by E. F. Benson
“Is that the modern theory?” asked Marie.
“No, I don’t know that it is exclusively modern. But what’s the matter, Marie? What was Jack in a bad temper about?”
Marie frowned.
“Jack was coarse. I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you. Do you remember my going home with Jim two nights ago from your house, when I was going to see Blanche about the bazaar? Well, he hinted that I had not been to see her at all. Now, what are you to do when your husband behaves like that?”
Mildred laughed.
“Dear me! is that all? Men are coarse folk, you will not recognise that, and when they are in a bad temper they say all sorts of things they don’t mean. Now, I can tell you how I should deal with that. I should simply have laughed in his face, laughed with a wide mouth. But as for letting it disturb my peace of mind — You, too, of all people, who simply are the most enviable woman in London.”
“So you tell me,” said Marie; “but I don’t quite know why.”
“Oh, my dear, if it was not you I should think you were fishing for compliments — Why? Because you have the brains to be sometimes amused and sometimes bored at what absorbs all of us; because you are young; because somehow or other you are the person; because you make any woman standing near you look dowdy and coarse — —”
Marie laughed.
“I am stifled in my own perfections,” she said. “Let me get a breath of air.”
“Guardina is just going to oblige us with one,” said Mildred. “She really is like the girl in the fairy stories out of whose mouth drop diamonds and pearls. I suppose she is paid at least a sovereign a note. How pleasant that must be! Look, there is poor Nellie Leighton standing close to her, as if she hoped to be able to pick some of them up. What a wonderful woman! Not a penny of any sort to bless herself with, an insatiable appetite for pleasure, and the most light-hearted and appreciative woman I know. She sees us; she is coming over here.”
Mrs. Leighton, in fact, opened her mouth sideways towards one ear, which was her way of smiling, and rustled elaborately across the room. She laid an affectionate hand on Marie’s arm, and looked as if she had something very important to say.
“She is going to sing the ‘Zitanella,’” she whispered as the accompanist played a brilliant chromatic passage to compel silence. “Quite too divine for words. And I have bought a new house. Rustic.”
But at the moment a sound as faint and far-away as the ring of a musical glass pierced the air. Guardina’s lips were hardly parted, but that spear of sound thrilled through the room. Certainly, if she was paid a sovereign a note, that first note of the “Zitanella” was good measure. Then it broke like quicksilver into a thousand perfectly round and shining globules of sound, collected itself again, poised, quavered, trilled, thrilled, perched as it were like a bird on the topmost twig of sound, and vanished like a conjurer’s handkerchief into air. Mrs. Leighton again extended her mouth over her right cheek.
“Too delicious!” she said. “And how we are to pay for it all — the house I mean — I haven’t got the remotest idea. It is so comfortable having no money at all: you not only don’t, but you can’t pay for anything, and it’s no use thinking about it. Marie, you must come down and see it. There are two spare bedrooms all white and chintz. When I am there I always dream of milk and butter and litters of pigs. Yes, isn’t Guardina marvellous? I wish she would lend me her vocal cords for a week. I would willingly lend her anything I have for a fortnight.”
The end of Guardina’s song was marked by a sort of general post, and Marie was snapped up by Mr. Maxwell, if such a phrase can properly be used of so deliberate a process. His interpretation of the art of conversation chiefly consisted in opening his mouth as if he was going to speak, and then shutting it again, like a fish in an aquarium. The person with whom he was conversing he stood over in an encompassing manner, with an air of proprietorship. Elsewhere Anthony had cornered Mildred Brereton’s little girl, who evidently wanted to go away, but was checked by her mother’s eye, which from time to time pinned her like a fluttering butterfly to the spot. She herself was taken possession of by Mrs. Maxwell, who, unlike her husband, was as voluminous in speech as she was in person. Arthur Naseby, close beside them, was half listening to his hostess’s conversation, while he was discussing a quantity of subjects entirely unfit for discussion with Mrs. Leighton.
