. I am thirty-six. But I have still a greedy appetite for pleasure, which is the only real test of youth. Therefore I cut my coat, or rather dye my hair, according to my essential age, and pay no attention to the utterly misleading measure of years.”
“But what is the use of being young if it is only to be young?” asked Lady Alston.
“That is a question which you will not ask when you are thirty-six. Most delightful things are of no use whatever, and useful things are seldom delightful. Go on about the want of originality in the world.”
“There is really nothing to say about it. It is there, a colossal fact. Nobody is serious — seriousness is considered the greatest of social crimes — and we drift along like thistle-down. We are vicious; we are idle. No one has any dignity or any manners, and there is no object under the sun, except perhaps the avoidance of physical pain, for which we would sacrifice our breakfast or dinner.”
“There is no one under the sun,” said Mildred, “for whom many of us would not sacrifice our reputations.”
“But not our dinner. Oh, I know I am only really speaking of — well, of people you and I know best, among whom we choose to pass our time. There again you see our utter want of originality. We are bound hand and foot by conventions of our own making. Supposing I happened to go into the country for a fortnight, instead of grilling here in London, every one would say it was quite unheard of. And I have not got sufficient originality to go, although I do think that it is simply silly and absurd to live in a town in the summer.”
“Every one would say a great deal more than that,” remarked Mrs. Brereton.
“I know they would. They would wonder whom I had gone with, and they would speedily invent several people. I beg the pardon of the people among whom we live. They have one passion, and it is scandal; the more ill-natured the better.”
“No; ill-nature has nothing to do with it,” said Mrs. Brereton. “They have a passion for scandal, it is true. What else is there to talk about? I share it; in fact, I have a particularly large helping, but it is the subject-matter of scandal which really interests people. I don’t see why you shouldn’t call it the study of human nature. It is if you come to think of it.”
Lady Alston shook her head.
“No, the study of the worst side of it,” she said. “So far, what you say is true. All that most men think about is women, and all that women think about is men. That is the coarse, raw truth of the thing; that is the real indictment. Oh, it is inexplicable to me! All that we want in this world is at our command — at any rate all the beautiful and interesting things in existence can be read or heard or seen by us. But we don’t waste two thoughts on them all. We sit in corners and giggle like barmaids with our young men. And, as long as there is no public scandal, no scandal of the wrong sort — you know what I mean — the more people that see us, the better we like it. We put our noses in the air when we see a Harry and a Harriet with their arms round each other’s necks, having changed hats, and say, ‘How those people can!’ But we can! And we do!”
Mrs. Brereton shrieked with laughter.
“Oh, Marie, you are too heavenly!” she said. “And you certainly have a right to say those things, because nobody ever accused you of changing hats with anybody. You don’t draw them in, you know, dear. They call you ‘Snowflake’ and all sorts of things, I am told. And such lots of people offer you their hats. Yet you never take one.”
Lady Alston shifted her position slightly, as if something had suddenly made her uncomfortable.
“It is no use talking about wickedness nowadays,” she said, “because people simply stare, as if they did not know what you meant. But I made Blanche stare in a different kind of manner the other day, when I asked her if she really had no idea how vulgar she was.”
“Surely she did not mind being called vulgar?”
“She did when I explained carefully what I meant by vulgarity. Of course a certain sort of vulgarity is chic now. It is very vulgar not to be vulgar, not to talk at the top of one’s voice, and eat too much, and laugh very loud at things which ought not to be said; but when I told her what sort of a picture she makes when she sits simpering and ogling Dick all across the room, and, so to speak, spreading herself on the floor for him to walk over, she did not think I was so pleasant. But that’s exactly what she does.”
Mrs. Brereton drew on her gloves.
“There is something very successful in your attitude, Marie,” she said. “You go about hurling home-truths at people; you hold up looking-glasses to them, and make them see themselves; you point out what brutes they are, and scold them for it; but they never bear you any ill-will, and always want to see you. You really must not go into the country: we cannot get on without you!”
“Ah, if I only was conceited enough to think that, I should go!”
“That is truly amiable. But what I mean is this: you have got somehow the quality of centrality; our parties — I’m sure I don’t know why — are brilliant if you are there, and sensibly flatter if you are not. I suppose it is because people are always talking about you, and it is so nice in one’s own house to be able to point to the original. At the same time, I always feel about you as if you were the volcano on which we were all dancing.”
“I shan’t explode: I am the least likely person in the world to explode,” said Marie.
“Ah, you never can tell about volcanoes. That is the joy of them. I snatch a fearful joy from you, dear. I wish I was a volcano. How do you manage it? Do you get very angry inside, and determine not to say anything till the pressure is irresistible? By the way, Jim Spencer has just come back. You know him, I suppose? Anyhow, you will meet him at dinner this evening.”