“Yes, I’m sure she sings beautiful,” said Mrs. Maxwell, “and so true. She seems to hit the note every time. What a thing to have a gift like that! and I’m sure she makes the most of it. Why, I remember her first coming out, and she went away in a hanson-cab from the opera. But she can go handsomer than cabs now!”
Mrs. Brereton again pinned the unfortunate Maud to her seat.
“And what a brilliant party you have got together, Mrs. Maxwell!” she said. “Positively, there is every one here one has ever heard of, and absolutely nobody that one hasn’t heard of. That is so clever of you! It is easy enough to get people, but the difficulty is to not have the wrong ones. I’m sure you must find it so.”
Mrs. Maxwell sighed.
“It’s as much as Anthony and me can do in a week’s work to go through the calling-book,” she said. “Talk of weeding, you never saw such a deal of it as we have to do. People seem to think they can all come for the calling. But one must be careful, and I try never to ask any one whom a single one of my guests would be sorry to have in their own houses.”
Mrs. Brereton smiled a congratulatory smile.
“We should most of us be very glad to see them in ours,” she said.
Mrs. Maxwell’s mood grew more sublime.
“And the pushing and the shoving that some people do to get asked to other people’s houses,” she said, “why, it fair passes belief. Now, Maxwell has no spirit. ‘Let ’em all come,’ he says, like that horrid vulgar song; but I said, ‘No, Maxwell — if they all come, half of them will keep away, and them’s the very half you want, and where shall we be then?’ There’s Guardina going to sing again, with Pagani this time. She’s got to sing two solos and two duos. How wonderfully their voices suit! you would say they was made for each other. Excuse me, there’s the Duchess of Perth just come, and I must say a word to her.”
Arthur Naseby sank into the unoccupied seat.
“Anything more divine I never wish to hear,” he said in a shrill whisper. “And the diamonds have caught an added lustre for their brilliant surroundings. To-night Mrs. Maxwell is one coruscation, with a collation to follow.”
“How true, too, what she said about Pagani and Guardina,” murmured Mrs. Brereton. “It takes that sort of person to say that sort of thing. I am not nervous personally, but” — and her eye caught sight of Maud and Anthony again— “but she is an excellent good kind woman,” she added with a very distinct change of tone.
“And what of the new man, Jim Spencer?” asked Naseby. “Are there developments? I always look on you as a sort of barometer. You can tell what is going to happen before it does happen.”
Mildred looked round.
“A little cloud like a man’s hand,” she said.
“Rising out of South Africa. You mean his head will follow?”
“Hush! That’s the worst of having these great people to sing. One cannot talk.”
“So unsociable,” said Arthur Naseby.
The room where they sat was the ballroom, with six windows overlooking Piccadilly. It would have held certainly a hundred couples on the floor, and, crowded as it was now, it must have contained twice the number. All the world, as Mrs. Brereton had said, was there, and if it was true that, as Mrs. Maxwell hoped, every one present would have been glad to see any of the guests at their houses, the world, it must be confessed, was of very catholic if not apostolic tendencies. It would be, in fact, impossible to imagine a more heterogeneous gathering: here a peer of European reputation, whose very name was considered by the country at large to be synonymous with solid respectability, was being talked to by a woman who in other circles
, and in widely different ways, was also of European reputation, and who seemed capable of quite making him forget for the moment, at any rate, the happy colonies which were intrusted to his wise and well-judged care; here a traveller recently returned from regions which were supposed to be impenetrable on account of the cannibal habits of their denizens was relating to two overdressed dowagers the internal horrors which ensued on drinking the only water which could be found in these abandoned spots; here a terrible man with curiously arched eyebrows and carmine-coloured cheeks, who looked like a decadent wax-work, was retailing to a brilliant débutante, in discreet whispers, things that made her white shoulders shake with laughter, till she was whisked away by an indignant mother. Princes of royal blood mingled with the crowd, which bobbed as they approached, and straightened itself again to make itself amusing, and all talked and giggled and gabbled together with the utmost freedom and impartiality. But the predominant feature of the entertainment which brought all its heterogeneous components into one harmonious whole was Wealth: Wealth burst from the throat of the singers, Wealth gleamed from the gilded chairs and Genoese upholstering, Wealth beamed from the ropes of pearls and diamonds which encircled lean necks and plump necks, old necks and young necks, and sat enthroned on black and gray and white and brown, and particularly on golden, hair. There were no doubt many people there who were not rich, but the wives of such were pretty, or had some cachet other than mere good breeding about them; but it is certain that there was no one in London who was very rich who had not at any rate been asked for that night, and but few who had not come. This probably was what Mrs. Maxwell meant when she said there was no one there whom any of her guests would not have liked to have at their own houses, and, with exceptions so few as to be negligible, she was perfectly right. All the plutocracy, in fact, were there, English, American, German, Greek, and Jew, with all the mixtures of religion, race and language which wealth, with its wonderful amalgamating power, can bring together. It was, in fact, a typical English party, for there was there all that money could buy and all those whom the power of money could bring. That is why it was so very full. People of birth and breeding were there, who screamed with unkindly laughter at Mrs. Maxwell and her bevy of quite impossible millionaires, yet they drank her champagne and danced to her fiddles with the greatest goodwill in the world, and had Mrs. Maxwell a hundred sons, each of whom would be as rich as Anthony, they would have hurled two hundred daughters at their heads; and had she a hundred daughters, it is perfectly certain that at least two hundred coronets, prospective or immediate, some with strawberry leaves, some with pearls, some possibly, even with fleur-de-lis, would have been laid at their feet. There were, of course, many people who still were not seen in Mrs. Maxwell’s drawing-rooms, and who persisted in looking over her head when they met her elsewhere, but she in her turn called them “stuck-up,” so the honours were pretty evenly divided. The world in general, moreover, distinctly agreed with Mrs. Maxwell, and said how absurd it was to give yourself airs.
Mrs. Maxwell by this time was getting to know the ropes sufficiently well to refrain from telling people how honoured she felt by seeing them at her house; she also was sufficiently well acquainted with the minute appetite the English have for music and the great appetite that our healthy nation has for food. Consequently the concert, at which every item was admirable and performed by first-rate artists, was short, and the supper, also in the hands of first-rate artists, elaborate. Her other preparations also were on the most complete scale, and Bridge-tables were ready in one room, all sorts of nicotine and spirits in another, and in the garden behind, brilliantly illuminated as to its paths and decently obscure as to its seats, there were plenty of opportunities to enjoy the coolness of the night air, which many people seemed to find refreshing and invigorating. In the supper-room, finally, there was a huge sort of bar for the rank and file, and a quantity of small tables for the very elect. “In fact,” as Mildred Brereton said to Jack as they strolled about the garden after a violent tussle to get food, owing to the invincible determination of every one to eat without delay, “it is as good as the best restaurant, and there is no bill afterwards.”
Jack laughed.
“You mistake the character of the entertainment,” he said. “It is a salon; I heard Mrs. Maxwell say so, and not a restaurant. Also, the bill is your presence here.”
“I expect many people would like to know another restaurant conducted on the same principle,” said Mildred; “but for you to say that sort of thing is absurd, Jack. I believe Marie is making you as old-fashioned as herself.”
Jack swore gently.
“Has she been old-fashioned to-night?” he asked.
“Immensely. She told me about her row with you.”
“How like a woman! They have to unburden to their friends about everything. What’s the good of unburdening?”
“Jack, you are such a pig — so am I; that is why we are friends. But, anyhow, I can see what a pearl she is. Sometimes I’ve half a mind to finish with the whole affair. Marie makes — —”
He turned on her fiercely.
“You don’t dare,” he said.
“My good man, it is no use storming. You get your way in the world, I allow, for somehow or other most people are afraid of you. But if you think I am, you are stupendously mistaken. To resume — half a mind, I said. When I have the whole mind you shall be instantly told. I am scrupulously fair in such matters, and I recognise the justice of your knowing first.”