Marie looked up with a sudden vivacity.
“Jim Spencer? Why, of course I do. We were brought up together almost. Then — well, then I married, and I lost sight of him somehow.”
“One does,” observed Mrs. Brereton. “Marriage often produces a sort of moral cataract.”
“Don’t be foolish, Mildred. There is nothing cheaper or easier or falser than that sort of innuendo. Besides, he went abroad; he has been away two years, I should think.”
“They do go abroad,” said Mrs. Brereton.
“Oh, if you want to know, there is no earthly reason why I should not tell you. He proposed to me. But I always liked him very much.”
“I always said so,” remarked Mrs. Brereton.
“Then you had no business to. Dear Jim! I shall be delighted to see him again. He is one of the few really reasonable people I know. He has got some sort of plan of his own; he has always known what he meant to do, though he has not always done it. For instance, he wanted impossible things; he had no money and I had none, so he proposed that we should marry and support ourselves by his writings. He has appeared before now in Christmas numbers.”
“Then, perhaps you acted wisely. But he rolls in wealth now. A South African millionaire, without anything South African about him: no local colour, in fact. He is also remarkably handsome. Wealth, manners, good looks! A fairy-prince combination.”
Lady Alston laughed.
“Dear me! I shall like to see Jim with society at his feet,
” she said.
“You make certain it will go there?”
Lady Alston raised her eyebrows.
“My dear, how can you ask? He is rich — that is sufficient alone.”
“He must not kick us, then. It is to be understood he gives us halfpence, golden halfpence. And it is very interesting — that story about him and you, I mean.”
Lady Alston did not at once reply.
“You give one a bad taste in the mouth sometimes, Mildred,” she said at length.
“Very possibly. And you always tell one that one has done so.”
“I know. That is why we are friends.”
Mrs. Brereton looked doubtful.
“In spite of it, I should say.”
“No, because of it. Ah! here is Jack.”
Jack Alston was one of those people whom it was quite unnecessary to point out, because he was distinctly visible not only to the outward, but also to the inward eye. He was so large, that is to say, that you could not fail to notice that he had come into a room, and at the same time, he had about him the quality of making himself felt in some subtle and silent manner. As a rule he spoke but little; but his silence, as Mildred Brereton once remarked with more than her usual insight, took up all the time. It could not be described as a rich silence, for it was essentially dry, but somehow it compelled attention. Probably, if he had been short and squat, it would have passed unnoticed, but coming as it did from him, it was charged with a certain force, partaking of his own quality. Also it was doubly unnecessary for his wife to call attention to his entrance, for on no one did it produce such an effect as on her. Thus, on this occasion, having remarked on it, she said no more.
Jack lounged slowly into the balcony, shook hands with Mrs. Brereton, and sat down on a basket chair sideways to his wife, so that he looked straight at her profile.
“Decent afternoon for once, Mildred,” he said. “Summer at last. You look summery, too.”
“What there is left of me,” said she. “Marie has been taking the hide off us all — skinning us.”
Jack considered this a moment.
“Well, you look all right skinned,” he said at length. “Bad habit of Marie’s, though. What has she been skinning you about?”
“She’s been telling me we are all wicked and stupid, and vicious and vulgar.”
“That’s a hobby of hers. One must have a hobby. Going out this afternoon, Marie?”
Mildred took the hint instantly.
“I must be off,” she said. “Really, Jack, you have the most brutal manner. You send me to the right-about with the least possible ceremony. So I wish to tell you I was going in any case. I’ve a hundred things to do.”
Jack rose.
“When have you not? I’ll see you down. Wait a minute, Marie, if you’re not in a hurry; I want to have a word with you.”
“Oh, don’t trouble,” said Mildred. “I can find my way.”
Jack said nothing, but merely followed her into the house, and when they had passed the drawing-room, “Has she been cutting up rough about anything in particular?” he asked.
“Oh, no; merely the rigid attitude, fire-works, thunder-storms, what you will.”
“I’m rather tired of them. For several reasons she had better stop. I believe most idiots find it amusing.”
Mildred took a parasol out of the stand, with the air of a purchaser selecting the one that most struck her fancy. As a matter of fact, it happened to be her own.
“I should take care if I were you,” she said in a low voice. “A man like you cannot form the least idea of what a woman like Marie really is. Is my carriage here? Just see, please.”
She stood on the bottom step of the stairs, putting on her rather thick and masculine driving-gloves, while Jack crossed the hall and rang the bell. Then he came back to the bottom of the stairs again.
“Do you mean that she suspects anything?” he asked.