She got up as she spoke.
“I shall now go home,” she said.
He laid his hand on her arm.
“No, don’t go yet, Mildred,” he said. “And I wish to Heaven you would not say such horrible things. But never mind that: you don’t mean it. Sit down again.”
She laughed.
“I mean every word,” she said, “also that I must go. Come; Andrew is sure to be playing Bridge. You can just drive me home. I will leave the carriage for him.”
Jack rose also.
“Won’t he look for you?” he asked.
“Not for long, and then he will play some more Bridge.”
CHAPTER V
Mrs. Brereton, among her many other moral hallucinations, was in the constant habit of remembering that she was an excellent mother, and that, next to her own affairs, it was highly probable that among all others she took most thought for those of her daughter. Consequently, on the afternoon following the Maxwell entertainment she determined to devote herself to Maud and her prospects, and with that end in view drove down with her in a space-annihilating motor-car to their house just above Windsor, in order both to talk with her by the way, and when arrived there see that things were in order for the week-end party that they were giving on Saturday. The summer weather which had begun with such splendour a week ago had by an unparalleled effort kept itself up, and seven days of sunshine had brought out a wealth of fresh green leaf on the trees, in London still varnished and undimmed by dust, and in the country of an exquisite verdure. Overhead the sun was set in a sky of divine purity, and the swift motion through the air she felt to be quite as exhilarating to the senses as would have been the afternoon party to which, had not duty called, she would otherwise have gone. She had never wished to have a daughter, and the abandonment of this party reminded her how often she was sacrificing herself to Maud. Indeed, she seemed to herself a most excellent mother.
But, notwithstanding that she was generally and justly supposed to be able to spar with the most robust emergencies, Mrs. Brereton did not particularly fancy the task she had set herself, or that, strictly speaking, had been set her; in fact, early this morning there had arrived for her a note from her hostess of last night, saying what sort of communication her dear Anthony had made her before he went to his bed. Under these circumstances it was only right that Maud’s mother should be asked whether she sanctioned the step he proposed to take in presenting himself as a suitor for her daughter’s hand. The phrasing of the note, as might be expect
ed from so successful a lady as Mrs. Maxwell, was as unimpeachable as its contents, and both filled Mrs. Brereton with joy, for the two odious sons of her husband by his first marriage would inherit the bulk of her husband’s fortune, and Maud would have almost nothing. Now, Mrs. Brereton had no desire whatever to see her an impecunious peeress, or, indeed, an impecunious anything, and she had come to the very wise conclusion that money certainly is money, and that where a chance of marrying a huge fortune was presented, it would be distinctly a failure of maternal duty not to put its advantages very distinctly and decidedly before her daughter. But she was never very much at ease with Maud, whom, if she had been another woman’s child, she would have described as an uncomfortable kind of girl. But being her own, she spoke of her always as very original and with great opinions of her own. She did not particularly like girls, any more than she liked young men or new wines: they all needed maturing before they were fit for the palate. But she was just, and gave full allowance to the necessity for being young before you can become mellow, though she wished that Maud would be quick about it. Really, when a girl is nearly nineteen, nearly six feet high, with a superb figure, and a face at which men undisguisedly stare, and with reason, it is time for the possessor of such advantages to begin thinking about making her nest. Here was one ready, excellently well-feathered. She only hoped, strongly but somehow remotely, that Maud might see it in that light. But she considered her daughter to combine symptoms of hopeless simplicity with those of the most world-weary cynicism. It was impossible that both could be genuine, but it puzzled her mother to say which was.
The sun was quite hot, and Mrs. Brereton at once put up her parasol, for a large glass screen sheltered them from the wind.
“Delicious the sun is,” she said, as she extinguished it. “And what a delightful drive we shall have, Maud! When one goes into the country like this, I can never understand why we ever live in town. So sensible of dear Nellie, is it not? She has bought a cottage in the country, with an orchard and a dairy and all that, and dreams of butter, she tells me. She probably wakes and finds that it is earwigs. That she doesn’t tell me.”