“No, of course not. What I do mean is that she is beginning to see what we all are like. You and I, when we see that, are delighted. It is a nice big playground. But it does not strike Marie as a playground. Also you must remember that she is the — how shall I say it! — the sensation, the latest, the fashion. You’ve got to be careful. She is capable of exploding some day, and if she did it would be noticeable. It will hardly be worth while picking up the fragments of you and me that remain, Jack, if she does. Because if she does, it will be since something has touched her personally.”
“Well?”
“You are extraordinarily slow. Of course the person who is most likely to touch her personally is you.”
“I’ve got to mind my p’s and q’s, in fact. That’s not the way to manage her.”
Mrs. Brereton’s face clouded a little as she walked across the hall to the door which was being held open for her.
“Well, au revoir,” she said. “I shall have more to say to you to-night. You dine with us, you know.”
Jack Alston did not appear to be in any particular hurry to go upstairs again after Mrs. Brereton had gone. He waited on the door-step to see her get in, a groom who barely reached up to the horses’ heads holding them while she took up the reins, then running stiffly to scramble in behind, as she went off down Park Lane in the most approved fashion, elbows square, a whip nearly perpendicular, and her horses stepping as if there were a succession of hurdles to negotiate, each to be taken in the stride. Her remarks about the importance of taking care had annoyed Jack a little, and still more his own annoyance at being annoyed. He had his own ideas about the management of his affairs, among which, about halfway down, came his wife, and the hint that she might, even conceivably, make matters unpleasant for him was the same sort of indignity as a suggestion that he could not quite manage his own dogs or horses. But after a minute he turned.
“For what time is her ladyship’s carriage ordered?” he asked of the footman.
“Half-past three, my lord.”
“Tell them to come round at a quarter to four instead,” he said, and went slowly upstairs again.
He found his wife on the balcony where he had left her, with her maid beside her with two hats in her hand.
“Yes, that one will do,” she said, “and send the other back. No, I will take it myself this afternoon. It is all wrong. Put it in a box and leave it in the hall. I am going out immediately.”
The maid retired with the condemned hat, and while Marie pinned the other on, she turned to her husband.
“You wanted to speak to me?” she said, not lifting her eyes.
Jack looked at her in silence a moment, and lit another cigar.
“Finish pinning on your hat first,” he said.
Marie found herself obeying him, with a sense of wanting, just in order to see what happened, not to do as he told her. However, she pinned her hat on.
“Well?” she said again.
“Jim Spencer has come back,” he said.
“I knew that. Mildred told me just now.”
“I wanted to say a few words to you about him. I find people have not forgotten that he was very much attached to you once.”
She looked up at him with eyes of indifferent wonder, as if he had asked her some inane unanswerable sort of riddle.
“People are quite at liberty to remember or forget what they like, as far as I am concerned,” she said. “Is that all you have to say to me? If so, I will go out, I think. The carriage ought to be round.”
“Not yet. I told them not to come round till a quarter to four. And I have more to say.”
“Please consult me another time,” she said, “before you take it upon yourself to alter my arrangements.”
Jack did not reply at once. Then in a voice expressive neither of compunction nor annoyance, “It is no use making a fuss,” he said. “I wish merely to warn you that people have not forgotten. I wish also to ask you to behave reasonably. People, very likely, will connect your names again: you know what they are.”
She rose flushing.
“So you wanted a quiet quarter of an hour in which to insult me,” she said.
He pointed to a chair.
“Sit down, Marie,” he said.
“Supposing I choose not to?”
“We will not suppose anything so absurd. There! Why not have done it at once? As I was saying, this will inevitably happen, and so I should advise you to accept it. That will entail certain alterations in your — your general style. I have often heard you criticising rather mercilessly the world you live in; Mildred tells me you were doing so this afternoon. I don’t mind your doing that: you have a racy sort of way of talking, and no doubt all your criticisms are perfectly true. But with the return of Jim Spencer, I should advise you either to drop that sort of thing, or else not see very much of him.”
He paused, and flicked the end of his cigar-ash over the balcony.
“Not that I mind your doing either the one or the other in themselves,” he continued, “but to do both will show a want of wisdom.”
“Ah, you don’t mind what I do, but only what people say!”
“Exactly. You have quite grasped my meaning.”
Again she rose from the chair in which she had sat at his bidding.
“That is all, then, I imagine,” she said. “Five minutes was enough.”
“Yes, for what I had to say. I thought you might like to talk over it.”
“I have not the least desire to.”
Jack reached out his hand for an early edition of the evening paper, and unfolded it.
“Perhaps you would tell me what you mean to do.”
“I have no intention of doing anything. Certainly I have no intention of discussing the question with you.”
Jack did not show the slightest impatience.
“There’s no use in being so nettled about it,” he observed. “If a woman behaves in a certain way, she gets talked about. That is all. I have indicated to you that if you do certain things you will get talked about; I do not want that.”